Xbox One graphics capabilities, odd SoC architecture, and bus bandwidth confirmed by Microsoft

Here’s the important points, for comparison’s sake. The CPU cache block attaches to the GPU MMU, which drives the entire graphics core and video engine. Of particular interest for our purposes is this bit: “CPU, GPU, special processors, and I/O share memory via host-guest MMUs and synchronized page tables.” If Microsoft is using synchronized page tables, this strongly suggests that the Xbox One supports HSA/hUMA and that we were mistaken in our assertion to the contrary. Mea culpa.

[thetruthx1]

"The underlying architecture is very similar to a super-charged APU with much higher internal bandwidth than a normal AMD chip"

Hmmm things are getting very interesting

[4Sh0w]

Nice deeper look at the specs from extremetech. X1 is customized up the ...! That chip is packing some surprising punch, with stuff like DirectX 11.1+, eSRAM, and the 109-204gb's of improved bandwith has my head exploding, plus no mention of the 8gb flash memory I read on a previous thread or am I confusing myself with something else? Damm its going to be very interesting to see the Digital Foundry bench tests once these 2 monsters release.

[thetruthx1]

Yup it'll also have 8 gigs of flash memory. Ms also said they have some things in the Xbox One that they don't want the competitors knowing about

[4Sh0w]

I thought so. Are they purposely keeping some spec info under the radar? I wonder what the hell that 8gb flash memory does?

[PrimeGrime]

@4Sh0w

The internal flash is used to store the new Xbox One's massive OS and firmware updates, also to alleviate space on the non removable HDD. Nothing more, if you are hoping it can free up RAM usage that the OS will need. Well we aren't there yet.

That is just impossible to use flash memory to run the entire OS. PC's can't even currently do that.

So to answer your question that is what they are using it for to store the OS, it will still use a certain amount of the systems RAM to operate.

[NextGen24Gamer]

Developers have been pleasantly surprised by the extra power the xbox one has due to the custom architecture in the xbox one. 8 gigs of ram, 8 gigs of flash memory, 2 extra custom cores for the hd audio, etc....

Here is a quote from the article:

If the cache really is 1024 bits wide, and the developers can make suitable use of it, then the Xbox One’s performance might surprise us.

This technical unveil confirms much of what we suspected about the chip, but throws us for some curves in other areas. All in all, a great session.

[slivery]

@Elite24Gamer

Those 2 audio chips are for the new Kinect and its audio processes.

[PrimeGrime]

Lol I love how many are disagreeing with pure facts. Flash memory cannot be used to run the OS but only to store it.

Why do you think the Xbox One's HDD and internal flash memory are using in conjunction with each other. Simple.

Jesus I am not shitting on the thing.

I am just explaining what the internal flash is used for. What else would be used for then? Since you can't use flash memory like RAM.

Please correct me then don't just disagree.

Lol ever since I got slasher716 or w/e his name is in trouble since then every time I comment. I get one disagree immediately..

[Bennibop]

109 - 204 gb is theoretical bandwidth, this is just Microsoft spin the reality will be around 109 - 150. Sony I am sure could release some theoretical figures too!

[kupomogli]

@Bennibop

Since only the 32MB ESRAM is 204GB/s most of it's going to be 109GB/s. Developers will probably be able to have the 8GB of slower ram not drop the commonly used textures and stuff that's not commonly used might go onto the 32MB first and then drop off the 32MB after it's on the DDR3.

It'll work well if the game is developed well, but the GDDR5 will run at a static speed, so giving developers less of a chance to make a mistake on filtering ram back and forth when there's only one pool to do it.

[NewMonday]

- 8g of Flash is most likely used to store the OS and system resources separately from the HDD, and that is to make it harder to crack.

- HSA/hUMA are not the same, hUMA concerns memory, HSA concerns processing, and the XB1 chip presentation did not state the use of hUMA or HSA or described a process that is similar.

[NextGenHorny]

Since the 8GB flash memory matches the RAM size, I guess it will be used for some kind of system suspension.
Instead of saving the RAM memory content to disk, it saves it to the flash memory, which I believe it's faster access than an HDD.

[Tw1tch3D]

@ Bennibop

"Theoretical bandwidth" makes no difference in either consoles, whether it be PS4's 176 GB/s or XOne's 204 GB/s ESRAM.

Sony's PS4 will NEVER hold a rate of 176 GB/s, but marking it at that point shows how much developers can work with. Same thing goes for XOne.

So if 109 GB/s is the minimum and 204 is peak and the ESRAM points to the GPU...well, that goes to show how much the developers can work with and not that they'll have difficulty going beyond 109 GB/s.

The question now is what is the ESRAM used for?!

...and the last question is a hint to Kupomogli on what his meaning of the term "commonly used textures" on the CPU, as if the CPU will be heavily used for graphics?! Doubt that!

@ newmonday

"..hUMA concerns memory, HSA concerns processing..."

Whaaa?!

There is no difference between the two, only that hUMA truly facilitates memory coherency. Do you understand what you post before doing it? Probably a twitter habit, right??

[Computersaysno]

The architecture is a bit of a mish mash created simply because Microsoft didn't think they could use faster memory in the shape of GDDR5.

In that sense it is overly complicated and patched up to try and help the weakness using DDR3 was going to create for the machine, that is not enough memory bandwidth for serious graphics performance.

We have to remember that is the only reason this complicated memory architecture exists, NOT because it is better than straight up massive chunk of unified memory.

Sony illustrated that they could theoretically have a small chunk of esram with bandwidth on the scale of 1000 gigabytes per second, but this was just not as good as having a large pool of memory with 'only' 176Gb/s.

If these small chunks of very fast on die memory were so helpful to graphics architectures, then PC graphics cards would be chock full of it.

The fact is its still a waste of die space for them. Its still much better to just use the space for extra shaders or TMUs and have a medium sized memory bus with high speed GDDR5.

Thats how every high end GPU still does it. Sony gambled choosing GDDR5 and it has paid off mega stylee. Microsoft have a slower architecture packed with more complex buses and a more difficult chip to get yields on.

Its hilarious really, Microsoft provided the best programming environment with the most straight forward machine in X360, and it worked fantastically for them. Sony created this fiddly machine in PS3 to accommodate their CELL processor and separate memory banks that devs grappled with for years.

This new generation is the ultimate role reversal.

[Athonline]

^To some people above:

HSA is part of the Jaguar APUs' architecture. There isn't ANY way the XBox could have a Jaguar-based APU and not HSA. HSA specifications are set by the HSA Foundation: http://hsafoundation.com/st...
which AMD HAS to implement and as a result, both Sony and Microsoft have to.

hUMA is AMD implementation of an HSA-like solution in traditional Von Neumann architectures X86(and X86-64) PCs to allow a shared memory pool to be used. hUMA is NOT part of the HSA specification and NOT the same. It is like an a poor, incomplete implementation of the HSA specifications, as HSA is NOT possible within a PC.
Similar to AMD's hUMA nVidia is launching Maxwell-architecture GPUs to allow shared memory access.

Both PS4 and XBOne got HSA in their APUs and none has nor needs hUMA.

HSA is an actual STANDARD set by a consortium of companies. hUMA is a MARKETING name for an AMD technology.

If you want, you can enjoy reading "brainless journalism", who try for a bit of internet traffic feed people with false info or incomplete statements.

[aceitman]

the 8 gig of flash was rumored for the interactive ads.

[ma1asiah]

You got to love this bit s well

"Of particular interest for our purposes is this bit: “CPU, GPU, special processors, and I/O share memory via host-guest MMUs and synchronized page tables.” If Microsoft is using synchronized page tables, this strongly suggests that the Xbox One supports HSA/hUMA and that we were mistaken in our assertion to the contrary"

I mean it doesn't confirm that they actually do but it is more and more looking highly likely.

As for unrevealed details that only makes logical sense. I mean its not like you want to show all your cards too early it is a war after all.

Man that 8 GB of flash memory if they do the same as they did with the X360 by using that for the OS then we could see even more of the pool of DDR3 RAM freed up for other uses.

Plus the hypervisor which can dial up and down resource allocation to where most needed.

Loving the X1 more and more

[NextGen24Gamer]

It's definitely good stuff. I'm with you. I'm loving the xbox one more and more as well. This is what they meant by saying it's rocket science stuff in the box.

It definitely looks like it. MS knew what they were doing all along. That's why they kept saying it's not only about the raw numbers that Sony was throwing out there.

What is even more interesting is they decided not to talk about specifics under the hood until Sony announced their launch date. Just to make sure they didn't change their tech in an attempt to compete.

[kneon]

If they used flash in place if ram not only would it be incredibly slow but it would burn through the read/write cycles of the chip in no time.

The flash is for storing the os or its another form of data cache, basically a mini ssd.

[JP1369]

Elite-
"What is even more interesting is they decided not to talk about specifics under the hood until Sony announced their launch date. Just to make sure they didn't change their tech in an attempt to compete."

Why would Sony need to change tech when they're already ahead?

50% More shaders
50% more texture units
50% more compute units
Twice the ROPS
Better RAM that is easier to get the most out of.
Also has dedicated audio chip

Sorry, MS themselves confirmed 1.3 TFLOPS, while PS4 is sitting at 1.8. No amount of spin and PR buzzwords will overcome that advantage.

[Pope_Kaz_Hirai_II]

cool story

[juggulator]

@JP1369
This is a comment thread for an X1 article. Most people commenting here don't care that PS4s specs prove its 50% more powerful(except maybe you and me). To them those specs are "raw numbers" which begs the question, if Sonys PS4 specs are raw numbers then what is all those specs/numbers mentioned in this article?

[JP1369]

juggalator-
" To them those specs are "raw numbers" which begs the question, if Sonys PS4 specs are raw numbers then what is all those specs/numbers mentioned in this article?"

Are you dense? You know exactly what those numbers are.
The reason I commented is to clear up the nonsense that people love to spew in articles like these. Saying that Sony needs to change tech to compete is, in fact, nonsense. Sony fanboys can be pretty bad as well, but I haven't seen as many of them willfully ignore the facts and succumb to hearsay, conspiracy theory and full-on delusion in an attempt to justify their purchase. The One will have great games and I'm sure millions of people will enjoy their experience with it. However, it won't be the most powerful console on the market, not by some margin. There's nothing wrong with that and - until recently - you heard many people in the MS camp say that graphics aren't all that important, yet it seems many of them have changed their tune now that official specs have been released. Unfortunately for them, all the specs do is confirm what we already knew. This is what is confusing and sad and pathetic about the situation; that is has remained pretty much the same, but a certain fanbase is acting as if some game changer just occured. Well, it hasn't. Deal with it.

[ma1asiah]

Could Microsoft somehow have managed to have implemented Fusion ioMemory to work with in the architecture of the X1???? possibly maybe?????

The virtual memory subsystem abstracts logical data addresses from their physical location by creating a directory of data locations. In modern OSs, a 64-bit virtual address space is used to organize and partition data used by the applications and users. Below this virtual address space lays the physical RAM, which has a much smaller address space. Operating systems and applications use this virtual interface to RAM (called the page table) to look up the physical location of data using a directory rather than requiring massive quantities of RAM just to satisfy each application's memory address space.

Similar to page tables in the host virtual memory subsystem, VSL virtualizes Flash via "block tables." VSL translates block requests to physical ioMemory addresses, also analogous to the virtual memory subsystem. It's important to note that these block tables are stored in host memory. This is a key advantage over other solid-state architectures (e.g. SSDs) that store block tables only in embedded RAM, where block tables are accessible only behind legacy storage protocols.

[MarkusMcNugen]

@JP1369
"Sony fanboys can be pretty bad as well, but I haven't seen as many of them willfully ignore the facts and succumb to hearsay, conspiracy theory and full-on delusion in an attempt to justify their purchase."

Sure they have. Kinect spybox comes to mind. That is a conspiracy theory an full-on delusion that PS4 fanboys have been spouting to defend their purchase of a PS4 and convince others to do the same.

And if not to defend their purchase than to try and convince others to participate in the delusion and buy their preferred console.

Trust me, both sides are guilty. Xbox fanboys defend the Xbox One without understanding the specs and how they compare, and PS4 fanboys attack the Xbox One because of specs they dont understand.

[juggulator]

@JP1369

First let's get one thing straight. I've been gaming since playing Asteroids and Pole Psotion on an Atari and have a college degree in level design. I work with game engines like UE3 and CRYENGINE on a daily basis. I know exactly what the specs of boths systems are. I comment on here for recreation, you comment here for a living and I will not be disprespected by some incognito delusonal fanboy.

"50% More shaders
50% more texture units
50% more compute units
Twice the ROPS "

Yes but HOW MANY of each cuz you sound like your spitting out raw numbers. Sony has provided the exact specs of what their CPU/GPU. MS is saying "you may get over 200/gbps depending on whether or not the 32MB of ESRAM is properly utilized" and obviously there are devs that are doing that because Ryse and Titanfall exist and they look damn good.

The sad thing is that I was initially agreeing with you but the "blinders" have obviously blurred your vision. And I won't be issuing or accepting any apologies either. I want to remain as respectful as possible as I know this is a comment thread for an X1 article but I've been a PlayStation gamer for over 20 years and that won't be changing because some article comes out claiming there's "new info" about the X1's architecture when in reality it's stuff that I knew before MS's reveal prior to E3.

I may be able to tolerate being called dense on the day that I exchange my Dualshock for something else, until then I don't f**cking think so.

[PrimeGrime]

Not trying to rain on your parade but it isn't anything new. I talked about this a couple days ago. Especially if anyone has been reading up on AMD's APU's lately.

Both the PS4 and Xbox APU's are based off of the same high performance technology used in the Kaveri APU planned to be released in early 2014.

The only difference is they are still based off of Jaguar cores and the Kaveri is steamroller cores but its still very new tech none the less.

They are both customized and everyone should be excited if you are Playstation fan or Xbox fan to see what these new APU's bring to the table.

[kewlkat007]

Nobody has yet to tell me what the 8GB flash ram is for?

I didn't know Microsoft customize that ship so much...
http://www.reactiongifs.com...

The XboxOne might not have the better GPU but if it were a Race car, it would have a more efficient and very very zippy Pitcrew looking at the architecture.

[bromtown]

People have said above - probably for storing the operating system since the HDD is non replaceable. However it's not for running the OS as some people have been saying, a) it's not quick enough, and b) Flash memory has a finite number of read/write operations before it craps out, so running an operating system from it would kill it super fast.

[NextGenHorny]

I guess it will be used for some kind of system suspension, as it matches the RAM size.

[Omegasyde]

@Bromtown.

Finally someone address that. The OS will be written to the HDD (despite not being able to be removed except by MS).

The 8 gig flash is a bit concerning as even the best quality flash drives have a limited read/write limit.

My guess is it used for storing background permanent information (I.e. "Software licenses") and has an advanced form of anti-hacking encryption on it. This leads me to believe that Major Nelson was right in a sense, that DRM can't be just turned off with a "switch".

IMHO, unless it was retooled for another purpose, the Xbox one might not even use the flash memory because of their reversal of policies after the FCC submission. It could possibly still store licences, but if thats true 8 gigs seems like overkill.

[MarkusMcNugen]

@Omegasyde
"The 8 gig flash is a bit concerning as even the best quality flash drives have a limited read/write limit."

True, but it all depends on whether its SLC or MLC for how many read/writes it can take before the end of its life. Id also like to point out that every smart phone has flash storage as well, and most of those have yet to die from read/writes.

Pretty sure my android phone is writing to and reading from the flash memory storage a ton and its alive and well. Hell, my old iPhone 3G is still working fine and I cant tell you the number of times Ive had to reload my 20000 songs to it.

[nosferatuzodd]

when it comes to hardware we all know who's king Samsung GE sharp all get help by Sony on hardware if it was software related then Microsoft would have the advantage but hardware please we are not worried about their theory 204 gbs second its just wishful thinking to trick ppl on their under power console look at the fact no matter how they over clock and es ram they're just making the system more difficult to work with they're going to overclock until every Xbox one catch fire in ppl houses I'm going to laugh at the RRoD that's coming i don't trust Microsoft with a dish washer much less a console

[MarkusMcNugen]

No... just no...

[stuna1]

And from your comments I'm willing to bet that you think that Microsoft are the only one that have something up their sleeve that they don't want the competition to know about!? After all you are about the truth!

I'm sure both have secret sauce in their architecture.

[ThatCanadianGuy514]

PS4: 1152 Shaders
Xbone: 768 Shaders

PS4: 72 Texture units
Xbone: 48 Texture units

PS4: 32 ROPS
Xbone: 16 ROPS

Doesn't change the cold hard facts.

[nightfallfilms]

You sure do like SPAM

[ThatCanadianGuy514]

Facts are spam now?
How convenient.

[Skips]

DayZ

But some don't like facts... They'd rather cling to "theoretical", "powah of ze ClOuD!!", and rainbows and dreams and whatnot... lol On paper, PS4 is definitely more powerful from what I understand...

And the games do show it, no doubt...

http://s.pro-gmedia.com/vid...
http://s.pro-gmedia.com/vid...
vs.
http://s.pro-gmedia.com/vid...
http://s.pro-gmedia.com/vid...

I admit, Forza 5 does look incredible...
http://a.pomf.se/3El1.gif

But I could honestly say the SAME thing about DriveClub... lol http://a.pomf.se/5Cj7.gif

^^Courtesy of GribbleGrunger...

EDIT: @badkolo...

Not sure if serious??? :/

Anyways, as good as Titanfall looks. It doesn't even come close... lol

https://www.googledrive.com...
https://www.googledrive.com...
vs.
http://i.minus.com/ibkLh2II...
http://i.minus.com/iSylqprP...

[Ritsujun]

YeH yOu cAn'T beEt tEh pAwaA of za ClouDz.

[badkolo]

skips, your first killzone pic is not gameplay , try harder. when the gameplay starts all that prettyness gets blurred, watch killzone videos again to see the truth

[u got owned]

From "theWB27";

Bugattii- 1000 horsepower 270mph 0-60 2 seconds
Nurburgring- 7:40 mins
Top Gear- 1:16 mins

Nissan GT-R-Stats- 480HP 193mph 0-60 3.2 seconds
Nurburgring- 7:24 mins
Top Gear- 1:17 mins

Game design isn't a straight line."

enough said!

[ALLWRONG]

The people who deny cloud or cloud computing (See OnLive) have the same mind set as those who thought electricity was magic. The same kind of people who tried to discredit Genetics or DNA.

In other words "denial"

[JokesOnYou]

ssshhh you're making too much sense. I keep telling them the performance difference is so close its mute, devs and money will determine quality of games. It will however be interesting to see the backtracking when real world bench tests highlight X1 advantages.

[GribbleGrunger]

@badkolo: I wasn't going to post anything until I saw your post.

"skips, your first killzone pic is not gameplay , try harder. when the gameplay starts all that prettyness gets blurred, watch killzone videos again to see the truth"

1080p comparison. Keep an eye on the shadows, lighting and reflections as well as the density of action and the near photorealism of textures:

http://www.youtube.com/watc...

Fun fact: The KZS footage is 1080p/60fps

Don't get me wrong though, Titanfall will be a fantastic game and well worth the purchase.

[Clarence]

Your sure hate facts.

[Deadpoolio]

It's amazing how with Xbots facts are suddenly Spam or just someone being a hater....It's weaker get over it, the One80 will never be as powerful, the cloud will never do what you people think it will especially graphically....

But that doesn't mean the One80 is a slouch, it's just weaker....So what games will still look nice on it

[_QQ_]

PC> both,so why bother?

[Arrrriibaa]

More money > less money.

edit: oohh nice pc fanboys disliking a fact, nothing new them PC fanboys haha!.

[madpuppy]

If you are so enamoured by the PC, why are you spamming console threads? wouldn't you just stay where you are with like-minded gamers?

[_QQ_]

Then why is he spamming XBOX threads? of course i'm not surprised, the white damage control knights don't come out on this site untill Sony gets criticism. plus why would i dislike someone claiming that i have allot of money?yeah more money,better graphics too,better indie scene, better options,better performance,better online community,More games. Cold hard facts right?

[LucasEVille]

What's wrong with choosing a console and using your pc? Unless your just staying with pc in which case why are you even commenting on console articles?

[Narutone66]

@lopez_josue,
Since your beloved XB1 is losing on specs, you have to resort to PC to win an argument.

[kneon]

Why bother? Because the games you want to play are only available on one of the consoles.

That's the only reason you need.

[_QQ_]

@Narutone Yep my beloved X1,I guess being unbiased now days means you are a fanboy. I don't give an ass about the X1.

[wtopez]

I agree with Lopez_Josue. If you're gonna swing your PS4 specs d*ck around an Xbox thread, don't moan when a PC user drops, as DayZ would put it, "cold hard facts".

PS4: 1152 Shaders
GTX 770: 1536 Shaders

PS4: 72 Texture units
GTX 770: 128 Texture units

This is from a Mid/High end GPU that has been out for months. By the time the consoles are out, AMD will have launched it's new line of GPUs and Nvidia will have revised it's GTX 700 series. That is only this year and it happens every year.

[Sevir]

Sooooo are you going to Spend $600 to upgrade so you can PLAY the SAME multiplatform Games which currently have PS3/Xbox 360 as their BASELINE, just so you can GLOSS over Framerates and Resolution? the overall story and gameplay dont matter, EVEN if its just a high res console port!?

LOL keep playing the resolution and framerate game.

But if a game runs steady and looks pretty on one console the overall experience is THE SAME across the board, even with high res assets and higher frame rates!

Just saying.

[maniacmayhem]

All of that and the games shown for Xbox One still look excellent.

[torchic]

I don't think anybody ever said that they wouldn't look excellent.

they just won't look as good as PS4, (especially 1st party) that's it. that is nothing to be ashamed of though, 360 users enjoyed their 1st party titles even though they didn't look as good as PS3 1st party titles.

[Death]

The same ones talking about PS4's superiority also claimed the PS3 would be "TrueHD" 1080p for everything released. They also said Blu-ray made PS3 games look better.

Here's a nice flashback to 2005 http://www.ign.com/articles...

The PS3 GPU was also rated at 1.8 Tflops by Sony so you will have to excuse me if I don't seem to overly excited by Sony's claims for the PS4.

[torchic]

holy fudgecakes! disagrees! what did I say wrong?

1st party PS3 games looked better than 1st party 360 games.

devs already saying that PS4 versions of multiplats will look a bit better (Rivals, Warframe)

these are indisputable facts people! not trying to trash 360 or Xbox One!

@death

if that's somewhat directed at me, just note that I was 12 in 2005, blissfully unaware of such topics.

[nightfallfilms]

No its SPAM when you post it in every single article. I could probably go onto a non gaming website and find you posting this crap.

[CPTN MITCHELL]

What about xbone fans with the no game spam

[MarkusMcNugen]

@CPTIN MITCHELL

They are both stupid. Fanboys are stupid, thats all there really is to it. Not stupid as in unintelligent, stupid as in blind to anyone elses interests other than their own.

[tuglu_pati]

@DayZ

Spam much...

i don't see any mention or comparison with the PS4 in the article. So its obvious that you are trolling.

[corvusmd]

@ Day Z Well this is based on old SUSPECTED figures..not to mention it's just a SMALL slice of the over all picture, you keep focusing on the paper specs you like....you'll get left in the dust...you've been warned.

PS3 did this SAME thing last gen...and it's still getting whooped at the end of the gen in graphics and playability. Open your mind a little, and stop focusing on paper specs that are outdated and mean little to nothing

[cell989]

Um... Show me something on the 360 that looks and plays better than The Last Of Us, Uncharted 3, God of War Acension, or Two souls. Exactly stfu and try harder

[ziggurcat]

Suspected specs that are confirmed.

How is PS3 being whooped? Because it's widely known that graphics in 1st party titles have far surpassed that of the X360. 3rd party titles have also reached parity in terms of graphical fideltiy, and are increasingly surpassing the X360. And where are you getting that nonsense about playability from?

[gamertk421]

@cell. Easy. Halo 4.

[MysticStrummer]

"PS3 did this SAME thing last gen...and it's still getting whooped at the end of the gen in graphics and playability."

There goes any hope of credibility.

[fooltheman]

I once had a guy over who only had a 360 and had played halo 4...
and even him had to confess Killzone looked a lot better... He was even impressed by all the first party games...

[StrangerX]

@cell 989

well if you insist!then:
Crysis 2&3,
Halo 4
Alan Wake
Gears of War 3
Forza 3&4

[Sevir]

StrangerX....

OK well lets compare.

Crysis 2 and 3 on Xbox 360 to Killzone 2 and 3 on PS3... it isn't Crysis

Again Halo 4 compared to Killzone 3 still falls flat.

You said Alan WAKE? let me say it like the form MS exec Don Mattrick... "HAVE YOU SEEN..." BEYOND: 2 Souls?

Gears of War 3... OK! UNCHARTED 2 or Uncharted 3 or better yet THE LAST OF US! Which ever do you pick the out come remains.

Forza 3/4? GT6 lets not play blind here! Visually PS3 exclusives hold the crown and always will!

but can we just stay on Topic here, this isn't about teh PS4's superior specs or the PS3s first party game comparisons to the xbox 360... Its about MS confirming what we all already knew about the XBO's internals with some interesting additions.

As it stands Now the XBOX is exactly the machine that it was predicted to be even when MS was being ambiguous and left tech junkies to scrounge for facts while they through out 5 billion transistor GPU and cloud powered.

Its a marked step up over the xbox 360... IT'll have some great games, Hello Titan Fall! but thats it. Acting as if the detailed info on the MS finally revealed makes the console magically more stronger than it already is silly. It is a POUND for POUND exact confirmation on the performance of the machine that many tech sites have deduced months prior MS just made it official. Lets get back to waiting for the great games coming out at launch for these 2 devices!

[badkolo]

then this will be the first time you see a lower powered system trounce a 40% more powerful system, cause no one is even denying the facts,, the games look better on the x1

[ziggurcat]

"the games look better on the x1"

Subjective opinion, not fact.

[JamieL]

@ ziggurcat
Yep, sure is, just like every PS4 zealot on here talking about how much better the PS4 is, before the damn thing has even come out. Why is his opinion any different that the folks talking about how much they love the PS4? One more thing, why didn't you start your crusade way up there where this opinion BS started? I saw at least 5 PS fanboy opinions you could have targeted before this one from badkolo.

[Funantic1]

Your "facts" haven't been proven because no one but Microsoft understands their architecture. The more we learn about the X1 the more we find out that it's more powerful than what we originally thought. So your spec spam is just a spoof.

[Quicktopick]

maybe ur ryt... then maybe u arent. well c in a couple of months

[JackOfAllBlades]

It is just simply facts guys..

[PFFT]

And this is a fact as well!

From "theWB27";

Bugattii- 1000 horsepower 270mph 0-60 2 seconds
Nurburgring- 7:40 mins
Top Gear- 1:16 mins

Nissan GT-R-Stats- 480HP 193mph 0-60 3.2 seconds
Nurburgring- 7:24 mins
Top Gear- 1:17 mins

Game design isn't a straight line."

I couldnt have said it better myself.
Thank you theWB27 and thanks to u got owned for re posting this awesome quote!

[JackOfAllBlades]

And the GT-R is Japanese, the PS4 is Japanese, the PS4 is more powerful, the Veyron is more powerful. The best of both worlds, so the PS4 is far superior, I understand what you are getting at now.

:D

[Narutone66]

Lol at the comparison between the cars and game designs. Just like the power of the clouds, not everybody's internet is fiber optic, right? So based on that comparison, the power of the clouds is just wishful thinking.

[theWB27]

@pfft
No problem : )

[TheHierarchy]

@DayZ

you know, I wonder in 6 years from now when things change again what you'll be saying then.

to me this tech comparison won't matter. we'll all be getting remasters of this upcoming gen's games in the future for the next consoles.

Bundles will be made and we'll all be buying the same sh3t because the gen after won't be backwards compatible with APUs and whatnot.

[B-radical]

You are so annoying no one is denying that? Geeeee

[starchild]

You're trolling because, while those are facts, they aren't all the facts.

You are only drawing attention to facts that support your bias.

[BallsEye]

Here we go again.
RAW specs RAW specs.
By saying that XO is not on par even with ps4, you automaticly admit that ps3 is like a SNES compared to xbox 360. Why? Because X360 got WAY more raw power.

Funny how amazing looking games still came out on ps3. It must be magic or your facts don't mean sh!t.

http://www.examiner.com/ima...

Here you go. Now go do something useful.

[Kingnichendrix]

let me just copy and paste something i pointed out to someone further down. "Ps3 is not 5x less capable in raw power are you out of your mind let me summarise just for you.
Cpu: Xbox 360 3.2-GHz PowerPC Tri-Core Xenon vs Ps3's 3.2 GHz Cell Broadband Engine x8 spes which work like cores one was reserved for os.
Gpu: Xbox 360 500 MHz ATI Xenos, Up to 512 MB GDDR3 RAM (shared w/ system RAM) and 10 MB eDRAM 21.6 GBps bandwidth (256 GBps via eDRAM) vs Ps3's RSX “Reality Synthesizer” @ 550MHz, 256 MB GDDR 3RAM (additional 224 MB can be shared w/ system RAM) and 22.4 GBps bandwidth
Total T-Flop performance: Xbox 360 1052 Gflops vs Ps3 1.8 Tflop's
Ram: Xbox 360 512 MB GDDR3 RAM (shared with GPU), 700 MHz speed and 22.4 Gbps bandwidth vs Ps3's 256 MB XDR RAM, 3.2 GHz speed and 25.6 Gbps bandwidth"

[FrigidDARKNESS]

Lmao you people still klinging to those old specs from vgleaks.

[JP1369]

Oh, you mean the leak that these new specs confirm? The boost in performance is from increased GPU clock speeds, which means the numbers are still in line with what VGleaks reported. Good argument though...

Also, it's clinging. This isn't Mortal Kombat, learn to spell.

[Belking]

lol..You can't measure performance with ROPS and FLOPS.

while the raw numbers would favor Sony, the real trick here is to try and output only what is required. MS custom design and the way they cached the heck out of this thing will easily match ps4 performance. The power gap that people thought was there just isn't, now that we have all the information from MS.

The real proof is in the games. xb1 games look just as good or even better than PS4....and they are running at better framerates.

[JP1369]

Killzone: Shadow Fall MP runs 1080P60. The only XBONE equivalents are Forza (baked lighting, racing game) and KI (fighting game). Your examples are poor.

"You can't measure performance with ROPS and FLOPS."

Actually, you can measure performance is ROPS and FLOPS, which is why these measurements even exist. The caching is done to overcome the slow DDR3, which may bring it on par with the PS4's GDDR5 (reports say the theoretical numbers for XBOne bandwidth is actually in the 150gb/s range). Still, that requires extra time and effort just to maybe get the memory on the One working as well as its competition. You're also ignoring the PS4's ability to bypass cache altogether and use multiple pipelines to ensure communication between CPU and CPU.
Still, that's only the memory. The One doesn't have the grunt to compete with PS4. Launch games are always a mixed bag, with devs constantly aiming at a moving target. I don't doubt the One will compare favorably this November, but things will change once the second wave comes out. It will only get worse from there, as people start to use compute functions on the PS4 that the One doesn't have.

To reiterate:
No amount of memory management will help the One develop more compute units, texture units, shaders or ROPS. These are physical limitations on the console and it's in this area that the One is completely outclassed. Enjoy your launch games, as they are the first and last generation on Xbone software that will be able to compete with PS4 graphically.

[XabiDaChosenOne]

@JP1369
"Enjoy your launch games, as they are the first and last generation on Xbone software that will be able to compete with PS4 graphically."
Pretty much.

[Badassbab]

@ Skips

Unfair screenshot comparisons. Let me explain why.

Titanfall is being developed on a heavily modified 'Source' game engine which was originally developed by Vale for Counterstrike and Half Life 2 way back in 2004. It's also 60FPS so only has 16.66ms to render an entire frame. In no way does Titanfall take full advantage of the Xbox One.

Killzone SF is on a game engine developed by first party developer Guerilla Games specifically for the PS4 from ground up. It's also a 30FPS SP so has twice as long to render a frame making for nicer looking graphics.

FM5 is like Titanfall a 60FPS game so 30 FPS Driveclub has twice as much time to render a frame which should mean it has a better chance of turning out to be the prettier game but in this instance it's not because Turn 10 are just better developers when it comes to extracting the most out of a console.

It really is down to the developer and the game engine used. If Killzone SF was 60FPS those screenshots would not have looked as good. In my opinion Titanfall looks like to have the better gameplay which is what matters in the end.

[JP1369]

Killzone multiplayer runs at 60 frames, just like Titanfall and it looks leagues ahead graphically. No other console game matches what is does and it does it at 1080P60.
http://www.youtube.com/watc...

Also, if you knew anything about Respawn, they've modified - and in some cases completely rewritten - the Source code to take advantage of new tech. What they've been saying is that the Xbone version may not run at 1080P60.
http://www.neogaf.com/forum...

Forza 5 does look good, but it's using the same baked lighting tech Forza 3 used. Driveclub, on the other hand, is using full dynamic lighting with trackside detail and density that Forza can't match. The team have also stated, on multiple occasions, that they are aiming for 60 fps at launch.

[Badassbab]

JP1369

Titanfall target frame rate is 60 for both SP and MP and as far as I can tell TF looks like the smoother game with more freedom of movement and with a lot more going on, Warzone looks to be the corridor MP experience from the video seen thus far and I can bet my bottom dollar it will be a perceptual 60fps while Titanfall will be more rock solid. As I said earlier Source has been heavily modified for TF but it's still not a ground up Xbone game engine like Killzone SF is on PS4 so it's still not a fair comparison. You can see the Source heritage right off the bat. Plus GG are masters of pushing hardware to the limit. Forgot to mention latency will most likely be superior on TF too.

I would hope Driveclub ends up looking better than F5 (not seen any evidence yet) since it's running at half the frame rate! The trackside detail and lighting you speak of, I don't see anything amazing over FM5. Also I would be surprised if DC turns up as a solid 60fps game. It may like GT5 be perceptual which I guess is ok for some.

[Nocando]

PS4: 1152 Shaders
Xbone: 768 Shaders

PS4: 72 Texture units
Xbone: 48 Texture units

PS4: 32 ROPS
Xbone: 16 ROPS

All of which amount to what? A few more FPS? A better texture here and there? Those are the cold hard facts, my friend.
However, if you want to talk specs, here is a great analogy: I have seen 4 cylinder cars beat 8 cylinder muscle cars in the quarter mile at a local track. It's not the horsepower, its what you do with it.

[JP1369]

Actually, it's torque, which is the baseline measurement for horsepower, that does it. I've also seen 4 cylinders that have more power than an 8. As has already been mentioned, your analogy is inaccurate and serves only to display your ignorance of cars, physics and tech.

[Nocando]

Hey everybody, look at how much of an ahole DayZ is, he just PMed me this little gem:

You clearly have no idea what you're talking about, so i'll forgive your ignorance.However, that analogy was just plain autistic.

You should be embarrassed, honestly.

[DonFreezer]

Name one graphics card retailer that mentions those specs or shut your fucking mouth.The Sony pr bullcrap should stop. Just one retailer that has information on the rops and texture units of a graphics card.

[MASTER_RAIDEN]

not sure what any of this means, but idc. just give me a next gen gta 5.

NOW PILE ON THE DISAGREES!

[SchwoererBear]

Your comment makes more sense to me than anything on this thread. processor this and core that, IDK what da faque these people are talking about! show me the games! show me the games! I will pick a system and I will play games

[KwietStorm_BLM]

Where is that article asking when did gamers stop caring about games?

[Kingnichendrix]

if you are talking about graphics it is pretty nice to have a game thats also nice to look at you know. Imagine zelda ocarina of time with xbox one or ps4 graphics that would be the best or even imagine playing the ocarina through the kinect haha that would be funny

[titletownrelo]

when they started caring more about pointless bragging rights, rather than having fun.

I've been coming to this site and others for months, and the people on here are really starting to disgust me.

Who gives a flying f*ck on what product some RANDOM person on the internet is getting!?

And then to try to make whatever console you're getting sound more superior than the other...to make yourself feel better is incredibly CHILDISH!

-Mine has more RAM!
-Well, mine has a better launch line-up!(even though I'll probably only buy one of the games)
-Oh yeah, well, the graphics of games on mine look better than yours!

This is all so...pointless

[Pancit_Canton]

More reason for the FCC to delay and Xbone developers to f up game development due to harware and software changes.

release date Nov 15 2014.

[strifeblade]

actually msoft got their aproval before sony. So you efFed up and now u look stupid. how do you feel? current top article at n4g.

[Nik_P757]

The PS4 is already finalized and in mass production so if if the X1 is packing more power then Microsoft originally claimed why would they keep it under wraps? It's not like Sony would halt production and start all over. The PS4 is more powerful, why is there so much debate about it when the numbers are already out there? Numbers do not lie. It's not the end of the world, doesn't mean you won't enjoy the X1. I enjoyed my 360 and guess what, the PS3 is more powerful.

[Pancit_Canton]

They have to do 180 on the hardware too. They can't have all the software and policy have all the fun.

Microsoft should have skip this gen and go back to the drawing board and start from scratch. It's clearly that they are not ready and just being pressure by a lot of people (investors) with all the changes the have been doing.

[Nocando]

I think you are a tad outdated with your comments.

[corvusmd]

Uh because this article proves that all the specs and numbers are NOT out there....that's WHY this an article at all

[tuglu_pati]

No one is saying the X1 is more powerful than the PS4. If you read the article it just says that it may have better performance than what everyone anticipated.

You guys been so defensive shows a lot of insecurity.

[JamieL]

That's just the PS crew period.

[Nocando]

That's what I am saying, I don't see anyone touting the X1 as being more powerful than the PS4, yet they come in here and still beat everyone over the head with specs.

[H0RSE]

The problem with simply sourcing numbers and claiming "victory" is that there is a lot of stuff going on in the background that can skew the message. Yes, on paper, PS4 is sporting bigger numbers, but how does everything come together? What processes are taking place? Which console is able to better utilize the capabilities of the hardware? What "tricks" will each console offer?

It seems to be that Sony has taken more of a traditional "off the shelf" approach to building the PS4, whereas MS has customized virtually every aspect of their hardware, thus we keep finding out more and more about the X1 that we didn't think it was capable of. Raw numbers only tell so much of the story.

[CPTN MITCHELL]

@thetruthx1 i know what it is... A release date jajaja nice secret

[MadSientist89]

oh look sony bots flocking to bash any positive xbox news.

[boing1]

There is no positive news about Xbox. Only one-eighties.

[JamieL]

This is positive too me, so you are 100% wrong, too me.

[Kingnichendrix]

more like 180% wrong

[JamieL]

@ Kingnichendrix
That was funny, it actually made me laugh when I read it.

[boing1]

^^
Get a room, you two.

[ricochetmg]

yawn.
ps4 day zero.

[gamertk421]

So you will never get a PS4, because day zero doesn't exist.

[B-radical]

Hahah schooled him

[n4rc]

"this strongly suggests that the Xbox One supports HSA/hUMA and that we were mistaken in our assertion to the contrary. "

Interesting...

[PrimeGrime]

http://en.wikipedia.org/wik...

This has been confirmed a long time ago. I tried to make comments about this and that is what an APU does. That is what it supports is hUMA.

All of AMD's APU's use hUMA. So why would Xbox One or PS4's APU's be any different.

"The AMD Accelerated Processing Unit, formerly known as Fusion, is a microprocessor from AMD designed to act as a CPU and GPU solution on a single chip. Its heterogeneous system architecture has been designed to make it easier to write, optimize, and load balance software, while providing higher performance and lower power consumption."

[n4rc]

Its only interesting because the n4g engineers all swore this wasn't the case.. Lol

I suspected as much.. it been floating around for awhile.. Nice to see details tho

[joeorc]

Strong to suggests by their observation does not mean it has. Like I stated before. In the case of the PS4 it does has hUMA . By AMD's very own Manager. While this is based on conjecture. Based on no confirmation by AMD.

[n4rc]

You mean the unquoted report that was later denied by amd?

Yeah... Saw that lol

They seemingly both use this tech in some form... But amd isn't going to comment on chips they built for ms and Sony..

Gotta wait until both companies confirm it if we want to be 100% on it

[CPTN MITCHELL]

U call this good news wow....good news is 50% more powerful ;-) u see now i'am flocking

[badkolo]

why wouldnt it be good news, the x1 is already showing superior graphics and now this shows its even more pwoerful then orginaly thought and that ms put some thought into this versus piecing off the shelf parts to make the ps4. you guys can claim the ps4 is 99% more powerful yet not one game has shown anything to match the x1 other then sons which looked as good as dr3

[Minato-Namikaze]

Nothing on the XB1 looks better than KZ:SF or Infamous, and if history is anything to go by Driveclub will also be one one the best looking Launch titles (its already miles better than the E3 build).

[badkolo]

if you think this infamous secon d son is the best looking game on both consoles then you sir are blind, it looks amazing not the best

here you go http://www.youtube.com/watc...

[CPTN MITCHELL]

What games are u talking about? Cause cod looks like crap forza still looks like forza 4 and titan it's ok...now kz ans second son and wait until santa monica studio and Ndog show what they are working with..even watch dog looka amazing on the ps4

[christocolus]

I reaLly don't care about these specs..I go by what I've seen and so far ms currently has better looking games imo...ryse, forza5,quantum break all look so awesome (and yes remedy said the trailer shown was all in game engine.)..ps 4 may be more powerful but honestly I'm yet to see where the extra power is going into..

[fooltheman]

The order... was also in-game engine...

[joefrost00]

@infamous assassin
You sound dumb
Yoh do realize dr3 blows Infamous ss out the water
You are talking about hundreds of zombies on screen at once
I have seen three gameplay demos of infamous and I swear there are.no more than eight characters on screen at once
Dr3 got hundreds of zombies physics every zombie actuall have their own insides ect
Its just a lot more going on in dr3 than infamous
And to really kill it ryse destoys infamous and they have hundred man battles in it
Infamous looks good but I think its just the improvement from the last one graphically why everybody is hyping it up

[Infamous298]

Facepalm

[windblowsagain]

Hundreds of zombies doing nothing.

It's actually easy to put lots of screen, even though it was running on a PC @ about 20fps. The windows sound gave it away.

Ryse looks good graphically(cry engine 3), gameplay wise, lots of glitches. But we'll see.

Forza5 looked decent and i'm sure it will play well. But again it should have day/night/weather by now.

I mean i tell you how silly people talk, some bloke was saying The New splinter cell on PC looks nextgen. It's not even close,lol.

[joefrost00]

Sad truly sad
The only games that were running on PC was a hand ful of third party gameswhich is normal to have dev kits for shows
All of the exclusives with the exception lococycle was confirmed on X1 hardware
The funny thing is all of MS exclusives you could play they didnt let anybody play infamous ss
Its a lot different seeing gameplay and actually playing gameplay
If you are going to comment please have facts and a little research not just things you have heard lol

[Niv]

Dr3 graphics will have to be cut down a bit to lift the frame rate.
There's nothing out there that can compare to infamous and order 1886 !

[joefrost00]

@niv
Lol really
Two things
First like I said before ryse looks better than infamous and dr3 is technically better and considering ryse and dr3 are launch titles and I.famous comes out a whole half year later its pathetic and really puts it in perspective
If you really want to be fair about it compare it to quantum break its coming out in the launch window but not on launch day but I forgot the small parts they did show was gameplay but no one believed
them so we will just wait and see I have always said the best looking game to me is quantum break but even when they actually showed like 10 seconds of gameplay people where saying it looked to good so its CG even though remedy said it was gameplay
But like I said infamous cant even compare to games coming out six months before it so I guess trying to compare it to quantum break would be a little to much

2. The order was a CG trailer lol
You might as well throw in the dark sorcerer tech demo lol
Bringing trailers to make a point sad

[Quicktopick]

my eyes hurt on reading this 1

[Jeff257]

@ joefrost00

Just so you know inFamous Second Son is coming out in Feb 2014. That puts it 3 months after the PS4 release not 6. But you haven't gotten anything else right so it is no surprise you would also miss that detail.

[joefrost00]

Last time I checked it was April and Feb was a rumor
Let me give the order it
First they said Feb and then pushed it back to April and then saw a rumor saying it might make feb but nothing is confirmed
Actually I have been spot on with everything I have said especially about infamous
See I know cause I also preordered a ps4 and X1
So I know you think Im just some fanboy on here ranting cause I have figured out sony fans really hate to here anything that dont put the ps4 as number one when all I am doing is telling you what I see from seeing the games in person
They are going to have infamous in the sony booth at PAX so hopefully they will let you play it

[Jeff257]

http://www.polygon.com/2013...

Confirmed 6 days ago that it is launching in Feb. So again you still can't get that right. There hasn't been one thing yet you are spot on about. You really should just stop before you embarrass yourself further.

[BallsEye]

You child, study this image as well.

http://www.examiner.com/ima...

So ps3 is 5x less capable in raw power than 360 and yet you see games like last of us, killzone etc.
Your logic fails.

You will be very very disappointed.

[Kingnichendrix]

Ps3 is not 5x less capable in raw power are you out of your mind let me summarise just for you.
Cpu: Xbox 360 3.2-GHz PowerPC Tri-Core Xenon vs Ps3's 3.2 GHz Cell Broadband Engine x8 spes which work like cores one was reserved for os.
Gpu: Xbox 360 500 MHz ATI Xenos, Up to 512 MB GDDR3 RAM (shared w/ system RAM) and 10 MB eDRAM 21.6 GBps bandwidth (256 GBps via eDRAM) vs Ps3's RSX “Reality Synthesizer” @ 550MHz, 256 MB GDDR 3RAM (additional 224 MB can be shared w/ system RAM) and 22.4 GBps bandwidth
Total T-Flop performance: Xbox 360 1052 Gflops vs Ps3 1.8 Tflop's
Ram: Xbox 360 512 MB GDDR3 RAM (shared with GPU), 700 MHz speed and 22.4 Gbps bandwidth vs Ps3's 256 MB XDR RAM, 3.2 GHz speed and 25.6 Gbps bandwidth

[Quicktopick]

@christocolus
thats those are just 1st gen games on both consoles. wait till we get to the 3rd or 4th then you'll see the difference

[FrigidDARKNESS]

Funny, the 40% more power GPU and 50% more power RAM was debunked yesterday at Hotchips.

So either yfolks made that whole thing up or the developer is lying (or doesn't know).

[1lawrence]

It's funny need for speed developer said one game looks better than the other then yoshida tweeted that quote showing that they were talking about ps4

[Metfanant]

not it wasnt...it was confirmed lol

[No_Limit]

Who the heck cares about how powerful the PS4 is on an XB1 thread? Yes the PS4 has GDDR5 and 40% more Flops and that is great. The article here is a great piece by the PC guru extremetech breaking down the components of the XB1 and they are liking what they are seeing and giving us mortals some insightful information on the hardware that we want to find out more on. I hate fanboys coming in and spamming everything into a bloody mess.

[Minato-Namikaze]

A better comparison will be when they have both the full picture of the XB1 and PS4.

[PrimeGrime]

Sigh this whole hUMA argument is old. If you look on AMD's APU wiki. It will state that both the PS4 and Xbox One use hUMA because that is what an APU does in the first place is use hUMA.. AMD's that is.

So seeing as they are both using AMD's APU's. That means they use hUMA no matter how each company goes about it.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wik...

"The AMD Accelerated Processing Unit, formerly known as Fusion, is a microprocessor from AMD designed to act as a CPU and GPU solution on a single chip. Its heterogeneous system architecture has been designed to make it easier to write, optimize, and load balance software, while providing higher performance and lower power consumption."

[Braveheart_NZ]

This is for badcola LOL Here is your multiplayer game play that you requested for KZ SF... It was announced in the last few days that the multiplayer will be in 1080P 60f/s..... I have both Xbox One and PS4 pre-ordered and paid for already so I am biased to none. I will enjoy both systems. This footage has KZSF looking pretty damn good if you ask me imo... Copy and paste the link and change the video resolution to 1080P and enjoy :)

https://www.youtube.com/wat...

[Trekster_Gamer]

The specs are fun to read about but I am about the games and microsoft has had the best showing by far.
Titanfall... Ryse.... Forza for starters... Those are specs I can get behind!!!!

[MagnusX]

your not wrong on that plus I believe this may be a rehash of last gen ps4 has the paper specs but the X1 looks and runs smother because customization...How else can you explain Ryse?

[Talamak]

All that truly matters is for devs to use both systems to max potential...tis' my 2 cents

[DoesUs]

Running through hoops to get good performance isn't the greatest. But most seem to not see the bigger picture. It is N4G afterall.

[creatchee]

Well, to be fair, developers who didn't harness the true power of The Cell this generation were called lazy hacks. So, status quo?

[DoesUs]

Well, you won't see me call them lazy. They did what they could, with the time and resources available. Same will apply here, only role reversal but still on inferior hardware.

[MultiConsoleGamer]

The stories of the alleged "hardware superiority" of one console are a myth.

[Theendgame]

You know that saying "specs don't lie"? In this case specs do lie. Did Microsoft truly create the most powerful console? Is everything you know about the console wars a lie?

Jk. I have no idea anymore. (Before you say that specs don't matter. They matter to me. This is my final console gen before my pc becomes my all in one. )

[Eonjay]

Both machines look to be substantially more powerful than their current gen counterparts. This isn't really a surprise. Will the stronger specs in the PS4 make a difference. Only time will tell but I promise you the first batch of multi-platform games will look the same on both consoles. Only studios like Naughty Dog and GG are going to be able to produce games that look substantially better than X1 titles... and being exclusives, we still wont be able to say that the games wouldn't look the same on X1.

[boing1]

http://n4g.com/news/1337821...

Don't make promises you can't keep.

[Animal Mutha 76]

Pre ordered my Xbox one last night. Free FIFA 14 and will get BF4 and Forza 5.

Quite happy with my choice so far. No concerns about hardware after all it's at least 6 times better than what I played BF3 on last night.

Might need a new TV though as my Bravia only supports 1080i :(

On topic I love reading about the silicon. There is plenty of performance in there and it will be interesting to see how it stacks up against the PS4s raw numbers rumoured superiority when games get benched. The Dig Foundry/ LOT face offs are going to be epic.

[BallsEye]

Get Plasma man. I'm a TV tech junkie. Had Backlit LED, edgelit LED, LCD and nothing matches new generation Plasmas, especially for fast paced gaming.

[IRetrouk]

Blacks are not as good and there is still screen burn issues with them, not very good for hud heavy games.

[BallsEye]

@IRetrouk

Blacks are best in plasmas PERIOD. There is no other screen that got as deep black as plasma that is a fact. As for screen burn it's an issue of the past. It's like saying xbox slim RROD's.

[IRetrouk]

I have a 50" plasma and 60" led im telling you for a fact that the led is a better performer for games, my plasma is less than a year old and im telling you now for a fact that screen burn is an issue, i have both and can make a fair judgement, what about you?

[Rimfro]

@BallsEye: I made the switch a couple of years back and have to agree with you 100%. Plasmas have better black levels than lcd/led, that's an indisputable fact backed by research and science. Black levels can be measured with tools/equipment showcasing light output during dark scenes and black screens. Lcds can't match the deep black levels due to the way the backlight/edgelight illuminates the screen. Burn in is still possible, but is not a permanent issue anymore. You may have slight image retention, but that is mainly an issue on the newer Panasonic sets, but still isn't something that will permanently affect your screen. CNET accidently left a static did menu on the 2012 Samsung flagship plasma for over 12 hours and the image retention was gone in just a couple of minutes.

Not only are the black levels vastly superior, but so are accurate colors. It's not debatable, it's scientific fact. Lcd screens, due to the nature of their back lighting, have issues with accurate colors because the lighting mechanism itself skews the color. Many people don't realize that the physical lcd panel is lit by bulbs that give off color, not pure white, and it has an effect on the ability to properly display color without the light source influencing the hue. Some Lcds have improved in this regard, but they still can't match a plasma. Most Lcds produce over saturated color, which to some means better because it's so colorful, but is not at all accurate to the source material being displayed.

@IRetrouk: 1) You must have gotten a really cheap plasma then. Because the tech has gotten to the point where that is not an issue. Maybe that's why you feel that the lcd has better black levels as well. There is not an lcd on the market that can produce black levels as deep as the best plasma can. OLED is in the same league, but those also suffer from burn_in, which is permanent, and can have blotches on the screen when all black due to the way the screen and panel is pressed. See the Vita for an example of this happening. Most OLED phones, over time, will have that Android notification bar burned into them. It's the case on every OLED phone I've owned.

2) You mention the caveats of owning a plasma, image retention, but skim over the faults of lcd tech. Here's a rundown: banding, dead pixels, clouding from the backlight, backlight bleed, over saturated primary colors, washed out primary colors, lighter black levels. Screen uniformity is rarely perfect on lcd tech, but has become the norm on Plasmas.

It's okay if you prefer lcd tech over plasma, it's your right to enjoy tech the way you see fit, but to say that lcd tech is technically superior is an absolutely false statement in nearly every scientifically measurable category. Turn on that lcd TV of yours in an entirely dark room, on a completely black screen, then tell me how great your black levels really are. I guarantee you that you will have some bright spots somewhere on that set, not even close to true black. Lcds have their place, they aren't the power hogs that Plasmas are, and can come in incredibly slim form factors, but when it comes to pure, measurable performance, they are rarely close to Plasmas in terms of accurate color and black level industry standards. Not only that, but Lcds are vastly more expensive on the high end for measurably inferior performance.

[IRetrouk]

Well the plasma cost 1500 so no not a cheap set, my 60" led far outperforms my plasma, as for black levels they can be disputed till the cows come home, i can only go on what i see and what i see is my led performs better than my plasma, you are right about the screen burn though, it goes away eventualy but still happens, plasma tvs are not as good for games as an led lcd tv, am i saying they are no good? Of course not, just not as good as you make out.

[PS4OUR]

Its like Groundhog Day. Back and forth, back and forth every damn day. Its pure comedy. My penis is bigger than yours. No, MY penis is bigger than yours. Please people, continue...

[voodoogts]

Ps3 has better specs on paper but when you ran it side by side with 360 with games like BF3 and COD it ran like and look like crap on the ps3. Xbox ran better

[vigilante_man]

More to do with developing on 360 and doing okay'ish port to PS3. Just look at PS3 only games for what that could do.

May be different this time as PS4 & XB1 have same CPU and both have 8GB Ram.

Expect differences to show in exclusive games. Play & enjoy..

[Agent_hitman]

PS4 is still ore powerful, this is a fact.

[okmrman]

yup way "ore"
/s

go fix your keyboard next time you plan to give your uneducated opinion

[vigilante_man]

ESRAM:-
"..First, there’s the fact that while we’ve been calling this a 32MB ESRAM cache, Microsoft is representing it as a series of four 8MB caches. Bandwidth to this cache is apparently 109GB/s “minimum” but up to 204GB/s. The math on this is… odd. It’s not clear if the ESRAM cache is actually a group of 4x8MB caches that can be split into chunks for different purposes or how its purposed.

The implication is that the cache is a total of 1024 bits wide, running at the GPU’s clock speed of ~850MHz for 109GB/s in uni-directional mode — which would give us the “minimum” talked about. But that has implications for data storage — filling four blocks of 8MB each isn’t the same as addressing a contiguous block of 32MB.

This is still unclear."

There are always more questions than answers. Will we really know, even in 3 months when both consoles are released? Over to you, developers!!

[NarcolepZZZZZZ]

But the flops of gigaram is better on the xbox one right? It has 400 terrabytes of ddr3 cpu bits and runs at 60 fpskhz which is far superior to ps4's crappy 10-core flop gpu which if I'm not mistaken only has 4 ports for esram speed boosters.Also the xbox chipset is bbq ridged and ps4 uses the original style with no ridges. This results in broken chips when it passes through the hardware D.I.P.

[creatchee]

Lol you made my head asplode.

[Kingnichendrix]

Amazing analysis

[NarcolepZZZZZZ]

Seems like I'm the only one on the site who knows what the hell a megaflop driive is. I see all these people that have no idea wtf they're talking about. Folks, the xbox one is electrical, but it needs a nuclear reaction in order to produce the 1.21 gigawatts required to power the flux capacitor. It's simple math. Xbox One= 1.21 Gigawatts. Ps4 only .97 Gigawatts. The ps4 cant spin it's hard drive at 88 mph, so it's never going to work, even if it was struck by lightning. The xbox one has 200 terragig of mcfly processing whereas the ps4 runs on the inferior biff imager. DERP! Now which one is more powerful?? Yeah, thought so.

[GoodnessGreatness]

PS4 will have better games. You can't deny that fact.

[Zepherite]

You can absolutely deny that fact since each person idea of a good game is entirely subjective.

[MagnusX]

So the X1 may be able to do more than expected that's great but what is this about this mystery core

"Microsoft claims a total of 15 non-CPU processing blocks, which works out to 12 for the GPU, two for audio, and another”

[5eriously]

Everyone forgot the last few years of Xbox360 misery and drought?

[kewlkat007]

It's not 47mb eSRAM but 47MB total on chip Cache with includes eSRAM 4sections of 8MB each =32MB, L2 cache which are total of 4MB etc...

So 47MB Cache/Storage. Onchip

[HarryB]

I like xbox because ps4 is better. Fucking cares about gpu. 90 percent of players don't even know what that is. And most people who buy these consoles are parents do you think they read this ?

[imt558]

You can see the Onion and Garlic buses represented in both AMD’s diagram and the Microsoft image above.

Where are they in this article? I don't see any of them.

AMD sais XO is not hUMA, so it's not.:)

[imt558]

Well, or read this ( quote from GAF ):

Planet3DNow! (Heavy focus on AMD) disagrees with the conclusion that the Xbox One has hUMA.

Unfortunately it's in german: http://www.planet3dnow.de/c...

or on english :

http://translate.google.hr/... http://www.planet3dnow.de/c...

[AceBlazer13]

I see specs suddenly matter to xbo Xbox guys now.Lol "the games,the games".180s everywhere.

[5eriously]

Just like there master and superhero M$. Like sheep following the Shepherd's example doing 180's and roundabouts.

[EXVirtual]

This is getting wsy out of hand. We shlould get someone who actually knows what the hell they're talking about.

[Mkai28]

"1.71 G primitives per second".Is that the DGPU? And is that what the 8 GBs of flash is used for?
Custom Jaguar x86-64 cores, two clusters of 4 cores
68 GB/sec peak bandwidth to off-chip 8GB DDR3 memory.
204 GB/s peak bandwidth to 32MB of on-die storage.
47MB of cache
8G DDR3 and 8G FLASH
Coherent Shared Memory
Memory sharing & bandwidth (HSA HUMMA)
DX11.1+ 11.2 GPU @ 1.71 BILLION POLYGONS A SECOND
264GB/s total memory bandwidth
GPU CONTAINS 15 co-processors
500 GB HARD DRIVE ++
Audio offload processor 15 GFLOPS

http://www.xboxone-hq.com/n...

[Metfanant]

1. you cant list the DDR3 and Flash in the same spot like they serve the same function....flash memory is DOG SLOW compared to RAM and will not serve to make the Xbone have "16gb of RAM" it just doesnt work that way

2. it does not have 264gb/sec of total memory bandwidth...you cant just add numbers together lol

3. the GPU does not contain 15 co-processors...the APU does...

if youre going to try, at least have a clue...

[Mkai28]

Hmmmm, it's what they had listed in the link below sir.. I didn't try at all, just copy, paste..

[imt558]

And it's "hUMA" not "hUMMA". You would have noticed it's a typo. Of course, XO MUST HAVE hUMA if PS4 has it. hUMA is Heterogeneous Uniform Memory Architecture!

Cerny :

A lot of that comes from the use of the single unified pool of high-speed memory," said Cerny. The PS4 packs 8GB of GDDR5 RAM that's easily and FULLY ADDRESSABLE BY BOTH the CPU and GPU.

http://i.imgur.com/WcA8aEf....

264GB/s total memory BW

From B3D :

I'll start: where does "204MB/s" come from? we know It is assumed that bus from eSRAM to GPU is not dual so how can it be possible to read and write simultaneously?

Ars Technica

The number had no context if rumors are to be believed, it suggests some rather creative accounting: 68 GB main memory bandwidth, 102GB bandwidth to an embedded SRAM buffer for the GPU, and 30GB bandwidth between the CPU and GPU. While that does add up to 200GB, there are no two parts of the SoC that can communicate with each other at 200 GB/s.

AnandTech

According to their data, there’s roughly 50GB/s of bandwidth in each direction to the SoC’s embedded SRAM (102GB/s total bandwidth). The combination of the two plus the CPU-GPU connection at 30GB/s is how Microsoft arrives at its 200GB/s bandwidth figure, although in reality that’s not how any of this works.

TechPowerup

XO chip is a slightly different beast. It uses the same eight "Jaguar" 1.60 GHz cores, but a slightly smaller Radeon GPU that packs 768 stream processors, and a quad-channel DDR3-2133 MHz memory interface, which offers a memory bandwidth of 68.3 GB/s, and holding 8 GB of memory. Memory between the two subsystems are shared in a similar way to PS4, with one small difference. XO chip uses a large 32 MB SRAM cache, which operates at 102 GB/s, but at infinitesimally lower latency than GDDR5. This cache cushions data-transfers for the GPU. Microsoft engineers are spinning this off as "200 GB/s of memory bandwidth," by somehow clubbing bandwidths of the various memory types in the system.

XO:
1.31 TFLOPS
40.9 GTex/s
13.6 GPix/s
68GB/s DDR3
109GB/s eSRAM

PS4:
1.84 TFLOPS (+40%)
57.6 GTex/s (+40%)
25.6 GPix/s (+90%)
176GB/s GDDR5

Two compute command processors (ACEs) and most likely two compute queues for XO. PS4 has eight ACEs and 64 compute queues. That means that Xbox One will probably suck at at GPGPU compared to PS4 and will not be able to do asynchronous fine-grain compute (GPGPU without penalty for rendering) efficiently. This is somewhat disappointing: Even a Kabini Notebook APU with 2 GCN CUs has four ACEs and 32 Queues. To me it looks like Microsoft never intended to do GPGPU with this console. So why would they need hUMA at all?

Embedded SRAM has a bandwidth of 109GB/s. 204GB/s makes no sense at all. Microsoft, please explain us how you do the math!!! My interpretation is that Microsoft added the 204GB/s figure to the slide to not lose their face after the 192GB/s PR stunt with Leadbetter.

Xbox One also has 8GB flash, probably for OS. Before you say "Awesome! 8GB SSD!". Nope, flash doesn't automatically mean that it's fast. It all depends on the controller. USB sticks for example have super slow flash memory. Wii U has 8GB flash memory, too, but a normal HDD is much faster than the stuff in Wii U. 8GB flash is very helpful for an always on/standby state (like in Vita), though.

Does it have hUMA? To be honest, I can't say yet. As far as I understand the slides, only the DDR3 is fully coherent and shared between CPU and GPU. The eSRAM isn't.

[badkolo]

yes you woul;d know the internal workings since you built the x1 with them right?

[joeorc]

Yupper's its not set standards by what hUMA, needs to set to be what the device needs in order to have for its standard to be designed the way the hUMA HSA group decided to be set for their hardware standard. In order to have it it has to be set in a certain way in order to have the standard.

That's why the AMD rep stated what he did' PS4 conforms to the design, while the xboxone does not.

[imt558]

So, why Forza 5 doesn't have dynamic lightning, night/day, weather change, real-time reflections if XO is so powerfull than PS3? Btw. it has real-time reflections, but ONLY ON YOUR CAR!!

http://i.minus.com/irqLpFxR...

[wtopez]

Isn't this surprising? A massive multi-billion dollar tech company who has remained on top for many, many years might actually know what they're doing.

[BOLO]

On top of what exactly? A near decade long software monopoly?

[cunnilumpkin]

I seriously hope the xbox1 comes out and is more powerful than the ps4

not because I care, and I am certainly not buying either at launch, but because it will be so funny, all the ps4 fans and crazed zealots have been screaming on every page of this and many other sites about how powerful the ps4 is

it will just be hilarious to watch them eat their words

things like the fact that bf4 on ps4 looks like crap and is sub-1080p according to multiple sources

its just good fun humor

[thexmanone]

I'm with you there. When ever I need a laugh I come here. N4g is the home of the PS4 Fanboys. The Xbox1 will be better in everyway.

[HarryB]

Your mother is a man. Remember this.

[HarryB]

First generation games on new consoles don't ever look as good as the games of the future. So a year down the line games for new consoles will look even better. Your mother is a cunt. And I'm just saying that for xbox1 and ps4.

[thexmanone]

Easy there

[ziggurcat]

"I seriously hope the xbox1 comes out and is more powerful than the ps4"

the specs prove otherwise.

"the fact that bf4 on ps4 looks like crap"

... compared to PC. the comparisons have always been against the PC version, which will always, no matter what, look and play a lot better than console. where are the reports of BF4 on xbone? i certainly haven't seen any myself, and i'm willing to bet that it's on par with the PS4 version.

"and is sub-1080p according to multiple sources"

it's also been said that it's not currently at its optimized resolution. 1080p is still possible for both PS4, and xbone.

[REDAVUTSTUVADER]

flash memory can be used to boost ram speeds on pc, this is nothing new, it can even be used for vitual ram

http://windows.microsoft.co...

http://lifehacker.com/55738...

[annus]

It doesn't speed up the RAM...

It IS used as virtual memory, and because flash memory is faster than a harddisk in most cases, it is faster virtual memory, so reading and write times are decreased giving an overall faster computer.

[5eriously]

We will just have to wait and see. Soon very soon. Fun Days ahead thats for sure.

[DOOMZ]

Its going to be a beast!!!

[REDAVUTSTUVADER]

THE BLIND LEADING THE BLIND

HINT 1= THE CHIP IS CALLED MAIN SOC (EMPHASIS ON MAIN)

HINT 2= ON SOC COMPONENTS http://pc.watch.impress.co....
AND ON GPU AND GPU MMU CLIENTS http://pc.watch.impress.co....
THERE IS AN INTERSECTION CALL HOST/GUEST GPU MMU
SO WERE WE SHOWN THE HOST GPU? OR THE GUEST GPU?
Look at a two hard drive pc, it has a master and a slave. These charts hint at another GPU.

HINT 3= THERE ARE 4 COMMAND PROCESSORS, TWO COMPUTE AND TWO GRAPHICS.
This is double the amount for only One GPU.

HINT 4= dGPU (d is for discrete ) would be seperate from The APU's GPU. Even though chatter on the web considers a second graphics prosessor in the XBOX ONE nonesense , hint 1,2 and 3 point to it. But in this 4th HINT i can show you who was working on an APU/dGPU SETUP at AMD with public documentation.
SEE FOR YOURSELF
dGPU not mentioned at HOTCHIPS.ORG but may exist according to AMD GPU Engineer Linkedin PG
Vinber Lei
GPU Design Verification Engineer at AMD
Graphics Core IP Design Verification,APU/DGPU
Xbox One,Playstation 4
http://www.linkedin.com/in/...

[5eriously]

"Playstation 4" So he also worked on the PS4 So?

Interesting

[MyNameIsNotRick]

Hey ps4 fanatics. Go read a ps4 article for once. I hear they're listening to the "gamers" and finally installing that fuck hole you PS tards have been dreaming of for years. I just hope it comes with the system and isn't an add on...for your sake. If you think there will be any real difference in graphics between these two systems your a fucking moron.
PS Fuck you too moderators.

[LiQuiZoN]

I think what bothers me the most is how Microsoft always seems to wrangle in their followers with marketing buzz, rather than actual consumer value. I really dislike how they run their Xbox division and hence won't support it.