Sucker Punch Seeking More Ways To Use PS4′s RAM; CPU a Bottleneck but There’s Room for Improvement

At the Games Developers Conference Sucker Punch Lead Engine Programmer Adam Bentley held a panel titled “inFAMOUS: Second Son Engine Postmortem” and the notes of the new version of the slides published today include some very interesting details about how the PS4′s hardware works and on how it was used for the game.

[incendy35]

I would recommend they explore 60fps.

[Bathyj]

Meh, I dont think it was necessary in a game like this. It was very smooth with rarely a hiccup and never effecting gameplay.

I'd prefer more destructible objects, custom skillsets and the return of UGC mode.

[VaporCell]

Is this game even using any of the 64 asynchronous compute units the PS4 has?

[tuglu_pati]

I though the PS4 had 6 GB free for games. Can anyone clarify?

Anyway, Infamous is visually impressive considering the scope of the game and this is just the beginning of the generation cant imagine what they will be able to produce later in it cycle.

[Naga]

@ tuglu_pati

4.5GB usable for games, [including] 512MB of “flexible memory."

Source (one of many): http://www.ign.com/articles...

This seems to confirm the disputed 4.5GB number that was tossed around way back when. Though it's interesting to note that Sucker Punch's 4.5GB includes the 0.5GB from the flexible pool, which would make 4.5GB the maximum available - not 5GB as was originally thought.

[Army_of_Darkness]

Make a new IP sucker punch. infamous needs a little break.

[fr0sty]

@VaporCell

"The compute shader size for particles can be over 15 MB of loaded data in memory."

Yes, they did. Maybe not as efficiently as they could have, but they did.

[u got owned]

@Naga and tuglu_pati

There was a developer at that time saying they were using almost 6 gb of the ram.. Makes me wonder... What is the truth then?

[Naga]

@ u got owned

Honestly, I'd trust the figures coming out of Sucker Punch on the basis that their reported figures are newer and certainly based upon the final hardware. That, and they undoubtedly care a great deal about getting the most out of the hardware, so I would be reluctant to second-guess them on a matter like this.

[yewles1]

@Naga

"This seems to confirm the disputed 4.5GB number that was tossed around way back when. Though it's interesting to note that Sucker Punch's 4.5GB includes the 0.5GB from the flexible pool, which would make 4.5GB the maximum available - not 5GB as was originally thought."

Two things wrong with that...

1. Naughty Dog revealed in their own slides that it's 5GB total...
2. Sucker Punches tally GOES PAST 4.5GB when added up.

[u got owned]

@yewles1

One thing wrong with that...

From Sucker Punch slideshow...

1) We used most of the 4.5 gigs available... and if you read the breakdown
.5 Gb is already included.

so who's right and who's wrong? ND or SP?

[yewles1]

@u got owned
"1) We used most of the 4.5 gigs available... and if you read the breakdown
.5 Gb is already included."

Thus going PAST the 4.5GB stated in the slides.

"so who's right and who's wrong? ND or SP?"

I like SP, but I'm not taking their word over the guys with THE VERY TEAM MAKING THE DEV TOOLS FOR EVERYONE TO USE (ND have Sony's ICE Team, responsible for PS3 and PS4 devtools for SDK's).

[GameNameFame]

82mb of screenbuffers for this game. That literally is impossible on 32mb esram.

[DragonKnight]

@Army_of_Darkness: No it doesn't.

Infamous 1: 2009
Infamous 2: 2011
Infamous SS: 2014

3 games with an average of 2 and half years apart doesn't scream milking.

Just because you don't want to play Infamous games anymore doesn't mean there needs to be a break. Maybe you need a break from them.

[UnHoly_One]

Or maybe they need to make another one that is actually good....

Because this one was awful compared to the first two games.

[UltraNova]

@dragon knight and army of dark

Wanna talk about milking?

Assassins Creed: 2007
AC 1.5: 2008
AC 2:2009
AC 2.5:2010
AC 3: 2011
AC 3.5: 2012
AC 4:2013
AC 4.5:2014
.
.
.
AC 5: 2015 (99% sure thing)

Hell Activation's COD doesn't even compete and that saying a lot!

[ion53]

You get 5GB. Just like the XbOne.

[Dynasty2021]

RARELY a hickup!?

Do me a favour. Destroy 2 DUP towers in a row, and watch the FPS halve.

[sander9702]

Yeah this game is really boring without UGC

[amiga-man]

This can't be right only M$ can make software more efficient, Sony is just supposed to sit there twiddling their thumbs lol.

[Naga]

@ cozomel

"I know Xbox fanboys arent the brightest bunch. But y'all cant count either? Along with both of your agreers. Do the math and it adds up to more 4.5GBs. I mean seriously, its right there in the numbers and y'all still can figure it out. 4969MB total. And stop trolling every Sony article."

1. If you want to insult me and say that I can't count, then perhaps you should work on your own math first. Add the numbers up, and you get 4.595 GB - not 4.969GB like you said.

2. Considering that you are quibbling over 0.095, and considering also the high likelihood that they rounded in order to clean up the numbers for the slide... it is very easy to explain why the calculation is 2% off of what Sucker Punch claimed it is.

Applying a little common sense can go a long way.

[combatcash]

Frame rate drops quite a bit sometime I'm guessing it's not locked at 30 fps because you can definitely see it and feel it in big battles.

[BitbyDeath]

The difference between 30 and 60 is minimal at best.
I'd much rather they spend their time on something more important like gameplay/animations/AI.

[incendy35]

60 / 2 = 30.

[BitbyDeath]

This is true but the effort to obtain the FPS is not worth the outcome... at least IMO

[Vegamyster]

Both links are of the same game footage (Dark Souls 2) but one is 60 fps & the other is 30 fps, There is a large difference.

http://www.giantbomb.com/vi...

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

[KING85]

I respectfully disagree. If you've played any FPS you may have realized the smoothness of 60fps vs. 30fps. It's just more fluid. Third person adventure games don't necessarily need 60fps, but definitely fps. I say if a developer can achieve without sacrificing what they want to achieve overall, then by all means go ahead.

[MadLad]

As someone who can easily spot the difference between even 60 to 120, yeah, there's a monumental difference. Not only in terms of control, but even in terms of visuals.

[LAWSON72]

@vegamaster
That is a great example of 60 fps.
I can see noticeable difference

[MadLad]

As per the disagress, which are you disagreeing with? The fact that I can spot the difference, or the fact that there's a difference in terms of visuals and gameplay between the FPS?
The first, I can only promise you. The second I can prove as fact.

[dougr]

Only people who don't have a computer capable of gaming would say something so silly. The difference between 30 FPS and 60 FPS is astronomical in action games, and it would be a huge difference and upgrade for a game like Infamous. With that said however, I had no issue with the frame rate in Infamous other than when you use that neon power, that significantly slows down the FPS, but in real time use, nothing causes the FPS to dip to an unacceptable amount. But play a game like a Far Cry 3 in 30 FPS then in 60 FPS and try to say with a straight face that their is minimal difference.

[u got owned]

You can definitely see the difference but as some one said already I don't think 60 fps is that important on games like infamous

[BitbyDeath]

@Vegamyster, both look smooth to me, what do you look for exactly?
Can you provide any exact examples?

You sure it's not all in your head cause you have been told it exists?

[Vegamyster]

@BitbyDeath

If you put them side by side it should be obvious, if you can't see the difference then your monitor doesn't support 60hz or you have a issue with your eyes lol.

http://frames-per-second.ap...

[BitbyDeath]

That link you just provided shows a visible difference.

The game videos aren't like that though.

Movies are also only 24fps and I have no issue with that either.

[TruthInsider]

@vegamyster Those vids were both 30fps so if you seen a difference you have been placebo'd.

Watch this in 30 then 60fps for the real difference, options to change are along the bottom of the video.
http://www.gamersyde.com/hq...

GT5 60fps http://www.gamersyde.com/st...

[DarXyde]

I think it depends. Certain genres really benefit from 60fps. I think horror, first-person shooters, and racing games in particular. Other than that, I have to say: playing Metal Gear Solid V: Ground Zeroes at 60fps was actually very sweet. Smooth and without a hitch. Would I want to go back? Not at all. Would I? Only for very good reason.

[DragonKnight]

Framerate is only a bonus, and only so in games that require a quick response time. Games like Dark Souls DEFINITELY don't need 60FPS at all, but a game like Infamous MIGHT benefit from it if only due to the fact that it has a semi-shooter mechanic to it.

People who want 60FPS for every game are likely people who primarily play shooters and don't expose themselves to games that aren't twitch or response time based. Note I said LIKELY.

[Vegamyster]

Watching a movie and playing a game at 24 fps is different, when a director makes a film at 24 fps there are limitations to how fast he can pan the camera without it making it too blurry & distorted. When you're in direct control of your character the difference is night and day, the controls are more responsive.

@phil_75

No they're not both 30 fps, i can see it immediately and so can others.

@DragonKnight

A game like Dark Souls definitely benefits from 60 fps, it's a game where every action matters.

"People who want 60FPS for every game are likely people who primarily play shooters and don't expose themselves to games that aren't twitch or response time based."

Any game with 60 fps will feel and play better, it doesn't have to be a shooter to feel the benefits.

[insomnium2]

What is wrong with you people? I've been playing DS1 for the past weeks now and that game has frame drops like silly. It would be very beneficial to the overall experience if it had a locked 60 fps. Especially during boss fights where the frames drop even more when the boss swings his sword and you roll to avoid it between his legs and the camera rotates like crazy at times.

@bitbydeath

Are you trolling or is there something wrong with your eyes? The starting part of those videos where the camera rotates quickly around the player clearly shows the benefit of 60 frames vs 30 frames. You have got to be trolling not to see it through those very links.

[DragonKnight]

@Vegamyster: Sorry but that's incorrect. Dark Souls 2 benefits more from a stable netcode than it does from framerate. The draw for the Souls games is primarily the PVP, and 60FPS won't help you with network lag that causes input delay.

Dark Souls 2 doesn't require the response times that 60FPS helps with, save and except MAYBE parry windows and only in PVE.

"Any game with 60 fps will feel and play better, it doesn't have to be a shooter to feel the benefits."

Also incorrect. A copy of Tetris won't feel and play better in 60FPS. Mario games won't, Zelda games won't, God of War won't, there are so many examples. Framerate is best used when in games with high speed action and a need for quick response times. In most games, those events only occur with specific parameters, eg. parrying and in some cases rolling in Dark Souls.

In others, quick response times help you throughout the game, such as racing games and shooters.

60FPS is only a bonus overall, only an advantage in certain circumstances, and should never be a priority for the majority of games.

[starchild]

Honestly, those of you downplaying the benefits of faster framerates sound just as ignorant as those who downplay the advantages of higher resolutions.

I knew this would happen. At first a lot of people thought the consoles would be doing 60fps this generation and there was a lot of talk about how essential 60fps was and how much it improved the experience. But now that it's clear the majority of games on both consoles will not be 60fps all we hear are a bunch of excuses about why 60fps isn't really that much better or how it's not "needed" for certain games. It's just such an obvious bunch of nonsense.

Next generation, when one of the consoles can do 60fps, all the fanboys will suddenly switch again and act like it's super important and something worth bashing other console gamers over.

For right now, though, it's back to resolution as being super important, even though last generation console fanboys constantly downplayed the advantage of higher resolutions. I just have to shake my head at all the hypocrisy.

[Black0000]

@DragonKnight

How is the draw of Dark Souls it's online? Everyone talks about its difficultly and tight combat.

"Also incorrect. A copy of Tetris won't feel and play better in 60FPS. Mario games won't, Zelda games won't, God of War won't,"

Which is why the A link Between Worlds & Mario 3D World run at 60 fps lol, maybe you'd have a different mind set if you were a PC gamer who was used to playing different genres of games at 60 fps you'd understand its benefits for gameplay. The only games where it wouldn't have any benefits are turn based games or a interactive game like Heavy Rain.

[Meep]

I agree that 30 or 60 fps depends on the game, but almost all 3D games should aim for 60 fps, hell any game that you need to move a camera somewhat quickly. That includes games like infamous and dark souls. The stutter isn't tremendous but its there and it adds up. Your eye catches the stutter every few seconds (especially if you move the camera quickly) and it adds up and the game ends up feeling slow because of it. You will definitely spot it when you get used to playing games at 60FPS and go back to a game at 30 fps. The difference is shocking.

If a game is going to have 30 fps then it damn well better be built around that fact. Its a technical hurdle. I'm pretty sure no developer wants have 30 fps in their game.

[elhebbo16]

What kinda peasantry is this? 30 to 60 is minimal? because the human eye can only see 30 fps amaright.

[DragonKnight]

@Black0000: Ask fans for the series what they play Dark Souls the most for.

"Which is why the A link Between Worlds & Mario 3D World run at 60 fps lol, maybe you'd have a different mind set if you were a PC gamer who was used to playing different genres of games at 60 fps you'd understand its benefits for gameplay. The only games where it wouldn't have any benefits are turn based games or a interactive game like Heavy Rain."

Firstly, ditch the PC talk. This isn't about the PC. Secondly, just because a game DOES run at 60FPS, doesn't mean it NEEDS to run at 60FPS. Some people can't tell the difference.

[insomnium2]

This has to be the first time ever I completely disagree with dragonknight. Games look way smoother running 60 fps. It boggles my mind why anyone would feal that it adds nothing to the experience. No matter what type of game if it has something (anything) moving in it it looks better if it moves smoother. The difference in 30 to 60 frames is so clearly visible from those vids where the camera spins in DS2 it even surprized me tbh.

[Kryptix]

The difference is very visible when you compare them together with the same material.

I think a lot of us are just used to playing at 30fps, but when you make the jump, going from 30 to 60fps games only...you'll be amazed to how smooth the game looks & feels.

I played DCUO on both PS3 & PS4, I prefer the latter for it's 60fps. Makes combat much more fluent.

[pixelsword]

elhebbo16:

Depends on what's being animated and how: if you have something with blur on every frame when it comes to something animated with a degree of speed, the framerate won't make much of a difference, but when you have frames with no blur, you need a higher framerate, or else everything in motion concerning speed will look unrealistic and "framey", to coin a term.

It's just like how you pause a movie that's filmed at 30fps and you see blurriness in images that have fast motion in them; but if you take something that's filmed in, let's say one of those cameras with a very high framerate, you see no blurriness on the frames when you pause the film.

Going back to games, if you have a game that has effects to emulate blurriness like Killzone 2 had, you don't need a higher framerate; but a game like Reistance 2 had none of those effects but a higher framerate and both looked buttery smooth when in action (minus Killzone 2's loading, lol).

[colonel179]

Why is everyone obsessed about 60fps/1080p? The games are good, it's what matters. Is not like the games run in slow motion.

95% of the people who play games don't even notice the difference between 30fps and 60 fps, and also 720p from 1080p.

[Hicken]

If they're not paying attention, they won't notice it. But ask them if they can see a difference, and most people can, I'm sure.

[Voozi]

Depends what size TV you have. On my 47"LG HDTV the difference between 720p and 1080p is night and day.

As for the FPS difference, it really depends. Is it a locked 30 fps, does it vary from 20-30, or does it go from 30-60?

Infamous SS was VERY smooth on the PS4. I honestly had no idea clue it was running at 30 fps until I read this article considering how fluid everything was.

[randomass171]

The difference in framerates can definitely be seen, ut not every game requires an optimal framerate. Games that require split second timing and precision need it more than others.

[Meep]

Honestly PC gamers notice the difference a lot more because they sit a lot closer to their monitors. For console gamers, the difference is subtle, for PC gamers the difference is huge.

[Kryptix]

Not sure where you got the 95%, but everyone that I know can tell the difference. Do they care? That's up the viewer, but I would prefer 1080p with 60fps in certain genres that are fast paced.

It's just something that you have to know to understand the benefits of having high frame rates. If you're going to turn around quick in a first person shooter & it's 30fps, you're going to see motion blur & that's not good for competitive multiplayer, it will be harder to focus on people. That's why you see all Call of Duty devs aim for 60fps because it's necessary for multiplayer twitch shooters.

[JsonHenry]

They hate it (like most devs) cause the low frequency CPUs in the consoles are making them work harder to multi-thread their products. Surely there is someone that is going to make a fortune in middleware that comes up with a good product that accomplishes this feat.

[alexkoepp]

DX12

[JsonHenry]

DX12 will help. Some.

[GameNameFame]

Or OpenGL which will have ports from DX12. Lol

[imt558]

Quote from article :

"...Material properties are stored in up to 8 gbuffers (5-6 plus depth/stencil), with 41 bytes written per pixel. THAT TRANSLATE TO 85 MB FOR FULL SCREEN BUFFERS...."

So, 32 MB eSRAM is enough!!!???

+ over 100k+ polys for characters.

[Azzanation]

Maybe DX12 would help... oh wait..

[candy_mafia]

Goes to show no system is perfect..... PS4 has it's strengths and weaknesses like Xbox One.

But IMO Sony has the least amount of work to do.

[SpadeX]

I'm surprised this comment didn't get beaten up by disagrees. N4G is certainly improving. :)

[MadLad]

I've noticed that as well. It's a good thing. There's still a lot of mud slinging, and there is certainly one party dominating the site, but people are warming up to the idea of mutual respect between one another and competing platforms.
It's nice to see.

[Nero1314]

I can't wait to see the future of these consoles

[The_Sneauxman]

Popcorn ready

[Bathyj]

I'll reiterate at the risk of sounding like a broken record, although the previous inFamous's were quite pretty and very smooth with a lot of action going on, Sucker Punch is not a studio really known for bleeding edge graphics. Amazing what they did straight out of the gate.

The next couple of years are going to be fun...

[Abriael]

may want to use past tense. With infamous SS they're definitely known for bleeding edge graphics now.

[1nsomniac]

Taking the original Infamous & its first sequel they have all been released as open-world technical showpieces.

No other 'open word' game has matched the graphical quality to any of them at the time of release on any console, I'm not quite sure what you mean? It's exactly what Sucker Punch have been known for at least for the last decade.

Remember that neither of them had the vasaline smudged post process effects or high LOD issues or haze. Which were all the norm for every other open-world game that had been released on console up until that point.

[HaydenJameSmith]

No other open world game really ?

Assassins Creed Games
GTA 4 and 5
Red Dead Redemption
Batman Arkham City
Oblivion and Skyrim
Fallout 3 and New Vegas
Just Cause 1 and 2
Prototype 1 and 2
Saints Row Games

This is not to say that those games didnt look good but there not the best last gen games to show off open world video games...

I think the best looking wud be among gta, red dead, skyrim and assassins creed 2 and 3...

[1nsomniac]

^ Most if not all of those games were not released at the time & came later on.

You're right with the original Assassins creed though & Oblivion maybe although the art style & engine of oblivion is a bit hard to compare.

[HaydenJameSmith]

Infamous was released on May 2009 and Infamous 2
June 2011...

Red Dead Redemption was released may 2010 and Is one of the best open world games I have ever played... GTA 4 was released in 2008 and the more recent Gta 5 was released just last october which is multiplat game and I think that is arguably the best open world game on last gen...

Just Cause Sept 2006 and Just Cause 2 March 2010
Massive Open world, great animation, great gameplay and weather effects... another great oepn world game...

Batman Arkham City Oct 2011 is great open world game too... the unreal engine does a lot for that game... and the more recent Arkham Origin may not be much different but equally impressive.

Ill discount Fallout and Elder Scrolls games as u said from the limitation of engine and art direction to be compared...

I will say they are visually better than prototype(although Prototype 2 was much better than the first) and most of the saints row games but alot of these games came out around the same time as infamous and the sequel and this is not to discredit the game but its not got the best graphics... I think there good games and i just recently got Second Son on my PS4 which is a much bigger improvement on open world visuals (and has set the bar for next gen games like watch dogs etc.) but I still think Assassins Creed, GTA, Red Dead and Just Cause were much more impressive Open World Games on the last generation of consoles but thats just my opinion :)

[starchild]

I'm sorry, I liked Infamous and Infamous 2, but they were hardly what I would call graphical showpieces. The first game was actually kind of ugly to be honest. The second game was decent by console standards. Neither game was among the best looking open world games I played last gen.

Sleeping Dogs on the PC, for example, still looks amazing to this day. I started it up the other day and even though I have been playing games like AC4 on PC and Infamous Second Son, it still looked pretty good. Not as good, mind you, but I was surprised how well it holds up. Anyway, that's just one example that popped in my head.

I think Bathyj made a good point. We have some truly amazing graphics ahead of us.

[1nsomniac]

People still arnt reading my comment properly, maybe because I put has instead of had. I said when it was released & on consoles only.

As I said, the draw distance & LOD when theses games were 'released' was something that had not been seen on consoles before. Obviously games that came out later in the generation looked better.

Simple thin to do is go back & look at the original reviews for these games they'll all say it looked amazing for an open world console game.

[Irishguy95]

The CPU was always gonna be the bottleneck and the GPU ain't even that strong in the first place. Oh well. It is only 400 quid afterall. Wish the matched the X1's price and put in a better CPU and GPU though.(An extra 40-50 quid for both the GPU and CPU is a pretty large difference in power, especially for the CPU, and the GPU would go from mid range to pushing on High)

edit - Ps3 was 630 over here? Don't remember a 500 one?

Anyhow, i'm not comparing it to anything Qrphe, I just personally would have liked it to be 500 Quid, same as the X1, and take the power difference to another level altogether. I mean they have 8gigs of ram in there with a decent GPU, heck if they could have even made the Ps4 bigger and clocked the frequency of the CPU up it would be fine. But it's not for the sake of aesthetics. The fact that it's a console and streamlining the hardware even lower than the performance it could actually output is just wrong. Surely the games themselves are more important than anything for a gamer? The CPU being this way is going to show in the future.

Although heck, Infamous is open world and looks great already so who knows, but we sure as **** won't be seeing many games dependent or heavily utilizing the CPU this gen due to the Ps4 and X1's CPU's./ Thats automatically cutting off alot of potential for various genres and game mechanics.

[Qrphe]

Releasing another $500 console would have been very unwise from Sony.

>but specs aren't top of the line when compared to PCs

Power relative to PCs is irrelevant. Sony already knows that a decently powered console with enough developer support (PS1, PS2) is the healthiest route any company can take. No high-end console has ever been a 100 million console seller.

[IRetrouk]

Yet, theres still time ;-)

[solar]

both Sony and MS went weak on the CPU on purpose. for cost. let's see what "optimized" engines can do with it.

[lfc_4eva]

Not for cost, simply because the majority of games these days are gpu limited.

[Qrphe]

They went with that CPU on purpose because it's not your typical discrete GPU/CPU setup. AMD has a really high chance of really pushing APUs this gen since pretty much every dev out there will be primarily optimizing AAA games FOR APUs. But hey, at least PC CPU cores will see more use in the next years thanks to that.

[bornsinner]

so it was true, 4.5gb gddr5 only available to games, the 6gb bull was just extra swap file memory aka hdd memory used as ram. oh well i'm sure if last gen they could survive on 512mb i'm sure they can do great things.

[kneon]

Sony is almost certainly holding back ram until they are sure it won't be needed by the os or any other new features such as VR,just like they did with the ps3.

Everyone seems to forget that the ps4 was only supposed to have 4gb of ram and the development kits gave the developers 3.5gb to work with. That means the os is using 500mb, which is believable given its derived from BSD.

After morpheus ships I expect another gb or more to be released back to developers.

[hollabox]

Oh I remember when everybody attacked Eurogamer for stating PS4 only had 4.5 GBs of available ram do developers. Calling them fanboys, MS is paying them (It wouldn't surprise me), they don't know what their talking about, according NEOGRAF PS4 has 6GB of ram with 1 GB of flex ram to equal 7. Sony put out a statement not exactly stating how much ram is available to developers and everybody assumed it was 5 GBs after that with 1 GB of flex ram to equal 6.

Oh well, 4.5-5Bs is plenty, but like MS XB1, I don't see what, and where in the hell 3.5 GBs of ram is being used on my PS4. My PS3 had 48 MBs dedicated to the OS, but I could see where the memory was being used with animated themes, music, and multiple media servers at the ready.

[hello12]

Exactly why Microsoft is so focused on directx12 it improves CPU performance

CPU performance is just as important as the GPU

[MelvinTheGreat]

Right. There is no powerful gpu, without a powerful cpu before it.

[Kayant]

That performance benefit was in reference to PC's/Mobile. http://blogs.msdn.com/b/dir...

"Under the hood, Forza achieves this by using the efficient low-level APIs already available on Xbox One today. Traditionally this level of efficiency was only available on console – now, Direct3D 12, even in an alpha state, brings this efficiency to PC and Phone as well. By porting their Xbox One Direct3D 11.X core rendering engine to use Direct3D 12 on PC, Turn 10 was able to bring that console-level efficiency to their PC tech demo."

[UnwanteDreamz]

Oh let them dream.

[ThatEnglishDude]

No shit there's more potential. No console will be 'maxed out' (if there is such a term) within the first year of being released.

I remember when Uncharted: Drake's Fortune came out, and that was supposedly using all the PS3's hardware power. Then Uncharted 2 came out, then Uncharted 3, then The Last of Us...

*Why would anyone disagree with this? It's pure fact. Jesus...

[MatrixxGT]

I dunno about your disagrees but you only list Naughty Dog games. Not every studio has their skill or track record. Me personally just ignore these news articles. I'm the consumer, I don't care about how you make it work I just want it to work when I pay $60 for your product.

[ThatEnglishDude]

I used Naughty Dog as an example. Just look at the difference in quality from Uncharted: Drakes Fortune all the way to The Last of Us. The point I'm trying to illustrate is of course the console has room for improvements and capabilities to be pushed further than we're currently seeing. The friggen thing hasn't even been out for a year yet.

These developers have an annoying habit of making claims that they've 'maxed out' all the power of whatever console. It's bollocks.

[Pandamobile]

It's not hard to max out a console. Most of the graphical improvements this generation will be attributed to authoring tools becoming more sophisticated, not squeezing every drop of CPU power out of the system (which takes teams of engineers and a lot of time).

[SyWolf91]

Uncharted 1 was using all the PS3's hardware power. The later games were just using all of it's power better. That's the power of optimization.

[ricochetmg]

This is n4g. IT happens

[Milesprowers]

Should of used an Intel Processor, everyone knows AMD Processors are slow.

[MadLad]

A cheaper quadcore from AMD actually outperforms my i5 when it comes to games . . . so.

@Ifc

I have a 3570k.
There are AMD processors out there that outperform it when it comes to games. This isn't from a place of bias. I have only built my first PC and I went with an i5/GTX680 build. There are tests out there that show that, for cheaper, you get the same or better performance in many cases.

[lfc_4eva]

Is your i5 broken dude?
No way is a cheap amd quad gonna pump my i5 2500k. Especially now its breathing fire at 4.6GHZ.

[papashango]

I agree. there's no way an amd cpu is outperforming a core I5...an unlocked I5 at that.

I've been using a core I5 2500k for many years now overclocked @ 4.5ghz and there's been very minimal gains performance wise since then.

[Anonagrog]

I don't suppose you'd mind providing links to some of those tests would you, please?

[MadLad]

Here's a video from an extremely trusted site on youtube

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

[mixelon]

Intel don't have a suitable APU.. Both companies looked at what was available and banked on multicore+gpu over brute force less cored systems.

I'm inclined to think they know what they're up to!

[Sp1tfireXM]

lol at the disagrees.... guess we know who's money tight

[Qrphe]

Sony, Nintendo and MS spent millions on research development and all of them decided against it for different reasons.

[SixtyNine]

Well, what do you know? The 'super' computer that is PS4 has bottlenecks. Who would have known? ^_^ :D 'dat powah'

SuckerPunch did a great job with the resources available to them.. :) optimization will get better with time like wine.

[Abriael]

Everyone with an even slight knowledge of technology would know that there's no machine that doesn't have bottlenecks.

[HaydenJameSmith]

Yes but how consuming those bottleneck is what is important... I think they could have clocked the CPU higher like on the x1 but maybe heat sink issues may arise as the x1 is much bigger and has a bigger fan than ps4...

Still works pretty well regardless of CPU bottleneck...

[mediate-this]

Yeah everyone but sony fans, i read numerous times from sony fans that ps4 is the most advanced console ever with no bottle necks. Raving bout the gddr5 and not even acknowledging its wesk cpu

[Hicken]

Every system has bottlenecks, super computer or not. The question is just how much that bottleneck restricts the system when it's performing its primary task.

[tee_bag242]

True, and in this instance the primary task is gaming. So an underpowered CPU is a royal PITA

[LAWSON72]

I remember when Cerney said there were no bottlenecks, and all the PC people went on and on about how weak the CPU was, and everyone else said "you dont know more than Sony" lol

Who knows maybe they do but PR bs will always lie about it (then again Sony are saints that are above such nonsense), while the PC crowd has no reason to lie.

[candy_mafia]

Allow a Girl to re-educate you...

Mark Cerney was referring to accessible 'MEMORY' bottlenecks among other things, not once did he state absolutely no bottlenecks in PS4 hardware. Mark Cerney is a total genius compared to 'some' people on this site, so don't mock him!

You tried hard, but died harder ;/ Toodles ;/

@DEEBO > Love your analogy dude, bubble up4u lol

[papashango]

allow a pc gamer to re-educate you, so you can so lose that casual gamer mentality.

Everyone else was saying this. I remember it extremely well. It didn't matter what Cerny was saying. It was being tossed around as "there is no bottleneck"

I own a ps4. There's no bias from me but this I remember extremely well as I knew from the get go the cpu would be a bottleneck. All the pc gamers knew this was going to be the case. It wasn't us picking a side. It was simply fact.

I called this along time ago btw.
http://n4g.com/comments/red...

[LAWSON72]

If I am not mistaken after a little research he said,
“With graphics, the first bottleneck you’re likely to run into is memory bandwidth. Given that 10 or more textures per object will be standard in this generation, it’s very easy to run into that bottleneck. Quite a few phases of rendering become memory bound, and beyond shifting to lower bit-per-texel textures, there’s not a whole lot you can do.

Our strategy has been simply to make sure that we were using GDDR5 for the system memory and therefore have a lot of bandwidth

"And if memory isn’t the bottleneck?" "If you’re not bottlenecked by memory, it’s very possible”

He was believed by pretty much the whole PS4 crowd to be saying, we eliminated bottlenecks by using GDDR5.

That brings me back to my point, however I was wrong about Cerney. I got him confused with the KZ dev.

[UnwanteDreamz]

You kids done? I love all of these generalizations and sweeping statements. You read some comments from some zealots and now they speak for all Sony fans? You know who sits in these comment sections arguing over console specs? Let me tell you it's filled with pseudo-experts whos computer engineering knowledge consists of building a gaming rig. This place isn't where computer engineers congregate. All you people do is regurgitate crap others say.

[mediate-this]

You're not a girl... Lol

[GamingTruth]

someone on this site knows more than sony? japanese people yeah right and ill have 5 million dollars delivered to my house tommorow

[TitanUp]

specs on an i7 laptop pc are better than the cpu in the ps4.

[MNGamer-N]

Here we go with the bottle necks again. Are we going to dwell on bottle necks for the next 6 years now? Maybe I should just go back to playing my bottle neck.

[Convas]

Anyone remember this? http://n4g.com/news/1227577...
It was hailed as gospel truth.

Sure is hilarious in retrospect ...

[GTgamer]

Its so harlirous that Devs are being Honest-_- so because KZ devs saw No Bottlenecks that meant they wern't :/ at the end of the day the more demanding a game gets the more Bottlenecks the devs will encounter.

[u got owned]

@ Convas

remember this one? http://www.gameskinny.com/j...

There was a developer claiming 6gb of ram were been used in games already and I remember everyone buying into this fat lie.

[UnwanteDreamz]

Do you know what the word "everyone" means. HERE I thought you only had problems with critical thought. Seems you struggle with english as well.

[kx11]

CPU is made by AMD so no wonder there's a bottleneck

[johny5]

Not trying to be a troll but wasn't Crytek trying to originally achieve 120,000 - 160,000 polygons for Ryse but scaled it back "to 80,000 poly's" for obvious reasons?

That's insane for a first gen PS4 game, just imagine uncharted 4!

[Illusive_Man]

They scaled it back but the Ryse character models still look better than they do in Infamous. There is more going on than just polys. Just look at the skin texture quality and lighting in Ryse vs Infamous which looks almost cartoonish and flat. Crytek used a lot more technical tricks than are found in Infamous.

[johny5]

Agreed and again I'm being no troll, Just wanting to know the facts!

"and Art style dictates whether a game is cartoonish or not!"

[dantesparda]

@illusive

You're just mad cuz Infamous spanks Ryse on every level. Its got 120k characters vs 85K on Ryse and 1080p vs 900p with a higher framerate And all in a open world game compared to a linear game. And Sucker Punch isnt even known to be the biggest graphics pushers when it comes to Sony devs and Crytek is only known for pushing graphics and still got crushed! So stay delusional my friend.

Oh wait bu, bu, but, DX12, "Under the hood, Forza achieves this by using the efficient low-level APIs already available on Xbox One today. Traditionally this level of efficiency was only available on console – now, Direct3D 12, even in an alpha state, brings this efficiency to PC and Phone as well. By porting their Xbox One Direct3D 11.X core rendering engine to use Direct3D 12 on PC, Turn 10 was able to bring that console-level efficiency to their PC tech demo."
Sorry to break this to all you easily duped MS fanboys but DX12 is using the same exact renderer in the X1, so oops, where's your big gains now?

http://blogs.msdn.com/b/dir...

[DanielGearSolid]

Wow, so a Sony dev admits the hardware isn't perfect

Meanwhile at MS, it was like pulling teeth having them admit Ps4 is more powerful

[Reaper29r]

Hahaha omg. So all the way up to the consoles launch all we hear is PS4 has no bottle necks, code straight to the metal with magic sauce optimization, you don't know more than the devs, tons of hate by Sony only gamers specially towards PC gamers trying to explain bottlenecks to console only gamers... I mean I love my PS4 and infamous looks fantastic on my Bravia but the irony here is too damn funny. Every system has bottlenecks. For consoles it's fixed hardware, for PC it's your wallet. Hope a valuable lesson has been learned, just enjoy your games :D

[tee_bag242]

Well put fella

[kingduqc]

CPU a Bottleneck

lulululul

>next gen

1.7ghz mobile cpu

[Beastforlifenoob]

1.)Ok first of all this is an infamous article not a pc article
2. What console are you going to play GTA, Destiny, Infamous uncharted, The Last Of Us, Metal gear solid V, Red Dead 2 (whatever its called), Killzone and a million others NOT ON YOUR PC.

haha Your pc is so epic it doesnt even have GTA 5 and it will never come just like everyone thought red dead would but it didnt hahaha your loss buddy.

3.) An i5 processor costs $360 on newegg nearly as much as a PS4 JUST for the processor and you cant game on an i3 so fail.

HAHaha you idiot Infamous has 120.000 polygons while your dumbass dota 2 has 5 polygons hahahahahahahahah HHAHAHA

[Pandamobile]

Man, you got so butthurt over such a basic comment.

[tee_bag242]

Man is your a$$ hurting something bad lol

[fonger08]

Seriously it's just a little black box, calm down.

[kingduqc]

@Beastforlifenoob :

1.) It's about hardware limitations and this hardware happens to be pc tech.

2.) I would rather play those games on pc in 1440p 60 fps with more details and particles and I woulrd rather those dev being able to sell on more then one platform so they can have a bigger fan base and more money (because they deserve it for all the hard work) but it's true it's not possible. In a perfect world it would. But frankly it's not the games that is missing on pc considering there is literally over 200 times more games on pc then there is on ps4 at this present time.

3.) An i5 processor does not cost 360$, it's actually $254.99 in canadian witch is probably less in the united state without rabate, you can get those at microcenter in the united state for as low as 180$ Also, there is no fees each month on pc to play online AND games are much much much cheaper at release and after release. If you do some math you actually save money in the long therm on pc but it is true that the upfront cost is higher.

4.) You are just mad your toy is already limiting developers and it's not even 1/10th of it's lifespan, next time come up with real arguments please.

[EverydayGuy]

Wonder if they will use some of the CUs on the GPU to lighten the load on the CPU.

[mysteryraz11]

Ps4 performance will improve, who cares what the pc geeks say

[annus]

I like how if you play on a PC you are a geek, but if you play on anything else you aren't. It sure does make a lot of sense.

[mysteryraz11]

thats cause most pc fanboys brag about hardware but then you look at the most played pc games and they are outdated looking games like wow or league of legends or minecraft, console gamers are cool we play games for fun not for beating off to pixels and resolutions

[annus]

Nice generalisation, next you will be saying all black people steal.

'Most' PC gamers don't care that much about graphis (as you even just proved by stating the most played games), sure there are people who do care but that doesn't make it all.

And console gamers don't care about graphics? So all these people in the Last of Us threads don't care? All those fighting over consoles resolutions and FPS don't care?

Console gamers act all high and mighty to each other, but when the big boys come in they go against what they are arguing about.

[Dante81]

PC geeks are usually more tech savvy than you, is that why you hold them in contempt?

Edit: A lot of former console gamers moved over to PC(it's like building Legos) which allows them to play 3rd party games in exquisite quality. They also get to dabble in emulators, films, music, etc. You're missing out, brother.

[CoLD FiRE]

Are you admitting that you're a casual gamer? In line with facebook "gamers"!

[ArbitorChief]

What do you expect, an AMD Processor clocked at 1.6 Ghz is going to bottleneck.

[tee_bag242]

I know.. My android runs at 2.3ghz for crying out loud.. lol

[MasterCornholio]

And an Intel Pentium 3 running at 3ghz destroys both of those.

Oh wait, GHZs doesnt determine how good the processor is. Which is why an Intel Atom at 2.8 GHZ outperforms an old Pentium at 3ghz.

[nerdman67]

I find news like this to be more and more unreliable for both consoles. So many developers cant agree on what is a bottleneck and what isnt, what they can and cannot do, they have enough power, they dont have enough power.
Just shut up and make the damn games as best you can with what you have.

[iceman06]

That's because development is directed specifically toward the game they are trying to make. It also depends on how savvy your engineers are and your tools as a developer. You will ALWAYS hear a dev complain about not having enough of something...they are greedy (and that's not bad) because they are trying to create their vision. You will ALSO hear devs that are happy with what they have, simply because they were able to realize their vision within the constraints of the hardware. In the end, though, you are right...just make the games the best that they can be. These articles are written from presentations that aren't directed at people who don't develop games. It's for the dev community to get some tips and tricks for development on specific consoles.

[nerdman67]

I feel if they really wanted to work with as much as they could, they would direct towards the PC market.
Other than that, it just sounds like whining.

[GamingTruth]

much as the could specs number arent what brings the best graphics thats been proven by sony so sonys platforms are the best place for several developers to make games with the best graphics they can else the games would be multiplat

[iceman06]

I agree about the focus on PC, but the consensus idea is that consoles bring in more money. So, they focus on consoles. That may be a bit of an archaic idea these days. But, that is what has traditionally been the idea for publishers. Also, I wouldn't say that it is whining necessarily because if you ask anybody who creates, they probably want the best tools to create with (of course being project specific). But, I do agree that it's really more of a 1st world problem.

[thejigisup]

I want an input from my ps4 directly into my brain...my eyes and hands are a bottleneck

[Meltic]

Wonder what infamous second son should look alike with a full 2000$ pc.

[tee_bag242]

It would look like you pawning off your PS4 to a second hand shop...
Lol

[Mister_G]

CPU is a bottleneck? Just push it all onto the GPU then.

[MasterCornholio]

GPU Compute?

[windblowsagain]

Big difference between 30-60fps.

But not needed for all games.

[Locknuts]

I prefer to play chess at 60fps.

[mediate-this]

Yes needed for all games, enough with the delusional only certaim genres need 60fps all genres benefit from it. As long as there is buttons the better fps the better experience

[kevnb]

The CPU is a little weak, but once game engines get the hang of using more cores we should see some improvements.

[lifeisgamesok]

So Xbox One has offloading from the CPU like audio (which uses a lot of memory in Second Son) and move engines

Xbox One has the faster cpu which benefits all cores at 1.75

And Directx 12 will allow 50% more cpu utilization

Looks like MS saw this bottleneck coming

[lameguy]

Remember 2 things though.

The xbox already has low-level access that may not get much better with DX12.

The 50% more efficient statement is only for the time the CPU spends preparing all the data for the GPU. If that is a total of 2ms today for a particular scene, it _may_ become 1ms tomorrow. So it really depends. 2ms out of 16ms (for 60FPS) is 13% of your render budget. Saving 50% CPU at that level will gain you about 6.5% overall.

[Solid_Penguin-64]

Focus improvements on AI and physics as well, can't forget about those.

[Tzuno]

cpu is lame for both consoles 8 core amd 2.6ghz. a intel quad core destroys that and under 3ghz per core.