PS4 GPU based on AMD's GCN 2.0 architecture?

New information discovered regarding the PS4 GPU.

Alt source: http://wccftech.com/playsta...

[gillri]

zzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzz

[Hydrolex]

you are too young to get it, drink some milk and hit the sheets

[RememberThe357]

That might be the best advice I've ever heard.

[JsonHenry]

Did I miss something? I was under the impression that the PS4 was using an 8 core APU but I also thought it was going to be paired with a discrete video card? Not that the weak-ass APU was going to be the only "GPU". Or am I missing something?

[AlphaJunk]

It's based on the AMD APU with 8 Jaguar(rumored) cores with the GPU inside being custom with 18 CU's (falling inbetween the 7850 and 7870 in # of CU's)and other unnamed goodies, making this a more economical chip to produce for Sony - No discrete GPU, however.

[JsonHenry]

Damn. I was hoping it was an APU paired in crossfire with a discrete GPU. faaacckkkkkk.. Still though that is a decent GPU. Outdated by two generations already but more powerful than the typical APU GPU.

[jerethdagryphon]

if its an in order processor its concievable to port/ patch cell based code to run entirly on gpu the speed is there and youd have enough cores you could rewrite spe code to work....

[porkChop]

Sony can't emulate the Cell on the GPU. A GPU cannot emulate a CPU, it doesn't work like that. They're different for a reason. You can run *some* CPU code on GPUs that are capable of GPGPU coding, but only a small fraction of CPU tasks are usable in this way.

The PS4 will not be backwards compatible, nor will it emulate PS1, PS2, OR PS3. Sony have officially said that the PS4 will have no backwards compatibility of any kind. Instead, they're going to use Gaikai to stream PS1, PS2, and PS3 games on the PS4. To use these Gaikai versions you will have to purchase the games again.

Sony have said that they have to technical ability to carry over our digital purchases to the Gaikai versions so that we wouldn't have to buy them again. However, at this time Sony has no plan to do so.

I really hope they change their mind though, because if I have to re-buy all my PS3 and PSN games just to play them on my PS4 I am going to be fucking furious. Especially when they sit there and have the nerve to tell me that they could easily unlock all my purchases if they wanted to. Would be a dick move if they don't do it now.

[fr0sty]

"To use these Gaikai versions you will have to purchase the games again."

Sony never said you'd have to repurchase, as far as I know. There is nothing stopping them from allowing those who insert a disc based game (proving ownership) or who have a PSN purchase of a game on their account to stream these games for free. At the very most, they may tie it in as a PS+ service, but I do not see them making users repurchase their content to access it on the cloud.

[DigitalSmoke]

Sony didn't state ppl have to buy these games again at all.
Thats an assumption.

[SpadeX]

Why don't you just keep your PS3?

[porkChop]

Shuhei Yoshida, president of Sony Worldwide Studios, was asked if Gaikai would sync with the users previous purchase history of digital games on PSN. This is important because Sony confirmed that the PS4 will have no backwards compatibility of any kind. Here is what he said:

"We could do so if we choose to. We know who purchased what as a record. But we are working on service plans and we haven't decided."

The fact is, Sony is looking into other ways of handling it, rather than just giving us the games we paid for. He says they're actually working on service plans. That's more than likely a reference to the rumored "Playstation World" subscription service that would give us access to streaming versions of PS1, PS2, and PS3 games for $89 a year.

That would be ok for people who choose to pay that subscription, but it's expensive and not everyone will choose to pay for it. There's no reason to lock us out of the games that we already paid for. The fact that it's even in doubt, and that Sony isn't immediately choosing to give us access to our games, shows that they're just trying to make even more money off of us.

[xhi4]

@PorkChop

Having instant access to every single playstation game ever made for $89 is unreal value.

And the truth is, Sony is a business first and foremost, they can't afford (especially because of their current financial situation) to spend millions of dollars on a unreal service and global network just to give it for free so that people don't feel bad.

[kino17]

@Porkchop

Why would u be furious? Just keep your ps3. Sony never said it manditory to sell it. Just as easy as you can insert your game into the ps4, it would take the same amount on time to do it on the ps3.

[MRMagoo123]

I have my original playstation plugged into my tv my original ps2 plugged into my tv and my slim ps3 (cos the original is in my bedroom on my newer tv) plugged into the same tv i can play any playstation games at any time its not hard to do just change the channel to the console you want to use and away you go.

I dont care about BC its not needed and im glad im not paying extra for it when i wont use it ever.

[3GenGames]

To reply post:

Modern processors have so much crap in them (Out of order execution, Branch prediction) that it's dumb to just call it a in order processor. The way the PS3 works is arrays and it uses DMA to speed up said processes with special pipelining that has just never been used to execute commands. It's honestly not new now, but it's hard to emulate unless you have 10x faster computers as that DMA speed will never be achieved with anything but the specified hardware for now. Now, it's not as efficient in games as games require a lot of different calculations that don't "just work" with arrays, so hence why they dropped the Cell in this system. It doesn't make sense.

But to above:

It should be noted you can also only really mess with GPU related code on the GPGPU's. It must stay local, and small, and operate on the GPU's RAM. Not the CPU. This may be something that might be changed with this single 8GB GDDR5 pipelining, as the CPU can't take full advantage of the RAM, but the 8 cores might share with the GPGPU+GPU too, allowing some extra crap to be offloaded to the GPU in some way. It'll be cool to see if they mess with that at all, but still that's a BIG thing to add. Probably not doable, I'm not looking at the access times of the PS4 so I obviously can't see for sure, but we'll see if they considered increasing the usefulness somehow with the extra bandwidth they have to mess with around the whole system. :)

[nirwanda]

This is why MS have gone with the move engines so the can fully share the main memory and its the gpu and cpu it rearranges cpu data and reregisters so it can work go straight to the gpu without traveling back and forth to memory.
I still think the raw power of the ps4 will be a better system but thrre will definaly be thinks the 720 will do the the ps4 can't

[nirwanda]

There is new piece on vgleaks about the new gpu, i bet its a clever solution to just have two units that work better out of order even if these have to be programmed differently but run well with data from the cpu

[Arai]

The official spec sheet released by Sony clearly states "AMD next-generation Radeon graphics engine".
Which makes these new bit of info even more credible, that would be a nice bonus as it's more efficient as well amongst a lot of other things.

http://s16.postimage.org/jx...

[SpitFireAce85]

Love to see the spec sheet of the PS4 bubbles man.

[mistertwoturbo]

The official spec sheet is there, but still not finalized. It would be nice if somehow they ended up getting an 8000 series GPU instead of the rumored 7000.

[Cryptcuzz]

I would flip my table at work if they were able to do that.

With the rumor GCN 2.0 GPU in the PS4, it leaves to me believe there can be many more possibilities of the hardware that we all would be pleasantly surprised to know and find out.

How I long for holiday 2013 to arrive.

[FlyingFoxy]

8000 series seems to be OEM only, it's apparently a rebadge and not worth adding to Retail, so we could see a jump straight to the 9000 series for PC's in the near future (few months).

[Walker]

What if it's true ?

[GamersRulz]

increased performance.

[alousow]

cant wait for the black beast to come out this holliday

[SpadeX]

Racist. JK! :P

[Cryptcuzz]

Lol I laughed simply because it was so random.

I wonder if sony will go with a black console again.

Would be kind of neat if they went with the original playstations color with the PS4.

Eirher way I am so ready to get one the moment its available.

[aquamala]

it's already been announced to be a 1.8Tblops GPU, so something in the Radeon HD 7850 range. these are $180 now.

[tubers]

Does your $ 179.99 HD7850 have 4.. no 8.. 8 GB GDDR 5?

Even if it's actually a 7850, consoles do have the benefit of optimization.

[N0S3LFESTEEM]

Everyone's throwing the word "Optimization" around like it means it's going to perform better than the specs deem possible. Utilizing the PC architecture I can almost guarantee the console is going to be maxed within the first 2 years after launch... then slowly but surely the devs will come out and start complaining about the processor if it retains that 1.6-1.8ghz clock speed. The console itself won't be DX11 capable either... it will be capable of mimicking some of the effects but it'll be based on Opencl which is good but not as efficient as DX11. DX11 is Microsoft's territory so the only console you'll ever see it on is Xbox and that's where they might have the advantage next gen. Irregardless the specs from the PS4 are pretty low ball with that 8gbs tagged on to fool people into thinking it's cutting edge tech which in reality it's just overkill.

[mistertwoturbo]

^Optimization is extremely important.

An analogy is the iPhone 4 vs a HTC EVO 4G.

Even though the iPhone 4 ran at 800MHz and the EVO 4G ran at 1GHz, the iPhone 4 was faster in all benchmarks. The reason is because Apple has optimized iOS for their hardware each generational step forward, while the EVO 4G was still running on Android 2.2 and since it is a much more open OS, it just wasn't as OPTIMIZED to that specific set of hardware.

You can hit a 100% limit when it comes to CPU resources on a console, but nothing ever said they can't find more efficient techniques of coding. And that process is called optimization. That is why when you see "Alpha" gameplay footage, it is not yet optimized or polished. This usually doesn't happen until the final few months in which the programmers are hard at work to make sure the game is utilizing the hardware to the best of their knowledge.

[PCpower]

Do you know how much GDDR5 (Hint: much less than 8GB) it takes to render on a 1920*1080P screen?? NO!! Do you you know the difference between dedicated RAM that is 100% use for Video card GPU vs RAM that must be shared between the CPU and GPU?? NO!! Enjoy your ignorance! Also, if optimizations are all that, then why won't anyone take my offer of $1000 bet that an HD7950 or HD7970 will get compute tasks done faster like password cracking or number crunching for cancer research, even though I am going through Windows OS and through slllloooowww busses that you consolers babble on about? Surely, if you are soooo confident in your statement then you will accept my offer? Guess not...It is because you know the truth. Now pipe down little one.

[fr0sty]

TFLOPS don't always translate to real world compute power though, it's how that power is utilized. That said, I'll believe this when I see it. They already went way out on a limb with the 8GB's of GDDR5.

[solid_warlord]

@mistertwoturbo its true, it true. iPhone has an inferior specs compared to other top range smartphones such as Galxy s3 yet it out perform it on the benchmark department.

The iPhone 5 is faster and smoother at playing games, apps and browsing web compared to a smartphone that has a faster quad core processor. So the idiots saying the optimization wont make a big difference are deluded.

Sure a PC will be ahead but u can't deny that a similar spec PC or little bit more powerful will lose. Current gen consoles have 512mb RAM and look what was possible. Games such as Uncharted, Gears of War, Killzone, God of War and many other are example of whats possible when optimized to the metal.

If u can make a similar spec PC with current gen console...console would dominate.

[Arai]

"Specifications are subject to change without notice."
As it says on all released information by Sony thus far.

[mistertwoturbo]

So my feeble brain comprehended that it is rumored to have 8 ACEs.

As reference, A radeon 7970 and 7870 has 2 ACEs.

Not necessarily raw compute power, but more parallelism?

[Timesplitter14]

I think I heard something in the conference that lead me to believe the PS4 will have a GPGPU (global GPU that is used for processing too) which would explain why it's able to simulate smoke and reflexions in real-time as seen in Kilzone 4

I could be wrong though

[DemH8ers]

I thought that was for the recording of games.

[Virtual_Reality]

I see a lot of nitpicking around PS4 hardware, I didn't see the same amount of concern with the Wii U, why is that?

[3GenGames]

Because it's the equivelent of a 360/PS3. So therefor, nobody cares about what it has at it's already out of date and irrelevant.

[stragomccloud]

I can't believe there are still people that believe that. You know people sound like ignorant fools when they say that, right? The Wii U is also sporting a sweet gpgpu. Well it's good enough for consoles anyway. Side from the ram, the difference in power between the wii u and the ps4 is not as disparaging as you believe.Now that ps4 is coming, and developers can now focus development on multiple "next gen" consoles, we'll actually start seeing what the Wii U it's actually capable of instead of seeing rushed unoptimized ports.

Please set aside fanboyism, ignorance, and dismissiveness towards Nintendo before speaking.

Game on.

[CaulkSlap]

The Wii U fully deserves dismissal if we're talking about modern computer hardware. Nintendo is once again a full generation behind in technology and charging full price for it. Specs are like a damned netbook. 2GB DDR3 with half reserved for OS? You have got to be kidding.

[MRMagoo123]

@stragom

The wiiu isnt even close to the ps4 in specs lmao thats just plain lies, if you actually truly believe that you are in for a shock when all the next gen consoles are out and the wiiu is left in the dust again.

[El_Colombiano]

Because the WiiU can't put out performance like the PS4 will. But they did pick it apart. Pics of the processor magnified are on the internet.

[MasterCornholio]

Because this article is about the PS4 not the Wii U, 360, Wii or PS3.

Seriously why does it bother you that much that the PS4 has better hardware than the Wii U? Isnt the controller the most important aspect of the device?

[Shacojin]

They did not have finalized hardware at the conference so I assume they have a couple of dev kits with more or less powerful components just not drastically different architecture so when they get to E3 and when Microsoft unveils there Nextbox they will give the more difinitive hardware they will release

[ironmonkey]

I have a ati 7950 and its still not good enough.

[SpinalRemains138]

SONY should just ask you what's sufficient enough for their system.

What were they thinking when they hired an entire R&D team? They could have come here and just asked random you.

[solid_warlord]

Can some someone with a high IQ(if there is any) explain what all this means in power ect AMD's GCN 2.0?

[RandomDude655]

More efficient context switching b/w graphics and compute. Essentially: Imagine an assembly line tooled to make one product, that is suddenly asked to make a different product vs. two assembly lines with the same workers, but can switch back in forth between the two as need be.

[GiantFriendlyCrab]

HD 8000 series here we come

[kainslayer]

its called rebrandig jeez amd is s***T

[nypifisel]

Yea, cause Nvidia have never re-branded? OH WAIT

8800GT->GT9800->GTS240

Yes, three times for one card..

[kainslayer]

and amds performance was sub -par back then just like with intel and amd nowdays.At least nvidia does some work except nice hair (tressfx) wich is on dx11.1 api so both cards can do it....txaa and physx hurt you i know also sgsaa (sparce grid aa)through inspector c ya ati fanboy

[nypifisel]

I'm no fanboy, what's right is right that's it! You though are obviously a fanboy - calling other competitors "sub par" even though ATI/AMD have held the performance crown just as many times if not more than nvidia... jerk.

[kainslayer]

you forget the cheating on texturring to achieve the high score ;-ppp., i recall it was the geforce 3 equivalent,the 9800xt.and the 7970, and i had geforce4,6800gtx,8800,9800,gtx 280,480,580,titan(:-p)ehem 680 before your driver optimizations hehehehe anyways performance is performance but filters nvidia always comes on top sorry!

[nypifisel]

You don't only use programs to see how a GPU performs, you mostly use actual game testing, there's no "cheating" there. It's actually more likely the other way around cause there's been some controversy about some benchmarking programs actually favouring nvidia, hence it not giving proper results. I suggest you read up on it a bit first!

[hano]

Lol,
Sony fanboys believe their PS4 will outperform a high end PC.

Newsflash!

Those parts are not even High End AMD parts, they're budget oriented.

[SpinalRemains138]

Heres a newsflash for ya.

Those interested in buying a PS4, for the vast majority, want nothing to do with PC gaming. If they did, they would be building their rig and talking about how it's the bestest everz.

No one has ever stated the PS4 will outperform high end PCs. You're just lying. It's your ego that created the lie. You feel like others are intruding into your tech world, but it's ok. It's going to be OK.