Xbox One 7th Core SDK Update Does Not Make Much of an Impact, eSRAM Was Not An Issue: Larian Studios

Swen Vincke, CEO of Larian Studios on developing Divinity: Original Sin Enhanced Edition on Xbox One.

[MJunior]

Love these articles from GamingBolt.

[APexGamer45]

That usage is when you are NOT using your OS. and things running it on the background.

There has been confirmation of it really being useful 5 to 10 percent of the time.

Either way gamingbolt is garbage. Idk how it isnt banned..

[MJunior]

Sarcasm...

[Hoffmann]

They could rename their site to consolewars.com or something like that.

[Black0ut]

FlamingBolt could work?

Either way I'm sick of this trash site as well.

[showtimefolks]

I am a ps4 owner but gamingbolt makes their living from click bait total console fanboys war articles

Ps4 or Xbox one end of the day goal is to play awesome games.

[slate91]

Anyone mind explaining esram and why it bottlenecks development, if Im even getting that right? And if so why did MS choose to include it?

[Letthewookiewin]

Because they made the mistake of forcing Kinect driving up the cost of the console instead of focusing on X1's specs.

[donthate]

To call ESRAM a bottleneck is incorrect. The ESRAM is designed to alleviate bottlenecks elsewhere in the system. It is an extension of how MS designed the Xbox 360 which at the time was considered a huge design win.

Now what is ESRAM for?

In computers you use something called a cache. A cache is a place to store recently used or frequently used data for very fast access and comes from a Computer Science theory called "principle of locality" which says in very simple terms that data that is recently used is likely to be re-used soon.

In essence, that means that ESRAM is there to give faster access than regular RAM. The problem with this is that it has to be managed by the programmer and optimized for best performance. Caches also tend to be small, because of the speed. That said, the Xbox One ESRAM is quite massive for a cache being 32MB.

So why is the PS4 not saddled with this?

The PS4 chose GDDR5 RAM that has significantly higher bandwidth (read how much data can pass through) than the Xbox One's DDR3. In fact the bandwidth on the GDDR5 is actually faster than what ESRAM can deliver so PS4 don't need it. On the flip side DDR3 has better latency than GDDR5.

As an aside, the PS3 also had significantly higher bandwidth than the Xbox 360, but the result was that the Xbox 360 performed better. This was due to a combination of architectural design decisions that affects software development. Because a system is a sum of it's parts. One area can make up for other areas. It is a trade-off.

So why did MS choose DDR3?

This essentially comes down to chance and luck!

When MS and Sony started designing the next generation consoles, they only had a prediction of the future. MS required 8GB RAM from the outset for their vision of the next console, and at the time the cost analysis suggested only DDR3 would be available quantities needed and at a price point that is feasible. Sony opted for 4GB GDDR5 RAM as they typically aim for high bandwidth systems.

Once you know what the state of the industry is, the component cost, and the availability for sure, it is far too late to re-design the system. So you make a bet, do you want to bet on DDR3 or GDDR5? One is available, and a price point is pretty sure fire, or the latter where it is unknown if it will even be available let alone the price tag. Keep in mind these decisions are made years in advance.

In short, MS lost the bet and Sony won this time around.

Contrary to what others are saying, it has nothing to do with Kinect and everything to do with the requirement of 8GBs of RAM required. This in turn, actually made Sony bump their specification up to 8GBs as well.

As you can tell, there is so much more in the hardware that there are trade-offs all over the place. For instance, MS deemed it more valuable to increase the frequency of their CPU over Sony's, because that gave better performance than any other part.

Also finishing this writeup, I realized you said "bottleneck development" not just "bottleneck. Posted this anyhow!

[OC_MurphysLaw]

Well done mate +bub

[slate91]

I really appreciate this post man +helpful thanks a lot. Its very interesting indeed. So ms had to include the esram inorder to make gddr3 ram feasible?

[rainslacker]

The X1 does have it's own general purpose cache more in the vein of classic architecture. I'm not sure how much it is off the top of my head.

The ESRAM is a specialized cache for the use of frame buffers. If it's used for other purposes then it's not terribly efficient, and can actually be slower than just brute forcing the data.

Otherwise, your comment is pretty spot on. It's there to alleviate the bandwidth constraints on the DDR3 memory in the processing of the frame buffer.

However, it's a bottleneck for development itself because it requires building the application to use it properly. I don't think it's a massive impact, as every system requires special coding.

[windblowsagain]

Sony at the time of making the PS4, were thinking of using esram, but decided on going the DDR5 route instead of esram(fast) into ddr3 slower and to make the system less complicated, i.e ps3.

But regardless of Ram.

PS4 can output 25.6 Gigapixels.

xboxone can output 13.1 gigapixels.

That's why 900p vs 1080p is 44% increase etc.

[muzikjunkie80]

donthate

why you have only 2 bubbles is beyond me, thats the first time i have read a post that had a mature well thought out and intelligent reply.

i see you have some disagrees but everything you stated is pretty spot on and how companies have to make sacrifices due to cost and time etc, guess u cant make everyone happy lol

ps i gave you an upvote for that :)

[UkrainianWarrior]

As far as I know, Esram has a higher bandwidth than GDDR5..

[Ch1d0r1]

Nailed it! Nice write up man!

[XtraTrstrL]

It's like 360's eDram that was useful last gen, though it is more complex than 1 bank of unified memory. The eSram is a small bank of super fast ram, but to use it you have to organize and send data through in small packets, which takes time to do and is a whole extra step apart from what is done on PC/PS4 versions of the same multiplat games. So, it's very unlikely to be used efficiently for multiplats, and may not even be used in many exclusive titles, unless the devs really want to push for it or it's a big enough title that they're gonna do everything they can to squeeze everything out of the hardware.

[dantesparda]

@ slate91

The problem with it is that its to small for most deferred rendering engine at 1080p, so developers have to resort to all sorts of tricks that dont always work for all games and engines. Tricks like placing all the more high bandwidth dependent code in it while leaving things like the sky in a game (that dont require a lot of bandwidth) in the slower/lower bandwidth DDR3 pool of RAM. Whereas you don't have to go through this on the PS4. The PS4 has a 8GB pool of RAM that runs at 176GB/s, whereas the X1's 8GB pool only runs at 68GB/s so if you've got higher bandwidth requirements, you've got to fit it into a 32MB pool (which is tiny) but runs theoretically up to 204GB/s if it is doing both reads and write simultaneously (which actually isn't that common), or just 109GB/s if its just doing a read or write.

All that adds up to more complexity for your development, as devs now have to figure out and plan what they need to put into the slower 8GB or the faster but tiny 32MB, and 32MB just isn't enough. The reason they did it is because it was cheaper and easier for them to do it. Whereas Sony took a risk and speculated that if GDDR5 prices of a certain size fell to the right amount of money by a certain time then they would be able to afford 8GB of it because originally they were only going to have 4 gigabytes of GDDR5. But they got lucky and prices fell into place. And boom! you got the situation you have now. MS wasn't even thinking about taking the risk, as they were way more worried about including Kinect and TV, TV, TV not the highest performance.

And btw, all the bandwidth numbers are theoretical peak numbers and not sustain most of the time. Also, the PS4 does have a good amount more GPU power than the X1 and most games nowadays rely more on the GPU power and bandwidth than they do on the CPU, hence why all three companies, (Sony, MS and Nintendo) all went with weak CPUs and more powerful GPUs. However, since the CPU's on these systems are so weak, they tend to hold back the framerate on some games. So if a game is GPU bound, then its going to perfom better on the PS4 but if a game is CPU bound, it should run better on the X1, but we've seen many case's where this isn't true. Because we've may CPU bound games that still run better on the PS4.

[dantesparda]

Wow, Mr. X, what made up nonsense. None of that made any sense. Try again, only this time less dribble! And try and know what you're talking about this time, cuz you just showed you don't. And its funny because you are trying to say that the X1 has more bandwidth yet, how many more games have higher res on the PS4? And you do know the higher the res the more bandwidth it takes right? So, if the X1 has higher bandwidth (Lol, laughable!) than the PS4, then why are so many games even til date (just look at Rainbow Six The Siege) lower res?

[343_Guilty_Spark]

It only bottlenecks development if you don't know how to use it. Early on a few developers complained it was too small but that isn't true as we've seen with newer games. Microsoft could have done a hell of a lot better though around launch because the drivers/SDKs were a complete disaster.

[dantesparda]

Nonsense, it is too small and you will continue to see games that have lower res than the PS4 version for it. You fanboys really like to feed yourselves with some serious bullsh't. The X1 cannot match the PS4's res in many games because of the eSRAM's size. Fact!

[lvl_headed_gmr]

2 words...

Tiled Resources..

Imagine getting 6 gigs worth of textures while only using 32mb of ESram....

https://youtu.be/-I5TEpAnuE...

Once Win 10 launches on XB1 it will unlock this ability that he XB1 hardware was designed around.

Just 1 of the few new methods MS is looking at ways to develop games better...Cloud Compute is another.

[poor_cus_of_games]

Nope.

[lvl_headed_gmr]

@poor_cus_of_games

What exactly "nope" about it? I provided a link that clearly shows it.

The buyers remorse is strong in poor_cus_of_games

[Letthewookiewin]

There is nothing MS can do to make the X1 on par with the PS4. Cloud, nope, SDK, nope. It's weaker hardware.

[Lennoxb63]

I agree with the SDK part and the fact that its weaker hardware. But you're wrong about the cloud. The cloud actually puts the X1 performance pass the PS4. Is there anywhere else that the PS4 can pull 20x the computational powerful from? No.

Only without the cloud is the X1 weaker than the PS4. Now... Waiting for my pile of disagrees.

[Letthewookiewin]

The cloud does not do shader and polygonal rendering. Like you said computational tasks. This will not make games have a higher res or better frame rate as those two things are only taken care of locally. Ya you can level a town in Crackdown but it's not a good looking one. The cloud will not put the X1 on par with PS4.

[solidboss07]

You are a clown if you think the cloud does that.

[kenwonobi]

Look the cloud has shown us essentially nothing so far. Lets just stop already with the idiocy. It showed Crackdown destruction. Aside from that there is no tangible evidence it makes Xbox (more powerful at all)

[PudgeyBurrito]

In theory the cloud sounds great but still is only shown in tech demo's 2 years in to it's life cycle. Sdk's, dx12, an extra core at around 900 mhz.. tiny tiny increments. Not even close to the 40% the PS GPU has in advantage or memory clock speed. Just stop already and enjoy your dam games.

[Lennoxb63]

@PudgeyBurrito

We're talking about the cloud in tandem with the X1. I've already acknowledged that without the cloud, the X1 is weaker.

The cloud isn't just some theory. It was already shown working. There are very few PCs on this planet; if any at all, that can produce what was shown.

There are documents on the internet about how the cloud performs these tags. These aren't some random bloggers journal. This is straight from MS. You can choose not to see it all you want. But it's there.

[PuppetMaster251]

The man Lennox is right; the cloud puts xbone performance in the lead, and, he got his pile of disagrees. Why do PS4 gamers flock to articles about the XBOX ONE? To denounce it and look for opportunities to say that the PS4 is better. If the PS4 gamers were really content with their console, why feel the need to rain hate on the XBONE?

[nitus10]

The so called cloud can do what is called near line processing what it can't do is real time graphics processing mainly due to the fact hat the connection between the cloud servers and the controlling machine is the internet which has considerable latency.

Just because Microsoft touts "Da Cloud" as something like the holy grail does not mean that Sony or any other company can not use the same techniques since these have been known for well over 30 years.

[angelusbrz]

I don't know which is sadder, the fact that you believe what you say or the 30 people that upvoted you...

[Picnic]

It seems to me like do you want a smooth looking racing car that can be damaged in a game or do you want 20 much less pretty, smaller, cars that can be damaged on the same screen? For Sony's story driven, cinematic yet intimate, purposes, GDDR5 and a smaller cloud makes more sense to them at the moment. Xbox, which has always tried to cover a PC like angle and doesn't go so much for emotion-heavy games, prefers the amount allowed the cloud, even though the fine details wil be less cinematic than PS4, Why hasn't the Cloud allowed Xbox to display as many strands of grass in multiformat games as PS4 has?

[Major_Glitch]

@Lennoxb63 Rofl!!! Are you serious?! You're actually serious about "Cloud Powerz"?! Great! Tell me again how using it to enhance ONE games MULTIPLAYER mode will prove the Xbone is more powerful then the PS4. Because you know, trying to pass off server processing power as a console's processing power makes TOTAL SENSE. Let me guess, you also probably think that when Crackdown 3 drops, people are just going to up and by millions of xbones thus erasing the sales gap between the PS4 and the Xbone. You know what I like about having a PS4? We don't have to wait for "Cloud Powerz" to play great games. Have fun with your one game and your clouds.

[user9950279]

We'll see if the PS4 is capable of anything on par with crackdown 3 =P

[Spotie]

The XB1 isn't capable of Crackdown 3 without outside help. I don't know why you and others try to pass off the servers' power as that of the console.

[magiciandude]

Well Spotie, I don't think the PS4 would be, either. So that doesn't matter. Has Sony invested in technology like that? Doubt it.

[angelusbrz]

I'm sure she can do PS2 looking game too.

[Picnic]

A bunch of extremely blocky, rather detailless, buildings being able to be destroyed in realtime is perhaps more of hint of what a treat that might be in future with better tech iin the hands of a master storyteller. At the moment, it's a bit like loving Virtua Racing on the Sega Megadrive/Genesis and not caring about Donkey Kong Country as a result.

[Major_Glitch]

@one bubble So that's the latest goalpost now? Crackdown 3? Have fun waiting for that.
@magian Spotie is right. Trying to pass off a server's processing power as the console's is lame, even by MS's standards.

[Spotie]

@magistalker: By all means, point to where I or anyone else said the PS4 could do that.

Honestly, why would you counter with that? Why would you refute a claim nobody has even made instead of addressing the subject at hand?

[magiciandude]

@Spotie

Who said the Xbox One would be capable of anything on par with Crackdown by itself? Didn't you just accused me of something that you previously did? Don't you see the irony in that?

[Lennoxb63]

Yea. From your last comment, I can tell you don't know what the hell you're talking about. Crackdown is far from finished. Its in prealpha. Meaning those are far from the final graphics.

"The cloud does not do shader and polygonal rendering."

You're right and wrong at the same time on this. It can take care of CPU tasks so that the CPU can send more commands that focus on graphics more. So no the cloud wouldn't render graphics. Only give the console the room to do it better.

[MRMagoo123]

The cpu having less to do doesn't make the gpu any better , so I don't get what your point is. Devs are using gpu compute much more now and that's where the Xbox will fall on its face, cloud won't help that at all.

[kenwonobi]

Cloud will not help graphics. It never has so far. It does computational tasks like physics, AI, a few extra buildings might blow up. On a always online game maybe.

[Bigpappy]

Come on 'MRMagoo', you are trying to talk tech and don't know of what you speak. You see those unflinching, locked solid 60fps in Forza and Halo, that is due to CPU not GPU. Both need to be utilized and optimized for games to play well. It also happens that more cores in the CPU, is now more important than the clock speed with new API like DX12 and Vulkan.

[Lennoxb63]

@MRMagoo123

If you knew anything, you would know that the CPU can also process graphics. Just not as good as the GPU can.

@Kenwonobi

Resources freed up from the cloud taking care of physics can be reallocated to other areas. Graphical fx that don't have much latency behind them can be processed by the cloud. Like lighting.

[MRMagoo123]

@bigpappa

I have been in the pc industry longer than most n4g users have been alive , I have forgotten more than you most users know, dont talk sh!t.

[DragonbornZ]

@Letthewookiewin

The PS4 is more powerful than the X1. Like you said it's a fact.

But i'd still like to think of cloud computing as an extension of the xbox one in games that utilize it (in this case Crackdown).
With crackdown in mp the user is taking advantage of a massive amount of computational power provided by the servers. It won't help res or framerate, but it does give the consoles games a huge boost in their physics, A.I, etc capabilities (in this case physics/destruction). Not directly of course, as it doesn't change the hardware, but it's essentially giving the consoles games access to a second incredibly powerful cpu.

No it doesn't help shaders or rendering, but it does have it's own huge benefits and they shouldn't be disregarded.

[kraenk12]

I can already see the walls of complaints users will have with weak or failing internet connections.

[nitus10]

Cloud computing or as I knew it over 30 years ago as "Remote IT Services" can be very useful but only if you are connected to those services and the most common means of connection today is the Internet.

Basically no Internet or Internet down then no cloud services. If the Internet is slow then Cloud services are also slow.

It never ceases to amaze me (popcorn time) how many people are still touting Crackdown which was a controlled demonstration and not a real world setup as what people will see in the short term.

[DragonbornZ]

@kraenk12

Yeah there will be some.

@nitus10
Touting, hyping, over exaggerating, undermining, disregarding, etc. People are doing a lot of things.

I'm excited for it because they are using this tech to create new gameplay experiences, the kind that many of us have wanted since we started gaming.
I want this to work, but I acknowledge that what we've seen is in a controlled evironment.
Keep in mind that Microsoft are one of the leading cloud companies with some of the smartest people and some of the best software engineers in the world. This kind of tech will seem more grounded in the future, but maybe they cracked it "early".

Or maybe they can't with today's tech. Who knows? Who cares? It's exciting and a damn cool addition to gaming. It's awesome that theyre even attempting to shake things up like this.

But, we'll see come the beta anyways.

[lvl_headed_gmr]

Well so far its the XB1 showing its games do more, are bigger in scope and better AI. While Sony pumps out last gen remasters in order to hit 1080p 60fps and struggles at hitting a locked 30fps framerate, MS is giving us huge epic games with 60fps and 1080p along with cloud based computing.

MS is just bringing the games while Sony is pumping out last gen experiences.

The strength of the hardware is a moot argument if there is no examples that the hardware is producing a product that shows the hardware is superior.

MS is delivering while Sony pumps out last gen games and experiences.

[parentsbasement]

Xbox bad , PS good .com.....just rename this site already...

[B1uBurneR]

Look pretty much like the new SDK means nothing for people with no online access

The Xbox can increase its performance using software but it will never surpass it's hardware limitations unless it's connected online using the cloud even though it's not proven in the wild and with the demo crashing really puts a damper in that hope of it being more powerful and stable because you can't have one without the other in this particular case.

But this is good news none the less.

[kenwonobi]

Its too late to change the hardware. All software tricks? Just tricks. Can be done on PS4. Software just optimizes what's already in place. You can argue every exclusive PS4 dev does this for each of their games.

[Bigpappy]

Nope the components are different. PS4 doesn't use ESRAM or DDR3 for example. Software intended to work with ESRAM, does nothing for PS4.

[kenwonobi]

Oh i forget software can never be optimized on PS4. Only Xbox. Ky bad.

[nitus10]

Why would the PS4 need software that only works with ESRAM and DDR3?

I would assume that any software would be compiled and linked to the appropriate libraries that are supported by the devices that will run said software.

[343_Guilty_Spark]

People on here act like there are some gigantic power differences between these relatively underpowered consoles.

[Lennoxb63]

Exactly. In terms of power, its a Honda (PS4) versus a Toyota(X1).

[MasterCornholio]

So a NSX vs a Yaris?

:P

[kraenk12]

50% bIgger GPU and faster RAM are still on the PS4 side. Not sure if I would call it gigantic but definitely substancial.

[kstuffs]

So substantial that Until Dawn runs 20-40 fps with tendency in the 20s.

[LastcenuryRob]

You are going by what the system could do day one. Since then X1 has opened full usage of its GPU to developers. That wasn't the case at first. 50% more power? Not remotely. The PS4 is still more powerful overall, just not as much as many seem to think.

[RiseofScorpio]

Calling it "50% bigger GPU" just makes you look like a bandwaggoner.

[killer876]

50% bigger gpu?
yet it cannot run witcher 3 over 30fps?

gimmie a break

if you care about specs so much go pc
console and high specs one huge oxymoron

[ThePresentIsAgift]

All the specs in the world aren't affecting my enjoyment of tombraider, battlefield 4, devil may cry 4, forza 6, halo, gears and many others.

I do not find myself pondering the theoretical throughput of asynchronous ram modules and high level coding algorithms whilst playing games. Perhaps I'm the only one.

Some people game at 4k, 100fps does that suddenly make PS4 garbage? I sincerely doubt it.

[parentsbasement]

I like my xbox 7th core sdk update , and the esram too , but sadly , I'm in the minority...

[Shakengandulf]

I don't think you're in the minority, i hope sony do the same soon. ( if they haven't already)

[Shakengandulf]

Speaking of cores, the more they release.. The better.
Especially when they aren't all that good to begin with.

[ChrisW]

Well then... Learn how to use it so it does make an impact!

[LastcenuryRob]

Collectively, every update MS has given the X1 from day one is all adding up. The system has had significant improvements with all the software, cpu and gpu updates this past year plus.