COD: Ghosts 720p Upscaled on Xbone but Native 1080P on PS4

[FordGT90Concept]

We're talking 60+ GB/s here. That's the whole freakin disk in a second.

 

[Dent1]

Yeah, 32 MB of fast RAM is going to compensate for the 5 GB of slow RAM... seriously, have you seen the size of textures lately?

Actually yeah. Think back to the late 1990s, back when video cards had 32MB of VRAM. It compensated for the fact that systems only had about 20GB of HDD and 64MB of main memory which was far too slow for transferring textures.

They might be able to get a whole 2 textures on there.

Textures don't stay in the same area, it constantly moves around the subsystems. We are talking about bandwidth of 1-10GB/sec. Tell me a single texture that big.

 

[hardcore_gamer]

Even the xbone's exclusive launch title Dead Rising 3 runs at 720p and 30fps.

They should have named the console as xbox 720..lol

Edit: About the discussion happening about the memory:
PS4 team already considered the embedded RAM cache but decided against it because it is not easy for developers to take advantage of. They went with GDRR5 which always offers a guaranteed high bandwidth rather than slower memory + embedded RAM which gives high bandwidth only with careful programming. Instead of wasting die area on the embedded RAM, they went with extra GPU shaders (50% higher than xbone) on the APU. The resulting APU has lower die area than xbone's APU, but has higher number of graphics cores and better memory. Therefore they managed to sell a console with superior hardware capabilities at a lower price.

If you have 45 minutes to spare, I'd suggest watching the "Road to PS4" video from PS4 architect Mark Cerny. It is a good presentation to watch even if you don't like gaming consoles.

The Road to PS4 | Mark Cerny talks at Gamelab 2013...

If you want to skip to the discussion about memory architectures, skip to 39th minute.

 

[newtekie1]

wait is 1440x900 even a standard HDTV size?! lol.

It wouldn't be 1440x900, it would be 1600x900. There are 1600x900 panels, but they aren't common. But 1600x900 scales pretty well to both 720p and 1080p.

Xbone has 32 MiB ESRAM which is about the same performance of the GDDR5 in PS4. I think that's going to compensate for DDR3's slower speed quite substantially.

What people don't talk about is the fact PS4 uses GDDR5 for its main memory. Yes, it is higher bandwidth, but it also more susceptible to error and has higher latency. The GDDR5 may be a boon for PS4's GPU component but it will cripple the CPU component. Microsoft took a similar approach with Xbox 360 and it worked well; the same should be expected of Xbone.


I think it's the shader difference that is translating to higher resolutions. Xbone has nothing to compensate for that difference except (maybe) higher clockspeeds but that isn't clear yet.

The 32MB of ESRAM is not going to make that much of a difference. Yes, it is fast, but there isn't enough of it. It is going to act like nothing more than a L3 cache shared between the GPU and CPU. Microsoft designed it with the hope that it would make-up for the shortfalls of using DDR3, but the fact is it doesn't. 32MB just isn't enough to be really useful. And saddly, the inclusion of the ESRAM on the APU die might be the reason that they are only using 2/3 the number of shaders. They gambled with using DDR3 and ESRAM and sacrificing shaders, and they lost.

Besides the GDDR5 on the PS4 is providing 170+GB/s of bandwidth, if the rumored 1375MHz clock speed is correct. The ESRAM is only doing ~200GB/s according to Microsoft, so the ESRAM is not actually that much faster than the GDDR5, and isn't going to make up for the slow DDR3 which is only capable of 60GB/s.

 

[KainXS]

1600x900 might not be standard but its actually a pretty good resolution to me. . . . . . to me.

 

[W1zzard]

Besides the GDDR5 on the PS4 is providing 170 GB/s of bandwidth, if the rumored 1375MHz clock speed is correct. The ESRAM is only doing ~200GB/s according to Microsoft, so the ESRAM is not actually that much faster than the GDDR5, and isn't going to make up for the slow DDR3 which is only capable of 60GB/s.

eSRAM has much better latencies, lower than DDR3 and much much lower than graphics memory

 

[Dent1]

1600x900 might not be standard but its actually a pretty good resolution to me. . . . . . to me.

I agree.

Microsoft said the second wave of games will be 1080p. So its no big deal.

 

[The Von Matrices]

I agree.

Microsoft said the second wave of games will be 1080p. So its no big deal.

This sounds like the same argument that Sony gave with the PS3 and it's hard to program Cell CPU architecture. Yes, it theoretically was comparable in compute capability to its competitor, but its difficulty in programming meant this it was really only used to its fullest extent in exclusive games. I see the same thing happening with the XBOX One's GPU.

eSRAM has much better latencies, lower than DDR3 and much much lower than graphics memory

eSRAM is better than using DDR3 alone, you have no argument from me. But just like Intel's Crystalwell (128MB on package compared to XBOX One's faster 32MB) it can only go so far to alleviating memory bandwidth constraints. To quote Intel:

it would take a 100 - 130GB/s GDDR memory interface to deliver similar effective performance to Crystalwell since the latter is a cache. Accessing the same data (e.g. texture reads) over and over again is greatly benefitted by having a large L4 cache on package.

The PS4 has 176GB/s, which would indicate that the XBOX One is still memory bandwidth constrained with eSRAM compared to the PS4.

 

[newtekie1]

eSRAM has much better latencies, lower than DDR3 and much much lower than graphics memory

Of course it does, it is on-die. But that still isn't going to makeup for the massive downfall of using DDR3.

 

[hellrazor]

We're talking 60+ GB/s here. That's the whole freakin disk in a second.

Textures don't stay in the same area, it constantly moves around the subsystems. We are talking about bandwidth of 1-10GB/sec. Tell me a single texture that big.

It doesn't matter, the textures have to come from somewhere which means that it has to go back down to the speed of the slow RAM or whatever the hell it's reading from as soon as it's done with whatever is in it. The only thing it'd be good for is instancing, which doesn't seem to be common enough to make up more than a small portion of the difference.

 

[FordGT90Concept]

Keep in mind that PS3 has a similar memory landscape (256 MiB XDR + 256 MiB GDDR3) compared to the PS4 (8 GiB GDDR5) and the same goes for Xbox 360 (10 MiB eDRAM + 512 MiB GDDR3) and Xbone (32 MiB ESRAM + 8 GiB DDR3).

 

[KainXS]

maybe when we see some of the one titles get extracted we will know about the texture sizes for sure.

and

a friend of mine got the PS4 today because he worked at the store selling it, although he didn't hook it up yet because he's afraid its gonna be banned.

 

[Dent1]

It doesn't matter, the textures have to come from somewhere which means that it has to go back down to the speed of the slow RAM or whatever the hell it's reading from as soon as it's done with whatever is in it. The only thing it'd be good for is instancing, which doesn't seem to be common enough to make up more than a small portion of the difference.

RAM is not slow. It isn't anywhere as fast as VRAM but its definitely not slow. To say its slow is unjust.

Also the textures don't have to go back to the RAM, after it's done in the VRAM the system might decide to wipe it clear or overwrite it. - It's up to the discretion of the programmer.

 

[newtekie1]

RAM is not slow. It isn't anywhere as fast as VRAM but its definitely not slow. To say its slow is unjust.

Also the textures don't have to go back to the RAM, after it's done in the VRAM the system might decide to wipe it clear or overwrite it. - It's up to the discretion of the programmer.

Relative to the PS4's RAM, yes the RAM in the Xbox is slow. Half the speed is what I call slow.

 

[hellrazor]

RAM is not slow. It isn't anywhere as fast as VRAM but its definitely not slow. To say its slow is unjust.

Also the textures don't have to go back to the RAM, after it's done in the VRAM the system might decide to wipe it clear or overwrite it. - It's up to the discretion of the programmer.

Yes, but the ESRAM still has to get populated from the DDR3, which is what I was talking about, and with it being only 32 MB it's going to have to do that quite a lot.

 

[RoutedScripter]

All this buzz isn't really surprising, it was obvious for the actual tech people when Microsoft announced DDR3 and 32MB ESRAM, what's going to happen.

Xbone has 32 MiB ESRAM which is about the same performance of the GDDR5 in PS4. I think that's going to compensate for DDR3's slower speed quite substantially.

What people don't talk about is the fact PS4 uses GDDR5 for its main memory.

I think you have that completely wrong.

 

[The Von Matrices]

I think you have that completely wrong.

Nope, he is absolutely correct. This block diagram from Microsoft explains a lot (it is tagged by semiaccurate but it is Microsoft's slide)

The ESRAM has 204 GB/s of peak bandwidth
The SDRAM has 68 GB/s of peak bandwidth

Compared the the PS4 with 176GB/s of peak bandwidth for its GDDR5.

The ESRAM is in fact not that much faster than the PS4's entire memory system, and it's only 32MiB instead of 8GiB. It has much better latency though, which will make it more useful than the bandwidth figures indicate alone.

 

[Durvelle27]

Call of Duty: Ghost quick test. Recorded on PS4

https://www.facebook.com/photo.php?v=674507602579792

 

[TheoneandonlyMrK]

Call of Duty: Ghost quick test. Recorded on PS4

https://www.facebook.com/photo.php?v=674507602579792

Useless video I have no desire to look at ghosts continuously trying to connect to the net ta.

 

[Durvelle27]

Useless video I have no desire to look at ghosts continuously trying to connect to the net ta.

Sorry about that. You have to fast forward

 

[...PACMAN...]

So, how are you finding it so far Durvelle?

 

[Durvelle27]

So, how are you finding it so far Durvelle?

It wasn't to bad. Couldn't play online though as servers were down.

 

[KainXS]

did you notice any stuttering or anything in ghosts and just wondering, do you like the joystick better than the ps3's?

 

[Durvelle27]

did you notice any stuttering or anything in ghosts and just wondering, do you like the joystick better than the ps3's?

Yes when I recorded with settings at best quality I got a few little lag spikes but if on high no lag and yes the DS4 is a huge improvement over the DS3 and it feels great in the hand

 

[Dent1]

Relative to the PS4's RAM, yes the RAM in the Xbox is slow. Half the speed is what I call slow.

Then that is slower. Not slow.


That is like saying a Boeing 747 is slow because its half the speed of a Concord.

Everything is slower relative to a faster benchmark. If PS4's RAM is the benchmark of very fast, half the speed of very fast is still fast. If PS4's RAM is average, then half the speed of average could be considered slow.

So if you feel the Xbox's RAM is slow, that means by proxy PS4's RAM is slow. Because Slow multiplied by 2 = Slow.

Yes, but the ESRAM still has to get populated from the DDR3, which is what I was talking about, and with it being only 32 MB it's going to have to do that quite a lot.

Ultimately we're going to see how it turns out. The games developers are usually the first ones to complain their grievances in regards to hardware limitations.