Epic games calling EA out.

[beebskadoo]

So i'm just going to link this one. I was in the middle of writing this long informative article when the page bugged out and I lost my work :angry:  so needless to say I don't have time to re-write it so here's the link to PCperspective's article on the subject: http://www.pcper.com/news/Editorial/Epic-Games-disappointed-PS4-and-Xbox-One enjoy :)

[Theo]

Good to see more people pointing out the dumb things that EA says. The only reason that he said it was to appeal to the ego of the console owners, I see no other way that someone working in that industry would think such a thing.

[Makol]

This is glorious. 

[Nicktrance]

I get what Taneja was trying to say with the statement about the architecture, but to me it looks like it's nothing but a PR stunt, a play on words to make some people (even if just a few) actually think that the current consoles are way more powerful than any PCs and that their choice of focusing on consoles is justified. This is similar to the statement that they "will out-power most PCs for years to come". Both completely true but misleading.

 

When it comes down to it real performance is what actually matters, sure the architecture may be more efficient, but as of right now you NEED a discreet video card and you NEED large chips and large amounts of separate memory modules in order to produce most power and the truth is that even though APUs with shared memory will eventually be enough for a good gaming experience, a simple way of increasing performance is increasing the quantity of everything, which would require larger chips. It's just a question of how affordable it is. In the meantime, graphics quality will still be on the increase, making that increase in performance more useful so those big graphics cards will still find their use for a long time.

 

I hope Linus and Slick read well into this and give us their thoughts tonight (or tomorrow depending on where you live).

[beebskadoo]

Good to see more people pointing out the dumb things that EA says. The only reason that he said it was to appeal to the ego of the console owners, I see no other way that someone working in that industry would think such a thing.

Another thing that was said in PCperspectives most recent podcast was the xbox1 won't be able to be as optimized as previous consoles due to the fact that there are 3 VM's running on one machine. 1 for 3d stuff like games and one for movies and such and the os itself. basically what's happening is the xbox is supposed to switch between those different environments seamlessly so the resources need to be split between 3 different environments. so that means memory allocation, cpu/gpu power and hard disk usage. Where as sony is simplifying the approach comparatively and has better hardware. the upside to the xbox approach is that these environments exist independently, so if one environment fails lets say the tv app crashes, then your game will still run fine. But then there's this 'Hypervisor' that manages these VM's which if it fails, will screw up everyhting. But more importantly due to the hypervisor being in place this doesn't allow developers to program nearly as close to the hardware as the previous gen. Therefore the less than 2 teraflops of the new xbox is further diminished. This was all mentioned in the podcast by Josh Walrath who has some pretty advanced understanding of the architecture of the jaguar cpu and the amd gpu that is being used in these consoles. you can find that podcast here 

The xbox discussion happens roughly 28 minutes in. Enjoy :)

[beebskadoo]

I get what Taneja was trying to say with the statement about the architecture, but to me it looks like it's nothing but a PR stunt, a play on words to make some people (even if just a few) actually think that the current consoles are way more powerful than any PCs and that their choice of focusing on consoles is justified. This is similar to the statement that they "will out-power most PCs for years to come". Both completely true but misleading.

 

When it comes down to it real performance is what actually matters, sure the architecture may be more efficient, but as of right now you NEED a discreet video card and you NEED large chips and large amounts of separate memory modules in order to produce most power and the truth is that even though APUs with shared memory will eventually be enough for a good gaming experience, a simple way of increasing performance is increasing the quantity of everything, which would require larger chips. It's just a question of how affordable it is. In the meantime, graphics quality will still be on the increase, making that increase in performance more useful so those big graphics cards will still find their use for a long time.

 

I hope Linus and Slick read well into this and give us their thoughts tonight (or tomorrow depending on where you live).

Well the PS4 has a discrete gpu while the Xbox has a SOC or an apu. meaning the xbox is more power efficient but the ps4 has more horsepower. About 30-40% more gpu horsepower in theory. 

[Nicktrance]

Well the PS4 has a discrete gpu while the Xbox has a SOC or an apu. meaning the xbox is more power efficient but the ps4 has more horsepower. About 30-40% more gpu horsepower in theory. 

 

Both have AMD Jaguar APUs with GCN based GPUs, the one in the PS4 has a few more cores (18CUs vs 12CUs) and the memory configurations are different (8GB DDR3 shared + 32MB eSRAM vs 8GB GDDR5 shared). So the PS4 seems to have slighlty more graphics power but no discreet GPUs on either of them.

[Neutronicsoup]

I think it's no surprise that these two consoles have fallen behind the benchmark that epic game set. but I'm glad to see that someone out there in the games industry is pushing for performance, it's what we PC gamers need. By the way that tweet at the end pure gold. 

 

EA really did an EA  :D if you know what I mean?  ^_^

[Bad2049]

Well the PS4 has a discrete gpu while the Xbox has a SOC or an apu. meaning the xbox is more power efficient but the ps4 has more horsepower. About 30-40% more gpu horsepower in theory. 

If I'm correct.. they both run the same SOC (APU) design so unless Sony added in a secondary GPU I don't see them being different in that regard.

[beebskadoo]

Both have AMD Jaguar APUs with GCN based GPUs, the one in the PS4 has a few more cores (18CUs vs 12CUs) and the memory configurations are different (8GB DDR3 shared + 32MB eSRAM vs 8GB GDDR5 shared). So the PS4 seems to have slighlty more graphics power but no discreet GPUs on either of them.

 

Both have AMD Jaguar APUs with GCN based GPUs, the one in the PS4 has a few more cores (18CUs vs 12CUs) and the memory configurations are different (8GB DDR3 shared + 32MB eSRAM vs 8GB GDDR5 shared). So the PS4 seems to have slighlty more graphics power but no discreet GPUs on either of them.

yes they are both APU esque. But the where the difference is in shader count and memory type. calling it an apu is acceptable but these Dies must be gigantic especially on the ps4. It's rumored that it's 40nm as opposed to 28nm so if so it's huge. Saying a few more cores is slightly understated. 1152 vs 768 cores accounts to a 34% theoretical performance difference. that's the difference between a 660 and a 680. that's a big difference. The ps4 is going to be the new leader i believe. I forsee that games will be made on ps4 and ported to xbox1 which is the opposite of how things are going now. The performance is further separated by the fact the XBOX will essentially be running 3 VM operating systems on one set of hardware. Meaning processing power and memory allocation has to be divided  between each environment. so the weak hardware got even weaker. Furthermore due to the hypervisor on the Xbox which manages these environments will not allow developers to access the hardware as direct as last gen or even the ps4. So this is an interesting strategy by microsoft.

[beebskadoo]

If I'm correct.. they both run the same SOC (APU) design so unless Sony added in a secondary GPU I don't see them being different in that regard.

I stand corrected but see my comment to Nicktrance it will explain a bit further the difference and disadvantage of each platform.

[beebskadoo]

Basically the only advantage the Xbox has is in fast ram. Yes the Ps4 has 8GB gddr5 which is blazing fast but the xbox has ESRAM which is located on the die. it's only 32 MB but it's blazing fast along with 8 GB of ddr3. That is another reason that the transistor count one the Xbox1 was 5 billion due to the ram on the die plus the APU which houses the GPU and CPU. Additionally the Jaguar architecture is a SOC meaning the various controllers are also on the die, thus driving the transistor count even higher. So the Xbox1 announcement was kind of ambiguous when it came to the 5 billion transistor count because it seems a lot on the surface but when you add the factors up and read into the hardware/software it's a bit lackluster. At least to me :)

[Nicktrance]

yes they are both APU esque. But the where the difference is in shader count and memory type. calling it an apu is acceptable but these Dies must be gigantic especially on the ps4. It's rumored that it's 40nm as opposed to 28nm so if so it's huge. Saying a few more cores is slightly understated. 1152 vs 768 cores accounts to a 34% theoretical performance difference. that's the difference between a 660 and a 680. that's a big difference. The ps4 is going to be the new leader i believe. I forsee that games will be made on ps4 and ported to xbox1 which is the opposite of how things are going now. The performance is further separated by the fact the XBOX will essentially be running 3 VM operating systems on one set of hardware. Meaning processing power and memory allocation has to be divided  between each environment. so the weak hardware got even weaker. Furthermore due to the hypervisor on the Xbox which manages these environments will not allow developers to access the hardware as direct as last gen or even the ps4. So this is an interesting strategy by microsoft.

 

Calling it APU is the only correct way to call it and they are using a 28nm manufacturing process, that is pretty much certain (going 40nm is a step backwards actually). True, the PS4 has a more powerful graphics subsystem and I think that proves that PS4 is more focused on games while XBox is more focused on other media, how much that will matter IRL we'll only know when it's released the differences will probably be very minimal, just like the difference between the PS3 and XBox 360 after all 34% is not nearly as big a difference as between a 680 and 660 since we're working with much smaller numbers.

[beebskadoo]

Calling it APU is the only correct way to call it and they are using a 28nm manufacturing process, that is pretty much certain (going 40nm is a step backwards actually). True, the PS4 has a more powerful graphics subsystem and I think that proves that PS4 is more focused on games while XBox is more focused on other media, how much that will matter IRL we'll only know when it's released the differences will probably be very minimal, just like the difference between the PS3 and XBox 360 after all 34% is not nearly as big a difference as between a 680 and 660 since we're working with much smaller numbers.

Well the new AMD mobile APU's  are SOC's based on the same architecture are going to possibly be 40 that's just what i heard and like you said time will tell. And yes the performance matters because if the PS4 is using all it's resources for games while the xbox is using 1/3 that's a huge theoretical difference. I wasn't just mentioning the difference in the stream processor count I was taking in account the software application of the hardware too. The software is what make the difference in this case. SOC and APU are similar but not the same thing. Therefore they are SOC's :)

[Nademagnet]

From what i gather after watching the reveal, M$ is banking on their cloud to boost the XB1's performance.

[XiaoPigs]

Whenever EA does something stupid or mouthing off without knowing what they're saying I have to pull out this meme :P

 

 

[James.]

Well the new AMD mobile APU's  are SOC's based on the same architecture are going to possibly be 40 that's just what i heard and like you said time will tell. 

 

According to this: http://www.tomshardware.com/news/APU-Jaguar-PlayStation-Kabini-Temash,21229.html, AMD's Jaguar apus are 28nm.

 

 

AMD's "Jaguar" is the successor to "Bobcat" which powers current C- and E-Series low-power APUs. The company is expected to launch its first batch of Jaguar-based APUs during the middle of 2013, codenamed as Kabini and Temash. These 28-nm chips will have power envelopes of 15W or less, and up to four cores.

 

[Ethnod]

Oh wow, depressing and yet not that surprising that the VP of one of the largest games companies in the world knows NOTHING about computer technology at all.... I'm lost, how do EA expect to hold the respect of gamers around the world?

[Blade of Grass]

YES! Finally.

[MadZee]

Epic is epic.

[infallday]

Oh wow, depressing and yet not that surprising that the VP of one of the largest games companies in the world knows NOTHING about computer technology at all.... I'm lost, how do EA expect to hold the respect of gamers around the world?

For me, they lost respect once they gained NFL exclusivity and refrained from adding any actual features outside of slight graphical enhancements to Madden. People are still playing the same game from 2005, rofl. Fail. What about post release patches for their most active games (FIFA 09-13)? Fail. How was BF3 on PC? 32 vs 32 with no REAL VOIP? While PS3 and 360 get it? REALLY? Fail. Add on what has happened to Bioware (once easily my favorite developer, and I'm sure I'm not alone) since the purchase just adds fire onto the flame...People need to stop supporting them.