PS4 “will out-power most PCs for years to come”, says Just Cause dev

@48,
So you know more than the devs that have seen the real deal, working on it for months/years, and liking it?

The article makes sense. PS4 should fall in around a medium spec PC. Should compare to a $1200+ Laptop, or a $1000 PC for around $400-500 off the shelf. They will probably lose a couple few hundred bucks on each machine.

The only issue is that by the time the PS4 hits the shelves the next gen CPUs and GPUs will be out, but really only a small percent of high end gamers will upgrade right away.

@39 Adding to this, GDDR 5 isn’t used in PCs as system RAM because it would have zero benefits outside of GPUs (so APUs would profit, but they again are far too limited by the processing power to justify the expense of big bandwith RAM), because a CPU isn’t bound by the RAM bandwith at all (for the part where it needs extremely fast memory modern CPUs have lots of cache). That’s why PCs only use GDDR 5 for where it makes sense – the GPU.

Since the PS4 will use RAM for both the CPU and the GPU it does indeed profit from it – but only because using normal DDR 3-RAM for the GPU would be slowing the whole thing down.

@53 And just to add to what you’ve added, MS might do some clever things here to overcome the bandwidth deficiency in DDR3 by using a small amount of ES/EDRAM in there as they did with the 360.

Anyway, has anyone stopped to think what would happen if the distro that Valve uses for its Steambox can be dual-booted on a gaming PC. I presume its likely an opensource product anyway. So my point is, how will the PC fare when you get rid of the huge OS overhead?

@54,
‘So my point is, how will the PC fare when you get rid of the huge OS overhead?”
You cant. And that’s the problem. Windows games needs windows to run, and windows needs ram+gpu+cpu to run. That is a part of the reason why similarly priced PCs just cant compete with consoles, ever.

@55 But then why are Steam pushing a linux based distro with the Steambox if nothing will work on it? They’re betting big on this so you can bet your arse they’ve covered bases. So now you’ve got Steam games running on a non windows system. Linux can be a lot thinner in terms of overheads anyway, so assuming Valve deliver on what they’ve promised, why does Windows need to be involved?

@55, he said Dual-boot the Steambox distro on a Windows PC.

Presumably if Valve were building a custom Linux distro for their own hardware they would minimise resource usage of that distro.

DamnSmallLinux fits in 50mb with a full graphical UI and a ton of software included and can run entirely within memory of 128mb or greater.

I’m not saying Valve are going to hit anything like that light, but the possibilities for an extremely light OS are there when you’re using Linux.

@51 I never claimed as such. Besides, there has always been developers who like console hardware and that doesn’t factor into how better or worse it is than the PC in the long run except when they decide to make games console exclusive. Why try to attack me personally just because you disagree with what I had to say?

@54 I find it interesting that people claim operating systems have huge overhead when most of the time their CPU cycles go idle most of the time and even when running games only a certain percentage of it is even used a lot of times. You’d think the CPU would always be working hard given the HUGE overhead that operating systems have right?

What I would hand them however is that perhaps having the hardware abstracted away by API layers isn’t as efficient. But guess what? Some consoles do this too. Like say, Xbox 360. Microsoft does not allow direct to the metal programming but did that make the PS3 1000x more powerful than the Xbox360 in multiplatform titles?

@56
“They’re betting big on this”

I’m getting growing feelings that no they aren’t. As an idea I love it, but for it to really work well they would need to chuck everything at it. I don’t feel from recent comments and statements they are doing that – it sounds much more like a cool little project and less like a serious effort to compete with Sony/MS in the home console arena.

@56,57,
We know how little support for linux is in comparison to windows dont we?
I am saying, Valve cant pull this off imo, at least not at the scale many people are expecting. I don’t even think Valve can sell more than, lets say 5-10 million max. Why would someone support an entirely new OS just for such a small fanbase?
Sony and MS broke their way through console biz through sheer money power, and to this day sell new (early in gen) consoles at a loss. I can bet nextbox and ps4 will be sold at a substantial loss, and Valve cant afford that.

@58,
Dont take it as an attack mate. But you certainly were saying something on the lines that- “It doesn’t matter”. And devs disagree with you, and they know better, don’t you think.

@59,
I agree. They are not doing anything to generate even an iota of hype. It really seems like a prototype project. It may damage their rep though even steambox doesn’t stand upon the grand expectations of their fans.

@The Latvian:

1. Logic is wasted on you.

2. Learn to count (as well as spell).

@60 That’s what I call a failure of understanding as what I said there had more to do with the hardware itself and less to dow with how much it costs. All I was saying in that moment was “the capabilities of the hardware count more than the price”. Understood? Good.

To be frank I do kind of think the whole GDDR5 thing is a tad overblown. But why does it even matter what I think? The facts will speak for themselves.

And how do you know I’m not in the industry? That’s a little presumptuous of you to put some people on a pedestal and assume I’m a nobody. Devs are not infallible authorities.

Consoles are shit. There is no comparisons.

@62,
You misunderstood at first. I mentioned price in response to a guy though erroneously thought that gddr5 ram is cheap, and you took it in an entirely new direction.
And all I am saying that the improvements matter. PS4 is better than current-gen, its next-gen. Thats all I said. And I completely and humbly disagree with you if you are saying otherwise because that is plain wrong.

@60 I know how little support there is for Linux, and I’m really having a pie in the sky moment with that thought process but my point is that if all the promises come true, could it not be interesting? However I do agree that things aren’t looking quite so rosy and I’m also worried it might not be what we’re hoping/expecting. Anyway, hope for the best and expect the worst and you’ll never be disappointed.

@58 Just a point of contention. When a system is idle, its idle. My CPU will sit at 0% and maybe spike a few percent as services do their thing, but yes, its idle. With 2gb+ sat in memory. Then when something gets asked of the processor, the CPU starts doing its thing. Now, the difference between what the process is actually using and what the system says its using is the overhead. That’s the point. When Windows is asked to do something, there is the process running, then there’s all the services’/process’ running on top of that to make it happen. The overhead is there and it IS huge.

@65,
Problem is that many people (not you) are really thinking steambox to be the god console, which it just cant be.
This year is probably the most exciting one in a very very damn long time

@66 Agreed, good times ahead for gamers

@65 Well, here’s the thing… just because all those services are in a list and can be ticked on or off that doesn’t mean they are all active and taking up CPU time at all times. Otherwise there would be no idling, period. It is true however that operating systems have generally speaking taken up more overhead than having no OS. That’s simple logic.. however, I do think in modern days just how much is kind of overestimated. Usually by people trying to put down the PC platform in favor of consoles.

BTW about the Steambox.. as far as I’m concerned it’s really just a living room PC and not really a console.

@60, there’s not much support, but with Valve backing it has more potential to grow than ever before.

Plus, we don’t know what Valve are doing, they could be working on their own Wine-like compatibility layer built specifically for gaming. Similar to GoG tweaking and testing old games on modern hardware before they sell it, Valve could certify Windows games in their compatibility layer before selling them as Linux compatible.

@68 Well I’m objective in the sense that I see good and bad in everything, but these days I’m almost fully invested in PC gaming. I agree that the services aren’t all running even when enabled, but perhaps my definition of a huge overhead is unfair as I’m particularly sensitive to the loss of any cycles not dedicated to the game I’m playing . In the same way that Erth et al need to learn that the consoles are not the scourge of evil that they’re made out to be and they’re actually looking very good. Perhaps a touch of the Ubermensch attitude wouldn’t hurt people. Make your own decisions and live with them without forcing your will and fanatical ideology on others.

@69 and Valve have hired Linux devs to port games over so its not impossible to imagine it working.

Here’s something else that has to be considered though. Many people play a game on the PC at much higher settings than the equivalent game is expected or allowed to run on that a typical console and then turn around and think it’s all due to overhead of these little demon services and APIs stealing away all their precious CPU cycles.

Stuff like raising the resolution and settings probably has a lot more overhead than those little services do.

For many people if a PC can’t do more than what a console can do then it’s not equal. If a PC can’t run Crysis 3 at 60FPS @ 1080p or above then it’s not as good as a console running the same game at reduced settings at 720p @ 30FPS it seems.

@69,
“there’s not much support, but with Valve backing it has more potential to grow than ever before.”
You also know how famous (or imfamous ) Valves gaming output is. I understand that Valve name can pull a few indies, but Steam on windows will always be there, and that will be the bread and butter for indies and Valve, not steambox.

Here is a theory/speculation from me, I think Valve is taking this step not because they want to, but because they are forced to, by none other than MS, makers on windows, the most popular PC OS in the world. MS is slowly but surely making a move to make windows an app store like thing, where they are the major (not only, because anti-competition lawsuits are nothing to scoff at, ms recently was fined a massive 700 million $) provider for everything. This would put Valve in a really bad place. So they are preempting that and expanding their bases with linux, a freeware.

@72 I would agree but substitute MS moving to apps for Apple making a move to console like gaming. I think there’s another dog in this race and people are not watching it or missing it.

@71 Yup, you’ve got a point there. Thing is, I play PC games on my TV. I’d rather have 720P/900P on max settings with a perceptibly better looking game, than a slideshow at 1080p just for the sake of it.

@73 On the other hand.. finances permitting you aren’t stuck with having to use those settings as a PC is typically more upgradable than an average console. So it’s not really a choice between 720p\900p at max settings with playable frame-rates or 1080p or above as a slideshow unless you are strapped for cash.

@73,
But what would Apple (or in that case valve)do that sony,ms or ninty are doing now?
Lets see. More competition is better for consumers, so I am definitely not complaining

@74,
Most people are indeed not interested in 1000$ pc gaming, they other more important stuff to deal with and just dont want to spend that much on gaming, that’s why consoles are best for them, as they pay for a hardware once and get great performance at a reasonable price for more than half a decade.

@74 Well having an 8 month old daughter has focused my money spending elsewhere. And forever more. But yes, its my choice to game at mostly 900P with eye candy. All it would take would be a processor upgrade and I’m there comfortably because my card is already up to scratch. But that’s kinda the whole point isn’t it? PC gaming is always about choice. Console gaming isn’t. Some people like the tinkering and the power of choice. Some like simplicity. Neither is wrong.

@75 Well Apple could paint a turd silver and someone would buy it. But competition is good and I’m all for it.

@25
LOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOL, very funny, you made my day

@75,
I dont think so mate. Looks like they remember Pippin everytime they see consoles
Audiences are completely different. I totally see them doing mediocre outside portable/computer biz.

I guess i’m not gonna argue with a dev that has seen and examined the devkit no doubt, but aren’t PC’s pretty much always more powerful and better? I thought that was pretty much a fact for like…well since PC came and consoles.

You know they more I see that controller the more I like it.

@79 Just read the headline again “PS4 will out-power most PCs for years to come” most PCs aren’t high end. And I know for sure it will out-power 100% of mine and my friends computers.

You people should learn to read what’s really written. He never said it will be more powerfull than every PC. It will be more powerfull than the regular PC your mom uses to play The Sims 3 and you brother to play Call of Duty, but I doubt it will be more powerfull than the PC you will use to play The Witcher 3.

I hate stuff like this, its just confusing. A PC can have very diffrent Hardware inside, there is no Norm of how much Power a PC has, and the Hardware is too not used the same way as in a Console, its all very diffrent.

To what Kind of PC does he compare the PS4? I can see that the Average PC will be behind the PS4, but if someone feels like to put some Thousand Bucks in Gaming Machine he will probably have no problem outpowering the PS4.

Its just confusing. Consoles and PCs are so diffrent things (just diffrent, no Side is better then the other), why want people always compare them in silly ways?

Hey Samoan Spider, just to point out it’s impossible to have a 286 running at 50 MHz!

@83 You’re quite right. It was 1986 to be fair. Must’ve been a 12mhz. It was my 486 later on that was 50mhz. I remember having to map out the 640k of RAM I had every time I wanted to run a game that flipping needed 1k more than I had available at that moment. Good times though.

consoles = Ice queen

Pc gaming = Borg queen

Borg Queen meets Ice Queen

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aAHW7GMbgLg

all the sony PS4 willing be doing is standardizing 8 gig ram for all new games. By the way ram is very cheap now a days $ 50 will get you 8 gigs of ram.By the time the ps4 comes out it will be even cheaper for the pc.

@55: Right. But it goes much further than that. PC games have the practical necessity of a hardware abstraction layer. On the other hand, a console has a fixed hardware configuration, and can dispense with the likes of DirectX entirely. It can be used directly by the game software. The difference this makes in performance potential is huge. It’s the reason why current consoles, nearly 10 years out of date, can still surprise us with good-looking, fluid games. The hardware tech may be fixed, but the software tech is not. Game engines continue to optimize the ways in which they get into the hardware.

Now imagine a console with this same advantage, and with hardware brought up to date. At first, a lot of middleware will keep it looking not much better than what it replaces, but as time goes by, and devs learn how to get into the chips themselves, it can far outstrip what a HAL-saddled PC of the same vintage can do.

“PS4 will out-power most desktop PCs for years to come.”

It won’t however “out-power” most gaming PC’s for years to come. Anyone who has a PC for gaming that costs just a little more than a console has a better piece of hardware for gaming than the console.

There is NO FUPPING WAY a PS4 is going to out gun even a 3 year old modest desktop PC with a half decent discreet graphics card. End of story. Even if the PS4 had DDR7 RAM and 256GB of it, there is just no way the CPU and on die GPU from AMD is going to touch the combined poke of a multicore CPU and an on card GPU with about 3.5 billion transistors. I just can’t be done- its been tested, AMD on die GPU cannot touch even last gen graphics cards at high resolutions, forget it. Even a GTX 560ti and a X4 AMD phenom can utterly hammer an AMD APU into the ground the moment a game is brought into the equation.

You talk about OS overhead and other crap like it is a performance killer- W7 is probably the most lightweight application a gaming PC will run today. Seriously, W7 will barely cost 2% of one core whilst running and maybe at maximum 2GB of RAM. Your average gaming PC has a heap of cores and more RAM than any application can use. I have a heap of recent games and NONE of them take my CPU anywhere near the 50% mark on all cores simultaneously. Gaming is just not that CPU intensive at the moment and processor technology is advancing all the time, what costs 400 bucks today will only be 200 in two years time.

Seriously, PS4 fan boys, don’t con yourselves that your console is going to suddenly mean you can play Crysis 3 at 60fps and with quality settings on ultra. That just isn’t possible with the hardware they are going to put in this console. If you wanted that kind of performance you’d need a GPU which will probably cost $1000, or more likely, twice the cost of your console at launch.

@49

Oh boy, I remember those comments from the PS3 now XD, makes me giggle. Remember the fact that PS3 was a SUPER COMPUTER!!!! that would not be matched IN GENERATIONS, and that it baked bread??

Those statements came in when PS3 hardware was above that of the PCs back then ( 7SPE with unified memory architecture and blazing fast computing power )… CELL MAN… CELL

The PS4 is not even selling itself like that today, it has CURRENT PC hardware, something you can grab on the store right now (go out check it).

That “developer friendly” system you are talking about it’s probably running on a PC right now, and that same system is probably going to be used for PC-Console and Console-PC ports.

That’s why I don’t understand your comment, PC can be upgraded, if you have a PC now, just upgrade some parts… why would you want to pay 5 more times when you could just spend $200 dollars on another GPU and sli or xfire… :/, you don’t make any sense right there.

Despite the fact that this is false, what really bothers me about this is that the PS4 will be using a more advanced AMD apu. AMD’s strongest APU, A10 5800k, only manages 60fps in Arkham City on high settings, not ultra, no AA, and only at 720p. Even if the APU in the ps4 was to do 4 times better than that, which is a huge step in terms of performance, would still be beat by any low-mid end CPU and a 7850/nvidia equivalent. Also, the Unreal Engine demo that Sony showed was clearly running at lower settings compared to the PC one Epic showed off which was running on a 680.

@90: Not to endorse bringing a thread back to life after 2 months, but I must say that 60 fps, properly synched, is *exactly* the one and only correct frame rate on a 60Hz HDTV. Anything more is wasted. Anything less will jitter, judder or stutter.

@90, I don’t know why you brought a 2 month old article back to life but the PS4 also has a Radeon 7870. With this precise architecture being focused on for the PS4 it could deliver visual results similar to a GTX 660Ti or Radeon 7950.