7 replies to this topic

[Pjsprojects]

Hear me out on this one.

From what we know both of them are just mid range pc's so why do we expect games to look fantastic in a couple of years?
Devs have been useing higher spec hardware for a while. If both the PS4 & Xbone have around 5gig and your average gaming pc has 4-8gig ram plus a couple of gig video memory then surly even launch games are already pretty much maxing the consoles? Ok a few tricks will be learnt over the years but nothing more.

With the PS360 the devs had only started to get to grips with pc so hence how well the older consoles came along.

Opinions?

[Chrop]

Devs don't need to learn it, the games on these consoles are the best they're ever going to look, the devs already know how to make games for it, with the PS3 and 360 they had custom hardware so the devs needed to learn how to use it, but these are just PC's... that's it, they already know how to master graphics on PC's so the best looking game you've seen on the PC is probably the best were getting on the PS4 and One.

[3Dude]

no system will ever be 'pretty much maxed at launch'.

[Nollog]

It's a pc but it's a closed pc.<br />They can maximise the juice they can extract from each piece of the hardware because they're guaranteed that hardware is inside the machine.<br /><br />They'll probably be able to get 25% more than the same spec PC.

[grahamf]

no system will ever be 'pretty much maxed at launch'.

It'll be close though, since they have been developing for nearly identical hardware though.

 

There may be some optimizing though, since they are now targeting a specific configuration. Mostly just removing scalability to higher end hardware and using features not supported by older hardware. Which admittedly could possibly add up to 25% increase in performance, but I think that will be the maximum possible increase.

[Pjsprojects]

Makes me wonder if future consoles will just be pc parts & the days of custom stuff goes out the window.

[Alex Atkin UK]

Even on PC you can get more performance by learning how that specific PC functions "in the real world" and tweaking your code for it.  On PC games you can't do that, as no two PCs are exactly the same.

 

However consoles go beyond that, the bandwidths, memory addressing, APIs, are considerably different.  Yes on Xbox One you CAN use DirectX, but if you want the best performance you go for the lower API instead which requires practice to learn how to optimise your game the best.  There is also extra hardware like the audio chip in the Xbox One (and probably something similar in PS4) that you offload work onto.  The GPGPU will be far more extensively used than on PC because you know how much headroom you need for the graphics and what is spare, plus the GPU/CPU can access main memory directly - its hugely inefficient for the GPU to access main memory on a PC.

 

A custom designed PC where you want everything to be balanced and are writing a dedicated OS to drive it can be FAR more efficient than an off the shelf PC.  Even a laptop/tablet based on PC is not the same thing as they still need to work within the PC hardware designs, with existing drivers, to run standard Windows.  There is just a lot LOT more you can do when you do not have to worry about compatibility with existing PC software. 

 

There is also still a fair bit in a PC that is for backwards compatibility with an x86.  You can throw that away for a console but it also means when developing on it you won't have everything that a PC might have, only the newer more efficient way of doing things will be kept and other tweaks more efficient for gaming will be added.

Edited by Alex Atkin UK, 06 October 2013 - 01:30 PM.

[tboss]

there is certinly going to be a smaller jump to the consuls max power to early builds, espicialy with the PS4. devs can still optimize, but devs also no X86 very well, and all the parts will be fairly standered. devs will optimize for the spacific build shortly then we will see mid range PC graphics, possibly a little above. but by the time they are that optimized it would be low end PC graphics. currently the next gen consuls are basicly mid range laptops.