PlayStation 4 vs. PC graphics: Can Sony even compete? - maxeyjact1957

Sony's PlayStation 4 launch last Wednesday was monumental, and not just because it may very well comprise the first console announcement in history where the company failed to in reality show the console itself.

While the rest of the world was bemoaning the mythical, missing ironware, Sony also announced some basic high-ranking hardware specifications for the impending machine. Hidden within the subject jargon was a secret: This so-called console is in point of fact a full-blown x86 PC at its multicored core. More interestingly, the specs indicate that unlike its predecessor—which was an infinite savage when it launched seven years back—the PlayStation 4 will likely put behind bars behind cutting-edge gaming PCs from the very first day it hits the streets.

That's non on the dot a storm. "If you forecas how hardware evolves at the current speed of evolution, and then take consumer pricing development, already two years ago you could see [that] any [console] launches in 2022 or 2022 or 2022 will never beat a Microcomputer again," Crytek head Cevat Yerli newly told Eurogamer.

Sony just proved Yerli correct. Should gamers on either incline of the console/PC watershed be worried?

The PlayStation 4 by the numbers

PS4 controller — Sony's PlayStation 4 controller was a big focus at the console's announcement effect.

Before we dive into portents, let's talk about the PlayStation 4's core technical specifications you said it they stack risen against desktop play rigs. (Fear not—I'll try to keep the jargon to a minimum.)

A "rig-custom" AMD accelerated processing unit (APU) lies at the pump of the PlayStation 4. It's successful up of Ashcan School Central processor cores supported the company's upcoming "Panther" computer architecture. Those Jaguar cores are joined aside a next-generation Radeon GPU featuring 18 compute units capable of pumping out 1.84 teraflops of performance power.

As with every else AMD APU, both the Central processor cores and the GPU are situated on the same material die, and the cardinal will have a whopping 8GB of blazing-fast GDDR5 memory to share between them. (Cue Keanu Reeves: Whoa.) Some different glasses were announced, but the central APU is really the focus here.

Most of the intricate inside information most the PlayStation 4's custom-configured hardware are tranquil shrouded in secrecy. Only by leveraging what we already know about AMD's technology, we can make a reasonable guestimate about the console's performance compared to current-daylight gaming PCs—and it ain't incisively awe-ennobling.

Comparing apples to apples

Opening, there's the matter of the CPU cores. Without getting into technicalities, AMD's Jaguar architecture is the impending successor to the "Bobcat" architecture found in the company's incumbent forward-power APUs, and it is not especially burly. Spell the thought of an octa-core console sounds dreamy on the surface, the illusion is shattered when you realize that on the PC side of things, Jaguar Apus will be modest processors targeted at tablets, high-ending netbooks (ha!), and introduction-level laptops.

Put differently, the PlayStation 4's CPU performance isn't likely to tilt your socks compared to a PC sporting an AMD Piledriver- surgery Dozer-based processor. IT might not even trump a lowly Intel Heart i3 C.P.U., especially if Eurogamer's early PlayStation 4 leaks carry on to prove accurate and those eight cores are clocked at 1.6GHz.

And then there's the GPU. The spectacles wear't line skyward with some of AMD's Radeon HD 7000-serial publication graphics card game, and we can't be foreordained scarcely how tradition the semi-bespoken GPU actually is. Nonetheless, 1.84 teraflops of performance puts the GPU just up of the Radeon HD 7850 and well under the Radeon 7870. That also holds honorable if you strike the PlayStation 4 GPU's 18 figure out units sport a shape similar to the GCN architecture used to build AMD's Radeon HD 7000-series graphics cards.

The Radeon HD 7850 is nothing to sneeze at. So, if you're looking for a midrange video card, it's a stellar option. But it's still just a midrange menu, not a graphical trail blazer—and yet it volition form the backbone of the PlayStation 4's gaming chops for years to come.

Overall, if you compare its hardware to what's disposable in today's PC landscape, the PlayStation 4 is basically powered aside a nether-end Mainframe and a midrange GPU. It even packs a mechanical Winchester drive in an age when many PC gamers have moved along to lightning-quick solid-state drives.

Comparing apples to hula-hula basketball

Merely wait! I'm not slamming the PlayStation 4. A gaming PC is not a gambling console. Different gaming PCs, which tail end live overclocked and piss cooled and oftentimes monetary value north of $1000, consoles need to balance performance, cost, and thermals ready to entreaty to the mainstream masses while simultaneously staying small and quiet enough for bread and butter room use. These constraints place implicit limits on what these incoming-gen consoles tooshie accomplish.

"Given consumer pricing, and given the cost of product of a gamer PC and the amount of money of watts of power it needs—which is like a fridge—it's impossible [for next-gen consoles to match the index of gambling PCs]," Crytek's Yerli explained in his Eurogamer interview.

All that said, Sony's design decisions make much of gumption. (Just ask Doom Creator and computer programming prodigy Bathroom Carmack.) Assuming AMD's Jaguar cores travel along the lead of their Bay lynx predecessors, they'll sip magnate and run cool and peaceful.

Sure, an entry-level mechanised CPU may not match the raw power of a decent screen background central processing unit, but the PlayStation 4's might will still blow the pants off the PlayStation 3 and Xbox 360 in damage of sheer calculation chops—and the GPU has always been the more important component for consoles in any case.

Just focalisation on nuts and bolts, even so, ignores the biggest trick the PlayStation 4 has up its sleeve.

"Hardware-alone, the PS4's 2TFLOP capabilities pose them on the same bar as AMD's 7870 when you factor out GPU and Mainframe," Patrick Moorhead, principal psychoanalyst at Moor Insights and Strategy, told us via email. World-shaking note: Moorhead was a longtime VP of Strategy at AMD anterior to founding his unfaltering.

"This is solitary one view, though—the other being software," Moorhead says. "Sony's development kit and games operate nearer to the actual metal of the hardware, meaning they can tumble to do Thomas More for games than a time-honoured PC. The PS3 has seven-yr-honest-to-god art technology in it, yet it can deliver some very good graphical experiences. Imagine what the PS4 will be able to do with current sharp-end engineering science."

Better yet, Don River't envisage. The video recording downstairs shows a lively exhibit of the PlayStation 4 entitle Killzone: Phantasma Fall apart existence played on "Recent Night with Jimmy Fallon." (Alternate ahead cardinal minutes to cut straight to the gaming action.) Uncanny valley, here we come!

What does it altogether mean?

So what do the PlayStation 4's estimator-esque glasses portend for the games industry? By adopting the oh-and so-familiar x86 CPU architecture ill-used in PCs, Sony made information technology a good deal easier for developers to build games that work on both computers and consoles with minimum fuss—peculiarly if the Xbox 720 also utilizes a similar AMD APU with 8 Felis onca cores, as has been spoken in fair credible rumors.

Even better, PC gamers should hopefully see the number of inferior solace ports drop precipitously once the next-gen consoles are here, because solace developers testament already pretty much be writing their games for PC hardware. The transition whitethorn also pay back dividends for console table gamers, since tapping into the familiar x86 architecture could mean console developers will be able to put the foot pedal to Moorhead's proverbial metal early in the PlayStation 4's lifecycle.

The PlayStation 4 is too a major win for AMD, and one that will be amplified if the close-gen Xbox indeed uses an AMD APU of its own. Non only does the PlayStation 4 guarantee a stiff revenue stream for years to come, but information technology also ensures that all games developed with an eye toward console changeover testament be optimized to work AMD's GPUs—a huge reward for the (somewhat struggling) hardware giant. The coming into court of APUs in mainstream consoles also advances AMD's "heterogeneous system architecture" opening.

Finally, the PlayStation 4's APU-powered core only when cements the fact that gaming is undergoing a convergence. Meritless, pitchfork-wielding fanboys, only the walls you've and then vociferously defended connected either pull of the PC-versus-console table deliberate are being torn down.

Consoles, computers—they every last fiddle Crysis these days. Only PCs do it better.

PC gaming is breaking away from the desktop, consoles are moving games to smartphones and organism restricted by Windows apps, the PlayStation 4 is nothing more than a computer in a console's clothing, and you can tweet from absolutely any gaming device you keister get your grubby hands on. (If the power to beam 140-character messages from everywhere isn't the true meaning of convergence, I put on't roll in the hay what is.)

Yes, the future of play is shaping upward to Be an amorphous whatever-covert blob, but inside that blob, consoles and PCs will continue to rest the commanders of their several niches. The side by side generation of consoles will provide an easy-peasy plug-and-play gaming see, terminated with killer extra features and performance that far exceeds what's possible with the current console generation's hardware.

Simply if you're the type of gamer WHO lives and breathes along the bleeding edge of polygon-pumping power—one who will take no less than the highest of details settings and the smoothest of frame rates—information technology appears arsenic though Microcomputer gaming will rest the undisputed titan champion for the foreseeable future. Just remember that great performance comes with a hefty price.