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chemgear · 09-11-2013, 04:24 PM

Ars sniff test:

http://arstechnica.com/gaming/2013/0...-underpowered/

Thus far this kind of navel-gazing stat-measuring contest seems to show numericaladvantages of 30 percent to 50 percent for the PlayStation 4 over the Xbox One in a number of important specs, such as GPU cores, control units, memory bandwidth, and teraflop shading.

The stat battle has gained renewed attention recently, though, now that Microsoft Director of Product Planning Albert Penello has waded in to defend the Xbox One from accusations of it being underpowered. "The performance delta between the two platforms is not as great as the raw numbers lead the average consumer to believe,"

Penello: "18 CUs [compute units] vs. 12 CUs =/= 50% more performance. Multi-core processors have inherent inefficiency with more CUs, so it's simply incorrect to say 50% more GPU."
Ars: "The entire point of GPU workloads is that they scale basically perfectly, so 50% more cores is in fact 50% faster."

Penello: "Adding to that, each of our CUs is running 6% faster. It's not simply a 6% clock speed increase overall."
Ars: "What the hell does that even mean?"

Penello: "We have more memory bandwidth. 176gb/sec is peak on paper for GDDR5. Our peak on paper is 272gb/sec. (68gb/sec DDR3 + 204gb/sec on ESRAM). ESRAM can do read/write cycles simultaneously so I see this number mis-quoted."
Ars: "Just adding up bandwidth numbers is idiotic and meaningless. While the Xbox One's ESRAM is a little faster, we don't know how it's used, and the PS4's GDDR5 is obviously a lot bigger."

Penello: "We have at least 10% more CPU. Not only a faster processor, but a better audio chip also offloading CPU cycles."
Ars: "Maybe true."

Penello: "We understand GPGPU [general processing on GPU] and its importance very well. Microsoft invented Direct Compute, and have been using GPGPU in a shipping product since 2010—it's called Kinect."
Ars: "Who cares about the API? It really doesn't make much difference."

Penello: "Speaking of GPGPU—we have 3X the coherent bandwidth for GPGPU at 30gb/sec which significantly improves our ability for the CPU to efficiently read data generated by the GPU."
Ars: "I don't know if that's even true."

09-11-2013, 04:24 PM	#385
chemgear Franchise Player Join Date: Feb 2010 Exp:	Ars sniff test: http://arstechnica.com/gaming/2013/0...-underpowered/ Thus far this kind of navel-gazing stat-measuring contest seems to show numericaladvantages of 30 percent to 50 percent for the PlayStation 4 over the Xbox One in a number of important specs, such as GPU cores, control units, memory bandwidth, and teraflop shading. The stat battle has gained renewed attention recently, though, now that Microsoft Director of Product Planning Albert Penello has waded in to defend the Xbox One from accusations of it being underpowered. "The performance delta between the two platforms is not as great as the raw numbers lead the average consumer to believe," Penello: "18 CUs [compute units] vs. 12 CUs =/= 50% more performance. Multi-core processors have inherent inefficiency with more CUs, so it's simply incorrect to say 50% more GPU." Ars: "The entire point of GPU workloads is that they scale basically perfectly, so 50% more cores is in fact 50% faster." Penello: "Adding to that, each of our CUs is running 6% faster. It's not simply a 6% clock speed increase overall." Ars: "What the hell does that even mean?" Penello: "We have more memory bandwidth. 176gb/sec is peak on paper for GDDR5. Our peak on paper is 272gb/sec. (68gb/sec DDR3 + 204gb/sec on ESRAM). ESRAM can do read/write cycles simultaneously so I see this number mis-quoted." Ars: "Just adding up bandwidth numbers is idiotic and meaningless. While the Xbox One's ESRAM is a little faster, we don't know how it's used, and the PS4's GDDR5 is obviously a lot bigger." Penello: "We have at least 10% more CPU. Not only a faster processor, but a better audio chip also offloading CPU cycles." Ars: "Maybe true." Penello: "We understand GPGPU [general processing on GPU] and its importance very well. Microsoft invented Direct Compute, and have been using GPGPU in a shipping product since 2010—it's called Kinect." Ars: "Who cares about the API? It really doesn't make much difference." Penello: "Speaking of GPGPU—we have 3X the coherent bandwidth for GPGPU at 30gb/sec which significantly improves our ability for the CPU to efficiently read data generated by the GPU." Ars: "I don't know if that's even true."