Why does the PS4 CPU have 8 cores?

[smokeybravo]

The only possible reason I can come up with is that Sony expects developers to make use of all 8 of them in their games. Would this not be a huge boon to FPS?

 

[darth pravus]

Why would it not?

Having more threads allows for more tasks to be done simultaneously.

The clockspeed is worryingly low however since they have to last 5 years.

 

[sscultima]

i dont see an issue with the clock speed since the OS is light weight and optimized for the hardware.

they have to make the system last for the next several years, the PS3 also had an 8 core CELL processor ( i believe).

im sure they will also utilize those cores for all the features that will be running at the same time, so you can suspend the game in the middle of gameplay, all the social features, the games themselves, etc.

 

[darth pravus]

It will allow for more multitasking as well as things such as letting your mates jump into your game and control it.

The last gen consoles had much higher clocks. Adding more cores and a new arch can only do so much when your losing clock speed.

 

[simon12]

This is speculation but I think 8 low speed cores will lower power consuption over 2 or 4 more powerful cores. Also I think 1 core may be dedicated to the OS and 1 to there version of Kinetic or something. Also Jaguar cores will be cheap even compared to Athlon cores.

 

[jaguarskx]

Because according to AMD....

MOAR is better!!!

 

[melikepie]

They are really promising to much. I find it funny just how exited people got about Killzone 4, Crysis 3 is a lot better IMO.

 

[mahin1islam]

kz looked a lot better than c3. also, the clock speed is not even confirmed; 1.6ghz is just speculation. Same with 1.84Tflops. the guys mentioned ~2Tflops.

This is all we know for sure about the specs: It's based off a next-gen AMD APU which combines eight x86 'jaguar' CPU cores, a 2 TFlops GCN GPU, and 8GB DDR5 Unified RAM. Thats all we know.

all the 18 CUs/800mhz/1.6GHz..... all that is speculation.

Also, why worry about the graphics so early? The OS is super light weight, and these are all first gen launch titles. if you forgot what first gen PS3 titles looked like, see Resistance:FOM and COD3. now, after optimizing, it can run stuff like last of us and crysis 3. Give the PS4 some time, and you will se the beauty that comes out of it.

 

[simon12]

What sony confirmed is:
8-core x86-64 CPU using AMD Jaguar cores (built by AMD)
High-end PC GPU (also built by AMD), delivering 1.84TFLOPS of performance
Unified 8GB of GDDR5 memory for use by both the CPU and GPU with 176GB/s of memory bandwidth
Large local hard drive
Update: Sony has confirmed the actual performance of the PlayStation 4's GPU as 1.84 TFLOPS. Sony claims the GPU features 18 compute units, which if this is GCN based we'd be looking at 1152 SPs and 72 texture units.
From http://www.anandtech.com/show/6770/sony-announces-playstation-4-pc-hardware-inside

It is also known that jaguar is not capable of high clock speeds and non PS4 versions will run at 1.6GHz so its very likely but I don't think 1.6 is confirmed.

 

[ZOMBIECRUNCH]

Hmm? I wonder if Sony will allow the user to overclock there consoles. lol!

 

[Cazalan]

Sony must have had enough confidence that they could leverage 8 slow cores better than 4 faster ones. We'll just have to wait and see.

 

[melikepie]

Consoles are bad. Their so slow. Have you seen BF3 on consoles? Any trees 5 feet ahead of further, the trees are flat images facing at you. And if there is a bunch of trees in your ranges they all but a few do that no matter the distance. If you look at the ground, you can see only a few slanted polygons with like 200 x 200 textures that are the exact same badly printed on it over and over and over and over.........

 

[Raktron]

i think Sony will use 6 cores effectively just for games and another core for processing the the move inbuilt dual-shock controller and 1 for OS.
i think 1 core is needed to process the real time pictures to calculate the exact location of the controller in 3d space...
six cores for games is it enough for future??? i wonder??

 

[da3ndorphin3]

Consoles have very light OS compared to PC-s ,but 8-core 1.6ghz jaguar is comparable to Intel Atom mobile chips,its ultra low for gaming,but its low power and efficent.They cant risk one more RROD(xbox360).PS3 was lucky.
Not impressed with graphics at all,they can optimize it but after 1-2 year we can see much bigger graphics leap on pc-s just like crysis do 1 year after console release in 2006.Killzone 4 looks like pre-rendered sh**,like they did with killzone 2 back in 2006.They even didnt show in 1080p wtf.The best thing they did was put 8gb gddr5 and x86 architecture.Pc gaming is gonna shine this decade.

 

[melikepie]

^+1

Yeah, take doom 3 for example .

They all seem to forget that 1080p doesn't exist when it comes to consoles. Which sucks since at 720p you need enough AA to match 1080p performance which at that point makes 720p not worth it.

 

[da3ndorphin3]

^+1

Yeah, take doom 3 for example .

They all seem to forget that 1080p doesn't exist when it comes to consoles. Which sucks since at 720p you need enough AA to match 1080p performance which at that point makes 720p not worth it.

Lol yeah i remember Doom 3
In few years when games are gonna be asking for more power they would go to sub-hd 1080p. 30fps is gonna start from launch games because developers have already stated that its better to graphics have more "juice" then put lower graphics and 60fps.Also aiming with controller is much more forgivable at 30fps then is it with mouse.This is also one of a reason(including very inaccurate aiming with controller) why consoles have to have auto-aim.
Gpu is ps4 is comparable to 7850 which is really not even high gaming card.Granted,its gonna be optimized(lower graphics).When people talk about how developers optimize console graphics to be "at the best" and can play 6year old games is utter bullsh**.PC-s can too with old 2core and 8800gtx you can run battlefield 3.Hell even you can put 30$ 9800gtx and run in 1080p.And this is what i like about pc-s,upgrades,when you want.
i respect consoles and i believe if there was no current consoles pc gaming would suffer because developers are getting bored with selling for pc-s only(pirating) and not get profit back that they deserve.With consoles we get so MUCH more games if you compare decade ago.Indeed they are ports but still we get them and run better.With steam and 100% growth a year.x86 arch. of new consoles we should be looking at very bright future of pc gaming finally

 

[meson1]

They want low TDP components to make cooling manageable and therefore keep the enclosure small and quiet. Remember that this has to be a living-room friendly consumer device. Therefore to get the computational power they want they add more cores.

This PS4 is all about the cost. This includes trying to make a more reliable device to reduce returns. Every time they have to replace one of these under warranty because it overheats and fails, it costs them money.

 

[Raktron]

In pc a average upgrade time would be 3 years but for consoles they would drag it 2 to 3 years more. By the time of release they would be slightly outdated. After 6 years useless! And many developer are also quite hungry for more! They wont wait for the cycle of a console! They go in their own cycle! So initially they would be aiming to max out consoles but after they do they try to max out technology i.e pc's! Pc rules always

 

[melikepie]

Lol yeah i remember Doom 3
In few years when games are gonna be asking for more power they would go to sub-hd 1080p. 30fps is gonna start from launch games because developers have already stated that its better to graphics have more "juice" then put lower graphics and 60fps.Also aiming with controller is much more forgivable at 30fps then is it with mouse.This is also one of a reason(including very inaccurate aiming with controller) why consoles have to have auto-aim.
Gpu is ps4 is comparable to 7850 which is really not even high gaming card.Granted,its gonna be optimized(lower graphics).When people talk about how developers optimize console graphics to be "at the best" and can play 6year old games is utter bullsh**.PC-s can too with old 2core and 8800gtx you can run battlefield 3.Hell even you can put 30$ 9800gtx and run in 1080p.And this is what i like about pc-s,upgrades,when you want.
i respect consoles and i believe if there was no current consoles pc gaming would suffer because developers are getting bored with selling for pc-s only(pirating) and not get profit back that they deserve.With consoles we get so MUCH more games if you compare decade ago.Indeed they are ports but still we get them and run better.With steam and 100% growth a year.x86 arch. of new consoles we should be looking at very bright future of pc gaming finally

Yeah, I think Sony is getting off on the wrong toe (they haven't evolved to use feet yet). For my experience with programming, Bulldozer isn't that fast even at 3.1GHz. So I don't think 1.6GHz Piledriver is gonna make the cut. Swimming in 1.6GHz barley gives you any time to do things that are worth doing such as physics or collision, most of the GHz is being used up to properly communicate with the other threads.

 

[Estacado]

i think be cause ps3 runs the games on 30 fps only so they will use 8 cores cpu to make it run on higher fps

 

[melikepie]

The CPU wouldn't be the bottleneck.

Bottlenecks of the current gen consoles:
1. RAM
2. GPU
3. CPU
4. They're made by dumb companies

Do you know what it's like to make a game with half 1GB of RAM? BF3 needs 2GB of RAM and 1GB of VRAM as a minimum. Do you realize just how much they cut down to put it on a station box thingy?

 

[da3ndorphin3]

The CPU wouldn't be the bottleneck.

Bottlenecks of the current gen consoles:
1. RAM
2. GPU
3. CPU
4. They're made by dumb companies

Do you know what it's like to make a game with half 1GB of RAM? BF3 needs 2GB of RAM and 1GB of VRAM as a minimum. Do you realize just how much they cut down to put it on a station box thingy?

Consoles have 512mb ram but most importantly 256mb is for games only(other half for OS).So basically they made game with 256 RAM.Ok pc needs for OS much more but still it needs minimum of 1gb for game.
With 8gb gddr5 we could see bigger worlds,number of npc ,physics like never before.
But still they're smart because ps4 will have basically 4gb ram! 1-2gb goes for OS,2-3 for GPU,CPU, 4 for RAM.But still 4gb of fast high bandwith RAM vs 256 slow ddr2 ram -its a HUGE leap forward for consoles.
But before i really hoped for 8gb ram and discrete gpu with 2-3gb vram.That would be groundbreaking.

 

[melikepie]

Ground braking performance wise or ground breaking budget wise?

 

[melikepie]

To make a game look good, you need ray tracing, great shaders, DX11 and tessellation. Although these things aren't simple to program in. I could make a game like BF3 right now if I wanted to, it would be hard, and take nearly the rest of my life, but me and a c++ compiler is all I need.

 

[nseamans]

The structure is that of an Apu so this adds more graphics processing power per core. This means that the cpu has some

source:
http://www.vg247.com/2013/02/28/ps4-apu-by-far-the-most-powerful-amd-has-produced/

"The PlayStation 4 has an x86 APU"

However, this does not directly mean that it will operate like a windows OS. A gaming os is usually very light in comparison to a workstation one and is programmed specifically for gaming. Everything can be written to take advantage of the architecture of the components of the ps4 and so the programs are much optimized for the same configuration. This can add huge advantages.

Also if the cpu is built like the 8 core desktop cpu's its not 8 cores in the way a intel would be. There is a difference in physical and logical cores.

About the bickering

A games graphics are highly subjective. I think the future of a lot of pc purists is that they do not realize presentation has a big effect on graphics. We notice certain color palettes and dimensions and if a game provides a wide variety of those in clarity then that effects the presentation almost as much as seeing a hi res texture and amazing effects. Instead of stating the power of your rig or showing dominance, think of this. For the longest time I had a good workstation with integrated graphics and a ps2 for experience. Thats the bottom line. Its why people still love Commedore 64's and arcade games.

Leave PS4 alone