What does the PS4's 8 core CPU mean for PC gaming?

thenick

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Hi,

I am pretty concerned about the PS4 announcement. I just got the 3570k and a new z77 1155 socket motherboard but I am wondering with if I should of gone with an 8 core (HT) CPU.

I assume if the PS4 has 8-cores then the games that come out in the future will be optimised to make use of those many cores. So does this mean the future PC ports will run better on a 6 or 8 core CPU. Did I make a bad decision in purchasing the 3570k?

Realistically how long until new games begin to use more than 4 cores? And will my CPU fall behind. I want it to last a good three years.

Thanks
Adam
 
Yep, you're going to be FINE.

Quad core CPUs are just now beginning to become the standard for gaming over the dual cores that have ruled during the era of the 3-core xbox 360 and the 8-core PS3.

Consoles work differently than PC games. Accept that and don't worry.
 
Generally speaking, that 8 core are supposedly running at 1.6GHz (unless it has been confirmed or denied at this point). So they are running slower than even the FX-8350. The IPC is somewhat weak compared to Intel CPUs and since console specs do not change over the years (excluding the release of a new generation console), the IPC gap vs. desktop PCs will increase every year. In other words, PC CPUs will get more powerful over time while the console PCs will remain the same.

I wouldn't worry too much about 8 cores. It is easier to insert an 8 core CPU into a console/PC... It is not so easy to design games that can actually make use of them. For single player games the 8 cores is not going to be a big deal. For MMOs it will still take some time before they will make use of 8 cores... and be optimized at the same time too.
 

loops

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I see 8 cores and think they wanted room to have the thing do more at once rather than have games actually use all 8 cores.

I hope we can get some kind of tool that helps us measure performance from the two platforms where one can do more with less (PS3/4, Xbox). It seems like apple and oranges at some lvl.

If I had to guess, the PS4 would be about a a rig with a gtx660ti---7950 with an FX chip.
 

loops

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Here is a link to follow:

http://www.anandtech.com/show/6770/sony-announces-playstation-4-pc-hardware-inside

Sony just announced the PlayStation 4, along with some high level system specifications. The high level specs are what we've heard for quite some time:

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
Details of the CPU aren't known at this point (8-cores could imply a Piledriver derived architecture, or 8 smaller Jaguar cores—the latter being more likely), but either way this will be a big step forward over the PowerPC based general purpose cores on Cell from the previous generation. I wouldn't be too put off by the lack of Intel silicon here, it's still a lot faster than what we had before and at this level price matters more than peak performance. The Intel performance advantage would have to be much larger to dramatically impact console performance. If we're talking about Jaguar cores, then there's a bigger concern long term from a single threaded performance standpoint.

Update: I've confirmed that there are 8 Jaguar based AMD CPU cores inside the PS4's APU. The CPU + GPU are on a single die. Jaguar will still likely have better performance than the PS3/Xbox 360's PowerPC cores, and it should be faster than anything ARM based out today, but there's not huge headroom going forward. While I'm happier with Sony's (and MS') CPU selection this time around, I always hoped someone would take CPU performance in a console a bit more seriously. Given the choice between spending transistors on the CPU vs. GPU, I understand that the GPU wins every time in a console—I'm just always an advocate for wanting more of both. I realize I never wrote up a piece on AMD's Jaguar architecture, so I'll likely be doing that in the not too distant future.

The choice of 8 cores is somewhat unique. Jaguar's default compute unit is a quad-core machine with a large shared L2 cache, it's likely that AMD placed two of these together for the PlayStation 4. The last generation of consoles saw a march towards heavily threaded machines, so it's no surprise that AMD/Sony want to continue the trend here. Clock speed is unknown, but Jaguar was good for a mild increase over its predecessor Bobcat. Given the large monolithic die, AMD and Sony may not have wanted to push frequency as high as possible in order to keep yields up and power down. While I still expect CPU performance to move forward in this generation of consoles, I was reminded of the fact that the PowerPC cores in the previous generation ran at very high frequencies. The IPC gains afforded by Jaguar have to be significant in order to make up for what will likely be a lower clock speed.

We don't know specifics of the GPU, but with it approaching 2 TFLOPS we're looking at a level of performance somewhere between a Radeon HD 7850 and 7870. 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. It's unclear how custom the GPU is however, so we'll have to wait for additional information to really know for sure. The highest end PC GPUs are already faster than this, but the PS4's GPU is a lot faster than the PS3's RSX which was derived from NVIDIA's G70 architecture (used in the GeForce 7800 GTX, for example). I'm quite pleased with the promised level of GPU performance with the PS4. There are obvious power and cost constraints that would keep AMD/Sony from going even higher here, but this should be a good leap forward from current gen consoles.

Outfitting the PS4 with 8GB of RAM will be great for developers, and using high-speed GDDR5 will help ensure the GPU isn't bandwidth starved. Sony promised around 176GB/s of memory bandwidth for the PS4. The lack of solid state storage isn't surprising. Hard drives still offer a dramatic advantage in cost per GB vs. an SSD. Now if it's user replaceable with an SSD that would be a nice compromise.

Leveraging Gaikai's cloud gaming technology, the PS4 will be able to act as a game server and stream the video output to a PS Vita, wirelessly. This sounds a lot like what NVIDIA is doing with Project Shield and your NVIDIA powered gaming PC. Sony referenced dedicated video encode/decode hardware that allows you to instantaneously record and share screenshots/video of gameplay. I suspect this same hardware is used in streaming your game to a PS Vita.

Backwards compatibility with PS3 games isn't guaranteed and instead will leverage cloud gaming to stream older content to the box. There's some sort of a dedicated background processor that handles uploads and downloads, and even handles updates in the background while the system is off. The PS4 also supports instant suspend/resume.

The new box heavily leverages PC hardware, which is something we're expecting from the next Xbox as well. It's interesting that this is effectively how Microsoft entered the console space back in 2001 with the original Xbox, and now both Sony and MS have returned to that philosophy with their next gen consoles in 2013. The PlayStation 4 will be available this holiday season.

I'm trying to get more details on the CPU and GPU architectures and will update as soon as I have more info.
 

shanky887614

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imho, 8 cores wont make it suddenly a lot more powerful than pc gaming.

first its an amd cpu, there not as efficent per clock as intel (not sure if this is still the case but ill go with it)

then you have the fact that nearly all intel and most amd cpu's run at 3ghz+ that means that with the same efficency per clock they will do the same workload in the same time.


the biggest limitation is going to be the built-in hdd. a lot of gamers have ssd's now that mean the os doesnt use any read/write performance from hdd


if any of you read custom pc then you will know that a lot of game engines are still made to use a single cpu core. they are starting to use 4 cores now which is a good thing.


the main area that pc's will excell is the gpu, if we really wanted to we could buy 6 core intel/8 core amd cpu's and have 3 high end graphics cards in sli/crossfire


the ps3 has 8 core and the apu. that's it, personally i think the reason there is 8 cores is a lot of the graphics is going to be offloaded to the cpu

 



Really??? I thought it would be some derivative of the PileDriver FX core like a lower clocked version of the FX-8300 (which consumes 95w) that would have decent enough power consumption.

You mean the CPU used in the next gen Xbox and PS is more or less a glorified AMD E-350 with 8 cores?

Goes to show how much I pay attention to consoles. Much less care about them.
 
It would be interesting to see how well the dual core version will perform in a tablet. Would also be interesting to see a quad core design for a tablet. nVidia's quad core (with a lower clocked 5th core) Tegra 3 seems to perform decently enough.

Of course it would be best if AMD can shrink down the Jaguar cores from 28mm to 20mm ASAP!!! Then again, I suppose that depends on GloFo getting their act together.
 

ohyouknow

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Good for AMD as console ports will play nicer with their architecture. This could be AMD's master plan! In all honesty, don't worry too much. Just worry about your GPU.
 

seinfeld

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to help you with this question. I had a Phenom II 955 black edition. now I was runninga dodgey fan as the std one broke, and I had no cash. so I sat a 8cm fan on it connected with zip ties. so it wasnt very good. to keep temps down I had to underclock it to 2.5ghz! to stop it going above 65 degrees at full load. so I did. and it ran black ops 2 fine.

not long ago I upgraded to a FX 6300 6 core 3.5ghz with turbo to 4.1ghz black edition. and a 7850 o/c version. well I take much longer to load into Bloack ops 2, to the point 3 deaths occur before I can even select my class!! thats how slow it is. the new amd architecture IS CRAP and sony got ripped off or amd sold it to them on the cheap@
 

wh3resmycar

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aren't you a spectator at the start of the game? how did you die?
 

cowboy44mag

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As most other posters have said I don't think you will have any problem gaming on your computer for many years to come. I am only running a Phenom II 965 BE and I'm confident that with the proper GPU I'll be able to game on it for the next two to three years (maybe not on Ultra setting like I am now, but still be able to run the games as well as the PS4). I don't see game developers taking full advantage of 8 cores for at least a year or two after the release, and I have a feeling that at least one or two the the 8 cores are going to be dedicated to "other" processes. By other processes I mean wireless technology (ie Kinect and PS4 version) and social networking. I have a feeling that games will be optimized for 4 cores (6 at most) leaving the rest of the processing power for hands free gaming and social networking.
 

Tman450

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This will be GREAT for me! i have an overclocked FX-8320, and games being optimized for 8 pseudo-AMD cores would be great for me. we might see the module architecture shine in games.
 

timil

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Thats got nothing to do with your cpu mate
 
G

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It won't really matter, your quad core has great single threaded performance. Even if they manage to spread out all the tasks evenly over those 8 cores of the PS4, your quad-core would beat it simply because it can do the work of 2 of those cores with 1
 

cowboy44mag

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If you are right, and I'm hoping you are it will be GREAT for all AMD customers!! The one thing I HATE about Intel is their processors are OVERPRICED. Back when AMD processors were killing Intel processors in overclocking, benchmarks, and practical application, Intel processors were still more expensive than AMD yet not as good. Good processor or bad processor, if Intel has a logo on it then it will be overpriced. If games are indeed going to be optimized for the 8 core AMD processors then my next upgrade will be new motherboard and a shiny new Steamroller chip when they release. I'm sure Intel will still have an edge over AMD, but that edge is going to be more and more in benchmark tests only as far as gaming goes. It doesn't matter if your car can go 200+ mph if the road your on limits you to 65 mph, just like it doesn't matter how good your benchmark is if the program (game) can't take advantage of all that extra power. I figure my Phenom II 965 BE will keep me gaming at least until the release of Steamroller (of course I also have a very good GPU). Again though another thing to consider is that a couple cores in the new PS4 and Xbox might be dedicated to hands free control and social networking so the actual games may only use 4-6 cores.

Regardless of how game design is going to change with the new PS4 and Xbox its nice to see that AMD is going to be around for a long, long time :sol:
 

jlan86

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Consoles and PCs are very different systems. Your graphics card is way more important for gaming than your CPU, so asking if the 3570K is better than the PS4 for gaming is a flawed question for 2 reasons: 1) How good your PC is for gaming depends on what GPU you are putting in your rig. Once that's known we make a more direct comparison. 2) Yes the 3570K is better than the CPU they put in the PS4 for general computing, but they didn't design the CPU in the PS4 for general computing, they designed it for console gaming, which is why they underclocked the CPU in the PS4 down to 1.9GHz (from what I heard) by cutting the multiplier in half in order to cut down on heat and power consumption. It just doesn't need that much CPU power- it needs GPU power and parallel processing power.

Based on everything I've read, this is the best way to imagine what they're putting in the PS4:
The Radeon 7850 has 16 compute units while the 7870 has 20 compute units. The PS4 chip will have 18 compute units (1152 stream processors), putting it somewhere in between, so let's call it a 7860. However, they hinted strongly that it's going to be the next generation graphics, so it could be Radeon 8000 hardware on the chip, making it something like a Radeon 8860.
Now, look at this CPU: http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16819113280
Take that CPU, but change the cores from Trinity to Jaguar, cut the multiplier in half so it's running at 1.9GHz instead of 3.8GHz, double the number of cores from 4 to 8, shrink the die size from 32nm to 28nm, double the L2 cache from 4MB to 8MB, increase the FPU datapath from 64-bit to 128-bit, and replace the the 7660D on that chip with the 8860D that I described above, increasing the stream processors on the chip from 384 to 1152, and upping the core clock from 800MHz to 1000MHz. Finally, instead of hooking this hypothetical CPU up to 8GB of DDR3 running at 1866MHz, imagine hooking it up to to 8GB of GDDR5 running at 4800MHz. Boom. You have yourself the PS4.

How this hypothetical setup would compare to your setup would depend entirely on what sort of challenge you stack each up against. For gaming, the PS4 is going to be better unless you put at least a Radeon 7870 or better card in your PC, and even then in situations that utilize the 8GB of GDDR5 they put in the PS4, the PS4 might win. For anything other than gaming, your 3570K computer wins.
 

seinfeld

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yeah it does. nothing else changed! except the new video card and a new CPU (both much faster then the previous ones in there! )
 
i dont think the fact it has 8 cores will make a difference for PC gaming, but the fact that they are x86 cores means ported games should run a lot better. I wonder what OS it will use though? a version of linux perhaps?