What is the PC GPU equivalent to optimized PS4 Graphics?

[juanrga]

I would like to obtain an estimation of which would be the PC equivalent to the graphics capabilities of the PS4. I don't wait exact numbers but only rough estimations or orders of magnitude.

PC and consoles are very different despite the fact that PS4 will be using PC-like hardware. Therefore here goes some background:

1. We have the overhead associated to Microsoft DirectX APIs on Windows 7/8. Some game developers like Carmack claim that the overhead is at least 2x over console-APIs. Other report larger overheads of up to 10x for specific drawing calls.

2. The PS4 will have possibility to be coded at metal level which will generate another amount of extra performance over DirectX.

3. We have the APU-HSA design on the PS4. This implies that the CPU can help to the GPU in situations of extreme load, unlike what happens in the PC where CPU and GPU work separately and can bottleneck the other.

4. Finally we have the unified GDDR5 memory design, which avoids the bottlenecks associated to both PCI and DDR3.

The PS4 has a raw power of 1.84 TFLOP. Which would be the TFLOP needed on the PC?

First consider the conservative 2x value given by Carmack and ignore the rest of the hardware benefits (points 2 to 4), this would give an effective performance of 3.68 TFLOP (1.84 x 2), which is slightly superior to what offers a Nvidia GTX-680.

It is interesting that early demos of the PS4 were comparing it to a PC with i7 + 16 GB RAM + GTX-680. What I find more interesting is that those demos were only fast ports from the older PC demo, without further optimization to the PS4 hardware, and they run on an early dev. kit with about a 30% the performance of the final PS4 hardware.

Taking then a 100/30 boost the conservative 2x transforms into a 7x. However, the PS4 demo had to be slightly scaled down (no SVOGI, a bit less FX) when compared to the GTX-680. Therefore I think that a 5x overhead is more appropriate.

This means that the PS4 would give a theoretical value of about 9.2 TFLOP (1.84 x 5) for a discrete graphics card in the PC side. 9.2 TFLOP is superior to what can offer the newest HD 7990 and far above the GTX Titan and the GTX-690.

It is realistic to wait latter, optimized, PS4 games to require of something like a HD 7990 for gaming in the PC?

 

[GOM3RPLY3R]

All in all, a PS4 is literally a low end to mid end gaming PC. That's really all there is to say. However, the games made for it and the actual hardware will be manufactured a little differently so if you were to run a PC program on the PS4 and vice-versa, they wont work as good as the before product.

So really, if your comparing it to a PC, it's like a custom $900 Gaming PC build, but the other things that have been changed to format it more for a console and the architecture difference make it more, comparing it to a pc, like buying a stock Dell XPS with no GPU and only Onboard CPU Grpahics.

 

[huilun02]

It's not as simple as a hardware comparison. A computer has to dedicate resources to keep the OS and any background applications running. Consoles only run the game and nothing else. Think of a very powerful GameBoy.

And then there is the game itself. Essentially all cross platform games are made primarily and run most efficiently on consoles. So it takes more power to get the same result with a PC.

 

[GOM3RPLY3R]

It's not as simple as a hardware comparison. A computer has to dedicate resources to keep the OS and any background applications running. Consoles only run the game and nothing else. Think of a very powerful GameBoy.

And then there is the game itself. Essentially all cross platform games are made primarily and run most efficiently on consoles. So it takes more power to get the same result with a PC.

True, forgot to add that factor. Still though, even with all that, it's still somewhat hard to compare. With the hardware of it, just based off of that, it is a low end gaming PC. Then the fact that it takes much less power and doesn't run an OS, allows for a little more performance, so I would think about mid-end. However, the coding and architecture will probably be more conformed to fit a console, which means a little less details, so software based, it's about mid-end to high-end. However if you ran something like Crysis 3 PC version on that, it'll probably get 30 frames max on max settings, :/

Just pondering theoretically, not definite.