Microsoft to Unleash More of Xbox One's GPU Power
Microsoft might free up that 10 percent of reserved GPU power.
The Xbox One currently reserves 10 percent of its GPU power for Kinect and apps, but it looks like that could soon change. According to the latest scuttlebutt, Microsoft will dramatically reduce the amount of reserved GPU power in its gaming console.
Pete Dodd, the driving force behind last year's ps4noDRM campaign and a reliable source for video game news, on Sunday tweeted that Microsoft will keep 2 percent of the reserved GPU power for voice but will do away with the 8 percent currently reserved for video (Kinect). This 8 percent will now be 'optional' for game devs, according to Dodd. Presumably game developers with titles that don't use Kinect at all will be only too happy to make use of the extra juice.
The news hasn't been confirmed or denied by Microsoft, nor does Dodd specify as to when this will happen. If it does, users can probably expect a noticeable improvement in framerate and the Xbox One will inch a little bit closer to the PS4 in terms of graphics processing power. That still leaves Microsoft lagging behind in memory, though, because while both consoles pack 8 GB of RAM, the Xbox One is DDR3 and the PS4 is GDDR5.
Check out what we thought of the Xbox One in our review here.
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Sorry, guys. Just a typo. Xbox is DDR3 and I guess my fingers ran away with themselves. Should be all fixed. Thanks for pointing that out!
Eek, thanks pal. All fixed.
Both consoles are crap anyway, with hardware a good year out of date. Unless this article is right, and the PS4 has this epic future tech DDR5 that hasn't even been invented yet. Maybe toms next story will be Sony invents the time machine?
Sorry, guys. Just a typo. Xbox is DDR3 and I guess my fingers ran away with themselves. Should be all fixed. Thanks for pointing that out!
But I thought GDDR# has higher latency than regular DDR[#-2]. That's why the CPU on computers don't usually use GDDR but regular DDR so latency is very low, though bandwidth is not as high as GDDR. But the PS4 just has GDDR5 and no DDR3, I guess latency is fine then for that console.
Because GCN is old. It is 2 years old actually. And the GPUs in it may be GCN but it is still lower end GCN, not like they threw a HD7970m in there with it's own 3GB of GDDR5, which I am not sure why they didn't just do that.
People call these consoles next gen when we have been using this next gen technology for 2 years now, well at least I have and am ready for the true next gen, which would be Maxwell and whatever AMD has next.
Microsoft won't phase out DX, it is their game winner as most games run DX and Mantle is not getting anywhere fast yet. I haven't even seen true tests with it yet.
Secondly, AMD has stated that Mantle was not designed for the GPUs in the consoles, so far it only would run on the HD7950/7970, R9 280/280X and R9 290/290X as they are all based on GCN. That and the HD 7790 should since it was also based on GCN but who knows.
Third, while it is interesting of an idea AMD is going to have to do a lot more than just offer the technology. They will have to support it and my worry is that if it does allow for direct hardware access then it will start to act like games did before DX or OGL were around, and that's to cause the entire system to crash if the game crashes. I hope not but you never know with new technology.
But I thought GDDR# has higher latency than regular DDR[#-2]. That's why the CPU on computers don't usually use GDDR but regular DDR so latency is very low, though bandwidth is not as high as GDDR. But the PS4 just has GDDR5 and no DDR3, I guess latency is fine then for that console.
I guess we shall see later on when the CPUs need more data. If so we might see the PS4 bog down with the higher latency GDDR5 vs Microsofts DDR3.
As I said before, I am not sure why they didn't just used a decent CPU and throw in a mobile style GPU instead with dedicated VRAM. Would have worked a lot better in the long run.