1) Running: The game is loaded in memory and is fully running. The game has full access to the reserved system resources, which are six CPU cores, 90 percent of GPU processing power, and 5 GB of memory. The game is rendering full-screen and the user can interact with it.

Looks like the xbox is going to gimp games in a lot of ways next-gen, and now it is announced it only uses 6 out of 8 cores and only 90% of a gimped GPU for games? The GPU drops to a mere 1.1 TFlops, which puts itself in range of a radeon 5750. The reason is to use the computing power for apps, TV and switching on the fly, making less resources available for games. The xbox is becoming a bloated PC as we speak.

http://kotaku.com/the-five-possible-states-of-xbox-one-games-are-strangel-509597078

Well I would think so it doesn't red-ring, then yea that makes sense.

If they PS4 has any kind of multi-tasking features built in, games won't have access to 100% of the systems power at all times, either.

...I also refuse to believe Teraflop is a real term for anything.

Yeah, the PS4 blows it out of the water, spec-wise. New consoles should be as powerful as a high-end pc when they come out, not a mid-range. Every new thing I read about the Xbox One makes me not one all the more.

Why don't they just build it without red rings? Problem solved.

It's because the rest is reserved for the app switching functionality.

You're mostly talking apples and oranges. At this point, commentary like this is practically meaningless. The real differences will be seen in the games, not in pre-release spreadsheets.

Well they need cores dedicated to TV and sports.

The real difference was seen this generation where PS3 wasn't utilized fully because of the unique architecture wasn't exploited and instead the off the shelf parts in the 360 reaped the most benefits.

The situation is reversed this time, with MS trying their hand at chip fabrication and designing their own chip while Sony goes straight to off the shelf parts.

The most capable system this time is also the path of least resistance. That doesn't bode well for multiplatform releases on X1, and most likely exclusives for PS4 will look pretty damn great in comparison.

I'm just sad I've got another 3 years or so on my XBL subscription. Hopefully they don't turn off the 360 servers anytime soon.

Without having announced an of their own services, you guys are giving Sony the benefit of the doubt in a really big way. I'm not saying itll work the same as the Xbox, but Christ just because they made some press conference that catered to you does not mean they'll necessarily be everything that the Xbox is not.

Again, apples and oranges. The last generation, the PS3 was -dramatically- different in architecture from a PC or 360. While the X1 is different(and the PS4 is a little different, too. There's more custom to it than you give it credit for), it is is no way as different as the PS3 was. That was its own beast. The X1 is more of a difference of priority than a difference in inherent structure. It puts a premium on video processing vs a PS3 or PC's lean toward CPU processing. Yet, that difference is still something that's only likely to be seen later in the generation.

Its foundation is primarily familiar, and so, this is only a matter of differing priorities(GPU vs CPU), not a completely unique structure requiring extensive research to familiarize yourself with it. There is simply no comparison between the PS3's difference and the X1's difference. The X1 and PS4 will likely be similarly unique vs traditional PC architecture, and while each will have their own quirks, they will be a lot more alike as development platforms than the last generation.

I'm not sure if you're serious. FLOPS = floating-point operations per second.

well i hope this doesnt hold back developers from pushing the ps4 when making cross platform games but yeah, thats gonna happen.

Umm...it's operating multiple apps at once, plus running the Kinect, and from their technomarketing jargan, 3 operating systems. Of course the Xbox One is going to divide where some of the cores propagate to. I'm guessing some of the cores in the PS4 won't be accessible for games too, what with the live streaming features it has.

@butano: While the 360 is using the main APU chip to power all of its OS needs, hence why it has only 6 cores available, Sony has a separate dedicated processor for all background tasks, including uploading, downloading, and other functions. It also has a dedicated encoding chip (I believe they said h264). This means these functions and the video streaming feature will not impact the PS4s APU.

It'll likely affect available ram, but no idea if it'll be 3gb worth like the 360's OS, though.

Honestly, even if they just did a lazy port from Xbox One, the (mostly) same code would still run better on the PS4. But if it's anything like Xbox and PS2, developers will probably take advantage of the extra resources because they like to put their best foot forward.

Wow, you know all about these consoles already. Fascinating.

Nobody is using off-the-shelf parts in... ever.

If the 360 used "off the shelf parts," it wouldn't have spent the first year melting down and the next 3 red-ringing.

It's an obvious conclusion that anyone could come to based only on the specs. They're the same architecture except one is more powerful, what else do you expect? It's not like with the 360 and PS3 where one was only theoretically more powerful but had trade offs in the real world.

Wasn't the Killzone demo using 6GB of RAM?

That was because some idiot made the executive decision to use substandard solder if I recall. Otherwise the 360 used a fairly standard synchronous multi-core PowerPC architecture (3 cores in this case), while PS3 used the exact same core in the Cell, but strapped on their own proprietary 7 small Floating Point Units for asynchronous operation. Granted, that triple core CPU wasn't standard at the time, but Sony went out of their way to try to reinvent the wheel to differentiate themselves to create a built-in learning curve and improvement over the course of the generation as developers learned the ins and outs of the chip, and most of that processing power ended up just going to waste.

No it was 4.5GB but with unoptimized code and using 530MB alone for sound.

Also

The difference with these two is bigger than it was for Ps3 and 360.

I full understand MS for aiming to make it a computer/set top box/everything device that targets everybody (with a HDCP capable HDMI screen lol) but jesus christ giving that much of the hardware to the OS..

Don't know if the PS4 is going to dedicate even a single core at all times towards its OS but it will dedicate a gigabyte of RAM towards it, giving developers seven gigs to work with. It's going to take a pinch longer to switch from game to whatever but I feel okay with that, knowing that the focus is games. I hate having to say that.

A 40nm APU would be explained by the esRAM stacking they want. Moneyhatted developers will use the XBone as a development platform, dog knows if they're going to upscale for the PS4. And when developers speak of games running at 60 on the PS4 and 30 on the XBone they mean a solid locked 30 on the XBone, not the kind of framedroppy garbage we're used to; If a game pushes 35-40 but has no chance staying close to 60 you definitely want to lock it down to 30 and preserve the experience.

(Wouldn't want to leave a machine running 24/7 anyway, remember the 360 fires?)

Stupid question. But don't they use heavily modded parts for consoles? Doesn't that mean the real gap when it's said and done can be near invisible? Could MS found some wacky way to bridge the gap? Maybe Sony also has that quick switching thing? Maybe Sony fucked their design? Maybe MS found a way around the bottleneck?

Have you not seen Micrsofts comment?

“It’s also been stated that the Xbox One is ten times more powerful than the Xbox 360, so we’re effectively 40 times greater than the Xbox 360 in terms of processing capabilities [using the cloud]. If you look to the cloud as something that is no doubt going to evolve and grow over time, it really spells out that there’s no limit to where the processing power of Xbox One can go. I think that’s a very exciting proposition, not only for Australians, but anyone else who’s going to pick up the Xbox One console.”

They have the infinite Cloud. But no they have no secret sauce^^

So the cloud is the secret sauce? And I do not think we have been told what their stuff is clocked to have we?

No. See. You're lying. This is a backronym! Nothing but elaborate toilet humor.

I think that is why damn near half the surface of the Xbox One is vents for fans. Ironically (or perhaps not) it reminds me of my cable box. I'm really doubtful about their claims of totally silent, maybe for a while but even my whisper quiet 360 Slim now sounds like its ready for lift off after only two years. I fully expect the PS4 to be similar in excessively having vents everywhere too. Both of these systems are designed to basically go into a sleep mode instead of totally shutting off. They are going have to make sure the woes of their predecessors early models are not repeated. Since the new standards for non-lead based solder have been in place for almost a decade now I doubt there will be a redux of red ring and yellow light.

If X1 beats the PS4 in sales, I think you can look forward to a ton of software money or work being shifted to shaders or other 'embellishments' rather than really extreme baselines. Think about PC games, where they still have the small areas and loading rooms that console games do, but they have TressFX or fancier grass textures or more shadow technology. Scalability will be a big thing. Luckily the common PC architecture between the consoles will make this way easier on devs.

it's been a long time since I heard up on it, but IIRC, the widespread xbox failures were due to cutting R&D/QA short on the chips to get the xbox out there. I guess I'm not entirely sure what you mean by 'off the shelf'. I'm fairly sure both companies fab their own chips, it's just a matter how far they deviate from the designs supplied by whomever.

So I knew something like this would happen. "Oh no, three operating systems?! Games have only a dedicated 6 cores/5 GB memory?! This is awful, the Xbox One is garbage!"

What you need to keep in mind is that it is running a hyper-visor. 5GB memory, 6 cores are DEDICATED - meaning games will have, at the least, those resources. I'm currently messing around with Hyper-V 2012 (While it definitely isn't the hyper-visor being used on the XONE, it's definitely based on the same tech) so that I can assess how much memory and CPU time it eats up. So far it's only using 47 megabytes of memory. Anyway, I'll be making a post later explaining about hyper-visors, virtual machines, etc. and what it really means about how the hardware in the XONE could be used.

The issue was contributed to a multitude of factors with the major ones being the OG Xbox 360 had terrible ventilation which in turn caused the motherboard to bow. Once the bowing started to happen the CPU would pop out just enough to cause the system to red ring. The Falcon chips that replaced the original CPU's didn't heat up as much but red rings were still possible. That's why with the slims you have a fan directly over the CPU to exhaust the heat from the system up or out to the side.

There is a aritcle some where stating with the cloud the Xone has the power of three Xboxones.

There's a reason MS didn't try to flaunt their specs during the show -- PS4's edging them out there. That's why you got FIVE BILLION TRANSISTORS instead.

It won't really matter though. Mainstream success has almost nothing to do with the specifications of the console. If he's already invested in the Microsft ecosystem, Joe Call of Duty won't care that the PlaySation version runs technically better.

And you could have the cell chip in your fridge or washing machine boost the power of your PS3.

"Off the shelf" meaning designed for general purpose, or slightly modified. The benefits are keeping R&D costs down, plus ease of use for developers who are already familiar with an existing architecture.

The PS2 for example had the Emotion Engine and Graphics Synthesizer chips designed in-house by Sony engineers from the ground up, while the Xbox one used a 733MHz Intel Celeron processor, possibly with a bit more on-chip cache. With this last generation, 360s and PS3 both used IBM PowerPC processors. While the 360 pushed the envelope at the time with a triple core processor when most desktops were running dual core, it was still running on a fairly well understood PowerPC foundation. Sony used a single PowerPC core as the root of the Cell, but then designed an architecture around it focusing on the 7 SPE co-processors in conjunction with IBM. Beyond the base PowerPC core, Sony did most of the heavy design lifting and it ultimately resulted in a challenging chip to processor for (historically). Although they touted the Cell as being a viable option to put into televisions, computers, and food processors, ultimately it pretty much only ever was included in the PS3. (So not "off the shelf.")

While there are real benefits to using off-the-shelf technology, the major downsides would be having components that aren't optimized for (in this case) your console, and a rapid adoption and plateauing for developers getting the most out of your chip. I've heard it said that Sony intentionally made the Cell challenging so there would be a slow gradual curve of improvement over the life of a system in order to keep people excited about progressively newer and better-looking games.

In any case, the biggest criticism leveled against using off-the-shelf components is a psychological one. People see that and wonder what the point is of buying that console, if it's just more of something that already exists somewhere else. That's been a big criticism of the Ouya, which is not only using a standard Tegra3 chip, but also pretty much just a repackaged android tablet with a different UI and bundled bluetooth controller. When the first Xbox came out, it was effectively just a compact PC with almost the exact same components you'd find in a PC with an Intel processor and an nVidia video card. The criticism is, "why should I get something that I already own or can get with better specs?"

Conventional wisdom dictates that something custom built for a purpose is always going to be better, even if a good case can be made for the opposite. Times have changed though, and we've come to the point where the vast majority of games are completely multiplatform, put out on damn near anything that will run it. The more off-the-beaten path an architecture is, then, the more likely it will miss out on something when publisher accountants crunch the numbers of what it would cost to massage the code onto yet another platform vs potential revenue. That's why you saw a ton of PC/360 releases this last cycle where PS3 got poorer ports, delayed ports, or were left out entirely.

It's a bit of a moot distinction this time as this generation both consoles are going to be using almost the same components, but Sony is allowing theirs to be slightly more conventional, using faster RAM instead of putting the onus on the developers to juggle slower ram with the faster 32mb embedded cache. It's not the developmental gulf of the last generation, presumably, but that coupled with the reported difficulty working with Microsoft these days will probably lead to PS4 being lead SKU on most games this time.

You do realize that a gaming PC with a 6 core CPU and 5GB GPU would be pretty bad ass, right?

My aged gaming PC with a dual core CPU and 1GB GPU runs Tomb Raider and Bioshock Infinite on Very High settings, 1080p at 40-50fps, and that's without the inherent benefits of a closed console architecture that isn't running 67 Windows system processes in the background.

There's no reason why the next gen of consoles won't be able to deliver Crysis 3 or Metro 2033 levels of eye candy at a rock solid 1080p30 (or 1080p60 in slightly less demanding games). The Killzone demo already proved that, and that's a launch window game where they haven't learned any tricks yet.

Compare Perfect Dark Zero to Gears of War 3. Developers will be able to get a LOT of performance out of these boxes after a year or two of tinkering.

But a 5750 would not be in 2013.

So comparing this to how the parts would be in a PC is rather stupid.

Also, no games need more than 1GB of GPU memory, only if you are using a crazy 3+ monitor setup. Having a ridiculously high amount of VRAM is quite meaningless when the majority are still using single screens at 1080P and below.

and I know console hardware isn't directly comparable, just saying that 5GB of GPU would do you absolutely no good, you'd gain nothing over a GPU with 1GB right now. Maybe in 5 years.

@truthtellah: I have no actually part in this discussion, but what is that gif and where does it come from?

"Only" 6 cores and "gimping" games is entirely a subjective judgement and has no basis in actual fact. Yes the facts are right next to those words but you can clearly see the implication that somehow these specs make the system look bad. Maybe they do with a lot more analysis, but that will matter jack dick in the end unless developers and games can utilize that stuff. Personally I would be way more interested in hearing developers speaking on this over anyone on any forum, no offense of course.

@Sooty:

A 5750 might be junk in a gaming PC today, but in a closed console environment with access to tons of RAM it could be a real beast. Look at the 360- it's Xenos GPU is a repurposed ATI X1800, yet it runs Bioshock Infinite @ Medium settings @ 720p30. There's no way an X1800 PC could pull that off, but the 360 does just fine thanks to the closed architecture.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Xenos_(graphics_chip)

HAHA alone and unmoded GTAIV says Hi. Also what is with this 5750 talk? there is a 7XXX in both of these machines anyway. The question is what 7XXX card.

Don't worry guys, there's always the cloud with its infinite transistors.

The Killzone demo used 3GB of Ram, this was before they bumped the RAM in the dev kits.

@bacongames: someone said that the X1 has something called hyper vision?

While the Xenon and Cell use the PowerPC architecture, the implementations were completely new custom designs by IBM. As for the comment about the Cell purposefully being difficult to program for (which I can't quote here because fuck this editor), that's complete nonsense. Sony were simply continuing the approach of using low-power but very high-performance cores which had proven successful in the PS2. IBM did sell a Cell variant with improvements for scientific calculations, but it didn't sell and they stopped developing the architecture. Toshiba also made a variant called the SpursEngine, which was used in some media accelerators.

As regards reserved system resources, remember that the PS3 reserved one of the seven SPE units just for security tasks. I would not be surprised in the least if both Microsoft and Sony used a similar approach in their new hardware.

I want to say I saw the PS4 clocked in at 1.8ghz on the CPU somewhere, but that may have just been speculation.

To elaborate a bit on my above comment, here's the head of Metro: Last Light talking console vs PC tech. An interesting quote:

"Digital Foundry: Do you think that the relatively low-power CPUs in the next-gen consoles (compared to PC, at least) will see a more concerted push to getting more out of GPU Compute?

Oles Shishkovstov: No, you just cannot compare consoles to PC directly. Consoles could do at least 2x what a comparable PC can due to the fixed platform and low-level access to hardware."

So the fact that the Xbox one and PS4 will have GPUs similar to AMD 7xxx is really a meaningless data point. I'm a PC gamer myself, but laugh at the PC snobs saying "Oh, I could build a PS4 equivalent PC and it won't even run Metro @ medium setting at 1080p!", but it's not true. As the lead programmer stated above, consoles can get literally double the performance out of CPU/GPUs as a result of low level access, meaning those wimpy 1.8ghz CPU and 7850 GPU will actually outperform a PC with a 7990 or GTX Titan.

Full article here: http://www.eurogamer.net/articles/digitalfoundry-inside-metro-last-light

I'm sure there's no doubt that the PS4 is more capable, even taking into consideration that the system will obviously have some of its compute power taken up by the OS. Microsoft is hard-dedicating resources to a whole virtualized OS on a system with lesser specs. By the way, for anyone following AMD architecture the past few generations, we know succinctly that it performs best with the fastest RAM possible (as compared to the lackluster performance enhancements with faster RAM on an Intel Core series processor). I feel like that GDDR5 coupled with a better GPU will make a world of difference.

Given Microsoft's showing of features which take advantage of the instant-switching, which is mostly TV stuff as of now, It makes me feel far more inclined to buy a PS4 as a dedicated games console because I don't watch TV. The other side of the coin is that I find the virtualized OS intriguing from my tech-whore side, and I know it will surely be used for better things in the future as Microsoft pulls away from the decaying traditional television model (they did make an effort to point out their belief in being flexible for a reason). I'm still personally undecided, even though I think I trust Sony to deliver games which appeal to me much more.