[synce]

It sounds like a weak PC if true. I wouldn't blame Sony, after their financial troubles they're probably going for the cheaper, easier to develop for route. What sucks is there won't be a single game that impresses anyone who has a decent PC.

[jyouji]

You can't really compare the SPU's with actual cores, frequency =! perf.

IIRC IBM had rated a single SPU to be equivalent to a P4 at 4ghz but with a much smaller power draw (5w I think?). The llano's use 32nm k10.5 with no L3 iirc, K10.5 trounces all over the various P4 models. Given when its coming out, if it is an AMD apu, it'd more likely be based on Trinity than Llano, maybe even Kaveri with the Steamroller arch if we're lucky.

The main reason I highly doubt these specs is that using an APU and a 2nd card means it'd likely be running in crossfire or something similar, something I can't see being used in consoles.

[marty370]

Originally Posted by synce It sounds like a weak PC if true. I wouldn't blame Sony, after their financial troubles they're probably going for the cheaper, easier to develop for route. What sucks is there won't be a single game that impresses anyone who has a decent PC.

Better route would be a next gen CELL with more SPU's as it's now in it's 2nd/3rd or 4th gen been shrunk cheaper to make/uses less power, also the tool chain has evolved nicely all in place and scalable. Does'nt make sense for Sony to throw all existing Tool chain R & D down the drain and start again.

3D chip layered tech would make a far better multiple CELL CPU, many many time more powerfull than AMD chip.

Here's hoping for 4gb Sys ram/2Gb Vram atleast.

[ps3hacker12]

Some of you guys are pretty retarded. It's DEFINETELY NOT a downgrade. Next more cores DOES NOT always mean better performance. higher clock frequencies does NOT mean better performance always. The vital part of any system is architecture. I cba to give examples (im sure your all capable of googling anandtech CPU/GPU benches).

The 7670 and AMDs apu is nowhere near high end PC (like my 2500K build lol) performance but when have consoles ever been even close to PC performance? It's still like 5 times better than ps3 specs.

You guys do understand 1GB of VRAM is completely fine for a console game even at 1200p...

Keep in mind pricing, are you willing to pay £400+ for a high spec pc performance console? Or £200 for a normal console?

Consoles have to keep costs down. (so people will actually buy it duh).

[guardianx71]

For some reason I doubt the ps4 will cost £200. More like £400 for 3 years and then depending on the market we'll see it for £200-250.
Conserning the cpu change , I believe that it is a very possitive move , since it will make it way easier for developers to use . About AMD haters talking about overheating etc , that's in the past . I've been builting PCs with both AMD and INTEL for the last 7 years , and in the last 3-4 years , even though INTEL is more powerful (but way more expensive) , AMD i s way cooler and quieter with stock coolers
Conserning RAM , I too hope for at least 2 GB for use in apllications like media players , and ofcourse future developments (it is supossed to have a ten year life span)

But I have to say , using 7670 , which is a rebranded 6670 - meaning 1 year old already ,and even more a LOW to MID range gpu that is , in a machine that will come out in another year is a major mistake , no matter how it will work with the integrated APU.

[ps3hacker12]

Originally Posted by guardianx71 For some reason I doubt the ps4 will cost £200. More like £400 for 3 years and then depending on the market we'll see it for £200-250. Conserning the cpu change , I believe that it is a very possitive move , since it will make it way easier for developers to use . About AMD haters talking about overheating etc , that's in the past . I've been builting PCs with both AMD and INTEL for the last 7 years , and in the last 3-4 years , even though INTEL is more powerful (but way more expensive) , AMD i s way cooler and quieter with stock coolers Conserning RAM , I too hope for at least 2 GB for use in apllications like media players , and ofcourse future developments (it is supossed to have a ten year life span) But I have to say , using 7670 , which is a rebranded 6670 - meaning 1 year old already ,and even more a LOW to MID range gpu that is , in a machine that will come out in another year is a major mistake , no matter how it will work with the integrated APU.

Yup. AMD have been better than intel in the past. It's a year on year thing. Eg 2001, 2004, 2006 AMD were better last 2 years tho, sandy bridge (and first gen I-series) is better than and AMD offerings for gaming. For other tasks (eg encoding) AMD is still a winner.

And I do agree on the ridiculous prices Intels "performance" range products have.

Sent from my me at home from my fingers typing the above message... using Tapatalk

[MysterySword]

Originally Posted by yourbunnywrote Jumping from 3,2ghz 8 core to 2,9ghz 4 core? I hope its true and $ony will screw up with this one.

The PS3's 8-core Cell processor is actually quite weak in some areas. Yeah, it's good for making computations, but not too much else. Also, since 2006, processors have improved quite a bit - to the point where it's no longer just about the number of cores. For instance, the quad-core 2.9Ghz CPU may have hyperthreading (and probably all of the improvements of newer CPUs since Core 2 Duo CPUs hit the market). Ever since the Core 2 Duo CPUs came out, it hasn't been an clock speed war, so GHz aren't as relevant anymore.

[bpear96]

This sounds cool, but its more likely to be the soon to come AMD piledriver trinity APU (check out AMD Trinity A10-5800K). That will have lower power consumption even though they are higher clocked. And have a intergrated chipset based on radeon hd 7xxx series. So it could easily "crossfire" with a separate 7xxx discreet card. This is great for ps4 and PC gamers. If these specs are somewhat true, the ps4 will basically be a PC (unupgradable,locked down pc :P) But games will not need much changes to run on PS4 and PC, so maybe we will stop seeing lousy ports to ps4 and even PC of multiplatform games.If this thing ever did get hacked up, or exploit found i would be surprised to see full windows 7+ on it lol. AMD is a good choice, there lowcost, and a good bang for your buck.There apu's are nice espically crossfired. And this could really help AMD get up off the ground since they havent been doing the "best".

I personally just made the switch to PC gaming though, upgraded my rig from something that could barely play half-life :P to something that can play basically any game maxed out. And it didnt cost much either.

I got a AMD Phenom II x4 BE overclocked at 4.1ghz with coolermaster 212+
MSI twinfrozr Radeon HD 6950, Unlocked to 6970 with tweaked bios, and OCed to 950/1375 CORE/VRAM. And then 8GB of ram.

Its awesome!
************* [ - Post Merged - ] *************

Originally Posted by yourbunnywrote Jumping from 3,2ghz 8 core to 2,9ghz 4 core? I hope its true and $ony will screw up with this one.

Ok for one you can not compare to CPU with complety different architecture, almost like comparing a quadcore tegra 3 with a quadcore Phenom ii x4, even at the same clock per core the phenom would likely beat it, completly different architecture, this AMD APU and The CELL processor.

Also sony could get a custom APU with Eight piledriver cores, and a radeon HD 7660M which could easily crossfire with a 7670 like the rumor says. But 4 cores would be plenty.

[Pawsed]

It amazes me how people don't understand that number of cores and all this crap isn't what defines how good a system is.

-These systems don't run your home copy of Windows. They don't have that overhead slowing them down. That's a huge factor

-The hardware is customized. The OS is completely custom. Everything about how they develop the system is aimed at running games first and foremost. When you write an OS to be as absolutely light as possible for a single task, you are way way way more efficient with less hardware. That's why PS3 and 360 can do what they do with what amount to ****ty computers today.

-Whoever it was that complained about going to less cores on the next system for PS4 - CELL is a highly specialized chip aimed at floating point calculations - super computing. It wasn't designed for PS3, it was a joint venture by IBM, Sony and Toshiba that produced a chip that broke current paradigms. This meant that is was more generalized to super computing and other design goals. Thus, it isn't the best suited for running games due to its nature. Also, four cores can be easier to manage than eight (and PS3 has seven by the way - eight to start, one disabled on purpose during production to account for production errors). Multi-core is about what it's good for, and there is some debate how many cores you need in gaming, given how specialized your code has to be aimed at dividing up tasks a certain way - you're going to get slowed down by the slowest task, and the more you divide up the tasks, the more potential for waiting around. In supercomputers highly designed to run numerous threads independent of one another (i.e. not needing each others data right away to compute), many many cores work. In a game where calculations are so interdependent, you end up losing a lot of efficiency trying to code so all the parts arrive in time.

Oh, and a slower clocked chip doesn't mean it's worse. If you like, I've got a P4 3.2Ghz single core system sitting around. I'll trade you it for basically any quad core system currently on the market from AMD or Intel, even at half that clock speed. Even considering most applications aren't using more than a single core, the modern implementation of instruction sets in those chips allows them to be faster.

The fact is that the Cell was optimized for very specific hardware instructions to certain tasks. To accomplish things that aren't specifically in the hardware instruction set, you need more clock cycles than a chip which has an instruction set that has more robust options. I.E. on the CELL, when they can't do something directly that other chipsets can, they are forced (the compilers that is, mainly, when translating it to machine code) to waste a ton of time simulating that function that isn't in the hardware via many clock cycles doing that through calculations on the fly.

If you want a real world example today, the Snapdragon S4 processor from Qualcomm has only two cores, and clocks at 1.5Ghz. The Tegra 3 from Nvidia has four cores running at 1.4Ghz (with a fifth low power core). The Dual Core S4, at only slightly higher clock speed, is being shown to readily destroy the Quad core Tegra 3. Note that these are all the same ARM based designs. It has to do with specific implementation, design, interconnects, and efficiency. The upcoming dual core Samsung Exynos 5250 is leaps and bounds ahead of both (though this is more due to more implementation of the newer ARM A15 chipset)

TL;DR - You can't tell a damn thing about modern processors, even ones based on the same architecture, based on clock speed and number of cores alone. You need a lot, lot more knowledge than that. Add to that the fact that gaming systems don't run a modern, bulky OS, and that's why these figures really mean nothing till we see the results. If they are even the right figures.

[marty370]

Cell is not limited to game systems. IBM has announced a Cell-based blade, which leverages the investment in the high-performance Cell architecture. Other future uses may include HDTV sets, home servers, game servers and supercomputers. Also, Cell is not limited to a single chip, but is a scalable system. The number of attached SPUs can be varied, to achieve different power/performance and price/performance points. And, the Cell architecture was conceived as a modular, extendible system where multiple Cell subsystems each with a Power Architecture™ core and attached SPUs, can form a symmetric multiprocessor system.

Surely multiple Cell 2 chips with more SPU's would be a better way to go. And PS4 would possibly retain backward compatibillty with PS3.