NX Gamer: PS5 Full Spec Analysis | A new generation is Born

[Brohan]

Is there the potential for game sizes to decrease? As Cerny mentioned devs have to have multiple copies of assets on disc and storage so that it can access them faster. I would assume less of that is needed next gen due to the blistering speeds of their SSD systen. and so game sizes will decrease in size? Maybe not though?

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Even though assets might no longer need to be duplicated because of the SSD speeds, I imagine that because of 4k, the assets will greatly increase in size. And since games are becoming ever more ambitious I think it's safe to say that game sizes will only keep increasing.

My hope is that they maybe will have found a way to only need to install parts of the game that actually need to be present or something. I don't know tbh. Going to be interesting to see how it's gonna play out.

 

[Kellemann75]

Was thinking about upgrading from a 1080 to a 2080 card. Thanks to neogaf i will buy a ssd disk instead

 

[AegonSnake]

The GPU compute difference is 18%. The gap in bandwidth, especially when you look at how Microsoft has configured their setup is 25%.
The only thing that is a wash is CPU.

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PS4's GPU difference was 40%. It's bandwidth difference was 75%. The end result was 900p-1080p for almost all games. 45% more pixels.

18% more flops and 25% more bandwidth (split ram btw) is not going to result in anything more than a 20% resolution advantage in third party games.

The onus is on MS first party studios to push ray tracing in ways Sony studios simply cant due to them being bandwidth and tflops starved, at least compared to the series x. Sony exclusives looked far ahead of MS exclusives for an entire gen until Gears hit last year. MS needs to come out strong and show everyone what this spec advantage translates into. Path tracing minecraft demo is a good start, but they need to go all out and show us that it wont just be a 1800p vs 2160p difference which roughly amounts to 20% more pixels. 6.8 vs 8.1 million. if ps5 games are 1440p or 3.7 million pixels, we are looking at 4.3 million pixels or something around 1620p.

it will win them the DF wars but it wont do much less if Sony studios start designing their games around the ssd. i want MS to really push ray tracing next gen. go all out. Make that the hook. not just resolution and tflops. Offer ray tracing features exclusive to the MS console in not just first party games but maybe third party games too. 1.8 tflops is A LOT of power. thats an entire ps4 gpu * 2. they have so much potential to really offer gamers more than just resolution.

 

[Brohan]

Was thinking about upgrading from a 1080 to a 2080 card. Thanks to neogaf i will buy a ssd disk instead

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Depends on what kind of setup you currently have. If you would have a 2070 but are still using a HDD then i would advise a SSD over a 2080.

 

[Siinova]

I'll just quote my post from earlier.

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I'm not even sure why you're bothering to be honest lol.

 

[Jeffram]

And the Series X's is 2.5Gb/s raw.

So if a multiplat game is, understandinly, designed around the Series X's SSD.... what can those devs do with the remaining 2.5GB/s (or 9GB/s+ compressed)

What can that remaining GB/s be used for or help improve? I think some just presume/push that it will only benefit load times.

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It helps with RAM utilization in streaming engines, which should be what games move towards with SSD standard. Let's look at the ends of the spectrum in a thought experiment:

With storage speed near 0: It would mean that all of the game, the part you can see, the hallway you have to walk through, the next room you aren't even close to, etc. all has to be loaded into RAM. That means you have to budget your RAM in terms of number of assets, quality of textures, etc. into the RAM, because yo can't load anymore. If your game is an hour long, and you spend 12 minutes in each room. 20% of your Ram is used for Room 1, 20% for room 2, etc. etc.

With storage speed infinite: You no longer need to budget your RAM for what's to come next. Every single GB of your RAM can be used for what's directly in front of you, not even what's in the room. If you spin around, the game will pull in the thing that's behind you and fill up the RAM with whatever you are looking at.

In theory, the faster the storage is, the more varied the objects can be and the more varied or detailed the textures can be, since you have to do less RAM budgeting for things that you "might" see.

At some point, you don't need to have infinite storage speed. You only need to be faster than the player can shift view points. Mark Cerny did mention that they looked at how fast it takes a player to turn around, so maybe that drove their 5.5GBs per second / 9GB decompressed target.

How much more efficient will the PS5 RAM end up being? no idea.

The other thing is that with streaming engines you can only move as fast as data can be streamed into the RAM, al a Sony's Spider-man Demo. 2X storage speed might lead to 2X movement speed capability. Maybe in something like a GTA, the Jet's in Sony's version go 2x as fast. or F1 typer cars can be driven.

This is all theoretical of course, but faster SSD on a 3rd party game might mean more dense or detailed or varied worlds or worlds that you can move faster through or all of those things at once. We'll have to see.

It's not like everything up to 2.5GB/s was absolutely necessary and everything past 2.5GB/s is an unnecessary luxury. There's no magic number, just like there's no TF magic number where everything else is a waste.

 

[Deleted member 24021]

Was thinking about upgrading from a 1080 to a 2080 card. Thanks to neogaf i will buy a ssd disk instead

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How to spot someone that doesn't know anything about tech.

 

[theAllseeingEYE]

So, I never said that (game will get 15.5GB), I stated an example (best case/theory) what I am alluding to here is that with the speed and construction of the system this, and other options, are possible to enable the core kernal, tasks, UI to remain resident and static data to cache. So rather than 3GB of OS, it only used 1-1.5GB of OS when the game is running and then swaps back when home is pressed.

Also, please do not put words in my mouth, I never said that a fast SS replace the GPU. I said that the SSD and I/O contrsuction alongside the other benefits means that when a game is dense with objects, streaming information in the stutters, cache misses, hangs etc etc will be reduced. It will likley always be at a slightly lower resolution (as I cleary state in the video) on the PS5 but to think that all slow down, stutters and hangs are all GPU bound is niave at best or intentially distracting the narrative at worst.

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Hey NXgamer, thanks for responding, and apologies if I misinterpreted your video in some ways.

Also, thanks for clarifying the OS memory theory you have. it would be amazing if Sony pulls that off, as giving even more memory to the game could definitely have big visual impact.

With regards to GPU, I didn't mean to suggest that framerate is solely GPU bound, of course it's not, I was mostly remarking on the raw GPU power in the machine. Games that are heavily CPU-bound could perhaps still bottleneck framerate at times, but there is more than enough muscle in both machines to push a steady 60fps, so long as devs aren't doing extremely ambitious things with the CPU. I don't see storage being much of a bottleneck on either system, especially with dev optimization.

I think what I mostly take issue with in you video is the suggestion that 3rd party developers will likely only use the extra power to boost resolution, as that's not what we saw with the X1X. Considering the Xbox's close ties to PC devs, I would assume the majority of 3rd party will have a wide range of GPU features they could tweak, that would improve on the series X, just like we saw tome and time again on X1X vs PS4 Pro or PS4 vs X1S

For example:
- Ray Tracing, lighting, shadows
- Post processing
- framerate
- Geometric complexity
- rendering distance

It will be a balancing act, but one where the Series X will certainly outperform the PS5 as to what it can actually render on-screen at once.

If Sony can free up more Vram for games though, that could certainly let them add texture/shader detail (which could still have GPU impact) to the assets per-scene, and make PS5 compare much more favorably. There are certainly numerous ways devs can and will also utilize the extra GPU power.

To be fair, I also didn't quite understand what you were trying to insinuate with regards to the X1X utilizing resolution scaling to improve framerate, and how that relates to making a difference in GPU power less...meaningful? (Not sure if that's the point you were trying to make).

For example, the graphical difference between an X1X, and a PC with a more powerful GPU running Gears 5, even though both use dynamic res and image reconstruction simultaniously, there is still a quite noticable visual quality difference, especially when settings are tweaked.

 

[Jeffram]

PS4's GPU difference was 40%. It's bandwidth difference was 75%. The end result was 900p-1080p for almost all games. 45% more pixels.

18% more flops and 25% more bandwidth (split ram btw) is not going to result in anything more than a 20% resolution advantage in third party games.

The onus is on MS first party studios to push ray tracing in ways Sony studios simply cant due to them being bandwidth and tflops starved, at least compared to the series x. Sony exclusives looked far ahead of MS exclusives for an entire gen until Gears hit last year. MS needs to come out strong and show everyone what this spec advantage translates into. Path tracing minecraft demo is a good start, but they need to go all out and show us that it wont just be a 1800p vs 2160p difference which roughly amounts to 20% more pixels. 6.8 vs 8.1 million. if ps5 games are 1440p or 3.7 million pixels, we are looking at 4.3 million pixels or something around 1620p.

it will win them the DF wars but it wont do much less if Sony studios start designing their games around the ssd. i want MS to really push ray tracing next gen. go all out. Make that the hook. not just resolution and tflops. Offer ray tracing features exclusive to the MS console in not just first party games but maybe third party games too. 1.8 tflops is A LOT of power. thats an entire ps4 gpu * 2. they have so much potential to really offer gamers more than just resolution.

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See I don't think that's true. AMD RT is in the CU. It scales with CUs and Clock Speeds. A PS5 game with lets say 15% less resolution (which is how much less TF PS5 has) will also need 15% less details RT. It should all be pretty linear.

 

[Deleted member 135]

That's not how things work lol. It's the percentage difference that matters, not the Tflop number between them, as performance scales with resolution.

Whilst the difference between the XSX and PS5 may be a PS4's worth in Tflops, the reality is that 17% difference might lead to very small graphical or resolution differences that are most likely going to be fairly negligible, as there is such a thing as diminishing returns the further up the resolution scale you go. That is if devs choose resolution to take the hit over frame rate, which I'd imagine they would (similar to this gen with the PS4 Pro).

To clarify on why the differences are so much less this gen.

Performance:

The PS4 has 40% more computational power than the Xbox One (1.84 Tflops vs 1.31 Tflops).

The Series X has 17% more computational power than the PS5 (12 Tflops vs 10.28 Tflops)

In other words, the performance delta was far greater this gen than it will be next gen.

Clockspeed:

The Xbox One's GPU clocks were 6.6% faster than the PS4's (853 MHz vs 800 MHz).

The PS5's GPU clocks are 22% faster than the Series X's (2.23Ghz vs 1.825GHz).

The benefits of a higher clockspeed that some have discussed were less apparent at the start of this gen than they are with the PS5/XSX.

Storage:

Both the Xbox One and PS4 came with a standard 5400rpm HDD.

The PS5 has an 825GB SSD at 5.5 GB/s, whilst the XSX has a 1TB SSD at 2.4 GB/s, so the PS5's storage is around 129% faster.

So here the PS5 actually has a clear advantage, unlike with the Xbox One and PS4 that were a wash.

Memory:

The Xbox One has 8GB of DDR3 at 68.26 GB/s and just 32MB of eSRAM at 204 GB/s. The PS4 has 8GB of GDDR5 at 176.0 GB/s. In other words the PS4's 8GB's of ram was 158% faster than the XO's.

The Series X has 16GB of GDDR6, 10GB of which is at 560GB/s and 6GB of which is at 335GB/s, whilst the PS5 also has 16GB of GDDR6 the entirety of which is at 448GB/s. So the PS5's ram is 34% faster than 6GB's of the Series X's, whilst 10GB of the Series X's ram is 25% faster than the PS5's.

In other words, there isn't anywhere near the gulf in memory performance between the PS4/XO as there is with the PS5/XSX.


Ultimately, the performance gulf between the Xbox One and PS4 was much bigger, and unlike with the Xbox One which essentially had no performance advantages over the PS4 (hence people resorted to secret sauces like Cloud, dGPU etc that didn't actually have provable or scientific benefits), the PS5 actually has a couple of real and tangible advantages over the Xbox Series X, or areas where they're near enough matched.

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This is a great post, should be threadmarked.

 

[marecki]

The GPU compute difference is 18%. The gap in bandwidth, especially when you look at how Microsoft has configured their setup is 25%.
The only thing that is a wash is CPU.

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just a small correction, yes XSX has 25% advantage for memory bandwidth but this is on the 10GB of the faster memory, on the remaining 6GB PS5 has 33% advantage.

 

[gundamkyoukai]

The GPU compute difference is 18%. The gap in bandwidth, especially when you look at how Microsoft has configured their setup is 25%.
The only thing that is a wash is CPU.

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We can't be certain on the ram until we get Sony OS number .
Suppose Sony has more ram for games ( not like it would mean much truthfully ) .
Things could not end up so cut and dry with ram and bandwidth when look at the set up of each console.

 

[Era of not Yakuza]

just a small correction, yes XSX has 25% advantage for memory bandwidth but this is on the 10GB of the faster memory, on the remaining 6GB PS5 has 33% advantage.

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any word about why use 2 different speeds ?

 

[Brohan]

any word about why use 2 different speeds ?

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Cost. Most likely.

 

[marecki]

any word about why use 2 different speeds ?

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I can only guess, but I would say the cost is the factor, Series X is a beast and that carry a hefty price tag, but even MS knows it cannot just ramp it up and needs to look for savings wherever they can.

 

[rokkerkory]

qq - what's the usable storage size out of 825GB?

 

[VinFTW]

nib95 Always appreciate the effort you put into your posts.

Is it fair to say we are expecting to see no real difference in visuals from the CPU/GPU/RAM differences between the two but the SSD will provide actual, real, tangible improvements inside our games?

If so, I have to ask what MS was thinking with their hardware. Going all out on w/ the wrong priorities it seems. If devs were truly asking for a mega-SSD why did they blatantly ignore that request?

 

[Pheonix]

The GPU compute difference is 18%. The gap in bandwidth, especially when you look at how Microsoft has configured their setup is 25%.
The only thing that is a wash is CPU.

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Lol... this percentage thing keeps getting higher.

XSX GPU is 17.5% more powerful than PS5.
PS5 GPU is 15% weaker than XSX.

And I don't really know about the RAM thing, that's debatable. Unless we are only comparing XSX highest bandwidth RAM to all of the PS5s RAM. Cause if we are doing that and saying, XSX has 25% more memory bandwidth, then shouldn't we also be saying that it has around 30% less RAM? Thats why I don't count the RAM in these things because how are we really to compare it?

 

[Orange Piccolo]

People are treating MS' solution to SDD as a failure not seeing it's already a 50x increase to what is current available. Not sure twice that is gonna make a world of difference to compensate for all the other PS5 shortcomings, but we'll see eventually.

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The shortcomings are very small, though. Literally the biggest difference between the two consoles is the SSD speeds.

 

[blodtann]

For parallel tasks (like ray tracing) the xbox will have a greater advantage with more cores. For CPU tasks the xbox will have an edge. For IO related operations the PS5 has a distinct advantage. For big open worlds this will make a difference. However, if this is a multiplat, the devs will most likely design for a scenario where neither platform stutters when loading assets. I think we can get some fantastic PS5 exclusive games coming out of this. I can't wait!

However, we are reaching diminishing returns on the SSD speed. The seek times will probably be identical. And you can only fit so much into memory, so loading in 10GB of assets will be not that much of a difference between the platforms. In terms of streaming assets the PS5 can load in higher LODs earlier and create less of a popping experience.

TLDR; PS5 open world exclusives can do things we have not seen before.
XBOX will have the esports edge with higher perf.

 

[nib95]

nib95 Always appreciate the effort you put into your posts.

Is it fair to say we are expecting to see no real difference in visuals from the CPU/GPU/RAM differences between the two but the SSD will provide actual, real, tangible improvements inside our games?

If so, I have to ask what MS was thinking with their hardware. Going all out on w/ the wrong priorities it seems. If devs were truly asking for a mega-SSD why did they blatantly ignore that request?

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I'm not expecting major differences in multiplatform games on either of the two tbh. In other words, I think there will be differences, but just not sizeable ones.

If I had to guess, I'm expecting some variable resolutions with maybe the PS5 versions dropping a touch below native 4K on occasion, or dropping more frequently than the XSX versions do. But because we'd be talking drops from (estimating) 2160p to say 2016p (a 16:9 resolution that is divisible by 8, and roughly 15% fewer pixels to account for the Tflop difference), I doubt that difference in resolution would be very noticeable.

With regards to the SSD side of things, maybe PS5 games have less slightly less pop in, better load times, slightly better asset streaming, I don't really know. But I don't think it'll be anything major.

I think first-party exclusives will probably be more likely to highlight the benefits and advantages of either system.

 

[Kellemann75]

How to spot someone that doesn't know anything about tech.

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Its irony. Allready have a rtx 2080 and a 960 gb m.2 drive with 3480 mb/s read spped.
One give me ray tracing, good framerates and 3440x1440 resolution, and the other a little less loading time

 

[Deleted member 24021]

Its irony. Allready have a rtx 2080 and a 960 gb m.2 drive with 3480 mb/s read spped.
One give me ray tracing, good framerates and 3440x1440 resolution, and the other a little less loading time

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It's more than just loading times. It's about larger draw distances, better LOD, higher quality textures, larger worlds, and more density with details, because the SSD will be able to stream in assets much, much faster.

All of those things I mentioned above have been a huge bottleneck with games this generation because they were designed with 5400RPM hard drives as the bottom end.

 

[VinFTW]

I'm not expecting major differences in multiplatform games on either of the two tbh. In other words, I think there will be differences, but just not sizeable ones.

If I had to guess, I'm expecting some variable resolutions with maybe the PS5 versions dropping a touch below native 4K on occasion, or dropping more frequently than the XSX versions do. But because we'd be talking drops from (estimating) 2160p to say 2016p (a 16:9 resolution that is divisible by 8, and roughly 15% fewer pixels to account for the Tflop difference), I doubt that difference in resolution would be very noticeable.

With regards to the SSD side of things, maybe PS5 games have less slightly less pop in, better load times, slightly better asset streaming, I don't really know. But I don't think it'll be anything major.

I think first-party exclusives will probably be more likely to highlight the benefits and advantages of either system.

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I think regardless of specs (barring the obvious scenario where the tech is incredibly inferior) PS5 exclusives were always going to be industry leading in visuals anyways. I'm sure I'm get flack for that but it's true.

 

[Pheonix]

For example:
- Ray Tracing, lighting, shadows
- Post processing
- framerate
- Geometric complexity
- rendering distance

It will be a balancing act, but one where the Series X will certainly outperform the PS5 as to what it can actually render on-screen at once.

If Sony can free up more Vram for games though, that could certainly let them add texture/shader detail (which could still have GPU impact) to the assets per-scene, and make PS5 compare much more favorably. There are certainly numerous ways devs can and will also utilize the extra GPU power.

To be fair, I also didn't quite understand what you were trying to insinuate with regards to the X1X utilizing resolution scaling to improve framerate, and how that relates to making a difference in GPU power less...meaningful? (Not sure if that's the point you were trying to make).

For example, the graphical difference between an X1X, and a PC with a more powerful GPU running Gears 5, even though both use dynamic res and image reconstruction simultaniously, there is still a quite noticable visual quality difference, especially when settings are tweaked.

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Not speaking for him, but I will give my spin on this anyways.

What I think he is implying is that the performance gap is nowhere near enough to make devs do significantly more with the XSX. At the end of the day, we are talking about a 15-17% compute advantage for the XSX. And that's not even painting the entire picture because there are things in the GPU that isn't tied to the CUs that the PS5 would do better because of its running at a higher clock. And some of those things even applies to the list you gave.

This is nothing at all like the PS4pro/XB1X where by default you are just dealing with all-round better hardware. More RAM, more compute units, higher clock and more bandwidth. Things are a lot muddier this time around to the effect that for a third party dev to make the XSX version better(outside of a resolution bump/more stable rez) they would have to put in extra work.

And like I already said in another thread, that resolution advantage people are talking about isn't even going to present the way most here thinks it would. Its not going to be a case of 2160p vs 1800p/2052p... no, it would rather be a case of both consoles running at 2160p at a fixed frame rate but the XSX hits that peak rez 98% of the time while the PS5 hits it 80% of the time.

Now onto your list...

• RT - unless I am mistaken, RT performance is tied to the CU performance. This means that we will be seeing at best a 14%-17% RT difference here too just as we would in compute throughput.
• Post-processing - I will give you that one, what difference it would make at such already high levels of fidelity though is another matter.
• Framerate - I have already discussed this one. I expect both to have locked framerates. More liked than ever before lol... but what fluctuates is the rez. Basically the XSX will stay at that max rez more of the time compared to the PS5 as I mentioned above.
• Geometric complexity - Sorry, this is one area that the PS5 has the XSX beat, because geometry rendering isn't tied to number o CUsbut rather to geometry units in the GPU of which both the PS5and XSX would have the same amount of. But the PS5 units run at a higher clock so...
• Rendering distance - has nothing to do with CUs either, but more to do with RAM quantity and bandwidth and also those geometry units. Oh, and that SSD...

And this is before we even start looking at things like thePS5 having over 2x the IO bandwidth of the XSX or getting into exactly how MSsemi-split pool of RAM would factor in. As I said thing are much muddier this time around.

 

[ZannrebeI]

PS4's GPU difference was 40%. It's bandwidth difference was 75%. The end result was 900p-1080p for almost all games. 45% more pixels.

18% more flops and 25% more bandwidth (split ram btw) is not going to result in anything more than a 20% resolution advantage in third party games.

The onus is on MS first party studios to push ray tracing in ways Sony studios simply cant due to them being bandwidth and tflops starved, at least compared to the series x. Sony exclusives looked far ahead of MS exclusives for an entire gen until Gears hit last year. MS needs to come out strong and show everyone what this spec advantage translates into. Path tracing minecraft demo is a good start, but they need to go all out and show us that it wont just be a 1800p vs 2160p difference which roughly amounts to 20% more pixels. 6.8 vs 8.1 million. if ps5 games are 1440p or 3.7 million pixels, we are looking at 4.3 million pixels or something around 1620p.

it will win them the DF wars but it wont do much less if Sony studios start designing their games around the ssd. i want MS to really push ray tracing next gen. go all out. Make that the hook. not just resolution and tflops. Offer ray tracing features exclusive to the MS console in not just first party games but maybe third party games too. 1.8 tflops is A LOT of power. thats an entire ps4 gpu * 2. they have so much potential to really offer gamers more than just resolution.

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Umm Forza Horizon 4???

 

[Dokkaebi G0SU]

nice video NX! Helps me understand the ps5 more :)

 

[AegonSnake]

Umm Forza Horizon 4???

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sure. i always forget racing games. gt sports and driveclub look amazing but i always think of gow, uncharted, horizon and even the order before them.

 

[deadmonkeyuk]

NX gamer is criminally underrated. I wish he had the same following as digital foundry. He totally deserves more recognition for his work and I love his technical breakdowns. It's complex enough without being overbearing.

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I agree he has great content (as does DF). DF does have the big advantage of being part of Eurogamer and bigger staff producing more content.

Really looking forward to seeing Sony first party on the PS5.

 

[gremlinz1982]

Lol... this percentage thing keeps getting higher.

XSX GPU is 17.5% more powerful than PS5.
PS5 GPU is 15% weaker than XSX.

And I don't really know about the RAM thing, that's debatable. Unless we are only comparing XSX highest bandwidth RAM to all of the PS5s RAM. Cause if we are doing that and saying, XSX has 25% more memory bandwidth, then shouldn't we also be saying that it has around 30% less RAM? Thats why I don't count the RAM in these things because how are we really to compare it?

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(12.155 - 10.28)/10.28 x 100 =18.239%

(12.155 - 10.28)/12.155 x 100 = 15.425%

Why is the RAM debatable? Microsoft has stated why they have gone for the setup they have chosen, and that they have consulted with developers.

Do you similarly believe that the PS5 GPU will access all of the RAM and bandwidth? Of course not, you stll have a CPU and OS to run.

 

[modiz]

PS4's GPU difference was 40%. It's bandwidth difference was 75%. The end result was 900p-1080p for almost all games. 45% more pixels.

18% more flops and 25% more bandwidth (split ram btw) is not going to result in anything more than a 20% resolution advantage in third party games.

The onus is on MS first party studios to push ray tracing in ways Sony studios simply cant due to them being bandwidth and tflops starved, at least compared to the series x. Sony exclusives looked far ahead of MS exclusives for an entire gen until Gears hit last year. MS needs to come out strong and show everyone what this spec advantage translates into. Path tracing minecraft demo is a good start, but they need to go all out and show us that it wont just be a 1800p vs 2160p difference which roughly amounts to 20% more pixels. 6.8 vs 8.1 million. if ps5 games are 1440p or 3.7 million pixels, we are looking at 4.3 million pixels or something around 1620p.

it will win them the DF wars but it wont do much less if Sony studios start designing their games around the ssd. i want MS to really push ray tracing next gen. go all out. Make that the hook. not just resolution and tflops. Offer ray tracing features exclusive to the MS console in not just first party games but maybe third party games too. 1.8 tflops is A LOT of power. thats an entire ps4 gpu * 2. they have so much potential to really offer gamers more than just resolution.

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It would be pretty exciting if each side's first party studios will show how their own system's strengths, Sony's with the insane SSD and MS with the RT tech, could lend to pretty different and awesome looking games for each console, I like this :p

 

[NXGamer]

I've watched and been a fan of NXGamer since the start but I have to say he's developed a bit of a smug, know it all attitude in the past year, especially in his latest few videos about the new console specs. Like he was the only one to predict Zen CPU's, 10-12tflop GPU's and SSD's... That stuff has been predicted for a couple of years everywhere online because of public AMD tech road maps and more recently leaks.

I'm still a huge fan but I think this attitude has lead to the downfall of his channel in general. A shame because so many of his videos have a ton of effort and great technical knowledge but they only get a few thousand views at best versus his first few years where the average video was 10k or over.

I still go back and watch old tech videos and thoroughly enjoy them too. I always wanted NXGamer to join DF but he does this content as a side gig so I'm sure he doesn't care about view counts.

I was a huge Totalbiscuit fan back in his WoW radio days and NX's accent reminds me so much of him.

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I really have not, at all, where on earth do you get that from? The only point I made recently was on the spec prediction of the consoles I made in 2018 which was almost exactly as we saw including Ray Tracing and NVME SSD's. I was called all things and wrong even on here and I just left it, ALL I have done is mentioned (In 1 video) that I was alone in some of those predictions but now a voice in the crowd, I assume that it was you are referring to?

For the record I have no interest in all the "wars", views etc this is not a business for me as it is for many just as side thing as you say. As such I have no reason or aim to be smug about anything to anyone, this is just YouTube videos and chats, nothing more.

 

[Bunzy]

(12.155 - 10.28)/10.28 x 100 =18.239%

(12.155 - 10.28)/12.155 x 100 = 15.425%

Why is the RAM debatable? Microsoft has stated why they have gone for the setup they have chosen, and that they have consulted with developers.

Do you similarly believe that the PS5 GPU will access all of the RAM and bandwidth? Of course not, you stll have a CPU and OS to run.

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PS5 most likely will have more ram to use on games, I can see them using 15gigs for ram potentially

 

[AegonSnake]

See I don't think that's true. AMD RT is in the CU. It scales with CUs and Clock Speeds. A PS5 game with lets say 15% less resolution (which is how much less TF PS5 has) will also need 15% less details RT. It should all be pretty linear.

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I get that. I am saying keep the resolution the same as the ps5 version and use the remaining tflops to allow for features not possible on the ps5 such as ray traced reflections if not present in the ps5 version.

i dont want this to become another resolution war. sony will have their ssd magic. ms should be looking to the gpu to see if they can use it for extra physics or ray tracing or something that really jumps out at you.

 

[Grayson]

I need not even watch the video. Let me guess. The saving grace is the SSD and it essentially closes the gap? Doesn't matter who is claiming it. The claim is still bullshit.

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It's going to be fun seeing posts like this eat crow. Do we trust devs or random posters?

 

[Onebadlion]

It's going to be fun seeing posts like this eat crow. Do we trust devs or random posters?

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Ah. The impartial opinion of the poster with the Mark Cerny avatar. The irony of calling out other posters for bias.

 

[Deleted member 61469]

PS5 most likely will have more ram to use on games, I can see them using 15gigs for ram potentially

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Based on what?

 

[Grayson]

Ah. The impartial opinion of the poster with the Mark Cerny avatar. The irony of calling out other posters for bias.

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Appreciating talent doesn't make one a fanboy but you do you, sailor.

also I didn't call anyone out for bias. Could you people please try not to be so fucking weird?

 

[Serenity Lotus]

Ah. The impartial opinion of the poster with the Mark Cerny avatar. The irony of calling out other posters for bias.

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Yeah because avatars are such a good basis to read the intention of others. Come on.

 

[Jeffram]

I get that. I am saying keep the resolution the same as the ps5 version and use the remaining tflops to allow for features not possible on the ps5 such as ray traced reflections if not present in the ps5 version.

i dont want this to become another resolution war. sony will have their ssd magic. ms should be looking to the gpu to see if they can use it for extra physics or ray tracing or something that really jumps out at you.

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Amen to not wanting a resolution war, I'm more than happy to have more complex worlds at 1440p if that's what it takes. I really hope MS isn't pushing 8K with its 12 TFs.

 

[Doom_Bringer]

Was thinking about upgrading from a 1080 to a 2080 card. Thanks to neogaf i will buy a ssd disk instead

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lol hahahaha

 

[Deleted member 1003]

Ah. The impartial opinion of the poster with the Mark Cerny avatar. The irony of calling out other posters for bias.

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Woof!

Has it gotten this bad?

 

[WarioLuigi22]

Unless PS5 is on the 7nm+ process it's not going to sustain 2.23 ghz most of the time. Even so, let's say it does, whenever the CPU gets taxed there will be a trade off with the GPU clock. It's not a 10.28 tflop console. That variable frequency is a big deal that's being downplayed because people are getting misled by the max theoretical throughput, the 10.28 number on the spec sheet. Also, a higher clocked GPU (with, again, variable frequency) doesn't provide any benefits over a significantly more powerful but lower clocked GPU, especially one with a sustained / locked clock rate. Not even sure where that one came from; someone above was actually talking about more complex geometry due to it, lol. There's a lot of misinformation in this thread.

 

[Serenity Lotus]

Woof!

Has it gotten this bad?

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Oh, it is only going to get worse until we get staff postings to control some of this crap.

 

[Liabe Brave]

I do not think it will have a decidedly different RAM Reservation for the OS. SSDs do not have random access latency like RAM, we use RAM for a reason.

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NXGamer 's conjecture isn't that the OS will be actively run off SSD instead of RAM. It's that the SSD is so fast, the complete OS can be loaded from there to
RAM in a half second. So he suggests it'd be possible to reduce OS reserve in RAM to a small portion of the whole, only enough for services active when a game is also running. Then, when the user calls for full OS, the remainder can be moved to active RAM quickly enough that the user doesn't perceive extra lag.

It is also very interesting approach, because early PS5 units will not be able to keep 3.5 ghz CPU and 2.23 ghz GPU, but later revisions will probably have more stable chips and improved cooling.

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Mr. Cerny very clearly explained that the variability isn't capped by thermal limits. Indeed, the whole point of the approach is that cooling needs will be predictable and consistent.

Microsoft and Sony have the same exact SSD tech including hardware decompression. It's just that Sony put a faster 5.5 GB/s in there instead of Microsoft's cheaper solution.

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You are incorrect. For one, their hardware assists are similar, but by no means identical.

Second, Sony's faster raw I/O speed is not because their chips run at higher clocks, as you seem to imagine. It's because they have a wider bus to the chips. Rather than being more expensive than Microsoft's storage, it's probably less. Because they have fewer packages, hence the capacity difference.

But what you can do with that million dollars is no different and doesn't change.

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But how much stuff you need to do also goes up. Say 1.8TF is enough to render a whole frame at 1080p. But on the newer, more powerful machine, your game is 4K. Now that same 1.8TF is only enough to render a quarter frame. And if all the settings are higher too, so that each pixel requires more calculations to render, then it'll be less than a quarter frame. Etc.

We had the same thing about insiders telling us that it was going to be close, really close and we see that it's obviously not even close.
Not even close at all.

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You're utterly wrong. This is the closest any two consoles from the same gen have been in decades.

The GPU compute difference is 18%.

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XSX is 18.2% higher than PS5; PS5 is 15.4% lower than XSX. Both numbers are correct.

In comparison, PS4 is 40.7% higher than XB1; XB1 is 28.9% lower than PS4. So the upcoming compute gap is quite a bit less than last launch. (It's also significantly less than PS4 Pro versus Xbox One X.) This is why I wouldn't be surprised at all if some third-party multiplats look and run exactly the same by default on both consoles. (Of course, Microsoft's power advantage will be detectable in others.)

 

[Grayson]

Unless PS5 is on the 7nm+ process it's not going to sustain 2.23 ghz most of the time. Even so, let's say it does, whenever the CPU gets taxed there will be a trade off with the GPU clock. It's not a 10.28 tflop console. That variable frequency is a big deal that's being downplayed because people are getting misled by the max theoretical throughput, the 10.28 number on the spec sheet. Also, a higher clocked GPU (with, again, variable frequency) doesn't provide any benefits over a significantly more powerful but lower clocked GPU, especially one with a sustained / locked clock rate. Not even sure where that one came from; someone above was actually talking about more complex geometry due to it, lol. There's a lot of misinformation in this thread.

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Did you even watch the presentation?

 

[NXGamer]

Hey NXgamer, thanks for responding, and apologies if I misinterpreted your video in some ways.

Also, thanks for clarifying the OS memory theory you have. it would be amazing if Sony pulls that off, as giving even more memory to the game could definitely have big visual impact.

With regards to GPU, I didn't mean to suggest that framerate is solely GPU bound, of course it's not, I was mostly remarking on the raw GPU power in the machine. Games that are heavily CPU-bound could perhaps still bottleneck framerate at times, but there is more than enough muscle in both machines to push a steady 60fps, so long as devs aren't doing extremely ambitious things with the CPU. I don't see storage being much of a bottleneck on either system, especially with dev optimization.

I think what I mostly take issue with in you video is the suggestion that 3rd party developers will likely only use the extra power to boost resolution, as that's not what we saw with the X1X. Considering the Xbox's close ties to PC devs, I would assume the majority of 3rd party will have a wide range of GPU features they could tweak, that would improve on the series X, just like we saw tome and time again on X1X vs PS4 Pro or PS4 vs X1S

For example:
- Ray Tracing, lighting, shadows
- Post processing
- framerate
- Geometric complexity
- rendering distance

It will be a balancing act, but one where the Series X will certainly outperform the PS5 as to what it can actually render on-screen at once.

If Sony can free up more Vram for games though, that could certainly let them add texture/shader detail (which could still have GPU impact) to the assets per-scene, and make PS5 compare much more favorably. There are certainly numerous ways devs can and will also utilize the extra GPU power.

To be fair, I also didn't quite understand what you were trying to insinuate with regards to the X1X utilizing resolution scaling to improve framerate, and how that relates to making a difference in GPU power less...meaningful? (Not sure if that's the point you were trying to make).

For example, the graphical difference between an X1X, and a PC with a more powerful GPU running Gears 5, even though both use dynamic res and image reconstruction simultaniously, there is still a quite noticable visual quality difference, especially when settings are tweaked.

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Thanks for the detailed and constructive reply, always good.

So re the X improvements over just resolution, yes, but much of this came from the fact it had a significat Memory increase
(3.5GB ~63% and ~85% greater bandwidth)
This gave developers a much great scope to play with above just the Tflop increase of almost the same gap as PS5 - XSX of 1.8Tflops.
Enabling us to enjoy greater texture quality, higher LoD, better performance and increase effects, I said all this before the console launched as it was a significant boost over the Pro.

The SSD is not just for storage, it suppliments the RAM and enables game choices to be open, higher density (helped by the Mesh Shaders which help improve detail and reduce bandwidth etc. Using this it will enable (as can the XSX) a shift in game design and streaming to reduce pop in, Mip Map chain delayed loads, stutter and all those other things we see often in the current gen, the CPU will greatly enpower teams to make bigger and bolder choices alongside performance as you say.

The piece on Scaling was to demonstrate that a ~18-20% gap in GPU performance can be mitigated (all other effects and throughput being equal) by turning on Dynamic scaling for the PS5 by 10% per axis and leave the XSX at native 4K this is where teams can make the easiest choices to use the power and not add a great deal to the development. 1st party will have the choice to make more use of that and the ray tracing functions, which again the XSX should be slightly better at but this will likely be an even smaller gap, BUT I need to stress this is just talk now and we will have to wait for actual games and more info as this is going into much speculation as was my comment on the SSD Ram use, just thoughts.

Thanks

 

[mordecaii83]

Devs will choose whether they want full Power to gpu or full Power to CPU where one or the other underclocks below the listed spec. So a game to game Basis. I imagine most cross gen games will choose to prefer higher clocked gpu Mode as they will be gpu bound even if the Zen cores are underclocked. Zen just runs around the Jag that most cross gen games are not going to worry about CPU time, especially 30 fps games.

That is how it works.

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Hi Dictator, can you explain why Cerny said both CPU and GPU would run at max speed most of the time? I quote "We expect the GPU to spend most of its time at or close to 2.23GHZ", and when talking about the CPU "In fact it spends most of its time at 3.5GHz". How can they both spend most of their time at max speeds if you have to choose which one is at max speed?

Also, I noticed when SmartShift was talked about, it was only for sending unused power from the CPU to the GPU, not the other way around. They don't mention adjusting clock speeds at all when talking about SmartShift, they specify "We send any unused power from the CPU to the GPU so it can squeeze out a few more pixels".

So whenever they talk about downclocking, they 100% reference power and workload, they never mention any sort of balancing act between the CPU/GPU but base it 100% off the workload on each chip and total overall power usage. If power usage/workload requires one or both chips to clock down they will, but otherwise it seems as if they will both run max clock speed.

Unless PS5 is on the 7nm+ process it's not going to sustain 2.23 ghz most of the time. Even so, let's say it does, whenever the CPU gets taxed there will be a trade off with the GPU clock. It's not a 10.28 tflop console. That variable frequency is a big deal that's being downplayed because people are getting misled by the max theoretical throughput, the 10.28 number on the spec sheet. Also, a higher clocked GPU (with, again, variable frequency) doesn't provide any benefits over a significantly more powerful but lower clocked GPU, especially one with a sustained / locked clock rate. Not even sure where that one came from; someone above was actually talking about more complex geometry due to it, lol. There's a lot of misinformation in this thread.

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I think you should educate yourself, higher GPU speeds absolutely have advantages and Cerny himself said both chips would spend "most of their time" at max speeds.

 

[Pheonix]

Unless PS5 is on the 7nm+ process it's not going to sustain 2.23 ghz most of the time. Even so, let's say it does, whenever the CPU gets taxed there will be a trade off with the GPU clock. It's not a 10.28 tflop console. That variable frequency is a big deal that's being downplayed because people are getting misled by the max theoretical throughput, the 10.28 number on the spec sheet. Also, a higher clocked GPU (with, again, variable frequency) doesn't provide any benefits over a significantly more powerful but lower clocked GPU, especially one with a sustained / locked clock rate. Not even sure where that one came from; someone above was actually talking about more complex geometry due to it, lol. There's a lot of misinformation in this thread.

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Funny you talk about misinformation....

 

[RedSeim]

Was thinking about upgrading from a 1080 to a 2080 card. Thanks to neogaf i will buy a ssd disk instead

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I think that we all know that a SSD wouldn't increase gaming performance of a PC, except for loading times. No one is saying that.

The thing is that consoles are not PCs. If you build a console and its games around the idea of squeeze out all its potential, then yes, SSD will help increase the performance of the system.

There are people not intelligent enough to get it. Don't worry. I forgive you. Nobody's perfect.