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Verge: Lockhart has 7.5GB of usable RAM, the same CPU speed as Series X, about 4 teraflops of GPU performance. [Up: TW - Won't hold back Next-gen]

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Hey Please

Hey Please

Avenger
Oct 31, 2017
22,824
Not America
DukeNukum said:
What do the console warriors say to this?
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  • CPU likely on par with XSX, ergo 3.8 GHz w/o hyper-threading and 3.6 GHz SMT- So a bonus of between ~300 MHz for BC and cross gen titles and ~100MHz for next gen title
  • This confirms that the GPU is based on RDNA2 tech and very likely a scaled down ver. of XSX GPU - less CUs, lower frequency, lower power consumption and I will be marveling at the engineering ingenuity if and how intensely RT functionalities are exploited during gameplay
  • Okay...? That ideology is antithetical to console development paradigm and is superfluous to what Lockhart has to offer. Sounds like an insecure resetera poster added that last point.
Somehow, I am now more interested in Lockhart than XSX.
 
Gamer @ Heart

Gamer @ Heart

Member
Oct 26, 2017
9,785
SkyMasterson said:
That's great and all, but aren't all first party games playable on Xbox One as well? Wouldn't that hamper next gen games?
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They've only committed to first party games released the first year of the consoles life being on XBO. Which makes sense since everything they make now has a PC version too. I doubt it will amount to more than 2 big games and a handful of smaller stuff at most considering their output. It's too soon for all their studio aquistions the past 1.5 years to be out with anything
 
Betelgeuse

Betelgeuse

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Nov 2, 2017
2,941
James Sawyer Ford said:
Is Lockhart CPU faster than PS5 after taking into account ancillary hardware on the PS5 for I/O which offloads items off the CPU? There's a lot of unknowns at this point to make universal claims. Regardless, the major difference is going to be on the memory & GPU, not the CPU. It's good that things like CPU and SSD are mostly the same, but that doesn't mean compromises won't be made.
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Wondering the same thing. My understanding is that MS' approach does task the CPU with some I/O operations that are offloaded to the I/O complex in PS5, although they worked diligently to reduce this workload to only a small slice of one core. And, at least last generation, Xbox has typically had a more complex OS (I think?).

Given these factors, I'm wondering if there's really any tangible CPU difference. Just comparing clock frequencies with SMT on (3.6 GHz v. 3.5 GHz) doesn't suggest a significant difference.

Considering the above I'm expecting XSX/XSS to be very similar to PS5 in terms of real-world CPU performance.
 
TheDarkKnight

TheDarkKnight

Member
Oct 25, 2017
7,651
CloseTalker said:
Seeing official specs won't suddenly educate the 90% of people here who don't know what those specs mean.
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But allows a starting point to actually see technical analysis.

What I see is a person that posts "inside info" of a product still not officially announced. That has had different "revised" updates of the specs just defend a product that MS doesn't even acknowledge exist.

Like he could be right. But this comes off super premature.
 
James Sawyer Ford

James Sawyer Ford

Banned
Feb 23, 2019
1,426
Betelgeuse said:
Wondering the same thing. My understanding is that MS' approach does task the CPU with some I/O operations that are offloaded to the I/O complex in PS5, although they worked diligently to reduce this workload to only a small slice of one core. And, at least last generation, Xbox has typically had a more complex OS (I think?).

Given these factors, I'm wondering if there's really any tangible CPU difference. Even the clock frequencies with SMT on (3.6 GHz v. 3.5 GHz) isn't very significant.

Considering the above I'm expecting XSX/XSS to be very similar to PS5 CPU-wise.
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Agreed. CPU differences aren't going to be a major factor/difference, which is good because roughly the same level of CPU power is needed for third party games (AI, physics, etc).
 
Iso

Iso

Member
Oct 25, 2017
1,189
Samanosuke Akechi said:
Wait, lockhart cpu is faster than PS5? Im not very technical but to me that makes me wonder how it's supposed to the cheap offering.
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The APU is rumored to be ~half the size of the XSX, while also having less RAM and and no disc drive. Smaller APU requires a smaller PSU, less cooling, and allows the size of the box itself to smaller as well. The cost savings there + a little more since like the PS5DE, Microsoft will get a cut of all game sales.

Personally expecting Lockhart to be $200 less than w/e the XSX ends up at.
 
Th3hoopman

Th3hoopman

Member
Apr 23, 2020
38
twistedbasis said:
It's not about tech and it's not about a whether this is a good or bad business decision for some large corporation (who even cares about that).

It's about an overworked studio needing to spend time on this thing. They have PS5, XSX, and various cloud techs to worry about in addition to lockhart now.

On top of that, in places I've worked and continue to work, do you think engineers and artists are excited to work on lockhart level hardware? News flash, they are not. You can moan all you want and you can lie to yourself all you want but the truth is they would not be excited. Being assigned to investigate an issue on lockhart will most definitely be met with a heavy sigh.

So what do you get when the worker bees are overworked, under time pressure, and not very excited to work on something? You get subpar output and you take time and energy away from the thing that they do enjoy working on and should be working on. It's a bad situation for everyone. Lockhart is not a free device to target by a long stretch and that non free cost is now a burden for everyone.

Lockhart is a time and people distraction. Less time will be devoted elsewhere. The journalist should ask some anonymous workers about lockhart. Does lockhart make things easier or harder for you? Do you enjoy working on it?
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This argument makes no sense to me. Why would the Series S be some sort of unprecedented level of added pressure on devs? I've never heard of a PC dev complaining that they have to scale a game across dozens hardware spec combinations. In this case we're talking about one additional spec with no guesswork involved. Even in the case of this generation I have not heard of any dev complaining that they have to develop for base console models instead of the PS4 Pro or Xbox One X. Every developer already deals with the issue you outlined above.
 
wwm0nkey

wwm0nkey

Member
Oct 25, 2017
15,666
Evildeadhead said:
You couldn't play PGR3 on an Xbox and you couldn't play Forza 5 on a 360 they're the reasons I bought the new console.
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What I am saying is even though there are exclusives, they /usually/ started as current gen except in a few cases, you wont see most games take full advantage of hardware till year 2. And even then you always develop for high end and then scale down, never the otherway.
 
Muppet of a Man

Muppet of a Man

Member
Oct 27, 2017
7,742
Betelgeuse said:
Wondering the same thing. My understanding is that MS' approach does task the CPU with some I/O operations that are offloaded to the I/O complex in PS5, although they worked diligently to reduce this workload to only a small slice of one core. And, at least last generation, Xbox has typically had a more complex OS (I think?).

Given these factors, I'm wondering if there's really any tangible CPU difference. Just comparing clock frequencies with SMT on (3.6 GHz v. 3.5 GHz) doesn't suggest a significant difference.

Considering the above I'm expecting XSX/XSS to be very similar to PS5 in terms of real-world CPU performance.
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There is effectively no difference (or very marginal if any).
 
rebelcrusader

rebelcrusader

Banned
Oct 25, 2017
1,833
Lant_War said:
I find it weird that people keep bringing PC gaming up in these conversations. If I'm making a game that needs a better GPU than a 970, I just list it in the minimum requirements and that's it, I'm not forced to support it if I want to release the game on the platform. In this case, if somebody with a 970 buys the game and it's unplayable, it's their own fault.

Nobody's arguing that Lockhart is gonna hold every single game back. But the biggest ones will have a lower baseline to target than they'd have to otherwise.
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lol but a 970 is much less powerful than Lockhart and there isn't a modern game that won't support it for the next few years
 
AegonSnake

AegonSnake

Banned
Oct 25, 2017
9,566
Shpeshal Ed said:
Does the 970 hold back PC Gaming?

Asking for a friend
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just to play devils advocate (i no longer believe lockhart would hold back next gen) but 970 is at least twice as powerful as the ps4 gpu and 3x more powerful than the x1 gpu.

a better comparison would be looking at alast gen card from 2007. roughly 3x the number of tflops as the x1x or around 400 gflops. would that gpu have held back current gen? unlike pc gaming where devs can just min spec u out of a game, they cant do that for a console that they are forced to support.

or put it another way, would making the wii u the base console have held back current gen?
 
Eeyore

Eeyore

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Dec 13, 2019
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No_Style said:
I want to know how third parties treat Lockhart as the years progress. Hopefully things just work at a lower resolution and that will be that.
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Based on how some games have run on the base consoles at the end of this generation (cough Control cough), it'll be interesting.
 
PianoBlack

PianoBlack

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May 24, 2018
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James Sawyer Ford said:
The fact that developers have been making games for various hardware ranges doesn't negate the fact that by targetting fixed hardware you can do a lot more. Just look at what some devs have been able to put out on the PS4 exclusively. TLOU2 is running on 1.84 TFlop hardware, which is absolutely crazy. I don't think there's a single game running on an approximately 1.84 TF PC Graphics Card that can come close to comparing.
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Uh, right. So now imagine that instead of a 1.84 TF PS4 running the game at 1080p and a 4TF PS4 Pro running it at 4K/1440p (or whatever, I haven't seen how TLOU2 runs on Pro), console devs could optimize the 1080 version for a 4TF machine with a ridiculous CPU and SSD upgrade and another 2.5 GB of RAM to play with. Like it's hard for me to imagine how insane that would even look.

Or think of it this way... The difference between the MS and Sony strategy is that Sony is discontinuing their 1080p console line, while MS is not. That's all.
 
Arkham

Arkham

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Nov 12, 2017
322
DukeNukum said:
What do the console warriors say to this?
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Not a warrior here, but that's approaching Greenberg territory. "You do know that Lockhart outputs 4K, right?" It comes across as overly defensive, seemingly targeting sentiments that needn't even be acknowledged. Pretty pointless to try to make a point about it.
 
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DukeBlueBall

DukeBlueBall

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Oct 27, 2017
9,059
Seattle, WA
AegonSnake said:
a better comparison would be looking at alast gen card from 2007. roughly 3x the number of tflops as the x1x or around 400 gflops. would that gpu have held back current gen? unlike pc gaming where devs can just min spec u out of a game, they cant do that for a console that they are forced to support.
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Xbox One launched as 25% of what the top of the line AMD GPU (7970) was in 2013. 400gigaflops is less than 10% of a AMD 7970.
So for your analogy to hold, the top of the line AMD GPU needs to be at least 40TF. There will be no 40TF GPU for years.
So in practice Lockhart is this gen's Xbox One. Xsx is like a 3-4TF console in 2013. If you think about it, a 4TF RDNA2 GPU over XB1 is as big if not a bigger jump than the XB1 GPU over a 360.
A 6TF machine would be this gen's PS5.

MS and Sony went pretty conservative with their processors in 2013.
 
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flipswitch

flipswitch

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Oct 25, 2017
3,995
What about 7.5GB of usable ram on Lockhart compared to 13.5 on Series X? Will developers be coding for 7.5GB or Series X?

Typical scenario: 1080p game on Lockhart. 2.5GB video, 4-5GB system ram.

Series X. 4K ?
 
James Sawyer Ford

James Sawyer Ford

Banned
Feb 23, 2019
1,426
PianoBlack said:
Uh, right. So now imagine that instead of a 1.84 TF PS4 running the game at 1080p and a 4TF PS4 Pro running it at 4K/1440p (or whatever, I haven't seen how TLOU2 runs on Pro), console devs could optimize the 1080 version for a 4TF machine with a ridiculous CPU and SSD upgrade and another 2.5 GB of RAM to play with. Like it's hard for me to imagine how insane that would even look.

Or think of it this way... The difference between the MS and Sony strategy is that Sony is discontinuing their 1080p console line, while MS is not. That's all.
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By enforcing a 1080p console, you basically ensure that the mandate for the high end console is near 4K.

I'm not a fan of this approach. I'd rather developers have one platform they can focus on at lower resolutions to push extreme visuals.

Additionally, while GPU scales fairly well, the main issue that could impact game design more is less memory. Sure, some of the memory will be for assets (most), but it could limit game design.
 
PianoBlack

PianoBlack

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May 24, 2018
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James Sawyer Ford said:
By enforcing a 1080p console, you basically ensure that the mandate for the high end console is near 4K.

I'm not a fan of this approach. I'd rather developers have one platform they can focus on at lower resolutions to push extreme visuals.
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Sure, but that's not gonna happen given we already see Sony pushing 4k across the board.

Like we all could have decided the base consoles should have targeted 540p this gen and the Pro/X could have gone bonkers at 1080 but... Consumers want shiny 4K for their shiny 4K TVs. It is what is it.
 
AegonSnake

AegonSnake

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Oct 25, 2017
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James Sawyer Ford said:
Is Lockhart CPU faster than PS5 after taking into account ancillary hardware on the PS5 for I/O which offloads items off the CPU? There's a lot of unknowns at this point to make universal claims. Regardless, the major difference is going to be on the memory & GPU, not the CPU. It's good that things like CPU and SSD are mostly the same, but that doesn't mean compromises won't be made.
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MS has said that their i/o work only takes up one tenth of a zen 2 core, the rest is handled by dedicated hardware in the i/o block and their super sampler API which is part of their velocity architecture. 1/10th of a zen 2 core isnt much.

They also have a dedicated 3d audio chip. While it might not be as extensive as the ps5 audio chip, it will not take resources from the cpu.
 
Drunkensamurai

Drunkensamurai

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May 12, 2020
1,587
James Sawyer Ford said:
By enforcing a 1080p console, you basically ensure that the mandate for the high end console is near 4K.

I'm not a fan of this approach. I'd rather developers have one platform they can focus on at lower resolutions to push extreme visuals.

Additionally, while GPU scales fairly well, the main issue that could impact game design more is less memory. Sure, some of the memory will be for assets (most), but it could limit game design.
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A lot less work for the Devs. Development times are going to skyrocket this gen.
 

twistedbasis

Member
Jan 10, 2018
159
Th3hoopman said:
This argument makes no sense to me. Why would the Series S be some sort of unprecedented level of added pressure on devs? I've never heard of a PC dev complaining that they have to scale a game across dozens hardware spec combinations. In this case we're talking about one additional spec with no guesswork involved. Even in the case of this generation I have not heard of any dev complaining that they have to develop for base console models instead of the PS4 Pro or Xbox One X. Every developer already deals with the issue you outlined above.
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You probably have. You've heard about the death marches, the massive amounts of overtime required, etc. It's all mixed in there as part of that in some form. I don't care that the status quo is a big thisisfine.gif Sure, throw another sku in there, just some marginal extra work you can squeeze in with everything else, ha haha ha. It is not free to add even a known sku to the mix. It does nothing to reduce the extreme time and cost of game development. It does not help the people who are going to be creating content for this thing. It does not help. Period.

At this point in the game, and the state of the industry, low cost solutions or extra configs aren't what's necessary. There needs to be things done to eliminate costs, not add to it regardless of how marginal the cost is.
 
TheRealBigRich

TheRealBigRich

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Oct 29, 2017
811
James Sawyer Ford said:
By enforcing a 1080p console, you basically ensure that the mandate for the high end console is near 4K.

I'm not a fan of this approach. I'd rather developers have one platform they can focus on at lower resolutions to push extreme visuals.

Additionally, while GPU scales fairly well, the main issue that could impact game design more is less memory. Sure, some of the memory will be for assets (most), but it could limit game design.
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I can understand this I'm just so curious how it will play out . Like let's say dev does so much in a game that the series X highest res is 1080p . What res would it be on Lockhart?
 
James Sawyer Ford

James Sawyer Ford

Banned
Feb 23, 2019
1,426
PianoBlack said:
Sure, but that's not gonna happen given we already see Sony pushing 4k across the board.

Like we all could have decided the base consoles should have targeted 540p this gen and the Pro/X could have gone bonkers at 1080 but... Consumers want shiny 4K for their shiny 4K TVs. It is what is it.
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Sony, so far, has pushed 4K across the board but who knows what their other studios will do. I suspect as the generation goes on, and devs come to grips with utilizing new techniques (such as nanite), we will see 1440P like the UE5 demo showed. There's always pressure for games to look better and better. TLOU2 is probably the best looking game this gen I've played and runs at 1440P.

AegonSnake said:
MS has said that their i/o work only takes up one tenth of a zen 2 core, the rest is handled by dedicated hardware in the i/o block and their super sampler API which is part of their velocity architecture. 1/10th of a zen 2 core isnt much.

They also have a dedicated 3d audio chip. While it might not be as extensive as the ps5 audio chip, it will not take resources from the cpu.
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Could be enough to where PS5's CPU is less taxed in reality, even if it's clocked lower. Either way, it's not a huge difference. It's good that Lockhart is going to be roughly the same.

TheRealBigRich said:
I can understand this I'm just so curious how it will play out . Like let's say dev does so much in a game that the series X highest res is 1080p . What res would it be on Lockhart?
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It would have to be really low with great scaling techniques, but I don't think devs would risk it at even 1440P for the XSX because it would mean a very low resolution on Lockhart. I think they're going to want to maintain 1080p for Lockhart. MAYBE we could see them going as low as 900p but I think that's the limit.
 

Merc

Member
Jun 10, 2018
1,260
How much of a price difference can this be to XSX? Maybe it's just me but if it's like a $250-300 difference, I think most folks would just save for the more powerful console. Unless Lockhart is going to be super cheap.. The price points just seem really off. XSX at 499 and Lockhart at $199? If Lockhart is $299, and XSX $499 then wouldn't you just save for the XSX?
 
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