AMD Designing Next-Gen Playstation's GPU
polycounter lvl 10
http://www.techpowerup.com/161172/AMD-Designing-Next-Gen-Playstation-s-GPU.html
to soon! to soon! to commit to hardware?
I actually hope that graphics commitment is stalled long enough for Maxwell levels of power. ( shadows, bones, muscle systems, micro-polygon tessellation etc... )
But since that has been puhed from 2013 to 2014 it seems doubtful. Kepler-era tech just doesn't seem to have enough distance for true levels of freedom.
to soon! to soon! to commit to hardware?
I actually hope that graphics commitment is stalled long enough for Maxwell levels of power. ( shadows, bones, muscle systems, micro-polygon tessellation etc... )
But since that has been puhed from 2013 to 2014 it seems doubtful. Kepler-era tech just doesn't seem to have enough distance for true levels of freedom.
Replies
It'll be some hardware we're already used to, and ATI has always been consistently cheaper.
ATI really has gotten itself a hold of the console market though.
I kid, I kid, I know they will be shit.
I am a little bit tired of all the "OMGAH MOER GIGAFLOPSSSS!" mentality everybody is going for. Whats the point in my 720 beinn able to crunch 10x more polygons if my characters all animate just as poorly as they do now? Whats the use in more memory if the world is still this static hull I cant really interact with?
I'm sure pretty soon we will be approaching insane levels of detail where I wont be able to tell if something is realtime or not. I mean, the recent SSSS demo was insane for example, and yes, you CAN do that level of detail for the world (if you had a billion people working on it, sure), but the thing is what use is all that detail if I'm still stuck with clunky physics, botched walk cycles (Mass Effect I'm looking at you) and zero interaction?
Just becuase I'm playing a first person game, why does my gun on the screen have to be the ONLY indication of me being there? Why can I not pick up a tin can from the ground, peel the label off, and throw it at pigeons? If I throw a chair through a window, why can I not pick up the glass shards?
Its true that a lot of things are not present BECAUSE its a game... But the above are extreme examples. A better one? why the FUCK am I playing COD 17 and yet I still can't jump over a one foot tall curb?
More power shouldn't just mean more insane graphics... Improve everything else FIRST, then move onto that.
Big freaking deal.
http://www.techradar.com/news/gaming/consoles/super-powerful-xbox-720-chip-enters-production-1057384
and WIIU goes AMD as well
http://www.joystiq.com/2011/06/14/wii-u-graphics-chip-outed-as-last-gen-radeon-which-is-still-pre/
I would be just happy if every new game just reflected yer talents and did not look like shit.
But everything looks like shit to me lately.
Witch is confounding cuz I seem to remember u guys as being ninja crazy talented?
Does the crate modeler have the final say on all final renders?
More real time lighting please, with more time spent correctly lighting and shaowing the world.
Haha :P, both the 360 and wii utilized hardware from ATI, I think it's easier for them to avoid issues when they only have one spec to work with
More hardware means more freedom to implement new systems that previously weren't feasible, it's up to developers to actually make use of that though.
Now this is a whole other can of worms, roguelikes excel at this kind of interaction though.
They never were powerful, PS2 was powerful, but only because PC's where a 'nerd' thing for many, unlike now, where a simple google search will tell you how to make one from an obsidian ingot, running on the enterprise.
If you don't want your games to look crap, make a PC version, simple as that. If you're afraid of piracy, wait till consoles have more access to internet hub like structures, you'll have P2P and Torrents on consoles in no time.
The average computer when the ps2 was released was already quite a few times more powerful than it, so it's pretty much the same.
Games look just fine even if the hardware is a bit behind the times, it's all about the artwork artists can produce.
He has a good point though, if we're talking technical progress in games the golden era was always when the pc market was dominant, now it's pretty flat with the occational large spike when a new console is released.
As a dev I'm more concerned about the CPU and memory of the system rather than the GPU performance. There needs to be a far better CPU (quad core would rock my world) and at the very least, 1GB of ram (2 would be better!).
because a lot of games are targeted at console first, it is really restricting, the PC market, since were stuck with what works on a console instead of games that can take advantage of the extra memory, cpu and gpu power of a PC.
also a lot of things that go into make goes look good on consoles is just tricks, like really low FOV to cut down on what needs to be rendered, and that consoles are generally only rendering at 30fps, and some games only at 720p.
Have you seen Battlefield 3 on the XBox? Not even going to address Rage...
6 times just ain't enough to provide lastability. I also think their choice of card is a big mistake. But... they still have bazillions of die hard LIVE users so I think they'll be fine. Looking forward more to what the PS4 ends up being now... I think this coming generation really needs to introduced tons of simmed hair and cloth to seem impressive.
I think there sales will be dissapointing whatever the specs though. They'll be released in a massive economic downturn.
Have you ever owned a console before? Never has there ever been a console that rivaled the home PC in terms of GFX and CPU power. Six times more power would put it easily on part with today's PC GPU's, which lets me honest, do more than enough. Will that run Crysis 12 in 9yrs? No. But bear in mind, those consoles came out about 7yrs ago. How many 7yr old PC's are running modern games?.. That's what I thought. Consoles will always be behind the bleeding edge of PC hardware, but that's the nature of the beast. A PC can be upgraded, a console cannot. It's a single hardware configuration that developers can target and exploit and that's kinda the point.
Most of these modern games are made and work on 7 year old consoles where my 7800 gtx cries like a bitch when I try to throw Bioshock at it. Consoles did have a bleeding edge. Legs.
the nvidia gpu in production during development was at best the 6800 gtx, the same same gpu Tim Sweeney was using to sell the first glimpses of unreal engine 3 can not run Bulletstorm of Arkham Asylum or the majority of console offerings.
It is remembering wot hardware was available at that time that makes me very nervous now.
But with Maxwell and Kepler being touted as CPU independent ( tech fer non-cpu bound happiness ) and Maxwell numbers being sold as 20x fermi.
I am hoping the tweaks the consoles get will match that kind of freedom.
6x the openworld or 6x the rts blitzreigs? vs 20x sounds like a huge difference and a playground that sounds more enjoyable to tinker with for the next 7 years. Considering that tech IS in development right now is really exciting. Certainly the pipeline I want to develop for. Seems like there are a lot of people trying to throw large wads of money into my pockets lately. To make their social and mobile get rich quick dreams come true. Just when things might have a chance of becoming really fun! I am willing to bet I only have 10 good years left in my old bones and would rather work for free just to work on really fun. After so many years sometimes money has a way of feeling like it owns u. At which point there doesn't seem like any polite way of saying " I do not want to work on yer fucking social game! go fuck u and yer iPhone!"
If yer 560 ti is not usless with the next gen of consoles I will probably jump off the south congress bridge!
The big issue with much of the PS3/360 isn't the power. It's mediocre art & art direction.
Games are NOT going to ALL start looking better than Uncharted 3 or Gears of War just because of Additional Power.
More GPU power won't fix bad anatomy, or shoddy spec maps.
That's entirely true, but there are some solid examples of console counterparts that are struggling technically, like battlefield 3, and the fact that nearly every console release runs at 30fp 720p when they could flow beautifully at 60fps and at a true 1080p resolutiuon.
And if you tell me that's not important I'll banish you back to the 480i age.
Dam, and all this time I was under the illusion that talent would no longer be a factor.
xcuse me, but pretty much every console was technically better than PC at its release date.
except PC technology run never ends, while with consoles you see new products only once in three or four years.
FF VII, shenmue, FFX, silent hill 2/3, ninja gaiden (or even dead or alive 2/3 for that matter) were kicking PC games asses, even despite making assets for consoles was a bitch compared to PC.
there would be no way you'll make a shadow of colossus tier game on a 1999 years PC hardware.
with this gen, uncharted looks better than roughly about 95 % of PC games (mostly due to sony's backing resources, but still)
I don't get the whole "bring true HD in!11one" shouting here - who really cares about tech power, if ps3/360 resources are splurge, yet most games looks like overprocessed glorified shit.
I'm also really curious what will be a game industry employers result of technology boost - is it gonna be more overtime, less per-hour pay, higher outsource percentage?
Someone will have to fill the whole 1920 HD space with stuff, bloom and fancy shaders can only do that much.
xcuse me, but this is just silly and uninformed, look up facts and the hardware of the times before you make such claims.
It would've been, most ports from pc to to ps2 during that time would have to be scaled back and split up, take something like deus ex where the levels had to be split up due to memory constraints on the ps2 versus the pc, and that game was released on pc the same time as the ps2 came out.
The pc hardware was always considerably more powerful and could pack a near massive amount of ram if they wished to and a harddrive to stream content from long before it became standard in consoles, but with consoles people knew exactly what hardware limits they were working with.
Shadow of the colossus is entirely smoke and mirrors, much like god of war.
Again, fantastic artworks and a ton of smart tricks.
But eld is also right, certain games like BF3 just don't work on consoles from a technical standpoint.
The new GPU I would guess is roughly the same as a GTX560 is today. That's enough power to create really outstanding worlds on consoles. As long as the CPU and system memory are bumped up, I really don't see a problem with it. I had the same graphics card for almost 5yrs and didn't have to upgrade until BFIII came out (it just couldn't handle that on more than low settings). But it handled all my other games great. I think 6x more power than the current gen is going to be plenty. As artists we just need to learn to make better, smarter art.
so why is everyone SO hyped for hardware, if it's still about artwork and smart development?
I don't think switching to new hardware will be cheaper than pushing limits of current offerings, especially with consoles; while a thousand out of school youths won't replace a good art director and lead artists.
I'm still lolling at "6 TIMES MORE PVR THAN 360" a bit, especially since marketing words never were a big thing in gamedev realm.
ps3's been looking much more exciting a year before it's release, and than cost-cutting suddenly appears.
really... were already using thepower these machines have very effeciently...all thats left is for thousands of man hours to eeek out the last few drops... personally some extra welly would seriously help push games forward without spending half the dev time wringing everylast drip out of aging machinary.
also good lighting tech in this generation is extremely limiting due to memory constraints fully dynamic lighting engines allows way more freedom in development, in terms of scope and speed of itteration. i cant wait for this........
this would be great indeed.
Developers simply don't have the time or money to do that.
Even when I see DX11 capabilities, and from the offset, it hardly looks better than what current gen games are offering. More polygons? Sure, but lack of polygons is hardly considered a BIG visual issues.
For every Battlefield 3, I could likely list 200 games that never really pushed the graphical capabilities to its fullest. It's also not really like Battlefield was much of a systems seller to necessitate creating a brand new console for.
But as with tech, it's always moving forward, regardless of whether any of us think it's smart or not.
Somewhere being properly used, sloppy porting is no excuse for anything.
Take 1999, when the good old athlon came out, these were powerful processors and while multicpu wasn't common, it was available as well, somewhere in the 500-1000mhz range of that time.
Memory was abundant if you wanted it to be, 128-512 mb of ram wasn't too crazy in an average gaming computer in 98, where as the 2000's ps2 sported 32mb.
the geforce256 had come out 99 too, this one packed 32mb vram, the ps2 one had a few megabytes at most, this is the usual console vs pc trend, people had the luxury to run their games at HD resolutions where as the ps2 would struggle at the regular 30 fps 480p resolution.
harddrives in pc's as I mentioned had been standard for years and not even this generation of consoles is it standard, streaming have always been limited.
GTA3 is a sandbox camera everywhere kind of game, where it gives you freedom it'll cut down in graphics, god of war for example features a very driven camera where no polygon wasted since the camera will never see it.
For the same reason we were hyped to finally work with shaders and normalmapping.
The next console generation is this current pc generation, we're already working with the tech, and everyone loves it, it's not as alien as people make it out to be, the total war series has already for some time been technically ahead of console specs, but that did not stop them.
We can squeeze in more details in environments, we might have a chance to loosen up on the optimizations for a bit, we can play around with more expensive shaders.
Oh and again, 1080p and smooth 60+ framerates, we're still barely HD in an age where we have run HD games on pc's since the early 90's.
Somewhere being properly used, sloppy porting is no excuse for anything.
Take 1999, when the good old athlon came out, these were powerful processors and while multicpu wasn't common, it was available as well, somewhere in the 500-1000mhz range of that time.
Memory was abundant if you wanted it to be, 128-512 mb of ram wasn't too crazy in an average gaming computer in 98, where as the 2000's ps2 sported 32mb.
the geforce256 had come out 99 too, this one packed 32mb vram, the ps2 one had a few megabytes at most, this is the usual console vs pc trend, people had the luxury to run their games at HD resolutions where as the ps2 would struggle at the regular 30 fps 480p resolution.
harddrives in pc's as I mentioned had been standard for years and not even this generation of consoles is it standard, streaming have always been limited.
GTA3 is a sandbox camera everywhere kind of game, where it gives you freedom it'll cut down in graphics, god of war for example features a very driven camera where no polygon wasted since the camera will never see it.
For the same reason we were hyped to finally work with shaders and normalmapping.
The next console generation is this current pc generation, we're already working with the tech, and everyone loves it, it's not as alien as people make it out to be, the total war series has already for some time been technically ahead of console specs, but that did not stop them.
We can squeeze in more details in environments, we might have a chance to loosen up on the optimizations for a bit, we can play around with more expensive shaders.
Oh and again, 1080p and smooth 60+ framerates, we're still barely HD in an age where we have run HD games on pc's since the mid 90's.
Most consumers and even most artists will only realize a tiny bit of what a new version and update to the shader capabilities will actually do, and in the ends it's a fantastic tool that is first realized by the people using it.
Nearly every game will max the hardware budget, what they do with it is different in every case though, needless to say though we have a very visisble roof on the current consoles and a towering new one on the actual tech we have advanced to this day and age.
shadow of colossus had free-roaming camera for the most time.
PS2 videocard was capable of outputting HD720 res stuff -
Video output resolution: variable from 256
It's not about capability, they could render three-digit framerates if they really wanted to, but to get the fidelity they wanted with the amount of freedom in camera motion they'd have to settle with 30fps, while some other games would pull tricks and be smart about it, those would reach 60fps.
Pc harddrives have been consistently cheaper than their console counterpart, but regardless; you'd end up with a smaller drive than you would've now, but that was still fast and big enough for intended purposes and game streaming, every pc had one.
In empty terrains, they were smart with what they did, and you'll notice in the temple how they're just nearly over the edge of going too far with the hardware, it wasn't a god of war in terms of detail as much as it was a piece of artwork in the style.
http://i21.photobucket.com/albums/b278/akadewboy/Valkyrie%20Profile/ValkyrieProfile216_9720p.jpg
A fair few...
Actually the graphics chip in the 360 was actually a pretty damn good card when the 360 was released, everybody was pretty surprised how good a card actually, which brings me to your next point...
... that's what people's problems is. Consoles SHOULD last that long these days; MS and SONY have been saying all along this generation that that would be their intention from now on. Consoles should last longer than fresh PC builds.
Uh huh. And somehow thats... not what I've been saying? The 360's graphics chipset was bloody impressive when it was released, and it's struggling after only 7 years. Now, this new Xbox does not look like it will be as impressive as even the 360 was at the time, so how long you figure it'll last, or multiplatform games will look good on it? 6 times just ain't enough. That Samaritan demo Epic showed required 10 times to processing power of a 360.
Of course, this is pure speculation on all our parts. Both consoles could be officially revealed to be processing monsters.