PS4 graphics to be PowerVR Series 6 ?

On Nov 25, 12:56*pm, Benjamin Gawert wrote:
* parallax-scroll:

The choice? The
PowerVR Series 6 by Imagination Technologies that utilizes a
technology known as "TBDR," which is "3-5 times better than a
competitive level nVidia/ATI Graphics card." Evidently, Sega used TBDR
to help power the old Sega Dreamcast and if you remember, that console
was definitely ahead of its time in the visual department.

Yes, at a time when the 3Dfx Voodoo2 was a top-of-the line 3D graphics
card for PCs. However, it is not 1998 any more, and while AMD and Nvidia
invested lots of ressources into advances in the performance and
capabilities of their GPUs, the PowerVR today is merely a low-power GPU
for handheld devices as their "grownup" versions never left the
prototype stage.

Sony would be mad if they choosed PowerVR for the PS4.

But perhaps
the most interesting part about all of this is that Sony will retain
the Cell processor currently in all PS3s; this new piece of advanced
technology from Imagination will work with the Cell.

The PS4 is very unlikely to be Cell based as IBM as stopped all
development for this architecture. Cell is dead.

Wow. I hadn't read that. So much for Blig Merk's constant yabbering
about how great Cell is.

On the other hand, isn't it still possible that they'd use some
current variant of Cell to power their next console? There must have
been developments to the processor since the launch of the PS3 3 years
ago and it would allow them to not have to worry about forcing
developers to learn yet another brand new architecture for the next
generation...

Benjamin

On Nov 26, 3:48*pm, Yousuf Khan wrote:
Jim wrote:
With IBM out x86+Larrabee looks more likely than PoweVR. *Intel can make an
offer Sony can't refuse.

Except that Larrabee isn't proven yet. PS4 can still go to a more
traditional regular PowerPC processor along with a traditional GPU,
making it more like the Xbox360.

I'd love to read comments from the fanboys on BOTH sides of the fences
on this one, haha...

* * * * Yousuf Khan

On Nov 28, 2:11*am, Benjamin Gawert wrote:
* YKhan:

Well, Nintendo used to do fine with cartridges in the olden days.
Perhaps they're going back to the modern equivalent of cartridges,
flash memory thumb drives? Most modern SD flash cards are 8 to 16GB,
meaning that they're already larger than or equal to DVD drives in
capacity, and they are still growing. Blu-Ray disk don't seem like
they offer enough of a cost advantage over flash drives.

A 50GB flash drive still costs many times (magnitudes) more than a 50GB
Bluray disk, so it is highly unlikely that next consoles will use flash
as medium.

Besides that, game publishers clearly aim to move from physical
distribution to electronic distribution, not only because it is cheaper,
but also because it allows them to kill the 2nd hand market (games are
locked to a console/user and can't be sold) and makes other licensing
models (like time-based licensing where you buy playtime) possible.

I'm quite certain there would be a huge backlash from consumers if
they were to take this route. Many people bank on the ability to
resell games once they've finished them.

Further, the network bandwidth required to handle massive downloads of
even games that only take up half a Blu-ray disc won't be here even in
the next decade. The U.S. is by far the most important market so the
video game industry will make sure that anything they choose to do
will be viable in this territory.

Benjamin

On Nov 29, 7:56*pm, YKhan wrote:
On Nov 28, 2:11*am, Benjamin Gawert wrote:

A 50GB flash drive still costs many times (magnitudes) more than a 50GB
Bluray disk, so it is highly unlikely that next consoles will use flash
as medium.

I picked up a 16GB Class 6 (highest speed class) SDHC card for $20
including shipping on Ebay. I'm sure it cost whoever was selling it
much less for him to buy it.

An equally likely scenario is that they purchased them earlier and
were not able to turn them around and so settled for making very
little to no profit just unloading them on eBay.

Besides that, game publishers clearly aim to move from physical
distribution to electronic distribution, not only because it is cheaper,
but also because it allows them to kill the 2nd hand market (games are
locked to a console/user and can't be sold) and makes other licensing
models (like time-based licensing where you buy playtime) possible.

That's entirely possible, and that's the reason they'd want to get rid
of the optical drive. A small flash drive slot would be a much more
cost effective non-permanent storage medium than a disk drive.
Physical distribution isn't going away, just the optical disk physical
distribution. And you can't rely on the Internet to download your
games when you need them.

Optical discs are not going away anytime soon. Maybe for the
generation after next but we're definitely going to have some sort of
optical medium for the coming generation. It's just not cost effective
enough to use anything else right now.

On Nov 30, 1:19 am, Benjamin Gawert wrote:
* YKhan:

I picked up a 16GB Class 6 (highest speed class) SDHC card for $20
including shipping on Ebay. I'm sure it cost whoever was selling it
much less for him to buy it.

See my answer to GMAN for that. 50GB Bluray disks can be produced for
way less than $1 *today*.

That's entirely possible, and that's the reason they'd want to get rid
of the optical drive. A small flash drive slot would be a much more
cost effective non-permanent storage medium than a disk drive.

The flash drive slot indedd is cheaper than a BD drive, but at the end
of the day the cheapest solution is no removable media at all.

Physical distribution isn't going away, just the optical disk physical
distribution. And you can't rely on the Internet to download your
games when you need them.

Sorry, but you must be really naive if you think physical distribution
is not going away in the long term, especially since the publishers more
than once expressed that this is what they are aiming for.

In the long term, of course - long term being the generation after
next *earliest.*

On the PC,
there already is STEAM which in fact is very successful and does
completely rely on the internet to download your games, and this for
several years now (and often enough, the STEAM version means less hazzle
than the version on DVD which requires online activation with limited
activations and other intrusive copy protection schemes).

You can't really compare the markets.

STEAM caters to PC gamers who well before the service came out were
already accustomed to long wait times for the download of large files.
This was nothing new to them *and* they were able to save some money
because some of the cost savings were passed along to them.

Console gamers only just this generation had online services and
gaming (yes, I know there were online games on the Xbox and PS2 but
they were not nearly as popular and widespread) and most people only
download the smaller Arcade games which are relatively quick downloads
even for people with slower DSL connections. It's a HUGE leap to a
25GB download.

Plus, Microsoft and Sony aren't going to pass **** along to the
customers - they'll keep all those savings for themselves and we'll be
paying $60 for a freakin' download. They're not dumb enough to try
that anytime soon.

Sony and MS
are constantly expanding their online stores, and this for a reason.
Digital distribution means that more profit goes to the publisher, the
second hand market can be dried out (by locking game titles to a certain
console), much better control over pricing (single source means no
pricing competition), and cost savings because mass production of media
is not necessary any more. Also, only digital distribution allows new
licensing models like time-based licensing.

If customers had to pay full shelf price for games on STEAM, it would
not have been nearly as successful and we wouldn't even be talking
about it right now.

Sony and MS are expanding their online stores but not taking any real
big chances there. We see some of the older Xbox 360 games available
but how big were those really? Maybe 6GB? 7GB? That's still a BIG
difference from even a 25GB game, let alone a 50GB game.

One thing is for sure, we won't be seeing anything like Metal Gear
Solid 4 in download-only form for at least a couple of generations.

Physical media might not disappear completely, but with the next
consoles we very likely will see that digital distribution plays an
equal role as physical distribution, if not more (Current consoles are
used as test beds for the concept).

Equal role? Unlikely. I'd say the next generation will be the "test
bed" and the generation after that will see digital distribution
playing a bigger role assuming that U.S. network bandwidth has
sufficiently increased within the next decade (not so confident about
that, though).

I'm quite sure both MS and Sony are going to be looking at how well
the PSP GO's software performs in the market. If Patapon 2's sales
performance is any indication, not well at all...

You have to be very naive to not see the writing on the wall IMHO.

Benjamin

According to Wikipeda,
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cell_(m...nt_.28P PE.29
Put three of the "PPE" cores together and you end up with something very
similar to the X360's Xenon CPU. So if Sony kept the current architecture (1
PPE + 6 SPE) and simply added two more PPEs, it can probably double the
real-world CPU performance over the PS3.

--
"War is the continuation of politics by other means.
It can therefore be said that politics is war without
bloodshed while war is politics with bloodshed."

"The alMIGHTY N" wrote in message
...
On the other hand, isn't it still possible that they'd use some current
variant of Cell to power their next console? There must have been
developments to the processor since the launch of the PS3 3 years ago and
it would allow them to not have to worry about forcing developers to learn
yet another brand new architecture for the next generation...

"Jim" wrote in message
...
You need the eDRAM's bandwidth to keep the pixel pipelines full. 3.2GB/s
wont give you 2.4Gigatexels so its use for gfx is limited.

3.2 GB/s is still *4x* the Dreamcast's bandwidth to local video RAM. And
that's just for streaming textures to the GPU. The framebuffer is in eDRAM
with its 9.6 GB/s bandwidth. Even with TBDR's claimed efficiencies back in
the day (3x according to PowerVR), the PS2's architecture still had more
memory bandwidth available.

Going back to the original topic, the biggest problem with TBDR is its
larger memory footprint, which can balloon out of control with today's
polygon counts. See this Beyond3D interview with Tim Sweeney back in 2001
(when the PowerVR Kyro was making rounds), accessible through the Web
Archive:
http://web.archive.org/web/200104231...ML/002596.html

RDRAM's high latency is another problem.

RAM latency isn't as big a problem with graphics as it is with
general-purpose CPU work.

So if you wanted to use any of the PS2's potential you had to use 8bit
textures and sub SD res.

That's a fanboy urban legend turned into "truth" after it got quoted and
requoted a few times. Probably what happened was that PS2 development tools
weren't good, and many developers couldn't stream textures from system RAM
with acceptable performance. The Dreamcast had an architecture closer to
PCs, so it was easier to program and to port games over.

The AA page was vague. Multisampling didn't come until next year with the
GeForce3 and with the GS's bandwidth it would be cheap to use. Jaggies
are usually the #1 complaint about PS2 gfx.

Actually multisample AA was made popular on the Voodoo5, which came out in
July 2000. The Geforce3 came out in March 2001.

--
"War is the continuation of politics by other means.
It can therefore be said that politics is war without
bloodshed while war is politics with bloodshed."

The alMIGHTY N wrote:
On Nov 26, 3:48 pm, Yousuf Khan wrote:
Jim wrote:
With IBM out x86+Larrabee looks more likely than PoweVR. Intel can make an
offer Sony can't refuse.
Except that Larrabee isn't proven yet. PS4 can still go to a more
traditional regular PowerPC processor along with a traditional GPU,
making it more like the Xbox360.

I'd love to read comments from the fanboys on BOTH sides of the fences
on this one, haha...

Fanboys of what? Larrabee or PowerPC?

Yousuf Khan

The alMIGHTY N wrote:
Wow. I hadn't read that. So much for Blig Merk's constant yabbering
about how great Cell is.

On the other hand, isn't it still possible that they'd use some
current variant of Cell to power their next console? There must have
been developments to the processor since the launch of the PS3 3 years
ago and it would allow them to not have to worry about forcing
developers to learn yet another brand new architecture for the next
generation...


There was a small but significant revision to the core, where they
increased the double-precision floating point efficiency of the
processor. However, this was done to help out in the supercomputing
arena, not really relevant for gaming. Nor does it provide much
performance increase for gaming, since most gaming is done using
single-precision floating point.

One has to wonder how long Sony would be interested in using a core
that's never going to be revised anymore?

Yousuf Khan

On Dec 1, 10:11*am, Yousuf Khan wrote:
The alMIGHTY N wrote:
On Nov 26, 3:48 pm, Yousuf Khan wrote:
Jim wrote:
With IBM out x86+Larrabee looks more likely than PoweVR. *Intel can make an
offer Sony can't refuse.
Except that Larrabee isn't proven yet. PS4 can still go to a more
traditional regular PowerPC processor along with a traditional GPU,
making it more like the Xbox360.

I'd love to read comments from the fanboys on BOTH sides of the fences
on this one, haha...

Fanboys of what? Larrabee or PowerPC?

* * * * Yousuf Khan

LOL

Xbox and PlayStation