Technology Playstation 4

Preach

Well-Known Member
#1
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SONY COMPUTER ENTERTAINMENT INC. INTRODUCES PLAYSTATION®4 (PS4™)
PS4’s Powerful System Architecture, Social Integration and Intelligent Personalization, Combined with PlayStation Network with Cloud Technology, Delivers Breakthrough Gaming Experiences and Completely New Ways to Play

New York City, New York, February 20, 2013 –Sony Computer Entertainment Inc. (SCEI) today introduced PlayStation®4 (PS4™), its next generation computer entertainment system that redefines rich and immersive gameplay with powerful graphics and speed, intelligent personalization, deeply integrated social capabilities, and innovative second-screen features. Combined with PlayStation®Network with cloud technology, PS4 offers an expansive gaming ecosystem that is centered on gamers, enabling them to play when, where and how they want. PS4 will be available this holiday season.


Gamer Focused, Developer Inspired
PS4 was designed from the ground up to ensure that the very best games and the most immersive experiences reach PlayStation gamers. PS4 accomplishes this by enabling the greatest game developers in the world to unlock their creativity and push the boundaries of play through a system that is tuned specifically to their needs.

PS4 also fluidly connects players to the larger world of experiences offered by PlayStation, across the console and mobile spaces, and PlayStation® Network (PSN).

The PS4 system architecture is distinguished by its high performance and ease of development. PS4 is centered around a powerful custom chip that contains eight x86-64 cores and a state of the art graphics processor.

The Graphics Processing Unit (GPU) has been enhanced in a number of ways, principally to allow for easier use of the GPU for general purpose computing (GPGPU) such as physics simulation. The GPU contains a unified array of 18 compute units, which collectively generate 1.84 Teraflops of processing power that can freely be applied to graphics, simulation tasks, or some mixture of the two.

PS4 is equipped with 8 GB of unified system memory, easing game creation and increasing the richness of content achievable on the platform. GDDR5 is used for this memory, giving the system 176 GB/second of bandwidth and providing a further boost to graphics performance.

The end result for gamers is new games with rich, high-fidelity graphics and deeply immersive experiences that shatter expectations.

SPECS
Main Processor
Single-chip custom processor
CPU : x86-64 AMD “Jaguar”, 8 cores
GPU : 1.84 TFLOPS, AMD next-generation Radeon™ based
graphics engine

Memory
GDDR5 8GB
Hard Disk Drive Built-in

Optical Drive (read only)
BD 6xCAV
DVD 8xCAV

I/O
Super-Speed USB (USB 3.0) 、AUX

Communication
Ethernet (10BASE-T, 100BASE-TX, 1000BASE-T)
IEEE 802.11 b/g/n
Bluetooth® 2.1 (EDR)

AV output
HDMI
Analog-AV out
Digital Output


Shared Game Experiences
Social interaction is central to PS4 experiences, so new features were built into the actual foundation of the system’s hardware architecture. PS4 provides dedicated, “always on” video compression and decompression systems that enables seamless uploading of gameplay. For the first time ever, gamers can share their epic triumphs with the press of a button. Gamers simply hit the “SHARE button” on the controller, scan through the last few minutes of gameplay, tag it and return to the game—the video uploads as the gamer plays. Gamers can share their images and videos to their friends on social networking services such as Facebook.

PS4 also enhances social spectating by enabling gamers to broadcast their gameplay in real-time to friends using live internet streaming services such as Ustream. During live broadcasts, friends can make comments on the streamed gameplay and, if a gamer gets stuck on a challenging level, friends can also join the game in completely new ways. For example, friends can offer health potions or special weapons when a player needs them most during actual gameplay.

Furthermore, users can connect their Facebook account with Sony Entertainment Network account. Through PS4, users are able to deepen their connections through co-op play or “cross-game chat”.


Confirmed to be the new PS4 controller. Note the "Share" button.

PS4 Second Screens
PS4 integrates second screens, including PlayStation®Vita (PS Vita), smartphones and tablets, to wrap gamers in their favorite content wherever they are. A key feature enabled by second screens is “Remote Play” and PS4 fully unlocks its potential by making PS Vita the ultimate companion device. With PS Vita, gamers will be able to seamlessly pull PS4 titles from their living room TVs and play them on PS Vita’s beautiful 5-inch display and intuitive dual analog sticks over Wi-Fi networks*1. It is SCEI’s long-term vision is to make most PS4 titles playable on PS Vita.

A new application from SCE called “PlayStation®App” will enable iPhone, iPad, and AndroidTM based smartphones and tablets*3 to become second screens. Once installed on these devices, users can, for example, see maps on their second screens when playing an adventure game, purchase PS4 games while away from home and download it directly to the console at home, or remotely watch other gamers playing on their devices.


Main interface.

Immediate Gameplay
PS4 radically reduces the lag time between players and their content. PS4 features “suspend mode” which keeps the system in a low power state while preserving the game session. The time it takes today to boot a console and load a saved game will be a thing of the past. With PS4, gamers just hit the power button again and are promptly back playing the game at the exact point where they left off. Additionally, users can boot a variety of applications including a web browser when playing a game on PS4.

PS4 also enables games to be downloaded or updated in the background, or even in stand-by mode. The system takes it one step further by making digital titles playable as they are being downloaded. When a player purchases a game, PS4 downloads just a fraction of thedata so gamers can start playing immediately, and the rest is downloaded in the backgroundduring actual gameplay.

Personalized, Curated Content
On the newly designed PS4 menu screen, players can look over game-related information shared by friends, view friends’ gameplay with ease, or obtain information of recommended content, including games, TV shows and movies. The long-term goal of PS4 is to reduce download times of digital titles to zero: if the system knows enough about a player to predict the next game they will purchase, then that game can be loaded and ready to go before they even click the “buy” button. PS4 will further enrich users’ entertainment experiences, by meeting their potential needs.


User profile interface.

Gaming in the Cloud
Launched in November 2006, PlayStation Network, a network service for PlayStation users, now operates in 67 countries and regions*4 around the world with the total number of downloaded content of more than 2.8 billion*5. In addition to a variety of games available in PlayStation®Store, PS4 users will be able to enjoy a variety of services offered by PSN, such as Sony Corporation’s Music Unlimited, a cloud-based music subscription service and Video Unlimited, a premium video service, as well as various content distribution services.

By combining PlayStation Network with Gaikai Inc’s cloud technology, it is SCE’s goal to make free exploration possible for various games. In the future, when a gamer sees a title of interest in PlayStation Store, they can immediately start playing a portion of the actual
game — not a stripped down version of the game. With Gaikai and PlayStation Store, gamers will be able to experience appealing games and only pay for the games they actually love. PlayStation Network and the cloud will offer additional value to PlayStation gamers. SCE is exploring unique opportunities enabled by cloud technology with the long-term vision of making PlayStation libraries including an incredible catalog of more than 3000 PS3 titles*6 that is unmatched in the industry, mostly ubiquitous on PS4.



SCE will announce new details of PS4 and its robust lineup of games from 3rd party developers and publishers, the independent gaming community and SCE Worldwide Studios, as well as further enhancements to the entire PlayStation ecosystem between now and the holiday 2013 launch.

###

*1 Depending on network environment or titles, users may not be able to play games outside comfortably.
*2 Exept games that require peripherals such as PlayStation®4 Eye .
*3 Depending on the version of OS or other conditions, users cannot use the application.
*4 Number as of December 31st , 2012
*5 Number as of February 19st , 2013
*6 Number as of December 31st , 2012, including free trials.
 

masta247

Well-Known Member
Staff member
#5
Pretty much the worst part is that AMD is a (great but) sinking company that offered a tremendous deal on their SOC and because of this the new Playstation uses a.... integrated GPU! It's the same that decent laptops and tablets will use. Pretty ridiculous, because on desktop PCs even mid-end dedicated GPUs offer multiple times higher performance.
That's because AMD made a terrible business decision of focusing on APU's (CPU and GPU on one chip, like in phones).

Those 8 CPU cores are less than 1/5th of i7's performance. they are 1,6ghz on a terribly inefficient core performance-wise. To put it into perspective similar 8 Bulldozer cores from AMD at 4ghz offer about 70% of performance of 4 i7 cores even with hyperthreading off.
What this means is stepping DOWN from 7 year old Xenon's/Cell's per-thread performance which is very bad since games basically rely on 1 main thread and 2-3 additional ones for background computation. 8 cores mean there will be a lot of bullshit going on at the same time (console's UI, video recording and whatnot) but the CPU performance in the game itself will be very poor. To me that's going in a terrible direction because I couldn't care less about bullshit and additional UI functions running when I'm playing, I care about the game itself.

To say even more - the GPU will be wearker than 4 year old mid-end PC graphics card. It's barely very good for mobile devices but consoles don't need to squeeze every Watt of power efficiency. They need performance and sadly the next gen kind of underdelivers because AMD manufactured too many APUs no serious PC owner wants and console manufacturers were able to secure amazing deals because of this and the new consoles will be able to sell for relatively cheap while at the same time maintaining very huge profit margins for Sony and Microsoft.
Because of a business decision based on the current market situation the new consoles will be poor performers for its time. Sure they will benefit from optimizations and the fact that games will be developed for that specific hardware and they will still look better than on current gen consoles. But it's a relatively minor upgrade, the smallest one we've seen so far on the console market. At the same time we have "quad GPUs" like Nvidia's GTX690/790 we have today that are beasts with like 1000% performance of the GPU they decided to use in PS4. To me that's disappointing especially considering that the Xbox 360 and PS3 were very powerful compared to PCs of their eras (90% of PCs used single core CPUs with lower per-core performance when those consoles came out!).
 

masta247

Well-Known Member
Staff member
#7
interesting... maybe it's to do with manufacturing costs.
Yes, at this point Intel would be extremely expensive and they'd have to combine that with Nvidia's GPU which is somewhat expensive (and they had bad past experiences) and IBM don't make X86 processors that Sony and Microsoft wanted to use. So AMD probably offered a price of like 20% of what Intel/Nvidia combo would cost while offering like 30% of that overall performance and ticking other boxes (x86, cheap to manufacture because it's only one small chip, small console size, small energy consumption and heat meaning less RRODs and only one unit to cool, lots of cores etc.). Since companies make decisions based on game theory I'm pretty sure at this point both Microsoft and Sony will use the same chip.

That said, the GPU isn't ridiculously slow - it's one of the fastest ever released on a single chip with CPU (integrated) and will run circles around the past-gen GPUs. You can't underestimate the power of optimization. The PS3 GPU is pretty much as fast as Geforce 7800GT - on PC that card wouldn't even run games that PS3 does run smoothly with some neat effects here or there.
It's just silly compared to modern stand-alone GPUs which are much faster. This basically means we won't see that much of a graphics leap and we will be stuck graphically again in the middle of this new generation's life cycle.

To put it into perspective this GPU should process 1.84TFLOPS of data. In comparison a higher end (not the highest) last gen Nvidia GPU, the GTX 580 does 3.71 TFlops single precision. The GTX 690, which is the highest end of the last year's generation (which is going to be replaced by 7-series soon) does about 6 Tflops single precision. The fastest GPU from AMD which is going to be released this year does 5,5Tflops. That said, 1.84Tflops is about the same as a mid end graphics card from last year.

Also it will harm the market in one more way - the low power/low performance CPU that they use is X86, same architecture as PCs - thus we know that games will be easily portable from consoles to PCs. Most developers will simply do just that. Some developers will do it the other way around but no matter what they will have to bear in mind that their game can't be CPU heavy because it has to run on consoles with low per-thread performance. This means that high performance CPUs will totally lose importance in games, most PC games as well.
 

THEV1LL4N

Well-Known Member
#8
Oh definitely, optimisation plays a huge role in making the most out of the hardware. I didn't think that the PS4 would show a huge improvement in graphics over the PS3, but there is talk over 4K compatibility, which could perhaps be provided via a firmware update just as 3D support was with the PS3. Maybe a jump to 4K would not be possible without 4K-specific hardware (GPUs) - I don't know.
 

Shadows

Well-Known Member
#11
Watchdog looks like the only game worth playing. The others don't look that interesting, honestly. =/

but what do i know, i'm a COD fan
 

masta247

Well-Known Member
Staff member
#12
Yeah Watchdog looks awesome.

I'm waiting to see the next Xbox announcement. I'm curious about it. Honestly I'll be stuck between the two but prefer Xbox' joypad, it's a very important factor for me because it's perfect in my hands.
 

dilla

Trumpfan17 aka Coonie aka Dilla aka Tennis Dog
#13
I may jump ship to the PS4 if M$ doesn't get its shit together. I hate paying for Live and the menu/dashboard for the 360 has been slow, laggy, buggy, etc. for a long time now. It sucks dick. Plus, it licks scrotum that I can't watch Blu-Ray but PS3 owners can. PS3 had a web browser before the M$ spread its cheeks and let out the turd that is IE escape from its rectum.

I just want an official announcement from either party regarding pre-owned games and whether or not their consoles will support that. If I can't buy a game used, or a game can only be played on one console due to DRM (a friend can't bring over Madden or a new game I want to try out) they can fuck right off.

I'm not even worried about the games anymore because everything comes out for everything these days. And games that are exclusive to one console or another are really that deal-breakers either. Halo, GoW, and whatever the PS3 had that was exclusive, not worth it. If all I play is CoD or sports games, then it doesn't matter. Whichever console is the most versatile and cheapest. Racing simulators might be a thing I look for, but seeing as how Gran Turismo 5 took forever to come out and even then didn't make that big of a splash when it did, Forza may have my vote.

But all that takes a backseat to how the system is outside of being a video game console. How it handles media is huge. The 360 can't even play .mkv files, which is coonshit. I think the PS3 can.
 

masta247

Well-Known Member
Staff member
#15
Yeah the next Xbox is likely to (and PS4 surely will) have bluray and run UI smoothly because it's going to have a dedicated CPU core for that. Paying for Live is a bitch move though. You don't pay for PSN and if you do decide to support PSN+ you get a free game every month.
Also in my eyes Sony is a so much more ethical company, I'd rather support them than Microsoft. If Microsoft will introduce DRM for used games that's the final nail to their coffin in my eyes. Sony already said they're not going to do such thing. Mandatory Kinect would also have the same effect to me.

It's just that.. I prefer the Xbox controller. I hope they'll come up with at least an alternative, optional one for the PS4 that's going to be more similar to the Xbox controller, which rocks. That's absolutely the only reason (apart from price) that made me go for Xbox in the first place.
 

masta247

Well-Known Member
Staff member
#18
lol when reading masta's rants, that's all i was thinking. I don't care. Both are good to me, but i guess the 360 is a lil more comfortable.
Yeah I suppose you can get used to the PS controller and say it's good but after you get used to the Xbox controller a lot it's hard to switch back for lots of people. It's mostly because of the size and shape, analog stick location and don't even get me started on the triggers, lol.

The PS4 will have a more complex pad though, it'll be harder to use alternatives.
 

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