PS4 Megathread

Richard Dower

More thoughts, I think the 6x BD drive with 50GB will be more then enough, that 50GB disk is a compressed format....once you unpack and install to the HDD it could be 70-80GB in size.

I doubt many games will fill a BD disc, but the tech is so cheap now they can just make it a double BD release

I wonder why they stuck with Bluetooth 2.1?....BT 4.0 combo chips from Marvell are dirt cheap!, I assume they use an embedded wirelness N and BT combo chip.....if they had sense they combine LAN into a single chip design as well.

That AUX port on the PS4 is the the new EyeCam...it'll provide power/data in a single cable. Hoping for 4 USB 3.0 ports, 2 on front and two on back.

Internal PSU again or M$ brick?.....200W thermal limit?....they need to improve the heatsink and fan design + proper thermal paste.

I'm a total tech head, I wanna see a teardown, see what chips they use....layout, signal paths etc. I will deffo wait until I see all of the above first.

heebusjeebus

Richard Dower wrote: »

Can anyone answer this question, this is a BIG deal to me and may sway my purchasing decision?....in terms of media playback capability...will the PS4 play .mkv files and FLAC files?

That has not been detailed by Sony but I'd guess that as the PS3 doesn't play .mkv neither will the PS4.

I wont be a big deal for 99% of potential buyers.

Varik

Killzone shadow: Shadow Fall

Anthony Anderson plays the game and sucks, so it's definitely not a pre-rendered video ( or in-engine cut-scene)

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rGlu3e9kdks

ferike1

I pre-ordered mine from Gamestop, just hope Sony don't do the staggered release like with the PS3, Europe always gets screwed.

rolexeagle1

OUYA and Gamestick look like GREAT shouts!

Icyseanfitz

Why are people pre ordering it when they know next to nothing about it? Il be waiting for an "irish" price before i make any decision, we get screwed over enough that it could be 700 euro here

Captain Chaos

Icyseanfitz wrote: »

Why are people pre ordering it when they know next to nothing about it? Il be waiting for an "irish" price before i make any decision, we get screwed over enough that it could be 700 euro here

Why pre order if you don't know what you are pre ordering. Chances are they will release 2 SKUs. And 2, it won't be out here for another 12 months at best. I'd wait till at least the aftermath of E3 to even consider pre ordering, but I still know it's day one for me unless something drastic comes out of the woodwork.

Amazon put up pre-order prices for the WiiU that were way below the final RRP and those that added it to the basket and paid for it got it at a great price. Can't see them making that mistake with a console again though..

NTMK

Richard Dower wrote: »

Very good analysis here

I concede having GDDR5 as system and GPU memory is a big deal...and a first. But I do want to point out that GDDR6 and DDR4 will be coming in the next 12-18 months.

So the advantages you point out could be wiped out, that's the nature of PC tech. HDMI 2.0, Thunderbolt etc. will be become standard.

My concern is that will be face in two-three years time the PS3 faced, ergo the PS3 was bottlenecked by the 512MB RAM limit....will the PS4 face a CPU/GPU limit down the line?

the gddr5 memory is a big bonus atm but isnt used the same way as the pc uses ddr3 ie a pc will usually have 8gb ddr3 dedicated to the cpu and 1-3gb dedicated for graphics

the thing is the since this memory is shared on the ps4 its much better it is gddr 5 as ddr3 will restrict the gpu down the line as pure ram gddr5 isnt nesscary but will be able to compete with ddr4 later in the year

im not worried about only 8gbs on the ps4 this was one thing the developers wanted its a common standard on pcs atm. 512 was below what developers wanted last time and the result was there to be seen

very few games i know exceed 4-6atm and i play games with maxxed out settings at 1440p so it wont be an issue at 1080p

marco_polo

RoverZT wrote: »

GPU in the PS4 isn't a seperate card, it's on the same die as the cpu.

Memory being GDDR5 will give it a huge boost, it's pretty unique

No PCs currently use GDDR5 for main system memory. It is an extremely fast high bandwidth type of memory that is currently only used by high end graphics cards. 3-4x faster than the system memory in a modern PC.

You can't go onto hardwareverand and buy GDDR5 for your pc's motherboard, plebs like you ous have no access to it.

All consoles use custom GPU/CPU/APUs, they are really not comparable to PC's, sure the tech is basically the same, but it's custom and very efficient.

Stupid analogy maybe, but it's like a 2.0l 300bhp Mitsubishi Evo Rally car vs the 300bhp Mitsubishi Evo road car.

Both cars have the same basic engine, same bhp, torque etc.

But the rally car, has custom gearbox, suspension, custom everything and because of that it is much much quicker.

You can't say my PC with 8gb ram, 7850, Core i3 will be the same, because it's not.

Your 1000bhp Bugatti Veyron ( 16gb ram, GTX 690, Core i7 ) of course will be faster than the rally car at most things like straight line speed.

Standard current gaming PCs with ddr3 have around 50 GB/s memory bandwidth.



PS4's supposed memory bandwidth is 178 GB/s, more than triple the amount of your average current gaming PC. It can shovel around massive amounts of data with unprecedented ease and speed.


3 gigs of data per frame at 60fps.


That's why the PS4's architecture is a big deal. Games will be optimized for the PS4's memory bandwidth, and it will enable a quantum leap in regards to game fidelity.



Epic, Crytek etc are full of praise for it and we will see why.

I wonder if it is a full HSA system, as that is the what AMD have been evolving their APUs towards over the past few years, and were road mapped to arrive there by late 2013/2014 which is precisely the time of the PS4 release.

Given that Sony recently joined the HSA foundation and a number of high profile developers seem quite enthusiastic about the PS4 architecture I suspect it is, as such an arrangement allows for great coding flexibility.

The HSA team at AMD analyzed the performance of Haar Face Detect, a commonly used multi-stage video analysis algorithm used to identify faces in a video stream. The team compared a CPU/GPU implementation in OpenCL™ against an HSA implementation. The HSA version seamlessly shares data between CPU and GPU, without memory copies or cache flushes because it assigns each part of the workload to the most appropriate processor with minimal dispatch overhead. The net result was a 2.3x relative performance gain at a 2.4x reduced power level*. This level of performance is not possible using only multicore CPU, only GPU, or even combined CPU and GPU with today’s driver model.

EDIT:Another interesting article on the topic.

http://hothardware.com/News/Sonys-Playstation-4-A-PC-Platform-in-Console-Skins/

krudler

ferike1 wrote: »

I pre-ordered mine from Gamestop, just hope Sony don't do the staggered release like with the PS3, Europe always gets screwed.

I doubt they'll have it released in Europe for christmas, I'd wager Feb/March 2014 for us

nocoverart

I was really looking forward to seeing the damn thing! very disappointed not to see this baby. I think they should implement a light on the console to match the controller, kind of like Alienware where you can customise the colours

ShadowHearth

Well just got back from work and GameStop.

Traded in 5 games and my 250gb Xbox.

Got 90eu credit on gift card and 142eu cash. All this is going to be nicely put away for next gen console. Most likely it's going to be ps4, if new Xbox still going to have subscription online model.

FlyingIrishMan

ShadowHearth wrote: »

Well just got back from work and GameStop.

Traded in 5 games and my 250gb Xbox.

Got 90eu credit on gift card and 142eu cash. All this is going to be nicely put away for next gen console. Most likely it's going to be ps4, if new Xbox still going to have subscription online model.

Thats a pretty good deal, might end up doing the same.

Captain Chaos

nocoverart wrote: »

I was really looking forward to seeing the damn thing! very disappointed not to see this baby.

No one has seen it yet. Not even Sony themselves, the final design is still being worked on. All they have is the internal specs locked down, the only questions are HDD size and the number of USB 3 ports it will have.

ferike1

Captain Chaos wrote: »

Why pre order if you don't know what you are pre ordering. Chances are they will release 2 SKUs. And 2, it won't be out here for another 12 months at best. I'd wait till at least the aftermath of E3 to even consider pre ordering, but I still know it's day one for me unless something drastic comes out of the woodwork.

Amazon put up pre-order prices for the WiiU that were way below the final RRP and those that added it to the basket and paid for it got it at a great price. Can't see them making that mistake with a console again though..

Yeah, for me its a day one buy, I can't see it being more than €500 since Sony got burned massively with the PS3, and I know I'll be getting whatever the 'premium' SKU is. I'll be saving from now

Its somewhat of an impulse thing but I don't mind!

ShadowHearth

FlyingIrishMan wrote: »

Thats a pretty good deal, might end up doing the same.

Aye. I originally wanted only to trade in 5 games, for that 90eu credit deal, but Jen I asked how much I get for Xbox I rushed back home. Staff was very helpful like always. I really lovely local Gamestop . Though this time I ended up with money in pocket, not the other way around!

They offer 115eu cash for 3ds too. Not bad deal as well. Though I might keep it so I can finish RE revalations. Stil waiting on that rumoured monster hunter game too.

I did not placed per order on ps4. No way I will be putting any money on it, before I know more about it. Need damn price too. All that cash and credit is put away for console. Though if it is going to be 500-600eu, then I won't go near one.

Sephiroth_dude

ferike1 wrote: »

Yeah, for me its a day one buy, I can't see it being more than €500 since Sony got burned massively with the PS3, and I know I'll be getting whatever the 'premium' SKU is. I'll be saving from now

Its somewhat of an impulse thing but I don't mind!

Whats A premium SKU?

mozattack

I will get the new machine for one game only, Battlefield 4.

Does anyone know if this will mean and increase from 24 multiplayer to maybe 48 or 64?

Thought the graphics on KZ4 were no better than good PS3 graphics

Varik

Probably won't be giving Gamestop any money, was in there and their prices have gotten progressively worse; most were at the €55 with some of the older games still being around €50.

FlyingIrishMan

ShadowHearth wrote: »

Aye. I originally wanted only to trade in 5 games, for that 90eu credit deal, but Jen I asked how much I get for Xbox I rushed back home. Staff was very helpful like always. I really lovely local Gamestop . Though this time I ended up with money in pocket, not the other way around!

Did they tell you how much store credit they'd give you for the console?

ferike1

Sephiroth_dude wrote: »

Whats A premium SKU?

Complete speculation but similar to the way the Wii U for example had a premium model with a larger HDD etc and a one with a smaller HDD. There may be two playstation 4's one with a 500gb HDD and some added goodies vs a standard model with for example a 200gb HDD.

shuffles03

Could it be possible for a premium SKU to have an SSD or is that absolutely ridiculous?

COYVB

shuffles03 wrote: »

Could it be possible for a premium SKU to have an SSD or is that absolutely ridiculous?

Wouldn't rule it out

ShadowHearth

FlyingIrishMan wrote: »

Did they tell you how much store credit they'd give you for the console?

No store credit for Xbox. Only cash. I did asked.

If anyone thinking of trading in their consoles for new one I would think now is the best time. I am pretty sure you will get complete feck all for it when it is launched.

I personally don't play Xbox at all. It had an inch of dust on it.... So not a big loss for me, plus I still got 20gb one in the closet. I am gaming on my PCs now anyway.

COYVB

ferike1 wrote: »

Yeah, for me its a day one buy, I can't see it being more than €500 since Sony got burned massively with the PS3, and I know I'll be getting whatever the 'premium' SKU is. I'll be saving from now

Its somewhat of an impulse thing but I don't mind!

The premium premium one will have a Vita with it

Sephiroth_dude

ferike1 wrote: »

Complete speculation but similar to the way the Wii U for example had a premium model with a larger HDD etc and a one with a smaller HDD. There may be two playstation 4's one with a 500gb HDD and some added goodies vs a standard model with for example a 200gb HDD.

Ohhhh right thanks for explaining that to me .

ShadowHearth

shuffles03 wrote: »

Could it be possible for a premium SKU to have an SSD or is that absolutely ridiculous?

Might be, though I don't know if they will go for it. Ssd is still very bad value in Gb per euro compared to hdd.

You and me know what ssd is and how handy it can be, but average joe won't care and he will just look at 120gb < 1tb. He won't care it is ssd.

shuffles03

ShadowHearth wrote: »

Might be, though I don't know if they will go for it. Ssd is still very bad value in Gb per euro compared to hdd.

You and me know what ssd is and how handy it can be, but average joe won't care and he will just look at 120gb < 1tb. He won't care it is ssd.

True. Avg Joe will go for size not speed.

Varik

I think we'll see more than one sku but it'll be different bundles rather than components or actual console features that differ.

Richard Dower

I want to see as if how a HDD vs. an SSD vs. a Hybrid HDD.....it'll be very interesting to see if an SSD or Hybrid are faster, quicker loading/menu access etc.

My guess the standard model will have 500gb with the premium 1tb, though if Sony had *sense* they design the HDD caddy to accept the 15mm HDD size....why?

Western Digital have a 2TB 2.5" HDD on sale....but its 15mm in z-height. Pretty sure Sony will use a slimline ODD as well, though with Sony-Optaric now dead...who is making the ODD?....Lite-On?

http://www.bit-tech.net/news/hardware/2012/08/28/sony-close-optiarc/1

http://www.wdc.com/en/products/products.aspx?id=830