The Xbox One - Mini Review & Comparison to Xbox 360/PS4
by Anand Lal Shimpi on November 20, 2013 8:00 AM ESTFinal Words
More so than last time, it seems like this next generation of console wars will boil down to a few key questions: exclusives, online, extra features and personal preference.
If there’s an exclusive IP that you will sink a ton of time into, the rest really doesn’t matter. For Microsoft that could be Halo, for Sony that could be Uncharted. I feel like Microsoft might have the stronger lineup out of the gate this generation, but that’s not saying much as neither platform appears to have anything that’s a must have at this point. I can’t help but wonder how different this launch would’ve been had there been a Halo 5 or Uncharted 4 (or Last of Us 2) available on day one.
The online story is going to take some time to flesh out. Microsoft held the clear advantage there last generation for online multiplayer, but Sony is intent on closing the gap this round. I’m going to say it’s still wait and see on this one as neither console is going to have enough users to make for a great online experience for a while to come.
In the extra features category, Microsoft is really hoping to win users over with things like their TV integration and Kinect. I couldn’t be further from the right demographic to talk about the former so I’m going to avoid saying much there. On the Kinect front, I know people who are interested in the Xbox One solely because of Kinect. I’m not one of those people but I can definitely see the appeal there. If Sony’s price tag didn’t nerf the PS3 last round, it’s entirely possible that Microsoft’s Kinect bundle and resulting price hike won’t do the same for the Xbox One this time.
Finally, there’s an element of personal preference in all of this. Look, feel, ecosystem, company loyalty all fall into this category. There are also things like controller preference that fit here as well. I can’t help much in this department.
If you’re looking at the Xbox One as a successor to the Xbox 360, I think you’ll be very pleased. It’s a much better console in every way and a long overdue upgrade.
It's interesting to me that the performance/image quality differences that exist between the Xbox One and PS4 ultimately boil down to a difference in memory interface rather than an interest in optimizing down silicon cost. In this case Microsoft has the bigger die, but the smaller GPU in order to accommodate enough eSRAM to offset the use of DDR3 memory.
If all you play are cross-platform games, then the PS4 will give you better looking titles at a lower console cost. For those of you that are particularly bothered by aliasing, the PS4 will definitely reduce (not eliminate) that. However I would argue that if all you play are cross-platform games then you might want to look into buying/building a PC instead. I’m also unsure about how much cross shopping actually happens between these two platforms. I can understand for first time gamers (e.g. parents buying the first console for their kids), but otherwise I feel like your friend group and prior experience is going to ultimately determine whether you end up with a Xbox One or PS4.
I need a Halo box, but I also like to play Uncharted. Unfortunately I don’t know that there’s a good recommendation one way or another, other than to wait for a bit. Being an early adopter of a next-gen console is rarely a fun thing. Literally all of my friends are on Xbox 360s or PS3s, meaning online multiplayer with people I know is pretty much out of the question for at least a year or so. The launch lineup for both platforms is reasonable but could be a lot better. Having just played Grand Theft Auto V and the Last of Us, I’m going to need more than CoD or NBA 2K14 to really draw me in to the Xbox One or PS4. This is how the story goes with any new console launch.
One thing is for sure - this generation was long overdue. I remember being at E3 in 2005 and wondering what the Xbox 360 and PS3 would do to the future of PC gaming given how well specced both systems were. This time around I’m less concerned. Everyone seems to have gone more conservative with GPU choices, even though the resulting APUs are anything but small. If anything the arrival of both consoles, targeted the way they are, is likely going to make things better industry wide. As both sell in good quantities we’ll see developers target a higher class of system, which will be good for everyone.
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psychobriggsy - Wednesday, November 20, 2013 - link
Shame that it can only use that ESRAM bandwidth on a total of 1/256th of the system's memory... so you need to account for that in your sums. I.e., it's useless for most things except small data areas that are accessed a lot (framebuffer, z-buffer, etc).smartypnt4 - Wednesday, November 20, 2013 - link
Except you just said it... You store what's used the most, and you get to realize a huge benefit from it. It's the same theory as a cache, but it gives programmers finer control over what gets stored there. Giving the developers the ability to choose what they want to put in the super low-latency, high bandwidth eSRAM is really a good idea too.Computer architecture is mainly about making the common case fast, or in other words, making the things that are done the most the fastest operations in the system. In this case, accessing the z-buffer, etc. is done constantly, making it a good candidate for optimization via placing it in a lower latency, higher bandwidth storage space.
cupholder - Thursday, November 21, 2013 - link
LOL. No. The majority of things that actually affect quality and frame rate are going to be larger in size than the ESRAM. 192 ENTIRE 8GB vs. 204 for a dinky amount of that... It's painfully obvious what the bottlenecks will be. Oh... Forgot the whole PS4 running a 7850 compared to the XB1's 7770.. Oh, and the 8GB ram vs. 5 true GB of ram(3 OSs take up 3GB).With that said, get the console that your friends will play, or has the games you want... Anyone pretending the XB1 is better in raw power is deluding themselves(it's hardly even close).
smartypnt4 - Friday, November 22, 2013 - link
I'm simply describing how the eSRAM should work, given that this should be a traditional PC architecture. Nowhere did I comment on which is the more powerful console. I really don't feel I'm qualified in saying which is faster, but the GPU seems to indicate it's the PS4, as you rightly said.Now, it is true that the PS4 has larger bandwidth to main memory. My point was that if the eSRAM has a good hit rate, let's say 80%, you'll see an effective speed of 0.8*204 = 163GB/s. This is a horrible measure, as it's just theoretically what you'll see, not accounting for overhead.
The other difference is that GDDR5's timings make it higher latency than traditional DDR3, and it will be an order of magnitude higher in latency than the eSRAM in the XB1. Now, that's not to say that it will make a big difference in games because memory access latency can be hidden by computing something else while you wait, but still. My point being that the XB1 likely won't be memory bandwidth bound. That was literally my only point. ROP/memory capacity/shader bound is a whole other topic that I'm not going to touch with a 10-foot pole without more results from actual games.
But yes, buy the console your friends play, or buy the one with the exclusives you want.
rarson - Saturday, November 23, 2013 - link
It's not even close to a traditional PC architecture. I mean, it totally is, if you completely ignore the eSRAM and custom silicon on the die.Test after test after test after test has shown that latency makes practically zero impact on performance, and that the increased speed and bandwidth of GDDR5 is much more important, at least when it comes to graphics (just compare any graphics card that has a DDR3 and GDDR5 variant). Latency isn't that much greater for GDDR5, anway.
The eSRAM is only accessible via the GPU, so anything in it that the CPU needs has to be copied to DDR anyway. Further, in order to even use the eSRAM, you still have to put the data in there, which means it's coming from that slow-ass DDR3. The only way you'll get eSRAM bandwidth 80% of the time is if 80% of your RAM access is a static 32 MB of data. Obviously that's not going to be the majority of your graphics data, so you're not going to get anywhere near 80%.
The most important part here is that in order for anyone to actually use the eSRAM effectively, they're going to have to do the work. Sony's machine is probably going to be more developer-friendly because of this. I can see how the eSRAM could help, but I don't see how it could possibly alleviate the DDR3 bottleneck. All of this is probably a moot point anyway, since the eSRAM seems to be tailored more towards all the multimedia processing stuff (the custom bits on the SoC) and has to be carefully optimized for developers to even use it anyway (nobody is going to bother to do this on cross-platform games).
4thetimebeen - Saturday, November 23, 2013 - link
I'm sorry to burst your bubble and I'm sorry to butt in but you are wrong about the eSRAM only available to the GPU cause if you look and read the digital foundry interview of the Microsoft Xbox One architectures and creators and the hot chips diagram IT SHOWS AND THEY SAID that the CPU has access to the eSRAM as well.smartypnt4 - Monday, November 25, 2013 - link
Yes, latency has very little impact on graphics workloads due to the ability to hide the latency by doing other work. Which is exactly what I said in my comment, so I'm confused as to why you're bringing it up...As far as the CPU getting access, I was under the impression that the XB1 and PS4 both have unified memory access, so the GPU and CPU share memory. If that's the case, then yes, the CPU does get access to the eSRAM.
As far as the hit rate on that eSRAM, if the developer optimizes properly, then they should be able to get significant benefits from it. Cross platform games, as you rightly said, likely won't get optimized to use the eSRAM has effectively, so they won't realize much of a benefit.
And yes, you do incur a set of misses in the eSRAM corresponding to first accesses. That's assuming the XB1's prefetcher doesn't request the data from memory before you need it.
A nontrivial number of accesses from a GPU are indeed static. Things like the frame buffer and z-buffer are needed by every separate rendering thread, and hence may well be useful. 32MB is also a nontrivial amount when it comes to caching textures as well. Especially if the XB1 compresses the textures in memory and decodes them on the fly. If I recall correctly, that's actually how most textures are stored by GPUs anyway (compressed and then uncompressed on the fly as they're needed). I'm not saying that's definitely the case, because that's not how every GPU works, but still. 32MB is enough for the frame buffers at a minimum, so maybe that will help more than you think; maybe it will help far less than I think. It's incredibly difficult to tell how it will perform given that we know basically nothing about it.
To actually say if eSRAM sucks, we need to know how often you can hit in the eSRAM. To know that, we need to know lots of things we have no clue about: prefetcher performance, how the game is optimized to make use of the eSRAM, etc.
In general though, I do agree that the PS4 has more raw GPU horsepower and more raw memory bandwidth exposed to naive developers. My only point that I made was that the XB1 likely won't be that far off in memory bandwidth compared to the PS4 in games that properly optimize for the platform.
There's a whole other thing about CPUs being very latency sensitive, etc., that I won't go into because I don't know nearly enough about it, but I think there's going to be a gap in CPU performance as well because things that are optimized to work on the XB1's CPU aren't going to perform the same on the PS4's, especially if they're using the CPU to decompress textures (which is something the 360 did).
And with that, I reiterate: buy the console your friends buy or the one with the exclusives you want to play. Or if you're really into the Kinect or something.
Andromeduck - Wednesday, November 27, 2013 - link
163 GB/s and hogging the main memory bandwidth - that data doesn't jut magically appearsmartypnt4 - Wednesday, November 20, 2013 - link
Also, not saying the guy above you isn't an idiot for adding the two together. The effective rate Anand quotes takes into account approximately how often you go to the eSRAM vs. going all the way out to main memory. The dude above you doesn't get it.bill5 - Wednesday, November 20, 2013 - link
yes i do get it, dork.small caches of high speed memory are the norm in console design. ps2, gamecube, wii, x360, wii u, on and on.
the gpu can read from both pools at once so technically they can be added. even if it's not exactly the same thing.
peak bw, xone definitely has an advantage on ps4, especially on a per-flop basis due to feeding a weaker gpu to begin with.