Sony just announced the PlayStation 4, along with some high level system specifications. The high level specs are what we've heard for quite some time:

  • 8-core x86-64 CPU using AMD Jaguar cores (built by AMD)
  • High-end PC GPU (also built by AMD), delivering 1.84TFLOPS of performance
  • Unified 8GB of GDDR5 memory for use by both the CPU and GPU with 176GB/s of memory bandwidth
  • Large local hard drive

Details of the CPU aren't known at this point (8-cores could imply a Piledriver derived architecture, or 8 smaller Jaguar cores—the latter being more likely), but either way this will be a big step forward over the PowerPC based general purpose cores on Cell from the previous generation. I wouldn't be too put off by the lack of Intel silicon here, it's still a lot faster than what we had before and at this level price matters more than peak performance. The Intel performance advantage would have to be much larger to dramatically impact console performance. If we're talking about Jaguar cores, then there's a bigger concern long term from a single threaded performance standpoint.

Update: I've confirmed that there are 8 Jaguar based AMD CPU cores inside the PS4's APU. The CPU + GPU are on a single die. Jaguar will still likely have better performance than the PS3/Xbox 360's PowerPC cores, and it should be faster than anything ARM based out today, but there's not huge headroom going forward. While I'm happier with Sony's (and MS') CPU selection this time around, I always hoped someone would take CPU performance in a console a bit more seriously. Given the choice between spending transistors on the CPU vs. GPU, I understand that the GPU wins every time in a console—I'm just always an advocate for wanting more of both. I realize I never wrote up a piece on AMD's Jaguar architecture, so I'll likely be doing that in the not too distant future. Update: I did.

The choice of 8 cores is somewhat unique. Jaguar's default compute unit is a quad-core machine with a large shared L2 cache, it's likely that AMD placed two of these together for the PlayStation 4. The last generation of consoles saw a march towards heavily threaded machines, so it's no surprise that AMD/Sony want to continue the trend here. Clock speed is unknown, but Jaguar was good for a mild increase over its predecessor Bobcat. Given the large monolithic die, AMD and Sony may not have wanted to push frequency as high as possible in order to keep yields up and power down. While I still expect CPU performance to move forward in this generation of consoles, I was reminded of the fact that the PowerPC cores in the previous generation ran at very high frequencies. The IPC gains afforded by Jaguar have to be significant in order to make up for what will likely be a lower clock speed.

We don't know specifics of the GPU, but with it approaching 2 TFLOPS we're looking at a level of performance somewhere between a Radeon HD 7850 and 7870. Update: Sony has confirmed the actual performance of the PlayStation 4's GPU as 1.84 TFLOPS. Sony claims the GPU features 18 compute units, which if this is GCN based we'd be looking at 1152 SPs and 72 texture units. It's unclear how custom the GPU is however, so we'll have to wait for additional information to really know for sure. The highest end PC GPUs are already faster than this, but the PS4's GPU is a lot faster than the PS3's RSX which was derived from NVIDIA's G70 architecture (used in the GeForce 7800 GTX, for example). I'm quite pleased with the promised level of GPU performance with the PS4. There are obvious power and cost constraints that would keep AMD/Sony from going even higher here, but this should be a good leap forward from current gen consoles.

Outfitting the PS4 with 8GB of RAM will be great for developers, and using high-speed GDDR5 will help ensure the GPU isn't bandwidth starved. Sony promised around 176GB/s of memory bandwidth for the PS4. The lack of solid state storage isn't surprising. Hard drives still offer a dramatic advantage in cost per GB vs. an SSD. Now if it's user replaceable with an SSD that would be a nice compromise.

Leveraging Gaikai's cloud gaming technology, the PS4 will be able to act as a game server and stream the video output to a PS Vita, wirelessly. This sounds a lot like what NVIDIA is doing with Project Shield and your NVIDIA powered gaming PC. Sony referenced dedicated video encode/decode hardware that allows you to instantaneously record and share screenshots/video of gameplay. I suspect this same hardware is used in streaming your game to a PS Vita.

Backwards compatibility with PS3 games isn't guaranteed and instead will leverage cloud gaming to stream older content to the box. There's some sort of a dedicated background processor that handles uploads and downloads, and even handles updates in the background while the system is off. The PS4 also supports instant suspend/resume.

The new box heavily leverages PC hardware, which is something we're expecting from the next Xbox as well. It's interesting that this is effectively how Microsoft entered the console space back in 2001 with the original Xbox, and now both Sony and MS have returned to that philosophy with their next gen consoles in 2013. The PlayStation 4 will be available this holiday season.

I'm trying to get more details on the CPU and GPU architectures and will update as soon as I have more info.

Source: Ustream

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  • sohcermind - Monday, February 25, 2013 - link

    And that PC I built in 2006 and costed double that of an XBOX 360 and wasn't even as powerful.
  • RussianSensation - Wednesday, February 20, 2013 - link

    Not a chance. Developers have access to the 'metal' on PS4. Certain functions will work 10-100x faster because there is no API overhead. Some of the graphics we've seen at the unveiling are already approaching Crysis 3 level and HD7870 cannot even come close to maxing out Crysis 3. In 4-5 years the type of games PS4 would be able to run, an HD7870 would not and certainly not a $550 PC because that means a Core i3 or low end FX4000.
  • stickmansam - Wednesday, February 20, 2013 - link

    http://pcpartpicker.com/p/ERS8

    Cough Cough

    Launch price of PS3 ranged from $500-$600 and steam sales offset hardware costs

    I do agree consoles can get better performance out of hardware but my old HD2600 and E5200 from 2006/2007 can still play most games at 720p low/medium 45-60fps.
  • thedarknight87 - Wednesday, February 20, 2013 - link

    Are you currently using PSN on your PS3? Compare PSN price of multi-plat games to the Steam prices. Most of them match up, thanks to a EU PSN sale, Dishonored and Darksiders 2 are actually cheaper on PSN than on Steam. I am quite sure that a few games are actually cheaper on Steam than on PSN.

    However the way Sony is pushing for agressive PSN pricing gives me hope that the PC-console digital game download price difference will shrink considerably over the coming years
  • stickmansam - Thursday, February 21, 2013 - link

    Nope, but hopefully consoles will have games at 50-75% off like steam does
  • SlyNine - Saturday, February 23, 2013 - link

    They will huh, Source?
  • minijedimaster - Thursday, February 21, 2013 - link

    That's a great story. Unfortunately it falls apart because it assumes PC's in general and budget PC's specifically will still be running AMD 7870 class GPU's in 4-5 years.

    They of course will not be. The PS4 on the other hand will. Even if the claims of speed gains are true, by the time devs are confortable with the hardware and cranking out highly optimized games on PS4 hardware, the PC will be 3-5 generations past the silicon in the PS4.
  • sohcermind - Sunday, February 24, 2013 - link

    PS4 will cost $400 and have better performance then your $600 PC with 7870 my i53570k, 4gb ram, and gtx 660 system costed $800 to build last year. PS4 will be half that and offer better performance.
  • sheh - Wednesday, February 20, 2013 - link

    176GB/sec memory to CPU?!
  • RussianSensation - Wednesday, February 20, 2013 - link

    Shared with the GPU. Possibly 256-bit memory bus width @ 5500mhz. It is more memory bandwidth that the fastest GCN mobile GPU, HD7970M:
    http://www.amd.com/us/products/notebook/graphics/7...

    Pretty impressive since a console can't realistically include 150-200W GPUs like HD7970 or GTX670/680.

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