[warfangle]

Sony didn't talk about hardware, because the PS4 doesn't really differentiate itself with the next-gen xbox hardware-wise.

You'll have two main variables to consider:

- which (or both) slightly differentiated but mostly-overlapping game library do you want access to

- do you want to give money to the company that installed spyware via music CDs, or the company that gave us IE6, Vista, and chair-throwing CEOs?

I think of every dollar I spend as a vote on the kind of future I want. Neither MS nor Sony get a dime from me these days.

[Tuna-Fish]

> Sony didn't talk about hardware, because the PS4 doesn't really differentiate itself with the next-gen xbox hardware-wise.

I think it does, actually. It has little over 50% more GPU shading power, twice the pixel throughput, and more than twice the main ram throughput. The difference is just about enough to make sure that PS4 can run at twice the resolution (720p vs 1080p) or twice the frame rate compared to XBox next.

The fact that they both use very similar system architecture, with PS4 just having more of it, will mean that it will be easy for multiplatform titles to scale to the difference. I'm willing to bet money that once the MS specs are actually out, Sony will talk about the specs a lot.

[warfangle]

> 50% more shading power

From my reading, four of the shader units in the PS4 are reserved for Compute Units; things like physics (just cause 2) and lighting (battlefield 3), which cuts the raw advantage from 50% to 16%. Apparently on the 720, developers will be able to choose how to allocate compute units across the cores.

> twice the pixel throughput

Mainly useful for stereoscopic images or 4k. How many people have 4k tvs and 3D tvs? 16 render output units are plenty for 1080p (the PS4 has 32).

> twice the main ram throughput

At the cost of half the storage (4GB vs 8GB).

It's pretty much a tossup. Orbis is choosing different things to optimize compared to Durango. Textures will probably be able to be larger on Durango, while level loading will happen faster on the Orbis.

> with PS4 just having more of it

More of some things; less of others. Faster at some things; slower at others.

Either way, I'm not giving a dime to either of these evil companies.

[Tuna-Fish]

> From my reading, four of the shader units in the PS4 are reserved for Compute Units; things like physics (just cause 2) and lighting (battlefield 3), which cuts the raw advantage from 50% to 16%. Apparently on the 720, developers will be able to choose how to allocate compute units across the cores.

You are reading bad sources. PS4 can allocate everything to graphics. And even if it couldn't, a lot of the graphics work in today's game engines is run as compute shaders anyway, so it would not matter in the slightest. The whole "cuts the raw advantage" spiel was concocted by fanboys to make themselves feel better. I strongly advocate that you pay no heed to anything said by anyone who mentions it.

> Mainly useful for stereoscopic images or 4k. How many people have 4k tvs and 3D tvs? 16 render output units are plenty for 1080p (the PS4 has 32).

Completely untrue. The load on rops doesn't depend on just resolution, but on what they draw. In deferred engines (which everyone uses now), you can often reduce load on other parts by storing intermediate results, spending more fillrate. On consoles, everyone designs their games to spend all the fillrate that is available.

Fillrate does, however scale linearly on resolution and frame rate, so if a game is designed to run on Xbox next at x resolution and y frame rate, to run at 2x or 2y you would need twice of it. Which is probably why Sony has exactly twice of it.

> At the cost of half the storage (4GB vs 8GB).

?!? What exactly are your sources anyway? PS4 has 8GB of GDDR5.

> Textures will probably be able to be larger on Durango

Umm, no. More memory means larger textures. The textures will be pretty much identical for the consoles.

> More of some things; less of others. Faster at some things; slower at others.

No, Orbis is strictly superior in everything. Which is my point.

[robmcm]

Sony aren't great at protecting data, but then again I've had my Xbox live account hacked. Both as bad as each other really...