A Dutch site claiming to have official specs of the still unannounced PlayStation 4, translated by Google, probably isn’t the most concrete of contributions when trying to decifer a rumour.
But here we are, with news this morning that the PS4 has had some of its internals spilled, even if it’s not entirely obvious whether this is all truth or not.
Let’s have a look.
Firstly, the report discusses the chipset, which contains an APU dubbed Liverpool and a CPU named Steamroller. Codenames, for sure (much like Orbis) but certainly powerful ones.
In terms of RAM, it looks like 2GB, although developers are apparently asking that this be ramped up to 4GB, which sounds a little more plausable.
The rumours mention two main SKUs for the console, a 320GB hard drive, a maximum output of 1080p (thankfully) and the rather obvious inclusion of HDMI 1.4 and Blu-ray playback.
It’s difficult to put too much stock in all this, but those figures seem reasonable. Discussion elsewhere suggests that the GPU isn’t quite as spritely as the site says, rather it’s comparable to a current Pitcairn, not an AMD 7970.
Yesterday Sony confirmed that PS4 games were in development, and offered some explanation why the new console wasn’t shown at E3. At least publicly.
TheSixthAxis understands more PS4 development kits will be going out shortly.
Taylor Made
Code name Liverpool, let’s hope it doesn’t sound & play like a scouser :p
gazzagb
I just hope the also include a big ass fan to keep the temperatures low, even if it’s noisy, I’d rather have a cool PS4 than a fried one.
I hope Sony look to the future and realise that they need to have hardware to last if for it’s entire lifecycle, the mistake of having not enough RAM in the PS3 has cost them dearly, with stuff like a slow XMB, lack of cross-game chat etc.
Aitor
I’d rather have them include a good fan system with a minimum of two fans, as nearly every console has one fan that blows stuff out, but not a fan that blows stuff in. There is no wind circulation in the system, that’s why the PS3 goes mental loud sometimes.
YOURMUMANDME
I’m not entirely sure what I think Sony should do, it’s not my decision and I don’t get paid to think for them.
What I will say is that if Sony expect me to fork £500 at launch again then they’d better had buck up their ideas. I reckon a SSD should be included too, especially if they start plugging the PS4 as a media hub. Maybe that would justify the price tag too….
jamess109
sounds crap id have gone with nvidia. they are GAMING gpus you get phsyx and any of the new features of the GeForce 6xx build. but fair enuf going with AMD just makes PCs the ultimate gaming & entertainment system! :p
Facelord
Sony wanted what’s best for their system, AMD is currently the best. Haven’t you noticed that Nvidia’s marketshare has gone down a ton since the 4870 released? Since then AMD’s had consistently better cards than Nvidia. Nvidia spent way too much money promoting their cards and working with the same architecture, AMD did R&D into newer architecture and it paid off in the end.
Using Physx and fanboyism as reasons to prefer Nvidia is pretty lame; Physx is pretty much just a marketing tool involving Nvidia throwing money at, for instance, the Arkham game developers to use their bloated tech to give gamers more reasons to purchase their systems. A smart PC builder always goes with whatever parts are best for a budget, Nvidia isn’t a smart option yet. They could definitely earn more market share with superior cards a few years down the road but as it stands AMD is the way to go. Price-to-performance ratio is the single most important factor in deciding on what hardware to get.
Also note that the rumors all point toward the PS4 using an APU, meaning technology you literally couldn’t use if you went the Nvidia or Intel routes.
Anyways, 4gb of RAM is more than enough, definitely future-proofed. That’d allow for tons of multitasking(like the Vita) and pretty much anything else you’d want out of the console for the next six or seven years, potentially more. My gaming rig has 6gb of RAM in it(sadly I couldn’t fit my fourth RAM stick into the build, I didn’t expect to upgrade my RAM and have a CPU fan in the way of one of my RAM ports xD), I was totally fine with 4gb unless I had Firefox up with hundreds of tabs… aka half the time I ever use my PC. Now I can leave Firefox up with hundreds of tabs and play Arkham City in 1080p with DX11 features on highest settings at 60 FPS, all while playing music in the background(if I want it) and running the bloated Windows 7 OS. Seriously, the PS4’s gonna compare favorably to my $600 gaming PC that can run any game on the market on highest settings(except for really poorly optimized games that try to sell you graphics cards, like Crysis 2) AND I couldn’t see it costing a cent over $400 based on the lessons they’ve learned after the PS3 launch issues. Considering a console lasts over five years(if it survives that long) and that console developers can make games look way better on old hardware when it’s optimized hardcore, I think the PS4 could last a good ten years or so. Titles like The Last of Us look prettier than any PC game I’ve ever played, clearly a console a lot more powerful than the PS3 would be close to the fabled graphical ceiling.
Izorpo
Liverpool?
well SCEE offices are off the Wavertree Technical Park stop on the Liverpool Lime Street train
certainly hope its more than 2gb ram – my 3 year old PC has that
Eternal_Bcb
Like CC_Star says, they are in a bit of a quandary atm with the VRAM they can use. It’ll be a little while before 512MB sticks gets cheap(er), but then I wonder maybe the reason they went with AMD for the CPU/GPU is because of the cost benefits AMD could bring them with having a complete processing system out of one company. This could also explain why Crytek explain that next-gen isnt exactly nailed down right now because from a developers perspective, making games with 2GB GDDR5 or 4GB GDDR5 is a whole different ball game. It would also explain why Tretton was saying about its not about being first to the party but rather “being the best” so maybe Sony are thinking really longer term and waiting till everything is cost-effective from the get go.
Kaminari
2 GB will be more than enough for a Linux system, as long as as the GPU has its own dedicated VRAM.
Talking about the GPU… a Radeon 7850 is 200/250 euros alone. I’ll let you do the rest of the maths.
Sympozium
Of all English Cities they had to choose Liverpool…
matsv201
The Liverpool is quite obvious a die shrieked Trinity. Quite quick CPU with a additional GPU (can be used as a SPU, that’s probably what Sony whats).
There have been some rumors that AMD is working on a XDR2 processor, is this it? If the rumors are true, most probably. The Trinity have one huge problem, the bus speed is way to slow for the processor. But the XDR2 alows for 5 times faster bus speed.removing the bottleneck making the Liverpool probably a really fast processor. The shrinking also allows for more Cache improving the performance. (the trinity is cash starved). Its really not the fastest processor on the market, but including the GPU/SPU part its probably 4-5 times faster than the fastest Intel processor.
2GB of RAM does not sound like a lot. Looking at Windows Task Manager most people will get the impression that games like Battlefield 3 consumes between 1-2GB of ram. Thats not really true. In reality it consumes around 200-300MB of ram. The rest is graphical data, disk buffer and other stuff that’s really is no part of the game engine. 2GB of ram is most possibly plenty for the coming 10 years. Remember that it don´t include the separate GPU memory that probably will be 4GB of GRAM
About the 7970 GPU, i´m skeptic, but when its that’s specified, its probably true. The 7970 have a odd number of memory bits making the maximum amount of memory 3GB (or possibly 6GB with larger modules). Also the 7970 is both Die and watt effective making it a pretty good chose.
Also remember in the RAM issue. Most of the ram consist of bitmap texture files. Using the APU/SPU as a real time demopression engine. The memory can be stored compressed (about 1:4 with lossless JPEG 2000 or similar technology). Making the 2GB of ram a effective 8GB of RAM equivalent to a PC.
Also if the Textures is stored compressed on the BD the effective transferrate comparative to PC is quadrupedal. The PS3 can do this trick to, but i don´t know if it actually does. The Xbox 360 can in theory do it to, but the architectural is all wrong making it kind of non effective.
320GB of storage sound all wrong. The 320GB disk is hardy not made anymore. And ceranly not next year. The price difrance is about £2 for a 320GB and a 500GB, making it probable that its not the reason. But if we are talking about SSD, than its suddenly allot. Here is a problem thow. A 320GB of SSD cost about about £200, that’s almost half the cost of the probable price. But 500GB would cost around £300 making it impossible.
Remember, its not October 2013 today, the price will fall about 35% making the price for the disk at launch about £130, it still a little bit to expensive, but quite achiveble.
I think Sony will integrate the SSD directly to the motherboard. Reducing the cost about 15-20%, than making it possible to expand with a SATA slot with a 1TB conventional drive an run them in hybrid mode.
A integrated SSD would make about 1GB/s of data transfer to the CPU/memory. Remember that’s 1GB/s of compressed data. That is similar to the transfer rate of the main RAM of a low powered PC. Making the RAM almost like a Cache, and making the harddrive almost like RAM. Remember the transferrate between the CPU and RAM is most probable 5 times faster than on a high end PC. Thats about the speed of the L3 Cache.
In PC terms then that is a CPU about 4 times faster than the fastest today (coding CPU code in to the APU:s GPU), with a effective 2GB of L3 Cache. (the largest today is about 0,02GB) and 320GB of effective RAM (that about 20 times more than a top of the line PC today). And everything is compressed…..
From the interface inwards….
4000k resolution – Possible, not likely
HDMI 1.4 – Most likely.
7970 GPU – Likely, but it really does not make that much diffrance – Price: ~£100 (only chip)
3GB GPU GDDR5 memory – If the 7970 is correct, its extremely likely – Price: ~£50
AMD APU Liverpool – Almost certain – Price ~£100
2GB of RAM – Very probable, XDR2 – Posible – Price ~£30
SSD/320GB – Highly likely/probably – Price ~£100
BD – Highly likely – Price ~£30 (only unit)
Production and other price: ~£50
Total cost about £450
This is how it looked the last time around (with eception of the more expensive BD drive). Why not use more RAM… Because the bus will not allow for it. Also using a more powerful CPU or GPU does not make scene. Everthing must balance. Making one thing very powerful just make the other thing a bottleneck.
This roamer is in my mind almost certainly true. What i might expect is that the change the size of the SSD drive. Or possible make to versions. One with 320GB and one with 120GB. Or maybe one with a 500GB/16GB hybrid drive.