The hype around the Playstation 4 doesn’t show any sign of slowing down; instead it seems to be growing by the day. It hasn’t really stopped since the first rumours of the system (then codenamed Orbis) began. However, once the leaked specs were then confirmed, gamers and developers have been excited at the prospect of what Sony’s PS4 could do. But the system isn’t that exciting – at least according to Nvidia’s Tony Tamasi:
“Compared to gaming PCs, the PS4 specs are in the neighborhood of a low-end CPU, and a low- to mid-range GPU side,” said Nvidia’s Nvidia’s senior vice president of content and development.” He continued on, using Nvidia’s own GTX680 as a point of comparison. “If the PS4 ships in December as Sony indicated, it will only offer about half the performance of a GTX680 GPU (based on GFLOPS and texture), which launched in March 2012, more than a year and a half ago.”
So is this really true – or is he and Nvidia just upset that their hardware isn’t going to be used inside Sony’s new Playstation? “”I’m sure there was a negotiation that went on, and we came to the conclusion that we didn’t want to do the business at the price those guys were willing to pay.”
So does his points have any merit? Well – actually yes. As I’ve already wrote in another article (and put a video out on too you should check out) the PS4’s GPU is slower than that of the GPU that it’s based on. It has less GCN cores (18 compared to either 20 of the full mobile 7970M, or the 32 of the desktop Radeon 7970) and they run at less speed. The CPU isn’t able to compete with the monsters that are being released from both AMD and Intel – but you’ve got to remember, the system is closed.
While in a few years time, we’ll see drastically better looking PC games, compared to the PS3 and XBox 360 of now, the PS4 is light years ahead. I am looking forward to seeing the market push forward a little, rather than being limited by such old tech that is present currently.
It’s also worthy of note that Nvidia have given the PS4 full support with regards to their Physx.
