PP Mguire
Build Guru
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Hmmm do you understand how Lcache works on CPUs? Where you have RAM, and then like 8MB of L3 (for example), 512KB L2, ect on CPUs. The data is streamed to this small pool that is ridiculously fast for the CPU to grab small bits of data from. This is basically the same thing ESRAM does. It's supposed to be super fast for small scale objects but there is a flaw in this logic. The unified architecture is meant for texture resolution to be greatly increased because there is such a large pool of RAM to use now. ESRAM issues are the reason why the GPU was scaled down on the Xbox. In the end, this will cripple it compared to the PS4 for the same reason why you don't buy a PC GPU with 4GB of slow DDR3 on a slow GPU. So when developers start utilizing high amounts of RAM due to having it there, the GPU will be slower to calculate and process, and 32MB seems kind of moot for textures that could be over 1GB a piece. Even if it can achieve a throughput of 192GB/s theoretically (much higher than originally announced).
To give you an idea, my quad channel RAM running at 2133MHz (DDR3) gives me about 68GB/s, while the GDDR5 on the PS4 is around 172GB/s. The Xbox's DDR3 will run slower than my RAM speed which is why they went for the ESRAM setup. While although for PCs memory bandwidth on the CPU side isn't an issue, we have graphics cards with dedicated GDDR5 that do the heavy texture work. This is why AMD's APU chips strive for higher memory speeds on PCs because their RAM is the CPU's RAM.
THis is essentially why I say the PS4 is better in almost every way. The GPU is faster, the RAM is faster (not just for CPU, but GPU too) and there isn't a lack of bandwidth until textures just get too high. Memory latency is kind of a moot point when you're looking at double the bandwidth (like DDR2 to DDR3 system memory on PC). I hope this helps clear it up a bit.
Edit: I'll add, that theoretically until developers scale up textures due to getting used to the hardware the ESRAM can give the Xbox the upper hand in sprite handling, and other small static objects. Things with small detail that won't really get changed until developers can ramp up graphics. For instance, grass is usually just a moving sprite that ESRAM can handle. Stuff like that. That will change quickly though, and I don't really see it helping. Possibly only hurting it.
To give you an idea, my quad channel RAM running at 2133MHz (DDR3) gives me about 68GB/s, while the GDDR5 on the PS4 is around 172GB/s. The Xbox's DDR3 will run slower than my RAM speed which is why they went for the ESRAM setup. While although for PCs memory bandwidth on the CPU side isn't an issue, we have graphics cards with dedicated GDDR5 that do the heavy texture work. This is why AMD's APU chips strive for higher memory speeds on PCs because their RAM is the CPU's RAM.
THis is essentially why I say the PS4 is better in almost every way. The GPU is faster, the RAM is faster (not just for CPU, but GPU too) and there isn't a lack of bandwidth until textures just get too high. Memory latency is kind of a moot point when you're looking at double the bandwidth (like DDR2 to DDR3 system memory on PC). I hope this helps clear it up a bit.
Edit: I'll add, that theoretically until developers scale up textures due to getting used to the hardware the ESRAM can give the Xbox the upper hand in sprite handling, and other small static objects. Things with small detail that won't really get changed until developers can ramp up graphics. For instance, grass is usually just a moving sprite that ESRAM can handle. Stuff like that. That will change quickly though, and I don't really see it helping. Possibly only hurting it.
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