Xbox One Patch Could Unlock GPU, But Will It Beat The PS4?

Xbox One Patch Could Unlock GPU,
But Will It Beat The PS4?

 The Xbox One GPU could be unlocked with a possible patch, but would the performance increase be enough to rival the PlayStation 4?

 In a related report by The Inquisitr, Microsoft is considering selling a cheaper $399 console by removing the Xbox One disc drive and increasing the size of the hard drive. The idea would be to force gamers to purchase digital games but some analysts think that’s a bad business strategy at this time.

 A PS4, Xbox One hardware comparison shows the two consoles are almost identical in most respects. They both have a 1.6 GHz 8-core Jaguar CPU, 8 GB of memory, a 500GB HDD,Blu-ray drive, WiFi, HDMI ports, and USB 3.0. But Sony chose to go with a GPU with significantly more streaming processors and also higher bandwidth GDDR5 memory. Microsoft, on the other hand, chose to offset the GDDR3 bandwidth with the Xbox One eSRAM, which offers both high bandwidth and low latency in a 32MB package attached directly to the CPU and GPU via a SoC design.

 While discussing the differences can get quite technical, long story short is that the Xbox One GPU offers a max of 1.33 TeraFLOPS/s versus the PS4 GPU performance of 1.84 TeraFLOPS/s. Xbox One provides 68.3 GB/s and 102 GB/s of memory bandwidth, while the PS4 once again wins with 176 GB/s. In practice, what these hardware differences mean is lower resolutions, performance, and sometimes slight tweaks to certain effects.

 Call Of Duty: Ghosts was famously limited to 720p on the Xbox One while the PS4 was able to handle the full 1080p experience. More recently, it was proven there were major differences between the Tomb Raider: Definitive Edition for Xbox One and PS4.

 Unfortunately, it turned out to be an apples vs oranges comparison because two different studios did the ports and the Xbox One was framerate capped at 30 FPS while the PS4 was capped at 60 FPS. This means the average FPS results are useless for comparison, but the lowest, or minimum, framerate is another story. The Xbone posted 27 FPS while the PlayStation 4 was 32 FPS. Hands-on tests cite the Xbox One experience as being more consistent, leading some to wish their was an option on the PS4 version for a 30 FPS cap.

 Video: Tomb Raider Definitive Edition: PS4 vs. Xbox One Cut-Scene Frame-Rate Tests

 Assuming this particular scene isn’t being bottlenecked by the CPU, this also allows us to compare the Xbox One GPU and PS4 GPU at a point where they are both under stress. Despite the PS4 theoretically being much faster on paper the minimum results don’t show the expected difference. This either means the Xbox One is performing better than expected or the Tomb Raider game is indeed CPU bottlenecked. Some also claim the Xbox One drops down to 900p for certain cutscenes, which would explain a lot. There’s also the potential for optimization issues with the PS4′s LibGNM API but some developers claim the Xbox One driver is still in need of work, as well.

 This also brings up the potential for a Xbox One patch that unlocks the GPU from the Kinect. Apparently, Microsoft currently demands that eight percent of the GPU is reserved for Kinect video and another two percent for Kinect voice. This means that when a game doesn’t use the Kinect at all about 10 percent of the Xbox One GPU is sitting idle. Worse, one industry insider named Pete Todd claims Microsoft purposefully chose to go with a cheaper/slower GPU because of the cost of the Kinect although they couldn’t have known Sony was shooting so high with the PS4 GPU.

 Although this Xbox One patch hasn’t been confirmed or denied by Microsoft, it’s been said that game developers have been clamoring for access to the unlocked potential of the GPU. What do you think Microsoft should do?

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 source: inquisitr.com

Sony exits the PC market

Sony exits the PC market

Sony is to exit the PC market, selling its Vaio division to a Japanese investment group as it concentrates on more profitable ventures including high-end TVs and smartphones.

 Sony has officially announced plans to exit the PC market, selling its Vaio division to a Japanese investment group as a plan to stem its overall financial losses.

 Earlier this week, Sony denied plans to sell the PC division to Lenovo, but in such a way that didn't rule out a sale to someone else. Now, the reason behind the company's careful wording is clear: it is indeed leaving the PC market altogether, selling its entire PC arm to investment group Japan Industrial Partners.

 The move comes as Sony's losses in the PC market mount, dragging down its overall earnings to a loss of around $1.1 billion for its latest financial year. With the Vaio arm making the biggest loss overall, it's natural the company would be looking to trim the fat - although that will come as little consolation for the 5,000 workers, 1,500 in Japan and 3,500 internationally, who are to be out of a job as a result of the sale.

 Sony also confirmed that it would be spinning off its display division into a separate company, and concentrating purely on high-end HDTV and UHDTV sets in the future. While its TV arm has been making a loss of late, the company predicts a return to profit by the end of financial year 2014.

 Sony will continue to produce home entertainment products, including its latest PS4 console, in-house with no plans as yet to sell or spin off any other business units.
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 source: bit-tech.net

PS4 Users Suffering From A Strange Issue

PS4 Users Suffering From A Strange Issue: Odd Grid-like Display Appearing On-Screen

Grids everywhere.

 A new error for the PlayStation 4 has cropped up. Users are apparently suffering from an issue which results in no audio, the controller not working and an odd grid-like display appearing on-screen.

 Switching to safe mode does nothing apparently and occurs as soon as the console is turned on. Other users, especially on GAF, have been facing a similar issue ranging from games like Battlefield 4 (and no, it’s nothing like the earlier CE-34878-0 error which affected the multiplayer), Killzone: Shadow Fall and Assassin’s Creed 4. It’s not as strong as the above picture, but still very noticeable. You can check them below:

 The HDMI cable isn’t the problem this time around – which resulted in some display problems in the beginning for the PlayStation 4. It looks to be more of a GPU issue this time around or simply a firmware glitch. Who’s to say? As it stands, the best advice that has been offered as of now is to simply “Call Sony”.

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 source: gamingbolt.com and reddit.com and Playstation Forums