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[Digital Foundry] Inside PlayStation 4 Pro: How Sony made the first 4K games console

3K views 40 replies 23 participants last post by  TheReciever 
#1 ·
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The PS4's Pro's GPU features two enhancements that are not implemented in Polaris, but may be implemented in Vega, this is a fantastic and juicy read!


Quote:
"A few AMD roadmap features are appearing for the first time in PS4 Pro," Cerny continues, giving a broad overview of how the semi-custom relationship functions.

"How it works is that we sit down with AMD, who are terribly collaborative. It's a real pleasure to work with them. So basically, we go ahead and say how many CUs we want to have and we look at the roadmap features and we look at area and we make some decisions and we even - in this case - have the opportunity, from time to time, to have a feature in our chip before it's in a discrete GPU. We have two of these this time, which is very nice."

And that work feeds back into the Radeon discrete products too, useful in maintaining consistency between PC and console games development. Asynchronous compute, for example, has had a huge benefit for AMD on PC DX12 applications, specifically because of the additional hardware scheduling pipelines championed by Mark Cerny in the PS4 design.

"We can have custom features and they can eventually end up on the [AMD] roadmap," Cerny says proudly. "So the ACEs... I was very passionate about asynchronous compute, so we did a lot of work there for the original PlayStation 4 and that ended up getting incorporated into subsequent AMD GPUs, which is nice because the PC development community gets very familiar with those techniques. It can help us when the parts of GPUs that we are passionate about are used in the PC space."
Quote:
In actual fact, two new AMD roadmap features debut in the Pro, ahead of their release in upcoming Radeon PC products - presumably the Vega GPUs due either late this year or early next year.

"One of the features appearing for the first time is the handling of 16-bit variables - it's possible to perform two 16-bit operations at a time instead of one 32-bit operation," he says, confirming what we learned during our visit to VooFoo Studios to check out Mantis Burn Racing. "In other words, at full floats, we have 4.2 teraflops. With half-floats, it's now double that, which is to say, 8.4 teraflops in 16-bit computation. This has the potential to radically increase performance."

A work distributor is also added to the GPU design, designed to improve efficiency through more intelligent distribution of work.
The PS4 Pro also features an addition of 1GB of DDR3 memory to free 512MB of the GDDR5 memory so developers will be able to use 5.5GB of memory for games, and 512MB of memory for the 4K front-end.
 
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#2 ·
Nice. Have always had soft spot in my heart for PlayStation. I personally will be picking up a pro to spice up my gaming.
 
#6 ·
They only reason Sony are legally getting away with calling it 4k is because the PS4 Pro definitely outputs a 4k signal, regardless of whatever internal upscaling tricks it uses.

But getting that hardware for $400 is impossible to beat so hats-off to Sony for that.
 
#8 ·
So excited that Vega 10 is not just a big Polaris but has improvements all around.
 
#9 ·
Quote:
Originally Posted by Juub View Post

How Sony made the first 4K game console...except they didn't.
How so?

Quote:
Originally Posted by Xuvial View Post

They only reason Sony are legally getting away with calling it 4k is because the PS4 Pro definitely outputs a 4k signal, regardless of whatever internal upscaling tricks it uses.

But getting that hardware for $400 is impossible to beat so hats-off to Sony for that.
Some games do natively render at 4K, such as: The Elder Scrolls Online, The Elder Scrolls V: Skyrim, The Last of Us Remastered, Mantis Burn Racing, Thumper and a couple of others.
 
#10 ·
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Originally Posted by FattysGoneWild View Post

Still getting it. But man. Its so misleading to call it a "4k gaming system".
It's a "sometimes native 4K but upscaled most of the time" 4K system, in the same manner that the PS4 and XB1 are "sometimes 1080p 60fps but usually 1080p (on the PS4 front) and sub-1080p (on the XB1 front) and a lot of the times 30fps/uncapped fluctuating FPS".

Can't wait for that 4k cinematic experience!
 
#11 ·
Quote:
Originally Posted by akaTRAP View Post

It's a "sometimes native 4K but upscaled most of the time" 4K system, in the same manner that the PS4 and XB1 are "sometimes 1080p 60fps but usually 1080p (on the PS4 front) and sub-1080p (on the XB1 front) and a lot of the times 30fps/uncapped fluctuating FPS".

Can't wait for that 4k cinematic experience!
Still way way better than the PS4's 720-1080 on a 4K TV. The Pro will look very good on a 4K TV. For the price they delivered.
 
#13 ·
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Originally Posted by Twirlz View Post

Is there any benefit of a PS4 Pro for those with a 1080p TV?

4k is great, but many (if not the majority) still have 1080p TVs and I can imagine a fair few people purchase the PS4 Pro thinking they can enjoy 4k but only have a 1080p TV.
Yeah, they'll down-sample to 1080p to improve the image quality, so you'll have less jagged edges etc, some games even come with multiple modes, Rise of the Tomb Raider has a 4K mode and a 1080p mode with higher frame-rate, and also a 1080p mode with better graphics. It's down to the developers to implement the multiple modes I think, but downsampliing is like a guarantee.

It's going to be phenomenal to see better image quality on consoles! I'm soo excited!
 
#14 ·
Yeah the custom GPU in this thing and hardware upscaler are reason alone that this console at $400 is a pretty good deal. Only a few more weeks til release.
 
#15 ·
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Originally Posted by TopicClocker View Post

How so?
It's not when the Xbox One S launched first and also does "4K" (upscaling)
 
#17 ·
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Originally Posted by GoLDii3 View Post

It's not when the Xbox One S launched first and also does "4K" (upscaling)
Yeah I see what you mean, but no game runs at native 4K on the Xbox One, they're just upscaled. Meanwhile there are a couple of PS4 Pro games that run at native 4K.
Quote:
Originally Posted by ma2k5 View Post

But the PS4 Pro also allows native 4k on compatible games, does the XB1S?
Nope.
 
#18 ·
PS4P will run 4x the resolution of Xbox One and not PS4. So expect 1440p, 1800p and 2160p.
 
#19 ·
Quote:
Originally Posted by Laserlight View Post

Still way way better than the PS4's 720-1080 on a 4K TV. The Pro will look very good on a 4K TV. For the price they delivered.
I'm just getting tired of this graphics war. One just half-does it better than the other. Before this gen started they all talked about 1080p 60fps, when only the PS4 does 1080p (most of the time, and even then often with medium-ish details) and neither console does 60fps a lot of the time. Now we're replacing 1080p with 4K. SSDD.
 
#20 ·
Quote:
Originally Posted by Xuvial View Post

They only reason Sony are legally getting away with calling it 4k is because the PS4 Pro definitely outputs a 4k signal, regardless of whatever internal upscaling tricks it uses.

But getting that hardware for $400 is impossible to beat so hats-off to Sony for that.
you mean like how PS3 can run games up to 1080p but most are sub-720p?

yeah, that's how marketing works.

Some games can natively run at 2160p, most are upscaled.
 
#22 ·
Quote:
Originally Posted by akaTRAP View Post

I'm just getting tired of this graphics war. One just half-does it better than the other. Before this gen started they all talked about 1080p 60fps, when only the PS4 does 1080p (most of the time, and even then often with medium-ish details) and neither console does 60fps a lot of the time. Now we're replacing 1080p with 4K. SSDD.
Also all the 4k games on PS4 Pro are pretty much guaranteed to run at 30 fps, which Sony decided was apparently fine (cinematic and all) because it's youtube trailers and sreenshots that mostly determine console game sales.

It looks like XBox Scorpio is going to be the only console that will even have a remote chance at 4k@60fps.
 
#23 ·
Quote:
Originally Posted by Xuvial View Post

Also all the 4k games on PS4 Pro are pretty much guaranteed to run at 30 fps, which Sony decided was apparently fine (cinematic and all) because it's youtube trailers and sreenshots that mostly determine console game sales.

It looks like XBox Scorpio is going to be the only console that will even have a remote chance at 4k@60fps.
Only if it gets a better CPU.
 
#24 ·
Quote:
Originally Posted by Xuvial View Post

Also all the 4k games on PS4 Pro are pretty much guaranteed to run at 30 fps, which Sony decided was apparently fine (cinematic and all) because it's youtube trailers and sreenshots that mostly determine console game sales.

It looks like XBox Scorpio is going to be the only console that will even have a remote chance at 4k@60fps.
Scorpio just like the Pro will play indie or sports games at 60fps and 4K. It has almost no chance of being capable of achieving 60fps in demanding games. Not enough CPU or GPU power.
 
#25 ·
Quote:
Originally Posted by Xuvial View Post

Also all the 4k games on PS4 Pro are pretty much guaranteed to run at 30 fps, which Sony decided was apparently fine (cinematic and all) because it's youtube trailers and sreenshots that mostly determine console game sales.

It looks like XBox Scorpio is going to be the only console that will even have a remote chance at 4k@60fps.
because 30fps good enough for controller-centric console games I play (third-person, platformers, etc)
if you want first-person games and simulators where 60fps is going to make the difference, stick with PC
and because you can't have it all, $400 for a 4K60 system? Maybe next-gen after year 2020.
 
#26 ·
Quote:
Originally Posted by twitchyzero View Post

because 30fps good enough for controller-centric console games I play (third-person, platformers, etc)
if you want first-person games and simulators where 60fps is going to make the difference, stick with PC
and because you can't have it all, $400 for a 4K60 system? Maybe next-gen after year 2020.
It'll still be 30fps. Graphics ain't gonna be the same in 4 years. 30fps have been the standard on consoles since the PS1 days. Not about to change any time soon.
 
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