Creator of FXAA says PS4 could be years ahead of PC, new Xbox may have memory bandwidth issues



Timothy Lottes is referred to as the father of FXAA in video games by many people. He knows a great deal about PC hardware and now he’s given his two cents on what he hopes to see in the next consoles from Sony and Microsoft. Lottes doesn’t have any insider information about this consoles, he discloses that right away. He’s basing these statements solely off of rumored specs.

While these rumors aren’t concrete we are seeing some particular things take shape. With so many sources reporting the same information every week it does seem like the new Xbox may feature a larger amount of DDR3 memory that has worse memory bandwidth than the smaller amount of DDR5 memory rumored to be in the new Playstation. This could change, but all signs are pointing towards it.

Lottes seems fearful of Microsoft using a large amount of DDR3 memory because it might pose limits on memory bandwidth. On this issue he says:

“On this platform I’d be concerned with memory bandwidth. Only DDR3 for system/GPU memory pared with 32MB of “ESRAM” sounds troubling. 32MB of ESRAM is only really enough to do forward shading with MSAA using only 32-bits/pixel color with 2xMSAA at 1080p or 4xMSAA at 720p. Anything else to ESRAM would require tiling and resolves like on the Xbox360 (which would likely be a DMA copy on 720) or attempting to use the slow DDR3 as a render target.

I’d bet most titles attempting deferred shading will be stuck at 720p with only poor post process AA (like FXAA). If this GPU is pre-GCN with a serious performance gap to PS4, then this next Xbox will act like a boat anchor, dragging down the min-spec target for cross-platform next-generation games.”这不是自抽么？说自己的货烂

Lottes seems to be less concerned about the rumored specs of the next Playstation. Most rumors have been pointing at the PS4 having less RAM than the next Xbox (4GB vs 8GB) but that may not matter if Sony uses DDR5 memory instead of the type of memory Microsoft is rumored to be considering. It would produce better results with a better amount of memory bandwidth.

Lottes says:

“If PS4 has a real-time OS, with a libGCM style low level access to the GPU, then the PS4 1st party games will be years ahead of the PC simply because it opens up what is possible on the GPU. Note this won’t happen right away on launch, but once developers tool up for the platform, this will be the case.

As a PC guy who knows hardware to the metal, I spend most of my days in frustration knowing damn well what I could do with the hardware, but what I cannot do because Microsoft and IHVs wont provide low-level GPU access in PC APIs. One simple example, drawcalls on PC have easily 10x to 100x the overhead of a console with a libGCM style API.”

Interesting comments altogether. I continue to be surprised by the amount of memory that it seems like we’ll be getting in next-gen consoles. I didn’t expect anything over 4GB, much less the 8GB supposedly in the new Xbox.

I would be fine with 2GB-4GB of memory in these consoles personally, though I’m sure many of you want more than that. We won’t have to wait much longer as it is very likely we’ll see these new consoles before E3, going by various reports. At the worst we have to wait until June 11th to see these devices in action.


偶觉得fxaa真是垃圾，没近视都把你搞近视。。特别是cod9里是必须关的。。

smaa才是真正廉价高效，不过本世代机器干嘛没人用。。。

[ 本帖最后由 倍舒爽 于 2013-1-26 04:34 编辑 ]

现在一下子又没新闻了，俺饿得要死！难得有个相关的就随便发呗。。

对了，realtime os又是啥呢？？

[ 本帖最后由 倍舒爽 于 2013-1-26 04:47 编辑 ]

都别争了，我觉得苍蝇那文说得蛮有道理的。。
微软想以客厅为重心拓展一大堆业务，所以以容量多任务为重。。
反倒是索尼想专心照顾游戏这个核心，才以带宽为重。。

再个以目前的泄露的架构来讲，720给人一种非常先进的感觉，什么有额外芯片做资源调度，
什么esram的职能大大提升等。。。可以做sampling。。
带宽的问题估计不是直接用ddr3对比gd5这么简单的，sony更暴力直接些，而微软更为讨巧些。。
且现在几乎最耗带宽的aa都有各种后制aa方案，一个比一个牛x。。
像以往微软那招edram专干脏活，绝对是经典的四两拨千斤。。

我觉得下世代的多平台游戏（假设ps4的gpu够得上720的话）
一开始ps4的画面占优势，慢慢就转为720较好了，毕竟gpgpu处理才是未来的方向，而720
似乎在direct compute方面更见长一些。。

引用:

原帖由 狂风007 于 2013-1-26 12:47 发表
别吵了，吵 个毛线吵

还要等3个月菜有次时代，我等不及了

被舒爽说说，从现在泄露的资料看，PS4和720跑前段时间那个最终幻想DEMO应该没问题吧？

俺不懂的。。。附和一下大家而已。。

posted by wap, platform: Nokia (E71)

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原帖由 @shinkamui  于 2013-1-26 15:51 发表
你是想说msaa吧。msaa的话，效果按理说最好，但是浪费太多，带宽消耗过大，一点都不廉价啊……个人还是更喜欢post aa，像是mlaa，fxaa之类，其实fxaa被称为nv的mlaa。

32M的esram一定是不怎么够用的，限制很大，不 ...

不是咧，真的是smaa，好东西来的。。

posted by wap, platform: Nokia (E71)

我在gaf无主2这个帖子里认识到这玩意，是个外部注入器来的，现不在台机旁，名字忘了，反正我试过的游戏都支持，不会有fxaa近视效果的。。

posted by wap, platform: Nokia (E71)

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原帖由 @moble22  于 2013-1-26 18:45 发表
smaa是非常牛逼的抗锯齿，我在project cars上玩的感觉，耗资源非常少，效果不错。不过很少游戏用smaa

所以俺就说注入器啊，理论上所有游戏都支持！俺用来跑gta4mod，火炬之光等，真是爽得一比！！贞率完全没变化！
这smaa本来想开帖介绍的，但原始下载ink又忘掉了。。

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原帖由 shinkamui 于 2013-1-26 21:20 发表

赶紧查了一下，结果发现从前看过的，基本就是个改进版mlaa，于是就忘了……
纯后处理aa，直接从输出图上分析，所以理论上支持任意游戏。但是不能补充原始输出缺失的画面，比如远距离的细线

http://www.iryoku. ...

是指子像素吧。。

就是mlaa的子像素处理加强版，mlaa的近景处理本来就不错的。。

fxaa&smaa和mlaa最大的区别在于后者对子像素完全无效化~
而smaa相对而言又不如fxaa模糊，远景的闪烁又不会像mlaa这么厉害。。

我再找找，这么好的东西不分享给大家说不过去。。

[ 本帖最后由 倍舒爽 于 2013-1-26 22:09 编辑 ]

引用:

原帖由 moble22 于 2013-1-26 22:27 发表
要不是project cars有smaa选项，我还真不知道有这么牛逼的抗锯齿。:D ，为什么很多游戏都没smaa选项啊？这不科学。

http://club.tgfcer.com/thread-6613016-1-1.html
找到了。。:D