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Xbox Series X’s Advantage Could Lie in Its Machine Learning-Powered Shader Cores, Says Quantic Dream

Lunatic_Gamer

Gold Member
David Cage, CEO and founder of Quantic Dream, highlighted the Xbox Series X's shader cores as more suitable for machine learning tasks, which could allow the console to perform a DLSS-like performance-enhancing image reconstruction technique.

It is always challenging to compare hardware, as they always have advantages and disadvantages. It is not just a matter of CPU or frequency; it is more about the consistency of the components and the possibilities of advanced features.

The CPU of the two consoles uses the same processor (slightly faster on Xbox Series X), the GPU of the Xbox also seems more powerful, as it is 16% faster than the PS5 GPU, with a bandwidth that is 25% faster. The transfer speed from the SSD is twice as fast on PS5.

The shader cores of the Xbox are also more suitable to machine learning, which could be an advantage if Microsoft succeeds in implementing an equivalent to Nvidia’s DLSS (an advanced neural network solution for AI).

Overall, I think that the pure analysis of the hardware shows an advantage for Microsoft, but experience tells us that hardware is only part of the equation: Sony showed in the past that their consoles could deliver the best-looking games because their architecture and software were usually very consistent and efficient.

 

Elias

Member
I think he's referring to "super resolution" which MS and AMD have mentioned in passing before. And yeah, MS has added some silicon to the shaders cores that's dedicated to machine learning, while Sony has not.

We'll have to wait and see but if "super resolution" can be used in conjunction with VRS, it will probably be more performance than DLSS which you can't use with VRS.
 

mejin

Member
Overall, I think that the pure analysis of the hardware shows an advantage for Microsoft, but experience tells us that hardware is only part of the equation: Sony showed in the past that their consoles could deliver the best-looking games because their architecture and software were usually very consistent and efficient.

And this will repeat in the new gen.
 

sinnergy

Member
Overall, I think that the pure analysis of the hardware shows an advantage for Microsoft, but experience tells us that hardware is only part of the equation: Sony showed in the past that their consoles could deliver the best-looking games because their architecture and software were usually very consistent and efficient.

And this will repeat in the new gen.
And that’s why MS is building first party studios 😉 it’s a multi year plan for both companies.
 
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N30RYU

Member
Overall, I think that the pure analysis of the hardware shows an advantage for Microsoft, but experience tells us that hardware is only part of the equation: Sony showed in the past that their consoles could deliver the best-looking games because their architecture and software were usually very consistent and efficient.

And this will repeat in the new gen.
yeah... cause good developers have nothing to do...
 

Elias

Member
Overall, I think that the pure analysis of the hardware shows an advantage for Microsoft, but experience tells us that hardware is only part of the equation: Sony showed in the past that their consoles could deliver the best-looking games because their architecture and software were usually very consistent and efficient.

And this will repeat in the new gen.
Not really, MS is growing "organically" studios like compulsion, inxile, and the initiative while also purchasing large publishers like Bethesda. The landscape is totally different.

But I do agree that the third party games will generally look better on series x, just like this gen on the one x.
 

THE DUCK

voted poster of the decade by bots
Overall, I think that the pure analysis of the hardware shows an advantage for Microsoft, but experience tells us that hardware is only part of the equation: Sony showed in the past that their consoles could deliver the best-looking games because their architecture and software were usually very consistent and efficient.

And this will repeat in the new gen.

Well I guess its over then. Mejin has spoken, next gen console war is over - Sony will have all the best looking games this gen no matter what, despite having weaker hardware.

In the last gen, the ps4 vs xbox had better looking games because it had the best hardware. As for ps4 pro vs xbox one x, every game that was mutiplatform, with rare exceptions, looked better on xbox one x.
There was the odd Sony game that looked equal to top tier xbox one x games, like gow and horizon.
 
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geordiemp

Member
David Cage, CEO and founder of Quantic Dream, highlighted the Xbox Series X's shader cores as more suitable for machine learning tasks, which could allow the console to perform a DLSS-like performance-enhancing image reconstruction technique.



Its likely true, question is what ML tasts is the correct question?

Procedural generation is now in Gerometry engine, and Digital foundry could not even tell if Spiderman was upscaled, and the we will all get the new AMD supersampling if Sony dont have their own of course.

It also confirms the shader cores and architecture are NOT the same, and Ps efficiencies are not the same.

Da da da
 
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mejin

Member
Well I guess its over then. Mejin has spoken, next gen console war is over - Sony will have all the best looking games this gen no matter what, despite having weaker hardware.

You do realize, in the last gen, the ps4 vs xbox had better looking games because it had the best hardware right?

One X didn't overshadow Pro and Sony first party games. Actually, it was the opposite. On paper a massive difference in favour of One X, but the more ambitious first party games came from Pro.

David Cage can speak with property about this subject cause his game for PS4 is one of the best looking games on the gen in a weaker hardware and he probably knows how WWS operates.

So, you have an ecossystem with S, X and PC and another which is highly specialized in a single platform. Two different approaches and concept. We have the launch this month and one side is ready while the other is not.

Sony Studios will have the advantage imo but you can think otherwise. You guys there is no need to be upset and I'm just comenting based on what Cage told us.
 

Riky

$MSFT
Well, if true, this could really be huge. We've seen huge gains from ai learning from nvidia with dlss 2.0. It would also allow the series s to hit above its weight.

Yeah I suggested that very thing in the Xbox thread, it's probably going to be the most interesting platform comparison, how competitive due to full RDNA2 hardware support is Series S.
 

MrFunSocks

Banned
I’d say MS will be working hard on making some good DX12U implementations of SuperResolution, which is going to be great for PC gamers and Series S/X. I love native 4K, but if I can get 1440p native and 60fps with good quality machine learning super resolution I’d take that for a lot of games.

Sony not having any ML hardware is a bit surprising given that they did a lot of upscaling/checker boarding this gen.

Having said that, the death stranding native vs DLSS comparison had some problems in DLSS mode imo. Any time there was fast camera panning it turned into a complete blur.
 

Md Ray

Member
Well, Wednesday is Microsoft's purchasing Sega day.
Thursday will become Microsoft's purchasing Quantic Dreams day.

tenor.gif
 
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geordiemp

Member
I’d say MS will be working hard on making some good DX12U implementations of SuperResolution, which is going to be great for PC gamers and Series S/X. I love native 4K, but if I can get 1440p native and 60fps with good quality machine learning super resolution I’d take that for a lot of games.

Sony not having any ML hardware is a bit surprising given that they did a lot of upscaling/checker boarding this gen.

Having said that, the death stranding native vs DLSS comparison had some problems in DLSS mode imo. Any time there was fast camera panning it turned into a complete blur.

Why do you believe super resolution will be ML based ? Its open source and likely will be heavily temporal with no specfic learning and will apply to all games.

Do you think the amazing spiderman footage, where nobody could tell the resolution, needed dedicated ML ? NO>

Lower precsion is already built into box boxes, Sony decided they dont need extra ML cores for their needs.
 

longdi

Banned
Yes there was talks about ML exclusively in XSX from that italian SCE guy.
Cant wait for Amd super-resolution to come out soon.

A semi DLSS1.5 on XSX/rDNA2, 1440p upscale to 4K. Imo the late 2nd years XSX games will look really superb. :messenger_ok: :messenger_open_mouth:
 
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Panajev2001a

GAF's Pleasant Genius
One X didn't overshadow Pro and Sony first party games. Actually, it was the opposite. On paper a massive difference in favour of One X, but the more ambitious first party games came from Pro.

David Cage can speak with property about this subject cause his game for PS4 is one of the best looking games on the gen in a weaker hardware and he probably knows how WWS operates.

So, you have an ecossystem with S, X and PC and another which is highly specialized in a single platform. Two different approaches and concept. We have the launch this month and one side is ready while the other is not.

Sony Studios will have the advantage imo but you can think otherwise. You guys there is no need to be upset and I'm just comenting based on what Cage told us.

MS is also playing the long multiplatform game / GamePass strategy and the change from XDK to more generic GDK plays into it while Sony improves the more PS specific dev environment (which developers loved on PS4) allowing for PC improvements by experience thanks to some of its first party devs releasing PC ports of their classics.

I think this is what Cage meant by software and hardware being designed to produce great results together on the PS platform as the OS and DevTools are specifically designed to work with the PS5 HW and can help devs extract the HW’s potential more easily.
 

M1chl

Currently Gif and Meme Champion
This guy again.... Would be nice, but I have my reservation, there was some slide about this in the Hot Chips, but for me it's wait and see....
 

DustQueen

Banned
ML is Series S saving grace cos u have to render games at 540-720 internally if u wanna have rays n other shit in ur game and there is no way u can make it look good without ML reconstruction.
 
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Then this brings the question also for when oodle textures come into play since ps5 can do lods and texture streaming more better. Would the textures look more better and higher as they can be compressed more faster compared to xsx? So why xsx will may run lower rez probably the same with ps5. Xsx will or may look look as if its actually played on 4k where ps5 will run at the same rez but the image and textures will look much higher compared to xsx due to oodle textures and compression?
 

Riky

$MSFT
ML is Series S saving grace cos u have to render games at 540-720 internally if u wanna have rays n other shit in ur game and there is no way u can make it look decent without ML reconstruction.

You got any proof of these figures?
 

MrFunSocks

Banned
Then this brings the question also for when oodle textures come into play since ps5 can do lods and texture streaming more better. Would the textures look more better and higher as they can be compressed more faster compared to xsx? So why xsx will may run lower rez probably the same with ps5. Xsx will or may look look as if its actually played on 4k where ps5 will run at the same rez but the image and textures will look much higher compared to xsx due to oodle textures and compression?
You’re not gonna be seeing much, if any, difference in textures in multiplatform games. Both consoles have more than adequate ram and I/o speed to have better quality textures than any game will need.
 

martino

Member
We really need confirmation because geometry engine looks like the magical escape answer now without them....
 
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DustQueen

Banned
Yeah sorry misread that.

But 540p? I mean even One S has never gone that low even at the end of the gen.

Why not? It ll free up lots of performance and if MS ML reconstruction ll be anything like Nvidia's u can get pretty ok 1440p final image from rendering 540 internally.
 

geordiemp

Member
People need to read the article more carefully

  • Cage said IF MS are wokring on a DLSS 2.0 solution dedicated ML may help.
  • Super samlping, the AMD cross platform solution, is not DLSS, its temporal mainly as it will be across all games so no special learning.
And here we are, people read upscaling twice and go off at a tangent. The 2 points are not related, thats the journalist trying to link them.

So again, what functions do we believe will need DEDICTATED ML cores ?
 
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longdi

Banned
MS is also playing the long multiplatform game / GamePass strategy and the change from XDK to more generic GDK plays into it while Sony improves the more PS specific dev environment (which developers loved on PS4) allowing for PC improvements by experience thanks to some of its first party devs releasing PC ports of their classics.

I think this is what Cage meant by software and hardware being designed to produce great results together on the PS platform as the OS and DevTools are specifically designed to work with the PS5 HW and can help devs extract the HW’s potential more easily.

Yes its this generationals/GPU/BC approach that's why im bullish on XGS. You can say MS is forced to change how the console model work as fighting Sony on old grounds will be tough.

MS being MS, a hearty warchest helps but its good men like Phil, Andrew and Ronald being the final push.

Imo first gen XSXS games will be rough, late XDK, pushed by the raw ST cpu speeds and 12tf.

It's the 2nd gen XSXS games that will be beautiful. Making use of efficiency features of VRS, mesh shading, SFS, 16T, ML, sustained SoC performance. 1440p upscale to 4k plZ . :messenger_savoring:
 
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supernova8

Banned
Yes its this generationals/GPU/BC approach that's why im bullish on XGS. You can say MS is forced to change how the console model work as fighting Sony on old grounds will be tough.

MS being MS, a hearty warchest helps but its good men like Phil, Andrew and Ronald being the final push.

Imo first gen XSXS games will be rough, late XDK, pushed by the raw ST cpu speeds and 12tf.

It's the 2nd gen XSXS games that will be beautiful. Making use of efficiency features of VRS, mesh shading, SFS, 16T, ML, sustained SoC performance. 1440p upscale to 4k plZ . :messenger_savoring:

I'm hoping that we'll have a repeat of the PS4/XB1 generation where we had a lull with nothing much happening, and then all of a sudden we had stuff like Uncharted 4. I cannot even imagine what the equivalent is going to be this time around. It's a shame we don't have a true next-gen showcase game like Ryse coming to Xbox but yeah they'll come out eventually.
 
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Riky

$MSFT
"The CPU of the two consoles uses the same processor (slightly faster on Xbox Series X), the GPU of the Xbox also seems more powerful, as it is 16% faster than the PS5 GPU, with a bandwidth that is 25% faster. The transfer speed from the SSD is twice as fast on PS5."

All the exact same specs that was obvious to everyone, yet people try their hardest to ignore or downplay what is fundamentally true. Here is a Dev telling it like it is.
 

supernova8

Banned
"The CPU of the two consoles uses the same processor (slightly faster on Xbox Series X), the GPU of the Xbox also seems more powerful, as it is 16% faster than the PS5 GPU, with a bandwidth that is 25% faster. The transfer speed from the SSD is twice as fast on PS5."

All the exact same specs that was obvious to everyone, yet people try their hardest to ignore or downplay what is fundamentally true. Here is a Dev telling it like it is.

Wait wasn't the GPU on the PS5 running faster but with fewer CUs?
 

Bitmap Frogs

Mr. Community
That's complete bullshit, they were not "let go" but you know that already. QD becoming multiplat is actually quite a loss for Sony as Detroit sold 5M copies (twice as much as, say, Bloodborne).

Ya but Bloodborne made a huge PR impact: hell it's even in the top 4 of gafs best of generation tournament. No one gives a shit about Detroit and even the wokies the game targeted have disparaged it.
 

Panajev2001a

GAF's Pleasant Genius
Yes its this generationals/GPU/BC approach that's why im bullish on XGS. You can say MS is forced to change how the console model work as fighting Sony on old grounds will be tough.

MS being MS, a hearty warchest helps but its good men like Phil, Andrew and Ronald being the final push.

Imo first gen XSXS games will be rough, late XDK, pushed by the raw ST cpu speeds and 12tf.

It's the 2nd gen XSXS games that will be beautiful. Making use of efficiency features of VRS, mesh shading, SFS, 16T, ML, sustained SoC performance. 1440p upscale to 4k plZ . :messenger_savoring:

Never losing a chance to take a conversation and making it an astroturfing piece (see bolded for a little gem there) ;). Enjoy your psychology 101 experiments in attempting to piss PS fans offs :p.

With that said, I do find your attempt to suggest PS5 will not improve over time as developers get more and more familiar with the HW cute though.

Having good first day DevTools does not mean there is no room for improvement or that devs experiments with HW do not extract more performance over time (especially if MS does plan to release more HW iterations more frequently and developers are disincentivized from optimising for any particular one as a result). That is the point of fixed specs console generations: single spec available to ALL the users and developers being able/having good RoI incentives to spend time to find novel and crazier ways to make it sing.
 
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oldergamer

Member
I think he's referring to "super resolution" which MS and AMD have mentioned in passing before. And yeah, MS has added some silicon to the shaders cores that's dedicated to machine learning, while Sony has not.

We'll have to wait and see but if "super resolution" can be used in conjunction with VRS, it will probably be more performance than DLSS which you can't use with VRS.
It can. Look at it this way. In addition to bandwidth saving measures they could use machine learning in combo with texture compression. In fact ms has a patent that mentions the two together. It could be an interesting advantage.
 
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