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[Xplainin]

Is this still the case?
There is no way a PC rig with a 1.84 tflops GPU, and a mobile CPU could deliver what we have seen late gen in games on the PS4, such as The Last of Us 2.

Going into next gen, with the host of new hardware adaptations like SSDs that are more integrated into the APU than is possible on PC, or custom decompression blocks not yet available on PC, are we going to see this gap stay the same, disappear, or get bigger?

 

[LordOfChaos]

No.

This tweet was written before low level APIs like DX12, Vulkan, Metal, and originally Mantle were introduced to PC, with literal order of magnitude increases in draw call performance.

PCs are still chipping away at other things like hardware GPU scheduling and DirectStorage/GPUdirect (which are more related to next gen SSDs than Carmack's old tweet), but the above was a large bulk of this. Is there still more overhead on a full windowed OS, yeah, but is any console magically outputting twice what we would expect from the hardware, no.

Impressive first party games are the result of a lot of time (=$$$) and polish, if you gave Naughty Dog the same with an equivalent PC who knows what we'd see.

 

[KuraiShidosha]

There is no way a PC rig with a 1.84 tflops GPU, and a mobile CPU could deliver what we have seen late gen in games on the PS4, such as The Last of Us 2.

Why not? Under DX12 or Vulkan and with the level of fine tuning a console exclusive game gets, there's no reason why not. Try playing your games at 1080p 30 fps with lower than low settings but tightly optimized and tweaked asset placement and you can get really far. Look at RDR2 on the One X and how gorgeous it is, yet a good portion of the game's demanding graphics settings are lower than the lowest setting available on PC, just to make it run on the most powerful console currently available.

 

[wordslaughter]

There is no way a PC rig with a 1.84 tflops GPU, and a mobile CPU could deliver what we have seen late gen in games on the PS4, such as The Last of Us 2.

Nah. It totally can.

We have seen that a similar PC to a PS4 can produce the same or better performance compared to a PS4.

There's always that argument that says "but those are multiplats, I'm talking about exclusives" .... but then former PS4 exclusives end up on PC and it turns out there was nothing magical about them. They perform on the PC as expected.

Detroit Become Human doesn't require a PC more powerful than a PS4 to run at 1080p30. The same will be true for Horizon Zero Dawn and Death Stranding.

The entire console secret sauce and "coding to the metal" advantage ( in the rare circumstanteces it existed ) evaporated with low level API's on PC like DX 12 and Vulkan.

 

[TheCrimsnFuckr]

I mean, its definitely hyperbole but I definitely feel it's true enough, even now. The console to PC comparison is true because the console is designed to always work a specific way, and is also one set piece of hardware that can easily have hardware specific optimizations to get it to run a specific way. A PC on the other hand, can be configured in a multitude of ways and is always different from a console (even without specific low level access) and also needs to run other things in the background (such as the OS, and any background apps). A Desktop PC to a Laptop has much more cooling headroom (as there is more airflow) and a much greater power limit (as a desktop does not need to be mobile) so honestly I am personally inclined to believe what John Carmack says to a certain extent

 

[CrustyBritches]

Certainly not concerning the GPU. A PC with a downclocked RX 480 to PS4 Pro spec outperforms PS4 Pro in DOOM at equal settings, I've tested it.

 

[supernova8]

No.

This tweet was written before low level APIs like DX12, Vulkan, Metal, and originally Mantle were introduced to PC, with literal order of magnitude increases in draw call performance.

PCs are still chipping away at other things like hardware GPU scheduling and DirectStorage/GPUdirect (which are more related to next gen SSDs than Carmack's old tweet), but the above was a large bulk of this.

Impressive first party games are the result of a lot of time (=$$$) and polish, if you gave Naughty Dog the same with an equivalent PC who knows what we'd see.

Surely the whole point of consoles is that they can home in on specific features rather than having to be more general about it as they are with PC.

 

[LordOfChaos]

Surely the whole point of consoles is that they can home in on specific features rather than having to be more general about it as they are with PC.

A fixed hardware target and singular focus help, I said so with the time and polish, but you're still not going to get 2x the performance out of them. A PS4 Pro performing like a 5700XT? Where exactly have they ever done something like that, and I'm talking after the 7th gen for this tweet? It may have been right once but is outdated, you mostly get what you expect to get out of the hardware now, and games that use performance saving features on consoles, like asynchronous compute, low level APIs, tend to do the same on PC and also save that performance. You can point to exclusive games that look impressive, but again, we can't exactly see what they would be with the same time, money, and polish put into an equivalent PC, from what we CAN see, performance is about what you expect of it.

 

[wordslaughter]

The quote from Carmack is also quite a bit older ... than Twitter.

The first time he said that, console games were still running at 480p, and there was no mention of mobile parts.

 

[Bernd Lauert]

HZD will run on a toaster at 1080p30. The thing that seems to demand higher specs is that 60 fps is the default frame rate on PC. Nobody likes playing below 60 fps.

 

[The Alien]

Dude revolutionized the gaming industry and in his spare time prefects VR and dabbles in aerospace.

Thanks for showing that even this genius has made at least 2 mistakes:

1. The aforementioned tweet.
2. Having a Twitter account.

 

[Tesseract]

sounds right to me, seems more of a practical account than technical

juice squeeze is whacked with closed boxes, lower level interfaces are quite the ball change tho

 

[llien]

Take a look at Horizon, God of War on PS4.
They runs on 7870.

So, hell, yes, it stands.

And, uh, no PC vs Console crap lease, #whynotboth.

This tweet was written before low level APIs like DX12, Vulkan, Metal, and originally Mantle were introduced to PC, with literal order of magnitude increases in draw call performance.

The thought that raw performance have ever been HALVED by an OS is weird. Where is that major perf jump that we should have seen with Vulkan and DX12?

The way it works for consoles is: assets, geometry, etc is being tailored and polished specifically for that hardware configuration.

 

[rofif]

It's John carmack so of course it's true

 

[Stuart360]

It wasnt really true when he said it. Remember Digital Foundrys budget I3 GTX750 powered PC out performing PS4 early in the gen?.
I would say that when we get like a couple of years away from a new gen, optimization on PC games takes a big hit, usually because devs expect most PC gamers have a strong enough PC to brute force console ports by that point.

 

[Lanrutcon]

The tech world moves so fast...6 years is a bleeding eternity, really.

That being said, everyone knows Carmack is actually a super intelligent computer made flesh sent from the future to steer our timeline into a singularity from which our species will emerge as a single consciousness devoid of emotion and weakness.

 

[Ballthyrm]

The tech world moves so fast...6 years is a bleeding eternity, really.

That being said, everyone knows Carmack is actually a super intelligent computer made flesh sent from the future to steer our timeline into a singularity from which our species will emerge as a single consciousness devoid of emotion and weakness.

He has started working on AI.
Better embrace the singularity now.

We are DOOMED

 

[anothertech]

Closed system vs open system. Closed always wins.

 

[ZehDon]

Of all the statements from all of the industry people I'd be happy to question and debate, a statement regarding computer engineering and theoretical hardware performance from John Carmack just isn't on my list. If the man says "Yeah, that's the way it is" I sure as shit don't have the education, knowledge, experience, understanding, peers, or foresight to really argue. And I'd wager virtually the entire member-base of this forum is in that boat with me.

 

[eot]

sounds right to me, seems more of a practical account than technical

juice squeeze is whacked with closed boxes, lower level interfaces are quite the ball change tho

Agreed, it's more an empirical observation than a theoretical limit

 

[Kenpachii]

Its false lots of proof out there that its not. It was even wrong in the day he stated it.

 

[Darius87]

It's still true that you can't code to the metal for PC because of the many configurations and never will be true but API got better so it's more like around x1.5 better performance then PC equivalent spec.
Anyone who don't agree can look at minimum and recommended spec for same games on consoles and PC, even minimum spec for PC requires better HW then PS4 specially CPU.

 

[manzo]

No.

This tweet was written before low level APIs like DX12, Vulkan, Metal, and originally Mantle were introduced to PC, with literal order of magnitude increases in draw call performance.

PCs are still chipping away at other things like hardware GPU scheduling and DirectStorage/GPUdirect (which are more related to next gen SSDs than Carmack's old tweet), but the above was a large bulk of this.

Impressive first party games are the result of a lot of time (=$$$) and polish, if you gave Naughty Dog the same with an equivalent PC who knows what we'd see.

The first post is absolutely correct. I don’t play on PC anymore except some random games of Overwatch while travelling on business and killing time in the hotel room before going to bed.

DirectX11 was horrible in efficiency. Once all low-level API’s came to PC, the systems got pretty close to par in efficiency. Some efficiencies are still on the consoles, but try to even find a processor such as the Jaguar on PC since it’s so goddamn horrible. First parties can squeeze some small additional overhead from the hardware, but it’s nothing in the endgame.

 

[ZywyPL]

Depends on the dev's effort to be hones, but generally, this doesn't hold truth anymore since A) consoles use the same PC parts now, and B) PCs also have low-level APIs for some time, and it's only getting better each year. The examples are countless:
















XB1 is 1.4TF, PS4 is 1.8TF, GF 750Ti is 1.4TF stock and 1.6TF when OCed. Looking at the above examples, I'd even say the PC is the one that performs better given its on-paper specs. Of course the times are changing, and we will have to wait and see before we can compare new tech/features like RT performance for example, but then again, with DLSS becoming better and more available, PCs are getting basically twice the performance per given TFlop, I just cannot see consoles being able to catch up with such efficiency by simply "coding to the metal".

 

[PaintTinJr]

Just look at the *minimum specs* for HZD on PC versus the PS4.

Generation newer CPU with double the clock rate needed.
Generation newer GPU needed, and one that is two tiers higher than the AMD GPU roadmap tech used for the PS4's GPU.

So yeah, as per usual Carmack is more than correct.

 

[Optimistic Gamer]

Of all the statements from all of the industry people I'd be happy to question and debate, a statement regarding computer engineering and theoretical hardware performance from John Carmack just isn't on my list. If the man says "Yeah, that's the way it is" I sure as shit don't have the education, knowledge, experience, understanding, peers, or foresight to really argue. And I'd wager virtually the entire member-base of this forum is in that boat with me.

100%

 

[CrustyBritches]

It wasnt really true when he said it. Remember Digital Foundrys budget I3 GTX750 powered PC out performing PS4 early in the gen?.
I would say that when we get like a couple of years away from a new gen, optimization on PC games takes a big hit, usually because devs expect most PC gamers have a strong enough PC to brute force console ports by that point.

They were beating both consoles with a lowly 7790 early on.

PS4 Pro is where to focus with either underclocked RX 480 or RX 470. I have vids of DOOM and TW3 showing this matchup. I’ll test Death Stranding and HZD this way, hopefully DF will provide console settings. I don’t have a RX 480 anymore, but my kids have RX 470s that will be suitable.

 

[vaibhavpisal]

Of course the times are changing, and we will have to wait and see before we can compare new tech/features like RT performance for example, but then again, with DLSS becoming better and more available, PCs are getting basically twice the performance per given TFlop, I just cannot see consoles being able to catch up with such efficiency by simply "coding to the metal".

Coding to the metal is end game.

As efficient as it gets.

Dlss is upscaling tech. Why is it being brought up when talking about efficiency?

Your other points hold. Ultimately it doesn't matter how much tflops in pc realm is required. You can outperform current gen consoles for reasonable money. Especially base model.

 

[Stuart360]

Just look at the *minimum specs* for HZD on PC versus the PS4.

Generation newer CPU with double the clock rate needed.
Generation newer GPU needed, and one that is two tiers higher than the AMD GPU roadmap tech used for the PS4's GPU.

So yeah, as per usual Carmack is more than correct.

The specs on Steam rarely mean anyhting, and they wont list obsolete tech most of the time. Hell i was running current gen games on a Q6600 at the start of the gen, and that hasnt been listed on Steam spec sheets for years lol.
Besides like i said earlier, optimization on PC games in the last couple of years of a gen is always dodgy. No need to spend too much time and money optimizing console ports when the most used gpu's on the PC are 1060, 2060, and 2070, all more powerful than the most powerful console in the OneX.

 

[KungFucius]

Just look at the *minimum specs* for HZD on PC versus the PS4.

Generation newer CPU with double the clock rate needed.
Generation newer GPU needed, and one that is two tiers higher than the AMD GPU roadmap tech used for the PS4's GPU.

So yeah, as per usual Carmack is more than correct.

This proves nothing. Porting a game from one architecture to another takes effort. They also make decisions on target specs based on the market they are going for and start from there. There is no fundamental physics based reason, it's engineering and business decisions. It is also worth noting that many games can run on HW below spec.

PC games don't target shit hardware as the minimum spec. Why the fuck would a modern PC game target specs from ~ 2013?

 

[ZywyPL]

Dlss is upscaling tech. Why is it being brought up when talking about efficiency?

It doubles the performance, it doesn't get any more efficient that that. It's the same as TAA is being widely used instead of MSAA or SSMM, it's just WAY more efficient, there is no reason to tank your performance by half if you can get almost the same results at fraction of the cost, and same applies for DLSS vs native res.

 

[vaibhavpisal]

It doubles the performance, it doesn't get any more efficient that that. It's the same as TAA is being widely used instead of MSAA or SSMM, it's just WAY more efficient, there is no reason to tank your performance by half if you can get almost the same results at fraction of the cost, and same applies for DLSS vs native res.

TAA, MSAA, SSMM are techniques used by engine to generate image.

Dlss is applied after final image is created. Cannot be compared.

Consoles also can use dlss or checkerboarding, whatever Dev's find to be useful and efficient. It cannot be a differentiating factor.

 

[General Lee]

I don't think Carmack meant that comment as some hard rule rather than just a general sentiment about how it is easier to leverage consoles vs. PC.

Technically you could optimize and build for a specific PC just as you do for consoles, and with modern APIs and consoles mostly having the same hardware there's limited actual benefit from any customization they've included. I do think something like TLOU2 could run just the same on similar PC hardware if such existed and a dev optimized for it. There's no magic in PS4 making it faster. It's just the reality that on PC you don't have the luxury to optimize for a single spec, and there's always a somewhat larger portion of performance going to generic OS use. Whatever cpu call overhead advantages consoles had in the past are pretty much obsolete with modern APIs. Next gen consoles come with fast SSDs and purpose built controllers to leverage them that will outrank most current PCs, but by the time there's any games designed to truly take advantage of that, PC will have the same and better - if you have the money to buy it.

 

[martino]

When some PC settings like draw distance even at min are better than console ones you need to really take time to invest the subject.

 

[Rikkori]

No.

This tweet was written before low level APIs like DX12, Vulkan, Metal, and originally Mantle were introduced to PC, with literal order of magnitude increases in draw call performance.

Why not? Under DX12 or Vulkan and with the level of fine tuning a console exclusive game gets, there's no reason why not.

There's still a significant difference between the console APIs and DX12/Vulkan, so the "full control" promised still has not really materialised on PC and likely never will because of a whole bunch of reasons. See this talk by the head of Nixxes, the best PC porting company in the world, for more info:

Advanced Graphics Tech: How to Thrive on the Bleeding Edge Whilst Avoiding Death by 1,000 Paper Cuts

A DirectX 12 development story told by Jurjen Katsman CEO of Nixxes, PC developers of AAA games 'Deus Ex: Mankind Divided' and 'Rise of the Tomb Raider'. During this talk, Jurjen will share the expectations set, challenges faced and lessons...

www.gdcvault.com

Just look at the *minimum specs* for HZD on PC versus the PS4.

Generation newer CPU with double the clock rate needed.
Generation newer GPU needed, and one that is two tiers higher than the AMD GPU roadmap tech used for the PS4's GPU.

So yeah, as per usual Carmack is more than correct.

Minimum specs are irrelevant, because we don't have access to hardware as shit as on consoles generally. You have to remember that what minimum specs are, is often just what they have to test with and can then guarantee a performance level. They don't actually try to find the lowest end hardware that could run it, nor the settings. Because let's also not forget - the games run lower than lowest on consoles sometimes compared to what you can choose on PC. We simply don't have such low settings!

Hence lowspecgamer exists.

LowSpecGamer

LowSpecGamer is a channel dedicated to budget gaming and low graphics, from pushing entry-level and old hardware to its limits to forcing the lowest graphics...

www.youtube.com

 

[ZywyPL]

TAA, MSAA, SSMM are techniques used by engine to generate image.

Dlss is applied after final image is created. Cannot be compared.

Consoles also can use dlss or checkerboarding, whatever Dev's find to be useful and efficient. It cannot be a differentiating factor.

At the end of the day DLSS is one of the ingredients of how fast the end result is being calculated, what I as the end user get, so I think it should be as well considered. But you're right about CBR, I completely forgot about it, that basically evens the odds I guess. So still, when it comes to native rendering or upscaled rendering, as the examples I posted previously show, the difference the consoles used to have back in the days have basically disappeared, it's more or less 1:1 ratio between the consoles and their PC counterparts.

 

[PaintTinJr]

This proves nothing. Porting a game from one architecture to another takes effort. They also make decisions on target specs based on the market they are going for and start from there. There is no fundamental physics based reason, it's engineering and business decisions. It is also worth noting that many games can run on HW below spec.

PC games don't target shit hardware as the minimum spec. Why the fuck would a modern PC game target specs from ~ 2013?

It proves what it is supposed to prove.(IMHO).

A game may well "run" on some technical specs well below that stated, but in a like for like comparison the game doesn't just have to appear to "run", in the eyes of the developers and QA team it actually has to be able to achieve the experience in the same way the console versions do, and be rigorously tested to those standards too, before going Gold, and this is the point the likes of DF fail to explain every time they do a face off with less than 2hrs of a game's playtime.

Unless the PC community is going to spend thousands of QA hours testing on systems below the technical specs - and refrain from cheating the comparison with SSD or even desktop class HDD, more memory, overclocks ,don't ignoring collision or AI issues only present on PC, not using HDR, not using full 7.1.2 sound capabilities, etc - and then claim it "runs" at the same persistent frame-rate and frame-pacing in all areas - including boundary checking dead-ends, then all we can go on is the minimum specs provided by the developer/publisher that guarantee the gamer can complete the game and play as intended.

I know that feels like a copout but in any contest a level playing field is required, and the it "runs" seal of approval in the PC space is not a level playing field test to something that "runs" on a console.

 

[Sophist]

Consoles have shared memory between gpu and cpu which allows to do post-processing with the CPU. It's no more relevant since ps4/xbox one.

 

[Whitecrow]

No.

This tweet was written before low level APIs like DX12, Vulkan, Metal, and originally Mantle were introduced to PC, with literal order of magnitude increases in draw call performance.

PCs are still chipping away at other things like hardware GPU scheduling and DirectStorage/GPUdirect (which are more related to next gen SSDs than Carmack's old tweet), but the above was a large bulk of this.

Impressive first party games are the result of a lot of time (=$$$) and polish, if you gave Naughty Dog the same with an equivalent PC who knows what we'd see.

Still less. As long as Windows is more heavy than console OS, it will perform worse. And Windows will always be more heavy because it's not designed exclusively or prioritizing gaming.

 

[LordOfChaos]

Take a look at Horizon, God of War on PS4.
They runs on 7870.

So, hell, yes, it stands.

When will we ever get to see what the same team with the same budget and time could have done with similar PC hardware? Large budget first party exclusives are really hard to compare. Though we'll see Horizon on PC eventually, but probably a port vs exhaustively tailored. Whenever we do see cross platform titles, we never see something like the PS4 Pro (~480) performing like a 5700XT for this double the performance claim. The hardware is mostly...Well, the hardware. The same fillrate, the same texturing rate and so on as you'd expect out of them.

Still less. As long as Windows is more heavy than console OS, it will perform worse. And Windows will always be more heavy because it's not designed exclusively or prioritizing gaming.

Are you suggesting that accounts for a difference of double the performance? That's the tweet being discussed. Sure, there's some overhead still. But in every comparison out there, the console hardware performs close to where you would expect.

 

[ZywyPL]

Still less. As long as Windows is more heavy than console OS, it will perform worse. And Windows will always be more heavy because it's not designed exclusively or prioritizing gaming.

That's not true at all, Win10 uses just a fraction of a core and around 1.6GB of RAM and can do... pretty much every single thing human kind can think of, whereas console's OS needs entire core for itself and 3GB RAM, and all it can to is boot up games and some simple media playback. I still scratch my head to this day wondering where all that RAM in PS4/XB1 goes, 1GB should be the upper limit.

 

[Whitecrow]

When will we ever get to see what the same team with the same budget and time could have done with similar PC hardware? Large budget first party exclusives are really hard to compare. Though we'll see Horizon on PC eventually, but probably a port vs exhaustively tailored. Whenever we do see cross platform titles, we never see something like the PS4 Pro (~480) performing like a 5700XT for this double the performance claim. The hardware is mostly...Well, the hardware. The same fillrate, the same texturing rate and so on as you'd expect out of them.




Are you suggesting that accounts for a difference of double the performance? That's the tweet being discussed. Sure, there's some overhead still. But in every comparison out there, the console hardware performs close to where you would expect.

I was answering the question of what would do ND with a PC with the same specs.

 

[llien]

When will we ever get to see what the same team with the same budget and time could have done with similar PC hardware?

When PCs game developers will start investing major effort into optimizing assets for concrete PC configurations... which is likely never.

And it applies to cross-plats too, check games on Switch with its laughable hardware.

 

[Guilty_AI]

Impressive first party games are the result of a lot of time (=$$$) and polish, if you gave Naughty Dog the same with an equivalent PC who knows what we'd see.

This. People always praise the graphics in a lot of Sony first party games as something ultra advanced and such, when in reality their visuals look great mostly due to heavy investment in art direction. It really isn't all that related to a console's unique hardware.

I've been watching my sister play HZD on a base PS4, and for all the praise its visuals get i still notice a lot of glaring graphical issues such as low draw distances, low-res foliage, loads of filters aplied on-screen to hide jagged edges, lower-quality water physics...
What really stands out is its art direction, rather than somehting on a technical level (and even then i felt that impressiveness was limited to certain key parts of the map)

 

[OptimistPrime]

Nah. It totally can.

We have seen that a similar PC to a PS4 can produce the same or better performance compared to a PS4.

Which octo-core Jaguar CPU was it that was used in this PC comparison?

The PS4/XBO 8 core CPU is weaker than Intel quad cores that came out in 2006. It's nearly impossible to even test with something so limited.

 

[LordOfChaos]

When PCs game developers will start investing major effort into optimizing assets for concrete PC configurations... which is likely never.

And it applies to cross-plats too, check games on Switch with its laughable hardware.

I think we're kind of converging but reading the OP intent differently. Will AAA first party titles with oodles of time and money thrown at them always be the most impressive? Yeah, of course.

Is there anything about PCs or consoles that make consoles somehow spit out double the throughput in any particular metric vs a PC? No, or not anymore. Carmack's comment was in the last days of the 7th gen and right ahead of when the low overhead movement made it to PC. There's no provable case since the 8th gen of a console performing like hardware equivalent to double of it, and most people also want to push for 60fps or higher on PC compared to the good enough for most 30 on consoles.

 

[deriks]

A console is unique, so as a default is more optimized and will run games better than same specs on a PC

Double? Nah. But I guess that he was exaggerating, so...

 

[OptimistPrime]

A console is unique, so as a default is more optimized and will run games better than same specs on a PC

Double? Nah. But I guess that he was exaggerating, so...

I would argue that on the XBO/PS4 CPU side that it's probably more than double.

 

[Oddvintagechap]

Twice is a tad too much. But when he said it, it was probably true. PS4 is based on Laptop hardware though.

 

[A.Romero]

I think what matters the most is the price. I bet there are many costs benefits that get passed to consumers somehow. Also, consoles don't need to make a lot of profit because of the business model. Unlike PC parts that need to produce revenue by themselves. Does it really matter if the closest CPU on the PC space performs as well as the console if it costs say 20% more? I think not.

Architectures themselves are similar but PC has to have the edge. If anything because they get the benefit of shorter hardware refresh cycles.