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Carol equips her gaming rig with an Intel CPU, the i5-3550P to be precise, a 4-core 3.1Ghz chip. She pairs that with a*Radeon HD 7850 with 2GB of DDR5 RAM and another 8 gigs of DDR3 RAM for system memory.
RAM-BO
Let’s take a look at the memory first. In the PC set-up, we have 8 gigs of common DDR3 RAM, but Sony has somehow crammed the same amount of GDDR5 RAM into its PS4.
GDDR5 is primarily used in graphics chips. It’s not something you see used as system RAM at all.
For instance, the nVidia “Titan” GPU, which costs $1000 by itself, has just 6GB of GDDR5 RAM, and that’s still all reserved for the GPU. You’ll be hard-pressed to find*any*PC*with GDDR5 plugged directly into the motherboard rather than sitting on the graphics card. This just isn’t how PCs work at the moment, though that will likely change.
GDDR5, while suffering from slightly higher latency, offers a substantial bandwidth boost over DDR3, and given the make-up of the integrated CPU/GPU chip in the PS4 this will translate to a substantial performance boost.
One Chip to rule them all
Next up we have the CPU/GPU configuration.
Again, what Sony has done with the PS4 is something that PC builderssimply cannot do yet. PC’s come with two separate chips connected over a PCI-E chipset.
The PS4, on the other hand, houses an integrated CPU/GPU custom AMD chip—the “Jaguar” CPU is not available for purchase yet and the GPU side of the equation is said to be similar to AMD cards running in the $200 price-range. The secret weapon here isn’t either the 8-core CPU or the GPU, but rather how the two are paired.
Both the processor and the graphics card are built into the same chip and both tap into that 8GB of DDR5 memory at once—it’s a “unified memory” setup as opposed to the system your PC uses, with the CPU utilizing your DDR3 system memory and your GPU harnessing the more robust GDDR5.
What does this mean? Basically it means that the two chips will be able to communicate with one another much faster and more efficiently than in a traditional PC set-up. Combine this with the high-bandwidth GDDR5 memory and the fact that much of the traditional CPU tasks will be offloaded to the GPU, and you have a machine that you*simply cannot compare to a modern PC.
Windows? We don’t need no stinking Windows
One expensive component I didn’t notice on Carol’s list was the operating system.
While you could go with a free Linux build, to get the most out of a gaming PC you’ll want to spend on a Windows install disc. You can still buy Windows 7 and you could probably find an OEM disc for around $99. But the costs of running Windows aren’t all monetary. Unlike a PC, the PS4 won’t need to bother with all those pesky PC applications. There will be no anti-virus software running in the background. A console is a closed system with all the benefits (and limitations) that entails.
In other words, what you can do with the PS4 hardware on a console is not the same thing as what you can do with the same, or similar, hardware in a PC.
This rule applies to game development as well. Consoles may be under-powered compared to their PC cousins, but they have advantages in terms of uniformity that make them very developer friendly. Developing games for a uniform system is a huge advantage over the PC market with its wildly diverse array of price and power points. Again, this convenience does come with its own set of disadvantages. In a few years, the PC will be much more powerful than the PS4, for instance.
The PS3 was no walk in the park for game development, but with a move to x86, Sony is making it much easier for developers to work with their platform. Standardization will also make it easier to port PS4 games to PC.
Finally, we don’t know what type of hard drive the PS4 will come equipped with. Will it be a traditional spindle-based drive or an SSD? Perhaps a hybrid solution? This, and the optical drive, will be the real performance bottlenecks in the system*and*in the PC you could theoretically build to compare it with.
The fact is, no matter how you slice or dice it, you can’t build a PC with the same specs or performance as the PS4. You could almost certainly build something faster and more powerful, but it will cost you more than the PS4 is likely going to cost.
None of that matters, however. PC gaming is great, but I’m a big tent guy. I like the participation of multiple systems in the market, and the PS4 will be a great competitor for the next generation of video games. The most important thing the system will have to offer will be its games.
There will be many PS4 exclusives that will only play on that machine. If you want to play those games, it won’t matter how amazing your gaming rig is—just like the PS4, however high-powered, will not have access to the entire breadth of titles available on PC.
Show me the money!
Either way, the console will almost certainly cost you less than a comparable gaming PC. Analysts are saying that*$299 is the “magic price point”
*for the system, but I’m betting we don’t see under $399 at launch. That would still empty your wallet less than a gaming rig. Will it make the PS4 a money-loser for Sony?
Actually, I doubt it. Unlike your gaming rig, Sony’s CPU/GPU combo chip is much cheaper to manufacture. The heating solution for one chip is also cheaper, as is the fact that no operating system overhead exists. Indeed, all the parts—save for the RAM—should come at a pretty reasonable price. I’m not sure if Sony is taking a loss, but from what I’ve read it doesn’t appear to be the case—or at the very least, the loss won’t be dramatic. Then again, we don’t know the price of the machine yet, so this is guess work.
Either way,*building a PC really is a lot of fun
, and it’s hard to top PC gaming with its*adaptability, openness, and future-proofing.
I can’t argue in favor of a system that hasn’t yet released, but I do think it’s important to note just how structurally unique the PS4 will be compared to its PC counterparts, at least for the time being. Not better, necessarily, but certainly different enough that any comparison is basically apples to oranges...
