PS4, PS2 Mutlithreading and you.

It all comes down to this.

Which is more costly for SOE?

The cost of the extra resources it will take to fully optimise the game for multithreading?

Or the cost of losing the large number of players who can't/won't play PS2 because of the chronic lack of performance?

I'd humbly suggest it's the latter, and suggest that SOE throw everything they physically can at the project.

I know a number of people who want to play PS2, but can't because it runs like a dog on their (pretty recent) systems. I also know quite a few people that have given up on PS2 because they got sick of the horrific framerates during pretty much anything resembling combat.

The things I hear the most from my friends relating to PS2 are: "I'd play PS2 if it ran better." or "I'd play PS2 again if it ran better.". They like the design, they like the direction the game is going, they want to play the game more than before.

But until the game is optimised a damn sight better than it is at the moment, they won't. The more that happens, the more chance they'll find another game that takes their interest that does run properly, which will lose PS2 potential players, and SOE potential revenue.

As it stands the developers have said they are having to rebuild the game to suit the ps4.

The ps4 is set to have an AMD "Jaguar" APU with 8 cores, these cores are alleged to run at a maximum of 2.0GHZ per core.

This leaves a fair amount of leg room when compared to modern or even three year old cpus put to use in desktops today.
It is a bit of an apples to pears comparison but, once it is optimized for a cpu that weak per core all of our computers will see an improvement; AMD and Intel alike.

I am most anticipating this update as I mentioned in my previous post, three of my four cores spend alot of time twiddling their proverbial thumbs while the game maxes one single core at 3.5GHZ the best it can. Once this change has come through we should see a lively distribution across all available resources, no matter their strength.

No! Let the dead horse lie!

Intel must be allowed to reign supreme, unchallenged and never-vigilant...











THEN AMD can come in and win again

I'm not saying your wrong, and I do get the basic differences in design approch. I'm just not convinced PS2 is the kind of program that lends itself particularly well to the feature. To some extent its useful in everything, but given how much of what the client is trying to do is dependent on unpredictable entities. Its obviously quite a strange level of abstraction, but how much are you going to gain, from a say 70% more efficent branch prediction architecture, when the choice of branches comes down to something like a gal drop happening? Utlimately, there will be a lot of 'if-then-else' like statements for which until word gets back from the server branch prediction could have been going down a blind alley (for however many milliseconds but there we do). Its actually quite interesting to think about especially as someone who had loads of desync problems a while back.

And the way your talking about it, might almost lead people to believe branch prediction is an intel only feature. Its not.

The cache on the other hand, thats probably something you would see a benefit from and probably does go some way to that 20-30% lead. Because the client does have to constantly re-cache resources because of situations like the above.

And eight weaker (its a relative thing, people presenting AMD cores as objective weak is a little 'lol wut?') cores is a problem depending on how the software your running is engineered. Its entirely possible that with the 'ok fine optimization re-write' PS2 could become one of the few programs able to exploit that architectural difference well.

Given the ridiclous base clock speed. I imagine quite well.

Nope, just really expensive.


Watch out though, damn things will burn through motherboards like nobodies business. Their just AMD showing off its new wealth and wooing the overclocking crowd again, not a particularly practical chip.

Doubt my Gigabyte 970A-D3 will handle that CPU, it's rated at 220W while the motherboard is rated up to 140W, granted when I OC'd my Phenom II X6 1090T it was over 200W and the FX 4350 in it right now is close to 200W as well, but I don't think it has VRM modules strong enough for 220W, let alone overclocking that. Guess you'd have to get a Sabertooth board or something.

Battlefield 3 runs like a dream on multi-core AMD systems, but it runs like a dream on Intel systems too (even i3's). There are some games and apps that runs very well on AMD, just that PS2 (and Guild Wars 2) aren't one of them. I remember when SWG first came out, it ran great on my Pentium III 533MHz and dual Celeron 533MHz (OC'd to 1.1GHz) but ran poopy on an AMD Duron 900MHz and Thunderbird 1.5GHz.

I'm just happy this is finally being done. If done right should be a hefty performance boost for everyone so take your time and don't rush it!

I think this is more a wish of you and not the real state. I am pretty sure PS2 already lost a huge playerbase because of the optimization failure for AMDs. An online shooter that can not get stable 30 fps even on the ****tiest low graphics is just unplayable. Not discussable, or ugly looking. Unplayable. Of course you guys at SOE do your best to entertain people with new stuff so they cheer instead of keeping up the complains about the fps drops they have. But I couldn't care less about Hossin and new weapons and a new texture you sell for $5 while AMD users can't really enjoy anything of that because they can't play the game properly.

But this is the truth about PC gaming. If the PS4 wouldn't force them to redo the engine for multi threating SOE wouldn't give a damn about the performance problems. Consoles show the way, PC may follow the trends and its power will left unused again.

Please don't treat everyone as if they were stupid just because some are (for what it's worth, I don't understand most of this thread. I still don't like that this sort of info is kept from those who do understand it. The bits I understand are that progress is being made and hey, I may even learn something!)

The people who do not like the more technical aspects can skip them (or read a tl;dr laymans explanation).
Alternately, you can put these sorts of post in a different section of the forums, such as https://forums.station.sony.com/ps2/index.php?forums/general-technical-support.29/ (it has a pinned 'optimization' thread from last November, not sure if it has any dev updates since then in the 22 pages) or a brand new forum section ("Tech talk" ?).

I doubt many will, its the literal CPU equivalent of a bright burning candle.

I'm sure it'll preform excellently at nearly anything. I imagine it'll also get stupidly hot and shrek the motherboard in a short time frame.

People gave up on getting to 10ghz by 2003 for a number of reasons, stability past 6ghz (its werid, but true) is one. Massive amounts of heat and power consumption is another.

Yeah, whilst a lot of Zotamedu is saying is true (i mainly am disagreeing with how he's infering certain features of which his knowledge is very good, bring themsleves ot PS2). The idea that amd does objectively 'weak' CPU's is just tribal nonsense banded around, do amd have weaker cores, yeap. Have they focused on making economical multicolored. designs as opposed to increasing efficency per core, yeap.

But the performance, entirely depends on the program. The less mutlithreaded (as oft is the case with games the last few years) intel is a clear winner. But heavily mutlithreaded programs (and most likely increasingly games) AMD's choices in terms of chip architecture win out.

I think the changes will probs leave the Haswell i7 6 core coming out ahead, but the FX 8 cores, may start to beat the i5's slightly and may be a close run thing behind the i7 4 cores. Thats a bet, but I think its a fairly good one.

I seems that Sony will have to make the game engine run on many cores to compete with games made with Unreal engine 3/4 or DICE. Games will run very badly on the Playstation 4 if not.
I am so glad I got an i7-3770k last year when building my new PC (8 threads & overclockable). An i5 is good enough for games now, but what about in a year or two.
With AMD, if a game engine is optimized for up to 8 cores, it may eventually be bottlenecked by the PCI express bandwidth. I understand they use 2.0 and ivy bridge/haswell has version 3.0.
As I want a PC to last a few years (with maybe GPU, Hard drive and memory upgrades), it seemed a good option.
A 64 bit DX11 version of forgelight will probably happen at some point. Memory requirements will probably demand it.
I am not an expert in all this, but just as I see it.

Dual cores came out to the consumer market a decade or so ago, and quad cores shortly after that. Still today, games like Bioshock Infinite have one primary game thread, a secondary low-load game thread, and a GPU driver thread. That is, just "3 core optimized".

Theres numerous threads after that, but with trivial workloads that have no real performance impact. So does PS2 though, and almost any other game. Those threads manage things like sound, resource loading, and network I/O.

Thats more or less how games were laid out 5-10 years ago.

Hey look another Intel fanboy!

Seriously though, good stuff. You obviously know your sh^t. That being said, the difference in performance in 98% of typical user applications (you know, Mom/Dad, Me, probably You) is so small and unnoticeable that the price difference is completely not worth it when you talk AMD vs. Intel.

You can throw all the technical engineering jargon in the ring that you want and hope to prove your point, but it doesnt change the fact that the real life differences just dont measure up to what most people would consider relevant.

YES I use AMD and you could turn my first sentence around on me and call me a "fanboy". Im only a fan though due to the fact that I have saved literally thousands of dollars over the years using AMD instead of Intel and had as good a system (far as most could tell) as any Intel user with what is considered comparable systems.

I play on a Phenom II, soon to be upgraded to a FX 8 Core VIshera (just got the Mobo for it today) and I get 30-40 FPS on High within large battles. Maybe that isnt good enough for some of the Super Users out there, but for most its plenty good enough.

I am looking forward to the AMD re-write however as any additional FPS is welcome, even if its not really needed (in my case).

Nice system and if you can afford it, more power to you.

However your concern about system relevance a few years down the road is a bit misguided.

As stated just below you most games are still coded along single threads.

I have a 5 year old Phenom II and I can play any modern game out there still. Maybe not on Ultra, but I can play them just fine.

Its been well known for years in the Tech field that Moore's Law has really begun to slow down. Its nothing like it was even 10 years ago.

AMD's release of the 5ghz processor today is a great example of that. I love AMD but realistically its mostly gimmick. Theres just not much new (technology wise) to wow people with right now.

Your system should be relevant for many many years to come. I would however be careful not to discourage those with fewer dollars in their pockets from looking at much more affordable options that WILL still be viable even 4 years from now......(whole point of my reply i guess).

Get something faster then, for cheaper than you could now.

Something I learned a long time ago, build for now, furture proofing is largely impossible (admittedly CPUs have stalled recently, but multi-threading is now gaining traction so their are likely to move on again).

Admittedly its fair enough to build with an eye to the future, but really 1-2 years is a long time, there's only really been now and a pause after the very early Pentiums where that sort of period went by without a significant performance upgrade gaming-wise.

People (especially novice builders) tend to look too soon at CPU upgrades in comparison to other components. I kept my Phenom II relevant by upgrading to a SSD HD and adding 12 more Gigs of RAM. All for around $200. Often the CPU is the last component that needs upgrading. People tend to get too caught up in the numbers....

Phallus of don't ask, don't tell.

The low frames I can live with. It's the massive frame drops and stuttering when I entered a busy area in my Reaver. Every time I fly over a big battle or drop into a big battle I know there will be 1 to 2 second window where I will be able to do nothing but wait for the game to catch up and let me resume control over my character. And in any circumstance in this game, 2 seconds can be life and death. Death more often for me.

Wanna open the flight game and not nerf the reverse thrust? Let me control my aircraft when entering enemy air space and I assure you I will fly more.

Yeah a decent SSD is certainly a good idea for performance and in that it might well last you a while too (although not if PS2 starts the triple loading screen thing it's been doing with my recently Never mind the crash and reverify).


It'll certainly be interesting to see if the new generation of consoles drag gaming into the multi-threading/mutli-core era though, it seems like the only way to goes as they've hit so many walls with the old ways of making CPUs "faster".

An SSD is a benefit to most modern games now, I remember throwing Bad Company 2 on there and taking only ~6 seconds from server list screen to loadout whereas it took nearly 2 minutes on a regular HDD (yes it was THAT bad), back in PS2 beta the difference was huge, going from char screen to spawn tube was nearly instant, not quite as instant now probably due to more crap for the game to load (hence the 3x load screen).

I run Linux on my SSD in my laptop now, it's better off being used there for what I do with it.