Xbox One to use More GPU for Graphical Performance?

January 28, 2014 by Cheats.co Staff - Leave a comment

Some criticism has been launched at the Xbox One’s graphical capabilities lately, but we may see an improvement soon.

Currently, 10% of the GPU is reserved for the Kinect attachment, even though many games make limited use of the Kinect, if they use it at all. A new rumor currently doing the rounds is that a patch is on the way which will reduce that limitation to 2%, which will be enough for Kinect to register voice commands. The 8% being freed is the amount reserved for the Kinect’s video functions.

Such a patch would not raise the Xbox One’s graphical performance to the level of the PS4, but it would allow games like Tomb Raider: Definitive Edition to play with a steady framerate, which would improve the gameplay experience for players.

Albert Penello defends Xbox One performance claims on NeoGAF

September 10, 2013 by Cheats.co Staff - 3 Comments

Microsoft’s Albert Penello has been an extremely busy man on the NeoGAF forums and most recently took up the challenge to back up his claims that the PS4 is nowhere near 30% more powerful than the Xbox One.

To be honest it’s a lot of technical speak that none of us here are that great with. Nonetheless, we hope that some Cheats.co readers find it interesting. Check out Penello’s full post here with the key take-outs quoted below.

As an aside, we think it’s awesome that he’s right in the trenches defending and promoting the Xbox One. Good on ya Albert – hat’s off to you!

1. 18 CU’s vs. 12 CU’s =/= 50% more performance. Multi-core processors have inherent inefficiency with more CU’s, so it’s simply incorrect to say 50% more GPU.

2. Adding to that, each of our CPU’s is running 6% faster. It’s not simply a 6% clock speed increase overall.

3. We have more memory bandwidth. 176gb/sec is peak on paper for GDDR5. Our peak on paper is 272gb/sec. (68gb/sec DDR3 + 204gb/sec on ESRAM). ESRAM can do read/write cycles simultaneously so I see this number mis-quoted.

4. We have at least 10% more CPU. Not only a faster processor, but a better audio chip also offloading CPU cycles.

5. We understand GPGPU and its importance very well. Microsoft invented Direct Compute, and have been using GPGPU in a shipping product since 2010 – it’s called Kinect.

6. Speaking of GPGPU – we have 3X the coherent bandwidth for GPGPU at 30gb/sec which significantly improves our ability for the CPU to efficiently read data generated by the GPU.

Major Nelson looking forward to the truth coming out

September 7, 2013 by Cheats.co Staff - Leave a comment

Xbox Director of Programming Larry Hyrb – more commonly known by his Gamertag ‘Major Nelson’ – has come out in support of comments recently made by his colleague at Microsoft, Albert Penello.

Have a read of the full article here, but basically Penello has said there is no way the PS4 has a 30% performance advantage over the Xbox One.

Major Nelson has since posted the following on Reddit, stating that some of the smartest programmers in the world are working on the Xbox One and that he looks forward to “the truth” coming out:

As I said above, Albert is one of the most amazing people I work with – that’s why I invited him on my podcast a few weeks ago. I jab him a bit about posting on ‘GAF (fact: they would not approve my account of there) but he’s smart and driven. He’s also right: We have some of smartest programmers in the world working on Xbox One. I am very much looking forward to the next few months (and beyond) as the truth comes out.

The last sentence might be a little bit dramatic, but it’s clear Hyrb is pretty confident of the Xbox One!

Microsoft: Xbox One vs PS4 performance difference not that great

September 5, 2013 by Cheats.co Staff - Leave a comment

Albert Penello, Microsoft Director of Product Planning, new “go-to-guy” for Xbox One info, and someone who we think is doing a helluva lot better job at promoting the X1 than Don Mattrick, has been posting in the NeoGAF forums of late. In fact it seems Penello has been a member for quite a while (being the dedicated gamer that he is).

Anyway, he recently made a couple of potentially controversial statements comparing the power and real world performance of the Xbox One and PS4, as well as giving out a few juicy new pieces of information as follows:

Disc Installs

The reason that both the Xbox One and PS4 require mandatory disc installs is that without them you’d be giving up too much performance and bottlenecking the entire system – “the speed and throughput of the consoles exceeds the transfer speeds of the disc.”

Performance – PS4 vs Xbox One

Next Penello said that the performance difference between the two systems is not as great as the raw numbers would otherwise suggest (like the PS4 being 30-40% more powerful than the Xbox One).

… the performance delta between the two platforms is not as great as the raw numbers lead the average consumer to believe. There are things about our system architecture not fully understood, and there are things about theirs as well, that bring the two systems into balance.

There is no way we’re giving up a 30%+ advantage to Sony.

Shot at Sony

Finally, Penello took a shot at Sony for consistently over-stating the performance capabilities of their consoles when comparing them to competitors (like the Xbox and Wii).

I get a ton of hate for saying this – but it’s been the same EVERY generation. Sony claims more power, they did it with Cell, they did it with Emotion Engine, and they are doing it again. And, in the end, games on our system looked the same or better.

Personally I think it’s very refreshing to see someone like Penello getting stuck into the thick of it in the NeoGAF forums! And if you want to watch a video of the interview he gave at PAX then simply take a look below. It’s very insightful!