AMD: Calling PS4 And Xbox One “PCs In A Box” Is Patently Untrue

We recently spoke to PR Lead for Gaming and Enthusiast Graphics at AMD Robert Hallock about upcoming technology for PCs, and how close these would sync up to games that we’d be seeing on the Xbox One and PS4. Will we see better visuals than the next generation is promising, for instance?

Hallock responded, “People often compare the hardware of the next-gen consoles and the PC, compare specs on paper, and conclude that these consoles must be “PCs in a box.” That is patently untrue. While there are many commonalities, there were platform architecture decisions made for the consoles that set them apart from the PC in a significant way: how developers access the hardware, the Xbox One’s ESRAM, and the PlayStation 4’s UMA are all powerful examples of such decisions.

“It remains to be seen how PCs and consoles will compare from the perspective of image quality–the consoles haven’t launched, after all–but we can certifiably say that the industry’s baseline image quality will make a quantum leap with the arrival of DirectX 11 in the mainstream. These next-gen consoles are working with state-of-the-art hardware: programmable shaders, large vbuffers, significant GPU compute resources and so much more.”

We also asked Hallock about what the future holds in the next 5-6 years since the big three console manufacturers are all using AMD technology.

“It’s tremendously difficult to predict where things will go in 5-6 years, but we can talk about the near-term with more confidence: the game development industry now uses AMD Radeon graphics for six shipping platforms: Nintendo Wii, Nintendo Wii U, Sony PlayStation 4, Microsoft Xbox 360, Microsoft Xbox One and the PC. For five of those six platforms, Radeon is the only choice in the development process.

“And coming into this latest generation, our flagship Graphics Core Next architecture is the common fabric for any game developer looking to publish. It’s all a bit oblivious to believe or assert that this situation won’t have a positive and obvious effect on the overall level of optimization games demonstrate for AMD architectures.”