on November 27, 2015 3:04 PM
188

Sony Might Have Unlocked the PS4’s 7th CPU Core For Developers

In the past, many developers mentioned that they were allowed to use only six cores of the eight-core CPU of the PS4, with the last two used by the operating system of the console. Yet, Sony Computer Entertainment might have recently and quietly updated the software SDK (Software Development Kit) to enable developers to use the seventh core.

The potential update is revealed by the changelog of the most recent update to the FMOD audio API, spotted by eagle-eyed NeoGAF user DieH@rd.

Firelight Technologies FMOD Studio API
Detailed Revision History

17/11/15 1.07.03 – Studio API patch release (build 69975)

Features:

LowLevel API – When using System::recordStart the provided FMOD::Sound can now be any channel count, up/down mixing will be performed as necessary.
LowLevel API – Improved performance of convolution reverb effect when wet is 0 or input goes idle.
LowLevel API – PS4 – Added FMOD_THREAD_CORE6 to allow access to the newly unlocked 7th core.

A similar mention was made in the changelog in January 2015, when Microsoft unlocked the 7th core of the Xbox One’s CPU, allowing developers to use it for their games.

22/01/15 1.05.11 – Studio API patch release

Features:

Lowlevel API – Xbox One – Added access to 7th CPU core.

This kind of update isn’t very surprising, as console manufacturers are often very conservative in letting developers use the resources of a console close to its launch, and progressively loosen those restrictions as the machine matures and the operating system and APIs get optimized.

Sony did not release any official announcement about this, and the SDK itself is under NDA, so we should consider this as rumor, and take it with the traditional pinch of salt until an announcement is made. That said, it’s certainly promising.

We reached out to Sony Computer Entertainment for a comment, and hopefully we’ll be able to give you further information on this soon.

Source: Firelight Technologies via NeoGAF

Join the Discussion

Read Community Guidelines
  • Jamal

    Nice!

  • Adavanter Mki

    Translation… Naughty Dog already used it. Thus why Uncharted looks so freaking stunning and has depth!

    • uptownsoul

      Can’t wait to play this game

    • Abrar Zahin Shahriar

      Also Battlefront.

    • kreator

      Syke!

      • JustGaming

        Fail

    • Cenk Algu

      U4 looks like some where between last and new gen.

      • Liquid7

        Get glasses.

        • Cenk Algu

          No need glasses.They are very fine.

          • Liquid7

            So you already have glasses? You might want to clean them then.

          • Doge-With-It

            his eyes are clouded, smoking will do that to you , look at his avatar

          • Tha-Truth

            Would you like to try writing that sentence again in English?

        • LeveledUpGamer

          Honestly, Uncharted looks good, but it’s using the same engine as the previous Uncharted’s with some enhancements. There is only so much you can push a old engine without updating the engine to today’s standards. Uncharted’s MP wouldn’t be 900p at 60fps or SP 1080p 30fps if Naughty Dog used a newer engine designed from the ground up to take advantage of the PS4 hardware. PS4 hardware shouldn’t have any issues with 1080p 60fps for Uncharted 4. The engine is what is holding back Uncharted 4 from looking more next gen and less like it used the same engine from last gen.
          Sorry, but I agree with Cenk, Uncharted 4 looks like it sits somewhere in between last gen and current gen.

          • Liquid7

            Lmao, stop trying to act like you know what you’re talking about.

            “PS4 hardware shouldn’t have any issues with 1080p 60fps for Uncharted 4” Where do you work in Sony or ND? How many PS4 games have you made?

          • LeveledUpGamer

            You’re comment is foolish.

          • Liquid7

            Says the guy who thinks “Uncharted 4 looks like it sits somewhere in between last gen and current gen”, smh.

          • LeveledUpGamer

            If you’re going to reference a comment, don’t butcher it with your ignorant agenda. I said the MULTIPLAYER looks like it sits somewhere between last gen and current gen…..which it does. The character models look like crap for a next gen game.

          • Liquid7

            No, you said what I quoted.

            You said “I agree with Cenk”. He said “U4 looks somewhere between last and new gen”, there was no mention of MULTIPLAYER.

            Nothing in your comment was MULTIPLAYER specific. You said “Uncharteds MP wouldn’t be 900p at 60fps or SP 1080p 30fps if Naughty Dog used a newer engine designed from the ground up to take advantage of the PS4 hardware” that was the only mention of MULTIPLAYER.

            Don’t try and backpedal, your comment history proves you’re a fanboy who pretends to be unbiased.

          • LeveledUpGamer

            Are you that dumb? You just quoted me where I referred the 900p MULTIPLAYER.

            You Sony leg humprs have SERIOUS and I mean SERIOUS mental issues.

            I own both consoles and I prefer the XB1 because it offers more in games, value and features. I am not blind to Sonys anti-consumer behavior nor am I blind to Sony terrible excuse for a game library. My preference is XB1. Fanboys don’t own both consoles, gamers do. Fanboys own 1 console and are blind to that consoles short comings because they are to busy trying to justify their purchase….LIKE YOU ARE.

      • Tha-Truth

        Ignore this moron. He’s clearly just upset that his precious Xbox is a cheap, worthless, unwanted, last – gen, POS FAILURE at retail. PS4 recently sold over 30 million consoles but the Poverty – Box is flopping down with a pathetic install base of something like 13 million because it’s a low – quality piece of garbage that no self – respecting gamer would touch with a barge pole.

        • Cenk Algu

          Lol at painful Pony.

          • deAtH-[b+Y]-steReO

            You’ll never be as awesome as this pony

        • Paul Hawkins

          What are you…10? He is commenting on the game, not the system. I have a PC and it BURIES your graphics capabilities (which is why 2016 is the year for PC only games..so sit and watch the grown ups play.). PS4 is a console…you know, an entertainment toy? OK, the PS4 sold a lot. You win. Neat-O. Now put on your jammies, make sure you brush your teeth, and go to bed. Good night……

          • Yo.

            You realise this comment made you no better than him, right?

            I’d copy and paste the first part of your comment here but it’s evident that won’t work. I’ll just go with incredibly immature instead.

          • Bebop

            Fa real talk about hypocritical

          • Tha-Truth

            LOL, a stupid PC peasant talking about hardware capabilities. How’s Batman: Arkham Knight working out for you on your “high – end” PC? You must feel really smart overpaying for a dead system which can’t run the game for more than 5 minutes without crashing.

            Also, what “PC only games” are coming out in 2016? I haven’t seen a single one other than the usual cheap, garbage MMO’s. You’ve either been living under a rock for the past few years or you’re in a state of constant denial, most publishers are moving AWAY from a dead platform like the PC. That’s why you’re not getting games like Destiny, Bloodborne or DOA Extreme.

            PC casuals can go back to doing what PC casuals do best – signing pointless petitions begging developers to give them real games like Bloodborne because they’re fed up with the trash games they get on their own platform.

          • Paul Hawkins

            “You’ve either been living under a rock for the past few years or you’re
            in a state of constant denial, most publishers are moving AWAY from a
            dead platform like the PC. ”

            http://www.gamespot.com/forums/pc-mac-linux-society-1000004/big-pc-exclusives-of-2015-2016-2017-new-31154099/

            You’re an idiot. Please, write something else that is totally wrong and stupid. I don’t think it is I who are delusional. But I’m sure you will respond with something ELSE that is incorrect, and equally as intellectually void. So I waste my time. Good day madam.

          • Tha-Truth

            Are you for real? “I don’t think it is I who ARE delusional.”??? Is that really your understanding of the English language? Good god.

            Judging by your profile pic it looks like you’re in your 40’s but I really hope that’s not the case. If you’re older than 11 you should be absolutely mortified at your own gobshite ignorance because you have NO excuses. You’re telling me that you’ve finished high school and yet you still don’t have the brain function to write a simple, coherent sentece? You’re an embarassment to nature, do you know that?

            If you’re going to have the nerve to call somebody else an idiot and intellectually void then you’d better get your own head out of your ass and learn to use the English language properly first, otherwise you’re going to expose yourself as an uneducated, inbred moron as well as a two – faced hypocrite.

            Evidently your dead, PC platform is just as much of a failure as your education was. Good day, moron.

        • LeveledUpGamer

          I praise the PS4 and you attack me? How dumb are you?

          FYI I own a PS4. Jeez you sany fanboys have serious mental issues.

          • Tha-Truth

            You might want to get your eyes checked, pal. My comment above was a reply to Cenk Algu, not to you. You have a bit of a nerve to accuse other people of having mental health issues when you are clearly over – sensitive and seem to have a persecution complex.

          • LeveledUpGamer

            You DO have mental health issues. YOU are upset because MY OPINION on a VIDEO GAME doesn’t match YOUR clearly fanboy opinion.

            IMO, as an owner of BOTH consoles, Uncharted 4’s MULTIPLAYER looks somewhere between last gen and current gen based on the character models and poor textures.

            If you don’t like my OPINION about a video game and it upsets you, then YOU have a mental issue.

            #DealWithIt

          • Tha-Truth

            Wow…you clearly are a backwards, inbred, de – evolved autismal little gimp, aren’t you? Your pathetic, juvenile “opinions” and complete ignorance of the videogames industry seriosuly are typical of a traditional Xboner – sucking fanboy.

            I also like how you decided to ignore the part where I ruined your entire argument by pointing out that my initial comment WASN’T EVEN AIMED AT YOU. Why have YOU not responded to THAT you pathetic little parasite? Are you too much of a COWARD to respond? You know you’ve been beaten.

            I also love how you used a hashtag that became famous for Microsoft’s anti – consumer approach towards gaming. I bet you’re one of the morons who never wanted them to change their policies. How common, a pathetic, ignorant little brand slave rushing to the defence of his pathetic, weak, anti – consumer failure of a console that nobody wants to buy.

          • LeveledUpGamer

            Nobody is going to read that wall of text. Especially me kiddo

            Keep fighting that console war like the Sony fanboy you are. I own both so I know what both offer and right now the PS4 is a below avgerage console for games, features and value. Even Sony said they don’t know why its selling so well, that the lineup is sparse and to expect less AAA games from them. PS4 is just a port station for Sonys last gen games and indies.

            PS4 is a joke right now.

          • Tha-Truth

            The only joke right now is you and how badly your education (or lack thereof) has let you down. The Xbox is a trash, weak, last – gen peasant console for non – gamers and that’s exactly why it’s rotting down at the bottom of the sales charts. If you were stupid enough to get suckered into Microsoft’s lies, overhype and underdeliver then that’s your own fault but going so far out of your way to defend your trash, unwanted console with no exclusive games worth playing only makes it look like you suffer from a mixture of down syndrome and stockholm syndrome.

            You do realise that the Xbox isn’t going to sell any better regardless of how heavily you defend it online, right? No matter how much of your life you spend typing stupid butthurt comments on the internet, you’re not going to convince anyone that the Xbox is worth spending money on. So really you’re only wasting your own time here.

            All the educated consumers and real gamers see the Xbox for what it is – a weak, inferior, last – gen POS and sales prove that. It’s only the brainwashed, delusional, brand – humping slaves like you that are still trying to fly the flag for Microsoft’s poor man’s excuse for a console. And quite frankly, it’s embarassing.

          • LeveledUpGamer

            Another wall of text that nobody, including me will ever read induced by your anger that I feel Sony is anti-consumer and has a system lacking in quality exclusives let alone the lack of exclusive games where their flag ship title Uncharted 4 will once again have a bad multiplayer with bad textures and poor character models for a next gen game….imo.

            Stay angry sony fanboy. I don’t care if my opinion upsets you.

        • Cenk Algu

          Pain is big with this idiot.

          • Tha-Truth

            Keep crying over those sales charts you pathetic, butthurt moron. Your dead, peasant Xbox console isn’t going to sell any better regardless of how much you defend it online. You know that, right?

    • Antonio Owensby

      Star Wars Battlefront looks amazing.

      • maroon1

        And yet that game run slightly better on core i3 4130 + GTX 950 than PS4 version. It was proven by digital foundry

        I don’t see anything amazing about PS4 when a budget gaming PC can easily match it.

        • Toru

          950 price is 400 USD in my country while PS4 is 450 USD, is not a budget card moron. not include decent Mobo, Power supply, Windows OS, CPU i3 is considered expensive, people will easlly choose PS4.

  • Ani X

    I do remember that PS4 developers have access to 5.5GB of the 8GB RAM. Is that still the case, or did Sony also reduce the system-reserved RAM?

    • TallSilhouette

      Wouldn’t surprise me to see that cap raised soon too.

    • Sunny11

      The OS is very ram heavy, I’m sure some of that is also reserved for PSVR and once they finalised it and optimised then they let the free ram be available for devs

    • zero

      Sony won’t want to give away ram too hastily to developers and would be wise to keep a certain bit of their ram unused for future implementations.

      Sony got burned by not keeping enough ram reserved during the PS3 days, they aren’t likely to make the same mistake again.

      Giving more ram to the developers will help developers with their games, however it severely hamstrings Sony in their ability to upgrade the main os for the system.
      “We would have implemented Party Chat on PS3, but we just didn’t have the necessary ram/cpu reserves to do it”.
      How they managed to get the ingame xmb working could almost be called a miracle.

      • camnpat

        The issue with Party Chat on PS3 was not a result of not having a reserve of ram due to letting developers use it from the get go but rather the way that they structured the ram on the system.

        The PS3 had 256MB of system RAM and 256MB of dedicated video RAM. For tech savvy developers it was possible to use system RAM to back up the video RAM if some extra was needed, but this was a pain to get to work.

        The issue was not the processor, which was a true tech marvel and very powerful in its own right, but rather the choice of split structure of the RAM memory as opposed to a single, unified 512MB module. The 256MB partition of system memory was certain to be packed more often than not leaving no headroom for something like Party Chat whether Sony wanted it or not.

        • zero

          Having the RAM split in the way the PS3 did made it harder to effectively reserve RAM, leading to them already having given away too much RAM in order for developers to properly create their games by the time they would want to and implement Cross Game Chat.

          Effectively you are saying the same thing I was.

  • Sexy Mcgee

    Xbox 360’s OS was fine last gen and it let you do a lot. So I don’t get why these systems need 2 cores and 2.5 gigz of ram. Hopefully, they really did free up a core and will free up at least a gig of memory with devs going back to some games and improving them visually or performance wise.

    • zero

      Because the OS in current gen consoles do a lot more than the last gen OS did.

      • Sexy Mcgee

        Not 2.5 gigz of ram and 2 cores worth more.

        • camnpat

          Have you checked how much OSX or Windows use of your RAM and how much the suggested memory is for each? Over 1+ gig is common. Now consider that the OS for current gen consoles keeps running in the background meaning that allocation remains untouched during gameplay.

          On top of that add the fact that another gig is reserved for the “Share” function of the consoles since the player can start those up at any time during gameplay and you are easily in the 2+ gig allocation.

          As for the processors it is common in closed architectures to have one core serve as the traffic manager for the remaining ones. In the case of the XOne another core was reserved for Kinect, and with PS4 is more than likely one of those was reserved for PSVR since this has been a long gestating project.

    • PCS4-Box U

      They have all that and the os on xbo is still slow af. It’s better after the recent update though, I’ll give them that.

      • R.K

        The new update is even faster than the PS and Wii U OSes lol

        • NeoTechni

          It better be. Wii us is notoriously slow

          • TheChosen

            WiiU uses a different cpu (ARM) for the OS-Task thats why it is “Slow”. It is meant to be power-saving not draining 20 watt just for the cpu. But i guess you will never understand that.

          • NeoTechni

            Understand? Vita also uses arm and less power and its menu is much faster. Maybe you should understand your excuse doesn’t change anything I said. It’s still slow, and insulting me over that is childish

    • Michael Norris

      This extra core won’t do very much but any bit of help these consoles can get is a plus.

  • calcy

    Gravity Rush 2 is going to look even more incredible now.

    • PerkyStep

      Or the same

  • YOUDIEMOFO

    “Ruh Roh Shaggy….!!”

  • ℳℛ.ⓅⒾⓀⓀⓄⓃ

    Sony is capable of opening The 7th gate: The Gate of Wonder !!!!!!!!!!!!!!

  • OtakuDom

    I see both Sony and MS are being careful about opening the Gate of Death

  • YU GI OHPS5 ComingAmerica 2016

    YugiOH 5ds Coming for PS4 America 3ds 2016

  • Senpai Gundam

    That must be why Horizon: Zero Dawn and Uncharted 4 look so phenomenal.

    • Michael W

      Yea it’s called a dev kit that will never ever hit real world performance. God you kids never learn.

      • Foster Hampton

        Why would the dev kit have more power then the actual ps4?

        • Michael W

          Are you serious??? Most gameplay videos are running on PCs early on, then moved over to Dev units. CGI is done elusively on a couple of High Powered PCs or a “farm”. Then compressed to the dev unit for adding to the game. Dev units are used to get gameplay and FPS smoothed out.

          • Foster Hampton

            Ok so the pc they develop the game on is more powerful. You still havent told me why the dev kit is more powerful

          • Michael W

            Most dev kits are more powerful. I think the PS4s has an extra 2gig ram. I know for a fact the 360 dev kits had double the normal ram.

  • Andy
  • TallSilhouette

    http://i.imgur.com/QMnmFca.gif

    Greatness getting better.

  • MrVux007

    Gee,i wonder why?

    • LeveledUpGamer

      Awesome looking Cut scene

      • MrVux007

        The whole game is looking awesome thus far ! 🙂

        • LeveledUpGamer

          The Single player looks good. The MP looks bad imo.

          • MrVux007

            Graphicaly ? it pretty much the same from what ive seen
            Gameplay wise? i dont know haven’t played it yet,but if its like Uncharted 3 or even like Uncharted 2 multiplayer i will thoroughly enjoy it 🙂

          • LeveledUpGamer

            Riiighttt….

          • MrVux007

            I said something wrong?

    • Tech junkie
      • Nate

        Nice try. That’s fake.

        • MrVux007

          flag it then

      • Michael Norris

        LOL Bullshit i have uncharted 3 on Ps3/Ps4 that cut scene looks like the E3 build nice try troll.

      • drjonesjnr

        Fake and gay

  • omarcominyo

    Can’t be a bad thing

  • Johanna_L

    Hmmmpzzzz had 8 cores for a long time!! PC gaming rules!

  • Hazell

    Just in time for…

    • drjonesjnr

      Lol

    • Yo.
    • chicha

      tan lines?
      must. buy.

      • Hazell

        Yup!

        • chicha

          man, with gravity rush and this february will be amazing xD

    • Quix

      No US or Euro release, Japan only.

      • Hazell

        I know, but you can import the Asian version and it will include Chinese, Japanese and English subtitles and menus.

    • kj8404

      Wait- what game is this… I’m asking for uh, um… a friend? Science? Masturbation. It’s because of masturbation.

  • sunK1D

    Power level now at 8999.

  • WEL

    A slight overclock would boost the entire CPU’s performance much more than one more core.

    • bardock5151

      Could also increase hardware failure rates.

      • MS

        Or have zero affect on it (the failure rate).

        • bardock5151

          Well Sony obviously doesn’t want to risk it, considering they’ve likely already put a boost to test.
          That or they’ve found performance starts to suffer at higher temps, after any meaningful boost.

        • Tech junkie

          You can bet they’ve already tested. They would have bumped it when MS did.

    • Leo Liu

      Let’s see. Without changing the cooling system what can you get from your i7 3770K? 5% will be good enough and 10% will be a bit crazy. Now, assume PS4 games are optimized well for multicore computing (which PC games are almost all not), the increment from 6 cores to 7 cores is 16%.

      I’d say putting another core into computing is much practical and much safer for a console with fixed design.

    • camnpat

      It all depends on what functions you want to accomplish. If you are trying to get raw processing power then yes, speed is better. But if you are after some sort of parallel processing for some functions then the extra core would be better. One of the cores is likely reserved for PSVR (which includes the headset systems, PS Camera, and PS Move controllers).

  • IamTylerDurden1

    Translation: PS4 games will look even better in the near future. Just in time for VR.

    • Abrar Zahin Shahriar

      Also better texture filtering.

  • tom

    Is it means new ps4 and Xbone with new processors?

    • Kenichitr

      No. They both have 8 cores but the software they were using only let developers use 6 cores. Now they can use 7.

      • DLConspiracy//

        Hopefully will be able to use. It’s a rumor as of right now.

  • such.wow

    I wonder if it’s a full core or up to 80% sometimes like on the Xbox One. Oh well, still good anyway (that extra 2fps will come in handy).

  • Nice!
    The supercharged PC just got even more Based! The Xbots have
    been boasting about their higher FPS for too long (no doubt paid for by
    M$). Well, with this the PS4 will be at least 200x more powerful!

    With this new core unlocked I’m fairly sure the PS4 can beat
    even two 980s! “Mustard Ranch be all like damn…wish we were that
    Based, totally not a netbook CPU or anything.”

    • Sunny11

      Wow

      • rsco6969

        Please please please, just ignore it, it’ll grow some hair on its nads soon and grow up.

    • DLConspiracy//

      Alcoholic gamer? Is this you? Please tell me.

  • subbie

    How about trying to increase the clockspeed instead. Higher clockspeed/better single core performance >>>>>>>>>>>>>>> extra cores.

    • Tech junkie

      I’d be willing to bet the PS4 can’t handle the heat. It can already get pretty loud. When it leans on the fans

      • subbie

        Yeah, that’s what I thought as well. The small size and internal power adapter really hurt the performance of the system.

        • Michael Norris

          That extra core won’t do anything to the thermals.

          • Tech junkie

            No it won’t its already being used but if they oc the cpu it will

          • Michael Norris

            Yea if it was getting OC than yea i would worry a bit.

    • Leo Liu

      That’s the case with PC. For PS4, since multicore is optimized MUCH better than on PC, single core performance is less important.

  • Tech junkie

    Sweet, now games will look slightly less crappy or have a slightly less embarrassing frame rate.

    • Tmfwang

      Stop being such a tech junkie

      • camnpat

        Just ignore him. He’s a PC player that doesn’t have anything better to do than check console discussions to b$tch about consoles.

  • Dark Knight66

    Why is it when MS said they was going to do this with the XBO they was called liars and frauds but now you guys are going nuts over this cause Sony is doing it now. I just find it both funny and weird anyway i look forward to this happening while a wait for SFV and Uncharted 4 to drop.

    • WTGHookshot

      Maybe it wasn’t the same exact users that were calling people liars that are now going nuts over this? I mean, while I’m not going nuts over this myself, I also didn’t have an account even when that article came up about the Xbox. So, commenters do change. New ones come, old ones leave, people’s opinions change, some people comment that didn’t comment before, etc. Yes, there are hypocrites and fanboys for sure, but that doesn’t mean you should lump all commenters into a single group.

  • Boerewors

    I missed stuff like this in the current gen. Consoles would be all about secret unlocking of power, fx chips, blast processing, extra RAM modules, the army using them to launch missiles, cancer research with our untapped power and weird cell processors… But this gen they’ve been nothing more than moderately specced PCs at best.

    The stuff which you discussed on playgrounds is back with VR processing units and extra CPU cores; our children are saved. What I do find odd is that the PS4s redesign has the fan running at a lower speed, causing it to heat up more where the CPU is located. If they’d improved on the design and let the already incredible airflow do its work even better, they might even be able to overclock the CPU without running too much of a risk. This might have caused some problems with the first batch of PS4s, but they would’ve run out of their warranty by then…and besides: we early adopters are used to buying at least 2 consoles each, each lifecycle 😀

    • Michael Norris

      I agree Sony should have pushed for 2ghz on Cpu and 1ghz on Gpu.That kind of OC would actually help overall. Thing is you have a thermal ceiling to a heave to.

    • WTGHookshot

      I’m an early adopter on many consoles. Never once have I had a problem in order to require 2 consoles.

      • k4yser

        you are lucky, i owned 3 ps3s, 2 xbox 360s and my ps4 is having troubles with the blu ray player again, where it sometimes ejects disks on its own. i have to remove the power cable for a minute in order to get it back working.

        i always tend to pick the broken ones 🙁

      • Boerewors

        Just like k4yser I wasn’t so lucky either. My first PS3 was doa and I was lucky enough to have bought and tested it in the States before going home, so I got a new one. Because all of our consoles early in the gen were imported back then, it was hard to claim your warranty, simply because the companies didn’t have any support in our region. My first PS3 YLOD’ed way before it was a thing and because we were more used to these kinda things, older consoles used to have it as well, we always tried to fix it ourselves, usually granting it 2 or 3 months worth of “extra lives”. That said, we live in a part of the world where it can get extremely hot and if we don’t cool our hardware some extra ourselves, we are more proned to get problems.

        I had 5 PS3s that didn’t work, the doa included, and 4 of them were the beautiful PHAT ones. 360 fared a bit better with “just” 2 hardware failures… But those weren’t used as often as our PS3s.

    • MrSec84 .

      The CPU is located on the same piece of silicon as the GPU, because PS4’s processor is an all in one unit, called a System on Chip or SOC for short, also 8 AMD Jaguar CPU cores at 1.6GHz only uses 30 watts, which is already pretty minuscule for a platform the size of PS4, a similar 9-10% overclock would only require about 3 watts more than when the CPU on-die is clocked 1.6GHz.
      The rise in heat would be tiny.

      The newer PS4’s are using less energy, because they use newer ram chips that are more efficient, Sony would have put them in the launch systems had they been available, but the technology hadn’t been tapered out at the fabrication plants until recently.

      As for your final comment, I bought one PS3 at launch in 2007 in the UK, that’s still running, my launch PS4 runs fine too.
      Sony tends to have a very good track record for reliable hardware, same goes for Nintendo, MS obviously has the worse with the RROD business in 360 launch models, though all companies use foxconn and similar silicon fab plants to make their wafers now, so really there shouldn’t be any issues nowadays.

      Overall this generation seems to have been pretty uneventful as far as platforms having hardware issues. The failure rate seems to be in the very low percentages.

      • Boerewors

        As far as I understand the rise in temperature would be far more significant, especially in the part where the APU is located in the newer models. A slight overclock would help the PS4 immensly, especially now we’re moving towards PS VR, so if it indeed isn’t a problem, I wonder why they haven’t done it yet. Whether or not the rise in temperature would be more significant, the current revision of the PS4 is known to get hotter around the CPU, although it’s more energy sufficient. I believe Digital Foundry has tested this quite extensively, but I usually hear these things from the more tech minded friends I have.

        Anyway, I wasn’t too serious anyway… I just like the feeling of consoles with hidden power. The cell processor’s power was never fully used and it’s said it outruns the current gen CPUs in raw computing capacity and that was exactly what attracted me so much to the PS3; if anything the PS3 was a dream of how the future would be where everything would be driven by connected cell processors. Although it never worked out that way, at the end it kinda delivered for me personally… It wasn’t just the most beautiful, fully specced, piano black console you’ve ever seen, it was outputting games that aren’t far off what we’re seeing now on 256mb memory.

        This generation was more of a Nintendo generation: running with off the shelve parts, easy obtainable and pretty cheap. No $300 losses on consoles and no hidden secrets…until now. The kid in me needed this and in between this and the VRs processing unit, which power they better make available for normal games too (!), I have something to dream about again.

        I had less luck with my PS3s and we paid way more than most others ever would without any form of (claimable) warranty because we had to import them the first couple of years. But I was joking anyway, which I tried to make clear with the homemade emoticon, since “accepting” hardware failures just because you’re an early adapter would be insane obviously. I always like the first models better btw, especially the PS3 phat which I still think is the most beautiful console to this day. The later ones don’t just get smaller, the materials used always feel cheaper and less reliable.

        • MrSec84 .

          There’s no way that a slight CPU overclock can yield significant changes, we’re only talking about 9-10% here, relative to what’s already happening in PS4 it’s a small boost, not that big.
          Maybe a frame or 2 difference in games, but CPUs only account fir a very small portion of the platform’s overall hardware performance.

          What will yield better performance in time is improved code optimization and developers building their games more around the GPU Compute side of the hardware and making sure they use a good fiber job system on the CPU, to make resources much more flexible to make use of.

          Actually adding an extra CPU core for developers to use would actually give developers an extra 12.5% of CPU performance, so 9-10% vs 12.5%, the extra core is more substantial, assuming it’s the full core and not just half of it or something.
          If Sony could add both a 10% clock speed boost and an extra CPU core, along with developers making the best efficient use of all hardware resources then improvements would actually be beyond significant.
          A CPU boost and an extra core would mean an added 22.5% boost to CPU intensive portions of game code, pretty decent, but I doubt Sony feels the need to mess with the CPU clock speed.

          As far as power consumption goes going from the CPU using 30 watts to 32-33 watts is a tiny rise in heat output compared to the full chip’s heat output.

          Overall he launch PS4 consoles use about 140 watts under it’s highest load, so a CPU clock speed up to 33 watts would only put the system at drawing 143 watts when you’re playing games and have the menus active, it wouldn’t cause hardly any increases in heat.

          According to Eurogamer’s own tests playing gameplay and using the UI, drawing 140 watts the PS4 maxed out at 45 degree Celsius, at 131 watts, just gaming the system generated 44 degrees.
          Doing the math 45 degrees, divided by 140 watts equals 0.3214 degrees per watt, so times that by 143 (143 watts total power consumption for PS4), means with a 10% clock speed boost to the CPU temps would rise to 45.9642 degrees Celsius.

          As for hidden power, well Asynchronous Compute is still something developers need to embrace more in their games, it’s not so hidden, but it’s still a pretty untapped area of all systems, PS4 included.
          Optimized streaming of assets will also net developers better performance and give them back more resources if they’re not trying render in assets that players can’t even notice.
          Better multi-core support and making sure that they’re designing their code efficiently will always yield improvements in how games run compared to earlier in a console generation or on any platform relative to what developers have made years ago.

          • Boerewors

            So GPU computing as Mark Cerny calls it, should actually be called asynchronous computing in PS4s case? Whenever these things come up I always remember how Ken Kutaragi once imagined the PS3 would not need a GPU at all for some reason.

            Thanks for the reply btw, very informative! I’ve been following the industry closely for more than 20 years, but I never really cared about how the hardware actually works. But lately I’ve been more and more interested in these things because it’s quite fascinating actually.

          • MrSec84 .

            Asynchronous means “not existing or occurring at the same time.”, in the case of compute this means that one potion of the GPU would be used for graphics and a different area for none graphics tasks, like Physics, AI, Audio, etc.
            It can also mean that workloads change based on available GPU time.

            Asynchronous Compute is a more specific term, referring to how compute jobs run on the hardware, how resources are being shared on a piece of hardware.

            GPU Compute is a more generalized term, meaning everything all jobs run on the GPU.

            Cerny didn’t invent the term, he investigated what hardware would be best for PS4 and uses the terms appropriately.
            AMD and NVidia have been using GPU compute for a while in their graphics cards, Asynchronous is more of a recent AMD thing from what I understand.

            Yeah back 2005 from what I’ve read PS3 was supposed to either do everything with Cell or have 2 of them, rather than a GPU, this Asynchronous Compute and GPU compute stuff is not so experimental now. The SPUs in Cell were more like shaders, so there are similarities to an APU in Cell, only that Cell was an in-order design, way less efficient than modern tech and their feature set is much less limited than Stream Processors of other GPU hardware.

            No worries, I kind of began getting into this stuff during last generation, though I’ve been gaining my education for years on technology in general and I really find anything like this, science, physics in particular interesting, tend to get my head around it pretty easily.

            Happy gaming and holidays. 😀

        • jonathan

          I mean even a 20% boost in performance (you don’t get 20% performance boost from going 20% over power limit, doesn’t work like that) that’s like 6 more fps if you’re at 30 fps. It would probably be more like 5 % improvement in the real world. What are we talking 1 or 2 fps? Driver optimizations, developers optimizing their games, and an updated API would be better bets.

    • C4

      The CPU isn’t located where it’s hotter.

  • kreator

    LIAR!

    • DragonKnight9825

      YOU”RE LIAR!

  • Cenk Algu

    As long as the GDDR5 is there,it won’t bring any improvements.GDDR5 i not CPU friendly at all.

    • Jeff Quartz

      What exactly do you mean? If GDDR5 is not cpu friendly then more cpu = way better.

      • Yo.

        Don’t pay too much attention to Cenk, he’s about as gormless as they come.

        • Cenk Algu

          Look at me my clueless friend. The purpose of GDDR5 is presenting high and fast data transfer for the GPU. On CPU side it chokes it due to high latency and very bad data transfering. This is the reason that the PS4 has more shaders on GPU. If GDDR5 was efficient for the CPU now we would be using it instead of DDR3 or 4:)

          • Kabwall

            You are correct in fact, and Sony Europe confirmed this, more cores used GDDR5 available bandwidth drops considerably for each core in use. I believe it is as low as 120GB/s for the 5th core.

          • Jecht_Sin

            More CPU cores using the GDDR5 RAM simultaneously drop the bandwidth available to the GPU in a non linear way, but more the CPU cores use the CPU cache less it is an issue. And the CPU cache does get used continuously, without even the need to program it, unlike with the eSRAM.

    • Jecht_Sin

      You should go back to your sheep and goats instead of talking IT.. Without meaning offense to the shepherds, sure!

      • Cenk Algu

        No words for clueless ignorants

  • TheChosen

    Doesn`t matter If ist using 6 or 7 cores! hahahahaa.
    The AMD Jaguar is stillt he slowest cpu of all Kind ever put in ANY console 😉 The IBM Espresso is the fastest this gen…And it allready Shows…
    I can´t wait to finally get UCraft and Show the true power of a cpu capable of a 60 Gbyte/S bandwidth (not even Core i7-cpus have that high bandwidth)…

  • Joe T

    Here’s the difference between MS and Sony. MS shouted from the rooftops when they did this for X1, Sony haven’t told anyone!

    • Michael W

      And yet when Sony shouts about it’s sale numbers idiots can’t quit drooling over them. Hypocrite.

      • Joe T

        Sorry why have you called me a hypocrite? For what reasons? I haven’t said anything about sale numbers…

        Also from what part of my comment did you devise that I am an idiot that “can’t quit drooling” over sales numbers?

        Weird.

      • Joe T

        Sorry why have you called me a hypocrite? For what reasons? I haven’t said anything about sale numbers…

        Also from what part of my comment did you devise that I am an idiot that “can’t quit drooling” over them?

        Weird.

        • Michael W

          If you think for a second I’d believe you don’t drool over sales numbers after that last comment… Then you are 110% an idiot.

          • Joe T

            Yes but my question is, what is your reasoning for insulting me and calling me a hypocrite and idiot?

            You are putting words into my mouth. I haven’t said anything about sales numbers. You brought that up, not me.

          • Michael W

            I called the general public “idiots” not you. Then proceed to point out your hypocrisy when you point to Sony not hyping the 7th core, when all they do is hype junk that never delivers.

          • Joe T

            “I called the general public “idiots” not you.”

            Er… “Then you are 110% an idiot.”

    • Tech junkie

      Show me where they shouted from the rooftops,
      From what I remember it came up in an SDK leak just like this,
      just like it states in this article. lol. If you are going to be a fan boy at least read the article not the headline

      • deAtH-[b+Y]-steReO

        There was quite a bit of noise about it over on IGN, Gamespot, etc. I don’t know about it being MS who “shouted from the rooftops” but there was over-inflated clickbait articles that featured the usual 10k+ post fanboy battle. I’m not going to bother trying to hunt it down but there’s no doubt it happened.

        • Tech junkie

          okay, but that’s different from this how? He’s claiming MS shouted it from the roof tops.

          • deAtH-[b+Y]-steReO

            I’m not trying to make any comparisons, you asked where they shouted from the rooftops. Don’t read anything more into it

          • Tech junkie

            Fair enough, I’m aware articles like this exist. Most turn into huge fan boy wars over 1 miss quoted tweet. Like I said I was only asking where Microsoft shouted it from the roof tops. I don’t recall that happening.

          • deAtH-[b+Y]-steReO

            Well there is a difference in how it is being presented, with huge featured articles on multiple sites when MS announced it and this being quietly reported here on DS. IDK, it could be site bias

          • Tech junkie

            Yes. This is the first I’ve heard about it on Playstation. As I recall it started off slow on Xbox and then was used as click bait for the fan boys. I don’t recall MS making big announcements is my point as stated by the original poster.

            I could be wrong and gave the original poster an opportunity to meet prove his statement

  • maroon1

    Consoles are horrible. Digital Foundary has proven that 95% of games run better on budget gaming PC (haswell core i3 + GTX 750 Ti or GTX 950) than PS4

    Budget gaming PC does not cost much more than consoles, but you can use PC more than just gaming. You can even emulate PS2, gamecube and wii games. Also, PC games usually cost slightly less than console games.

    Unlocking 7th will barely make any difference. Maybe you will get 1 or 2fps improvement at most