MS: A Closer Look at How Xbox Series X|S Integrates Full AMD RDNA 2 Architecture

theAllseeingEYE · Oct 28, 2020

Just noticed this tasty nugget.

additional next-generation innovation such as hardware accelerated Machine Learning capabilities for better NPC intelligence, more lifelike animation, and improved visual quality via techniques such as ML powered super resolution.

Basically Microsoft finally stating that not only is thier machine learning hardware accelerated, but that XSX/S also supports ML powered super resolution.

I assume this is AMD's DLSS competitor.

DjRalford · Oct 28, 2020

DestroyerOfWorlds said:
So, the question is, which RDNA2 features is the PS5 missing?

There have been rumors that it doesn't have things like mesh shaders or variable rate shaders, if I recall.

I believe they are both in the geometry engine, this is nothing more than Sony not requiring certain bits as they already had custom solutions.

Leonine · Oct 28, 2020

Did people not watch the AMD event today, there were a bunch of stuff that is Direct X exclusive that will be present in Microsoft's operating system and consoles. Microsoft are using the full stack available to them.

Sony as Cerny said aren't, they're using solutions that interest them and ditching those that aren't useful to them in the console space.

James Sawyer Ford · Oct 28, 2020

I wish Sony were more transparent with their chip architecture so we wouldn't have to speculate so much.

that being said, maybe PS5 doesn't have VRS because they opted for a different approach?

recall this tweet by principal engineer at Sony

Twitter

VanWinkle · Oct 28, 2020

Matt said:
.

Do you know or are you allowed to say if Sony has any of their own implementations for VRS/SFS/Mesh shaders?

CrazyNomad · Oct 28, 2020

Uzupedro said:
It will be fun seeing the game being identical across consoles for sure.

what? DF direct is where they discuss tech and not games...

DukeBlueBall · Oct 28, 2020

Mesh shaders, variable rate shading are not DX12 specific language.

source

Uzupedro · Oct 28, 2020

CrazyNomad said:
what? DF direct is where they discuss tech and not games...

They do both but you are right, comparisons are in another segment :P
Looking forward for what they are preparing too.

KillaKap · Oct 28, 2020

Do we know if sony has alternatives? I see a lot of assumptions as if they do. I think that's bad to set yourself up for disappointment if it's not the case. These are hardware-level additions.

bsigg · Oct 28, 2020

Uzupedro said:
Watch Dogs is getting RT on launch though? It's even present on Xbox Series S presentation, DMCVSE I assume is because devkits being late or something, at worst Sony moneyhatted it lol.

I think I confused the Maneater post launch RT patch and Watch Dogs. Also, Halo Infinite was originally set to get RT at some point in 2021 so who knows where that's at.

DukeBlueBall · Oct 28, 2020

KillaKap said:
Do we know if sony has alternatives? I see a lot of assumptions as if they do. I think that's bad to set yourself up for disappointment if it's not the case. These are hardware-level additions.

There are software alternatives for VRS. MW 2019 already uses them, as do Halo Infinite. RDNA 1 primitive shaders / geometry engine is very close to mesh shaders already.

Doctor Avatar · Oct 28, 2020

KillaKap said:
Do we know if sony has alternatives? I see a lot of assumptions as if they do. I think that's bad to set yourself up for disappointment if it's not the case. These are hardware-level additions.

From what we know Sony's answer to VRS, as an example, is the geometry engine by implication from these tweets. And we know that they also have RT solutions since we've already seen launch games using RT.

Who knows how it'll all work out though.

Audere Est Facere · Oct 28, 2020

James Sawyer Ford said:
I wish Sony were more transparent with their chip architecture so we wouldn't have to speculate so much.

that being said, maybe PS5 doesn't have VRS because they opted for a different approach?

recall this tweet by principal engineer at Sony

Twitter

yea it's almost a certainty sony has their own solutions for these things. idk why ms marketing is upsetting people so much.

Rex1157 · Oct 28, 2020

Audere Est Facere said:
yea it's almost a certainty sony has their own solutions for these things. idk why ms marketing is upsetting people so much.

MS marketing is annoying as it encourages warriors to run out and spread fud based on very little evidence.

xem · Oct 28, 2020

its very interesting to see the diff choices they may have made. i hope DF or someone has more knowledge eventually on which ones Sony made so as to make a detailed comparison.

Uzupedro · Oct 28, 2020

Check the staff post, stop arguing about the marketing.

Dantero · Oct 28, 2020

Audere Est Facere · Oct 28, 2020

Rex1157 said:
MS marketing is annoying as it encourages warriors to run out and spread fud based on very little evidence.

true but even fact based articles or videos from DF riles people up. its unavoidable.

edit. the ronald interview should be interesting at least

Elog · Oct 28, 2020

Am I the only one that finds it sad that a corporation - in this case MS - basically fuels console warring with the way they phrase the PR? I think we should hold them to a higher standard than that.

We already know that to the extent one of the features mentioned - Mesh Shaders, VRS, Sampler Feed-back, DirectStorage integration and RT is not used by the Playstation (and we already know that DirectStorage and Sampler Feedback is not used by Sony for obvious reasons) it is not because it is bad for the console but because Sony opted for their own customised solution.

By writing the PR with charged value words they imply that Sony is worse because they have chosen their own custom solutions. And MS knows fully that is how the internet will interpret it. I actually find it sad and disingenuous marketing behaviour.

Edit: Sorry - did not see that connecting the language of the article to markting was warned against. Apologies.

headspawn · Oct 28, 2020

zireael said:
https://www.anandtech.com/show/1620...-starts-at-the-highend-coming-november-18th/2

This will be huge for performance going forward on consoles if they can shave off performance with a good alternative.

Prime2 · Oct 28, 2020

Elog said:
Am I the only one that finds it sad that a corporation - in this case MS - basically fuels console warring with the way they phrase the PR? I think we should hold them to a higher standard than that.

We already know that to the extent one of the features mentioned - Mesh Shaders, VRS, Sampler Feed-back, DirectStorage integration and RT is not used by the Playstation (and we already know that DirectStorage and Sampler Feedback is not used by Sony for obvious reasons) it is not because it is bad for the console but because Sony opted for their own customised solution.

By writing the PR with charged value words they imply that Sony is worse because they have chosen their own custom solutions. And MS knows fully that is how the internet will interpret it. I actually find it sad and disingenuous marketing behaviour.

It is marketings job to make their product look the best, that means highlighting things even if it is putting down something else. This is only bad if people take it that way, its very similar to the PS4 how to give friends games video.

Dizastah · Oct 28, 2020

Leonine said:
Did people not watch the AMD event today, there were a bunch of stuff that is Direct X exclusive that will be present in Microsoft's operating system and consoles. Microsoft are using the full stack available to them.

Sony as Cerny said aren't, they're using solutions that interest them and ditching those that aren't useful to them in the console space.

Pretty much this. I'm sure this is not as big a deal as many think.

Hybrid Rainbow · Oct 28, 2020

Doctor Avatar said:
From what we know Sony's answer to VRS, as an example, is the geometry engine by implication from these tweets. And we know that they also have RT solutions since we've already seen launch games using RT.

Who knows how it'll all work out though.

Oh yeah, I had completely forgotten about that tweet. Interesting times ahead indeed.

Shyotl · Oct 28, 2020

theAllseeingEYE said:
Just noticed this tasty nugget.

Basically Microsoft finally stating that not only is thier machine learning hardware accelerated, but that XSX/S also supports ML powered super resolution.

I assume this is AMD's DLSS competitor.

I mean, technically OpenML can just fall back to standard GPU compute instead of vendor-specific metacommand implementations for various operations and still call it 'hardware accelerated'. I mean, so long as it isn't doing literally everything on the CPU fallback path. It merely only packages operations in a way that better lends itself to being hardware accelerated and provides generic fallbacks if need be. If that acceleration is done via standard compute or specialized machine-learning hardware (such as tensor for nVidia, etc), well, it's impossible to know unless they outright tell us.

Rurunaki · Oct 28, 2020

My understanding was this is brcause of Direct X features?

Leonine · Oct 28, 2020

Dizastah said:
Pretty much this. I'm sure this is not as big a deal as many think.

The language used is the hilarious bit, 'we're using the full stack, the competition isn't'.
At the end of the day the games will do all the talking.

Bennibop · Oct 28, 2020

Dizastah said:
Pretty much this. I'm sure this is not as big a deal as many think.

.

I can't believe people jumping on this believing that it's confirmation PS5 is not RDNA 2. I mean how many times do Sony have to confirm it! I mean we already knew Ps5 was using custom solutions alongside RDNA2 where Microsoft was not.

Begaria · Oct 28, 2020

It's basically this:

SolidJaum said:
PS5 is RDNA2 based, but Sony has their own custom implementations. It's not 1:1 to RDNA2 that AMD has on PC. MS using their smart wording again to attract some console warriors.

Quite the opposite, AMD incorporated DirectX12 technology into RDNA2 (Mesh Shading, DX12 Ray Tracing, Sampler Feedback, Variable Rate Shading), not the other way around:

platocplx said:
All this is really saying is MS adopted all of the RDNA2 Feature set, this doesnt mean sony isnt RDNA 2 but there is a divergence in the feature set sony wanted and they may have opted for their own solution than just taking the RDNA feature set. So like something like SFS is standard on RDNA2 but sony may have an alternative. Why sony has been stressing Custom RDNA 2 so hard.

Sort of, AMD announced they incorporated DX12 features into the RDNA2 architecture:

CrazyNomad said:
AMD showed today a lot of new RDNA2 that were made with microsoft help for their upcoming radeon 6000 video cards

Direct quote from that presentation, "With RDNA 2 we also focused on bringing new hardware features into the architecture. We partnered closely with Microsoft on Direct X 12 Ultimate features including: DirectX Raytracing, Variable Rate Shading, Mesh Shaders, and Sampler Feedback"

Where Gaming Begins: Ep. 2 | AMD Radeon™ RX 6000 Series Graphics Cards

Join AMD CEO Dr. Lisa Su as she explores the new AMD Radeon™ RX 6000 Series graphics cards powered by the RDNA 2 architecture, the most powerful gaming graph...

youtu.be

Those four bullet points, which Microsoft is touting as being part of the "full" RDNA 2 feature set, are all Microsoft created tech that Sony doesn't use in their API.

Yup:

Desodeset said:
It's more like DirectX Ultimate features that are typical for DirectX and thus implemented in Next-gen Xbox.

Microsoft are great in their marketing approach.
Embrace, extend, and extinguish

Also yup:

Theorry said:
I am not really in this tech talk. But doesnt the DX stuff makes the "only" happen.
I mean PS5 wont have that right? So its kinda a PR blurb in the end.

It is a fantastic marketing strategy by Microsoft because it's bombastic on one hand, while also holding a grain of truth in the other.

JaggedSac · Oct 28, 2020

Doctor Avatar said:
From what we know Sony's answer to VRS, as an example, is the geometry engine by implication from these tweets. And we know that they also have RT solutions since we've already seen launch games using RT.

Who knows how it'll all work out though.

Strange tweet. No reason why you wouldn't use both a mesh shader for doing what he is saying the geometry engine is doing and then also using VRS for even more efficiency.

robinium7 · Oct 28, 2020

Dantero said:

They need to get rid of Greenberg, he's so unprofessional. It's like having a console warrior as your marketing lead...

Deleted member 56752 · Oct 28, 2020

Begaria said:
It's basically this:

Quite the opposite, AMD incorporated DirectX12 technology into RDNA2 (Mesh Shading, DX12 Ray Tracing, Sampler Feedback, Variable Rate Shading), not the other way around:

Sort of, AMD announced they incorporated DX12 features into the RDNA2 architecture:

Direct quote from that presentation, "With RDNA 2 we also focused on bringing new hardware features into the architecture. We partnered closely with Microsoft on Direct X 12 Ultimate features including: DirectX Raytracing, Variable Rate Shading, Mesh Shaders, and Sampler Feedback"

Where Gaming Begins: Ep. 2 | AMD Radeon™ RX 6000 Series Graphics Cards

Join AMD CEO Dr. Lisa Su as she explores the new AMD Radeon™ RX 6000 Series graphics cards powered by the RDNA 2 architecture, the most powerful gaming graph...

youtu.be

Those four bullet points, which Microsoft is touting as being part of the "full" RDNA 2 feature set, are all Microsoft created tech that Sony doesn't use in their API.

Yup:

Also yup:

It is a fantastic marketing strategy by Microsoft because it's bombastic on one hand, while also holding a grain of truth in the other.

I really like your post

Deleted member 8688 · Oct 28, 2020

MS PR stoking the console war flames again. I'm sure Phil is *furious*.

platocplx · Oct 28, 2020

Rurunaki said:
My understanding was this is brcause of Direct X features?

Yes pretty much.

rokkerkory · Oct 28, 2020

theAllseeingEYE said:
Just noticed this tasty nugget.

Basically Microsoft finally stating that not only is thier machine learning hardware accelerated, but that XSX/S also supports ML powered super resolution.

I assume this is AMD's DLSS competitor.

That is juicy, need some hot sauce on those nuggets

rokkerkory · Oct 28, 2020

Withnail said:
MS PR stoking the console war flames again. I'm sure Phil is *furious*.

That damn arrogant MS is back

nib95 · Oct 28, 2020

AMD's potential DLSS alternative is the thing I'm most excited about here tbh. AMD really need their own version of this, and the next-gen consoles ideally too. Because the performance savings to image impact are just too good to miss out on, even if the alternative is a less efficient or more resource costing software based solution, unlike Nvidias GPU's.

Begaria said:
It's basically this:

Quite the opposite, AMD incorporated DirectX12 technology into RDNA2 (Mesh Shading, DX12 Ray Tracing, Sampler Feedback, Variable Rate Shading), not the other way around:

Sort of, AMD announced they incorporated DX12 features into the RDNA2 architecture:

Direct quote from that presentation, "With RDNA 2 we also focused on bringing new hardware features into the architecture. We partnered closely with Microsoft on Direct X 12 Ultimate features including: DirectX Raytracing, Variable Rate Shading, Mesh Shaders, and Sampler Feedback"

Where Gaming Begins: Ep. 2 | AMD Radeon™ RX 6000 Series Graphics Cards

Join AMD CEO Dr. Lisa Su as she explores the new AMD Radeon™ RX 6000 Series graphics cards powered by the RDNA 2 architecture, the most powerful gaming graph...

youtu.be

Those four bullet points, which Microsoft is touting as being part of the "full" RDNA 2 feature set, are all Microsoft created tech that Sony doesn't use in their API.

Yup:

Also yup:

It is a fantastic marketing strategy by Microsoft because it's bombastic on one hand, while also holding a grain of truth in the other.

A lot of this conversation to me seems surprisingly similar to the conversation around this time on the eve of last gen too, where there were murmurs that DX11.2/X would bridge the gap to the PS4 with its unique API features (including from posts on GAF by a then MS marketing employee). In the end none of that stuff really made any tangible difference, and Sony's API and tools seemingly had their own take on many of the specific features or benefits outlined.

Sort of feels like people are doing a similar thing, this time confusing DirectX associated features with AMD or RDNA2 specific ones.

fanboy · Oct 28, 2020

10 pages later, do we actually know whats the real difference between PS5 and XSX/S regarding RDNA 2 or are people just speculating?

Landy828 · Oct 28, 2020

I mean, AMD mentioned during their Desktop GPU stream today that they worked with Microsoft. I'm sure whatever MS is saying is accurate when it comes to features they nailed down.

Why are people getting tore up over this?

I'd love to see a breakdown of the features and everything they worked on for the Series X.

Deleted member 8688 · Oct 28, 2020

rokkerkory said:
That damn arrogant MS is back

Never went away.

JaggedSac · Oct 28, 2020

nib95 said:
A lot of this conversation to me seems surprisingly similar to the conversation around this time on the eve of last gen too, where there were murmurs that DX12 would bridge the gap to the PS4 with its unique API features, even though in the end it didn't, and Sony's API and tools had their own take on many of the specific features or benefits outlined.

Hell, we even had an actual Microsoft PR guy on GAF come on and tout the argument about DIrectX and its benefits over the competition.

Couple things to note. DX12 was announced after the Xbox One was released. Perhaps you are referring to just DX11?

I don't recall any gpu hardware features mentioned during the beginning of last gen driven by direct x. I could be mistaken though. Could you list them out?

Uzupedro · Oct 28, 2020

fanboy said:
10 pages later, do we actually know whats the real difference between PS5 and XSX/S regarding RDNA 2 or are people just speculating?

Guess what lol

Puroresu_kid · Oct 28, 2020

How the fuck does anyone catch feelings over some marketing material?

gofreak · Oct 28, 2020

Doctor Avatar said:
From what we know Sony's answer to VRS, as an example, is the geometry engine. And we know that they also have RT solutions since we've already seen launch games using RT.

From the PS5 tech presentation, the PS5 RT solution is just vanilla RDNA2, not a Sony solution. Based on some chatter, though, yeah, VRS and the geometry stage seem to be the most likely candidates for where they've taken a different tack.

Begaria said:
Direct quote from that presentation, "With RDNA 2 we also focused on bringing new hardware features into the architecture. We partnered closely with Microsoft on Direct X 12 Ultimate features including: DirectX Raytracing, Variable Rate Shading, Mesh Shaders, and Sampler Feedback"

Where Gaming Begins: Ep. 2 | AMD Radeon™ RX 6000 Series Graphics Cards

Join AMD CEO Dr. Lisa Su as she explores the new AMD Radeon™ RX 6000 Series graphics cards powered by the RDNA 2 architecture, the most powerful gaming graph...

youtu.be

Those four bullet points, which Microsoft is touting as being part of the "full" RDNA 2 feature set, are all Microsoft created tech that Sony doesn't use in their API.

Obviously Sony uses their own API, but the underlying hardware support I think is what's in question. And on that front, at least one of these (RT) is a RDNA2 drop-in on PS5 - thus not a Microsoft IP that Sony can't use. By extension I don't think we can assume too much about which others aren't RDNA2-standard on PS5 (although as above, VRS and the geometry stage seem likely candidates anyway).

fanboy said:
10 pages later, do we actually know whats the real difference between PS5 and XSX/S regarding RDNA 2 or are people just speculating?

We probably won't know until Sony talks about where they diverged.

bsigg · Oct 28, 2020

Puroresu_kid said:
How the fuck does anyone catch feelings over some marketing material?

I suppose it comes down to how people value their money? $500 for a console is a lot for people and anything that may detract from that purchase could cause people to get upset.

RoboPlato · Oct 28, 2020

Have any devs weighed in on this yet? Curious if there's any practical difference or not and want information from a non-PR source.

Adrifi · Oct 28, 2020

Withnail said:
Never went away.

You know he's being sarcastic, right? Do you know where "chicken chaser" comes from?

TheFurizzlyBear · Oct 28, 2020

fanboy said:
10 pages later, do we actually know whats the real difference between PS5 and XSX/S regarding RDNA 2 or are people just speculating?

We don't know but the DirectX ingrained stuff seems to be it. The Verge is working on a story so maybe they will have some more details. In the end, its speculation on what this means till we start seeing more and more games.

Calvinien · Oct 28, 2020

So in layman's terms, what does this mean?

iareharSon · Oct 28, 2020

zireael said:
https://www.anandtech.com/show/1620...-starts-at-the-highend-coming-november-18th/2

I wonder if Sony and Microsoft would have defaulted to AMD for its console if they knew DLSS was as much of a game changer as it is? Will be interesting to see what AMD is able to cook up.

.exe · Oct 28, 2020

Spicy! Whether it will have noticeable practical benefits remains to be seen. Fair game though. Sony put 8K on the box even though we know no game is actually going to run at that resolution 😸

MS: A Closer Look at How Xbox Series X|S Integrates Full AMD RDNA 2 Architecture

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