AMD to Start Shipping Next-Generation Graphics Processors in October

While it is really well overdue for some new hardware from team RED, it seems that they may actually start believing it themselves.  A lot of rumors have been going round as of late that the Hawaii Island chips maybe out the end of the year.

According Xbit, they will be coming as early as October!

Source: http://www.xbitlabs.com/news/graphics/display/20130820222639_AMD_to_Start_Shipping_Next_Generation_Graphics_Processors_in_October.html

Geforce GTX 790 and Titan Ultra? Possibly in the works.

There have been a couple of rumors that the 790 was in the works, in addition to the massive amount of hope for a dual GK110 from the community, myself included. I can't lie, it would beat my 690s into a pulp, but I think it would be an engineering feat to get them sandwiched together.

Rumors coming out of Fudzilla state that the 790 is in the works (GK110s) and possible a proper Tesla unit, Titan Ultra, with higher clock rates and all SMXs working.

Fudzilla: http://www.fudzilla.com/home/item/32360-nvidia-reportedly-working-on-two-new-cards

VideoCardz believe there is a Titan Ultra in the works, but their belief is that it is a 790 rather than two individual cards being worked on.
VideoCardz: http://videocardz.com/45403/nvidia-to-launch-more-cards-this-year-maxwell-in-q1-2014

Not to mention nVidia's official plans include Maxwell around the end of Q1, 2014.  Rumors also include Radeon HDs have been pushed closer to production (to as soon as November?!).

What both rumors don't tell you however, it doesn't seem super likely to be running 20nm if true, and if not true.... why release more of the same cards?  We do know that TSMC still isn't mass producing the smaller fabrication, and by calculations (based off of nVidias GFLOPs vs. Watt Roadmap Slide), it isn't possible to release their intended Maxwell without a die shrink.

With all this focus on the new console generation as well, AMD has been having to spend a lot of its fabrication queues on chips for the Xbox One, PS4, Wii, Wii U, and Xbox 360.

These rumors seem at best wishful think for now, only these two giants really know what is going on.

MSI Geforce GTX 780 3GB Lightning Is Out!

If only I had the cash to splurge... who does anymore?  It is very pricey, but it is good to see custom GTX 780 as I predicted.  It will definitely give Titans a run a for their money.

PCPER Review: http://www.pcper.com/reviews/Graphics-Cards/MSI-GeForce-GTX-780-3GB-Lightning-Graphics-Card-Review

PS4 vs Xbox One - Pre-Order Totals to August 24th 2013

Up until the week ending August 24 the PlayStation 4 currently leads in the total number of pre-orders in the US with about 600,000. This is up significantly since E3 where there were only 75,000 pre-orders. The Xbox One is still lagging behind with 350,000 pre-orders. This is also way up since E3 where there were only 45,000 pre-orders.

Source: VGChartz

HSA targets native parallel execution in Java virtual machines by 2015

Industry consortium HSA Foundation intends to bring native support for parallel acceleration in Java virtual machines, which would make it easier to tap into multiple processors like graphics processors to speed up code execution.

Source: http://www.pcworld.com/article/2047422/hsa-targets-native-parallel-execution-in-java-virtual-machines-by-2015.html

Xbox One November 8th Release Date Debunked

The source says to expect the console at a date later than November 8, though obviously still in the month of November, as that's the release window Microsoft has promised for some time.

Source: http://kotaku.com/the-xbox-one-will-not-launch-on-november-8-after-all-1211069173

PS4 / Xbox One Potential Release Dates

Microsoft are being tight lipped about their release date, the rumors have been pointing to around November 8th, a Friday, and at midnight.  This is interesting because the PS4 release date is supposed to be November 15th, a Friday, and at midnight.

PS4 goes on sale internationally two weeks after:

Xbox One Date Source: http://www.denofgeek.com/games/xbox-one/27042/xbox-one-to-release-ahead-of-ps4
Xbox One Source 2: http://kotaku.com/the-xbox-one-might-be-out-on-november-8-1204282442
PS4 International Date Source: http://www.latinpost.com/articles/1690/20130827/ps4-release-date-price-specs-overseas-market-debut-two-weeks.htm
PS4 Source 2: http://www.hypable.com/2013/08/20/ps4-release-date-revealed/

PS4 vs. Xbox One - The Bribery! Gamestop managers spoiled and a white Xbox One?

I first heard about this yesterday and wasn't going to post anything, however, it is obviously a little funnier now that both Sony and Microsoft are one upping each other.

At least Microsoft is back in the fight.

GameStop managers will receive PlayStation 4 units and seven games at launch, GameStop has confirmed to Joystiq. The announcement was made at the company's GameStop EXPO, currently taking place in Las Vegas. 

A tipster informs us the games to be given with the console include: Killzone: Shadowfall, NBA 2K14, Madden, FIFA 14, Need for Speed: Rivals, Battlefield 4 and Beyond: Two Souls. That final one being a curiosity if we're to assume managers will receive PS4 versions of the listed games, since to the best of our knowledge, and reiterated by Sony in follow-up,Beyond is only for PS3.

Source: http://www.joystiq.com/2013/08/26/gamestop-managers-to-receive-ps4-seven-games/

Shortly afterwards, we all heard this notice:

Turns out, in addition to a PlayStation 4, GameStop managers will also receive an Xbox One this holiday season. The announcement was made at the retailers' expo in Las Vegas a few hours after it revealed managers would receive a PS4 and seven games.

Neowin reached out to GameStop and the company confirmed the detail. The Xbox One console will be given to all the general managers of the company's 6,500 stores, whether or not they attended the expo. No word on whether it will also include software.

Source: http://www.joystiq.com/2013/08/27/gamestop-managers-to-receive-xbox-one/

 Also mentioned was that the Microsoft employees will receive a white Xbox One:

I personally like the look of this much better, especially considering White is the new black, and looks more in common with Xbox 360 than a TiVO.

Source: http://www.engadget.com/2013/08/26/white-xbox-one/

PS4 Full Hardware Capabilities will take 3 to 4 years to Surface

Sony's Playstation 4 has already been reported to have some nifty performance incentives over the Xbox One. The PS4 vs. Xbox One breakdown I did is here.

According to Michael Cerny, PS4's lead architect:

"It's a supercharged PC architecture, so you can use it as if it were a PC with unified memory," he said. "Much of what we're seeing with the launch titles is that usage; it's very, very quick to get up to speed if that's how you use it. But at the same time, then you're not taking advantage of all the customisation that we did in the GPU. I think that really will play into the graphical quality and the level of interaction in the worlds in, say, year three or year four of the console."

By my experience, one could infer that he means the second and third round of PS4 AAA games will unveil the majority of the potential of the console.

Source: http://www.gamespot.com/news/cerny-full-hardware-capabilities-of-ps4-may-take-three-to-four-years-to-be-harnessed-6413767

AMD Radeon HD 7000 Series getting DX11.2 Support. Kepler Support Better Explained.

Usually between revisions of DirectX, such as from 10 to 11, there are major changes in the underlying API/code.  With the latest service packs, patches, what not, this has not normally been the case.

DX11.1 and 11.2 were mostly software side optimizations, however, the Radeons do have full hardware support even for the optional feature sets in DX11.1/2 (optional as declared by Microsoft not nVidia ;)  In AMDs case, they really could be driver side supported.  AMD is showing this by releasing support for up and coming DX11.2 (via Windows 8.1) in a driver update.

"The Radeon HD 7000 series hardware architecture is fully DirectX 11.2-capable when used with a driver that enables this feature. AMD is planning to enable DirectX 11.2 with a driver update in the Windows 8.1 launch timeframe in October, when DirectX 11.2 ships. Today, AMD is the only GPU manufacturer to offer fully-compatible DirectX 11.1 support, and the only manufacturer to support Tiled Resources Tier-2 within a shipping product stack.”

Pcper: http://www.pcper.com/news/Graphics-Cards/GCN-Based-AMD-7000-Series-GPUs-Will-Fully-Support-DirectX-112-After-Driver-Updat
MaximumPC: http://www.maximumpc.com/driver_update_will_add_directx_112_support_amd_radeon_hd_7000_series_gpus


What AMD stated is pretty much true, roughly 90% was software side and they have the ability to support the extra 10% with dedicated hardware.

According BON (Brightside of the News), who first reported that the HD 7000 series supposedly would support DX11.1 by hardware, nVidia weighed in on the situation then.  There were four features left out, on Kepler's side, that nVidia stated they didn't think they pertained to gaming.

nVidia's Quote:

"The GTX 680 supports DirectX 11.1 with hardware feature level 11_0, including all optional features. This includes a number of features useful for game developers such as: 

• Partial constant buffer updates 
• Logic operations in the Output Merger 
• 16bpp renderingUAV-only rendering 
• Partial clearsLarge constant buffers 

We did not enable four non-gaming features in Hardware in Kepler (for 11_1): 

• Target-Independent Rasterization (2D rendering only)
• 16xMSAA Rasterization (2D rendering only) 
• Orthogonal Line Rendering Mode 
• UAV in non-pixel-shader stages 

So basically, we do support 11.1 features with 11_0 feature level through the DirectX 11.1 API. We do not support feature level 11_1. This is a bit confusing, due to Microsoft naming. So we do support 11.1 from a feature level for gaming related features."

From my understanding, I looked up what exactly was Microsoft's naming convention.  It looks like 11_0 was released with DirectX 11.  Code specific to ONLY 11.1 was deemed 11_1.  They then went on to state that they do support the 11_0 (which is apart of DX11.1) but not 11_1 via the 10% that require specific hardware.  It is somewhat confusing on Microsoft's side, but to me it seems nVidia is trying a little damage control.

So to my original statement, most of the DX11.1 was software updates, therefore, should run on DX11.0 hardware.  You can not do the same for an entire family revision (ex DX12).  These DX11_1 features not included via hardware, could very well be included with work around for developers in the driver (call this function for this effect etc.).  The same can be said of the DX11_2 release.  There is not much in the way of substantial change.

Source: http://www.brightsideofnews.com/news/2012/11/21/nvidia-doesnt-fully-support-directx-111-with-kepler-gpus2c-bute280a6.aspx

It is all still rather more straightforward on AMDs side the nVidia, but I did find this immensely helpful breakdown on Anandtechs Forums.

OK. Enough with this kind of misunderstanding.
Let's see the facts:
- DX11.2 will be supported by any DX11 or DX11.1 GPUs.
- Tiled Resources support is not mandatory, it's just an option.
I created a list that contains the most relevant gaming features in DX11.1/11.2 and the hardware support for it.

Mandatory features:
Logic operations in the Output Merger:
NVIDIA Kepler: Yes
NVIDIA Fermi: Yes
AMD GCN: Yes
AMD VLIW4/5: Yes
Intel Gen7.5: Yes
Intel Gen7: No

UAV-only rendering:
NVIDIA Kepler: Yes
NVIDIA Fermi: Yes
AMD GCN: Yes
AMD VLIW4/5: Yes
Intel Gen7.5: Yes
Intel Gen7: Yes

UAV in non-pixel-shader stages:
NVIDIA Kepler: No (technically yes, but the DX limit this option in feature_level_11_0)
NVIDIA Fermi: No (technically yes, but the DX limit this option in feature_level_11_0)
AMD GCN: Yes
AMD VLIW4/5: No (technically yes, but the DX limit this option in feature_level_11_0)
Intel Gen7.5: Yes
Intel Gen7: No

Larger number of UAVs:
NVIDIA Kepler: No (8)
NVIDIA Fermi: No (8)
AMD GCN: Yes (64)
AMD VLIW4/5: No (8)
Intel Gen7.5: Yes (64)
Intel Gen7: No (8)

HLSL FLG:
NVIDIA Kepler: Yes
NVIDIA Fermi: Yes
AMD GCN: Yes
AMD VLIW4/5: Yes
Intel Gen7.5: Yes
Intel Gen7: Yes

------------------------------------------
Optional features:
Tiled Resources support:
NVIDIA Kepler: Yes (tier1)
NVIDIA Fermi: No (tier0)
AMD GCN: Yes (tier2)
AMD VLIW4/5: No (tier0)
Intel Gen7.5: no (tier0)
Intel Gen7: No (tier0)

Feature level support:
NVIDIA Kepler: 11_0
NVIDIA Fermi: 11_0
AMD GCN: 11_1
AMD VLIW4/5: 11_0
Intel Gen7.5: 11_1
Intel Gen7: 11_0

Conservative Depth Output:
NVIDIA Kepler: No
NVIDIA Fermi: No
AMD GCN: Yes
AMD VLIW4/5: Yes
Intel Gen7.5: No
Intel Gen7: No

Comparison of DX11/11.1 Support.  Source: http://forums.anandtech.com/showpost.php?p=35396249&postcount=14

Xbox One Technical Specifications Laid Out In More Detail

Microsoft unveiled some of the power of their new Xbox One.


"In talking up the innards of its upcoming gaming console, Microsoft didn’t reveal any new capabilities of the One—due this November—during a presentation at the Hot Chips conference Monday at Stanford University. But company executives discussed the so-called “speeds and feeds” of the main Xbox One processor in detail, as well as the problems that the new Kinect team had to overcome."

Source: http://www.pcworld.com/article/2047482/xbox-ones-massive-custom-cpu-can-pick-you-out-of-a-lineup.html


Notable pieces of information, were some of the new slides on the technical specs of the APU/SOC (System on a Chip).







Image Source: TechHive, http://images.techhive.com/images/article/2013/08/xbox-one-gpu-diagram-100051501-orig.png


Makes it a pretty formidable SoC, however, based on the calculations of the GPU, it still puts it inline with an HD 7780 (between a HD 7770 and 7790.)


For those Kinect enthusiasts, there was information for you too:


"The image sensor chip also controls a 1080p camera that can capture video for Skype or other purposes. Kinect now has a 70-degree viewing angle and can detect movement in larger spaces, ranging from around 0.8 meters to 4.2 meters away. Now it also doesn’t matter if the lighting in the room is good or poor. Kinect can also detect up to six players at a time now"

Source: http://venturebeat.com/2013/08/26/microsoft-disclosed-details-for-the-main-processor-and-the-kinect-image-processor-in-the-xbox-one-video-game-console-today-at-a-chip-design-conference-those-details-are-critical-for-the-kind-of-expe/#CHmQsWBiLPgyKgSy.99


Another question a few of us had, was the actual architecture of the Jaguar core being x86, x64, or x86-64? Turns out the Jaguar cores are x64, according to Venturebeat.

PS4 vs. Xbox One - Architecture Break Down

UPDATED: At bottom.

Despite Microsoft turning the Xbox One to a Xbox 180 of its policies, is there a real difference between the PS4 and Xbox One?  The answer to that question is a resounding yes.

PS4 will be using HSA / HUMA.  It will be the first known closed system to implement HSA/HUMA from a commercial aspect.  Many of us have been fantasizing about the potentials of HSA/HUMA, but now we finally get to see it in action.

HSA / HUMA from AMD:
http://www.amd.com/us/products/technologies/hsa/Pages/hsa.aspx#3

Source for PS4 having HSA / HUMA and very good break down of HSA / HUMA:
NeoGaf: http://www.neogaf.com/forum/showpost.php?p=77493461&postcount=1

Just a note though: since the architecture is almost identical for the Xbox, HSA and HUMA may very well potentially get implemented on their side.

Is that all there is to the differences?  No absolutely not.  (THE TL;DR is at the bottom).

Lets get to the APU.
The APU in question is the AMD Jaguar.  A octo-core (probably faux octo-core in where it has 8 integer processing units and 4 floating point processing units).  Both systems have a variant of this, the detailed specifics are still missing.

The PS4 GPU inside the APU is different too.  It is better, in terms of performance and shader count.  Microsoft have already announced a frequency boost to make it "competitive."  At this point in the game, my experience tells me they stumbled on performance and are trying to make it up with frequency speed.

There has been a lot of downplay on the PS4's superiority.  I call this marketing bullshit.

The PS4 GPU has approximately 1152 Shader Count, or more than like "Stream Processors" utilizing the GCN architecture.  The estimated GPU throughput is at 1.84 TFLOPs.

For Comparison's sake, the AMD Radeon HD 7850 (Desktop not Mobile) GPU has 1,024 Steam Processors, and 1.76TFLOPs of performance.  The memory bandwidth is 153.6 GB/s.   An HD 7870 has 1,280 Stream Processors, and 2.56 TFLOPS, with 153.6 GB/s of memory bandwidth.

That would put the paper/theoretical perforamnce of the PS4 somewhere between an HD 7850 to 7870.  There is also the factor of D2M Programming and HUMA.  D2M is direct to metal programming, code for specific hardware runs so much better than generic or non-specific code.  While the theoretical performance maybe an HD 7860 (not a real card) the actual performance maybe higher and closer to a 7950.  Especially with the type of memory it has: 8GB GDDR5 (not sure what speed yet.)  This gives it the potential for 176.0 GB/s Memory Bandwidth @ the rumored 5500 MHz.

The Xbox One on the other hand, will have 768 Shader/Steam Processors @ 1.23 TFLOPs, 32MB of eSRAM (rumored to be between 100 GB/s to 200), and 8GB of DDR3 @ 2133~2300 MHz (about 50~65 GB/s)  Now memory bandwidth won't really be a limitation to either side this time, and while on paper the Xbox One looks to finesse about the same performance as the PS4, the PS4 will result in the smoother experience (at least at the start.)

Microsoft claims that it has a theoretical output of 192 GB/s but what I calculated was closer to 133 GB/s due to the speed of the slowest component bottle necking performance.

The comparable desktop GPU to the Xbox One's would be between an HD 7770 to a 7790.  A moderate downgrade over a theoretical HD 7860 by any standards.

Summary (TL;DR):
The CPU Performance should be on par with each other, in favor of the Xbox One (cloud potential.)
        The CPU while important, is not the primary ingredient in driving video games, its the GPU.

PS4 GPU:                        XBox One GPU:
Processors: 1152             Processors: 768
TFLOPS: 1.84                 TFLOPS: 1.23 TFLOPS
Memory: 8GB GDDR5    Memory: 8GB DDR3 w/ 32MB eSRAM
Mem Band:  176.0GB/s   Mem Band: 68.3 GB/s  w/ 102 GB/s ~ 133GB/s with overhead/bottle neck.

Xbox One CPU has the potential for 3 VMs per machine providing CPU performance.
         I honestly can't see how this will help video games specifically though, but cool none the less.
PS4 will use HSA/HUMA, very cool.
PS4 GPU Processors has 50% more processors.
PS4 TFLOPS is about 49.59% higher.
Equal capacity in memory.
Memory Bandwidth (should be good enough for both systems.)
Potentially equal bandwidth on memory or more according to Microsoft (+9%)
By my calculations/estimate the PS4 has 32.33% more bandwidth.
PS4 HDD can be replaced by end-users (SSD here I come!)

While, both systems should be bought based off the games you wish to play (i.e. exclusives :( ), there shouldn't be any question to which has the beefier hardware. The PS4 has roughly 50% more raw GPU power than the Xbox One.

Eurogamer.net did a very detailed breakdown as well!
http://www.eurogamer.net/articles/digitalfoundry-can-xbox-one-multi-platform-games-compete-with-ps4

UPDATE:
I have followed the fiasco today with PCPER vs. VRZONE.
PCPER thought they debunked it: http://www.pcper.com/news/General-Tech/Sony-PlayStation-4-PS4-will-NOT-utilize-AMD-hUMA-Kabini-based-SoC?utm_source=twitterfeed&utm_medium=twitter
VRZONE has confirmed HSA: http://vr-zone.com/articles/xbox-dev-xbox-one-answer-ps4s-huma-technology/52662.html#ixzz2cjmZ3miR

AMD's current stance seems to be they can't confirm nor deny now, although they were the original source of the confusion.

WinPE / BCDBOOT: Failure when attempting to copy boot files. (Solution)

From time to time, when repairing an MBR or just applying BCDBOOT for a new image, you may occasionally get this error: Failure when attempting to copy boot files.

When this happens, your new image or computer will not boot from hard drive.

Some may have investigated that even further and discovered you can "force" BCDBOOT with /S command to your drive and it works correctly.  When this happens, your new image still may not boot!  Why?

Sometimes it will work and sometimes it won't work seemingly random.  It isn't necessarily the same machine, not necessarily the same OS, or OS version.  What gives? I have finally discovered for myself what the hell is wrong with this thing.

The trick I found out was HOW I was getting into WinPE or PXE.  If I am doing a LEGACY boot of the USB (WINPE), BCDBOOT would work successfully.  If I am doing a UEFI/EFI boot WinPE environment, it would not work!  Puzzling, but at least I know how to fix this!

Basically what happens:
If you boot your WinPE drive via UEFI interface / options, BCDBOOT will default to try working with GPT and EFI firmware.  With an EFI reserve partition missing because it wasn't created you get: Failure when attempting to copy boot files.

If you boot your WinPE drive via BIOS / LEGACY options, BCDBOOT will default to try working with MBR and BIOS firmware.

That's okay if you can't or don't want to run LEGACY!

The EXTRA commands need to be thus for generating the old MBR style drive!

Step One:
Your Windows partition is still active.  We will call it W:\

Step Two:
Your System partition exists!  We will call it S:\

Step Three:
You have applied your image (or the location of Windows already exists.) to W:\

Step Four:
Command to finalize the MBR (under UEFI mode) is this:
bcdboot W:\Windows /s S: /f BIOS

Conversely, if you are booting non-EFI to USB drive, but your drive is GPT and UEFI you will want to run this:
bcdboot W:\Windows /s S: /f EFI
Where S: in this case is the EFI partition, necessary, for those drives.

Hope that helps!

AMD Catalyst Driver 13.8 Beta 2 (Microstutter Fixing / CFX Drivers)

Sorry for the delay, AMD's second driver attempt to reduce microstutter in GPUs is now out. Link below.


Feature Highlights of The AMD Catalyst 13.8 Beta2 Driver for Windows:

Saints Row 4: Performance improves up to 25% at 1920x1280 with Ultra settings enabled
Splinter Cell Blacklist: Performance improves up to 9% at 2560x1600 with Ultra settings enabled
Final Fantasy XIV: Improves single GPU and CrossFire performance
Van Helsing: Fixes image quality issues when enabling Anti-Aliasing through the AMD Catalyst Control Center
Far Cry 3 / Far Cry 3 Blood Dragon: Resolve corruption when enabling Anti-Aliasing through the Catalyst Control Center
RIPD: Improves single GPU performance
Minimum: Improves CrossFire performance
Castlevania Lords of Shadow: Improves CrossFire performance
CrossFire: Frame Pacing feature – includes improved performance in World of Warcraft, Sniper Elite, Watch Dogs, and Tomb Raider
Doom 3 BFG: Corruption issues have been resolved


Known Issues of The AMD Catalyst 13.8 Beta2 Driver for Windows:

CrossFire configurations (when used in combination with Overdrive) can result in the secondary GPU usage running at 99%
Enabling CrossFire can result in the PCI-e bus speed for the secondary GPU being reported as x1
Bioshock Infinite: New DLC can cause system hangs with Frame Pacing enabled – disable frame pacing for this title to resolve.


http://support.amd.com/us/kbarticles/Pages/AMDCatalyst13-8WINBetaDriver.aspx