Xbox One CPU Speed Boosted

A few sources have discovered that Microsoft has boosted the Xbox One's CPU by 150 MHz, making it now 1.75GHz.  This in addition to the GPU boosted earlier last month from 800 MHz to 853 MHz.  While this is good for consumers, every little bit helps, but from a professional stand point I see one of two things:
1.) They were rushed in planning the console.
2.) There is a noticeable discrepancy in performance compared to the rival (PS4) and this is an attempt to bridge the gap.

In all likelihood, it could be both, there unrealistic and unwanted policies being changed is a sign of disconnect with the community or potentially haphazard ideas thrown together hastily.  One thing is for sure, we don't know the actual speeds of the PS4's hardware, but from the start in the GPU is approximately 50% more powerful at rendering than the Xbox One.  Realistically we will see this show up at 10~30% boost in frame rates at equal settings, possibly more as developers get more and more used to the hardware in question.

Source: http://www.ign.com/articles/2013/09/04/xbox-one-is-now-in-full-production-with-an-improved-cpu

PS4 looks to be using Virtual Reality!

Sony is said to announce official VR plans at the Tokyo Games Show 2013.   Not only is it being rumored to be based off of Oculus Rift tech, but they already have a prototype of DriveClub working with it.

Very nice on the heals of the Xbox One supposedly trumping the PS4 by supporting 8 controllers, meaning 8 simultaneous players.  I personally don't care but I guess some party goers will enjoy 8 players on the same screen.

Source: http://www.extremetech.com/gaming/165609-sonys-next-xbox-killing-move-developing-a-ps4-virtual-reality-headset

Xbox One Launching November 22nd (after PS4)

This is it: the battle for the next generation console market is on.Microsoft has finally revealed the launch date for its Xbox One machine – it will hit retail in 13 major territories including North America and the UK on 22 November.

Source: http://www.theguardian.com/technology/2013/sep/04/xbox-one-launch-22-november

Xbox One is launch in the US before PS4 but is actually beating Sony to the UK by arriving 7 days early.

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.

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

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

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.