Sony's made your PlayStation 4 that little bit more powerful without telling you. Well, that's the conclusion that NeoGAF has come to – and for good reason. Since launch, the Japanese giant has restricted game development to just six of the system's eight CPU cores. The remaining two were reserved for operating system operations.
However, it sounds like the platform holder's unlocked a seventh CPU core for developers to use. The information comes courtesy of a changelog for the FMOD audio middleware. In the documentation, it states that it's enabled access to the PS4's "newly unlocked seventh core". You may remember Microsoft doing something similar when resolution-gate was at its peak.
The difference is that the Redmond firm publicised the change – perhaps as a means to get some positive press – while Sony has remained silent about the tweak. But this is not uncharacteristic for the company: it overclocked the PlayStation Portable without really telling anyone, and made numerous subtle improvements to the PlayStation 3 over the course of its life.
But the question is: what does this mean? Well, nothing just yet, as any titles currently in development will presumably be using the six cores. Moving forwards, though, it suggests that studios will be able to squeeze a little extra juice out of the console, which may help to steady the odd framerate or add an extra effect or two. Not bad, huh?
[source fmod.org, via neogaf.com]
Comments 49
What I would like to see is that games like the Wifcher and Bloodborne get patched accordingly. Because of the new PC architecture these games are highly scaleable anyway, so some extra juice could be tapped in sooner than we might think.
@Boerewors Definitely possible. Just depends whether developers are willing to dive back into the code and rework games in, what I suspect, would be a pretty major way.
A pleasant fact to find out nonetheless
@get2sammyb
Then again, why would it though? I just imagine it to be like overclocking the CPU: you get some more power to your disposal and games simply scale. In this case it obviously needs some work, but for the earlier mentioned titles this could be worth it. We had a pretty awesome sale here and TW3 was sold for €24,95 and people were buying 3 copies at a time, so the game has the legs and CDPR are overall nice guys... I could definitely see it happen!
@Boerewors You could well be right, I sadly don't really know enough about this sort of stuff to understand how it would work to be honest.
You're absolutely right that, if it's possible, CDPR are the kind of developer that would go and do it just for their fans.
@get2sammyb
Having an extra core at their disposal could potentially be huge; although 1080p is the PS4 standard, it's not been the smoothest of rides so far. This could just be the little extra power they needed since more than once devs have spoken bout the CPU being the bottleneck, especially in open world games.
This probably will have positive effects on PS VR and No Man's Sky's development as well. This is just what I needed, a modern day console tapping in to some extra "secret" power. These things were all you'd talk about on the playground in the old days, where "secret" chips, add- ons and blast processing reigned supreme; but ever since console became mid to low range PCs I really missed this. PSVR has the processing unit, we get an extra core: the children of today are gonna be just fine!
I'll take it. Watch, now MS will come out with a SLI/crossfire function to hook up two xbones to catch up
"Your PS4's Seemingly Got a Little More Powerful in Secret"
Hate to be the grammar Nazi, but I couldn't help myself from creating a profile simply to express my disdain at knowing that the person responsible for writing this grammatically unintelligible headline gets paid to write for a living.
You are suggesting that PS4's possess a characteristic known as 'Seemingly' and that the 'Seemingly' quality of said object has secretly become more powerful. This is absolutely worthy of derision, and you guys should be embarrassed with yourselves. Let me guess: You get to be your own editors at Push Square? .
Yay we can play the Order without a Border!!!
This news as well as companies getting the hang of optimising games again, will soon give us 1080p 60fps gaming - phew.
@Strangers Well, thanks for the feedback. I personally don't think one questionable headline out of roughly 18.000 articles from Sammy is too bad. I certainly don't think it's enough reason to stop him from being paid, either.
It's fine to be critical of our work - yes, we are our own editors - but please don't belittle our writers in the process.
Yeah, they can make the OS as simple as they want, I only use my PS4 for playing games.
@Strangers There is always someone like you that has nothing better to do because your life is so dull.
I have noticed recently that the PS4 UI has slowed somewhat. Is this the reason why.
this is good the ark survival evolve developer recently said that the ps4 cpu is a little weaker than the xbox ones and due to that there game is very heavy on the cpu so hopefully this will make it a match
@Strangers
Wow, who the hell cares? considering the guys at Push Square push out a lot of articles per-day. They all do an excellent job with this website, which might I add is a lot better then some others websites.
This is good news especially for games in development to take advantage of this.
@banacheck I guess he/she had a bad day and got a little cranky
on-topic: I wonder if games like Dark Souls 3 and Horizon are too far into development to benefit from this...
There was an interview with mark cerny after the ps4 reveal, on neogaf i think, in which cerny went into real detail regarding ps4 architecture some of it went over my head but what cerny was saying is that ps4 has things built into its architecture that could be "turned on" to boost the ps4,he also mentioned that this could be done years into the ps4 life cycle, so devs being able to use the 7th core isnt really surprising
This is GREAT news, with this 7th core unlocked, this means that new PS4 games will be able to carry a steadier frame rate than what it already does.
Awesome stuff!
@Strangers hey moron, they're using a contraction for "has got," not making it possessive. English is hard, I know.
@strangers I don't think you hate to be a grammar nazi. I think you love it. You probably got all dressed up for the occasion, fake moustache and all. Created an account just to be an arrogant arsehole. Well done man.
@Strangers your a politition right?? You gotta be to be so far up your own ass.
Sounds good in principal, but more power = more heat = potentially more failures? Same as over clocking which was mentioned. Maybe I'm being overly negative, but as someone who looks after his consoles making sure its not crammed in a tv unit, I've already seen one ps4 fail.
That was down to the APU separating itself from the board, very similar to the RROD (e.g. The console gets hot, the joints between the chip and motherboard get weakened and the board flexes and contracts from heat/cold cycles).
I'm hopeful Sony have looked at the data and heavily tested it before just doing this.
... I still blame rocket league anyway, that game used to make the fan on my PS4 go nuts! that all aside, we all want higher fps, prettier games - wonder if anything has sparked this like maybe Uncharted 4's development.
@WARDIE I thought it was the theme i was using!! I'm glad its not just me, because I've totally noticed the same thing!
@Strangers In British English, 'has got' does not simply refer to possession, it can also be used to mean 'has become' (usually on more informal situations). This is an example of the present perfect; used (in this case) to show a past action has an impact on the present. When using this aspect (it is not a grammatical tense), adverbs are placed following the auxiliary verb. The headline is, therefore, perfectly grammatically accurate.
On topic: it'll be interesting to see what the means in terms of performance.
@Strangers welcome to PushSquare. Sammy is the editor and really good too. He doesn't get paid enough. I use this site 3-4 times a day, it's one of the best ps sites on the net. Sammy's grammar is actually very good.
"This is absolutely worthy of derision, and you guys should be embarrassed with yourselves." Well you Brought this on yourself....
, and - no comma needed
You guys - girls work with Pushsquare too
Absolutely - unnecessary for the sentence
"Hate to be the grammar Nazi"
I would (insert sentence), Sorry to be a (insert sentence). In fact this sentence is terrible. 2/10.
Sorry dude, winding you up. Please read more articles before posting a crazy comment. You could always use the forums were Sammy, Robert and the rest of the team respond. A mistakes a mistake, in my opinion not really worth docking someone's pay. Let alone the bloke who set the website up.
@Cron_13
This core was probably in use, albeit lightly by the UI and background processes, Sony would have tested these cores at full tilt during design and manufacturing. It's great news though, smoother framerates for games should be coming soon.
Its nor unusual for consoles to become a bit more powerful during their lifespan of late. Whilst they haven't had peripherals to boost performance, streamlining the OS though has been used to good effect. I don't know if the PS4 OS though is more streamline itself than at launch or if developers can now 'turn off' aspects of it to utilise an extra core - similar in essence to the 'core' assigned to MS's Kinect which was more publicly announced.
@Strangers There is nothing fundamentally wrong with the headline. Your (as in belonging to you) PS4's (Object and the apostrophe indicates the word 'has' follows) seemingly (so as to give the impression of having a certain quality) has got (maybe should be 'has become' but essentially the same meaning - could be a space/character limit issue) a little bit more powerful.
In general, this headline sums up 'Our PS4s have received a small percentage increase in the amount of processes that can be utilised by software to benefit us as gamers and thus appearing to be more 'powerful' although in essence its still contains exactly the same specifications'
The changes to resource management by freeing up an extra core for developers to utilise creates the illusion the PS4 has become more powerful even though its no more powerful than it was before.
Why are you all jumping on strangers. He's an obvious troll. No decency to reply to your comments proves that.
Sammy knows he's respected for his threads. Keep 'er lit Sammy
@Strangers
I'm dyslexic so I don't know if it is good grammar or not. So I put it in Google translate and it came back VIRGIN, who new.
I appreciate the support but let's not pile on @Strangers, please. His feedback is welcome and the headline could have been better worded. It's not the end of the world.
Having said that, as a so-called "grammar nazi" you may want to re-read the headline and your comment, because you're wrong.
@get2sammyb Wow Sammy. Taking the high road and then rolling down that hill to take a stab at someone. Super of you bud.
In this news though, well it's interesting to say the least. Just begs the question why it wasn't like this from the start and why Sony doesn't say so. It just seems off from a developer point of view, to know the work of the past few years is now inferior in hardware performance because Sony hid this stuff.
@Volcanox
Not sure how true this is but I read that the ps4 required 2 cores for the Ui at launch, but subsequent updates have streamlined it to now require just the one. Not sure how this would affect the select minority that have never connected their ps4 to the Internet
@Volcanox Yeah, @gingerfrog is correct. Another possibility is that they wanted to reserve hardware in case they wanted to add anything in the future. Remember when people were screaming for Party Chat on the PS3? They couldn't add it because the hardware resources had already been allocated to developers. They probably wanted to avoid that issue this time.
I wonder if Black Ops 3 already uses this. It's the only game I've played that makes the ps4 os horribly 'laggy'
Great! More power gives more possibilities to devs - as long as they don't use everything simply to make their games look better. But, really, devs are complaining about the limitations of hardware, already? C'mon, what's going on with these guys obsession with the newest tech? Explore everything you can do with what you have instead. This just makes me think that it's time for consoles to be upgradable, like, buy extra hardware for a cheaper price and plug it into your system. Economies around the world simply don't support buying new consoles too soon after each other... I wouldn't mind a bigger cycle than 6 years, myself, considering brazilian prices.
Wow, thanks for showing me what this community has to offer with your responses, folks. Guess I'm not missing anything by not commenting here:
1- Yes, I can admit when my disdain over a thing gets misdirected at an individual, and for that I can say my comment was too harshly worded.
2- People correcting my criticisms of a poorly written headline need to go back to school. Pluralization of an object denotes possession, not characteristic. 'PS4's' in this case actually reads as 'PS4 is...' not 'Ps4 has'. An object cannot own anything, it can only express characteristics. An apostrophe 's' is a contraction for 'Is' not 'Has'.
Either drop the contraction on PS4 or drop the word 'Got' and the headline is fine. I am absolutely not wrong about this, even if it is really not the end of the world.
But thanks for the hate-o-rade community. Poor grammar and a caustic, insular community guarantee I won't be giving my click traffic, much less my lip service, to Push Square any further. Good job!
@Strangers So regardless of the content you wont come back? You made the jibe. You are clearly clever so why stoop so low? We all like the staff here. You would too if you gave it time. Caustic and Insular? I prefer strong willed, supportive and friendly.
Age old lesson here folks, never speak to strangers.
could be in preparation for PS VR. It'll need a boost, even with it being a separate peripheral.
@themcnoisy Hahahaha! "Never speak to strangers", brilliant reference.
@Strangers Dude, this isn't a website about English, it's about games. It's ok to correct people, but be kind, that's all. Also, the community here is one of the best around the web; international players checking and talking everyday, no fanboys on sight, no free insulting... Good luck finding a better place! =)
@RenanKJ "Great! More power gives more possibilities to devs - as long as they don't use everything simply to make their games look better. But, really, devs are complaining about the limitations of hardware, already? C'mon, what's going on with these guys obsession with the newest tech? Explore everything you can do with what you have instead."
My thoughts exactly. Optimisation, compression and great code have been forgotten about. Its understandable when they use 7 or 8 third party plugins, each at a different level of compatibility. These separate engines and blocks of code are bloated individually or convoluted in tandem with the main assembler. The best option big companies have is to produce their own engines such as the Fox Engine. A huge negative for this is its expensive with no proof of return. Especially when said companies have poor or unproven programmers in the first place.
One reason you may feel like this - Did Brazil prop up the Sega Megadrive / genesis for years after the rest of the world gave it up?
I don't trust neogaf as a source but interesting regardless.
You should make more headlines like this, look at all the comments it's gotten! haha
I would maybe have worded it like this: 'Your PS4's Seemingly GOTTEN a Little More Powerful in Secret' or just lose the 'seemingly'.
Good news for future games, as I hope it means better graphics/effects. I just don't hope that it also means that Sony will stop adding new features and functions to the OS.
I like the way it's very responsive now, fast and easy to navigate through games, apps and other stuff, playing music in the background as well.
I get the feeling the PS4 is doing this by itself It has a mind of it's own Anyway sounds cool and can't wait to see even more better looking PS4 Exclusives in the future
I only logged on to say I liked the twitter pic better than the article pic but now I fear the torch carrying mob.
@themcnoisy Personally, I was a small kid playing his first videogame - Super Nintendo, so I didn't feel the Sega support. But yes, Brazil kept playing Sega consoles for years after the whole world gave it up. We usually buy consoles by the end of its cycle, because they are really expensive at the beginning. For example, PS4 released for R$4000,00, that would be - at the time - around $1600-1800.
Couldn't they unlock the 8th core and use the ARM cpu for the os,
@RenanKJ we should start an import business. $1600 / £1066 / R$4000 is too expensive. How come the disparity with US and European pricing?
@themcnoisy They blame taxes - which are way too high, but I never really understood how it came to this price. I thought about importing, the problem is that dollar is too high now. I'll probably wait 'til the end of 2016, then get it at Black Friday or something. I'll be ansious to play KH 2.8 by then, anyway, heheh.
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