Microsoft has boasted their upcoming Xbox One X will be the beefiest console ever made, easily outstripping the capabilities of the PlayStation 4 Pro, but that balance of power may be about to change. AMD, whose processors power both the PS4 and Xbox One, has announced a new cutting-edge processing technology, and only the PS4 Pro supports it.

The new tech, which will be available via AMD’s new high-end RX Vega graphics cards, is called Rapid Packed Math, and already games like Wolfenstein II: The New Colossus and Far Cry 5 have pledged to support it. Scroll on down to learn more about Rapid Packed Math, and what it might mean for the PS4 Pro…

What is Rapid Packed Math?


This is all a bit technical, but, very basically, Rapid Packed Math allows games to render certain graphical effects using 16-bit processing rather than 32-bit processing. That frees up extra power the GPU can use elsewhere. Under ideal conditions, Rapid Packed Match could potentially double the processing capabilities of the GPU, allowing it to do two 16-bit tasks at once instead of one 32-bit one, although that won’t usually be the case.

It seems like the main benefit of Rapid Packed Math will be in making various minor touches – hair effects, lighting, shaders – less of a drag on the hardware, allowing for better performance. But again, I’m not an expert on this sort of stuff. You can check out an explanation of Rapid Packed Match from AMD itself in the video, above.

Why Does This Benefit the PS4 Pro?
Well, it turns out Sony was thinking ahead with the PS4 Pro, as the system’s GPU supports Rapid Packed Math. The tech hadn’t been rolled out yet when the PS4 Pro launched, but developers can now take advantage of it on the system. The Xbox One X, on the other hand, does not support the feature. Here’s what PS4 Pro architect Mark Cerny had to say about Rapid Packed Math late last year…

“A few AMD roadmap features are appearing for the first time in PS4 Pro. One of the features appearing for the first time is [Rapid Packed Math] – it’s possible to perform two 16-bit operations at a time instead of one 32-bit operation. In other words, at full floats, we have 4.2 teraflops. With half-floats, it’s now double that, which is to say, 8.4 teraflops in 16-bit computation. This has the potential to radically increase performance.”

For the record, Microsoft is boasting 6 teraflops of power for the Xbox One X, so Rapid Packed Match could, in theory, make the PS4 Pro the more powerful machine, although again, it’s not quite that simple. Xbox One X will still have the power edge, although it seems it won’t be as large as we once thought.

Posted: Aug 15, 2017 7:02 pm
Related Forum: PlayStation Forum

Source: http://comicbook.com/gaming/2017/08/15/ps4-pro-could-match-xbox-one-x-power-amd-tech-rapid-packed-math/