Your arguments here rely extensively on your view that Durango was designed first and foremost to be a media box, which requires lots of RAM, which would need to be DDR3 to stay affordable, which then requires extra hardware to boost effective bandwidth just to perform up to snuff with the baseline GPU it is supposedly based off of, which is weaker than the one in Orbis. I don't necessarily disagree with most of this logic so much as I'm not sure we can take the initial premise at face value at this point. That is an assumption on your part and since everything else relies on taht, it's a pretty hefty one worth vetting.
Yours isn't the only plausible interpretation of how things might fit together as I understand it. Isn't it also possible that MS talked to major graphics gurus like Sweeney and Carmack et al who told them they wanted to see graphics architectures built around virtualized assets through and through? The existing stuff on PC's (like the 7970) sounds like its PRT support is actually somewhat limited. AMD themsevles warned against trying to leverage it too much due to RAM size constraints being too low in many PC's (scalability would be the issue here). MS wouldn't have that concern on a console though. So is it not also possible that MS saw that approach as a solution to both challenges?
I mean, they can do the cheap DDR3 and the 8GB is now a boon for performance. The bandwidth issue in that scenario isn't all that troublesome as virtualized assets don't require a lot of bandwidth to get the same visual output. The drawback is managing all the tiles and whatnot, right? Correct me on this stuff because I honestly dunno, just going from what I've read. For all we know the DME's and eSRAM are there to help with all of that (hence the extra functionality of the DME's over normal DMA's). Virtualized assets also don't require as much processing, especially in terms of AF, right? If I'm remembering this correctly, that may well suggest they found ways to produce what they felt was a competitive platform for housing next gen game engines with a highly specialized architecture built around a mid-range GPU.
So it seems possible that they didn't start from the pov that they needed to gimp the graphics architecture and thus had to bolster its performance with extra kit so much as trying to make a setup built around leveraging virtualized assets that simply don't need as much bandwidth/processing to yield the same visual results.
So the Durango's standalone GPU wouldn't have any of those features built into it stock? Or are we to believe they removed those features and pushed them outside the standalone GPU to spread out the processing or what? Maybe for heat concerns? And if so, that still would leave the GPU with less burden to shoulder, no?
Btw, using loaded terms to mock ppl who might disagree with your conclusions isn't helpful in the slightest. Ppl with an agenda seem eager to use terms like 'special sauce' as an excuse to mock those who felt there was more to consider in comparing things than the standalone GPU specs on paper. I'd argue that over the past month those people would have seen their contention validated significantly. It seems that at the very least there is still some uncertainty about how these machines will perform graphically relative to one another amongst those who aren't ready to stick a flag in the ground just yet.
Who there tiger, you most certainly
implied that by asserting that MS was only including the extra kit to lessen the purported performance gulf between Durango and Orbis. Like I said, you can come off as defensive.
Read this aloud to yourself. Take a minute to do that and note the tone of your post here. It's one thing to feign frustration. It's another to present your views in a wholly defensive light, which is how this post reads.
I am certain you know more about this stuff than I do, but I already gave you a scenario reliant on leveraging virtualized assets in this here post. So by the time you read this paragraph surely you can see that and respond to that conjecture of mine. It was discussed at some length here in the past and the consensus seemed much less pessimistic and sure of itself compared to your posts. Would a setup leveraging virtualized assets not be more efficient in terms of bandwidth and overall processing? Pretty confident that was the motivating force behind virtual textures in the first place, no?
That's not any definition of 'efficiency' I've ever heard of. That sounds more like Orbis would be more powerful in that scenario while Durango would be more efficient.
Are you saying bgassassin is lying? Wrong? Trolling us? Has bad intel? What are YOU assuming in the process? Honestly bkillian's reply to my question there seems to strongly imply it's not Jaguar at all.
And why are you suggesting that the stuff like the display planes and DME's are the same thing as their analogs on previous platforms? Pretty sure I read ppl here noting differences in their capabilities. Or did you mean eSRAM, which isn't common in PC's as it is?
It's interesting that your first instinct here seems to involve painting MS as going out of their way to mislead ppl in specs they never meant to see leaked in the first place.
