Next Generation Hardware Speculation with a Technical Spin [post E3 2019, pre GDC 2020] [XBSX, PS5]

[Shifty Geezer]

Personally, I'm not a 100% sold on the next-generation consoles having anything over 10.5TF in raw performance.

Why not? What's the limiting factor? To date, we've talked at length on production nodes and die sizes and costs, resulting in some expecting south of 10 TFs. Here we're being told it's 12 TF, so what's happening that's enabling this against expectations? Is the die just HUGE and expensive? Or is 7+ nm confirmed? Or is it all enabled by the novel cooling solution, and is that expensive?

 

[Karamazov]

whatever the flops, if these can really produce the kind of graphics seen in that hellblade 2 trailer, i'm good.

 

[Jay]

Here we're being told it's 12 TF

No, we've been told it's twice the power of the 1X.
Based on their maths.
If anything that makes it more of a strange way to say approx 12TF. 6*2 is basic maths not MS having to work it out.

I'm not saying it's not 12TF, but I've not seen anywhere where MS has said that and still can't reasonably be interpreted differently

 

[BRiT]

No, we've been told it's twice the power of the 1X.
Based on their maths.
If anything that makes it more of a strange way to say approx 12TF. 6*2 is basic maths not MS having to work it out.

I'm not saying it's not 12TF, but I've not seen anywhere where MS has said that and still can't reasonably be interpreted differently

So how did you interpret their Xbox One X is 4.5 times the power of Xbox One? Did you ever interpret that as not meaning ~ 6TF? Or are you just changing your interpretation for this time around because of some unsaid reason?

 

[Shortbread]

Why not? What's the limiting factor? To date, we've talked at length on production nodes and die sizes and costs, resulting in some expecting south of 10 TFs. Here we're being told it's 12 TF, so what's happening that's enabling this against expectations? Is the die just HUGE and expensive? Or is 7+ nm confirmed? Or is it all enabled by the novel cooling solution, and is that expensive?

I have a hard time believing that a air-cooled / vapor chamber design with a single fan is somehow magically sufficient enough on managing TDP of APU housing both a 12TF GPU and >3.2GPU CPU in a whisper quiet form factor. If we look at the PC space, small form factor cases that are equivalent to XBSX size and have performance approaching 2080/Ti level requires serious cooling solutions. Usually expensive cooling solutions.

As a PC guy, I want the best for the console space because it makes PC gaming much better in the long run. However, I’m just not buying the whole 12TF-14TF RDNA stuff at the moment in the console space.

 

[Jay]

So how did you interpret their Xbox One X is 4.5 times the power of Xbox One? Did you ever interpret that as not meaning ~ 6TF? Or are you just changing your interpretation for this time around because of some unsaid reason?

I based that after the fact, once I knew that the 1X wasn't navi based. there wasn't much difference between 1 Xbox one flop compared to 1 Xbox one X flop.
That matrix of power works pretty much the same in that situation.
Not the same here, where the flops aren't equal.

Just watched the DF video, they probably explain it better than I could

Edit: as I said I'm not one of the people ruling 12TF out, just pointing out that it's far from crazy to interpret it as not being 12TF

 

[mrcorbo]

Now we know it's possible in a PC tower.

Let me present a hypothetical. If PS5 were not able to match the performance specs of XBSX and the reason for them falling short was their choice of form factor, would you consider that a good trade-off?

 

[Shortbread]

So how did you interpret their Xbox One X is 4.5 times the power of Xbox One? Did you ever interpret that as not meaning ~ 6TF? Or are you just changing your interpretation for this time around because of some unsaid reason?

Personally, I would like to hear Microsoft or Sony actually state such (TF) performance numbers themselves and not pundit game/tech sites whispers of such numbers. And yes, Microsoft or Sony can be right about the performance metrics (2x, 4x, 6x, etc.) that their receiving when compared to prior systems when using other factors such as SSD performance and larger memory pools and bandwidth… inclusive of the greatly improved GPU/CPU components.

 

[DavidGraham]

Why not? What's the limiting factor?

Heat, cost, die size, power consumption, all of those things combined.

A 5700XT reaches about 220w~230w of power consumption, reaches a 100c on the standard cooling solutions from AMD, and it's only 9TF (at it's gaming clock of ~1.75GHz).
imagine adding a 30% more powerful GPU than that, with Ray Tracing and more features on top, and adding that GPU next to a big CPU die operating anywhere between 2.2GHz and 3.5GHz.

We are talking about a GPU that is quite possibly 280w alone, if we assume linear power scaling with TF scaling (which could be the same or not), or possibly more. And that before we add in the CPU. It will also require a serious cooling solution to cool two GPU + CPU beasts next to each other. Then having to sell all of that at a reasonable 500$ price.

I think we all should be a little more serious and realistic here, Microsoft wording is clear cut to me, old CPU vs new CPU is 4 times, so different architectures are being compared, 8 threads vs 16 threads, low IPC vs massively high IPC, different clocks, yet Microsoft rounded up their total compute power numbers and chose to present it in a metric of 4 times more powerful than Xbox One X.

So it's only logical they do the same with their GPUs, old GPU vs new GPU is also different architecture, different clocks, IPC, and also compute/texturing/geometry capabilities, so it's only logical that Microsoft would round up their math and express it the same way they did CPUs: two times more powerful than Xbox One X.

 

[Jay]

Personally, I would like to hear Microsoft or Sony actually state such (TF) performance numbers themselves and not pundit game/tech sites whispers of such numbers. And yes, Microsoft or Sony can be right about the performance metrics (2x, 4x, 6x, etc.) that their receiving when compared to prior systems. Using other factors such as SSD performance and larger memory pools and bandwidth… inclusive of the greatly improved GPU/CPU components.

This time they was clear which aspects they was talking about, gave figure for both CPU and gpu.

Trouble is all you can say for 100% certainty is that it's twice the power, which may not actually mean twice the flops.

 

[BRiT]

The 5700XT is incredibly overvolted and not finely tuned like console systems will be. I wouldn't look at PC GPU measurements as absolutes. Look for measures of undervolted PC parts.

 

[DavidGraham]

New The 5700XT is incredibly overvolted and not finely tuned like console systems will be. I wouldn't look at PC GPU measurements as absolutes. Look for measures of undervolted PC parts.

Undervolting is one of the most commonly mentioned myths in the GPU space, undervolted parts are extremely luck dependent, they may work or may not, and when they work they don't work well in all workloads, they will crash in certain games, scenes, or compute workloads quite easily, but people don't mention that because they rarely test these parts across a wide enough benchmark suite. Not to mention that this is definitely affecting the longevity and stability of the chip long term.

Undervolting is definitely not representative of what consoles power consumption will be.

 

[Shortbread]

This time they was clear which aspects they was talking about, gave figure for both CPU and gpu.

I don't disagree. But they can also take into account less bottlenecking restrictions (when compared to the prior consoles architectures) which allows for better PR on CPU/GPU performance metrics in general.

 

[mpg1]

So we have had Tom Warren say 12 for Anaconda, then Windows Central leak the specs for for Lockhart and Anaconda and it showed 12 for Anaconda. Then we have Phil say using the same language he did to describe the increase in gpu power(flops) from XOne to X1X, for the new console over X1X.

The only explanation for it not to be 12 for me would be that Microsoft simply think info about teraflop numbers is ultimately irrelevant and trivial to the average person so they literally wouldn't care if there was confusion online about what it was.

 

[iroboto]

Or they are purposefully being ambiguous until a closer date. Not necessarily as a delight against consumers; but to ensure that all parties continue to operate without confirmation making reaction decisions riskier.

like moving a pawn into the position where lots of trades will happen. But not yet making the move to trigger the event. Both are still keeping close to heart even though the lay of the land is getting obvious.

 

[Shortbread]

And all of the rumors stating PS5 is 12.9TF, I’m going to be thinking horse shit as well. Until it is officially stated as such.

 

[JoeJ]

I do not like to bring this up, but so far nobody else did, so... http://www.redgamingtech.com/navi-2...rmed-to-exist-amd-renoir-tech-info-exclusive/

Not that i personally expect some magic this time or believe that rumor, but who knows.
After 5700 release i lost hope on >10 TF, but bought a >10TF for 230 bucks (Vega56) at the same time. So 12TF does not sound unrealistic if assuming RDNA2 is very different.

 

[anexanhume]

And all of the rumors stating PS5 is 12.9TF, I’m going to be thinking horse shit as well. Until it is officially stated as such.

I believe that was likely the dev kit at the time based on Vega. That 12.9TF number has been around a long time.

 

[BRiT]

Undervolting is definitely not representative of what consoles power consumption will be.

That's exactly what MS did for the entire XBox One X console. Not using all out voltage levels, but fine tuning it to deliver not more than absolutely required.

Where as on the PC side many parts are providing far more voltage than required.

 

[anexanhume]

That's exactly what MS did for the entire XBox One X console. Not using all out voltage levels, but fine tuning it to deliver not more than absolutely required.

Where as on the PC side many parts are providing far more voltage than required.

And it was individually tuned to each part at manufacturing. They even gave it a name: The Hovis Method.