Middle Generation Console Upgrade Discussion [Scorpio, 4Pro]

[Jay]

I always kind of liked the idea of a pci card that had a full console on it, minus drives, usb ports and storage. Probably doesn't make sense for a lot of reasons, but maybe setup like an external GPU it could work. I wonder how small they could make a PS4 or Xbox One if they removed all of the extraneous stuff, and it was just the processors, memory and cooling. It would basically be like buying a GPU, but it would happen to have a CPU as well.

wasn't that one of the first NVidia cards or something?
actually it may have been Sega on pci card?
don't think it ever came out in the end.

 

[Scott_Arm]

wasn't that one of the first NVidia cards or something?
actually it may have been Sega on pci card?
don't think it ever came out in the end.

Not sure. Hadn't heard of anyone doing it. Wouldn't be surprised if there were dev kits somewhat like that.

 

[3dilettante]

I always kind of liked the idea of a pci card that had a full console on it, minus drives, usb ports and storage. Probably doesn't make sense for a lot of reasons, but maybe setup like an external GPU it could work. I wonder how small they could make a PS4 or Xbox One if they removed all of the extraneous stuff, and it was just the processors, memory and cooling. It would basically be like buying a GPU, but it would happen to have a CPU as well.

Per the PS4 jailbreak, it would seem that it would be close to that scenario already, with the APU plugging into an independent CPU/IO hub (with its own OS) using PCIe. It's almost like the PS4's APU is a device dedicated to running an x86 software bubble (whose security Sony doesn't seem to care that much about).
It may be still a ways away from being general enough for this to be done with a host CPU that wasn't designed and programmed to interface correctly.

It would potentially make backwards compatibility in a Fat PS5 possible by expanding the secondary chip's IO to have two PCIe interfaces and plonk down an old chip and the new PS5 one. If the PS5 is compatible with the Pro featureset, a fat PS5 would have a PS4 shrink. Otherwise, the PS4 Pro would be the means for backwards compatibility for the whole generation.

 

[AzBat]

IF they had the ability to convert Scorpio to an accessory for existing windows PCs to act as a secondary CPU/GPU for playing games, rendering etc., that would be a cool and somehow useful capability.

Ah yes, the 3DO Blaster returns!

Tommy McClain

 

[AzBat]

wasn't that one of the first NVidia cards or something?
actually it may have been Sega on pci card?
don't think it ever came out in the end.

Yeah, kinda. It was the Diamond Edge 3D card with Nvidia NV1. Sega gave some support by converting a few Saturn games for it.

Tommy McClain

 

[Silent_Buddha]

I am not sure I follow, the big piracy on 360 was custom DVD drives so although there are probably loads of pirate disks about they have no pirate use on Xbox One so allowing 360 games via BC does not translate to any piracy on Xbox One, if anything it acts to reward good customers who own retail copies of these games and punish the pirates who cannot get the BC version due to no valid disk.

The true hacks of the 360 system I am not sure are applicable to the Xbox One unless you can alter their signed Xbox One game which itself contains the 360 emulation to try and exploit that, I suspect that as an attack vector is little different to attacking and normal retail game.

Yes, unlike the original Xbox, piracy on X360 relied on either hacking the DVD drive's firmware or taking advantage of the relatively short lived JTAG exploit. We didn't really see the kind of "soft" hacks on the X360 that we saw on the Xbox where you could exploit certain games in order to circumvent the security measures via buffer overruns, access to protected memory, etc. without having to modify the hardware in anyway.

Regards,
SB

 

[sir doris]

I always kind of liked the idea of a pci card that had a full console on it, minus drives, usb ports and storage. Probably doesn't make sense for a lot of reasons, but maybe setup like an external GPU it could work. I wonder how small they could make a PS4 or Xbox One if they removed all of the extraneous stuff, and it was just the processors, memory and cooling. It would basically be like buying a GPU, but it would happen to have a CPU as well.

 

[mpg1]

In regards to Xbox being able to double as a PC-lite...I'd settle just for having a fully desktop version of Microsoft Edge with full keyboard and mouse support...That would be 90% of my desktop needs right there...

 

[Jay]

Yeah, kinda. It was the Diamond Edge 3D card with Nvidia NV1. Sega gave some support by converting a few Saturn games for it.

Tommy McClain

Yea this is the one I was thinking about.
Remember it was based on splines(nurbs?), not polygons or something like that.

Actually had forgot about this one.

Wonder what difference board design, layout and cost would be compared to jaguar and zen.
Think zen has bios, and some of the southbridge on it?
Come to think about it does that board render look simple zen layout? Didn't look overly simpler to me.

 

[Jay]

In regards to Xbox being able to double as a PC-lite...I'd settle just for having a fully desktop version of Microsoft Edge with full keyboard and mouse support...That would be 90% of my desktop needs right there...

With kb/m and uwp should be pretty much there for most people.
Wonder if that's why they've held of on releasing general support.
Mix messaging, TV messaging type issue.

 

[Scott_Arm]

Never even knew 3DO blaster existed. Awesome.

 

[mosen]

I always kind of liked the idea of a pci card that had a full console on it, minus drives, usb ports and storage. Probably doesn't make sense for a lot of reasons, but maybe setup like an external GPU it could work. I wonder how small they could make a PS4 or Xbox One if they removed all of the extraneous stuff, and it was just the processors, memory and cooling. It would basically be like buying a GPU, but it would happen to have a CPU as well.

Actually I was thinking about something like this:

https://arstechnica.com/gaming/2016/03/amd-wants-to-standardise-the-external-gpu/

 

[turkey]

yea I was just wondering if piracy would ever have an effect on BC. For some reason I thought it would, especially if we decide to use the same architecture again, that the games would still be open for exploit. But it's pretty obvious that shouldn't be true.

Ahh I see.

Well it probably depends on the implementation of the backwards compatibility, for example the PS2 included enough of the PS1 hardware that you could use the original modchips on the PS2 to play PS1 titles. It was very rough and better more tailored chips were developed for this and it expanded to CD based PS2 games and then new chips came out that were native PS2 modchips later once the system was beaten, softmods came last.

I doubt we will see prior gen hardware used for BC and just extra software layers used to achieve it. Old security is now probably encapsulated in new security but it's almost certainly a consideration.

 

[AzBat]

Never even knew 3DO blaster existed. Awesome.

It was great. Worked at Creative Labs during the time of 3DO Blaster. Loved the "training". Providing tech support for it, not so much. "Yes sir you need a VESA Local Bus to use it." Lol

Tommy McClain

 

[arijoytunir]

so this update now enables developers to justify developing for pro and neglecting the base ps4?

 

[Deleted member 11852]

so this update now enables developers to justify developing for pro and neglecting the base ps4?

Arguably this disincentives' effort because Pro will provide a better experience with no effort on the part of the developer.

 

[orangpelupa]

Arguably this disincentives' effort because Pro will provide a better experience with no effort on the part of the developer.

Yeah that's what I think too. Developers can simply make it for PS4 classic, or at a wee bit of effort to test it while running on boost mode.

 

[DieH@rd]

It will be interesting to see how will dynamic resolution games handle themselves in boost mode.

 

[Shifty Geezer]

so this update now enables developers to justify developing for pro and neglecting the base ps4?

No. If they target Pro, they could end up with something very poor on PS4 vanilla. All this is doing is saying devs can target PS4 as before and optionally Pro, or, as DSoup says, not even bother because it gets a free upgrade. Which I'm not entirely against. It'd be a waste of the improved architecture, of course, but the idea of Pro before hand was really just as a high res/high framerate PS4, and that's what this upgrade potentially turns it into.

 

[scf]

But sony requires new games to have pro mode. At least it was like that before this firmware update.