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

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The sizing is completely different to be more conducive to airflow along the longest dimension of the box as opposed to perpendicular to it. It's a very different approach.

You said size - and it's around the same size. If you said shape...

Either way let's see how it compares regarding previous console comparisons...there have been some juicy ones before!
 
I'm on board with the 12TF now. I think Phil's statement is stated in such a way as to give him plenty of wiggle room if for some unforeseen issue they can't hit 12 TF in retail units. Even if they have to downclock it, they can still say it's over 2X powerful (which it would be).

Although given that design, I doubt they'll have issues. With that volume, they could fit a very nice cooler into that design. One of the things that has been very disappointing for me with my PS4s is the noise, Xbox has this nailed, and I have no reason to doubt them that this box will be very quiet.
 
Break your back lifting it up.
Huuuge heat sink running the length of it.
One way to cool that APU.

I doubt power will go down from what has been stated. They have no reason to give a figure that they wasn't 100% confident they could hit. Will only stay the same or go up.
But it's not like they've given a definitive figure.
 
Which says it's an assumption that the figures in OP are correct...so again, do we know the exact figures? That'll be a no.
They have both the controller and ODD to scale from. It will be correct to within +/- 5%. In fact, Microsoft noted the controller is slightly smaller, so any error will be on the negative side.

If you want to be a pedant, go right ahead.
 
They have both the controller and ODD to scale from. It will be correct to within +/- 5%. In fact, Microsoft noted the controller is slightly smaller, so any error will be on the negative side.

If you want to be a pedant, go right ahead.

Well as you said, the controller is smaller and with minimal photoshop work I figure it's around 5.5 x 5.5 x 10.5 = 317 compared to 263 of the X.

So yes, it's potentially bigger...by around 20%, but again I reiterate that size doesn't mean anything...the Xbox One was massive at 13.1 x 10.8 x 3.1 = 438...and that didn't have a PSU!
 
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So we are at a conflict here. Official vs non official, If that unofficial is true, then Phil Spencer is either sandbagging, or speaking about a custom RDNA GPU that is castrated in other departments, like Texturing/Fill Rate/Geometry while retaining it's compute advantage.

it will roll either way. But I appreciate the effort into comprehension of the statements made on XSX. In the end it’s not going to be known until DF gives the full run down of CU and clock speed. Once a that is known this debate is cleared; but until then I think this debate needs a hard pause since it’s going to be about word/article interpretation.
 
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Look at the size of that thing.
That's very unrepresentative. It's twice the width yet half the depth. Go by volume as others have calculated - it's basically 'normal' console size. It looks pretty cool standing upright, but I don't think it's a great fit for AV cabinets. The advantage is a central vortex-type cooling I suppose which should provide better cooling for the size. It worked well with the Mac Pros (which seemingly ditched it to help with serviceability, going back to huge boxes where professionals don't care about size versus functionality and raw perofrmance).
 
That's very unrepresentative. It's twice the width yet half the depth. Go by volume as others have calculated - it's basically 'normal' console size. It looks pretty cool standing upright, but I don't think it's a great fit for AV cabinets. The advantage is a central vortex-type cooling I suppose which should provide better cooling for the size. It worked well with the Mac Pros (which seemingly ditched it to help with serviceability, going back to huge boxes where professionals don't care about size versus functionality and raw perofrmance).

For me it will fit nicely into the void behind my TV!
 
A 5700XT is only 251mm2. Paired with an 8 core Zen 2, we can expect a similar die size to the launch PS4: ~330mm2.

7nm
If we assume a 40CU (44CU's with 4 disabled) part tuned in line with undervolted 5700XT's, we can expect it to consistently reach 1950mhz:
40*64*2*1.95 = 10.98TF RDNA 1

If memory serves, that can result in a wattage along the lines of 160W. I'll double check that shortly, unless someone here happens to have that information to hand. Well within the realm of console power consumption. Relatively high - especially when you factor in other components - but nothing too bonkers.

7nm+
A 20% increase in density would mean 48CU's (52CU's with 4 disabled). Then there's the matter of picking between 10% greater performance, or 15% greater power efficiency. I assume power efficiency is desirable for a console. So, I'll just assume the same 1950mhz clockspeed:
48*64*2*1.95 = 11.98TF RDNA 1 / 1.5 / 2

Going off of my previous ~160W figure (which I'll double-check!) this would result in:
(160*1.2)*0.85 = 157.44W

There's the possibility of decent architectural improvements too. For an example, I'll just assume a 10% architectural improvement: 11 or 12 TF RDNA 1.5 / 2 GPU's may respectively perform like the equivalent of 12 or 13 TF RDNA 1 parts.

Putting that all in perspective:
  • TF for TF, Navi performs between 1.4 and 1.6 times as well as GCN.
  • The worst case would result in a next-gen console GPU which performs like the equivalent of a (10.98*1.4 = ) 15.37 TF GCN GPU.
  • The best case would result in a next-gen console GPU which performs like the equivalent of a ((11.98*1.6)*1.1 = ) 21.08 TF GCN GPU.
I don't see why any of us should be pessimistic.

I don't think expecting 10% more efficiency in RDNA2 is realistic. It has never been the case is the recent few years of microarchitecture changes for AMD GPUs. Someone once posted here a great link to an analysis of the efficiency changes in the GCN generations.

The RDNA did bring much higher performance per TF than GCN, but RDNA delivers less TFs per transistor. Since we're talking 7nm to 7nm+ differences here, we should be comparing performance per number of transistors.

https://images.anandtech.com/doci/15206/Radeon RX 5500 XT Press Deck_03_575px.jpg

This image shows the RX 5500 has 1.12x the performance of RX 480. The RX 480 has 5.7 billion transistors and the RX 5500 has 6.4 billion, or 1.12x more.

So I don't think RDNA is amazingly more efficient than GCN, as many people seem to think. People seem to reach that conclusion because they want to keep looking at the meaningless TF numbers
 
Since the Series X is shown to be cooling focused, and the rumored high clock speeds are looking to be true, I've been thinking:

Could it be that building high clock speeds console is not the most cost effective way to achieve the desired performance?

I haven't done any math, this is just speculation. Could it be that these high clockspeed consoles could result in, for instance, an average of +$70 in power consumption over the console lifetime compared to going low clockspeeds and bigger die, but the bigger die would result in a $50 more expensive console?

So the console makers are choosing the less cost effective way because it's not them who will pay for the energy consumption, and they will benefit a lot by being able to sell a cheaper console or take less loss per console.

Is that plausible or are additional energy costs negligible compared to bigger die size costs?
 
So I don't think RDNA is amazingly more efficient than GCN, as many people seem to think. People seem to reach that conclusion because they want to keep looking at the meaningless TF numbers

No, people reach the conclusion that RDNA is more efficient than GCN by using the more (as you point out) relevant metric performance/transistor.
Radeon Vega 64: 12.5billion
Radeon 5700 XT: 10.3billion
At similar bandwidth, Navi still outperforms Vega 64 by (ballpark) 20%. Even if we normalize clocks, Navi still has a substantial performance/transistor advantage.

It is a game of definitions to try to pin an exact number on the difference. RDNA-console can probably tweak this a bit further, if nothing else because they can drop everything in the architecture that is motivated by computational loads or anything else that might be largely irrelevant in the consoles. (This is not likely to bring huge advances though, the biggest benefit probably lies in having the target for the architectural decisions being exactly defined.)
 
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