AMD Execution Thread [2024]

[DegustatoR]

I've been saying for some time that PS5's and XS's CPUs are in fact too fast for the GPUs these consoles have. Whatever the next generation will be upgrading primarily it sure as hell shouldn't be the CPUs - the main upgrade point should be the GPUs instead. And CPUs could probably do with some +50% of cores and be done with it.

What people seem to completely miss out on is that no matter what CPU a console would have there will always be games made with such... skills... that they will struggle to lock to anything be it 30 or 60 fps. This console cycle has brought some relatively insane CPU improvements and all we got from that was less time/money being spent on optimizing the CPU code in games.

 

[homerdog]

Also as mentioned somewhat above it's worth keeping in mind Zen 2 APUs on the consoles are actually rather slow/behind. Zen 4 (or 5) by itself is a rather significant 50%+ increase already depending on the implementation context. The general direction also is likely to move more off to the GPU or even other dedicated units (eg. decompression this gen).

Even the Ryzen 3600 destroys the 4800S (PS5 CPU) in games. I'm still guilty of forgetting how slow the console CPUs are compared to even midrange PC gaming CPUs. I think "Zen 2" and think it performs in the ballpark of a 3600. That is clearly not the case. I think the lack of cache combined with GDDR is killing it.

 

[Erinyes]

In general I'm not to sure how relevant "bleeding edge" CPU performance is for a console. We kind of want them on the PC for gaming because we're trying to basically brute force games optimized to 60 (or 30) fps to higher frame rates.

A PS6 would likely be designed more so with VRR in mind and have other techniques to aim for 60 fps and higher in terms of playable stability. Another 20% faster CPU or whatever is not likely to be the limitation.

If cross gen is also going to be the focus then you can't really design the core gameplay around a much faster CPU either as that wouldn't scale backwards to the PS5/pro.

Also as mentioned somewhat above it's worth keeping in mind Zen 2 APUs on the consoles are actually rather slow/behind. Zen 4 (or 5) by itself is a rather significant 50%+ increase already depending on the implementation context. The general direction also is likely to move more off to the GPU or even other dedicated units (eg. decompression this gen).

CPU performance is certainly relevant and the previous gen was definitely held back by the Jaguar CPUs. Zen 2 was a big step up but is till quite behind the latest Zen 4 or 5 as you state, not to mention the X3D parts. The next gen is likely to target even higher frame rates as 120hz displays are common now, though if the PS5 Pro is any indication, it's likely to be through upscaling. That trend is likely to continue with matrix/tensor units in the next gen parts. But CPU performance is still important for gaming as we've seen in a bunch of reviews of the 9800X3D recently so I'd hope they go the Zen 5 route at the very least if it's a 2027 release as rumored.

However AMD is completely changing the design philosophy with Zen 6 with new interconnects which bring a lot of performance and power benefits. It would certainly be an advantage to use Zen 6 if the area increase is not significant and the IP is ready in time. I wouldn't be surprised if the next gen console APUs use a tiled/chiplet based architecture as that would allow them to use a mix of nodes for the different IPs. SoC/IO/SRAM related IP can remain on a 4nm class node while the CPU and GPU IP can use more advanced nodes like 3nm.

I've been saying for some time that PS5's and XS's CPUs are in fact too fast for the GPUs these consoles have. Whatever the next generation will be upgrading primarily it sure as hell shouldn't be the CPUs - the main upgrade point should be the GPUs instead. And CPUs could probably do with some +50% of cores and be done with it.

What people seem to completely miss out on is that no matter what CPU a console would have there will always be games made with such... skills... that they will struggle to lock to anything be it 30 or 60 fps. This console cycle has brought some relatively insane CPU improvements and all we got from that was less time/money being spent on optimizing the CPU code in games.

Not really, Zen 2 esp with half the L3 is comparatively slow for the GPUs they were paired with. A full Zen 3 implementation would have been significantly faster if they could have managed it. CPU performance continues to be important, esp for high frame rate gaming. The next gen certainly needs a CPU upgrade as well as GPU.

Even the Ryzen 3600 destroys the 4800S (PS5 CPU) in games. I'm still guilty of forgetting how slow the console CPUs are compared to even midrange PC gaming CPUs. I think "Zen 2" and think it performs in the ballpark of a 3600. That is clearly not the case. I think the lack of cache combined with GDDR is killing it.

Yep, also the slightly lower clock speed at 3.5 ghz vs 4.2 ghz of the R5 3600 all make the PS5 CPU relatively slow compared to today's CPUs. I'm not sure if it's the GDDR as bandwidth is good enough, and not all games are latency sensitive.

 

[homerdog]

Yep, also the slightly lower clock speed at 3.5 ghz vs 4.2 ghz of the R5 3600 all make the PS5 CPU relatively slow compared to today's CPUs. I'm not sure if it's the GDDR as bandwidth is good enough, and not all games are latency sensitive.

A quick look indicates to me that the games that are more latency sensitive perform much better on the 3600 than the 4800S. This makes sense. It has very little L3 and the GDDR6 is not tuned for latency. Bandwidth should be fine. It has much more bandwidth available to it than even the fastest desktop CPUs, and on the 4800S it doesn't have to share with the GPU.

 

[DegustatoR]

Not really, Zen 2 esp with half the L3 is comparatively slow for the GPUs they were paired with.

If that would be the case we wouldn't be seeing so many games running in sub-720p resolutions on these consoles.

 

[arandomguy]

CPU performance is certainly relevant and the previous gen was definitely held back by the Jaguar CPUs. Zen 2 was a big step up but is till quite behind the latest Zen 4 or 5 as you state, not to mention the X3D parts. The next gen is likely to target even higher frame rates as 120hz displays are common now, though if the PS5 Pro is any indication, it's likely to be through upscaling. That trend is likely to continue with matrix/tensor units in the next gen parts. But CPU performance is still important for gaming as we've seen in a bunch of reviews of the 9800X3D recently so I'd hope they go the Zen 5 route at the very least if it's a 2027 release as rumored.

Jaguar was all they had and slow even from a gen on gen improvement stand point. I don't feel that's relevant here. How it stacked up to PC CPUs wasn't the issue.

CPU performance matters on the PC in terms of trying to push beyond the console 60 fps targets without relying on things like frame gen. Those buying them essentially pay to brute force through what is otherwise not an optimized scenario. The other is "heavy sim" (just trying to find a simple descriptor here) games simply aren't very popular on the consoles and I doubt console specs will be set with them in mind. Lastly it would be esports pros (or junkies) trying to get as much FPS as possible (even beyond display refresh rate) for competitive reasons, which again is not a scenario that exists on the console esport scene. But if you look at the numbers the CPU required for PC gaming if you just want 60 fps gaming on the PC is rather modest, it is far from the latest 9800X3D.

Otherwise consoles in general will likely target 60 fps with 120 fps via things like frame generation. Esports titles that are CPU optimized for 120fps can be achieved without bleeding edge CPU architectures.

Unless game design paradigms change, the majority of console style games are not going to be CPU heavy enough to have trouble with 60 fps that warrants the entire platform being designed around high performance CPUs.