PS3 specs could change?

EndR said:
But it could also mean that they promised too much at last years E3. There has been some hardware change (usb ports, ethernet ports etc) from last year. I don´t know why but I suspect a downgrade of RSX to 500Mhz. Anything but a downgrade would not make sense, financially (which is the most important factor)
Standard HDD is considered an upgrade from the spec of the last year (it was "detachable HDD").
 
one said:
Standard HDD is considered an upgrade from the spec of the last year (it was "detachable HDD").
Well but this even strengthens the thought that if something has changed to the specs (Mhz wise), that it would be a downgrade to recude cost.

Sony don´t need an upgrade of Mhz as bad as they need to reduce cost.
 
EndR said:
Well but this even strengthens the thought that if something has changed to the specs (Mhz wise), that it would be a downgrade to recude cost.

Sony don´t need an upgrade of Mhz as bad as they need to reduce cost.
Yes, that may make sense but the same could be said about the components in the PS2 and PSP, yet some of them were upgraded.

It certainly has something to do with some sweet spot concerning the yields as Baumann points out. I think Sony is also taking into account the total life cycle of the PS3, the larger performance they can deliver within their financial budget the longer life cycle can be achieved. For marketing reasons they may also want to establish some kind of GPU performance delta to the 360 (real or perceived, please no flames) which appeared on the market a year ahead of PS3.

In March we learned Nvidia was setting up RSX production in Sony and Toshiba fabs:
http://www.beyond3d.com/forum/showthread.php?t=28999

Maybe the learning of processes has not yet settled 100% and that is the reason for the uncertainty in the frequendy number.
 
Crossbar said:
Maybe the learning of processes has not yet settled 100% and that is the reason for the uncertainty in the frequendy number.

That's more or less the same thing. If they don't get enough good chips, the price goes up *and* they won't hit their 2M target. If they lower the specs the price goes down as they get more working chips...

Publishers wouldn't be worried if they were expecting an upgrade of the specs in my opinion.

For what that's worth. ;)
 
pipo said:
That's more or less the same thing. If they don't get enough good chips, the price goes up *and* they won't hit their 2M target. If they lower the specs the price goes down as they get more working chips...
Could be. Or the processes may have settled, but the 2M target may be moving and they are waging the RSX volumes (at X MHz) against the volumes of the other components.
The number of theories are countless. ;)
 
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Dave Baumann said:
Margin acceptibility is generally built into the die size thats chosen for consoles. On a console thats already loosing money a clock that is beyond the high point of the yeild curve is unlikely to be picked as you're wasting the majority of the wafer.

But you don't know a) what that clock is (the high point of the yield curve) and b) what the yield curve is for RSX and c) how much money they are willing to lose. With so many unknowns about specifics, it seems premature to be making assertions as to what their final clocks could be. They could be higher, they could be lower. You don't know that the clocks they picked 1 year ago are representative of the yields they are getting now, they may only have been representative of worst case yields they expected.

Your constraints on the problem are duly noted, and I agree with them, but I don't think they can be used to make a definitive assessment of what Sony is going to do because of the lack of information.
 
Curiously, you'll note, that there was an absense of assertions as to actual clocks - just a highlight that a comparison to high end graphics is not a sensible measure in terms of economics with consoles (which you apparently agree with).
 
EndR said:
Well but this even strengthens the thought that if something has changed to the specs (Mhz wise), that it would be a downgrade to recude cost.

Sony don´t need an upgrade of Mhz as bad as they need to reduce cost.

The GPU they used is an "old" GPU compared to current GPUs available for the PC. They had more than enough time to find out how much it will cost with 550 Mhz. The first release date was Spring 2006. I don't think they had made the price higher than $599 at this time which they had to do if they need to reduce the cost of the GPU now.

Now they have another 7 months. PC graphic cards became cheaper the longer they are on the market. The same will happen with the PS3 GPU. Maybe they could change the production process to a lower nm value now which would make it possible to use a higher clockrate.

Some here said that it makes no difference if the PS3 was maybe 10-20% faster. Think about what happens if the new GTA runs faster and better on the PS3 than on the XBox 360. Even if it was a small difference. People would prefer the better version, same with other Multi Platform Titles

What is actually with GDDR4 Ram? Is it possible Sony will use this instead of GDDR3 Ram? Or is it necessary to change the GPU for this?
 
Some here said that it makes no difference if the PS3 was maybe 10-20% faster. Think about what happens if the new GTA runs faster and better on the PS3 than on the XBox 360. Even if it was a small difference. People would prefer the better version, same with other Multi Platform Titles
of course people prefer things to run better, look nicer, ect, but it doesn't mean they will buy them. if that were the case the XBOX would have been the dominant console last generation since it had many multiplatform games that looked nicer and/or ran better from launch right on through till today. in fact, many launch titles not only looked nicer but had extra features (extra levels, custom soundtracks, network play, extra levels) that weren't present on either GC or PS2.
 
What makes most sense to me is that Sony probably has done a couple of respins and finetunning and are waiting for the final revision of the chip.
Who knows what the current G71-A2 silicon could achived with 2 more respins ie A4 silicon?
 
Would really, increasing the MHz from 550 to say 600 really make such a big difference? Sure, I can see it happening, IF it does not cost Sony one single cent and if it does not cause any problems with heating...
 
Platon said:
Would really, increasing the MHz from 550 to say 600 really make such a big difference? Sure, I can see it happening, IF it does not cost Sony one single cent and if it does not cause any problems with heating...

Well, with 24 shader pipes, that's 1.2-2.4GFLOPs more. And with 16 ROPs, it's 800 megapixels more, although the bandwidth probably aint there to realize it.
 
overclocked said:
No it isnt anything official.
Actually, it depends on what docs you happen to be looking at. However, Sony's doc's indicate that FP16 rendering drops the fillrate to 4 writes per cycle, which is consistent with the NV4x/G7x hardware having 8 ROP's.

Brimstone said:
RSX = GeForce 7600???
Sony have already confirmed it to be NV47 based with 24 texture units, so no.
 
Because there are multiple bullshit methods of counting FLOPS on a graphics chip and they vary depending on what people decide to include at any given moment.
 
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