Predict: The Next Generation Console Tech

[Teasy]

That's a disappointing prospect if that turns out to be true! As someone who already has a 5770, what would be the point of me even considering getting the platform? I could easily throw in a 6950 or whatever the 7000 equivalent is and never have to worry about upgrading. This is also without even bothering to consider the PS Vita/Smartphone/Tablet scene which buy 2013 will be capable of producing some pretty impressive graphics for gaming. Seriously anything less than a 6950 equivalent in terms of graphics capability is a total waste of time for them as buy the time 2013 comes around there will be numerous alternatives that could provide comparable gaming experiancs while offering more practical uses (smartphones, tablets and PCs).

The point would be that your 5770 is in a PC and this is a console not a PC, you can't compare them directly. Also Vita is less powerful than PS3 let alone this rumoured console, so I'm not sure why you're bringing it up.

You don't need a HD6950 based console (10 times as powerful as the GPU's in 360/PS3) to completely destroy the consoles and handhelds we have today and obviously the handhelds we'll have in 2013 and into the next few years.

 

[AlNom]

Actually I was referring to statement ( I believe) you made on the matter way before WiiU announcement, at the time we were assuming 45/40nm lithography as the process used and the odds for a low power system. Memory may not serve right though.

Ah ok. It might have been in reference to what a next gen would look like given the same die size budgets as 360, though that worked out to be roughly 6870-level on a hypothetical 28nm shrink. Anyways, no point dwelling on it.

AMD is still using 40nm lithography for the HD6670 and that why the IGN rumor is non coherent. They speak of a gpu not a SoC having 6 times the power of Xenos and in the same time akin to the HD6670.

Yeah, it's just... bizarre. Even if the clocks didn't change from Xenos, 6x ALUs would put it at 1440 VLIW5 units, and that's obviously ignoring any architectural efficiencies. And of course there are the ROPs and TMUs - how the heck does one factor all these different hardware specs into a single number? It's silly!

It's still believable to me, we know nothing on MS positioning for their next product but I can see MS choosing kinect HD to be standard as well as an HDD. It all depends on the price bracket MS wants to be at launch.

mm... indeed.

Funny thing though from my perspective, the 360 launched in Canada at $499 for the 20GB SKU, but that was before the Canadian dollar became on par with the US dollar. But since we're still roughly on par now, I wonder if they could launch at $499 on day 1, even in the US. At least here, launching at $399 again would mean a rather significant decrease in value. With inflation mixed in, it's even worse.Should be interesting to see how they handle it. I don't think $499 would be too nuts these days especially with kinect bundled in there. 360S 250GB with Kinect was $399 afterall... (still is?)

Hopefully, Thailand doesn't suffer another catastrophe too... but I digress.

 

[Rangers]

Yeah, iPad is $500. I think it really reset the bar for the price of glorified toys.

And as a Peter Schiff guy, I can tell you "real" inflation is probably insanely higher than the government lets on $500 iPad becoming mass market is just a symbol of the fact todays 500 is yesterdays 250.

Another example to often look at is the price for other things. The price of the recently released 7970 for example, $550 for just the card.

I bet they could get away with 499/399 core sku. I'm for it.

There would be honest risk, though. It would likely prevent a large early adoption, etc. A lot would really depend on what the competition looks like. You could only do it if it's set in stone you're going to be the most powerful box for the forseeable future.

 

[Kasersky]

Yeah, iPad is $500. I think it really reset the bar for the price of glorified toys.

And as a Peter Schiff guy, I can tell you "real" inflation is probably insanely higher than the government lets on $500 iPad becoming mass market is just a symbol of the fact todays 500 is yesterdays 250.

i understand your reasoning but the problem is that the ipad has no precedence people pay $500 because it was something new. consoles have been around forever and there is still this notion of a $100-$200 investment for the game box. and imo ms customers just dont have the fanaticism like sony or apple fanboys that will pay any dollar.

 

[AlphaWolf]

Another example to often look at is the price for other things. The price of the recently released 7970 for example, $550 for just the card.

7970 is 15% cheaper than a launch gtx280. But I agree that we shouldn't necessarily expect the price point to be $399 for a new console, considering that people are paying nearly that 7 years after their last launch.

 

[Crossbar]

Potentially, but one thing that doesn't make sense to me would be the number of supposed wafers. He claimed around 10k 300mm wafers. Given that the XCGPU even with edram in the actual die, not just on the package, would be sub 200mm (probably closer to 150mm) @ 32nm, you'd get potentially millions of chips out of just this run. Yields would probably be very good for a chip this small.

IMO, that would would be a production run and conflicting with IBM's statement that full scale production isn't starting until late in the year. Perhaps he got the number of wafers wrong. Hell, 10k wafers for anything would probably cost $50-100 million.

I agree, either he got the 10k wafers wrong or he got the nextbox SOC wrong.

Assuming he mixed up the information about the chip so it is indeed a die-shrinked 360 chip set with integrated EDRAM. I think you are very conservative if you think such a chip would be 150 mm2 given that the Veile chip contained just 372 million transistors. I think we could expect sub 100 mm2 for a 32 nm shrink including EDRAM. In that case 10k wafers could potentially give 5 - 10 million chips, depending on yield and size. If they put a similar order on another fab, they may have covered the the sales of the 360 for the coming year. Chip manufacturers also tend to favor small chips when starting up a new process because of potential yield issues.

Assuming he mixed up the 10k wafer number, so it was just 1k, then this may be a pre-production run of next box chips to cover dev kits and trim the production line.

10k wafers just for dev kits just sounds totally off to me.

 

[almighty]

I don't believe all this 6670 GPU rubbish from IGN for a second.

That would leave the next Xbox slower then Wii U which I can't see Microsoft allowing in the slightest..

 

[babybumb]

The numbers dont really match up. 6670 is not 6x xenos. The only number making sense is Wii U being 20% slower than that which puts it around 400SPU so ~2xXenos

 

[kagemaru]

Yeah really. They have done zero next gen reporting worth a flip. Their tech editor Scott Lowe (who wrote this 6670 piece) also knows very little about tech (caught plenty of his errors in past articles).

I read the complete opposite, that they have a great track record and have been pretty much on the ball for the Vita and Wii-U. I don't read IGN so I don't really know how true this is, just posting that I've read otherwise.

Either way I hope they are wrong or these are specs from early under-powered dev kits because they are rather disappointing.

I don't think $499 would be too nuts these days especially with kinect bundled in there. 360S 250GB with Kinect was $399 afterall... (still is?)

Hopefully, Thailand doesn't suffer another catastrophe too... but I digress.

Hopefully they have a Kinect-less SKU, $499 is way too high.

I'll be really surprised if the current SKUs are the same price when the nextXbox launches, so I'm not sure what effect they would have on next gen pricing.

 

[Proelite]

With these current rumors, it's looking like a 2012 fall release is looking more and more likely.

1. With 100K wafters, and 50% yield rate, we're looking at 500,000 chips made in the upcoming months. There is no way they need that many for dev kits / testing, and I don't think MS will sit on several hundred thousand chips for over a year.

2. Low specs means that MS isn't really pushing the graphics envelope, and thus they don't need a dedicated launch game that would show off the capabilities of the system. Halo 4 at 60fps / 1080p would do fine to show case the hardware improvements this next Xbox has over 360. Majority of developers would not take more than several days to get their game running upscaled / at a higher frame rate on the new Xbox.

3. MS is scared of Nintendo despite what pundits say. What better way to limit the effects of Nintendo's new system than to launch a competitor priced in the same range, is (slightly) more powerful, has Kinect 2.0, has setup box capabilities, and has Halo 4?

You push this system to 2013 and then you will have to compete with a Wii-U that might or might have caught fire, has a price point advantage, and a bigger library of games (Zelda Mario etc), some looking much better than your launch titles.

 

[AnarchX]

Maybe this a little bit underspecd Xbox Next is only planed for ~5 years life-time.

When you believe vendors the future holds greats developments:

• Nvidia projected for a 2019/100W console 10 TFLOPs at GTC Asia 2011
• silicon interposers and memory cubes are upcoming - >TB/s BW
• 3D-TVs with multiple viewer points, which could be considered by the software
• ...

 

[Teasy]

The numbers dont really match up. 6670 is not 6x xenos. The only number making sense is Wii U being 20% slower than that which puts it around 400SPU so ~2xXenos

The 6670 is about the performance I'm expecting from WiiU (though I expect a lower clock and more SPU's).

 

[babybumb]

http://www.develop-online.net/news/39593/Wii-U-twice-as-powerful-as-Xbox-360

While twice the power of an Xbox 360 is broadly above market expectations

That unverified calculation, if true, echoes claims from the Develop source who claims the Wii U is far more powerful than current expectations.

The expectations must have been really low if 2x is far exceeding them..

 

[Teasy]

That article says the claim about 2x the performance was made last year, before final development kits came out and they've also been unable to confirm any of it. They then go on to agree with IGN who said 5x, I know its been claimed that final dev kits are more powerful then earlier kits and above expectations ect but I can't see 2x improving to 5x. Its quite a confusing article.

 

[DuckThor Evil]

With these current rumors, it's looking like a 2012 fall release is looking more and more likely.

1. With 100K wafters, and 50% yield rate, we're looking at 500,000 chips made in the upcoming months. There is no way they need that many for dev kits / testing, and I don't think MS will sit on several hundred thousand chips for over a year.

Hehe... it was 10k wafers. You seem to think that one 300mm diameter wafer holds 10 dies and with 50% yield you get 5 working dies per wafer... One such wafer can cost up to about $5K so per die cost would be pretty high

But no worries 10K wafer should put the total amount of chips over that 500K, so if the numbers are true and they are actually making something Xbox related, then the chips are either for a new Xbox 360 revision or like you said, some new Xbox is launching sooner than expected. No way they'd be making huge amount of chips now for a late 2013 release, but I personally don't have an opinion on the whole matter. Too many unknowns and rumors.

 

[Silenti]

I am trying to imagine what would have to be involved for me to shell out for those specs. I'm not coming up with much beyond a very low price tag and full backwards compatibility to go along side set top box features. If there is any truth to this it reeks of "stopgap" measure. That or MS is abondoning the hardcore and leaving it to Sony.

 

[Rangers]

http://www.develop-online.net/news/39593/Wii-U-twice-as-powerful-as-Xbox-360



The expectations must have been really low if 2x is far exceeding them..

2X would exceed my expectations of Wii U.

I would have been surprised if it was honestly faster at all, in a way. But expected 30%.

Still do for that matter.

 

[Rangers]

With these current rumors, it's looking like a 2012 fall release is looking more and more likely.

LOL bookmarked.

I'm just wondering why people are being so gullible about next gen rumors. By my count this is like the 7th one, every preceding one has been false. Do you get any hint?

If we're believing the 6670 rumor it means:

Lets see: MSnerd next Xbox is a ARM set top box or something: false. Xboygen Xbox has a dual GPU and is coming at CES :false Hardocp Xbox is based on a cell CPU and some other stuff: false. Charlie: Xbox is called Oban and has a HD7000 GPU: false Another random rumor I cant remember origin of: Xbox is going to be tablet based: false. Each of these rumors were discussed as if they were certainly true at the time.

At this point I fully expect tomorrows rumor that Xbox is a repurposed Gameboy color chipset that runs n a watch battery and Ps4 is going to totally like, blow it away by 100 times, let alone Wii U which is now a supercomputer.

Might as well throw this Kotaku rumor into the unfounded mess:

http://kotaku.com/5879202/sources-t...t-play-used-games-and-will-introduce-kinect-2

And what of gaming site IGN's report that the machine could be six times more powerful than the Xbox 360? From some industry sources I'm hearing that that's the right ballpark and that Microsoft is estimating they might even get to 8x the Xbox 360. But another insider clarified that no one in the industry has development kits yet and that any talk about specs right now is still hypothetical.

I think only the second insider is the real one.

[UPDATE: A Microsoft rep e-mailed me the following statement: "As an innovator we're always thinking about what is next and how we can push the boundaries of technology like we did with Kinect. We believe the key to extending the lifespan of a console is not just about the console hardware, but about the games and entertainment experiences being delivered to consumers. Beyond that we don't comment on rumors or speculation."]

Sounds if anything like they're planning on keeping 360 longer due to Kinect, which is the gist of most of MS statements on the matter.

A "Kinect 2.0" could indeed be pretty compelling to the masses though. Streamlined and more effective, cheaper.

 

[AlNom]

Here, I've got it. 2x is just an average of all the specs:

WiiU

3x3.5GHz CPU cores
48 threads
3MB L2 Cache
32MB eDRAM
50 StrongALUs
2 XtRad ROPs
2 UltRad TMUs
8 geometry engines
457.14286 MHz GPU
8GB flash memory (vs 4GB on 360 Arcade)
1152MB of RAM (64-bit, GDDR5 @ 700MHz)
25GB optical disc (vs DVD9)


And all at 3.6W load (against 90W 360S).

That is exactly 2x the 360.

 

[Teasy]

http://www.develop-online.net/news/39593/Wii-U-twice-as-powerful-as-Xbox-360

While twice the power of an Xbox 360 is broadly above market expectations

That unverified calculation, if true, echoes claims from the Develop source who claims the Wii U is far more powerful than current expectations.

The expectations must have been really low if 2x is far exceeding them..

Your selective quoting there makes it sound totally different than the actual article. The "unverified calculation" is the 5x IGN mentioned.

I would have been surprised if it was honestly faster at all, in a way. But expected 30%.

Still do for that matter.

No offence, but expecting only 30% more than 360 is quite crazy IMO. Unless you're deliberately looking extremely low in order to make sure you're impressed rather than disappointed?