Predict: The Next Generation Console Tech

[bkilian]

They will use arm cores on monday, power7 in the days divisible for 2, and amd's steamroller on the remaining days
the different gpus are activated by the moon cycles

anyone feel free to tweet this leak

I get these urges to go "Warm... warmer... colder... ooh, ice cold!.. okay warmer..." It's amazing how scattered all the "info" is.
Note that I will not indulge these urges, but in general take anything you read with a grain of salt. There may be a few people with actual knowledge, but even those folks seem to be spotty at best. Hopefully at some point all the rumors can be laid to rest, and we can go back to arguing about which design is better

 

[Kaotik]

Well my line of thinking was they were less concerned about lower level coding and just wanted something to start working on. I could be wrong, but I thought there were rumors that one of the very early 360 dev kits used Nvidia cards in SLI (possibly for Gears) and was thinking something similar may be going on here. I never meant to insinuate they would be changing hardware at the last minute.

First 360 devkits used Radeon 9700 or 9800 IIRC, there was no SLI back then excluding 3dfx's ScanLine Interleave

 

[Cyan]

It's odd to suddenly have everything you think you know about next gen upended, but I still think the BG/lherre/bkilian trio have painted a pretty consistent and likely picture.

Even DaE's twitter today has some tweet seeming to say the Durango is an AMD box (yeh, he really doesn't know what he's talking about lol). So our one source for Nvidia/Intel isn't even saying that, apparently.

bkilian said the info is inconsistent for now, and he seems to know more than he wants to admit. I dunno if BG or lherre are fellow forumers.

I can only guess these new systems are going to be beasts with great brains.

Can you imagine the totally crazy and amazing things you could do with those specs? -I am drooling- :smile:

 

[Cyan]

First 360 devkits used Radeon 9700 or 9800 IIRC, there was no SLI back then excluding 3dfx's ScanLine Interleave

Now that you mention it I wonder if it makes sense for them to go with nVidia this time around.

ATi raging fan here btw. Sure it seems that nowadays ATi high end cards are the equivalent to Mid-range nVidia cards while High end nVidia cards seemingly play in another league, but for a console you can't just throw a high-end card in there, it's about smartness versus brute force.

I am one of those people who think that a fine designed graphics card can beat a brute force one.

 

[Acert93]

I can only guess these new systems are going to be beasts with great brains.

Oh how I wish I had your faith!

 

[wco81]

Yeah you wonder if MS in particular approaches the BOM the same way they did previously, since they have ambitions in the mobile space, where they see billions in profits being made on products with higher ASPs than consoles and being sold in much larger volumes.

They've announced their interest with the Surface tablets unveiling. If they decide to go all-in, trying to ship tens of millions of Surface tablets a year, or even a quarter, they may reconsider how much capital they'd want to invest in consoles.

They have the resources to pour billions into both tablets/mobile devices and consoles. But it may be a question of opportunity costs and ROI. They may conclude that producing their own hardware for the mobile space offers a higher potential ROI than consoles.

 

[The Historian]

First 360 devkits used Radeon 9700 or 9800 IIRC, there was no SLI back then excluding 3dfx's ScanLine Interleave

I think kagemaru was referring to the known fact that Epic used nVidia 6800 GTs in SLI to promote Gears of War. When this info emerged in 2005 spring, it even spawned a separate thread here on Beyond3D.

This thread on teamxbox.com forums from back in 2005 concludes that the alpha dev kit's original configuration was 2x 2GHz Power G5 CPUs and Radeon 9800 PRO, which was some time later upgraded to Radeon X800.

nVidia SLI was a feature introduced with the GeForce 6600 series, which was paperlaunched on 12th August of 2004. Since it required a nForce 4 SLI motherboard, no real tests could be run until November 2004.

 

[Osamar]

Yeah you wonder if MS in particular approaches the BOM the same way they did previously, since they have ambitions in the mobile space, where they see billions in profits being made on products with higher ASPs than consoles and being sold in much larger volumes.

They've announced their interest with the Surface tablets unveiling. If they decide to go all-in, trying to ship tens of millions of Surface tablets a year, or even a quarter, they may reconsider how much capital they'd want to invest in consoles.

They have the resources to pour billions into both tablets/mobile devices and consoles. But it may be a question of opportunity costs and ROI. They may conclude that producing their own hardware for the mobile space offers a higher potential ROI than consoles.

Well, I think they are interested in giving, if they can, a "final blow" in the console wars. Considering the evolution just gaming machine to media center plus.

 

[Rangers]

For what it's worth

 

[wco81]

A games developer is going to have a vested interest in touting the next generation. What are they going to say, it's shit, don't waste your money on next gen consoles?

Their livelihood depends on people upgrading, unless they want to try mobile games development.

 

[Scott_Arm]

Well, it's definitely going to be a big jump from what we have now, but relative to the top-end PC it'll probably seem "weak."

I do think people expecting 1080p as a standard are going to be massively disappointed. I'd say sub-1080p, and maybe even some 720p games with either MSAA or edge-detect methods. They'll push the lighting, draw distance, texture quality, geometry etc, rather than using up most of the "power" for a resolution bump.

 

[fearsomepirate]

If the "lose money for the first 2 or 3 years" model is abandoned this time around, they'll be less powerful than the 360 or PS3 is. That said, people who are still playing 7-year-old machines will still be pleased with what they get for $299 or $399.

 

[Scott_Arm]

If the "lose money for the first 2 or 3 years" model is abandoned this time around, they'll be less powerful than the 360 or PS3 is. That said, people who are still playing 7-year-old machines will still be pleased with what they get for $299 or $399.

I'm assuming you mean relatively less powerful than the 360 and PS3 were at the time they came out?

Yeah, that's basically what I said. Compared to the top-end PCs, they won't seem like much, but they're going to be a significant upgrade over the current consoles. The games are going to look a lot better, and I think they'll do that by staying sub-1080p and pushing more advanced rendering effects.

 

[fearsomepirate]

Yes. I had typed something like that. Then I backspaced. Then I did some copy-pasta. Then everything turned to crap, and I hit "post" before proofreading.

 

[Rangers]

Well, it's definitely going to be a big jump from what we have now, but relative to the top-end PC it'll probably seem "weak."

I do think people expecting 1080p as a standard are going to be massively disappointed. I'd say sub-1080p, and maybe even some 720p games with either MSAA or edge-detect methods. They'll push the lighting, draw distance, texture quality, geometry etc, rather than using up most of the "power" for a resolution bump.

If the PS4 target specs have any weight to them, it will definitely be capable of 1080p (almost built for it with 192 GB/s BW) and still lots of power left over.

For example, 7X the flops of PS3 GPU. You can deal with 2.25X the pixels and still get a nice generation jump there.

Edit: I see you're more referring to some cheating or maybe half between 720-1080 steps. I can see that.

 

[archangelmorph]

A games developer is going to have a vested interest in touting the next generation. What are they going to say, it's shit, don't waste your money on next gen consoles?

Their livelihood depends on people upgrading, unless they want to try mobile games development.

Our livelihood depends on people buying games...

Whether they upgrade to a new playstation or switch to an iPad doesn't really matter to me in many ways...

 

[XpiderMX]

Well, it's definitely going to be a big jump from what we have now, but relative to the top-end PC it'll probably seem "weak."

I do think people expecting 1080p as a standard are going to be massively disappointed. I'd say sub-1080p, and maybe even some 720p games with either MSAA or edge-detect methods. They'll push the lighting, draw distance, texture quality, geometry etc, rather than using up most of the "power" for a resolution bump.

6X~10X GPUs can't take 1080p games?

 

[wco81]

Our livelihood depends on people buying games...

Whether they upgrade to a new playstation or switch to an iPad doesn't really matter to me in many ways...

Can you get the same kind of returns on mobile games yet?

Certainly not gross as much money as those $60 games. But then your budgets don't have to be nearly as big either.

Ideal scenario would be able to develop a game and port it to all the platforms where you can get any kind of volume.

 

[Scott_Arm]

6X~10X GPUs can't take 1080p games?

Well, yeah, they can do 1080p games. So can 360 and PS3. Those games just don't look all that great. Nice image quality, but pretty primitive on the rendering side of things. For most people, a sub-1080p resolution would be unnoticeable. A lot of people don't even notice when a game is sub-720p on the current consoles. On top of that, the games that are 720p, use a lot of low resolution buffers for rendering different effects. I imagine the new consoles will use those same "tricks" to leave more resources for all the other goodies we want, with improved dynamic lighting, shadows, destruction, draw distance or whatever.

 

[jlippo]

Well, yeah, they can do 1080p games. So can 360 and PS3. Those games just don't look all that great. Nice image quality, but pretty primitive on the rendering side of things. For most people, a sub-1080p resolution would be unnoticeable. A lot of people don't even notice when a game is sub-720p on the current consoles. On top of that, the games that are 720p, use a lot of low resolution buffers for rendering different effects. I imagine the new consoles will use those same "tricks" to leave more resources for all the other goodies we want, with improved dynamic lighting, shadows, destruction, draw distance or whatever.

Amount of possible tricks just increase with the flexibility future consoles offer.
Things like decoupled shading should become more common.