Baseless Next Generation Rumors with no Technical Merits [post E3 2019, pre GDC 2020] [XBSX, PS5]

[Picao84]

I'm not sure that having Lockhart with 7 TFlops makes much business sense within a two tier system, unless it's sold for really cheap like 199. This would most likely barely cover the BOM, so it would need to be more expensive and with that comes the risk of osbourning Anaconda, negating any advantage they might have on Sony if PS5 is indeed 9.2 TFlops.

Like yes, Anaconda is more powerful but also likely more expensive. If Microsoft launches Lockhart with a price point that is barely cheaper than the PS5, they are changing the value proposition and making Lockhart look more appealing since it's closer to PS5. What's the point of Anaconda then?

If Lockhart was indeed upgraded to 7 TFlops is it because Microsoft started to doubt their 2 tier approach (at some point Lockhart had apparently been cancelled) as PS5 would have been a perfect middle ground? Triggering them to update Lockhart specs, sacrificing Anaconda sales?

 

[London Geezer]

Komachi says no evidence of anything other than 36CUs chip for PS5.

Thuway says Xsx and PS5 are the same.

Komachi vs Thuway.

Imagine.
PS5 and XBSX mostly the same.
Both at ~7-8TF.
World ends.
Life in the universe cancelled.
Thanks Sony, thanks MS.

 

[ultragpu]

Did you ever do that with previous consoles? Did you look at PS4 and compare it to 680 GTXs and 780 GTXs? Did you consider PS3's ~240 GFLops GPU in relation to the GTX 8800 that launched in the same time-frame? When PS4 launched, November 2013, it had 1.8 TF. In the same month, the 780 Ti launched with 5 TF. PS4 wasn't even half the power of the top end (not even elite end!). If GPUs are hitting 18 TFs end of this year, 9 TFs would be half, which is perfectly in keeping with previous generations AFAICS.

I didn't because those specs weren't too far off from the competition and even held major advantage in the case of PS4. 12 vs 9.2 is just too much, sure price might come into play but it's not what I would call a good alternative. I must declare tho, this nightmare scenario is of my personal opinion as it only affects me personally, so it's definitely not representative of the general audience.

 

[AbsoluteBeginner]

I didn't because those specs weren't too far off from the competition and even held major advantage in the case of PS4. 12 vs 9.2 is just too much, sure price might come into play but it's not what I would call a good alternative. I must declare tho, this nightmare scenario is of my personal opinion as it only affects me personally, so it's definitely not representative of the general audience.

But Xbox One specs were further from PS4 then it would be the case in hypothetical Oberon v Arden, no? In fact, its double the difference.

12 v 9.2 is also less of a difference then XBX and PS4Pro. Provided they have same RAM amount and CPU, then they would effectively be the same with one having ~30% advantage in TF.

 

[KirkSi]

I'm not sure that having Lockhart with 7 TFlops makes much business sense within a two tier system, unless it's sold for really cheap like 199.

Not quite sure why you've jumped right down to 199 for the Lockhart. What are you expecting the PS5 to sell at? I personally think Lockhart should be priced at £100 below PS5 and XSX £100 above. I can't see PS5 being sold for less than £399 so MS would bracket the PS5 with Lockhart at £299 and XSX at £499.

 

[ultragpu]

But Xbox One specs were further from PS4 then it would be the case in hypothetical Oberon v Arden, no? In fact, its double the difference.

12 v 9.2 is also less of a difference then XBX and PS4Pro. Provided they have same RAM amount and CPU, then they would effectively be the same with one having ~30% advantage in TF.

3 TF is still significant in the scheme of things, there's tons of compute tasks afforded with those power. Besides they might not even reach 9.2 TF in the retail unit if only using 36 CUs as 2Ghz is way too extreme. That approach would likely only give you ~8TF and that'll lead to a Pro vs 1X situation easily if bandwidth aligns too.

 

[AbsoluteBeginner]

3 TF is still significant in the scheme of things, there's tons of compute tasks afforded with those power. Besides they might not even reach 9.2 TF in the retail unit if only using 36 CUs as 2Ghz is way too extreme. That approach would likely only give you ~8TF and that'll lead to a Pro vs 1X situation easily if bandwidth aligns too.

Its proportional power that matters, not TF count.

• Difference between hypothetical Arden v Oberon is 3TF.
• Difference between XBX v Pro is 2TF
• Difference between PS4 v Xbone is 0.5TF

Going by your theory, PS4 v Xbox One would result in comfortably smallest difference, while Arden v Oberon would result in biggest difference. To put this theory further to the test, lets take RSX GPU with 200GFlops and compare it to PS4. Difference of 1.6TF would in this case STILL result in smaller difference then one between XBX vs Pro, as well as Arden v Oberon, which obviously couldn't be further from the truth.

It doesn't work like that. Provided CPU, memory and BW (per TF) are in same ballpark (and they are), 3TF difference would result in somewhat lower resolution (20-30%) and few effects toned down a notch (if that).

 

[Picao84]

Not quite sure why you've jumped right down to 199 for the Lockhart. What are you expecting the PS5 to sell at? I personally think Lockhart should be priced at £100 below PS5 and XSX £100 above. I can't see PS5 being sold for less than £399 so MS would bracket the PS5 with Lockhart at £299 and XSX at £499.

The initial rumours for Lockhart was for a console with 4TFlops that was more of an entry level device that could run Xbox One as XBox One X games, plus working as a Project X Cloud client device. That's why I mentioned the 199 price point. The rest of my whole post is precisely about why a change to 7TFlops comes with a price point that is much closer to PS5 and how that impacts on Anaconda desirability.

While I agree that PS5 with 9.2TF should be 399, I'm expecting Anaconda to be more than 499. Lockhart being 299 will be DOA IMO.

 

[AbsoluteBeginner]

I don't see how a console in 2020 can cost $199. I think some people will be surprised by prices of these new consoles (in a bad way).

For comparison sake...

R9 270X - 212mm2 chip - $179 (28nm node)
RX480 - 231mm2 chip - $229 (16nm node)
5700/XT - 251mm2 chip - $350/$400 (7nm node)

There is no denying that per yielded mm2, as was confirmed by AMD, prices are much higher for ~250mm2 die. While gross margin is up, this mostly falls under their CPU dept, so even if slightly up for Radeon, its not nearly enough to make up the difference. In this comparison I have not included RT and VRS logic for next gen consoles, which will be there, nor have I included significantly more memory, SSD and any additional tech that will be used.

This is why I cannot see 9-10TF console with 16GB of RAM, and all bells and whistles (3D Audio, RT, VRS, custom SSD, haptic controller) going for $399. BOM of this console would still be quite considerably higher then something like PS4Pro (which forced Sony to cut UHD drive to meet $400 price point).

 

[Picao84]

I don't see how a console in 2020 can cost $199. I think some people will be surprised by prices of these new consoles (in a bad way).

For comparison sake...

R9 270X - 212mm2 chip - $179 (28nm node)
RX480 - 231mm2 chip - $229 (16nm node)
5700/XT - 251mm2 chip - $350/$400 (7nm node)

There is no denying that per yielded mm2, as was confirmed by AMD, prices are much higher for ~250mm2 die. While gross margin is up, this mostly falls under their CPU dept, so even if slightly up for Radeon, its not nearly enough to make up the difference. In this comparison I have not included RT and VRS logic for next gen consoles, which will be there, nor have I included significantly more memory, SSD and any additional tech that will be used.

This is why I cannot see 9-10TF console with 16GB of RAM, and all bells and whistles (3D Audio, RT, VRS, custom SSD, haptic controller) going for $399. BOM of this console would still be quite considerably higher then something like PS4Pro (which forced Sony to cut UHD drive to meet $400 price point).

The 199 price point would be for a 4TFlop Lockhart.

 

[goonergaz]

The 199 price point would be for a 4TFlop Lockhart.

But how would a new machine hit $200 if the Pro costs more?

 

[BRiT]

https://twitter.com/x/status/1222270934578552833

 

[Picao84]

But how would a new machine hit $200 if the Pro costs more?

By that logic, the last generation of consoles should have costed more than the 6th generation. It didn't. Console price is decided by more than production cost, but also taking into account competition within the same generation. Plus they use a new smaller node now, which probably gives them more dies than the PS4Pro APU had.

 

[iroboto]

I have doubts that Lockhart exists outside some discussion items; and even then, I don't necessarily believe it needs to be a console. There are other devices that MS has in its lineup that may need its power output with a lower TDP signature.

 

[KirkSi]

I have doubts that Lockhart exists outside some discussion items; and even then, I don't necessarily believe it needs to be a console. There are other devices that MS has in its lineup that may need its power output with a lower TDP signature.

If they're not going for a two SKU approach then they'd better be taking a hefty loss on the XSX hardware then, otherwise they've priced themselves into 'premium device' territory. I know MS have shown there is a market for these devices with the Elite controller, but they can't use it as their sole market at the release of a new console. When they're selling an Elite controller, there's also the option of a regular controller for those that can't afford it.

 

[goonergaz]

That gap has ever been closing though, a comparable PC to a PS4 back in the day wasn't that expensive. Yes look at what the PS4 can do today, the same is true for a pc from that time-era. I was surprised Doom ran so well on a mere GTX760/i5 system, even a tad bit better then the base PS4. I think in general games are being more optimized and scaled these days.

On the other hand, the base consoles are also suffering in some newer titles.

Doom is not a great example, it runs well on just about everything - even the Switch!

Consoles always used to punch above their weight due to the fixed hardware compared to poorly optimised games on PC. Seems like this advantage has been shrinking with the increasing PC gaming market. PC games seem to be better optimised these days so they're loosing out on that advantage, but if the PS5 has half the GPU power of this years PC cards, as @Shifty Geezer stated, that's a lot better than the PS4 was (1.8TF PS4/5TF 780Ti= 0.36 the power of the new PC card).

I think I'm getting over the TF discussion now. I'm pretty convinced XSX will be 12TF and PS5 9-10TF. What I want to see now is the PS5 form factor to compare with the XSX tower and I really want to know about the cooling solutions of both. I think they're both going to have amazing looking games and I'm hoping they don't sound like jet engines when running them!

I'm not totally disagreeing about the gap shrinking, but have you guys seen the minimum specs for RDR2? Any idea how much that would cost to build compared to buying a PS4?
Anything on a PC built to PS4 spec that looks as good as God of War or Days Gone (etc)?
Also, this time during last gen games on PCs and consoles were running really badly on the consoles...not so much this gen from what I've seem.

 

[Deleted member 13524]

New rumor from reddit:

OK, I won’t reveal my identity at all nor the company I work in, but I’m someone working on a new IP for Sony’s PlayStation 5 and Microsoft’s Xbox Series X, I just created this new Reddit account just to dump all this info before inevitably all this gets posted by VG Leaks, maybe Kotaku and the likes in the next few days, maybe even tomorrow, understand that the specifications that I’m gonna post right now are NEAR FINAL specifications from both console manufacturers, so with all that out of the way, I’m gonna fill you guys and girls with all the info!

Let’s start with the PlayStation 5:

1. GPU will be 56 Compute Units, 64 ROPs, clocked @ 1.76 GHz, 12.61 Navi-based RDNA TeraFlops with HW ray tracing. Supposedly Sony wants to boast “3 times the power of PS4 Pro” with the TF number alone while not taking the efficiency of AMD’s latest RDNA architecture into consideration, kinda like Microsoft’s messaging.
2. CPU will be 8 cores and 16 threads clocked @ 3.2 GHz.
3. RAM will be 16 GB GDDR6 this time with 3GB for the OS and 13 for the game to work with.
4. NVMe Solid State Drive is the fastest SSD we’ve ever seen, much faster than Xbox Series X’s SSD.

Now for the Xbox Series X:

1. GPU will be 52 Compute Units, 64 ROPs, clocked @ 1.85 GHz, 12.31 Navi-based RDNA TeraFlops with HW ray tracing.
2. CPU will be 8 cores and 16 threads clocked @ 3.5 GHz.
3. RAM will be 16 GB GDDR6 with 3 GB for OS and 13 GB for the games.
4. Very fast NVMe SSD faster than almost every SSD out there, but still slower than some of the fastest and slower than PS5’s SSD.

Now as for the PlayStation 5 reveal, it won’t take place in February, look for a State of Play where they can show some new demos of games running on the PS5 and maybe some detailed specs.

Both consoles are extremely powerful and we are very delighted to be working with such machines that will truly deliver full next generation experiences.

That’s all from me, good bye!

 

[iroboto]

If they're not going for a two SKU approach then they'd better be taking a hefty loss on the XSX hardware then, otherwise they've priced themselves into 'premium device' territory. I know MS have shown there is a market for these devices with the Elite controller, but they can't use it as their sole market at the release of a new console. When they're selling an Elite controller, there's also the option of a regular controller for those that can't afford it.

That's true if you factor in an asbolute need to transition your entire population over to the new console.
I don't think that's MS strategy here, and we see that with the 'no exclusive 1P' titles until 2021. That doesn't mean they won't take advantage of the hardware, but they aren't forcing their users to upgrade immediately.

That buys time for prices to come down. People who want more power will upgrade naturally with trade in deals.

 

[MrFox]

New rumor from reddit:

 

[mpg1]

I have doubts that Lockhart exists outside some discussion items; and even then, I don't necessarily believe it needs to be a console. There are other devices that MS has in its lineup that may need its power output with a lower TDP signature.

I think there are too many rumours about it for it not to exist/or at least have been in development at some point. Still think it was/is primarily meant for Xcloud.