Digital Foundry Article Technical Discussion [2021]

[Shortbread]

Memory bandwidth.
PS5 = 448 GB/s (shared between the CPU and GPU).
RTX 3080 = 760 GB/s...

It is simple math.

And don't forget, the RTX 2060 with its meager 336 GB/s of memory bandwidth is handling AF better than both next-generation consoles.

Edit: Also, please don't take my smartass comment as console vs. PC fanboy fodder. Just playing off HLJ statement why this would be (discrete components).

 

[PSman1700]

And don't forget, the RTX 2060 with its 336 GB/s of memory bandwidth is handling AF better than both next-generation consoles.

Different architecture, no sharing between the rest of the system regarding bandwith and more advanced features
DLSS does help greatly in BW too.

 

[BRiT]

my only complaint was 448 GB/S.

It would have been great to have 18GBps GDDR6 memory chips for 576 GB/s of memory bandwidth but this is too expensive.

On consoles we will have 16x AF next generation.

What's your thoughts on where memory technology will be in 2026/2027? And then what's the economical pick for consoles?

 

[Shortbread]

What's your thoughts on where memory technology will be in 2026/2027? And then what's the economical pick for consoles?

I can see one of the big three using a more unified memory setup... that storage and memory are one and the same. But of course, the obvious hurdles of SSD modules' speeds/bandwidth will have to be resolved first.

 

[Jay]

Memory bandwidth.
PS5 = 448 GB/s (shared between the CPU and GPU).
RTX 3080 = 760 GB/s...

It is simple math.

Do understand bandwidth limitations.
My querying was in regards to this statement and if they are really only PC tricks.

AMD and NVIDIA have learned some tricks to reduce AF footprint on PC though

 

[PSman1700]

What's your thoughts on where memory technology will be in 2026/2027? And then what's the economical pick for consoles?

The expert hasnt answered yet, but we might be seeing real powerfull hardware..... in server racks

 

[chris1515]

What's your thoughts on where memory technology will be in 2026/2027? And then what's the economical pick for consoles?

Probably GDDR6 with better speed but I think consoles will have more bandwidth. Ideally it would be having better UMA and infinity cache but this is impossible on consoles without stacking it and I am not sure what AMD will do with 3d stacked cache on CPU is possible on GPU.

Each generation, texture filtering progress, no AF on PS3/360 only bilinear or trilinear in most title maybe some exception , 4x AF on PS4/XB1, 8xAF on PS5/SXS and I think 16xAF on PS6/next Xbox.

 

[chris1515]

And don't forget, the RTX 2060 with its meager 336 GB/s of memory bandwidth is handling AF better than both next-generation consoles.

Edit: Also, please don't take my smartass comment as console vs. PC fanboy fodder. Just playing off HLJ statement why this would be (discrete components).

448 GB/s shared between CPU/GPU, Tempest Engine and SSD.

 

[JoeJ]

What's your thoughts on where memory technology will be in 2026/2027? And then what's the economical pick for consoles?

Something like Apple M1, with all memory on SoC package.

 

[BRiT]

Something like Apple M1, with all memory on SoC package.

Only possible with Apple-style profits on Hardware, and that hasn't happened with Sony/Microsoft consoles ever.

 

[JoeJ]

Just scratch the Apple logo... it'll become cheap!

 

[snc]

 

[Jay]

Could have 120hz at 40fps locked for non VRR displays or games that would drop below 45fps on VRR displays.
Really hope more studios start to take a look at 120hz & VRR support in more ways than just 120fps.

 

[snc]

Could have 120hz at 40fps locked for non VRR displays or games that would drop below 45fps on VRR displays.
Really hope more studios start to take a look at 120hz & VRR support in more ways than just 120fps.

As John mention 40 fps is not realy teritory when vrr looks and feel good, for this fps teritorry locking fps at 40 and 120hz is the way btw soon df video about it

 

[Jay]

As John mention 40 fps is not realy teritory when vrr looks and feel good, for this fps teritorry locking fps at 40 and 120hz is the way btw soon df video about it

That's why I separated out the use cases.

 

[HLJ]

And don't forget, the RTX 2060 with its meager 336 GB/s of memory bandwidth is handling AF better than both next-generation consoles.

Edit: Also, please don't take my smartass comment as console vs. PC fanboy fodder. Just playing off HLJ statement why this would be (discrete components).

It has all of that bandwith to it self indeed.
It the good old:
Consoles "next-gen" is PC's last gen.
A truth some cannot handle.

But they have them self to blame...buying in the the hype again, again, again...

And I wonder how much of the console market game-streaming will grab...next launch the consoles will be facing streaming services...same lag...same/better I.Q.

That and the increase in cost per transistor will but a lot of pressure on the next consoles.

 

[cwjs]

It the good old:
Consoles "next-gen" is PC's last gen.
A truth some cannot handle.

Platform warring is childish and this is silly. The market and development follows after consoles, including feature support on pc gpus. Aside from a few enthusiasts nobody cares who can run a game at native 4k 260fps, what matters is what devs are producing, and that follows console generations.

We've all had ssds in our pcs for over ten years and nobodys been making games requiring them.

 

[PSman1700]

Platform warring is childish and this is silly. The market and development follows after consoles, including feature support on pc gpus. Aside from a few enthusiasts nobody cares who can run a game at native 4k 260fps, what matters is what devs are producing, and that follows console generations.

We've all had ssds in our pcs for over ten years and nobodys been making games requiring them.

Thats not wholefully true anyways. Many features actually made its way to the PC first, this time around ray tracing made its entry before the playstation did, aswell as deep learning reconstruction etc.
And again, scaling does wonders.

 

[cwjs]

Thats not wholefully true anyways. Many features actually made its way to the PC first, this time around ray tracing made its entry before the playstation did, aswell as deep learning reconstruction etc.
And again, scaling does wonders.

I wouldn't consider those totally true -- shipped games with heavily raymarched lighting was first seen in (major) console games, hardware rt is 'just' an optimization to make it more viable. dlss sure, but it's fundamentally just a kind of temporal upscaling, and we've seen that for a long time on consoles. Obviously pc hardware is far beyond console hardware, and everybody who makes games works on a PC, graphics research is done on pcs, etc. I'm not saying there's no place to point out how much more powerful pc hardware is.

Just the generation talk is goofy imo. There's a reason everyone uses console generations to refer to games.

 

[Dictator]

I wouldn't consider those totally true -- shipped games with heavily raymarched lighting was first seen in (major) console games, hardware rt is 'just' an optimization to make it more viable. dlss sure, but it's fundamentally just a kind of temporal upscaling, and we've seen that for a long time on consoles. Obviously pc hardware is far beyond console hardware, and everybody who makes games works on a PC, graphics research is done on pcs, etc. I'm not saying there's no place to point out how much more powerful pc hardware is.

Just the generation talk is goofy imo. There's a reason everyone uses console generations to refer to games.

Raymarced lighting? What? Like screen space lighting?
If you mean something else