And one thing I've been thinking about is exactly that: sure, X devkits will improve, but surely the PS5 devkits will also improve in due time? You can't tell me that things will improve on one side, but not the other?
There's a set of beliefs that got progressively ingrained within the console sub-forum for a while:
- Maximum theoretical TFLOP throughput and maximum memory bandwidth are
the most defining metrics for comparison.
- Mark Cerny lied / was dishonest when claiming the PS5's GPU would be running at 2.23GHz most of the time (because it goes against the values shown in a certain
gospel).
- Whenever the GPU reaches 2.23GHz the console's power consumption
must be ridiculously high
- The SeriesX's GPU is
more advanced because it's
more RDNA2 than the PS5's (also because Sony's particular customizations that deviate from RDNA2
must be worse than AMD's standard set).
That said, they were expecting the SeriesX to be some 20% faster or more, depending on
how dishonest Cerny/Sony were being with the 2.23GHz values and assuming the GPU had to downclock to 2GHz and below (again, that
gospel..).
Real life results are challenging all that.
On these Digital Foundry face-offs using multiplatform games, the SeriesX and the PS5 are showing similar framerates + render resolutions + effect quality levels (which should be good for everyone but whatever), both consoles are consuming around the 200W and turns out those
preposterous 2.23GHz are actually conservative if we compare them to AMD's own RDNA2 PC GPUs on the same process.
This latest secret sauce devkit idea is probably some form of coping mechanism until acceptance can be reached.
BTW, Mark Cerny wasn't dishonest when he mentioned the GPU clocks, nor when he warned against overvaluing the max theoretical TFLOPs as means for comparison, nor when he suggested the PS5 was coming with a SSD, nor any of the other times it's been suggested here that his statements carry a veil of deception.
It's almost like he's the head of Sony's console hardware architecture and not a PR/marketing talking head, and perhaps we should take his statements at face value instead of trying to determine
in which way he's actually lying.