Next Generation Hardware Speculation with a Technical Spin [2018]

[anexanhume]

Hm. I wonder how fast you could clock the original Cell design on 7nm lithography... It ran at 3.2GHz on 90 friggin nanometers.

Also, quite the hotspot on the chip as well...


Maybe that, and just general tech/console/gaming geeks geeking out over the possibility of a new toy in the near-ish timeframe.

Personally I never thought Sony would launch a next-gen until at least 2019, and likely some even later date. They're doing very well right now; there's no genuine need to launch anything new. Actually prematurely launching a next generation would just irritate their customers, and if they're too quick it would lead to tech disparity between PS and Xbox.

They have a new-ish device in PS4 Pro already, that'll tide people over for quite a while.

PS4 numbers are still very good, and the MSRP is still $300. They’d need for the market to slow and to have no downward mobility in pricing to justify a new console IMO. I’m guessing price floor for this gen is around $200, which we’ve got a way to go.

 

[Deleted member 13524]

No tech info [except that discs will not be phased out in next gen], but Andrew House expects that PS4 gen will be long
https://www.polygon.com/2018/4/11/17225834/playstation-5-next-generation-andrew-house

A comatose PC gaming hardware market due to mining may have been responsible for pushing back the 9th-gen release for a year..

My major concern is if Sony doesn't have a contingency plan for a console released later and they end up launching the exact same system in late 2020 that they would launch in late 2019.

 

[Shifty Geezer]

A comatose PC gaming hardware market due to mining may have been responsible for pushing back the 9th-gen release for a year...

Why? With the PC market taking such a pounding, consoles are an even stronger value propositions than usual, with significantly better relative bang-per-buck.

 

[Picao84]

Why? With the PC market taking such a pounding, consoles are an even stronger value propositions than usual, with significantly better relative bang-per-buck.

I would change what he said for "A comatose PC gaming hardware market due to AMD being uncompetitive on graphics / developing less GPUs may have been responsible for pushing back the 9th-gen release for a year..". We have been going through a draught of graphics hardware releases and that affects console makers, especially since Xbox and PS started relying on hardware from AMD. In a sense, the PC market subsidised the R&D of the current generation of consoles. With AMD graphics division in turmoil, Sony and Microsoft must find it harder to plan a decent upgrade over PS4Pro / Xbox One X (especially the former as a PS5 must be decently more powerful than the latter).

 

[iroboto]

A comatose PC gaming hardware market due to mining may have been responsible for pushing back the 9th-gen release for a year..

My major concern is if Sony doesn't have a contingency plan for a console released later and they end up launching the exact same system in late 2020 that they would launch in late 2019.

They design more than 1 console at a time. This I’m fairly positive of. 2 release times, 2 price points. Don't it all your eggs in 1 basket until you’re ready to pull the trigger.

 

[Shifty Geezer]

We have been going through a draught of graphics hardware releases and that affects console makers, especially since Xbox and PS started relying on hardware from AMD.

So Vega didn't happen?

 

[Picao84]

So Vega didn't happen?

It did, but with broken/underdelivered features and performing like a Fury on steroids?

EDIT - Additionally, while OG PS4 and XBone GPUs are closely related to HD7870 and HD7850, there are no Vega GPUs that are of that calibre (hence my mention of less GPUs). The Vega APUs that were released meanwhile are not even on the league of PS4Pro, never mind being the basis for a new APU for PS5. The Vega present on the Intel hybrid SKUs are better, but still not good enough for a console generational upgrade, especially with Xbox One X out in the wild.

Unless we are expecting AMD to design a fully custom APU for Sony, I guess Sony has no option but "wait" for Navi.

 

[anexanhume]

I would change what he said for "A comatose PC gaming hardware market due to AMD being uncompetitive on graphics / developing less GPUs may have been responsible for pushing back the 9th-gen release for a year..". We have been going through a draught of graphics hardware releases and that affects console makers, especially since Xbox and PS started relying on hardware from AMD. In a sense, the PC market subsidised the R&D of the current generation of consoles. With AMD graphics division in turmoil, Sony and Microsoft must find it harder to plan a decent upgrade over PS4Pro / Xbox One X (especially the former as a PS5 must be decently more powerful than the latter).

AMD has said they’ve brought in some Zen engineers to the Radeon group to try incorporate power efficiency lessons learned. My guess is that would show up post Navi/GCN, sadly too late for consoles almost certainly.

They design more than 1 console at a time. This I’m fairly positive of. 2 release times, 2 price points. Don't it all your eggs in 1 basket until you’re ready to pull the trigger.

This. When you’re on the precipice of a generation where you stand to sell 100 million pieces of hardware, and you care about when your competition launches, no way do you just have one design in the wings. What’s the extra NRE here, maybe tens of millions? They’ll make that back launch week.

 

[Deleted member 13524]

Why? With the PC market taking such a pounding, consoles are an even stronger value propositions than usual, with significantly better relative bang-per-buck.

No PC gaming hardware = no means for the PC to compete with the consoles = console makers have less pressure to update their hardware.
They can sit back and wait until the price-per-mm^2 and price-per-RAM's-GB goes down, while the higher-performance PC keeps stagnant.
Except for Vega, what we have in the market are the exact same graphics cards that started being sold almost 2 years ago. It looks like both AMD and nvidia are gearing up to make their first 14/16FF lineup to last as much as Pitcairn. Which is a bit depressing for enthusiasts, to be honest..

So Vega didn't happen?

Not only that, but AMD made a console SoC to release just 6 months ago, and prior to that it was 1 year before. And 6 months ago they released a PC SoC with an iGPU that blows Intel's offerings out of the water, and they made a custom GPU for Intel (that might or might not be reused for as Vega M in the near future).

So the suggestion that AMD somehow isn't capable of developing semi-custom solutions as follow-ups to the previous consoles makes little sense.

They design more than 1 console at a time. This I’m fairly positive of. 2 release times, 2 price points. Don't it all your eggs in 1 basket until you’re ready to pull the trigger.

Question is when is this decision made. Maybe most of the major decisions for releasing a console in late 2019 might have already been made back in early Q4 2017, before the bitcoin soar completely blew up the discrete graphics cards market.

 

[Picao84]

Not only that, but AMD made a console SoC to release just 6 months ago, and prior to that it was 1 year before. And 6 months ago they released a PC SoC with an iGPU that blows Intel's offerings out of the water, and they made a custom GPU for Intel (that might or might not be reused for as Vega M in the near future).

So the suggestion that AMD somehow isn't capable of developing semi-custom solutions as follow-ups to the previous consoles makes little sense.

That is not what I meant at all. Read my answer to him.

 

[Deleted member 13524]

That is now what I meant at all. Read my answer to him.

You bolded the main sentence yourself:

AMD being uncompetitive on graphics / developing less GPUs

You claim they're uncompetitive on graphics and they're developing less GPUs, both of which are untrue.
They're definitely competitive and they've released 8 different GPUs within the last 2 years:

- Polaris 10/20
- Polaris 11
- Polaris 12
- Vega 10
- Vega M for Kaby Lake G
- Raven Ridge Vega iGPU
- PS4 Pro iGPU
- XBoneX iGPU

Can you count how many GPUs + iGPUs nvidia released in the same time period?
Including Tegra X2 and Xavier, I count 9.

 

[anexanhume]

They may be competitive on number of releases, but their discrete GPU market share has shrank and they haven’t been competitive on performance per watt ever since Nvidia fixed Fermi’s failings.

 

[Picao84]

You bolded the main sentence yourself:



You claim they're uncompetitive on graphics and they're developing less GPUs, both of which are untrue.
They're definitely competitive and they've released 8 different GPUs within the last 2 years:

- Polaris 10/20
- Polaris 11
- Polaris 12
- Vega 10
- Vega M for Kaby Lake G
- Raven Ridge Vega iGPU
- PS4 Pro iGPU
- XBoneX iGPU

Can you count how many GPUs + iGPUs nvidia released in the same time period?
Including Tegra X2 and Xavier, I count 9.

My point still stands: There is no Vega available on the old 7870 / 7850 tier to base a new console on. All of the Vega chips, bar Vega 10, are GTX1050Ti and under category. PS4 Pro and XBoneX iGPU are still based on Polaris and pre-Polaris architectures.

Can you count how many GPUs + iGPUs nvidia released in the same time period?
Including Tegra X2 and Xavier, I count 9.

NVidia has not released new GPUs because they really don't need to, given the lack of any serious competition from AMD.

 

[Deleted member 13524]

AMD's dGPU marketshare is the highest it has ever been since 2014 and has taken 6% from nvidia just this last quarter.

https://www.dsogaming.com/news/amd-...to-its-highest-point-in-the-past-three-years/


Power efficiency is important for laptops but not so much for desktop gamers.
Freesync (i. e. affordable adaptive sync) could be a lot more important for desktop gamers than the extra 40-80W of power consumption during gaming sessions.


Regardless, the subject here should be 100-200W custom-made SoCs with high-performance iGPUs for gaming consoles, of which AMD has made 4 and nvidia has made zero.

Point is AMD don't have to prove themselves as being capable of developing high performance semi-custom SoCs that please the console makers.

 

[phoenix_chipset]

It did, but with broken/underdelivered features and performing like a Fury on steroids?

EDIT - Additionally, while OG PS4 and XBone GPUs are closely related to HD7870 and HD7850, there are no Vega GPUs that are of that caliber

The air cooled vega 64 is throttled and a bit shit, and the water cooled variant wouldn't be seen in a console in a million years. But Vega 56 is actually a very good card that's better than a 1070 in the pc space. In a console without having to contend with worse drivers vs. Pascal, who knows how good it’d be. I'd expect a lower clocked 56 for console to be quite efficient.

I’d also note that amd never beat its chest that vega would dethrone pascal, that was fan hype.What it does do is close the gap vs. Pascal except for the monstrous 1080 ti. As one would reasonably expect given the similar lithography.

Not that you‘d ever see current vega in a console since they’d want 7nm. And why would Sony or MS use an off the shelf apu given that all 4 current console soc‘s are custom?

 

[Picao84]

The air cooled vega 64 is throttled and a bit shit, and the water cooled variant wouldn't be seen in a console in a million years. But Vega 56 is actually a very good card that's better than a 1070 in the pc space. In a console without having to contend with worse drivers vs. Pascal, who knows how good it’d be. I'd expect a lower clocked 56 for console to be quite efficient.

I’d also note that amd never beat its chest that vega would dethrone pascal, that was fan hype.What it does do is close the gap vs. Pascal except for the monstrous 1080 ti. As one would reasonably expect given the similar lithography.

Not that you‘d ever see current vega in a console since they’d want 7nm.

I doubt we will see Vega at all on next consoles. When AMD is working on Navi and there is no midrange Vega to even port to 7nm (Vega 56 inside an APU is likely still too large), that would be doing double the work.

 

[mpg1]

Intel Is Developing A Desktop Gaming GPU To Fight Nvidia, AMD:
https://www.forbes.com/sites/jasone...-gaming-gpu-to-fight-nvidia-amd/#38f83b9e3578

 

[AlNom]

Intel Is Developing A Desktop Gaming Mining GPU To Fight Nvidia, AMD:
https://www.forbes.com/sites/jasone...-gaming-gpu-to-fight-nvidia-amd/#38f83b9e3578

Fixed

 

[anexanhume]

AMD's dGPU marketshare is the highest it has ever been since 2014 and has taken 6% from nvidia just this last quarter.

https://www.dsogaming.com/news/amd-...to-its-highest-point-in-the-past-three-years/


Power efficiency is important for laptops but not so much for desktop gamers.
Freesync (i. e. affordable adaptive sync) could be a lot more important for desktop gamers than the extra 40-80W of power consumption during gaming sessions.


Regardless, the subject here should be 100-200W custom-made SoCs with high-performance iGPUs for gaming consoles, of which AMD has made 4 and nvidia has made zero.

Point is AMD don't have to prove themselves as being capable of developing high performance semi-custom SoCs that please the console makers.

They’ve recovered from a recent exaggerated downturn, but the trend over that entire chart is clearly a gradual conceding of the market to Nvidia. I also wonder how much the crypto craze has been responsible for the ‘correction.’

I doubt we will see Vega at all on next consoles. When AMD is working on Navi and there is no midrange Vega to even port to 7nm (Vega 56 inside an APU is likely still too large), that would be doing double the work.

AMD has admitted there will be no 7nm Vega gaming products. Still, scaling from 14/16 to 7nm is very good, greater than 50%. They could cram a Vega 56/64 in a 350mm^2 APU with that type of scaling.

On top of all of this is the gaming performance per TF as well. I’m sure this has a lot to do with drivers, but comparing SP FLOPs performance to games performance shows an advantage for Nvidia as well.

Based on all of the recent APUs, I’m guessing console makers work with a die size budget moreso than a TDP one. They’ve all been pegged near the 350mm^2 mark. If they’re willing to do a vapor chamber for cooling, I suppose that gets them closer to the 150W-200W range, but some efficiency gains from AMD would go a long way.

Edit: here’s a nice little Zen retrospective where they talk about Zen’s gaming focus and trying to incorporate lessons learned to the Radeon group:

 

[MrFox]

I doubt we will see Vega at all on next consoles. When AMD is working on Navi and there is no midrange Vega to even port to 7nm (Vega 56 inside an APU is likely still too large), that would be doing double the work.

It feels like AMD is doing what they can with the tech they have at the ready. They have to sell something until their next architecture is done. Just like they did waiting for Zen, which was worth the wait.

I don't even think we will see Navi on next gen consoles (if it's true navi is simply incremental changes to GCN, do we know for sure?).

The first reasonable leaks indicates ps5 is still years away. So it could be whatever comes after Navi, rumors are that they're getting help from the Zen team to improve power and clocking. I mean it's logical to put all your best engineers on the next architecture, it will pay off for many years forward.