Let's not turn this discussion into whether XB1X is next-gen or not. 
Next Generation Hardware Speculation with a Technical Spin [2018]
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fair enough!Let's not turn this discussion into whether XB1X is next-gen or not.
I don't want to merry-go-round this one into the wrong direction.
I bring it up not because I think it is necessarily, but because the challenges of predicting next-gen (or even developing it), what's the target given what we have today. I guess is where I'm trying to go with the discussion.
It's the first time we've witnessed a mid-generation refresh, and so it's sort of having an negative impact on our abilities to predict the hardware (which in turn, lines up with the timing)
I'd take next gen as a generation advance on what this generation launched at in terms of general power, not features. If you compare how last gen consoles were feature wise at the end versus at the beginning, they could be considered similarly generationally advanced. So, 2-3x more power is not next-gen, regardless of whatever niceties appear. Maybe we'd be looking at ~8x XB1's TFs, so 10 TFs?
yes, we can say with a certainty (nintendo aside) Next gen's CPU will be a lot more powerful. Games designed for next gen consoles will need sacrifices made to run on current gen, running at a lower resolution doesn't help at all if your CPU is too weak.
borntosoul
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If it’s cpu power that we are thinking increasing in a meaningful way then big changes need to happen, as it is now it’s a lot easier to have a big increase from gpu to gpu over a generation than it is the cpu to cpu generation.
Look at past history of pc architecture which we are borrowing from.
Cell was supposed to take us there when that was released.....so are we looking at a 8 core cpu? 12 core? Or is an efficient quad core going to do the trick for cost per performance and energy spent?
Pretty hard to be radical when the price point is so low.
Look at past history of pc architecture which we are borrowing from.
Cell was supposed to take us there when that was released.....so are we looking at a 8 core cpu? 12 core? Or is an efficient quad core going to do the trick for cost per performance and energy spent?
Pretty hard to be radical when the price point is so low.
everything that a CPU does, fewer objects in the world, worse physics, worse AI, worse framerate (framerate is very CPU dependent 16msec vs 33msec)
@borntosoul The xbox1 X CPU's only running at 2.3Ghz, Its a very low bar. I'm sure everyone agrees the current gen's CPU's were weak even when they released
Megadrive1988
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Which ever incarnation of Zen gets used in PS5 and Xbox Next, I believe they won't have less than 8 physical cores, with or without SMT.
So either 8c/16t or 8c/8t. No way they go with just a single 4c/8t CCX.
So either 8c/16t or 8c/8t. No way they go with just a single 4c/8t CCX.
I think we can all agree that their weak, but it's good, because they're able to muscle out as much performance as possible out of the limited die space that is available. We don't want to be in a situation where the CPU is spending it's cycles assisting the graphics chip like the PS3 did, there is more efficient use of the silicon space.
Here's what some CPU graphs look like: Green is the render code, which, could be entirely offloaded to the GPU. But we don't do it today.
You can see the same trend here in video format:
Render block just eats up tons of CPU. It's not a real CPU function, it's not adding to the gameplay, it's not changing the physics.
The frame rate is limited by the fact that the CPU can't keep up with continually more complex scenes. But in the future, we expect all games to go the route of GPU side dispatching thus having a dramatic drop in CPU load, so why have a larger CPU than we realistically need. While I agree next gen will be Zen, I don't want it to be any larger than it needs to be.
If people keep asking for 60fps games, or even 120fps games. Developers can find a way to do it. They just don't want to do it right now. It's no where near a priority for them but for some games (like twitch FPS titles) perhaps they will.
Rootax
Veteran
Faster loading time too/better streaming. I mean, yes, most of the time I guess the hard drive is the bottleneck, but in some case the cpu is (decompression / compilation I guess ?).
On PC, some time ago when I moved my games from HDD to SSD, the surprise was to see the increased cpu usage during loading.
I think they will go 4c/8t. Or 6c/12t max. Maybe use 8c chip, but they will privilege yield ? Ryzen is so much more powerfull than what they have now... It would be a big upgrade anyway, and It won't killed the price.
On PC, some time ago when I moved my games from HDD to SSD, the surprise was to see the increased cpu usage during loading.
I think they will go 4c/8t. Or 6c/12t max. Maybe use 8c chip, but they will privilege yield ? Ryzen is so much more powerfull than what they have now... It would be a big upgrade anyway, and It won't killed the price.
Loading the data, you want to process it, such as decompression and decryption. If you are loading faster, you need to decompress faster, so yes, CPU will increase. CPU is only a bottleneck if you hit 100% utilisation. As long as CPU utilisation is below 100% while maxing out the drive, it's not a bottleneck.
Devkit that's not a devkit?
(double ram, cherry picked APU that has all units enabled):V
anexanhume
Veteran
I think we can all agree that their weak, but it's good, because they're able to muscle out as much performance as possible out of the limited die space that is available. We don't want to be in a situation where the CPU is spending it's cycles assisting the graphics chip like the PS3 did, there is more efficient use of the silicon space.
Here's what some CPU graphs look like: Green is the render code, which, could be entirely offloaded to the GPU. But we don't do it today.
You can see the same trend here in video format:
Render block just eats up tons of CPU. It's not a real CPU function, it's not adding to the gameplay, it's not changing the physics.
The frame rate is limited by the fact that the CPU can't keep up with continually more complex scenes. But in the future, we expect all games to go the route of GPU side dispatching thus having a dramatic drop in CPU load, so why have a larger CPU than we realistically need. While I agree next gen will be Zen, I don't want it to be any larger than it needs to be.
If people keep asking for 60fps games, or even 120fps games. Developers can find a way to do it. They just don't want to do it right now. It's no where near a priority for them but for some games (like twitch FPS titles) perhaps they will.
AMD is hard at work optimizing CPU and GPU architectures to be more efficient and better utilized for gaming workloads.
Pipeline including separate hardware data paths for different instruction types
And it appears AMD is finally tackling transactional memory (Intel TSX or equivalent)
Processor support for hardware transactional memory
Method and system for yield operation supporting thread-like behavior
Heterogeneous parallel primitives programming model
https://patents.google.com/patent/US20180060124A1/
System and method for dynamically allocating resources among gpu shaders
https://patents.google.com/patent/WO2018075529A1
I think we can all agree that their weak, but it's good, because they're able to muscle out as much performance as possible out of the limited die space that is available. We don't want to be in a situation where the CPU is spending it's cycles assisting the graphics chip like the PS3 did, there is more efficient use of the silicon space.
Here's what some CPU graphs look like: Green is the render code, which, could be entirely offloaded to the GPU. But we don't do it today.
You can see the same trend here in video format:
Render block just eats up tons of CPU. It's not a real CPU function, it's not adding to the gameplay, it's not changing the physics.
The frame rate is limited by the fact that the CPU can't keep up with continually more complex scenes. But in the future, we expect all games to go the route of GPU side dispatching thus having a dramatic drop in CPU load, so why have a larger CPU than we realistically need. While I agree next gen will be Zen, I don't want it to be any larger than it needs to be.
If people keep asking for 60fps games, or even 120fps games. Developers can find a way to do it. They just don't want to do it right now. It's no where near a priority for them but for some games (like twitch FPS titles) perhaps they will.
Dat Xbox command processor...
Yea, but also Nvidia'sDat Xbox command processor...
Awesome tools waiting to be exploited.
anexanhume
Veteran
AMD Computex show was last night. Nothing impacting console APUs was shown other than roadmaps still on schedule.
7nm CPUs are in the lab and looking good, but we already knew they were sampling, so kind of an empty statement.
https://www.anandtech.com/show/12909/amd-computex-2018-press-event-a-live-blog-10am-taiwan-2am-utc
Edit: 7nm Vega for AI/ML is now shipping this year instead of just sampling. Good sign for 7nm https://www.anandtech.com/show/12910/amd-demos-7nm-vega-radeon-instinct-shipping-2018
7nm CPUs are in the lab and looking good, but we already knew they were sampling, so kind of an empty statement.
https://www.anandtech.com/show/12909/amd-computex-2018-press-event-a-live-blog-10am-taiwan-2am-utc
Edit: 7nm Vega for AI/ML is now shipping this year instead of just sampling. Good sign for 7nm https://www.anandtech.com/show/12910/amd-demos-7nm-vega-radeon-instinct-shipping-2018
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