Next Generation Hardware Speculation with a Technical Spin [2018]

[eastmen]

The xbox one x makes an interesting road block. The system should continue to drop in price. If we are expecting a new sony system in 2019. The xbox one x will surely have dropped in price. So if your looking at a $400 xbox one x . What would sony launch ? an 8tflop machine ? I guess that would be double the power of the ps4 pro but from the xbox one x it wont be much of a jump. Perhaps GDR 6 will give it enough of a jump over the x ? 2020 perhaps they can get further and hit 10tflops or higher. It would depend on 7nm uptake.

For MS I would wager 2020/21 for a new xbox . 24 gigs of ram , GDR 6 , Navi and Zen 2 8 core / 16 thread @ 3.6ghz in the 30-45 watt range. For sony perhaps 2019/2020 with an 8 /16 ryzen (maybe ryzen + on 12nm) with 16 gigs of ram and a vega varrient with some tuning by sony. Of course if sony is happy with going later than 2019 I would imagine the machine morphs closer to what I predict for MS .


I also believe that as we get to 7nm a portable xbox one could happen

 

[sniffy]

The xbox one x makes an interesting road block. The system should continue to drop in price. If we are expecting a new sony system in 2019. The xbox one x will surely have dropped in price. So if your looking at a $400 xbox one x . What would sony launch ? an 8tflop machine ? I guess that would be double the power of the ps4 pro but from the xbox one x it wont be much of a jump. Perhaps GDR 6 will give it enough of a jump over the x ? 2020 perhaps they can get further and hit 10tflops or higher. It would depend on 7nm uptake.

For MS I would wager 2020/21 for a new xbox . 24 gigs of ram , GDR 6 , Navi and Zen 2 8 core / 16 thread @ 3.6ghz in the 30-45 watt range. For sony perhaps 2019/2020 with an 8 /16 ryzen (maybe ryzen + on 12nm) with 16 gigs of ram and a vega varrient with some tuning by sony. Of course if sony is happy with going later than 2019 I would imagine the machine morphs closer to what I predict for MS .


I also believe that as we get to 7nm a portable xbox one could happen

I don’t see the price of the Xbox One X dropping anytime soon. I believe MS have already said it’s sold at a loss. The SoC and 12GB GDDR5 would not be cheap. I see the X as a PR move to improve their image rather than a profitable device.

To me this also illustrates how expensive a hypothetical Zen/12TFLOP Vega machine would be at least for the next couple of years. I think the only way around this is for Sony and MS to ride out this gen for a while longer.

 

[Allandor]

I don’t see the price of the Xbox One X dropping anytime soon. I believe MS have already said it’s sold at a loss. The SoC and 12GB GDDR5 would not be cheap. I see the X as a PR move to improve their image rather than a profitable device.

To me this also illustrates how expensive a hypothetical Zen/12TFLOP Vega machine would be at least for the next couple of years. I think the only way around this is for Sony and MS to ride out this gen for a while longer.

And wafer costs go up in the next few month. So it doesn't get cheaper anytime soon.
But the XboX is already sold for 429€, so I don't think it is sold at loss if they went down from 499€ to this. But it just might a $->€ conversion thing. But I don't think a next gen consoles get's that much cheaper, as the 7nm process should be even more expensive according to the statements of some companies. The jumps from gen to gen are getting smaller and smaller. If anyone want's to sell another next-gen $400 console, I don't think it get's much faster than the XboX.
And with 4k assests, the hard disks are a limiting factor, too (loading times and size). And consoles don't have the budget to include an SSD.

 

[milk]

If they managed to stretch the ps360 gen to 7-8 years, without PRO/X versions of the standard machines to apease the premium users, I don't see why they wouldnt be able to ride this one out a while longer. Sony specially has historically waited as long as it could before releasing each next gen system. Even the PRO was a bit of an anomaly given the ps4 was still doing just fine when it had come out, but as the concept of a mid-gen itself is sort of new anyway, I wouldnt read much into it.
Sony could of course change the game and release a ps5 sooner, but reality is hiting us. It becomes more and more obvious that its not very likely for technology suficiently difereciable from the current gen machines to be feasable in less than 2 years. Specially not accounting for their mid-gen counterparts. And certainly not with consumer friendly pricing. At this point the idea that ps5 will only come, at the earliest in late 2020, and probably further from that should become the more realistic hypothesis.

 

[iroboto]

If they managed to stretch the ps360 gen to 7-8 years, without PRO/X versions of the standard machines to apease the premium users, I don't see why they wouldnt be able to ride this one out a while longer. Sony specially has historically waited as long as it could before releasing each next gen system. Even the PRO was a bit of an anomaly given the ps4 was still doing just fine when it had come out, but as the concept of a mid-gen itself is sort of new anyway, I wouldnt read much into it.
Sony could of course change the game and release a ps5 sooner, but reality is hiting us. It becomes more and more obvious that its not very likely for technology suficiently difereciable from the current gen machines to be feasable in less than 2 years. Specially not accounting for their mid-gen counterparts. And certainly not with consumer friendly pricing. At this point the idea that ps5 will only come, at the earliest in late 2020, and probably further from that should become the more realistic hypothesis.

Yea where originally our predictions were widely cast, our viewpoints are starting to narrow into a specific direction.

Predictions seem to be either near a XBO-X configuration with Ryzen at $399 in 2019, or it's going to be much later around 2021+ pushing PS4 for 8 years of service before next gen. Anything else is possible sure, but from reading the the responses, most of us are banking on 2019 or 2021. 2019 we will know soon, they would need to announce around may of this year. (correction of next year, whoops, got my years mixed up)

Xbox 2 arriving in the 2020+ is pretty common thinking here as well. It would be weird to see it arrive earlier, they would just be better off removing the S line, and replacing it with the X line.

 

[bitsandbytes]

If PS5 is 2019 it will almost certainly be November or December so Sony could announce it February 2019 like PS4 or even 2 months before launch like PS4 Pro.

The only thing I would expect in the next few months are the usual leaks, indications and rumour articles. If we don't get them this year then it isn't coming in 2019. Simple.

 

[milk]

If PS5 is 2019 it will almost certainly be November or December so Sony could announce it February 2019 like PS4 or even 2 months before launch like PS4 Pro.

The only thing I would expect in the next few months are the usual leaks, indications and rumour articles. If we don't get them this year then it isn't coming in 2019. Simple.

Great point! Even before the more solid "durango" and ps4 spec leaks, there had been a fair amount of buzz and whispers about next gen. Regarding ps5/XBTWO things are quite quiet. We barely even have any made up rumor.

 

[MrFox]

2019 is crazy unlikely, I agree with the general feeling that they would first decide on the tech required to have a next-gen improvement, and then the release year would be whenever it's doable for a console pricing.

 

[Deleted member 13524]

The xbox one x makes an interesting road block. The system should continue to drop in price.

With a 360mm^2 SoC at TSMC's 16FF+ (substantially more expensive than 28nm) and 12 GDDR5 chips at the current prices I really doubt that.
Memory makers have been reducing wafer numbers of GDDR to give way to increasing demands of DDRx and LPDDRx.
And now they have to reduce GDDR5 wafers to give way to GDDR6 and HBM2.
At the same time, cryptocurrency ASICs are competing in volume for TSMC wafers with GPUs. Bitmain's orders at TSMC for bitcoin ASICs surpassed nvidia's total orders. More demand for the same supply will probably prevent Scorpio's SoC price from going down.

It becomes more and more obvious that its not very likely for technology suficiently difereciable from the current gen machines to be feasable in less than 2 years.

It boils down to console makers wanting to release something at 7nm (late 2019) or 5nm (late 2020). 7nm should allow for 10-12TFLOPs at 350mm^2, which has been their target for some time. 5nm might be good for a bit more, perhaps 14 TFLOPs.
I don't think they will use 10nm (much less 12/16nm) but they won't wait until 2021+ to release a new console, either.

In my opinion, we'll see the PS5 in November/December 2019 and Xbone Z one year later.

 

[milk]

but they won't wait until 2021+ to release a new console, either.

Why?

 

[bitsandbytes]

2019 is crazy unlikely, I agree with the general feeling that they would first decide on the tech required to have a next-gen improvement, and then the release year would be whenever it's doable for a console pricing.

I don't know....I think they are much further along than people appreciate even if it is 2020. Look back at the public reveal of One X for quite a detailed guide of lead times. The reveal video showed renderings of final HW also shown in the later DF tech article, Phil stated they started work 2 years earlier too (mid-2014) which makes it 3.5 years total and more than 18 months before launch they had very close to final HW. The last 18 months were used to take the product from design to a physical product.

Great point! Even before the more solid "durango" and ps4 spec leaks, there had been a fair amount of buzz and whispers about next gen. Regarding ps5/XBTWO things are quite quiet. We barely even have any made up rumor.

I don't actually think it has been that quiet. Plenty of gaming articles asking Sony execs about PS5, three analysts given their two cents with little to no prompting and the odd insider weighing in when normally quiet unless things are really happening all over the last ~7 months. I don't think this would be happening if next gen is 2020 or later.

Jason Schreier also predicting leaks this year from a big publication (probably him, Patrick Klepek or Stephen Totilo).

 

[Shifty Geezer]

At the same time, cryptocurrency ASICs are competing in volume for TSMC wafers with GPUs. Bitmain's orders at TSMC for bitcoin ASICs surpassed nvidia's total orders. More demand for the same supply will probably prevent Scorpio's SoC price from going down.

Cryptocurrency is seemingly more and more a useless blight. The future won't be gaming or entertainment or using your computer to make something, but sitting around waiting for it to find a key and make some money. Woohoo.

 

[AlNom]

sitcoin ¯\_(ツ)_/¯

 

[Shifty Geezer]

Soon we'll all need to be bitcoin mining to pay for the consoles and GPU's inflated prices thanks to everyone bitcoin mining.

 

[AlNom]

Always-on future
Minecraft while not Minecrafting - Every bit pays for bitself.

Minecraft 2: Nothing But Bits

 

[Xbat]

2020 on a 7nm+ 16GB gddr6 dumbed down mobile Zen 2 CPU and Navi GPU with some next gen bells and whistles. Not that straight forward but I think it gives a ballpark for power, RAM might be on the low side.They will probably use more ram depends on the RRP they going for.

 

[BRiT]

LootCoin
Coin Raider

Obvious first titles for next gen consoles...

 

[Pixel]

2020 Cryptocurrency apocalypse: Cryptocurrencies quickly overtake the Euro/USD. Good GPU's become as rare as unicorns in retailer. MS/Sony can't even produce anymore PS4/X1.
None of TSMC, Global Foundries, Samsung's capacity is left over for low margin console chips.

Thus Sony is forced to start up their old CELL fab...

PS5: CELL based cpu and gpu
CELL CPU: 160 GFLOP
CELL GPU 500GFLOP.
45nm scalar processes.
Unified 4GB GDDR6. ($100 Bill of Material cost)
2 TB HDD (hey at least HDD size improved).

$399 MSRP

 

[Syferz]

I believe PS5 will launch in late 2019 and have about 12TFLOPs of performance. This will mean that multiplatform titles for PS4 will dry up holiday 2021, and Switch multiplats with it.
My post is about Switch, I think Holiday 2021 or Spring 2022 is the launch of the next generation of Switch hardware, carrying a new Tegra based on Ampree (Nvidia said they believe their partnership with Nintendo will last 20 years, and Nintendo lags about a year and a half to 2 years behind in tech, with a May 2015 Tegra chip (X1) inside a March 2017 handheld. Ampree should hit production in Spring 2020 if these 2 year life cycles continue for Nvidia's Tegra chips. It will be a 7nm+ part and use LPDDR5 likely around 200GB/s.

• Process node 7nm+
• Display: 7 inch 1080p HDR screen. Switch 2.0 keeps the same form factor as the original Switch and joycons are compatible.
• GPU: 1024 Cuda cores clocked at ~1.3GHz for 2.7TFLOPs. 0 Tensor cores. (Tegra Volta is clocked at 1.3GHz on 12nm, 7nm+ should achieve double density and double performance)
• CPU: ARM64 8 core 16 thread, DynamIQ based on 4 A75 cores and 4 A55 cores. (Snapdragon 845 is using these cores) clocked at 2.4GHz. A55 cores clocked at 1.6GHz.
• RAM: 16GB LPDDR5 /w ~160GB/s bandwidth. (Volta uses LPDDR4 with 137GB/s bandwidth)
• Storage: 256GB flash storage.
• Media Storage: Flash cards like Switch (Same form factor, but a different color) currently 8GB cards are said to be about the same cost as a 66GB bluray disc. I believe in the 4 years we are talking about here, 64GB cards will be about the same as 100GB UHD Bluray discs and not require download/installs. 128GB cards should be available for a bit more and after a couple years, would become similar in price to discs finally.
• Optional Enhanced Dock: $199, 4K dock, with 12TFLOPs GPU inside.
• Price: $299 with standard dock. $479 with 4K dock bundle.
• Launch with the game after next in the Zelda series.

I believe this is the best option available to Nintendo given their nature. I don't expect it to do all these things, but I think this is the best guess I can give right now.

 

[McHuj]

I wish, but I think the next version of the switch will be on the cheapest 16nm variation. It will allow for better battery life or smaller batteries, maybe more consistent frame rates if we’re lucky.