If the Xbox 3 has a 1.2TFLOP GPU & PS4 has a 1.8TFLOP GPU would it even be noticeable to the average person?
I ask this because the Wii U is maybe 1.5 X or more powerful over the PS3/Xbox 360 GPU & right now it's not really showing .
It's not showing could be many reasons, from what we hear Nintendo's SDK is absolutely horrid, that's probably holding devs back. The CPU is probably weak and that needs to be worked around and is holding them back. Finally, we dont actually know the exact specs of Wii U anyway to say it's 50% more powerful.
So far the supposed extra RAM hasn't showed up, but tablet overhead alone could be eating a lot of that, plus the speed of the RAM, the nature of early development, on and on.
I dont think 50% more power is something that will "not show up". Ask yourself if say, the PS3's GPU was suddenly downclocked from 500 mhz to 350 mhz (and literally nothing else was changed!), you dont think it would have a major effect? We pore over the most subtle differences in PS360 multiplats, now we knock 33% off the PS3 GPU can you imagine?
But yes I agree, it's easy to imagine in the abstract, "ehh, 1.2 vs 1.8, all the games will look spectacular next gen anyway". But the reality on the pavement will be quite different, the differences would be there, and they would grow and grow in importance the closer the next consoles become to reality. It's easy to say "ehh" in abstract, different when you start hearing "next gen game GTA VI in development is rumored to look far better on PS4". And you WILL start hearing that in such a hypothetical case (all else fairly equal of course, which it may not be say if PS4 ends up with only 2GB RAM)
IF Durango had a "1 teraflop GPU" It would probably point nicely at a down clocked 7770 Cape Verde. Which comes in at something like 1.28 TF at 1 ghz stock (7750 only comes in at 819 gflops though). The problem I see there is you dont disable any functional units for yield. Of course the real GPU might be something from the 8000 series in actuality.
If it makes it sound any better it's 1.7B transistors which sounds good next to 232m of original Xenos parent die :/ The GPU would surely come with a hunk of ESRAM attached.
It almost makes me think back to those 6670 rumors :/ Which is supposedly only 570 Gflops.