PlayStation 4 (codename Orbis) technical hardware investigation (news and rumours)

Arwin didn't say 'better', only 'smaller', which you can't deny - it would have been smaller by maybe 20-25% (going by eye), if the mobo could be shrunk.

 

Any one with estimates for the size of the APU?

 

Waiting for someone to X-Ray the 2 main chips.

 

Think of the internal power supply as part of the ad campaign, smaller, cheaper, with an internal power supply and the most powerful console evah ...

Nice design. Looking at my old "60 gb" ... well those Foreman Grill memes when the PS3 was shown come to mind very quickly

 

The CR2032 battery is 20mm across, and the APU looks "similar"?

 

I agree with this! The PS4 is one nice looking machine

 

TDP should be higher than the Slim, but there's more heatsink surface area, and more copper/heatpipes (or at least better placed), so it should be similar under high performance games, and should be completely silent during media playback.

I wish we could read the chips markings

It's amazing how few wires there are, and how there isn't a square inch wasted, everything interlocks, and all connectors are soldered on the motherboard. Even the HDD. The area required for the SoC+Memory is really small.

 

The APU looks so tiny..

Does this even use 75w at full load?

 

Including the GDDR5 memory, it's at least the equivalent of a 7850 (a few more CU, but bit lower clock) plus whatever the CPU requires. I don't see how it can be less than 130W for the entire console (at full load).

 

I'm curious if PS4 is designed with the best performance/cost index ?

For instance, if PS4 uses HD 7850 + 2GB VRAM + main RAM 8GB DDR3, what is the actual performance compared with current design (1.843 Gflops with 8GB GDDR5)? Is production cost lower due to the use of 8GB DDR3?

 

http://i.imgur.com/LBItG5W.jpg

The rectangular chip on the left of the south bridge... Samsung... flash or memory?
Lots of caps around it means flash I think.

4 PCIe lanes to the SB.

There's a small chip between the SB and the SATA connectors. I'm scared.

 

It's a BGA DRAM chip from Samsung.

~361 mm² for the APU.

 

Goes against their principal complaint with the PS3 - split memory pool.

Thanks!

 

Imagine if AMD ever allows Kaveri and its successors to use gdrr5m or better how tiny a steambox (for example) without BRD player and an external power brick could get :8O:
Pretty much a Game Cube.

 

Very quick and dirty try at rough perspective correction:



Redish CR2032 battery is scaled to 100px diameter.

Bluish APU is about 95px*91px in that case.

So roughly ~350mm² for the APU given that the CR2032 is 20mm in diamter?

 

Better take a GDDR5 chip dimensions as a reference (12 mm x 14 mm).

 

They have a few teardown videos of Tablets , Phones , Cameras & things like that they post on facebook from time to time.

 

The SATA chip could possibly be the Fujitsu MB86C31, it's 6mm by 6mm.
Maybe it's a dirt cheap solution to have a hardware AES encryption.

 

You can definitely see the PCB savings with the GDDR5 trace routes vs DDR3.

 

What process is the PS4 chip(s) built on?