Predict: Next gen console tech (9th iteration and 10th iteration edition) [2014 - 2017]

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Tkumpathenurpahl said:
Not for lower power, but for the sake of freeing up a large amount of more expensive memory without having to burden developers and users with a couple of GB swapping in and out of main memory. Maybe lower power would come as a result of this, but doesn't the X1X use less power in standby than the PS4Pro?

In reference to engineering work, would there be that much, considering the PS4 already operates like this to some extent? I know it's a gross oversimplification, but would it be much effort to take the existing PS4 design, replace the 1GB of DDR3 with 4GB of DDR4, attach some video decoding blocks and whatever else is needed to run 4K menus?

GDDR6 or HBM3 will be relatively expensive and reserving 2 or 3 GB of it in case someone wants to watch an episode of Rick and Morty seems like pissing away money.
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No, in standby (without downloading stuff but internet connected), Pro and PS4/Slim have always used less power than XBX ( respectively XB1/slim).

For instance numbers from @Rikimaru for his Pro (similar to what others found):

Standby 1.1W
Rest mode (internet disabled, usb power disabled) only 2.6W
Rest mode (internet enabled, remote control enabled, usb power disabled) 2.7W
Rest mode (internet enabled, remote control enabled, usb power enabled – nothing connected) 8.5W

For Xbox X we have different numbers oddly, but all are higher than Pro (same for XB1, XB1s vs PS4 1000/1200/Slim). From 10W to 39W without downloading stuff depending of the outlets to be compared to 2.7W of the Pro with USB power disabled.

It's clearly the ARM alone + DDR3 doing the rest mode with internet enabled on PS4.
 
I stand corrected. No idea where I got that impression.

After thinking on the matter and reading predictions elsewhere, I'm going to revise my own. I still think Sony will launch first, and I'm still fond of a two tier launch in 2019.

A quick reference for resolution:
1440p = 2560 x 1440 = 3,686,400
1800p = 3200 x 1800 = 5,760,000
4K = 3840 x 2160 = 8,294,400

From skimming through some Digital Foundry analyses, it seems that, whilst the X1X is capable of running an XBoxOne game in native 4K with some further enhancements, a decent number of developers have opted for 1800p as a sweet spot.

So 1800p is the resolution to beat or at least match for the base PS5.

Much as the PS4Pro mandates a minimum framebuffer of 1080p, 1800p would be a decent minimum for the base PS5, with full 4K for the PS5Pro: twice the power to be spent on 1.44 times the pixels.

Base PS5:
~10TFLOP GPU - Navi
4 core, 8 thread CPU - Zen
24GB HBM3
Tiny SSD or NVME of ~50GB
500GB HDD
UHD BR ODD

PS5Pro:
~20TFLOP GPU - Navi
8 core, 16 thread CPU - Zen
48GB HBM3
Tiny SSD or NVME of 100GB
1TB HDD
UHD BR ODD
2 x HDMI outputs

The PS5Pro takes the PS4Pro's butterfly design to the next level, and contains, in effect, two base PS5's, each fed by its own ~50GB NVME.

They can function as a single unit if you want the best possible graphics/performance for a single game, or can function independently if two people want to play different games, a one console LAN party, or hook up two VR headsets.

They will be backwards compatible and run any patched PS4 game (or "PS5 Enhanced" PS4 game) at twice the framerate and 1800p/4K. Particularly lovely for any VR games.

Utilising data generated by millions of PS5 owners, they'll define the bear minimum hardware for running unpatched, base PS4 games on Zen + Navi + HBM3. At that point, they release a PS tablet on a mature 7nm+.
 
Maybe PS5 will be the native 4k HDR machine from the get go, so PS5 PRO will be the 60fps one.
Then those titles that already were at 60fps can go 120 fps or whatever.
In that case, there will have to be a more significant boost to cpu speed too.
 
I don't anticipate that there will be a Pro version of next consoles and even less likely any console maker will release a pro version at the same time as a normal. There's a point in which it becomes choice overload. PS5 no Pro 10 TF machine should be able to handle 4K fine in most cases. These mid gen consoles came out because we were in a transition from 1080p to 4K as the PS4/XBO was released and the companies wanted to sell a machine to those who were buying 4K TVs. 8K mainstream is a long way out.

I'm also not optimistic about anything north of 16GB RAM in the next 3 years. Not only is it expensive and big, I think RAM/HDD throughput speed is the bigger bottleneck at this point. We are a long ways away from trying to fit Skyrim in 256 MB.
 
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dten said:
I don't anticipate that there will be a Pro version of next consoles and even less likely any console maker will release a pro version at the same time as a normal. There's a point in which it becomes choice overload. PS5 no Pro 10 TF machine should be able to handle 4K fine in most cases. These mid gen consoles came out because we were in a transition from 1080p to 4K as the PS4/XBO was released and the companies wanted to sell a machine to those who were buying 4K TVs. 8K mainstream is a long way out.

I'm also not optimistic about anything north of 16GB RAM in the next 3 years. Not only is it expensive and big, I think RAM/HDD throughput speed is the bigger bottleneck at this point. We are a long ways away from trying to fit Skyrim in 256 MB.
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I agree with the bolded strongly.
 
I think there will be pro consoles, strictly for money. They can sell it as a premium experience for a higher margin. It doesn't have to sell in huge volume. It just taps max dollars out of the people that are willing to pay.
 
Scott_Arm said:
I think there will be pro consoles, strictly for money. They can sell it as a premium experience for a higher margin. It doesn't have to sell in huge volume. It just taps max dollars out of the people that are willing to pay.
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At launch though, they will be supply-constrained.

So do you manufacture a lot of the higher-performing components, which may have lower yields, in the hope of getting a lot of people to buy the more expensive SKU?

Or do you try to scale to whatever volume you think will meet demand and try to minimize costs and maximize volume?

From that standpoint, the pro consoles may come a couple of years after the launch of the base consoles.
 
milk said:
Maybe PS5 will be the native 4k HDR machine from the get go, so PS5 PRO will be the 60fps one.
Then those titles that already were at 60fps can go 120 fps or whatever.
In that case, there will have to be a more significant boost to cpu speed too.
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Adding support for 60fps after the fact is generally much harder than simply increasing resolution. Devs are already having problems adding meaningful Pro support for only a comparatively small number of customers, because this takes away resources from their other work. They won't start investing even more resources now. My guesses:

- If there will be a push for 60fps in nextgen, it will be at the beginning of the generation, on base PS5 consoles. It makes more sense to invest resources to 60fps when all PS5 owners can profit from it. Also, this would considerably help with VR, because it's easier to add VR support if your games already run at 60fps (see Resident Evil 7). Which imo is also the only way to increase VR adaption in a meaningful way going forward.

- I think it makes some sense to completely eliminate Pro patches. In an ideal world, games use automatic scaling for things like resolution to automatically adapt to the hardware they are running on. So that, for example, any launch PS5 game already has built-in support for a future PS5 Pro. This could even be useful if there will be a PS6 at some point.

And, to expand on this idea: If Sony choses to release PS5 with backwards compatibility, we could already see this for select PS4 games. I wouldn't be surprised if something like "The Last of Us Part II" had automatic resolution scaling and an unlockable frame-rate, allowing us to run the game at 4K/60fps on PS5. Of course this still needs some work. Not every game will automatically reach 60fps on future hardware when unlocked, and while automatic resolution scaling is probably relatively easy, it will be interesting if there are other areas regarding graphics where they can use automatic scaling without too much problems.

They might also use these techniques for all cross-gen titles. I expect that PS4 and PS5 architectures will be quite similar, so this should greatly reduce the effort needed for cross-gen games. Game released during the transition period could carry a "PS4/PS5" logo or something like that. This would probably also encourage more people to invest in the Playstation ecosystem.

When you have cross-gen games running rather effortlessly at 900/1080p@30fps on PS4, and 4K CB@60fps on PS5, all with the same disc/download, this of course opens up even more opportunities. Because why stop here? This basically is some kind of forwards compatibility. They could just keep this model going forward. Of course there still need to be more upgrades for PS5 titles, besides resolution and frame rate, for example better textures and better lighting.

But I think modern games offer plenty of scalability. We even have games like Wolfenstein II running on Nintendo Switch, and this is on very different hardware. I think the transition between PS4 to PS5 could look very different from what we had with PS3 to PS4, thanks to similarities in architecture.

In the end, I think the important thing is, does this make sense from a business point of view, because I don't think there are too many technical obstacles.
 
Clearly 30fps is good enough for a huge percentage of games and gamers. I suppose a split where 30fps is mandatory on the base system and 60fps is mandatory on the “Pro” system could work but that would probably have to be carefully architected prior to launch or severely over engineered after the fact.

Assuming sales are as good as reported I still see room for a “Pro” revision even if it’s not this regimented.
 
Game companies could always charge more for a "Pro" version of the game. The pro version runs on the pro console and costs more but looks better and runs better. Then they don't need to actually make the base version look or run all that well and they can spend their dev time on the pro version.
 
Esrever said:
Game companies could always charge more for a "Pro" version of the game. The pro version runs on the pro console and costs more but looks better and runs better. Then they don't need to actually make the base version look or run all that well and they can spend their dev time on the pro version.
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I’d be interested to see what this would look like if we explored this option out in discussion, but pretty sure this wouldn’t work out.
 
Esrever said:
Game companies could always charge more for a "Pro" version of the game. The pro version runs on the pro console and costs more but looks better and runs better. Then they don't need to actually make the base version look or run all that well and they can spend their dev time on the pro version.
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PC gaming rejected that a long time ago.

¯\_(ツ)_/¯

:mrgreen:
 
All I know is, if I'm still gaming when the next consoles come out, there's a very good chance I switch back to pc if 30Hz is still a standard for most games. PC world is moving on to 120Hz to 240Hz. 60Hz should be the bare minimum.
 
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