Predict: The Next Generation Console Tech

[Rangers]

and what was the heat of the 7800 (castrated i know) in the PS3? or the 90nm cell?
what about Xenon or the 360's cpu?

just remember that thermal envelopes are completely differernt to PC components.

cost is also another factor to ignore completely. what you can get from newegg is far, far different to what sony pays nvidia directly, for a custom chip....what you can build for $1000, sony / MS can build for $400, if that.

your buying 1....they are buying 10,000,000

I doubt the cost differential is anywhere near what you make it out, while it doubtless exists.

The price of barebones newegg OEM stuff is probably not THAT terribly far off from actual item manufacturing cost. It's retail PC components where you may be paying large markups.

And it's in bulk too. While YOU may be buying 1, newegg is buying a million.

I'd say the fact MS and Sony lost so much money on hardware when a breakdown of components wouldn't indicate that is some proof.

IE, if you break a 360 down, it doesnt seem like it would cost terribly most than 199/299. As I often point out, you can get a video card with a lot more silicon and RAM onboard than a 360 for dirt cheap these days.

 

[mech]

People confused about Beyond3D forum members low-balling next-gen tech numbers should know there's a bit of history of this on the boards. When predicting 360/PS3 CPUs, there was a common thread of people picking 1-1.5Ghz numbers, and I was laughed down for picking 3Ghz... That was at the end of 2002...

I expect mandated 1080p and hopefully locked 30/60fps depending on detail... hopefully we can stick to the one standard for a while and not need a refresh for a very long time, because we really are getting to the point of diminishing returns, and we finally seem to have a resolution consumer TVs will stick with for a reasonable amount of time.

 

[Rangers]

I see a definite drawdown in what Sony/MS shoot for next gen though. They simply cannot keep losing these obscene amounts of money any longer and they know that. Sony's losses on PS3 probably exceed 5 billion dollars, and theres no way theyre going to recoup that. MS has of course lost a lot on 360 as well, even if some is due to RROD. There's also the problem of the process shrink gravy train rapidly becoming uncertain next gen. I think it's reasonable for them to shoot at breaking even or close to it right out of the gate on next gen hardware. Which will still allow a good amount of punch and large improvement over this gen.

OTOH, I dont expect Wii style platforms from Sony or MS either. It's really not likely at all imo. I refer to the reported qoute from AMD, "wait till you see the next gen consoles".

Personally whether they go 1080P mandated, or stick with 720P is interesting imo. Simply because a lot of hardware power this last gen compared to the prior was sapped in the res increase in drawing 3X the pixels at 720P. Moving to 1080P would again sap some of the expected visual improvement from the 2011+ gen.

On the one hand, one manufacturer may gain a huge bullet point if they say "we're 1080P only". OTOH, I can see the other undercutting them by pushing out better looking games at 720P forcing the other to react (exactly how MS undercut Sony's 1080P hyperbole this gen).

 

[proffesso]

I doubt the cost differential is anywhere near what you make it out, while it doubtless exists.

The price of barebones newegg OEM stuff is probably not THAT terribly far off from actual item manufacturing cost. It's retail PC components where you may be paying large markups.

And it's in bulk too. While YOU may be buying 1, newegg is buying a million.

I'd say the fact MS and Sony lost so much money on hardware when a breakdown of components wouldn't indicate that is some proof.

IE, if you break a 360 down, it doesnt seem like it would cost terribly most than 199/299. As I often point out, you can get a video card with a lot more silicon and RAM onboard than a 360 for dirt cheap these days.

you missed the point about the newegg thing

newegg is buying complete cards...gpu's attached to ram, attached to ramdac's, dvi connectors, fans, heatsinks etc

sony / ms buy just the gpu(and accompanying chips) aboutthe only thing thats standard gear, is the hdds (even then, MS went thier own custom way)

the reason thermal design isnt as big an issue as pc, is sony/ms custom design a total system, theres no need for large open cases, multiple hdd's etc...they can focus on a layout that wont change. just like a macbook pro...completely designed hardware, where the cooling is part of that design, not just somthing hacked onto the end like desktop pc hardware.

closed system = much better design = much more efficient.

anyway, lets hope this forum is around when the new consoles get released. always fun to look back on predictions.

btw, thread needs some sort of poll, with a handfull of the suggested specs listed here.

 

[Cheezdoodles]

You guys are lowballing your expectations. I dont get it. Your predictions make no sense.

A next gen console from MS or Sony, if they go a similar route of how they did with their previous products, will be much stronger than what most people here are suggesting. 4x AA @ 720p? We can already do this on the PS3\X360 today. The newest nvidia line of GPU's laugh at such resolutions already.

If we say a 2012 launch, they will have a GPU thats an derivative of some 2011\12 scheudled PC GPU class. Todays PC GPU are already tremendously faster than whats sitting in the consoles, even a 2 year old 8800GTX is several times faster at everything than whats sitting in a X360 \PS3 today.

A 2011 GPU from nvidia, even the budget cards, will be much much much much more powerful than Xenos\RSX.

 

[Crossbar]

If we say a 2012 launch, they will have a GPU thats an derivative of some 2011\12 scheudled PC GPU class. Todays PC GPU are already tremendously faster than whats sitting in the consoles, even a 2 year old 8800GTX is several times faster at everything than whats sitting in a X360 \PS3 today.

A 2011 GPU from nvidia, even the budget cards, will be much much much much more powerful than Xenos\RSX.

I would be surprised if the XB720 and PS4 don´t contain unified CPU/GPU solutions, because that is the direction where the development is going.

 

[TheChefO]

I would be surprised if the XB720 and PS4 don´t contain unified CPU/GPU solutions, because that is the direction where the development is going.

Depends on the timeframe.

I don't think either will go the unified route without knowing where the other stands. Unified may be a performance limiter against a dedicated competitor in the short term.

 

[Shifty Geezer]

I would be surprised if the XB720 and PS4 don´t contain unified CPU/GPU solutions, because that is the direction where the development is going.

Doesn't that kinda depend on how well that works though? At the moment it's theoretical and the real-world gains may not favour it, versus a discrete CPU and a GPU/vector processing heavy-math unit.

 

[TheChefO]

You guys are lowballing your expectations. I dont get it. Your predictions make no sense.

A next gen console from MS or Sony, if they go a similar route of how they did with their previous products, will be much stronger than what most people here are suggesting. 4x AA @ 720p? We can already do this on the PS3\X360 today. The newest nvidia line of GPU's laugh at such resolutions already.

If we say a 2012 launch, they will have a GPU thats an derivative of some 2011\12 scheudled PC GPU class. Todays PC GPU are already tremendously faster than whats sitting in the consoles, even a 2 year old 8800GTX is several times faster at everything than whats sitting in a X360 \PS3 today.

A 2011 GPU from nvidia, even the budget cards, will be much much much much more powerful than Xenos\RSX.

My point in originally bringing this up is that slight improvements like these will not be enough to differentiate for gamers to spend $300+ on a new console.

I think the current high quality graphics and increasing need for further graphic advancements to show a difference in next gen and last gen will result in a longer cycle.

The counter balance to this though is fear of being the last console out of the gate.

I think this puts the cycle from a 5 year to a 7 year.

2012.

 

[TheChefO]

Doesn't that kinda depend on how well that works though? At the moment it's theoretical and the real-world gains may not favour it, versus a discrete CPU and a GPU/vector processing heavy-math unit.

exactly.

 

[Crossbar]

Doesn't that kinda depend on how well that works though? At the moment it's theoretical and the real-world gains may not favour it, versus a discrete CPU and a GPU/vector processing heavy-math unit.

Sure, but do you see any specific reasons to why it wouldn´t work? The situation is kind of similar to when unified shaders were proposed. Once it became reality every agreed that it was the best way to achieve efficient resource utilisation.

Considering how much post-processing that is already done on Cell in the PS3 and comments like this by Tim Sweeney:

Jon Stokes (from Ars): I'd like to chat a little bit about Larrabee and software rendering. I'm sure you're NDA'd on it, but Intel just did a pretty substantial reveal so we can talk in more detail about it. So first off, I'm wondering if you're looking at any of the Larrabee native stuff. What do you think about the prospects of this whole idea of not doing Direct3D or OpenGL, but writing directly to Larrabee's micro-OS?

Tim Sweeney: I expect that in the next generation we'll write 100 percent of our rendering code in a real programming language--not DirectX, not OpenGL, but a language like C++ or CUDA. A real programming language unconstrained by weird API restrictions. Whether that runs on NVIDIA hardware, Intel hardware, or ATI hardware is really an independent question. You could potentially run it on any hardware that's capable of running general-purpose code efficiently.

I think the writing is on the wall.

 

[Tahir2]

4x AA @ 720p? etc etc

Try telling that to a game like Crysis!

Hopefully it will be about pixel quality and further realism - even Crysis can be improved upon. So yea 4x AA + 16X AF @ 720p/60 with graphics that exceed what you see in Crysis et al.. would be quite nice!

 

[Shifty Geezer]

Considering how much post-processing that is already done on Cell in the PS3 and comments like this by Tim Sweeney:

CUDA runs on a GPU. They'll be able to code C++ and CUDA on a CPU+GPU combo. I can imagine the GPU as we know it dying away to be replaced with a massive, fully-programmable engine, but that doesn't mean it's a CPU and GPU combined. We could have a 'Cell' and a 'Visualizer' in PS4 for example. The main point here is GPUs can still be vastly more efficient than CPUs by working in limits, such as processing data in quads. Flexibility vs. performance are the commodities being balanced by a processor design. Perhaps the added flexibility will lead to optimisations that the GPUs can't make and gain an advantage?

 

[RobertR1]

Try telling that to a game like Crysis!

Hopefully it will be about pixel quality and further realism - even Crysis can be improved upon. So yea 4x AA + 16X AF @ 720p/60 with graphics that exceed what you see in Crysis et al.. would be quite nice!

Exactly this. Give me amazing lighting, large scale highly detailed enviornments, animation, AI, textures, effects at 60fps 4xAA 16xAF. If you can manage that at 1080p, cool! if not, I'm fine with 720p as the aforementioned things are NOT compromised for the sake of resolution.

 

[Crossbar]

CUDA runs on a GPU. They'll be able to code C++ and CUDA on a CPU+GPU combo. I can imagine the GPU as we know it dying away to be replaced with a massive, fully-programmable engine, but that doesn't mean it's a CPU and GPU combined. We could have a 'Cell' and a 'Visualizer' in PS4 for example. The main point here is GPUs can still be vastly more efficient than CPUs by working in limits, such as processing data in quads. Flexibility vs. performance are the commodities being balanced by a processor design. Perhaps the added flexibility will lead to optimisations that the GPUs can't make and gain an advantage?

I agree with the bold part (and the rest as well as there are room for variations). Today we have physics middleware that runs on GPUs and we can run CUDA that can be used to that as well and much more. Why keep calling it GPU and what kind of work is left after you´ve bunched all that work together on one processing unit? In terms of massive calculations not much at all I would say. A lot of AI work can be vectorised as well. You could go Larrabee or sneak in one or two bog-standard CPU-cores in a corner of the die somewhere to take care of the old school programs.

Another reason to just have just one type of processing unit is that it keeps development and manufacturing costs down.

I also think that the added flexibility is something that a console will take full advantage on.

-edit: Another point is that the benefits of the quads are slowly fading the more details and polygons that you are rendering. When the polygons go subpixel the quads are no longer as effecient. Not saying that upcoming PUs couldn´t use quads as well to target certain tasks.

 

[Silent_Buddha]

Why keep calling it GPU and what kind of work is left after you´ve bunched all that work together on one processing unit? In terms of massive calculations not much at all I would say. A lot of AI work can be vectorised as well. You could go Larrabee or sneak in one or two bog-standard CPU-cores in a corner of the die somewhere to take care of the old school programs.

GPU works as an acronym for General Purpose Unit just as well as Graphics Processing Unit.

Regards,
SB

 

[Crossbar]

GPU works as an acronym for General Purpose Unit just as well as Graphics Processing Unit.

Regards,
SB

True! :smile:

Though I would prefer GPCPU to avoid mix-ups, but it´s probably to long. What is Intel calling the Larrabee?

 

[Shifty Geezer]

IMO VPU (vector processing unit) makes sense. Or a Heavy Maths Unit, but that loses the ...PU that electronic people seem so enamoured with.

 

[obonicus]

http://www.1up.com/do/newsStory?cId=3174762

Via GAF via 1up. So, uh.

Rumor: Xbox Natal is Actually Microsoft's Next Console

So you know how Microsoft is saying Natal will be as big as console launch? Well...yeah.
By Sam Kennedy, 06/12/2009

Earlier this week gaming blog Kotaku quoted Microsoft's Shane Kim as saying that the launch of Natal, Microsoft's new controller-free motion control technology, would be as big as the launch of a console. Not surprising. That's because Natal is going to be a new console.

On this week's Listen Up podcast we discussed Natal, and David Ellis and I talked about what we've been hearing regarding the new technology -- and how it's actually the cornerstone of Microsoft's next evolution of the Xbox. Microsoft will not only release Natal as an add-on for the Xbox 360, it will come standard with the next Xbox console.

Yes, there will be a new Xbox console next fall.

However, the new console won't just be an Xbox 360 with a camera, though -- we've heard it will be considered a new platform and carry a new name (Xbox Natal?). It's not clear what sort of upgrades we might see, but some have suggested it will be an slight upgrade of the current Xbox 360 technology. Current Xbox 360 games would be playable on it, but future games would be able to take advantage of the added muscle. Similar to what we see in the PC space, games played on the more advanced Xbox would look or perform better, but publishers will still be able to support owners of both systems. Some developers have complained that they've already maxed out the Xbox 360; perhaps this will give them room to expand.

Make no mistake, we wouldn't be talking about the sort of hardware leap we've seen with Xbox (or most other) platforms in the past, and we're not talking about Microsoft ending one console cycle and starting another. We're talking about an evolution of the Xbox 360; similar hardware but upgraded, repackaged, and rebranded. It's actually not that unlike what Nintendo did with the Wii, where it essentially took the GameCube hardware, stuck in motion controls, and successfully relaunched it. The new Xbox console is said to be aimed directly at a mainstream audience -- and will launch before Nintendo is able to release its Wii HD.

What's interesting is that Nintendo and Microsoft are on a course to deliver very similar products yet are coming at them from opposite directions. Microsoft currently has the HD hardware and will in the future introduce motion controls, while Nintendo has motion controls and will in the future introduce HD hardware. Sony's PS3 will also be providing motion controls next year, though as a peripheral for its EyeToy camera.
As John Davison pointed out on the podcast, the Wii was the first console to do this, but it's likely that all future hardware will be more iterative than substantive. The distinction between new consoles will become far less marked -- similar to what we've seen in the handheld space, such as with the transitions from the Game Boy to the Game Boy Advance, the DS to the DSi, or the PSP to the PSP Go.

So when would we first hear about this new Xbox console? Our sources point to next year's Game Developer's Conference as the target for its unveiling and Fall 2010 as the target for release.

So, uh, yeah. It is from the nitwits at 1up, so, yeah, but GDC 2010 announcement is pretty close.

 

[RudeCurve]

Personally I would love to get an overclocked X360 Slim with more RAM that's 100% BC. Nintendo's Wii is a pefect example of what MS's next console could follow.