Predict: The Next Generation Console Tech
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I doubt we'll get single thread performance of a modern i5/i7, but how much of a boost over the current 360 would an 8 core/4 module CPU @ 2GHz with an IPC performance in the ballpark Phenom II provide? Add to that a modern AVX unit, something along the lines of a 256-bit register size for 8 single precision ops/cycle.
If all the talk of the xenon having horrendous IPC performance is true, I would think any modern CPU would trounce it.
I also don't think either of Sony or MS are going to just plop down off the shelf designs. They'll add their own secret sauce whether it's edram, some other high speed ram, a specialized vector unit, or whatever. I think we'll see something very innovate.
itsmydamnation
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what you have just described is an 8 core piledriver based SOC. at 2 ghz you would likely be looking at something like 25-30watts without GPU ( 25watt trinity minimum clock with 4 cores is 2.2 when the 384 ALU gpu is running at 300-500 mhz.)
hopefully AMD will improve steamrollers performance per clock atleast by the range of trinity over bulldozer. This is what i think it will be like as well, maybe 2 full rate AVX2 ALU's instead of 2 1/2 rate (128bit) AVX ALU's.
bobcat and jaguar are small and power effecient because they dont have massively wide vector units and the associated data paths and the throughput rates to feed them.
Microsoft has the money to make Live a free service, but they don't. They have the money to do a lot of things, but that doesn't mean they will. If they think they can sew up the hardcore with Live + Gears and Halo, and the casuals with Kinect and media apps all without bleeding money on a high power GPU, why wouldn't they?
Maybe because Sony are extremely weak right now and giving them a good kicking in the console space over the next few years could finish them or at least effectively kill off any chances of a PS5.
The chance to finish off a long term competitor would be very tempting for an aggressive company like MS.
The chance to finish off a long term competitor would be very tempting for an aggressive company like MS.
french toast
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Well I was referring to 2013 when I said 8 year old consoles, I really do think that a company such as a Microsoft or Sony or apple or who ever...could design a ps vita type device with off the shelf components next year that would walk over a ps360 with about 3-4 hours battery life, I really do.
Mobile phone games now are starting to succeed the original xbox in graphics at much higher resolution output, we are at the end of this current mobile technology cycle...some of the claims made by mobile companies such as rogue, Wayne, adreno 3xx/4xx or whatever are impressive.
Of course we don't know as they are not here, and there is a slim chance that anyone will be making such an expensive handheld console in anycase in the current climate..
tongue_of_colicab
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But the console business is one of the few parts that is actually earning sony money. Besides they have a strong position on the market as well so unless MS wants to bleed billions to create a console noticibly faster than the ps4 in the hope that it might kill Sony doesn't really sound like a good business plan if you ask me. The finally got the xbox brand going, making money on it and they managed to get people to pay for a live subscription so why lose billions hoping to make it back later?
So you're saying every PC GPU could be using 1/10th the power, but AMD and nVidia just don't care to design their processors that way?
The rumor I read was a link posted on GAF saying people at Sony Corporate like Kaz Hirai wanted to stay at 2GB for profitability reasons but Sony 1st parties are quite unhappy with 2GB and have aggressively lobbied for more ram. And that supposedly the 4GB side is winning the argument. Is that true ? Who knows.
@tongue_of_colicab
I think you took my commnets a little out of context. I do not mean that MS would do what Sony did last time, release a very expensive box at a huge loss per unit. However I believe they will not have to go quite as cheap as Sony.
However constant talk off very weak GPUs etc must be taken with a pinch of salt.
I fully appriciate that PC graphics cards have got to the stage that there TDP are completely unsuitable for a console and as such we wont be getting 250 watts GPUs.
However if people ethink MS and Sony are seriously thinking of putting something woefully underpowerered into a box that
a) has to last for at least five years
b) has to try and compete with the constant upgrade cycle of smart phones and tablets
I think you will surprised.
I think you have to consider PC gaming to days as having got a bit out of hand for very little gain. Who really thinks that having a kilowatt power supply, dual 200 watt gpus plus the rest of the system isnt a bit silly.
Gaming PCs in the last 5 years have basicly turned into something similar to drag racing, huge amounts of power to go in a straight line next gen consoles will have to be more like rally or touring cars.
The one thing that allows consoles to differentiate themselves from mobile devices is the fact they are plugged into the wall and so can pull some serious current. That is your unique advantage and that means while you cant use high end PC components due to cost , heat and in many ways their inefficiency it doesnt mean you cant have a much higher end that what we have now in the console space and what mobile devices will be able to do in the next few years.
Realisticlly next gen games may not run over 720p but the onscreen experience i expect to be much much richer. Just looking at things like Starwars 1313 and Watch dogs does give you an idea where we will be starting from in 2013 and god knows what games will look like with a few years of deveoper experience.
I think you took my commnets a little out of context. I do not mean that MS would do what Sony did last time, release a very expensive box at a huge loss per unit. However I believe they will not have to go quite as cheap as Sony.
However constant talk off very weak GPUs etc must be taken with a pinch of salt.
I fully appriciate that PC graphics cards have got to the stage that there TDP are completely unsuitable for a console and as such we wont be getting 250 watts GPUs.
However if people ethink MS and Sony are seriously thinking of putting something woefully underpowerered into a box that
a) has to last for at least five years
b) has to try and compete with the constant upgrade cycle of smart phones and tablets
I think you will surprised.
I think you have to consider PC gaming to days as having got a bit out of hand for very little gain. Who really thinks that having a kilowatt power supply, dual 200 watt gpus plus the rest of the system isnt a bit silly.
Gaming PCs in the last 5 years have basicly turned into something similar to drag racing, huge amounts of power to go in a straight line next gen consoles will have to be more like rally or touring cars.
The one thing that allows consoles to differentiate themselves from mobile devices is the fact they are plugged into the wall and so can pull some serious current. That is your unique advantage and that means while you cant use high end PC components due to cost , heat and in many ways their inefficiency it doesnt mean you cant have a much higher end that what we have now in the console space and what mobile devices will be able to do in the next few years.
Realisticlly next gen games may not run over 720p but the onscreen experience i expect to be much much richer. Just looking at things like Starwars 1313 and Watch dogs does give you an idea where we will be starting from in 2013 and god knows what games will look like with a few years of deveoper experience.
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french toast
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Of course they will run above 720p...
french toast
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No I'm not mentioning current pc gpus, you are.
I'm saying that xenos and rsx are the vehicle equivalent of 1960s automobiles...with up to date additions tacked on...(new lithography, improved heat sinks, fusion etc)....rather than what they are capable of now.
If amd or nvidia designed a gpu for the ps360 for the same tdp it would be around 10x more powerfull/better/whatever than it is now...that is what I'm saying.
By next year I'm saying hypothetically it would be possible to build a ps vita type device that out does a ps360 with several hours battery life.
Having the best/fastest hardware doesn't necessarily mean you'll dominate the future console market, though.
If SONY can pull off a really well-balanced system with lots of exciting launch titles and good multimedia/cloud integration at a good price, I don't see MICROSOFT finishing them off with an expensive living room super computer that can track up to four players' eyelashes while counting your mom's wrinkles and streaming your newest KINECT2 waving experience to your neighbour's smart phone.
I think the PC comparisons are moot given the PC market isn't really anymore defined by the desktop PC, that is a dying breed. The PC market is defined now by laptops and soon tablets and the performance of the Intel and AMD CGPUs. Anyone looking at the PC games market and the growth areas could only conclude that the majority of the PC market is defined not by the performance of the high end and mid range external graphics adapters in the current lineup but by the performance of the lowest common denominator.
What I think you GAF forumers got wrong is the discussion about the Xbox 3 GPU. When you claim its GPU is weaker than PS4 GPU, it´s based on old rumors that claimed the Xbox 3 was gonna get a 6000 series Radeon vs the latest rumors that claim the PS4 one is a 7000 series.
According to lherre, the are some Xbox dev kits that already have a 7000 series Radeon. And the final hardware could end up with a 8000 series Radeon. The russian "insider" seem to suggest the latest dev kits have TWO Radeon 8000. If the 360 dev kits are any indication, as they also had teo GPUs, this could mean the Xbox 3 GPU is omething hybrid more advanced than the GPUs which are currently available.
This is just speculation, but my point is the Xbox 3 is not gonna have a Radeon 6000 by any mean, as there are already dev kits with a more powerful GPU.
Prophecy2k
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So basically you're free dismissing some unsubstantiated rumours and freely believing other unsubstantiated rumours purely because of your own desire and hope that Durango will be more powerful than the PS4?
If anything at least try to conscience the fact that some rumours have been consistent between multiple sources, and whilst they may ALL indeed be total BS, there's still a much more believeable chance that the more consistent rumours seem to hold more weight.
Also, two GPUs is nonesense. They'll either go APU + GPU or CPU plus GPU. There's no business nor performance reason to go CPU plus 2xGPU. Plus, given the many reports of a 8-16 core CPU in Durango, it's more likely to be a CPU plus GPU setup. Unless those 16 cores are tiny ARM cores and inside an APU.
Regardless, I'm more inclined to suspect that MS will have the weaker box. If only slighty weaker. If anything just because of their big Kinect push and the fact that they will be not only packing Kinect into every box but archetecting the HW around Kinect and all their service features. It's clear that gaming is only a part of what MS wants to push with xbox, so sinking billions in a power struggle with Sony over who will have the greatest graphics is not something I see modern day MS doing.
I think fundamentally, regardless of silly arguments like MS has more money than Sony etc etc (it didn't help them with the first xbox did it?), I firmly believe that both platform holders will be looking towards profitability on HW within the first year. So in that sense, and given the very tight pricing margin they both have to work with (as current gen boxes are still over £150), there's physically only a certain amount that BOTH of them can pack in a box they want to sell at a reasonable mass market price. Neither MS nor Sony will be taking losses on HW on the scale of this last gen, if not because of the precedent Nintendo set with the Wii, then because times have changed and they BOTH have the likes of mobile/tablet gaming, Onlive/Gaikai etc to contend with. Meaning the risks are much greater these days.
The nex generation EyeToy will be cost-reduced right from the start so we don´t need to take its cost into account.
http://www.eetimes.com/electronics-news/4375965/Sony-spends-CMOS-sensors
Stacked ICs, nudge, nudge, know what I mean.....
Prophecy2k
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I really don't actually. I believe Sony will put its emphasis on its first party gaming software and improved PSN as it's differentiator. If they do do an updated Move controller they wont pack it in with every box. They might offer a bundled SKU, but they won't put nearly as much emphasis on it as MS will with Kinect.
At best I expect Sony to pack in a microphone, either in the console itself, or tethered to the unit, for voice commands.
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