Predict: The Next Generation Console Tech

[McHuj]

I haven't been following this thread too closely--If Sea Islands is used, are we looking at a low-end or mid-range GPU from the R8XXX family?

My guess is low end like a 87xx GPU, which should be in the performance region of a 78xx Pictrain GPU, but with much better power numbers, probably similar to a 77xx series (~75W for entire GPU card).

I can easily see a 75W GPU + 35 W CPU + 40 W for everything else.

 

[Megadrive1988]

Interesting.

Thanks guys.

 

[bkilian]

If MS delivers an Xbox 3 with a GPU with a GPU over 2TFLOPs of programmable shader powerformance I will personally drive south to bkillian's house and give him one of my world famous orange vanilla cheesecakes and offer to grill him Alaskan Salmon. (If it has a 3TFLOPs GPU I will put the console in a box, bake the cheesecake, and take it out of the box and throw the Salmon on the console lid and grill it in the living room George Forman style!)

Ps- Poor AlStrong only got a cheapo throw togetther Cheese Stick. 'em the brakes!

Why me? I'm just an audio guy. I don't get much input into future products

 

[Shifty Geezer]

for example I could see something with less flops and more rops delivering a better 1080 experience. It'll be interesting to see where the sweet spot is.

Whichever of nVidia and AMD first unify the functions into universal frolops is going to have a signficant hardware advantage, but I doubt that'll be ready for any console.

 

[Ruskie]

Interesting fact.

When PS3 released in 2006, 7800GTX with 256MB cost whopping 300$+ and Radeon x1950xt in August 2006 for 399$ and 499$. One year after 360 was released with comparable GPU.

 

[Blazkowicz]

Intel did away with ROPs with the Larrabee and the end result was a disastrous GPU. Even software AA resolve on the radeon 2900 and 3800s was bad (dunno if it is a real decision or a hardware bug and it's weird it was fixed in the radeon 4850/4870 and not the 3870)

 

[Brimstone]

The same Epic who is more interested in iOS games than console games at this point (beside supporting their engine middleware). And the same Crytek who announced they were getting out of making console games altogether after Crysis 3 and Ryse?

Sony and MS won't kill their console businesses under mounds and mounds of losses just to appease a pair of devs who's interest in console gaming on the whole has been shown to wane this gen.

Xbox 720 is more than one platform. LIVE is very successful network platform and Microsoft is going to be on the offensive with it. Taking the performance crown will help continue to grow the LIVE user base.

 

[Ruskie]

I guess MS has most room to play with prices. They have LIVE that brings solid revenue, they have subscription model with 360 and I guess they will have for Durango, and they have most money to spend and biggest appetites for entertainment hub.

While they were careful with price last gen, they surely didn't cheap out on GPU, actually, they wanted even more ALUs on Xenos.

That guy that wrote 8xxx article. Seems like he at least "knows his stuff".

Here are interesting bits from his other article.

Two things happened at the same time - Sony wasn't satisfied with the attitude shown by Nvidia's key employees. According to sources very close to heart of the matter, "working with NVIDIA is the same as going to the expensive dentist. You know it will get the job done and that your end result will be great, but that does not feel you will feel great. In fact, you will feel like sh**."

Be that as it may Bob led the team to negotiate Sony PlayStation 4 and ultimately, ended with an impressive deal. Out of three next-generation consoles, three of them will have AMD GPU, and at least one will have an APU as well.

Thats the feeling I got from Nvidia console business as well.

http://vr-zone.com/articles/nvidia-...brought-all-next-gen-console-deals/16789.html

 

[Kb-Smoker]

/\/\ Nice find! I call the apu plus gpu!

It just makes perfect sense, use the apu for dashboard, movies, streaming and gpu only run when you are gaming. When i was reading up on HSA i just thouht that would be the perfect solution for consoles.

 

[Ruskie]

It does make a perfect sense, if you have discrete that isn't 100W. I guess they could have APU plus something like Cape Verde, but not Pitcairn. That would work more with what is rumored from MS than Sony though...

 

[Kb-Smoker]

PS3 had a 90w tdp gpu and 90w tdp cpu.

You could go with a 130w tdp gpu and 45-65 watt APU.

 

[Megadrive1988]

These are exciting times. I always enjoy following the development of new consoles--As do a lot of people, thus the size of this thread

 

[DieH@rd]

PS3 had a 90w tdp gpu and 90w tdp cpu.

You could go with a 130w tdp gpu and 45-65 watt APU.

That would really be best case scenario. ~150-170W for cpu & gpu combo, ~40W for the rest of the system. (Is 40W realistic for motherboard, 2.5" HDD, 4-8gb of DDR4 and 4x Bluray drive?)

I fear for the console that will only use one bigass APU (Charlie mentioned disastrously low yields for MS's mystical Oban). Discrete gpu can offer so much more, especially cooling and yield wize.

 

[msia2k75]

What would be the point of having an APU and a discrete GPU?
Just put one big a** APU with most of it dedicated to the GPU part and some small but efficient CPU cores.

 

[Ruskie]

Didn't that Sweetart guy say that PS4 is APU? Than we got leaked specs sheet which suggested that and BG also confirmed its APU. I mean, that thing would go better with MS philosophy of heavy OS and Kinect, but I would rather CPU+ discrete GPU. 4-6 core Jaguar and big GPU, say ~130W.

What would be the point of having an APU and a discrete GPU?
Just put one big a** APU with most of it dedicated to the GPU part and some small but efficient CPU cores.

Because you could turn discrete GPU totally off and you would have very lite APU managing OS.

 

[Kb-Smoker]

That would really be best case scenario. ~150-170W for cpu & gpu combo, ~40W for the rest of the system. (Is 40W realistic for motherboard, 2.5" HDD, 4-8gb of DDR4 and 4x Bluray drive?)

I fear for the console that will only use one bigass APU (Charlie mentioned disastrously low yields for MS's mystical Oban). Discrete card can offer so much more, especially cooling and yield wize.

15-20 w for the rest since half the ram is included in the gpu power number.

 

[DieH@rd]

What would be the point of having an APU and a discrete GPU?
Just put one big a** APU with most of it dedicated to the GPU part and some small but efficient CPU cores.

Point is that you cant make 180W APU (or even 150W one) and expect it to run cool.

AMD and Intel never made 130W+ power CPUs, and GPUs that are 180W+ require serious cooling.

 

[kots]

Seems that we 're getting closer to the Samaritan demo requirements...

 

[Proelite]

Point is that you cant make 180W APU (or even 150W one) and expect it to run cool.

AMD and Intel never made 130W+ power CPUs, and GPUs that are 180W+ require serious cooling.

Why would a big APU with mostly GPU elements be that much hotter than a similarly sized and watted GPU?

Why would a 150 watt APU (>80% GPU) be any hotter than a 150 watt GPU?

 

[LXFBN]

Is the consensus here still that MS will have Kinect as a pack in for Durango?

If true they would be missing out on a lot of the hardware profits they've been getting this gen from Kinect. Also contrary to what many here think I don't really think MS ever cared for Kinect to be taken seriously as a platform for core games, I've really only ever thought that they wanted Kinect to be a quick cash in on casuals. I think they'll stick with that strategy next-gen.