Predict: The Next Generation Console Tech

[almighty]

Shader power, fill rate....none of that will be the deciding factor any more.

The best console next generation will be the one that offers the highest tessellation performance, as a PC gamer I can't wait for the new consoles to release so we can finally see geometry pushed to the extremes.

If one of the next gens is noticeable weaker at tessellation then the other I expect that to be more obvious to the average person then a few missing shaders here and there that the current machines show.

 

[Megadrive1988]

Question:

Is it expected that the Xbox Next GPU will go beyond DX11.1/SM5.1, in the same way that Xenos went beyond DX9c/SM3.0 ?

 

[XpiderMX]

Question:

Is it expected that the Xbox Next GPU will go beyond DX11.1/SM5.1, in the same way that Xenos went beyond DX9c/SM3.0 ?

Any rumour about DX12/OGL5?

 

[Megadrive1988]

Didn't the leaked PS4 target specs mention DX "11.5"?

That's gotta be a fake, but, who knows?

 

[user542745831]

Any chance Ms is using Haswell on Durango?

Any chance it would be using Windows then ?

 

[kagemaru]

Any rumour about DX12/OGL5?

Judging by older comments from engineers like Corrine Yu and Tim Sweeney, it seems like some people believe the future is going back to the software rasterizer, but who knows if that's the direction they want to take with DX12.

Didn't the leaked PS4 target specs mention DX "11.5"?

That could mean anything really.

 

[tunafish]

Any chance Ms is using Haswell on Durango?

Almost none. Intel makes great CPUs, but it is a genuinely shitty company to partner with. The second the deal is done Intel would do everything in it's power to bleed MS for every cent of profit they possibly can. And MS knows this is what would happen, because it has happened to them twice before. (On the desktop, and on the original XBox.)

The same is sort of true for nVidia -- they make truly great products, yet everyone who has done any kind of long-term partnership with them hates their guts. In contrast, AMD has a reputation as a company you can actually deal with. Perhaps that's why Intel and nVidia consistently make great profits, and AMD gets the scraps.

It seems Intel made a pretty huge deal about Haswell's improved architecture and how it would enable voice and face recognition aswell depth tracking using hardware acceleration and thus low cpu usage and power consumption... Seemed perfect for Kinect, specially if it means they can improve the precision of the camera and still doesn't take much performance from the games...

This is mostly hype. There's no reason why Haswell is especially suited to these tasks -- it's just that most people are not using the CPU power they have, and Intel needs to spin tales of what it could be used for. Kinect 2 won't need Haswell to work well.

Is it expected that the Xbox Next GPU will go beyond DX11.1/SM5.1, in the same way that Xenos went beyond DX9c/SM3.0 ?

Almost certainly. AMD and nVidia both probably have all kinds of ideas about the future of GPUs, and there's no reason AMD wouldn't stuff theirs into the console GPU they build. So I'd take it almost as a given that a GPU they build specifically for console use has some features beyond DX11.1. Are those features any good, and will anyone ever use them? That's a whole another issue.

 

[XpiderMX]

Judging by older comments from engineers like Corrine Yu and Tim Sweeney, it seems like some people believe the future is going back to the software rasterizer, but who knows if that's the direction they want to take with DX12.

More C++ AMP emphasis?

 

[Megadrive1988]

Almost certainly. AMD and nVidia both probably have all kinds of ideas about the future of GPUs, and there's no reason AMD wouldn't stuff theirs into the console GPU they build. So I'd take it almost as a given that a GPU they build specifically for console use has some features beyond DX11.1. Are those features any good, and will anyone ever use them? That's a whole another issue.

Thanks. This is what I've been expecting myself but I wanted to hear (or read) it from someone else.

 

[LightHeaven]

Any chance it would be using Windows then ?

I'm kinda hoping to see at least a fully compatible metro interface in it... Like, being able to run all W8 metro apps

 

[3dilettante]

Almost none. Intel makes great CPUs, but it is a genuinely shitty company to partner with. The second the deal is done Intel would do everything in it's power to bleed MS for every cent of profit they possibly can. And MS knows this is what would happen, because it has happened to them twice before. (On the desktop, and on the original XBox.)

The same is sort of true for nVidia -- they make truly great products, yet everyone who has done any kind of long-term partnership with them hates their guts. In contrast, AMD has a reputation as a company you can actually deal with. Perhaps that's why Intel and nVidia consistently make great profits, and AMD gets the scraps.

Perhaps the cart is before the horse in this description. Intel and Nvidia are in a position of strength so they great profits, while AMD can only compete for the scraps.
It might be a matter of wildly different corporate culture, but there's a lot less pressure to be nice if the partner can take or leave your business, and would charge you enough to make up for their foregoing better opportunities.

If a company doesn't have much better business, it has more reason to be amenable.
IBM's providing designs for the current gen in part came from the fact that the software and service company needed to justify the existence of its microelectronics division.
AMD does provide a nice combination of graphics and CPU IP and decent system interfaces, and going fabless has relaxed capacity worries.
And AMD really needs money, and really needs to please.

 

[LightHeaven]

This is mostly hype. There's no reason why Haswell is especially suited to these tasks -- it's just that most people are not using the CPU power they have, and Intel needs to spin tales of what it could be used for. Kinect 2 won't need Haswell to work well.

I thought they had dedicated silicon for video decoding/encoding as well some sort of programmable bits they could use to do those type of tasks...

They are promising some astonishingly low TDPs for haswell, it does seems a perfectly candidate for a console cpu...

 

[Shifty Geezer]

Future of Kinect discussion moved here.

 

[Rangers]

Spotted this on GAF. As good a proof as any Nvidia wont be in any next gen consoles LOL. Which (most of us) already assumed.

 

[DieH@rd]

They can return to console business only if they themselves produce one.

 

[liolio]

They can return to console business only if they themselves produce one.

I would honestly like to this to happen, AMD could too but that the ugly truth is that subsidizing is not "good" for consumers, it prevents some companies (and the most likely to have the best designed systems) to enter the market.
Ultimately you face a financial fight to gain a monopoly as most of the law in this world don't prevent the raise of monopoly, they just deal with it once it there (and less and less seriously).

 

[Cyan]

Spotted this on GAF. As good a proof as any Nvidia wont be in any next gen consoles LOL. Which (most of us) already assumed.

Hardly surprising. If what nVIDIA say ever happened I would leave consoles and gaming for good and think nothing of it.

I like brands, variety and physical machines too much, to be interested in just having some kind of machine that does nothing but read data from the Internet.

It's just effin good that AMD is going to be in every console this next generation, although I don't dislike nVIDIA at all, and I hope they create a chip for a next-next generation console.

 

[AlphaWolf]

What exactly do you people think these future streaming devices (that you connect to your TV) will be called?

 

[Brad Grenz]

Rokus?

 

[tongue_of_colicab]

What exactly do you people think these future streaming devices (that you connect to your TV) will be called?

Shit.