Predict: The Next Generation Console Tech

[Rangers]

Sounds like more confirmation what we already expect.

It's likely most of the "custom" part of the Xbox GPU just revolves around grafting EDRAM in. I'd still guess that relates to it's DDR/EDRAM setup vs PS4's likely GDDR/no EDRAM setup.

A lot of people seem to want to jump the gun and move PS4 over to DDR so it can have a gaudy bigger total RAM number like Durango, but I smell wishful thinking rather than true well based rumors as it stands. My guess is PS4 is still planned at 2-4GB's of GDDR.

 

[kagemaru]

The time frame guarantees nothing. Given current rumors I wouldn't be shocked if PS4 slips six months and still ends up weaker and undercooked.

It's premature to make any assumptions over which will be more powerful IMO. I think it's highly unlikely the difference will be meaningful.

Also there's no reason to think anything about the ps4 will be undercooked. I just don't see them making the same mistakes gain, especially after how well the Vita turned out as a platform.

 

[Rangers]

It's premature to make any assumptions over which will be more powerful IMO. I think it's highly unlikely the difference will be meaningful.

Also there's no reason to think anything about the ps4 will be undercooked. I just don't see them making the same mistakes gain, especially after how well the Vita turned out as a platform.

There's already some general scuttlebutt that MS is on point and on time with Durango and Sony well, less so with PS4. You can choose to believe or no, I'd be inclined to believe it for now. For all the same reasons I all along suspected Wii U wouldn't be a powerhouse. You get a feel for these things based on company history.

I agree it's premature to say who's more powerful. Just pointing out to that guy six months or even a year doesn't make it so. Or 7 years in the Wii U's case (sorry couldn't help it )

 

[Brad Grenz]

There's also scuttlebutt the Durango hit a huge set back and is well behind the Orbis on production schedule. Everyone is picking which rumors they want to believe, so at this point most predictions reveal more about the predictor than anything else.

 

[bkilian]

There's also scuttlebutt the Durango hit a huge set back and is well behind the Orbis on production schedule. Everyone is picking which rumors they want to believe, so at this point most predictions reveal more about the predictor than anything else.

Really? I wouldn't believe this rumor, unless it happened in the last month. The only reason I would put any credence into the PS4 rumor is from previous experience. The PS3 slipped six months, and then another six months in europe. Even then, I doubt Sony would make the same mistake twice, they're usually pretty competent.

 

[Docwiz]

There's also scuttlebutt the Durango hit a huge set back and is well behind the Orbis on production schedule. Everyone is picking which rumors they want to believe, so at this point most predictions reveal more about the predictor than anything else.

Really? Look, we get that you don't like the info that has been given. However, has it come down to being so bitter about the information and thus the person who brought the information?

This is life, you are not going to get everything you want all of the time, so you have to deal with it.

 

[Brad Grenz]

It's the fab stuff from Semi-Accurate, plus Arthur Gies's rumor that Durango was originally supposed to launch this year, plus those Sweetavar26 rumors that AMD had to fast track a redesign of the Durango silicon while Orbis chips were on track. There are lots of fairly specific rumors about troubled production on the Durango side.

All the incredibly nebulous "scuttlebutt" about Orbis being late and launching in 2014 instead of 2013 basically comes from fans on message boards presuming as much based on a shallow understanding of Sony's financial situation, a misinterpretation of a careful statement Jack Tretton made at E3 in a response to a direct question about WiiU (the famous, "not first, but best" sound bite), and Arthur Gies admitting he hasn't heard anything about Orbis. Trending fanboy sentiment isn't a credible source of information.

I don't know that there's any veracity to any of this stuff, but I know the waters are muddy enough that we can't with any confidence say which will launch first, or which will be more powerful.

 

[Rangers]

It's the fab stuff from Semi-Accurate, plus Arthur Gies's rumor that Durango was originally supposed to launch this year, plus those Sweetavar26 rumors that AMD had to fast track a redesign of the Durango silicon while Orbis chips were on track. There are lots of fairly specific rumors about troubled production on the Durango side.

All the incredibly nebulous "scuttlebutt" about Orbis being late and launching in 2014 instead of 2013 basically comes from fans on message boards presuming as much based on a shallow understanding of Sony's financial situation, a misinterpretation of a careful statement Jack Tretton made at E3 in a response to a direct question about WiiU (the famous, "not first, but best" sound bite), and Arthur Gies admitting he hasn't heard anything about Orbis. Trending fanboy sentiment isn't a credible source of information.

I don't know that there's any veracity to any of this stuff, but I know the waters are muddy enough that we can't with any confidence say which will launch first, or which will be more powerful.

I agree, but we can make educated guesses.

Durango was never meant for 2012, a little common sense should show that. For one thing, this is the first year of declining 360 sales. Hell, I still think 2013 could technically be argued too early strategically, in that you would think at least two years of declining sales from the peak for the predecessor would be wanted before replacing it. Also, the known next gen software development timetable never made 2012 remotely realistic either.

And semi-accurate...if you are not smart enough to see he's smoking something that's your own problem, speaking of parsing rumors intelligently. Now he's just changing rumors around over time so his original ones wont look quite so horrifically bad when every single one of them turns up false, or at least he will have his fake retcon explanation down in print. The stuff he's said never made the least bit of sense. And I think some like his PS4 rumors cause theyre very pie in the sky jeff-rigby like, and some people enjoy that kind of nonsense and or want ps4 super whiz bang most powerful exotic uber computer ever stuff.

 

[bkilian]

It's the fab stuff from Semi-Accurate, plus Arthur Gies's rumor that Durango was originally supposed to launch this year, plus those Sweetavar26 rumors that AMD had to fast track a redesign of the Durango silicon while Orbis chips were on track. There are lots of fairly specific rumors about troubled production on the Durango side.

All the incredibly nebulous "scuttlebutt" about Orbis being late and launching in 2014 instead of 2013 basically comes from fans on message boards presuming as much based on a shallow understanding of Sony's financial situation, a misinterpretation of a careful statement Jack Tretton made at E3 in a response to a direct question about WiiU (the famous, "not first, but best" sound bite), and Arthur Gies admitting he hasn't heard anything about Orbis. Trending fanboy sentiment isn't a credible source of information.

I don't know that there's any veracity to any of this stuff, but I know the waters are muddy enough that we can't with any confidence say which will launch first, or which will be more powerful.

As I've said before, I haven't seen a single thing on semiaccurate about xbox next that is even semi accurate - those fab and yield things he spoke about have zero basis in reality, I mean the guy was claiming 99.9% sure it was powerPC one week, and then next going "oopsie, it's AMD" after all the other AMD rumors got started. I've no idea who Arthur Gies is, but there was never a plan to launch a next gen console this year.

Sweetvar26 would be the only leaker I would put any belief in, since he knew code names no one else knew, and even his info wasn't stellar. I also suspect it got him fired.

 

[Brad Grenz]

Right, all the rumors about problems with Durango might be bullshit. But that doesn't get us any closer to concluding that Durango will launch 6 months earlier than Orbis.

 

[bkilian]

Right, all the rumors about problems with Durango might be bullshit. But that doesn't get us any closer to concluding that Durango will launch 6 months earlier than Orbis.

Absolutely. I don't think that for a minute. At this point we know next to nothing about launch dates and relative console powers, and I'm pretty sure Sony does not want to be pre-empted again.

 

[RedVi]

Thinking about DDR3 vs. DDR4 yet again, is there any reason they can't go with DDR3 at first, and then switch to DDR4 for the second or third revision when it makes more sense? They have to revise the chip for a shrink anyway, why not change the controller and pair it with the DDR4 of the same speed and latency as the old DDR3. The speed advantages will be basically non-existent if they go with DDR4 next year, and the lower power use will be unlikely to be large enough to make up for the price parity in 2013-14.

They could have cheap and easy (wrt AMD designing a competent controller) DDR3 now and change to DDR4 when shrinking to 20nm, or even later if it still doesn't make sense. I'd expect they could still go for clock speeds of at least 2GHz and possibly up to 2.4GHz. DDR4 as of next year would probably struggle to best that by more than a few hundred MHz. Sure, the power usage would be lower for DDR4, but that just doesn't make up for the likely price... just yet anyway.

 

[arijoytunir]

can small amount of fast gddr5 + large amount of slow ddr3 work like edram + ddr3 ram ?

 

[Proelite]

As I've said before, I haven't seen a single thing on semiaccurate about xbox next that is even semi accurate - those fab and yield things he spoke about have zero basis in reality, I mean the guy was claiming 99.9% sure it was powerPC one week, and then next going "oopsie, it's AMD" after all the other AMD rumors got started. I've no idea who Arthur Gies is, but there was never a plan to launch a next gen console this year.

Sweetvar26 would be the only leaker I would put any belief in, since he knew code names no one else knew, and even his info wasn't stellar. I also suspect it got him fired.

Correction: Sweetvar26 doesn't work in the industry, he got his source from elsewhere. After AMD traced him, he is now sourceless.

 

[Proelite]

There's also scuttlebutt the Durango hit a huge set back and is well behind the Orbis on production schedule. Everyone is picking which rumors they want to believe, so at this point most predictions reveal more about the predictor than anything else.

Except:

Charlie = proven fraud (bkilian can back this up)

Sweetvar26 = proven to have legit sources (all his relevant posts were deleted from Neogaf AND Google cache).

 

[Docwiz]

Right, all the rumors about problems with Durango might be bullshit. But that doesn't get us any closer to concluding that Durango will launch 6 months earlier than Orbis.

I have been following the rumors and it goes like this.... Microsoft from the very beginning has always said 2013, there has never been any other date period. That is solid.

The Sony stuff about launching in 2014 came in because according to all rumors they have been behind Microsoft in moving proper devkits out to developers and that Microsoft has been ahead of them all of this time. In other words they are late and they may have to have a delay, but that they are shooting for the same time as Microsoft, that is their goal. Nobody knows if they will make that goal because they are rushing it.

Microsoft has been planning this for years for 2013 and they hired people from other companies to make sure they make that goal and the technology for Next-Gen in 2013 (probably by November 2013).

I am not in the industry, but even I as a layman can tell this from all of the rumors, it's not really that hard to grasp.

 

[MarkoIt]

Sounds like more confirmation what we already expect.

It's likely most of the "custom" part of the Xbox GPU just revolves around grafting EDRAM in. I'd still guess that relates to it's DDR/EDRAM setup vs PS4's likely GDDR/no EDRAM setup.

A lot of people seem to want to jump the gun and move PS4 over to DDR so it can have a gaudy bigger total RAM number like Durango, but I smell wishful thinking rather than true well based rumors as it stands. My guess is PS4 is still planned at 2-4GB's of GDDR.

It says heavily engineered, I'm expecting something more than just eDRAM slapped on it. Giving that it's going to use as a baseline the Sea Island-architecture, i'm expecting they will tune it to be more future proof. And I'm sure we will see some new features as well, beyond the DirectX11.1 standard.

 

[Love_In_Rio]

It says heavily engineered, I'm expecting something more than just eDRAM slapped on it. Giving that it's going to use as a baseline the Sea Island-architecture, i'm expecting they will tune it to be more future proof. And I'm sure we will see some new features as well, beyond the DirectX11.1 standard.

PS4 could just go with DDR3 and 512 with bus via an interposer. That´s one of the rumors by the way. Memory problem solved.

 

[Hornet]

PS4 could just go with DDR3 and 512 with bus via an interposer. That´s one of the rumors by the way. Memory problem solved.

With DDR3-1600 that would give 102.4 GB/s. I doubt that's enough for next generation.

 

[Brad Grenz]

Except:

Sweetvar26 = proven to have legit sources (all his relevant posts were deleted from Neogaf AND Google cache).

Oh, you mean the guy that said Sony's chips came back first and were looking good while AMD had to throw out a ton of work on Durango and start from scratch? That's the info we're relying on to say Durango will get to market first?

The Sony stuff about launching in 2014 came in because according to all rumors they have been behind Microsoft in moving proper devkits out to developers and that Microsoft has been ahead of them all of this time.

See, you're conflating dev kit delivery schedule with launch scheduling. If the PS4 is so similar to PC architecture, maybe there is just less urgency to get hardware kits delivered as early. Studios can prototype on PCs and when close to final silicon is available switch over. In any case, MS delivering dev kits some months before Sony does not automatically equate to them being "ahead of schedule" or Sony being "late".

Let me ask you this: how close are these dev kits to final hardware? The Durango dev kits we're been hearing about are literally just PC hardware in an expensive case. If Sony delivered a much closer to final kit 3 months after that, then MS delivered and even closer to final kit after another 3 months, how can we say one is "ahead" of the other? We can't, we can just say one came earlier. There's no rigid pattern to these things, and it's impossible to directly compare the state of each platform's current dev kit when we know nothing about them.