Revolution GPU and CPU STILL in development.

[jvd]

I read your posts just fine, though that's a nice catch-all excuse. Moving the radiator around in the case doesn't change the need to have a certain amount of air flowing over it. So you still don't change your cooling solution, just relocate it. I don't see how it makes it better. CFMs should be the same. You'll just get to work with different ducting. Not to mention, the heatsink/conductor portion of the heat exchanger still dumps a certain amount of heat into the case anyway through radiation. So you still want some sort of wind tunnel effect.

Sigh . MOving the heat exhast to the back of the case where there is an exhaust and using a fan to pull it out will greatly reduce the heat .

IN a fixed case like a console pushing the air to above the cpu / gpu will cause alot of the hot air to be recycled and will reduce the cooling capacity of the heatsink / fan combo .

Now if you have the radiator at the back of the case with a fan pulling the air you will push the hot air out of the case instead of it staying in the case . This will require less fans than if you went with a normal heatsink / fan combo .
Its what we've been doing with water coolers for a long time

One that can perhaps be played on the go from a backpack or so. You don't necessarily need a tv when Nintendo already makes a plethora of portable video screen-equipped devices. Perhaps that's what the big secret about the Rev controller is. Or maybe they're really making some VR goggles, and with that "trigger-equipped controller". A number of unknowns.

yea okay . Thats great. Put the vr googles on and go arcoss new york . See how long it takes you to get hit by a taxi . That is a really great safty feature there .

Come on its not going to be used on the go the power needs will be to great esp if you have to drive a display off it .

 

[randycat99]

quit trolling. You're essentially agreeing with my last major reply, and then turning around and saying I didn't understand??? Just let it go.

 

[jvd]

quit trolling. You're essentially agreeing with my last major reply, and then turning around and saying I didn't understand??? Just let it go.

Sigh , Your the one thats been argueing with me for the last few posts telling me I'm wrong and now you think i'm agreeing with you ?

Sigh . Some people are just rediclous

 

[randycat99]

My posts were directed at pce, if you want to be specific about it. So how can I have been "arguing" with you? I believe your reply on the previous pg. was the first to take my comments into a quote. So that means you have chosen to pick an argument with me. Your description of what has happened is a bit ridiculous. Are you not the one cutting down other people here with blind claims of, "you are wrong, you do not understand heatsink design, you have not read the topic properly..."? Are you being for real???

 

[jvd]

Read the thread , you mentioned something that wasn't correct and I corrected it and you procceed to argue with me and then end up saying that I agree with you when in fact I do not . But u kept insisting on something that is wrong

 

[Teasy]

MechanizedDeath

The Revolution has a stand so it can be stood upright with its disc slot pointing up, that's it, that isn't a docking bay.

Forget the idea of Revolution being in any way a portable system. Its completely impractical and completely against Nintendo's philosophy on portable systems (long battery life). As small as the system will be it will be nowhere near small enough to carry around and play. As power efficient as it might be it will be nowhere near enough to play on the go with any kind of reasonably sized battery.

I'd think Nintendo want to make Revolution very small to distinguish it from the other consoles. MS and Sony are going for big powerful consoles. Nintendo doesn't want to make it that expensive so if its going to be lower power then why not take advantage of that and make is super small and fast loading.

 

[randycat99]

Read the thread , you mentioned something that wasn't correct and I corrected it and you procceed to argue with me and then end up saying that I agree with you when in fact I do not . But u kept insisting on something that is wrong

According to the record, you should actually be correcting pce then since he was under the impression that a GC windtunnel will be the solution, rather than your "more correct" rear heatsink scenario. If you intended to "correct" me on something else, however, you should be more clear, because right now it is a mystery on what you found incorrect in my comment.

Either way, you must be implying that Revolution will be able to shed 100's of watts just by putting a small heatsink in the back of a small case blown gently and quietly by a small fan or that Revolution will manage to be remotely competitive in processing horsepower to PS3/XB2 while only consuming something far below 100 watts? So which is it, just to get the record straight?... I'm not sure you would be particularly "correct" in either scenario, but live and let live...

 

[jvd]

Sigh. I'm correct in saying there are many things they can do which will cool hot chips and using them together would allow them to do it .


If you look back to page 4 you can see exactly what I disagree on you with .


So go ahead and read it . Till then there really isn't any point in continueing this

 

[randycat99]

No, it isn't clear. So until you elaborate, all you have is an empty accusation.

 

[jvd]

http://www.beyond3d.com/forum/viewtopic.php?p=534800#534800

 

[randycat99]

I'll take this as you are incapable or too lacking in general respect to reword the basis of your quarrel. This shouldn't be difficult between 2 people who wish to communicate, but you seem to want to play this "game"- guess what I said on pg.4, cuz I will tell you not again!...

 

[jvd]

I linked you to the post in question. Why should I have to repeat everything that was said all over again just so you will understand ? If you didn't get it the first time around and still have no clue as to whats going on its a better use of my time to just forget about it . ALl the information is already in my posts for all to read and see .

 

[randycat99]

You have no argument then, if you simply cannot reparse a single point into an original sentence to elaborate. That is very little to ask of a person, but it just may be if they hiding something else.

 

[MechanizedDeath]

MechanizedDeath

The Revolution has a stand so it can be stood upright with its disc slot pointing up, that's it, that isn't a docking bay.

Forget the idea of Revolution being in any way a portable system. Its completely impractical and completely against Nintendo's philosophy on portable systems (long battery life). As small as the system will be it will be nowhere near small enough to carry around and play. As power efficient as it might be it will be nowhere near enough to play on the go with any kind of reasonably sized battery.

I'd think Nintendo want to make Revolution very small to distinguish it from the other consoles. MS and Sony are going for big powerful consoles. Nintendo doesn't want to make it that expensive so if its going to be lower power then why not take advantage of that and make is super small and fast loading.

My original point was that the smaller form factor means lower power, but I also remember seeing a pic of the Rev with a power socket on it. Me thinks I've been duped by some photoshop work. That's why I figured it for a docking station. Anyway, I assume the form factor is thus a result of the spec chosen rather than the spec being a result of the form factor chosen. I would have to disagree with Nintendo's decision here. Making the device small to create a hybrid made more sense than them just cheaping out for another gen. But I guess you can't argue with them making money. Their approach has been working well enough for them thus far. It's just not very daring. PEACE.

 

[Entropy]

Anyway, I assume the form factor is thus a result of the spec chosen rather than the spec being a result of the form factor chosen. I would have to disagree with Nintendo's decision here. Making the device small to create a hybrid made more sense than them just cheaping out for another gen. But I guess you can't argue with them making money. Their approach has been working well enough for them thus far. It's just not very daring. PEACE.

Hmm.
I don't know about "not very daring".
They are getting a lot of critique here for not playing the specs game, and very little credit for their good ergonomics and overall practicality. I guess gamers in general (perhaps American in particular?) subscribe to a "bigger is better" ethos. Whereas Nintendo for instance in their portable gear has emphasized compactness coupled with battery life. Those kinds of design decisions will never give you the most impressive specs or the most spectacular visuals, but does that mean that prioritizing in that way is bad? Rather than "not very daring" isn't it actually pretty daring not to appeal exclusively to testosterone?

And it is pretty significant that not knowing any specs at all, the overall reaction here when seeing the Revolution design wasn't that it was impressive that it really seemed to bear out their claims of being sleek, cool, quiet and compact, but rather "OMG it's so SMALL it's gotta SUCK".

Now maybe it's just that the American audience here is cheering for Microsoft. But it sure isn't knowledge speaking though, because the pertinent information isn't even out in rumour form. Which makes peoples reactions all the more telling I guess, being based on prejudice alone. And the rather compact disregard of form factor and noise as being significant for an electronic device for home use is quite interesting, whereas creative ways of counting GFLOPS has occupied peoples minds here in the Console Forums quite a lot.

Would Nintendo producing a clone of the XBox360 only with FOUR cores and SIXTYFOUR ALUs courtesy of finer lithography have been particularly daring? Yet that seems what people here are criticising them (based on pure assumption) for not doing.
Perhaps I shouldn't post at all here, because I don't really care much about consoles.
But be careful what you ask for, lest you get it.

 

[Ooh-videogames]

Anyway, I assume the form factor is thus a result of the spec chosen rather than the spec being a result of the form factor chosen. I would have to disagree with Nintendo's decision here. Making the device small to create a hybrid made more sense than them just cheaping out for another gen. But I guess you can't argue with them making money. Their approach has been working well enough for them thus far. It's just not very daring. PEACE.

Hmm.
I don't know about "not very daring".
They are getting a lot of critique here for not playing the specs game, and very little credit for their good ergonomics and overall practicality. I guess gamers in general (perhaps American in particular?) subscribe to a "bigger is better" ethos. Whereas Nintendo for instance in their portable gear has emphasized compactness coupled with battery life. Those kinds of design decisions will never give you the most impressive specs or the most spectacular visuals, but does that mean that prioritizing in that way is bad? Rather than "not very daring" isn't it actually pretty daring not to appeal exclusively to testosterone?

And it is pretty significant that not knowing any specs at all, the overall reaction here when seeing the Revolution design wasn't that it was impressive that it really seemed to bear out their claims of being sleek, cool, quiet and compact, but rather "OMG it's so SMALL it's gotta SUCK".

Now maybe it's just that the American audience here is cheering for Microsoft. But it sure isn't knowledge speaking though, because the pertinent information isn't even out in rumour form. Which makes peoples reactions all the more telling I guess, being based on prejudice alone. And the rather compact disregard of form factor and noise as being significant for an electronic device for home use is quite interesting, whereas creative ways of counting GFLOPS has occupied peoples minds here in the Console Forums quite a lot.

Would Nintendo producing a clone of the XBox360 only with FOUR cores and SIXTYFOUR ALUs courtesy of finer lithography have been particularly daring? Yet that seems what people here are criticising them (based on pure assumption) for not doing.
Perhaps I shouldn't post at all here, because I don't really care much about consoles.
But be careful what you ask for, lest you get it.

Great post anyway.

 

[PC-Engine]

That really is the key, isn't it- how much heatsink componentry is exposed in the "wind tunnel"? The more heat you have to get rid of, the more heatsinking you need to expose, and the more turbulence helps you eek out the most efficiency in the heatsink.

Are you saying the sky is blue? Yes the heatsink is doing it's job and so is the fan. Yes Nintendo designed it that way and it's quiet and fits into a tiny confined box too. That's one of the reasons why it was brought up in the first place. The second reason is the fact it came out at the same time as Xbox and its processing power is slighty less than Xbox. Do you get the hint yet? How about the third reason of shooting down your "drag" argument by using a realworld example in the form of a GCN? Confined space does not equal more drag since there is very little drag to speak of in the GCN's method of cooling. Heck the heatsink in the GCN doesn't even have that many fins which means the surface area isn't even that great which means there's even more room for improvement in this simple HSF combination let alone a liquid metal cooling one.

The GC has a clean design, but then again, it isn't called upon to transfer the kind of heat output that we are anticipating in PS3/XB2/whatever. Once you add that condition, you are right back to square 1, where you literally are blowing a hurricane through a confined channel where extensive heatsink geometries must be exposed in order to exchange a considerable amount of heat ==> hence the conditions quite ripe for noise issues (i.e., no "free lunches" here whether or not you are using clever and elegant wind tunnel contraptions).

From your comment above, you apparently didn't get it. Here is the concept:

If Nintendo could build the GCN to be within the processing capability of Xbox in a smaller form factor using a simple HSF and released at the same time, why would Nintendo have any trouble doing the same with Revolution? Isn't the Xbox 360 smaller than Xbox? Heh, I haven't even factored in the 1 year difference between Revolution and Xbox 360, but you know what? I don't even need to. If Nintendo goes with that liquid metal cooling solution I posted earlier, they could mount the HSF away from the main source of heat which are the processors. The HSF can be located near the exhaust port so that you don't need a lot of airflow pushing hot air throughout the whole case just like jvd said since there no hot air being dumped into the case. Heck this was what I explained earlier before jvd expanded on that concept further. It's kinda strange that you say you agree with jvd yet he's just saying the same thing I said when I brought up that liquid metal cooling system. For some reason you don't want to admit I was right and you were wrong. That drag example got shot down pretty quick didn't it?

To address that, there are few options other than opening up that channel and significantly increasing heatsink area, just so you can reduce air velocities and load demands on the fans... If you are stuck with a compact case, this will place a certain upper limit to "opening the channel", so it becomes a distinct balance of noise vs. cooling challenges.

Both jvd and I already explained how it could be done from a smart engineering perspective many posts ago. If you'd rather take the nonsmart route then yeah it wouldn't be possible. Fortunately we have some pretty smart people designing the cooling system for Nintendo's console.

Finally your assumption is flawed too. You're assuming the size will be THE limiting factor which is plain wrong. Sure if you're talking about friggen Gigawatts of dissipation then yeah the size would likely be the limiting factor, but how do you know how many watts a certain size case can handle?

To think that someone actually believes fancy GC windtunnel design will spontaneously "quiet cool" the sort of heat bohemoths coming down the line to us next generation...well, all I can say is, "good luck with that, slick!"

It's nothing new to anybody who knows anything about computers. Tunnels and ducts have been used for years to keep heat from being recycled back into the case.

The irony here is that "windtunnels" happen to also make terrific tuned hemholtz chambers. So any noise generated within the conduit tends to conduct sound at the exit quite effectively. The "magic" of these designs really comes from doing things that prevent noise from being too obstrusive/distinct and making the tunnel as attenuative as possible (relative to a "tunnel", anyway). They are no means a "magic bullet" for quiet cooling, and it would be naive to suggest that they don't bring a number of additional issues to overcome for the benefits they provide. Once you add in heat transfer targets in the realm of 100's of watts, it becomes just as much an engineering challenge to overcome as anything else.

I think you've ran out of excuses and resorting to straw collecting. Hemholtz chambers? Riiiight.

How does a smaller case have better airflow than a bigger case? AFAIK, there's a point of diminishing returns. The keys to cooling is CFM (cubic feet per minute) of air and surface area. If you've got a smaller case, you can get away with using the same fans as in a larger case. But this is assuming the heat conductor also has the same surface area. If you've got a smaller case, you've probably got less surface area to absorbe all that heat, which means you probably want to increase the airflow to compensate for the faster spread of heat.

A smaller case doesn't necessarily have better airflow. In fact like I said when I drop kicked randy's drag argument, smart airflow routing can negate drag making it moot. Why do you think automobile manufacturers boast drag coefficients? Yeah if you're a friggen idiot and build a square car then drag becomes a major issue. What a small case does provide is less air volume. With a certain CFM rating you can move air through a small case many times more than a larger one. Think of an aquarium. If you have a small 10 gallon fish tank hooked up to a 100 GPH water pump you can cycle the tank volume 10 times in an hour. With a 100 gallon tank, you can only cycle the tank volume once per hour.

I don't see Rev getting away with similar power to the PS3 and 360 without either going 65nm or just plain a weaker processor. If it's portable, it has to do this anyway, or it'll be a battery hog. I really don't buy it. I'd like to be proven wrong, but there's a reason laptops are always weaker than their desktop counterparts, and it's got nothing to do with the Wintel monopoly. PEACE.

You just answered your own question. Laptops need to run on batteries, so they'll always be limited in processing power relative to desktops.

Great post anyway.

Agreed.

 

[MechanizedDeath]

I don't know about "not very daring".
They are getting a lot of critique here for not playing the specs game, and very little credit for their good ergonomics and overall practicality. I guess gamers in general (perhaps American in particular?) subscribe to a "bigger is better" ethos. Whereas Nintendo for instance in their portable gear has emphasized compactness coupled with battery life. Those kinds of design decisions will never give you the most impressive specs or the most spectacular visuals, but does that mean that prioritizing in that way is bad? Rather than "not very daring" isn't it actually pretty daring not to appeal exclusively to testosterone?

And it is pretty significant that not knowing any specs at all, the overall reaction here when seeing the Revolution design wasn't that it was impressive that it really seemed to bear out their claims of being sleek, cool, quiet and compact, but rather "OMG it's so SMALL it's gotta SUCK".

Now maybe it's just that the American audience here is cheering for Microsoft. But it sure isn't knowledge speaking though, because the pertinent information isn't even out in rumour form. Which makes peoples reactions all the more telling I guess, being based on prejudice alone. And the rather compact disregard of form factor and noise as being significant for an electronic device for home use is quite interesting, whereas creative ways of counting GFLOPS has occupied peoples minds here in the Console Forums quite a lot.

Would Nintendo producing a clone of the XBox360 only with FOUR cores and SIXTYFOUR ALUs courtesy of finer lithography have been particularly daring? Yet that seems what people here are criticising them (based on pure assumption) for not doing.
Perhaps I shouldn't post at all here, because I don't really care much about consoles.
But be careful what you ask for, lest you get it.

Bigger is better IMO. Electronics IMO is a power game. Everytime you go to a smaller form factor, especially this drastic difference, you sacrifice something. Until I get a lappy with the same performance as a desktop without also doubling as a space heater, then I can't change my opinion on that. I suppose it's that ergonomics of the actual console itself means nothing to me. It usually just sits by my tv and never gets touched unless I'm changing games. The practicality nature of it I'm lost on. I think a PS3 and X360 will be as practical as a Rev. I'm not sure how the form factor works into that, unless you mean less power = dev friendly.

I am still operating under the assumption that Nintendo is producing a hybrid as all the rumors and scuttlebutt seems to point in that direction. I base this on hints and clues from some of the past GAF discussions. I got a GC, but can't help but think Nintendo's conservative approach is more geared to their bottom line than trying to impress anyone. But I also blame this for their continued loss of marketshare each successive generation. But again, they're making money, so it must be what works for them. I don't think it's daring or interesting, though.

If they'd upped the ante on the power end, I'd be impressed. They still might have, as a move to 65nm could net them some gains in tranny count. But if they are then gonna cram all that into a tiny case, it seems like they're once again gonna trade the potential power advantage for cost/space savings. This seems counterintuitive (to me) in an industry influenced so heavily by visual wow-factor, but at least if they're really going with some hybrid system, then it would at least be justified. That would be more daring than just making a tiny system for the hell of it. PEACE.

EDIT: And I'm aware that next to nothing is known about Rev. But that form factor has some major pitfalls associated with it. And we've already been given an idea of how small it might be (it's already tiny).

 

[Fox5]

Read the thread , you mentioned something that wasn't correct and I corrected it and you procceed to argue with me and then end up saying that I agree with you when in fact I do not . But u kept insisting on something that is wrong

According to the record, you should actually be correcting pce then since he was under the impression that a GC windtunnel will be the solution, rather than your "more correct" rear heatsink scenario. If you intended to "correct" me on something else, however, you should be more clear, because right now it is a mystery on what you found incorrect in my comment.

Either way, you must be implying that Revolution will be able to shed 100's of watts just by putting a small heatsink in the back of a small case blown gently and quietly by a small fan or that Revolution will manage to be remotely competitive in processing horsepower to PS3/XB2 while only consuming something far below 100 watts? So which is it, just to get the record straight?... I'm not sure you would be particularly "correct" in either scenario, but live and let live...

Laptops manage to be fairly competitive(athlon 3700+ and geforce 6800 ultra gpu anyone?) with desktops while consuming below 100 watts(well, maybe more like below 200W by this point in time). BTW, do we have any idea how much power PS3 and Xbox360 will require? If we assume similar power consumption to current PC parts, xbox 360 will have 80W x 3 cpus, plus a 120W gpu, so 360W, plus whatever other parts are in there. So microsoft will have to go for a very good power supply as well, I don't think consoles have ever had PC level power requirements before.

Oh, and if nintendo wanted to spend the money, they could go heavy on the multicore while keeping low clocks to keep the power down. I believe Intel has 1ghz Dothans that consume <1W, so if the Power cores could do the same they can keep power consumption ridiculously low while having a lot of (theoretical)power.

The second reason is the fact it came out at the same time as Xbox and its processing power is slighty less than Xbox.

It only came out at the same time if you count the American release, it existed in the world several months before Xbox was released(probably enough to account for the power difference), and its design was finished way before.

 

[Ty]

Wha? If the airflow is the same, then the pressure is the same, no?

A bigger fan can move a higher volume of air at a lower rpm than a smaller fan.

Yes, I even said this later on in the same post you replied to here.

Think of a big water pipe vs a small water pipe. A bigger water pipe can move a lot more water at a lower pressure. A smaller water pipe has to be vey high pressure to move the same amount of water.

This analogy assumes that the output can go to infinity (i.e. no constrictions), which is not the case (haha, no pun intended) of what we are talking about.

For instance, take the water pipe example and attach it to a case where the case has a single outlet.

Case A with wide pipe fills up and water begins to flow out through the outlet.

Case B with small pipe fills up and water begins to flow out through the outlet.

If the cases are the same and the GPM of the pipes are the same, then the water pressure out of the outlet (the turbulence and therefore "noise") is likely the same because the average ambient pressure within the case are about equal. Note that I am NOT a fluid dynamics guy so I could be make incorrect assumptions.

<snip>

Because bigger fans can move the same amount of air with fewer RPMs of the motor, which decreases motor noise

Yes, but jvd was talking about a bigger processor fan vs a chassis fan. A 120mm fan will have a big dead spot in the center so it might not be ideal for a processor.

I don't see that when what I replied to was the following (my bold):

There is a reason why bigger fans are more popular and why most of the companies that build for the gamers have cases with a 120 mm fans instead of 80mm fans

I.e. there really aren't 80mm CPU fans out there unless you're looking for something Zantec and of course he used the word "cases".

In the end it simply comes down to efficiency. Liquid coolers can pull away heat more rapidly than standard HSF arrangements (surface area of the coolers being equal) but you still need to remove this heat so the liquid can do its job; i.e. hot water won't pull away much heat.