What would you buy? A true Next Gen Console or Upgraded 2x PS3/360?

I don't know the specifics of the changes they would make, I'm not an AMD senior engineer, but they could easily change the amount of rops or other things for better efficiency on a fixed hardware platform, some features could be replaced by custom parts or various other things could be included. I also know that the 6850 is probably not the penultimate graphics technology, they continue to employ those engineers to innovate, not just to find ways to make die shrunk versions of Barts.

If your argument is that RSX (launched a year later) almost competes with Xenos with help from cell. It's not supporting your case. It's a pretty clear indicator that the custom part was a significant benefit. Expecting little more than die shrunk version of years old technology on the next consoles which will probably launch in 2013 or 2014 is foolish. Even just assuming they can't improve on perf/mm with a custom part is out there.

 

I think the point Acert was making is that unified shaders (the big reason for most of the performance advantage of xgpu vs RSX given the smaller die size) is an advantage that doesn't exist anymore.

This was a progression of the gpu architecture that was inevitable.

Again, we see further progression of gpu technology taking place as gpgpu is just about to be released by AMD and is already in the wild in nvidia GPUs.



It wasn't that AMD had a special sauce just for xbox360, it's that xbox360 was the first to come to market with technology that eventually made it's way to the desktop.

Not to say there won't be some modifications, but I doubt there will be such a drastic advantage this go 'round.

 

There's still room to grow for CPU-GPU connectivity.

 

Maybe I'm off on this, but I'm under the impression this is still a few years away ...

 

I'm not talking about merging the two, though that obviously helps with performance/latency. Even Xenos had access to L2 on Waternoose (for example).

 

Ah, yes I agree.

I was looking at your comment in the context of a revolutionary jump which would provide a sizable advantage over the pc market or a competitor as Alpha was suggesting.

 

Well, it's more of an evolutionary thing on PC. Unified shaders did make it to PC afterall. But why wouldn't tighter CPU-GPU features be "revolutionary" considering how basic it is right now on PC? This sort of communication is not going to happen with high end hardware for awhile just by nature of the setup (GPU card, PCI-E slot...). It'll eventually make its way to Fusion-type setups of course, not that there will be devs focusing as much as they would on a fixed hardware either.

There's a lot more to explore with that sort of integration, and being in a console, it'll actually get used at some point...

Do you believe devs aren't already making use of Xenos' ability to read from L2 on the CPU for assistance with certain rendering techniques? Anyways, I'm not sure why it has to be "revolutionary" or be a certain performance advantage, which is mostly irrelevant anyway because PCs are going to plough ahead.

 

That's my point.

Just as xb360 is already utilizing unified shaders for higher efficiency and more flexible to different styles/techniques.

Tighter cpu/gpu integration will likely be realized in xb720/ps4, and one step is likely EDRAM being accessible to CPU and GPU instead of just a frame buffer as is the case with xb360.

Extending functionality and methods which already exist in PC or consoles, sure. But I'm not seeing anything as revolutionary as unified shaders for the GPU was for xb360.

GCN/Tesla SIMD will likely make their way into xb720/ps4, but this isn't a revolutionary advantage one way or another either vs Sony/MS or vs PC.



I'm not suggesting that tighter integration will not happen, nor trying to downplay what this integration would mean.

 

i've always preferred PC's over consoles but i understand why joe public goes for them.
i would most like something arm based that can just scale up for the big screen. same OS