Xenon version of Unreal Engine 3.0 games: 1/2 texture res
- Thread starter Megadrive1988
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fxtech said:
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Well thats great , but who is paying for those fabs
it all costs money .Sony has to pay to make the fab , to keep it up to date , they have to pay for the engineers , the testing , the sampling and even tax on the land .
Ms just has to pay a flat fee which will continue to shrink and shrink .
Making your own chips and out sourcing come with advantages and disadvantages .
MS is paying profits for the manufacturer though, on top of the costs of running a fab and keeping it up to date, whereas Sony don't necessarily (though looking at their infrastructure I think SCE have to pay Sony-Semiconductors or whoever makes the chips, unless they've consolidated ?).
How much profit is MS's fab team going to charge? How much will Sony save?
eg. if 512 Mb DDR = $30 to make, and 512 Mb XDR = $50 to make, if MS's fabs charge $15 profit the difference isn't so great.
Having no experience of this field I can't say at all how much initial batches will cost, how quickly Sony and MS can find savings, and so forth.
How much profit is MS's fab team going to charge? How much will Sony save?
eg. if 512 Mb DDR = $30 to make, and 512 Mb XDR = $50 to make, if MS's fabs charge $15 profit the difference isn't so great.
Having no experience of this field I can't say at all how much initial batches will cost, how quickly Sony and MS can find savings, and so forth.
Shifty Geezer said:
Your post was a bit confusing cause you're using the term "profit" in the wrong anything.
JVD was saying though Sony runs it's own fabs, it still needs to upkeep them. I'm saying that MS still has to pay for the upkeep of whoever's fabs they use for their ram, plus profits for that company.
How much money will Sony save if they can supply XDR at cost price for PS3? How much money will MS have to pay on top of cost price for DDR as profit for whoever fabs their memory? What'll the difference be (of course factoring in MS's fab isn't just supplying to MS, Sony IS just supplying XDR to Sony, etc.)?
How much money will Sony save if they can supply XDR at cost price for PS3? How much money will MS have to pay on top of cost price for DDR as profit for whoever fabs their memory? What'll the difference be (of course factoring in MS's fab isn't just supplying to MS, Sony IS just supplying XDR to Sony, etc.)?
Shifty Geezer said:
Right, well no one can answer those questions now, there are just too many factors involved.
We don't know what profit margins the companies MS is employing will expect, and we don't know how much it costs to Sony to fab its own chips...
MS could very well have the cheaper deal, or Sony could just have no problems at all and get away without spending too much on their own fabs.
Remember that if something goes wrong with Sony, they have to pay to solve their own problems, if something goes wrong with, say, ATI, MS is not liable for the costs cause the responsibility is ATI's. MS pays what was agreed and ATI needs to work around that.
(i'm using the name ATI just as an example)
Shifty Geezer said:
But it is not that simple. Less compare Apples-to-Apples first. Lets say company X & Y make GDDR3 memory. Company X sells 50x as much GDDR3 because company X is the biggest supplier of GDDR3 and they provide it for hundreds of products (consoles, PC cards, etc.). Company X also makes other technologies and is able to offset some of the fab costs by the fact they are aiming at many markets. Company Y mainly makes GDDR3 for their use in a single product. Company X, because of the significantly larger manufacturing ability and from competition from companies A,B, and C wanting to move in on their market, are able to sell GDDR3 at levels that are near competitive with the cost of company Y producing their own GDDR3 modules. But company Y chooses to make their own because of 1) control and 2) keeping their fabs busy.
So making your own memory module may sound great in theory, when you have a company (like Samsung) who sells to everyone, everywhere, for everything you begin to see the difference fade. And in the real world, if Samsung is too expensive there are always their competitors willing to undercut them to get a big contract. Whereas when you make your own you have to dish out the costs of everything.
When you look at XDR and GDDR3 the situation becomes very much Apples-to-Oranges.
GDDR3 will have been available in retail products for almost 18 months when the X2 launches. It is available in bulk from a number of manufacturers who are actively competiting in this market now, today. The tech is well understood both from manufacturing and implimentation sides. GDDR3 is a process any of the large memory makers can use without paying a premium (to *cough* Rambus *cough*)
XDR is new and has yet to be produced in huge quantities (e.g. the kind you need for a huge console launch). It is not currently available in any retail product and will only be available from a limited number of manufacturers initially. Rambus has stated that because of the performance advantage XDR has it will also charge a *premium*.
If my understanding is correct, most memory makers (and TMC) operate on razor thin operating budgets. Neither Sony or MS is going to overspend on their memory budget. While Sony may save money making their own XDR (will they thought? Big IF? I know Toshiba is planning to make XDR, but was not aware that Sony was... if so it means Sony has to make XDR, CELL, and the GPU) the question is can a brand new tech with a large licensing fees compete with an established and competitive commodity like GDDR3?
This much we know: MS can order a couple million GDDR3 modules at a set, competitive price of a commercially available product. If Sony is using their own fab they have the cost of the fab + licensing + first run. That is a huge initial cost.
Acert93 said:
There is more to it than that though. Another factor to consider is how much the initial costs will play into things versus the long term costs, and what it will mean for the platform. If sony takes an inital hit on development costs but can still supply enough memory to meet demand it might not necessarily be a terrible thing. So long as they can bring costs down in the long term so that the overall costs are roughly the same as GDDR3, it would be ok, especially if they gain additional preformance out of the deal. On the other hand, if they end up over all loosing money on it, or if they can't supply enough to meet demand they could run into big problems, especially if the xbox is already out in mass quantity while the PS3 may be in high demand, but they can't produce enough memory to meet it.
Nite_Hawk
You should determine your texel to pixel ratio from the worst case, ie. how big can that certain art asset get on the screen? In an FPS, it's perfectly realistic to have an enemy monster get close to the player, so with 720 lines of resolution, an 1K map seems okay to me. Texels might get a bit larger then a pixel, but as long as they're not 4 pixels big, it's still okay.
Consider this... a Hellknight in Doom3 can get in your face and it still won't look too blurry, even in 1280*1024 - you'd probably notice the relatively low polygon count first. And it only has an 512*512 texture map, which has one quarter of the detail of an 1K map...
Consider this... a Hellknight in Doom3 can get in your face and it still won't look too blurry, even in 1280*1024 - you'd probably notice the relatively low polygon count first. And it only has an 512*512 texture map, which has one quarter of the detail of an 1K map...
well it will be hard to tell. gddr3 700mhz say (1.4 effective) may start out at 50$ per 512 megs and xdr may start at 75$ (these are made up numbersm ind you )
Now not only will the volume of gddr 3 increase as they will be making gddr3 from 500mh to whatever it tops out at but as they push the tech the yields will go up. These companys will invest huge amounts of money to bring yields and speed up all which indirectly affect ms as with better yields and higher speeds from those yields . Ms will pay less per meg for the ram. Now say 4 companys make the ram , at any point ms can jump to another company that is charging less .
Sony or toshiba on the other hands are the companys that will be working on increasing the yields of the chips . There will only be one speed (mabye 2 if nintendo uses it ) of the ram . It will only go into 1 product as of now (mabye 2 in the future) sony will also be stuck if the yields are very bad , they can't get a sweeter deal else where
Now what may happen is in 3 years gdr ram is 15$ per 512 megs and xdr is 15$ per 512 megs . However , ms doens't have a fab to pay for or upkeep which will allways add to the cost . Now if it is toshiba making the ram , i'm sure they are going to want to make money on the ram and running these fabs even if it is a joint fab .
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