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[Kibbles]

I was thinking about getting a Slim during the Black Friday sales since my 360 is kind of crapping out, but I'll hold off and see if this thing is announced at CES.

 

[dragonelite]

WTF is a "dual-core GPU" and what makes people think that MS is going to use a 200W chip?


Then it should be called the XBox Fireplace.

Isnt the 590GTX and the AMD 6990 Dual core GPU.
They got two cores on one card.

Wouldn't be surprised if you can get 100% scaling with the dual gpu programmers can now code a a constant hardware configuration and not be dependent on the Card makers to set up their drivers right for every combo possible.

Maybe use on card to do physics and decompressing with Direct Compute i believe gpu are made for that but then you have to overcome the low bandwidth connection between CPU and GPU right? Noob here.

 

[east of eastside]

ARMv8 64bit core suitable for consoles:

http://www.anandtech.com/show/5098/applied-micros-xgene-the-first-armv8-soc

 

[slider]

Has anyone else seen the core utilization benchmarks on TomsHardware and the like?
Even Battlefield 3 only uses 2 cores, very very few games use 3 or 4 at ALL.

You know why? They don't need to. 6GHZ (2 3ghz cores) is more than enough to process game code, especially now that you can shove physics calculations to the much more powerful stream processors on the GPU.
Sony went with this stream processor idea for the Cell, and it works fantasically when people use it like in Uncharted and Killzone, but a total failure everywhere else. Just see how many DigitalFoundry faceoffs the PS3 fails in.

MS would be INSANE to go to a 6 core, when 4 cores aren't even used well even though they've been standard for years. They will put the money into a GPU with ample capacity for physics & CUDA-type calculations.
Thats why this rumor is another pile of hit-seeking HORSESHIT. IMHO.

Hmm, interesting. Where MS might have a better start is software and tools. (I realise Sony's are apparently much improved.)

The topic being so opaque to me I'd be very happy to hear someone tell me (us!) whether a "dev environment(?)" can do all the heavy lifting in farming out "tasks" to different cores etc.

You'll notice I use a lot of quotes. That's cos I don't know what the hell I'm talking about and have probably made the above point as clear as mud.

All that said about me being tech-illiterate I do like knowing there's tech in a product. Tragically it often informs my purchase decisions.

 

[thuway]

Doing so would kill em, man.


KILL EM DEAD

Sony is in the hole right now, but they are no where near "out of business".

 

[Jonm1010]

But not over $399 hopefully.

Yep I think they will go balls out, but not over $399. If they even go the route of taking a loss this generation, it will be a minimal one and front loaded into the first year, at most the second. Sony needs to show they can make a profit and maintain market share in order to not fail out of the market.

Like others have said, look to Vita as a good gauge.

 

[gofreak]

Has anyone else seen the core utilization benchmarks on TomsHardware and the like?
Even Battlefield 3 only uses 2 cores, very very few games use 3 or 4 at ALL.

You know why? They don't need to. 6GHZ (2 3ghz cores) is more than enough to process game code, especially now that you can shove physics calculations to the much more powerful stream processors on the GPU.

At the expense of rendering. And 'they don't need to' because these games are being designed to work on consoles with much smaller CPU capacity. Not because games couldn't or wouldn't do more if more was available on the lowest common denominators.

If the next round of consoles ship with larger CPUs with more parallelism, games will use that power and the PC versions will 'magically' start needing more cores there too.

A 6-core - if it's something like a custom PPC core that is smaller than Intel's - is not over the top at all even next to today's PC CPUs. The next round of consoles may not need proportionately as 'big' CPUs as the last generation, but 6 would probably not be 'big'.

I would not recommend using PC games today - specifically and in particular those that are multiplat with console versions - as guidelines on next-gen game requirements. All those games are basically lowest-common-denominator-ed around boxes much less powerful, they don't represent some vision into next-gen console games.

 

[thuway]

ARMv8 64bit core suitable for consoles:

http://www.anandtech.com/show/5098/applied-micros-xgene-the-first-armv8-soc

A new challenger has arrived.

BTW- how does this compare to Cell? Would Sony be better off using multi-cell or multi-arm?

 

[guek]

Sony is in the hole right now, but they are no where near "out of business".

They also have no room to loose any more money. They need profits and they need em bad.

 

[thuway]

Yep I think they will go balls out, but not over $399. If they even go the route of taking a loss this generation, it will be a minimal one and front loaded into the first year, at most the second. Sony needs to show they can make a profit and maintain market share in order to not fail out of the market.

Like others have said, look to Vita as a good gauge.

If I were Sony, I would make sure I'd do every damn thing right the first year with the most powerful hardware I could muster. They need to come out the gate with the most gorgeous visuals, a competent online, and a feature set that diversifies itself from the rest of the pack (remote play with Vita or any mobile phone)?

They need to build a 499 console, sell it at 399, and coerce people into paying money for online to offset costs.

My PS4 in 2013 would be -

4 X Cell
6 GB of Ram (2 GB DDR3 + 4 GB GDDR5 / XDR 2)
GTX 580 X 1.5-2
Small Flash HDD of 40 GB

$399 to consumers, $499 to build- launch with a title from Naughty Dog and Polyphony.

There will be a premium $499 build as well for those of us on GAF.

 

[east of eastside]

A new challenger has arrived.

BTW- how does this compare to Cell? Would Sony be better off using multi-cell or multi-arm?

ARM.

Multicore cell with 32 spe's, or whatever, is going to be very costly taking up way more transistors and producing way more heat that is better allocated to the GPU core.

Integrating the ARM cores with the GPU core in an APU is the ideal solution.

Nvidia is already working on it--Denver/Maxwell:

PS4?

http://www.xbitlabs.com/news/cpu/display/20110119204601_Nvidia_Maxwell_Graphics_Processors_to_Have_Integrated_ARM_General_Purpose_Cores.html

4 TFLOPS @ 250 watts.

 

[Durante]

Has anyone else seen the core utilization benchmarks on TomsHardware and the like?
Even Battlefield 3 only uses 2 cores, very very few games use 3 or 4 at ALL.

You know why?

Yes I do. Because effective console CPU performance is just equivalent to 2 current PC CPU cores, and because most games are GPU limited at the settings usually tested on PC.

ARM.

Multicore cell with 32 spe's, or whatever, is going to be very costly taking up way more transistors and producing way more heat that is better allocated to the GPU core.

Do you have any numbers backing that up? SPUs are incredibly power efficient, they have that going for them.

 

[Durante]

In general, I don't see much point in going ARM in next-gen consoles. The streaming/data parallel stuff you can do on the GPU much better than even on a large core count ARM. And for the sequential or coarse grain parallel stuff x86 or power cores are still faster, and you need just a few of those. The only use case I can see where a lot of small ARM cores would win is some kind of fine-grained, very parallel but not rigidly structured workload. Like parallel tree processing. That may be useful for games, but I don't know if it justifies choosing the architecture.

 

[TheChewyWaffles]

Again that didn't prevent them from dominating NA (vs Sony) and doing great in Pal market.

Japan wouldn't have supported them anyways.

Everything is going "stream". this is not 2001 anymore.

I'm sure you've already been beaten up over this notion that streaming is going to dominate the next-gen consoles, but it sure as hell isn't. Bandwidth caps guarantee that. Shitty NA infrastructure guarantees that. It just isn't happening. It's not 2001, but it's not 2101 either.

 

[cpp_is_king]

MS will always be the best in the world when it comes to the OS, the network infrastructure, dev tools, API's, everything. They are they biggest code shop on the planet, and anything they don't have they can buy.
The PS3's original OS, online-store, and network infrastructure was a joke, the japanese are always playing catch-up with the westerners when it comes to online, its certainly better now, but they can't catch MS, and its the sole reason why PS3 got side-swiped.

But i still think the 6-core thing is bullshit, game code doesn't need 18 GHZ of headroom, as proved by current PC games. You just need a EFFICIENT GPU with lots of physX/CUDA stream processors.

Thing is, in the next gen consoles will be trying to do more stuff in the background while you're playing.

 

[east of eastside]

In general, I don't see much point in going ARM in next-gen consoles. The streaming/data parallel stuff you can do on the GPU much better than even on a large core count ARM. And for the sequential or coarse grain parallel stuff x86 or power cores are still faster, and you need just a few of those. The only use case I can see where a lot of small ARM cores would win is some kind of fine-grained, very parallel but not rigidly structured workload. Like parallel tree processing. That may be useful for games, but I don't know if it justifies choosing the architecture.

That's the point of integrating the ARM cores with the GPU in an APU. The ARM cores would allow a much more GPU-centric design.

 

[Zeal]

Yeah, this cloud service and streaming shit just isn't coming with the next gen. Anyone who thinks else is fooling themselves. The bandwith isn't there yet and ISPs are only getting more expensive and greedier with prices, too.

That's a ways out.

 

[Respawn]

They do. They could run with a proprietary disc format. New discs are already available with much more capacity than Blu-Ray. Plus, this would completely eliminate piracy.

Yes, because proprietary media always eliminates piracy.
There's not a face palm big enough for this.

 

[Proelite]

If I were Sony, I would make sure I'd do every damn thing right the first year with the most powerful hardware I could muster. They need to come out the gate with the most gorgeous visuals, a competent online, and a feature set that diversifies itself from the rest of the pack (remote play with Vita or any mobile phone)?

They need to build a 499 console, sell it at 399, and coerce people into paying money for online to offset costs.

My PS4 in 2013 would be -

4 X Cell
6 GB of Ram (2 GB DDR3 + 4 GB GDDR5 / XDR 2)
GTX 580 X 1.5-2
Small Flash HDD of 40 GB

$399 to consumers, $499 to build- launch with a title from Naughty Dog and Polyphony.

There will be a premium $499 build as well for those of us on GAF.

That's optimistic.

I can play the game too:

SOC:
4 core scaled down Power8 derivative with 4 way SMT
6950+ level GPU
64mb Edram

4 gb GDDR5/XDR2 unified ram. They're going to have to find space of the mobo for 16 modules. Having a SOC would help it this regard.

Kinect 2.0
HDD of 60gb
Blu-ray

$399 to consumers, $499 for the pro pack with movie playback and an extra consoler.

 

[Cipherr]

DDR3 and 2 GPU's make this rumor reek of bullshit. Someone slapped some shit rumor together, but didnt go completely crazy with it IMO, and its got folks thinking that maybe its true.

DDR3 and 2 GPUs flush this entire thing though, Someone made this shit up.

 

[cpp_is_king]

That's optimistic.

I'll be surprised if they even use a cell at all.

 

[BurntPork]

Has anyone else seen the core utilization benchmarks on TomsHardware and the like?
Even Battlefield 3 only uses 2 cores, very very few games use 3 or 4 at ALL.

You know why? They don't need to. 6GHZ (2 3ghz cores) is more than enough to process game code, especially now that you can shove physics calculations to the much more powerful stream processors on the GPU.
Sony went with this stream processor idea for the Cell, and it works fantasically when people use it like in Uncharted and Killzone, but a total failure everywhere else. Just see how many DigitalFoundry faceoffs the PS3 fails in.

MS would be INSANE to go to a 6 core, when 4 cores aren't even used well even though they've been standard for years. They will put the money into a GPU with ample capacity for physics & CUDA-type calculations.
Thats why this rumor is another pile of hit-seeking HORSESHIT. IMHO.

That's not how it works dammit! The cores are independent!

Isnt the 590GTX and the AMD 6990 Dual core GPU.
They got two cores on one card.

No, they have two separate GPUs on one card. Saying "dual core" would imply that they're on the same die or at least in the same package.

 

[squidyj]

Multi-GPU and split memory? this has to be fake! what possible benefit could there be from multiple GPUs in the TDP requirements of a console? Split memory also sounds dicey.

 

[Tengen]

"Level of CPU, it'll have a 6-core which has 2GB of DDR3 (ram), and our source also talked about a prototype of a double AMD GPU. We don't know how much RAM (the GPU has)"

So, where can I pre-order the portable house-fire-starter?

 

[Jobiensis]

I don't know about ARM.

I think that would make backwards compatibility another resource sink. I really doubt they are going to want to split up the live community either.

Yeah, this cloud service and streaming shit just isn't coming with the next gen. Anyone who thinks else is fooling themselves. The bandwith isn't there yet and ISPs are only getting more expensive and greedier with prices, too.

It's not going to be 100%, but there is already digital distribution on the 360, and they are going to expand it.

I really want them to have cloud saves, to hell with developers locking saves to specific consoles.

 

[itsgreen]

Multi-GPU and split memory? this has to be fake! what possible benefit could there be from multiple GPUs in the TDP requirements of a console? Split memory also sounds dicey.

Physics? Could be used as an extra processing unit

 

[WrikaWrek]

X gene, ARM...

You guys really believe MS isn't going to go with the more obvious? It will be Intel again because they have a working relationship. And it will be AMD for the GPU.

 

[clutch.as.it.gets.]

You know what? 512mb might seem "small" in 2010, but devs are still pushing that teeny tiny itty bitty pool of ram to make fantastic looking games.

...with terrible ultra low res textures, a LOT of pop ups and streaming issus, bad framerates with shitload of screen tearing and sub hd resolution. Yeah, sure.

Sincerely, the ps4 and new xbox should have 4 GB of good RAM. 2 GB would be a joke and would create a system where we will get a lot of bottlenecks.

Normally i´m a early adopter, but i wont buy a xbox with only 2 GB of slow RAM and would wait for the ps4 and what sony offers with it.

 

[1-D_FTW]

Has anyone else seen the core utilization benchmarks on TomsHardware and the like?
Even Battlefield 3 only uses 2 cores, very very few games use 3 or 4 at ALL.

You know why? They don't need to. 6GHZ (2 3ghz cores) is more than enough to process game code, especially now that you can shove physics calculations to the much more powerful stream processors on the GPU.
Sony went with this stream processor idea for the Cell, and it works fantasically when people use it like in Uncharted and Killzone, but a total failure everywhere else. Just see how many DigitalFoundry faceoffs the PS3 fails in.

MS would be INSANE to go to a 6 core, when 4 cores aren't even used well even though they've been standard for years. They will put the money into a GPU with ample capacity for physics & CUDA-type calculations.
Thats why this rumor is another pile of hit-seeking HORSESHIT. IMHO.

Tom's Hardware has sucked forever. My Intel Q9400 overclocked at 3.4Ghz runs all 4 cores at over 80 percent utilization. And that's with my GTX 460 redlined at 99 percent utilization (so I'm clearly GPU bound with that.)

 

[BurntPork]

X gene, ARM...

You guys really believe MS isn't going to go with the more obvious? It will be Intel again because they have a working relationship. And it will be AMD for the GPU.

The 360 uses an IBM CPU.

 

[WrikaWrek]

The 360 uses an IBM CPU.

Man I need to stop smoking, this memory is going away fast

 

[onQ123]

for the people saying "2GB of main Ram is too low "

I think you should be reminded that 2GB is 8 X the main Ram of the PS3, you know the console with Uncharted 3 & GT5.

 

[bhlaab]

That is insane... I think it will run Crysis decent enough

But tis a rumor still

Yeah, great, it will run a game from 2007 without a ton of compromises.

for the people saying "2GB of main Ram is too low "

I think you should be reminded that 2GB is 8 X the main Ram of the PS3, you know the console with Uncharted 3.

Yeah exactly. The low amount of ram is a big part of the reason why games have become pretty but slow, linear, and noncomplex.

 

[Atilac]

for the people saying "2GB of main Ram is too low "

I think you should be reminded that 2GB is 8 X the main Ram of the PS3, you know the console with Uncharted 3 & GT5.

It's actually x4 total ram.

 

[diffusionx]

If I were Sony, I would make sure I'd do every damn thing right the first year with the most powerful hardware I could muster. They need to come out the gate with the most gorgeous visuals, a competent online, and a feature set that diversifies itself from the rest of the pack (remote play with Vita or any mobile phone)?

They need to build a 499 console, sell it at 399, and coerce people into paying money for online to offset costs.

My PS4 in 2013 would be -

4 X Cell
6 GB of Ram (2 GB DDR3 + 4 GB GDDR5 / XDR 2)
GTX 580 X 1.5-2
Small Flash HDD of 40 GB

$399 to consumers, $499 to build- launch with a title from Naughty Dog and Polyphony.

There will be a premium $499 build as well for those of us on GAF.

Can you provide some detailed breakdown on how you think that will get to $499 to build? Because it sure sounds like a stretch, even in 2 years.

 

[1-D_FTW]

It's actually x4 total ram.

Except the rumor is it has system RAM and VRAM. So his point remains. It has 8X the system RAM if true.

Plus, as I said this morning, if you stick 2GB of RAM in Windows 7, the vast majority of games can be played maxed out without running out of physical RAM. And PC is vastly less efficient than consoles. 2GB is plenty and people saying minimum of 4 and preferably 8 are flat out off their rocker.

 

[onQ123]

It's actually x4 total ram.

we don't know the total ram of this new console, only the main ram which is 8 X the main ram of the PS3 256MB.


as far as we know the Xbox 3 could have 2GB of main ram & 2GB of Vram.

 

[thuway]

Can you provide some detailed breakdown on how you think that will get to $499 to build? Because it sure sounds like a stretch, even in 2 years.

As for Cell, well Sony owns the damn thing, so it shouldn't be that much of a cost to put the sucker in. It might be in the relatively low dollars.

As for the other parts, I'm optimistic NVidia will get their shit together and Sony will go for a beefy GPU.

As for the RAM? Well 6 GB of unified DDR5 shouldn't be too much in 2013, but we'll see how prices go. I don't think its impossible, much like how people said the Vita was impossible at 249.

 

[bhlaab]

6 core cpu is a complete waste as well. Hell, 4 cores pushes usefulness in a dedicated gaming machine. RAM is much more important and cheaper.

Of course more memory doesn't sound as cool on a press release as PLAY HARDCORE WITH HEXACORE!!! 16-BIT GAMING!!!

 

[Instro]

for the people saying "2GB of main Ram is too low "

I think you should be reminded that 2GB is 8 X the main Ram of the PS3, you know the console with Uncharted 3 & GT5.

With the way people react to this stuff you'd swear they want to pay $500 for a console.

 

[1-D_FTW]

And FYI, if you sell 100 million units, a 20 dollar savings on RAM will net you an extra 2 billion dollars in profit.

They're not sticking anymore RAM into the unit than it truly needs. This isn't some dick waving contest. It's big dollars and parts need to justify their costs when you're dealing in that volume.

 

[itsgreen]

And FYI, if you sell 100 million units, a 20 dollar savings on RAM will net you an extra 2 billion dollars in profit.

They're not sticking anymore RAM into the unit than it truly needs. This isn't some dick waving contest. It's big dollars and parts need to justify their costs when you're dealing in that volume.

20 dollars today,
10 dollars in 1.5 years
5 dollars in 3 year

But it improves competitiveness so it will sell better
Will keep the console longer up to date, so it will sell longer

And they can charge extra to recoup the additional costs...

 

[bgassassin]

If I were Sony, I would make sure I'd do every damn thing right the first year with the most powerful hardware I could muster. They need to come out the gate with the most gorgeous visuals, a competent online, and a feature set that diversifies itself from the rest of the pack (remote play with Vita or any mobile phone)?

They need to build a 499 console, sell it at 399, and coerce people into paying money for online to offset costs.

My PS4 in 2013 would be -

4 X Cell
6 GB of Ram (2 GB DDR3 + 4 GB GDDR5 / XDR 2)
GTX 580 X 1.5-2
Small Flash HDD of 40 GB

$399 to consumers, $499 to build- launch with a title from Naughty Dog and Polyphony.

There will be a premium $499 build as well for those of us on GAF.

I lol'd.

 

[venne]

Yeah, this cloud service and streaming shit just isn't coming with the next gen. Anyone who thinks else is fooling themselves. The bandwith isn't there yet and ISPs are only getting more expensive and greedier with prices, too.

That's a ways out.

Cloud and streaming are available on consoles now and will only expand in scope in the future.

Some MS employee recently shot his mouth off about it.

http://www.computerandvideogames.com/325977/microsoft-teases-exciting-xbox-360-cloud-secrets/

 

[FStop7]

There's a Halo game coming next year for the 360. They're not going to launch a new console against their own flagship game franchise. Unless they're being tricky by saying "It will be on 360" they're holding back on saying it will be on both the 360 and the new console.

 

[Baron_Calamity]

Yes, because proprietary media always eliminates piracy.
There's not a face palm big enough for this.

no but if done smartly it does slow it down.

 

[[Nintex]]

I could see MS release a 2GB model in 2012, followed by a Xbox Ten that does 4k resolutions with a RAM upgrade in 2015 or so. It probably depends on how the TV market is going to evolve. I'm sure MS will keep the door open for future hardware upgrades this time. It all depends on the VRAM pool if they do 2GB DDR3 system RAM for the CPU(another PowerPC?) and 1/2GB GDDR5 for the GPU the 'problem' is solved. It also seems more 'cost effective' than a unified memory pool like the 360 has. Maybe they can even design it in a way that the GPU can access both pools if necessary.

 

[DSN2K]

720/loop is basically the WiiU big brother..both will use ATi GPU's and IBM CPU's.

 

[1-D_FTW]

20 dollars today,
10 dollars in 1.5 years
5 dollars in 3 year

But it improves competitiveness so it will sell better
Will keep the console longer up to date, so it will sell longer

And they can charge extra to recoup the additional costs...

Except it doesn't really work that way. You can reduce costs some, but it's still a fixed product with a fixed manufacturing line. It's why newer RAM is always cheaper than older RAM. Those things don't transfer backwards.

And there won't be another console generation after this. So who cares how long it lasts. If this current gen could last 10 years, the next console model will be dead long before people want new hardware. So the point remains, they're not going to get in a dick waving contest if it contributes zero real world benefit and costs them an extra 1 or 2 billion in lifetime profit.

 

[onQ123]

6 core cpu is a complete waste as well. Hell, 4 cores pushes usefulness in a dedicated gaming machine. RAM is much more important and cheaper.

Of course more memory doesn't sound as cool on a press release as PLAY HARDCORE WITH HEXACORE!!! 16-BIT GAMING!!!

it's better for them to go with 6 cores than to stick with the 3 cores & run at 2X the clock speed because of heat & power consumption.

PS Vita seems to be doing just fine with a 4 core CPU & 4 core GPU.