ATI already won contract for next-gen XBOX?

[BladeVenom]

Originally posted by: BenSkywalker

So I expect a part that will not be revolutionary but will be very derivative of similar parts from the PC world in order to reduce costs. Something like a 5770 + 2generations + edram. The cpu will probably be a regular quadcore.

They won't downgrade their CPUs, not a chance. The PC space is a bad place to get a CPU for a gaming console, very poor actually. The costs are actually too high and the performance versus what is needed is far too low.

A quadcore would be a huge upgrade from what they have now. A PC CPU is far better than what the consoles get. The 360 and PS3 CPUs were utter shit. The cell may have been able to do a few specialized tasks well, but as a general purpose gaming CPU it was far inferior to what's in a PC.

 

[Rezist]

Wreckage please post your sources for console revenues and cost breakdown's? I must warn you a pic of your ass is against the TOS.

With that out of the way Nintendo looks to make money on every console sold. MS loses money on every 360 sold or atleast used to.

I also don't see the cell being used a follow up to the PS3. The idea behind the cell as well with the R&D was to have two cell's in the PS3 and for IBM to use the cell's in there servers.

Fast forward and the cell isn't used in many servers and Sony had to rush out and find a GPU for the PS3.

However now with the engineering done they know what the chip can and can't do.

 

[T2k]

Originally posted by: Wreckage

They no longer sell GPUs to the console makers they sell a design to them.

Utter BS.
That was always your master, Nvidia - they never made a single RSX chip for Sony, they only supplied the IP, unlike ATI who still makes Hollywood.

 

[T2k]

Originally posted by: Wreckage
It's the volume where the money is at. Look how many portable systems Nintendo sells. This would be a huge amount of money.

Except iw will be a LOT LESS than next-gen Xbox for ATI. If you don't understand something no need to make up fanboi BS.

 

[BenSkywalker]

The cell may have been able to do a few specialized tasks well, but as a general purpose gaming CPU it was far inferior to what's in a PC.

Maybe you should explain that to guys like Carmack then, he seems to think Cell is more powerful then PC CPUs, guess you must understand it better then he does.

I also don't see the cell being used a follow up to the PS3. The idea behind the cell as well with the R&D was to have two cell's in the PS3 and for IBM to use the cell's in there servers.

Cell wasn't close to strong enough to use as a rasterizer, that was KK's big mistake. As far as useage in IBM's machines, it works pretty well in RoadRunner. For the type of CPU Cell was designed to be, it did extremely well, just the entire idea of using CPU cores to render graphics was a huge mistake(and one Intel is in the process of making too). The worst part about using Cell was getting a reasonable development environment going, they have that now. Sticking with an updated Cell would smooth the transition process a considerable amount and allow them BC while pretty much any other processor architecture is going to give them big issues with.

 

[akugami]

There has been a lot of criticism of the Cell CPU. Granted there are gaffs in the design that has made it more difficult to program for and to fully utilize but to assume that because of the flaws of the original Cell CPU, they won't use an updated Cell is unreal.

What's not mentioned is that they will have had at least five years to update the Cell and we would have to expect that they will have fixed some of the shortcomings of Cell in a successor.

And as BenSkywalker points out, the development tools are much more mature now than when the Cell was first introduced. I don't see a bumpy transition in continuing the use of some form of the Cell processor in a Playstation 4.

In fact, it'd make a lot of sense considering the financial investment that Sony has made into the Cell processor. If they were going to switch to a "regular" Power based CPU or x86 CPU then they should never have invested in Cell in the first place.

 

[bfdd]

Originally posted by: Rezist
I expect ATi to win the MS contract, I also expect the new MS console to probably have less of a GPU then a 5850 is right now. Is there any reason to get better when your stuck at 1920x1080?

We'll find out when some DX11 games get I guess.

Well the 360 had basically a prototype HD2900 GPU in it when it came out from ATI. So I'm guessing MS liked the experience they had with ATI and the work they did together and that played the biggest factor.