Digital Foundry: next-gen PlayStation and Xbox to use AMD's 8-core CPU and Radeon HD

[VulgarDisplay]

Slow down there. You aren't allowed to bring actual information in here anymore, just some speculation. That is all

I, for one, don't see what the concern is. It's still going to be vastly better than what was there before, have a lot of FPU power, some special and exclusive go juice, etc.

Crap folks, you know that cross platform titles will have to work on the WiiU, right? It's likely this thing will only be able to stretch its legs on exclusives.

Or maybe the WiiU is about to get cut out like the Wii did if the xbox 3/PS4 are similar enough?

I don't think crossplatform devs will even really bother with the WiiU. From all accounts it's selling horribly. Like beyond horribly.

http://www.neowin.net/news/nintendo-wii-u-sales-bomb-in-us-good-or-bad-news-for-microsoft

People are avoided the Wii U like the plague because of how terrible the Wii was in terms of content, games, and exlusive games. It was a wasteland. People bought the Wii. Played bowling for a month, and then it collected dust.

 

[Cerb]

Everybody I know has used their Wii pretty regularly. But, the Wii U really needed a lot more than a funky controller and HD out to be something new and special. IMO, it doesn't mean anything for MS or Sony, though. Outside of handhelds, Nintendo has been only tangibly in competition with them.

 

[blckgrffn]

Man, if Nintendo is really going to get curbed that hard, then they through the baby out with the bath water, etc. in not creating something more competitive from a hardware spec.

Even then, the WiiU has Nintendo exclusives, and that will sell a fair number of them.

Fore example Bayonetta sequel is exclusive to the WiiU, so I'll own one at some point.

I'll keep hoping that it looks better than Bayonetta 1 on the xbox. At least it should have some higher resolution textures. Or something.

But you really think CoD/Modern Warfare etc. are going to ignore the WiiU for what will likely be dubious amounts of P4s & xbox 3's for the next 18 months or so? WiiU is here in volume, even if that volume is also still on shelves Or will those 18 months in the meantime be the "golden age" of third party titles for the WiiU - when many decent titles are still aimed at the PS3 and 360?

 

[VulgarDisplay]

Man, if Nintendo is really going to get curbed that hard, then they through the baby out with the bath water, etc. in not creating something more competitive from a hardware spec.

Even then, the WiiU has Nintendo exclusives, and that will sell a fair number of them.

Fore example Bayonetta sequel is exclusive to the WiiU, so I'll own one at some point.

I'll keep hoping that it looks better than Bayonetta 1 on the xbox. At least it should have some higher resolution textures. Or something.

But you really think CoD/Modern Warfare etc. are going to ignore the WiiU for what will likely be dubious amounts of P4s & xbox 3's for the next 18 months or so? WiiU is here in volume, even if that volume is also still on shelves Or will those 18 months in the meantime be the "golden age" of third party titles for the WiiU - when many decent titles are still aimed at the PS3 and 360?

I don't think there will be a golden age of third party titles on the Wii U. They need to move some consoles before the holiday season or the Wii U is dead.

As soon as the PS4 and new Xbox hit no one is going to buy the Wii U. Especially with Kinect and Move stealing the gimmicky control crap thunder of the Wii.

 

[ShintaiDK]

In terms of Wii U, our household got a Wii and we still love it. But we have zero incentive to upgrade to a Wii U. on the other hand we would never buy an Xbox or Playstation either. If people like us dont see the reason tp upgarde their Wii, I doubt many others will. And thats also why the Wii U sales are disasterous.

 

[poohbear]

It would never work with FM2. 7850 level of performance requires 7850 levels of memory bandwidth, and dual channel DDR3 isn't going to cut it. They could mask some of it with on-package DRAM like Haswell GT3e (and supposedly the next XBox), but that would of course make it more expensive.

I can see it being used in BGA boards though, with soldered on GDDR5. Do it like graphics cards- make a reference MiniITX board, but let partners customise it if they like.

isn't it 8GB of DDR5, not DDR3? that ups the bandwidth a bit.

 

[TurtleCrusher]

isn't it 8GB of DDR5, not DDR3? that ups the bandwidth a bit.

And by a bit you mean a lot.

 

[NTMBK]

isn't it 8GB of DDR5, not DDR3? that ups the bandwidth a bit.

The PS4 is, yeah, which is why it should perform well. But FM2 platform is DDR3 only.

 

[Asterox]

Here's a nice comparison in terms of size, one Jaguar Compute Unit with 4 Cores(PS4 has two units) vs one Bulldozer/Piledriver/Steamroller Module with 2 Threads or two special CPU cores.

 

[Olikan]

That L2 interface is HUGE, almost same size as a core

 

[podspi]

In terms of Wii U, our household got a Wii and we still love it. But we have zero incentive to upgrade to a Wii U. on the other hand we would never buy an Xbox or Playstation either. If people like us dont see the reason tp upgarde their Wii, I doubt many others will. And thats also why the Wii U sales are disasterous.

It's all about the first-party titles

Here's a nice comparison in terms of size, one Jaguar Compute Unit with 4 Cores(PS4 has two units) vs one Bulldozer/Piledriver/Steamroller Module with 2 Threads or two special CPU cores.

How does the density of those two processes compare? Really though, you have to wonder what all those transistors in BD/PD are doing...

 

[BallaTheFeared]

Really though, you have to wonder what all those transistors in BD/PD are doing...

You mean besides sucking down power


Joking aside, why is it called a compute unit?

 

[inf64]

28nm vs 32nm,bulk vs SOI etc.
But still Jaguar looks very impressive,especially when you count in the automated tools they used to design it. From pure performance POV PD is much better(~4.4Ghz capable core with similar IPC) but from perf./mm^2 Jaguar takes the cake.

 

[pablo87]

That 30.9mm^2 figure for BD is disingenuous when you consider the rest of the processor takes up 195mm^2...

 

[Cerb]

That 30.9mm^2 figure for BD is disingenuous when you consider the rest of the processor takes up 195mm^2...

Not really. The slides do not include the rest of the chip that would make Jaguar a full CPU, either. The process difference is all that might be disingenuous, but are they making a 28nm BD-based CPU, at TSMC?

That's 4 ~K8 cores in about the space of 1 BD module. It should have 1.5-2x the FP performance of a 2-module BD-based CPU, too.

 

[pablo87]

Not really. The slides do not include the rest of the chip that would make Jaguar a full CPU, either. The process difference is all that might be disingenuous, but are they making a 28nm BD-based CPU, at TSMC?

That's 4 ~K8 cores in about the space of 1 BD module. It should have 1.5-2x the FP performance of a 2-module BD-based CPU, too.

It is. Its like saying we have more back seat legroom than anyone else while omitting to mention there's no trunk. AMD promoted that module die size to justify a seriously flawed half-baked concept, omitting to mention that the uncore and L3 alone were 6-7x the size of said module.

 

[podspi]

It is. Its like saying we have more back seat legroom than anyone else while omitting to mention there's no trunk. AMD promoted that module die size to justify a seriously flawed half-baked concept, omitting to mention that the uncore and L3 alone were 6-7x the size of said module.

Do the modules require such a large uncore though? Or is BD/PD's uncore just a poor design?

 

[pablo87]

Do the modules require such a large uncore though? Or is BD/PD's uncore just a poor design?

Probably not but those parts of the watch are still needed - its academic to design a great engine with a poor transmission though come to think of it, its not surprising they did that as the whole design seems to have been that way. Pretty sad that it got off the drawing board IMO.

 

[Cerb]

It is. Its like saying we have more back seat legroom than anyone else while omitting to mention there's no trunk.

Cars without trunks are very popular.

AMD promoted that module die size to justify a seriously flawed half-baked concept, omitting to mention that the uncore and L3 alone were 6-7x the size of said module.

The desktop/mobile CPUs don't even have L3, for the most part. The size of that is 0. It's just uncore.

The rest of the 'uncore' is big, but not massive, like 1st-gen BD:
http://www.anandtech.com/show/6332/amd-trinity-a10-5800k-a8-5600k-review-part-1

The Jaguar unit, to the best of our knowledge, is going to be 4 cores, with 2MB L2 outside of them. The smallest BD-based unit is 1-2 cores, with 2MB L2 cache. Jaguar fits almost double the cores, each of similar IPC, into the space of 1 BD module. The most fair comparison might be 2 1MB L2 modules, but that never materialized.

Both the BD module and Jaguar will both require those uncore parts, and both require a GPU, to be viable CPUs. The amount of space they take up should be more dependent on the desired TDP, GPU performance, and socket/platform spec the whole chip will use.

BD should have faster cache, or denser cache, not in-between. BD shouldn't have been made a speed demon. BD should have had wider FP units, shared or not. It's got major flaws. But, that hardly makes a logic+cache A v. B comparison disingenuous.

 

[Phynaz]

nvm, brain fart

 

[beginner99]

In terms of Wii U, our household got a Wii and we still love it. But we have zero incentive to upgrade to a Wii U. on the other hand we would never buy an Xbox or Playstation either. If people like us dont see the reason tp upgarde their Wii, I doubt many others will. And thats also why the Wii U sales are disasterous.

makes sense. If you like a Wii you obviously care shit about good graphics so the Wii U won't give you much.

Me personally I never really understood the Wii. The sports gave was fun...for about 5 hours. For other games the controller was more a hindrance and source of frustration.

 

[Dark Shroud]

I have a WiiU Pro and I regret buying the thing. Eventually I know I'll get some Zelda and a few other titles I'll love. But I can tell this thing isn't going to be my favorite by any means. The way they handled backwards compatibility sucks hard. I should have set up Dolphin emulation instead of wasting the money.

I'll get a PS4 partially for it's playback capabilities, it can output 4K video and I expect more VOD options. The PS3 I bought at launch was a great investment just for Blu-ray & streaming.

 

[TurtleCrusher]

makes sense. If you like a Wii you obviously care shit about good graphics so the Wii U won't give you much.

Me personally I never really understood the Wii. The sports gave was fun...for about 5 hours. For other games the controller was more a hindrance and source of frustration.

If you mod a Wii, it becomes an amazing system to have. Once you have atleast 1 of each controller, the possibilites of that system are endless. From emulation, playing backups and media, it's probably one of the best purchases I've made for $70. I find that I spend more time playing retro, Wii and GameCube backups than I do on my gaming PC. My wife also uses the crap out of it for Netflix.

I also bought an HDMI 720/1080P upscaler that is proprietary for the Wii, and makes games (and especially video) much, much better.

 

[2is]

Playing "backups" eh? How is that better than playing the original again?

 

[TurtleCrusher]

Playing "backups" eh? How is that better than playing the original again?

Having 400 Wii/Gamecube games on a single HDD, as well as every single NES, SNES, Genesis, GameBoy, GBA and other retro games on a single SD card.

Not to mention load times are much better from a USB 2.0 HDD than an optical drive.