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

[Phynaz]

That's exactly how it works. It's called binning.

 

[Idontcare]

1: The APUs must be produced first before Miscrosoft assemble/manufacture the XB1.

2: A large Volume Launch in 13 countries at 22 November 2013

3: For this to happen they already have final silicon, XB1 is in full production now.

4: It will take 2-3 months for TSMC to produce the APUs,

thus final clocks decision was not made recently.

The original "decision" on clockspeeds may have entailed nothing more than a "target range", with the final decision on locking in a specific value for the clockspeed being something left open to be determined once the ship date was closer.

They may have, for example, left themselves a target of say 1.4 to 1.7GHz provided the power-consumption fit inside the defined TDP window.

Now that they've seen a few thousand wafers worth of yields and bin outs, they have much more confidence in the reliability of a specific bin coming out of the fabs.

Good time to lock in the final clockspeeds, now that they have more data to drive that decision.

 

[Enigmoid]

I dont believe thats how it works. AMD will have to know how many chips can do 1.75GHz, that means that yields will be different than chips at 1.6GHz. Also AMD needs to validate those chips at 1.75GHz and then TSMC to produce them.
Also, changing the specs will have an impact in thermals and consumption. Remember they changed both the CPU and GPU clocks. Having the same Heat-Sink Fan will increase DB noise as well or you will have to change the HSF, and more.

Jaguar can hit 2 GHz. Upping the speed from 1.6 to 1.75 GHz is probably nothing more than a minor bios change. Its like intel's pentium/celeron line. Is there anything prohibiting the chips from running at say 2.8 ghz vs 2.5 ghz? Not really (maybe minor binning at the very most). Its just artificial segmentation.

 

[SPBHM]

remember, the GPU also received a clock increase compared to their initial target

 

[Dribble]

Sounds like MS are just making any little tweaks they can to catch up with the faster gpu on the PS4. Faster single threaded performance with these low ipc cores is always helpful, for example for feeding the gpu more efficiently.

 

[guskline]

The original "decision" on clockspeeds may have entailed nothing more than a "target range", with the final decision on locking in a specific value for the clockspeed being something left open to be determined once the ship date was closer.

They may have, for example, left themselves a target of say 1.4 to 1.7GHz provided the power-consumption fit inside the defined TDP window.

Now that they've seen a few thousand wafers worth of yields and bin outs, they have much more confidence in the reliability of a specific bin coming out of the fabs.

Good time to lock in the final clockspeeds, now that they have more data to drive that decision.

Great explanation. Instead of blasting AMD as implied by some posts for some type of "conspiracy", your post, IDC, makes sense.

 

[ShintaiDK]

Great explanation. Instead of blasting AMD as implied by some posts for some type of "conspiracy", your post, IDC, makes sense.

Did I miss some posts?

I havent seen anyone in here "blasting" AMD. They simply deliver the design that MS and Sony orders. However the other 2 companies, sure. And specially MS havent exactly been lucky with their design goals.

 

[Gikaseixas]

And specially MS havent exactly been lucky with their design goals

ShintaiDK could you please elaborate more on that. Who's to blame in that scenario?

 

[frozentundra123456]

ShintaiDK could you please elaborate more on that. Who's to blame in that scenario?

I don't know who to blame except MS, but it is just beyond my comprehension how MS can deliver a less powerful system and charge more money for it. Obviously someone in MS thought their system has some advantages that justify the cost, but I don't see what they are. Or maybe someone at MS just totally screwed the pooch in setting the price.

 

[ShintaiDK]

ShintaiDK could you please elaborate more on that. Who's to blame in that scenario?

What more do you want elaborated. Any specific division or people in Microsoft? Besides the already known differences explained between the Xbox One and PS4? It was simply brilliant of Sony to go GDDR5 and add 50% more GPU vs the eSRAM. But both consoles still suffers massively for being discount this time around.

 

[cmdrdredd]

I don't know who to blame except MS, but it is just beyond my comprehension how MS can deliver a less powerful system and charge more money for it. Obviously someone in MS thought their system has some advantages that justify the cost, but I don't see what they are. Or maybe someone at MS just totally screwed the pooch in setting the price.

Because you ARE paying for kinect and Sony is taking more of a risk with their pricing. Rumors were for $500 for the ps4 too.

 

[krumme]

Considering the huge speed differences to last gen consoles i doubt the speed differences between xb or ps4 will have an effect. Will it be visible for other than a few nerds?

 

[Idontcare]

I don't know who to blame except MS, but it is just beyond my comprehension how MS can deliver a less powerful system and charge more money for it. Obviously someone in MS thought their system has some advantages that justify the cost, but I don't see what they are. Or maybe someone at MS just totally screwed the pooch in setting the price.

Put yourself in the unenviable position of being a project manager for hardware inside a software-based company which means all your peers are delivering silly high margins next to your division's paltry margins.

That puts a different bit of internal pressure on your bonuses, your annual targets, stretch goals, etc.

If I were a Microsoft guy, tired of looking like I'm the one dragging down corporate's average margins and tired of being looked at by me internal management peers as being the ugly duckling of the bunch, I'd be shooting to do anything I could to boost margins - however transitory and temporary it may be - with the initial product launch of Xbox One.

To be sure there will be a price drop triggered once some pre-defined unit volume threshold has been crossed. Maybe a $25 or $50 price drop once the first 3m units sell retail, or after 3 months, whichever happens first.

But milking the margins on the first early adopters, very much a corporate pressure situation going on at Microsoft which is not present at a true hardware-based corporation like Sony.

 

[ShintaiDK]

http://www.eurogamer.net/articles/digitalfoundry-vs-the-xbox-one-architects

Yet more info, and its not good.

Heavily CPU limited before release.

"Interestingly, the biggest source of your frame-rate drops actually comes from the CPU, not the GPU," Goosen reveals. "Adding the margin on the CPU... we actually had titles that were losing frames largely because they were CPU-bound in terms of their core threads. In providing what looks like a very little boost, it's actually a very significant win for us in making sure that we get the steady frame-rates on our console."

And resolution cant be kept up either.

Expect to see sub-1080p or dynamic resolutions on next-gen games. Crytek's Ryse is confirmed as running at 900p

"What we're seeing in titles is adopting the notion of dynamic resolution scaling to avoid glitching frame-rate. As they start getting into an area where they're starting to hit on the margin there where they could potentially go over their frame budget, they could start dynamically scaling back on resolution and they can keep their HUD in terms of true resolution and the 3D content is squeezing. Again, from my aspect as a gamer I'd rather have a consistent frame-rate and some squeezing on the number of pixels than have those frame-rate glitches."

How long are these consoles expected to last? 1-2 years?

 

[tulx]

http://www.eurogamer.net/articles/digitalfoundry-vs-the-xbox-one-architects

Yet more info, and its not good.

Heavily CPU limited before release.



And resolution cant be kept up either.

Well, seeing what developers managed to achieve with almost a decade old hardware that's on the level of modern smartphones, I'm sure that the new console generation will allow for considerable technical improvement in gaming, even if not to teh extent we hoped.
Besides, if you compare some of the first games made for the Xbox 360 and the last ones, someone will surely figure out how to use the new hardware to its full potential as well.

 

[Dresdenboy]

The topics discussed here (adaptive scaling, performance level) and the given compatibility of XBone, PS4 SoC base components and easy gfx scalability let me think, that there is a chance in seeing upgraded variants with higher gfx performance to sufficiently serve 4K or 3D screens.

 

[SPBHM]

How long are these consoles expected to last? 1-2 years?

if they really want, 5+ years I think.

when the PS3 was released (Q4 2006) Intel was releasing the Core 2 Quad and Nvidia the 8800GTX, so the PS3 was already quite weak compared to high end desktops.

 

[USER8000]

if they really want, 5+ years I think.

when the PS3 was released (Q4 2006) Intel was releasing the Core 2 Quad and Nvidia the 8800GTX, so the PS3 was already quite weak compared to high end desktops.

Plus the memory limitations were there too. Even at that time 1GB to 2GB of system RAM was common not 512MB,and the CPUs used were in-order designs,which needed high clockspeeds to somewhat compensate for this. On top of this they were not X86 CPUs either which made the porting process more difficult. With consoles being the lead platform for more and more games,the two main consoles having an X86 CPU is good news for PC gamers. It should make porting easier in theory and hopefully there will be less poorly optimised console ports.

 

[Ancalagon44]

http://www.eurogamer.net/articles/digitalfoundry-vs-the-xbox-one-architects

This is probably the first good Microsoft PR I've seen in some time.

 

[Techhog]

The topics discussed here (adaptive scaling, performance level) and the given compatibility of XBone, PS4 SoC base components and easy gfx scalability let me think, that there is a chance in seeing upgraded variants with higher gfx performance to sufficiently serve 4K or 3D screens.

No way. That would totally eliminate the point of making consoles in the first place. I don't see this being another 8-year generation though.

Anyway, right now, we have 2 (hell, 3 counting Wii U) next-gen consoles with a focus on GPGPU utilization. That's what I'm seeing, and once the industry adapts to this transition, we'll see better results.

 

[frozentundra123456]

Well, for one thing I would take what these guys say with a lot of reservations. Not saying they are outright lying, but obviously as MS developers, they are trying to put the best spin on the hardware choices they made relative to Sony.

What I think overall we can conclude, is that the hardware is limited, so a lot of optimizations and compromises will have to be made, unlike some of the early hype which claimed the consoles would rival or beat a high end PC. But yea, it is a bad sign when they start showing screenshots to say 900p looks as good as 1080.

 

[Erenhardt]

. But yea, it is a bad sign when they start showing screenshots to say 900p looks as good as 1080.

100% true... That weak jaguar is not able to handle 1080p rendering. Next step will be to convince us that 10FPS is absolutely playable.

 

[beginner99]

100% true... That weak jaguar is not able to handle 1080p rendering. Next step will be to convince us that 10FPS is absolutely playable.

like it wasn't obvious that they will be CPU limited from day one with that CPU.

 

[monstercameron]

100% true... That weak jaguar is not able to handle 1080p rendering. Next step will be to convince us that 10FPS is absolutely playable.

I dont think they are too weak and even so the jaguar cores are much faster than the older ppc cores.

also the console devs have always tried to maintain a minimum of 30fps so the bolded part is just inflammatory.

 

[Erenhardt]

That was sarcastic. What does CPU have to do with resolution?
One does not lower resolution when his CPU is having hard time. Quite the opposite. If you are CPU bound, you max out graphics to tax GPU more while maintaining the same frame rates as before.