Nvidia: Not Enough Money in a PS4 GPU for us to bother

[blackened23]

I would argue that Tegra isn't as off-topic as you think, as it was more than likely what nVidia pitched to MS and Sony to use in their consoles. Because while they probably didn't just want to put a GPU in there, you can be damned sure that they would have if they could have gotten Tegra in there as well.

Are you joking? Gimme a break. Tegra 4 is completely worthless for a console because the performance is probably about equal to the 360 and it uses pixel and vertex shaders. Look at the specifications. The graphics performance is low, the advantage of ARM chips is efficiency.

ARM SOCs = efficiency at the cost of terrible performance.

As I said pixel and vertex shaders used in the Tegra 4 make it worthless for a console anyway. The world moved to unified shaders for gaming in 2005.

The Tegra 3 is 96 Gflops but that isn't a proper comparison due to pixel and vertex shaders (AGAIN, P+V is not usable in a modern console). Xbox 360 is 240 Gflops and has a unified shader model like all modern graphics hardware. Tegra 4 is 100 Gflops maximum, but PIXEL AND VERTEX SHADERS. The nvidia chip used in the playstation 3 is more powerful than the tegra 4. But again - tegra 4 is not usable whatsoever due to pixel and vertex shaders. As stated a hundred times.

 

[cplusplus]

Are you joking? Gimme a break. Tegra 4 is completely worthless for a console because the performance is probably about equal to the 360 and it uses pixel and vertex shaders. Look at the specifications. The graphics performance is low, the advantage of ARM chips is efficiency.

ARM SOCs = efficiency at the cost of terrible performance.

As I said pixel and vertex shaders used in the Tegra 4 make it worthless for a console anyway. The world moved to unified shaders for gaming in 2005.

The Tegra 3 is 96 Gflops but that isn't a proper comparison due to pixel and vertex shaders (AGAIN, P+V is not usable in a modern console). Xbox 360 is 240 Gflops. Tegra 4 is 100 Gflops maximum, but PIXEL AND VERTEX SHADERS. The nvidia chip used in the playstation 3 is more powerful than the tegra 4. But again - tegra 4 is not usable whatsoever due to pixel and vertex shaders. As stated a hundred times.

I'm not saying it would have been a good choice. It would have been a completely awful choice. But nVidia would have pitched it. And the pitch definitely wouldn't have been Tegra 3. Hell, it probably wouldn't have been Tegra 4. Remember that the original rumors stated that these consoles would have been coming out early next year instead of late this year. So the pitch probably would have contained Tegra 5, and isn't that supposed to be the one that integrates a Kepler GPU?

 

[Arkadrel]

Are you joking? Gimme a break. Tegra 4 is completely worthless for a console because the performance is probably about equal to the 360 and it uses pixel and vertex shaders. Look at the specifications. The graphics performance is low, the advantage of ARM chips is efficiency.

ARM SOCs = efficiency at the cost of terrible performance.

As I said pixel and vertex shaders used in the Tegra 4 make it worthless for a console anyway. The world moved to unified shaders for gaming in 2005.

The Tegra 3 is 96 Gflops but that isn't a proper comparison due to pixel and vertex shaders (AGAIN, P+V is not usable in a modern console). Xbox 360 is 240 Gflops and has a unified shader model like all modern graphics hardware. Tegra 4 is 100 Gflops maximum, but PIXEL AND VERTEX SHADERS. The nvidia chip used in the playstation 3 is more powerful than the tegra 4. But again - tegra 4 is not usable whatsoever due to pixel and vertex shaders. As stated a hundred times.

96 Gflops Tegra 3

vs

1,84 Teraflops in the PS4 (1840 Gflops)


So its about 1/20th the performance, but like you said,
"pixel and vertex shaders" vs "Unified shaders"

Nvidia would certainly have to put alot of work into a tegra 4 or 5 for it
to be able to match anything close to 1,84 Tereflops.

How about CPU wise?
How close are the small ARM cpu cores to something like AMD jaguar cores @1.6-1.7ghz ?

Could you compensate by just haveing 50 small ARM cpu cores instead of 8 bigger 86x ones?
How much worse can it be to multi thread a game to run on 50 threads instead of 8?

 

[sontin]

Power budget for a console is much higher than for a tablet.

In 3 years nVidia increased the graphics performance 20x from Tegra 2 to Tegra 4.
Logan will have between 3x - 6x times more performance next year. That put Logan around 300 - 600 GFlops/s.
In 3 years Tegra could be on the same level like the PS4 but using much less power.

From the CPU point there is no real difference between A15 and Jaguar. And with Parker nVidia announced that they will using their own custom 64bit arm CPU which will be much faster than A15.

So looking a little bit in the future i guess that nVidia will not very far away with Parker - only 2 years after the PS4...

 

[Arkadrel]

In 3 years Tegra could be on the same level like the PS3 but using much less power.

Thats still pretty wild if its possible to get that into a mobile phone, without it running "dry" of battery in a hour or so.

Im not sure I believe you, that we ll have mobil phones matching a PS3 in 3years time.
But I guess anything is possible.... I just cant see it advanceing that fast.

Maybe in 3years time nvidia has a bigger tegra chip (NOT for mobile phones) thats able to do it though, and they ve made their own "stationary" PC's product line.

but by then, I think the next consol's on the draw boards will still be demanding much much more.
The PS5, will probably be 3x the amount the PS4 is, or more (and will probably not be a tegra chip).

 

[ICDP]

Power budget for a console is much higher than for a tablet.

In 3 years nVidia increased the graphics performance 20x from Tegra 2 to Tegra 4.
Logan will have between 3x - 6x times more performance next year. That put Logan around 300 - 600 GFlops/s.
In 3 years Tegra could be on the same level like the PS3 but using much less power.

From the CPU point there is no real difference between A15 and Jaguar. And with Parker nVidia announced that they will using their own custom 64bit arm CPU which will be much faster than A15.

So looking a little bit in the future i guess that nVidia will not very far away with Parker - only 2 years after the PS4...

What has that got to do with Sony and MS choosing an AMD solution because it offered what they required now? All these hypothetical performance rumours have absolutely no bearing on why Sony and MS went with AMD for their next gen consoles.

 

[Olikan]

i am pretty sure that, AMD have PS3 performance, using way less power....today

 

[MrK6]

96 Gflops Tegra 3

vs

1,84 Teraflops in the PS4 (1840 Gflops)


So its about 1/20th the performance, but like you said,
"pixel and vertex shaders" vs "Unified shaders"

Nvidia would certainly have to put alot of work into a tegra 4 or 5 for it
to be able to match anything close to 1,84 Tereflops.

I was at PAX East and nvidia had a demonstration mostly about Shield and the number they kept throwing around is Tegra 4 is six times faster (I guess they didn't do much with IPC this time around, maybe someone has the numbers).

The games they demonstrated looked dated, and considering the size of the Shield (its bulkiness), small screen, and poor battery life (5 hours) seems to detract too much from just gaming on a smartphone. The cloud gaming was interesting but there's a lot of noticeable lag to the point where I don't think you could play anything multiplayer or fast-paced single player without it being frustrating. They were very tied to Android and Steam in the demonstration, although beyond running an Android OS and accessing both marketplaces I'm not sure what else there is.

If that was what nvidia was hinging on instead of consoles, it doesn't seem like a good bet to me. However, I don't know the mobile market well and I don't have kids, so maybe parents will snatch them up as a cheap babysitter.

 

[Dark Shroud]

If parents go cheap on a console for their kids it will be an Ouya.

People keep going on about ARM & Tegra.

I really don't think Nvidia has a chance with project shield and I don't put much stock into their Tegra chips until a final product is out and benchmarked. This company has lied many times over in their product demos.

Now that Sony & MS are x86-x64 I just do not see them changing to ARM. With all that cross compatibility and ease of programming I doubt the development houses are going to want to switch to ARM

These next 5 years are going to fly by and it will be interesting times.

 

[BFG10K]

It's amazing to see that because people don't see things the same way you do, that they don't grasp what you're saying. Because if they grasped it, then of course they couldn't see things any other way than you do.

http://dictionary.reference.com/browse/monopoly

mo·nop·o·ly/məˈnɒp

ə

li/ Show Spelled [muh-nop-uh-lee] Show IPA
noun, plural mo·nop·o·lies.

1. exclusive control of a commodity or service in a particular market, or a control that makes possible the manipulation of prices. Compare duopoly, oligopoly.

2. an exclusive privilege to carry on a business, traffic, or service, granted by a government.

3. the exclusive possession or control of something.

4. something that is the subject of such control, as a commodity or service.

5. a company or group that has such control.

The concept of a monopoly (and its detriment to customers) is well-documented, along with numerous examples of gouging.

The only people who think monopolies are good are ones who have an affiliation with the company (e.g. shareholders, investors, employees, etc). No genuine consumer wants to see reduced competition.

Intel's Hexcore and Titan are priced the way they are because they're monopolies in their respected markets.

And in the future, try not to confuse me receiving evaluation hardware and my personal purchasing habits.

There's no confusion here; you spend less on nVidia hardware overall than someone who purchases the same cards from their own pocket.

I have 7 PC's (not counting notebooks) in my home. Did NV send me 7 Titans? Or 680's? or 7 anything? Newwwww. So prices affect me, genius.

nVidia didn't send you PSUs or cases either but that doesn't change the fact that you get free cards from them, which reduces your total costs for nVidia hardware.

Just curious, have they sent you a Titan yet?

 

[Ancalagon44]

Thats still pretty wild if its possible to get that into a mobile phone, without it running "dry" of battery in a hour or so.

Im not sure I believe you, that we ll have mobil phones matching a PS3 in 3years time.
But I guess anything is possible.... I just cant see it advanceing that fast.

Maybe in 3years time nvidia has a bigger tegra chip (NOT for mobile phones) thats able to do it though, and they ve made their own "stationary" PC's product line.

but by then, I think the next consol's on the draw boards will still be demanding much much more.
The PS5, will probably be 3x the amount the PS4 is, or more (and will probably not be a tegra chip).

Think about it, the first gen PSP was only slightly weaker than a PS2. Therefore, a PS Vita is more powerful than a PS2. How close it is to a PS3, I dont know, but the PS Vita itself is at least a year old at this point (isnt it? not sure).

So, if a year old mobile game platform is as powerful as PS2.5, its not much of a stretch to think that in 3 years time, there will be a mobile chip that is more powerful than a PS3.

 

[BFG10K]

How do you figure people don't have a choice to get Titan or not? You can get a 7970 for $400 that is within 30% of it, or a 680 for $440 that is within 40%? Where is the lack of choice?

There's no choice if you want a Titan's level of performance on a single GPU. Because of this fact, it costs $1000. So you either pay it or you get a slower card that isn't directly competing with it.

I would have liked a Titan, who are we kidding... But I made a choice to get a 7950 instead.

Do you think you would've made the same decision if Titan was more reasonably priced?

We're already there, $1000 cpus, $1000 gpus, neither make any sense compared to their $300 counterparts. i5-2500k makes a hell of a lot more sense than the 3960x, it also is insanely more popular, just like lesser cards make a lot more sense than Titan, and are also a lot more popular and will always be.

You're missing the point: they wouldn't be $1000 if they had competition. If AMD released a $700 Titan competitor, do you think nVidia wouldn't lower the prices? We've already seen this with the GTX280.

In a duo monopoly one company can either inhibit prices or enable them, in your situation AMD inhibited a 500+ mm2 die from selling for $650, in the current situation AMD is enabling a 294 mm2 die to sell for $500. Simple math tells me I'm getting more hardware for $650 at 576 mm2 than I am for $500 at 294 mm2.

Since when is die size an indicator of value for money? Nobody pays for die size, they pay for performance and features.

Not to mention that $650 and $500 would become $1000 and $750 if AMD wasn't around.

My point isn't that monopoly's are good, it just that duo monopolies aren't much better.

I can can cite numerous examples where competition has forced the other company to get it's act together where it otherwise wouldn't of bothered.

E.g. GTX280 price drop, fixed ROPs on the 4xxx series, stutter reduction in AMD drivers, nVidia implementing SSAA, post-filter AA on nVidia cards to compete with MLAA, etc, etc.

 

[BFG10K]

The current petrol prices occur because the companies have used up the cheapest-to-exact oil so that makes prices rise, and there is much more demand from china/india/brazil so that makes prices rise.

It's nothing to do with that. The prices are artificially kept high. There have been numerous examples where they cut production on purpose to achieve this:

http://www.businessweek.com/articles/2012-12-20/iraqs-oil-surge-could-threaten-the-saudis

Saudi Arabia, in contrast, has started to cut production to limit the risk of a price decline in 2013.

Brent crude recently traded as high as $110.15 a barrel, but it may sink to $88 by June if OPEC fails to curb supply, says Leo Drollas, chief economist at the Centre for Global Energy Studies. Though the Saudis have ample foreign currency reserves to cushion the country from a slide in prices, they cannot tolerate crude below about $90 a barrel for long, according to Jamie Webster, a consultant at PFC Energy.

Demand for OPEC’s crude will shrink to 29.7 million barrels a day in 2013, the organization’s secretariat said in a statement at the end of its meeting in Vienna. That’s 1.1 million barrels a day below November’s actual output, OPEC data show. “OPEC is overproducing, and the Saudis need to cut,” says Roy Mason, founder of tanker tracker Oil Movements.

As far as I know we aren't running out of sand for silicon.

If there's so much sand, how come Titan costs $1000?

Petrol is also just petrol - you don't come out with a new version of petrol that's twice as fast every year and you can't make smaller petrol or larger petrol.

That's not really relevant except in showing that a monopoly can keep selling the same thing and keep making money without competition. People say "Intel needs to give you an incentive to upgrade". Actually they don't, not if they can keep making money off the same products.

 

[Anarchist420]

When 16 nm process nodes are available, then you could have a console with a system on a chip using a GTX Titan+. They could even clock it a 1 GHz and integrate the PCH, codecs, and VRMs.

It would be expensive, but it would be a hell of a lot more performance/watt than even a 16 nm of the PS4's SOC.

 

[gorobei]

http://www.bit-tech.net/news/gaming/2013/03/27/ps4-interface-social-user-details-gdc/1
looks like a couple of the jaguar cores will be used solely for the social media, screenshot, video recording, download management.

 

[cplusplus]

http://www.bit-tech.net/news/gaming/2013/03/27/ps4-interface-social-user-details-gdc/1
looks like a couple of the jaguar cores will be used solely for the social media, screenshot, video recording, download management.

Actually, they're probably using an ARM chip for the download management part. Also for the low-power charging and downloading while idle part, too.

 

[Olikan]

http://www.bit-tech.net/news/gaming/2013/03/27/ps4-interface-social-user-details-gdc/1
looks like a couple of the jaguar cores will be used solely for the social media, screenshot, video recording, download management.

1 core for the O.S., other for the programs, i think

still wish they reveal, if the gpu is GCN 1.0 or 2.0

 

[cytg111]

if an entire core was needed to run an os, we would have gotten nothing done back in the days of single core/single thread cpus

 

[Final8ty]

There's no choice if you want a Titan's level of performance on a single GPU. Because of this fact, it costs $1000. So you either pay it or you get a slower card that isn't directly competing with it.


Do you think you would've made the same decision if Titan was more reasonably priced?


You're missing the point: they wouldn't be $1000 if they had competition. If AMD released a $700 Titan competitor, do you think nVidia wouldn't lower the prices? We've already seen this with the GTX280.


Since when is die size an indicator of value for money? Nobody pays for die size, they pay for performance and features.

Not to mention that $650 and $500 would become $1000 and $750 if AMD wasn't around.

I can can cite numerous examples where competition has forced the other company to get it's act together where it otherwise wouldn't of bothered.

E.g. GTX280 price drop, fixed ROPs on the 4xxx series, stutter reduction in AMD drivers, nVidia implementing SSAA, post-filter AA on nVidia cards to compete with MLAA, etc, etc.

And NV had multi screen gaming capability before AMD but didn't bring it out for consumer level cards until AMD had come out with Eyefinity + having 3 screen on one card.

 

[Meekers]

So stock analysts seem to disagree with NVIDIA. AMD's stock has made huge gains over the last few days and investors are stating PS4 and Xbox as the reason.

AMD's stock price surged earlier this month on the 8th when unofficial news of the Xbox using a Jaguar core was released. However, the earliest rumors of Xbox using a Jaguar core I could find were well before that. Extremetech.com's article was released on March 22nd. I have not seen any analyst mention AMD being used for "steam box" variants, but right now the market seems giddy of any news regarding AMD's future in the gaming industry. Most analysts I have seen cite this news as the reason for AMD's surging price.

AMD has beautifully positioned itself at the cornerstone of the console gaming industry. Being used in all three next generation consoles, and at least some of the variants of a steam box, will partially divorce AMD from declining PC sales. I feel that the optimizations that will take place on coding games to operate on AMD hardware will prevent AMD from further losing market share, and possibly regain some of the lost market share to rivals Nvidia (NVDA) and Intel.

http://seekingalpha.com/article/1413681-amd-s-strategic-position-in-the-gaming-industry?source=yahoo

 

[BallaTheFeared]

I thought it surged because of the rumor of Intel buying them out?

http://forums.anandtech.com/showthread.php?t=2317294

 

[Meekers]

I thought it surged because of the rumor of Intel buying them out?

http://forums.anandtech.com/showthread.php?t=2317294

That was a rumor because no one knew why the stock was going up. Since then pretty much every analysts is claiming it is because of consoles and rumors of putting AMD into xbox and steambox.

Indeed, feeding on the market's speculative juices injected into circulation by the FED gland, traders have bid up AMD all the way up to $3.61, for a gain of close to 50% in less than one month. This is slightly surprising, in that the rumors of AMD having won both next-generation consoles were already present months ago. But the market, hot as it is, decided to pay these rumors attention just now.

http://seekingalpha.com/article/1408931-beware-of-buying-advanced-micro-devices-now?source=yahoo

Finally, chip maker Advanced Micro Devices (NYSE: AMD ) continued its monumental run this week, tacking on another 5.6%. All told, shares rose 37% this week as investors unleash their optimism surrounding AMD's key wins in the next-generation Microsoft Xbox and Sony Playstation 4. The gaming industry has been waiting years for updates to these consoles, and AMD looks poised for some quick gains on what should be strong sales for these next-generation gaming devices.

http://www.fool.com/investing/general/2013/05/03/todays-3-best-stocks-82.aspx

SAN FRANCISCO (MarketWatch) - Shares of Advanced Micro Devices (US:amd) soared Friday and the stock was poised to end the week with a 40% gain. AMD was last trading up 10% to $3.75. Bernstein Research analyst Stacy Rasgon said it appears to be based on speculation that the chipmaker, which has been hurt by a collapsing personal comptuter market, may get a significant upside from its growing presence in the game console business. Rasgon cited Sony's announcement that it will be using AMD chips for the next PlayStation. He said there is also speculation that Microsoft Corp.'s (US:msft) upcoming version of the Xbox will also include an AMD processor. "Right now, it's someone make a bet on the console opportunity," Rasgon told MarketWatch. AMD shares have jumped more than 55% year-to-date.

http://articles.marketwatch.com/201...2_1_amd-shares-advanced-micro-devices-console

AMD shares have seen their biggest week of gains in over 10 years, although a number of analysts are wondering at the magnitude of the run-up, considering the uncertain outlook for the firm. At any rate, the most usually-cited reason for the gains is the major part that AMD’s processors are anticipated to play in the next generation of video game consoles, but short-covering and deal chatter have also been thought factors.

http://wallstcheatsheet.com/stocks/...-heavily-traded-stocks-to-follow.html/?ref=YF