PS4 Pro has 36 active GPU cores, not 40. And the new chip's clock rate is 40 percent higher, so it's more like "34" vs 36 gpu cores, about the same. The CPU is the main problem with current consoles, limiting most games to 30 fps.
Link to major developer on record? Custom-written software for consoles tends to be designed to work around things like that, offload as much work as possible to the GPU and custom blocks, go heavy on parallelization, optimize cycle-hungry blocks of code, etc.
From what I've read, the GPU is equivalent to the AMD RX 580. This card can easily push High-Ultra settings at 1080p and maintain a solid 60fps. So, not close to the PS4 Pro, which only pushes Low-Medium-High settings at 30fps at either 1080p or 2160p. (4K)
Really? I guess you should stop taking twitreddit seriously, and look up the specs yourself.
It's not very close to an RX 580. It has similar clocks to any off-the-shelf RX 580 and a substantial shader deficit. That doesn't even factor in boost, not to mention almost every model sold is running a mild overclock out-of-the-box.
It's not, a Zen core is a Zen core. And if you're referring to like how there's the recent Chinese manufacturing of licensed EPYC's, those are identical to the official AMD western designs as well.
From 'sources' it is looking like Zen 2 + Vega 7nm or Navi 7nm depending on launch window and product maturity. It all depends on the console cycle timing, since the execs would have to order the initial stock ~3 quarters in advance of the actual console release, and they can only order what is available/proven for a semi-custom part.
ummm, Ryzen has been out and launched in western countries since early 2017 LOL (March 2 for 1700-700x-1800x...Apr 11 for 1400-1500x-1600-1600x...June 29 for 1200 and 1300x)
Ryzen 2200/2400g were launched Feb 12 2018 Zen + (Ryzen 2xxx desktop) 2600-2600x-2700-2700x were launched April 19, 2018.
the G in AMD naming stands for Graphics (what they also call APU..accelerated processing unit that is cpu and gpu in the same chip.
Interesting. Still, I'm more interested in what's happening with Vega Mobile. Considering they showed it off eight months ago, is it somewhat safe to assume that it's been canned? It did look promising in terms of size, area and CU count, but one has to speculate if Nvidia's performance/watt (or at least perf/watt/die area(and as such price), if you downclock Vega to peak efficiency) advantage has the laptop market cornered. I'm glad to see KBL-G getting a foothold, but I'd really like to see Vega Mobile show up at some point. If nothing else, how about making a slim, SFF, portable eGPU out of it? Sized to match an ultrabook, but with ~GTX 1060 performance? That would be sweet.
Yes, the west needs to bear in mind this is the form much of the market takes in the developing world - shops w/ ~a dozen terminals charging by the hour.
This. I'm guessing that, for cost reasons, it's also using GDDR5 as system RAM. I'm also betting that it's got 8 threads, to help hide the additional memory latency.
GDDR trades latency for bandwidth, but just how much would that be? Code latency may be unnoticeable because of caches, data latency actually less important than bandwidth for consumer workloads. In the past it also used to be cost, but again with DDRx prices through the roof, is the gap between GDDR and DDR4 still as high? On the other hand GDDR5 should be a lot better when the workload is actually HSA, right?
Cool chip, wouldn't mind something like that as a socketable APU or soldered on a mSTX/ITX motherboard. The more interesting bit to me is what sort of OS the console will run.
If it can run Steam games, maybe with a skeleton Windows OS, it'll be great for the living room. The Steam OS has crappy game selection compared to Windows 7.
I hope when 7nm is here for both Zen 2 and Vega that AMD releases a 8C16T APU with at least RX 580 performance. All we need for this to happen is 8GB of HBM2/3 to be installed on the AM4 package. If they could do that I would gladly upgrade to X470 with video ports and retire my discrete video card. Why not?
Interesting APU/SoC. The second update of the article (the GDDR5 memory is NOT part of the chip) suggests that an APU for PCs similar to this would be easier for AMD to roll out than otherwise. So, AMD marketing department: Ryzen 2500G or something like this? Would love to see an APU with 20 or so Vega CUs, although seriously fast DDR4 would be a must to make those CUs worth their while. Other thought: Doesn't the Subor sound an awful lot like the affordable Valve Steam PC that Valve has been talking about for years? If it can run Linux and WIN 10, it would be a serious value proposition at $ 550 or so, replacing a console and a regular daily driver PC. Yes, you would be stuck at 8 GB combined system memory, with it being GDDR5, but that's enough for most productivity applications, and good enough for most games at 1080p. Alternatively, make it 10-12 GB GDDR5, make sure it has FreeSync, and add another $ 50 or so to about $ 600, it'd be even better, and I would seriously consider getting one.
So what games does this thing play? A bunch of free-to-play garbage made specifically for the Chinese market? It's interesting hardware, but if it's not just a PC running Windows, what good is all that hardware power?
The point of a game console isn't to play games? Or do you mean that the point is simply that the hardware exists and perhaps gives us an early look at what next-gen consoles will look like?
No, I mean that's not why anandtech is covering it. Most of us aren't interested in their games console, but rather the technological and business aspects and implications of the news.
Whatever games it plays probably won't differ much from what China allows to be played on other consoles sold there.
I am totally mystified as to why this article doesn’t show up on the home page: Have to go to ‘CPUs’ to see it….?
For me the major question is if the SoC is designed and fabricated generic enough to bring the Infinity Fabric out to the pads and allow stacking: That would be a complete game changer, because you could combine it into 2x, perhaps 3x, 4x or indeed turn it into a nice HPC supercomputer with proper switch chips while just 2x passive setup should already make many power gamers quite happy.
Of course, AMD could always another SoC for that, but without the scale of something like this Chinese console market…
I’d also hope that HMC capabilities would have been retained, just in case HPC would want to go extra dense…
If this is in fact PC compatible enough to run Windows, Linux, Android-x86 and not “illegal” for some reason outside China (e.g. lack of CE etc.), I can see it selling like hot-cake.
I dunno. The CPU performance will lag the current Ryzen 3's. GPUs are not so expensive, these days. 8 GB of unified memory is not great. Lastly, the only upgradable aspect of it will be storage. So, for $625 + a hefty margin for importers (assume US street price easily north of $700, not including tariffs), it's not exactly a slam dunk. But, at something like half the price, it would be a steal.
kind of a slap by AMD for Ryzen 2200/2400g if they were "able" to use the same cpu design (4c/8t) with a gimped Vega that uses system ram when they probably could have "easily" done a 2200/2400g with more CU version Vega on it instead of "castrating" potential performance by 2.18+%
I know they are in business not to cater but to make $$$$$$, but gimping things just to make other sales is beyond my understanding, that seems very Intel or Ngreedia way of doing things.
they likely could have "locked" the speeds based on the box cooler for example 15-35w TDP for 2200g 20-45w TDP with 2400g and a 2200/2400g X variant that has a better boxed cooler but also a more "substantial" XFR and Vega variant (using the 24 CU instead of only 11 at "best")
the 2200/2400g are "pretty ok" for what they are, but seeing what they end up releasing AFTER the fact says they probably could have done a bit more for the price especially in the case of 2400g ~$120 more from what I have seen and yet "in the real world" does not really justify this price increase.
almost like the specs for this "new" subfor one is what they 2400g should have been and the 2200g should have been what the 2400g is (with the clock speed base 3.8ghz for 2400g with 24 CU Vega and 2200g 3.0ghz base and 11 CU Vega) likely they could have "played" a bit more to justify the pricing etc, because likely with the difference of 2400g at 3.8Ghz base 24 CU Vega it would be "very much" worth that extra price increase.
Maybe they should do this and call the "old" 2200g as 2100g reduce clock to 3.0 base with vega 8, upgrade 2200g with vega 11 call it 2250g, rebadge the 2400g as 2300g (as it currently is) make the 2400g as 2450g with the better vega core design, this way here in all cases there is enough product/performance/price segregation to "make it matter"
I just really do not get AMD for doing this, either it makes the ones who already purchase 2200/2400g look stupid or it makes the "china" market get something "better" for whatever reason again..RX gpu have done this a few times, given "special editions" to them that WE (north america) do not end up getting.
either way, this seems like what the 2200/2440 could have and should have been right off the bat, hell just the vega 8 and 4gb GDDR3 4 or 5 at 3Ghz and 2400g 8gb GDDR3 4 or 5 with Vega 11 at a higher available TDP would have made a very distinct difference.
I guess just goes to show that whomever "thinks of these things" may not fully understand product segregation or testing to make sure there is enough distance between the goals posts or something.
on another note, that consol almost looks like a combination/frankenstein of Xbox (gen 1) PS3 and PS4 with the angular approach they are using, maybe they will have been smart enough to use cooling fans you can easily replace unlike Sony and MSFT with their consoles that for whatever reason did NOT do this (which is moronic)
Woah. You're making a lot of questionable assumptions, there.
You need to see how 2400G's performance is affected by memory speed to see the degree to which it's limited by 128-bit DDR4. This thing uses 256-bit GDDR5. That's what you need to keep a 24-CU Vega well fed.
Anyway, the chip was build like all the other console chips - by contract. It is not an AMD product - they were contracted by Zhongshan Subor to build it.
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klatscho - Friday, August 3, 2018 - link
Really exciting news! I wonder when we will see Zen in "western" consoles...Alistair - Friday, August 3, 2018 - link
Really exciting, I wanted this in the Xbox One X so badly! And the GPU seems equal to a PS4 pro with that clock rate.stephenho - Friday, August 3, 2018 - link
Zen is better than Jaguar, but may I know if the CPU the key factor for gaming? Does Vega 24 vs Vega 40 a more important parameter?Alistair - Friday, August 3, 2018 - link
PS4 Pro has 36 active GPU cores, not 40. And the new chip's clock rate is 40 percent higher, so it's more like "34" vs 36 gpu cores, about the same. The CPU is the main problem with current consoles, limiting most games to 30 fps.Alexvrb - Saturday, August 4, 2018 - link
Link to major developer on record? Custom-written software for consoles tends to be designed to work around things like that, offload as much work as possible to the GPU and custom blocks, go heavy on parallelization, optimize cycle-hungry blocks of code, etc.Flunk - Monday, August 6, 2018 - link
Can't outsmart a 4x CPU performance difference.themrsbusta - Saturday, August 4, 2018 - link
Size isn't power alone, clock counts too.and Xbox uses Polaris
Alexvrb - Saturday, August 4, 2018 - link
There's still a large deficit. It's closer to a PS4 Pro.Here2Teach - Friday, August 3, 2018 - link
From what I've read, the GPU is equivalent to the AMD RX 580. This card can easily push High-Ultra settings at 1080p and maintain a solid 60fps. So, not close to the PS4 Pro, which only pushes Low-Medium-High settings at 30fps at either 1080p or 2160p. (4K)Alexvrb - Saturday, August 4, 2018 - link
Really? I guess you should stop taking twitreddit seriously, and look up the specs yourself.It's not very close to an RX 580. It has similar clocks to any off-the-shelf RX 580 and a substantial shader deficit. That doesn't even factor in boost, not to mention almost every model sold is running a mild overclock out-of-the-box.
Tkan215 - Friday, August 3, 2018 - link
this zen might be different zen from USA.Cooe - Friday, August 3, 2018 - link
It's not, a Zen core is a Zen core. And if you're referring to like how there's the recent Chinese manufacturing of licensed EPYC's, those are identical to the official AMD western designs as well.Matthmaroo - Friday, August 3, 2018 - link
I believe both the ps5 and next Xbox will have zen or zen 2Lots of talk about it on the inter webs
FullmetalTitan - Friday, August 3, 2018 - link
From 'sources' it is looking like Zen 2 + Vega 7nm or Navi 7nm depending on launch window and product maturity. It all depends on the console cycle timing, since the execs would have to order the initial stock ~3 quarters in advance of the actual console release, and they can only order what is available/proven for a semi-custom part.kmi187 - Friday, August 3, 2018 - link
A lot of western consoles already run AMD hardware.mode_13h - Friday, August 3, 2018 - link
All, except Nintendo.t.s - Saturday, August 4, 2018 - link
AFAIK, Nintendo is from Japan.drSeehas - Saturday, August 4, 2018 - link
Yes, Sony is from Japan too.msroadkill612 - Saturday, August 4, 2018 - link
Western consolations.Dragonstongue - Monday, August 6, 2018 - link
ummm, Ryzen has been out and launched in western countries since early 2017 LOL (March 2 for 1700-700x-1800x...Apr 11 for 1400-1500x-1600-1600x...June 29 for 1200 and 1300x)Ryzen 2200/2400g were launched Feb 12 2018
Zen + (Ryzen 2xxx desktop) 2600-2600x-2700-2700x were launched April 19, 2018.
the G in AMD naming stands for Graphics (what they also call APU..accelerated processing unit that is cpu and gpu in the same chip.
Valantar - Friday, August 3, 2018 - link
Interesting. Still, I'm more interested in what's happening with Vega Mobile. Considering they showed it off eight months ago, is it somewhat safe to assume that it's been canned? It did look promising in terms of size, area and CU count, but one has to speculate if Nvidia's performance/watt (or at least perf/watt/die area(and as such price), if you downclock Vega to peak efficiency) advantage has the laptop market cornered. I'm glad to see KBL-G getting a foothold, but I'd really like to see Vega Mobile show up at some point. If nothing else, how about making a slim, SFF, portable eGPU out of it? Sized to match an ultrabook, but with ~GTX 1060 performance? That would be sweet.neblogai - Friday, August 3, 2018 - link
In some AMD slides from ~May/June, 'Vega mobile' was shown as arriving '2018', the same as Vega20 7nm/Instinct.msroadkill612 - Saturday, August 4, 2018 - link
It has a ring of truth about it.If production run slots are scarce for the 7nm process, as seems logical during ramping, then amdS commercial priorities would favor pro gpu & mobile.
Both are lucrative and efficiency driven.
12/14nm are proving more than competitive in cpu, sothey are relatively less urgent.
Tkan215 - Friday, August 3, 2018 - link
so the rumor and leak comes out to be true the powerful soc was built for chinese gamer. good job amdiwod - Friday, August 3, 2018 - link
TMSC or GF, that is the most important question.psychobriggsy - Friday, August 3, 2018 - link
I'd love to see a photo of this chip.I wonder how wide the memory bus is if all the GDDR5 has to be on-package. 128-bit?
This would sell really well as part of a SFF board in the west.
Cooe - Friday, August 3, 2018 - link
Memory isn't on package. See updated article.mode_13h - Friday, August 3, 2018 - link
Considering the CU count and clock speed, it should be 256-bit.T1beriu - Friday, August 3, 2018 - link
>Assuming that this custom chip is a single chip designAMD says it's a single chip (SoC): https://community.amd.com/community/gaming/blog/20...
T1beriu - Friday, August 3, 2018 - link
LE: I think they're talking about a package when they say chip.Something like this: https://i.imgur.com/PhPIKL7.jpg
psolord - Friday, August 3, 2018 - link
Yes, but will it run Crysis?msroadkill612 - Saturday, August 4, 2018 - link
It will play Havoc.Lolimaster - Friday, August 3, 2018 - link
The Custom APU should take internet gaming cafe's for itself. Should be a bit higher than a 1050ti for a fraction of it's price.The SOC is basically an i7 7700+1050ti OC.
Alistair - Friday, August 3, 2018 - link
Or more like an i7-7700 plus RX 470.msroadkill612 - Saturday, August 4, 2018 - link
Yes, the west needs to bear in mind this is the form much of the market takes in the developing world - shops w/ ~a dozen terminals charging by the hour.jospoortvliet - Saturday, August 4, 2018 - link
Just curious - why would it be a fraction of the price???hasherr87 - Friday, August 3, 2018 - link
Does this system have DDR RAM in it? Or it runs windows or other x86 os utilizing gddr5 as system memory?mode_13h - Friday, August 3, 2018 - link
This. I'm guessing that, for cost reasons, it's also using GDDR5 as system RAM. I'm also betting that it's got 8 threads, to help hide the additional memory latency.abufrejoval - Monday, August 6, 2018 - link
GDDR trades latency for bandwidth, but just how much would that be?Code latency may be unnoticeable because of caches, data latency actually less important than bandwidth for consumer workloads.
In the past it also used to be cost, but again with DDRx prices through the roof, is the gap between GDDR and DDR4 still as high?
On the other hand GDDR5 should be a lot better when the workload is actually HSA, right?
Death666Angel - Friday, August 3, 2018 - link
Cool chip, wouldn't mind something like that as a socketable APU or soldered on a mSTX/ITX motherboard. The more interesting bit to me is what sort of OS the console will run.webdoctors - Friday, August 3, 2018 - link
If it can run Steam games, maybe with a skeleton Windows OS, it'll be great for the living room. The Steam OS has crappy game selection compared to Windows 7.mode_13h - Friday, August 3, 2018 - link
It's not going to be socketable, due to GDDR5. However, let's hope we see some grey-market motherboards finding their way to western markets...LarsBars - Friday, August 3, 2018 - link
Intel with Radeon RX VegaGPU: Polaris
Called out! Zing!!
mode_13h - Saturday, August 4, 2018 - link
But that's old news.mode_13h - Friday, August 3, 2018 - link
This is what the forthcoming Atari console *should* be using. That thing is a bad joke, by comparison.SkOrPn - Saturday, August 4, 2018 - link
I hope when 7nm is here for both Zen 2 and Vega that AMD releases a 8C16T APU with at least RX 580 performance. All we need for this to happen is 8GB of HBM2/3 to be installed on the AM4 package. If they could do that I would gladly upgrade to X470 with video ports and retire my discrete video card. Why not?msroadkill612 - Saturday, August 4, 2018 - link
The fundamentally new thing here afaik, is pairing Vega w/ the way less scarce gddr5.HBM supplies have stifled vega volumes.
There is clearly no shortage of vega chips, given the sharp priced, cacheless Zen apuS.
msroadkill612 - Saturday, August 4, 2018 - link
SOC it to 'em AMD.eastcoast_pete - Saturday, August 4, 2018 - link
Interesting APU/SoC. The second update of the article (the GDDR5 memory is NOT part of the chip) suggests that an APU for PCs similar to this would be easier for AMD to roll out than otherwise. So, AMD marketing department: Ryzen 2500G or something like this? Would love to see an APU with 20 or so Vega CUs, although seriously fast DDR4 would be a must to make those CUs worth their while.Other thought: Doesn't the Subor sound an awful lot like the affordable Valve Steam PC that Valve has been talking about for years? If it can run Linux and WIN 10, it would be a serious value proposition at $ 550 or so, replacing a console and a regular daily driver PC. Yes, you would be stuck at 8 GB combined system memory, with it being GDDR5, but that's enough for most productivity applications, and good enough for most games at 1080p. Alternatively, make it 10-12 GB GDDR5, make sure it has FreeSync, and add another $ 50 or so to about $ 600, it'd be even better, and I would seriously consider getting one.
mode_13h - Saturday, August 4, 2018 - link
Why do you think this uses GDDR5?A bigger Vega in AM4 doesn't make any sense, as it would just get starved by 128-bit DDR4.
cfenton - Saturday, August 4, 2018 - link
So what games does this thing play? A bunch of free-to-play garbage made specifically for the Chinese market? It's interesting hardware, but if it's not just a PC running Windows, what good is all that hardware power?mode_13h - Saturday, August 4, 2018 - link
That's not the point.cfenton - Sunday, August 5, 2018 - link
The point of a game console isn't to play games? Or do you mean that the point is simply that the hardware exists and perhaps gives us an early look at what next-gen consoles will look like?mode_13h - Monday, August 6, 2018 - link
No, I mean that's not why anandtech is covering it. Most of us aren't interested in their games console, but rather the technological and business aspects and implications of the news.Whatever games it plays probably won't differ much from what China allows to be played on other consoles sold there.
abufrejoval - Monday, August 6, 2018 - link
I am totally mystified as to why this article doesn’t show up on the home page: Have to go to ‘CPUs’ to see it….?For me the major question is if the SoC is designed and fabricated generic enough to bring the Infinity Fabric out to the pads and allow stacking: That would be a complete game changer, because you could combine it into 2x, perhaps 3x, 4x or indeed turn it into a nice HPC supercomputer with proper switch chips while just 2x passive setup should already make many power gamers quite happy.
Of course, AMD could always another SoC for that, but without the scale of something like this Chinese console market…
I’d also hope that HMC capabilities would have been retained, just in case HPC would want to go extra dense…
If this is in fact PC compatible enough to run Windows, Linux, Android-x86 and not “illegal” for some reason outside China (e.g. lack of CE etc.), I can see it selling like hot-cake.
mode_13h - Monday, August 6, 2018 - link
> I can see it selling like hot-cake.I dunno. The CPU performance will lag the current Ryzen 3's. GPUs are not so expensive, these days. 8 GB of unified memory is not great. Lastly, the only upgradable aspect of it will be storage. So, for $625 + a hefty margin for importers (assume US street price easily north of $700, not including tariffs), it's not exactly a slam dunk. But, at something like half the price, it would be a steal.
Dragonstongue - Monday, August 6, 2018 - link
kind of a slap by AMD for Ryzen 2200/2400g if they were "able" to use the same cpu design (4c/8t) with a gimped Vega that uses system ram when they probably could have "easily" done a 2200/2400g with more CU version Vega on it instead of "castrating" potential performance by 2.18+%I know they are in business not to cater but to make $$$$$$, but gimping things just to make other sales is beyond my understanding, that seems very Intel or Ngreedia way of doing things.
they likely could have "locked" the speeds based on the box cooler for example 15-35w TDP for 2200g 20-45w TDP with 2400g and a 2200/2400g X variant that has a better boxed cooler but also a more "substantial" XFR and Vega variant (using the 24 CU instead of only 11 at "best")
the 2200/2400g are "pretty ok" for what they are, but seeing what they end up releasing AFTER the fact says they probably could have done a bit more for the price especially in the case of 2400g ~$120 more from what I have seen and yet "in the real world" does not really justify this price increase.
almost like the specs for this "new" subfor one is what they 2400g should have been and the 2200g should have been what the 2400g is (with the clock speed base 3.8ghz for 2400g with 24 CU Vega and 2200g 3.0ghz base and 11 CU Vega) likely they could have "played" a bit more to justify the pricing etc, because likely with the difference of 2400g at 3.8Ghz base 24 CU Vega it would be "very much" worth that extra price increase.
Maybe they should do this and call the "old" 2200g as 2100g reduce clock to 3.0 base with vega 8, upgrade 2200g with vega 11 call it 2250g, rebadge the 2400g as 2300g (as it currently is) make the 2400g as 2450g with the better vega core design, this way here in all cases there is enough product/performance/price segregation to "make it matter"
I just really do not get AMD for doing this, either it makes the ones who already purchase 2200/2400g look stupid or it makes the "china" market get something "better" for whatever reason again..RX gpu have done this a few times, given "special editions" to them that WE (north america) do not end up getting.
either way, this seems like what the 2200/2440 could have and should have been right off the bat, hell just the vega 8 and 4gb GDDR3 4 or 5 at 3Ghz and 2400g 8gb GDDR3 4 or 5 with Vega 11 at a higher available TDP would have made a very distinct difference.
I guess just goes to show that whomever "thinks of these things" may not fully understand product segregation or testing to make sure there is enough distance between the goals posts or something.
on another note, that consol almost looks like a combination/frankenstein of Xbox (gen 1) PS3 and PS4 with the angular approach they are using, maybe they will have been smart enough to use cooling fans you can easily replace unlike Sony and MSFT with their consoles that for whatever reason did NOT do this (which is moronic)
mode_13h - Monday, August 6, 2018 - link
Woah. You're making a lot of questionable assumptions, there.You need to see how 2400G's performance is affected by memory speed to see the degree to which it's limited by 128-bit DDR4. This thing uses 256-bit GDDR5. That's what you need to keep a 24-CU Vega well fed.
Anyway, the chip was build like all the other console chips - by contract. It is not an AMD product - they were contracted by Zhongshan Subor to build it.