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  • Smell This - Sunday, June 9, 2019 - link


    'Dibs' on front-line beta tester.
    (and I don't do gaming/consoles)
  • Old_Fogie_Late_Bloomer - Monday, June 10, 2019 - link

    Hijacking this comment to say that nineteen sponsored links and a video ad between the article and the comment section is just an absolute f--king embarrassment. Of all the tech news sites out there, Anandtech is the only one that I still took seriously, but I really can't anymore.

    FFS you guys allowed a floating banner ad at the bottom of the page with a fake X that, instead of closing the banner, launched the advertised website. Talk about literal clickbait.
  • p1esk - Monday, June 10, 2019 - link

    You've never heard about adblockers?
  • Old_Fogie_Late_Bloomer - Monday, June 10, 2019 - link

    You've never heard of people not installing plugins for the browsers on their work computers because they don't want to accidentally leak confidential or export-controlled data?

    Besides, that doesn't help Anandtech remain a viable website. That problem is solved by advertising that is relevant to its readers' interests, presented in a way that doesn't make a tech-savvy readership reach for browser plugins.
  • Hrel - Monday, June 10, 2019 - link

    I turned my adblocker on for anandtech as soon as they started publishing "articles" like this one, that are nothing but advertising blurbs themselves. Wasn't long after Anand left. I used to visit daily, now it's barely monthly.

    All this is to say, its taken you a LONG time to catch up.
  • Old_Fogie_Late_Bloomer - Monday, June 10, 2019 - link

    And yet, by sheer coincidence, you're here today, reading this very article, just in time to make yourself momentarily feel better about yourself by talking down to me.
  • aj654987 - Tuesday, June 11, 2019 - link

    You've heard about WORKING at work instead of goofing off reading xbox articles?
  • zmatt - Thursday, June 13, 2019 - link

    If your are reading this on your work computer that happens to have ITAR restricted information on it then get the hell off and get back to work. At the very least use a personal device.

    Besides your reasoning is laughable. You are trading the potential for data spillage in one way for the almost certainty its happening in another. You are letting arbitrary javascript from god knows where run in your browser and do whatever it wants. That is far more likely to compromise your machine than an ad blocker is.

    Clearly the best solution is to not browse any sites beyond those needed for work on your work computer.
  • ksec - Sunday, June 9, 2019 - link

    Zen 2 + Navi + SSD, I mean at this point are there any reason why we can't use that as a PC?
  • tk11 - Sunday, June 9, 2019 - link

    Because as a console paying for it doesn't mean you own it.
  • boozed - Sunday, June 9, 2019 - link

    Ding ding ding!
  • azfacea - Sunday, June 9, 2019 - link

    bad idea. closed platform lots of evils down the road. look what sony is already doing to playstation store. get lured in and be at the mercy of some corporate AAHHOOOLE with a big multi-chip package up his bbbuuutt.

    PC Masterrace
  • SlyNine - Monday, June 10, 2019 - link

    But their politics is da good politics. Don't be evil.
  • GreenReaper - Monday, June 10, 2019 - link

    Without the freedom to be evil, being good has no meaning.
  • Thretosix - Monday, June 10, 2019 - link

    I own a PC that I game on. I also own an Xbox One X. When Scarlet releases to build a PC with similar functionality will cost night and day less. Let's be honest as well. This latest lineup of GPU's is not that impressive. I find myself skipping generations because the improvements are to little to care about. Scarlet will be a beast for the price. PC will always be best. Console is starting to make more and more sense for the cost. Perhaps as I get older I'm more of a casual gamer.
  • MadManMark - Monday, June 10, 2019 - link

    Thretosix wrote "Let's be honest as well. This latest lineup of GPU's is not that impressive. I find myself skipping generations because the improvements are to little to care about. Scarlet will be a beast for the price."

    Dude, Scarlet is going to literally be built with componenst (Zen2 and Navi) that are going to be available next month. SO you're comment contradicts itself, if you think Scarlet will be a "beast" when it comes out in 18 months, then by definition the GPUs out this summer are too.
  • mode_13h - Tuesday, June 11, 2019 - link

    First-gen Navi won't have ray tracing or HDMI 2.1. So, it's *not* going to be the same GPU.
  • Showtime - Tuesday, June 11, 2019 - link

    If they can somehow get 120hz at 4k with good settings, there will be a lot of pc gamers considering the next Xbox. Especially if pricing stays along the lines of what they have been. $600 can't even buy a GPU that can do 4k 60hz.
  • Valantar - Monday, June 10, 2019 - link

    Jaguar+HDD+GCN is just as much a PC architecture. This still doesn't mean you can use your XBONE or PS4 as a PC (though people have certainly tried!). There's no BIOS/UEFI, no support for standard PC boot procedures, so you'd need a fully custom system firmware to even get it to look for an OS. Not an easy task.
  • Notmyusualid - Monday, June 10, 2019 - link

    +1 / agreed.
  • GlossGhost - Monday, June 10, 2019 - link

    They also tend to use custom chips for other background tasks that will be mostly useless for us on PC because utilizing them probably needs OS implementations. Also consoles like using shared memory between GPU and RAM unlike PC where we have it split up. Everything is possible of course.
  • Valantar - Monday, June 10, 2019 - link

    PCs support shared CPU+GPU memory quite well, with both static and dynamic memory allocation. Custom chips are an issue, yes, particularly the ARM SoC-based "chipsets" used by both MS and Sony for the current gen. Interaction with those would probably require some very weird drivers to be custom made - though the people working on getting Linux running on PS4s seem to have made it possible.
  • wumpus - Monday, June 10, 2019 - link

    "PCs support shared CPU+GPU memory quite well", technically true, but in practice this has been confined to low performance models. Back when PCs first started doing it, there was a bit of marketing showing that it was how SGI built its workstations (letting the CPUs use the might "GPU" memory system) while what PC buyers got was a "Packard Bell-style computer" where the graphics system was using the (often already overworked) memory subsystem. Even now, Intel often puts a separate memory bus for GPUs integrated into the system.

    Something like the Zen/Vega "Zhongshan Subor" console chip (4 zen cores, 24 Vega "cores", 8G GDDR5) would be more workable as a "shared memory bus".
  • Peter2k - Monday, June 10, 2019 - link

    Consoles advantage was always that devs can optimize for one set of hardware

    PS5 is probably again the sorta same hardware
    Sony was blowing they're horn about loading times too

    Do the things is still, one set of hardware for millions that you can optimize for

    Hell, at an PS5 thread I answered to a question "how can a console SSD be faster then PC"
    Easy
    Just like they said in the video, they use some SSD even as RAM
    Like going the octane way

    To top that off, as a dev you know millions of gamers have the same SSD GPU CPU combo

    As opposite to the PC you have to keep in mind all sorts of configs

    Btw
    If anything PC gamers should rejoice
    Using Zen 2 would also mean devs have to focus more and more on more cores/threads
    Which will obviously benefit PC gaming too

    I bet the focus on SSD in consoles will benefit PC loading times too, as games will be more aware of SSD's abilities
  • willis936 - Monday, June 10, 2019 - link

    I feel like this post deserves a deconstruction.

    >Consoles advantage was always that devs can optimize for one set of hardware
    This was true in the past. Every modern game engine abstracts the hardware away and can export to any platform efficiently. Code optimization techniques will apply across platforms.

    >Just like they said in the video, they use some SSD even as RAM
    This makes no sense. You could use the RAM as storage (check out RAMdisk) and cache stuff you'll need from storage if you have lots of memory.

    >As opposite to the PC you have to keep in mind all sorts of configs
    This literally does not matter except that individual users have to pick graphics settings so they can tune visual quality vs. performance. For people who don't like to touch settings things like geforce experience exist that optimize game settings based on GPU (assuming a GPU limited config, which is a relatively safe bet).

    >Using Zen 2 would also mean devs have to focus more and more on more cores/threads
    I wish this meme would die. See: modern game engines and exporting.

    >I bet the focus on SSD in consoles will benefit PC loading times too, as games will be more aware of SSD's abilities
    Why exactly would higher layers need to be aware of a fatter pipe in the lower layers? SSDs compared to HDDs offer better or same performance across all metrics. Nothing needs to change in software to take advantage of that.
  • mode_13h - Tuesday, June 11, 2019 - link

    >>they use some SSD even as RAM
    >This makes no sense.

    Sure it does. Haven't you ever heard of swapfiles, pagefiles, virtual memory, etc?
  • willis936 - Tuesday, June 11, 2019 - link

    You mean that thing that has been in every non deterministic OS since paging was invented? What a wonderful addition enabled by new hardware. It’s also not a good idea to depend on paging, even with SSDs. You know when you thrash the drive and it isn’t pleasant.
  • mode_13h - Tuesday, June 11, 2019 - link

    If you can afford to add more RAM, that's obviously the way to go. However, paging allows games to load more assets and have the OS swap them in as-needed, instead of forcing the game programmer to manually do a lot of memory management.

    It also adds flexibility to have more things running in the background, without worrying too much about memory exhaustion. Within limits, of course.
  • serpretetsky - Tuesday, June 11, 2019 - link

    Yes, but like willis said, how is this an advantage for consoles over general purpose PCs? The original post was listing advantages of console, and this point doesn't make much sense either way.
  • mode_13h - Tuesday, June 11, 2019 - link

    To that extent, I'll agree. At a high level, it's not an advantage that a console would have over a PC.

    However, they could optimize paging, with the knowledge that there's a fast SSD as the backing store. For instance, they could merely suspend the thread on page faults, instead of context-switching. If your typical SSD read latency is on the same order of time as a context switch, then it'd be far better to just put the thread in a low-power spinlock, until the data is available.
  • mode_13h - Tuesday, June 11, 2019 - link

    >I bet the focus on SSD in consoles will benefit PC loading times too, as games will be more aware of SSD's abilities
    >Why exactly would higher layers need to be aware of a fatter pipe in the lower layers?

    You lack imagination. If a developer knows the storage has low latency, then they can do things like mmap() huge data and just page in the bits they need, on demand. If you do this with a HDD, you're going to notice a stutter, since it could take up to 10s of ms (depending on how busy the disk is), but a SSD could do it orders of magnitude faster.
  • willis936 - Tuesday, June 11, 2019 - link

    That technique hurts performance. If you want more stuff in memory then put it there. Waiting microseconds (literally thousands of cycles) for data is something that should happen less than a tenth of a percent of the time.
  • mode_13h - Tuesday, June 11, 2019 - link

    Don't be so precious! There are going to be like 16 threads in this thing, so it's not necessarily a problem if a couple of them stall on page faults.

    If you're building a PC, perhaps you can afford to add enough RAM to obviate the need for such techniques, but this is a mass market product and they have to consider that every $ of added cost will have a very real impact on adoption rates. The best hardware is of no benefit, if few people can afford it. And if that happens, it won't get software support, which affects even those who DO buy one.
  • willis936 - Tuesday, June 11, 2019 - link

    Such a shame. You were almost worth talking to.
  • mode_13h - Tuesday, June 11, 2019 - link

    I'll just let that speak for itself, and take this opportunity to underscore my point that it's actually not hard to design a high performance system, without cost constraints. However, to design the best system at a price... THAT takes good engineering.

    So, all this PC Master race talk about how consoles aren't doing this or that in the best possible way just misses the point. What defines consoles, and sets them apart from PCs, is their accessibility (and, by that, I mostly mean price).
  • Notmyusualid - Monday, June 10, 2019 - link

    I don't imagine its too far a stretch of the imagination.

    I reckon hacking (replacing) the bios would be the starting-point.

    Of course, the 'chip-smasher' stories will be out soon thereafter.
  • tipoo - Monday, June 10, 2019 - link

    Because they don't want you to is about it.

    If you could run a standard consumer OS on it it would be a pretty great value for a small PC.
  • zmatt - Thursday, June 13, 2019 - link

    It runs a stripped down and locked down version of Windows 10 that wont let you. Its probably missing all sorts of libraries that are necessary for applications that aren't games.
  • mode_13h - Friday, June 21, 2019 - link

    I doubt that it lacks the runtime support of normal Windows, although I *don't* doubt that it's locked-down to prevent unapproved apps from being installed.

    However, its web browser is probably fully-featured, enabling you to use any sort of browser-based apps. Beyond that, I assume you can install and run apps from the the Windows Store.

    I'm pretty sure MS *wants* people to use it like a PC, as long as they're only running apps or streaming media where MS gets a cut.
  • tk11 - Sunday, June 9, 2019 - link

    Please... Why not just promise 8k at 240fps... Looking forward to the next gen after this to see how even more ridiculous the marketing claims will be.
  • shabby - Sunday, June 9, 2019 - link

    What they probably meant is 4k@120fps of console quality graphics, meaning low detail. Not ultra quality graphics that the pc master race expects.
  • Opencg - Sunday, June 9, 2019 - link

    It probably wont play ultra maxed settings at 4k 120 but you cant even do that with a 2080ti. This consoles gpu will be at least as powerful as a 2070 and likely it will be more like 2080 level performance. Should be a very nice value.
  • AshlayW - Sunday, June 9, 2019 - link

    Of course it wont play PC-quality max settings 4K at anywhere near 60FPS. More like 30FPS. Either way the GPU doesn't excite me as much has the CPU. Jaguar really is a piece of poop, even Zen1 has like 2X the IPC and 75% higher clock speeds.
  • AshlayW - Sunday, June 9, 2019 - link

    Anywhere near 120FPS*
  • mode_13h - Tuesday, June 11, 2019 - link

    Given that AMD's RTX 2070-equivalent Navi will launch at the price of an entire console ($450), I'm not sure how they're going to pack a RTX 2080-equivalent in there. I guess they have a year for 7 nm and GDDR6 to get cheaper, but then you have to account for additional die space to add on HW ray tracing that the RX 5700X doesn't have.

    So... I'll believe 2080-level performance when I see it.
  • Gastec - Sunday, June 9, 2019 - link

    What calendar date is this "Holyday"?
  • boozed - Sunday, June 9, 2019 - link

    Sunday
  • svan1971 - Sunday, June 9, 2019 - link

    which holiday? CHRISTMAS???
  • Opencg - Monday, June 10, 2019 - link

    they are targeting the presidents day market this time. nobody releases consoles for christmas
  • Bp_968 - Sunday, June 9, 2019 - link

    It wont beat a decent spec PC of the same time frame, but it will be a great console im sure. Same for the PS5. As a PC gamer I love to see this because it means the baseline AAA studios shoot for is going to be much higher than it is now (especially on the CPU level).

    Something else us PC gamers often miss i think is we compare component costs to build a similar machine but tend to ignore the fact that a gfx card is basically a PC by itself. You have to pay for all that extra ram, and the cooling and other goodies that go along with it. With these consoles they get to build it as a custom SoC and don't have to pay for so much duplication in hardware. Of course the downside is they can't slap a new GPU in there. Im running a 1080ti and its quite likely that by the end of 2020 or early 2021 ill be picking up a new GPU on the 2nd gen of ray tracing tech.

    And maybe a new CPU since by that time my 8700k will only be able to process all the hack mitigations and won't have any left over CPU cycles for frivolous stuff like windows or a game. /s (hopefully its sarcasm...)
  • AshlayW - Sunday, June 9, 2019 - link

    Join the Glorious Ryzen Godhood!
  • Opencg - Monday, June 10, 2019 - link

    it will beat a pc hands down in value. likely beating what you can get right now for 2x the money. as for side channel mitigations just turn them off. they litteraly don't effect you unless you are running hyper sensitive virtual machines
  • mode_13h - Tuesday, June 11, 2019 - link

    Yeah, he clearly wasn't talking about *value* - just performance in absolute terms. Everybody knows consoles tend to offer better value.

    Also, you don't know what you're talking about, with side-channel attacks. They don't *only* affect VMs - they affect *even* processes running in another VM, which was once thought to be secure.

    However, I will agree that console OS' can potentially disable any side-channel mitigations for games, since they can ensure that web browsers or other avenues for running foreign code are suspended, at the time.
  • GreenReaper - Monday, June 10, 2019 - link

    It's an APU (not that AMD wants to call them that, now) with fast RAM. You could build a rough equivalent once a "4600G" with Zen 2 cores comes out in 2020. It won't be as tightly integrated, and it may cost a bit more - but on the plus side, you'll be able to run anything on it and upgrade it. Including a standalone CPU and graphics card, if it proves insufficient a few years down the road.
    One question is how much difference GDDR6 vs. DDR5 will make. DDR5 runs at a little under half the bandwidth, but also uses far less power, which will help with cooling:
    https://www.tomshardware.co.uk/what-we-know-ddr5-r...
    Of course, overclocking may significantly increase the bandwidth to rival that of GDDR6 - and not all games will be limited by the bandwidth.
  • mode_13h - Tuesday, June 11, 2019 - link

    > You could build a rough equivalent once a "4600G" with Zen 2 cores comes out in 2020.

    No, you can't. AMD never builds APUs with such big iGPUs. The power dissipation would be well beyond what AM4 can handle, and it would be incredibly memory-bottlenecked.
  • mode_13h - Tuesday, June 11, 2019 - link

    BTW, when comparing memory technologies, don't forget to account for data width. AMD's Polaris and (currently-announced) Navi cards use 256-bit memory interfaces, while their AM4 socket uses 128-bit.
  • AshlayW - Sunday, June 9, 2019 - link

    My PC can do 120FPS 4K right now!*

    *In Warframe
  • SlyNine - Monday, June 10, 2019 - link

    I'm glad to see the CPU performance step up so much. The worse thing about the Xbox one and PS4 were those crappy ass CPUs. They were holding back innovation. We literally seen a regression in physics last generation with those weak CPU's trying to feed the graphics.
  • Games Goblin - Monday, June 10, 2019 - link

    Both Sony and MS talking about raytracing, but AMD did not talk anything about it during the navi reveal - so, will navi have raytracing or not?
  • Yojimbo - Monday, June 10, 2019 - link

    My impression is that the Navi about to be released will not support hardware-accelerated raytracing. But these upcoming consoles will be based on custom chips coming out in pate 2020 and they will have hardware accelerated raytracing. Whether AMD will release an updated Navi with raytracing to the PC space in 2020 is anyone's guess. I wouldn't count it out, because NVIDIA is rumored to be coming out with their second generation ray tracing hardware in 2020 and if I am. Not mistaken Intel says they will be making their new discrete GPU available in 2020, too.
  • mode_13h - Tuesday, June 11, 2019 - link

    They're probably using a next-gen Navi die. That's my guess.

    I doubt MS and Sony both independently designed ray-tracing customizations, although it's certainly possible.
  • Cullinaire - Monday, June 10, 2019 - link

    No RAM info? I'm guessing 32GB of GDDR5X. Doubt there's HBM or else the thing is gonna cost $1K+.
  • Kevin G - Monday, June 10, 2019 - link

    That would depend purely on the economies of scale at play. If AMD already is going the chiplet route for consoles, then leveraging HBM isn't as big of a jump as multiple dies per package already increases complexity. Not to say that it is going to be easy or inexpensive, but if they're already doing something unique with a package, the premium for HBM is not as high as it would be before.
  • Brett Howse - Monday, June 10, 2019 - link

    They said GDDR6 but not how much.
  • cheshirster - Monday, June 10, 2019 - link

    Looks like 12-16Gb of GDDR6
  • Valantar - Monday, June 10, 2019 - link

    32GB sounds highly unlikely simply due to cost. 16GB shared is likely perfectly fine (remember, there's no Windows to use up memory, and having a unified memory structure across the CPU and GPU can bring some savings too). 24GB might happen, but even that is a stretch. Also, GDDR5X? Why? GDDR6 is an actual standard, is widely available (and definitely will be in a year!), is no more expensive, and is faster and more power efficient. GDDR5X was a stop-gap solution and is all but dead. I doubt there still is volume production of G5X today, let alone in a year.
  • GreenReaper - Monday, June 10, 2019 - link

    The Xbox One does run a very customized version of Windows as its operating system:
    https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Xbox_One_system_soft...

    I wouldn't be surprised if this is the case for the next version as well. Obviously, it's cut down a lot.
  • mode_13h - Tuesday, June 11, 2019 - link

    How you think there's no Windows is... ?
  • Midwayman - Monday, June 10, 2019 - link

    I kinda wish they would release a beast mode $1k console alongside the base. The base has to live with devs making 30fps a target like usual and the beast mode could have at least 60 fps.
  • mode_13h - Tuesday, June 11, 2019 - link

    How was the XBox One X anything *other* than a beast mode XBox One? Same with PS4 Pro vs. PS4.

    They won't do it along side, because smaller economies of scale, mixed marketing message, creating more market niches for Sony to slot into, etc. I actually kinda like the half-gen approach, especially being a trailing-edge guy.
  • TheUnhandledException - Monday, June 10, 2019 - link

    I really doubt it will have that much RAM. Video RAM is still incredibly expensive. Right now GDDR5 is about $6/GB. GDDR6 is about $10/GB but expected to fall as it replaces GDDR5. 5x is in the middle. So 32GB of RAM would be $200 to $300+.

    Also 5x is a hack until 6 becomes mainstream. For a product intended to last 5-7 years I would imagine they will go with the real GDDR6. Maybe 12 to 16 GB.
  • mode_13h - Tuesday, June 11, 2019 - link

    Yeah, and I think GDDR5X has only one supplier?
  • mode_13h - Tuesday, June 11, 2019 - link

    After talking about how they're going to be swapping to the SSD, I highly doubt it'll be above 16 GB. Just maybe 24 GB, if they go for 384-bit memory interface, but I really don't see 32 GB.
  • 5080 - Monday, June 10, 2019 - link

    Will it be PCIe 4.0 or still 3.0? Probably 4.0 since they need a fast bus to connect to that "super fast" SSD and because Zen 2 supports it as well.
  • IntelUser2000 - Monday, June 10, 2019 - link

    Short Answer: It'll be super-fast because its a console.
    Long Answer: A console is a computer available in one hardware specification and won't change for 5-7 years before the next generation comes out. That means developers can do things they simply cannot do on PCs. You optimize the filesystem, the way the controller manages data on NAND chips, and the games are built for SSDs too.
  • dcuccia - Monday, June 10, 2019 - link

    51 comments and as yet no quips about how Scarlet is a little on-the-nose for those who suffered the red ring of death...
  • catavalon21 - Monday, June 10, 2019 - link

    +1
  • Gunbuster - Monday, June 10, 2019 - link

    Video: Montage of 40+ year old's tell you how they are tuned in to the pulse of console gamers...
  • eastcoast_pete - Monday, June 10, 2019 - link

    To re-state Microsoft's announcement: "We'll do whatever SONY does with the PS 5. Ask them for details". What a joke! Not even a declaration that they are shooting to be the most powerful console out there, like they did for Scorpio (and delivered, at least on raw GPU compute power).
    Maybe MS could save itself some money on R&D, make a deal with SONY, and just sell rebranded PS5 consoles with a different OS and a different case.
  • drothgery - Monday, June 10, 2019 - link

    In case you didn't notice, the hardware differences between the Xbox One and PS4 were pretty minimal. That's hardly news. Heck, the Xbox 360 CPU was pretty much 3 of the PPE from the PS3 Cell.

    AMD's really the only one that can offer an SoC with a relatively high-end CPU and GPU right now and they're not going to use a multi-chip solution anymore. nVidia would have to use a licensed ARM core for a CPU and no matter what they say about A76 performance it's not up to Zen or X Lake (let alone Zen 2 or Sunny Cove) standards, and Intel isn't far enough along with Xe to put their own GPU in a console launching next year. And anyone else would lack both a good enough CPU and a good enough GPU. So why would anyone think AMD is going to develop two significantly different SoCs for products targeting the same market space at the same time?
  • eastcoast_pete - Monday, June 10, 2019 - link

    I am/was aware of the great similarities between PS4 and Xbox One. But, just because two consoles use the same basic tech doesn't mean they have to be almost identical. The PS4 Pro and the Xbox OneX share a lot of technical feature, but have different memory size and GPU compute power.
  • mode_13h - Tuesday, June 11, 2019 - link

    > Heck, the Xbox 360 CPU was pretty much 3 of the PPE from the PS3 Cell.

    No, not even close. The only similarity is that they're POWER-derived and in-order. That's about it. Everything else about how they're connected, how they're programmed, and how the access memory is different. MS even pointed out that they added a couple AltiVec instructions that Cell lacked - not sure if Cell has instructions not found in the 360.

    Believe me, Cell programmers *wished* it was as easy to program as the 360, but if you could make your algorithm fit the way it worked, it had a beastly amount of compute power and bandwidth.

    > AMD's really the only one that can offer an SoC with a relatively high-end CPU and GPU right now

    True, but Intel will certainly be in contention, *if* there's another generation of consoles after this.

    > nVidia would have to use a licensed ARM core for a CPU

    Um, Xavier has 8 custom Nvidia-designed cores. This is their 3rd generation of custom ARM cores.

    > why would anyone think AMD is going to develop two significantly different SoCs for products targeting the same market space at the same time?

    Because Sony and MS are paying them. AMD is licensing their cores, but Sony and MS are in the driver's seat. How "custom" they are is basically just a matter of cost and time-to-market. Because of those pragmatic concerns, it's not surprising if neither customer makes very drastic customizations.
  • mode_13h - Tuesday, June 11, 2019 - link

    Just want to clarify: AMD does contract design - Sony and MS *own* the resulting IP. So, it's not AMD deciding what to build for MS and Sony, but AMD is certainly providing access to their existing IP.
  • mode_13h - Tuesday, June 11, 2019 - link

    > the hardware differences between the Xbox One and PS4 were pretty minimal.

    Also, an overstatement, but not as bad as that PS3 vs. 360 nonsense.

    The original XBox One had in-package video memory + DDR3, while the PS4 had unified GDDR5. That's a pretty big difference, right there. You certainly can't call it minimal. What's true is they both leveraged existing GCN cores, Jaguar CPU blocks, and probably some other AMD IP.
  • V900 - Monday, June 10, 2019 - link

    So... The exact same Zen2/Navi combo that the PS5 will have.
    (Lemme guess, one of them will have a slightly higher clockspeed?)

    No HW raytracing. Roughly RTX 2070 performance.

    Boring!
  • TheUnhandledException - Monday, June 10, 2019 - link

    What magical ponies were you expecting from a $300 to $500 PC which is what consoles are. I mean baring Microsoft or Sony finding some unobtanium they aren't going to cram 24 TFlops into something that has a pricetag of <$500 and pulls less than 200W.
  • mode_13h - Tuesday, June 11, 2019 - link

    The wildcard would be some custom hardware block that MS could stick in there. Like, they could build their own raytracing accelerator. Remember how they built a custom HPU, in the Hololens? They have their own hardware team, for that sort of thing.
  • V900 - Monday, June 10, 2019 - link

    Welp, guess all the guesses about the next Xbox using an Arcturus (Or other real RDNA) GPU were wrong.

    XBoxNext=PS5=Midrange 2018 PC. Only difference will be a few percent difference in clockspeed or something like that.
  • Eliadbu - Monday, June 10, 2019 - link

    makes me wonder how did they calculate "4 times more powerful that the Xbox One x"
    since assuming that there are no major tweaks to the CPU and GPU architecture Navi top card would have around 9.75 Tflop and let say they scale it up teak somethings around and in real world use get it to be around twice as fast as Xbox one X GPU (which is already at 6Tflops) so where the other performance comes out? the CPU ? let say the CPU is twice faster so they can relate to the performance improvement as equal to CPU performance improvement * GPU performance improvement. does it make any sense ? IMO it does not and the should be clear how much faster the CPU ALONE and the GPU ALONE and not give some vague statement "4 times as powerful" or give real world benchmark comparison for general usecase that can show 4 times improvement .
  • eastcoast_pete - Monday, June 10, 2019 - link

    The only way this is "4x more powerful" is on CPU compute power. Yes, 8 Zen-type cores should be about 4 times as powerful as the "custom Jaguar" cores. Now, if the GPU would be 4x the speed of the one in the Xbox One X, that'd be something to really write home about!
  • mode_13h - Tuesday, June 11, 2019 - link

    Yes, it must be CPU. And Zen2-type cores, that is.
  • mode_13h - Tuesday, June 11, 2019 - link

    > Microsoft states this console will be four times more powerful than the Xbox One X.

    Um, four times *as* powerful? Probably what they meant.

    ...maybe, if you're talking about just the CPU. It's hard for me to see how they could get such a big jump in GPU performance, without the entire console costing at least 2x as much.
  • qwertymac93 - Thursday, June 13, 2019 - link

    Is it really necessary to have a video I didn't click on autoplay as soon as the page loads? why waste my bandwidth on a video ad I didn't click on and isn't even really relevant? This is an xbox article and I'm getting a video on how to choose the right SSD. I have five SSDs already, convinced by real articles written by Anand the man himself, I don't need a video to tell me SSDs are faster than hard drives, and I certainly don't need ANOTHER video to autoload right after and start playing too. If I leave this page open in the background how many videos are you guys gonna load? 50 videos in a loop and eat up gigs of bandwidth? WTH!
  • Vitor - Sunday, June 16, 2019 - link

    They are aiming for 4k/60fps on all games. I just hope they also offer 1080p/120fps option.
  • mode_13h - Friday, June 21, 2019 - link

    Those "helpful" videos are just a way to force-feed you youtube ads.
  • sushukka - Monday, June 24, 2019 - link

    Many people referring to the manufacturing costs of fast chips, memory etc, but no one seems to mention how the usual practice is to sell these pizza boxes at a loss for first years after the launch. PS3 is probably the worst case scenario where the hardware was generating earnings only at the end of its lifecycle. PS3 was initially priced at $600 and actual manufacturing costs were around $840.

    Memory, SSD, case, BD-drive, mobo costs some bucks but are not that significant nowadays. With 16GB RAM, they can probably squeeze all these under $200. If we assume that the actual manufacturing expenses at the launch are something around $600-$700 there would be $400-500 for CPU/GPU combo. Ryzen 3700X MSRP $329. With Sony/MS the actual cost would more likely be something around $100-200 or less (PS3 Cell chip was ~$89) leaving $300-400 for the GPU. RTX2080 level of graphics performance could then very well be reality on next gen consoles thanks to AMD being back on its feet and feeding the competition.

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