So, there is people that actually believe than an Intel solution would have been more hot and big than the current AMD proposal.
Not long ago, it was true that Intel stuff was prohibitive for third parties to use due to their insane profit margins, since actual manufacturing costs of those parts are actually cheaper for them than for AMD. But times have changed, x86 is in a struggle to live and Intel tactics are way more aggresive.
This is an All in One HDMI dongle able to run Windows10 (or any other x86 OS such as Linux or Android) on any TV. This thing, along 1GB DDR3, WiFi N, BT, 32gb storage and some other I/O stuff, includes a full fledged Intel Atom Z3735F Bay Trail Quad Core @ 1.83 GHz. This toy is fabbed at 22nm for a crazy 2W SDP (~4W worst case scenario TDP). This is, 1/4th power consumption of a similar clocked 4C Jaguar but with +50% to over +100% more IPC.
Best of this? Bulk price is 60.5$ for orders above 500 units. Nope, no zero missing.
Throw in 4 to 8GB RAM, and replace crappy 4EU iGPU with a custom Iris Pro with double EU count (enough to catch PS4 GPU, and just as AMD did with current consoles APUs), and you would have an under 45w TDP chip able to nuke current consoles with smaller and better form factor. Include a control pad and you would had ~300 bucks headroom to accomplish this with xurrent consoles price tag. Tech was already there.
Sure chips would be more expensive than current AMD giveaways, but just think about lowered manufacturing cost from cheaper vent solutions and savings in logistics with smaller boxes to distribute. Imagine buying desktop consoles on Vita sized boxes.
In this type of threads, people tend to confuse what tech is able to do with what business models did at one point. That fanless stick CPU is better than current consoles CPUs. That is the level of crappiness we are facing with those consoles tech. And some small chinese company is selling those for 60 bucks. I just can't believe that Microsoft, with all those Wintel deals that built their core business empire, can't make a better deal with Intel than Shenzhen T.D.S. Electronic Technology Co. I have hard times believing Sony wouldn't be able to convince Intel to do that for them with their sales and marketing muscle.
From a pure tech standpoint, current gen is atrocious. Only saved somehow by the not more than competent PS4 GPU.
Walloftext aside, I still find funny how not initiated people is so easily amazed by CELL tricks even nowadays. I think it's not that hard to realize that, SPU synthetics benchmarks aside, CPU performance is really poor even by 2007 standards. Throw there some heterogenous real world loads and performance will plummet. Best value of out of order designs is that they can handle more branches of code without begging for mercy and without the need of trucks of programmers crafting every line of code so CPU doesn't choke.
I thought that PS4 embracing current computing paradigm of CPU+GPGPU would open some people eyes, but I guess I was wrong.
