Huh... where did he say that? I didn't see that quote of his (it's exactly what i asked above). Must 've read over it.
If it's a 4770, it would make more sense as i said months ago, because a smaller die, less power consuming. With 960 Gflops (card runs at 750 MHz though). The 4850 does 1 Tflops by the way. Not 800 Gflops. And i get 480 Gflops for the 4670, not 432? But that card also runs at 750 MHz, so wouldn't the 4770 be more logical, even downclocked?
Add the added modifications, and this surely has to be a lot more powerful than 1.5x the Xenos. Or seriously downclocked. Should a 4850 be downclocked to say 400 MHz, it would still roughly get over 600 Gflops... against Xenos' 240. Downclock a 4770 to 450 MHz and you still have 575 Gflops.
He was talking about 4670M and 4850M which are different to the desktop parts. I would have thought that if the 4770 base design had a die shrink to 32nm and was slightly underclocked we could still get something that would outperform a 4770 on a pc very handily. somethign that would perform to around 1TFLOP by PC (Epic) standards but maybe only be 20% slower on paper. so maybe an 800GFLOP 4770 on 32nm
Here is some speculation I thought might be interesting. Please feel free to tear it apart.
The AMD HD7750 is a 1TFLOP card that is now $99 at retail. The cost price of the GPU itself in volume (without ram, thermals, power, connectors, PCB, logic) would be about $25. I am sure nintendo can afford to put in a $25 card in there.
The WiiU CPU's and GPU's are not even being manufactured yet so final volume prices haven't been agreed on and final candidates have not been chosen. There could be two or three candidates that nintendo is playing around with ready to go and able to fit in that case if needed in the last minute. We are probably only seeing the bare minimum vesion of these chips. this could also mean the difference between a $249 $299and $349 retail price for the console. The maximum Nintendo can go for is a 1-1.2TFLOP card that could fit in that case without too much heat issues if it was at 32nm. Price will be a factor in that an 800-1.2TFLOP will be $349 550-750GFLOP $299 and 360-500 GFLOP will be $249 for example.
Nintendo is either working with a 55nm part or a 40nm r700 part as a baseline design and if they are indeed working with 40nm as a baseline then there are a few candidates in the r700 lineup that they could have used as a base but it is also possible they started on 55nm part knowing that they will be applying die shrink anyway.
If nintendo is smart and basically get MS and SONY to lowball nintendo and release sub 1.8TFLOP GPU's in their consoles because they think WiiU will only be 360GFLOPS only for nintendo to then suddenly spring in a ~1TFLOP GPU in there, then it will hamper development of first gen SONY and MS titles as well as some third parties. Even if SONY and Microsoft at the last minute decide to also add power to their consoles, if their contingency plans did not plan on nintendo going for something 1TFLOP (pc gpu) performance it might make it easy for nintendo to suddenly be on par with next gen especially for first gen PS4 games and second gen WiiU games.
Consider PS4 being 1.8 TFLOP and the WiiU being 800GFLOPS, the difference would only be something in the range of PS4 1080p@30fps vs 720p@30fps for WiiU with virtually the same effects. Having this for the first year may establish a status quo with the public that the WiiU GPU is more than adequate especially at the price and the already year old userbase which has had a headstart. the gamecube only got its power bump at the last minute. The Wii got its power downgrade also at the last minute. The 3DS got its power bump just before launch and also after launch part of the processing was released for developers to use.
Those development kits are closed and are subject to change within the current confines of the targetted specifications that made no mention of GPU power or CPU power.This may actually be a good thing if you think about it, as it allows for changes up until the last minute to make sure the competition has less time to counter. Going first and with your competitors always wanting to see what you are doing and countering your every move is something nintendo is very careful of and have planned contingencies to do so. Look at smart glass and Kinect and Move just as examples to show that the competitors are hot at their heels.
If E3 is any indication it just goes to show that even though Nintendo has big hitters in development they will not show it to a news hungry faithful just to make sure the competition underestimates Nintendo. SONY and MS see Nintendo a teddy bear but in reality it is more of a grizzly in hibernation just waiting for spring to come out. It was a very smart move to show shareholder pleasing titles which will bring the stock price up. We are six months to launch and we have to remember many other times in other console launches where six months from launch, the products did not look too good.
The launch lineup is looking fairly strong. In a couple of weeks we will start to hear what Japanese third parties have in store. Closer to launch we will hear about non launch window games coming that are pre E3 2013, but are also first generation. Nintendo is at a very strong place at the moment. The perception is one of confusion at the moment, but its ok to have confusion until the product is ready to ship to market. By october there will be a very clear picture of the WiiU platform but even now nintendo is still guaging final specs for the machine but will do it at the last possible minute so as to throw off the competition. It is not at the expense of third party developers thought it may look inderectly like that but it is can be considered a premeptive defensive move in order to protect their plans.
What would you do as a company in order to to keep your competitors from one upping you without going into an arms race?
Oh and also $299 at 720-960 GFLOP is doable and can make nintendo between $5-10 a unit sold which is about what they were making with the wii at $249. If I was nintendo that's what I would do. 1/-1/4 the power of PS4 and xbox720 but at maybe $100 less and one year early and at profit.
This will allow nintendo to price drop to $249 in september of 2014 and $199 in early 2016 and $149 in 2017 and $99 when the next gen starts in 2018 which will give them 6 years in the market. The balance is to pleae developers consumers and shareholders while maintaining profits at all time no matter what. If you think about it is actually a very hard thing to do.
