They could do that with a dedicated chip.
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Rumor: PS4 GPU based on AMD's GCN 2.0 architecture?
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Well a few days ago I did get an email from a Gaffer who has posted a lot in these topics.
It's a PDF. I don't know how much of it is new or old. (It's a little bit different from the VGleaks document)
What I can say is the current leaked specs haven't changed.
So I'm curious to who bgassassin's source is.
That's all I know.
Thanks.
I didn't meant to offend you in any way but for me it is getting tiresome reading a thread with all this GDDR5 nonsense.
Arrogant Menace
Banned
It's funny how everyone doesn't believe what superdae has to say, yet they believe his durango leaks are legit LOL
Osiris
I permanently banned my 6 year old daughter from using the PS4 for mistakenly sending grief reports as it's too hard to watch or talk to her
ScribD allows anonymous uploads, so share this PDF and let us judge for ourselves.
Miles Quaritch
Member
I'd been led to believe that such a thing wasn't possible?
Boss Man
Member
Probably because despite having access to legitimate information, he has said some really stupid shit.
The 'mass production' thing comes to mind.
phosphor112
Banned
My favorite is when they just say "DDR5" like they know what they are talking about... or dropping the G because it's shorter that way and somehow still correct.
What this man says.
Dead Prince
Banned
in sony we trust.
That PDF is not for the public. All you need to know is that the specs have not changed.
Glad I wasn't the only one thinking this.
Osiris
I permanently banned my 6 year old daughter from using the PS4 for mistakenly sending grief reports as it's too hard to watch or talk to her
No offense ,but I think you're full of shit.
Miles Quaritch
Member
Maybe, but the number of posts flat out stating such a thing wasn't possible doesn't add up to the claim that they made huge last modifications.
Are we to assume it's possible for Sony to make last minute modifications but no-one else? Or are we to assume that this info simply wasn't divulged earlier?
This. People are looking way too much into this and are acting like as if GCN 2 will be some major overhaul.
As far as we know, GCN 2 will mostly bring more HSA features and perhaps some balancing and tweaks to up the efficiency. It is possible that AMD will clean up their design for more performance/mm² (pretty much like they did with Barts vs Cypress) though.
Since AMD is holding their next IPs back for a while longer, which obviously will have these new features implemented, it is likely that they are adding this new HSA stuff to the PS470's SoC.
Tears For Fears
Banned
Don't do this, seriously.
Osiris
I permanently banned my 6 year old daughter from using the PS4 for mistakenly sending grief reports as it's too hard to watch or talk to her
No, you have previously hinted, and are now outright stating that you have inside information.
You should either validate what you say with the mods/admins here like other insiders have to, or face the consequences IMO.
You should either validate what you say with the mods/admins here like other insiders have to, or face the consequences IMO.
phosphor112
Banned
AMD needs this contract. They aren't in much room to bloat the price up. Consoles are the only thing to keep them afloat as of current.
GCN2 versus GCN wouldn't be a huge change. It's big but nowhere near as huge as the 8gb GDDR5. They could also have just implemented some of the benefits of GCN2 into a GCN chip.
TheGuardian
Member
A lot of people assume that compute is only about making the GPU do CPU style stuff, but that is far from reality.
The compute capabilities of modern GPUs just remove the old vertex->fragment way of operating from the equation and enable the GPU to work on arbitrary buffers and output arbitrary data. The uses for this just on the graphics side are enormous: post-processing, lighting, building auxiliary data structures like sparse voxel octrees or even replacing the whole graphics pipeline with a non polygon oriented approach.
You still want the old pipeline to be there for the basic rendering workload in most games though.
The compute capabilities of modern GPUs just remove the old vertex->fragment way of operating from the equation and enable the GPU to work on arbitrary buffers and output arbitrary data. The uses for this just on the graphics side are enormous: post-processing, lighting, building auxiliary data structures like sparse voxel octrees or even replacing the whole graphics pipeline with a non polygon oriented approach.
You still want the old pipeline to be there for the basic rendering workload in most games though.
Coulomb_Barrier
Member
Sorry I should have been more clear.
It doesn't say anywhere that Durango has a more efficient CPU than PS4 though, right?
And is there a link where they say the Durango CPU is 'more efficient'?
I would assume that would be the case, but for both consoles.
phosphor112
Banned
I don't think GCN 2 is bringing in new HSA features. If it does, that's great, but I doubt it will.
But the increase in ACE's is great because it'll allow any combination of CU's to be used for compute functions.
Lagspike_exe
Member
Experts also claimed that 8GB was not possibile. 4GB was just barely possibile, right?
Soulscribe
Member
What the fuck does any of that mean though
Much of the information that has formed the basis for discussion in this forum in relation to PS4 and Durango has been based on similar levels of sources.
The fact that it is a poster on Beyond3D who has credibility makes it a rumour worth paying attention to.
Also if a mod is reading this can we possibly get a thread for the sole purpose of discussion around PS4 and its hardware as it is going to be an ongoing process and as much as I am sick of seeing GDDR5 threads, people coming into legitimate threads talking shit is getting just as old.
Tears For Fears
Banned
What's so hard about varifying info with the mods?
I think one of the issues with having 2 ACEs before is less efficient switching between compute and graphics tasks. having 8 might allow you more granularity in allocating compute CUs. although 8 might be based on a 32 CU chip (4 CUs controlled per ACE) so in that case PS4 might only have 4-5 ACEs
But then what was with the 14+4 rumour which suggested a fenced off block of compute focused CUs?
Miles Quaritch
Member
My point was that whenever someone brought up similar comments in any thread about the next xbox, they were immediately set upon with claims that such a thing wasn't possible and that it would set the console back months, etc.
I'm just trying to ascertain why such comments were shot down or dismissed when it's apparently possible to make last minute changes to architecture.
Probably this was in design from the get-go and it was never leaked before.
So much bitter in this post.
This isnt some random GAFFer or an aegies/DAE kind of person we're talking about.
Their roadmaps indicate otherwise though.
(I know that the last few months things have been shifted around a lot at AMD so all of this is still up in the air.)
Osiris
I permanently banned my 6 year old daughter from using the PS4 for mistakenly sending grief reports as it's too hard to watch or talk to her
You could still answer his question here, what's so hard about verifying the information with the mods?
Coulomb_Barrier
Member
So the Durango 'more efficient CPU than PS4' rumour exists because someone on a thread posted it then?
Come on.
Looks a case of 'you repeat a lie often enough, it becomes the truth'.
EDIT: Seriously, someone send me the link that verifies this (in so far as 'leaks' can be verified) and I'll change my mind.
Come on.
Looks a case of 'you repeat a lie often enough, it becomes the truth'.
EDIT: Seriously, someone send me the link that verifies this (in so far as 'leaks' can be verified) and I'll change my mind.
Lagspike_exe
Member
Because there are certain airmchair hardware experts which don't actually know anything, but pretend they do. Most of them are properly tagged, though. Proceed with caution next time.
Which is what I expect MS is doing as we speak.
Each Durango will feature a cloned brain of Dr. Halsey as its main CPU.
Source is bgassasin so far.
Lagspike_exe
Member
Probably. Sony heavily boosted the PS4 from the last rumors just by doubling the magical RAM.
Doesn't really matter, PS4 will be the more powerful system if MS doesn't change anything.
Gemüsepizza
Member
What? Where do you get the impression that this was a last minute change? Do you know how long GCN2 is in development? Afaik it is even already finished. This "last-minute-change" seems like some conspiracy stuff, it is much more plausible that AMD shared their developments on GCN2 from the beginning with both of their very important partners, Sony and Microsoft, and that this technology influenced development of the PS4/Xbox3 from the beginning.
Though if production timelines are to be believed then it's possible Sony didn't even need to revise the motherboard layout to double the RAM density. Absent that I'm sure we'd have seen only 4GB in the machine.
That's hardly on the same level of the kind of changes MS would have to make to match (assuming the rumors as they stand are true and not horrendously outdated obviously).
Unspeakable Evil
Member
Offtopic, but wasn't he the one that said Nextbox is always online and doesn't play used games? If so, how reliable is he?
Coulomb_Barrier
Member
Really?
Well then I really don't know why a lot of people are putting so much stock in his post.
I'm only trusting what Eurogamer/Edge/other established websites are posting specs wise, as both have been pretty accurate so far.
phosphor112
Banned
Their roadmaps indicate otherwise though.
(I know that the last few months things have been shifted around a lot at AMD so all of this is still up in the air.)
This is what I was thinking of. Maybe it's not "true" GCN 2.0 like this says, but it comes with some of the perks of it. If it is GCN 2.0 with HSA improvements, that'll be fantastic.
Yes. But the always online and no used games was first broken by Eurogamer.
it's not that simple because the GPGPU in the PS4 & maybe the Xbox 3 are being enhanced for General Purpose Computing so the CPU tasks are not limited to the CPU.
so you could see the Xbox 3 using 200GFLOPS for Computing & 1.2 TFLOPS for Graphics
Vs the PS4 using 500GFLOPS for Computing & 1.4TFLOPS for Graphics.
or it could be a lot different we don't know the numbers on the CPUs yet.
Don't give previous rumors too much credit.
We have seen a clear trend from a few 'insiders' to hype up non existing things on the Xbox side while downplaying or hiding things on the PS side (the 2GB of memory which they were struggling to up to 4GB, no one mentioned or hinted at the 32vs16 ROPs thing for the GPU before the vgleaks latest article, Microsoft was supposed to use GCN2 while Sony not).
It's not like because those people were wrong you have to assume that they made last minute changes.
Changing the RAM capacity using more chips or higher density ones is not challenging considering that it's still the same kind of memory, it's just a costs/benefits decision.
But there was no reason to believe that Sony was using an old building block from AMD (the GCN) when the company had a new one available (GCN2).