serversurfer
Member
"Just think of it as two PS4s… duct-taped together!!"
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Digital Foundry: Neo GPU are point-for-point a match for RX 480
- Thread starter Shtof
- Start date
HughJanuss
Banned
The PS4K will probably cost Sony just 50$ more (maybe even less) than the PS4 to manufacture.
You can forget about a 499$/599$ price tag.
You can forget about a 499$/599$ price tag.
More like 3 PS4s...
Because specs matter. I'd like to stay with PlayStation this gen but I'll leave if Scorpio is 6TF and neo is 4.
serversurfer
Member
You'd best be talking power and not price, my man.
brianmcdoogle
Member
It's sad but all I want is a quieter machine. The current PS4 is too damn loud.
1.84 x 3 = 5.5
Even now I still think it's a dream. How is Sony going to launch a PS4K at 5.5 TF a year before MS?
There are other costs other than manufacturing that need to be put into account.
serversurfer
Member
AMD are releasing a 36 CU, 5.8TF card next week. Seems like Sony could release the same later in the year.1.84 x 3 = 5.5
Even now I still think it's a dream. How is Sony going to launch a PS4K at 5.5 TF a year before MS?
Still, I don't see the hurry, and I think they're better off waiting until spring. (Unless Zen and Vega are ready now, of course.)
SolidSnakex
Member
Sony has experience with that pricepoint and knows that it's not attractive to consumers. They've said that they want Neo to help them reach the 20m figure for this fiscal year. What makes them think that they Neo could do that if they put it at a pricepoint that they know consumers aren't willing to go for? So this isn't just about power. It's about them using it to boost overall PS4 sales as well. Which means that they can't just pack a bunch of power in a box and put it at a pricepoint that's really not going to move the needle for overall PS4 sales.
That's a full fledged desktop card though.
Would imagine there is a bit of work required in order to keep heat/power down for a console.
They already have their specs locked down by this point as well as the hardware inside the APU is already fully done and probably has been tested for months and months.
Sony knows that the people willing to abandon playstation to go for a console that doesn't come out until late 2017 just cause of the specs lists being leaked are a minority of their userbase.
They can't play reactionary all the time just to play a war of attrition, especially when their new box isn't even generally about being the strongest in general, but being a better version of their current option with 4k media capabilities.
If they come out cheaper, earlier, its better for them.
I don't think so. This isn't a mainstream machine. This is the Xbox elite controller in console form targeting itself at high end performance. They are calling it interviews a high end PS4. I don't know thought this could all be hot air.
serversurfer
Member
It's supposed to draw like 110-130W under load, and that includes 8GB of RAM and whatnot. It's a lot, but it's not a ridiculous amount. Again, PS3 launched with a 380W power supply.
But that's actually part of the reason I think waiting for Vega would be a good idea. Isn't HMB2 supposed to draw a lot less power than GDDR5?
Bl@de
Member
Consoles don't use PCIe form factor cards with big coolers. Consoles use APUs. And there is no APU out with the power of a 390X right now or next week.
StrongBlackVine
Banned
Right now is irrelevant to what happens 3 years from now.
The original PS4s TDP is like 150-180W
A 14nm APUwith 8 improved jaguar/puma cores and a 5TF polaris graphics part would be the same in terms of energy consumption.
A 'highER end' PS4 in comparison to the original unit. Its not going to be particularly 'high end' to begin with in an APU to be sold for the leaked price at 399$ this year.
Its still a PS4, and by definition, the capabilities of the unit are going to be severely limited by what the PS4 can do, and so the power it has at a certain point becomes redundant.
If you believe certain parties about Sony's reason for launching this device, its not just because they want to sell a stronger unit, but because their usual plan of selling a SLIM model at the same power draw as the original didn't bring the cost savings it would have this time as it would have in the past.
In addition to that, they probably saw it as wasting their cash to not put in stronger parts for the same or slightly lower prices with lower heat output among other things. First and foremost, this is a glorified slim device with 4k playback that just has some uplocked parts and a more modern GPU.
The investment they planned to put into this unit from the start was most likely limited.
Again, if your looking for a war of attrition and Sony to 'respond' just because MS happened to announce specs of their console presumably coming out a full 12 months later, i think that's looking at the situation wrong.
150 is the the higher end of the scale. It doesn't go above the 150s watt range.
What your talking about is closer to PS3 level with 180w, and they are never going back to that
Prices aren't based on cost, they're also based on what people will pay.
It doesn't cost Apple $100 to go from a 16GB chip in the iPhone to a 64GB chip, but it helps them segment the market in an extremely profitable way
serversurfer
Member
Well, part of that depends on just how close they are to launching, but as I said, they've bumped specs at the last minute before, and they explicitly said the dev kit was a min spec.
If they're "worried" those users may stray to PC, then it seems like Scorpio would be an equal threat, if not the very same threat.
If we assume it's reactionary at all. Like I said, Sony knew Zen and Vega were scheduled to launch any time now, and I still haven't heard a good argument for them doing their big upgrade on some arbitrary date rather than "when the big upgrade is available." Seems like that's what precipitated the announcement of the PS4 itself, actually. They got word they'd be able to do 8GB and announced the console immediately thereafter.
Earlier is all they really need, as long as they're reasonably close on price and performance. And again, since they merely need to be "earlier," spring 2017 will give them a massive advantage over Scorpio. Assuming it's specs don't pale in comparison, of course.
Let's say Scorpio is 6TF with 12GB of awesome RAM and an 8-core Zen, and launches holiday 2017 for $499. If Sony release more or less the same box at GDC next year, that'll be "too late" for them or something? Too late for what, exactly? What kind of massive damage are MS poised to do this holiday if Sony don't launch Neo first? There's this huge sense of urgency coming from everyone, but I have no idea why =/
Nightengale
Member
To be fair, 20 million PS4s in the 2016 fiscal year is not a very high leap above their 17.7 mil sold in the 2015 fiscal year.
Even if we assume that up that vanilla PS4 estimate to conservative 18 mil, that means they're looking to sell only around 2 mil Neo SKUs in 4-5 months time.
A $599 SKU is very unlikely looking at Sony's history with that price point, but it's not like they seem to have very high targets for Neo anyway.
Exactly. people also need to realise that 6 is CPU+GPU.
StrongBlackVine
Banned
Leaked price is now $499. Keep up.
Well you can bump you RAM in the last minute because you literally just use microchips with double the capacity. 16x4Gbit instead of 16x2Gbit chips.
You can't redesign the entire APU months away from launch.
An i7 2600k has 0.1 Tflop/s. What do you think can the mobile CPU in the AMD APU do?
serversurfer
Member
No, but you could start 18 months ago, and then when it's finally ready say, "Surprise! It's twice as good as what we've been using." Again, Zen's imminent release comes as no surprise whatsoever to Sony. It's always been on the roadmap for late '16/early '17.
Nightengale
Member
No, he's confirmed official details should be coming soon.
Which I'm inferring to be some sort of official Sony invite to talk about blahblahfutureofPS4blahblah.
Sad Affleck
Member
I agree. This is a device that is aimed at the hardcore and those who value performance. If the Neo is significantly slower than the Scorpio then this fact will affect sales.
So SONY will pay AMD $100mio. to develop a dummy APU, so they can surprise the devs/gamers with a better one(which would be again ~$100mio.)?
piccio_ssl
Member
Kazification vol. 2
According to the original leak there were two machines being developed simultaneously. One with better performance and the one we currently know about.
This brought about the Red pill Blue pill aka option A and option B verbiage.
serversurfer
Member
Also, after hearing* the Jim Ryan interview, I'm even more convinced Sony are purposely leaking conflicting rumors to keep everyone confused.
*Speaking of, I don't suppose they ever re-posted with the original audio, did they?
And for all I know, the $100M may include "dummy" chips. Sounds like there's a lot of trial and error as they refine new processes, and as I understand it, they typically start by making smaller versions of the stuff they build now because it limits variables. So maybe AMD made a test wafer of these supercharged PS4 APUs and it turned out pretty well. So then they started working on something genuinely new, while Sony split up the test wafer and built 100 dev kits out of it. That sounds pretty logical to me, actually.
*Speaking of, I don't suppose they ever re-posted with the original audio, did they?
They may do. $100M really isn't all that much money, even for broke-ass Sony. It's less than the cost of 286k PS4s, for example. I'm not sure why people bought the idea that Sony suddenly balked at the cost of a die shrink for the PS4 when they do die shrinks for stuff all the time, and they're actually not that broke, and PS4 is kicking ass and has been since launch. They've actually done two PS4 redesigns already, while MS are almost ready for their first. PS4 is actually about due for a third
And for all I know, the $100M may include "dummy" chips. Sounds like there's a lot of trial and error as they refine new processes, and as I understand it, they typically start by making smaller versions of the stuff they build now because it limits variables. So maybe AMD made a test wafer of these supercharged PS4 APUs and it turned out pretty well. So then they started working on something genuinely new, while Sony split up the test wafer and built 100 dev kits out of it. That sounds pretty logical to me, actually.
They are not 'worried' to begin with though. That is hyperbole from article headlines. What andrew house said was that they noticed some peel off of users going to PC at the end of the 7th gen because the gen was long in the tooth and showed in the games, so launching something like this also happened to be a good chance to keep them in the ecosystem.
Their intent was not a super powerful unit that outclassed anything else, just an option to keep the generation more solvent for PS users.
According to who? We don't have much info to go on as it stand right now to begin with. It seems to me that the only ones desperate for Sony to nullify MS's power advantage are looking at a lost cause. Power aint everything folks.
Also, the snark definitely isn't needed. Don't bring it down to that level.
Silver what did Jimmy say?
Oh THAT'S what it is all about! So they apparently decided to go the high-end route in order to be not too inferior to Scorpio when it launches, at the cost of a higher launch price. If the October timeframe is true (due to the Neo patch requirements starting then) they should start with mass production right about NOW to have sufficient units.
He just said the usual PR fluff in response to questions about the power difference. 'Don't make statements about specs before units are launched' ect ect. And he laughed to dismiss questions about it.
That's not quite right. The original leak said that they had two options on the table. better CPU(presumably some variant of zen or else there would be no point) for 499, or an uplocked jaguar for 399.
We only have news on the upclocked jaguar cores at 2.1 GHZ though, so we don't know outside of price rumors where that went.
Where are you extrapolating this information from? It's all conjecture. I don't think a single thing has been officially announced or decided.
Go back to post #938. When asked about Scorpio having a 2 TFLOP advantage, Sony's Jim Ryan seems to suggest that the interviewer is repeating rumors, not facts.
APU size is the only big concern. Polaris 10 is ~230mm2, and to that they need to add CPU. Still, it will still be smaller than current PS4 APU, so cost should be around the same because yields will probably be lower during 1st year of production.
So yes, Jaguar [or small Zen] and Polaris10 [clocked at any setting, 911mhz could be only for launch, they can increase that down the line whenever they want] inside <300mm2 is a great candidate for $400 console. Rest of the HW could same same. PSU will not need to be bigger, GDDR5 chips will spend a bit more power but that's nothing strange, cooling should require no changes.
5.5tf means a overclock and nothing more. Neo can come out whenever they want it out.
xenorevlis
Member
Don't forget that general GFLOP for a CPU is not the same as what a GPU does. Also, that i7 is a quad core whereas the Jaguar makes up some of that ground by having 8 cores.
Another potential bit of confusion is people saying the CPU and GPU power aren't counted seem to misunderstand that an APU is both stuck together and can be counted together with one metric, but floating point operation count isn't the end all be all number.
There were rumors of two versions, one more and one less costly.
The second bolded part is from the experience of someone I read here that mass production roughly yields about one million units per month. However this can change, obviously...
serversurfer
Member
Fair enough.
Osiris.
See here
Precisely. That's why I don't understand why some people keep saying, "They can't just change this stuff!!" =/
family_guy
Member
Not really. If you're in the ecosystem already then I doubt you're going to switch, especially if you have a bunch of digital purchases that carry forward. It's like trying to get someone to switch from an iPhone even though Android phones have been technically better for awhile now. User experience and quality of available software is going to be more important than specs.
Nestunt
Member
I would argue that price is the best predictor of these machines' success.