News - Playstation 4 'Orbis' rumoured to feature next-gen AMD Fusion APU

[HEXUS]

Multiple-sources point to 28nm AMD Fusion APU, according to psx-sense.nl.

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[Hicks12]

I would like it to be true as it would mean PC gaming would get much better ports . However i cant see this happening, to have an APU would likely add ~£100 if you include the ram and motherboard so thats already £400 (including the discrete card), extra like £5 for flash storage then £30 for HDD and add on the casing probably another £30 and psu? £40 with that much power needed and again you have a bluray drive ~£30... controllers another £25 each so we are looking at ~ £585 already!?

No way would sony do that with their current finances! I wish though

[DannyM]

They will buy in bulk and also consider that they would integrate it all into one board so no modular hardware instantly means a savings in costs.

Sony definitely need to make a better console this time round to survive so it wouldn't surprise me if they lose money on consoles to try attract a larger audience.

[Hicks12]

thats the problem though Danny, MS and Sony both lose money on their consoles currently so if it was the believed that this new spec for PS4 then it would bankrupt them they would have to sell at like £150 loss per unit. even buying in bulk with those expensive items id say about £400 -£500 if its believed, way to much

[Kushan]

I would like it to be true as it would mean PC gaming would get much better ports . However i cant see this happening, to have an APU would likely add ~£100 if you include the ram and motherboard so thats already £400 (including the discrete card), extra like £5 for flash storage then £30 for HDD and add on the casing probably another £30 and psu? £40 with that much power needed and again you have a bluray drive ~£30... controllers another £25 each so we are looking at ~ £585 already!?

No way would sony do that with their current finances! I wish though

This is interesting, I read the same rumours from a different site: http://translate.google.nl/translate?sl=auto&tl=en&js=n&prev=_t&hl=nl&ie=UTF-8&layout=2&eotf=1&u=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.psx-sense.nl%2F89207%2Fexclusief-talloze-informatie-over-de-playstation-4-inclusief-specificaties%2F
However, they specifically state that the 7970 GPU is going to be part of the APU and not a separate, discrete card. I can't see how that's physically possible in today's technology, but in 2013 I guess it's plausible, presuming AMD has some incredible tricks up its sleeve (surely it'll take more than a die shrink to pull that off)?
That would sure as hell drive down the cost as most components would be on the Chip already. It still wouldn't be what you'd call cheap, but I can see that reaching the "console price" territory of about £300-350 and it'd seriously benefit from die shrinks down the line.

It'll be very interesting if Sony does indeed go for an x86 processor but I just can't see that happening.

[Hicks12]

thats interesting, maybe its actually a 7970M, that would certainly make it more plausible! And that would help towards temperature/power/price control, be interesting what actually it ends up as!.

[Scribe]

thats the problem though Danny, MS and Sony both lose money on their consoles currently so if it was the believed that this new spec for PS4 then it would bankrupt them they would have to sell at like £150 loss per unit. even buying in bulk with those expensive items id say about £400 -£500 if its believed, way to much

Sony actually broke even on the PS3 a few years ago, though may very well now favour increased sales/lower price over hardware profit, however, you have to also factor in that not spending half a billion on investing in something like the Cell offsets a huge amount of loss in comparison to the PS3 and a gradual loss per sale of console will sit much better in the minds of shareholders than an upfront expenditure with the company in such an uncertain state.

[Scribe]

This is interesting, I read the same rumours from a different site: http://translate.google.nl/translate...ecificaties%2F
However, they specifically state that the 7970 GPU is going to be part of the APU and not a separate, discrete card. I can't see how that's physically possible in today's technology, but in 2013 I guess it's plausible, presuming AMD has some incredible tricks up its sleeve (surely it'll take more than a die shrink to pull that off)?
That would sure as hell drive down the cost as most components would be on the Chip already. It still wouldn't be what you'd call cheap, but I can see that reaching the "console price" territory of about £300-350 and it'd seriously benefit from die shrinks down the line.

It'll be very interesting if Sony does indeed go for an x86 processor but I just can't see that happening.

I thought that they state this but I can't say "specifically", it wasn't clear, they kind of mumbled over it.

[andrewuk]

Whatever it is, the next gen consoles can't come soon enough so PC games can move forward. Sure there are some games that take advantage of all the DX11 goodies but many are still bad/lazy DX9 ports...

[3930k]

TAHTI XT ON A £300 CONSOLE? Impossibles.

[OilSheikh]

No way they would put a HD7970!
Best I guess is HD3450 or something similar.

[keithwalton]

They usually put in a mid range gpu rather than a high end one at the time of first build. By the time the ps4 gets here the 7970 would be old hat and rebranded as a 8870 or 9770 or something like that.
Maybe they'll do a crossfire thing with the apu ?

[Fraz]

I'm surprised people are surprised about this...

At design stage, the tech that is shortlisted for the innards of a new games console (excluding Nintendo...) is nearly always absolutely bleeding edge, with the GPU/CPU often being the generation beyond what is available commercially at the time. This means that when the console is finally released after however much (~2 years?) development time, the innards are at least top-end "current-gen". If they don't aim high at the design stage, then the console will be depressingly behind-the-times by the release date.

[Hicks12]

Problem is back then the price... a 7800GT was $450 and is the equivalent of the 360 and ps3 gpu power (iirc?) and this 7970 is $550 maybe im wrong but if they do it by launch prices its a bit much, I would LOVE to be proved wrong as it would be a win for PC market but ive lost faith in the high end of a console, the 7800gt was mostly midrange at launch but the 7970 is top of the line high end.

2 years time then the gpu would be really out of date and we are back where we started unfortunately, i hope they started work atleast a year or two ago .

[Terbinator]

Don't forget, if they tack a load of niche stuff on like EDRAM again then the performance isn't a known quantity depending on how dev's manipulate the hardware.

[watercooled]

It's all but confirmed that both Xbox3 (really don't like the 720 moniker) and PS4 will be using AMD Fusion chips of some sort, apparently at least the Xbox ones have already taped out. I'm quite surprised about the move to x86 for a number of reasons, but it makes some sense when you bear in mind ease of programming/porting. Just for code which will be very well optimised for the exact platform anyway, you'd get better power/die space efficiency with a RISC CPU, which is partly why they've been the choice for past consoles (excluding Xbox1 which was rushed to market with near off-the-shelf parts). I'd also say FPU performance, but the choosing an APU obviously alleviates that concern.

As far as I'm aware, both PS3 and Xbox360 broke even some time ago and are both selling for a profit now, largely due to die shrinks/combined CPU/GPU. This is anticipated/planned by the MFRs - they initially sell the hardware at a loss; it uses fairly advanced hardware/large dies/multiple chips/large TDP (needs better cooling), but still make a profit large margins on the games they sell. When technology allows, they shrink dies, eliminate little used/unused components, combine dies, lowering TDP in the process, so less cooling and smaller power supply.

7970? It depends on when the consoles are to be released, consoles have historically used fairly good GPUs but never top-end of even the last gen. Either way, it's not really comparable because of the massive change in architectures. Also, as Terb said consoles tend to add on various uncommon bits of hardware to improve performance.