AMD - Piledriver chitchat

[DanceswithUnix]

last time i checked nv dont even have an X86 license anyway....

ISTR they have worse than no x86 license, they are specifically banned through an agreement with Intel from producing x86 compatible chips even through emulation.

But then historically games consoles don't care what CPU architecture they use. If Tegra was any good, they might have been in with a shout with a custom version of that, but who wants outdated shaders on a 32 bit platform.

[watercooled]

Tegra is nowhere near as powerful as even current consoles, and the API support is badly outdated. Something like Denver, assuming it's what I understand it to be, would have been a better option if it was ready to offer.

No, Sony don't need x86 of course, but going with Nvidia would have meant waiting for Boulder or similar, getting Nvidia to co-operate in something custom with a load of A15 cores for example, or going with something like POWER again. Still, the level of integration AMD offers, and on the timescale they could produce it, is likely out of reach of others.

[CAT-THE-FIFTH]

The chap said "most PCs" not "most gaming PCs" FFS. It just shows you how insecure many hardware enthusiasts are when they cannot read,as noted by the PS4 thread.

It is amusing but he is right, consoles can only match up to the lower end of the performance spectrum when it comes to PCs. Admittedly the claim that the PS4 was ahead of PC performance seemed to be making reference to the average Dell or HP box you could get from PC World not a gaming machine. I was bemused by that claim until noticing that there was no mention of gaming hardware, just general low end PC. It is insulting to claim that consoles would out perform gaming machines for years to come when they quite clearly are miles behind before they have even launched the new versions they have been developing, so it is understandable that nVidia have responded in this way.

The PS3 did not have a high end GPU and yet Nvidia had no issues selling it as one.

Going by his previous statments he is a hyprocrit. He talk about margins and yet they are selling ARM based SOCs which are known for low margins,especially considering the Nvidia ones are big even for the standard of ARM based ones. They even are involved in projects like Ouya.

Looking at their "latest" Tegra 4?? They had to ship a stop gap T4i which still uses the old A9 design,not the new A15 design. That has been delayed for "later" when the competition already has new generation CPUs out.

This is all nothing but damage control.

Would the VP of a company seriously say anything good about a major win by a competitor,especially Nvidia??

He cannot be objective as result.

"Compared to gaming PCs, the PS4 specs are in the neighborhood of a low-end CPU, and a low- to mid-range GPU side,"

What type of deluded planet is this chap on?? HD7850 low end?? HD7870 low end?? The PS4 GPU is probably around GTX660 level. When has a £140 to £180 GPU been low end?? So a GTX660 is low end too??

So people who bought the GTX460,GTX560 and GTX660 are low end gamers??

Or is he trying to sell £140+ GPUs as low end to make DIY PC builders spend more on expensive GPUs?? To make Titan pricing look better??

Moreover, considering that Jaguar 8 core CPU is probably around 2GHZ SB Core i7 level(or slightly slower) when all threads are used,how does your Tegra 4i A9 cores compare then,Nvidia??

He knows very well that both Intel Atom and AMD Jaguar will be competitors for Tegra in higher end tablets,so why not comment on that then?? Lets try to poo-poo competing products instead.

Seems,like a marketing push there??

Nvidia seems to a very arrogant company indeed,even down to them showing a Fermi made of wood and saying its the real deal.

He talks about a GTX680 which probably almost costs the same as a whole PS4. Plus MOST PC gamers don't have a GTX680.

Maybe he should comment on the declining add in graphics card market, year by year?? Less and less people are buying desktops and discrete cards.

More people are buying laptops and since most people don't overclock,even the most expensive GTX680MX discrete card in uber expensive laptops and all in one desktops,which is the fastest mobile graphics card AFAIK,looks slower than a GTX670 desktop card.







Where is 50% claim of a "low end card" when compared with a GTX680??

More marketing speak,to bolster GTX680 sales which have collapsed after christmas:

http://www.techpowerup.com/178795/NV...e-GTX-680.html

It is insulting to claim that consoles would out perform gaming machines for years to come when they quite clearly are miles behind before they have even launched the new versions they have been developing, so it is understandable that nVidia have responded in this way.

Its sour grapes on Nvidia's part. That is it. If it were not and they did not care,they would not bother commenting at all.

They have no problem selling the "ultra low end" gaming capabilities of their ARM SOCs,so it smacks of hypocracy when they sling mud on a competitor's product.



http://blogs.nvidia.com/2013/01/four...ck-on-tegra-4/

They even talk about Hawken for Android,which probably looks crap compared to the desktop version.

What about Ouya then?? Nvidia is working with the developers of that too:

http://www.polygon.com/2013/2/14/398...ra-3-processor

That is a non-mobile gaming console.

So using the standards of the Nvidia VP,what is Tegra 3 then?? The level of an asthmatic mouse then??

But,wait a second!! They seem to be selling their Tegra based devices as gaming consoles!!

Nvidia gaming consoles=uber,competitor gaming consoles=crap.

Its only damage control,most likely more for the stock holders if anything else.



It is not understandable in anyway,as Nvidia had no issues,with that sort of marketing for the PS3 in anyway,even though in reality it was gimped.

Moreover,it seems that VP cannot read either it seems.

Maybe,that is why they have actual marketing people.

Edit!!

As Nvidia's senior vice president of content and development, he sees the PS4's specs as outdated, even today.

So,your competitor getting consoles wins ,won't conflict with what you are doing,right??

[kompukare]

Nvidia are not only very arrogant (and this is not exclusive to JHH) but they also seem to hold their customers in contempt. With bumbgate they were almost silent but I had a feeling their attitude would have been similar to some true green PC hardware 'enthusiasts':

"So what if your 2-3+ year old laptop / desktop video card broke. Don't be cheap buy a new high end replacement already: those who don't upgrade every six months to a year are cheapskates anyhow and not worthy of owning Nvidia stuff."

It's like they only value their customers if they continuously spend with them.

Unfortunately, overly aggressive companies do tend to do well and Nvidia have something like $4 billion in cash (so ironically they could have afforded to pay the $1 billion damage which bumbgate actually caused rather than the $250 million they were forced to pay out).

[Noxvayl]

@ CAT

You just explained why it is understandable. They feel threatened and therefore responded to defend themselves despite it not having the desired effect.

[CAT-THE-FIFTH]

@ CAT

You just explained why it is understandable. They feel threatened and therefore responded to defend themselves despite it not having the desired effect.

[CAT-THE-FIFTH]

AMD is working on mobile phone CPUs:

http://gulfnews.com/business/technol...ntel-1.1156937

[scaryjim]

Wondered if anyone would have picked up the "PS4 to out-power most PCs" comment in here AMD have stuck a facebook status up about it, and lots of idiots have commented on it. was going to post my thoughts there but tbh they're wasted on facebook: so figured I'd give oyu chaps a dose of my "wisdom"

hmmm, 2 things:

1) Q4 2012 PC sales: 90m, Q4 2012 discrete GPU sales: 28.8m. So 68% of PCs don't have discrete graphics, and PS4 graphics is much more powerful than any current integrated GPU (it's also more powerful than a lot of discrete GPUs). I reckon it'll be at least 2 generations of APU, and probably more, before integrated graphics catch up. So on the GPU side, "more powerful than most PCs" is probably accurate. And given most games are graphics bottlenecked anyway, the lowish power 8 core CPU (which is already out-powered by a lot of PCs in some situations) won't matter that much.

2) being a console, developers can code much closer to the bone - not having a general purpose OS/driver to worry about means the hardware can be used more efficiently. So consoles should perform better than an equivalent "power" PC. So you've got better graphics than most PCs being used more efficiently, and you've got a highly threaded CPU that can also be used efficiently. So if you take well threaded code and very optimised graphics coding, then run the same game on "most" PCs - yes, the PS4 will out-power them for some time.

[watercooled]

Yeah that comment really seems to have got some people hot under the collar. It's not a very specific comment, but as you say it's not actually incorrect. The amount of time you could waste trying to explain it though...

[CAT-THE-FIFTH]

BTW,Timothy Lotts,the chap behind FXAA(Nvidia employee) had some very positive comments about the PS4 specifications:

http://gimmegimmegames.com/2013/01/c...=zergnet_42581

However,for some reason,now he has taken down his original post and all of his blog.

[scaryjim]

I'd guess that his baseline point was, if you're buying a machine specifically for playing games, the PS4 is going to be better than a standard beige-box PC from a big retailer, and will continue to be for several years. Presumably it'll be priced somewhere around a standard integrator's basic box - £300ish? - and it's almost bound to be more powerful than those boxes for a fair few years yet.

It's also almost definitely intended to drive some controversy and get people talking about it, which it's done; although I'm not sure it's been beneficial to do so...

EDIT reply to CAT's cross post:

Interesting article that. I'd read a couple of clueless comments along the lines of how would having 8GB would keep the PS4 ahead of PCs as their PC already had 16GB *doh*
(in case anyone hasn't seen it, here's the article claiming "PS4 will outpower most PCs for years to come")

Most people don't seem to realise that the access developers have to console hardware is completely different to the access developers have to PC hardware. > 5GB RAM available for the game, with the GPU able to access as much of that as it wants, is a massive competitive edge over PC gaming. It's interesting to read an industry insider actually putting figures on the performance penalty attributable to having to write games within Windows.

[CAT-THE-FIFTH]

“On this platform I’d be concerned with memory bandwidth. Only DDR3 for system/GPU memory pared with 32MB of “ESRAM” sounds troubling. 32MB of ESRAM is only really enough to do forward shading with MSAA using only 32-bits/pixel color with 2xMSAA at 1080p or 4xMSAA at 720p. Anything else to ESRAM would require tiling and resolves like on the Xbox360 (which would likely be a DMA copy on 720) or attempting to use the slow DDR3 as a render target.

I’d bet most titles attempting deferred shading will be stuck at 720p with only poor post process AA (like FXAA). If this GPU is pre-GCN with a serious performance gap to PS4, then this next Xbox will act like a boat anchor, dragging down the min-spec target for cross-platform next-generation games.”

“If PS4 has a real-time OS, with a libGCM style low level access to the GPU, then the PS4 1st party games will be years ahead of the PC simply because it opens up what is possible on the GPU. Note this won’t happen right away on launch, but once developers tool up for the platform, this will be the case.

As a PC guy who knows hardware to the metal, I spend most of my days in frustration knowing damn well what I could do with the hardware, but what I cannot do because Microsoft and IHVs wont provide low-level GPU access in PC APIs. One simple example, drawcalls on PC have easily 10x to 100x the overhead of a console with a libGCM style API.”

Comments by over 2 dozen devs on the PS4:

http://www.develop-online.net/featur...velopers-speak

[CAT-THE-FIFTH]

EDIT reply to CAT's cross post:

Interesting article that. I'd read a couple of clueless comments along the lines of how would having 8GB would keep the PS4 ahead of PCs as their PC already had 16GB *doh*
(in case anyone hasn't seen it, here's the article claiming "PS4 will outpower most PCs for years to come")

Most people don't seem to realise that the access developers have to console hardware is completely different to the access developers have to PC hardware. > 5GB RAM available for the game, with the GPU able to access as much of that as it wants, is a massive competitive edge over PC gaming. It's interesting to read an industry insider actually putting figures on the performance penalty attributable to having to write games within Windows.

I tried explaining that and so did others,in that thread.

Here is an example of one response:

Comparing how the different software runs on a given CPU architechture is pointless and completely off topic. The faster cpu (assuming they are of identical architecture/cache etc) is still the faster CPU. So the system with the faster CPU is more powerful.

[CAT-THE-FIFTH]

Desktop Haswell Core i7 4770K tested:

http://www.tomshardware.co.uk/core-i...w-32651-6.html

It looks like in the desktop space,the HD4600 does have a decent performance improvement,but the A10 5800K is still faster overall,with a slower CPU.

It seems TSX is absent on K series CPUs too.

[HalloweenJack]

scary i posted it for you

[CAT-THE-FIFTH]

scary i posted it for you

Some of the Ottellini bedroom poster holders, are already predicting the end of AMD due to the the Haswell IGP,because of the GT3E version!