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Thread: Ataribox will employ a custom AMD SoC with Radeon graphics

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    Re: Ataribox will employ a custom AMD SoC with Radeon graphics

    Quote Originally Posted by Xlucine View Post
    Raven ridge for the price would be amazing (and probably worth getting just to put windows on it, as a media PC or similar) - I'm expecting bristol ridge.
    ... and yet for similar money the Xbox and PS4 get Jaguar cores?

    Edit to add: Might be more interesting if they gave this an Atari ST mode. Or maybe that would be another product.
    Last edited by DanceswithUnix; 02-10-2017 at 12:18 PM.

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    Re: Ataribox will employ a custom AMD SoC with Radeon graphics

    Quote Originally Posted by Xlucine View Post
    I'm expecting bristol ridge.
    Certainly a possibility, and would fit the low cost and the focus on low end games. I can hope for Raven Ridge, but yeah, I'm worried it might be Stoney Ridge. Atari did say that the box would play games like a mid-range PC, which makes me a little hopeful, but I don't trust Atari enough, so we'll have to wait and see.

    The interesting question is what's custom about the chip being used.

    Quote Originally Posted by DanceswithUnix View Post
    ... and yet for similar money the Xbox and PS4 get Jaguar cores?
    First of all, Xbox and PS4 have costs beyond the APU. Blu-ray drive, hard drive, extra cooling, etc. They are relatively big, bulky and power hungry. I suspect that the Ataribox will have 4GB of RAM and 64GB eMMC (hopefully not less than this, but it's possible), not the 8GB (GDDR5, in case of the PS4) + HDD of the consoles.

    As for the Jaguar cores, they were put in the Xbox One / PS4 before Excavator was available, and naturally changing things would break compatibility. Far as I know 8 Jaguar cores take about the same silicon area as 4 Excavator cores, and provide better overall performance if all cores are taken advantage of. Which isn't usually the case for PC games, where Excavator is likely to perform better (as well as for general usage).
    Last edited by ET3D; 09-10-2017 at 07:26 AM.

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    root Member DanceswithUnix's Avatar
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    Re: Ataribox will employ a custom AMD SoC with Radeon graphics

    Quote Originally Posted by ET3D View Post
    First of all, Xbox and PS4 have costs beyond the APU. Blu-ray drive, hard drive, extra cooling, etc. They are relatively big, bulky and power hungry. I suspect that the Ataribox will have 4GB of RAM and 64GB eMMC (hopefully not less than this, but it's possible), not the 8GB (GDDR5, in case of the PS4) + HDD of the consoles.

    As for the Jaguar cores, they were put in the Xbox One / PS4 before Excavator was available, and naturally changing things would break compatibility. Far as I know 8 Jaguar cores take about the same silicon area as 4 Excavator cores, and provide better overall performance if all cores are taken advantage of. Which isn't usually the case for PC games, where Excavator is likely to perform better (as well as for general usage).
    Blue ray drive is a few dollars, you can buy a PC disc reader for a tenner with extra metal casing and power electronics that wouldn't be needed in a console.

    As for eMMC, well it may not be Apple pricing but the stuff isn't cheap. Here is 64GB of eMMC on a cheap carrier PCB for £62: https://lilliputdirect.com/64gb-emmc...n&currency=GBP
    compared with 1TB of hard disk storage for £46: https://www.ebuyer.com/726218-toshib...e-hdwj110uzsva
    I'm sure you can get a better deal on the eMMC than that if you can get the volumes up, but not to the point of comparing it with hard drives. So the hard drive is a cost reduction exercise. If you want really cheap storage you have to go Nintendo style, tiny flash and make the customer add an SD card to store more.

    So the bulk of the price is going to be on the APU, it needs to be a big old lump of silicon if you want the games to be any good. Excavator probably wouldn't have helped here, the thing about Jaguar cores was their ability to perform at low power. Ryzen can do that, none of the construction cores really could. Regardless of cpu core used, lots of shaders means heat and hence the cooling.

    A single Ryzen core (not CCX, single core two threads) and enough shaders would make for an interesting APU *if* AMD can wire that up without their standard fabric. That would be $10M in up front costs to make the masks, and probably the same again in engineering costs for not using standard AMD modules in the design.

    In short, if you can't find some way of subsidising the console which lets face it Atari can't, you need something you can sell at a profit from day one. If they are aiming at Nvidia Shield pricing, I am expecting something on par with the Nvidia Shield.

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    Not a good person scaryjim's Avatar
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    Re: Ataribox will employ a custom AMD SoC with Radeon graphics

    Quote Originally Posted by DanceswithUnix View Post
    ... Excavator probably wouldn't have helped here, the thing about Jaguar cores was their ability to perform at low power. Ryzen can do that, none of the construction cores really could. ...
    The whole focus of Excavator was improved performance in a mobile envelope - the top end 15W TDP Bristol Ridge runs 4 cores at 2.7GHz base (3.3GHz turbo) and has a 512 shader IGP at ~ 750MHz. That's a pretty significant performance boost all-round over - for instance - my aging Trinity laptop, in less than half the TDP. And my laptop is still pulling daily duty with no issues, including some (lightish) gaming.

    That said, I'd fully expect a quad core (8 thread) Raven Ridge to hit similar clocks in a 15W envelope but of course it has ~ 50% higher IPC, so would be unquestionably better.

    A lot of the early Zen presentations hinted strongly at two APU dies - a quad core with up to 11 CUs, and a dual core with up to 3 CUs. 2 Cores/4 Threads + 196 vega shaders would be pretty passable for entry level machine. Something like 2 Zen cores + 6 CUs should still be pretty cheap and give Bristol Ridge levels of performance. I guess it all depends on just how "custom" they've gone ... the more customisation they've requested the more it's going to cost...

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    Re: Ataribox will employ a custom AMD SoC with Radeon graphics

    Quote Originally Posted by scaryjim View Post
    The whole focus of Excavator was improved performance in a mobile envelope - the top end 15W TDP Bristol Ridge runs 4 cores at 2.7GHz base (3.3GHz turbo) and has a 512 shader IGP at ~ 750MHz. That's a pretty significant performance boost all-round over - for instance - my aging Trinity laptop, in less than half the TDP. And my laptop is still pulling daily duty with no issues, including some (lightish) gaming.
    Oh that was certainly the best of the bunch for low power use, but would you really use one in a modern design? If only for the reputational baggage it drags behind it, I would try not to even if there was a really good deal on 28nm wafers.

    I notice the Intel cpu with AMD Vega rumours are back. Now that would be interesting, and going with Intel's fancy MCM tech probably wouldn't add too much to cost

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    Re: Ataribox will employ a custom AMD SoC with Radeon graphics

    http://www.game-debate.com/news/2386...el-mobile-cpus
    Quote Originally Posted by DanceswithUnix View Post
    I notice the Intel cpu with AMD Vega rumours are back. Now that would be interesting, and going with Intel's fancy MCM tech probably wouldn't add too much to cost
    Didn't know about that, but looks like it has been disproved.

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    Re: Ataribox will employ a custom AMD SoC with Radeon graphics

    Quote Originally Posted by DanceswithUnix View Post
    As for eMMC, well it may not be Apple pricing but the stuff isn't cheap.
    Under $35 in small quantities.

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    Re: Ataribox will employ a custom AMD SoC with Radeon graphics

    Quote Originally Posted by ET3D View Post
    http://www.game-debate.com/news/2386...el-mobile-cpus

    Didn't know about that, but looks like it has been disproved.
    The rumour keeps coming up and keeps getting dismissed, at first I was really dismissive of it but for a bonkers rumour it seems to have some real staying power. Still, my thought wasn't that Intel are interested in such a product but more that if someone turned up and asked for an Intel cpu and radeon gpu in an MCM could probably get it made. A games console should have the volume to make it happen. I would be shocked if it actually came to pass, but as I said it is an interesting thought.

    Quote Originally Posted by ET3D View Post
    About the same as 500GB of hard disk, and probably $34 dollars more than putting on a micro SD or USB connector and making the user buy their own storage.

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