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Data leaked onto GitHub indicates the next Xbox may come packing a custom 56CU Navi GPU.
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Data leaked onto GitHub indicates the next Xbox may come packing a custom 56CU Navi GPU.
If it is I might be sorely interested in getting one...
Accept the inevitable, Mr Anderson....Quote:
Originally Posted by Tabbykatze
$600/$700 series X won't seem /too/ unreasonable next to a $300 series S.
I could even see them launching at $800 and $400 (X and S respectively), though I doubt that'd be good for sales
Sounds like the iphone X of consoles. Not a bad idea, I can see a space in the market for a premium console.
It'll be a serious die, definitely bigger than radeon 7 (unless it's a bunch of chiplets, which would be even more interesting)
Have you been living under a rock? There already is a premium console market, and you confused the iphone 11pro with the X lmaoQuote:
Originally Posted by Xlucine
I don't see why they wouldn't use a chiplet arrangement, given the technology is available. How much they divide it up would be interesting, but at a minimum I wouldn't be surprised to see a CPU chiplet connected to a combined GPU+memory controller die. The reason I suggest that rather than a separate memory controller die like we see with Ryzen is the difference in memory bandwidth for the GPU, but I don't know which way would make the most sense for this scenario. After all the Zen2 chiplets are already available off-the-shelf, unless they wanted to modify them further but that would likely add to the cost considerably.Quote:
Originally Posted by Xlucine
As you say though, if monolithic it could be a huge die which wouldn't help cost-wise.
As for splitting up the GPU into chiplets, that would be considerably more complex, and unless the console manufacturers have played a part in developing the tech, it's something we haven't seen previously (a multi-die GPU is very different to a multi-GPU setup). Having said that, the 5700XT is 'only' 251mm2 so there's still room there to add a bit and not send the cost through the roof. I think there's definitely some motivation to leave the CPU on its own chiplet though, and it's something they've almost certainly given strong consideration to, to the point I think it would be more interesting if they decided against going with that.
There are two tiers, but there's a large difference between a console equalling a 480 (launched when that was a modern GPU) & one with performance comparable to £700 GPUs (i.e. > 2080 S territory, linearly scaling a 5700XT by the CU count). This'll set a new high point in console prices (i.e. >$1000 easily), same way the iphone X did with it's price tag (and once normalised by the iphone X, everyone stopped making a fuss about all the other phones with comparable prices as being silly money). The 11pro is just a refreshed iphone X, why would you think it's defining a new market segment?Quote:
Originally Posted by Usernamist
A zen2 die talking to a GPU is indeed likely, but it's also boring :p I'm hoping for 4 14-CU GPU chiplets, the CPU chiplet, and a separate RT chiplet (or two) for maximum interconnection! 14 CUs would be ~zen2 chiplet sized, and we know the foundries can pump those out cheaplyQuote:
Originally Posted by watercooled
£700 GPU performance does not mean that would cost £700 in a console. Not to mention the current £700 Nvidia GPUs are only that price because of a lack of competition and is the wrong way to go about estimating wholesale pricing for this theoretical semi-custom Navi die. Generally, very little profit is made on console hardware, in fact they're often sold pretty much at cost or for a loss initially, so again, not comparable. Unless it's a second console released by Microsoft and they still have one available for a reasonable price to target their existing market, they'd get demolished by the competition. Outrageously expensive phones again cannot be directly compared because the cost of often amortised by way of a 24+ month contract - relatively few people will pay >£1000 up-front for a phone (and numerous reports seem to indicate that people are keeping phones for longer now).
I don't think people stopped making a fuss about the cost of phones either, the iPhone X sold terribly from what I remember, and even Apple weren't brazen enough to release that as the only option. The console market has proven time and time again that customers will switch platforms if cost/release date/performance encourage it. Don't forget the PS3 was more expensive and later than the Xbox 360. Likewise the PS4 was both cheaper and higher performance than the Xbox One, and very few people wanted Kinect forced upon them. Both times, the cheaper console sold substantially better. I very much doubt Microsoft would ignore history and try to force an outrageously expensive console onto their customers - they'd just flat-out lose to the competition again, but probably worse than ever before if it was >$1k as you suggest, something I personally very much doubt. Even with speculated hardware I don't see it being close to that figure.
Even the $499 launch price of the Xbox One had to drop in response to competition (being the generally slower console didn't help either), to more than double that for the base model would be ludicrous. It wouldn't surprise me if it's more expensive than $499 if they can justify it and if competition allows it, but again I think it would be pushing it and very risky if they don't have a cheaper base model to sell alongside it.
That ~$1000 figure is also pushing way too far into decent PC territory, which would strip the console of one of its key advantages, plus you have to remember many previously-exclusive Xbox games are now also available on PC anyway.
The problem with GPU chiplets isn't the size, it's the interconnection. It's something we'll likely see in the future at some point, I'm just not sure whether we'll see it on these consoles - the speculated core counts don't really demand it, and it would take considerable engineering work to implement it into Navi. Like any silicon engineering decisions, there would have to be a good reason to do it. No doubt, there's already a lot of extra work been put into the semi-custom part given they're expected to have hardware ray-tracing capability and MS/Sony historically make their own modifications regardless, but making it into chiplets would not be a trivial task. Again I've no doubt it's been considered, it's personally I think it's more likely than not we'll see the GPU on a single die this time. Could be wrong though!
As 4K are pretty much the norm in the TV market now, any new console better damn well be able to play at 4K, so unless you dial back on the eye candy to maintain playable FPS, then YES the consoles better have 5700XT or better performance.
And i do think they have to dial back on the eye candy to maintain playable FPS and have a price on the unit where it will sell without too many questions asked.
Resolution isn't everything. It's quite possible to have a game rendering at 4k and looking pretty poor compared to a more polished game at 1080p. No doubt they'll tick the box for 4k for those who just want to see the marketing hype. It's like the amount of '4k' streamed content where bitrate is so low it would probably be better utilised by 1080p in real-world quality. Proper 1080p Blu Rays are still vastly superior to some 4k streams I've personally seen.
Just to be clear I'm not trying to overly generalise there, just giving some extreme examples. There are some good 4k streams too obviously, and new codecs can help to a point, but you can't give a 4k stream something like 4000kb/s to work with and realistically expect anything close to BD quality.
I for one don't think MS (or Sony for that matter) will set RRP using a cost+ model (costs plus a mark up). I wouldn't be surprised if MS margin on hardware sales for Xbox One Series X will be wafer thin or nonexistent, they need to push units and MUST have learnt from the Xbox One's poor launch - over priced and under-powered, it would be odd if they only addressed one of the two issues.
Given the amount of brand loyalty out there, in order to attract PS4 owners, of whom there are many, MS needs to compete on price and specs, selling a console that's more powerful for more isn't enough, it needs to sell a more powerful console for the same or less than Sony. I suppose some of it will be down to how much of a bulk discount either/both MS and Sony get from AMD but I'd be astonished if MS didn't come out equal on cost, better on performance than Sony.
What do I know though, I got my Playstation AFTER my Sega Saturn :D
Yeah, like you say profit margins for console hardware are often very small or non-existent.
Trying to come up with a price by comparing to retail pricing of PC hardware carrying large profit margins is pointless as that is not what Sony/MS will be paying for their semi-custom orders, not even close.
Global Warming? Yes Please.
If anything I'd expect (hope) the next consoles improve their power management again compared to the last generation. If the rumoured specs are true we may see peak power increasing, but given modern consoles aren't only used for games, decent power management and idle states should help overall consumption a great deal.
I think you are all missing the big picture with pricing. With Game pass Microsoft have started selling the console (One X) with game pass for a set monthly price (just like a phone). I suspect that is the plan for the next gen - People don't tend to take into account the total price if its say an affordable £30 a month. Just consider the following scenario - PS5 for £500 with one game or a Xbox One Series X with 100s of games for £40 a month?
The same way that the iphone X was supported by the iphone 8, there will be a cheaper xbox that can keep numbers on the platformQuote:
Originally Posted by watercooled
https://hexus.net/gaming/news/xbox/1...aper-lockhart/
The claimed "1440p @60" performance target for the cheaper system neatly matches the rumoured PS5 specs in this thread's article (i.e. ~5700XT, or 3x xbone X / PS4 pro performance), so we can expect two well matched consoles competing on price. The extra features of raytracing (I'm assuming it won't be on the cheap consoles, for the same reason it's not on the 5700XT - no point half doing it a la 2060) and 4k performance are enough to command a higher fee, and a £1k console will sell enough to make MS a comfy profit
I would expect the vast majority of sales to still be outright purchases though. But again, like I say it's not accurate to just look at retail pricing of similar PC hardware and extrapolate that to consoles because they're very different business models. AMD ostensibly make narrower margins on the semi-custom hardware at the wholesale level to start with, and then the consoles themselves aren't sold with large profit margins, as is the case for enthusiast PC hardware. Plus I think the raw manufacturing cost of processors is a lot less than many people realise. Sure, R&D and other one-time costs have to be considered in overall costing but in the case of consoles this is amortised by way of taking a cut on game sales.
kompukare did some back-of-envelope calculations of die costs (again, not factoring in R&D/mask costs etc which are significant) a while back for the chiplets: https://forums.hexus.net/cpus/371038...ml#post4112303
If anything, defect density should be lower than that now and with EUV, and wafer costs likely lower too.
Scaling the 5700XT die area linearly with the CU count, and using the same methodology (i.e. plugging a square die into that calculator, same defect density & wafer cost), the cost per working chip comes to <$133. But it's not a case of die costs driving prices (which we agree on), pricing is based on what the market will bear. Recent releases have shown that AMD isn't seriously committed to bringing top end GPU prices down to sensible levels (even the 5700XT, the natural successor to the 480 in the product stack, coming in at twice the launch 480 cost) so the current top-end GPU pricing will continue, meaning that the only other way of gaming at the fidelity offered by a 56 CU xbox will be a $2k+ PC. Consoles generally undercut PCs, but they've no obligation to do so by two octaves. People are happy to pay that money for 4k gaming & RT (as 2080 tis are selling), so why would microsoft pass it up*?
* other than a PS5 pro with a smaller profit margin
'What the market will bear' doesn't mean 'as high as possible until there's no-one left buying it'. As I said earlier, the console manufacturers have also learned the hard way, on multiple occasions, that people will just tell them where to shove their overpriced console if they price it too high. Even $500 for the Xbox One was treated that way by the market, especially when the competition were offering a $400 console. And again, despite brand loyalty, there were plenty of Xbox 360 fans who moved to PS4 that generation.
Again, comparing to PC isn't really valid given it's a very different market. They don't have an 'obligation' to do anything, but as I've said before, and again in this post, history tells us otherwise if they actually want to retain some market share! Even with a cheaper base model, they still need to price the 'premium' model sensibly enough that they actually sell some of them. I'm not sure if you're relating top-end GPU pricing to this topic or just comparing to it, but if it's the former, AMD have pretty much nothing to do with console pricing.
To a point, die costs do drive prices in the console market given how close they're priced to BoM costs, time and time again.
I had this debate before the PS4 generation with a couple of friends who expected astronomical pricing, and again with the 'pro' refresh. It's just not the same as PC pricing.
Finished watching a youtube vid regarding the specs for the Xbox Series X, and it basically stated that was the equivalent of the RTX 2080 Ti in performance.
Whatever the results it's a day 1 purchase for me.
Spoiler: NO!
I really hope the actual console doesn't say "Solid state DRIVE DRIVE" on the front. *snicker*.
MAx price of £550 is allowable , anything more and it will die in the water. There may be room to bring out a Premium version later down the line (the folllowing xmas?). Also the cheaper version is baked in , and they both have a strong interest in streaming games , which lets face it, is the obvious choice for the future . better to have a steady £9.99 a month every month, rather than massive sales once every 6-7 years. Boiled frogs, take notice.