@Chozofication said:
@emgesp said:
@Chozofication said:
@emgesp: It's definitely possible, everything seems to point to Nintendo using the absolute latest chips so I think it's a given at this point.
Ron's said so as well. To me, the writing is on the wall, I mean Nintendo is looking into cloud processing even, they're not in the same mind as when they put out the already outdated Wii U. They have to be more aggressive now.
But I assume they would choose 14nm more so to keep the TDP low while still offering around PS4 level grunt. Nintendo is definitely gonna aim for a sub 100 watt box again, but imagine if they didn't hold the NX back and made a 130 - 140 watt box it would be well over 3 Tflops with Polaris.
I think we're jumping the gun on Polaris's performance, it's matching the gtx 950 with beta drivers. It could be a 960 level card for all we know now. Also, something i'm not sure about, but the r9 nano fury already nearly doubled the performance per watt vs. the 2/390x cards, and we don't know if this particular card is using hbm (r9 nano used hbm's power and space saving for more transistors). If it's supposed to compete with the 950/60, it might not need hbm and thus not make use of its power savings. Some amount of HBM isn't out of the question for NX.
You'd think if they just shrunk the nano fury to 14nm, they could quadruple the Ps4's performance with similar power draw.
There are so many unknowns, and even if NX used a 28nm process which I think is pretty unlikely, it'll still be a sub 100 watt console with a 7870 level card + dx12 and a new architecture vs. what's in the Ps4.
AMD is using the same marketing approach when NVIDIA released it's desktop 750 Ti and the direction for the larger Maxwellv2.
R9-Fury Nano is not fleet friendly SKU product i.e. it has mass production issues. R9-Fury Nano could be higher grade "speed bin" R9-Fury X with very low electrical resistance characteristics. Part of R&D problem is the mass production side. R9-Fury Nano's performance is about the same level as R9-Fury (non-X).
Lower electrical resistance = lower voltage and amps, hence lower TDP/power consumption.
The 50 watt low end desktop Polaris SKU would be fleet friendly with better mass production characteristics. AMD is effectively stating, they have solve the production issues with 2X performance per watt and it's available in desktop fleet numbers. This ability impacts the larger SKUs and it's production numbers.
Desktop Polaris' 50 watt R9-270X/7870 GE (20 CU at 1Ghz) performance level GPU is more than 2X performance per watts over PS4's and 7970M (20 CU at around 850 Mhz)'s 100 watts.
7970M is slightly slower than the desktop R9-270X i.e. 850 Mhz vs 1Ghz respectively.
PS4's GPU is slightly slower than the laptop's 7970M.
AMD used GTX 950 as a reference for the best desktop GPU at R9-270X (20 CU at 1Ghz) performance level GPU with around 100 watts power consumption.
Most higher grade very low electrical resistance characteristics GPUs usually heads to laptops while desktop variant has higher electrical resistance characteristics.
My laptop's 8870M GPU at 850Mhz OC (R9-M370X has 800Mhz) has about 35 watts and it's the same part as desktop 7700/R7-250X with more than 2X the TDP i.e. 8870M is almost 2X performance per watt with about 90 percent of 7700/R7-250X performance, but it's not a desktop SKU and AMD charges higher for it.
Anyway, 8870M 2X would be 20 CU GPU with ~70 watts which is slightly lower than 7970M's 100 watts 20 CU at 850Mhz. 8870M 4X would be 40 CU GPU with ~140 watts which is close to R9-Fury Nano which has 44 CU with 175 watts. R9-Fury Nano has similar electrical characteristics to my 8870M.
AMD can't offer sustained 35 watts 7700/R7-250X for mass fleet desktop PC OEMs.
AMD is able to mass produce slightly slower 7970M level GPU for PS4 with around 100 watts.
The hint for NX's Polaris GCN is due to very high polygon performance rumour/leak.
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