Digitial Foundry: Teraflop computation no longer a relevant measurement for next gen consoles.

Digital Foundry's latest take on xbox Scarlet's hardware and what it means in terms of real world capability.

• Teraflop metric becoming meaningless with AMD Navi arch*
• More to performance and pixel pushing than TF.
• AMD 9.75TF Navi RX57XT = 14% MORE capable than 13.7TF RXVega64
• 25% increase in IPC
• SOC size estimate of 365 - 380mm2
• An estimated 48 cu's with 44 active.

Ron and Torm, red corner are you ready? Blue corner are you ready?

Next gen 8TF confirmed.

@boxrekt said:

Ron and Torm, red corner are you ready? Blue corner are you ready?

?

Eh maybe, but it sounds like that scale doesn't translate into performance as we currently estimate it with current GPUs.

If 8TF in performance with next gen consoles on Navi = real world performance that allows 4k 60fps in AAA games, will fixating over that TF number really matter?

AMD TFlops have not mattered for a while now. Many of their previous GPUs would have high TFlops count, but perform worse than Nvidia GPUs with less TFlops due to the architecture and driver differences. All that matters is real world benchmarks.

Even if AMD got Navi to match Nvidia's Pascal or Turing's efficiency...... A 10 TFLOP NAVI is still not 4k 60 fps material without compromises, let alone having Ray tracing....

Lol @ AMD tflops

That's the part that's yet to be determined because the next gen consoles have custom components which have yet to be revealed.

You have to remember we're not talking bare bone GPUs that are simply thrown into random rigs. From the SSD's to the CPUs every piece of these consoles are being designed to work as one unit.

We won't know what their actual capability is until we either have a developer leaks that information early or when Sony/MS actually show off the the next gen games running on these consoles.

There are already reports of PS5 dev kits running Red Dead Redemption 2, Spiderman and The Last of Us 2 (all AAA caliber titles) 4k 60fps so saying they will not do 4k 60 is really premature.

At the very least, it sounds like next gen consoles will be running any current gen titles hitting that bench.

Got any links to back that up?

@horgen: Even if, dev kits are historically far more powerful than the final product.

Semi-Custom does not mean "better" then what is available now or soon after. Look at every console since 2013 they are vastly based on Pc hardware designed by AMD with power, cooling and cost restrictions, and they have never outpaced PC hardware.... Even from AMD themselves let alone others from Intel or Nvidia...

You seem not to understand that even with customized parts designed to fit together and work most efficiency that they can still can not out pace stronger hardware.

True, we dont know what the final hardware is nor what their capabilities are. However AMD has never outdone themselves with consoles vs what they release on PC. With the rumored benchs of the Navi 5700XT being Vega 64 + upto 15% more performance at 7nm. At 225w its still not console orientated.... It would have to be cut down quite abit one way or another to get an APU under 200w using an zen 8 core.

Dev kits have always been stronger than released spec and running "current" titles with same settings as PS4/PS4 Pro with better framerates and higher resolutions dont mean that much.

4K @ 30 FPS confirmed.

Could be 60 FPS if they stick to visual fidelity of this gen.

These were older reports so I had to search to the information I had previously seen. Not sure if it's the exact same as the original reports I'd seen.

https://www.express.co.uk/entertainment/gaming/1050000/PS5-release-date-UPDATE-PS4-news-Sony-PlayStation-5

That would be true if you are comparing Navi vs Vega.

If you are comparing Navi vs Navi then don't tell me Flops are meaning less,because there is no way in hell AMD sell you a 9.75TF Navi that perform worse than a cheaper 8TF navi get were i am going with this?

Comparing Tflops across different hardware is problematic and not optimal,comparing Tflops between the same architecture will yield an advantage for the one with higher Tflops.

Is like comparing the RX2080 ti vs the 2070 regardless of the 2080 architecture been more efficient than the previous 1080 one ,comparing GPU across the same family would still be effective and would still show an advantage for the higher Tflop GPU.

Who knows why Richard Leadbetter do this as he is MS ass kisser all the way,and i remember how he downplayed a 40% gap in performance between the xbox one and PS4 but hyped the same 40% advatage for PC as been massive,when the topic was 1080p vs 900p.

This smell like pre damage control.

I was going to make a thread about that video,but was about the fact that sony confirmed 8 cores while MS didn't,according to Richard Leadbetter.

Which would imply that MS went fr 4 cores 8 threads with faster and more efficient Ryzen,while sony went with an 8 core 16 threads one.

Well it doesn't specifically say RDR2 at 4K 60FPS, but nice hearing that a major update is coming. Sort of like GTA V got I guess. If it is completely BC with PS4, I'll buy PS5 slim.

It's a conspiracy!!

PS5 is already confirmed completely BC with PS4. This was revealed during Mark Cerny's inverview when announcing the PS5.

@tormentos: And you’re not a Sony ass-kisser?

Yes proven and certified By sony's it self. :)

This thread exist because its going to burn that in raw TFLOPS next gen is NOT going to be a huge jump, not even double the Xbox One X GPU.

They did once, with the Xbox 360. It was the first consumer product to sport unified shading units.

That also can be true considering MS already claimed 4X performance of the xbox one X,when in reality GPU in AMD hand will not reach even close to that.

The parameters in which they arrived to that point is something i would love to know,also since the xbox one X TF count is higher than sony,the PS5 will probably seen as a bigger jump from the PS4 Pro than Scarlet would be,which could also work against MS.

You need more than 12TF to claim 3X Pro,and 18TF to claim 3X xbox one X,the juggle of words to convince people that this machines are a great jump will be incredible.

That was all ATi. AMD didn't buy ATi until 2006. Then AMD started changing things up with the focus on APU's.

@Pedro: To be fair the Xbox One should be used as a basis for comparisons. Not the Xbox One X.

That's why look forward to more of Sony defense drivel (its already in motion with Ron).

Well there will always be defence here,i do know that the jump in power will not be as big already,no matter how much improvement Navi is over Vega,is not to a point were one can claim a 9TF Navi is equivalent to 18TF vega or 24TF Vega in this case to achieve 4X times the power of the xbox one X,the same apply to the Pro as well,regardless of having a lower ceiling to claim higher jump.

Odd that you think a console power is just the GPU. Guess you didn't want to consider the 4X is for the system as whole since as you said its not possible with the GPU.

@Random_Matt: no.

Why?

I have a feeling they're going to use some sort of motion smoothing method with these consoles to bring the illusion of 60fps if they can't hit it naturally. There's gonna be shortcuts if they want to sell these things at a mass market price.

@BenjaminBanklin: You mean freesync support?

Digital Foundry taking their cred a bit far, aye? Lol

Freesync support could be there, but they could possibly develop their own proprietary tech for it. Kind of like how some TVs have motion smoothing.

@BenjaminBanklin: Pretty sure X1 already supports freesync, not sure how effective it is though.

I wouldn't bet on them developing their own tech, maybe with the mid gen refresh.

I know CPU as well count and faster ram as well,but ram doesn't generate power and CPU will mostly be resposible for things at once on screen and frame rates.

I think the 4X is for system which make it even less impresive,as on 2013 on GPU alone even the xbox one was like 5 to 6 times stronger,ram wise 16 times bigger.

You can get better results by pairing a strong GPU with a lol worthy CPU on consoles than a faster CPU and lol worthy CPU.

Alto the best option would be have the best of both worlds.

No that will not be fair at all,because the xbox one X was release and is here you can buy it,available to certain portion of the userbase who like stronger hardware just like the Pro.

From what i been reading the PS5 dev kit could be in deed 13TF,but is not because that is the final flop count,but because Navi has an improvement per watt compare to Vega so Navi 9TF would be equal more or less to 12-13 TF give or take,so early kits instead of having Navi now they have stronger Vega GPU to compesate,unitl final Navi kits arrive.

I still seriously doubt Scarlet or PS5 will carry a top of the line Navi over 10TF or even 9TF do to TDP but it would be fantastic if it happen.

@Pedro: Because 80% of people have the base console and they serve as the lowest common denominator?

Well, I was thinking of is a way for everyone to experience the tech out of the box even if they didn't have a freesync tv/monitor. Just using a modern HDTV with HDMI 2.0 and 60hz. A frame duplication trick built into the hardware. Don't know if something like that would take extra horsepower. I know LG's tech is called Trumotion, and it makes everything look like a soap opera when it's turned on.

Let's keep expectations low people. These are consoles we are talking about. LOL

lol graphics whores. And people say PC players are the graphics whores.

Pedro struggles with the concept of generations and doesn't realize that all games developed since 2013, outside of xbox one *exclusives*, used PS4's base hardware achieving 1080p at 30fps as their reference point for all game creation this gen.

I.E. generations. I've explained it to him many times but he refused to accept these facts.

He somehow thinks the X should be included in generations (having paid $500 for an X himself and heavily invested) and doesn't seem to realize that everything he's played on the X thus far have only been upscaled versions of base developed PS4/XB1 games.

I think people just assume it runs the exact same as a PC. Like with PC gaming, devs have a range of gpu's/cpu's that it could work with, whereas consoles is one. They can optimize the game to work a lot better.

Why not use 2080TI?

It's hardware that also came out "this gen" and you said consoles are just PC's anyway, so why not use a 2080TI?

@fedor: according to DF it works quite well if the game sticks to the freesync range which is 48 to 60hz, so it does nothing to 30fps games

so skipping power, we already comparing exclusive this early? Hope xbox has something exclusive that is not on pc

@boxrekt:

DF's beyond3D context from https://forum.beyond3d.com/threads/next-generation-hardware-speculation-with-a-technical-spin-post-e3-2019.61245/page-8

Alright broke out the measurement taping and found out some things about Navi and the Anaconda in terms of sizes on 7nm.

5700:

GDDR6 phy controller: 4.5mm x 8

Dual CU: 3.37mm x 20

4 ROP cluster: .55mm x 16

L1+L2+ACE+Gemotry processor+empty buffer spaces + etc: 139mm

Now Anaconda:

A rougher estimate using the 12x14mm GDDR6 chips next to the SOC.

370mm-390mm.

It's a bit bigger than the 1X SOC for sure.

If we use the figure of 380mm,

75mm for CPU

45mm for 10 GDDR6 controllers

8.8mm for ROPs

140mm for buses, caches, ACE, geometry processors, shape etc. I might be over estimating this part as the 5700 seems to have lots of "empty" areas.

We have ~110mm left for CUs + RT hardware. There is enough there for ~30 dual CUs and RT extensions.

Conclusion:

The Anaconda SOC is around the minimum size you need to fit the maximum Navi GPU and Zen2 cores.

I expect Anaconda to have a minimum of 48 CUs if the secret sauce is extra heavy or 60CUs if the sauce is light.

This is true but I don't see why comparing it to the most recent released hardware is "bad". In the end it depends on the consumers' perspective. If you have orig Xbox one or S then I can understand comparing it to those and if you have a One X, I also understand the comparison. In the end any of the next gen would be significant to the launch consoles.

You can if you want. Consoles are just PCs anyway.....Oh, you thought they were something special.

So after 2 years going on three of Xbox stating their games would be on both platform you are still hoping for "something exclusive that is not on PC". That's an interesting expectation.

For certain 4K display, Freesync can range from 40 to 60 hz. It depends on display's quality.

ATI has

MIPS based SOC(APU's close relative). https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Xilleon

ARM based SOC https://pcper.com/2015/06/qualcomm-history-and-its-gpu-revolution/ ATI partnered with Qualcomm for ARM based SOC.

Vega 56 at 1710Mhz (12.23 TFLOPS) beaten Vega 64 at 1590Mhz (13 TFLOPS). Apparently, higher clock speed reduces time latency across the graphics pipeline.