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An x86 PlayStation 4 could signal a sea-change in the console industry

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Evilsizer

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Jun 6, 2002
http://arstechnica.com/gaming/news/...nals-a-sea-change-in-the-console-industry.ars

hmm sony using a 6 core or even 8 core cpu from amd, doesnt sound cheap. heck even current pricing of some consoles reaches entry level pc prices. it is how ever about time that all consoles use off the shelf parts, as it will help keep costs down on the HW. look at how long it took to come up with the specialized cell cpu with ibm or the one that ms used in the xbox 360. MS needs to get on board with the same thing, why powerpc cpus after all? apple ditched using those a long time ago since cpu speeds can not be increased that fast on that platform. i havent seen any news (but i havent gone looking for it either) about big gains in the power pc market. i dont even know when the last power pc cpu was sold in a device, it sure seems like a long time ago. it would make more sense for ms to go with a TI based arm cpu and interlink more of the quad core TI arms together. as the latest gen TI arm will have cpu speeds reaching 2.5ghz. the cpus will still also have 1 or 2 lower powered cpus to use as well.

for console manufactures it makes more sense to use pc parts then specialized parts. lead you to reduced time to different markets, there would be no need to recode the game from pc to the console or console to the pc. this way we wouldnt wind up with poorly coded games like the old GTA(dont recall which one but it was about 1-2yrs ago now, im pretty sure when it came out ?GTA 4? around the time of the debate about getting a quad core over a dual core here in the forums.) that needed a quad just to run smoothly.

gonna be interesting to see what they really spec out the ps4 and xbox with.
 
I would actually be quite surprised if they started making consoles with an ordinary desktop CPU.
 
I would actually be quite surprised if they started making consoles with an ordinary desktop CPU.
Why not? I don't see why it wouldn't work. It isn't like they are using super special hardware in these systems. The XBox 360 is a PPC processor, which is the same architecture as the old Apple computers.
 
Its for this reason that I bought a couple hundred shares of AMD. I don't have a lot of faith in their desktop performance CPU area but they can ship a decent amount of units in the new consoles
 
Reading the specification of the HW they are projecting for the PS4 I am really getting this itchy feeling thats screaming Hex core Trinity APU...
 
This is pretty cool. I hope AMD does in fact have contracts to sell chips in both the xbox and the PS4, as that would provide a nice income, which can then be used to fund more research. I honestly am terrified of a world where Intel has no real competition - there is no way I could afford to build another rig if that were to happen.
 
This is pretty cool. I hope AMD does in fact have contracts to sell chips in both the xbox and the PS4, as that would provide a nice income, which can then be used to fund more research. I honestly am terrified of a world where Intel has no real competition - there is no way I could afford to build another rig if that were to happen.

That isn't really true. Unless you can't currently afford any Intel setup (which is hard to believe). Intel wouldn't be able to raise their prices through the roof as people just will not pay it, and the prices will come back down. Economics, my dear Watson. :beer:
 
IMO, i have a feeling it is going to go that way. it'll just be a custom mobo/gpu build. Probably like how some AMD boards are made with a radeon 5x built onto the board. It would make sense since the tech is already there, it would be cheaper in the manufacturing aspect for MS or Sony, lower the prices down faster. The only real difference would be the OS/dashboard.
 
That isn't really true. Unless you can't currently afford any Intel setup (which is hard to believe). Intel wouldn't be able to raise their prices through the roof as people just will not pay it, and the prices will come back down. Economics, my dear Watson. :beer:

What do you mean? Intel are already charging insane prices at the high end because AMD are no longer able to compete in that segment. $1045 for their 6 core i7? Anyone think this isn't happening already?

Just imagine what will happen if there's no competition in the mid range. We'll be back to the bad old days like when AMD only had the K5 or K6 series of CPU's.

I'm doing my bit to try keep them afloat. In the mid range performance is pretty close between the 2500K and FX-8150 so yeah, I went with AMD. Buying AMD kit is the only way they can stay alive to compete another day.
 
Uhhhh, not only has Intel had a thousand dollar chip for several generations, when AMD was competing with, and beating, Intel at the high end, they also had a thousand dollar chip. AMD dropping out of the high end market didnt change that.

I also dont see the k6 as the bad old days, i used to have a k6-2 550mhz, it felt quite similar to a p2 or celeron of the day to me.
 
Stabillity kind of sucked with AMD chips back then. I blame that primaily on the fact that they were designing chips to fit Intel sockets rather than coming up with their own platform. Things improved significantly when they brought out K7
 
IMO, i have a feeling it is going to go that way. it'll just be a custom mobo/gpu build. Probably like how some AMD boards are made with a radeon 5x built onto the board. It would make sense since the tech is already there, it would be cheaper in the manufacturing aspect for MS or Sony, lower the prices down faster. The only real difference would be the OS/dashboard.

One major benefit will be the porting to PC. If they are already using PC hardware, the 'port' could effectively be 1:1 (minus SDK/etc issues)
 
Stabillity kind of sucked with AMD chips back then. I blame that primaily on the fact that they were designing chips to fit Intel sockets rather than coming up with their own platform. Things improved significantly when they brought out K7

Im pretty sure that alot of AMD's bad reputation from the K6 and earlier generations is VIA's fault.
 
Hmmm...interesting. Why didn't Sony and MS go with Intel? When it comes to quiet, low temp and efficiency Intel have it. Isn't Intel practically in bed with MS? No way AMD can compete with Intel with regards to low-balling if and when Intel want to play dirty. Which it is know to do.

Interesting change in the console industry if indeed they decide to go this direction. They will not be far removed from competing directly in the PC gaming industry. Seems to me they have a vested interest in keeping everything proprietary.
 
Im pretty sure that alot of AMD's bad reputation from the K6 and earlier generations is VIA's fault.

While that may be true, the real issue is that AMD made CPUs but not the platform for them at that time. They ran off old Intel boards.

Don't forget sis and Ali, they were even worse than via.
 
AMD has something Intel does not... real performance in integrated graphics.

With lucid MVP, if that makes a showing in the next consoles, alongside amd's superior gpu integration... they could nail a console segment pretty well it seems.

Lucids stuff uses the integrated graphics for framebuffer stuff, while the discrete gpu does the heavy lifting, and I guess it really improves framerates.
 
AMD has something Intel does not... real performance in integrated graphics.

With lucid MVP, if that makes a showing in the next consoles, alongside amd's superior gpu integration... they could nail a console segment pretty well it seems.

Lucids stuff uses the integrated graphics for framebuffer stuff, while the discrete gpu does the heavy lifting, and I guess it really improves framerates.

Aye, and I believe graphics performance is more important than CPU for games ;)
 
The hardware would be more expensive for Sony. Likely Sony could sell the console at a loss and make it up in successful games sales. Converting consoles to x86 would have the huge benefit of significantly reducing development costs. Their games would also be very easily backwards compatible with PCs to the point where you might even be able to pop it into your PC and play it. That would be great for marketing and also they could charge game companies more per game then they do now.

Using custom developed chips was dumb and expensive in the first place... it was more of a marketing ploy then anything I think. Moving in line with x86 architecture would be fantastic for the consumers and game developers.

I am just wondering when Intel will buy Nvidia. We have reached the limits of CPU requirements required for the average PC user. More and more will be on the GPU/multi processing solutions. The future is where both sides of the CPU/GPU are working together dividing work as needed between the two sides for optimal performance. The GPU is where most of the development is going to be over the next 5-10 years.

I also am looking forward to when a significant chunk of ram is integrated into the CPU.
 
The hardware would be more expensive for Sony. Likely Sony could sell the console at a loss and make it up in successful games sales. Converting consoles to x86 would have the huge benefit of significantly reducing development costs. Their games would also be very easily backwards compatible with PCs to the point where you might even be able to pop it into your PC and play it. That would be great for marketing and also they could charge game companies more per game then they do now.

Using custom developed chips was dumb and expensive in the first place... it was more of a marketing ploy then anything I think. Moving in line with x86 architecture would be fantastic for the consumers and game developers.

I am just wondering when Intel will buy Nvidia. We have reached the limits of CPU requirements required for the average PC user. More and more will be on the GPU/multi processing solutions. The future is where both sides of the CPU/GPU are working together dividing work as needed between the two sides for optimal performance. The GPU is where most of the development is going to be over the next 5-10 years.

I also am looking forward to when a significant chunk of ram is integrated into the CPU.

man that would be the BEST!
 
Intel already tried to buy out nVidia and they blocked it. Now Intels having another go at creating decent graphics though so far with no more success than in the past. They really need decent graphics tech as the days of faster and faster x86 components driving change seem to be over. It would appear that GPU's will now be the driving force creating change in the industry and until Intel get something competitive in this space they may be in trouble in 10 years time or so.
 
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