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walsufnir on 22 June 2013
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Shinobi-san said:
walsufnir said:


"The only major difference between the two systems is RAM type and GPU cores (12 vs 18). Sony is probably paying AMD more for the APU. This is the only cost factor that can actually have a major impact on price and i think that is what NYCrysis was getting it."

Perhaps he is but it is still wrong. System-performance depends on a lot of variables and not just ram-type and gpu. Anyway it is not *much* stronger.

"And price does have a direct relation to power. Especially in this case when the two systems are directly comparable"

But they aren't. Many parts are totally different so barely comparable. And no, there is no direct relation between price and power. If this would be true, the 3ds would be much cheaper than the vita, the WiiU also. The price is also influenced by a lot of variables.

"The price you pay for consoles is determined by the manufacturing costs as well as the amount the manufacturer is willing to subsidize."

Yes, and exactly the manufacturing costs consists of a lot of things.

"And I think the Kinect price can be approximated based on the price of the current Kinect and a bit of extrapolation."

Sure but we will never get actual costs. Crash did guesstimates at best, with a little bias.


Sorry but i just don't agree. The little additions Sony and MS make to their systems are negligible and probably dont add much to the cost. Its not that hard to price these systems with a little bit of knowledge on systems and how they work. But i think what is even more obvious is that the core components of the system are the main costs. And we already know what the main components are:

GPU, CPU, HDD, MOBO, RAM, COOLER, BLURAY DRIVE etc.

Theres also the cost of the controller and kinect. At this point we also know what specialed units both Sony and MS added to the console. Components that handle Sound etc.

Again the architectures are damn near identical going by the rumours. And lets face it, the rumours have been 100% accurate...you never going to get the details straight from MS or Sony. AMD obviously heavily influenced the design of the systems theres really nothing in it. Thats why they are comparable. If these systems arent comparable then no systems will ever be comparable. Consoles have never been this comparable ever before. And the major difference right now is the ram type, compute units, and Kinect. It really is that simple. I'm sorry but theres just no other way to see it.

This is why i have said multiple times in multiple other thread why the whole argument over console power is completely dead and boring. We know everything there is to know about these consoles. Thats what happens when you take off the shelf pc parts and put them in a console.

"Sorry but i just don't agree. The little additions Sony and MS make to their systems are negligible and probably dont add much to the cost. Its not that hard to price these systems with a little bit of knowledge on systems and how they work. But i think what is even more obvious is that the core components of the system are the main costs."

 

Sorry but I don't agree. The consoles are not made the way we build computers. The apus are customized by AMD and MSony, the chip-design is custom, the audio-hardware is completely custom, board-design... Ok, yes, HDD is off-the-shelf but the costs of all this detrmined by the actual hardware and the contracts MSony made with the ones who actually build the hardware. For example, the Xbone chip has 5 bn transistors. How would you measure the costs of such a chip?

 

To the architectures: Sadly MS built a system where it is *not* easy to say how the system-perfomance will be. PS4 is straight-forward but we are talking about system-performance here. This means you have to take into account the move-units, esram, the most probably way powerful audio-chip SHAPE and so on. Freeing the computing units from any audio-stuff frees a lot of ressources, for example. Or what is with the os? How many cores does the os occupy? Or is it done by an arm-chip? These are considerations you have to make to talk about system-performance, beside even more other things.

Do you get the idea? I know that you are not completely wrong and many people think like you but your arguments are not the whole truth - they are only part of it. It is really not that simple :) This doesn't mean that you can't compare the components but the single components don't make alone for system-performance.