torok said:
Landguy said:
As far as Console makers go, I am sure that they have a few years to go before they hit the panic button. But, based on how hard Nintendo/Sony/Microsoft want you to get in their ecosystem now, they know what is coming.
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It is impossible. Short answer is:
Phone: 5w
Tablet: 10w
Console: 200w
PC: You can even grab 1000w, your choice.
If you use the same tech on all these devices (and that is a lot of a stretch because mobile GPUs use several year old desktop tech), the device that uses more power is more powerful. To beat that guy, you need to get way better tech. Just think at this: a phone uses 20 to 40x less power than a console. You need a decade of tech to reach that guy. And if you create a tech that can beat the 200w or 1000w guy with just 5w, someone will just get your revolutionary tech and use on a 200w or 1000w system that will crush your 5w device.
The quick advance in mobile tech just happened because the tech used on phones was pathetic in 2005. And then gradually they started putting their best silicon in there. Exactly what PCs and consoles are doing since ever. Now they reached the power wall. It's just like Sony portables, lagging a gen behind their consoles.
And don't talk about transistor count. A 2010 Core i7 would have "just" 1B and simply obliterates the performance of an ARM processor. We actually have good evidence that ARM was an option for PS4/X1 but was discarted for its low performance. The ARM architecture was made to be power efficient, not powerful. x86, PowerPC and any other were created for desktop computing/supercomputer and other enviroments in a time nobody was caring about power comsumption but everybody was eager to get more performance. Even Intel just puts on phones their weak Atom processors. These things, when created, were basically first gen Pentium processors created with modern litography and some more tweaks. They are literally the worse available x86 CPU (of course, they use way less power). And they were beating a lot of high-end ARM SoCs when released. And they are absolutelly the worst thing x86 has to offer.
And there is the die size. The area of a desktop/console CPU and GPU is way higher than on a phone. They use the same manufacturing tech (even that is a stretch, Intel usually is always one gen ahead). And right now, we are close to the limit of how tiny components can be so the margin to improve things without growing the die size is really getting tight even on desktops where you can use a massive cooler or even use water to cool things down.
Edit: Just one more thing, portable consoles will surelly lag behind heavily. These guys have to worry and looking at how badly both 3DS and Vita are doing compared with their predecessors things can get complicated.
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I agree completly that the power situation will never be overcome anytime soon. BUT, you are speaking to the 20-20% of gamers that actually need that kind of gaming experience. With the cost of AAA content being so high, if a large portion of the console buying public figures out they don't need a console to play the short mobile games, the publishers won't continue to make them for the console crowd. If you look at the gaming that is coming down the line for mobile devices, it matches with what most of the casual gamers are looking for. The games will not be AAA console/PC games, but they will be "good enough". That is what will kill console gaming, "good enough". Already, we are seeing that most of the next gen games could be played on last gen, but the visuals/framerates would suffer dramatically. So, if the developers recognize that there are a billion smartphones out there that have powerful enough systems to handle games(2-4 years from now), they will slowly quit the console markets - thus further reducing the need for a console.
No guarantees to this idea, just a thought of where it is going. Someday!
