Probably because there isn't much stock. But the standard price is $200.

Lol.... ok. so at 1.1GHz the polaris 10 GPU gives you 5.1TF. 

To get that up to 6TF you would need to overclock it to 1.33Ghz.... I'm sure you are telling yourself that doesn't sound like much. But consider these...

This is the exact same GPU sony is using in the Pro. And built with the exact same 14nm process it's going to be built with next year. AMD (who makes the GPU) sends them out clocked at 1.1Ghz, and that's just a GPU. If you can successfully clock it up to 1.2Hz you get a little over 5.5TF. But as reviews have shown, it's almost impossible to get it that high. 

Sony chose to use the same GPU in question but clocked it down to 910mhz, yet you somehow believe that MS is gonna not only do what AMD could't, but do it while the GPU is sharing the same silicon with a CPU?

Unless the scorpio is using something other than Polaris 10, it's not going to hit 6TF. 5TF most likely but not 6TF. And for it to even hit that five they would need to seperate the cpu and GPU meaning they won't go with an APU design anymore. The heat from a CPU just won't allow you run the GPU at too high a clock in an APU design. 

I expect PS4Pro to drop to $349 holiday 2017, probably with a 2TB sku at $399. If Scorpio launches at $399 it will be interesting to see how much a $50 price difference for "equivalent" machines makes. But the one year head start is a decent advantage for Sony.

I don't see VR being a factor next year, but if it is, then PS4P is definitely going to be the much cheaper entry for VR on consoles. Which means this will also be an interesting price vs power situation. One suspects people who are enthusiastic about VR are also more financially well off, or are more willing to dedicate money to getting the technically best possible hardware. Which in theory should favour Scorpio + Oculus. But by then Sony has at least 55 million VR capable consoles in homes, and perhaps a couple of million headsets and MS has zero VR capable consoles and probably also zero compatible headsets. I'm figuring the people who have Oculus also have high powered PCs and however you cut it, Scorpio VR is going to be an inferior experience to high powered PC. Is scorpio going to have Scoprio exclusive (i.e. not available on PC) VR software? If all the VR games that are on Scoprio will also be on PC, there is exactly zero reason why a PC VR person will get Scorpio for VR. Sony should have a handful VR exclusives on the market by the time Scoprio launches. But VR could be a wasteland for Sony by then as well.

The pcper article also says there's some creative accounting when it comes to AMD's clock speeds. AMDs base clock, according to the article is the average clock under typical uses, and the "boost" clock is the factory maximum. With NVIDIA the "base clock" is the minimum clock speed, and the "boost" clock is the average that is achieved under typical use conditions. I'm not techhie but that probably means it's harder to "overclock" beyond AMD's publioshed specs than it is to overclock an NVIDIA card. It also suggests that PS4Ps "downclock" to 910 is likely to be the 480's unpublished minimum clock.

Question: Are there any advantages to running a GPU at minimum or average clock vs maximum/overclock? I assume a GPU needs to work with all other components of teh system, which means it's operating speeds need to be in sync with CPU etc. So is PS4P going with the (probable) minimum clock more about how the GPU needs to operate in sync with the CPU than there being any inherent benefit to operating at minimum? I assume higher clock means more heat, but that shouldn't matter if you have decent cooling/venting.

Yes higher clock= more heat. 

Anyways, here's the issue. Not all GPUs are made the same. In truth, they are all just a little bit imperfect. 

Say Sony can get 400 APUs from a single wafer. The could be paying $32,000 per wafer which comes to around $80/chip. Not all those chips are perfect. And in most cases not all of them can be clocked to their max frequencies because of it. This is what is referred to as the"maturity" of a fab process. With a fab process as young as 14nm is The guyAMD/Sony/MS are using, a great deal of those chips will be "defective". 

But that in most cases just means they can't be clocked up to perform as high as they possibly could go or in worse case there are things in them that are just broken. 

So Sony/ms or anyone for that matter find workarounds for this. Since you can't guarantee that evey chip can clock up to 1.2Ghz, you clock it down to 910mhz and at least ensure that you can use every single chip (or at least majority of them) that comes off that wafer. Further more you may even disable 1/2 cores. All these things are done to improve yield and thus reduce costs.

If AMD/Ms decides that they are gonna put a 6TF GPU in ever APU, then they would be able to only use the ones that can clock that high and remain stable. So out of the 400 chips on that wafer they may end up being able to use only like 250. But they will STILL pay $32k for the bloody wafer. Even though they have 150 less usable chips. 

PS4 is going with the minimum for stability and to reduce costs. AMD can Run the GPUs at a higher clock cause they know they are charging more for just the GPU. If they wanted to clock those GPUs at say 1.2TF as the minimum clock meaning that all GPUs are guaranteed 5.5TF, then it means they will take GPUs that can be over clocked to 1.3GHz and still remain stable for prolonged periods. That in turn reduces they amount of usable GPUs they can get from a wafer. Which drives up the price. 

because the library for the XB1 is pretty much the same as the PC.  I was tempted at one point to get a XB1 at one point, but once all the games because play anywhere it was as simple as grabbing an RX 480 recently. I can't wait to play FH 3, that is the type of game that would have tempted me to pick up an XB1. 

So if a person likes the library choices over PS4 they can go with PC, XB1. That is where the steam machine comment came from, that is simply a type of PC, I chose that because it is sort of a bridge for a person who wants the power of a PC(and flexibility) with the simplicity of a console (for the most part). 

I will miss absolutely nothing going PS4/PC. Before I would have. 

he said stock. the base 4 GB is 199, base 8 GB is 249, I got a black edition 8 GB with a nice OC and cooling upgrades for 299. They are really popular right now so supply demand was pulled prices up some, but they were launched at 199/249

I think the hair on my head is starting to turn grey with the blatant abuse of flops as some kind of performance metric.

You are both being highly inaccurate.

An nVidia GPU with 6 Teraflops is not going to be representative or even comparative of an AMD GPU in the consoles at 6 Teraflops.
Nor are flops a complete representation of a systems actual gaming performance anyway.

And nor are Flops tied to any kind of pricing/costing model.

We have no idea what the specifications for Scorpio actually is, Microsoft will likely retain the same basic Architecture as the regular Xbox One, but will go with a better memory subsystem, more modern GCN blocks and possibly a more modern x86 chip, that doesn't mean backwards compatability will be broken though.

As for the eSRAM, eSRAM is a fantastic technology, when used and implemented correctly.
The issue with Microsoft however was that they implemented eSRAM at the expense of compute units, that doesn't mean the technology is bad however.

And honestly, I hope they go with an off-chip solution like eDRAM to be used as a CPU's L4 cache, reduce power consumption, allow for more seamless Xbox One backwards compatability and tiled based rendering approaches.

Not exactly.

If you have a higher clockrate, but more aggressive binning, you can run at a lower voltage, so you can have both a higher clock and less heat.

Scorpio launching a year later means that Global Foundries/TSMC will be able to get more intimate with 16nm/14nm and make refinements to their processes that should translate to less leakage, so clockrates can be increased without any increase in power consumption or the need for more aggressive binning.

Whilst for the most part you are accurate, in many instances to get more workable chips, you just need to be more aggressive with the voltages or more conservative with the clocks.
But there are a ton of more factors involved, you can actually choose different types of transisters to use which have their own power characteristics, changing the layout of the GPU can help reduce leakage, patterning improvements and other refinements can actually make a larger, higher clocked chip, be cheaper and use less energy than another chip.

However, the current situation with the PS4/Neo/4k/Pro is not going to be representative of chips coming out of the fabs in a years time or define what Scorpio is going to be from a chip perspective.
And you can bet Sony will take advantage of those process advantages as well when they happen, with a silicon respin of the PS4's SoC.

Heck we don't even know what Fab they are using, there is a difference between TSMC's 16nm and Global Foundries 14nm for example... And AMD has historically used both. (But mostly only TSMC for Semi-custom designs oddly enough.)

I think a clockrate of 1300mhz is more than feasible in a years time once 14nm/16nm matures.
But a wider design based around something like a cut-down Vega is probably going to be more likely.

There are a few technology's that AMD has used on the Desktop which I am unsure if the consoles used which can save energy and reduce heat... Known as the Resonant Clock Mesh, even then there are improvements being done with that technology.

Why is this the first time I am hearing of that rule? I have been doing it since forever. D:

There's the fact that Nx could be a hit, further taking sales away from Scorpio so who knows what will happen.

MSRP is $240.  Nvidia still hasn't launched any real competition in this space and so AMD's vendors are price gouging.