What specs do you expect to see in the Wii U, PS4 and Nextbox?

[KBG29]

VetteDude said:

KBG29 said:
Minimum 6GB of RAM, every generation before this has had around a 12x increase in memory. So I expect this gen to be at least that, but givin the extra 2 - 3 years this gen will have lasted, 8-10 would seem reasonable.

CPU and GPU are near impossible to say. If I had to guess, some sort of 8 to 12 core CPU around 3GHz, with lots of embedded memory. On the GPU side, must be around current year top end GPU if its going to be a year to a year and a half away.

I would hate to see any system ship without some sort of high speed storage, either flash or a small SSD.

Blu-ray with 4 layer support.

I am expecting one company to go all out and have specs very similar to this, another to be in between with some unique features, and another to be even lower in power, and even less unique. Hopefully the cards will be revealed at E3.

This is a good philosophy but the technological details disagree now. We hit a wall at 4GB RAM for gaming, and that's running Windows in the background. You can max out most PC games with 4GB of RAM, although most people have 6-8GB of RAM just because its cheap.

As far as CPU goes, gaming is VERY hard to thread. 4-6 cores is another technological wall we've hit. Sure, most games launch like 28 threads but only Physics and Rendering actually use up a chunk of time. User input, sound, and all the other tiny stuff can all basically run on 1 core since they use very few CPU cycles (and a quad core at 3 GHZ has TONS of cycles). Rendering is very hard to multi-thread, a lot of games still only use 2 threads for rendering. I think they will use a 6 core just because they could dedicate 2 to have a robust in-game OS and leave 4 to games (which is a sweet spot in terms of performance and price). No reason to spend all that money to put a 12 core in when you wouldn't use half the cores anyways.

 

This is BF3 on a Core i7-2600k (4 cores with hyperthreading)

Graphs 1,3,5,7 are the physical cores, the rest of the hyperthreaded ones.

If you are interested in more BF3 CPU scaling pics, heres the link: http://www.techspot.com/review/458-battlefield-3-performance/page7.html

All of this is very true, and very in the moment. With the next generation of consoles we are looking at devices that are going to have to face up against more competition than ever before. Just look at what EA and Epic have talked about at GDC.

http://www.examiner.com/video-game-in-boston/can-the-ipad-3-change-the-gaming-industry

These next consoles will not only face off against iPad, but every every android device as well. These are devices that are making leaps and bounds each year. If the next round of consoles last tell 2020. I would not be suprised to see them going up against tablet like devices with 20GB of RAM and 60 Core CPU/GPU's. 

That is why RAM and processor cores are vital. The market is so open right now it is not all about what, a couple of companies do. Everyone is capable of building a very powerful device, and they can all open it up as far as they want. 

Lets also not forget the beauty of a closed system. If any company can get a unit out there with 8GB of RAM and a 12 Core CPU, and get the sales behind it, games will come. The big three have in house teams that will take advantage of whatever they are givin. 

Every generation has been the same. People always have a PC game they don't expect the next consoles to match. Once the tech is announced people always say it is unneccesary. Later on those things become the standard in other devices, and by the edn of the generation, those outragous extras in the consoles are 2 or 3 gens behind the PC counterpart. I don't see any reason for this gen to be any different.