Wii U vs PS4 vs Xbox One FULL SPECS (January 24, 2014)

[Scoobes]

drkohler said:

Sirius87 said:

But can't AMD modify the memory controller? Without doing that of course there won't be a higher bandwidth possible. But as GPUs all the time use different bus width I thought that changing some parts will also be possible in the APU.

Of course AMD can change things. Makes the chips more complex and bigger (translation: a lot more expensive). The point, however, is not to design a console with world-record-memory throughput, the point is get to 1080p/60Hz as cheap as possible.

There is a point, though, when your cache controller outfoxes your memory bandwidth (basically meaning all the data required by the CPU is in the cache, no matter how wide your memory controller shuffles data). On the PC, that bus size is apparently 128bit. Then you can play with more channels.. but it gets more expensive. With APU, things get even more complex as the bus width is doubled inside the chip for the GPu part. (Still APU was not a good GPU idea for a console that strives for high graphics performance).

My understanding was that AMD were going to up the supported DDR3 RAM to 2133MHz for the Kaveri line of APUs so development on a PS4 version that supported this RAM would be to both AMDs and Sony's benefit (in terms of keeping costs down).

I still think they'll use a next gen APU with a 77xx in crossfire rather then just an APU though.