| Soleron said: AMD does not view a GPU as "coming from" the 8900 series or whatever, it is a custom chip for both consoles. "Mobile versions" are usually just the same as desktop with lower clock speeds. It can't be 20nm as that's not until 2014. Also the slides you linked are pointless marketing ones. |
Ok but if we look at custom chips for prevous consoles, they were only custom in being cut-down versions of faster PC parts. RSX in PS3 is just a cut-down 7950GT, while R500 in Xbox 360 is basically an early cut-down 2900Pro, lacking DX10 support. AMD suffered serious delays for HD2900 series due to buyout of ATI/restructuring. The actual specs behind RSX and R500 in PS3/360 are just cut-down PC parts with Xbox having eDRAM on a separate die.
http://www.gpureview.com/show_cards.php?card1=445&card2=537
If the GPU in PS4/720 is AMD-based, it has to be Graphics Core Next architecture because it would be worthless to do a custom VLIW 28nm shrink and waste millions of dollars when GCN already exists on 28nm. Since we know AMD has moved to 28nm with GCN, we know it has to be GCN 1.0 or 2.0. Mobile 28nm GPU line-up is a good indication of the maximum amount of power a PS4/Xbox 720 GPU can have in a small form factor where power consumption and poor airflow are key constraints. Even if you design a custom GPU, it's still subject to 28nm laws of physics, and that puts HD7970M/8970M as the best possible GPU in a next generation console. On-die eDRAM is separate from the actual capabilities of the GPU because it is mostly used to minimize anti-aliasing performance hit. It's too small for textures of next gen games. Those slides are not pointless since they give us an idea of when the next generation Sea Islands AMD architecture is launching (Q2 2013), and already highlight that everything below HD8900M will be insufficient. When you say a custom GPU won't be "Coming from" HD8900 series, you are not making sense. AMD has no faster tech than GCN 1.0-2.0. That means we know right off the bat that HD7970M or HD8970M is the absolute fastest it can be. AMD will nto have anything faster than HD8970M in a console because if they could, they would have launched it on the PC as well and so no much part is coming in 2013. Both the RSX and Xenos GPUs in PS3/360 were slower than the fastest NV/AMD cards available on the desktop at the time.
