|
BlueFalcon said: I don't think it has been confirmed that Xbox 720 will have an 8-core AMD CPU though. It could be an 8-core PowerPC architecture CPU. It's actually very expensive and difficult to code games for multi-core processors. Game code itself does not land itself well to scale easily across 8 separate cores. In the real world a 4-core 4.0ghz CPU would outperform the exact same CPU architecture that's 8-cores at 2.0ghz in games because most 3rd party developers will not spend extra 6-12 months and millions of dollars to optimize for all 8 cores fully. Do you realize how much harder it is to create an 8-way parallel game code? Why do you think developers complained so much about coding for the Cell and its 6 supporting SPE engines? It was easier to code for the 360 since it had just 3 cores. Since it's too time consuming and costly to optimize for more CPU cores, this also explains why cross-platform 3rd party games look and run better on the 360 than PS3 for the most part. If Xbox 720 has 8 avg speed low clocked cores and PS4 has 4 faster cores, it would be a complete reversal of PS3 vs. 360. Chances are MS can't afford to get the FX8320-8350 due to its higher price, TDP limitations and because they want hardware BC. For these reasons, imo they are more likely to go with IBM's cheaper 8-core CPU. They might prefer more slower cores for lower power consumption, cheaper price of IBM CPUs and to have some of those cores dedicated to run Kinect 2.0. Since Sony does not have Kinect, for their console a fast 4-core CPU could be preferable and could easily end up faster for games because one-on-one a single AMD core would level an IBM core in IPC. Metro 2033 developer said that a single Core i7 (1st gen) is more powerful than the entire 3-core 6 threaded Xenon CPU in the 360, you can't just assume that an 8-core IBM CPU in the Xbox 720 is some super-powerful CPU. If those IBM cores are closely related to Wii U's CPU, then 2 of such 1.6-2.4ghz cores could only be as fast as a single 2.4ghz AMD/Intel core. Suddenly, an 8-core 2.4ghz IBM CPU wouldn't look so hot against a 3.6ghz 4-core AMD one. In reality, both the CPUs in Xbox 360 and PS3 were slow and overhyped. This is why in situations like Blighttown in Dark Souls, it's a chug-fest. A 2.4ghz 8-core IBM CPU doesn't sound powerful at all actually considering that IBM has had to quit making consumer CPUs because they were so much more inferior to AMD/Intel's in performance and performance/watt. |
I can't see Microsoft using IBM this time... for me both consoles will use AMD for CPU and GPU.
But well we have to wait 
.
