| riderz13371 said: I meant to say that based off all the recent rumors of next gen consoles using AMD. I thought NVidia was the best right now. |
The only 2 undisputable cases where NV has a class-leading position is $1,000 GTX690 and the outrageously overpriced GTX680MX. Those 2 products are hands down the best products in their class if costs do not matter, but their prices imply that they are out of the question for consoles. With that out of the way, AMD not only sells the fastest single GPU on the desktop (HD7970GE > GTX680), but it costs less $ than NV's part: http://www.techpowerup.com/reviews/EVGA/GTX_670_FTW_Signature_2/27.html
For consoles though, a more logical GPU would likely be a mobile product due to power consumption limitations -- i.e., something from GTX600M or HD7000M families. The pricing structure there is much much worse for NV. For example, the rumored PS4 GPU, HD7970M, costs $332.50 less than GTX680M:
| 2GB GDDR5 AMD Radeon™ HD 7970M [Included in Price] | |
| 2GB GDDR5 NVIDIA® GeForce® GTX 675M [Add $47.50 or $2.00/month1] | |
| 2GB GDDR5 NVIDIA® GeForce® GTX 680M [Add $332.50 or $10.00/month1] |
Problem is HD7970M is now performing within 5% of GTX680M in games. Because a console is not a laptop, the argument of Enduro vs. Optimus graphics switching is completely irrelevant, which means HD7970M works at full speed when connected to a power outlet.
"Thanks to the enormous lead in the last three titles, the Nvidia GPU is more or less 5 % ahead of the AMD card - a negligible difference. With regards to costs, however, the performance of the Radeon HD 7970M is truly impressive as the 680M can run users $400 USD more than the Radeon." (http://www.notebookcheck.net/Review-Update-Radeon-HD-7970M-vs-GeForce-GTX-680M.87744.0.html)
If you are a Sony/MS executive and NV wants you to pay hundreds of dollars more for 5% more performance, let me think about that one...
What this essentially means you'll have to pay way more for a performance increase that won't show up in games if you went with the GTX680M from NV. The next level up would means pending $400-500+ more on a GTX680MX for 20% more performance over the HD7970M...Ya....
1) With AMD you get superior performance for single GPUs this generation;
2) With AMD you also get superior price/performance for single GPUs, especially if you choose to use a mobile GPU for the console;
3) You also get class leading GPGPU / OpenCL / OpenGL / Compute performance and DirectX 11.1 support -- these may be helpful for a console that may last 7+ years. (Future GPUs from NV and AMD will focus even more heavily on compute, while GTX600 series do not support the full feature set of DX11.1 and in GK104 form is way slower when using compute shaders in games - Dirt Showdown, Sleeping Dogs, Sniper Elite V2, Hitman Absolution have all proven NV's GTX600 series is not future-proof for compute). This is especially helfpul for Sony if they plan to run PS4 on Linux and use things like OpenCL/GL for games and for both MS/Sony if they want to give programmers more flexibility in how to best extract more performance from the GPUs long-term;
4) With AMD, you probably also get an additional discount if you buy their CPU+GPU combo (PS4?);
5) With AMD, you also get ZeroCore power which idles the GPU to 3 watts when it's not used. If PS4/Xbox 720 have an APU for the CPU, they could use the GPU inside the APU and save on power when the dedicated GPU power is not needed. This may or may not matter;
6) You also get superior native color spectrum/calibration because Full RGB over HDMI is broken on all NV cards without software calibration/tweaks. For PC users this generally doesn't matter because we use DVI/dual-link DVI to power our PC monitors. For consoles, the primary connection to the TV is via HDMI which makes NV cards permanently broken wrt to accurate colors/deep black levels on a console:
http://blog.metaclassofnil.com/?p=83
http://www.rockpapershotgun.com/forums/showthread.php?9334-Nvidia-RGB-HDMI-issue
(this is why PS3 games/colors/blacks look washed out/incorrect compared to Xbox 360 because PS3 has an NV GPU and the connection is via HDMI).
The choice can't be any more clear. NV is worse in nearly every way for consoles this round from the most important metric for consoles starting with price/performance to anything from single GPU performance, features and longevity/compute flexibility perspectives. PhysX is a wild card but if only 1 of 3 next gen consoles had an NV GPU, most developers probably wouldn't spend any $ to implement this. So it wouldn't have mattered.
You simply cannot ignore price/performance in a console when you are trying to hit $350-450 price levels. That means if they went with NV, MS/Sony/Nintendo would have gotten worse performance every time because NV charges more $ for a similar level of performance (another reason why the GPU in Xbox 360 was faster than RSX despite PS3 launching 1 year later).
