Xbox One vs PS4: ESRAM slower than GDDR5, It's Bottleneck"

[drkohler]

Pemalite said:

Then you need to elaborate.
No point claiming someone is "wrong" and not even bothering to back up such claims, you just wasted my time with reading that for no gain or benefit to any parties involved.

drkohler said:

binary solo said:

If MS did actually think about delaying Xb one in order to put in GDDR5 ..

That never happened. Once they decided on the memory system (which likely was the second decision after the cpu decision), there was absolutely no way of changing the path. This is so fundamental in the whole process that if they changed that, they'd have to go back to blank sheets of paper.

No they wouldn't.
It would literally be as simple as swapping out the DDR3 with GDDR5 memory chips, Kaveri/Jaguar has dual-memory controllers which supports both memory technologies.
They might need to revise the PCB at most.

The latest Kaveri has two ddr controlers and two deactivated gddr controlers. That combination would get you nowhere console-wise (and this kaeveri is a low-end product). I'm not going to lecture about ram technologies, you can assemble the knowledge on the internet. However, these things are absolutes if ms switched from ddr to gddr memory at some point in time:

a) Complete redesign of the apu. Check the sizes of the four ddr3 and gddr5 controlers in the apu pictures posted on the web.

b) complete redesign of the motherboard (and to that effect the entre cooling system e.g. the whole system).

c) Find a customer for the terabytes of ddr memory you already ordered

d) Find a manufacturer for the terabytes of gddr memory you do not have.

To sum up again: Once a manufacturer has decided which cpu/memory path to take, there is no way back, come rain or storm. If in the end, it turns out you made the false choise, the usual thing happens: The guilty get promoted, the innocent get punished.

In this whole ram debate, there was one crucial mistake made that could have changed the entire situation. Likely due to cost considerations, it was mandated to the engineers that the apu was to be designed as one single die (probably the high cost of the Kinect2 was a major obstacle here). Had they decided to go the Intel path (apu on a die + daughter edram die), they could have come out with a "fatter" apu and a daughter edram die the size of their choice. Probably even like Intel with a 128Mbyte daughter die if they wanted to take a higher loss.