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Intrinsic on 01 June 2014
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RenCutypoison said:
JoeTheBro said:
Next gen(gen 9) systems will be interesting.

Assuming things haven't moved to streaming, here's what I'd expect from a system releasing in 2020.


CPUs are all but a thing of the past. They are still very important for a few tasks, but the majority of the work is done by the GPU. Because of this the systems will move from x86 to arm.

The GPU will be a beast by today's standards, but in 2020 it'll be mid tier compared to PCs. However the efficiency will make it hit above its weight class.

RAM will be huge. Either it'd go with 128 gb of unified memory similar to the PS4, or alternativly if the tech gets there I could see a 256 gb ssd being used in combination with 4 gb of ultra fast memory. Doubt it'd have seperate RAM just for the os.


Assuming it has moved to streaming, things might be even more interesting, as what will distinguish consoles will be hardware's features (Motion gaming, VR, even weirder pads, ...)

I don't think we wuld ever move to streaming. The computational equirements and all the unknowns are simply ridiculous. Just think of how much power will be needed to play BF10@4k@60fps........ for 20ml gamers simultaneously. And the cost o upgrading the hardware will be even more ridiculous on the server side. 

@Joe. There are tasks that the GPU can never do better than a CPU. And as games get ore and more demanding, those CPU tasks become even more important. So no, we won't ever go to CPUs based on ARM, hell.... when you consider that even in the mobile space the next big thing are 64bit processors you can clearly se that even mobile processors are demanding more and more power. And 2.5Ghz 8 core ARM 64bit cpu is not the same thing as 2.5Ghz 8 core X64. Not even close.

I have to agree with you on the GPU side of things but I think it wil be very dfferent from what most of us think. The simple truth of the matter is that as long as we are using silicon, GPUs can only so much more powerful. At 15nm fabrication, you can basically put exactly double the cores if using a similarly sized die. So basically what had to be done with dual cards could be done with one card. And it doesn't even work just like this.  But to have 4k@60fps, consoles basically need to have a gpu that has around 4x the cores of an R9 290 right now. Or somehow manage to have an R9 290 running at 4ghz.

I think you are mixing up Ram with storage space. As far as Ram goes, I doubt any game now or in the next 20 years will ever need more or even upto 20GB of RAM to run. I have it pegged at 16GB. And having an additional 4GB of DRAM just for the OS is actually really really cheap, especially by 2017.