sc94597 said:
A few things: I expect the PS4/XBO to release in 2018. Want to make sure we agree on the year before anything else. It has been the case that each generation the theoretical FLOP percent increase has decreased each time. For example, the XB -> XB360 was about 12 times, while the XB360 -> XBO was only five times. The PS2 -> PS3 was about 35 times, whereas the PS3-> PS4 was only 7.8 times (1800/230 Gflops.) So I think the trend of lower marginal increases in GPU power for the same marginal cost will continue and we're only going to see like 5-6 times percentage difference in 2018, especially when we consider how long last generation was compared with the sixth generation and what I predict the eight generation will be. 5 * 1300 = 6500 Gflops, 6*1300= 7800 Gflops, 5*1800 = 9,000 Gflops, 6*1800 = 10,800 Gflops. So unless MS/Sony decide on more expensive/more power-hungry consoles like they did in the seventh generation, I just can't see them going above 12 TFLOPs. As for native 4k resolutions, I don't think either Sony/MS will do it next generation and I don't think third parties are ready or want them to do it. The asset qualities at 4k would just be too high for them to keep up with the development costs. I think we'll see 1600p/1440p as the standards, much likes how sub-HD/720p was a standard in the 7th generation. |
2018? Depends on TSMC. Apparently, they should have 16nm in Q2 2016 (at least according to nVidia), knowing them that will be more like Q4 2016, so their roadmap with 10nm in early 2017 is...well, bit optimistic. But if they have mature 10nm by end of 2017, then maybe 2018 is possible, though I don't think that would make much sense for either MS or Sony, unless MS decides to do what they've done with original Xbox and kill it earlier.
As for this gen's jump - when you take how long 7th gen was vs how much of jump we have, both MS and Sony were very stingy. Sony just had to be carefull due to how badly they had it with PS3 and MS being specially missguided by their Kinect/TV policies. Otherwise, we would see (at least MS) what EPIC asked of them, which is around full blown 7870 with 2.5TFLOPS - that case with proper cooling most certainly can handle that GPU, price would probaly be same as or slightly higher than PS4 (since they're willing to lose initially on console), and I think their sales (at least in US and UK) would be much better then they are now.
So, no, I don't think 5-6x is resonable estimate (specially given how this gen was already underpowered, some more, some less, from the start, and how much bad press they have for it), just like I didn't think (along with few other people around here) that was reasonable estimate for 7th to 8th jump either.
And while I doubt they will go for native 4K (since they would then really have to wait for 7nm and 20+ TFLOPS GPUs), going with 2560x1440 (or 2880x1620, which would be 720p to 1080p equivalent) would give them a lot of headache with upscaling and some bad press, so I think they will opt for anamorphic and/or temporal 2160p which will give better image quality with similar pixel count. But for that, they need at least PS3 to PS4 jump.
