| sc94597 said: Well my 2018 estimate depends greatly on when Nintendo releases their next console (which is looking to be late 2017.) It also depends on the capabilities of the PS4/XBO. By late 2017 4k display adoption rates should be quite big - enough to justify new consoles releasing in late 2018. As you said, this generation was relatively underpowered from the start. They're going to want to upgrade sooner rather than later to satisfy developers and third parties. Even if we consider that MS and Sony gimped their consoles for other reasons (if the cost is truly miniscule I don't believe Sony wouldn't have gone for a 7870), a 7870 would only mean a flop increase of 10 times, although it definitely would've given 1080p gameplay with a consistent 30fps. This is still much less than the preceding generation difference. I'm suspicious though of how cheap it would've been to go with a 7870. It seems to me that the additional cost would be between $50-100 (considering the retail price differences were double for a time after peak hardware development) and I'm unsure if that price difference could be reconciled with the XBO matching PS4 prices. It's not like these consoles are selling for a profit in their current form. Well we were talking about floating points. The PS3 was rated at ~230 gflops and the PS4 at ~1,800 gflops. That is a difference of 7.8. If the real-world difference is about ten times that, it is likely because of fewer memory bottlenecks and advance feature-sets. The same could apply to the PS5/XBTWO vs. PS4/XBO. The trend has been, with each geneneration, smaller increases in raw power/same price. This is especially evident when we consider how long last generation was. I just can't see the difference being much larger than 7th -> 8th generation, even if one of the manufacturers tried to outpower the other. I also don't see MS/SONY repeating the seventh generation power struggle. That was bad pretty much for both of them and third parties. Either way, I don't see native 4k being a thing next-generation (although I do think they'll try to promise it.) |
Honestly, I'm not so sure MSony care at this point when will Nintendo lauch their next home console, at least not too much - unless they susprise them and have something that 3rd parties like a lot, or if we have another Wii-like craze, this gen is pretty much showing how important 3rd party support is and what will their audience buy. So, I'm thinking 2018 is bit too soon, 2019 seems more realisitic - again, if MS decides to pull original Xbox, and cut One early, that will force Sony's hand as well, but, tbh, I think a lot depends on TSMC in the end.
As for 7870 - well, IIRC, PS4 has one inside, it's just 2 CUs are disabled and and it's running @800MHz instead of 1000MHz (I remember back in days few of us disccusing 7970m, which is 7870 for laptops @850MHz as being possible choice for MSony). I'm pretty sure if Sony was in better shape for this gen (price-wise), they could've gone with worse yields (since at the end that's what 2CUs less is about) with bit higher price, but it seems price was crucial in their strategy . But obviously Sony ninjas informed them that MS screwed up XBO design, so they didn't have to worry. ;)
4K pressure will be interesting to see - SD to 720p pixel jump is 3x, 720p to 1080p is 2.25x, and 1080p to 4K UHD is 4x. While this does not mean that 4x more GPU power is needed (1080 to 4K is around 3x according to benchmarks), it's really a big jump compared to 7th to 8th gen. Who knows, maybe they will wait for it, but I doubt it - to have same relative jump as in this gen they would need really beefy GPUs.
