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Nintendo - NX power - View Post

haxxiy on 05 October 2015
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sc94597 said:

1. "Removing bottlenecks" - bottlenecks are usually the type of things that if you don't have enough power they limit your system, but the difference to "just enough" could be quite marginal cost vs. a large benefit you gain. The performance gains, when bottlenecks are in the system are not linear/scale evenly by percentage. I am sure you know all of this.

An example in PC gaming:

Notice the marginal differences in computing frequency and/or threads lead to a significant stability in frame-time for the Witcher 3 and then after that it is flat, and before that it slopes somewhat linearly. If you have a 1.3 GHZ 4 threaded CPU you will see gains by increasing that to 1.5 GHZ (+15%), but after that you see no gains. That is what I meant by, 10-15% could be enough to resolve cpu bottlenecks in certain applications.

2. Most advances in CPU IPC from generation to generation (for the same clock-speed) today are quite miniscule. Look at Haswell Refresh -> Skylake. That is what I meant by 10-15% as quite significant.

3. Possibly since they are going to finally ditch the old GameCube architecture they will make wiser decisions this time around. They could increase performance even if they go with AMD. There are low-profile GPU chips that will let them match XBO/PS4 performance for a pricepoint of $300, without leaving their power consumption requirements, and I am sure there will be more options for when they manufacture such a console (probably won't come until the end of 2016/early 2017.)

The Witcher 3 is a fairly CPU-agnostic game maximized to run on four threads. What I don't get is why you think it would be particularly relevant to console gaming. Do you think frame time and frame rate are particularly gimped by the Bulldozer architecture when most games are running at 30 fps, 60 fps tops? I haven't seen many benchmarks, but it can't be that relevant next to, say, bottlenecks on the GPU. Otherwise the engineers at Sony and Microsoft would have opted for faster CPUs and slower GPUs, if they were working strictly within the limits of a given TDP.

Yes, it's quite a relevant jump. But again, not very relevant for gaming. I run an FX 8350 with a GTX 970. Run an i7 6700K (>50% IPC difference) with a GTX 960 and you'll still be way behind on frame rate on almost every single game. The lower the framerate, the larger the gap in my favour.

As for matching XBO/PS4 performance without increasing their power consumption requirements... eh. The Wii-U/Wii/Gamecube ran on 20-35 Watts. That's extremely low for gaming. Even in 2016 the 15-35W Carrizo APUs won't come lose to X1/PS4, and they'll still be 28nm. That is assuming Nintendo will opt for very fresh hardware this time around, for the first time since the N64.