[Rumour] Latest information about NX !

[Pemalite]

JEMC said:

That's great and all that, but there is a big problem: we're talking about Nintendo.

I remember when we were having the same discussion about Wii U, with many of us making the same mistake of believing Nintendo would use modern hardware. And look how Wii U ended.

Taking for granted that Nintendo will use Zen and Polaris is a mistake and goes against all what Nintendo has done in the past, always going for tried and tested hardware for their products. In fact, if this rumor is true (something that I don't believe) then NX looks to be an hybrid device, and for that, an ARM processor seems more likely.

Indeed.
But who knows what goes behind closed doors. :P Just throwing some theories around, that's all. Or "hopes".
But even with that said, even if Nintendo goes for Zen+Polaris... They could still have hardware that is technically slower than the Xbox One.

Akeos said:

Pemalite said:

It's really not.
Let's use your "math".

If the Wii U is twice as fast as the Xbox 360... And the Xbox One is only twice as fast as the Wii U... Then the Xbox One is only 4x faster than an Xbox 360.
Just let that sink in for a moment. Please.

Now look at the games, there is a stark contrast in the graphics of the Xbox One and the Xbox 360/Wii U. No contest. - One that lends credence to it being a gap larger than 2x or 4x.
Proof is in the games.

The Wii U can have less "GFLOPS" than the Xbox 360, yet still offer more performance.
It can have less bandwidth, but still pull ahead, the Xbox One is the same case again.

Zen won't be expensive/expansive.

You don't put a full-featured Desktop CPU into a console, you just don't, console's do not have the cooling capacity nor power delivery, heck they can't even afford to do it.
A low-end Quad-Core Zen would be more than adequate, maybe even a high-clocked Dual-Core. (A Dual-Core Intel chip can be faster than all 8-cores in the Xbox One/Playstation 4.)
Zen will fill AMD's entire product stack from cheap tablets right up to 16-core servers, it will also be the Architecture which will replace Carizzo and the other APU's.


HBM? Why? HBM is useless in a console, you are only gaming at a last-century 1080P. Nor would a console employ such an expensive memory system, you aren't paying $1000 for your hardware.
Let's say the NX had 150Gb/s of GDDR5X (Or plain ole' GDDR5) bandwidth... It will make better use of that than the PS4 which has 176Gb/s of bandwidth.
Why? Compression. Or more specifically Colour compression. - It's amazing how newer GPU's tend to have newer technologies to drive up efficiency, so the NX doesn't need more raw bandwidth (And thus more expensive memory chips) to beat the PS4.

Polaris will likely be a good deal faster than only 2x than the PS4, in the high-end at-least.
Fury X is already 3-4x faster... At 1080P. - But it doesn't really show it's true muscle untill you start gaming at 1440P or 4k, then it is in a league of it's own.
Polaris at the mid range could actually meet where R9 290/390 is right now in all regards except bandwidth, with superior energy characteristics, 14nm is showing some great promises that AMD and nVidia have been vocal about.

Price is probably going to be a big factor, Nintendo usually tends to market itself to the younger/casual market, which are typically more price sensative. I would be very surprised if the machine was priced higher than the Next-gen twins.

 

 

Xenos xbox360: 240 GFLOPS 

Wiiu: around 30 watts at 16 GFLOPS per watt: 480 GFLOPS 

Xbox One: 1300 GFLOPS 

 

So xboxone = 2,5 wiiu = 5 Xbox 360... 

 

I have looking for polaris and you are in right,  there is one with GDDR and one with HBM,  or can use ZEN with figi.. But i think Nintendo can use carrizo (excavator + Tonga), that will be OK for having third party games... And less expansive... 

You are going to need definitive evidence to say the WiiU has 480Gflops, most outlet's think it's far less than that.

Just. Look. At. The. Games. There is a clear generational difference between WiiU titles and the Xbox One, one that leads it to a performance gap greater than 2.5x that you you imply. - That's all the proof right there. The games.


Polaris can use HBM, GDDR5, GDDR5X and the Memory controller will likely have DDR4 (Maybe DDR3?) support also for die-harvested parts that will filter down into lower-end segments and mobile.

Tonga would also be a good choice, Colour Compression would help make up some performance ground with the other consoles even if it has less resources than the Xbox One. - Excavator would be an extreme dissapointment, a dissapointment that would be on par as being served a big fat steak that was actually Tofu.
AMD's current CPU's are horrible.

Polaris and Zen had working silicon last year, so it's not entirely impossible to imagine Nintendo taking advantage of that, whether it happens though is something that only time will tell.

Ck1x said:
I can't believe people are still discussing the WiiU specs as we are talking about the possibilities of their next system... kind of crazy!

We are looking towards history for an idea of the future.