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Fei-Hung on 31 August 2016
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Intrinsic said:
Fei-Hung said:

For someone who knows how the tech works, what difference would adding 4GB of GDDR5 make and will it be a worthwhile difference? If not, what would they need to do to get it to 5TF?

I'm hoping whatever it is they do, they are able to keep the Neo at $449 at the most.

 

Edit: just read up how to work out TF and roughly what Sony would need to do to hit 5TF. The RAM won't make a difference. 

I am no expert, but I have an informed idea. Getting the GPU to 5TF would be as simple as up clocking it from 900+MHz to 1100+MHz. Considering the GPU it's based on is designed to run at 1300-1400Mhz it's not beyond reason that such a bump can happen (I personally believe it's guaranteed to happen). 

It will require a really good cooling system though, as the heat generated from running at higher clocks is likely the single biggest issue so would have to contend with. Then again, Sony is first and foremost a hardware company so if someone can pull this off it will be them. 

Another thing to consider is the maturity of the 14nm fabrication process. Simply put, for every 100 chips bought right now only 80 of them may reliably be able to run at a higher clock. So if they wanted to go with a 1.1Ghz GPU they may have to bin like 20 out of every 100 chips. While going with 900mhz could mean that they could use 100 out of a 100 chips. What that means at the end of the day is that going with a higher clock will be all round more expensive for sony. 

As for RAM, at this level and if targeting higher resolutions and higher/more stable framerates then memory bandwidth is actually more important than memory quantity. I doubt adding 4 extra gig of ram would make that much if a difference. But it's also not the hardest thing in the world to do if it's something they considered from the start of designing the Neo. 

I've been looking at this and it seems like the only way to do it would be to go the Polaris 10 route with 32 CU running at 1300mhz. Apparently the less CU you have the cheaper it is on power consumption. That would give you 5.5TF performance. 

 

Currently the Neo specs are rumored to have 36CU @911mhz. If they stick with this option, they will need to clock the processor to 1100mhz to hit 5TF.