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EricHiggin on 01 February 2017
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Pemalite said:
EricHiggin said:

Well sure 14nm won't be as efficient as 7nm, but AMD also didn't have PS and XB to cater to before 28nm which could push them into finding a solution.

Makes no difference.

Well if PS and XB say they need something by this date at the very latest and AMD can't make that happen then it would definitely make a difference. I'm not saying they wouldn't give AMD time and wait a bit, but you can only wait so long, and at what cost.

Pemalite said:

EricHiggin said:

Well a semi custom version of Ryzen would be expected, as well as the GPU. Sure your not talking a small die or power efficient, but the norm is usually something that fits that scenario just like the PS3 (minus the cell+gpu). It ran very hot and was very very power hungry until they shrunk the dies and came out with the PS3 Slim. Thats what I would expect out of the PS5 if 7nm was delayed. Unless they went with something like TSMC's new 12nm "half" node which is supposed to outperform 14nm apparently and is based on their 16nm node which is what is being used for PS4 and Pro I thought.

And the Playstation 3 was also super expensive to manufacture. - Remember how we were expected to get a second job to pay for it? 
The days where Sony and Microsoft were willing to eat hundreds of dollars in hardware costs are over. - For one... Sony can't afford to do that.
TSMC's 12nm node uses a 16nm BEOL... And thus had better outperform Samsung's 14nm node which has a 20nm BEOL, highly doubt it will be used for GPU's or APU's though.
You are correct that the Playstation 4 and Playstation 4 Pro is built on TSMC's 16nm process.

Yes PS3 was really really costly, but much of that was due to cell, plus adding a GPU late in the development, as well as PS2 internal hardware for BC. None of that should be an issue with PS5 if they stick with x86. The extra cost would go into larger power supply, heatsink, fan, shell size, box size, shipping, etc. All which should add some cost, but nothing even close to what PS3 did. PS5 could launch for $449 or even $499 and it wouldn't be that big of a deal. $399 is the sweet spot clearly, but at that price PS can't even keep consoles in stock, so charging a little more won't hurt them, so no subsidy necessary.

The 12nm node was just a what if. For all we know 7nm ends up on target, or maybe PS doesn't need to or doesn't want to launch before 7nm is ready and nothing may change that. If Pro is the best you can get from PS until 2020, I think many of us may have to upgrade to Pro to stay at 1080p(900p). That may be what PS wants or plans on anyway.