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Intrinsic on 17 February 2018
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KBG29 said:
Intrinsic said:

GDDR6 is good enough. The benefits of HBM2 compared to GDDR6 doesn't offset the much higher costs of HBM2. best HBM2 is around 901GB/s of bandwidth while the best GDDR6 is around 864GB/s. And we will not see those consoles come with an M.2 nvme SSD. But my money is on the interface being there. So we will use an m.2 slot that supports nvme drives but will come shipped with a sata based drive. Probably 1TB of it. But the option will always be there for the users to throw in an nvme drive. 

GDDR6 is good enough, but it does not fit the console design nicely. HBM is like a perfect marriage for an APU and a console. It is the ultimate in effeciency in current tech. 

I think even if they launched with GDDR6, they would eventually switch to HBM in a revision. The way I work, I wouldn't even waste the time with GDDR6, and just do things right the first time with HBM. There is no rush, so no reason to do a short term work around.

As far as Storage goes, I think that has to be the absolute minimum. If NVMe is not at least supported, I am going to be very, very disappointed. I look at it the same way as the RAM though. There is no hurry for a next gen device, so don't force something if you don't have to. A new platform splits the userbase, and even with full B/C, you are starting a zero again. Best not make that commiment until you have something well worth the it.

You couldn't be more wrong on that. GDDR6 fits perfectly with how consoles are made. HBM is always going to be more expensive and complicated than just soldering chips onto a MB. And with HBM you introduce the issue of lower yields per package. More things can go wrong. And that doesn't sit well with how consoles are to be designed. Further more, the benefits doesn't justify it adoption for consoles. 

As i adhered to previous and this time i would be more detailed. 16GB GDDR6 with 256-bit bus will give you 576GB/s. 24GB of GDDR6 with a 384-bit bus will allow for around 860GB/s of bandwidth. All options would cost less than going with HBM. They can one day transition to HBM, but only when the tech and its implementation is cheaper than GDDR6.

You also seem to be of the impression that by 2020 there wouldn't be enough in the tech space that can be implemented in a $400/$500 price point that would justify the jump to next gen. I think you are wrong and would be pleasantly surprised.

My theory, is that the PS5 will come in at $499. I believe that GDDR6 would be well developed tech by then and as such cheaper than it obviously would be today. I also believe that we will see a return to a split CPU and GPU in the consoles even tho they are both from AMD. This would drive the cost of the CPU+GPU up by around 50% but would result in a significantly more powerful console at launch. So rather than seeing a 12TF GPU we could be looking at an 20 to 24TF one instead. If and only if they go with a split architecture.