Nvidia Gets SALTY

[EricHiggin]

Pemalite said:

EricHiggin said:

With Polyphony showing off GT Sport using ray tracing, it's quite unlikely they were doing that just for fun, and even more unlikely it's distant future tech for PS6. AMD has mentioned recently they are working on ray tracing tech for their future products. If PS5 is going to use Navi, then at the very least, even if AMD isn't planning to use ray tracing tech until their "Next Gen" gpu products, they could very well be baking it into a semi custom Navi, just like how PS4 Pro used Polaris but had some Vega tech baked in.

Well. AMD's GPU's are capable of Ray Tracing today... Ray Tracing is typically a very compute and memory bound scenario... And what is Graphics Core Next great at? Compute... Hence why miners typically preferred them.

But, current hardware just doesn't have the horsepower to brute force it, hence nVidia's fixed-function approach, plus methods to reduce the processing load by reducing the work required.

It will be interesting to see what official path AMD takes to Ray Tracing though going forward, nVidia has applied the pressure that it's a must-have technology now.

As for the Playstation 4 Pro... It's not actually using Polaris as a base, it's using the same identical GPU found in the base Playstation 4, just doubled/mirrored. - It implemented features from both Polaris and Vega... But we need to keep in mind that the Playstation 4 also had changes away from the original Graphics Core Next design anyway. (Like an increase in ACE units.)

AMD designs it's GPU's in terms of "blocks". - And they can update, mix and match those blocks to suit their needs.

My own hopes is that next-gen will not be using Graphics Core Next, but AMD's next-gen architecture... But the realist in me says that both consoles will be Graphics Core Next based with features taken from Vega and Navi... And that to me isn't next-gen console hardware.

I wouldn't count that though because it's like saying consoles today are capable of 4k, they just don't have the hp to push it. Well then they aren't really 4k, so you bake in whatever is necessary to reach 4k as close and cheaply as possible.

Pro isn't true Polaris no, but it still makes the point that AMD can take upcoming tech and mold it into a present or even outdated design.

You would almost think with Nvidia pushing ray tracing this hard and making it clear that it's the next big thing in GPU tech, that when AMD announces a new architecture after this long with GCN, specifically called "Next Gen" (at the moment), and admitting they are focusing on ray tracing for their future products, that it would be a very strong indicator that it should be something designed around ray tracing, with efficiency taken more so into account as well.

If Navi is the last hoorah for GCN, and you've got next gen consoles around 2020 give or take, and Polyphony showing off GT Sport ray tracing on a SNY 8k display, it's hard not to think PS won't just use AMD's "Next Gen" arch. You would almost think the cost has to be more to try and create a hybrid out of Navi, so unless PS wants PS5 out late 2019 to early 2020, you have to wonder is it coming sooner than we think or are the Navi PS5 rumors incorrect possibly?