| Pemalite said: No. You didn't listen to what Cerny said. |
This was one of the points Cerny should definitely NOT have made in his talk, because it confuses people more than necessary. I guess the temptation of inserting a little pr with a buzzword was too high, so he added the Smartshift bit.
Again you don't understand "maximum" in that context. Both cpu and gpu could run faster than 3.5GHz and 2.23GHz (obviously as the cpu in the XSX runs at 3.66GHz). The capping runs both cpu and gpu BELOW the maximum clock rates possible, in order to maintain the power limit set by the cooling (which I really want to see).
Now if you ran Pong! on the PS5, the power draw on the cpu would be almost nil and Smartshift could in theory send dozens of Watts to the gpu. On the other hand, to save power, the gpu would probably be downclocked anyways so as to cool the entire system. It's Pong!, after all.
As the PS5 cooling system is apparently laid out to let both cpu and gpu simultaneously run at capped speeds (NOT maximum speeds) under "non-Dealth Valley conditions", Smartshift does absolutely nothing (except probably downclocking the cpu to cool the system). When the Tempest hardware and the ssd hardware are in full operations, my guess is downclocking will occur with a possible Smartshift contribution to hold the gpu at capped speed.
So when does Smartshift actually kick in? That is the part that was a little too fuzzy in Cerny's talk. He never answered that unasked question. Looking at the various statements he made about the whole power managment and what happens when and how long, there are a few open questions left.
