goopy20 said:
DonFerrari said:
Still console makers pay a very different price on the GPU part or their APU compared to PC parts.
From the breakdown of PS4 and X1 I remember something like less than 100 USD cost for the GPU. And for this new gen I doubt the cost of GPU for PS5 and XSX is over 200 USD.
So even if it was possible to pay 1/3 the cost for the 1/3 of the power (it isn't, because the chips cost to manufacture doesn't scale linearly, you'll always have the optimum curve where a size and speed will be the most cost efficient and the reduction of any in let's say 50% won't net 50% saving in cost, similarly when going above then a increase in 50% may even be 100% more costly).
So if I had to guess all the saving possibles for Lockhart (cost, not final price since that may be dependent on willingness to take loss)
If remove disc - 30 USD
Lower performance GPU - 50 USD
Less RAM - 50 USD
Slightly less powerfull CPU - 20 USD
So it could undercut XSX by 150 USD. Daniel Ahmad estimate XSX BOM to be between 460 and 520. If we go for the lowest option we could say that Lockhart would cost at least 300 to build plus other costs to ship to retail and their cuts MS to sell it at 299 would need to subside 50 bucks (quite regular sub). So for Series X to sell for the triple it would mean 900 USD (won't happen) and for they to sell for the double it would be 599 (so about 70 of profit). If they just sell for the price of the BOM it would be 300 vs 460 or 35% less (which is already a good saving, I wouldn't buy the low entry because I prefer to have the best performance possible for a reasonable price and saving 150 USD to have 1/3 of the graphic performance even with everything else up to par isn't for me, but sure I can see a lot of people interested in it even more if they use gamepass and xbl subs for a long term contract and person can walk out with console+gp+xbl for 0 upfront payment and perhaps 30-40 USD/month meaning they will have games available for the life of the console basically paying just the subs they would pay anyway and a very small additional monthly cost to pay for the console). Still your 1/3 or 1/2 of the price seems very off the curve.
I see something like this, Lockhart no disc 299 (50 subside), PS5 no disc 399 (100 subside), PS5 with disc 499 (no subside), XSX 549 (no subside).
|
Lockhart sounds like a pretty crap deal if that's true. You would get a 2.5 times Less powerful gpu just to save $100, which is the price of 1.5 game. WE'll see about the pricing but it's really the 4Tflops part of Lockhart that worries me the most.
|
Lockhart versus XSX within that scenario would be 250 USD difference. MS can't really control Sony, and of course all the prices I put can end up totally wrong. But still the cost for MS in buckles of the GPU wouldn't make Lockhart cost 1/3 the production cost of Series X. Perhaps if everything on the console was cut to 1/3 performance it could cost MS less than half the price to assembly (not truly real, just look at PS4 and X1, they probably cost about 150-200 to assembly, and are 1/10 the performance of XSX or even less still XSX won't cost 10x more).
But rumor of Lockhart is that GPU is 1/3 but RAM, SSD, IO and RAM are close to XSX (let's say 2/3 or more) exactly to ensure that the only difference between both is the graphical output (mainly resolution) and that nothing else is hold back. Because for a lot of gamers that will use a 1080p TV the added cost for PS5 or XSX doesn't make sense because they don't care about the resolution.
