Pemalite said:
JRPGfan said:
DakonBlackblade said:
I suppose the conclusion here is that Mark Cerny is a genius, the man knows how to engineer a console |
"No offense, but 1.825 ghz is pretty crazy for a console. we had a max of 1.172 ghz last gen.MS wasn't conservative at all. They pushed both the CUs and the clocks. They went with a super expensive vapor chamber cooler to achieve that. You seem to be forgetting that MS and Sony arent just cooling the GPU like AMD is doing, there is a CPU in there with a big io block and ram bus that needs to be cooled too.
Where MS screwed up was not thinking outside the box like Sony did. Sony went with a much cheaper and more traditional cooler/heatsink. it made their console look like a planet but they were willing to look ugly and big in order to save a buck. they also did a lot of work with liquid thermal cooling that tbh, MS nor any other GPU maker has bothered to implement. Sony was able to get to 2.23 ghz because they had fewer CUs AND because they went with liquid metal cooling and a traditional and super cheap heatsink that cost them only a few dollars according to bloomberg. Penello was super surprised to hear that the cooling was only costing sony a few dollars and refused to believe it. it likely cost MS almost $30 to do vapor chamber cooling." - SlimySnake (neogaf)
This.
Cerny is confirmed a genius now.
If you can use a smaller Chip (apu) and thus have cheaper costs, and use a cheaper cooler (even if its massive), then thats a smart move.
If it wasn't for the dual sense likely being more expensive than the Xbox Series X controller, I woulda without a doubt said the PS5 was cheaper to produce. I think its close though, and it actually has me wondering how far (down) the prices of these devices can even go.
Like will there be a slim version of a PS5? or XSX?
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Wrong.
The size of the chip is only one aspect of the cost equation.
When you push clockspeeds upwards, you get less functional chips per wafer that are capable of hitting that clockspeed, impacting yields. So in order to compensate you increase voltages, but then some chips start to suffer from electromigration or just outright fail, again... Impacting yields.
I wouldn't be surprised if the APU in the Playstation 5 and Xbox Series X are *equivalent* in costs right about now, in a year or two Sony will definitely have the cost advantage... And not by a small amount either. - But then Sony and Microsoft might shift to TSMC's 5nm (branded) process which muddy that landscape.
Does that make Cerny a genius? No. No it does not. Anyone who has any idea about silicon engineering knows the pro's and con's to each approach, neither is intrinsically better than the other.
Cerny is a smart guy, he is well aware of all this.
Vapor Chamber cooling isn't that exotic anymore, it's actually fairly common, especially in the PC space, yes it's going to be more expensive than the Playstation 5 cooler, but probably not by as much as people think.
Although Sony's approach definitely takes the "large+slow" in shifting cfm... The caveat to that is a very large box to house it all in which may require more materials.
The Playstation 5 does have the more expensive SSD, more expensive controller which levels out costs somewhat.
In all honesty, we may see a $100 price reduction once production starts to meet demand, likely in a couple years time, especially with some revisions that consolidate and cost-reduce.
A slim console built at 5nm though is probably only a couple years away, TSMC's 5nm process is being ramped up with some good yields right now, where even Apple is finding it viable for it's big chips.
Chips would be 80% smaller, consume 30% less power... Which bodes well for a much smaller Playstation 5, might be the perfect opportunity to ditch the massive fan, go vapor chamber and make a console half the size or more
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Size of chip also impacts yeilds (ontop of bigger size = less dies pr wafer).
Also the new GPUs from AMD all seem to be running 2200-2300mhz.
So in that reguard, I think the process node and the GPU parts, were made to run at those speeds.
I doubt the PS5 gpu running at these speeds, is actually impacting yields in a meaningfull way at all.
Because it seems the architecture was designed around this speed.
So its not like they are pushing it to unreasonable levels, where its resulting in less viable dies.
"Vapor Chamber cooling isn't that exotic anymore, it's actually fairly common, especially in the PC space, yes it's going to be more expensive than the Playstation 5 cooler, but probably not by as much as people think."
They mentioned the price differnce was like a few $ (~3$) for sony's cooling solution,
vs nearly 10 times that (~30$) for the xbox cooling (with the vapor chamber).
"In all honesty, we may see a $100 price reduction once production starts to meet demand, likely in a couple years time, especially with some revisions that consolidate and cost-reduce.
A slim console built at 5nm though is probably only a couple years away, TSMC's 5nm process is being ramped up with some good yields right now, where even Apple is finding it viable for it's big chips."
I hope your right.... I'm not as optimistic about shrinks and slim versions of these consoles.
Last edited by JRPGfan - on 19 November 2020
