| JEMC said: You may have doubts, but that's the info we've got so far. 640GB/s, almost 200GB/s faster than the base PS5 and around 70GB/s more than the PS5Pro. But it's not like we haven't had clues that could explain this numbers. Keep in mind Sony and AMD partnership with project Amethyst, were one of the three key features is called Universal Compression and it's designed to "improve GPU memory bandwidth". Why would they need that if they were going to have a 320-bit memory bus and 1.2TB/s bandwidth? Of course, of course, that tech could be for the handheld console, but wouldn't it be a waste to develop it and only use it for one of the two machines? |
RT and FSR does require more memory throughput.
Parts of Amethyst is being bankrolled into FSR4, it's not going to be a completely "new" thing that we won't see on PC before the PS6 launches.
Universal compression isn't likely to be a game changer for fillrates as compression for that is already extremely competent having been constantly improved for a third of a century... But it could reduce bandwidth requirements for other datasets.
We also need to remember that the explosion of GPU compute since the R480 days is orders of magnitude greater than bandwidth.
The jump between R480 and Navi31 was 16Gflop to 61,000Gflop. (3,812x increase in compute)
But bandwidth was 38GB/s to 960GB/s. (25.25x increase in bandwidth)
Add on the new explosion to low-precision, high-throughput compute like FP4, FP8, INT4, INT8 and it looks even more lob-sided for compute... Especially when you start talking 1,000TOPS or more.
Which is why AMD and nVidia has invested a significant amount of time improving bandwidth through efficiency and architectural improvements. I.E. Infinity Cache, Draw Stream Binning Rasterization, Delta Colour Compression and more as memory bandwidth hasn't been able to keep up with compute that GPU's demand.
A 160-bit bus would be more appealing for a handheld or low-end device though, but I also guess that there is some potential cost-control happening in the console space in the face of constantly increasing prices for old antiquated hardware.
Either way, I definitely hope 320bit ends up being the target memory bus for the fixed home consoles, especially as RT and A.I. will be the front-and-center highlight of next-gen hardware.
www.youtube.com/@Pemalite
