Sorry but not fact.   Charlie is hit and miss and on this one, he's a miss.  The only thing he's actually 99.9% sure about and correct is it will not be an x86 CPU but that was never a hard thing to figure out to begin with.

As for GPU, all he says is Southern Islands/ HD 7xxx series.  Assuming he means the HD 7970 is laughable.  At best, an HD 7790 with the bit depth in half and reduced clocks.

You can't just arbitrarily say the next X will have whatever GPU is rated at 10 times the FLOPs count of the X360.  Far too many factors involved beyond just FLOPs to consider.  Heat dissipatoin, energy consumption, die size, noise, system bus to RAM depth, cost and more.  And the X360 GPU (Xenos) is more akin to the X1800 XL than the X1900 (though with R600 series unified shaders).

Realistically they'd probably be able to run it on a console with half the performance of an HD 7970. Effectively it'd be doable with a 200mm^2 GPU on a mature 28nm process.

I didn't say the Nextbox GPU would literally be based on the 7970 but it will be based on the 7000-series architecture. I use the 7970 as a reference as it's the strongest GPU in the series just like the X1900 was the strongest of the R500 architecture. Also it's easier to communicate by using a specific card that people know the specs of (like the GTX 580s running the Samarithan demo).

The Nextbox will not be as strong as the 7970 because that would mean it's 15. But just like the X360 GPU is around 0.7 x the Radeon X1900, the Nextbox GPU could be 0.7 x the 7970 and the end result is that the Nextbox is 10 times faster than the X360.

Btw, I do not compare consoles or GPUs by comparing FLOPs numbers, I use other parameters.

What about the Wii U??????

The Wii U (rumor says) has a GPU akin to a R770(HD 4830-4870). Last time a rumor mentioned it, it used 40 nm but it's a long time ago and maybe(i wish) they are going to use 32 nm which can fit more flops onto the chip while maintaining heat and power consumption. The first devkits had underclocked hardware because of not finished design and heat problems.
I saw some guy from AMD say the Wii U chip is a 1+ teraflop chip 1.0-1.2 which fits the '4x-5x xbox 360' rumor more or less in terms of flops.

I just don't see Microsoft going all out again when they know casual players are outnumbering 'hardcore' players. They want to push the Kinect 2.0 and what better way to do this than make a console that is cheap while having a proper hardware upgrade. Windows Phone, Windows 7/8 and so on will focus more and more on connectivity with friends and family and Xbox is Microsofts answer to Android TV/Smart TV/Apple TV. It's a media hub for the whole family and releasing a console for $500 in these times is not going to make them succeed.

Also Sony will probably not go and make a 'PS3' again. It didn't sell well in the beginning and it sold at a huge loss.

I think deminishing returns and the finicial situation will force Microsoft and Sony to not make expensive consoles.

But even 70% of the HD 7970's power is far too much.   The cost, cooling, bus depth, wattage, etc...unless you want yoru console also serve as a stove top and sound like a leaf blower, that's not going to happen.

And the most powerful R520 card is the X1950 XTX.

Will be supported.

i don't know how much watt a card with 70% of the 7970 will need second half of 2013 (i think a 7950 could be at 180 watt or so at max in one and a half year) but why are the costs too high? you said th 360 gpu is like a x1800 xl. this card did cost 450 euro in november 2005 in germany. the 7970 does cost i believe 550 euro atm. so the card costs 100 euro more now. a card with 70% of the power would cost much less now and even more less in 2013.

a 7950 does cost ~450 euro atm and has more than 70% of the 7970s power.

which means the gpu would cost microsoft less for the nextbox. ok we don't know anything about the console (tablet or not for example) but only speaking about the gpu price they could easily use such a card and put a lot more money for better cooling and so on without higher costs than 2005.

Do you really think MS wants to do a 3rd console with billions in losses the whole generation?  And this only addresses one of the issues I raised.  180 watts just for the GPU?   The entire X360 was 180 watts at launch - GPU just 70 of those watts..   Try putting a 180 watt GPU in a HTPC cabinet and still listen to your movies (read: cooling solution would be very loud).   Remember, the entire cooling solution was tryign to dissipate 180 watts on the X360.  If the Next X GPU is 180 watts itself, expect the entire system to be about 250-300 watts.  Just how large of a power brick do you want?

And all that is based on the premise the 7950 could drop from 180 watts by next year.   First, unless the GPU itself is given a die shrink, it will not drop to 180 watts. AMD doesn't die shrink high end retail GPU's.  It took MS, IBM and AMD dropping the CPU, GPU, RAM and eventually going full on SOC to get from 180 watts to 115 watts today and those die shrinks went from 90 nm to 45 nm.   The HD 7950 will not receive a die shrink from 28 nm to 11 nm in 1.5 years.

I know that 70% of the 7970s power will be difficult to achieve due to power consumption and I acknowledged that earlier in the thread. But I believe there is a chance for that to happen, if:
1. Nextgen Radeon architecture allows more efficient use of power. We often see GPU iterations to demand less power even without an entirely new GPU architecture or a smaller silicon manufacturing process. I don't know all the methods for reaching lower wattage  but I just recall history here.
2. MS are bold and take the risk of having a hot and noicy first generation of Nextbox before the process is mature to go 22nm.

I don't think the price is a huge issue as like I said, the X1900XT cost $500 in early 2006 and yet the X360 that came in Nov 2005 was mainly based on that GPU architecture (again, Im not saying the X360 GPU is as powerful as the X1900XT, Im just using the top-of-the-line cards as a reference), meanwhile the 7970 right now costs $500 while the Nextbox ain't coming out until 1,5 years from now. A stripped 7970 could cost $150 by then (I imagine a custom built GPU slightly slower than the Radeon 7950). Well, price is definitely an issue as MS will want to include Kinect 2.0 and obviously wants a cheap console as possible, but despite its heat problems and losses on hardware early in the gen the X360 has been a big success.

I know there's a lot of "ifs" with my reasoning and I am hoping much but this is also a theroetical discussion on how the next gen could be if MS were to chose the hardcore strategy of the X360, and it all relates to the Samarithan demo which Epic made in hope of getting strong hardware nextgen.

Yes I know the X1950XTX was the strongest in the 1900-series but I recall it came out in 2nd half of 2006 and was a typical mid-gen refresh or face lift, while the X1900 XT (and XTX for that matter) and 7970 are "raw" versions in a new GPU gen.

You're at least 3 years late bro.
They never made a huge loss. Only due to RROD.

http://www.xbitlabs.com/news/multimedia/display/20061120132150.html