You keep saying a lot of stuff that is just borderlime wishful thinking.  HBM2 RAM???? You kidding me? you think cause tech is available MS can just throw it in there and call it a day? You are more likely to see DDR4 ram in the XBs than HBM2. 

And where are you getting that devs won't use the neo power? in truth that you even say that makes me see you don't really know what you are talking about. From the first neo leak its clearly said ven with a date "that all games made from a certian daye would be required to come with a neo mode" 

Now if you think the neo or scorpio means that  devs make two totally different versions of their games then you are setting yourself up for disappointment. The Neo/scorpio power just means higher rez textures,higher rezolution all round, more stable framerate (be it 30/60fps), Higher LOD, better lightening, better AA higher level PP effects and thats about it. 

All things that they are already doing as we speak when it comes to PC and console releases. Basically, the neo/scorpio is the console equivalemt of a stable ultra preset as compared to the PS4/XB1 medium/high preset. Nothing more than that. 

No.

Why? because I suspect the RX 480 is 135-140watts.

Its too much for a console if the GPU alone uses that much.

I think the reason its rumored to be 911mhz is to reduce the power consumption down to like 95-100watts.

Then the rest of the apu, has 30-35watts or so for the cpu portion.

Waiting a extra year, is along time.

Also it ll likely be more expensive... and by the time the Xbox One-two is out, the PS4 neo will have gone down in price.

Would you buy a Xbox 2 for 499$ when the PS4 neo is probably 349$ by then? Unless there is a big differnce in visual quality in gameplay I dont think most will.

It's similar to what you do in a regular desktop with CUDA. However, GPUs are heavily parallelized, while CPUs are more single-threade oriented. So what you can offload varies. If you are talking about computations full of conditions and different paths (AI), it's a pure CPU task. But some tasks are easily paralelized, like some types of physics. So you run them on the GPU.

Also mind that GPGPU on PC is very different, because you don't have an unified memory. So if you are dealing with data on your CPU (system RAM) and wants to pass some task to the GPU, you have to copy it to the GPU's VRAM. That's very slow. An unified memory allows you to offload tasks that wouldn't be interesting on a shared memory architecture.

So you are correct. A routine like physics that runs on the GPU would be faster on the Neo, so it would depend if the CPU tasks of the game can be parallel or not.

Interesting stuff for sure. And as far as the unified memory pool goes, GDDR5 was chosen because of its high bandwidth correct?  Going by the leaks then, It would be cost prohibitive to do a major CPU upgrade when they're supposedly increasing the throughout of the Ram, while the small incremental CPU upgrade may be "crutched" by the exponential increase in GPU via GPGPU Compute. That really puts 3rd parties in a sort of predicament regarding optimization. Do I spend the extra time coding for such a unified APU to hit certain targets, do I scale back certain assets, do I just make the title exclusive and focus solely on that architecture to reap the optimization benefits, or do I just say screw it and launch a bug ridden game. 

In any case, Neo is sounding better and better. It's as if these consoles should be the real upgrade from 7th gen, and the X1/PS4 are the ".5's"

Yeah, if Neo launches this year it'll wreck Scorpio.... especially if they can adjust the clock. I don't see them keeping the same box as the base PS4. I think this is pretty much end of the road for ms in home consoles.

I plan on picking up a Neo as well, but that's going a bit too far. MS is going to be around for quite a while. 

In one word; Yeild. But its a little more complicated.

The 480 chip is designed to run at 1200mhz+ and a max power draw of 150W. For AMD that may be a good sweetspot. For sony that may need a 20M of those coupled with a CPU (which in itself increases the comolexity of the chip design) the problem becomes that for eveey 5 chips you make, 2 of them may be defective. You are still paying for all 7 chips though. The yeild determines just how expensive your chips actualky are. Now downclocking them helps allevate this issue. Cause some of those fective chips may only be defective when being clocked higher than 1100mhz or even 980mhz. 

Another issue is heat. The power draw of the system determines how much heat it generates. Higher temperatures means higher failure rates or general instability. Downclocking the GPU pretty much ensures the power draw and thus heat is kept at manageable levels. Its also likely that sony wamts to make the Neo smaller than the original PS4. 

As for significantly upgraded CPU; forget it. They will only bump it up as much as they need to cover the added GPU overhead so it doesnt become a bottle neck. Reason   being that they want to ensure feature and content parity between the stock PS4 and the neo. The favt that they are only chanhing the GPU should make it xlear what direction they want a neo mode to take. All the things that a much more powrrful cpu could add to a game are things that would make that game well...... be a conoeltely different game more or less. With exception to things like doubking a framerate though which is tied to both the cpu and gpu. 

Way I see it is they are fighting a war on two fronts now. One against Steam and Valve and another against Playstation. 

They have made so many anti-consumer movements in the past that they have a certain reputation now. They also closed down several studios lately and exclusives are going to PC too with gpu's getting cheap for great performance i.e. 480. 

If Valve and Sony decide they need to shut MS down they could easily pay for major exclusivity on franchises like FIFA etc. to keep it off xbox. Doesn't look good from where I am sitting for MS. 

I believe that the lack of a CPU upgrade may be motived by either costs (increasing the price by another 100 bucks) or simply because Zen wouldn't arrive in time.

As for 3rd parties, I don't really think that it will change too much. Exclusives tend to push the hardware and such, but thirdy parties are more direct. The chose a version as the lead. It may be any of them. If the game doesn't run nicely, cut corners until it does.

Basically, the take the PS4 game and decrease resolution for X1. Still not ok? Reduce some effects. Better than expected? Turn up some effects. PC version? Add some extra effects, better textures and call it a day. High end PCs will be subutilized, but it doesn't matter. These users can use the extra performance to increase resolution and/or fps and will also be happy. In the end, they aren't treating any platform badly. They just can't develop a game for each one. It would cost a lot and wouldn't really make it sell more. Crysis did it, Crytek almost went down.

Devs will make the game run on PS4. Then they will put it on PS4K and increase visuals in some areas while it is still running nicely. End of history.

Also, don't count on a major upgrade. It's not like PS4/X1 will look ".5" versions. It's more like: PS4K > PS4 >>>>>>>> PS3. I have a GTX 970. Let's suppose that I replaced it right now with a 1080. It packs more than double the punch. Games won't look a gen better. Higher res, maybe some supersampling and that's it. A simple test is get a PC game on ultra and put it on medium/high. It's not a very big difference. Better, for sure. Now put a PS3 game side by side and that will be one hell of a difference. For most 3rd party games, if you look the Digital Foundry comparisons, the X1, PS4 and PC versions aren't that different. The PS4K version will simply be more like the PC one.

Edit: Of course, if you don't have a new gen console and are thinking about getting one, buy the upgraded version. If you already have one, don't bother. Wait for the next gen.

The payment of the ships and the cost will depend on the contract... there is no reason for sony to pay for the defective chips, but that will probably  make good chips more expensive... and in any way the supplier must work to improve their yield.