AMD Gonzalo SoC Appears - A Console APU with Zen Cores and Navi Graphics
- Thread starter WYP
- Start date
Looks like the next gen of consoles will see a balancing take place.
BIG increase in CPU power but not so much in GPU grunt. (compared to the PS4 Pro & One X).
8 Zen 2 cores at ~3GHz and a 1080Ti class GPU (10-12Tflop) should ensure a solid 60fps at 4K (native) in most games or 60fps at 4K( with chequer-boarding reconstruction techniques) in the most demanding of Triple A titles.
BIG increase in CPU power but not so much in GPU grunt. (compared to the PS4 Pro & One X).
8 Zen 2 cores at ~3GHz and a 1080Ti class GPU (10-12Tflop) should ensure a solid 60fps at 4K (native) in most games or 60fps at 4K( with chequer-boarding reconstruction techniques) in the most demanding of Triple A titles.
WYP
News Guru
TBH, I think the PS4 Pro is a big sign for things to come. If reconstruction techniques can deliver a "faux-K" result that looks similar enough to 4K for most people not to notice, it is definitely something that is worth getting behind, especially given the performance benefits.
While it is hard to know what will happen to things like Nvidia's DLSS technology, it is definitely possible that we will see a similar technology take hold in the coming years.
The CPU upgrade will be a big thing for next-gen, as it will allow developers to create more complex titles. Yes, more GPU power is great, but extra CPU power will help push things in other directions, outside of resolution targets.
NeverBackDown
AMD Enthusiast
CPU/Memoryis pretty much always more important in most scenarios. It would be nice to get an actual 8C/8T CPU instead of 4C/8T design. However I have a feeling that one of the 2 companies will go with 4C/8T. But if the PS4/Xbox launch are anything to go by, power wins the initial race. People who are spending similar amounts of money on 2 consoles will choose the better graphics one because most people play COD anyway lol
I think whoever has the stronger CPU will win the initial launch. I suspect both will have similar GPUs again.
I think whoever has the stronger CPU will win the initial launch. I suspect both will have similar GPUs again.
Well GPUs are the part they can play with easily in mid cycle refreshes or even premium models closer to launch, with CPUs you're much more limited in that area if you wanted to maintain back+forward compatibility across a lineup so I think that's the area they'll focus on in the first consoles of the generation, 6-8 cores(They like to have one or two disabled with more progressive nodes to ensure string yields) presumably with SMT enabled, but GPUs that aren't much more powerful than the mid cycle refresh consoles but use more modern features, maybe one of them will launch a large GPU versions alongside this time to offer a generational leap in graphics too but they may prefer to wait till 7nm is more mature & not saturated with their other products.
demonking
New member
This is a big increase for consoles. Though we are still waiting to see exactly what Navi can do on a CPU side this is still a big increase.
You got to remember that the consoles use a very low level API and do not have the ridiculous overhead of Windows whilst you are gaming. Although idle windows services and processes do not use much processing power they still command mass amounts of allocation to the CPU queue, something a bespoke OS on specific hardware can be programmed better for.
I always explain this to non tech savy's as trying to get a road car optimized for the track but still keep it road legal. No matter how hard you try, not having the headlights, battery, indicators, cat, road legal exhaust ect will always give the car purely built for the track the edge as it doesn't need it.
You got to remember that the consoles use a very low level API and do not have the ridiculous overhead of Windows whilst you are gaming. Although idle windows services and processes do not use much processing power they still command mass amounts of allocation to the CPU queue, something a bespoke OS on specific hardware can be programmed better for.
I always explain this to non tech savy's as trying to get a road car optimized for the track but still keep it road legal. No matter how hard you try, not having the headlights, battery, indicators, cat, road legal exhaust ect will always give the car purely built for the track the edge as it doesn't need it.
Technically Windows uses many of the same APIs as the Xbox does(And in some ways always has, Xbox is named so after the DirectX set of APIs it is built to use), and with modern processors themselves, especially multi-core & multi-threaded, the impact of idle processes and the like on using up compute resources is negligible, especially given consoles technically dedicate ~15% of their CPU power just to system resources, the difference in performance in consoles nowadays mostly just comes down to memory use, as those idle processes still have a meaningful impact there regardless of how little CPU time they take, and PCs have much less control over memory access, and far less predictability. You can see this on the GPU side by comparing a XboxOneX to an RX580, both are very similar pieces of silicon (~6Tflop ~40CU ~Polaris GPU) and both deliver very similar performance, however on PC you'd need 16GB total memory (SRAM+8GB VRAM), possibly 24GB in some titles at least to get near the consoles capabilities due to system overhead. There's no direct comparison to the 8-core jaguars, but the 8-core bulldozers, particularly at lower clocks, aren't a world apart from them, while still holding up well in many modern multi-threaded titles.
This is quite fortunate though, because recently memory has been the most expensive part of these systems, and the cost of memory at the moment is a big part of the reason they can come in cheaper with similar performance even though they now use essentially PC silicon & software. Obviously, this is mainly due to the fact that console APUs can use a single shared bank of GDDR memory, which anything with a socket for either the processor or memory couldn't use, as GDDR requires a direct soldered connection to maintain its intrinsic bandwidth advantages.
This is quite fortunate though, because recently memory has been the most expensive part of these systems, and the cost of memory at the moment is a big part of the reason they can come in cheaper with similar performance even though they now use essentially PC silicon & software. Obviously, this is mainly due to the fact that console APUs can use a single shared bank of GDDR memory, which anything with a socket for either the processor or memory couldn't use, as GDDR requires a direct soldered connection to maintain its intrinsic bandwidth advantages.
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AlienALX
Well-known member
Faux k works very well tbh.
Even though on my Xbone X I am running it at 4k and to the letter of the law it is 4k the enormous cuts they have made to the graphics are totally noticeable if I take a screenshot and then study it on my PC. Like, in Fallout 4 I was standing by a small house on the ocean bay and it looked so beautiful I decided to take a screenshot. When I got to my PC I was like "wow, this looks like ass" lol.
But 12ft away on my TV? it looked drop dead gorgeous.
NeverBackDown
AMD Enthusiast
I really just want 4k60 to be the minimum power target. Although it would most likely be the maximum target realistically speaking
AlienALX
Well-known member
Yeah that would be a good target for next gen to reach.
NeverBackDown
AMD Enthusiast
I mean if the current consoles can hit 4k30, makes sense to improve upon that.
I don't think any corrective eyewear could get my vision to a point where I could discern faux-K from full 4K on a ~40" screen from 2-3 meters, and I think a lot of the population is in a similar boat at those kinds of sizes/ranges or further. The difference from 1080p to 4K is big mostly because of the aliasing on larger screens for me, if images had the smoothness of 4K but not quite the full technical detail I'd be more than happy, for many faster paced titles I'd happily stick with faux-k if it meant better graphical effects & higher & more stable framerate, in fluid gameplay I feel like you get 90% of the benefit.
Technically the OneX can hit 4K60 in a good range of games, some quite graphically intensive (Forza Motorsport 7 is a masterpiece in many ways), so I've no doubt it will be a popular scheme now the CPU isnt holding the framerate down, but for some experiences I'd still like to have the choice, as while true 4K is nice it's also intensive and I'm not always convinced that's the best way to spend the GPUs power budget.
Technically the OneX can hit 4K60 in a good range of games, some quite graphically intensive (Forza Motorsport 7 is a masterpiece in many ways), so I've no doubt it will be a popular scheme now the CPU isnt holding the framerate down, but for some experiences I'd still like to have the choice, as while true 4K is nice it's also intensive and I'm not always convinced that's the best way to spend the GPUs power budget.
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Digital Foundry did a look at this before linus in some form of fashion.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=x0KSJg2sqJM
Whilst it's nice to see that there would appear to be finally a good balance in hardware, its still down to the devs to code around it properly. If I recall, we generally don't see good games until using the engine properly until after something like the 2 year mark...I don't remember launch games bar sony 1st party or msoft pushing the engines from the minute 1 mark.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=x0KSJg2sqJM
Whilst it's nice to see that there would appear to be finally a good balance in hardware, its still down to the devs to code around it properly. If I recall, we generally don't see good games until using the engine properly until after something like the 2 year mark...I don't remember launch games bar sony 1st party or msoft pushing the engines from the minute 1 mark.
That was mostly due to the work around properly making use of 6-7(More cores/more use of the last core were opened to game devs a later on both after a year or two I believe) relatively weak cores spread across two clusters with non-uniform access between each set of 4 and properly utilising the hUMA architecture. Any successor to the current consoles is likely to use a similar setup, so while many of these features remain the work for them has mostly been done, particularly when you consider these Zen cores are also reasonably popular gaming PC parts now. I think that SuborZ+ can use the fact it's still using fairly popular PC gaming blocks just put together in a custom way (Mostly for that GDDR memory) to get reasonable titles out from relatively large local Chinese developers fairly quickly with good utilisation, once they get the WinIoT based OS released anyway, as Windows' heavy memory utilisation is the only thing holding the hardware back currently in any meaningful way.
Of course future western consoles will likely also use some similar blocks, with the exception of the GPU, though properly utilising 6-8 cores is still a challenge many devs struggle with or just ignore in the PC world today so there's definitely still room for improvement on both sides, but it will help that the general layout of them (hUMA based APU with 4c CPU clusters) is consistent.
Of course future western consoles will likely also use some similar blocks, with the exception of the GPU, though properly utilising 6-8 cores is still a challenge many devs struggle with or just ignore in the PC world today so there's definitely still room for improvement on both sides, but it will help that the general layout of them (hUMA based APU with 4c CPU clusters) is consistent.
