Forbes: PS4 May Be Powered By AMD

[mankind]

Forbes is reporting that the next PlayStation console may be powered by AMD.
“Sony is working on an as-yet-unannounced new gaming console,” says the report, citing “former AMD employees” and claiming that AMD “may play a key role in the new product.”
The Xbox 360 is already powered by AMD’s graphics chips, but PS3 uses Nvidia technology.
Both AMD and Sony have declined to comment on the story, but, as Forbes states, AMD’s Chief Financial Officer Thomas Seifert recently identified gaming as something that will drive revenue growth at the company in 2012.
Forbes link through to the ‘full story’, here, although there’s little else there apart from a line that says that “work on another yet-to-be-announced collaboration with Sony is under way, potentially *unseating Nvidia, which powers the PlayStation 3.”
Sounds a little woolly, but there you go.

http://www.thesixthaxis.com/2012/02/...owered-by-amd/

[Inzane2050]

Ouch! If true, then NVIDIA is bonified boned!

But I want NVIDIA for sure to make BC easier.

[Nakatomi Uk]

I'll take that with a massive sppon full of salt but if it were to be true then Sony could save a lot of money because AMD have there own graphics devision thus ATi or former name ATi, and currently AMD/ATi graphics are the bees knees to the PC gaming world with nVidia not far behind. With this in mind Sony could have a complete console with a AMD Console Fusion set-up and it would and should work all ok.

Downside is AMD dont own many Fab plants in fact I think they sold a lot off also AMD CPUs aint the best INTEL are in that respect and always will be thanks to the D***s at the top of AMD over the years they have just screwed over what every CPU launch is good on paper and for hype turns out to be **** cough cough Bulldozer.

Could have more pros than cons thou.

[Sajuuk Khar]

I'll take that with a massive sppon full of salt but if it were to be true then Sony could save a lot of money because AMD have there own graphics devision thus ATi or former name ATi, and currently AMD/ATi graphics are the bees knees to the PC gaming world with nVidia not far behind. With this in mind Sony could have a complete console with a AMD Console Fusion set-up and it would and should work all ok.

Downside is AMD dont own many Fab plants in fact I think they sold a lot off also AMD CPUs aint the best INTEL are in that respect and always will be thanks to the D***s at the top of AMD over the years they have just screwed over what every CPU launch is good on paper and for hype turns out to be **** cough cough Bulldozer.

Could have more pros than cons thou.

I agree with you about all the GPU stuff. I would think the APUs that amd have released could be well suited to a console environment. A modified A8 from amd with a upgraded GPU could pump out some serious eye candy. CPU wise though, I dont see amd or intel offering anything unique enough for a console. I would like to see something else from IBM, maybe a cell evolution, though wouldn't be too shocked to see a custom ARM based cpu.

[Bigdoggy]

actually this is good news considering Nvidia is turning into the premium corporate sellout that causes people to ignore such a company. Nvidia's GPU's are way to expensive and if Sony is going to go a different route in terms of price then AMD is a good option.

[keefy]

Performance wise AMD are doing better in the GPU area they run with and often beat Nvidia GPU's and usually for a good price.
With consoles there is no need for devlopers to follow an API like OpenGL or DirectX they can code directly to the hardware the same goes for any CPU's they do not have to worry about an operating systems innefective scheduiling system or whatever it is that makes Bulldozer perform worse.

[LfCpS3]

Would also make sure that multiplatform titles are similar as well right?

[Bigdoggy]

actually, when I said sellout I should have used a different word, they aren't a corporate sellout but Nvidias GPU's are extremely overpriced, they restrict SLI for the fact of making more money off of 2x highend cards. Personally, I think AMD right now is where they should be, there medium range is solid, Nvidia is not. Nvidia mainly concentrates on the Highend GPU base while AMD does have the highend but there mid range GPU's are better. charts and graphs to me don't mean a damn thing, it's what I experience when I use either AMD or Nvidia and so far, AMD is better.

I like Nvidia highend GPU's and mid range also, but it's just not the price that turns me off. When you use an Nvidia GPU or when I use it at least, I can swear something is missing in it, it's not as smooth of a run as AMD for some reason.

[Soldier 95B]

Great news if true.

TapaTit

[coolguy]

I think sony lost a lot of moeny dealing with Nvidia just like MS did when they used Nvidia for the frist xbox.
I think sony is doin the right thing if true

[D3seeker]

Well, if it's so then it better be awesome!

[daLa]

They better bring a graphical power beast.

[Nakatomi Uk]

actually, when I said sellout I should have used a different word, they aren't a corporate sellout but Nvidias GPU's are extremely overpriced, they restrict SLI for the fact of making more money off of 2x highend cards. Personally, I think AMD right now is where they should be, there medium range is solid, Nvidia is not. Nvidia mainly concentrates on the Highend GPU base while AMD does have the highend but there mid range GPU's are better. charts and graphs to me don't mean a damn thing, it's what I experience when I use either AMD or Nvidia and so far, AMD is better.

I like Nvidia highend GPU's and mid range also, but it's just not the price that turns me off. When you use an Nvidia GPU or when I use it at least, I can swear something is missing in it, it's not as smooth of a run as AMD for some reason.

I havent used a nVidia GPU in years last one I had was a 8600GT and that was ok but then I moved over to the HD5770 even though I have built AMD systems for myself for years I used to AMD/Nvidia set-ups because I like the driver system for Nvidia cards at the time. They have then falling behind as I agree they seem to be interested in pushing high end with it's CUDA platform and forgetting the lower and medium end players are what makes you money and there going for the high gamer.

I do believe AMD could make something for the next PS heck they may have already been researching the 8000 Series platform for it you never know and may skip that for PC users and move to the 9000 series for them

[Vulgotha]

I don't quite get the hate surrounding Nvidia. I prefer them considerably over ATi\AMD, I will only use their desktop GPU's imo.

Remember, ATi are the shifty bastards who would downgrade image quality in the game to score better on benchmarks with review sites with their last batch of GPU's.

[itachi73378]

I don't know but if the rumoured spec sheets circulating the web are true, nvidia's kepler is going to easily beat the 7000 series. So if the ps4 gpu is based on the 7000 series, I'm worried about power.

[Sufi]

Would also make sure that multiplatform titles are similar as well right?

Shouldn't be a problem if the RAM is the same...and well, not split up and stuff.

[itachi73378]

Shouldn't be a problem if the RAM is the same...and well, not split up and stuff.

According to current rumors the console use like 4gigs of DDR3 memory, so it can't be shared (too slow for gpu) so presumably its split. However Sony could go for faster memory like DDR4 unified (but its still slow)

[Inzane2050]

DDR3 is going on 7 years old. I don't think they would use it for that reason. DDR4 is around the corner along with GDDR5 already here. I think those would be more plausible.

[Sufi]

So you guys think MS and Sony's consoles should be similar or completely different?

[Inzane2050]

I think they should be similar to make porting easier.

[TDbank24]

AMD could be the way to go for Sony.

[ex nihilo7]

According to current rumors the console use like 4gigs of DDR3 memory, so it can't be shared (too slow for gpu) so presumably its split. However Sony could go for faster memory like DDR4 unified (but its still slow)

Register > cache > main memory > disk.


Anyways, some of the memory is shared. Thats how you get your threads running parallel yo. There are some performance hits when moving data from the gpu to the cpu, host-to-device, etc. What the PS4 GPU needs is a larger cache than found on today's GPUs. At least thats what I think.

[Two4DaMoney]

So you guys think MS and Sony's consoles should be similar or completely different?

I guess it depends on who's spending the most money.

[keefy]

I don't quite get the hate surrounding Nvidia. I prefer them considerably over ATi\AMD, I will only use their desktop GPU's imo.

Remember, ATi are the shifty bastards who would downgrade image quality in the game to score better on benchmarks with review sites with their last batch of GPU's.

Wasn't in games just benchmarking tools also if you google it Nvidia did similar things in the early part of this century kettle calling the pot black.

AMD OpenGL support sucks, games crash left and right.

[itachi73378]

Register > cache > main memory > disk.


Anyways, some of the memory is shared. Thats how you get your threads running parallel yo. There are some performance hits when moving data from the gpu to the cpu, host-to-device, etc. What the PS4 GPU needs is a larger cache than found on today's GPUs. At least thats what I think.

I'm not so good with these things but last time I checked cache size were extremely small compared to main memory. Registers are even smaller. The most they can do is make the cache 2x or 3x larger? That still isn't enough. Considering the things ps3 has achieved EVEN WITH the infamous split memory pools, I think devs can handle it for next gen aswell.