Next-gen PS5 and next Xbox speculation launch thread - MY ANACONDA DON'T WANT NONE

[modiz]

GPU is not the only measure of performance.
A 4tflop gpu, 16-24gddr6 and a 8core zen 2 would be more caperble then the X1X.

However overhead is needed to guarantee 1080p, so I would expect at least 4.8tflops if anaconda is 12tf.
Lockhart needs to be at least 40% of anacondas gpu to have 1080p in the majority of games.

Click to shrink...

the discussion was specifically about the 4TF being a "marketing nightmare" because a 6TF current gen sku exists, it might make sense why would it be stronger, but people who own an X1X will be surprised to find out a "weaker system" can run next gen games when they can't. I agree with the general thinking here that lockhart is at the very least 6TF and most likely 8TF with a 399$ price which will help keep graphics parity other than resolution.

 

[ItWasMeantToBe19]

the discussion was specifically about the 4TF being a "marketing nightmare" because a 6TF current gen sku exists, it might make sense why would it be stronger, but people who own an X1X will be surprised to find out a "weaker system" can run next gen games when they can't. I agree with the general thinking here that lockhart is at the very least 6TF and most likely 8TF with a 399$ price which will help keep graphics parity other than resolution.

Click to shrink...

A "budget" option for $399 is kind of a joke, I'm going to be real here.

 

[Deleted member 1589]

I dunno, the 6TF X1X runs some current gen games at 1440p, trying to push next gen visuals on a 5TF GPU sounds like a nightmare even at 1080p.

Click to shrink...

The main problem is Jaguar. Some things need to be turned down to run at 30fps

 

[BitsandBytes]

A "budget" option for $399 is kind of a joke, I'm going to be real here.

Click to shrink...

Whilst I would tend to agree, just how many were quick to declare PS5 would be $500 minimum and further thinking the Anaconda could be even higher?

$399 then seems like a bargain.....

I think when it all shakes out we'll have the obvious $299, $399 and $499 in power order.

 

[Deleted member 12635]

They wont be using TF to push cheapbox at all, so it doesn't matter as far as marketing goes. It is a cheap option to play next gen games with new tech like ssd and zen, and they will pump out a bunch of anaconda footage for dat halo effect. + gamepass! Keep your kids quiet for the cost of a Netflix sub! They've got lots of sales hooks besides more power.

Click to shrink...

Sure we'll have to wait and see but with a much newer GPU, massively better CPU, same amount (12GB) but faster RAM as 1X and secret sauce, it could perform great at 1080P even if paper specs are 4TF. Also Microsoft might not highlight TF numbers as mentioned by joe-zazen.

Click to shrink...

We all have seen their planned marketing message, right (the tag lines for each console from the Klobrille tweet that is a copy of a real MS document), so I ask myself how this could work. The good informed customer will ask about why a next gen consoles doesn't show at least the same peak performance compared to the top model of last gen even it is the "budget" console. Also how else other than with peak performance MS would be able to convince people before launch they still also have the most powerful console to offer. I personally don't know if such an approach of two different marketing hooks can work in this modern era of social media all over the place.

 

[ItWasMeantToBe19]

Whilst I would tend to agree, just how many were quick to declare PS5 would be $500 minimum and further thinking the Anaconda could be even higher?

$399 then seems like a bargain.....

I think when it all shakes out we'll have the obvious $299, $399 and $499 in power order.

Click to shrink...

$399 won't feel like a bargain to any general consumer, I feel confident about this.

 

[Deleted member 12635]

$399 won't feel like a bargain to any general consumer, I feel confident about this.

Click to shrink...

Lowest entry price <> Bargain
I don't think that any consumer expects bargain prices for a brand new product especially if it is a technology product.

 

[joe_zazen]

The problem I see with this is that MS first party titles are not the best quality. They're "good enough for gamepass", pay a couple of dollars a month for some b tier timewasters.

I just can't see the big third party titles showing up on gamepass and cannibalising their full price sales for cents on the dollar. So you're left with the big MS franchises that the mass market still aren't interested in.

Even on resetera polls have shown it's games that sell hardware. The mass market punters are even less likely to buy in now for stuff coming down the pipe later (or not at all!) from recent acquisitions.

Click to shrink...

this is why they have been buying studios—i think they are at 14 now, and are still looking for more. Past /= future. It wont be long before they are releasing more first party games than sony.

In 3 years, there will be a new game-pass game from MS studios every two or three months, and some will be great. Then you throw in the AAA stuff like Halo GaaS game, Forzas, Fable, Gears, etc and it is not hard to see how a regular gamer might be fine with nothing else but gamepass in 3 years plus the odd gta or fifa purchase.

Plus we need to throw streaming into the mix and the fact that gamepass will be the same on pc and they will be releasing both the most expensive and the cheapest consoles. They've shaken things up big time, and we'll see how it plays out.

Very well then Sony can counter with ps4 and psnow. That would be cheaper and psnow has a lot more traffic doesn't it?

Click to shrink...

The defining feature of gamepass is all new first party games day one. MS has more studios now than sony (or soon will), and a decent stable of AAA games. So people will be reminded of this every time a new game drops. It is quite compelling imo, even if I have no interest i

 

[Anthony Hopkins]

I find this part of the most recent reddit "Sony dev conference" leak, interesting

My friend also said Sony as of recently wants to position itself as a premium brand and this will be the messaging focus.

Click to shrink...

This does not make a whole lot sense, the whole philosophy of the PS4 was to make a simple powerful box at an attractive pricepoint with no marketing bullshit like "blast processing"

PS4's marketing was not about being a "premium gaming brand" this was clear from the adverts to the packaging.
Does not make much sense to alter the strategy that gave them so much success with the PS4.

I guess SCE management has expirienced some shake ups recently, so maybe this is a result of that?

 

[Jdogg4089]

I dunno, the 6TF X1X runs some current gen games at 1440p, trying to push next gen visuals on a 5TF GPU sounds like a nightmare even at 1080p.

Click to shrink...

Here's the thing though. Wouldn't a 4tf gpu massively bottleneck the cpu? They would probably have to clock it at 1.6 just to barely keep even.

 

[Deleted member 1589]

I find this part of the most recent reddit "Sony dev conference" leak, interesting



This does not make a whole lot sense, the whole philosophy of the PS4 was to make a simple powerful box at an attractive pricepoint with no marketing bullshit like "blast processing"

PS4's marketing was not about being a "premium gaming brand" this was clear from the adverts to the packaging.
Does not make much sense to alter the strategy that gave them so much success with the PS4.

I guess SCE management has expirienced some shake ups recently, so maybe this is a result of that?

Click to shrink...

Not really, and PS4 had marketing bullshit; supercharged pc architecture anyone?

The reason why they failed with the PS3 was not because they were being a 'premium gaming brand', but rather a shitload of clusterfucks.

Right now they are taking a page out of the Apple rulebook by trying to position themselves as 'the' video game brand, after recovering from PS3. It's something they could do considering how they have positioned themselves world wide.

 

[joe_zazen]

I find this part of the most recent reddit "Sony dev conference" leak, interesting



This does not make a whole lot sense, the whole philosophy of the PS4 was to make a simple powerful box at an attractive pricepoint with no marketing bullshit like "blast processing"

PS4's marketing was not about being a "premium gaming brand" this was clear from the adverts to the packaging.
Does not make much sense to alter the strategy that gave them so much success with the PS4.

I guess SCE management has expirienced some shake ups recently, so maybe this is a result of that?

Click to shrink...

They might not be able to compete for the cheap gamer post ps4 with MS and Google, so they want to do what Apple does and snag the premium customer segment. It can work. I really think we need to wait though until we get more info on Sony's next gen plans in terms of pricing and services.

 

[Jdogg4089]

Here's the thing though. Wouldn't a 4tf gpu massively bottleneck the cpu? They would probably have to clock it at 1.6 just to barely keep even.

Click to shrink...

Edit: nvm, it wouldn't. Multithread makes it have a retarded number of cores but STILL no bottleneck on an rx570 and ryzen 7 2700.

 

[BitsandBytes]

We all have seen their planned marketing message, right (the tag lines for each console from the Klobrille tweet that is a copy of a real MS document), so I ask myself how this could work. The good informed customer will ask about why a next gen consoles doesn't show at least the same peak performance compared to the top model of last gen even it is the "budget" console. Also how else other than with peak performance MS would be able to convince people before launch they still also have the most powerful console to offer. I personally don't know if such an approach of two different marketing hooks can work in this modern era of social media all over the place.

Click to shrink...

Unfortunately I haven't seen the original doc and don't know if any specific TF numbers are mentioned or if it is just the general "performance leader" language. I'm hoping this coming working week the leaks come....

$399 won't feel like a bargain to any general consumer, I feel confident about this.

Click to shrink...

For Lockhart, yes. That is why it seems "obvious" to me that the three SKUs would come in at $299 for Lockhart, $399 for PS5 and $499 for Anaconda.

 

[Anthony Hopkins]

They might not be able to compete for the cheap gamer post ps4 with MS and Google, so they want to do what Apple does and snag the premium customer segment. It can work. I really think we need to wait though until we get more info on Sony's next gen plans in terms of pricing and services.

Click to shrink...

I agree, people are getting carried away with all these new "leaks".

We all have seen their planned marketing message, right (the tag lines for each console from the Klobrille tweet that is a copy of a real MS document), so I ask myself how this could work. The good informed customer will ask about why a next gen consoles doesn't show at least the same peak performance compared to the top model of last gen even it is the "budget" console. Also how else other than with peak performance MS would be able to convince people before launch they still also have the most powerful console to offer. I personally don't know if such an approach of two different marketing hooks can work in this modern era of social media all over the place.

Click to shrink...

Rather simply, show them a video of a Lockhart next gen game and say to the informed customer "Does your X1X have games that look like this?"
And also explain that the X1X needed 6tflops to make X1S games run at 4k, but lockhart has a new next generation CPU, GPU and memory system and 6tflops of last gen performance is not needed for 1080p resolutions.

I've worked in game retail and selling a $299 lockhart that can play next gen games but @ 1080p would be an easy sell to most casuals. Ive a hard time explaining the benifits of the pro + X1X they say things like "but it looks the same"
People on hardcore gaming forums don't realise how much most people don't care about 4k gaming, if casuals do by the pro or X, they just think its better because they have a 4k TV and they think its going to be like ps3 to ps4.

 

[Hudsoniscool]

A "budget" option for $399 is kind of a joke, I'm going to be real here.

Click to shrink...

Ya Microsoft are calling it the budget or value option. No way it's 399$ retail. Look I have no clue if it's gunna be 4tf or 8tf but the price range on this thing is 249-349 with 299 almost certain at this point.

 

[Deleted member 1589]

For Lockhart, yes. That is why it seems "obvious" to me that the three SKUs would come in at $299 for Lockhart, $399 for PS5 and $499 for Anaconda.

Click to shrink...

Except PS5 is the dark horse there.

When it comes to Anaconda I would think that by the slight chance PS5 is actually better in some ways for gaming at 499, MS would just overclock/add RAM and sell it at 599, as long as they get to be the most powerful. Even MS insiders are speculating this.

 

[eathdemon]

Except PS5 is the dark horse there.

When it comes to Anaconda I would think that by the slight chance PS5 is actually better in some ways for gaming at 499, MS would just overclock/add RAM and sell it at 599, as long as they get to be the most powerful. Even MS insiders are speculating this.

Click to shrink...

it feels like sony's "advantage" will be the supper fast nvme ssd. I could be wrong, but cant see the extre benifit over a normal nvme ssd, and given the most likely 499 price, it means sony is cutting conrers somewhere else. will be intreasting to see what happends.

 

[BitsandBytes]

Except PS5 is the dark horse there.

When it comes to Anaconda I would think that by the slight chance PS5 is actually better in some ways for gaming at 499, MS would just overclock/add RAM and sell it at 599, as long as they get to be the most powerful. Even MS insiders are speculating this.

Click to shrink...

I really don't think either Sony or Microsoft will dare touch $599. Especially Sony for obvious reasons.

All rumours and insiders are saying or hinting Anaconda will be the most powerful and/or performance leader. So for me it means PS5 will need to be cheaper and Lockhart cheaper still hence my $299, $399, $499 price point guesses in my last post.

 

[Deleted member 1589]

I really don't think either Sony or Microsoft will dare touch $599. Especially Sony for obvious reasons.

All rumours and insiders are saying or hinting Anaconda will be the most powerful and/or performance leader. So for me it means PS5 will need to be cheaper and Lockhart cheaper still hence my $299, $399, $499 price point guesses in my last post.

Click to shrink...

Here. I'm not saying you're wrong for your price point guesses of course, but what I'm trying to say is PS5's pricepoint can be what cause MS to change a few things around. Pricepoint included.

Sure and I agree, things are confusing based on that.

Microsoft's Dante (the dev kit) is more powerful than Anaconda, this is typical, as you give devs the kitchen sink and ship a subset of that hardware. From what i have seen, the dev kit matches the CPU/GPU but things like RAM, and ports are different. Anaconda will have a smaller amount of RAM but I dont think it's locked down yet as they wait to see how performance shakes out across the industry.

To go from 12 to 16 gb of ram is trivial at this point, or to go from 16 to 32 etc can be done but will come down to cost. So what I believe is happening, they are weighing out Sony's options and pricing RAM and storage etc (still expecting full solid state, likely of the NVME flavor) to make sure they are significantly more expensive than the PS5 but they also want that crown of highest performing device.

It's a bit like poker, Microsoft wants to, at minimum, match the PS5 but in reality, is trying to have better specs at the end of the day. But with neither company playing their cards fully yet, we don't quite know.


Remember, the base features, CPU/GPU are both coming from AMD, so raw features for those parts will be similar but will come down to thinks like clock speed, cooling, and software optimization.

Click to shrink...

 

[eathdemon]

I really don't think either Sony or Microsoft will dare touch $599. Especially Sony for obvious reasons.

All rumours and insiders are saying or hinting Anaconda will be the most powerful and/or performance leader. So for me it means PS5 will need to be cheaper and Lockhart cheaper still hence my $299, $399, $499 price point guesses in my last post.

Click to shrink...

one of the big reassons I think Lockhart will hit the 299 price is becouse the gpu chip will be effectively free, it will be chips ms would have just thrown away otherwise, combine with being able to use less ram, a cheaper power supply, and 299 is much more realistic.

 

[Anthony Hopkins]

Except PS5 is the dark horse there.

When it comes to Anaconda I would think that by the slight chance PS5 is actually better in some ways for gaming at 499, MS would just overclock/add RAM and sell it at 599, as long as they get to be the most powerful. Even MS insiders are speculating this.

Click to shrink...

I don't think PS5 is most likely to be $499

A 10-11tflop gpu, Zen2 8 core, 16gb gddr6 and hybrid ssd memory + hdd @$399 is more appealing then a 12-14tf gpu, Zen2 8 core cpu, SSD, 24gb gddr6 @$499
And the cheaper version still has an "advanced feature set"


For ref Cerny said on price:
"will be appealing in light of its advanced feature set"

 

[Deleted member 1589]

Interesting to know that the person who wrote the article on AMD had two thirds of its staff working for Sony's PS5 worked at AMD as a Senior Marketing Specialist.

Maybe it's true after all.

 

[Deleted member 40133]

if its true, then why does it matter? Why should Sony get the go ahead with a fake narrative they are stronger?

Click to shrink...

People. Even insiders, were positive

this is why they have been buying studios—i think they are at 14 now, and are still looking for more. Past /= future. It wont be long before they are releasing more first party games than sony.

In 3 years, there will be a new game-pass game from MS studios every two or three months, and some will be great. Then you throw in the AAA stuff like Halo GaaS game, Forzas, Fable, Gears, etc and it is not hard to see how a regular gamer might be fine with nothing else but gamepass in 3 years plus the odd gta or fifa purchase.

Plus we need to throw streaming into the mix and the fact that gamepass will be the same on pc and they will be releasing both the most expensive and the cheapest consoles. They've shaken things up big time, and we'll see how it plays out.



The defining feature of gamepass is all new first party games day one. MS has more studios now than sony (or soon will), and a decent stable of AAA games. So people will be reminded of this every time a new game drops. It is quite compelling imo, even if I have no interest i

Click to shrink...

More studios does not mean more actual developers. Sony have stated they are not interested in buying more studios but expanding the headcount. They've stated they have the largest network or developers (headcount) of all the platform holders. Guerilla expanded by 200+, that's an entire studio

 

[VX1]

my $299, $399, $499 price point guesses in my last post

Click to shrink...

My thoughts as well.

 

[Deleted member 36493]

I really don't think either Sony or Microsoft will dare touch $599. Especially Sony for obvious reasons.

All rumours and insiders are saying or hinting Anaconda will be the most powerful and/or performance leader. So for me it means PS5 will need to be cheaper and Lockhart cheaper still hence my $299, $399, $499 price point guesses in my last post.

Click to shrink...

Or MS will eat a bigger loss

 

[VX1]

Sorry for the off topic, but i just noticed our Mat Piscatella deleted his Era account...damn :(

All the best Mat!

 

[Deleted member 1589]

AMD built Vega for Apple and it is building Navi for the Sony PS5 – which is expected to launch in 2020

The reason why Lisa did that was simple: semi-custom applications is a lucrative business. The margins are low, but the volume is high and the net income is consistent. Catering to gamers was not part of the win-condition; making AMD a viable, financially robust company was. Here is a fun fact: Vega was designed primarily for Apple and Navi is being designed for Sony – the PS5 to be precise.

This meant that the graphics department had to be tied directly to the roadmap that these semi-custom applications followed. Since Sony needed the Navi GPU to be ready by the time the PS5 would launch (expectedly around 2020) that is the deadline they needed to work on. Similarly, for Vega, Apple's timeline is what actually dictated the release of the GPU and not the other way around. AMD's Radeon graphics cards were intricately tied to the industry's semi-custom roadmaps by design and that is something that a lot of people disagreed with. This is also what, I suspect, precipitated the departure of key executives including the RTG boss, Raja Koduri.

Click to shrink...

Fucking hell, I just read the other article in Wccftech.

With Xbox, I won't be surprised if most of the work is done by Microsoft. It's not like they don't have the manpower and people familar with AMD's GPUs.

 

[BitsandBytes]

Or MS will eat a bigger loss

Click to shrink...

Nah. This is another thing I don't think either will do. They didn't do a large loss last time and for that matter both launch and mid-gen consoles were the boring $399 and $499 respectively. Almost too obvious to assume the same will be done with next-gen?

 

[Anthony Hopkins]

The way I see it is

$399 = 11tflops, 16gb gddr6, sdd chips + hdd
$499 = 12.9tflops 24gb gdd6, NVEme Ssd

Ray tracing implementations will be like the checkerboard optimisation for the Pro.

 

[RTX ON]

I don't think PS5 is most likely to be $499

A 10-11tflop gpu, Zen2 8 core, 16gb gddr6 and hybrid ssd memory + hdd @$399 is more appealing then a 12-14tf gpu, Zen2 8 core cpu, SSD, 24gb gddr6 @$499
And the cheaper version still has an "advanced feature set"


For ref Cerny said on price:
"will be appealing in light of its advanced feature set"

Click to shrink...

You truly believe the first option is viable at $399?

 

[TheTruthofKayle]

If Lockhart is $299-$399, with ssd and premium cpu...well, how many TF gpu do you think is reasonable given XB SAD is $250.

Click to shrink...

I make you the same question if today the pro is 409 Euro in Italy (around 450 dollars) and is 4.2 TF how much TF you expect from the PS5 with 16/24gb ram nvme ssd and a premium cpu ...if it will be 399?
(This to show you that what you asking is essentially a wrong way to look at this)

 

[eathdemon]

You truly believe the first option is viable at $399?

Click to shrink...

if it was a standerd nvme maybe, nut unlikly. given that they are using a pcie 4.0 nvme no way.

 

[Anthony Hopkins]

I think Microsoft, in the long run have shot themselves in the foot with the "6tf GPU hyyyyyype" marketing for the X.

Their new console will be seen as only twice as powerful......Sony's however They have the advantage straight out the gate by claiming 3 times as powerful as the Pro.


You truly believe the first option is viable at $399?

Click to shrink...

Yes. With a $50 - 100 loss
If they can do the $499 spec for that much then they can do the $399 spec for that much

The $399 specs is saving on gpu, cooling, 8gb less memory and cheaper storage solution. That should save $100

Also that gpu is roughly the same power as a vega 56, which can be had now for $250, with 8gb membey, pcb and cooling

By nov 2020 a vega 56 level gpu should be cheap source, like $150 - $200

 

[anexanhume]

Vega 20 was designed specifically for N7 process from the start. There's nothing "shrank" about it.

Click to shrink...

Without a source, it's one argument against another. The vast swaths of empty die space in the die shot compared to 14nm Vega say otherwise.

Consoles assuming they'll go into full production at the end of 2020 are very likely to use either the N7+ process (the one with EUV usage) or the recently announced N6 process - which is more or less a shrink of N7.

Click to shrink...

Again, going to need a source. There's no reason to suggest any of these designs have been ported to N7+, that it will be ready for HPC volume in 2020, or that 6nm will be ready for Fall 2020.

Even the Wired article calls out 7nm:

The CPU is based on the third generation of AMD's Ryzen line and contains eight cores of the company's new 7nm Zen 2 microarchitecture.

Click to shrink...

And 6nm is out of the question:

TSMC will start risk production of chips using its N6 fabrication technology in the first quarter of 2020. Keeping in mind that it usually takes companies about a year to start high-volume manufacturing (HVM) after the beginning of risk production, expect N6 to be used for mass products starting from 2021.

Click to shrink...

 

[SharpX68K]

Regarding Navi and AMD's Next Gen GPU architecture, from April 2018.

AMD Navi Mainstream GPU to Have GTX 1080 Class Performance, Succeed RX 580

Navi is Radeon's last Graphics Core Next based architecture and is expected to be the world's first high performance GPU built on 7nm process technology. Little is known about Navi in the techspere to date. One detail that we seldomly see reported is that AMD is working on two Navi GPUs, we'll call them Navi 10 and Navi 11 for the time being. One is designed for the desktop market and the other for the mobile market.

Click to shrink...

According to this report from Fudzilla, Navi will not be a large high-end GPU. Although the report doesn't specify which Navi GPU is being talked about, we're going to assume that it's the Navi 10 desktop part. The report further states that this Navi part will be a high performance, low power chip with the performance of today's high-end GPUs and the positioning and power consumption of mainstream parts.

Click to shrink...

Behind The Scenes at AMD's Radeon GPU Labs

Over the past year we've been hearing whispers about a project at the company to bring horizontal die stacking technology — commonly referred to as 2.5D stacking — and expertise over from the CPU department to the GPU department. With the intention of making high-end multi-die GPUs, akin to Ryzen Threadripper. We would have something like Navi 10 and Navi 20, with Navi 20 featuring two Navi 10 dies in the same package. This Navi 20 is what would theoretically go up against NVIDIA's high-end parts, a la GTX 1180/Ti.

Click to shrink...

(note: that was before nvidia named their cards RTX 2080/Ti)

This die-stacking program we're told is what the company meant by "scalability" in its Navi Roadmap. More recently we've been hearing that the future of this Navi die stacking project may be uncertain in 2019, as more die stacking engineering effort is poured into AMD's entirely new 2020 post-GCN "Nextgen" architecture. A design that we're told is as revolutionary as the company's Zen CPU architecture.

Click to shrink...

If the Navi die stacking project has indeed been postponed then we will see AMD debut both its revolutionary new architecture, the Zen of GPUs if you will, and multi-die GPU stacking technology in 2020, after Navi. This would allow the company to address all segments of the market, from the entry level all the way to the ultra enthusiast segment just by employing a single GPU die that can be stacked to meet the needs of every market segment.

Click to shrink...

We've also recently heard about another GPU project AMD has started, one that will have a clear and more immediate impact.

Click to shrink...

Now, if the correct thinking is that Arcturus is not the namee of next gen GPU micro-architecture, but a specific GPU or configuration of Navi, I am wondering if Arcturus is the big chip Navi 20, revised version of Navi or dual-Navi 10 card. or something along those lines. Or even a specific GPU in the Next Gen GPU family, but not the name of the new architecture itself. We've been through this before. Vega was originally known as Greenland as far back as early 2015, and was meant to be the flagship of AMD's Arctic Islands family. It turned out AMD had two new GPU families on the horizon back then, Polaris and Vega.
The Arctic Islands name never became official.

Anyway, here's a follow-up article, also from April 2018.

AMD RX 600 Series GPU Project "Zen" Detailed – Radeon on Steroids to Amp Clock Speeds & Efficiency

A couple of days ago we reported that AMD is working on a mainstream 7nm Navi GPU with GTX 1080 class performance to debut in 2019 at around ~$250. We also reported that the company is working on another project that's going to have a clear and more immediate impact on the company's graphics cards and their competitiveness in the market.

Click to shrink...

The New Radeon Technologies Group
Today we're finally taking the lid off what this project is and what it's about. Officially we're told that this project is unnamed, however in some circles it's referred to as project "Zen". A perfect name for it as you'll soon find out due to its nature and the people involved in it.

Click to shrink...

AMD Assembles Zen Team of Engineers For Radeon Project "Zen"
One of the most significant changes that have occurred after Raja's departure is the assembly of a "Zen team" of engineers at the Radeon Technologies Group whose sole purpose is to drastically improve the performance of AMD's GPU designs, by working alongside the company's established engineering teams at RTG.

Click to shrink...

We're told that the new team was put together around October of last year after it was obvious that Raja was intent on leaving. It includes several key engineers who had leadership roles in bringing AMD's Zen CPU to market. One of the leading figures for Radeon Project Zen is none other than Suzanne Plummer, who was a key architect behind the company's incredibly popular Ryzen CPUs.

Click to shrink...

Radeon Project "Zen" & RTG's Zen Team Supercharging AMD's GPU Roadmap Starting With RX 600 Series

The new team has been put in place to inject the company's upcoming GPU products with a dose of engineering steroids so to speak and leapfrog the company's original GPU roadmap. It's tasked with bringing expertise from the original Zen CPU project to the GPU side as well as to innovate in two key areas in an effort to make upcoming GPU products more competitive than originally planned.

Click to shrink...

The two key areas that the team is focused on is significantly improving the clock speeds of AMD's GPU designs and pushing them to be more power efficient. We're told that this project was put in motion under the direct orders of CEO Su, who expects results in as early as this year. Although the team is also involved with engineering efforts around the Navi architecture which is expected in 2019 as well as the company's brand new post-GCN architecture that's expected in 2020.

Click to shrink...

We've been hearing a lot of chatter in private channels about how the company's post-GCN, all new architecture is going to be Radeon's Zen so to speak. But if what we've been hearing about Radeon Project Zen is also accurate, we might see some of the new team's results with the Radeon RX 600 series, much earlier than 2020.

Click to shrink...

How all of this impact next gen consoles, we'll have to wait and see. But I wouldn't put it past Microsoft to get AMD to engineer a GPU that uses most of the next gen GPU feature set, like they did with Xbox 360's Xenos GPU for 2005. The unified shader architecture that ATI made for Xbox 360 did not show up in Radeon cards until Spring 2007 - The R600 GPU in Radeon HD 2900XT. I see no reason for Xbox Scarlett family (Anaconda, Lockhart, Dante dev kits, future xCloud server racks, etc) not to have AMD Next Gen GPU architecture.

 

[Deleted member 1589]

I make you the same question if today the pro is 409 Euro in Italy (around 450 dollars) and is 4.2 TF how much TF you expect from the PS5 with 16/24gb ram nvme ssd and a premium cpu ...if it will be 399?
(This to show you that what you asking is essentially a wrong way to look at this)

Click to shrink...

Problem is you look at it with an enthusiast perspective. You see the numbers behind it.

Lockhart is being sold to people who are looking for a better, cheaper console to play video games, which is to say outnumber us enthusiasts by oh, tens of millions.

I do think it's a risk, but it's doable. 'Optimised for 1080p' and 'Optimised for 4K' is a marketing term that they can focus on. On ground marketing that shows that performance on 1080p is as smooth as Anaconda on 4k TV is another.

 

[mangochutney]

Who really knows. Maybe I am making a mistake compare it to the Xbox One X. But it would be weird if Lockhart would have less peak performance than the One X. Would be a marketing nightmare.

Click to shrink...

Yes, they would have to ditch X1X at that point - and maybe they are planning to anyway.

Something that stuck out to me on klobrille's graphic is how under Lockhart next-gen was in quotes.

Almost as if to suggest yes it is essentially a next-gen console but not really.

I find it a fascinating concept. Microsoft seems to be banking on the decoy effect buy if Lockhart is too gimped and Anaconda is not miles beyond the PS5 it could end up having the reverse effect.

 

[FIREKNIGHT2029]

I don't think PS5 is most likely to be $499

A 10-11tflop gpu, Zen2 8 core, 16gb gddr6 and hybrid ssd memory + hdd @$399 is more appealing then a 12-14tf gpu, Zen2 8 core cpu, SSD, 24gb gddr6 @$499
And the cheaper version still has an "advanced feature set"


For ref Cerny said on price:
"will be appealing in light of its advanced feature set"

Click to shrink...

I agree with this.

 

[Anthony Hopkins]

Yes, they would have to ditch X1X at that point - and maybe they are planning to anyway.

Something that stuck out to me on klobrille's graphic is how under Lockhart next-gen was in quotes.

Almost as if to suggest yes it is essentially a next-gen console but not really.

I find it a fascinating concept. Microsoft seems to be banking on the decoy effect buy if Lockhart is too gimped and Anaconda is not miles beyond the PS5 it could end up having the reverse effect.

Click to shrink...

Reverse effect?
Please clarify

 

[FSavage]

Regarding Navi and AMD's Next Gen GPU architecture, from April 2018.

AMD Navi Mainstream GPU to Have GTX 1080 Class Performance, Succeed RX 580




Behind The Scenes at AMD's Radeon GPU Labs

(note: that was before nvidia named their cards RTX 2080/Ti)






Now, if the correct thinking is that Arcturus is not the namee of next gen GPU micro-architecture, but a specific GPU or configuration of Navi, I am wondering if Arcturus is the big chip Navi 20, revised version of Navi or dual-Navi 10 card. or something along those lines. Or even a specific GPU in the Next Gen GPU family, but not the name of the new architecture itself. We've been through this before. Vega was originally known as Greenland as far back as early 2015, and was meant to be the flagship of AMD's Arctic Islands family. It turned out AMD had two new GPU families on the horizon back then, Polaris and Vega.
The Arctic Islands name never became official.

Anyway, here's a follow-up article, also from April 2018.

AMD RX 600 Series GPU Project "Zen" Detailed – Radeon on Steroids to Amp Clock Speeds & Efficiency














How all of this impact next gen consoles, we'll have to wait and see. But I wouldn't put it past Microsoft to get AMD to engineer a GPU that uses most of the next gen feature set, like they did with Xbox 360's Xenos GPU for 2005. The unified shader architecture that ATI made for Xbox 360 did not show up in Radeon cards until Spring 2007.

Click to shrink...

That 1.8 MHz frequency on Gonzalo (PS5?) is looking a lot more believable. A lot of info here seem to match recent leaks.

 

[eathdemon]

still think people in this thread dont get just how much more gpu power is needed for 4k v 1080p, even a 4tfp gpu is more powerful at 1080p, than a 12tfp gpu at 4k. just going from 1080p to 4k requres a 4x power jump, and 4 to 12 is only 3x.

 

[Deleted member 1589]

still think people in this thread dont get just how much more gpu power is needed for 4k v 1080p, even a 4tfp gpu is more powerful at 1080p, than a 12tfp gpu at 4k. just going from 1080p to 4k requres a 4x power jump, and 4 to 12 is only 3x.

Click to shrink...

10k tfps is good enough to run at 4k, it's the 4 tfps gpu that is very overpowered for a 1080p resolution.

 

[TheThreadsThatBindUs]

Regarding Navi and AMD's Next Gen GPU architecture, from April 2018.

AMD Navi Mainstream GPU to Have GTX 1080 Class Performance, Succeed RX 580


Behind The Scenes at AMD's Radeon GPU Labs

(note: that was before nvidia named their cards RTX 2080/Ti)



Now, if the correct thinking is that Arcturus is not the namee of next gen GPU micro-architecture, but a specific GPU or configuration of Navi, I am wondering if Arcturus is the big chip Navi 20, revised version of Navi or dual-Navi 10 card. or something along those lines. Or even a specific GPU in the Next Gen GPU family, but not the name of the new architecture itself. We've been through this before. Vega was originally known as Greenland as far back as early 2015, and was meant to be the flagship of AMD's Arctic Islands family. It turned out AMD had two new GPU families on the horizon back then, Polaris and Vega.
The Arctic Islands name never became official.

Anyway, here's a follow-up article, also from April 2018.

AMD RX 600 Series GPU Project "Zen" Detailed – Radeon on Steroids to Amp Clock Speeds & Efficiency


How all of this impact next gen consoles, we'll have to wait and see. But I wouldn't put it past Microsoft to get AMD to engineer a GPU that uses most of the next gen GPU feature set, like they did with Xbox 360's Xenos GPU for 2005. The unified shader architecture that ATI made for Xbox 360 did not show up in Radeon cards until Spring 2007 - The R600 GPU in Radeon HD 2900XT. I see no reason for Xbox Scarlett family (Anaconda, Lockhart, Dante dev kits, future xCloud server racks, etc) not to have AMD Next Gen GPU architecture.

Click to shrink...

I think wccftech was just throwing shit at the wall to see what sticks.

Almost every rumour they've peddled from 2018, they written a more recent rumour that contradicts it. I don't think it's an overarching coherent narrative, rather wccftech printing BS rumours for shits and giggles.

 

[nekkid]

still think people in this thread dont get just how much more gpu power is needed for 4k v 1080p, even a 4tfp gpu is more powerful at 1080p, than a 12tfp gpu at 4k. just going from 1080p to 4k requres a 4x power jump, and 4 to 12 is only 3x.

Click to shrink...

It doesn't necessarily scale like that.

 

[Lagspike_exe]

I think wccftech was just throwing shit at the wall to see what sticks.

Almost every rumour they've peddled from 2018, they written a more recent rumour that contradicts it. I don't think it's an overarching coherent narrative, rather wccftech printing BS rumours for shits and giggles.

Click to shrink...

Yeah, they're basically posting every angle to get clicks and then when the actual numbers are out, they'll link to the correct claim and tell people "We told you so!".

 

[Raide]

You know, I am not sure what kind of TF number or secret sauce I would be happy with. Knowing my Xbox stuff will be BC is great anyway and Game Pass keeps getting better and better. I am hoping for something that pushes 60fps as the main option, even if its 4k CBr or however they do it. RT would be cool but no point putting it in it is half-baked and is only a minor upgrade at the cost of performance hitting too badly.

 

[mangochutney]

Reverse effect?
Please clarify

Click to shrink...

If we go along with Anaconda being the most powerful, but not by huge amounts and we go along with the hypothesised price points then I think Anaconda lacks enough power advantage for people opt for it over PS5.

But there's a lot of if's and buts. If Anaconda didn't have the hypothesised price gap, but instead was closer - let's say $50 instead of $100 I would say Anaconda then becomes the much more attractive proposition.

I think Lockhart exists to get you to spend more. But if Ancaconda is too much more, PS5 wins out for the masses as it becomes 90% of the console for much less of the price.

I don't think it matters to the launch day buyers, however.

 

[SharpX68K]

I think wccftech was just throwing shit at the wall to see what sticks.

Almost every rumour they've peddled from 2018, they written a more recent rumour that contradicts it. I don't think it's an overarching coherent narrative, rather wccftech printing BS rumours for shits and giggles.

Click to shrink...

Possibly, or probably true. That said, we shouldn't discount what Microsoft and ATI did during 2002-2004 the main development years for Xbox 360. The Xenos aka "C1" GPU was a lot more advanced than the Radeon X1800 (R520) released in Oct. 2005 and X1900 (R580) released in early 2006. Nvidia had unified shaders in the G80 / GeForce 8800 GTX in Fall 2006, yet the PS3 released around the same time using Nvidia's 2005 era NV47 / G70 / GeForce 7 series tech without unified shaders.

We know from Mark Cerny that PS5 has been in development for 4 years, since early 2015. It's a pretty safe bet that Microsoft did not begin Scarlett development quite that early, since Scorpio hadn't even been announced yet, and wouldn't be until E3 2016. So I think the earliest Scarlett could've gone into development is perhaps early 2016 at the very soonest, perhaps mid/late 2016. So it's fair to think Microsoft may have wanted something more advanced than Navi architecture, if possible. I'm not say Scarlett isn't using Navi architecture, it very well might be. It's just that it would not be unprecedented for Microsoft to have a newer GPU architecture in the next Xbox console(s) than Sony. Especially since both companies are launching the same year -- With Xbox 360, Microsoft managed to launch a console a year earlier than PS3, with a much more advanced architecture. However, what makes that less likely this time, is the GPU tech is coming from the same company (AMD), not ATI (Xbox 360) and Nvidia (PS3), where roadmaps and tech were very different.

 

[Anthony Hopkins]

If we go along with Anaconda being the most powerful, but not by huge amounts and we go along with the hypothesised price points then I think Anaconda lacks enough power advantage for people opt for it over PS5.

But there's a lot of if's and buts. If Anaconda didn't have the hypothesised price gap, but instead was closer - let's say $50 instead of $100 I would say Anaconda then becomes the much more attractive proposition.

I think Lockhart exists to get you to spend more. But if Ancaconda is too much more, PS5 wins out for the masses as it becomes 90% of the console for much less of the price.

I don't think it matters to the launch day buyers, however.

Click to shrink...

Is this with the assumption of

Lockhart $299
Ps5 $399
Anaconda $499?