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PS5 SoC is ~25% smaller than the Series X

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KodiakGTS

KodiakGTS

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Jun 4, 2018
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bbq of doom said:
At this point, discussion to the contrary is just useless console war banter.
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His statement was equally wrong to those trying to paint the PS5 in a negative light. The devs have no control over the clock speeds at all. The system dynamically adjusts by running a heuristic for estimated workload and feeding that into a SmartShift style controller which balances power to the GPU/CPU. This is done in a way to be replicable so there is not variance between units, which is a problem that happens when a temperature based heuristic is used instead.
 
RayTracing

RayTracing

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Chaystic said:
That's a pretty huge difference, well done Sony.
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Sarcasm?

A chip with more logic transistors generally means more performance. When nVidia or AMD come out with a new GPU on a new Die process, they don't shrink the transistor count and make the chip smaller, they increase it and keep the die at around the same size.

XSX has 52 CUs vs PS5's 36 CUs. As Cerny mentioned, RDNA2 CU's have 62% more transistors, but desipite this, because its based on a 7nm process, they can actually make it smaller than PS4 Pro.
 
Redbarrel

Redbarrel

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Sep 10, 2020
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The PS5 seems to be a super efficient machine from what it costs Sony to produce and what they manage to deliver in terms of performance. It's impressive and even more impressive is the fact that Microsoft also managed to have a $500 price point on their Series X.
 
Brohan

Brohan

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Fizie said:
Pretty amazing that despite this, the XSX is the smaller console and the same price too
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This fact actually explains the size of the PS5. And i'm pretty sure that the BOM of the XsX is higher than that of the PS5.

It seems Sony tried to keep their costs down while Microsoft didn't mind eating a bigger loss on their hardware.
 
Jimbobsmells

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User warned: Metacommentary around console wars
Threads like this are great for expanding my ignore list.
 
Eeyore

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Negotiator117 said:
Maybe you can explain what variable means?
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KodiakGTS said:
His statement was equally wrong to those trying to paint the PS5 in a negative light. The devs have no control over the clock speeds at all. The system dynamically adjusts by running a heuristic for estimated workload and feeding that into a SmartShift style controller which balances power to the GPU/CPU. This is done in a way to be replicable so there is not variance between units, which is a problem that happens when a temperature based heuristic is used instead.
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Pretty sure this answer is more informative than anything I could come up with.
 
Fezan

Fezan

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Oct 26, 2017
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Yes this was obvious. Less cu means smaller chips.

It just means Xbox SX is using territorial method of unlocking chips to get more power while being expensive while PS5 is designed like typical RDNA2 GPU if lakhs are anything to go by
 

Deleted member 24021

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Negotiator117 said:
Maybe you can explain what variable means?
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The variable clocks in PS5 are to make sure the power draw doesn't go out of control like it does on PS4 when it gets jet engine loud. The PS5 clock speeds aren't variable in real time like PC hardware, the speeds have to be set by the developer for what they need to use it for since the experience has to be the same for everyone. If a developer wants to use the 3.5Ghz CPU clock speed and the 2.23Ghz GPU clock speed, they can do so all they want while rendering the game itself. All they have to do is lower them for screens where all that power isn't necessary.
 
Detective

Detective

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Oct 27, 2017
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Chaystic said:
That's a pretty huge difference, well done Sony.
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tenor.gif
 
Brohan

Brohan

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FernandoRocker said:
I'm not a MS shill or a console warrior. I was just stating the obvious. Smaller SoC than the Series X = less powerful than the Seriex X
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There is no denying that the XsX is the more powerful machine but you are wrong about a few things.

More CUs does not necessarily mean more powerful. Clocks are just an important factor in determining the performance of a GPU. It's very possible to have less CUs yet also be more powerful depending on the clockspeeds.
 

Deleted member 4869

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Fizie said:
Pretty amazing that despite this, the XSX is the smaller console and the same price too
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Seems that people are forgetting that the Dual Sense has far superior technology than the Series X controller, and that the PS5 SSD solution is also a lot faster.

I don't know why people are judging the prices just based on the consoles Teraflops.
 
M4xim1l1ano

M4xim1l1ano

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Oct 29, 2017
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because we know the pricing of the consoles, this probably means that Sony doesn't lose as much money as MS does per sold unit. This is what perhaps allowed Sony to reach 399 and be close to +- 0 loss per unit.
 
nib95

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neoak said:
Those are Turbo™ clocks built in.
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It can't really be compared to traditional overclocking, turbo or boost modes, since it's not tied to thermal dynamics but deterministic set power loads. But don't take my word for it, here's Digital Foundry on it.

EYmRhDvXgAUMsx_
 
Searsy82

Searsy82

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May 13, 2019
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Brohan said:
There is no denying that the XsX is the more powerful machine but you are wrong about a few things.

More CUs does not necessarily mean more powerful. Clocks are just an important factor in determining the performance of a GPU. It's very possible to have less CUs yet also be more powerful depending on the clockspeeds.
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Sure. It is possible, but its not the case here. So why bother talking about it?
 

Deleted member 2441

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25% smaller die size for an 18% gap in performance seems pretty good. Definitely saved some cost there.

I always find it intriguing to think about the process for this at AMD, where you've got two teams working on totally competing products, completely silo'd from each other. Wonder if they have their reveal moment at the same time the rest of us do for the competing products...

Side note: love how one person shitposting manages to ruin threads on this site every single day - when are we going to get a 0 tolerance approach and longer bans? If you console war, you're banned til the war is over etc.
 

Deleted member 24021

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Lonely1 said:
E]

That's not how it works. You really think that a GPU can only get max usage during (uncapped) menus?
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As Cerny explained in the Road to PS5, when the PS4 GPU is saturated with low amounts of tris like in a menu or map screen, it's extremely inefficient at rendering those simple/low amount of tris which increases the power draw for no reason. In my experience, my PS4 Pro would start screaming in the Horizon map screen because of that reason. Uncharted 4 and GT Sport does the same in the menus.
 
gundamkyoukai

gundamkyoukai

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Oct 25, 2017
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KodiakGTS said:
His statement was equally wrong to those trying to paint the PS5 in a negative light. The devs have no control over the clock speeds at all. The system dynamically adjusts by running a heuristic for estimated workload and feeding that into a SmartShift style controller which balances power to the GPU/CPU. This is done in a way to be replicable so there is not variance between units, which is a problem that happens when a temperature based heuristic is used instead.
Click to expand...
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They do have control if i remember right since the dev kits have fixed clocks they can used.
When it comes to retail game is when the system takes over .
 
RayTracing

RayTracing

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Mecha said:
Why was the PS4 SoC smaller than Xbox One then?
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Take a look, PS4 had more Compute units, a larger part of the design was taken up by logic.

RHpdkU2.png


Xbox One on the other hand was forced to use ESRAM in order to make up for not using GDDR5, it took up important die Real Estate bringing the CU count to 14 (12 active). In other words, in terms of GPU logic, the PS4 GPU took up more space.
 
gofreak

gofreak

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Oct 26, 2017
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The relative die size is just a logical consequence of the smaller GPU.

I think the more interesting comparison is how it stacks up vs prior gens, being smaller again, and what it might say about possible cost reduction expectations over the course of the cycle. Hopefully a reasonable curve will be possible to aid price and adoption.
 
Negotiator117

Negotiator117

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Eeyore said:
Pretty sure this answer is more informative than anything I could come up with.
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Regardless of the inner workings it simply cannot run at the speed the official spec sheets proclaims at 100% of the time under heavy load, variable means just that. It's a trade off for having such a high clock, nothing more needs to be said.
 
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