So the PS4 and XB1 are both equipped with what is essentially the same 8-core AMD Jaguar APU. According to reports, the APU cost the Sony & MS $110-120 out of consoles retailing for $400-500. It's working out pretty fine for the cost but even from the beginning several games struggled to output 1080p at 60 FPS.
My question is, would have an Intel CPU + Nividia GPU solution yielded a higher-performing or more future-proof solution for a similar or slightly higher cost? What kind of architectures would be used for a console application?
If you ask me, selling the consoles for a slight profit this generation around was a really safe move and they perform reasonably well. But now, three years after the fact, that move has cost everybody; resulting in games struggling to look any better than last generation and talks of "hardware refreshes" to ease gamers into slightly better machines while maintaining the same profit margins.
I really felt that the console makers should have stuck to a reasonable loss-leader strategy; of making a console that performs in the upper mid-range of gaming PCs while maintaining a small loss (a $100 loss on each console, at most). The console makers would lose money on each console but the sales of games and the value of the console's technology would build a customer base that would be profitable in the months and years to come, especially once economies of scale and shrinking chips make the consoles cheaper to make year by year.
Consoles are perfect for AMD. Cheap trash that barely works and uses a shit ton of power.
>>55308037
>Intel CPU + Nividia GPU
More complex code to get all the spyware working to make the hardware happy so it would run like shit.
>>55308059
/thread
No. Nothing about Intel and Nvidia hardware is more "future proof". Console manufacturers should buy the best price to performance parts.
>>55308037
Consoles are designed for cost, and specific power target. At the time no one could offer what AMD was offering in a single chip solution in a given thermal envelope. Discrete components increase board complexity, logistical burden, and lose the ability to benefit from certain compute benefits. AMD also offered the fastest time to market with their semi-custom approach to chip design.
From a design perspective there are huge advantages.
>>55308059
The total system power draw for the original PS4 is 140w, and 40w of that is memory, and other components on board. The APU itself stays in a 100w envelope. The Xbone's APU is 65w.
Shitpost elsewhere, tech illiterate retard.
>>55308037
>>55308037
Dude if you spent 100$ on Intel + NVidia you'd have an Atom and something like a GTX 240. For that price, AMD's APU is a monster
>>55308059
TEAM GREEN!!!!111111 8=======> - - - -
>>55308037
>RE: Console Loss-leader strategy
I the console industry was using a loss-leader strategy with new consoles starting from the Dreamcast, which featured hardware that surpassed Pentium 2 cpus and 3Dfx Voodoo GPUs at the time, right up until it was released of course. 6th and 7th Gen continued the trend giving people reasonably powered machines that didn't leave people wanting.
I think MS and Sony were lead astray from this idea after last gen, particularly when Sony released the Playstation 3 that was equipped with the PPC-based Cell Broadband Engine. The Cell cpu was very powerful for its time but using it resulted in the console being worth nearly 60% more than what it was selling for ($800 for a $500 console or so). It also supported a version of Linux installation out-of-the-box, which convinced a lot of people to buy it for the hardware and not for the games. This shot Sony in the foot; the Cell was made to no one's benefit (with developers frequently complaining that it was a bitch to program for) and the expense was especially galling once big organizations like the US Airforce and University science labs started buying PS3s by the truck load to build cheap supercomputers. One can only imagine the billions lost over this. Even by 2012, Sony was losing money on PS3s because of the Cell, selling $300 PS3 Super slims at $330 cost to them.
>>55308037
Yes, consoles are better because fuck windows.
>>55308157
>>55308162
I see. So how hard would it have been for the console makers to design an Intel+Nividia SOC? It would probably cost more than using an off-the-shelf APU, but such cooperation would be beneficial in designing future products, like future consoles or gaming laptops. A project like that would be attractive for Intel and Nividia, wouldn't it?
>>55308320
>RE: Sony's mistake with loss-leader
Clearly Sony made a big mistake with designing expensive hardware that lost them $300 each right off the bat and supporting an operating system that allowed people to take advantage of Sony's subsidy in the hardware. But didn't anyone think that this could have happened before it did? Never mind the difficulties with programming on the Cell, didn't anyone at Sony predict that people would find the hardware attractive for all the wrong reasons and that even for a corporation of their size, $300 loss per console was a big blow? What did they think would fucking happen if they released an $800 Linux-ready computer and sold it for $500, using a PowerPC CPU that would work great in a supercomputer network?
>>55308532
Neither APU in the PS4/Xbone was off the shelf.
Cross licensing IP from different vendors is not simple, and Nvidia has a long standing legal dispute with intel over GPU arch.
Consoles will continue to use AMD because they focus on price/performance. Sure, they could make better consoles with Nvidia and Intel, but you wouldn't want to buy at the price they'd charge for them. Sony learned this lesson the hard way when the PS3 was released for $600 and it was a failure until they price dropped it significantly.
>>55308037
>Intel, Nvidia, Sony, MS
>fine with selling for a loss
You do know they always sell shit for the highest price possible? The AMD equivalent is always cheaper. Nvidia founders did exactly that.
$100 loss per console is ridiculous even for Nintendo or AMD. That's $1b in profit gone if they sold 10m units. Games don't sell enough to allow that.
