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Sources: Microsoft Is Still Planning A Cheaper, Disc-Less Next-Gen Xbox


AbsolutSurgen

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1 hour ago, TomCat said:

people always make this stuff sound harder then it is. I said a long time ago MS would come out with two skus this generation.  I said they could easily take the GPU in the 1x add a ryzen2 core cpu and make that the lower sku xbox. major blunder in last gen was the Jaguar cpu's  they held the whole system back. get rid of them and you have a competent gaming machine.

 

Should I pat my self on the back now or later. I said that with the Ryzen2 cpu games would target 60fps as the standard. I was laughed at. Guess what MS appears to be using a gpu that is not even as powerful at the 1x gpu and doing exactly what I said. Execept going for 1080p-1440p instead of 4k since most people havent upgraded to 4k yet.

 

consoles are basically pc's now. especially the MS console.  Pc's have millions of combinations of hardware that dev. have to program for.  Why would making games for 4skus be so difficult? It wont and the lower skus wont hold the top games back.  I can play the same games on my 970 that people are playing on their 2080ti's   just at a lower resolution and some effects lowered or canceled.  the dev kit will do most of the scaling work for dev.  It has a button for each sku so dev can test performance

 

MS will come out swinging for the fences next gen so get ready gaming is about to be hella fun

 

and as far as raytracing goes its a fluid technique  the hardware is capable they are just refiniing the techniques on how to use the hardware more efficiently the effects on framerate will get alot better once they perfect the software tricks.  Look at the gains and improvements theyve already done with the few games that are released. it will only get better.

 

If a developer can only reliably leverage the expanded raycasting capabilities on the Scarlet and PS5 next gen boxes (for whatever purpose that may be), Locheart could potentially hinder ambitions and/or require custom paired back solutions that will eat up dev resources and time.  This is a hypothetical senario of course, but it does illustate one of the potential issues with introducing a partial step console at the begining of a console generation.

 

You don't have to take my word on it though.  If you trust Jason Schreiers reporting on Lockheart, you should also accept that, yes some developers have concerns: 

Quote

Game developers will be expected to support both Anaconda and Lockhart, which some are worried might hamper their ambitions for next-gen games in the coming years.

 

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2 hours ago, TomCat said:

people always make this stuff sound harder then it is. I said a long time ago MS would come out with two skus this generation.  I said they could easily take the GPU in the 1x add a ryzen2 core cpu and make that the lower sku xbox. major blunder in last gen was the Jaguar cpu's  they held the whole system back. get rid of them and you have a competent gaming machine.

Not in 2020.

2 hours ago, TomCat said:

Should I pat my self on the back now or later. I said that with the Ryzen2 cpu games would target 60fps as the standard. I was laughed at. Guess what MS appears to be using a gpu that is not even as powerful at the 1x gpu and doing exactly what I said. Execept going for 1080p-1440p instead of 4k since most people havent upgraded to 4k yet.

When all of the launch games are rendering at a minimum 1440p and a minimum of 60 fps, you can pat yourself on the back.

2 hours ago, TomCat said:

consoles are basically pc's now. especially the MS console.  Pc's have millions of combinations of hardware that dev. have to program for.  Why would making games for 4skus be so difficult? It wont and the lower skus wont hold the top games back.  I can play the same games on my 970 that people are playing on their 2080ti's   just at a lower resolution and some effects lowered or canceled.  the dev kit will do most of the scaling work for dev.  It has a button for each sku so dev can test performance

They really aren't.  Having a fixed spec simplifies the optimization process, and allows the console to overperform its hardware.  The more fixed specs, the more optimization work there is for the dev.  If console users were willing to have the same sliders that PC users have, then it would be simple for them.  On PC, the user has to essentially optimize for themselves.

2 hours ago, TomCat said:

MS will come out swinging for the fences next gen so get ready gaming is about to be hella fun

What does this even mean?

2 hours ago, TomCat said:

and as far as raytracing goes its a fluid technique  the hardware is capable they are just refiniing the techniques on how to use the hardware more efficiently the effects on framerate will get alot better once they perfect the software tricks.  Look at the gains and improvements theyve already done with the few games that are released. it will only get better.

What does this even mean?

2 hours ago, Duderino said:

 

Now those are some high expectations.

Not really.

1 hour ago, Duderino said:

 

If a developer can only reliably leverage the expanded raycasting capabilities on the Scarlet and PS5 next gen boxes (for whatever purpose that may be), Locheart could potentially hinder ambitions and/or require custom paired back solutions that will eat up dev resources and time.  This is a hypothetical senario of course, but it does illustate one of the potential issues with introducing a partial step console at the begining of a console generation.

 

You don't have to take my word on it though.  If you trust Jason Schreiers reporting on Lockheart, you should also accept that, yes some developers have concerns: 

 

If they want to support the PC gaming market, they will need a non-raytracing component of their engine anyways.

 

"Some developers have concerns" is a generic comment that conveys very little real meaning.

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@AbsolutSurgen, what makes you so confident that AMD will be able to provide next gen consoles with cost effective GPUs that are competitive with Nvidia's high end RTX line?
 

 

Today’s lower end PCs fall into the same category as cross-gen releases.  Eventually devs will stop supporting them in an effort to raise the visual bar and move past old limitations.  In the case of Lockheart however, devs will be locked into supporting its lower than Scarlet specs for the next 6-8 years.  (If these rumors are true).

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2 hours ago, Duderino said:

@AbsolutSurgen, what makes you so confident that AMD will be able to provide next gen consoles with cost effective GPUs that are competitive with Nvidia's high end RTX line?
 

 

Today’s lower end PCs fall into the same category as cross-gen releases.  Eventually devs will stop supporting them in an effort to raise the visual bar and move past old limitations.  In the case of Lockheart however, devs will be locked into supporting its lower than Scarlet specs for the next 6-8 years.  (If these rumors are true).

I'm not, I'm comparing a console launching in 2020, with a two-year old graphics card.

 

There are a lot of non-ray tracing compatible video cards (just look at the stats on Steam) -- they will target better computers, but still offer the option to play on lower end computers.

Devs will not be locked into supporting Lockhart for 6-8 years.

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3 minutes ago, AbsolutSurgen said:

I'm not, I'm comparing a console launching in 2020, with a two-year old graphics card.

 

There are a lot of non-ray tracing compatible video cards (just look at the stats on Steam) -- they will target better computers, but still offer the option to play on lower end computers.

Devs will not be locked into supporting Lockhart for 6-8 years.

Soo much would have to change in a year. For example, Nvidia's own low end RTX cards ($325-$400) are not suitable for the 4k60 gaming MS is suggesting as a general target for Scarlet games in this rumor.  AMD would have to leap frog Nvidia's current efforts in both cost and performance, raytracing or otherwise.  Not saying it's impossible, just unlikely.

 

Despite being skeptical of RTX level of raytracing on consoles, I do think we will eventually see more approximated solutions running on Scarlett, PS5, and in time, a higher percentage of gaming PCs.  If Lockheart can’t keep up, that could certainly impact the generation as time goes on.
 

Raytracing might not even be the bottleneck, btw.  This generation for example would have been very different had Sony or MS launched a SKU with a Switch level GPU.  Not saying Lockheart will be this generations equivalent to that, but I wouldn’t rule it out.

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Jason Schreier on the kotaku podcast.
 

Quote

I've heard some skepticism from third-party developers, who are, like, "Hey, it's a pain in the ass to ship on multiple hardware SKUs. Second of all, this is going to hamper us, because Microsoft is requiring us to ship on this lower-powered version, that has the equivalent graphical power of a PS4 Pro." It's worth noting, that is has a higher-end CPU and a solid-state drive, and other next-gen features, so it's not safe to compare it directly to the PS4 Pro.

The way it’s been described to me…I think [Lockhart] is going to have significantly less RAM, but the CPU makes a big difference, especially when it comes to framerate. The SSD makes a huge difference when it comes to loading times. So, I think what [devs] can do a lot of the time is knock down the texture quality, take a hit on the resolution, but you don't have to sacrifice framerate as much.


First time hearing about the RAM too.

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17 minutes ago, Duderino said:

Soo much would have to change in a year. For example, Nvidia's own low end RTX cards ($325-$400) are not suitable for the 4k60 gaming MS is suggesting as a general target for Scarlet games in this rumor.  AMD would have to leap frog Nvidia's current efforts in both cost and performance, raytracing or otherwise.  Not saying it's impossible, just unlikely.

 

Despite being skeptical of RTX level of raytracing on consoles, I do think we will eventually see more approximated solutions running on Scarlett, PS5, and in time, a higher percentage of gaming PCs.  If Lockheart can’t keep up, that could certainly impact the generation as time goes on.
 

Raytracing might not even be the bottleneck, btw.  This generation for example would have been very different had Sony or MS launched a SKU with a Switch level GPU.  Not saying Lockheart will be this generations equivalent to that, but I wouldn’t rule it out.

Yes.  I am expecting Ampere to launch in 1H 2020, consistent with current rumours.  No.  As I mentioned, I am expecting PS5/Anaconda to be comparable (in GPU) to a 2080 (not leapfrogging NVidia).  Which would be ~50% faster than X1X in rasterization, plus having ray tracing.

 

I am expecting PS5/Anaconda to have GPU performance comparable to a $400-$500 PC 2020 NVIDA GPU.

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12 minutes ago, AbsolutSurgen said:

Yes.  I am expecting Ampere to launch in 1H 2020, consistent with current rumours.  No.  As I mentioned, I am expecting PS5/Anaconda to be comparable (in GPU) to a 2080 (not leapfrogging NVidia).  Which would be ~50% faster than X1X in rasterization, plus having ray tracing.

 

I am expecting PS5/Anaconda to have GPU performance comparable to a $400-$500 PC 2020 NVIDA GPU.

 Both PS5 and Scarlett will have some raytracing capabilities from the new architecture, but between console cost cutting measures + downclocking to improve life expectancy, power usage, and thermal output, I still find this to be a very unrealistic expectation for a console in 2020.

 

Love to be wrong of course.

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1 minute ago, Duderino said:

 Both PS5 and Scarlett will have some raytracing capabilities from the new architecture, but between console cost cutting measures + downclocking to improve life expectancy, power usage, and thermal output, I still find this to be a very unrealistic expectation for a console in 2020.

 

Love to be wrong of course.

Then, they will be very disappointing.

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4 minutes ago, AbsolutSurgen said:

Then, they will be very disappointing.

Only if you are expecting full blown raytraced GI, AO, shadows, and refections in the first place.

 

I don't think it's a coincidence that this rumor is talking in terms of 4k60fps as opposed to raytracing.

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2 hours ago, AbsolutSurgen said:

As I mentioned, I am expecting PS5/Anaconda to be comparable (in GPU) to a 2080 (not leapfrogging NVidia).  Which would be ~50% faster than X1X in rasterization, plus having ray tracing.

 

I am expecting PS5/Anaconda to have GPU performance comparable to a $400-$500 PC 2020 NVIDA GPU.

 

We don't know how heavy of a focus AMD is putting into raytracing with the next-gen consoles.  We also have no clue how performant ray-tracing will be in these machines.  Or how much temporal upscaling would offset the load.

To project it'll match a 2080 is highly speculative now, to say the least.  Especially when we know that Nvida's cards are RT focused by design.  It could end up being an apples to oranges comparison.

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41 minutes ago, AbsolutSurgen said:

We don't "know" anything about these consoles.  Everything is speculative.

 

But some things are more than others.  At least with more standard GPU functions, there’s more reference points and historical data to point to.

 

I still maintain it’s absurd to speculate about relative performance to the RTX chips when with hardware driven RT, there’s no reference point on AMD’s end.

 

Team Red has much to prove.  We’ll probably know more by CES.

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Just now, crispy4000 said:

 

But some things are more than others.  At least with more standard GPU functions, there’s more reference points and historical data to point to.

 

I still maintain it’s absurd to project anything about relative performance when with hardware driven RT, there’s no reference point on AMD’s end.

I am suggesting what minimum they should be targeting -- AMD themselves may not know what performance they can put out.

What I was suggesting as the target is only about marginally faster than Nvidia's current $500 GPU -- the 2070 Super (about 10% faster on rasterization, about 15% faster on Ray Tracing).  Ampere should be out before these consoles launched, so the NVidia cards in the market will be even faster than this.  I am assuming that AMD will actually not shit the bed with Navi, and will be somewhat competitive.

If PS5/Scarlett isn't faster than a 2070 Super, I will be disappointed.  (To be honest, I think PS5/Scarlett SHOULD be faster than what I described above.)

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6 hours ago, AbsolutSurgen said:

I am suggesting what minimum they should be targeting -- AMD themselves may not know what performance they can put out.

What I was suggesting as the target is only about marginally faster than Nvidia's current $500 GPU -- the 2070 Super (about 10% faster on rasterization, about 15% faster on Ray Tracing).  Ampere should be out before these consoles launched, so the NVidia cards in the market will be even faster than this.  I am assuming that AMD will actually not shit the bed with Navi, and will be somewhat competitive.

If PS5/Scarlett isn't faster than a 2070 Super, I will be disappointed.  (To be honest, I think PS5/Scarlett SHOULD be faster than what I described above.)

 

I’m much more skeptical than you.  I think in regard to RT, we’d be lucky to get a 2070 out of it.  I suppose it could be more like a 2080 in other ways.

 

Unless we’re talking about Lockhart, lol.

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For those that think a 2080 or better raytracing performance is plausible for Scarlett and/or PS5, what do you think AMD's new line of competing PC cards will cost next year?  Will price point be in the high-end enthusiast range or low enough for the more mid range consumer?

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2 hours ago, Duderino said:

For those that think a 2080 or better raytracing performance is plausible for Scarlett and/or PS5, what do you think AMD's new line of competing PC cards will cost next year?  Will price point be in the high-end enthusiast range or low enough for the more mid range consumer?

A complicated answer:

1) I believe that AMD has spent much of their R&D budget on their Zen processors, and backed off on their GPUs

2)  This has allowed Nvidia to take premium pricing on their GPUs (as they don't have credible competition)

3)  Using MS/Sony money, AMD will be able to spend the appropriate amount of money to become somewhat competitive again in the GPU space

So.... My expectation (and @crispy4000, I am totally speculating here)

Because they can't continue their ridiculous pricing, Nvidia will launch a 2170 in 1H of 2020 that has specs between a 2080 and a 2080TI (8.9 and 11.8 Tflops of rasterization and 81 and 108 Tensor Flops).  AMD will launch a comparable card, and both will be priced with suggested MSRP between $400 and $450.  I interpret this price to be a "mid-range consumer" price.

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11 hours ago, AbsolutSurgen said:

A complicated answer:

1) I believe that AMD has spent much of their R&D budget on their Zen processors, and backed off on their GPUs

2)  This has allowed Nvidia to take premium pricing on their GPUs (as they don't have credible competition)

3)  Using MS/Sony money, AMD will be able to spend the appropriate amount of money to become somewhat competitive again in the GPU space

So.... My expectation (and @crispy4000, I am totally speculating here)

Because they can't continue their ridiculous pricing, Nvidia will launch a 2170 in 1H of 2020 that has specs between a 2080 and a 2080TI (8.9 and 11.8 Tflops of rasterization and 81 and 108 Tensor Flops).  AMD will launch a comparable card, and both will be priced with suggested MSRP between $400 and $450.  I interpret this price to be a "mid-range consumer" price.


The main reason Nvidia doesn't have credible competition is that AMD was leapfrogged with raytracing.  Buying an AMD card, as of now, is a dumb investment for that reason alone.  We don't know what their new cards will be capable of, or what retroactive support would look like with their current cards. (probably not good)

Traditional Tflop comparisons matter for less at the moment as a result, IMO.  It's still important, but the bigger question is how well AMD will support modern rendering techniques, and what's the overhead/cost/trade-off of them.  And that's an especially salient topic for the next-gen consoles.

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1 hour ago, crispy4000 said:


The main reason Nvidia doesn't have credible competition is that AMD was leapfrogged with raytracing.  Buying an AMD card, as of now, is a dumb investment for that reason alone.  We don't know what their new cards will be capable of, or what retroactive support would look like with their current cards. (probably not good)

Traditional Tflop comparisons matter for less at the moment as a result, IMO.  It's still important, but the bigger question is how well AMD will support modern rendering techniques, and what's the overhead/cost/trade-off of them.  And that's an especially salient topic for the next-gen consoles.


nVidia really didn’t have competition in the 1xxxx era either. :p 

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WIndows central has rumored targeted specs of the Anaconda and Lockhart

 

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In the 2019 reveal video, Xbox cloud architect Kareem Choudhry said Scarlett could "eat monsters for breakfast," and indeed, Anaconda looks as though it will be able to. According to several sources familiar with Microsoft's plans, Anaconda is targeting around 12 teraflops (TF) of computing power, compared to the Xbox One X's 6TF, and the Xbox One S's 1.4. Lockhart conversely will sport around 4TF, and according to marketing materials we've seen previously, it is being positioned as the most-affordable entry point to next-gen experiences.

 

 

More details in the article. Also someone who is verified at ERA said the full reveal will be in the "very near future"

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8 hours ago, crispy4000 said:


The main reason Nvidia doesn't have credible competition is that AMD was leapfrogged with raytracing.  Buying an AMD card, as of now, is a dumb investment for that reason alone.  We don't know what their new cards will be capable of, or what retroactive support would look like with their current cards. (probably not good)

Traditional Tflop comparisons matter for less at the moment as a result, IMO.  It's still important, but the bigger question is how well AMD will support modern rendering techniques, and what's the overhead/cost/trade-off of them.  And that's an especially salient topic for the next-gen consoles.

According to insiders, AMD devoted most of their resources to Ryzen, and didn't have the $$$ to also invest in their GPUs.  They knew they wouldn't be competitive in the mid/high end for several years.  Those same sources suggested that the money they receive from Sony and MS should fund a competitive GPU in time for NAVI.  I don't know how much truth there is to that.

 

Traditional Tflop comparisons are very valid for rasterization performance.  I referenced the "Tensor Flops" benchmarks for the Tensor Cores that do the ray tracing computing -- I've read some suggestions that this may be a valid way of comparing the ray tracing capabilities of these cards.  I am certainly not a chip engineer, but my understanding is that the cuda cores and tensor cores on an NVidia chip are not good at doing each others jobs -- so you need to look at the speed of both.

 

We don't know what AMDs strategy is for NAVI, and whether they will have something similar to Nvidia's "Tensor cores".  Many people have taken the "hardware ray tracing" comments to suggest they will.  (AMD could easily say "fuck ray tracing" and come out with a 12-14 TFlop rasterization card, and just do "software" ray tracing.)  This strategy would likely "destroy" a 2080 in traditional rendering, but perform very poorly on ray tracing.

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15 hours ago, AbsolutSurgen said:

According to insiders, AMD devoted most of their resources to Ryzen, and didn't have the $$$ to also invest in their GPUs.  They knew they wouldn't be competitive in the mid/high end for several years.  Those same sources suggested that the money they receive from Sony and MS should fund a competitive GPU in time for NAVI.  I don't know how much truth there is to that.

 

Traditional Tflop comparisons are very valid for rasterization performance.  I referenced the "Tensor Flops" benchmarks for the Tensor Cores that do the ray tracing computing -- I've read some suggestions that this may be a valid way of comparing the ray tracing capabilities of these cards.  I am certainly not a chip engineer, but my understanding is that the cuda cores and tensor cores on an NVidia chip are not good at doing each others jobs -- so you need to look at the speed of both.

 

We don't know what AMDs strategy is for NAVI, and whether they will have something similar to Nvidia's "Tensor cores".  Many people have taken the "hardware ray tracing" comments to suggest they will.  (AMD could easily say "fuck ray tracing" and come out with a 12-14 TFlop rasterization card, and just do "software" ray tracing.)  This strategy would likely "destroy" a 2080 in traditional rendering, but perform very poorly on ray tracing.

 

AMD has already signaled that they don’t aim to offload the Raytracing load entirely on dedicated cores, but do some kind of hybrid approach to support select raytraced effects.  Until some point in the future, when they hope to offload more of the processing to the cloud. (....yup)

 

Considering what’s happened with Nvidia’s cards, especially how poorly the non-rtx cards handle Rt, there’s good reason to be skeptical.  Perhaps they found some clever way to make it work more efficiently that Nvidia hasn’t.  But I still think it’s likely to be a half-measure step, at least on the console side.  Until a mid-cycle refresh perhaps.

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3 hours ago, crispy4000 said:

 

AMD has already signaled that they don’t aim to offload the Raytracing load entirely on dedicated cores, but do some kind of hybrid approach to support select raytraced effects.  Until some point in the future, when they hope to offload more of the processing to the cloud. (....yup)

 

Considering what’s happened with Nvidia’s cards, especially how poorly the non-rtx cards handle Rt, there’s good reason to be skeptical.  Perhaps they found some clever way to make it work more efficiently that Nvidia hasn’t.  But I still think it’s likely to be a half-measure step, at least on the console side.  Until a mid-cycle refresh perhaps.

I know they have a patent that outlines a hybrid approach.

 

AMD said at E3 that their hardware support for ray tracing will be available in Next Gen RDNA -- as far as I know they haven't given any specifics as to when this will launch.  

I have seen speculation that the "hardware ray tracing" referenced by MS/Sony implies that the "hardware approach" referenced at e3 will be in next year's video cards and consoles.

I haven't seen anything from AMD clarifying (or even hinting) at their specific strategy for the consoles and next year's video cards.  If you have, please give me a link, because I would very much like to read it.

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1 hour ago, AbsolutSurgen said:

I haven't seen anything from AMD clarifying (or even hinting) at their specific strategy for the consoles and next year's video cards.  If you have, please give me a link, because I would very much like to read it.

 

AFAIK this is the most we have, beyond what the console manufactures have stated.

 

CVbGLE4.jpg

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