Friday, February 24th 2012
AMD Designing Next-Gen Playstation's GPU
Sony has begun working on its next-generation gaming console under the Playstation brand, and Forbes learned that it's none other than AMD designing its graphics processing unit (GPU). AMD is far from new to the game console GPU business, as its GPUs already drive graphics processing in Microsoft's Xbox 360 and Nintendo Wii consoles. If launched anytime soon, the next-gen Playstation will create a rare moment where GPUs of all three major game console makers would be AMD-made. The current Playstation 3 console uses an NVIDIA GPU.
Source:
Forbes
118 Comments on AMD Designing Next-Gen Playstation's GPU
Since the ATI 9800pro/Xt .. ATI has only had A few bad GPUs (38XX). I have probably owned more GPUs then most. I was 18 when I frist had the need for A GPU. It was the Monster VooDoo2 12MB... took me like 4 pay checks from the comic book store to pay for it. I am now 32, I have owned well over 25gpu (some were dupes SLI/Crossfire).
When I was younger and did not have bills (or women/sex) I would buy the best GPU no matter what the cost. .. As I got older, have too many bills (sex w/ women) Value took over. for me AMD is A better Value & I never have these driver issues ppl always talk about. (well I do have crossfire driver issues on new games)
Point is, their is Never A total better brand .. .. they each have their highs & lows... all that being said ATI(now amd) dont make bad gpus and are not far behind nvida on sales... in fact if you look at real data... ATI / AMD is gaining % and nvida is losing.
Also, the new xbox gpu is in fact AMD/ATI. So they now have all 3x of the consoles
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The advantage to this is it should make cross-platform programming much easier to optimize, saving the consumers money (doubt it but whatever).
The above poster said the HD 38xx was one of the only bad GPUs. Had one myself and it was very efficient. I think he means the HD29xxs which were hot power-hungry dogs.
RUMOR!
*cough*
*ahem*
I'm sorry, but that article has no facts nor confirmations from both factions. A) Because probably there is no project (They have piledriver, trinity, the rest of the HD7x00 to worry about)
B) Because Sony still hasn't milked the PS3 yet, or whatever... Gee, I don't know...Radeon? APUs? :\
Most probably in the same situation I described AMD would have conceeded to a new agreement. Nvidia didn't and is not likely to do now either, hence, aside from the better perf/watt of AMD's VLIW design, in part they are moving to AMD because it's easier for them to work with the small company that will give no trouble. Denying that this is a factor is naive and stupid.
EDIT: And in general, before you talk about "making bucket loads of money" maybe you should take a look at AMD's financials for the last half a decade. They already had 2/3 of consoles and that didn't help much, one more won't make them "make bucket loads of money", especially when all 3 consoles are rumored to use mid-range level cards as oposed to high-end chips at the time of release. How much do you think AMD will be making selling HD6600s in 2017?
AMD, and whoever else, are just gonna do what brings in the best profits. Except nVidia...Jen Hsun's ego is far too large for him to concede control for profit. You cannot compare the two. they aren't even in the same business, for christ's sake.
Also, we can say that NV's lack of merging with AMD says you are very wrong in that opinion.
ALso I read your edit..i tihnk you are missing the point that sales in connsole might reap benefits in other markets as well. It's not liek they jsut do VGA cards, ot jsut CPUs for servers, or jsut APUs..they have a very board range marketable products that are customized to it's respective market.
A win in the console space shows how adaptable they are to meeting customer needs...mainly the customers who sell consoles... Must be....you're here...;) :laugh:
Financials do not tell the story of what a company is doing. Fact is, nvidia, by Jen Hsun's own speech, is NOT a hardware company..they are a software comapny, that also sells hardware.
That mindset has nVidia market it's software, and then leverages that software to make extra sales via hardware that works best with the software they sell. Jen Hsun wanted to do the same with AMD, and make them something they are not today, but what nVidia is today. That's his ego...playing a role. Just becuase I used the word ego, doesn't make it a bad thing. Everyone has one. That ego is what makes nVidia the success they are.
AMD, in the reverse, is a hardware company, that relies on otherd to make software that uses the solutions AMD privdes to the best it can. Very different companies, very different goals and ideals, and very different approaches to success. Thus, they are not truly comparable, except that they both operate within the same confines of the tech market.
And because they are not comparable, they were chosen to provide the desgins, based on the difference in the package they offered. You construe this as a bad thing, however, it's exactly what their customers asked for, clearly by them winning these contracts. it's not them being pushed around, or bullied..it's them conforming to the needs of their customers, and ultimately, that is the path to success. You see this as a weakness...when clearly, I, and their customers, see it as a strength.
The comment about them being a software company has nothing to do with what you pretend. Nvidia does not sell any software that I'm aware of (maybe Mental Ray). He was most definitely refering to the fact that what sells GPUs are games or other apps that need GPUs and that they are focused on improving those. Nothing wrong with that. Speculating again. They won the contracts because they offered what customers wanted for a lower price. Come on, how does AMD and Nvidia get Apple contracts too? You can pretend that there's something other than pure bussiness behind the decisions, but there is not. They met both brands and the one who was willing to give more for less won. That has nothing to do with how the companies work and certainly nothing to do with egos. Nvidia will be fine. Look the same was said when M$ used AMD cards for the Xbox360, but luckily we have history to teach us the reality.
And pretending that with Road AMD is completely different is absurd. AMD has been changing CEO more than slips and that didn't make it very different and certainly not better, which is what we are talking about.
In any case I never said this was something bad for AMD, that's an invention of yours. I admit "bully" was not the best owrd, but I don't know how to express it better.
Here's the tagline from the article: and a line: And the actual article:
www.forbes.com/sites/briancaulfield/2012/02/22/the-predator/
and cadveca is bang on when he says AMD have their hands in many baskets, with their advanced Soc capabillities they are all set to rival arm in oem sales, and in just for purpose chip design
all 3 in the pocket is going to happen ,why do you think nvidia are pushing their tech into GPGPU so hard and focusing on tegra so much, they know where their breads going to be buttered
55.5 million playstations to make gpus for,65.8 million new xbox,s to provide GPU's for
95 million wiiu's to also possibly supply with gpus all over the next 5-10 years, :eek: wow they are going to be busy(wikki'd) if they only got a pound in proffit per chip, that their is still BEEEads and your head up nvidias ass given your average post
i do hope they dont forget PD as im waiting
The line of "old was bad, new is good" is as old as our history, and in case you don't follow history, it's never true.
I just chose to ignore marketing hype, and look at the big picture. That included me saying that AMD and Intel were not in direct competition, to only have that same thing repeated by AMD themselves several weeks later. The only reason I knew that this was going to be the direction they took...was because it's common sense. Unless of course, you think that AMD is listening to me...because that's really stupid.
AMD roadmap has changed, staff has changed, and company focus has changed as well. You are right that those changes may not lead to the success they are raching for, but I'm not going to call it a failure before they have a chance to step into action.
To extend the point, if console contracts were the money makers that some people are pretending it to be. AMD would have been making shedloads of profits already. And they don't. I didn't say you are an AMD fanboy. I said you and (also) AMD fans are probably happy with that koolaid.
It's only us here who spend pretty often hundreds of whatever currency to update our monstrous GPUs to play games that are designed to run on small boxes equipped with cheap hardware.
It's very good that AMD will provide parts for consoles, they need every bit of success they can to make some profit and keep afloat. On the other hand we shouldn't be worried about NV, they are doing fine even if it's not so evident in the GPU sector, the one we all love so much. Let's not forget that the market cap of NV is almost double than that of AMD.
That GPU in Xbox 360 is a piece of poop so no wonder results are so underwhelming. I'm a long time ATI user, currently running HD5770 but the Xbox GPU downright sucks.