Microsoft Tribe
Let your Microsoft flag fly
0 postsThe Verge
032c
On The Verge since Jan 17, 2013
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Just because you buy it in volume doesn’t mean they’ll sell it to you dirt cheap.
nVidia and AMD board partners have been buying GDDR5 in droves and they’ve not enjoyed special rates. There’s a specific reason why the RAM makers are refusing to dip on GDDR5- they don’t make much from typical computer RAM, and they’ve went bust after DDR2’s absurd pricing back then.Yeah I phrased that poorly about power consumption- it’s the chip itself rather than the RAM. I’m surprised that the XO still manages <100W on its main chip, despite its huge cache. the 7790 (its closest parallel, slightly faster) takes 85W at full load. The PS4 GPU parallel, the 7850, gets rated at 130W (slightly generous IMO, should be lower)
I almost have a hunch that the XO would launch cheaper if MS would agree to loss-lead like Sony.
The Kinect might be “new” awesomesauce, but a 1080p color CMOS sensor is freaking cheap nowadays. A lot of it is just a better data path + software. -
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um. no?
GDDR5 has already been close to 5 years in usage, it was rolled out just a year after DDR3 was introduced- the 2 share common technology but diverge in clockspeeds/usage patterns.
GDDR5 will never be as cheap as Sony wants it to be, because there’s pressure from OEMs to not lower it in spite of increased volume- over the last 4 years it has remained out of reach from lower-end GPUs, which use GDDR3 (DDR2 derived tech). If ATI and nVidia have trouble justifying 1GB of GD5 in mid-range cards/laptops until this year, how do you explain Sony’s decision as beyond one that’s just trying to woo gamers in the short term? There’s 8 gigs of that thing right there.
DDR3 won’t drop in volume quickly because dual-channel DDR3 serves 99% of the bandwidth needed for mainline computing, and Intel has started to complement its flagship Haswell iGPUs with on-die RAM, just like the Xbox One. There simply isn’t a need to jump to DDR4 quickly if it’s expensive and provides little gains for the PC side.
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I think the PS4’s GPU power will go to extra GPGPU features (see what nVidia has always tried to showcase with PhysX in-game) and perhaps some extra shader detail, but a generation-wise gap’s not going to manifest.
The nasty thing I fear, might be 60 vs 30fps situations though. That would really suck.
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What was the Xperia Play again?
If anything, I know for sure that Sony as a company is much sloppier at committing to ideas than MS. The Xperia S is still waiting for Jelly Bean as we speak.
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Also, in the same light, the PS4 looks to be in every extent, a 150-175W system while the XO probably ranks in under 130… the difference is only going to grow in the future when TSMC/Gloflo go from 28nm to 20/16/14nm processes- ESRAM can be shrunken easily saving costs and power, the same can’t be said for GDDR5 at a fixed capacity stuck on a 256-bit bus; you will always need 8 chips, and unlike bargain bin priced DDR3, GD5 has not, will not, and won’t be cheap for the rest of its foreseeable life (it’s a premium product that memory makers use to raise margins vs DDR3).
I don’t mean to be so deterministic yet, but having 8GB of GDDR5 instead of waiting for commodity-based DDR4 or a bespoke DDR3 + cache RAM is a bad bad decision; it’ll be one of the pain spots in component costs for the PS4.
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You can’t compare it like that; GPU bandwidth is perhaps more important in traditional PC non-UMA setups,, where every single bit of graphics data has to be put unto discrete video RAM through PCIe initially. With unified addressing space (both XO/PS4) there’s lesser need to have that much of RAM, that fast.
Not saying that the ESRAM’s technically a better choice- the PS4 solution still wins, but the amount of bandwidth is less critical in 2013 given i) how 1080p is still the resolution of choice, and ii) post-process anti-aliasing has taken over as the “better” solution compared to majority of multisample AA (and this uses 0 bandwidth compared to MS/FSAA).
And honestly, 70GB/s full-frontal bandwidth is pretty easy for developers to work with. Add in the ESRAM and at worst you get partial bandwidth compensation vs the PS4, at best you get special nifty things you can pull off with CPU/GPU that require faster cache access.
Imagine a CPU with a 32MB ~L4 cache. That’s a pretty big thing in its own feat! It means a crazy good hitrate for the CPU with much faster latencies while the PS4 CPU has to access its quick, but latency ridden system memory (remember Pentium 4 and Rambus RDRAM?)
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Spotty, chipset/certification-dependant implementation, uneven branding… all the possible bureaucratic red tape’s cut out there. And it seems to be mostly invested in letting local sources play wirelessly instead of things like GPlay content.
Alternatively it’s still easier to have the DRM sorted on the receiver side (a la Xbox/ATV/Roku/Sonos) and beam playback controls to it- which was what should have been done to the Q.
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This was actually some nice hardware.
But more and more so it seems obvious that there hasn’t been any implementation of a secure audio/video path through wireless sources (mobile-side, and outside of iOS). Leaving it to an app is ridiculously stupid by design, evident by the stuff it breaks here. -
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Didn’t know talking heads had actual eyeballs
D:
/s
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Same CPU/GPU as 4S, but slightly larger resolution. Should run most things great.
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You always know the stench of a Singaporean commenting on the internet… sucks for a country to tout its infrastructure being top-notch while its netizens possess next to zero civility.
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Typical Singaporean anal retentiveness. You’ve just met one.
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You say it as if it’s a bad thing.
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Let’s face it, 90% of interactive advertising is facetious, self-indulgent, and/or fakes for awards. :D
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The Bing logo is a reversed version…
As for Yammer, I just can’t shake AF out of my head though. Inexplicable, but yeah.
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Bong. Now it’s all relevant and such eh?
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Someone who actually knows their type history instead of being a certain brand plant? I’m pleasantly shocked!
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Recommended MarkKB's comment in Bing, Skype, and Xbox rebranding plans revealed in Microsoft design presentation
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Do you even know why companies commission typefaces themselves? Because of flexible licensing and creative opportunities. They pay a LOT for any of these faces, a fact that you conveniently hide. Even the foundries (Lino, now Monotype, Bitstream, H&FJ etc) ENCOURAGE large corporate clients to cut their own modified derivatives because it’s less ridiculous in accounting terms to handle.
And design language as a whole is way more about a typeface/color, but I wouldn’t put it past Mr Internet Armchair to be reasonable beyond his/her outrageous point.
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You should really shut it if you have zilch idea of what you’re talking about.
Design is supposed to be communicative and evocative and problem-solving, not some circle-jerk about nonsensical made-up criteria that you put forward
The Bing logo isn’t great (it’s a bit on the bland side actually), but in the whole Microsoft branding system it is pretty strong, and it manages consistency with other products than fight with them.
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1. State-owned company
2. Actually run pretty good with good cargo/international routes, turns in a profit (compare that to the huge losses that US carriers have had, and you can see why GDP is pretty irrelevant in how companies buy planes)
3. The 787 is actually “pretty cheap”, in line for its size and market positioning.
