(Wired) EXCLUSIVE: WHAT TO EXPECT FROM SONY'S NEXT-GEN PLAYSTATION

QLC, or even higher bit densities, which are perfect for read-heavy applications like games.

Possibility, its a good thought! I didn't consider that.

What I'm stuck on is will they still offer the ability to replace or upgrade your storage? Both the PS3 and PS4 used traditional 2.5" SATA form factor drives. ~5400 RPM drives if i recall. so their read speed is ~100MB/s sequential, but random is the problem. Random Read/Write is terribly slow.

If they stuck with the same 2.5" form factor. We would be talking about SATA SSD's, not NVMe SSD. I'm not sure they could get the performance uplift they are referring to with SATA, so its plausible they may be going with NVMe

They could go M.2-2280 form factor SSD and still offer removable / replaceable / upgradable storage, though would be interesting how they built that into the case to allow you to do without removing the whole case.

The other part of the challenge is that a 2280 NVMe drive is traditionally more expensive than a SATA drive.

Given they are also going for economies of scale here, I doubt it will be some custom solution for Storage, most likely some off the shelf part they can get at a huge discount due to the volume they would be purchasing.

As such QLC would be probably the best bet, not something greater as that would require some custom tooling which would (increase) cost. The vendor of the storage now is pure speculation. Will need more time to find that out.
 
They could use an Intel CPU and NVidia GPU. It doesn't have to be an APU.

Sure if Sony (or MS) wanted to put a 500+ watt power supply in it... and 3-4 fans. So double the chip suppliers to pay.... increased part costs, anda ton of unneeded complexity.

And on top of that you have to get Nvidia to supply YOU open drivers so you know how your machine works. And play nice with Intel who absolutely hates NV with a passion.

Chances of any console being produced with 2 chips is between slim and no way in hell. Chances of NV being involved with Sony or MS ever again are about the same.
 
3rd Gen Ryzen? So far people have been speculating that next gen consoles will contain either 1st or 2nd gen Ryzens and even those would have been huge updates over the Jaguar garbage that current gen consoles are based on. 3rd Gen Ryzen will be a massive upgrade! (I think, it is not released for PC's yet after all)
 
3rd Gen Ryzen? So far people have been speculating that next gen consoles will contain either 1st or 2nd gen Ryzens and even those would have been huge updates over the Jaguar garbage that current gen consoles are based on. 3rd Gen Ryzen will be a massive upgrade! (I think, it is not released for PC's yet after all)

Think the rumor has always been 3000 class navi in an APU hasn't it ? Makes sense if you look at AMDs releases with zen. They seem to release a Ryzen class and release the APUs in between. So 3000s mid to late this year... and the Navi based 3000 APUs spring or so next year which could well be when the PS5 hits using a custom verison chip very close to the Navi based APU parts.
 
The ps2 was the best selling console ever , and that was because of the content.
I think it´s mostly only people with some tech knowledge that worry about the specs, don´t get me wrong , they look impressive but , if it does´nt have a good line up at launch I feel it´ll sit on the shelves.
 
From the article:

Because it’s based in part on the PS4’s architecture, it will also be backward-compatible with games for that console.

Well damn. I skimmed the article, but apparently missed that. That is good news. That implies the games run native, not emulated. I wonder if that means we'll see some games updated to take advantage of the more powerful hardware or performance improvements on games that have an unlocked framerate.
 
PS1, PS2, PS3, PS4, and ??? Still unnamed they say.

Otherwise, I think it's cool that they are being honest and talking about it this early. You usually don't get anything from them until they day it's announced.

And I wonder if the PS4 games that going from 15 seconds to 0.8 seconds load time are designed for PS5 or simply ported over? If developers know there is an SSD, it's going to drastically change how they handle data. PC is going to benefit as well.
 
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Way too much heat for a console form factor. You need low power solutions and Intel's low power chips suck. Nvidia has burned bridges with both Sony and MS in the past, they're not going near Nvidia any time soon. Besides, two separate chips mean two separate, large, sources of heat to deal with and two major points of failure. An APU is really the only option for modern consoles.

So far as I have seen, clock for clock, power and performance are similar if not in favor of Intel.

And two moderate sources of heat, may be easier to manage than one massive one. Raven Ridge for example start choking on it's own heat with at pretty moderate clock speeds, you can do much better with even a very cheap and cool running GPU card like the 1050.

There is NO reason it has to be an APU, but it certainly simpler for it to be an APU, especially from the licensing perspective.
 
The ps2 was the best selling console ever , and that was because of the content.
I think it´s mostly only people with some tech knowledge that worry about the specs, don´t get me wrong , they look impressive but , if it does´nt have a good line up at launch I feel it´ll sit on the shelves.

Only a very small handful of consoles have had a good launch lineup. Switch and Dreamcast come to mind. The PS2 had an abysmal launch lineup. The PS4 has a pretty bleh one as well, the only stand out title was Rezogun and that was free. Launch lineup isn’t what sells people on consoles, it’s marketing and appealing to the biggest audience at the right time. The PS2 sold on being the first affordable DVD player and promising graphics that it could never achieve (Toy Story level).
 
Only a very small handful of consoles have had a good launch lineup. Switch and Dreamcast come to mind. The PS2 had an abysmal launch lineup. The PS4 has a pretty bleh one as well, the only stand out title was Rezogun and that was free. Launch lineup isn’t what sells people on consoles, it’s marketing and appealing to the biggest audience at the right time. The PS2 sold on being the first affordable DVD player and promising graphics that it could never achieve (Toy Story level).

No. The Switch had a total crap launch lineup.
 
If the price is right and it's at least able to hold solid 60fps in 4k then I'll probably get this. By then a lot of the games I'm interested in now ought to be heavily discounted too. Came really close to getting a PS4pro last summer but ultimately the faux 4k killed it for me. That combined with the lack of backwards compatibility to the previous gens other than the online B.S. offers. Seems like a few weeks ago I thought I read MS was planning on something builtin for their next gen, shame Sony still won't follow suit on this.

Did I miss it? No mention of variable refresh rate support. How about higher than 60fps in 1080p or 1440p? Outside of Tetris I've got some serious doubts what this will do in 8k though.
 
Interesting this is. Pretty much what I expected, but glad to have confirmation of it.

So their custom chip is going to be an APU. Given what we have seen so far with Zen 2, I would honestly be very surprised if this was a monolithic die. I am speculating that they probably are just going to wholesale reuse the existing zen2 chiplets that are coming out for the next Playstation.

So their APU die would be something like a 8c Zen 2 chiplet, a semi-custom IO die for whatever type of memory subsystem they are connecting to, and then some sort of navi-chiplet connected to the IO die?

The real question in my mind is the memory subsystem. Are they going to go with what they did on the PS4 again and wire in GDDR6 as shared memory for the CPU and GPU? Are we going to see something like the Intel-AMD hybrid CPU where there is a HBM2 cache on die and separate system ram? Or maybe a combination of both?

This is quite interesting to me. Regardless, I think this design could also signal what Zen 2 AM4 APU's might look like for PC's. (Though I'm not sure there is enough room on the package for a HBM chip without shrinking the IO die to 7nm as well.)

The last bit about Solid State storage rather than a spinning disk. I have no idea how they would make that economical... but if true, this will be a blood game changer. It would be an astronomical improvement that would lead us to the future where a fast SSD would be able to actually improve the gameplay itself rather than just improve loading speed while still being limited to designs based on traditional mechanical hard drive speed.

Based of their PS4 philosophy I doubt they have embedded ram on the APU other than normal CPU caches. Cerny describes why in “The Road to PS4”. I fully expect them to have 24GB of shared DDR6 with 4-8GB for system services and the OS.

I also think a chiplet design is the obvious choice here since it’ll make the transition to a PS5 Pro far easier.

I don’t think they will have an embedded SSD, I’m thinking simplicity is the key design choice just like PS4. So when he says “fastest SSD on the market” I just see it being a PCIE 4.0 m.2 NVMe drive that’s user upgradable.

No spindle in the console, use external storage to expand if you wish. Having a spindle in the console limits you to 2.5” and increases costs when it could go towards a larger NVMe drive.

The only moving part is the cooling fan.

- AMD 8c Ryzen 2 (3rd Gen) 7nm 1.8Ghz (3.2Ghz Boost)
- AMD Navi Lite custom Sony design 12TF
- 24GB DDR6 (16GB available for games)
- 1TB NVMe M.2 SSD
 
If the price is right and it's at least able to hold solid 60fps in 4k then I'll probably get this. By then a lot of the games I'm interested in now ought to be heavily discounted too. Came really close to getting a PS4pro last summer but ultimately the faux 4k killed it for me. That combined with the lack of backwards compatibility to the previous gens other than the online B.S. offers. Seems like a few weeks ago I thought I read MS was planning on something builtin for their next gen, shame Sony still won't follow suit on this.

Did I miss it? No mention of variable refresh rate support. How about higher than 60fps in 1080p or 1440p? Outside of Tetris I've got some serious doubts what this will do in 8k though.

8K support means they are using HDMI 2.1 so I would assume it would naturally support it. In other words if it’s not their it’s Sony purposefully omitting it which is seriously doubt happens.
 
Based of their PS4 philosophy I doubt they have embedded ram on the APU other than normal CPU caches. Cerny describes why in “The Road to PS4”. I fully expect them to have 24GB of shared DDR6 with 4-8GB for system services and the OS.

I also think a chiplet design is the obvious choice here since it’ll make the transition to a PS5 Pro far easier.

I don’t think they will have an embedded SSD, I’m thinking simplicity is the key design choice just like PS4. So when he says “fastest SSD on the market” I just see it being a PCIE 4.0 m.2 NVMe drive that’s user upgradable.

No spindle in the console, use external storage to expand if you wish. Having a spindle in the console limits you to 2.5” and increases costs when it could go towards a larger NVMe drive.

The only moving part is the cooling fan.

- AMD 8c Ryzen 2 (3rd Gen) 7nm 1.8Ghz (3.2Ghz Boost)
- AMD Navi Lite custom Sony design 12TF
- 24GB DDR6 (16GB available for games)
- 1TB NVMe M.2 SSD

I mostly agree with you. Not so sure they'll abandon a spindle, yet, but it's possible and I do agree with your logic. I also agree with the shared ram strategy. I seem to remember someone else mentioning that before, just not sure about the 24GB size but it's entirely possible. 16 would be too small and 32 could be overkill but if they want this thing to do anything in 8k then 32 shared might be needed.
 
So, I would imagine the next Gen XBox will probably be at least equivalent to this PS5. That said, how many people are going to rage about the prices of these Next Gen consoles and demand that Sony and Microsoft must sell them at a loss?
 
I mostly agree with you. Not so sure they'll abandon a spindle, yet, but it's possible and I do agree with your logic. I also agree with the shared ram strategy. I seem to remember someone else mentioning that before, just not sure about the 24GB size but it's entirely possible. 16 would be too small and 32 could be overkill but if they want this thing to do anything in 8k then 32 shared might be needed.

I don't see 16GB being too small. The point here isn't to build the uber PC with the best specs ever, it's to deliver decent performance, which should be no problem at all with 16GB of GDDR and a very fast SSD.
 
Decent read but no real surprises yet.

One assumes they are going m.2 and doing away with SATA for the SSD. SATA SSD on current PS4/Pro didn't make enough of a difference to be worth the cost. If they want a real speed increase they have to go m.2 nvme. Buy enough drives in bulk and they can get the cost down, but I would be SHOCKED if we see more than 1TB storage initially.

They confirmed the optical drive is staying... but I did not see anywhere any mention of 4K/UHD. I mean, for f*cks sake Sony, you HAVE to do this. A $250 Xbox One S does it, your future $599 launch PS5 better too. If they aren't doing a UHD drive, might as well just skip it.

Also no mention of how BC will work, will you just throw a disc in? I'm thinking probably NOT, I think Sony is eyeballing their streaming service for legacy games. But this is conjecture on my part, there are no hard details yet.

8K? I mean I guess the thing has to at least support a desktop/main screen on it and some video output. No way in hell we are going to see launch 8k game support. I mean the TV's aren't even available yet (except Japan/Korea and they cost more than a house). But you have to plan for the future. Now in 5-6-7 years when the PS5-Pro XXX comes out, maybe 8k will be a thing.

I want a SILENT console. My launch ps4 can get a little loud when it gets busy (not 360 loud, but not silent) especially the BR drive when it spins way up.. which makes no damn sense to me if a game is installed on the HDD. Also... real buttons please no more touch sensitive BS.

I hope the Dualshock 5 has a better battery life than the Dualshock 4's pathetic one.

I have never waited in line for a launch console (IRL or online, LOL) so we'll see what the price launches at. Don't be shocked if it's something nuts like $599 at launch for the Cadillac model. I can wait for the price to come down.
 
I'm sure I'll have it at some point in my household as my son likes consoles event though he is a LoL addict. Once Last of Us 2 comes out I'll grab his PS4 console and play that and Uncharted 4 and then give it back.

For the PS5 I could see me getting it not just for the games but for a good 4k HDR blu-ray player. I'm interested in the positional audio as I have a 7.1 system. I was disappointed in the surround audio for Hellblade.
 
The ps2 was the best selling console ever , and that was because of the content.

Later on, yes it's all about content. But what sold launch consoles with a pathetic launch game catalog was the DVD drive. Remember this was like 99/2000... standalone DVD players back then still cost real money. There isn't really a comparable "essential" tech like that today. The Dreamcast had a great launch catalog but the lack of the DVD drive (a cost saving measure Sega took, and it bit them in the ass big time) is one of the main factors in it's failure.

I mean unless someone can produce a game console that also doubles as an HD DVR for OTA/streaming/cable.... but that kind of living room integration was sort of what MS was going for with Xbone and they quickly kicked it to the curb to focus on other things.

Other than that I can't think of a single critical function that current gen can't already do. Game consoles have turned into computers and from here on out it's all about "more storage, faster, higher rez" etc
 
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I mostly agree with you. Not so sure they'll abandon a spindle, yet, but it's possible and I do agree with your logic. I also agree with the shared ram strategy. I seem to remember someone else mentioning that before, just not sure about the 24GB size but it's entirely possible. 16 would be too small and 32 could be overkill but if they want this thing to do anything in 8k then 32 shared might be needed.

I don’t think 16GB is too small at all. This is going to be 2080 or less performance and can’t see them throwing more ram at a GPU of this caliber. The CPU is vastly superior so compression should be perfectly fine.
 
I don’t think 16GB is too small at all. This is going to be 2080 or less performance and can’t see them throwing more ram at a GPU of this caliber. The CPU is vastly superior so compression should be perfectly fine.

So does the GPU have dedicated RAM or not? It's NOT a Raven Ridge APU, it's a Ryzen based SOC with a separate Navi GPU. IF the GPU has 8gb of it's own (and I think 8 is really the MINIMUM for it to be really 4k successful, more is better) then 16gb of system ram is probably enough. Or do 32gb for everything and call it a day. Keep in mind these things have a development lifespan of 10 years. On PC, how much ram will your GPU have in 10 years? With current trends, and GPUs 3 gens from now, 32GB or more just for GPU RAM wouldn't shock me at all. Main system memory? Probably 32gb there too. 64gb total maybe. How much will the PS5 have? Trick question... the same amount as when you bought it and you can't upgrade it.

5 years later, when it's time for the "PRO XXX" model, maybe they add more. Maybe 8k is a thing by then. If I had a crystal ball I would be a millionaire living on St. Martin right now, not posting on Hardforum in the middle of the day LOL
 
It wouldn't surprise me if they soldered in the storage this time and made increasing your storage something you can only do through them by buying first party external nvme drives.
 
Surprised @ raytracing capability.

Shouldn't be- implementing the hardware is trivial and the software support is already there. The hard part is getting enough performance to make it usable; Nvidia is leveraging machine-learning both with their indigenous compute resources and on end-user hardware. Sony and AMD (and Microsoft) will likely do something extremely similar and perhaps even more comprehensive given that the target hardware is static.

Way too much heat for a console form factor. You need low power solutions and Intel's low power chips suck. Nvidia has burned bridges with both Sony and MS in the past, they're not going near Nvidia any time soon. Besides, two separate chips mean two separate, large, sources of heat to deal with and two major points of failure. An APU is really the only option for modern consoles.

Not at all...?

Watt for watt, an Intel + Nvidia solution will get more work done. The technical challenge would be combining the two for console use, and the real challenge is that Sony and Microsoft demand that they own the hardware implementation- and well, neither Intel nor Nvidia have reason to 'sell out cheap'.

Fun part is that as Arm has advanced (and nodes have shrunk), Nvidia will be able to produce a competitive 'APU' at their leisure; Intel should already be able to do it, technically speaking. Neither are likely to be willing to compete with AMD on pricing, and the gap on pricing alongside the existing AMD implementation used in current consoles makes a switch highly unlikely so long as they maintain technical near-parity.
 
Shouldn't be- implementing the hardware is trivial and the software support is already there. The hard part is getting enough performance to make it usable; Nvidia is leveraging machine-learning both with their indigenous compute resources and on end-user hardware. Sony and AMD (and Microsoft) will likely do something extremely similar and perhaps even more comprehensive given that the target hardware is static.



Not at all...?

Watt for watt, an Intel + Nvidia solution will get more work done. The technical challenge would be combining the two for console use, and the real challenge is that Sony and Microsoft demand that they own the hardware implementation- and well, neither Intel nor Nvidia have reason to 'sell out cheap'.

Fun part is that as Arm has advanced (and nodes have shrunk), Nvidia will be able to produce a competitive 'APU' at their leisure; Intel should already be able to do it, technically speaking. Neither are likely to be willing to compete with AMD on pricing, and the gap on pricing alongside the existing AMD implementation used in current consoles makes a switch highly unlikely so long as they maintain technical near-parity.

Intel’s big issue on the APU end, besides cost, is the graphics side of things. Intel IGPUs have gotten marginally better over the years but they’re still not amazing and the ones they toss into the lower end chips are not great.

ARM is advancing quickly but it is still nowhere near good enough for high-end console gaming. A X2 enabled Switch or Shield TV like device would be outstanding systems for a lot of games but even that wouldn’t get anywhere near the power that is going to be required for the PS5 and next Xbox.
 
Intel’s big issue on the APU end, besides cost, is the graphics side of things. Intel IGPUs have gotten marginally better over the years but they’re still not amazing and the ones they toss into the lower end chips are not great.

I wouldn't want to compare them to AMD's tech, let alone Nvidia's- but the damn things do work, and they've gotten their drivers in shape in the process. And hell, they're still shipping the GPU architecture that they designed for Skylake (or earlier); one would hope that they'd have made some advances in that time despite not having a node to ship them on. Put simply, technically speaking, they should be able to produce a part that would work for the PS5, and their CPUs would be a step ahead too.

Of course, we're talking about total performance and performance / watt, not design cost, margins, or manufacturability on nodes other than Intel's, and AMD has a significant advantage here.

With respect to the combination with an Nvidia part: I stand by that given current releases, and at the same time I believe that AMD is capable of more than we've seen. They may not match Nvidia completely but I do expect them to do a better job of competing across all markets in the future. Cranking up APU performance and efficiency would be a huge benefit too.

ARM is advancing quickly but it is still nowhere near good enough for high-end console gaming. A X2 enabled Switch or Shield TV like device would be outstanding systems for a lot of games but even that wouldn’t get anywhere near the power that is going to be required for the PS5 and next Xbox.

High-end console gaming isn't really 'high-end gaming'; the disadvantage that Arm presents is not so much a technical one in terms of performance, but because x86-64 is established. The Arm parts, in a console configuration with large cores and higher clockspeeds tuned more for IPC than efficiency, would get the job done. The switch is just not worth the cost of converting, and backward compatibility would be a no-go for at least another generation.
 
Way too much heat for a console form factor. You need low power solutions and Intel's low power chips suck. Nvidia has burned bridges with both Sony and MS in the past, they're not going near Nvidia any time soon. Besides, two separate chips mean two separate, large, sources of heat to deal with and two major points of failure. An APU is really the only option for modern consoles.

Nah, you can easy deal with heat in that size. Look at the Gigabyte Aero 15x and see what they pack in to that little thing. That aside dual chips doesn't mean more heat, you can have multi-chip solutions that use much less power than single chip solutions. The real issue is cost. More chips means more cost, if for no reason other than you have to connect them together (there's plenty of other things that increase teh cost too). That aside, AMD is willing to make deals Intel and nVidia aren't because they need to get what they can to stay profitable.

With consoles cost really is the alpha and omega. I'm not saying heat, size, noise, etc don't get considered, but they are secondary to price. They want to offer the hardware for as little as possible to consumers so that as many people as possible buy their console. The console market is very subject to positive feedback loops meaning if everyone buys a console, it gets more games, because everyone has that console, meaning people buy that console because it has all the games. Good way to get that going is to have powerful hardware for a low price. To do that you either need to be willing to take a massive loss subsidizing expensive parts and selling them at a loss, or you need to find a way to get parts cost down. Getting an AMD chip has been highly effective at getting the cost down for MS and Sony. You only need one chip instead of two, and AMD is willing to take very slim margins on it.
 
Depends how much space they offer. Some of these next gen games will be massive. 4tb ssd could cost more than i'm prepared to pay for the whole console.


Its probably going to be a PCIe disk cache, with a regular cheap hard dive, so they don't have to price this thing at over $500.

All you have to do is have the game installer preload the first level onto the SSD cache during install. Then hit play, and game loads instantly.

The disk controller just needs software that's intelligent enough to preload the next level from hard drive into flash while you're playing the current level, and it's seamless to you. You'll want to keep the current level in the same cache, in case you decide to restart, or you die. Keep replacing the old levels with te new ones, and you never need more than two dedicated slots in cache for your game.

When you are done, the current level you are on is left in cache, so you can reload it lightning quick, or if it's not a game with any sort of storyline saved from one play to the next, you just reload the first level in the background.

It's going to be easier than a feature like Windows SuperFetch, because Sony controls the OS and can easily inform developers of how to break-up their games to fit as many of the "last two levels you played" into flash cache drive as possible. You'd only need 64GB to 128GB to make that work TODAY for maybe five games cached, and it's easy to increase the size in later releases.

Hell, could we be talking an Optane disk cache? You guys know how fast that makes hard drive systems, and it's probably going to be a lot less expensive by the time the PS5 comes out.
 
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I don't see a future for console gaming in the next generation, mostly due to cost and probably an incoming recession. There's a reason why Google and it seems everyone else is working on cloud gaming because the transition from the PS4 to the PS5 is going to be ruff. If the PS5 is $500 or more I can see people resisting to buy it. If there's no physical media to buy the games then you're really going to see people resisting the transition.

I don't see cloud gaming having a chance in hell either. What I see is a lot of people just holding onto their PS4's and Xbox One's and maybe even PC gaming gaining traction as well. In all seriousness PC gaming is the cheapest form of gaming compared to consoles and cloud gaming. All the old PC games work without a need to remaster them, and they're dirt cheap. You don't need to pay for a service to play your games online. You have many choices where to buy your games like G2Play, G2A, and Humble Bundle. You can pirate your games, and yes that's an option for people. Not like Denuvo does anything, amiright? You can mod games. You can play console games through emulators. You can play modded console games through emulators. ;)

 
ray-tracing!...might be better to just get a console for RT...I bought a PS4 for Bloodborne but sold it right before the PS4 Pro came out...I'm most likely going to pick up a PS5...
 
lol seriously?

The reason is money. Look at where amazon makes almost all their profits.
Yea money but cloud gaming is the most awful idea ever conceived in gaming history. It has received a unanimous no, which might explain why there's no pricing yet announced by Google. Google figures if people are going to resist the transition to PS5 and Xbox Two then this is where they can capitalize on console gamings decline. I also have this feeling that **IF** there's physical media for these consoles that it'll be on USB thumb drives that cost $70.

I can just see a mass exodus of people jumping on PC gaming to avoid that fiasco. Especially if Google's Stadia costs like $25 per month while Microsoft and Sony's next gen consoles cost $500+ and physical games are $70. Maybe no physical games at all which means no used games.
 
Happy for backwards compatibility. Lets see how it plays out. If it can run games at higher frame rates and also force a higher resolution that would be wonderful. Proper remakes would be nice, but many games won't get them. But if it can do that at least we can play those PS4 games we missed. May pick one up because I missed out on the Black Friday deals this year. But would probably wait another year for a nice bundle.
 
I have to roll my eyes at the reaction I have seen from kids elsewhere.

They are interpreting and spinning the statement about 8k (presumably because it has a HDMI 2.1 port. Anything with HDMI 2.1 is technically 8k capable, right?) to mean that it will be able to natively render games in 8k...


My prediction: True 8k60hz on top end PC's between the years 2028 and 2034, with console to follow 2-3 years after, if - and only if - hitting the limits of silicon doesn't slow GPU development (which it definitely will).

Based on assumptions below:

1.) We only just got the ability to do real 4k60hz rendering on new titles recently with the launch of the 2080ti in 2018.

2.) 8k has 4x as many pixels as 4k, so you need at least a 4x more powerful GPU if it scales linearly with pixels (but usually it scales worse, so you'll probably need more!)

3.) Each GPU generation lately has only given us 20-35% performance improvement

4.) Each GPU generation lately is 2 years long.

5.) Do the math
 
Yea money but cloud gaming is the most awful idea ever conceived in gaming history. It has received a unanimous no, which might explain why there's no pricing yet announced by Google. Google figures if people are going to resist the transition to PS5 and Xbox Two then this is where they can capitalize on console gamings decline. I also have this feeling that **IF** there's physical media for these consoles that it'll be on USB thumb drives that cost $70.

I can just see a mass exodus of people jumping on PC gaming to avoid that fiasco. Especially if Google's Stadia costs like $25 per month while Microsoft and Sony's next gen consoles cost $500+ and physical games are $70. Maybe no physical games at all which means no used games.
Physical games are already $60 minimum, unless the game was a flop or a small game/from a smaller studio...
 
I have to roll my eyes at the reaction I have seen from kids elsewhere.

They are interpreting and spinning the statement about 8k (presumably because it has a HDMI 2.1 port. Anything with HDMI 2.1 is technically 8k capable, right?) to mean that it will be able to natively render games in 8k...

Well it probably will technically be able to render games in 8k. It'll have enough RAM for the framebuffer and so on. So you probably will see a couple... that are low detail/complexity. I mean we are seeing more games these days that are 2d or use simple 3d graphics, particularly in the indy scene (which is on consoles now). So those would be perfectly possible to do in 8k at 60Hz. You saw the same shit in the PS3 days where there were a few games that actually rendered at 1080 because they were simplistic and it did support that. However that is going to be the rare exception. We'll see some more than will do 8k at 30 with tiling, because when properly done tiling cuts the needed render power in half. Then I'm sure the majority will render at 4k, or lower, and just get scaled up.

Particularly since 8k is damn near useless on a TV. You have to have a pretty big TV and be sitting reasonably close before 4k is really noticeable over 1080. You can certainly do it, and many people do, but many don't. If you are 12' away from a 50" TV the chances you notice any difference between 4k and 1080 are pretty minimal. It might look ever so slightly sharper with real crisp scenes. For an 8k TV that problem is just magnified. If you sit 6' away from your TV, it needs to be about 95" before 8k is really going to start to be noticeable. That's not going to be many people out there. Hence spending the rendering budget on getting 8k is not going to be very worth it, just do 4k and call it good.

8k is really a solution looking for a problem, or more accurately marketing BS to try and convince people they need new toys. It is just not needed in the vast, vast majority of living rooms. Better HDR, wider gamuts, better viewing angles, these things will all improve image in a way people can see, 8k will not. However companies want to sell new toys so expect to see 8k marketed.

But hey, if you want to drop $15,000 on Samsung's 65" Q900 (the only 8k TV I know of) and then sit like 4' away from it you'd be able to appreciate an 8k game... if one existed :D.
 
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