AfterDawn: News

AMD building graphics for the PS4

Forbes has reported today that Sony's upcoming PlayStation 4 console will move away from Nvidia and instead use AMD for the GPU.

Sony used Nvidia to power the graphics of the current generation's PlayStation 3, while Microsoft uses AMD in their Xbox 360 and is expected to use them again for their next Xbox.



The note comes via former AMD employees, says Forbes.

Both companies declined comment, and Sony went as far as to not even acknowledge that the PS4 is coming, at all

While the move would be significant, the report must be taken as speculation as moving to a custom AMD Radeon graphics chip would likely kill backwards compatibility with PS3 games, says Xbit, unless Sony pays dual royalties to AMD and Nvidia.

Written by: Andre Yoskowitz @ 24 Feb 2012 12:43

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• 13 comments

• beanos66

  Backwards compatability? Sony? HA!
  

  24.2.2012 12:49 #1

• brockie

  I would have thought intel myself.

  24.2.2012 13:07 #2

• LordRuss

  Price, price, price... Intel won't do anything for less than 5x's the cost. It's just like buying jewelry folks. A $1000 necklace in actuality costs $100. Intel could sell their chipsets & the likes for a reasonable price, but they have conditioned the markets to pay the bloated prices & have gotten away with it for so long they've religiously bought into their own bullshit, so they refuse to budge. Oh well, their loss.
  
  Now why Sony would screw around & dip their own edited by ddp in their ice cream with the whole driver issue with regards to their older games? That's a new one me... unless they have a loophole somehow twisted around their barbed wire edited by ddp ring from ATI cards that went into their VIO computers...
  
  It's pretty much nothing more than an educated guess really...

  24.2.2012 13:36 #3

• Interestx

  I wonder if we're heading to a time when the main consoles are basically the same thing but slightly different in features.
  It's like that in most every other part of the CE market so why not?
  
  Think of TVs, DVD players, CD players, VHS decks or Blu-ray players or audio receivers. All doing much the same thing but with the brandings' own flavour added to the mix to differentiate it from the others.
  
  It's not as if there's much in it now between Xbox 360 & PS3 besides a video format
  (and even then that's only really to do with it coming via disc, not a matter of much actual difference in ability to show 1080p video).
  

  24.2.2012 14:03 #4

• KillerBug

  Originally posted by LordRuss: Price, price, price... Intel won't do anything for less than 5x's the cost. It's just like buying jewelry folks. A $1000 necklace in actuality costs $100. Intel could sell their chipsets & the likes for a reasonable price, but they have conditioned the markets to pay the bloated prices & have gotten away with it for so long they've religiously bought into their own bullshit, so they refuse to budge. Oh well, their loss.
  Intel can't make a graphics chip; their latest and greatest desktop graphics chips are something like a half-decent laptop chip from 5 years ago. As for the CPUs, they make great chips for workstations...but you don't need that kind of chip for a gaming system so it is just a waste if you put one of those chips into a system that won't be used as a workstation.
  
  
  Originally posted by Interestx: I wonder if we're heading to a time when the main consoles are basically the same thing but slightly different in features.
  It's like that in most every other part of the CE market so why not?
  
  Think of TVs, DVD players, CD players, VHS decks or Blu-ray players or audio receivers. All doing much the same thing but with the brandings' own flavour added to the mix to differentiate it from the others.
  
  It's not as if there's much in it now between Xbox 360 & PS3 besides a video format
  (and even then that's only really to do with it coming via disc, not a matter of much actual difference in ability to show 1080p video).
  They are very similar, but there are still very significant differences that go beyond just the exclusives. I am just waiting for someone like Dell/HP/etc to spank the @55 of Sony and Microsoft by making a low-price integrated gaming PC system with decent hardware. There is nothing preventing them from making a mainboard with a decent video chip on-board just like the 360/PS3 does...if they can make $250 laptops then they can make $250 gaming mini-desktops...and it wouldn't take very good specs to just spank the 360 and the PS3. Plus, there is no game delay...there are about 10,000 games available the day they start selling such a system.
  
  There is just one big downside there...consoles stay "current" for a longer time. I used the quotes because while they are still getting new games, the 360 and the PS3 have not had current tech for a while now...and they don't tend to last more than 2 years before dieing anyway.

  24.2.2012 15:53 #5

• himsaad714@yahoo.com (unverified)

  Originally posted by brockie: I would have thought intel myself.
  well being that intel only offers the 2000 and 3000 series integrated graphics and the gma northbridge. they would have to do a ground up build whereas amd has full set of northbridges to start architecture for dedicated gpu on the ps4. hell there are the new 9000 series chipsets that are so over powered as is, just start there and build for a dedicated 8 core processor. intel is overpriced anyways. wow they have hyper threading, well amd has bulldozer multi threading processors. just wait for the excavator to come out, the 4th gen in this line up.

  24.2.2012 16:45 #6

• KillerBug

  Originally posted by himsaad714@yahoo.com: Originally posted by brockie: I would have thought intel myself.
  well being that intel only offers the 2000 and 3000 series integrated graphics and the gma northbridge. they would have to do a ground up build whereas amd has full set of northbridges to start architecture for dedicated gpu on the ps4. hell there are the new 9000 series chipsets that are so over powered as is, just start there and build for a dedicated 8 core processor. intel is overpriced anyways. wow they have hyper threading, well amd has bulldozer multi threading processors. just wait for the excavator to come out, the 4th gen in this line up.
  I like AMD from the standpoint that "they are not Intel"...but there are some serious drawbacks. I held out on my old AMD for about two years after I was ready for an upgrade...just waiting for them to include basic features like AES support. I finally gave up and went with Intel. Today AMD still doesn't have AES support, even on the server processors where it is far more important than the 3D-specific functions that are included in those chips.
  
  When it comes to a game-only system, both AMD and Intel are both junk. There are a lot of functions built in that are downright useless for gaming. This means that there are either fewer cores or a larger (more expensive) chip for the same number of cores and the same performance. This is why neither the 360 nor the PS3 have Intel or AMD CPUs. AMD can still compete in this field with the graphics chips, Intel has nothing to offer. IBM...well, they are the king of dedicated-gaming CPUs...even if they don't offer decent video chips.
  

  
  

  24.2.2012 17:54 #7

• WierdName

  Originally posted by Interestx: I wonder if we're heading to a time when the main consoles are basically the same thing but slightly different in features.
  It's like that in most every other part of the CE market so why not?
  
  Think of TVs, DVD players, CD players, VHS decks or Blu-ray players or audio receivers. All doing much the same thing but with the brandings' own flavour added to the mix to differentiate it from the others.
  
  It's not as if there's much in it now between Xbox 360 & PS3 besides a video format
  (and even then that's only really to do with it coming via disc, not a matter of much actual difference in ability to show 1080p video). Originally posted by KillerBug: They are very similar, but there are still very significant differences that go beyond just the exclusives. I am just waiting for someone like Dell/HP/etc to spank the @55 of Sony and Microsoft by making a low-price integrated gaming PC system with decent hardware. There is nothing preventing them from making a mainboard with a decent video chip on-board just like the 360/PS3 does...if they can make $250 laptops then they can make $250 gaming mini-desktops...and it wouldn't take very good specs to just spank the 360 and the PS3. Plus, there is no game delay...there are about 10,000 games available the day they start selling such a system.
  
  There is just one big downside there...consoles stay "current" for a longer time. I used the quotes because while they are still getting new games, the 360 and the PS3 have not had current tech for a while now...and they don't tend to last more than 2 years before dieing anyway.
  I'm not sure if you're referring to hardware or software. I would agree there are a lot of cross-platform games but the hardware is quite different. That's, aside from licensing issues, one of the biggest reasons games highly optimized for a specific platform (Metal Gear Solid 4 comes to mind) are not ported to other systems. The software from the start is designed to work with one and only one hardware setup and to use that hardware to its fullest. Not to mention towards the end of the console consumers are expecting more so the developers are under more pressure to eek out every last bit of performance they can or suffer content degradation.
  
  That then leads to the bigger problem of companies having different ideas for priorities. Sony invested in multi-thread performance, Microsoft invested in budget friendly, and Nintendo invested in childrens' ability to annoy until they get what they want. Ok, Nintendo invested in uber-cheap, but also the kid thing.
  
  In short, we won't see console convergence until makers and the market agree on priorities. TVs, DVD players, etc. are alike because they all have one specific goal of playing content, then they add brand features. Consoles are like that but they play dynamic content which depends heavily on hardware and brand features. TVs and DVD players are made for the content, whereas games are made for the console.
  
  Budget gaming rigs would probably be a hit though. Using a 5 year old, non-gaming laptop I would be interested in a computer capable of playing even Portal or TF2, let alone Portal 2 or BF3. Not to mention the loads of PC exclusive titles. But alas, I'm broke.
  

  Doesnt expecting the unexpected make the unexpected expected and therefore mean youre expecting the expected which was the unexpected until you expected it?
  "Opinions are immunities to being told were wrong." - Relient K

  24.2.2012 18:46 #8

• xaznboitx

  wait, thought MS not going to allow xbox and 360 games but how can the new xbox console not going to allow it if it's going to use the same chip that uses on the 360 as well and what's the point the point of making new console if they are going to use same chip?
  
  if you google ps4 amd chip, this been going on since 2008
  

  24.2.2012 20:35 #9

• A5J4DX

  what!?
  

  24.2.2012 20:39 #10

• LordRuss

  Originally posted by KillerBug: Intel can't make a graphics chip; their latest and greatest desktop graphics chips are something like a half-decent laptop chip from 5 years ago. As for the CPUs, they make great chips for workstations...but you don't need that kind of chip for a gaming system so it is just a waste if you put one of those chips into a system that won't be used as a workstation.
  
  
  Not to be argumentative; they could. By your own admission they made a crappy laptop graphics processor. Which I believe was a copy or downright rip off of the S3 processor of yester years.
  
  As for workstation processing... I'm pretty much on board with you there, but there are going to be a bunch of PC gamers out there 'chomping at the bit' to debate as to whether or not it's worthy as a gaming processor; seeing as so many folks want to cram the thing into a gaming PC as it is.
  

  http://onlyinrussellsworld.blogspot.com

  25.2.2012 12:04 #11

• xnonsuchx

  It doesn't necessarily kill backwards compatibility as a newer Radeon-based GPU should be able to do just about all the PS3's RSX does, so real time interpreter 'emulation' is quite possible (GeForce and Radeon aren't as different from each other as the PS2 Graphics Synthesizer was to them). The backwards compatibility killer would be switching completely away from a CPU with similar architecture to the Cell BE, which the rumored POWER6/7 + SPE cluster would be (similar to). It could also be fairly easy to make patches to PS3 games to help w/ compatibility issues that aren't as easy to address via firmware.

  25.2.2012 18:02 #12

• brockie

  KillerBug intel powered sandy bridge CPU chip with NVIDIA gtx 580 standard graphics card would work great in a console what are you talking about.

  28.2.2012 09:36 #13