Has anyone else started down the rabbit hole of what the next gen consoles might bring in the way of performance gains and what that might mean for gaming as a whole?
Things we know so far.
AMD Zen 2 CPU: This alone is a huge leap in performance as the Jags currently used has been the biggest thing holding current hardware back in terms of performance.
8 core 16 thread CPU: With devs now working with this as the baseline PC gaming should see a huge jump in performance.
Custom Navi GPU: While a chip upgrade brings in more muscle to push performance, I am more excited about...
RDNA Architecture: Because they will be using Navi we will get all the gains from the advancement of graphics architectures over the last 7 years. Current gen hardware is really based on early GCN architecture. Digital Foundry recently did a comparison video of how much architecture changes from Tahiti GCN 1.0 to Polaris GCN 4.0 to Polaris GCN 4.0 (4 more compute units) to Navi (same 36 compute units) at worse we are looking at a 30% gains in from the architecture alone.
14Gbps GDDR6 system memory: We still don't know how much ram will be provided. It would be surprising to see the the kind of jumps we've had in the past. However, anything is possible.
Custom Low level integrated Storage SSD: A lot has been said about how they are going to be able to pull of the claims from both Microsoft and Sony. The idea is to get to next to no loading times. Something even the PC isn't currently capable of using NVME.
Ray Tracing: Sony has said they will have ray tracing but not saying how they plan to handle it. Microsoft on the other hand has stated they will have hardware enhanced ray tracing. The thing to remember about ray tracing is that up until the Nvidia RTX lineup, that type of integer processing was completed at the CPU level. I will be interested to see if they use a dedicated chip, part of the GPU or CPU, or even possibly software based (in the case of Sony). Also, I wonder about what the means for the future of PC ray tracing.
Variable Refresh Rate: Xbox has already added this feature and soon more and more TVs will support VRR with the advancement of the HDMI 2.1 spec. As spoiled as we have become with FreeSync and G-Sync, having this available on consoles is a huge deal. No longer will we see tearing like what was common place in the 360 era and being locked in at 30, 60, or even 120 won't matter quite as much as it does today. Combined with the dynamic resolution tricks currently seen in gaming I think this will help the new hardware meet or exceed expectations for a buttery smooth experience.
Now the fun part. Speculation. The goal post seems pretty much set that 4k 60 needs to become the norm. Microsoft seems to be setting their bar even higher with 120fps. Being that these are 400 to 500 dollar boxes and current PC prices for that kind of performance seems far fetched at that price point. However, looking back at how good current games were able to look and run with such outdated and weak hardware, looking at you Jaguar CPUs, and how far technology has come. DX11 to Mantle to Vulcan and to DX12, giving devs more access API commands and lessen the burden on driver and software support. Think about the more efficiency in processing with additions of asynchronous compute with less idling compute units. Also, the addition of more, complex, and powerful compute units. This might be a much bigger leap than we have seen in a very long time.
Things we know so far.
AMD Zen 2 CPU: This alone is a huge leap in performance as the Jags currently used has been the biggest thing holding current hardware back in terms of performance.
8 core 16 thread CPU: With devs now working with this as the baseline PC gaming should see a huge jump in performance.
Custom Navi GPU: While a chip upgrade brings in more muscle to push performance, I am more excited about...
RDNA Architecture: Because they will be using Navi we will get all the gains from the advancement of graphics architectures over the last 7 years. Current gen hardware is really based on early GCN architecture. Digital Foundry recently did a comparison video of how much architecture changes from Tahiti GCN 1.0 to Polaris GCN 4.0 to Polaris GCN 4.0 (4 more compute units) to Navi (same 36 compute units) at worse we are looking at a 30% gains in from the architecture alone.
14Gbps GDDR6 system memory: We still don't know how much ram will be provided. It would be surprising to see the the kind of jumps we've had in the past. However, anything is possible.
Custom Low level integrated Storage SSD: A lot has been said about how they are going to be able to pull of the claims from both Microsoft and Sony. The idea is to get to next to no loading times. Something even the PC isn't currently capable of using NVME.
Ray Tracing: Sony has said they will have ray tracing but not saying how they plan to handle it. Microsoft on the other hand has stated they will have hardware enhanced ray tracing. The thing to remember about ray tracing is that up until the Nvidia RTX lineup, that type of integer processing was completed at the CPU level. I will be interested to see if they use a dedicated chip, part of the GPU or CPU, or even possibly software based (in the case of Sony). Also, I wonder about what the means for the future of PC ray tracing.
Variable Refresh Rate: Xbox has already added this feature and soon more and more TVs will support VRR with the advancement of the HDMI 2.1 spec. As spoiled as we have become with FreeSync and G-Sync, having this available on consoles is a huge deal. No longer will we see tearing like what was common place in the 360 era and being locked in at 30, 60, or even 120 won't matter quite as much as it does today. Combined with the dynamic resolution tricks currently seen in gaming I think this will help the new hardware meet or exceed expectations for a buttery smooth experience.
Now the fun part. Speculation. The goal post seems pretty much set that 4k 60 needs to become the norm. Microsoft seems to be setting their bar even higher with 120fps. Being that these are 400 to 500 dollar boxes and current PC prices for that kind of performance seems far fetched at that price point. However, looking back at how good current games were able to look and run with such outdated and weak hardware, looking at you Jaguar CPUs, and how far technology has come. DX11 to Mantle to Vulcan and to DX12, giving devs more access API commands and lessen the burden on driver and software support. Think about the more efficiency in processing with additions of asynchronous compute with less idling compute units. Also, the addition of more, complex, and powerful compute units. This might be a much bigger leap than we have seen in a very long time.
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