Console Hardware

[Paddi01]

It has almost always been a fact that console hardware is weaker than PC´s when it comes to performance.

But where does the limitation come from in the first place? My guess would be a cooling issue if they are too powerful.

Just asking out of curiosity.

[kelvinhall05]

Price and "console OS" I think.

[Paddi01]

14 minutes ago, kelvinhall05 said:

Price and "console OS" I think.

so it would be impossible to put something like a 1070 into a xbox for example?

[lieder1987]

11 minutes ago, Paddi01 said:

so it would be impossible to put something like a 1070 into a xbox for example?

yep impossible. 

[Godlygamer23]

13 minutes ago, Paddi01 said:

so it would be impossible to put something like a 1070 into a xbox for example?

At this point, it'd be too expensive. Price would be the limitation here, otherwise we wouldn't have notebook 1070s. 

[kelvinhall05]

2 hours ago, Paddi01 said:

so it would be impossible to put something like a 1070 into a xbox for example?

I don't think the OS could take advantage of it, and it would be too expensive.

[skywake]

The idea that the OS couldn't take advantage of it is nonsense, of course they could put out a higher spec PS4 or XBOne. They've already done it once!

 

Really it comes down to two things, what consumers can actually take advantage of and cost. On both you need to remember that for consoles you're selling to the majority of users rather than on PC where it's ok if a specific GPU only makes sense for even 1% of the market. If you have a 1080p/60Hz display it doesn't make that much sense to buy a 1080Ti or even a 1070. And the vast, vast majority of PC and console gamers have their machines hooked up to 1080p displays.

[Paddi01]

8 hours ago, skywake said:

The idea that the OS couldn't take advantage of it is nonsense, of course they could put out a higher spec PS4 or XBOne. They've already done it once!

 

Really it comes down to two things, what consumers can actually take advantage of and cost. On both you need to remember that for consoles you're selling to the majority of users rather than on PC where it's ok if a specific GPU only makes sense for even 1% of the market. If you have a 1080p/60Hz display it doesn't make that much sense to buy a 1080Ti or even a 1070. And the vast, vast majority of PC and console gamers have their machines hooked up to 1080p displays.

But there would be no cooling issue? Remember the Xbox 360. It is now old but nevertheless.

[snes]

Most console owners don't want to pay a premium just do be abused as beta testers for new hardware. Consoles are supposed to be as reliable and as maintenance free as possible. Also, most devs like to know what they're working with. That's why an underpowered system like the SNES turned out to be a success. It was proven hardware. Simple as that.

[skywake]

21 hours ago, Paddi01 said:

But there would be no cooling issue? Remember the Xbox 360. It is now old but nevertheless.

Two points. Firstly, power consumption under gaming load for various consoles from highest to lowest draw (launch SKUs):

Switch: 11W

Wii: 18W

Wii U: 32W

XBOne: 100W

PS4: 140W

PS4 Pro: 150W

XBOne X: 170W

360: 180W

PS3: 195W

 

The 360's issues were only partly due to its high power consumption. It also had a pretty wimpy heatsink and just a generally poor cooling design. Other consoles have drawn just as much power from the wall without issue. The size and power draw were both factors but they weren't the only factors.

 

Secondly there are console sized mITX cases on the market already. Ones where you can fit an SFX power supply a full sized CPU and modern GPU all into a box not much bigger than an XBOne. With fans for both the CPU and GPU having full access to air from outside of the case. You could put a 1080Ti and a CPU powerful enough to not bottleneck it in such a case with no issues at all.

[asus killer]

i don't think cooling is even a issue, you have laptops with dual 1080ti and 7700k.

I think its price, 500USD seems the limit for sofa gamers, no one seems to want to go higher (remember PS3 launch price).

And also the tv's sofa gamers use, 1st most are 1080p or even less and also the refresh rates of those tv's. 

[Mira Yurizaki]

On 1/6/2018 at 12:19 PM, Paddi01 said:

It has almost always been a fact that console hardware is weaker than PC´s when it comes to performance.

But where does the limitation come from in the first place? My guess would be a cooling issue if they are too powerful.

Just asking out of curiosity.

Cooling wasn't really an issue. At least not to the point where the Xbox 360 and PS3 in their first incarnations existed.

 

The primary limitation is cost. Nobody wants to pay $1000 for a console. Very few even want to pay more than $500 for one. And you still have to make a profit somehow so there's only so much power you can stuff into a console before it becomes prohibitively expensive.

 

The secondary limitation comes from the hardware specs being cemented. While this creates a limitation in hardware, it has one huge advantage: the hardware configuration, save for storage, is guaranteed to be the same. This makes development orders of magnitude easier. And while the New 3DS, PS4 Pro, and Xbox One X exist, developers have to support the older hardware still. So either they spend more resources optimizing for both versions, or they develop for one or the other and hope the API can sort out the rest.

[Zodiark1593]

On 1/6/2018 at 12:19 PM, Paddi01 said:

It has almost always been a fact that console hardware is weaker than PC´s when it comes to performance.

But where does the limitation come from in the first place? My guess would be a cooling issue if they are too powerful.

Just asking out of curiosity.

Price and aesthetics. Price in that more silicon cost more, the additional cooling costs more, and the up-rated psu costs more. Aesthetics also plays a role in cooling capacity. A smaller console provides less room for cooling.

[SteveGrabowski0]

Console hardware is weak because they're targeting a low price point and not upgrading for 6-7 years usually.

[ExplosiveSloths]

We don't know how long it takes to get parts and manufacturing ready and with the current pace of the PC market yeah.

Everything is so fast, that it's not possible to keep up.

 

 

[Nedkely]

On 1/6/2018 at 8:19 PM, Paddi01 said:

It has almost always been a fact that console hardware is weaker than PC´s when it comes to performance.

But where does the limitation come from in the first place? My guess would be a cooling issue if they are too powerful.

Just asking out of curiosity.

Xbox one and ps4 is the 2013 year invention. 

Comparing them to the PC's from that era with 600 series nvidia gpu's or even AMD's, they were incredibly strong for the price of 350-500$, when the good gaming PC was easly over 1000$. The consoles were able to play the game and record it without any performance loss, that was unthinkable on the PC back then. Not even to mention 1080p support, a real full hd, when most of the pc was either hd ready or 900p. 

The things changes a little after 700 series, but consoles were still relevant. 

 

And for the performance, its still amazing if you take into consideration how much power they take. 

And neither sony or MS will never put into the consoles dedicated isolated gpu+CPU architecture like on the PC, since the HSA chips works for them wonders and they will focus on this type of solution, due to its superior performance and power usage. Merging both chips together saves incredible amount of space on Vram along with the reduced number of computing tasks to do the same job. 

I will be surprised if Nvidia will not release their very own, HSA fixed PC when the next gen consoles will go out. 

 

[Mira Yurizaki]

24 minutes ago, Nedkely said:

The consoles were able to play the game and record it without any performance loss, that was unthinkable on the PC back then.

They get around that by having a separate ARM chip doing that work. You could do the same thing on a PC using an HDMI capture device (note the video was made in May 2013)

 

EDIT: Actually that ARM chip doesn't do media encoding, so thinking about this some more, you can still achieve minimal performance loss while recording game footage using the GPU, which is what the PS4 is likely doing. Not to mention that I believe the PS4 records at 720p, the Pro at 1080p, regardless of actual resolution.

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Not even to mention 1080p support, a real full hd, when most of the pc was either hd ready or 900p.

1080p was a relatively common resolution back then. I was gaming in at least 1920x1200 since 2009.