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Sony hikes up PS5 pricing in April: PS5 – $649.99, PS5 Digital Edition – $599.99 PS5 Pro – $899.99, Portal $249.99

My kids all got forced into early teenage jobs. They all got bank accounts early and I could do cool shit like posting: "$25 to weed the mulch beds" into the family group chat and they'd compete or collaborate to get it. They relate their money to sweaty hard work more than most people probably do. But I even see their friends being a less spendy then I was at their age. IDK, their interest is the best anecdotal I've got to how console makers are attracting the younger generation, and it seems to track a little bit with the articles that come out. To get me back into consoles, I want Sony to accept their audience is adults and drop a $1,500 audiophile grade ES badged Playstation. Always dreamed of a Playstation dressed up like an EX receiver.

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or at least make it able to replace a WiiM. I think that is totally reasonable, they'd just have to raise the BOM a bit on those internals and I/O. PS3 was headed that direction and the 4 stripped every bit of it.

I don't think ES still means what it used to to mean:


And this is a proper technical measurement review. Not an I have magic audiophile ears review.
 
Nah. Nintendo is much smarter than Sony. The Switch2 BoM is very manageable.

Superior Nvidia technology purchased at cost: I don't know what words Nintendo spoke to Jensen to convince him to sell an Ampere+ 10nm SoC at 40$. (Basically cost).

This is important because the performance/$ of a Nvidia Ampere SoC purchased at cost is astronomical.

They also didn't follow Sony's Bozo Commodity maxing strategy.

Switch2 has a 256GB UFS3.1 Storage. (PCIe 2.0 class speed). And it has 2x6GB of bottom bin garbage LPDDR5-6400.

Their BoM is very manageable compared with Sony's. And Nintendo can finish off Sony with a Switch 2 Pro that's just Switch2 + SoC ported to a 3nm process. That would just be twisting the knife.
That's not being "smart"...

That's making a handheld.

And slow down... your fanboyism is beginning to show. Like the nonsense you said about 3nm process, switch 2 is currently on an 8nm process from Samsung... you think that's a coincidence? The second they decide to go to a 3nm process, watch the cost of their chip skyrocket.

I understand objectivity may be hard because you are picking sides, but at least try... You cannot compare a home console to a handheld, any more than anyone can compare a home console to a PC. Completely different markets and design priorities. The second you find yourself doing that, then just know you are a proper fanboy.

Hell... manageable? You seem to forget that the PS5 launched at a $399 price point. Is it Sony's fault that the process node shrinks and or RAM prices skyrocketed? Is it Sony's fault that every single electronic device has gotten more expensive?
 
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Maybe, you seem to know more about the build than I do. Nintendo needs a screenless version anyway, there is no way I canplay either the first one or second without my hands hurting. Both pro controllers are nice but a bit small.
Why not just use it docked? Switch2 screen costs less than the dual sense. There is no way they remove it. Even if they make a cheaper model they will just use a 20$ cheaper screen.
 
It's nice to be reminded what Sony's industrial design department can put out. I guess they were on vacation during the development of PS5.
Plot twist: they weren't.

The PS5 is the best console design since the NES (NA version). It's also (easily) the most iconic product design since the iPod. Looks are subjective; you either love it or hate it. However, functionality and design language aren't. Those two require extraordinary skills to get right. This is where the PS5 excels in ways that make it iconic.

Let me quickly list 4 extremely impressive things about the PS5 design:

1) They integrated the console number (V) into the design itself. The last time that was done was with the OG Xbox and Gamecube, and neither of those designs integrated a number into their looks.

2) They integrated two extremely difficult colors (black and white) into the entire console, controller, and accesories design. The two-tone color-delete look is rarely done because high-contrast designs will always stick out; and more often than not, they stick out in a bad way (e.g., Series S black "speaker" on white body.) Someone at Sony had the nutsack to go with this design language for the PS5 and everything related to it.

3) They integrated upgradeability, rotationality, and customization into the console without compromising thermals, airflow, and of course aesthetics. Nothing sticks out, everything just fits as if it's part of the original design -- even though the user can and or has made changes to it. Extremely difficult to do.

4) They integrated curvature into every PS5 console, controller, and accessory design. In fact, the PS5 -- even the disc drive -- has no straight lines. This is extremely difficult to do. Almost every mass market product has a blocky look due to the ease of just drawing straight lines and calling it a day. This was not the case with the PS5.

There are other incredibly impressive design nuances (e.g., how the lights on the console don't shine directly into your eyes, the 4-symbols texturing each PS5 and accessory etc.) that show how much fantastic work was done by their designers. There are material choices that are bad (e.g., thumbsticks rubber, disc stand plastic), but they are far outweighed by what the designers were able to achieve in such a form factor. Exceptional work.
 
That's not being "smart"...

That's making a handheld.
Not really. You're not getting the issue with the PS5 current price being so unattractive.

The major issue with PS5 is that the IP on the chip is mediocre. It's Zen2 on N6, which is bad perf and features/area.

This is because sony pursued a "commodity maxing strategy" where they made up for the bad performance/area by packing cheap plentiful commodities (16GB GDDR6 and a 1TB PCIe 4.0 SSD). now those commodities are killing the BoM.

Nintendo otoh went with a Nvidia Ampere+ SoC, which is much better than RDNA2, they then chose the cheapest process node imaginable for it. Thus Nvidia's superior technology made up for the process's shortcomings. That's how Switch2 is beating the daylight out of Steam Deck.

They then proceeded to use bottom bin garbage for commodities. (12GB LP5-6.4 + 256GB PCIe 2.0 class phone storage). Resisting game developer calls for more.

It's quite literally the opposite strategy as Sony.

And it gives Nintendo room to both resist Switch2 Price hikes that would derail the install base but also to release a Switch2 Pro through a simple port to 7-6-5-4-3-2nm to compete with PS6 Switch (won't dwell on this more because this isn't the thread for this).

Tariffs was the problem for Nintendo. Since those were 20% (90$), but those are 10% currently and will be gone within months. Nintendo overall hasn't lost ground when tariffs go away because the commodities on their BoM were minimal to begin with.

The only threat for Nintendo is that physical game cartridges costs will increase. But they can just start selling download codes. Not to mention they can just cut digital price and shift enough people to that to come out ahead overall.

TLDR: Nintendo's console strategy makes them much less vulnerable to commodity price hikes than Sony.
 
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Plot twist: they weren't.

The PS5 is the best console design since the NES (NA version). It's also (easily) the most iconic product design since the iPod. Looks are subjective; you either love it or hate it. However, functionality and design language aren't. Those two require extraordinary skills to get right. This is where the PS5 excels in ways that make it iconic.

Let me quickly list 4 extremely impressive things about the PS5 design:

1) They integrated the console number (V) into the design itself. The last time that was done was with the OG Xbox and Gamecube, and neither of those designs integrated a number into their looks.

2) They integrated two extremely difficult colors (black and white) into the entire console, controller, and accesories design. The two-tone color-delete look is rarely done because high-contrast designs will always stick out; and more often than not, they stick out in a bad way (e.g., Series S black "speaker" on white body.) Someone at Sony had the nutsack to go with this design language for the PS5 and everything related to it.

3) They integrated upgradeability, rotationality, and customization into the console without compromising thermals, airflow, and of course aesthetics. Nothing sticks out, everything just fits as if it's part of the original design -- even though the user can and or has made changes to it. Extremely difficult to do.

4) They integrated curvature into every PS5 console, controller, and accessory design. In fact, the PS5 -- even the disc drive -- has no straight lines. This is extremely difficult to do. Almost every mass market product has a blocky look due to the ease of just drawing straight lines and calling it a day. This was not the case with the PS5.

There are other incredibly impressive design nuances (e.g., how the lights on the console don't shine directly into your eyes, the 4-symbols texturing each PS5 and accessory etc.) that show how much fantastic work was done by their designers. There are material choices that are bad (e.g., thumbsticks rubber, disc stand plastic), but they are far outweighed by what the designers were able to achieve in such a form factor. Exceptional work.
But the disc drive is at the bottom of the console which is annoying.
 
Not really. You're not getting the issue with the PS5 current price being so unattractive.

The major issue with PS5 is that the IP on the chip is terrible. It's Zen2/RDNA2 on N6, both offer terrible perf and features/area.

This is because sony pursued a "commodity maxing strategy" where they made up for the bad performance/area by packing cheap plentiful commodities (16GB GDDR6 and a 1TB PCIe 4.0 SSD). now those commodities are killing the BoM.

Nintendo otoh went with a Nvidia Ampere+ SoC, which is much better than RDNA2, they then chose the cheapest process node imaginable for it. Thus Nvidia's superior technology made up for the process's shortcomings. That's how Switch2 is beating the daylight out of Steam Deck.

They then proceeded to use bottom bin garbage for commodities. (12GB LP5-6.4 + 256GB PCIe 2.0 class phone storage). Resisting game developer calls for more.

It's quite literally the opposite strategy as Sony.

And it gives Nintendo room to both resist Switch2 Price hikes that would derail the install base but also to release a Switch2 Pro through a simple port to 7-6-5-4-3-2nm to compete with PS6 Switch (won't dwell on this more because this isn't the thread for this).

Tariffs was the problem for Nintendo. Since those were 20% (90$), but those are 10% currently and will be gone within months. Nintendo overall hasn't lost ground when tariffs go away because the commodities on their BoM were minimal to begin with.

The only threat for Nintendo is that physical game cartridges costs will increase. But they can just start selling download codes. Not to mention they can just cut digital price and shift enough people to that to come out ahead overall.

TLDR: Nintendo's console strategy makes them much less vulnerable to commodity price hikes than Sony.
Dude, what are you talking about????

Actually, you know what... nvm.
 
Plot twist: they weren't.

The PS5 is the best console design since the NES (NA version). It's also (easily) the most iconic product design since the iPod. Looks are subjective; you either love it or hate it. However, functionality and design language aren't. Those two require extraordinary skills to get right. This is where the PS5 excels in ways that make it iconic.

Let me quickly list 4 extremely impressive things about the PS5 design:

1) They integrated the console number (V) into the design itself. The last time that was done was with the OG Xbox and Gamecube, and neither of those designs integrated a number into their looks.

2) They integrated two extremely difficult colors (black and white) into the entire console, controller, and accesories design. The two-tone color-delete look is rarely done because high-contrast designs will always stick out; and more often than not, they stick out in a bad way (e.g., Series S black "speaker" on white body.) Someone at Sony had the nutsack to go with this design language for the PS5 and everything related to it.

3) They integrated upgradeability, rotationality, and customization into the console without compromising thermals, airflow, and of course aesthetics. Nothing sticks out, everything just fits as if it's part of the original design -- even though the user can and or has made changes to it. Extremely difficult to do.

4) They integrated curvature into every PS5 console, controller, and accessory design. In fact, the PS5 -- even the disc drive -- has no straight lines. This is extremely difficult to do. Almost every mass market product has a blocky look due to the ease of just drawing straight lines and calling it a day. This was not the case with the PS5.

There are other incredibly impressive design nuances (e.g., how the lights on the console don't shine directly into your eyes, the 4-symbols texturing each PS5 and accessory etc.) that show how much fantastic work was done by their designers. There are material choices that are bad (e.g., thumbsticks rubber, disc stand plastic), but they are far outweighed by what the designers were able to achieve in such a form factor. Exceptional work.
You call it iconic when a lot of people made jokes about the PS5 looking like a cheap router from China. We even had at least one thread on this very forum.
 
Plot twist: they weren't.

The PS5 is the best console design since the NES (NA version). It's also (easily) the most iconic product design since the iPod. Looks are subjective; you either love it or hate it. However, functionality and design language aren't. Those two require extraordinary skills to get right. This is where the PS5 excels in ways that make it iconic.

Let me quickly list 4 extremely impressive things about the PS5 design:

1) They integrated the console number (V) into the design itself. The last time that was done was with the OG Xbox and Gamecube, and neither of those designs integrated a number into their looks.

2) They integrated two extremely difficult colors (black and white) into the entire console, controller, and accesories design. The two-tone color-delete look is rarely done because high-contrast designs will always stick out; and more often than not, they stick out in a bad way (e.g., Series S black "speaker" on white body.) Someone at Sony had the nutsack to go with this design language for the PS5 and everything related to it.

3) They integrated upgradeability, rotationality, and customization into the console without compromising thermals, airflow, and of course aesthetics. Nothing sticks out, everything just fits as if it's part of the original design -- even though the user can and or has made changes to it. Extremely difficult to do.

4) They integrated curvature into every PS5 console, controller, and accessory design. In fact, the PS5 -- even the disc drive -- has no straight lines. This is extremely difficult to do. Almost every mass market product has a blocky look due to the ease of just drawing straight lines and calling it a day. This was not the case with the PS5.

There are other incredibly impressive design nuances (e.g., how the lights on the console don't shine directly into your eyes, the 4-symbols texturing each PS5 and accessory etc.) that show how much fantastic work was done by their designers. There are material choices that are bad (e.g., thumbsticks rubber, disc stand plastic), but they are far outweighed by what the designers were able to achieve in such a form factor. Exceptional work.

It's the dumbest looking console made yet, especially the launch version. Has there ever been another console that some people cant tell which way is up, It's so bad the head of gaming for Sony did not even know which side is up, when trying to do some viral marketing. Its an ugly piece of hardware, that looks like the design was slapped together at the last minute. Which I am pretty sure it was, as the rumors go that they were still trying to get the internals cooler nearing production window.
 
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You can be specific about what part you disagree with. A fourm is about discussion, after all.
I was gonna respond, but what you are saying is so FAR removed from reality that I didn't even know where to begin.

eg.

The major issue with PS5 is that the IP on the chip is terrible. It's Zen2/RDNA2 on N6, both offer terrible perf and features/area.
first of all, PS5 launched on 7nm, not 6nm. Secondly, at the price point, fab process, chip size, you couldn't possibly have made a more powerful console in 2020 than what Sony did, and in part, MS. Both approached using the best hardware they could at that price point in slightly different ways. And the entire industry actually commended sony on their lean and efficent design strategy, and the benefits of that has been showing itself all generations so far.

Also, you also need to look at what you can get for the same money, what other $400 device from can match what the PS5 could do? None? Then you can't possibly say the stytem design was flawed.
This is because sony pursued a "commodity maxing strategy" where they made up for the bad performance/area by packing cheap plentiful commodities (16GB GDDR6 and a 1TB PCIe 4.0 SSD). now those commodities are killing the BoM.
Again, I don't know where you are getting this nonsense from? What bad performance per area? How are you arriving at that???? To say that with any degree of fact, then yu have to point out something that was made in 2020... hell, even 2021/2022/2023, that for the price or APU size of the PS5, could give you better performance.

And don't forget, AMD did not even have ML hardware at the time the PS5 came to market.

And what do you even mean cheap plentiful commodities? What does that mean... going with GDDR6 and 16GB was not them being cheap, or evn them being expensive, its what you need to have in a console that is supposed to be capable of doing 1080p-4K in the graphical envelope they operate in at 30-60fps. Thats the minimum you need to have "good enough". There is a reason why a switch 2 that released almost 5 years after the PS5, doesnt and cant even look as good as a base PS5. And that's because you are in two completely different worlds with the tech and design goals for that tech.

On one hand you are making a machine with an APU that can push 250W. On the other you are making something that should be able to do 25W.
Nintendo otoh went with a Nvidia Ampere+ SoC, which is much better than RDNA2, they then chose the cheapest process node imaginable for it. Thus Nvidia's superior technology made up for the process's shortcomings. That's how Switch2 is beating the daylight out of Steam Deck.
Do you have any idea how much an APU from Nvidia would have cost for Sony and MS for the kinda hardware they are trying to build? Do you realize that they can't switch from an x86 architecture to an ARM one without completely breaking backwards compatibility? Lol at Nvidia's superior technology, any technology is only as good as its ability to meet your needs. eg. The steam deck, has an X86 APU, because it wants games made for desktop PCs... to just work on it. And Nvidia doesn't make any low power APU that is X86. As I said, tech is only as good as what can meet your needs.
They then proceeded to use bottom bin garbage for commodities. (12GB LP5-6.4 + 256GB PCIe 2.0 class phone storage). Resisting game developer calls for more.
Ok... now do that for something that's supposed to be driving 4K IQ and fidelity on par with a PS5. Nintendo didn't do anything smart here... they simply just built a handheld. Nothing more, nothing less. If I were designing a handheld, I would have done the same thing.

And what's crazy is that you don't realize that's the same point you are making, albeit through rose-tinted glasses, but you are helping make the point that Nintendo just built a handheld.
 
1TB Gen5 SSD and no Disk Drive
God, a "next-gen" box with 1TB of storage. I mean with SSD prices becoming almost as insane as RAM it is kind of understandable but 1TB in 2027/2028 would be crazy.

So basically $800+ BOM with 2TB, throw in additional costs for packaging/shipping/retailer surcharge and unless Sony subsidizes it's going to be $900+ 😰.
 
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If stuff like Concord bothers you, you are not ready for Xbox ecosystem.

Its not for faint of the heart.

Imagine how Xbox One users must've felt when their system was $100 more expensive and weaker. Just one of the examples.

Its crazy.

Yeah, good point. I have a $500 series X, but paying $650 to fund Activision Blizzard is bad. I had access to Activison Blizzard before Microsoft bought them.

Sounds like we are enjoying the last gen.
 
Caved in and re-bought the PS5 Pro to avoid the price hike. Not sure if it was the best decision but I'm sure I'll get use out of it.

Also I'm excited for PSSR 2.0 and the gains we'll start seeing from games moving forward.
 
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first of all, PS5 launched on 7nm, not 6nm. Secondly, at the price point, fab process, chip size, you couldn't possibly have made a more powerful console in 2020 than what Sony did, and in part, MS.
True. But notice something.

What I called out as terrible wasn't "price point, fab process, chip size". It was the IP, RDNA1/2 Hybrid.

RDNA1/2 are intermediary IP while AMD fixes their graphics IP which has fallen significantly behind. By the time they get to RDNA4, it's much more competitive with the industry at large but still behind (and the industry was much less competitive in 2020 than now). Though not the best.

This is relevant because at this level of performance had they been able to independently develop or acquire far better graphics IP at a reasonable royalty or price (not guaranteed at all, but Nintendo managed it), they could have offered a smaller chip or cheaper process at the same performance (giving them BoM headroom), or offer more performance and features at the same cost (making PS5 a more worthy console at initial 499.9$ or current 649.99$).

Not to mention now that PS5 Linux has shown us that Cerny bullshitted us on clocks and 6nm PS5 Slim runs its GPU at 2.0 GHz + CPU at 3.2 GHz in GTA V (Overheats and throttles at 3.5 | 2.23) PS5 is weaker than many were writing it as.

what other $400 device from can match what the PS5 could do? None?
There aren't that many consoles out there. And the ones out there in the same class as PS5 share the flaw (RDNA2/3).

Laptops that are better than PS5 start at 799$ at current prices with a 17" screen. But the thread isn't about that.

I am only mentioning to explain how a PS5 that has managed to remain a somewhat attractive value offering for most of it's lifetime is now unattractive in my opinion.

And what do you even mean cheap plentiful commodities? What does that mean... going with GDDR6 and 16GB was not them being cheap, or evn them being expensive
I meant cheap on the BoM. They acquired their GDDR6 for Pro at sub 3$/GB . That's cheap. And the SSD was relatively cheap too. They prioritized that over the chip (IP wise) which now backfires when both NAND and DRAM blow up by more than 2x in cost. The selling point and the design philosophy for PS5 was quite literally all about data streaming. The value was the unified memory and SSD + decompression subsystems. Aka the commodities.

Above all it's an issue because sony themselves market and made the hardware value of their consoles a much bigger part of their marketing for PS5 than PS4. Similarly, PS5 has a significantly weaker software added value. (They deprioritized exclusives).
 
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Well he is the architect of PS4 and PS5. Because of him MS badly lost the console war 2 times whereas their X360 drew against PS3. Thanks to him Playstation made billion of dollars and they are currently in a fruitful collaboration with AMD.

What did Leadbetter accomplish in his life?

He also designed the best portable ever : the Vita. Just a shame the software was not as good.
That's not true... The PS Vita had a great catalog and the best game in the industry.

Sony's stupidity and the memory cards are what ruined it.
 
Caved in and re-bought the PS5 Pro to avoid the price hike. Not sure if it was the best decision but I'm sure I'll get use out of it.

Also I'm excited for PSSR 2.0 and the gains we'll start seeing from games moving forward.
It's definitely a good deal at 749.99$. And the console will be supported for a very long time.
 
You call it iconic when a lot of people made jokes about the PS5 looking like a cheap router from China. We even had at least one thread on this very forum.
There is very specific reason for that, lets not forget tons of ps5 users live with their gf/fiance/wifey after all:
Cerny and sony's top engineering team learned from their ps4/ps4pr0 (PS= Plash Speed) fiasco:


There is also very pecculiar reason for beep sound ps5 controller does:
 
They did have it. But only used it on CDNA1, with had Matrix units in 2020, with 184 TOPs. And only supported Int8, similar to what Turing and Ampere.

I reckon if they had a good ML solution by 2018~ or so by the time PS5/Series specs were being locked, they would have had native support day 1.
 
I reckon if they had a good ML solution by 2018~ or so by the time PS5/Series specs were being locked, they would have had native support day 1.

You have to realize that in 2018, no one could have foreseen that ML upscalers would become as good as they are now.
What we now look as an essential feature, at the time was seen as a waste of die space.
 
You have to realize that in 2018, no one could have foreseen that ML upscalers would become as good as they are now.
What we now look as an essential feature, at the time was seen as a waste of die space.

Yeah, I get that.

I'm just saying if it were more prevalent at that point, the odds of the two flagship consoles having it would have been much higher.

Switch 2 has DLSS support because of its release window and that gives it a certain edge to lift it up higher than its bare specs.
 
True. But notice something.

What I called out as terrible wasn't "price point, fab process, chip size". It was the IP, RDNA1/2 Hybrid.

RDNA1/2 are intermediary IP while AMD fixes their graphics IP which has fallen significantly behind. By the time they get to RDNA4, it's much more competitive with the industry at large but still behind (and the industry was much less competitive in 2020 than now). Though not the best.
This what-if scenario is redundant.... In 2020, the best hardware they could make was what they made. There was nowhere or no way else they could do anything else for what they were trying to do. They simply worked with the best they had in their segment, and that could meet their needs. There was no viable other option.
This is relevant because at this level of performance had they been able to independently develop or acquire far better graphics IP at a reasonable royalty or price (not guaranteed at all, but Nintendo managed it), they could have offered a smaller chip or cheaper process at the same performance (giving them BoM headroom), or offer more performance and features at the same cost (making PS5 a more worthy console at initial 499.9$ or current 649.99$).
Again... Nintendo didn't manage anything. Nintendo made a HANDHELD. You are looking at a totally different performance window when dealing with handhelds vs home consoles. And mind you, even nintendo is at the mercy of whatever tech is available at the time they are making hardware that can fit in their profile. Eg. The first switch didnt have DLSS-capable hardware even thoug it was from Nvidia, but the switch in 2025 did.

Even the models are different, while sony pays AMD outright for their chips, Nvidia takes a royalty from Nintendo.
Not to mention now that PS5 Linux has shown us that Cerny bullshitted us on clocks and 6nm PS5 Slim runs its GPU at 2.0 GHz + CPU at 3.2 GHz in GTA V (Overheats and throttles at 3.5 | 2.23) PS5 is weaker than many were writing it as.
Sigh... thats not bullshitting. You really dont know what you are talking about do you? Unless you really think that the drivers sony uses in house is the same with some random Linux distro???? Does that even make sense?

Besides that, forget whatever the fuck anyone says... use your own damn eyes, there are at this point hundreds of DF coverage of PS5 games... use your damn eyes.

Laptops that are better than PS5 start at 799$ at current prices with a 17" screen. But the thread isn't about that.

No pls lets, can you show me a laptop made in 2020/2021 that cost $400-$700 thats better than the PS5? Cause its like you dont seem to understand the concept of technology increasing with time and any hardware released is basically defined by the technology available at its time of release.
I am only mentioning to explain how a PS5 that has managed to remain a somewhat attractive value offering for most of it's lifetime is now unattractive in my opinion.
And that's your opinion, and if that's all you said... I won't be saying a thing to you, cause we are all entitled to our opinions... but what you are doing is saying a lot of unfounded nonsese, basically some warped misinformation.
I meant cheap on the BoM. They acquired their GDDR6 for Pro at sub 3$/GB . That's cheap. And the SSD was relatively cheap too. They prioritized that over the chip (IP wise) which now backfires when both NAND and DRAM blow up by more than 2x in cost. The selling point and the design philosophy for PS5 was quite literally all about data streaming. The value was the unified memory and SSD + decompression subsystems. Aka the commodities.

Above all it's an issue because sony themselves market and made the hardware value of their consoles a much bigger part of their marketing for PS5 than PS4. Similarly, PS5 has a significantly weaker software added value. (They deprioritized exclusives).
Dude... wtf are you saying? Like I am actually getting amused by how your mind seems to work lol.

They got their GDDR6 chips at $3/GB cause thast what they cost at the time. How is that prioritizing it over the chip? what does that even mean? And you do realize that no matter what RAM they used, it would still be more expensive now? And you know why they went with that kinda RAM, right?

Actually, you know what? Ok... you are right. Thanks for correcting me. Sony is fucked and stupid and yada yada yada...
They did have it. But only used it on CDNA1, with had Matrix units in 2020, with 184 TOPs. And only supported Int8, similar to what Turing and Ampere.
Yh I know... but I was talking about their RDNA architecture. Hell, I know that even RDNA2 had some semblance of ML hardware, but it was grossly underdeveloped.
 
Yh I know... but I was talking about their RDNA architecture. Hell, I know that even RDNA2 had some semblance of ML hardware, but it was grossly underdeveloped.

It wasn't "grossly underdeveloped". It was just AMD's version of DP4A. Similar to what nvidia had done with Pascal.
And it's capable of running FSR4 Int8 with decent performance, tough far from what it is done with RDNA4.
 
Yeah, I get that.

I'm just saying if it were more prevalent at that point, the odds of the two flagship consoles having it would have been much higher.

Switch 2 has DLSS support because of its release window and that gives it a certain edge to lift it up higher than its bare specs.
And that's why I will forever say the brains at AMD are all full of shit.

AMD is constantly reacting... all the time. And Sony is for the most part, stuck with them. It basically took AMD 8 years..... 8 BLOODY YEARS, to release a proper consumer GPU with ML capable hardware.

EIGHT.
It wasn't "grossly underdeveloped". It was just AMD's version of DP4A. Similar to what nvidia had done with Pascal.
And it's capable of running FSR4 Int8 with decent performance, tough far from what it is done with RDNA4.
No... it was underdeveloped in RDNA2, non-existent in RDNA1. AMD had RDNA, their standard normal raster focused GPU for consumers and gaming... and they had CDNA, their compute focused data centre GPU. CDNA didn't have anything in it that would allow it to draw a game. And they even had two different teams working on those products. ML compute hardware only arrived in RDNA from RDNA3 (AI accelerators), with RDNA2 ther was no dedicated ML hardware; they only put in support for DP4a. And the problem with its DP4a support in RDNA2 was that it was basically a software approach, no hardware to actually run it.
 
That discord channel must have been chaotic the past 5 years :messenger_grinning_sweat:

Blaming developers for awful Series S performance coordinated defence and spinning the narrative from Jason Ronald's dreadful and misleading marketing video.

Pushing the message about taking your uber expensive proprietary storage card to a friend's house and why it's better than a non-propiertary and cheaper product.

Let Microsoft compete and buy Activision.
Only 4 games, just a nothing burger.
Everyone will be becoming third party.
Consoles are dead we all play on Steam now.

It's been entertaining seeing the mega shilling effort.
"Consoles are dead we all play on Steam now." Unironically true.
 
No... it was underdeveloped in RDNA2, non-existent in RDNA1. AMD had RDNA, their standard normal raster focused GPU for consumers and gaming... and they had CDNA, their compute focused data centre GPU. CDNA didn't have anything in it that would allow it to draw a game. And they even had two different teams working on those products. ML compute hardware only arrived in RDNA from RDNA3 (AI accelerators), with RDNA2 ther was no dedicated ML hardware; they only put in support for DP4a. And the problem with its DP4a support in RDNA2 was that it was basically a software approach, no hardware to actually run it.

You are wrong on both accounts. Like K KeplerL2 said in a previous post, RDNA1 was supposed to already have DP4A instructions but it was broken and AMD decided to release the GPU without them enabled.
And no, DP4A support in RDNA2 is not software, it's real hardware. Of course it's not a Matrix unit.
DP4A is not some underdeveloped tech. It was the start of the Ml tech revolution. It's obsolete for our time, for in the Pascal era, it was cutting edge tech.

CDNA1 was basically just GCN GPU with Matrix cores. It could run games if it had the proper drivers for it and a display output.
There is a lot in common between CDNA and GCN/RDNA. And that is one of the reasons why AMD moved to UDNA.
 
You are wrong on both accounts. Like K KeplerL2 said in a previous post, RDNA1 was supposed to already have DP4A instructions but it was broken and AMD decided to release the GPU without them enabled.
And no, DP4A support in RDNA2 is not software, it's real hardware. Of course it's not a Matrix unit.
DP4A is not some underdeveloped tech. It was the start of the Ml tech revolution. It's obsolete for our time, for in the Pascal era, it was cutting edge tech.

CDNA1 was basically just GCN GPU with Matrix cores. It could run games if it had the proper drivers for it and a display output.
There is a lot in common between CDNA and GCN/RDNA. And that is one of the reasons why AMD moved to UDNA.
Ok... well, I described it as underdeveloped because in RDNA1... for whatever reason, it wasnt there. And with RDNA2, even though it had DP4a "support" it didnt have matrix hardware to actually run it so it just meant its the good ol shaders that would do it... just another thing for them to do in addition to also doing ray intersections. These weird stop gaps and non performant attempts is what I meant by underdeveloped.

I dont see why we should call it anything bu t that if neither RDNA1 or 2 ever had any proper offoial support for ML instructions. I mean, if you want it bad enough, you can say they can do it... But they would be doing so very inefficiently. Actual AI accelerators didn't show up in an AMD consumer-facing GPU until RDNA3. And even then, it was still a stopgap and not implemented properly.
 
Not sure if this was discussed, but why did they increase price of PS Portal too? That uses a Qualcomm 400 series chip with 4 GB ram, that's used in $40 prepaid android phones. Is it just taking advantage of an accessory that's selling decently? OLED Portal will likely be $299 then.

I thought they would raise the price by giving it an OLED screen, slapping a $250 price tag, and replacing the original as a gen2 upgrade. Now it's pretty clear they are going to release a $300 Portal, whether that be in addition to the LCD or replacing it entirely.

I'm also convinced now this was just the perfect excuse for Sony to try and offset losses from failed live service games by rolling the costs into their hardware. We get the privilege of paying for tariffs and supply chain disruptions, NAND shortage, and bad management decisions.
 
Ok... well, I described it as underdeveloped because in RDNA1... for whatever reason, it wasnt there. And with RDNA2, even though it had DP4a "support" it didnt have matrix hardware to actually run it so it just meant its the good ol shaders that would do it... just another thing for them to do in addition to also doing ray intersections. These weird stop gaps and non performant attempts is what I meant by underdeveloped.

I dont see why we should call it anything bu t that if neither RDNA1 or 2 ever had any proper offoial support for ML instructions. I mean, if you want it bad enough, you can say they can do it... But they would be doing so very inefficiently. Actual AI accelerators didn't show up in an AMD consumer-facing GPU until RDNA3. And even then, it was still a stopgap and not implemented properly.

You probably don't know this, but when nvidia first presented DP4A, it was the first solution to accelerate Machine Learning operations. It might be obsolete by today's standards, but it was cutting edge ML tech, back in the day. You probably don't even remember how big AlexNet was at the time.
Here is a quote taken directly from the nvidia presentation for developers:

DP2A is a similar instruction in which A is a 2-element vector of 16-bit values and B is a 4-element vector of 8-bit values, and different flavors of DP2A select either the high or low pair of bytes for the 2-way dot product. These flexible instructions are useful for linear algebraic computations such as matrix multiplies and convolutions. They are particularly powerful for implementing 8-bit integer convolutions for deep learning inference, common in the deployment of deep neural networks used for image classification and object detection. Figure 3 shows the improved power efficiency achieved on a Tesla P4 GPU using INT8 convolution on AlexNet.

Figure 3: Using INT8 computation on the Tesla P4 for deep learning inference provides a very large improvement in power efficiency for image recognition using AlexNet and other deep neural networks, when compared to FP32 on previous generation Tesla M4 GPUs. Efficiency of this computation on Tesla P4 is up to 8x more efficient than an Arria10 FPGA, and up to 40x more efficient than an Intel Xeon CPU. (AlexNet, batch size = 128, CPU: Intel E5-2690v4 using Intel MKL 2017, FPGA is Arria10-115. 1x M4/P4 in node, P4 board power at 56W, P4 GPU power at 36W, M4 board power at 57W, M4 GPU power at 39W, Perf/W chart using GPU power.)
 
I thought they would raise the price by giving it an OLED screen, slapping a $250 price tag, and replacing the original as a gen2 upgrade. Now it's pretty clear they are going to release a $300 Portal, whether that be in addition to the LCD or replacing it entirely.

I'm also convinced now this was just the perfect excuse for Sony to try and offset losses from failed live service games by rolling the costs into their hardware. We get the privilege of paying for tariffs and supply chain disruptions, NAND shortage, and bad management decisions.
Agreed. 4 million more Portal devices with $50 extra equals $200 million in profits, offsetting any potential losses from Marathon underperforming.

OLED Portal has to have 120 hz VRR screen, and base LED Portal 2 should also be upgraded to 120 hz VRR. And a more powerful SOC, at least the Snapdragon 600 Series if not 700 series.
 
I don't think ES still means what it used to to mean:


And this is a proper technical measurement review. Not an I have magic audiophile ears review.
I follow Amir and ASR is part of my daily scroll! These measurements are poor enough that I have to think there's a failing component in there somewhere. Building ANYTHING is a perilous road these days. I create a lot of electrical BOMs, and for the past 5 years it just feels like there's no winning. These price hikes have been baked in for a long time. Companies are rolling it out in stages to try and avoid sticker shock. These PS5 prices are pre-Iran war even.
 
Caved in and re-bought the PS5 Pro to avoid the price hike. Not sure if it was the best decision but I'm sure I'll get use out of it.

Also I'm excited for PSSR 2.0 and the gains we'll start seeing from games moving forward.
I actually did the same thing. But it's still in the box ( bought one from Walmart, but i want to return it if I get the one i ordered from Costco comes through ( they have a 3-month return window instead of 15 days at Walmart, in case i change my mind down the road )

With that being said, I am not sure if they will actually deliver the item and not cancel it on me. Because the minute i ordered it, its sold out here in Costco Canada ( you can see it on the website says online only and available, but once you actually click on it to add it, it will tell you sold out on the second page ).

Also, it's sold out at Amazon Canada, and Best Buy Canada sold out.

I think it's only available at Walmart.ca only for now. and not sure for how long or if it's still available.

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You probably don't know this, but when nvidia first presented DP4A, it was the first solution to accelerate Machine Learning operations. It might be obsolete by today's standards, but it was cutting edge ML tech, back in the day. You probably don't even remember how big AlexNet was at the time.
Here is a quote taken directly from the nvidia presentation for developers:

No... I have never even ever heard about AlexNet lol.

Anyways, I am not saying DP4a in of itself was bad, but saying that for whatever reason, it skipped anything and everything AI-based in RDNA1. Then with RDNA2, rather than actually put in ML hardware, they instead built in support of the standard vector shaders in the CU to basically be able to do AI math, of the DP4a variety, as if the CUs didnt already have enough to do. And that thing was so inefficient that running it could result in as much as a 15-20% performance hit.

Most importantly, though, and this is the main point I am making, there was no actual dedicated ML hardware in an AMD GPU until RDNA3, and even then it was well fleshed out.
 
No... I have never even ever heard about AlexNet lol.

Anyways, I am not saying DP4a in of itself was bad, but saying that for whatever reason, it skipped anything and everything AI-based in RDNA1. Then with RDNA2, rather than actually put in ML hardware, they instead built in support of the standard vector shaders in the CU to basically be able to do AI math, of the DP4a variety, as if the CUs didnt already have enough to do. And that thing was so inefficient that running it could result in as much as a 15-20% performance hit.

Most importantly, though, and this is the main point I am making, there was no actual dedicated ML hardware in an AMD GPU until RDNA3, and even then it was well fleshed out.

Let me put it this way. Alexnet was the moment when the tech world realized that the AI boom was starting.
ChatGPT was when the normal people realized what was going on. But there is almost a decade in distance.
 
Damn Sony. :( I've just bought a PS5 Pro via PS Direct. If you want to do the same because they've created a sense of scarcity, I'd remind you that if you're a PS Plus member, you get a 5% discount via PS Direct, which isn't half bad on an $800 console.
 
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Let me put it this way. Alexnet was the moment when the tech world realized that the AI boom was starting.
ChatGPT was when the normal people realized what was going on. But there is almost a decade in distance.
Well, that just annoys me even more and just reinforces the issue I have always had with AMD. So this whole AI thing has been in the tech space for so long, and yet AMD waited until now to have hardware that fully supports it?

Like, why would they do that? Especially after seeing the first RTX GPU back in 2019. If AMD had taken that shit seriously, the base PS5 and XBX would have had proper full-on ML support. Even if only of the INT8 variety. That tech would have done wonders for those consoles.

And this is the one thing that worries me about AMD, and the fact that sony and MS seem tied to them, AMD is so inept at taking intiative and reading the room that they are practically responsible for craeting this hard stop/barrier on console generations. eg. PS5 has half-assed RT no AI. PS5pro has AI acceleration and slightly better RT. PS6 will now have proper RT and proper AI... so basically, what they are going to accomplish next year, is basically putting them on the same technology feature set that Nvidia had 8 years ago.

That's just wild to me.
 
Well, that just annoys me even more and just reinforces the issue I have always had with AMD. So this whole AI thing has been in the tech space for so long, and yet AMD waited until now to have hardware that fully supports it?

Like, why would they do that? Especially after seeing the first RTX GPU back in 2019. If AMD had taken that shit seriously, the base PS5 and XBX would have had proper full-on ML support. Even if only of the INT8 variety. That tech would have done wonders for those consoles.

And this is the one thing that worries me about AMD, and the fact that sony and MS seem tied to them, AMD is so inept at taking intiative and reading the room that they are practically responsible for craeting this hard stop/barrier on console generations. eg. PS5 has half-assed RT no AI. PS5pro has AI acceleration and slightly better RT. PS6 will now have proper RT and proper AI... so basically, what they are going to accomplish next year, is basically putting them on the same technology feature set that Nvidia had 8 years ago.

That's just wild to me.

Modern day Radeon Group never misses an opportunity to miss an opportunity. It's their current hidden motto.

The PS5 RT is not half assed. It was made that way to save on die space, which is at a premium in a console. Having the RT units in the TMUs, allows to share resources and compute capabilities, as both processes have some similar calculations.
If the PS5 had full RT units such as Turing, it would use up about 20-30% of die space. Add another 10% for the Tensor units. And soon you get a 7TFLOP console.
The RT in the Pro is not slightly better. It is using the RDNA4 RT units. For RT calculations, it's pretty much on par with nvidia's RT units. It's on Path Tracing that it lags far behind.

The reason why neither Sony, nor MS want to work with nvidia anymore, is because they got burned badly during the original Xbox era, and the PS3 era.
Nvidia is a terrible partner to work with. So MS and Sony would rather have a cooperative partner, even if it's tech is a bit behind, than having to deal with an antagonistic company.
 
The PS5 RT is not half assed. It was made that way to save on die space, which is at a premium in a console. Having the RT units in the TMUs, allows to share resources and compute capabilities, as both processes have some similar calculations.
I mean, it is half-assed. You just explained why it is lol.
 
Well, that just annoys me even more and just reinforces the issue I have always had with AMD. So this whole AI thing has been in the tech space for so long, and yet AMD waited until now to have hardware that fully supports it?
Their position was that gaming didn't need Tensor Cores. As communicated indirectly by MLID.

DP4a is much lower silicon cost than dedicated Tensor Cores that Nvidia added. Thus why AMD added DP4a.

AMD believed they could match AI Upscaling using only heuristics. They failed miserably with Nvidia wiping the floor with them.

Thus they were forced to add Tensor Cores kicking and screaming for PS5 Pro and RDNA4.

The same thing happened in RT. RDNA2/3/4 don't have BVH Traversal in the RT cores. A feature Turing had.

Now RDNA5 has BVH Traversal in hardware per Cerny presentation. AMD tried to handle BVH traversal using shaders in RDNA 2, 3 and 4 until they gave up and did it on the RT Core on 5. That's the pattern.

AMD entire design philosophy is trying to match Nvidia at lower cost, because they have to sell dGPUs at a lower MSRP than Nvidia given lower perceived value to consumers. Unfortunately for them Nvidia has always out-engineered them.

RDNA4 is good and much better than RDNA2/3, but it's also slightly worse than Nvidia's 2022 Ada both in performance/area (4080S > 9070XT) but also features (Blackwell RT Core handling BVH traversal gives it the ability to run path tracing much faster).
 
The PS5 RT is not half assed. It was made that way to save on die space, which is at a premium in a console.
It is half assed because developers could barely ray trace without tanking performance. Practically all the games that adopted RDNA2 "performant RT" philosophy looked like trash with quarter res RT reflections and other junk.

Without BVH traversal and any way to handle shader divergence any moderate usage of RT straight up choked RDNA2.

Instead a feature that Cerny called the greatest leap since the 3D triangle ended up barely mattering on PS5. With Nvidia having defacto exclusivity over any real raytracing being done until PS5 Pro.

The developers who managed to make RT look good and run on PS5 are few. (Insomniac premier among them).
 
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It is half assed because developers could barely ray trace without tanking performance. Practically all the games that adopted RDNA2 "performant RT" philosophy looked like trash with quarter res RT reflections and other junk.

Instead a feature that Cerny called the greatest leap since the 3D triangle ended up barely mattering on PS5. With Nvidia having defacto exclusivity over any real raytracing being done.

The developers who managed to make RT look good and run on PS5 are few. (Insomniac premier among them).

The question is not if it has top tier performance, but rather if it has top performance per transistor. And that was the goal.
This is the part that most people don't understand. Consoles have great limitations when it comes to cost, power usage and die space. So a lot has to be sacrificed.
In the past 2 decades, consoles have rarely, if ever been at the forefront of graphical prowess. Yes, they can sometimes punch above their weight. But the top graphical features and capabilities are almost always on PC, because the high end avoids the limitations that consoles have.
 
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Oh come on man you know the ps5 gonna be alive a good 5+ years past the ps6 with cross gen titles being the norm.
Ps4 kept going for years and this time cross gen will be even longer.

Sony never kills their consoles quickly.
You guys know that consoles can get new games even when not being manufactured, right? It's like you don't bother to understand the damn point.

There is no how so. PS5 disc version stopped selling at loss announced in Aug. 2021 . You've claimed it was selling at loss all the way to 2024. Never ever claimed it wasn't sold at loss at launch. Don't twisty words.
Is the disc model the only PS5 available? Even if it did stop selling at a loss in August 2021 (something that, again, wasn't the case anymore later on), the ENTIRE hardware line was still reporting losses for Sony up to 2024.
There is no IF. Wast majority of sales were Disc Based version. That was a thing until Slim version and optional Disc Drive at the end of 2023.
It doesn't matter, and you still play with the logic that the disc model stopped being sold at a loss ever since 2021. This is not the case.

What? This PS5 price hike is very suggestive when to comes to PS6 pricing. Especially when the console will be more expensive to make than PS5 pro.
And PS6 will not have the same margins (it will make no profit, at all) as the PS5 Pro when it plays into a very different business model. Again, no point in discussing it if you can't see that.
 
The question is not if it has top tier performance, but rather if it has top performance per transistor. And that was the goal.
RDNA2 doesn't have top performance per transistor. It's true that full RT units would have taken area. But the RT they added was so weak Cerny was skeptical it can do anything meaningful on PS5 (even though Cerny is a ray tracing believer). In the end it was very difficult for developers to manage it.

They just underestimated how massive of a problem ray divergence would be. And RDNA2 was pretty terrible at handling that.
 
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You guys know that consoles can get new games even when not being manufactured, right? It's like you don't bother to understand the damn point.


Is the disc model the only PS5 available? Even if it did stop selling at a loss in August 2021 (something that, again, wasn't the case anymore later on), the ENTIRE hardware line was still reporting losses for Sony up to 2024.

It doesn't matter, and you still play with the logic that the disc model stopped being sold at a loss ever since 2021. This is not the case.


And PS6 will not have the same margins (it will make no profit, at all) as the PS5 Pro when it plays into a very different business model. Again, no point in discussing it if you can't see that.

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RDNA2 doesn't have top performance per transistor. It's true that full RT units would have taken area. But the RT they added was so weak Cerny was skeptical it can do anything meaningful on PS5 (even though Cerny is a ray tracing believer). In the end it was very difficult for developers to manage it.

They just underestimated how massive of a problem ray divergence would be. And RDNA2 was pretty terrible at handling that.

RDNA2 has the best performance for transistor of the era, because it reuses the TMUs for RT. It's not top performance, but it's efficient for saving transistors.

No GPU of that era has hardware to deal with Shader Divergency when the GPU is doing RT. The first GPU to deal with that was the RTX 4000 series with SER.
 
What does this to prove in relation to the current manufacturing environments, lol.
PS3 (87.4M LTD) sold 10.1M between April 2013 and March 2015, while PS4 (117M LTD) sold 6.8M between April 2020 and March 2022. That should be enough to tell you.
 
What does this to prove in relation to the current manufacturing environments, lol.
PS3 (87.4M LTD) sold 10.1M between April 2013 and March 2015, while PS4 (117M LTD) sold 6.8M between April 2020 and March 2022. That should be enough to tell you.

I doubt this will be replicated next gen. Unless PS6 launches in current PS5 DE price.

But Sony did not stop production of old consoles after next gen launch, it still goes on for years.
 
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Modern day Radeon Group never misses an opportunity to miss an opportunity. It's their current hidden motto.

The PS5 RT is not half assed. It was made that way to save on die space, which is at a premium in a console. Having the RT units in the TMUs, allows to share resources and compute capabilities, as both processes have some similar calculations.
If the PS5 had full RT units such as Turing, it would use up about 20-30% of die space. Add another 10% for the Tensor units. And soon you get a 7TFLOP console.
The RT in the Pro is not slightly better. It is using the RDNA4 RT units. For RT calculations, it's pretty much on par with nvidia's RT units. It's on Path Tracing that it lags far behind.

The reason why neither Sony, nor MS want to work with nvidia anymore, is because they got burned badly during the original Xbox era, and the PS3 era.
Nvidia is a terrible partner to work with. So MS and Sony would rather have a cooperative partner, even if it's tech is a bit behind, than having to deal with an antagonistic company.
Oh, I am well versed in the history they have with Nvidia. And I honestly can't blame them for not wanting to work with them anymore.

At this point, AMD GPUs will become good simply because they have run out of way to be bad or run out of bad decisions to make.
 
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