Well it will be high out the gate yes, but Sony alone will most likely drive the cost way down. The sheer amount that they need is going to make it cheaper across the board I would guess very fast.
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PS4 initial costing analysis [Updated]
- Thread starter zomgbbqftw
- Start date
maabus1999
Member
RAM latency is the largest factor for the CPU by far. The CPU rarely needs the bandwidth. GPU on the other hand is opposite due to being parallel.
Again the ps4 will have a superior graphics solution while the X1 will have q superior CPU solution. And both parts are equally important in modern gaming. My prediction is both boxes in the end perform very close to each other in the real world.
maabus1999
Member
The increase of its usage in PCs across the years haven't done much to spot prices, and the amount of video cards being shipped these days is very substantial and higher then console shipments. I doubt Sony will make a paradigm shift in the business. Any cost decrease will just be a natural trend IMO.
Do you have any figures to back that up? Especially when you only include video cards that have GDDR5? Even then, PS4 will have 16 4Gbit chips and most video cards won't have that many on them to drive down prices.
GDDR5 is really not much different than DDR3 in terms of fundamental silicon production, it's just produced at far less quantities than DDR3.
dragonbane
Member
I don't think this is true at all and the latency problem was debunked here multiple times already:
-CPUs are very weak in both consoles. Devs are supposed to use the GPGPU features more and more instead of the CPU. Therefore the GPU will play the biggest part nextgen
-PS4 uses a OOO CPU
http://www.techspot.com/community/t...-memory-and-gddr5-memory.186408/#post-1295335
-PS4 has several backdoors to speed things up
http://www.vgleaks.com/playstation-4-architecture-evolution-over-time/
I'm pretty sure latency is going to be a non-issue.
encephalon
Member
Kind of sad that this is all it takes to prevent Japanese jobs from being created for this.
Gemüsepizza
Member
Your prediction is wrong. X1's marginally better latency (we are talking about a few nanoseconds here) won't be able to compete with 55+% more processing power, 158% more memory bandwidth and 40% more usable memory.
So on the manufacturing of 10 million (est quantity based off the first few batches for global production), if made in China instead of Japan, they save themselves an estimated $450 million? Damn.
CaptainZombie
Member
My guess is around $399-$449, but we might be surprised and they hit that $349-$399 price point.
AgentP
Thinks mods influence posters politics. Promoted to QAnon Editor.
It doesn't suck, it is ill suited. CPUs don't need massive bandwidth and hence they don't use more expensive high bandwidth RAM. It's like saying a V8 Hemi "flat out sucks" for a Civic.
iamshadowlark
Banned
Why?
Wait what?
An overly latent memory solution would hurt the CPU but neither system suffers from that. PS4 and XB1 are identical at worse, as far as CPUs.
Problem: GDDR6 comes out next year and will be adopted by GPU manufacturers in no time (there was basically no GPU in the last four years that didn't use GDDR5), meaning PS4 won't change anything in overall quantities. And since it's five year old tech that isn't developed anymore (we have stacked DDR3, DDR4 and GDDR6 next year, each better than GDDR5) cost won't go down substantially.
You mean "might" come out late next year and will only likely be available in low quantities initially and take quite some time for production to ramp up. A more realistic outlook at least
Also there are still GPUs today that don't use GDDR5
fuzzy.dunlop
Banned
Xbone one uses eSRAM so it's actually got a lower latency pool of ram (albeit smaller) than PS4. Sony has said that they have worked into their APU design to reduce memory latency, but I guess only they and their devs have real benchmarks.
His overall point is that there are lots of upcoming memory solutions that compete with GDDR5. Not sure how that will affect supply or demand at this point.
His overall point is moot if either company wanted/wants to release this year.
iamshadowlark
Banned
Well yeah I know that the Xbone uses DDR3, therefore having a lower-latency. Im saying that it doesn't necessarily make the CPU situation better.
fuzzy.dunlop
Banned
I wrote eSRAM; didn't even bother saying DDR3. But I don't quite understand what you are saying as far as the latency and the CPU considered together.
They will be making consoles for the next 5+ years, so I don't see how it is moot. We're talking about GDDR5 price over the entire production life.
As some people speculated in the early GDDR5 threads, we don't know if Sony will be able to switch to a stacked DDR4 production later in the life cycle or not.
Let me get this straight, you're saying Sony should wait, at best, over a year to release their next console at most likely a higher price point to gain the benefit of the decreasing price of GDDR6 which might only reach price parity with GDDR5 in, again best case, a year after its released i.e. 2yrs time. Not forgetting that the RAM is only one component in the entire system
What a brilliant business plan
BobTheFork
Member
For the unit cost yes, which is why I'm not totally ready to dismiss the Patcher claim of 349. I don't think it's going to happen but it;s reasonable. If anything, Sony knows now the importance of getting units off FAST.
fuzzy.dunlop
Banned
No one ever said that, at least I didn't. Again, we're talking about forecasting the price of GDDR5. NOT about Sony changing memory options. GDDR6 was mentioned as a competing memory option, not as a possibility for PS4.
Sure, I think this is a scenario where Sony has better models for the price of PS4 memory and possible options than we do. We don't really know where what technologies will be further out, nor do we fully know the economies of them.
iamshadowlark
Banned
XBones memory is DDR3. The ESram is nothing more than a big scratchpad for primarily the GPU. DDR3 is less latent than GDDR5, but GDDR5 latency is nothing to worry about.
fuzzy.dunlop
Banned
I'm not going to discuss this with you any further than this post. Talking about memory latency, you said that the CPU on both systems was "identical at worse, as far as CPUs." I wrote that the Xbone CPU and memory set up could enable it to do certain things with better than the PS4 CPU and memory set up. That's it.
So, no, they are not "identical at worse." Just because you say that the eSRAM would be used as a GPU scratch pad doesn't mean that the Xbone CPU + eSRAM + DDR3 memory set up couldn't be used to perform better at some tasks than the PS4 + GDDR5.
In practice, I don't think any of this will make a difference, especially since the GPU is what will be featured over the CPU in both machines. And frankly, only Sony and their devs know the memory latency after all their hardware tweaking and optimizing.
Melchiah
Member
That's news to me. They recouped their losses well in the European market, where the PS2 cost 500 at launch.
EDIT: And the PS3 cost 659 here at launch
Brad Grenz
Member
The Xbox One CPU can't read from the ESRAM. It's a non-factor in CPU performance.
fuzzy.dunlop
Banned
PS2 was a different beast. Sony will have to start boosting revenue from digital distribution and various other services by a lot.
well, my bad.
iamshadowlark
Banned
LOL thats a hell of a precursor. Im saying that latency, only matters past a certain point. I can dive into the details if you want but then again you don't seem to know what you're talking about.
Garrett 2U
Member
I don't think that Sony can afford to take losses on this.
You're getting an ultra powerful console, expect a $500 price tag.
You're getting an ultra powerful console, expect a $500 price tag.
The CPU has to go through the GPU memory controller to access the ESRAM, if vgleaks is to be believed. So we really don't know what the latency will be like. And really there's basically no configuration of components where we could say with any confidence what it would be without measuring it in a hands on experiment.
BladeoftheImmortal
Member
Either 350 or 399. Nothing more.
dragonbane
Member
Again there is nothing to worry about. GDDR5 latency is a non-issue in a console environment. It doesn't do 1000 things at the same time like a PC, so the latency won't come into play at all. Even if it does, the CPU in the PS4 is OOO, which means if it has to wait reading from RAM, it simply executes another task first. So in this controlled environment devs can easily program around that, because they know what they are working with.
These two posts lay it out pretty good:
http://www.techspot.com/community/t...-memory-and-gddr5-memory.186408/#post-1295335
prag16
Banned
This is only the BOM. That's not the whole story.
Wii's BOM was $160 iirc and it sold for a slight (single digit dollar) profit. Vita's BOM was $170 or $180, and sold at a loss at $250. I don't know the exact breakdowns, but you have to consider manufacturing, labor, packaging, shipping, retailer markup (between $10-20 for last gen consoles at launch I believe), and probably other minor costs.
So selling a $450 BOM console at $400 is much more than a $50 loss; it would really be easily over $100, maybe even close to $150.
With regard to the numbers in the OP, a few of them are probably a little high, but the ARM chip and the APU sound too low. The chipworks guy speculated the Wii U's MCM cost Nintendo around $100. So either Nintendo fucked that up way worse than we even thought paying that much, or the estimate in the APU is way too low. It DOES sound low for a 'decent' octocore CPU and an alleged HD7850 equivalent.
$449 or $499 is more likely imo.
Portugeezer
Gold Member
Cloud computing has less latency than GDDR5, amirite? Guys...?
No.
Angelus Errare
Banned
Bu-bu-but 4x visual increase!
Delusibeta
Banned
The problem with hailing the Xbone as having a superior CPU due to latency is that both the PS4 and the Xbone's CPU is cheap trash. I think the GPU would have a bigger influence this gen, and the PS4 has a definite lead there, judging from the specs we know.
Xbox One does not have a superior CPU ........ where are you getting that from?
I stated they day of the Playstation 4 reveal and a few posts down from the OP that the PS4 will retail in the UK for £359 ....... I still stand by that, maybe less.
Not really half, but at least 25% off the total price. I don't expect the manufacturing costs for the whole console to be above $350. The rest will bring the cost a bit above $399, but they will easily make it back with the price we in Europe will be paying. I really wouldn't worry neither about the affordability nor them taking big losses. They'll be perfectly fine.
PistolGrip
sex vacation in Guam
No but the bandwidth increases dramatically therefore making the GDDR5 bandwidth advantage moot. When it comes to physics and animation you will be see a tremendous advantage on the Xbone due to its HPC(high performance cloud)
LOL
Delusibeta
Banned
From people in this thread claiming the Xbone will do better at CPU tasks due to RAM latency.
HomerSimpson-Man
Member
RAM latency, eh.
Stick DDR2 in there for the superior CPU experience! It has even less latency!
Stick DDR2 in there for the superior CPU experience! It has even less latency!