Register a SA Forums Account here!
JOINING THE SA FORUMS WILL REMOVE THIS BIG AD, THE ANNOYING UNDERLINED ADS, AND STUPID INTERSTITIAL ADS!!!

You can: log in, read the tech support FAQ, or request your lost password. This dumb message (and those ads) will appear on every screen until you register! Get rid of this crap by registering your own SA Forums Account and joining roughly 150,000 Goons, for the one-time price of $9.95! We charge money because it costs us money per month for bills, and since we don't believe in showing ads to our users, we try to make the money back through forum registrations.
 
  • Locked thread
Rastor
Jun 2, 2001

Boiled Water posted:

Also pairing with Nvidia would probably mean getting your CPU bits from a different source, and since Intel don't want to touch custom silicon in any way shape or form, well.

Yeah, but Samsung has a CPU bits division.

http://www.androidauthority.com/closer-look-samsung-mongoose-cpu-712587/

AMD still seems like a better fit for other reasons though.

Adbot
ADBOT LOVES YOU

EmpyreanFlux
Mar 1, 2013

The AUDACITY! The IMPUDENCE! The unabated NERVE!
I mean, it's not impossible for Imagination to be selected either, right? They do have proven designs whereas Samsung would have to bankroll AMD's GPU division so they can get a FP16 mobile part moving.

If AMD gets it though, the majority of all mobile products would sport ATI derivative graphics, which is humorous to me. *Nvidia weeps at it's 2% market share*

champagne posting
Apr 5, 2006

YOU ARE A BRAIN
IN A BUNKER

Rastor posted:

Yeah, but Samsung has a CPU bits division.

http://www.androidauthority.com/closer-look-samsung-mongoose-cpu-712587/

AMD still seems like a better fit for other reasons though.

Making 3W chips is very different from making higher wattage chips. Then there's the whole ARM v. x86 thing.

Rastor
Jun 2, 2001

Boiled Water posted:

Making 3W chips is very different from making higher wattage chips. Then there's the whole ARM v. x86 thing.

We all know AMD makes absurdly high TDP parts but they have also made ~3W chips.
http://www.anandtech.com/show/7974/amd-beema-mullins-architecture-a10-micro-6700t-performance-preview

champagne posting
Apr 5, 2006

YOU ARE A BRAIN
IN A BUNKER

That was not my point at all. Who in their right mind would want a console with a 3w ARM chip?

Truga
May 4, 2014
Lipstick Apathy
Nintendo.

Rastor
Jun 2, 2001

Boiled Water posted:

That was not my point at all. Who in their right mind would want a console with a 3w ARM chip?

Since when are we talking about consoles? I thought this discussion was about Samsung trying to boost the GPU oomph in their mobile devices.

champagne posting
Apr 5, 2006

YOU ARE A BRAIN
IN A BUNKER

Rastor posted:

Since when are we talking about consoles? I thought this discussion was about Samsung trying to boost the GPU oomph in their mobile devices.

Welp. I thought it was a discussion about whatever happens about the current consoles kick the proverbial bucket.

Rastor
Jun 2, 2001

Boiled Water posted:

Welp. I thought it was a discussion about whatever happens about the current consoles kick the proverbial bucket.

There are no such things as consoles anymore, only locked down x86 PCs and Nintendo mobile devices.

Twerk from Home
Jan 17, 2009

This avatar brought to you by the 'save our dead gay forums' foundation.

Rastor posted:

There are no such things as consoles anymore, only locked down x86 PCs and Nintendo mobile devices.

Admittedly, the PS4 Pro is sure cheaper than building an equivalent small form factor Windows gaming PC, and SteamOS isn't quite there yet.

champagne posting
Apr 5, 2006

YOU ARE A BRAIN
IN A BUNKER

Twerk from Home posted:

Admittedly, the PS4 Pro is sure cheaper than building an equivalent small form factor Windows gaming PC, and SteamOS isn't quite there yet.

Is it really? How powerful is that thing?

Twerk from Home
Jan 17, 2009

This avatar brought to you by the 'save our dead gay forums' foundation.

Boiled Water posted:

Is it really? How powerful is that thing?

It's got an RX 480 downclocked to fit in a lower power envelope, I'd call it pretty comparable overall to an i3 and RX 470. I can't see a good way to spec a small form factor PC with an i3, RX 470 or equivalent, wireless ethernet, and a Windows license for $399, although you're welcome to try. If you could use 2-thread CPUs then maybe it's doable, but some games will refuse to run at all on dual core CPUs.

Edit: After actually looking at things, it's not even close. The absolute cheapest I can get a computer with those things is more like $700.

http://pcpartpicker.com/list/4P3kJV

Twerk from Home fucked around with this message at 17:11 on Sep 14, 2016

fishmech
Jul 16, 2006

by VideoGames
Salad Prong

Twerk from Home posted:

Admittedly, the PS4 Pro is sure cheaper than building an equivalent small form factor Windows gaming PC, and SteamOS isn't quite there yet.

SteamOS is never going to be "there" because it's a backburner linux distro that pretty much no one tests against.

champagne posting
Apr 5, 2006

YOU ARE A BRAIN
IN A BUNKER

Twerk from Home posted:

It's got an RX 480 downclocked to fit in a lower power envelope, I'd call it pretty comparable overall to an i3 and RX 470. I can't see a good way to spec a small form factor PC with an i3, RX 470 or equivalent, wireless ethernet, and a Windows license for $399, although you're welcome to try. If you could use 2-thread CPUs then maybe it's doable, but some games will refuse to run at all on dual core CPUs.

Edit: After actually looking at things, it's not even close. The absolute cheapest I can get a computer with those things is more like $700.

http://pcpartpicker.com/list/4P3kJV

This is really interesting. I wonder if we'll see a return to console manufacturers subsidizing their own consoles again.

fishmech
Jul 16, 2006

by VideoGames
Salad Prong

Boiled Water posted:

This is really interesting. I wonder if we'll see a return to console manufacturers subsidizing their own consoles again.

What made you think they stopped? Both of the current gen consoles and the Wii U launched at prices they required taking a loss at launch, even though all of them are now profitable. In the case of the Wii U, I believe it was either their first regular console that sold at a loss at launch.

The PS4 Pro might be lucking into launching at a profit, but it's also a weird half-step system like the Xbox One's half-step console due next year will be. And that means a lot of the normal costs of a "new" system are already paid in the existing base system.

SwissArmyDruid
Feb 14, 2014

by sebmojo
No, both consoles were made at a profit this time around. Both companies saw what that did for Nintendo and the Wii. However, The XBone's profit margin was much larger compared to the PS4's, and so Microsoft's early price cuts forced Sony's hand.



source: http://www.eetimes.com/document.asp?doc_id=1320199

In any case, that's why slim versions of consoles exist, to further drive BOM down.

SwissArmyDruid fucked around with this message at 20:19 on Sep 14, 2016

fishmech
Jul 16, 2006

by VideoGames
Salad Prong

SwissArmyDruid posted:

No, both consoles were made at a profit this time around. Both companies saw what that did for Nintendo and the Wii. However, The XBone's profit margin was much larger compared to the PS4's, and so Microsoft's early price cuts forced Sony's hand.



source: http://www.eetimes.com/document.asp?doc_id=1320199

In any case, that's why slim versions of consoles exist, to further drive BOM down.

Just seeing raw bill-of-materials costs doesn't really tell the whole story. Also what do you mean "what it did for the Wii"? What it did for the Wii, in actuality, was mean that the system was already dead within 3-4 years of launch and there was very low software sales per unit sold (i.e. very small ongoing profits even though there were respectable initial profits on units sold). That's not what they're going for.

And the reputation of the Wii as a dead gimmick system didn't do anything to help the Wii U, which is on track to be Nintendo's worst selling home console.

Edit: also your wording isn't clear, but I just want to remind you that while the already released Xbox One S is a plain "slim" revision, the PS4 Pro and the upcoming matching Xbox One release are full on improved hardware for the games etc to use. The Xbox One S has a minor overclock to handle 4K video decode, but it's still the same everything else.

Edit 2: And let me be clearer about what I meant with the Wii stuff:

So it comes out in 2006, and Nintendo decides to aim for a lower price, as we remember. One of their biggest means for doing that is deciding to go standard definition only, and to correspondingly use weaker hardware than the other, HD-capable consoles. And sure that makes sense for 2006, when SD sets are still rare. The problem is that's a very temporary situation, because by 2009 the United States now has the majority of households owning at least one HDTV. With the weak system specs turning off a lot of game developers besides those making shovelware, these means very few games are sold past about 2009 or 2010 or so, outside of a very few big Nintendo titles. And Nintendo is also hurt by the fact they haven't had multiple generations of experience making HD games for their next console (remember: the original Xbox and the PS2 both supported 720p and 1080i output and had some games that did each, as well as the 360 and PS3 doing full 1080p output on some games).

This is why the Wii U is so hosed, on top of it being 2005 hardware (because it's essentially a 360 with more RAM) at its release in 2012.

fishmech fucked around with this message at 20:53 on Sep 14, 2016

PerrineClostermann
Dec 15, 2012

by FactsAreUseless
PS4 launched with a slight profit.

Twerk from Home
Jan 17, 2009

This avatar brought to you by the 'save our dead gay forums' foundation.

PerrineClostermann posted:

PS4 launched with a slight profit.

Which is mostly true because AMD is willing to take a beating on pricing in order to keep the revenue coming and stay alive, right?

Lafarg
Jul 23, 2012

Twerk from Home posted:

Which is mostly true because AMD is willing to take a beating on pricing in order to keep the revenue coming and stay alive, right?

You usually get a discount when you contract for a few million at a time.

EdEddnEddy
Apr 5, 2012



Also while you can purchase an OS, you can also run Windows 10 free enrolled into the Preview Program and just setting it on the slowest upgrade path.

You get the updates a hair earlier than the rest of the world, and you can spend the money on things like a SSD or something.

Bare Bones VR entry Level.

You could shave off a bit more even going with a lesser GPU than a 3G 1060 (470 was the same price and worse for VR) and maybe a smaller HDD/SSD. Heck probably even farther if you dropped down from the Skylake gen CPU's or even to AMD, but I decided to keep things current gen Intel.


One thing that I still wonder, what would the mobile market have looked like if Intel and AMD had instead kept their mobile SoC Divisions and focused on just their CPU/SoC devisions rather than all these other semi failed x86/software/GPU ventures.

ATI and Nvidia left to do their GPU stuff and part swapped between the two CPU guys...

The XScale chips were badass back then as was the ATI GPU's back in the day (for 2D at least).

EdEddnEddy fucked around with this message at 18:06 on Sep 15, 2016

SwissArmyDruid
Feb 14, 2014

by sebmojo

fishmech posted:

Just seeing raw bill-of-materials costs doesn't really tell the whole story. Also what do you mean "what it did for the Wii"? What it did for the Wii, in actuality, was mean that the system was already dead within 3-4 years of launch and there was very low software sales per unit sold (i.e. very small ongoing profits even though there were respectable initial profits on units sold). That's not what they're going for.

And the reputation of the Wii as a dead gimmick system didn't do anything to help the Wii U, which is on track to be Nintendo's worst selling home console.

Edit: also your wording isn't clear, but I just want to remind you that while the already released Xbox One S is a plain "slim" revision, the PS4 Pro and the upcoming matching Xbox One release are full on improved hardware for the games etc to use. The Xbox One S has a minor overclock to handle 4K video decode, but it's still the same everything else.

Edit 2: And let me be clearer about what I meant with the Wii stuff:

So it comes out in 2006, and Nintendo decides to aim for a lower price, as we remember. One of their biggest means for doing that is deciding to go standard definition only, and to correspondingly use weaker hardware than the other, HD-capable consoles. And sure that makes sense for 2006, when SD sets are still rare. The problem is that's a very temporary situation, because by 2009 the United States now has the majority of households owning at least one HDTV. With the weak system specs turning off a lot of game developers besides those making shovelware, these means very few games are sold past about 2009 or 2010 or so, outside of a very few big Nintendo titles. And Nintendo is also hurt by the fact they haven't had multiple generations of experience making HD games for their next console (remember: the original Xbox and the PS2 both supported 720p and 1080i output and had some games that did each, as well as the 360 and PS3 doing full 1080p output on some games).

This is why the Wii U is so hosed, on top of it being 2005 hardware (because it's essentially a 360 with more RAM) at its release in 2012.

What it did for the Wii was this: BOM for a Wii was $160. Retail for a Wii was $250. Even as they were putting out new versions with bundles, they were still maintaining roughly that $250 dollar mark. Therefore, regardless of the Wii's relative success in terms of market share, every Wii sold was a net profit for Nintendo throughout its entire lifetime. Any games they sold were also, obviously, at a profit.

For this reason, the Wii U isn't as disastrous as you make it out to be, Nintendo still has cash reserves on the order of $4.6 billion USD, and total assets over $11.7 billion USD.

https://www.nintendo.co.jp/ir/pdf/2016/160202e.pdf

In short, they could--and still can--afford it.

SwissArmyDruid fucked around with this message at 19:02 on Sep 15, 2016

fishmech
Jul 16, 2006

by VideoGames
Salad Prong

SwissArmyDruid posted:

What it did for the Wii was this: BOM for a Wii was $160. Retail for a Wii was $250. Even as they were putting out new versions with bundles, they were still maintaining roughly that $250 dollar mark. Therefore, regardless of the Wii's relative success in terms of market share, every Wii sold was a net profit for Nintendo throughout its entire lifetime. Any games they sold were also, obviously, at a profit.

For this reason, the Wii U isn't as disastrous as you make it out to be, Nintendo still has cash reserves on the order of $4.6 billion USD, and total assets over $11.7 billion USD.

https://www.nintendo.co.jp/ir/pdf/2016/160202e.pdf

In short, they could--and still can--afford it.

Nintendo has all that money because at the same time their mobile devices were doing very well - first the DS and then after a rough first year the 3DS.

The Wii U is an utter failure in sales, and their first couple months it wasn't even profitable for the console sale - because the odd hardware choices ran up against their pricepoint (iirc the tablet controller screen was one of their big sourcing issues). The Wii also did really poorly for them once it started flatlining - they would have greatly preferred a PS2 situation where it continues to sell well into the next generation.

Plus they shouldn't need to afford a big failure, nobody wants to be in the situation of being hosed on one of their main product lines for a good 5 years straight!

His Purple Majesty
Dec 12, 2008
How is AMD CPU and GPU support on Linux these days?

Twerk from Home
Jan 17, 2009

This avatar brought to you by the 'save our dead gay forums' foundation.

His Purple Majesty posted:

How is AMD CPU and GPU support on Linux these days?

CPU support is excellent, GPU support lacking unless you've got a very specific OpenCL use case. Gaming on Linux on an AMD GPU is still a pretty bad time.

EmpyreanFlux
Mar 1, 2013

The AUDACITY! The IMPUDENCE! The unabated NERVE!

Twerk from Home posted:

CPU support is excellent, GPU support lacking unless you've got a very specific OpenCL use case. Gaming on Linux on an AMD GPU is still a pretty bad time.

To AMD's credit though, it has gotten substantially better within the last 6 months.

His Purple Majesty
Dec 12, 2008
Yikes well I guess I'll just dual boot and keep my games on my windows partition. Thanks guys.

SwissArmyDruid
Feb 14, 2014

by sebmojo
The hot thing to do these days is to pass your hardware through to virtual machines of Windows running on top of Linux, with a minor (<5%) performance hit.

SwissArmyDruid
Feb 14, 2014

by sebmojo
Ladies and germs, your first publicly available look at Socket AM4, courtesy of WCCFT:



http://wccftech.com/amd-am4-socket-zen-bristol-bridge-soc-package-pictured/

Twerk from Home
Jan 17, 2009

This avatar brought to you by the 'save our dead gay forums' foundation.

SwissArmyDruid posted:

Ladies and germs, your first publicly available look at Socket AM4, courtesy of WCCFT:



http://wccftech.com/amd-am4-socket-zen-bristol-bridge-soc-package-pictured/

Why the hell aren't they going LGA?

SpelledBackwards
Jan 7, 2001

I found this image on the Internet, perhaps you've heard of it? It's been around for a while I hear.

Sure looks like a socket, all right.

Arsten
Feb 18, 2003

Twerk from Home posted:

Why the hell aren't they going LGA?

You'll get pins and you'll like it.

Haquer
Nov 15, 2009

That windswept look...

Twerk from Home posted:

Why the hell aren't they going LGA?

I saw some people on other forums praising the pinned CPUs because a motherboard with bent pins is just terrible! (Ignoring the cpu generally costs more)

Also just bend those cpu pins back with a credit card no big deal guys honest!

Arsten
Feb 18, 2003

Haquer posted:

I saw some people on other forums praising the pinned CPUs because a motherboard with bent pins is just terrible! (Ignoring the cpu generally costs more)

Also just bend those cpu pins back with a credit card no big deal guys honest!

Honestly, I'd rather deal with the cost of the CPU vs removing all of the devices and wiring from a motherboard to replace it.

Twerk from Home
Jan 17, 2009

This avatar brought to you by the 'save our dead gay forums' foundation.

Haquer posted:

I saw some people on other forums praising the pinned CPUs because a motherboard with bent pins is just terrible! (Ignoring the cpu generally costs more)

Also just bend those cpu pins back with a credit card no big deal guys honest!

This hits close to home because I bent pins on a Socket 939 chip when upgrading from single to dual core, ended up breaking off 2 or 3 pins entirely. I got incredibly lucky that they were all power or ground and the CPU still worked fine for many years after.

WhyteRyce
Dec 30, 2001

I remember when I ordered an open box mobo off Newegg that had some bent pins. The first time it booted fine but from then on I'd sometimes randomly not boot or have random crashes or reboots so I had to RMA the thing. All to save like $10

EmpyreanFlux
Mar 1, 2013

The AUDACITY! The IMPUDENCE! The unabated NERVE!
In theory PGA allows AMD to sell incredibly cheap motherboards, so basically Mobo manufacturers get better margins.

Haquer
Nov 15, 2009

That windswept look...

Arsten posted:

Honestly, I'd rather deal with the cost of the CPU vs removing all of the devices and wiring from a motherboard to replace it.

Yeah I like dealing with 50%-100% more cost to save me 20 minutes of work too.

EmpyreanFlux
Mar 1, 2013

The AUDACITY! The IMPUDENCE! The unabated NERVE!
I've never had an issue with pins with either method so I guess YMMV but I'd don't feel like its something to get worked up about. It's going to be funny when the decision between AMD and Intel will be down to PGA vs PGA.

Adbot
ADBOT LOVES YOU

adorai
Nov 2, 2002

10/27/04 Never forget
Grimey Drawer
How often do you

A) change your CPU out?
B) gently caress up bad enough to bend pins?

If the answer is basically never, it probably doesn't matter where they are.

  • Locked thread