NVIDIA also has a two decade+ head start after they spent the early naughties colluding against ATI/AMD and almost pushed AMD out of the market. I hardly look at anything coming out today without that lens, tends to explain a lot; also an entire supercomputer project was almost borked because of NVIDIA - hasn’t happened with any of our AMD supercomputers (in fact that the worlds fastest, and first exascale machine, is AMD). They’re definitely doing things right but playing catch up - hopefully the supercomputing and console spaces provide AMD the ability to compete better dollar-per-dollar (more engineers, better refresh schedules, etc).
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Yeah, the amount they make on it is crazy. I don’t expect AMD to catch up overnight or anything, I just wish they were able to disrupt the GPU market in the same way they did with the CPU market, which was another area people weren’t sure if AMD would catch up. Even Intel has done a better job being competitive with RT and ML, which is crazy to even say.
Who knows, maybe when Intel moves into the high end GPU market, they can be the ones to provide a good alternative to Nvidia products. XESS recently got a nice update where the quality of the open source version now exceeds FSR2, but at a slightly heavier performance cost. I believe they are working to further improve performance, so that’s another exciting option.
With any luck, AMD can come back with RDNA5 in a big way. I’m most interested in how the RT performance looks in RDNA4 since that was supposed to be a revamp of their RT pipeline to better compete with Nvidia and Intel.
I would absolutely love for Nintendo to come back to the high end console market, unfortunately I think I have a better chance of winning the lottery. 
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https://x.com/klobrille/status/1694706419877196098?s=46&t=O_AGT9SEnlptKOF_2SxtqQ
Xbox is in good hands.
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Would that be really good?
You make a good point, especially since the Pro is supposed to have reconstruction features, which I imagine the AI accelerator can help with.
Yeah, it’d be very good.
Absolutely no chance.
- How will they cool it?
They’ll certainly have a stronger GPU, but they are not going from 8 terraflops to 37 terraflops overnight in a small form factor case with limited cooling.
And I’m typing this on an mini atx based PC with liquid cooler, 3 fans and I know for a fact I’m being throttled when my CPU and GPU start drawing power(heat) when I game.
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Are we talking PS4 to PS4 Pro differences, Pro to One X differences or even Xbox One to One X?
Obviously Phil isn’t gonna spill the beans if they had any plans for a mid gen refresh, especially when the competition hasn’t said a single thing either. But i would definitely see it as a mistake if they were to sit it out until 2027 or 2028.
I know Phil said he wants the XSX to be used to its full potential, but what if that PS5 Pro takes him by surprise and it’s a surprisingly more powerful system? Devs are bound to take advantage of it more often (compared to One X back then) because of the install base. They really would be playing catch up, it would not be a good look. I’m sure Game Pass, Cloud and such will continue to do fine, but they’d absolutely lose out on power, something he said was not gonna happen ever again.
But not too long ago there was a rumor by a few decent sources that MS was planning a discless XSX iirc, but also new hardware for 2025. You’d think that can only mean one thing. We’ll have to wait and see I guess, this Pro hasn’t even been officially announced yet.
The rumor for the Pro is it’ll be 23TF, so not exactly what’s shown in the image above, but it could be based on that chip. It’d be almost twice the performance of the PS5/XSX in pure compute, but other factors like memory bandwidth will play a part. There are also the RDNA3 efficiency and RT performance gains too, assuming it goes with that architecture.
I doubt Phil cares all that much about how games will compare in videos to be honest. I think people put too much weight in his power comment. There’s no way he can guarantee Xbox will always have a more powerful console. And I really don’t think gamers should care either as long as they are happy with the system they have.
Both Xbox and Sony use AMD chipsets for CPU and GPU on the same board. Phil Spencer would most certainly know if Sony planned a vastly more powerful console than Microsoft.
After all Microsoft developers would be developing on the Playstan xyz of the future.
I get what you mean, I just want my favorite console to keep up and not lag behind too much. Early 2025 could be the start of me having a PS console for the exclusives and as multiplatform console, while XSX is solely for its exclusives, but I really rather not. We’ll have to see what is true about that new hardware in 2025 rumor.
If for example Rockstar were to release GTA 6 holiday next year, bet on it that will be a bundle with the Pro and it’s going to sell like hotcakes. Not to mention what CDPR will do with Witcher 4. I hope my worries turn out to be for nothing and that they do not lag behind until next gen, I’d hate it.
That’s assuming PS even provides Xbox devs with Pro kits or even informs them about it.
Granted, with the way people move in this industry, there is a chance they know some things. However I like to believe that the vast majority of people in the industry honor NDAs. Even if they knew some things, reacting to it would be a different story. Consoles take 3-4 years to make. Unless Xbox had a Pro console planned for years now, it’s not like they can whip one together in a couple years.
I hear you. I like to play the best version of games too, but I’m also a tech nerd that loves that kind of things. It’s why I went from 360->PS4->PS4 Pro->One X as my primary console the last couple of gens. It’s also why I’ve been moving to PC more and more this gen. So I don’t blame you if you play on a PS5 Pro for that reason alone.
I’m just saying if people are still happy with how games look and run on the XS|S or stock PS5, they shouldn’t be bothered if the Pro version runs better or has higher graphical settings.
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They’d have to provide them with dev kits or they’d be rocking COD 2025 on Series X being the most advanced version.
I’d be extremely shocked if Microsofts R&D teams on the Surface side of the company haven’t looked at a beefier CPU chip, extra RAM and a more powerful GPU on a chipset.
In saying that… It already has something like a Ryzen 7 3700x CPU, 16gb RAM and close to an AMD Radeon RX6800 GPU with 10GB VRAM… I suppose they could beef up the VRAM on the GPU and possibly further upgrade the CPU.
The Series X is grand… it just needs to be given space to develop on… Covid held devs back with getting to grips with it.
On what process node are these chips? Over 250 watts (without the CPU) is a bit much for a console.
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It is not going to be the ps4 pro kinda of difference. You see, they up the GPU size by 50%. And may increase the clock speed as well. It may take them to 80%-100% more performance. Last gen mid refresh had around 2.5-3 times performance uplift on GPU side alone.
Do not worry about Xbox mid gen refresh. If Xbox ever felt the need for one they may simply launch mid gen refresh a year later (what they did with one X last gen). They are well positioned to catch up in one year alone. If the this PS5 pro is actually true, xbox just need to up clock the cureent soc and use faster vram.
| Column 1 | Column 2 | Column 3 | Column 4 |
|---|---|---|---|
| Series X | PS5 pro | ||
| Gpu size | 52 CU | 54 CU | |
| Gpu speed | 1.825 | 2.5 | |
| So they just need to match or exceed PS5 pro’s clock speed to get there. There GPU is already similar to PS5 pro. |
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I believe you’re underestimating how much work it would take to produce a souped up console. The CPU in current gen consoles is also closer to the 3600 due to the cut cache.
Who knows, maybe MS does have something in the works for 2025, I hope they do. But if they ride this gen out with the current consoles, that won’t be the end of the world either IMO.
I do agree though that even the current gen consoles still have plenty of headroom to grow, especially the PS5 and Series X. Which is why I don’t get the concern expressed here over the Pro. It’ll be better but that won’t make the current consoles suck by any means.
5nm. I get the feeling that both MS and Sony are going to up the limit of power draw in consoles going forward, whether we’re talking Pro consoles or next gen. They pretty much have to if they hope to see noticeable performance gains.
That means these consoles will get even bigger. I’m not a fan.
I still think Pro consoles make not a lot of sense with slowing down of Moores law. Too expensive, too big.
We will find out. If Sony is on path for a 2024 release the specs will leak this year.
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I played so much of this when I was a kid (so that is a VEEEERY long time ago) I’m still shocked by how fun this game is.
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Yeah it’ll be interesting to see how they tackle that issue. We saw an innovative cooling solution in the SX, so maybe we’ll see more of that going forward.
I also thought there wasn’t much point to a pro console before but as we see more signs of how demanding engines like UE5 are looking to be, I can see more powerful consoles having real benefits. And TBF, we don’t know the size or cost of this pro console yet. We actually discussed the topic of cost in my stream last night and Sony (or MS) could produce some interesting options by going with consoles with this detachable drive direction. I’m thinking Sony might stick with the two SKU approach, but offer both the stock and Pro console as digital consoles out of the box and provide the swappable drive separately as an option for people that wish to continue using physical media. As someone who supports physical media and wants it to remain a healthy option, I’m not a fan of the idea but this direction makes the most sense since they save on cost, push digital purchases (which are more profitable), allows them to keep it at two SKUs (helping to avoid confusion), and also allows them to avoid being forced to charge $100 for a blueray drive (which would be an insane price but required if they keep the current two base SKUs). I’m also thinking we could see the slim remain at $400 while the Pro ends up being $600, which is very fair for the rumored specs.
It’ll be really interesting to see how it all shakes out.
Yeah, while I played Q2 MP on PC, I have very little experience of the campaign. I only completed the N64 version back in those days, not realizing the whole campaign was very different. So I’ve been really enjoying this remaster. Night Dive did an amazing job.
After this ABK deal closes, I’d love to see them tackle Hexen 1 and 2.
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But isn’t the current problem with UE5 is that it’s very new and not as well optimized or utilized by devs yet? I think if we compare it to an engine like Forzatech, we can see just how its constant involution has allowed it to be a match for UE5, but because it’s not widely adopted less people use it. Or even Rockstars Rage Engine, that has been getting steady updates throughout the years.
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