Comment on Chips aren’t improving like they used to, and it’s killing game console price cuts

• tomalley8342@lemmy.world ⁨3⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago

  Short version: The PS5Pro would be a wildly lopsided, nonsensical architecture to try to one to one replicate in a desktop PC… 2 GB system RAM will run lightweight linux os’s, but not a chance in hell you could run Windows 10 or 11 on that.

  Fuck, even getting 7 to work with 2GB RAM would be quite a challenge… if not impossible, I think 7 required 4GB RAM minimum?

  It’s shared memory, so you would need to guarantee access to 16gb on both ends.

  The RX 6600 in the partpicker list is fairly close in terms of GPU performance.

  I don’t know how you could arrive at such a conclusion, considering that the base PS5 has been measured to be comparable to the 6700.

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  • sp3ctr4l@lemmy.dbzer0.com ⁨3⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago

    It’s shared memory, so you would need to guarantee access to 16gb on both ends.

    So… standard Desktop CPUs can only talk to DDR.

    ‘CPUs’ can only utilize GDDR when they are actually a part of an APU.

    Standard desktop GPUs can only talk to GDDR, which is part of their whole seperate board.

    GPU and CPU can talk to each other, and the mainboard.

    Standard desktop PC architecture does not have a way for the CPU to directly utilize the GDDR RAM on the standalone GPU.

    In many laptops and phones, a different architecture is used, which uses LPDDR RAM, and all the LPDDR RAM is used by the APU, the APU being a CPU+GPU combo in a single chip.

    Some laptops use DDR RAM, but… in those laptops, the DDR RAM is only used by the CPU, and those laptops have a seperate GPU chip, which has its own built in GDDR RAM… the CPU and CPU cannot and do not share these distinct kinds of RAM.

    The PS5Pro appears to have yet another unique architecture:

    Functionally, the 2GB of DDR RAM can only be accessed by the CPU parts of the APU, which act as a kind of reserve, a minimum baseline of CPU-only RAM set aside for certain CPU specific tasks.

    The PS5Pro’s GDDR RAM is sharable and usable by both the CPU and GPU components of the APU.

    …

    So… saying that you want to have a standard desktop PC build… that shares all of its GDDR and DDR RAM… this is impossible, and nonsensical.

    Standard desktop PC motherboards, compatible GPUs and CPUs… they do not allow for shareable RAM, instead going with a design paradigm of the GPU has its own onboard GDDR RAM that only it can use, and DDR RAM that only the CPU can use.

    You would basically have to tear a high end/more modern laptop board with an APU soldered into it… and then install that into a ‘desktop pc’ case… to have a ‘desktop pc’ that shares memory between its CPU and GPU components… which both would be encapsulated in a single APU chip.

    Roughly this concept being done is generally called a MiniPC, and is a fairly niche thing, and is not the kind of thing an average prosumer can assemble themselves like a normal desktop PC.

    All you can really do is swap out the RAM (if it isnt soldered) and the SSD… maybe I guess transplant it and the power supply into another case?

    I don’t know how you could arrive at such a conclusion, considering that the base PS5 has been measured to be comparable to the 6700.

    I can arrive at that conclusion because I can compare actual bench mark scores from a nearest TFLOP equivalent, more publically documented, architecturally similar AMD APU… the 7600M. I specifically mentioned this in my post.

    This guy in the article here … well he notes that the 6700 is a bit more powerful than the PS5Pro’s GPU component.

    The 6600 is one step down in terms of mainline desktop PC hardware, and arguably the PS5Pro’s performance is… a bit better than a 6600, a bit worse than a 6700, but at that level, all of the other differences in the PS5Pro’s architecture give basically a margin of error when trying to precisely dial in whether a 6700 or 6600 is a closer match.

    You can’t do apples to apples spec sheet comparisons… because, as I have now exhaustively explained:

    Standard desktop PCs do not share RAM between the GPU and CPU. They also do not share memory imterface busses and bandwidth lanes… in standard PCs, these are distinct and seperate, because they use different architectures.

    I got my results by starting with TFLOPs output from a PS5Pro, finding a nearest equivalent APU with PassMark benchmark scores, reported by hundreds or thousands or tens of thousands of users, then compared those PassMark APU scores to PassMark conventional GPU scores, and ended up with ‘fairly close’ to an RX 6600.

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    • Aceticon@lemmy.dbzer0.com ⁨3⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago

      Just to add to this, the reason you only see shared memory setups on PCs with integrated graphics is because it lowers performance compared to dedicated memory which is less of a problem if your GPU is only being used in 2D mode (mainly because that uses little memory), but more of a problem when used in 3D mode as the PS5 is meant to be used most of the time.

      So the PS5 having shared memory is not a good thing and actually makes it inferior compared to a PC made with a GPU and CPU of similar processing power using the dominant gaming PC architecture (separate memory).

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      • addie@feddit.uk ⁨3⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago

        You’ve got that a bit backwards. Integrated memory on a desktop computer is more “partitioned” than shared - there’s a chunk for the CPU and a chunk for the GPU, and it’s usually quite slow memory by the standards of graphics cards. The integrated memory on a console is completely shared, and very fast. The GPU works at its full speed, and the CPU is able to do a couple of things that are impossible to do with good performance on a desktop computer:

        • load and manipulate models which are then directly accessible by the GPU. When loading models, there’s no need to read them from disk into the CPU memory and then copy them onto the GPU - they’re just loaded and accessible.
        • manipulate the frame buffer using the CPU. Often used for tone mapping and things like that, and a nightmare for emulator writers. Something like RPCS3 emulating Dark Souls has to turn this off; a real PS3 can just read and adjust the output using the CPU with no frame hit, but a desktop would need to copy the frame from the GPU to main memory, adjust it, and copy it back, which would kill performance.

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      • sp3ctr4l@lemmy.dbzer0.com ⁨3⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago

        Basically this is true, yes, without going into an exhaustive level of detail as to very, very specific subtypes of different RAM and mobo layouts.

        Shared memory setups generally are less powerful, but, they also usually end up being overall cheaper, as well as having a lower power draw… and being cooler, temperature wise.

        Which are all legitimate reasons those kinds of setups are used in smaller form factor ‘computing devices’, because heat managment, airflow requirements… basically rule out using a traditional architecture.

        …

        Though, recently, MiniPCs are starting to take off… and I am actually considering doing a build based on the Minisforum BD795i SE… which could be quite a powerful workstation/gaming rig.

        Aside about interesting non standard 'desktop' potential build

        This is a Mobo with a high end integrated AMD mobile CPU (7945hx)… that all together, costs about $430. And the CPU in this thing… has a PassMark score… of about the same as an AMD 9900X… which itself, the CPU alone, MSRPs for about $400. So that is kind of bonkers, get a high end Mobo and CPU… for the price of a high end CPU. Oh, I forgot to mention: This BD795iSE board? Yeah it just has a standard PCI 16 slot. So… you can plug in any 2 slot width standard desktop GPU into it… and all of this either literally is, or basically is the ITX form factor. So, you could make a whole build out of this that would be ITX form factor, and also absurdly powerful, or a budget version with a dinky GPU. I was talking in another thread a few days ago, snd somekne said PC architecture may be headed toward… basically you have the entire PC, and the GPU, and thats the new paradigm, instead of the old school view of: you have a mobo, and you pick it based on its capability to support future cpus in the same socket type, future ram upgrades, etc… And this intrigued me, I looked into it, and yeah, this concept does have cost per performance merit at this point. So this uses a split between the GPU having its GDDR RAM and the… CPU using DDDR SODIMM (laptop form factor) RAM. But its also designed such that you can actually fit huge standard PC style cooling fans… into quite a compact form factor. From what I can vaguely tell as a non Chinese speaker… it seems like there are many more people over in China who have been making high end, custom, desktop gaming rigs out of this laptop/mobile style architecture for a decent while now, and only recently has this concept even really entered into the English speaking world/market, that you can actually build your own rig this way.

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    • tomalley8342@lemmy.world ⁨3⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago

      People are not trying to replicate the Sony’s console hardware layout, they are trying to have the same gaming experience. I’m not sure how I can make it any clearer than pointing out an article which showed that the 6700 has similar performance across 7 separate games to the base Playstation 5. Not the Playstation 5 Pro, the base Playstation 5.

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      • sp3ctr4l@lemmy.dbzer0.com ⁨3⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago

        TFLOPs generally correlate to actual, general game performance quite well.

        resetera.com/…/all-games-with-ps5-pro-enhancement…

        A PS5Pro can render CP77 at ‘quality mode’ …which is roughly the ‘high’ graphical quality preset of CP77 on PCs, with… I believe all raytracing other than raytraced shadows off…

        … at 2k30fps, or it can render at a dynamicly scaling resolution between 2k and 1080p at a locked 60fps.

        gpu-monkey.com/…/benchmark-amd_radeon_rx_6700-cyb…

        An RX 6700 can render CP77 at 2k, 43 fps avg.

        This site isn’t 100% clear as to whether these GPU scores are done at the ‘high’ preset, or the ‘ultra’, all settings maxed out preset… but with all raytracing off.

        gpu-monkey.com/…/benchmark-amd_radeon_rx_6600-cyb…

        A 6600 can do the same, high or ultra preset, with no raytracing, at 2k, with 31 fps.

        1080p at 51 fps.

        So uh yeah, even with the top of the line PS5 variant, the PS5Pro’s graphical capabilities are a bit worse than a 6700, and a bit better than a 6600.

        I have used many AMD cards, and yeah basically, if you only use raytraced local shadows?

        At 1080p, or 2k?

        Very roughly, you’ll get about the same fps with a ‘high’ preset, and only raytraced local shadows, as you would with no rt local shadows, but the game’s graphical preset bumped up to ‘ultra’.

        There are now like 6 different raytracing options in the PC version of CP77.

        They only work well with Nvidia cards… and the latest iteration of AMD cards, that now have basically their equivalent of RT cores, though they’re not as powerful, nor as expensive, as Nvidia cards.

        Needless to say, PS5… normals, or whatever, are going to be even weaker than the ‘somewhere between an rx 6600 and rx 6700’ rough equivalence.

        …

        Playstation users only even see about 10% of all the graphical settings options that PC players see, really just the 4 post processing effects and motiin blur. PC players get many, many more settings they can tweak around.

        Also, PS5 users generally seem to think CP77 is being rendered at 4k, in quality mode.

        Uh, no, it isn’t, its rendered at 2k max, and that is likely using FSR 2.1,with a bit of dynamic frame upscaling within CP77, meaning the actual real render resolution is roughly 5% to 15 % lower than 2k, then FSR upscales to 2k,… then the PS5 does its own upscaling outside of the game, likely via an emulator style simple integer upscale algo, to display at 4k on a 4k TV.

        … I am saying all of this with confidence because I have spent a considerable amount of time fucking with customizing dynamjc resolution scaling, and other graphical settings, in CP77, on different AMD cards, on PCs.

        The PS5Pro is using the same dynamic resolution scaling that exists in CP77 on PCs. PCs generally do best with an ‘Auto’ mode for various frame upscalers, but the dynamic setting on PC basically lets you throw out the auto settings and fuck about with your own custom tolerances for max and min resolutions and frame rates.

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