NVIDIA: "No Longer Possible" for Consoles to Better PC Graphics


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There's an NVIDIA Interview on PC PowerPlay Magazine titled "The Sky Isn?t Falling," as it hears from NVIDIA's Tony Tamasi about graphics cards, who tells them: "It?s no longer possible for a console to be a better or more capable graphics platform than the PC." Surprisingly, he says one of the reasons for this is that the console giants don't have the cash to compete in this area:

 

  • By the time of the Xbox 360 and PS3, the consoles were on par with the PC. If you look inside those boxes, they?re both powered by graphics technology by AMD or NVIDIA, because by that time all the graphics innovation was being done by PC graphics companies. NVIDIA spends 1.5 billion US dollars per year on research and development in graphics, every year, and in the course of a console?s lifecycle we?ll spend over 10 billion dollars into graphics research. Sony and Microsoft simply can?t afford to spend that kind of money. They just don?t have the investment capacity to match the PC guys; we can do it thanks to economy of scale, as we sell hundreds of millions of chips, year after year.

Source: Bluesnews

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Microsoft doesn't have the funds to match? What a load of BS! It's more like they have to be cost conscience with the consumer. Most people aren't going to drop a grand on a console, so they can only do so much. For me, things are reaching a point of good enough graphically.

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Microsoft doesn't have the money? What?

Let's look at something:

MSFT Revenue: $78 billion

MSFT Profit: $27 billion

Nvidia Revnue: $4 billion

Nvidia Profit: $650 million

Microsoft's profit alone was almost 7x the amount of revenue Nvidia brought in. They can easily afford to spend $1.5 billion a year on research.

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Microsoft doesn't have the funds to match? What a load of BS! It's more like they have to be cost conscience with the consumer.

He's right though. Microsoft and Sony commit themselves to fixed-spec platforms to keep costs down, relying on the fact that several years down the road the consoles will cost very little to make. Neither company could afford to keep up with PC gaming, as they wouldn't be profitable. It's why they use software prices to subsidise the cost of consoles.

 

Sony invested heavily in the PS3 and has struggled to make a profit, while PC gaming long ago eclipsed it.

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Microsoft doesn't have the money? What?

Let's look at something:

MSFT Revenue: $78 billion

MSFT Profit: $27 billion

Nvidia Revnue: $4 billion

Nvidia Profit: $650 million

Microsoft's profit alone was almost 7x the amount of revenue Nvidia brought in. They can easily afford to spend $1.5 billion a year on research.

 

Now post the profits from the games division.

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So what?  I don't understand the comparisons between consoles and PCs when it comes to gaming.  They're two separate beasts that coexist just fine.  The fact that between the big three, over 250 million consoles were sold last gen with countless games should be all the proof anyone needs to say that a large amount of people don't care if PC graphics can always be better.  We all know that.  It's like saying smoking will kill you.  It's a different experience than PC gaming, and many people prefer it.

 

Nvidia can spend 100 billion in 10 years, it doesn't mean people are going to jump ship to PC gaming - that's not why they choose consoles over PCs for gaming.

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Now post the profits from the games division.

 

That's not really relevant to the discussion as that's not really how it works.  It's not like they can't pull from all their assets to specific divisions if they so choose.

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Lets not forget that NO nVidia GPU made it inside XBOne or PS4...  Jealous much?

 

And they (MS, Sony) could have included a faster GPU, but at what cost?  Everybody remember how well the PS3 sold at a "low price" of $599...

 

Still, game devs don't seem to be able to push the hardware to render 1080p and that's a shame.  Were not talking about multi-monitor or 4K like you would expect on a PC but just plain 1080p/60fps HDTV.  Welcome to 2013, I would have expected XBOne and PS4 to be able to do that with ease.

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Microsoft hasn't been, until recently, into the hardware part of things, and especially into graphic drivers. Why should MS spend that kind of money on something they don't make? Things might be different in the future, now. 

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The bigger point raised in the interview is that consoles can no longer keep up with PC gaming because they don't match the investment being made.
 

Tamasi: It?s no longer possible for a console to be a better or more capable graphics platform than the PC. I?ll tell you why. In the past, certainly with the first PlayStation and PS2, in that era there weren?t really good graphics on the PC. Around the time of the PS2 is when 3D really started coming to the PC, but before that time 3D was the domain of Silicon Graphics and other 3D workstations. Sony, Sega or Nintendo could invest in bringing 3D graphics to a consumer platform. In fact, the PS2 was faster than a PC.

The other issue is power, as consoles have to work with much less power than PCs.
 

The second factor is that everything is limited by power these days. If you want to go faster, you need a more efficient design or a bigger power supply. The laws of physics dictate that the amount of performance you?re going to get from graphics is a function of the efficiency of the architecture, and how much power budget you?re willing to give it. The most efficient architectures are from NVIDIA and AMD, and you?re not going to get anything that is significantly more power efficient in a console, as it?s using the same core technology. Yet the consoles have power budgets of only 200 or 300 Watts, so they can put them in the living room, using small fans for cooling, yet run quietly and cool. And that?s always going to be less capable than a PC, where we spend 250W just on the GPU. There?s no way a 200W Xbox is going to be beat a 1000W PC.

It's a really interesting interview.

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The bigger point raised in the interview is that consoles can no longer keep up with PC gaming because they don't match the investment being made.

 

The other issue is power, as consoles have to work with much less power than PCs.

 

It's a really interesting interview.

 

Yes, but they still aren't getting at why hundreds of millions of people choose consoles over PCs, which isn't because of graphics or power.  They did mention it however, though in a different context...

 

 

so they can put them in the living room

 

Probably one of the biggest factors.  Again, Nvidia can spend all they want on graphics chips, it's not going to move people from consoles to PCs because that's not why people choose consoles so I'll say again that they're wasting their time comparing the two.

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That's not really relevant to the discussion as that's not really how it works.  It's not like they can't pull from all their assets to specific divisions if they so choose.

 

It is since Microsoft is not a private company.

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Probably one of the biggest factors.  Again, Nvidia can spend all they want on graphics chips, it's not going to move people from consoles to PCs because that's not why people choose consoles so I'll say again that they're wasting their time comparing the two.

Yes, but Valve is looking to change that with SteamOS and SteamBox. Hopefully they will be able to break the hold that Microsoft and Sony have on gaming and create an open, flexible platform that offers cheaper games and better graphics. Mobile phones and tablets have been evolving at breakneck speed because they're flexible platforms - there is more innovation and more competition. It doesn't make sense to have consoles with eight-to-ten year lifecycles.

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Yes, but Valve is looking to change that with SteamOS and SteamBox. Hopefully they will be able to break the hold that Microsoft and Sony have on gaming and create an open, flexible platform that offers cheaper games and better graphics. Mobile phones and tablets have been evolving at breakneck speed because they're flexible platforms - there is more innovation and more competition. It doesn't make sense to have consoles with eight-to-ten year lifecycles.

Why not. I'm perfectly happy getting a console that will last that long. I don't want to spend money on hardware more often. If I did, I'd be a PC gamer. Which brings me back to my other point about how consoles and PCs are two different ecosystems that can coexist perfectly fine together.

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Why not. I'm perfectly happy getting a console that will last that long. I don't want to spend money on hardware more often. If I did, I'd be a PC gamer. Which brings me back to my other point about how consoles and PCs are two different ecosystems that can coexist perfectly fine together.

They have coexisted but Microsoft and Sony have both struggled and it's an incredibly risky business to be in. Sega pulled out years ago and Nintendo is really struggling with the Wii U. That's why both Microsoft and Sony have played it very safe with specs in order to strive for profitability but that might not be enough. As pointed out, the X360 and PS3 were close to PC level when they were released but the XB1 and PS4 are lagging behind - they risk falling even further behind this generation, which will give the PC and other competitors a major opportunity to compete. You never know, we might see Apple jump into the gaming arena, as it's not much of a leap from mobile / tablet.

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They have coexisted but Microsoft and Sony have both struggled and it's an incredibly risky business to be in. Sega pulled out years ago and Nintendo is really struggling with the Wii U. That's why both Microsoft and Sony have played it very safe with specs in order to strive for profitability but that might not be enough. As pointed out, the X360 and PS3 were close to PC level when they were released but the XB1 and PS4 are lagging behind - they risk falling even further behind this generation, which will give the PC and other competitors a major opportunity to compete. You never know, we might see Apple jump into the gaming arena, as it's not much of a leap from mobile / tablet.

Sony and MS are far from struggling and have been for a long time. There's no reason to think they will start struggling any time soon especially if reports about preorder numbers are to be believed. I think you're deluding yourself if you think some sort of wrench is being thrown in the console game any time soon. There's no reason for anyone to do so. Consoles are doing well, Pcs are doing well, mobile is doing well. NVIDIA is just mouthing off because they're not getting any money out of the consoles.

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That's not really relevant to the discussion as that's not really how it works.  It's not like they can't pull from all their assets to specific divisions if they so choose.

 

That is exactly how it works in the eyes of the investors, and part of the reason Microsoft reorganized.

http://www.eteknix.com/microsoft-investor-wants-to-fire-ballmer-and-sell-xbox-division/

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Microsoft doesn't have the money? What?

Let's look at something:

MSFT Revenue: $78 billion

MSFT Profit: $27 billion

Nvidia Revnue: $4 billion

Nvidia Profit: $650 million

Microsoft's profit alone was almost 7x the amount of revenue Nvidia brought in. They can easily afford to spend $1.5 billion a year on research.

Not just for graphics and specific things... I think the point is, if your company is focused on a specific element and core, you can do a lot more than a company with a zillion times your budget, but are so diverse that they have their hands in a zillion things at once.

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Nvidia starting to be butt hurt now? No **** console graphics aren't nor won't be on par with PC. If MS and Sony spent enough money they could throw in a 7990 or a Titan but who actually would buy the console for that price anymore? 

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Architecturally the consoles are way ahead of the PC. They have fully shared memory and powerful integrated GPUs, stuff that we'll only start seeing a bit next year if AMD delivers. I think there's a lot of efficiency the consoles can tap into there. Carmack spoke at length about how latencies and indirections on PC killed performance vs what could be achieved on consoles and that was Xbox 360/PS3. Next-gen will be much more efficient even.

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Architecturally the consoles are way ahead of the PC. They have fully shared memory and powerful integrated GPUs, stuff that we'll only start seeing a bit next year if AMD delivers. I think there's a lot of efficiency the consoles can tap into there. Carmack spoke at length about how latencies and indirections on PC killed performance vs what could be achieved on consoles and that was Xbox 360/PS3. Next-gen will be much more efficient even.

That's true. Microsoft, Sony, and even Nintendo are in the business of making cost-effective gaming solutions. If they made consoles that are as powerful as PCs in terms of raw processing power, then it'll be too expensive for console gamers. There's no doubt that consoles are more efficient which explains why the image quality gap isn't so big given the spec difference. Of course, whenever people talk about PC gaming in comparison to console gaming.. they're usually thinking of a high-end system. And then there's the additional uses a PC has. It isn't just a gaming and entertainment machine.

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No, it's not possible for MS/Sony to best the top of the range offerings from AMD/Nvidia. Heck, we've got on the record statements by John Sell saying that MS deliberately did not target the absolutely best graphics possible, and I bet Mark Cerny would say the same thing privately, but he's never going to say that publicly because Sony want to **** all over MS (the console wars be serious business...).

 

MS/Sony are in the business (as pointed out by others) of delivering tightly engineered systems; even though they are not the most powerful gaming devices on the market, the consoles can deliver long term value to the customer, with graphics that will be on par with most custom higher end gaming rigs for quite a while.

 

Sure, Titans in SLI + i7 + 16GB ram +SSD will deliver exquisite visuals and performance, but this will be at great cost, and the result is something that not many people will ever experience. For most people, the console will give them the best gaming graphics they experience. 

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Yes, but Valve is looking to change that with SteamOS and SteamBox. Hopefully they will be able to break the hold that Microsoft and Sony have on gaming and create an open, flexible platform that offers cheaper games and better graphics. Mobile phones and tablets have been evolving at breakneck speed because they're flexible platforms - there is more innovation and more competition. It doesn't make sense to have consoles with eight-to-ten year lifecycles.

Valve is exactly targeting the 8-10 year cycle with their steambox'es at least for another console life cycle that is... so don't expect valve dictating hardware trends in the next 15 years. As long as they are not dominating game sales compared to other consoles they have no word on when new generation of hardware has to be adopted, that's what happened to Nintendo, nobody cares if your hardware is a bit faster if you don't have support from devs/publishers/users.

 

And your talks about flexible and SteamOS or steamBox is wrong, if any impact it will bring to pc gaming its stability, games that are created with targeted hardware for optimal performance,

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