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AMD has almost completely taken over the console market. The PS2 was a MIPS system and the PS3/Xbox360 were PowerPC, but, for the last ten years, Sony and Micro
by pdpi 3y ago
AMD has almost completely taken over the console market. The PS2 was a MIPS system and the PS3/Xbox360 were PowerPC, but, for the last ten years, Sony and Microsoft have been all AMD. Intel has been out of the game since the original XBox, and nvidia only has the switch to its name. The Steam Deck-style handhelds (like the ROG Ally and the Lenovo Legion Go) are AMD systems.
It’s kind of interesting how they have this hold on gaming outside of conventional PCs, but can’t seem to compete with nvidia on just that one market.
- zitterbewegung 3y agoFrom my understanding AMD holds the console market because its basically lowest price wins so the margins are business that Intel and NVIDIA doesn't really want.
- jsheard 3y agoThey also more or less won the PS4/XB1 generation by default as the only supplier capable of combining a half decent CPU and GPU into a single chip - Intel had good CPUs but terrible GPUs and Nvidia had good GPUs but terrible CPUs. That tide is shifting now with Intel's renewed push into GPUs, and Nvidia getting access to high performance ARM reference designs.
- PlutoIsAPlanet 3y agoIt's also interesting that at one point, Nvidia's chips were going to support both x86 and ARM (see Project Denver), but x86 support was scrapped due to Intel's patents. https://semiaccurate.com/2011/08/05/what-is-project-denver-based-on/ https://semiaccurate.com/2011/08/05/what-is-project-denver-b... Would of been interesting to have had another large x86 player
- jsheard 3y agoLast years Xbox leak revealed that Microsoft was at least considering switching to ARM for the next Xbox generation, though regardless of the CPU architecture they chose they indicated they were sticking with AMD for the GPU. It will be interesting to see how that shakes out, going to ARM would complicate backwards compatibility so they would need a very good reason to move.
- hypercube33 3y agoAMD holds an arm license and uses them as part of the software tpu in the pro series processors as I understand. It's not unreasonable to assume they could make some ARM x86 hybrid CPU (like apple did for Rosetta) or a mixed arch chip we've never seen before that can run emulators native. Who knows.
- AnthonyMouse 3y agoBut what would be the point of that? If you're already buying it from AMD and the previous generation was x86 so that's what gives backwards compatibility, just do another x86 one. The reason to switch to ARM is to get it from someone other than Intel or AMD.
- lmm 3y agoThe reason to switch to ARM is to get better performance, especially per-watt. If the supplier that's making your graphics card can deliver that, then why risk onboarding someone new?
- jwells89 3y agoIn addition to better perf per watt, it’d allow them to shrink the console, potentially to something as small as a Mac Mini or NUC. Less need for cooling means a smaller console. This could help them make inroads to people who might not have considered a home console before due to their relatively large size. Wouldn’t be surprised if the Switch did well with this market and now MS wants a slice of that pie.
- isthatafact 3y ago> The reason to switch to ARM is to get better performance, especially per-watt. I am not expert, but I cannot remember ever hearing that before. Why would arm have better absolute performance than x86? As a spectator, reading tech press about architectures gave me the impression that even in performance per watt, the advantage arm has over x86 is fairly small, just that arm chip makers have always focused on optimizing for low power performance for phones.
- AnthonyMouse 3y agoA console wants a competitive GPU and a competitive CPU. Nvidia has the first, Intel has the second, AMD has both. The first one is more important, hence the Switch, and AMD's ability to do it in the pre-Ryzen era. (The original Intel-CPU Xbox had an Nvidia GPU.) Console vendors are high volume institutional buyers with aggressive price targets, so being able to get both from the same place is a big advantage. For PCs, discrete GPUs are getting bought separately so that doesn't apply. AMD does alright there but they were historically the underdog and highly budget-constrained, so without some kind of separate advantage they were struggling. Now they're making a lot of money from Ryzen/Epyc and GPUs, and reinvesting most of it, so it's plausible they'll be more competitive going forward as the fruits of those investments come to bear.
- p_l 3y agoThe original Xbox was supposed to use AMD CPU as well, and parts of that remained in the architecture (for example it uses Hyper Transport bus), backroom deals with intel led to last minute replacement of CPU for an intel P6 variant.
- Fire-Dragon-DoL 3y agoThere is a new one steam-deck-like that's intel, but I don't remember the brand
- ekianjo 3y agoMSI. But expect very bad power consumption
- Fire-Dragon-DoL 3y agoYeah, but I would be interested in the performance. I use my steam deck always connected to a power outlet (I have multiple connected around the home), so power consumption has never been a problem, the most I use it in handheld mode is on the subway for a total of about 1 hour/1 hour and a half (this is the total time spent for a roundtrip)
- avery17 3y agoThey all have very bad power consumption lol
- ekianjo 3y agoApart from the Steam Deck, that is.
- jwells89 3y agoThe OLED Deck in particular is great. On less demanding games or streaming with Moonlight where I can crank down the TDP it’s not hard to squeeze 10+ hours of playtime out of its 50Wh battery. Linux probably helps here, with its greatly reduced background activity compared to Windows.
- chillfox 3y agoSupposedly a big reason is that Nvidia is difficult to work with.
- ekianjo 3y agoIs there any info to substantiate that?
- B1FF_PSUVM 3y agoLinus Torvalds said a couple of words about it ... https://www.google.com/search?q=linus+nvidia https://www.google.com/search?q=linus+nvidia
- jsheard 3y agoThe friction between Linux wanting all drivers to be open source and Nvidia not wanting to open source their drivers isn't really relevant to any other platform besides Linux. Console manufacturers have no reason to care that Nvidia's drivers aren't open source, they can get documentation and/or source code under NDA if they choose to partner with Nvidia. Secrecy comes with the territory.
- weberer 3y agoIts not about open sourcing their drivers. Its about providing ANY drivers for their hardware. Also note that this was from 2012. Nowadays, they actually do provide decent closed-source drivers for Linux. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xPh-5P4XH6o https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xPh-5P4XH6o
- CuriousCosmic 3y agoWell EVGA withdrew from making Nvidia GPUs despite being one of the best board partners due to how unreasonable Nvidia was.
- ekianjo 3y ago
- mschuster91 3y ago> It’s kind of interesting how they have this hold on gaming outside of conventional PCs, but can’t seem to compete with nvidia on just that one market. As for PC gaming, word of mouth plus a huge chunk of money for advertising deals. AMD, or back then rather ATI, drivers were always known for being more rough around the edges and unstable, but the cards were cheaper. Basically you get what you pay for. On the CPU side, it's just the same but without the driver stuff... until AMD turned the tide with Zen and managed to kick Intel's arse so hard they haven't recovered until today. The console market is a different beast, here the the show isn't run by kids who have had NVIDIA sponsorships in games since they were first playing Unreal Tournament 2004 but by professional beancounters who only look at the price. For them, the answer is clear: - generally, the studios prefer something that has some sort of market adoption because good luck finding someone skilled enough to work on PowerPC or weird-ass custom GPU architecture. So the console makers want something that their studios can get started on quickly without wasting too much time porting their exclusive titles. - on the CPU side there's only two major architectures left that fulfill this requirement, ARM and x86, and the only one pulling actual console-worthy high performance out of ARM is Apple who doesn't license their stuff to anyone. That means x86, and in there there's again just two players in town, and Intel can't compete on price, performance or efficiency => off to AMD they go. - on the GPU side it's the same, it's either AMD and NVIDIA, and NVIDIA won't go and use their fab time to churn out low-margin GPUs for consoles when they can use that fab time to make high-margin gamer GPUs and especially all the ludicrous-margin stuff for first coin miners and now AI hyper(scaler)s => off to AMD they go. The exception of course is the Nintendo Switch. For Nintendo, it was obvious that it must be an ARM CPU core - x86 and performance under battery constraints Just Is Not A Thing and all the other mobile CPU archs have long since died out. Where I have zero idea is why they went for NVIDIA Tegra that was originally aimed at automotive and settop boxes instead of Qualcomm, Samsung or Mediatek but I guess that the former two demanded inacceptable terms (Qualcomm), didn't want to sell low-margin SoCs when they could run their own high-performance SoCs for their Galaxy lineup (Samsung) or were too sketchy (Mediatek), so they went for Nvidia who could actually use a large deal to showcase "we can also do mobile" for a world that was dominated by the three before-mentioned giants.
- Dalewyn 3y ago
- skhr0680 3y agoATi made the GameCube’s GPU if that counts
- octotoad 3y agoClose. They bought the company that made it.
- Dalewyn 3y agoAs already mentioned by others, AMD won the console market because back then the only thing they could compete on was price. Which coincidentally, the most important thing to Sony and Microsoft with regards to consoles ("make tons and sell tons" products) is cost of materials. Even getting that cost 1 cent cheaper still means a $1 difference over 100 units, $10 over 1,000 units, $100 over 10,000 units, and onwards. Remember, we're talking many millions of basically identical units sold. AMD couldn't compete in performance nor efficiency, but they could absolutely compete in price, while both Intel and Nvidia couldn't due either to their business strategy or the logistics for Sony/Microsoft of procuring more materials from different suppliers. So long as AMD can continue to undercut Intel, Nvidia, and any other contenders they will continue to dominate consoles.
- choudharism 3y agoI generally agree with this reasoning, but your example could use some scaling down to convince a reader. 1 cent cheaper would net Sony a total of 500K USD for all PS5 units sold till date. So about a hundred PS5 units at retail as pure profit. A company of the size of Sony for a product of the scale of PS5 would absolutely forego that profit if the alternative offered any tangible benefits at all.
- Dalewyn 3y ago>if the alternative offered any tangible benefits at all. That's the thing though: A new generation console only needs to be better than it's predecessor. It doesn't have to have groundbreaking technologies or innovations, let alone be a pioneer paving the way forward for other computing hardware products. So cost of materials remains the chief concern.
- avery17 3y agoMsi is making an intel based handheld called the claw. Its pretty sweet.
- themoonisachees 3y agoIs it? It doesn't seem to me that Intel can compete on performance per watt, which is what really matters in a handheld. From what I can tell, the APU alone can get to 45W in the claw, while that's the max power draw for the entire steam deck (LCD). Add to that the fact that MSI is not selling games to recoup the very aggressive price point of the steam deck and you just get a worse machine for more money
- deleted 3y ago[deleted]