Nm

[KNIGHTTIME^]

Nm

 

[DaShuckster]

God, PUH-LEEEEZE have it come out with NCAA FOOTBALL 21!!!!!

 

[firm_bizzle]

I'm not buying another system until NCAA football comes out. My PS3 just crapped out. I have NCAA football, basketball and baseball.

 

[firm_bizzle]

Never will happen again. The issue with using the players likeness.

They have a college game coming out with generic schools that you can change.

 

[DaShuckster]

You're going to create like 130 div 1 teams?

I'll probably cut that number down to only the ones that really matter.

You know, the Power 5 conference teams.

 

[firm_bizzle]

You're going to create like 130 div 1 teams?

Nah, only the schools that I care about. Doesn't matter to me if I play against Oklahoma State or Oklahoma Tech.

 

[UCFBS]

Not a gamer at all but more to have for my kids. Supposedly coming out fairly soon. Have an xbox. I'm sure it will be on another level.

The 5th generation consoles, even at a lower price point with lower specs, are going to challenge mid-tier gaming PCs. The 4th and 5th gens are all AMD x86-64 based, but the packaging and architecture is very efficient.

But the Wintel (Windows-Intel) architecture PC gaming will only live for another 5 years as the superior platform, until ... the 6th generation of consoles overtake. We're reaching the limits where traditional Wintel architecture breaks down. ... unless the PC gets a massive, radical change soon.

Spoiler

nVidia is warning with the RTX 3000 series that Intel treating the GPU as an I/O peripheral bus, plus using software hacks for CPU-GPU coherency, is not going to be viable long-term. nVidia is further pointing out that direct NVRAM to GDDR on GPU is no longer a 'nice to have,' and Intel has to support some sort of 'peer system interconnect' so GPUs can handle in DRAM, NVRAM and NAND addressing.

This mirrors what AMD argued almost two decades ago, and eventually offered HyperTransport eXtension (HTX) to ATI (prior to AMD purchase) and nVidia as an alternative to peripheral buses with full, peer coherency to CPUs. At the time, before Nehelem, Intel offered no I/O MMU like AMD, and -- even today, Nehelem's legacy -- still doesn't have full, TLB speed hardware protection (don't get me started, I was under NDA with Intel c/o Red Hat 2007-2017) in any processor.

On the storage side, Western Digital and other storage vendors have been complaining Microsoft only having an 'overlay' NTFS driver and not dedicated, generic OS-level, flash file system type (only embedded, and even then, most are deprecated and limited now). WD went one step further 2 years ago and developed a Linux-only NAND device with a driver that is now upstream, and most are building on that too.

Which brings me to ...

nVidia is now making more on DataCenter GPU than Consumer. Even with +10% coming from the Mellanox acquisition, this means they are really a DataCenter focused company now.

The question is ... where do AMD and nVidia just go 'vector first' -- meaning the GPU is the primary heart of the computer -- and the CPU is the peripheral?

Pushing bits is the easy part, and addresses the issues with GPUs being 'second class citizens' in the Wintel architecture, now having access to both NVRAM and efficient (and longer-lasting) NAND with a flash file system. It's not a technical issue, it's a "Do we support a 2nd platform" one in a PC?

Console are already solved. And that's why I think the 6th gen consoles are going to overtake the PC, as Wintel just won't compete. Because Wintel (Win/x86) is falling behind, and adding a 2nd PC platform in any Linvec (Linux/vector+aarch64) is going to be too much of an 'added cost' because Wintel PC won't be dropped overnight.

Console is much cheaper ... single platform, supported longer, at economies-of-scale ... which IBM figured out years ago with Power-based consoles (and Power systems), dropping the PowerPC for Apple Macs from their fabs.

Spoiler

Because Windows is not an option, but Linux is. Linux solves all the other hardware support issues too that Windows continues to be unable to use. Virtually all major engine runtimes are available on GNU/Linux, but the publication houses just don't want to support a 2nd runtime (or 3rd if they already support MacOS X -- although MacOS X is way behind on GL/Vulkan now). Because most console runtimes are now GNU/Linux (most devkits since the early '00s, and definitely 64-bit by '04), as well are the core infrastructure of all Clouds, including Microsoft Azure too.

AMD has been planning for this, but hasn't made a dent in DataCenter with ARM periphery. It's been other ARM startups. nVidia has had excellent success with its ARM units, and is reconsidering re-entering the direct-to-consumer realm (instead of just designing for Google et al.) once more, flush with cash from its DataCenter success. If anyone is going to do it, it's going to be nVidia.

So that's the question, and it will be interesting to see what the 6th generation consoles bring, and if the PC evolves away from traditional Wintel architecture. It's going to have to in order to be competitive.