Why are PS5, Xbox and Steam Deck just AMD APU now? What happened to the days of wild, custom hardware architectures like the Saturn, Dreamcast, PS2 and PS3?

>>713205850 (OP)
pc fags cried because they couldn't get it on pc

>>713205850 (OP)
>custom hardware architectures like the Saturn, Dreamcast, PS2 and PS3
They were mostly shit and annoying to develop for.

>>713206037
Developers were the ones who kept crying.

>>713205850 (OP)
Those architectures cost a lot to design and develop, then you have to write software for them which is expensive too. There's no benefit to running special snowflake hardware. It's not like performance is gonna be better. PS2 and PS3 were special snowflakes, but they performed like shit. Barely on par with contemporary PCs.

>>713207364
hi zoom zoom

>>713205850 (OP)

PS3's cell debacle was so traumatic for the industry that everyone agreed never to pull that shit again. Hundreds of millions wasted on a thoroughly mediocre chip(for games) that did nothing but piss off third party developers. Then to try and claw back some of the money they gimped the RAM too.

There needs to be a very compelling benefit to invest that money in making a custom architecture, and at the end of the day you're gonna have give TSMC a call anyway, so why not just go with a proven, low risk solution and buy an AMD SoC?

>>713207364
The PS2's architecture had some genuine advantages for certain effects, which is why Xbox and PC ports of PS2 games often dropped or downgraded things like shadows, fog, and particle effects.
It was the last hurrah for custom architectures.

>>713205850 (OP)
Devs can't even write good software for the ONE architecture in use nowadays. They wouldn't be able to handle multiple wildly different ones.

>>713205850 (OP)
Digital Foundry is dogshit.

>>713205850 (OP)
What exactly would a custom chip change?
Can you elaborate?

>>713205850 (OP)
Because of x86 and ARM
90s console hardware was mostly off the shelf Japanese PC hardware, and only ever seemed exotic to us because Japanese computers weren't sold outside of Japan (unlike the consoles). Then the Japanese PC scene died because Intel murdered it.
At this point, Toshiba, Nvidia, and IBM are SEETHING because none of them have a license to the x86 patents. So many consoles get used for them to push alternative architectures to pull down x86, since you can't use PCs for that anymore. This eventually culminates in the trashfire that was Cell. Then ARM arrives, does everything they were planning to, resulting in IBM and Toshiba leaving the processor market.
Nvidia STILL seethes about not having x86, which is why the Switch uses the funky Tegra.
No one else is coming to the console makers with new hardware anymore, so they have to be the ones to seek out a good partner, and AMD is one.

>>713205850 (OP)
>lightsaber clips through body

Get it together poojit

>>713208487
Only because they would have had to redevelop them to port them and they just didn't want to bother.

Part of the answer is that they often weren't custom or any way unconventional after all, it just wasn't Wintel. E.g. the Cell wasn't "customly designed for PS3" but was a co-developed by Sony, Toshiba and IBM (which, besides PS3, was used for supercomputing among other tasks), and had PowerPC architecture developed by IBM, Apple and Motorola (which was also used in e.g. contemporary Macs).

At the end of the day there are only universal computers: given enough memory and time, every computer can do every computing task. Now, some features may allow you to do things faster or slower: for example
>it's really convenient (and faster) for Chess engines to represent 64-square board as bitboards, since they fit in the 64-bit word
>some older CPUs might not have had multiplication or division instruction, so you'd have to do it in software. Having the circuitry on board likely allows you to do these in fewer cycles
>some hardware might be better for floating point number calculations (binary representation of decimal/real numbers), others for integers

But realistically, vidya isn't really unique in the kinds of demands it sets on hardware. I understand sidescrolling games for example were typically implemented using byteshifts/bitshifts, but it's not like that's their only use. GPUs do floating point number calculations highly parallel, but that's also useful for non-gaming tasks like machine learning. And if you compare allegedly gaming-focused hardware (say, the sound chip in NES) to contemporary "generic" hardware (like C64) - sound undoubtedly being one of the things games ought to prioritize - then it was by no means assured the "specialized" hardware was more fit for the task anyway.

So, to the extent the answer isn't "they were never custom", it's "the same reason we used to have a far greater diversity of hardware and software architectures in general but no longer do", which comes down lock-in effects, fabs costing billions, etc, etc.

>>713205850 (OP)
>What happened to the days of wild, custom hardware architectures like the Saturn, Dreamcast, PS2 and PS3?

competency crisis. younger generations don't kno w how to program as well as the older ones and there's also a ton of DEI hires on board now.

with custom silicon you have a handful of devs that get really good at using the special features and it separates them from the rest of the group. most of these devs are commies now and there's a lot of women as well so they will always knock down the "tall poppy". utilizing Unreal and other popular game engines allows to put more work on the competent devs and make it look like the DEI hires are doing something, to management.

this is why it's so common for the talented devs to leave and start their own studios.

>>713210123
>Unreal and other popular game engines allows to put more work on the competent devs and make it look like the DEI hires are doing something, to management.

Yeah its never been easier for any retard to make games, we're seeing the results of that.

>>713210123
Do you know how to program?

>>713206091
PS2 games still have better fog effects than most modern games on any platform

>>713209628
IBM still produces PowerPC architecture chips regularly. Toshiba's CPU division mostly got absorbed into Fujitsu, who were responsible for the A64FX in the fastest supercomputer at Riken.

It's more about economies of scale than anything. Third parties had more sway than people think and having to know multiple architectures was causing quality to slip on specific platforms which caused the console manufacturers to point the finger back at the third party devs.

The only "win-win" solution was to make the chips similar to the point of being nearly identical. The problem is that the consumer still loses because they are artificially locked in to that platform despite the hardware just being a fucking PC. Even Nintendo fell, converging their handheld and home console into the equivalent of a 2015 flagship smartphone (or 2023 flagship for S2)

the only way to get back to custom architectures is to have everyone adopt RISC-V and then differentiate themselves with the GPU and any other peripherals. we aren't going back to custom CPUs ever.

>>713210530
That's partly due to the widespread adoption of deferred rendering, which struggles with alpha transparencies (including fog effects) as they tank performance.

>>713210508
I know golang and am learning Rust. Of course I'm not dumb enough to think I can produce a game of quality myself, so I don't.

Have you seen the Nintendo eShop lately?

>>713210648
And the other part due to the PS2's unique hardware strengths, it was also better than GC/XBOX in that regard despite being the weakest of the three.

>>713209628
>Then the Japanese PC scene died because Intel murdered it.
QRD?

>>713211128
It's pretty well-known that Microsoft and IBM teamed up with Intel to undercut the japanese PC market in Japan

https://youtu.be/CEtgzO-Im8w

>>713205850 (OP)
>now
Welcome to 10 years ago

>>713205850 (OP)
If all the console games are already optimized for AMD hardware, why don't ports typically run much better on AMD GPUs than Nvidia ones?

>>713205850 (OP)
Because it is by far the most economic solution.

>>713212006
because Nvidia literally sends employees to embed themselves into dev teams to properly implement their features. AMD doesn't have the manpower or logistics capabilities to pull this off, ironically.

>>713212006
the dark ages managed to shit itself on nvidia gpus despite being sponsored by them
9070xt beating a fucking 5080

>>713212376
>9070xt beating a fucking 5080

What's the verdict on the 7900 XTX

>>713212006
On consoles, Xbox/Sony assist in making drivers for the hardware
On PC, AMD has to write drivers all by themselves, and AMD can't into software.

>>713212469
outdated and pointless
It has more VRAM than the XTX but it's wasted on an AMD card, you're not going to be doing AI shit on it anyway.

>>713212376
That's just because NV has pulled a number of talented engineers off of gaming driver performance and now they work on AI stuff
Also why Nvidia has had so many issues with drivers in general lately
They don't give a shit about gaming anymore because they could lose the entire department and the growth from AI/data centers would more than make up for it

>>713210609
Power aren't made near leading nodes anymore, and are for embedded systems - entirely unusable for general computing, which is what PowerPC was made as. I suppose they could come back, but they've been out of the market for a decade, the expertise has likely withered. It's possible for the architecture to work for development, the 360 didn't have near the scale of problems the PS3 had. But IBM gave up on it.
And yeah Fujitsu absorbed the Toshiba processing team, and doing so brought their entirely different culture to that team. The A64FX is an ARM chip, since Fujitsu doesn't give a fuck about pushing architecture.
>>713211128
This video >>713211880 seems pretty good (I can't watch atm), but also note how Intel refused to supply anyone that made PCs with cpu's other than their own. Meaning if you wanted to sell a Windows PC (necessary for modern office work) in Japan, you weren't allowed to also offer a model line that featured Japanese processors.

>>713212093
Microsoft and Sony should have just teamed up to make a console and build out their own digital storefront applications. There isn't any real difference between the PS5 and Xbox besides release timing.

So the customer loses because they get artificial first party exclusivity on a console that is physically nearly identical to the competing console.

Sony and Microsoft could easily still compete in the controller space, all of the controllers are bluetooth now.

I should be able to just buy a Sonysoft XS5 and choose my Dualsense or Elite controller and still have access to every "first party" title by just switching stores, or ideally just filtering the developer on a single store to either Sony or Microsoft. We'll never get this though because of the Americans, they don't know how to do partnerships- even if it would save them billions in development costs.

>>713212474
>Xbox/Sony assist in making drivers for the hardware
>On PC, AMD has to write drivers all by themselves, and AMD can't into software.

Why doesn't MS/Xbox write the drivers for Windows

>PVR on Dreamcast was much better than PSX GPU
>Rarely-used volumetric per-pixel shadows and volumetric fog features
>Order Independent Transparency and is the only system to date that came with OIT at the hardware level

Kino

>>713213130
Because nvidia is the market leader at 90% of the dGPU market, and Windows makes up about 95% of the gaming OS market. There's no incentive to, MS doesn't make money on AMD GPU sales.

>>713212469
fine if you bought it 2 years ago
not worth now