Rumor: AMD-Powered Graphics In PS4

Despite Sony's insistent claims that they need to focus on the PS3 and Vita right now, there's more evidence that a new home console is in the works.

The latest comes from former AMD employees as reported by Forbes. It seems AMD might be involved in the creation of Sony's new machine, which is interesting because the PS3 utilizes Nvidia graphical technology. Microsoft's Xbox 360 uses AMD.

AMD refused to officially comment on the rumor, as did Sony Chief Transformation Officer George Bailey; very likely, we can guess at the email Forbes received: "We do not comment on rumor and speculation." Par for the course from Sony. Still, the source did note AMD Chief Financial Officer Thomas Seifert's claim that gaming would be "one of several trends" that will drive revenue growth for his company in 2012.

As I've always said, though, I'm good with the PS3 (and Vita) for another few years. Really. Don't be in a big hefty rush, Sony (and I don't think you are). Just keep bringin' the games.

Tags: ps4, playstation 4, new playstation, amd graphics

2/22/2012 8:50:02 PM Ben Dutka

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Comments (38 posts)

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kevinater321
Wednesday, February 22, 2012 @ 9:24:58 PM
Reply

I wonder why he's an ex employee.. Probably for starting rumors.

4 up, 3 down

bigrailer19
Wednesday, February 22, 2012 @ 9:28:09 PM
Reply

So Sony, are you or are you not working on the PS4? Let's just be honest here, ok?!?!

4 up, 2 down

Havoc
Wednesday, February 22, 2012 @ 10:37:40 PM

Of coarse they're working on it.

9 up, 0 down

shadowscorpio
Wednesday, February 22, 2012 @ 10:46:09 PM

Most likely they're working on it. If they plan to be ready with the competition, they have to be.

1 up, 1 down

bigrailer19
Thursday, February 23, 2012 @ 12:53:41 AM

That was my point... That they are working on it. They don't need to try n hide that from us. There was a lot of sarcasm in my comment.

Last edited by bigrailer19 on 2/23/2012 12:54:35 AM

2 up, 0 down

CrusaderForever
Wednesday, February 22, 2012 @ 9:41:18 PM
Reply

I would be very happy with this if it's true. AMD/ATI make very good cards. I remember buying my 4870 on the cheap when it was brand new. Nvidia was selling an equivalent card for $300 and I got my ATI for $200. The card rocked and is still in my PC right now. I am not a PC gamer anymore though. AMD should do well with Sony and hopefully that will allow them to keep costs down. I really would like Sony to out the PS4 even if it's 2yrs away. With Vita and news like this Playstation land is rocking!!

1 up, 2 down

Temjin001
Wednesday, February 22, 2012 @ 11:18:35 PM

They do make good chips, but from my experience they tend to allow their chips to run at higher temp thresholds. I remember pulling a 9800pro from my computer after it had been running some benchmarks and the card nearly blistered my hand. I'm not kidding. I've also had similar heat with a x19xxGTO(forgot the exact spec), and it ran hot, leading to visual abnormalities, like video artifacts etc. Then, then the x360. A system that ran too hot because of inadequate cooling.
I have an ATI 6770m in my laptop and it seems to be doing okay.

But aside from heat issues, I really do like how forward thinking ATi has been with their graphics chips. The Xenos chip was ahead of it's time, even yielding archectural advantages over the then-current x1800 class GPU they had on the market for PC.
Really, the 360 shouldn't have been as hard to trump this gen by the PS3, and that being owed in large part to ATi's sophisicated graphics solution (and the last minute RAM boost).

Im curious to see if this is true... I just hope SOny makes certain they engineer something with adequate cooling.

2 up, 0 down

Excelsior1
Thursday, February 23, 2012 @ 1:07:22 AM

I've often wondered how differently this gen would have played out if MS hadn't made the last minute ram boost. It was going to be just 256mb of memory instead of 512mb. Interesting how many developers whined about memory contraints on the PS3 due its larger operating system footprint and partitioned memory. We would not have had to hear that if MS went with 256mb.

Listen, that Xenos chip was a powerhouse and ahead of its time that seems to have gotten a lot of praise from developers. A lot of developers have said they loved it.

Last edited by Excelsior1 on 2/23/2012 1:16:47 AM

0 up, 0 down

slugga_status
Thursday, February 23, 2012 @ 10:46:42 AM

You guys are talking about ram..but let me ask this..would you prefer xdr dram or gddr3?

0 up, 0 down

AcHiLLiA
Thursday, February 23, 2012 @ 12:46:09 PM

There definatley needs to be more ram on the next PS for the browser to work functionaly great. Dang, I'm still using a AMD Athlon 64 X2 processor with a nVIDIA GeForce 6100 GPU.

0 up, 0 down

Highlander
Thursday, February 23, 2012 @ 12:49:03 PM

Excelsior, you are aware that the memory in the 360 is unified right? so that for a decent video mode you lose anything up to half of it leaving a typical system memory configuration not unlike the hard partitioned PS3 memory scheme. In other words stop pushing the same BS that 360 fanboys push about memory size. PS3 has 256MB of XDR system memory and 256 of video RAM. total 512MB. 360 has 512MB of RAM soft partitioned depending on video mode.

2 up, 2 down

Fane1024
Friday, February 24, 2012 @ 3:27:15 AM

Highlander,

I think you misread Excelsior's intent. I think he's saying that if M$ had stuck with the original plan, the PS3 would have had more total RAM and wouldn't have suffered from bad early ports by developers allocating RAM poorly.

I think you, Ben, and a few others are inclined to read the worst into anything he writes. Sure, he's a bit of a downer, but I really don't think he's "slamming" Sony and I'm positive he's not a 360 troll.

5 up, 0 down

maxpontiac
Wednesday, February 22, 2012 @ 9:43:12 PM
Reply

E3 Will tell us answers.

2 up, 1 down

MyWorstNightmar
Wednesday, February 22, 2012 @ 10:20:03 PM

Yes, E3 2013, not 2012.

7 up, 2 down

jlch777
Wednesday, February 22, 2012 @ 9:53:44 PM
Reply

The only problem I see here is Backward Compatibility!

0 up, 0 down

shadowscorpio
Wednesday, February 22, 2012 @ 10:48:32 PM

Would a different graphical format really cause problems?

I'm actually asking because I don't know.

2 up, 0 down

buckoboy1
Wednesday, February 22, 2012 @ 10:49:05 PM

No way they would allow backwards compatibility just like they did with ps3 for ps2

0 up, 0 down

Excelsior1
Thursday, February 23, 2012 @ 1:22:45 AM

Yeah, it would be tough to pull off bw compatability. They would probably be forced to include actual PS3 chips in the PS4 much like they did when it came to bw compatbility in the early PS3's. They were only able to do that because they had PS2 chips in them.

0 up, 0 down

shadowscorpio
Thursday, February 23, 2012 @ 2:38:32 AM

Gotcha

0 up, 0 down

xnonsuchx
Thursday, February 23, 2012 @ 5:37:11 AM

It could be fairly easy to 'emulate' the RSX w/ more advanced Radeon technology, considering the more recent yearly leaps in performance...at least easier than trying to emulate the very proprietary PS2 Graphics Synthesizer. I think PS3 backwards compatibility is pretty much a must for the PS4, so I kinda doubt Sony would choose something that inherently made that very difficult.

3 up, 0 down

Excelsior1
Thursday, February 23, 2012 @ 9:53:59 AM

That's a good point about emulating the PS2's graphics chip, but I still think pure software emulation would be very tricky.

0 up, 0 down

Geobaldi
Wednesday, February 22, 2012 @ 11:33:43 PM
Reply

The last rumor I heard about the new Xbox was that it was going to use an AMD Radeon 6670 graphic card. Which is sad as it's already out of date technology and it's going to be even more out of date by the time it launches. The graphic card I have in my 4 year old PC is better then what's rumored to be in the new Xbox which is embarrassing for a so called next gen console. Hopefully Sony won't follow suit.

1 up, 1 down

Temjin001
Thursday, February 23, 2012 @ 12:04:11 AM

I read that at IGN a few weeks ago. Let's hope that's entirely false. It'd be a pretty crappy upgrade by way of graphics for Xbox users. I'm wondering if they're planning on skimping on the graphics upgrade to force everyone in their market to engage the KINECT with it being standard. A 6670m may be able to out do our current consoles but it wouldn't be a huge upgrade. Itd be a bit better than GC to Wii, but that's not saying much.

0 up, 0 down

Jakintosh
Sunday, February 26, 2012 @ 12:51:18 PM

The way I understand it, game consoles don't need as powerful of graphics card. I don't know why, I'm sure one of the tech savvy members can elaborate, but I've read that the 6670 is like, at least 3x more powerful than what the 360 already has. So imagine the best the 360 can offer, and then multiply that by 3. Plus, using "older" parts makes it much cheaper, which is very important in game console hardware. I mean, you can't use a $200 graphics card if you want to make a $300-$400 game console, and I'm sure neither Sony OR Microsoft wants to be any higher than that, after what happened with the PS3 last time.

0 up, 1 down

Ludakriss
Thursday, February 23, 2012 @ 3:40:47 AM
Reply

Nice, laid back news. Well, rumours but still. Chilled. I like!

Especially the exit the editor made "in no hefty rush"...sigh, more peple should calm themselves. It'd be so...paced =)

0 up, 0 down

___________
Thursday, February 23, 2012 @ 5:23:16 AM
Reply

i honestly cant see AMD being in the ps4.
$ony and nvidia seem to have a good relationship, and one problem AMD ALWAYS keep having is heat problems!
in a PC its not too much of a issue, so many things you can do to solve it.
consoles though, tight confined boxes a hot product causes a whole mass of headaches!
nvidia are higher performance too now, especially if the GTX 600 series rumours are true.

0 up, 0 down

Geobaldi
Thursday, February 23, 2012 @ 5:41:02 AM

The Radeon 7970 topped out at 25% faster than a factory overclocked GTX 580 3GB card and is currently the fastest single-GPU video card ever released. So it could be interesting to see what the comparison between the 7970 and 600 will be.

2 up, 0 down

___________
Thursday, February 23, 2012 @ 8:24:39 AM

cant remember where i saw it, but they had some supposed clocks for the 680 i read yesterday stating it would be roughly 12% faster then the equivalent radeon.
whether those turn out to be accurate or not is a different story.
ive always preferred nvidia though simply because they run allot cooler, ive had allot of overheating issues with radeons before.
there far less unstable under heavy over clocking too.
ive over clocked every card i have owned, all my nvidias have been fine never running above 80C.
radeon on the other hand though, one of the cards i over clocked went up and over 100!
luckily i had my GPU temp program running which automatically turns off the PC and saves a log otherwise i probably would of cooked a few things.

Last edited by ___________ on 2/23/2012 8:27:23 AM

0 up, 0 down

Douchebaguette
Thursday, February 23, 2012 @ 7:20:08 AM
Reply

Better not be. Stay NVIDIA. There's always a scale AMD tries to compare with NVIDIA, trying to slot in the ranges NVIDIA don't cover:

__N
_____A
__N
_____A
__N
_____A

...meaning whilst they aim for cheaper alternatives to NVIDIA, they certainly don't make better quality alternatives. Previous powerhouse cards (such as the Radeon 6900 series) also come to have issues with size and cooling as well. I don't know how this would relate to the console world, but I'm sure AMD's personality is pretty much the same in that department.

1 up, 1 down

Beamboom
Thursday, February 23, 2012 @ 8:15:08 AM
Reply

Hmmm... I've always preferred the Nvidia chipsets in my builds.

1 up, 0 down

Highlander
Thursday, February 23, 2012 @ 12:52:13 PM

Nvidia FTW!

Always better to use a Geforce than a Radiator...

4 up, 2 down

Geobaldi
Thursday, February 23, 2012 @ 1:25:40 PM

Never had a problem with any of my AMD cards, and I love my current ones. To each his own I guess.

2 up, 0 down

Neo_Aeon666
Thursday, February 23, 2012 @ 7:04:34 PM
Reply

I like Nvidia for PhysX. Makes a good diff in games that support it like Batman Arkham City on PC. When you compare AMD/NVIDIA,there are much more effects in the NVIDIA version of the game since the effects are handled by the GPU instead of the slower CPU (Like broken glass on the floor or carpet moved from fighting)

You can even encode videos using Nvidia cards and it goes much faster than any cpu. I chose to go with a 560 ti 448 core. I overclocked it enough that it gets results similar to a 580gtx :D ( Meaning I paid 270$ and reached performances of a 480$ card :D ) Nvidia drivers tend to be more stable also. When I used ATI cards in the past I had some weird performance drops in some games while others were lag free. I think Nvidia has more devs in their pocket or something. Sometimes, even if an AMD card is more performant... The Nvidia will perform the same or better in a game.

That would be a whole other story for a card that is used in all PS3s though. Devs would have no choice but to use it to its full potential and well I am pretty sure that a card from AMD will do just as good as any Nvidia card in a console.

0 up, 0 down

Qubex
Thursday, February 23, 2012 @ 8:32:29 PM
Reply

I think Sony are pretty far in their PS4 developments already. The more they deny the more the machine exists in their labs...

Q!

"play.experience.enjoy"

1 up, 0 down

xnonsuchx
Saturday, February 25, 2012 @ 3:54:52 AM
Reply

Keep in mind (as with the next Xbox rumors I see many complaining about) that whatever GPU is in the PS4 will be up to 2 years older than whatever's current because they have to nail down specs that far ahead of time. The only last minute spec consideration are usually amount of RAM (and other more minor component considerations due to costs when production is about to start).

0 up, 0 down

djr4yman
Sunday, February 26, 2012 @ 11:34:49 AM
Reply

I don't know about others personal experiences or if I am saying the wrong thing here but i have seen laptops with AMD processors suffering crashes every now and then, also buffer underruns and whanot. If someone else knows about things like this, please feel free to reply even if it is to correct me as I might be mistaken.

0 up, 0 down

mooser
Sunday, February 26, 2012 @ 12:51:26 PM
Reply

they are probably working on one and testing i would guess a few more years then that would be 8 kinda like when ps3 came out after the ps2

0 up, 0 down

berserk
Tuesday, February 28, 2012 @ 3:02:42 PM
Reply

I m good with the ps3/360 too but i would definitely love to see what the next gen have to offer soon .

0 up, 0 down

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