Meet the Chinese console that's like PS4 Pro - but with AMD's next-gen CPU
AMD has collaborated with hardware manufacturer Zhongshan Subor to create custom console hardware for the Chinese market - and first impressions suggest a hardware specification similar to PlayStation 4 Pro in terms of GPU compute power, but combined with next-gen Ryzen processor architecture. New hardware set for a Chinese launch in the next month actually takes the form of a Windows PC, with a dedicated console using a custom OS due later this year.
But this initial Windows PC release will have a hardware make-up quite unlike any other. The semi-custom silicon takes the form of a fully integrated SoC (system on chip) combining x86 Ryzen processor cores with AMD Radeon graphics - in this case RX Vega technology, with 24 compute units at 1.3GHz for 3.99 teraflops of GPU power. Combining Ryzen and Vega into a single chip is nothing new - AMD has already done it with its excellent 'Raven Ridge' Ryzen 3 2200G and Ryzen 5 2400G APU products. However, the Subor project is much more console-like in its core hardware design and it will clearly be more capable.
For a start, unlike Raven Ridge, DDR4 system RAM isn't used. Instead, the new processor is connected to 8GB of GDDR5 - just like PlayStation 4 and PS4 Pro. This offers a vast increase in memory bandwidth, eliminating the primary graphics bottleneck AMD's APUs suffer from. The use of GDDR5 means that the Subor chip can basically double Raven Ridge's compute power with far less possibility of hitting memory bandwidth limits. Again, similar to PS4 and Pro, the GDDR5 memory controller is integrated into the chip itself.
from Eurogamer.net https://ift.tt/2vC2YR4
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