Adam Jensen said:
ravenshrike said:
Adam Jensen said:
Microsoft and Sony don't have much of a choice in this. This happened because AMD will no longer produce 28nm parts. They're moving on to their 14nm FinFet designed for Zen and GCN 4.0. Microsoft and Sony had a choice. To use the newer tech but to gimp it and basically pay for potential that will never be utilized, or to use the offered increase in performance to develop a faster console while they're at it. They were also probably both scared that the other company would choose to upgrade and make their console more appealing to consumers.
This is AMD's fault first and foremost. And yes, it could be a pretty devastating blow to the entire console market.
That... makes no sense. AMD would have happily provided them with 14nm boards that ran at the previous specs, especially since if designed right it would have allowed them to use a significant chunk of otherwise unusable silicon. That they allowed their fear of what the 'other guy' would do drive their decision in now way makes it the fault of AMD.
They're not about to pay more to get less performance than they could be getting for the same money. Bottom line is that the performance gains don't cost extra and gimping the chips might actually cost more.
AMD doesn't produce the chips, they design and licence them to be manufactured by foundries in China. I am guessing that TSMC and/or GlobalFoundies built the 28nm chips that are found in the PS4 and XB1 and both companies still prominently advertise their 28nm production facilities on their respective websites. Just because they have begun production of 16nm and 14nmFinFet, doesn't mean that 28nm production disappears overnight. 28nm node production will exist as long as there is sufficient demand and profit to be had. 28nm is currently more profitable for these foundries as the yields are far better than smaller nodes.
Sony and Microsoft are squarely to "blame" for these half step consoles. There are more and more 4K TVs in homes now, but no consoles that are able to play games at these screen's native resolution, hence the need to upgrade the GPU in the XB1 and PS4 consoles.