AMD Gonzalo APU in PS5, Xbox Next May Feature Navi Graphics, Zen Cores

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Ryzen-Launch

AMD hasn't formally announced that it has won the Xbox Next and PlayStation 5 contracts but yet, just it'south considered a more-or-less foregone decision in the industry. Now, noted hardware leaker TUM_APISAK has released a Tweet he claims identifies and unveils AMD'due south Gonzalo APU — or at least, what its specifications claim about the fleck.

AMD Gonzalohttps://t.co/uSTurBfcx3

— APISAK (@TUM_APISAK) January 18, 2019

Point of description: The CPU he compares with (ZD3601BAM eight viii F4 _ 40/36 _Y) is the applied science sample product number for a six-core Ryzen CPU that surfaced before Ryzen second Generation had formally launched.

Every bit the tweet illustrates, the combined implication of the data is for a chip with a ane.6GHz base clock, 8 CPU cores, and 8MB of L3 cache. Bradd Sams, executive editor at Thurrott, has claimed that Microsoft's Xbox Scarlett will use an AMD Zen two chip on the 7nm node, while the amount of L3 on this core (8MB) is closer to what Zen used. At that place are claims that the boost CPU clock will exist as loftier every bit 3.2GHz.

Every bit far equally CPU architecture and process node are concerned, the question breaks down similar this: 7nm seems incredibly likely, given that the node should be fully mature past then and Navi is debuting on that process. Whether the chip volition employ Zen+ or Zen 2 architecture is an interesting question. AMD could get the chiplet route here, or information technology might non.

Either way, the PS5 and Xbox Side by side will pack serious improvements in overall CPU functioning. Call up, the CPU core inside of the Xbox One and PS4 is based on Jaguar, a 2013 low-power core from AMD intended for the mobile market. Kabini wasn't a bad CPU core — I was rather fond of it, as far as the low-end of the PC market place was concerned — but it was unquestionably a express CPU core. Even its tiptop-cease mobile SKUs lagged backside AMD's big-core hardware. Tests like Cinebench showed it could hang with Kaveri clock-for-clock, but the half-speed L2 cache and power-efficient focus made information technology a significantly weaker performer in other contexts.

When deployed in consoles, there were other weaknesses too. The PS4 SEEAMAZON_ET_135 See Amazon ET commerce and Xbox Ane both deploy two quad-core clusters, each with its own L2. According to Naughty Domestic dog, the L2 admission latency across these clusters is about equally high equally native DRAM admission, thanks in office to the half-speed L2 cache. Bringing the L2 upwards to total speed should significantly improve performance, while building a unified eight-cadre block instead of a pair of quad-cores volition improve multi-threading and the latency associated with shifting data between core clusters.

The low base clock speed isn't peculiarly concerning. Recollect that Ryzen is an estimated 1.52x faster than AMD's previous Bulldozer architecture. The gap between Kabini and Kaveri was never that high — in Cinebench, at the same clock, the two were equal — but the overall performance difference betwixt the two was often more a part of clock. Compared in Anandtech's Bench and with the bear on of clock speed removed, the AMD A10-7850K (Kaveri) was between 5 percent – 45 percent faster than Kabini (the same CPU inside the Xbox / PS4), with the gap often landing in the 1.1x – one.25x range. Call it 1.25x to exist polite, and the net gain from Kabini to Ryzen could easily be 1.8x or more.

Even if we presume a default 1.6GHz static clock with no Turbo manner whatsoever, at any point, switching from Kabini to Ryzen should be worth a huge performance improvement, dwarfing the gains from PS4 – PS4 Pro or Xbox One – Xbox One X. With an estimated height turbo clock of 3.2GHz, it shouldn't exist any kind of problem for the new AMD APU to offer 2x the sustained performance of Jaguar, and that'due south strictly based on things like L2 latency, cross-cadre communication latency, and general IPC. Any boosted improvements gained from increased support for SIMD instruction sets would exist ladled on top of that.

Now, how much will this increased CPU horsepower help better game quality? That's less clear. GPU horsepower has always been much more central to the overall performance equation than the CPU. But having more than CPU cores aboard (and having hopefully better access to multi-threading resource) should give developers more legroom to improve AI and increase game multi-threading. There'south been a lot of emphasis on the PC side on improving game visuals through the adaption of HDR or FreeSync as opposed to strictly pushing detail levels, and it'd be nice to encounter game developers targeting something more than along the lines of a locked 60fps at 1080p and a xxx+ frame rate at 4K (If it has to be 30fps at 4K, I'd dear to run into locked 30, rather than what's all-besides-often a "Have a shot at 30fps and settle for 25fps") kind of system.

CPU-wise, at to the lowest degree, the new consoles should exist far more powerful than the last few generations. Nosotros'll have to wait to run across how much horsepower the GPU side of the equation volition receive.

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