Console quality graphics gone mobile?
NVidia at CES yesterday claims to have achieved that. Can't find a good article on the topic, but I am of course skeptical and for 2 reasons; CPU power and thermal footprint. Also, the claim itself fails in equating itself to last gen consoles... but more on that after.
When companies like NVidia and AMD unveil new mobile chipsets and talk about potential they are very rarely running real world examples. They often aren't even running reference hardware. And that makes the claims a little difficult to digest. It isn't really important what a chipset is theoretically capable of. It is much more important what it is plausibly capable of.
To explain, most phones these days are quad or octa core chips. But in most cases, only one or a few cores are active and they rarely throttled to full speed for any length of time. Two reasons being battery consumption and thermal output. Phones/tablets get hot and die fast running at full speed. Sure, my console emits a ton of heat and drains a lot of power, but it sits under my TV with plenty of breathing room and it is permanently plugged into a wall. I'm never touching it so the heat doesn't matter, and aside from my electricity bill, energy usage is also not relevant.
The same trade-offs are far less valid in a tablet, and even less valid in a cell phone. So, the question quickly becomes, can these chips run at those speeds without frying my hands or killing my battery in under 2 hours? If not, we likely won't see those speeds on phones for sure, and maybe not even on tablets any time soon. Also, can the chip even maintain that without active cooling? Not many will buy a phone with a fan even if it is a beast.
I'll blame NVidia and tech journalists for lack of certainty on this topic. There was very little useful information in the articles I was able to find. So bear in mind that I could be way off.
So, those are the first 2 problems out of the way. Simply put, I have my doubts that even reduced to 10W power consumption and thermal footprint are good enough to shove it in a cell phone without having it on a tight leash.
The next problem was the comparison used for the claim. Claiming it has PS3/Xbox 360 like performance characteristics. That is certainly great from a historical perspective. It is certainly better than anything on the market in mobile. But, those aren't current gen consoles. And even the current gen consoles are being slammed for being underachievers.
From a relevance perspective, the chipset is a generation behind and will be hitting the market just as the consoles it can match start losing relevance. If this chipset were unveiled 2 years ago and hit market in force a year ago you might actually have seen PS3 "grade" games running on these chips. Introduced this late, you'll just get slightly better models on existing mobile style games.
I'm happy to see the gap closing. But I don't think I even care. I have no real urge to play a console game on a phone or tablet anyway. And the mobile market it one where there is no value in getting too far ahead of your competition. Most games studios targeting mobile will code with average hardware specs in mind. So, by the time this tech becomes mainstream it will already be less relevant than it is today. If anything, it just pads out NVidia's lead on the high end side of things for another year.
When companies like NVidia and AMD unveil new mobile chipsets and talk about potential they are very rarely running real world examples. They often aren't even running reference hardware. And that makes the claims a little difficult to digest. It isn't really important what a chipset is theoretically capable of. It is much more important what it is plausibly capable of.
To explain, most phones these days are quad or octa core chips. But in most cases, only one or a few cores are active and they rarely throttled to full speed for any length of time. Two reasons being battery consumption and thermal output. Phones/tablets get hot and die fast running at full speed. Sure, my console emits a ton of heat and drains a lot of power, but it sits under my TV with plenty of breathing room and it is permanently plugged into a wall. I'm never touching it so the heat doesn't matter, and aside from my electricity bill, energy usage is also not relevant.
The same trade-offs are far less valid in a tablet, and even less valid in a cell phone. So, the question quickly becomes, can these chips run at those speeds without frying my hands or killing my battery in under 2 hours? If not, we likely won't see those speeds on phones for sure, and maybe not even on tablets any time soon. Also, can the chip even maintain that without active cooling? Not many will buy a phone with a fan even if it is a beast.
I'll blame NVidia and tech journalists for lack of certainty on this topic. There was very little useful information in the articles I was able to find. So bear in mind that I could be way off.
So, those are the first 2 problems out of the way. Simply put, I have my doubts that even reduced to 10W power consumption and thermal footprint are good enough to shove it in a cell phone without having it on a tight leash.
The next problem was the comparison used for the claim. Claiming it has PS3/Xbox 360 like performance characteristics. That is certainly great from a historical perspective. It is certainly better than anything on the market in mobile. But, those aren't current gen consoles. And even the current gen consoles are being slammed for being underachievers.
From a relevance perspective, the chipset is a generation behind and will be hitting the market just as the consoles it can match start losing relevance. If this chipset were unveiled 2 years ago and hit market in force a year ago you might actually have seen PS3 "grade" games running on these chips. Introduced this late, you'll just get slightly better models on existing mobile style games.
I'm happy to see the gap closing. But I don't think I even care. I have no real urge to play a console game on a phone or tablet anyway. And the mobile market it one where there is no value in getting too far ahead of your competition. Most games studios targeting mobile will code with average hardware specs in mind. So, by the time this tech becomes mainstream it will already be less relevant than it is today. If anything, it just pads out NVidia's lead on the high end side of things for another year.
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