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182

Chips aren’t improving like they used to, and it’s killing game console price cuts (arstechnica.com)

submitted 1 day ago* (last edited 1 day ago) by j4p@lemm.ee to c/technology@lemmy.world

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"These price increases have multiple intertwining causes, some direct and some less so: inflation, pandemic-era supply crunches, the unpredictable trade policies of the Trump administration, and a gradual shift among console makers away from selling hardware at a loss or breaking even in the hopes that game sales will subsidize the hardware. And you never want to rule out good old shareholder-prioritizing corporate greed.

But one major factor, both in the price increases and in the reduction in drastic “slim”-style redesigns, is technical: the death of Moore’s Law and a noticeable slowdown in the rate at which processors and graphics chips can improve."

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[–] FreedomAdvocate@lemmy.net.au 45 points 15 hours ago* (last edited 14 hours ago) (1 children)

It’s not that they’re not improving like they used to, it’s that the die can’t shrink any more.

Price cuts and “slim” models used to be possible due to die shrinks. A console might have released on 100nm, and then a process improvement comes out that means it can be made on 50nm, meaning 2x as many chips on a wafer and half the power usage and heat generation. This allowed smaller and cheaper revisions.

Now that the current ones are already on like 4nm, there’s just nowhere to shrink to.

[–] toastmeister@lemmy.ca 6 points 12 hours ago (1 children)

Which itself is a gimmick, they've just made the gates taller, electron leakage would happen otherwise.

[–] dai@lemmy.world 7 points 7 hours ago (1 children)

NM has been a marketing gimmick since Intel launched their long-standing 14nm node. Actual transistor density depending on which fab you compare to is shambles.

It's now a title / name of a process and not representative of how small the transistors are.

I've not paid for a CPU upgrade since 2020, and before that I was using a 22nm CPU from 2014. The market isn't exciting (to me anymore), I don't even want to talk about the GPUs.

Back in the late 90s or early 2000s upgrades felt substantial and exciting, now it's all same-same with some minor power efficiency gains.

[–] lka1988@lemmy.dbzer0.com 2 points 1 hour ago* (last edited 1 hour ago)

This is why I'm more than happy with my 5800X3D/7900XTX; I know they'll perform like a dream for years to come. The games I play run beautifully on this hardware under Linux (BeamNG.Drive runs faster than on Windows 10), and I have no interest in upgrading the hardware any time soon.

Hell, the 4790k/750Ti system I built back in 2015 was still a beast in 2021, and if my ex hadn't gotten it in the divorce (I built it specifically for her, so I didn't lose any sleep over it), a 1080Ti upgrade would have made it a solid machine for 2025. But here we are - my PC now was a post-divorce gift for myself. Worth every penny. PC and divorce.

[–] heyWhatsay@slrpnk.net 24 points 18 hours ago (2 children)

This article doesn't factor in the new demand that is gobbling up all the CPU and GPU production: Ai server farms. For example, Nvidia, that was once only making graphic cards for gamers, has been trying to keep up with global demand for Ai. The whole market is different, then toss tarrifs and the rest of top.

I wouldn't blame moores law death, technology is still advancing, but per usual, based on demand.

[–] nlgranger@lemmy.world 6 points 8 hours ago

technology is still advancing

Actually not really: performance per watt of the high end stuff has been stagnating since Ampere generation. NVidia hides it by changing models in its benchmarks or advertising raw performance without power figures.

[–] FreedomAdvocate@lemmy.net.au 8 points 15 hours ago (1 children)

AI has nothing to do with it. Die shrinks were the reason for “slim” consoles and big price drops in the past. Die shrinks are basically a thing of the past now.

[–] sugar_in_your_tea@sh.itjust.works 2 points 13 hours ago

Not exactly, but smaller nodes are getting really expensive. So they could make a "slim" version with a lower power unit, but it would likely cost more than the original.

[–] Diplomjodler3@lemmy.world 64 points 1 day ago (4 children)

Consoles are just increasingly bad value for consumers compared to PCs.

[–] zerofatorial@lemm.ee 44 points 1 day ago (4 children)

Are they tho? Have you seen graphics card prices?

[–] SoftestSapphic@lemmy.world 2 points 33 minutes ago

My 4070 cost $300 and runs everything.

The whole PC cost around $1000, and i have had it since the Xbox One released.

You can get similar performance from a $400 steam deck which is a computer.

[–] sugar_in_your_tea@sh.itjust.works 7 points 13 hours ago

You don't need a top end card to match console specs, something like a 6650XT or 6700XT is probably enough. Your initial PC build will be more than a console by about 2X if you're matching specs (maybe 3X if you need a monitor, keyboard, etc), but you'll make it up with access to cheaper games and being able to upgrade the PC without replacing it, not to mention the added utiliy a PC provides.

So yeah, think of PC vs console as an investment into a platform.

If you only want to play 1-2 games, console may be a better option. But if you're interested in older or indie games, a PC is essential.

[–] Toneswirly@lemmy.world 23 points 23 hours ago* (last edited 23 hours ago) (3 children)

2060 super for 300, and then another 200 for a decent processor puts you ahead of a ps5 and for a comparable price. Games are cheaper on PC too, as well as a broader selection. https://pcpartpicker.com/list/zYGmJn here is a mid tier build for 850, you could cut the procesor down, install linux for free, and im sure youve got a computer monitor laying around somwhere... the only thing stopping you is inertia.

[–] tomalley8342@lemmy.world 35 points 22 hours ago* (last edited 22 hours ago) (1 children)

2060 super for 300, and then another 200 for a decent processor puts you ahead of a ps5 and for a comparable price.

you're going to have to really scrunge up for deals in order to get psu, storage, memory, motherboard, and a case for your remaining budget of $0.

https://pcpartpicker.com/list/zYGmJn here is a mid tier build for 850

This is $150 more expensive and the gpu is half as performant as the reported PS5 pro equivalent.

[–] sp3ctr4l@lemmy.dbzer0.com 9 points 17 hours ago* (last edited 17 hours ago) (1 children)

Ok so, for starters, your 'reported equivalent' source is wrong.

https://www.eurogamer.net/digitalfoundry-2024-playstation-5-pro-weve-removed-it-from-its-box-and-theres-new-information-to-share

The custom AMD Zen2 APU (combined CPU + GPU, as is done in laptops) of a PS5Pro is 16.7 TFLOPs, not 33.

So your PS5 Pro is actually roughly equivalent to that posted build.... by your 'methodology', which is utterly unclear to me, what your actual methodolgy for doing a performance comparison is.

The PS5 Pro uses 2 GB of DDR5 RAM, and 16 GB of GDDR6 RAM.

This is... wildly outside of the realm of being directly comparable to a normal desktop PC, which ... bare minimum these days, has 16 GB DDR4/5 RAM, and the GDDR6 RAM would be part of the detachable GPU board itself, and would be ... between 8GB ... and all the way up to 32 if you get an Nvidia 5090, but consensus seems to be that 16 GB GDDR6/7 is probably what you want as a minimum, unless you want to be very reliant on AI upscaling/framegen, and the input lag and whatnot that comes with using that on an underpowered GPU.

Short version: The PS5Pro would be a wildly lopsided, nonsensical architecture to try to one to one replicate in a desktop PC.... 2 GB system RAM will run lightweight linux os's, but not a chance in hell you could run Windows 10 or 11 on that.

Fuck, even getting 7 to work with 2GB RAM would be quite a challenge... if not impossible, I think 7 required 4GB RAM minimum?

The closest AMD chip to the PS5 Pro that I see, in terms of TFLOP output... is the Radeon 7600 Mobile.

((... This is probably why Cyberpunk 2077 did not (and will never) get a 'performance patch' for the PS5Pro: CP77 can only pull both high (by console standards) framerates at high resolutions... and raytracing/path tracing... on Nvidia mobile class hardware, which the PS5Pro doesn't use.))

But, lets use the PS5Pro's ability to run CP77 at 2K60fps on ... what PC players recognize as a mix of medium and high settings... as our benchmark for a comparable standard PC build. Lets be nice and just say its the high preset.

(a bunch of web searching and performance comparisons later...)

Well... actually, the problem is that basically, nobody makes or sells desktop GPUs that are so underpowered anymore, you'd have to go to the used market or find some old unpurchased stock someone has had lying around for years.

The RX 6600 in the partpicker list is fairly close in terms of GPU performance.

Maybe pair it with an AMD 5600X processor if you... can find one? Or a 4800S, which supposedly actually were just rejects/run off from the PS5 and Xbox X and S chips, rofl?

Yeah, legitimately, the problem with trying to make a PC ... in 2025, to the performance specs of a PS5 Pro... is that basically the bare minimum models for current and last gen, standard PC architecture... yeah they just don't even make hardware that weak anymore.

EDIT:

oh final addendum: if your tv has an hdmi port, kablamo, thats your monitor, you dont strictly need a new one.

And there are also many ways to get a wireless or wired console style controller to work in a couch pc setup.

[–] tomalley8342@lemmy.world 4 points 16 hours ago (1 children)

Short version: The PS5Pro would be a wildly lopsided, nonsensical architecture to try to one to one replicate in a desktop PC.... 2 GB system RAM will run lightweight linux os's, but not a chance in hell you could run Windows 10 or 11 on that.

Fuck, even getting 7 to work with 2GB RAM would be quite a challenge... if not impossible, I think 7 required 4GB RAM minimum?

It's shared memory, so you would need to guarantee access to 16gb on both ends.

The RX 6600 in the partpicker list is fairly close in terms of GPU performance.

I don't know how you could arrive at such a conclusion, considering that the base PS5 has been measured to be comparable to the 6700.

[–] sp3ctr4l@lemmy.dbzer0.com 5 points 15 hours ago* (last edited 14 hours ago) (1 children)

It's shared memory, so you would need to guarantee access to 16gb on both ends.

So... standard Desktop CPUs can only talk to DDR.

'CPUs' can only utilize GDDR when they are actually a part of an APU.

Standard desktop GPUs can only talk to GDDR, which is part of their whole seperate board.

GPU and CPU can talk to each other, via the mainboard.

Standard desktop PC architecture does not have a way for the CPU to directly utilize the GDDR RAM on the standalone GPU.

In many laptops and phones, a different architecture is used, which uses LPDDR RAM, and all the LPDDR RAM is used by the APU, the APU being a CPU+GPU combo in a single chip.

Some laptops use DDR RAM, but... in those laptops, the DDR RAM is only used by the CPU, and those laptops have a seperate GPU chip, which has its own built in GDDR RAM... the CPU and GPU cannot and do not share these distinct kinds of RAM.

(Laptop DDR RAM is also usually a different pin count and form factor than desktop PC DDR RAM, you usually can't swap RAM sticks between them.)

The PS5Pro appears to have yet another unique architecture:

Functionally, the 2GB of DDR RAM can only be accessed by the CPU parts of the APU, which act as a kind of reserve, a minimum baseline of CPU-only RAM set aside for certain CPU specific tasks.

The PS5Pro's 16 GB of GDDR RAM is sharable and usable by both the CPU and GPU components of the APU.

...

So... saying that you want to have a standard desktop PC build... that shares all of its GDDR and DDR RAM... this is impossible, and nonsensical.

Standard desktop PC motherboards, compatible GPUs and CPUs... they do not allow for shareable RAM, instead going with a design paradigm of the GPU has its own onboard GDDR RAM that only it can use, and DDR RAM that only the CPU can use.

You would basically have to tear a high end/more modern laptop board with an APU soldered into it... and then install that into a 'desktop pc' case... to have a 'desktop pc' that shares memory between its CPU and GPU components... which both would be encapsulated in a single APU chip.

Roughly this concept being done is generally called a MiniPC, and is a fairly niche thing, and is not the kind of thing an average prosumer can assemble themselves like a normal desktop PC.

All you can really do is swap out the RAM (if it isnt soldered) and the SSD... maybe I guess transplant it and the power supply into another case?

I don't know how you could arrive at such a conclusion, considering that the base PS5 has been measured to be comparable to the 6700.

I can arrive at that conclusion because I can compare actual bench mark scores from a nearest TFLOP equivalent, more publically documented, architecturally similar AMD APU... the 7600M. I specifically mentioned this in my post.

This guy in the article here ... well he notes that the 6700 is a bit more powerful than the PS5Pro's GPU component.

The 6600 is one step down in terms of mainline desktop PC hardware, and arguably the PS5Pro's performance is... a bit better than a 6600, a bit worse than a 6700, but at that level, all of the other differences in the PS5Pro's architecture give basically a margin of error when trying to precisely dial in whether a 6700 or 6600 is a closer match.

You can't do apples to apples spec sheet comparisons... because, as I have now exhaustively explained:

Standard desktop PCs do not share RAM between the GPU and CPU. They also do not share memory imterface busses and bandwidth lanes... in standard PCs, these are distinct and seperate, because they use different architectures.

I got my results by starting with the (correct*) TFLOPs output from a PS5Pro, finding a nearest equivalent APU with PassMark benchmark scores, reported by hundreds or thousands or tens of thousands of users, then compared those PassMark APU scores to PassMark conventional GPU scores, and ended up with 'fairly close' to an RX 6600.

The early, erroneous reporting of the TFLOPs score as roughly 33, when it was actually closer to 16 or 17... that stemmed from reporting a 16 digit FLOP score/test, when the more standard convention is to list the 32 digit FLOP score/test.

...

You, on the other hand, just linked to a Tom's Hardware review of currently in production desktop PC GPUs... which did not make any mention of the PS5Pro... and them you also acted as if a 6600 was half as powerful as a PS5Pro's GPU component.... which is wildly off.

A 6700 is nowhere near 2x as powerful as a 6600.

2x as poweful as an AMD RX 6600... would be roughly an AMD RX 7900 XTX, the literal top end card of AMDs previous GPU generation... that is currently selling for something like $1250 +/- $200, depending on which retailer you look at, and their current stock levels, and which variant of which partner mfg you're going for.

[–] Aceticon@lemmy.dbzer0.com 2 points 8 hours ago* (last edited 8 hours ago) (2 children)

Just to add to this, the reason you only see shared memory setups on PCs with integrated graphics is because it lowers performance compared to dedicated memory, which is less of a problem if your GPU is only being used in 2D mode such as when doing office work (mainly because that uses little memory), but more of a problem when used in 3D mode (such as in most modern games) which is as the PS5 is meant to be used most of the time.

So the PS5 having shared memory is not a good thing and actually makes it inferior compared to a PC made with a GPU and CPU of similar processing power using the dominant gaming PC architecture (separate memory).

[–] addie@feddit.uk 1 points 53 minutes ago

You've got that a bit backwards. Integrated memory on a desktop computer is more "partitioned" than shared - there's a chunk for the CPU and a chunk for the GPU, and it's usually quite slow memory by the standards of graphics cards. The integrated memory on a console is completely shared, and very fast. The GPU works at its full speed, and the CPU is able to do a couple of things that are impossible to do with good performance on a desktop computer:

load and manipulate models which are then directly accessible by the GPU. When loading models, there's no need to read them from disk into the CPU memory and then copy them onto the GPU - they're just loaded and accessible.
manipulate the frame buffer using the CPU. Often used for tone mapping and things like that, and a nightmare for emulator writers. Something like RPCS3 emulating Dark Souls has to turn this off; a real PS3 can just read and adjust the output using the CPU with no frame hit, but a desktop would need to copy the frame from the GPU to main memory, adjust it, and copy it back, which would kill performance.

[–] sp3ctr4l@lemmy.dbzer0.com 3 points 4 hours ago* (last edited 4 hours ago) (1 children)

Basically this is true, yes, without going into an exhaustive level of detail as to very, very specific subtypes and specs of different RAM and mobo layouts.

Shared memory setups generally are less powerful, but, they also usually end up being overall cheaper, as well as having a lower power draw... and being cooler, temperature wise.

Which are all legitimate reasons those kinds of setups are used in smaller form factor 'computing devices', because heat managment, airflow requirements... basically rule out using a traditional architecture.

...

Though, recently, MiniPCs are starting to take off... and I am actually considering doing a build based on the Minisforum BD795i SE... which could be quite a powerful workstation/gaming rig.

Aside about interesting non standard 'desktop' potential build

This is a Mobo with a high end integrated AMD mobile CPU (7945hx).. that all together, costs about $430.

And the CPU in this thing... has a PassMark score... of about the same as an AMD 9900X... which itself, the CPU alone, MSRPs for about $400.

So that is kind of bonkers, get a high end Mobo and CPU... for the price of a high end CPU.

Oh, I forgot to mention: This BD795iSE board?

Yeah it just has a standard PCI 16 slot. So... you can plug in any 2 slot width standard desktop GPU into it... and all of this either literally is, or basically is the ITX form factor.

So, you could make a whole build out of this that would be ITX form factor, and also absurdly powerful, or a budget version with a dinky GPU.

I was talking in another thread a few days ago, snd somekne said PC architecture may be headed toward... basically you have the entire PC, and the GPU, and thats the new paradigm, instead of the old school view of: you have a mobo, and you pick it based on its capability to support future cpus in the same socket type, future ram upgrades, etc...

And this intrigued me, I looked into it, and yeah, this concept does have cost per performance merit at this point.

So this uses a split between the GPU having its GDDR RAM and the... CPU using DDDR SODIMM (laptop form factor) RAM.

But its also designed such that you can actually fit huge standard PC style cooling fans... into quite a compact form factor.

From what I can vaguely tell as a non Chinese speaker.. it seems like there are many more people over in China who have been making high end, custom, desktop gaming rigs out of this laptop/mobile style architecture for a decent while now, and only recently has this concept even really entered into the English speaking world/market, that you can actually build your own rig this way.

[–] lka1988@lemmy.dbzer0.com 2 points 1 hour ago

Fascinating discourse here. Love it.

What about a Framework laptop motherboard in a mini PC case? Do they ship with AMD APUs equivalent to that?

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[–] Diplomjodler3@lemmy.world 9 points 22 hours ago (5 children)

You don't need a graphics card. You can get mini PCs with decent gaming performance for cheap these days.

[–] chunes@lemmy.world 1 points 7 hours ago

Can confirm. I wouldn't recommend it unless you mostly play indie games, though.

[–] Ulrich@feddit.org 9 points 22 hours ago* (last edited 22 hours ago) (4 children)

The ones with capable GPUs cost as much as a PS5 Pro.

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[–] Skyline969@lemmy.ca 22 points 1 day ago (7 children)

I mean, for the price of a mid range graphics card I can still buy a whole console. GPU prices are ridiculous. Never mind everything else on top of that.

[–] sugar_in_your_tea@sh.itjust.works 1 points 13 hours ago (1 children)

Yeah, GPU prices are kinda ridiculous, but a 7600 is probably good enough to match console quality (essentially the same as the 6650XT, so get whatever is cheaper), and I see those going for $330. It should be more like $250, so maybe you can find it closer to that amount when there's a sale. Add $500-600 for mobo, CPU, PSU, RAM storage, and a crappy case, and you have a decent gaming rig. Maybe I'm short by $100 or so, but that should be somewhere in the ballpark.

So $900-1000 for a PC. That's about double a console, extra if you need keyboard, monitor, etc. Let's say that's $500. So now we're 3x a console.

Entry cost is certainly higher, so what do you get in return?

deeper catalogue
large discounts on older games (anything older than a year or so)
emulation and other PC tasks
can upgrade piecemeal - next console gen, just need a new CPU + GPU, and if you go AMD, you can probably skip a gen on your mobo + RAM
can repurpose old PC once you rebuild it (my old PC is my NAS)
generally no need to pay a sub for multiplayer

Depending on how many and what types of games you play, it may or may not be cheaper. I play a ton of indies and rarely play AAA new releases, so a console would be a lot more expensive for me. I also have hundreds of games, and probably play 40 or so in a given year (last year was 50 IIRC). If I save just $10 per game, it would be the same price as a console after 2 years, but I save far more since I wait for sales. Also, I'll have a PC anyway, so technically I should only count the extra stuff I buy for playing games, as in my GPU.

[–] Skyline969@lemmy.ca 0 points 10 hours ago (1 children)

You do make some decent points, but the console has one major aspect that PC simply does not have: convenience. I install a game and I’m playing it. No settings to tweak, no need to make sure my drivers are up to date, no need to make sure other programs I’m running are interfering with the game, none of that. If I get a game for my console I know it absolutely will work, with the exception of a simply shitty game which happens on PC too.

The other thing I wanted to touch on was the cheap games. That’s just as relevant on console nowadays. For example, I’ve been slowly buying the Yakuza games for $10-$15 each. That’s the exact same discounts I’ve seen on Steam.

For backwards compatibility, it depends on your console. Xbox is quite impressive - if you have an Xbox Series X you can play any game ever released for any Xbox all the way back to the original. Just stick in the disc. With PlayStation, it’s just PS4 games that the PS5 is backwards compatible with. Sony needs to do better. And with Nintendo… lol.

Yeah, with a PC you can do other things than gaming. For most of that you can get a cheap laptop. There are definitely edge cases where a powerful PC is needed such as development, CAD, AI, etc. But on average a gaming-spec PC is not necessary. I’m saying that as a developer and systems administrator for the past 14 years.

[–] sugar_in_your_tea@sh.itjust.works 1 points 3 hours ago

No settings to tweak, no need to make sure my drivers are up to date, no need to make sure other programs I’m running are interfering with the game, none of that.

I also do almost none of that on my PC. I do install updates, but that's pretty much in the background. Then again, I use Linux, so maybe it's different on Windows these days? I doubt it.

Most people tweak settings and whatnot because they want to, not because they need to in order to get a decent experience. I use my PC and Steam Deck largely as a console: install games then then play. That's it.

I’ve been slowly buying the Yakuza games for $10-$15 each

Steam isn't the only store for buying games on PC, so the chance that you can buy a given game on sale on a given day is quite a bit higher vs console, where there's only one store. I've picked games up on Steam, Fanatical, or Humble Bundle, and there are several others if you're interested in looking.

For example, here's Yakuza 0 price history on PC, it has been $10 somewhere for almost a year. On PlayStation, it looks like it's been $20 most of the year. I actually got it for a little under $5 about 5 years ago, and I only paid >$10 for one Yakuza game (most were $7-8).

Tons of games show up in bundles as well. I have picked up tons of games for $2-5 each (sometimes less) as part of a bundle, and that's just not really a thing on consoles.

if you have an Xbox Series X you can play any game ever released for any Xbox all the way back to the original

Interesting, that's pretty cool!

gaming-spec PC

Honestly, the difference between a "gaming spec" PC and one targeting only typical tasks is pretty minimal outside the GPU, assuming you're targeting console quality. You really don't need a high end CPU, RAM, or mobo to play games, you can match CPU perf w/ something mid-range, so $150-ish for the CPU. Likewise for the GPU, you can get comparable quality for something in the $300-400 range, probably less now since the PS5 and XBox Series consoles are kind of old.

But that's assuming you need console quality. You can get by with something a bit older if you turn the settings down a bit.

If you want to save cash, you have a lot more options on PC vs consoles. If you want to go all out, you have a lot more options on PC vs consoles for maxing out performance. PC gaming is as expensive as you make it. I used the same PC for playing games for something like 10 years before getting an upgrade (upgraded the GPU once), because it played all the games I wanted it to. If I have a console, chances are the newer games will stop supporting my older console a year or so after the new one launches, so I don't have any options once the console goes out of support outside of buying a new one.

That said, there are a ton of caveats:

don't buy laptops for gaming, they are way too expensive and can't really be upgraded (Framework exists, sure, and I think eGPUs still do, but that's going to be expensive)
don't buy a pre-built PC if you want to save money - if you DIY your PC, you can save a bit of cash, but more importantly, you're more likely to upgrade it vs replace it later on
you can spend a ton on PC gaming, if you follow whatever the influencer trends are (everyone needs a top-end GPU for $2k or whatever, plus a monitor > 200 hz)
consoles have a much better couch co-op experience

I have a Switch for the couch co-op experience, as well as ease of use for my kids to just put in a game and play, and a PC for most of my personal gaming time (I also have a Steam Deck so I can play in bed or on vacation). I have something like 20 Switch games and hundreds of PC games.

[–] turbowafflz@lemmy.world 11 points 23 hours ago (1 children)

Yeah but remember to factor in that you probably already need a normal computer for non-game purposes so if you also use that for games you only have to buy one device not two

[–] Fondots@lemmy.world 8 points 23 hours ago (1 children)

I just built a PC after not having a computer for about 5+ years.

Built it for games, did not feel like I was missing out on anything in particular except games by not having a computer. There's a lot of things I'd rather use a computer for but these days most of what I used to do on a computer can be done just fine from a phone or tablet.

During those 5 or so years, I maybe needed to use a computer about a dozen times, and if my wife didn't have a computer I could have just swung by a library for a bit to take care of it.

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[–] gravitas_deficiency@sh.itjust.works 14 points 1 day ago (6 children)

Tbh the only consoles I’ve been really interested in lately are the switch and steam deck, simply because they’re also mobile devices.

[–] cmnybo@discuss.tchncs.de 6 points 20 hours ago (1 children)

The Steam Deck is the only decent console because it's not locked down.

[–] sugar_in_your_tea@sh.itjust.works 1 points 13 hours ago

That's because it's not a console.

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[–] Auntievenim@lemmy.world 20 points 23 hours ago (3 children)

Is it Moores law failing or have we finally reached the point where capitalists are not even pretending to advance technology in order to charge higher prices? Like are we actually not able to make things faster and cheaper anymore or is the market controlled by a monopoly that sees no benefit in significantly improving their products? My opinion has been leaning more and more towards the latter since the pandemic.

[–] ICastFist@programming.dev 14 points 18 hours ago (1 children)

Moore's law started failing in 2000, when single core speeds peaked, leading to multi core processors since. Memory and storage still had ways to go. Now, the current 5nm process is very close to the limits imposed by the laws of physics, both in how small a laser beam can be and how small a controlled chemical reaction can be done. Unless someone can figure a way to make the whole chip fabrication process in less steps, or with higher yield, or with cheaper machines or materials, even if at 50nm or larger, don't expect prices to drop.

Granted, if TSMC stopped working in Taiwan, we'd be looking at roughly 70% of all production going poof, so that can be considered a monopoly (it is also their main defense against China, the "Silicon Shield", so there's more than just capitalistic greed at play for them)

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=po-nlRUQkbI - How are Microchips Made? 🖥️🛠️ CPU Manufacturing Process Steps | Branch Education

[–] Auntievenim@lemmy.world 2 points 11 hours ago

Very interesting! I was aware of the 5nm advancements and the limitations of chip sizes approaching the physical limitations of the material but I had been assuming since we worked around the single core issue a similar innovation would appear for this bottleneck. It seems like the focus instead was turned towards integrating AI into the gpu architecture and cranking up the power consumption for marginal gains in performance instead of working towards a paradigm shift. Thanks for the in depth explanation though, I always appreciate an opportunity to learn more about this type of stuff!

[–] SaltySalamander@fedia.io 35 points 22 hours ago (7 children)

This has little to do with "capitalists" and everything to do with the fact that we've basically reached the limit of silicon.

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[–] kalipixel@reddthat.com 18 points 23 hours ago

The consoles unless you root or jailbreak them are too restrictive anyway. For older games you can just use an emulator on your PC or mobile.

[–] theotherbelow@lemmynsfw.com 2 points 14 hours ago (1 children)

No, it turns out that lying to the consumer about old tech is profitable.

[–] doodledup@lemmy.world 2 points 4 hours ago* (last edited 4 hours ago)

Hatebait. Adds nothing informative to the thread.

[–] ABetterTomorrow@lemm.ee 3 points 18 hours ago

Wtf, that headline is fucking backwards thinking and capitalistic. If you’re not greedy and don’t have unnecessary high standards that doesn’t make a game, you’re the problem. Sorry not sorry but gamers demand and the companies are at fault here.

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