Quote from: Sanjiv Sathiah on May 04, 2020, 09:03:42
@Valantar Who is getting defensive? You've made criticisms of what has been written and I have done you the courtesy of responding to them. I stand by the article as something of interest, and which has been clearly identified as a rumor and one which should be questioned. Doesn't mean the article shouldn't have been written.

I have never said the article shouldn't have been written, I've just said that I find the contents of the article unbalanced, uncritical and of poor journalistic quality. You are obviously both allowed to disagree and to stand by the article - I've never claimed that you don't have the right to have an opinion different to mine, after all. As for being defensive: I have presented several specific and detailed questions about and critiques of your writing and your initial response, to which you responded not by presenting an argument against mine, but by singling out a two-word phrase from my post and calling it an oxymoron - in other words, rather than engaging with the contents of my post (a courtesy which I have done you) and presenting arguments as to why you disagree, you instead attempt to make me look stupid by attempting to make fun of my writing. Not only is this defensive, it is quite immature. If this is the type of response you are "doing me the courtesy of" posting, I don't see much value in that.

I would also very much like to see how my posts here have in any way been defensive - like I have shown above about your response. Sure, I have spent a bit of time fleshing out my arguments and explaining my thinking, but if you're reading that as defensiveness ... how then would one have any kind of discussion without being defensive?

@Valantar Who is getting defensive? You've made criticisms of what has been written and I have done you the courtesy of responding to them. I stand by the article as something of interest, and which has been clearly identified as a rumor and one which should be questioned. Doesn't mean the article shouldn't have been written.

Quote from: Sanjiv Sathiah on May 04, 2020, 01:32:00
@Valantar "unsubstantiated rumors" -- oxymoron much? That's what rumors are by definition -- unsubstantiated. Hence the headline and why I wrote "if the rumor has any truth to it" in the article.

I dont think that's the word you're looking for. "Substantiated rumor" would be closer to an oxymoron. Pleonasm?

Nonetheless, I would say an important part of a journalist's role in covering rumors is to check the veracity of rumors, so no, in this case I think specifying that the rumor is unsubstantiated (rather than one that has been looked into in some way, no matter the result) is of value. Also, if that's your takeaway from what I wrote... Seriously, please take a step back and think this through. Accepting criticism is difficult, but getting defensive like this doesn't help anyone.

Wow - look at the xbox fans go ballistic at the article.

Its the best part of the fanboy wars, watching fans go overboard both with the boasting and with the crying.

Although I will admit, its the salty tears I love the most - fantastic.

@Valantar "unsubstantiated rumors" -- oxymoron much? That's what rumors are by definition -- unsubstantiated. Hence the headline and why I wrote "if the rumor has any truth to it" in the article.

Quote from: Sanjiv Sathiah on May 03, 2020, 14:25:07
@OzMomotaro You concede that "Yes, Sony may be partnering with AMD on specific tech..." That is the point of this article. And yes, it is equally true that Microsoft is doing the same. Yet, that is not what this rumor is about. Cerny isn't going to give away all the details this far ahead of the launch that is going to give Microsoft a chance to sniff out what Sony and AMD are doing on the PS5 -- particularly if it is instruction set-based and not hard wired into the silicon.

Instruction sets are "hard wired" into the silicon - either a piece of silicon supports a given instruction set (or subsection of an instruction set, like an extension of one), or it doesn't. There is no way to add this after the fact unless the required hardware is already in place (unless you emulate support through some sort of translation layer, in which case it will be slow and likely buggy). So if Sony had access to some sort of ISA-level RDNA 3 feature that MS didn't, they would be shouting it from the rooftops by now if it had any serious value - there would be no way for MS to implement the same at this point. Both of these SoCs have been taped out already and are likely in test production with mass production ramping up in the coming months.

Quote from: Sanjiv Sathiah on May 03, 2020, 03:27:02
@Valantar "Which is just outright false. VRS is an RDNA 2 feature" I didn't claim it was an RDNA 3 feature -- I was writing about it as an RDNA 2 feature but also as an example of the kind of technology/approach that might result in Sony getting access to further optimized instruction set support. But perhaps you are just trying to find fault?

I'm not "trying to find fault", I'm reading your article as it was written with the barest minimum of critical interest - which I would say is how one should read anything one cares about, no?

You present VRS as an example for both parts of a two-pronged argument. The first part of this argument is that Sony has previously been given early access to GPU design elements for their consoles - which they did with parts of early Vega designs for the PS4 - and you present VRS as an example of what such access might look like for the PS5. The issue here is that VRS is a bog-standard RDNA 2 feature, so how would it be representative of getting early access to anything, given that the XSX is confirmed to be fully RDNA 2? PCs with AMD GPUs will have VRS around the same time as the PS5 arrives, as will the XSX. All VRS exemplifies is how RDNA 2 unlike RDNA (1) focuses more on adding features. If you were trying to exemplify some sort of hitherto unknown future graphics feature, using VRS as an example doesn't fit the bill.

The second part of the argument is that you claim that "RNDA [sic] 2 and RDNA's architectural changes have been focused on reducing instruction sets and latency" and that VRS as a new feature contrasts to this approach. This part of the argument is flawed in two ways: not only does RDNA 2.0 come with quite a few significant new graphics features (VRS among them, as well as real-time ray tracing, alongside the primitive shader from Vega (which was finally enabled in RDNA (1)) being updated to a mesh shader, and likely more that haven't been presented yet) making the factual basis of this part of your argument fundamentally erroneous, but even saying RDNA (1) focused on "reducing instruction sets and latency" is ... a weird misrepresentation of its changes. While RDNA indeed does lower latency, it does so through a fundamental rearchitecting of its wavefront to increase SIMD utilization, which amounts to much more than "reducing instruction sets and latency". It also carries over 100% compatibility with the GCN ISA, so saying it "reduc[es] instruction sets" is also false; it might implement a new and simplified ISA, but it is not a reduced instruction set as such, just a condensed one added on top of the existing one.

Quote from: Sanjiv Sathiah on May 03, 2020, 14:30:43
As for me personally, I'm equally excited by both consoles and can't wait for them to be released. I have no skin in the game one way or the other as I will be buying both consoles, as I always do. The reason is two-fold -- as a tech writer I just love technology and I like to play the exclusive titles on each platform.

Just an FYI: taking unsubstantiated rumors from untrustworthy sources and running with them by writing uncritical articles speculating willy-nilly about how it might look if the rumor turns out to be true a) makes you look biased towards whoever stands to gain from the rumor being true (and calling it a rumor in the title doesn't help when there's nary a trace of critical thinking in the rest of the article), and b) is terrible journalism. I don't mean this to come off as personal in any way, but writing and publishing articles of this type makes both you and NotebookCheck look bad - writing like this belongs in garbage-quality rumor-monger publications like WCCFTech, not serious publications wanting to maintain a reputation for journalistic integrity and rigor.

It's great that tech journalists are enthusiastic about the tech they cover (I'd not quite call it a requirement, but close), but the ability to maintain a critical distance and ask the right questions is part of what differentiates quality journalism from rumor-mongering.

As for me personally, I'm equally excited by both consoles and can't wait for them to be released. I have no skin in the game one way or the other as I will be buying both consoles, as I always do. The reason is two-fold -- as a tech writer I just love technology and I like to play the exclusive titles on each platform.

@OzMomotaro You concede that "Yes, Sony may be partnering with AMD on specific tech..." That is the point of this article. And yes, it is equally true that Microsoft is doing the same. Yet, that is not what this rumor is about. Cerny isn't going to give away all the details this far ahead of the launch that is going to give Microsoft a chance to sniff out what Sony and AMD are doing on the PS5 -- particularly if it is instruction set-based and not hard wired into the silicon.

Seriously - is this high school writing? Let's consider the facts as presented. Firstly there is an established relationship between AMD and Microsoft for DX12 Ultimate compatibility; secondly all promotional material has really focussed on AMD and MS; thirdly So y has never categorically stated 100% RDNA feature set - just that it uses RDNA2 architecture; fourthly there has not been any hint of a separate collaboration with Sony and AMD; fifthly RDNA3 is not a real thing as yet - so suggesting Sony was getting RDNA3 tech which was going to compensate for lower spec hardware is meaningless. Yes Sony may be partnering with AMD on specific tech, but the same argument could (more seriously) be said for MS XBsX. Finally - Sony already did their tech discussion paper at their GDC talk. If they had something up their sleeve that was a game changer - why do the GDC talk which arguably did more damage to Sony PS5 than helped it. This article is just trash.

@Valantar "Which is just outright false. VRS is an RDNA 2 feature" I didn't claim it was an RDNA 3 feature -- I was writing about it as an RDNA 2 feature but also as an example of the kind of technology/approach that might result in Sony getting access to further optimized instruction set support. But perhaps you are just trying to find fault?

Quote from: Sanjiv Sathiah on May 02, 2020, 14:02:42
1) The headline clearly says it's a rumor. 2) Sony did have early access to Vega technology for the PS4, lending the rumor some substance. 3) It is not unheard of for certain companies to gain early access to technology -- for example, Apple had manufactured and shipped a 64-bit ARM-based smartphone when ARM itself was only taping out its first in-house ARM 64-bit designs.

1: Sure, but the article still treats the information as if there's all the reason in the world to assume that it's true. This is not what a good-faith discussion of a rumor looks like, this is what an uncritical treatment of a rumor and poor quality journalism looks like. At the very minimum a proper treatment of a rumor entails discussing the trustworthiness of the source, but should also further entail a critical discussion of the contents of the rumor. This post does neither.
2: Sure, there is some precedent for this. Is that sufficient grounds to take the rumor and run with it like this post does, though?
3: See above.

Also, the article says things like this:

QuoteFor example, the PS5 fully supports RDNA's Variable Rate Shading technology that increases resolution in certain sections of a frame while reducing it in others where it isn't required or noticeable. This maximizes the visual fidelity while fully utilizing the processing power on hand. RNDA 2 and RDNA's architectural changes have been focused on reducing instruction sets and latency and this is more likely the type of early access to RDNA 3 that Sony will be able to incorporate in the PS5, if the rumor has any truth to it.

Which is just outright false. VRS is an RDNA 2 feature, and RDNA 2 is confirmed to add quite a bevy of features compared to both GCN and RDNA (1) - such as ray tracing support. VRS is also part of DX12_1, which AMD has confirmed RDNA 2 is fully compatible with DX12_1. The Xbox Series X is also confirmed to have VRS.

Quote from: Jeff Goldblum on May 02, 2020, 16:38:36
I love all these BS rumours and how short of memory the tech press is.

AMD designed Navi rDNA V1 for Sony when they were prioritising semi custom work, this took engineers off Vega and didn't go down too well at RTG and one reason why Raja jumped ship to Intel. This was covered very well two years ago by multiple tech press sources

rDNA V2 is fully DX12 Ultimate compliant and came from AMD and Nvidia working closely with MS for the past five years on the spec. Both Nvidias 3000 series and Navi X2 will support all features
(Turing is nearly there now)

If Sony has any "secret sauce" why did Cerny only talk about primitive shaders which is really older tech first appearing on Vega but never activated. The current Navi based cards RX 5700/XT had it enabled.
Mesh shading replaces primitives on rDNA V2 though

So seeing as we haven't seen any V2 tech from Sony yet, it's a big jump to assume they are running features from V3

Is there a major difference between RDNA1 and RDNA2 primitive shaders in the larger context of DX12 mesh shading?

I love all these BS rumours and how short of memory the tech press is.

AMD designed Navi rDNA V1 for Sony when they were prioritising semi custom work, this took engineers off Vega and didn't go down too well at RTG and one reason why Raja jumped ship to Intel. This was covered very well two years ago by multiple tech press sources

rDNA V2 is fully DX12 Ultimate compliant and came from AMD and Nvidia working closely with MS for the past five years on the spec. Both Nvidias 3000 series and Navi X2 will support all features
(Turing is nearly there now)

If Sony has any "secret sauce" why did Cerny only talk about primitive shaders which is really older tech first appearing on Vega but never activated. The current Navi based cards RX 5700/XT had it enabled.
Mesh shading replaces primitives on rDNA V2 though

So seeing as we haven't seen any V2 tech from Sony yet, it's a big jump to assume they are running features from V3

1) The headline clearly says it's a rumor. 2) Sony did have early access to Vega technology for the PS4, lending the rumor some substance. 3) It is not unheard of for certain companies to gain early access to technology -- for example, Apple had manufactured and shipped a 64-bit ARM-based smartphone when ARM itself was only taping out its first in-house ARM 64-bit designs.

Way, way way back an AMD spokesperson mentioned that Sony would have a little bit of "extra special sauce" in relation to both Sony and Microsoft using AMD tech. That was right back at the very first reveal. This could be it???