this post was submitted on 04 May 2025
183 points (96.9% liked)

Technology

69702 readers
3542 users here now

This is a most excellent place for technology news and articles.

Our Rules

  1. Follow the lemmy.world rules.
  2. Only tech related news or articles.
  3. Be excellent to each other!
  4. Mod approved content bots can post up to 10 articles per day.
  5. Threads asking for personal tech support may be deleted.
  6. Politics threads may be removed.
  7. No memes allowed as posts, OK to post as comments.
  8. Only approved bots from the list below, this includes using AI responses and summaries. To ask if your bot can be added please contact a mod.
  9. Check for duplicates before posting, duplicates may be removed
  10. Accounts 7 days and younger will have their posts automatically removed.

Approved Bots

founded 2 years ago
MODERATORS
L3s@lemmy.world
enu@lemmy.world
technopagan@lemmy.world
L4s@lemmy.world
L3s@hackingne.ws
L4s@hackingne.ws
183
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
70 comments fedilink hide all child comments
 

"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."

you are viewing a single comment's thread
view the rest of the comments
[–] Aceticon@lemmy.dbzer0.com 2 points 8 hours ago* (last edited 7 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 42 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 55 minutes 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?