272
Chips aren’t improving like they used to, and it’s killing game console price cuts
(arstechnica.com)
this post was submitted on 04 May 2025
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It's shared memory, so you would need to guarantee access to 16gb on both ends.
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.
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 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.
...
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.
People are not trying to replicate the Sony's console hardware layout, they are trying to have the same gaming experience. I'm not sure how I can make it any clearer than pointing out an article which showed that the 6700 has similar performance across 7 separate games to the base Playstation 5. Not the Playstation 5 Pro, the base Playstation 5. If you believe that the tflop numbers are more credible than just running games to see how they perform, then I believe your priorities are misplaced with respect to the end goal of playing video games on this hypothetical PC build.
TFLOPs generally correlate to actual, general game performance quite well.
A very demanding game will do poorly on a gpu with a given TFLOPs score, but a less demanding one may do fairly well.
So, if you can roughly dial things into a TFLOPs value, you can get a result that is then generally applicable to all games.
The most graphically demanding games require the most TFLOPs out of a GPU to render well and fast, but less demanding games can be fine with a lower TFLOPs GPU.
Like... a GPU with a medium high TFLOPs score may only be able to push about 50 fps on CP77 ultra w/o RT, but it could likely easily hit something like 200ish FPS in say, CounterStike2, both games at 4k.
https://www.resetera.com/threads/all-games-with-ps5-pro-enhancements.1026072/
A PS5Pro can render CP77 at 'quality mode' ...which is roughly the 'high' graphical quality preset of CP77 on PCs, with... I believe all raytracing other than raytraced shadows off...
... at 2k30fps, or it can render at a dynamicly scaling resolution between 2k and 1080p at a locked 60fps.
https://www.gpu-monkey.com/en/benchmark-amd_radeon_rx_6700-cyberpunk_2077
An RX 6700 can render CP77 at 2k, 43 fps avg.
This site isn't 100% clear as to whether these GPU scores are done at the 'high' preset, or the 'ultra', all settings maxed out preset... but with all raytracing off.
https://www.gpu-monkey.com/en/benchmark-amd_radeon_rx_6600-cyberpunk_2077
A 6600 can do the same, high or ultra preset, with no raytracing, at 2k, with 31 fps.
1080p at 51 fps.
So uh yeah, even with the top of the line PS5 variant, the PS5Pro's graphical capabilities are a bit worse than a 6700, and a bit better than a 6600.
I have used many AMD cards, and yeah basically, if you only use raytraced local shadows?
At 1080p, or 2k?
Very roughly, you'll get about the same fps with a 'high' preset, and only raytraced local shadows, as you would with no rt local shadows, but the game's graphical preset bumped up to 'ultra'.
There are now like 6 different raytracing options in the PC version of CP77.
They only work well with Nvidia cards... and the latest iteration of AMD cards, that now have basically their equivalent of RT cores, though they're not as powerful, nor as expensive, as Nvidia cards.
Needless to say, PS5... normals, or whatever, are going to be even weaker than the 'somewhere between an rx 6600 and rx 6700' rough equivalence.
...
Playstation users only even see about 10% of all the graphical settings options that PC players see, really just the 4 post processing effects and motiin blur. PC players get many, many more settings they can tweak around.
Also, PS5 users generally seem to think CP77 is being rendered at 4k, in quality mode.
Uh, no, it isn't, its rendered at 2k max, and that is likely using FSR 2.1,with a bit of dynamic frame upscaling within CP77, meaning the actual real render resolution is roughly 5% to 15 % lower than 2k, then FSR upscales to 2k,... then the PS5 does its own upscaling outside of the game, likely via an emulator style simple integer upscale algo, to display at 4k on a 4k TV.
... I am saying all of this with confidence because I have spent a considerable amount of time fucking with customizing dynamjc resolution scaling, and other graphical settings, in CP77, on different AMD cards, on PCs.
The PS5Pro is using the same dynamic resolution scaling that exists in CP77 on PCs. PCs generally do best with an 'Auto' mode for various frame upscalers, but the dynamic setting on PC basically lets you throw out the auto settings and fuck about with your own custom tolerances for max and min resolutions and frame rates.
There is no need to speculate or dial anything in, the article above literally compared that exact game side by side with the base model Playstation 5.