330: Our E-Cores Are Better Than Your P-Cores

00:00SPEAKER- Brad, I did the unthinkable.

00:01SPEAKER- Oh.

00:02SPEAKER- I submitted.

00:04SPEAKER- You gotta attenuate these intros a little bit.

00:08SPEAKER- Look, we're through the looking class here, man.

00:10SPEAKERIt's a whole new world.

00:11SPEAKER- At this late date, words like unthinkable,

00:13SPEAKERmaybe you get the hackles up a little more than I can handle.

00:16SPEAKER- Look, okay, maybe it's unthinkable for me, okay.

00:19SPEAKER- In the context of like some nerdy computer project shit,

00:22SPEAKERit's unthinkable, let's say.

00:24SPEAKER- Yeah, I submitted a pull request, man.

00:26SPEAKER- Not like you started digging

00:27SPEAKERan underground shelter or something.

00:29SPEAKER- Look, okay, I do watch a lot of tunnel videos on YouTube.

00:33SPEAKERThere's that woman that's dug the tunnel under her house.

00:36SPEAKERI don't know if you, are you into the cold comfort

00:39SPEAKERof underground lodging?

00:40SPEAKER- Not yet, but maybe I should be.

00:42SPEAKER- I can't, well, first this started for me

00:44SPEAKERwith Colin Furze, right?

00:45SPEAKERColin Furze, that YouTube guy,

00:46SPEAKERhe builds like crazy engineering.

00:48SPEAKERI think he started out as a welder,

00:50SPEAKERbut he builds like motorcycles

00:52SPEAKERwith giant counter weighted balances on the top

00:54SPEAKERso you can ride on the motorcycle

00:55SPEAKERlike 15 feet in the air.

00:58SPEAKERAnd he dug a hole in his backyard

01:02SPEAKERand put a home theater in it.

01:03SPEAKER- All right.

01:04SPEAKER- Like a 20 foot by 20 foot home theater.

01:06SPEAKERAnd then he started making tunnels

01:08SPEAKERthat connected that to the house.

01:09SPEAKERAnd the thing he's been working on

01:11SPEAKERfor like two and a half years now

01:12SPEAKERis digging up his front driveway

01:14SPEAKERin like a UK kind of suburban home

01:18SPEAKERand putting an elevator underground garage

01:21SPEAKERwith an elevator that can lower his DeLorean in

01:24SPEAKERunderneath it.

01:26SPEAKER- One way to maximize your space.

01:27SPEAKER- You should look at the YouTube.

01:28SPEAKERIt's a good YouTube series 'cause it's-

01:30SPEAKER- When you own the property above ground,

01:31SPEAKERyou also own the space below the ground level, right?

01:35SPEAKER- Well, see, it's funny.

01:35SPEAKERThat's what he thought.

01:36SPEAKERAnd then the local authorities

01:37SPEAKERhad different feelings about that.

01:38SPEAKERSo anyway, I have not started digging yet

01:42SPEAKERto answer your question.

01:42SPEAKER- Okay, that's fair.

01:43SPEAKERAlso, I'm gonna say that burying your home theater

01:46SPEAKERin the ground is an interesting way

01:47SPEAKERto solve the blackout curtain problem.

01:49SPEAKER- Yeah, like I think he probably created

01:51SPEAKERa much larger echoing problem

01:53SPEAKER'cause he built it out of steel and stuff.

01:56SPEAKER- Yeah, you need something absorbent on the inside.

01:58SPEAKER- Yeah, and also it looks wet in there

02:01SPEAKERin a way that I maybe wouldn't be thrilled with.

02:03SPEAKER- Yeah.

02:04SPEAKER- But also think of how cool it would be

02:06SPEAKERto have like a whole...

02:08SPEAKERLike I used to, as a kid, I had dreams.

02:10SPEAKERWe used to get stuff shipped in like these wooden containers

02:13SPEAKERfrom the UK for my parents' business.

02:15SPEAKERAnd they were like six feet on a side

02:17SPEAKERand we would knock.

02:19SPEAKERThey were just kind of throw away fur wood

02:22SPEAKERand we would cut holes inside and put a door there

02:24SPEAKERand then connect them and make like a fort in the backyard.

02:26SPEAKERThat is some prime fort material as a child.

02:29SPEAKER- It's like having infinite stacks of pallets, basically.

02:32SPEAKERAnd I always thought, what if we dug a hole

02:36SPEAKERand buried a couple of these

02:37SPEAKERand then we'd have an underground space underneath the fort?

02:40SPEAKERThere was like that, and my parents were like,

02:41SPEAKERno, we're not putting you in a hole

02:43SPEAKER'cause that's how people die, trenching problems.

02:45SPEAKERBut anyway, okay, so it's not about me digging a hole.

02:48SPEAKERThat's the, the unthinkable is not that.

02:50SPEAKERYou got any other guesses what the unthinkable is?

02:52SPEAKER- I think I heard you say the words pull request

02:54SPEAKERat the beginning, which for certain definitions

02:56SPEAKERof unthinkable, I think qualifies.

02:58SPEAKER- I never thought I'd be a pull request guy.

03:00SPEAKER- Man, you beat me to it.

03:01SPEAKER- I know.

03:02SPEAKER- I almost submitted my first pull request

03:03SPEAKERlike a month ago and somebody actually beat me,

03:05SPEAKERsomebody beat me to it there also.

03:07SPEAKERLike they found the same issue that I did.

03:10SPEAKER- Yeah.

03:11SPEAKER- And they filed the pull request before I did.

03:13SPEAKERSo like maybe best of both worlds

03:16SPEAKER'cause now the thing's getting fixed

03:17SPEAKERand I didn't have to deal with it.

03:18SPEAKER- So we talked to you,

03:19SPEAKERthat's much better than having to figure it out.

03:20SPEAKERLike I had to look up, I had to,

03:22SPEAKERthere was like that scene in Office Space

03:23SPEAKERwhere like how do you launder money

03:24SPEAKERand they looked it up in the dictionary or whatever.

03:26SPEAKERAnd it was basically the equivalent of,

03:28SPEAKERhow do you make a pull request?

03:30SPEAKER- Okay, set the stage.

03:31SPEAKERWhat's the project, what is the bug, how did you fix it?

03:34SPEAKER- So the problem is that I have an AIO,

03:37SPEAKERwater cooler in my system.

03:38SPEAKER- Oh, I think I know where this is going

03:40SPEAKER'cause I saw you asking about building kernel modules

03:42SPEAKERon the full nerd discord.

03:44SPEAKER- Yep, and they are lightly supported

03:48SPEAKERby a bunch of different projects.

03:49SPEAKERHWMon has some support, Liquid Control has some support,

03:52SPEAKERbut there's a process by which new hardware is supported

03:55SPEAKERand it usually starts in Liquid Control

03:57SPEAKERand then somebody kind of ports whatever reverse engineering

04:01SPEAKERor whatever like hardware ID identifying business

04:04SPEAKERhad to happen down into HWMon.

04:07SPEAKERAnd then once it's in there,

04:08SPEAKERyou can do things like use cooler control on Linux,

04:11SPEAKERwhich is a fabulous utility

04:12SPEAKERthat's kind of like a souped up version of fan control.

04:15SPEAKERAnd I got tired a couple of weeks ago

04:17SPEAKERof basing my AIO fan curves on like the thermistor

04:22SPEAKERthat I kind of taped up on the side of the radiator.

04:25SPEAKERAnd I started Googling to find out what was supported

04:29SPEAKERand what wasn't.

04:30SPEAKERAnd it turns out my family of coolers

04:31SPEAKERhas a pretty good Liquid Control driver,

04:34SPEAKERbut they're Asus, it's an Asus cooler

04:37SPEAKERand they do different hardware IDs

04:40SPEAKERfor like the different SKUs.

04:41SPEAKERSo like there's one that's like one color

04:43SPEAKERand there's one that's like robot themed

04:44SPEAKERand one that's white and one that's a 240

04:46SPEAKERand one that's a 360

04:47SPEAKERand they all are different hardware IDs

04:49SPEAKERso that their software can identify them

04:52SPEAKERand know what stuff to put on the screen.

04:55SPEAKERSo I was like, I would like for mine

04:57SPEAKERto be supported by this.

04:59SPEAKERAnd I looked at how to add that support

05:00SPEAKERand I download, I cloned the repo onto my machine

05:04SPEAKERand I made the necessary changes in the Python files.

05:08SPEAKERAnd I restarted the service and it worked.

05:13SPEAKERAnd I was like-

05:14SPEAKER- Who wrote or maintains the driver just out of curiosity?

05:16SPEAKER- So the first one- - Not Asus, right?

05:18SPEAKER- No, this is not Asus.

05:18SPEAKERThis is a project called liquid control, liquid CTRL or CTL.

05:22SPEAKER- The same project is also doing the drivers.

05:25SPEAKER- Yeah, so it's the same project on Windows and Linux.

05:28SPEAKERAnd like fan control actually has a liquid control plugin

05:31SPEAKERon the Windows side that you can control

05:34SPEAKERlike a whole buttload of supported AIOs with.

05:39SPEAKERAnd the reason you do this is so you can get specifically

05:42SPEAKERthe temperature of the coolant inside the loop

05:44SPEAKERrather than basing it your fan speed on like the CPU usage

05:49SPEAKERor CPU temperature, because the CPU temperature

05:52SPEAKERgoes up and down, but the liquid temperature

05:53SPEAKERmoves really slowly.

05:54SPEAKERAnd in an AIO loop, you wanna base your fan curves

05:57SPEAKERon the temperature of the liquid,

05:59SPEAKERnot necessarily the moment to moment spikes

06:01SPEAKERin the CPU temperature.

06:04SPEAKERSo I looked up and the nice thing about Linux in this

06:07SPEAKERis that if you have the AIO hooked up to a Linux machine,

06:10SPEAKERit's really easy to get those USB IDs

06:13SPEAKERfor all the relevant pieces of hardware,

06:15SPEAKERwhich is kind of tricky on the Windows side actually,

06:18SPEAKER'cause you have to pull a handful of things

06:20SPEAKERand basically integrate them in this Python file

06:24SPEAKERand update some documentation.

06:26SPEAKERAnd I got it working on my machine

06:29SPEAKERand then I updated liquid control a couple of days later

06:31SPEAKERby accident and it stopped working.

06:32SPEAKERI was like, oh crap, okay.

06:34SPEAKERSo I did the work again and I was like,

06:36SPEAKERI'm gonna submit this.

06:38SPEAKERAnd I was like, can I just like copy and paste the file

06:40SPEAKERinto GitHub?

06:40SPEAKERNo, you can't do that.

06:42SPEAKERYou first make a fork of the project,

06:44SPEAKERthen you make your changes in your version of the project,

06:47SPEAKERcommit them to your version of the project.

06:49SPEAKERAnd then you go back to the original project

06:52SPEAKERand you hit the button that says new pull request.

06:54SPEAKERAnd you say, I wanna do my version of this project

06:58SPEAKERagainst their version of this project.

06:59SPEAKERThere's five changes or eight changes or whatever.

07:02SPEAKERAnd most projects have like a little thing that you fill out

07:05SPEAKERthat says, yeah, I tested this and here's what I did,

07:08SPEAKERblah, blah, blah, blah, blah.

07:10SPEAKERI did all the things that you want me to do before

07:12SPEAKERyou submit a pull request.

07:13SPEAKERAnd then I hit the button that said,

07:14SPEAKERthen like two days later, it was in the software

07:17SPEAKERand you can download it from the repo.

07:20SPEAKER- You got merged.

07:21SPEAKER- Yeah, and then I did the same thing again

07:22SPEAKERthe next week for hwmon.

07:24SPEAKER- That's cool.

07:24SPEAKERThat's cool.

07:25SPEAKERThat's roughly what I understood the process to be

07:28SPEAKERbefore I gave up or rather instead of giving up on it,

07:31SPEAKERlike I said, somebody else did it first.

07:32SPEAKER- Yeah.

07:33SPEAKER- It was about the point where I realized

07:34SPEAKERI was going to have to fork and clone the repo,

07:37SPEAKERdo it on my end and then kind of effectively

07:40SPEAKERback port the change into the upstream.

07:43SPEAKERLike, look, I get it.

07:44SPEAKERI know that's the process.

07:45SPEAKERI'm sure it's all second nature

07:47SPEAKERonce you've done it a couple of times,

07:48SPEAKERbut it was definitely a brief moment of like,

07:50SPEAKERthis is a lot of steps.

07:52SPEAKERI'm not sure I have time for this.

07:53SPEAKER- The forking.

07:54SPEAKER- I wish it was a little more direct.

07:55SPEAKERI mean, I know it's like basically one button

07:57SPEAKERto fork a repo.

07:59SPEAKER- Yeah, you can fork stuff left and right.

08:00SPEAKERIt's there, you're forking stuff all over the place.

08:03SPEAKERBut no, that part, it's funny.

08:05SPEAKERThat part I've done before, 'cause I use get pages

08:08SPEAKERto host like static webpages for a couple of projects

08:13SPEAKERthat I've helped people with in the past.

08:15SPEAKERAnd so I was pretty familiar with that stuff.

08:17SPEAKERBut the merging the commits in

08:20SPEAKERand how to do all that was weird,

08:22SPEAKERbecause I had actually forked somebody else's fork

08:25SPEAKERof the project, 'cause they'd done the initial,

08:27SPEAKERfor the hwmon thing, I had forked somebody else's fork

08:31SPEAKERbecause they had done the changes

08:33SPEAKERfor the overall support of the device.

08:35SPEAKERAnd I just needed to add hardware IDs to their support.

08:38SPEAKERSo then I had to figure out how to like change my changes

08:43SPEAKERon their version.

08:44SPEAKERAnd anyway, so then the next step is--

08:46SPEAKER- Git is a whole thing.

08:47SPEAKER- Git is--

08:48SPEAKER- Git is a thing, man.

08:50SPEAKERI use, I just use a bear.

08:52SPEAKERThis is here I am burning of Dolby Diaries topic

08:56SPEAKERif I were to ever show up on there.

08:57SPEAKERAlthough I think you guys maybe have covered

08:58SPEAKERsimilar stuff already, but I use just a plain

09:00SPEAKERbear Git repo to sync my dot files between machines.

09:04SPEAKERAnd I know basically just enough Git to push

09:07SPEAKERand pull those changes and commit files when I change them.

09:10SPEAKERAnytime anything breaks in there,

09:12SPEAKERit's 30 minutes of Googling arcane Git error messages

09:15SPEAKERand running commands I don't really understand.

09:18SPEAKER- Well, so the weird thing about Git is every game studio

09:21SPEAKERI've ever worked at has one person who's actually good

09:23SPEAKERat Git and then a bunch of people who have a post-it note

09:26SPEAKERstuck on their monitor that are like the three commands

09:28SPEAKERthat they use for Git all the time.

09:30SPEAKER- Yeah, that's my experience.

09:31SPEAKER- But then the other weird thing about Git is,

09:33SPEAKERin games at least, most studios are using Perforce,

09:36SPEAKERat least big studios are using Perforce

09:38SPEAKERfor all the binary stuff.

09:39SPEAKERSo the art files and the models and all that

09:41SPEAKERand the game assets and all that stuff.

09:43SPEAKERBut the program, and because Git is kind of notoriously bad

09:47SPEAKERabout binaries, right, it's hard to do.

09:49SPEAKEREven the LFS product, which is specifically

09:52SPEAKERfor syncing binaries is not great at.

09:55SPEAKERPerforce, really good at that.

09:57SPEAKERBut the programmers hate Perforce.

09:58SPEAKERSo Perforce has a translation layer

10:01SPEAKERwhere you can use Git commands on the Perforce repository

10:04SPEAKERfor the engineers who are mostly working in text files.

10:07SPEAKERAnd then the artists are just using the Perforce client

10:09SPEAKERlike sane people from inside their game engine.

10:12SPEAKERAnyway, syncing files is hard it turns out.

10:15SPEAKER- It sure is, just like a lot of things in computers.

10:17SPEAKER(upbeat music)

10:28SPEAKER(upbeat music continues)

10:45SPEAKER- Welcome to "Brad and Will Made a Tech Pod."

10:48SPEAKERI'm Will.

10:49SPEAKER- I'm Brad.

10:49SPEAKER- So the next step on that whole thing

10:50SPEAKERis I got to figure out DKMS.

10:52SPEAKER- Oh boy, I can kind of help, kind of.

10:55SPEAKERLike I've done some DKMS-ing.

10:58SPEAKER- Well, you're on, you're still on Kashi, right?

11:00SPEAKER- I'm on Arch, yeah, it's basically Arch.

11:01SPEAKER- I think there's two ways to automate kernel module

11:05SPEAKERbuilding DKMS, which I know Debian uses

11:07SPEAKERand I think Arch also does.

11:08SPEAKER- Arch is DKMS, yeah.

11:09SPEAKER- And then there's AK mods,

11:11SPEAKERwhich is more in the Red Hat land.

11:13SPEAKERRed Hat and Fedora use that instead.

11:14SPEAKER- Yeah, I don't know anything about that.

11:15SPEAKER- Although I think you can install DKMS

11:17SPEAKERon Fedora instead if you want.

11:18SPEAKERBut yeah, like I've got,

11:21SPEAKERI've done a little bit of DKMS-ing to sign ZFS modules

11:25SPEAKERwith my secure boot keys when they get built.

11:27SPEAKER- I'm just afraid I'm going to DKMS some stuff up,

11:30SPEAKERso I got to be careful.

11:31SPEAKER- I get it, I get it.

11:33SPEAKER- Speaking of messing things up, it's Newsweek.

11:36SPEAKER- Whoa, wait, who's messing what up?

11:38SPEAKER- I don't think we've messed anything up.

11:40SPEAKERI was just, it was just a bad segue.

11:41SPEAKER- That was not a nice segue.

11:43SPEAKER- Sorry, I'm sorry, I'm off.

11:45SPEAKERI've been at GDC a lot this week

11:47SPEAKERand the Game Developer Conference

11:50SPEAKERwith the new reduced your baboon access.

11:53SPEAKER- Oh, is that the whole gardens thing that I've seen?

11:55SPEAKER- Yeah, people are upset, it sucks, it's bad.

11:57SPEAKER- What is it they're upset about, I'm not clear?

11:59SPEAKER- So the controversy this year,

12:02SPEAKERthe mess up is that traditionally, Muscone,

12:05SPEAKERabove Muscone North, there's a big giant park

12:09SPEAKERcalled Yerba Buena Gardens.

12:11SPEAKERIt's been there for a really long time.

12:12SPEAKERIt's between the Metreon and the Yerba Buena Arts Center.

12:15SPEAKERAnd it's where people go to hang out during GDC.

12:19SPEAKERSo if you don't have a ticket,

12:21SPEAKERyou can go and you just need to have some meetings

12:23SPEAKERwith people, you go there and you hang out and have a meeting

12:26SPEAKERif you're in between running around to different hotels

12:28SPEAKERwhere there are meetings constantly, stuff like that.

12:31SPEAKERIt's nice to touch grass, as the kids say.

12:35SPEAKERAnd this year, the Yerba Buena Conservancy

12:39SPEAKERstarted letting people who were having events in that area

12:42SPEAKERfence the whole park off

12:44SPEAKERso that it's no longer accessible to the public

12:47SPEAKERand is only accessible to badge holders.

12:49SPEAKERI think the GDC concession was that it was open

12:54SPEAKERto the public from 11 'til two in the morning,

12:58SPEAKERwhich is, considering that normally you'd walk around there

13:01SPEAKERduring GDC and there'd be 1,500 people

13:03SPEAKERsitting around in the grass and all around hanging out

13:06SPEAKERand chatting with friends and having a nice time,

13:08SPEAKERit stinks, it's a bad choice.

13:10SPEAKERHopefully they'll change it for next year.

13:12SPEAKER- Is that a public park or is it owned by the city?

13:16SPEAKER- No, it's owned by the Yerba Buena Arts Conservancy

13:18SPEAKERor gardens or whatever project, I believe.

13:21SPEAKERBut anyway, so GDC is fine.

13:24SPEAKERWe got some news though.

13:25SPEAKERWe got some GDC news, we got some other news.

13:28SPEAKER- What kind of a shocking amount of hardware stuff

13:30SPEAKERhappened in the last week?

13:32SPEAKER- Yeah, in a world where hardware is hard to get.

13:37SPEAKERAlthough a lot of it is kind of future looking.

13:40SPEAKERI mean, well, okay, we can foreshadow here, right?

13:44SPEAKERIntel announced some new core Aero Lake CPUs.

13:48SPEAKERApple launched the cheapest laptop they've ever announced

13:52SPEAKERand it seems like it's pretty good.

13:54SPEAKER- Yeah, and interesting.

13:56SPEAKER- PlayStation announced an update for PSSR.

14:00SPEAKER- Yeah, pretty minor one there,

14:01SPEAKERbut there's stuff to talk about.

14:02SPEAKER- Nvidia is rolling out the G-Force, the DLSS 4.5 stuff

14:06SPEAKERthat they kind of teased earlier this year

14:07SPEAKERfor G-Force 5 series cards, I guess.

14:09SPEAKER- Is that coming out now?

14:11SPEAKER- I think it's the end of the month soon.

14:12SPEAKER- Okay, interesting, all right.

14:15SPEAKER- And then details have emerged

14:17SPEAKERon Microsoft's plans for the Xbox.

14:19SPEAKERI think that's the big one.

14:20SPEAKERYou wanna start there?

14:21SPEAKER- Seems like the big, well, it is the big one

14:23SPEAKERin terms of the scope of the news

14:25SPEAKERand how much detail there are,

14:26SPEAKERor kind of how important and fresh and bleeding edge

14:30SPEAKERthe information is.

14:31SPEAKEROn the other hand, it's also vague

14:33SPEAKERthat I feel like we have to read between a lot of lines

14:35SPEAKERand speculate about what they're getting at in some cases.

14:38SPEAKER- Just to put an overview on this,

14:40SPEAKERthis seems like the kind of thing

14:42SPEAKERthey wouldn't be talking about

14:43SPEAKERif they were still selling a lot of hardware.

14:44SPEAKER- Oh yeah, oh yeah.

14:46SPEAKERThe current Xbox hardware business

14:48SPEAKERis basically moribund, as I understand it.

14:50SPEAKER- I kind of wonder how

14:51SPEAKERthe current console hardware business is.

14:54SPEAKERI mean, obviously Nintendo's sold some units

14:57SPEAKER'cause they managed to sell

14:58SPEAKERmore than two million copies of "Poketopia."

15:01SPEAKERBut yeah, I can't imagine that PlayStation Pros

15:07SPEAKERare flying off the shelves right now either.

15:09SPEAKER- Yeah, I don't know, I don't know.

15:11SPEAKER- Yeah, and even the base PS5,

15:12SPEAKERthe price is up from what it was at launch.

15:15SPEAKER- Yeah. - So yeah.

15:17SPEAKERAnyway, yeah, all these other stories are iterative.

15:19SPEAKERThey're all interesting in one way or another,

15:20SPEAKERbut they're all kind of building on existing stuff.

15:23SPEAKERProject Helix is the next Xbox and that's all new.

15:26SPEAKERThat's a whole new box that's coming, dot, dot, dot,

15:30SPEAKERnext year or the year after or the year after that.

15:32SPEAKER- Well, they-

15:33SPEAKER- So that is the place to start for sure.

15:35SPEAKER- There's some timing.

15:36SPEAKERSo what's the top line, Brad?

15:38SPEAKER- It's called Project, okay, sorry,

15:40SPEAKERit's not called Project Helix,

15:41SPEAKERbut that's the official code name.

15:42SPEAKERThey came out and put a label on it.

15:45SPEAKERIt is the next Xbox.

15:46SPEAKER- They're bringing AI to video games.

15:50SPEAKER- But it's also a PC?

15:52SPEAKER- Well, I thought everything's an Xbox.

15:54SPEAKERSo your PC is an Xbox, your microphone's an Xbox,

15:56SPEAKERyour game frame's an Xbox, your Sin City poster.

16:00SPEAKERThose are all Xboxes, right?

16:02SPEAKER- Anything can be an Xbox if you want it bad enough.

16:04SPEAKER- Who did this talk?

16:06SPEAKER- I believe it was Jason Ronald.

16:07SPEAKER- Okay.

16:08SPEAKER- He's the byline on, they ran a new story on Xbox Wire

16:12SPEAKERthat says it is, in fact, it says this is a summary

16:14SPEAKERof the keynote address and it's bylined.

16:17SPEAKERByline Jason, I've heard, I've talked to Jason Ronald before

16:20SPEAKERand heard him speak.

16:21SPEAKERLike he, he extremely knows his stuff.

16:23SPEAKER- Okay.

16:24SPEAKER- At the platform and hardware level.

16:25SPEAKERBut I mean, Asha Sharma, who's the new head of Xbox

16:29SPEAKERas of what, three weeks ago or whenever it was, time-

16:33SPEAKER- I don't think it was that long ago.

16:34SPEAKERI think it was last week or the week before.

16:35SPEAKER- Maybe it was two weeks ago.

16:37SPEAKERTime makes no sense now, but she had tweeted

16:39SPEAKERsome of the top line stuff of this last week,

16:42SPEAKERI believe it was.

16:43SPEAKERSo some of this was floating around out there.

16:45SPEAKERProject Helix is designed to play your Xbox console

16:47SPEAKERand PC games.

16:48SPEAKERLike that's the log line here.

16:52SPEAKERLike they are confirming the thing they have said

16:54SPEAKERin the past, or I'm sorry, not the thing they've said,

16:56SPEAKERbut in the past thing that's been rumored in the past,

16:58SPEAKERwhich is that this will play both Xbox and PC games.

17:02SPEAKERI feel like there are so many different ways

17:03SPEAKERto interpret that that we have to like unpack what this means

17:07SPEAKERexactly.

17:07SPEAKER- Is there gonna be an Epic game store and a Steam

17:10SPEAKERon your Xbox next, or on your Helix?

17:13SPEAKER- So Epic did come out two, three weeks ago and say,

17:15SPEAKERyes, we are talking to Microsoft and we want to be

17:17SPEAKERon the next Xbox day one with the Epic game store.

17:21SPEAKER- Well, they want that because they don't wanna give

17:22SPEAKERMicrosoft a cut of the Fortnite revenue, right?

17:26SPEAKER- Sure, I guess not.

17:28SPEAKER- I mean, 'cause that's the whole thing.

17:29SPEAKER- That leads to like one of my first questions

17:31SPEAKERabout this thing though is, or actually they're all

17:34SPEAKERthe same question just approached from multiple angles.

17:37SPEAKER- Yeah.

17:38SPEAKER- Okay, is this thing just going to run vanilla windows

17:41SPEAKERwhere you can drop to a desktop?

17:43SPEAKERIs it gonna have all the runtime support that you would need

17:45SPEAKERto run like any piece of windows software you want?

17:49SPEAKEROr is this going to be runs your PC games asterisk

17:52SPEAKERwhere they're having these platform holders build

17:55SPEAKERlike custom versions of the storefront apps for this Xbox?

17:59SPEAKERGames are maybe gonna have to get like Helix verified

18:01SPEAKERor whatever, you know, PC games.

18:03SPEAKER- Yeah.

18:04SPEAKER- Won't necessarily like your 15 year old indie game

18:06SPEAKERthat hasn't seen a patch in 12 years.

18:09SPEAKERIs that gonna run straight out of your Steam library

18:12SPEAKERor is there gonna be more of a certification requirement

18:16SPEAKERor like some amount of like translation or compatibility

18:19SPEAKERthat needs to be in place for games to work?

18:20SPEAKERIs it gonna be a subset of your games?

18:22SPEAKERYou can see what I'm getting at.

18:22SPEAKER- Or are they gonna do like some sort of weird

18:24SPEAKERtranslation layer where they look at your Steam library

18:26SPEAKERand are like, oh, he owns a copy of Fez there

18:28SPEAKERso we'll just give him the Xbox version of Fez

18:30SPEAKERto play here when he wants to play.

18:31SPEAKER- Yeah.

18:32SPEAKER- I can't imagine that seems less likely on the pale.

18:35SPEAKER- Yeah, that seems less likely.

18:37SPEAKERLike really it's like there's a continuum

18:39SPEAKERbetween what is a traditional PC, which is modular

18:42SPEAKERwhere you can replace components in it

18:43SPEAKERand you can run windows or Linux or anything else on there.

18:47SPEAKERYou can try to game on FreeBSD if you're an insane person.

18:50SPEAKERAnd then a console, which is totally integrated,

18:54SPEAKERa single board design, locked down operating system

18:56SPEAKERcan only run what they sanctify, right?

18:59SPEAKERSo where on that continuum is this box going to land

19:02SPEAKERis my burning question about what this thing's gonna be.

19:05SPEAKER- Well, they don't really talk about that at all.

19:07SPEAKER- Not really.

19:08SPEAKERI mean, they get into some hardware details here.

19:10SPEAKERSo like they've said in the past,

19:12SPEAKERlike AMD had already confirmed this as well.

19:15SPEAKERAnd this will be the third Xbox in a row to use an AMD SOC.

19:19SPEAKERSo when they say we're doing a next gen AMD SOC,

19:22SPEAKERyou're like, duh.

19:23SPEAKER- Yeah.

19:24SPEAKER- But they do drop the word FSR next in here,

19:29SPEAKERwhich is I think the first time I've heard that term,

19:31SPEAKERlike FSR four is the current one on PC, right?

19:34SPEAKER- Yeah, that's correct.

19:36SPEAKERAnd that's only on RDNA four and newer.

19:38SPEAKERIt's not on RDNA three stuff, which means the old Xbox,

19:41SPEAKERthe Steam Deck, all that is not.

19:44SPEAKER- I'm not up on the AMD roadmap enough

19:46SPEAKERto know exactly what is likely to be on this SOC

19:49SPEAKERin terms of RDNA or is UDNA still a thing

19:52SPEAKERor did they push back or abandon that?

19:55SPEAKER- Maybe UDNA was never a thing, Brad, it's unclear.

19:58SPEAKERUDNA seems like somebody was talking about something

20:00SPEAKERand then maybe they shouldn't have.

20:03SPEAKER- Maybe the rubber met the road and they're like,

20:04SPEAKERoh, we're gonna stick with the paradigm that we have.

20:06SPEAKER- Well, and for folks who don't know,

20:07SPEAKERRDNA is the consumer graphics architecture.

20:11SPEAKERCDNA is like the data center graphics architecture.

20:15SPEAKER- Right.

20:16SPEAKER- They use different microcode

20:17SPEAKERso that if you wanna run programs on,

20:19SPEAKERif you wanna run like a GPU compute thing

20:22SPEAKERon the data center, you compile it differently

20:24SPEAKERthan you would if you were running on consumer graphics.

20:26SPEAKERAnd it's like, honestly, it's been a problem for AMD

20:30SPEAKERwhen you look at things like Strix Halo

20:32SPEAKERbecause they had opportunities to do that,

20:35SPEAKERlike they're missing out on the opportunity that Nvidia has

20:38SPEAKERbecause all of the Nvidia stuff just runs on CUDA, right?

20:42SPEAKER- Right, so RDNA four on the PC is,

20:44SPEAKERI think we've talked about this before,

20:46SPEAKERbut that's the architecture where AMD more or less

20:49SPEAKERstarted catching up with baseline parity with Nvidia

20:52SPEAKERin terms of ray tracing and machine learning

20:54SPEAKERand that sort of thing, right?

20:54SPEAKER- Yeah, so on previous versions of AMD architectures,

20:59SPEAKERyou basically stole general purpose compute shader time

21:03SPEAKERto do ray tracing math and GPU compute math.

21:07SPEAKERThe RDNA four stuff has tensor core equivalence

21:10SPEAKERand ray tracing acceleration in hardware.

21:13SPEAKER- So I wonder if this AMD chip and this next Xbox

21:16SPEAKERis going to be RDNA four or 4.5?

21:18SPEAKER- I would assume it's a super set.

21:20SPEAKER- Yeah, because I want to say the PS5 Pro

21:24SPEAKERwas like a subset of RDNA four.

21:26SPEAKERI think it was like some of the features,

21:28SPEAKERbut not all, if I'm not mistaken.

21:30SPEAKER- Yeah, they have the dedicated ray tracing acceleration

21:33SPEAKERand some tensor cores,

21:35SPEAKERbut I believe it's not as fully featured

21:36SPEAKERas even like the current gen GPUs.

21:38SPEAKER- Yeah, I mean, I think we can assume PS6 and Helix

21:41SPEAKERare both gonna be substantially beyond the PS5 Pro.

21:44SPEAKER- Yeah, given the timing here,

21:46SPEAKERso they talk about shipping alpha versions of hardware

21:50SPEAKERbeginning in 2027, which to me says it's gonna be RDNA,

21:57SPEAKERI would be surprised if that means

21:58SPEAKERthat the shipping hardware is RDNA four.

22:00SPEAKERI would assume it's the next generation beyond that.

22:03SPEAKER- I think I would agree.

22:04SPEAKERAlthough like consoles generally have lagged a little bit,

22:08SPEAKERlike the, I think the current consoles

22:09SPEAKERare sort of RDNA two-ish.

22:12SPEAKER- They're 2.5, right?

22:14SPEAKER- I think the Series X is a little more powerful,

22:16SPEAKERmight have some newer features.

22:18SPEAKERI think that's right.

22:19SPEAKERThis is five-year-old information now.

22:22SPEAKER- No, I think you're right,

22:23SPEAKER'cause it's the Steam Deck is two as well.

22:26SPEAKERAnd the whole point was,

22:27SPEAKERhey, we wanna be able to run console games

22:28SPEAKERat the resolution that's shipped.

22:33SPEAKERSo yeah, I mean, to me,

22:35SPEAKERif they're shipping alpha hardware next year,

22:37SPEAKERthen that means we're not gonna see anything

22:39SPEAKERuntil 2028 probably.

22:40SPEAKER- Maybe, it depends on when.

22:41SPEAKERLike if they're early next year,

22:42SPEAKERI think they still could hit an end of next year launch

22:45SPEAKERbecause there's definitely precedent for final dev kits

22:47SPEAKERgoing out within like six, eight months

22:50SPEAKERof the console launch.

22:50SPEAKERIn fact, in my experience, that's how it usually works.

22:54SPEAKER- Oh, that's true.

22:55SPEAKER- This is going way back,

22:56SPEAKERbut I can tell you even going back to like the 360 launch,

22:58SPEAKERI remember going to Sega to preview "Full Auto,"

23:02SPEAKERwhich was the first 360 game any of us had seen running

23:05SPEAKERand played in person.

23:06SPEAKERAnd that was still, that was the year of launch,

23:08SPEAKERthat was still running on one of the giant fuck off huge-

23:10SPEAKER- The G5s?

23:11SPEAKER- Like giant, yeah, giant full-size computer dev kits

23:14SPEAKERbecause they didn't have final 360 dev hardware

23:16SPEAKERto run it on yet.

23:17SPEAKERSo like-

23:18SPEAKER- Wait, was there something before it was in the dual G5s?

23:21SPEAKER- I don't remember.

23:23SPEAKER'Cause it might've been under a blanket.

23:24SPEAKERIt might've been under a sheet, to be honest.

23:26SPEAKERThey might not have actually let us see

23:28SPEAKERthe entire box uncovered.

23:30SPEAKER- The earliest Xbox 360 dev kit I saw

23:33SPEAKERwas a dual Power Mac G5.

23:37SPEAKERAnd that's because it was a risk processor.

23:39SPEAKERThey needed risk processors.

23:41SPEAKER- Yeah, so anyway, long story short,

23:43SPEAKERI think the original roadmap

23:45SPEAKERbefore this insane supply crisis hits

23:48SPEAKERwas saying late '27 for both new consoles.

23:51SPEAKER- Yeah.

23:52SPEAKER- Well, we'll see.

23:53SPEAKERI mean, I think it is possible

23:54SPEAKERthat hardware could go out next year

23:56SPEAKERand still see the console launch by the end of the year.

23:58SPEAKERBut it seems- - Yeah, that's true.

24:00SPEAKER- But again, this is like,

24:03SPEAKERthis is heavy on like kind of massaged marketing speech

24:06SPEAKERand light on actual numbers.

24:07SPEAKERThey do say order of magnitude in ray tracing increase

24:10SPEAKERor increase in ray tracing performance.

24:12SPEAKER- That's easy given how unusable the ray tracing is

24:16SPEAKERin current gen consoles.

24:17SPEAKER- Yeah, it's like almost non-existent.

24:19SPEAKERSo that's, although it's like decent

24:20SPEAKERin the PS5 Pro, actually, like-

24:22SPEAKER- Yeah, but I don't think it has actual-

24:24SPEAKER- No, not really.

24:25SPEAKERI'm just saying that's a more recent example

24:28SPEAKERin consoles of actual functional ray tracing.

24:30SPEAKERBut I mean, you're not wrong.

24:33SPEAKERThat's a low bar,

24:34SPEAKERbut that still does seem somewhat substantial.

24:36SPEAKER- Well, I mean, so the current,

24:38SPEAKERthe ray tracing in current hardware

24:40SPEAKERis good at the base level.

24:42SPEAKERWe're not seeing full path tracing in anything

24:44SPEAKERon an original Series X or original PS5.

24:46SPEAKER- No, no, not even on the Pro.

24:47SPEAKERLike I'm playing "Resident Evil Requiem"

24:49SPEAKERon a PS5 Pro right now,

24:50SPEAKERand it's got decent ray tracing,

24:51SPEAKERbut it's nowhere near path tracing or full.

24:54SPEAKER- Yeah, the digital foundry thing said that the PS5 Pro

24:56SPEAKERwas somewhere between the ray tracing high

24:59SPEAKERand ray tracing, the default ray tracing on the PC version.

25:04SPEAKER- Yeah, I think it looks very good to be clear,

25:06SPEAKERbut I'm sure, I would like to see the PC version

25:09SPEAKERpath traced at some point.

25:10SPEAKER- Oh, I can make that happen for you.

25:12SPEAKER- All right.

25:14SPEAKER- I can't, I just can't play the game

25:15SPEAKER'cause it's too scary for me.

25:17SPEAKERI'm a giant coward, it turns out.

25:18SPEAKER- It's, you know, it's up there.

25:21SPEAKER- I don't like scary games, Brad.

25:22SPEAKERAnyway.

25:24SPEAKER- A couple of other quotes here.

25:26SPEAKER- Yeah.

25:26SPEAKER- They say that the SOC quote integrates intelligence

25:29SPEAKERdirectly into the graphics and compute pipeline.

25:32SPEAKERI think we can probably-

25:33SPEAKER- Thank God.

25:34SPEAKER- Tease out pretty clearly what they mean by that.

25:37SPEAKER- I think they mean, do you think they mean

25:39SPEAKERnatural intelligence or some sort

25:40SPEAKERof artificial intelligence?

25:41SPEAKER- Yeah, no, I think probably like if,

25:43SPEAKERlike what if a computer were to be able to learn

25:46SPEAKERto do things in an iterative fashion?

25:48SPEAKER- Like turn one pixel into four?

25:50SPEAKER- Something like that.

25:51SPEAKER- Yeah, what if it could turn one frame into two

25:54SPEAKERor possibly three even?

25:56SPEAKER- Yeah, I assume this means this will be heavily reliant

25:59SPEAKERon both upscaling and frame generation.

26:01SPEAKER- I think anytime you're talking about heavy duty

26:03SPEAKERray tracing, you're gonna assume that.

26:05SPEAKER- Although it's probably beyond the scope of this episode,

26:08SPEAKERbut there's some direct X news that has come out of GDC.

26:12SPEAKER- Oh, I miss that.

26:13SPEAKER- About like linear algebra support

26:15SPEAKERand shader programs effectively.

26:17SPEAKERLike I'm way out over my skis on this stuff,

26:19SPEAKERbut like it kind of sounded to me like what the news

26:22SPEAKERaround the 50 cards was when those were announced.

26:24SPEAKERRemember all the direct integration of machine learning

26:27SPEAKERwith like shader programs and stuff that they talked about

26:30SPEAKERwith the 50 cards?

26:30SPEAKER- Yeah.

26:31SPEAKER- Like kind of like AI driven texture compression

26:34SPEAKERand stuff like that.

26:35SPEAKERI don't know if this is the same type of deal or not.

26:37SPEAKERIt would make sense.

26:38SPEAKERThe AMD is following in that direction.

26:41SPEAKERI'm not sure.

26:42SPEAKER- Did this come out of the evolving direct X

26:43SPEAKERfor the machine learning era on windows?

26:46SPEAKERYeah.

26:47SPEAKER- Yeah, I believe we're talking about the same thing here.

26:49SPEAKERThis is on the windows developer blog,

26:50SPEAKERevolving direct X for the ML era.

26:53SPEAKERLike the others they're talking about, you know,

26:55SPEAKERstarting with linear algebra support in HLSL,

26:57SPEAKERwhich I think is what high level shader language.

27:00SPEAKER- Yes, that is exactly it.

27:02SPEAKER- Is what that stands for.

27:02SPEAKERUnified shader language across all processors.

27:05SPEAKER- Right, as opposed to like some vendor specific stuff,

27:08SPEAKERbut like that, you know,

27:09SPEAKERto unlock hardware accelerated NL operations

27:11SPEAKERdirectly in shaders,

27:12SPEAKERsounds like a lot like the stuff in video

27:14SPEAKERwas talking about last year with the 50 launch.

27:17SPEAKER- Yeah, this is wild stuff.

27:18SPEAKERI got to read more about this before I want to talk about it,

27:20SPEAKERbut.

27:21SPEAKER- Yeah, we're probably way out over our skis on this stuff.

27:23SPEAKERThe point I'm making though,

27:24SPEAKERis when they drop the vague marketing language

27:27SPEAKERin the Xbox wire post about,

27:31SPEAKERhow did they phrase it exactly intelligence,

27:33SPEAKERintegrates intelligence directly into the graphics

27:35SPEAKERand compute pipeline.

27:36SPEAKERLike that probably does mean more than just frame gen

27:39SPEAKERand upscaling like that's,

27:40SPEAKERit's probably much more granular programmatic stuff.

27:44SPEAKERLike what we're talking about with this direct X thing.

27:46SPEAKER- I mean, I think that there's frame gen upscaling.

27:48SPEAKERI think Ray reconstruction is important and denoising

27:51SPEAKERare all places that you'll see machine learning applied

27:54SPEAKERthat to me feel inoffensive.

27:57SPEAKERHonestly, the thing I'm most excited about in this whole,

28:00SPEAKERin this whole Microsoft,

28:02SPEAKERhey, here's what we're talking about at GDC

28:03SPEAKERis advanced shader delivery on windows,

28:06SPEAKERbecause like we've seen that on steam,

28:09SPEAKERdoes that for the steam deck where you,

28:11SPEAKERwhere when you play a steam deck, a game on the steam deck,

28:13SPEAKERthey just dull the shader, the compiled,

28:16SPEAKERalready compiled shaders for whatever game you're playing

28:18SPEAKERout into the appropriate place.

28:20SPEAKERAnd it's awesome.

28:21SPEAKERIntel GPUs do that now too,

28:23SPEAKERfor games that they pre-compile shaders on.

28:25SPEAKERSo like if you have an arc GPU and you want to play a game,

28:28SPEAKERyou don't have to sit through the shader compilation step

28:30SPEAKERanymore if you have the right software installed.

28:32SPEAKER- I've kind of wondered for a long time,

28:34SPEAKERwhy this isn't done more broadly.

28:36SPEAKERI mean, okay.

28:37SPEAKERWhat are the variables in shader compilation?

28:38SPEAKERThe game you're running,

28:39SPEAKERthe graphics API slash driver version and the GPU type.

28:42SPEAKERAre there any others that?

28:45SPEAKER- I think that's, well,

28:45SPEAKERit's which version of the GPU you have to.

28:48SPEAKER- Oh, in terms of like transparent revisions

28:51SPEAKERof the same GPU?

28:53SPEAKER- Yeah, or no, like the it's different GPU dies

28:57SPEAKERfor like a 50, 70.

28:58SPEAKER- Oh, you mean up and down the stack.

29:00SPEAKER- Up and down the stack, yeah.

29:00SPEAKER- Yeah, that's what I mean.

29:01SPEAKER- Mobile to, yeah.

29:03SPEAKER- That's what I mean, which,

29:04SPEAKERI mean literally which specific GPU,

29:06SPEAKERbut it's just those three things, right?

29:07SPEAKER- I believe so, yeah.

29:08SPEAKER- So that makes me, I've always wondered-

29:10SPEAKER- Oh, and version of DirectX,

29:11SPEAKERbut that doesn't change very often.

29:13SPEAKER- Like I've always wondered like,

29:14SPEAKERwhat is the actual compatibility matrix?

29:16SPEAKERLike there's probably a few dozen GPUs per company

29:21SPEAKERthat are supported at any given time,

29:22SPEAKERor is it more than that?

29:23SPEAKER- But there's a lot of drivers and there's a lot-

29:25SPEAKER- There's probably a ton of-

29:26SPEAKER- There's way more than a few dozen GPUs.

29:27SPEAKERLike Nvidia, if you think about across mobile

29:29SPEAKERand desktop and 5770 and the 5070/70 Ti

29:33SPEAKERand the 5080 Super, and like there's,

29:38SPEAKERI don't know, probably 90 or 100 GPUs across.

29:41SPEAKER- I guess I bet when you start factoring mobile,

29:43SPEAKERlike laptop tier GPUs, then that number actually

29:46SPEAKERgoes up pretty fast.

29:47SPEAKERSo maybe it's-

29:48SPEAKER- And driver revisions.

29:49SPEAKER- Yeah, sure.

29:50SPEAKEREspecially 'cause I bet there are driver revs

29:52SPEAKERthat don't make it out to the public

29:53SPEAKERthat they'd still have to worry about

29:54SPEAKERthat are probably getting distributed by like Dell

29:57SPEAKERor something like that.

29:58SPEAKERSo like, okay, fair.

30:00SPEAKERAt some point managing builds for every single set

30:03SPEAKERof shaders across all those combinations

30:05SPEAKERprobably is prohibitive.

30:06SPEAKER- When Intel told us about this,

30:08SPEAKERthe first thought I had was,

30:10SPEAKERoh yeah, this is something you can do

30:11SPEAKER'cause you only have four GPUs.

30:13SPEAKER- Right.

30:14SPEAKER- And then mobile.

30:15SPEAKER- It totally makes sense for these integrated

30:16SPEAKERlike Xbox handhelds and what Helix is gonna be,

30:19SPEAKERassuming it's PC enough that,

30:21SPEAKER'cause you know, consoles have the same requirements,

30:23SPEAKERit's just that they're a single target.

30:25SPEAKERSo like that's just the shaders

30:27SPEAKERare just packaged in with the game and nobody notices.

30:29SPEAKER- Well, it was easy for Steam Deck

30:30SPEAKER'cause similar situation, right?

30:31SPEAKERIt's like they just re-spin the shader compilation

30:35SPEAKERevery time the driver updates.

30:37SPEAKER- Yeah.

30:37SPEAKER- So doing it on Windows is exciting

30:39SPEAKERand I can't wait to hear more.

30:41SPEAKER- Yeah, so, but again, I wonder if that extends

30:43SPEAKERbeyond these kind of integrated Xbox slash PC devices

30:46SPEAKERto like actual computers, desktop PCs, I don't know.

30:51SPEAKER- This says that they're doing it on Windows

30:54SPEAKERthrough the Xbox app

30:55SPEAKERand that a developer can package them for submission

30:59SPEAKERthrough the Xbox app and delivery across, so.

31:02SPEAKER- Interesting.

31:03SPEAKER- Yeah, that's cool, that's fabulous.

31:05SPEAKERI'm excited about it.

31:06SPEAKER- I hesitate to even bring this up

31:07SPEAKER'cause I barely know what I'm talking about here,

31:09SPEAKERbut there was a reset error thread

31:11SPEAKERon another GDC talk or announcement,

31:13SPEAKERlike as we were setting up to record

31:15SPEAKERlike 10 minutes before we started

31:17SPEAKERabout some new Nvidia Microsoft initiative

31:19SPEAKERthey've launched just now,

31:20SPEAKERwhich is also aimed at eliminating shader stutter,

31:24SPEAKERbut it seems to be

31:26SPEAKERsome kind of insane compile time optimization.

31:28SPEAKERIt's not about distributing pre-computed shaders ready to go,

31:34SPEAKERlike looking at the slides that they had there,

31:37SPEAKERlike it seems to be some kind of like crazy optimization

31:40SPEAKERfor the current paradigm, which is building the shaders

31:43SPEAKERas they are required in the game at runtime, right?

31:46SPEAKERExcept not in a way that hitches your performance.

31:49SPEAKERLike, I don't know what kind of crazy stuff

31:50SPEAKERis going on with that.

31:51SPEAKER- But yeah, if you don't know about this,

31:53SPEAKERDigital Foundry has done a whole bunch of good work on this

31:56SPEAKERin a bunch of games over the last couple of years,

31:58SPEAKERand the thing that they've found in

32:00SPEAKERis that even in games where you pre-compile shaders

32:02SPEAKERwhen you launch, there's a lot of games

32:05SPEAKERthat either miss stuff during that pre-compiling phase

32:08SPEAKERor it comes up later,

32:09SPEAKERand then when the game loop pauses to compile that shader,

32:14SPEAKERit causes hitching, microstutter,

32:18SPEAKERwhich is incredibly apparent to players,

32:20SPEAKERand people are taking it seriously.

32:23SPEAKER- It's funny, 'cause Nvidia has been talking about this

32:24SPEAKERfor about 10 years now.

32:26SPEAKERI remember when they first rolled out G-Sync,

32:28SPEAKERthey were talking about frame pacing

32:29SPEAKERand getting microstutter under control,

32:32SPEAKERand it's just now kind of the rest of the industry

32:36SPEAKERis waking up to it, and I'm excited to see the people.

32:39SPEAKERIt's nice that people care.

32:41SPEAKER- Yeah, that seems like important progress.

32:43SPEAKERAnyway, like that's most of the,

32:45SPEAKERthere's one more detail about, not just about Helix,

32:48SPEAKERbut about where Microsoft and Xbox game compatibility

32:51SPEAKERis going, but before we get to that,

32:52SPEAKERlike I'll just throw the question out again.

32:56SPEAKERWhat is that box?

32:57SPEAKERLike it's still, internally,

32:59SPEAKERit's still gonna look like a console, right?

33:00SPEAKERLike it's still gonna be- - It's gonna look

33:01SPEAKERlike a Steam machine.

33:02SPEAKER- Well, inside though,

33:03SPEAKERit's still gonna be a single board design.

33:05SPEAKERIt's still gonna have solder-on memory

33:07SPEAKERhooked directly to a single SOC, right?

33:09SPEAKERLike there's not gonna be anything.

33:10SPEAKERCan you see anything user-replaceable in that thing?

33:13SPEAKER- The storage.

33:14SPEAKER- You think they will at least let you do that?

33:17SPEAKER- I mean, I think I look at the,

33:20SPEAKERA, the distance, the change in quality of SSDs

33:24SPEAKERfrom the Xbox series launch to now is pretty good.

33:29SPEAKERLike if you look at, like Sony's support

33:31SPEAKERfor third-party SSDs on the PS5 has been,

33:34SPEAKERI think, a pretty unequivocal success, right?

33:37SPEAKERLike there's a handful of skews

33:39SPEAKERthat the message boards tell you not to buy,

33:41SPEAKERbut generally speaking, you plug an SSD in there

33:43SPEAKERand it just kinda works.

33:44SPEAKER- Right.

33:45SPEAKER- I feel like if Microsoft doesn't do that,

33:48SPEAKERif they do the thing that they did with the current gen,

33:50SPEAKERwhich is, do they sell like a module

33:53SPEAKERor something you can add in?

33:54SPEAKERIs that how it works?

33:55SPEAKER- Yeah, it's a proprietary storage card.

33:56SPEAKERThere's a couple of them now.

33:57SPEAKERThe first, the launch one was made by Seagate

33:59SPEAKERand then at some point,

34:00SPEAKERWestern Digital rolled out a cheaper option,

34:01SPEAKERbut they're still proprietary

34:04SPEAKERin terms of physical form factor.

34:05SPEAKERI think under the hood,

34:06SPEAKERthey are using some standard storage bus or something,

34:09SPEAKERbut you do have to buy

34:10SPEAKERthe like branded Xbox storage cards still.

34:13SPEAKER- I would hope that they ditch that

34:15SPEAKERin favor of something that's more off the shelf,

34:17SPEAKERbut maybe they won't, who knows?

34:18SPEAKER- Like, my big question is just like, you know,

34:20SPEAKERyou crack open a console right now.

34:23SPEAKERIt's one motherboard.

34:24SPEAKERThere's one SOC that's got CPU and GPU on it.

34:27SPEAKERLike crucially, there is one shared pool of memory.

34:29SPEAKER- Mm-hmm, that's gonna be the same.

34:32SPEAKER- Right, okay, that's what I'm getting at.

34:33SPEAKER- I mean, that's the way the Steam Deck works.

34:34SPEAKERThat's the way the Steam Machine is gonna be too.

34:37SPEAKER- Yeah, so I guess all of this

34:38SPEAKERis kind of a solved problem already.

34:40SPEAKER- Yeah, they're all Strix halos.

34:41SPEAKERThat's, I mean, and who knows?

34:43SPEAKERThat might be, I joke, but I mean,

34:46SPEAKERStrix halo is RDNA 3.5, which is a weird choice,

34:50SPEAKERI think probably just due to the timing on those products.

34:55SPEAKERBut it wouldn't surprise me if the eventual hardware

34:57SPEAKERis something that looks like a Strix halo

34:59SPEAKERwith a great big pool of memory

35:01SPEAKERthat's shared between GPU and CPU across the single APU.

35:05SPEAKER- That's kind of what I was getting at here,

35:06SPEAKERis like hardware-wise on the inside,

35:08SPEAKERthis is gonna look just like a traditional console.

35:10SPEAKERThe difference is gonna be in the software implementation

35:12SPEAKERand what they let you run on it, right?

35:14SPEAKER- Yeah, for me, I mean, there's a whole spectrum, right?

35:18SPEAKERThere's a whole weird, there's a whole weird spectrum of,

35:24SPEAKERlike you alluded to this in the beginning.

35:25SPEAKERIn the beginning, there was a console and there was a PC

35:27SPEAKERand there was a big gulf in between them.

35:29SPEAKERAnd now we increasingly are seeing PCs

35:32SPEAKERthat are kind of console-y and we see consoles

35:34SPEAKERthat are kind of PC and like, who knows?

35:39SPEAKERLike, are they gonna let you jailbreak this

35:40SPEAKERand put like normal ass windows on it?

35:42SPEAKER- Or Linux, well, this is two questions.

35:45SPEAKERA, can you jailbreak it and put Linux on it?

35:46SPEAKEROr do you even have to jailbreak it to put Linux on it?

35:49SPEAKERB, is it gonna run normal ass windows?

35:51SPEAKERLike, is it gonna have the drop to a Windows desktop option

35:54SPEAKERlike a Steam Deck does for a Linux desktop?

35:57SPEAKERIs it gonna be full Windows under the hood

35:59SPEAKERor is it gonna be a stripped down Windows

36:00SPEAKERthat's like, you know, lacking certain backwards,

36:03SPEAKERlike I mentioned earlier, maybe it doesn't run

36:06SPEAKER35 years of Windows software necessarily, who knows?

36:08SPEAKER- That's probably a good thing, honestly.

36:10SPEAKERI mean, when you pair that with the Xbox mode stuff

36:13SPEAKERthat they did with the ROG Ally X, the Xbox edition one.

36:17SPEAKER- Yeah, which that's coming to Windows desktop next month,

36:20SPEAKERby the way, is one of the other bullet points here.

36:22SPEAKER- Yeah, and for folks who don't know about that,

36:23SPEAKERit was basically, it's basically the Xbox app.

36:26SPEAKERYou can set it to launch and go full screen

36:28SPEAKERand it makes your Windows handheld

36:32SPEAKERa little bit more like a console.

36:33SPEAKER- It's basically Steam big picture,

36:35SPEAKERbut for Windows slash Xbox, right?

36:37SPEAKER- Yeah, and they do turn some stuff off in the background,

36:40SPEAKERso it uses a little less memory

36:42SPEAKERthan like a normal Windows install

36:43SPEAKERwith just the big Xbox app does.

36:46SPEAKERIt was, the reaction to it amongst like Adam Patrick Murray

36:50SPEAKERover at The Full Nerd spent a lot of time with it

36:52SPEAKERand people who've reviewed that kind of stuff,

36:54SPEAKERit was pretty tepid at best.

36:56SPEAKER- Yeah, I remember that.

36:58SPEAKER- It's interesting though,

37:00SPEAKER'cause it does point to a future where Windows is just,

37:04SPEAKERwhere the OS is just a thing that runs the software

37:06SPEAKERand the software is either Windows or Xbox.

37:09SPEAKERAnd that to me is kind of interesting, I don't know.

37:14SPEAKERI don't know that Microsoft is able

37:16SPEAKERto make a good OS anymore.

37:19SPEAKER- Maybe not.

37:20SPEAKER- I don't feel super optimistic about that.

37:22SPEAKER- Yeah, seems possible.

37:25SPEAKER- They also-- - Seems probable,

37:26SPEAKERseems like maybe we're seeing that borne out day by day.

37:29SPEAKER- Yeah, they also talked about cross compatibility

37:33SPEAKERfor applications.

37:34SPEAKER- Yeah, there's, I guess there's going to be a new,

37:36SPEAKERa new version of the GDK that supposed to make it easy

37:40SPEAKERto spin up builds for Windows next Xbox

37:43SPEAKERand current slash previous Xbox, meaning series X and S,

37:46SPEAKERlike kind of, I guess this, I'm coming to realize

37:50SPEAKERas I'm talking to you and hearing about the handhelds

37:51SPEAKERthat are out there and stuff that like some of the

37:54SPEAKERdifferences under the hood,

37:55SPEAKERlike the memory architecture differences in terms of,

37:57SPEAKERyou know, on a PC, you've got system memory

37:59SPEAKERand graphics memory, and those are separate

38:01SPEAKERand communicate over a pretty slow bus

38:03SPEAKERversus the one pool faster memory on.

38:06SPEAKERIt sounds to me like the, at the software,

38:09SPEAKERat the game development level,

38:10SPEAKERthose differences are being abstracted away already

38:12SPEAKERor already have been in a way that like,

38:15SPEAKERmaybe it is much easier to just spit out builds of,

38:19SPEAKERI'm not saying it's one button,

38:20SPEAKERbut maybe it is easier to spit out builds for PC and Xbox.

38:25SPEAKER- I think, I think, so I think there's two things happening.

38:28SPEAKEROne is that the people who work at the bleeding edge

38:30SPEAKERof what's capable with what's possible with graphics

38:34SPEAKERare paying attention to that stuff in a way

38:36SPEAKERthat they always have, right?

38:38SPEAKER- That's my, okay, that was my assumption.

38:40SPEAKEREspecially like your Naughty Dogs or whatever, you know,

38:43SPEAKERlike they're squeezing every bit of performance

38:45SPEAKERout of the platform that they can

38:48SPEAKERbased on those efficiencies that aren't there on a PC,

38:50SPEAKERbut maybe at the, maybe like the smaller team on a Unity

38:53SPEAKERor Unreal 5 project are having to spend less time

38:58SPEAKERthinking about those architectural differences

39:00SPEAKERand the engine just kind of handles it and the SDK.

39:02SPEAKER- Yeah, it's like anything.

39:04SPEAKERIf you have 300 people, if you're Bungie

39:06SPEAKERand you have 300 people working on Marathon, right?

39:08SPEAKERAnd you have a 30 person graphics team,

39:12SPEAKERyou're gonna spend more time,

39:13SPEAKERyour 30 person graphics team is gonna spend

39:15SPEAKERa lot more time thinking about that

39:17SPEAKERthan if you're a 30 person studio

39:19SPEAKERand you have one guy whose job it is to do graphics stuff.

39:21SPEAKER- Right, right, right.

39:22SPEAKERAnd at that point, you're probably,

39:23SPEAKERI assume to a large degree,

39:24SPEAKERjust relying on the tremendous amount of brute force compute

39:27SPEAKERthat exists now compared to in the past.

39:29SPEAKER- Well, and the work that Epic

39:31SPEAKERor whoever provides your engine is doing, right?

39:33SPEAKERLike you're saying, okay, we're going to,

39:38SPEAKERwhat can we do that's gonna make our game stand out?

39:43SPEAKERIf you're a 30 person team, that's where you're at.

39:45SPEAKERJust to be clear, a 30 person team is like,

39:48SPEAKERat this point is a pretty big indie game.

39:49SPEAKERLike it's not quite a triple A game,

39:52SPEAKERit's a big, giant indie game.

39:55SPEAKERSo like you're talking about like a Double Fine

39:57SPEAKERor yes, Double Fine often has 20 to 30 person teams

40:03SPEAKERthese days is a good example, I think.

40:05SPEAKER- Yeah, so yeah, like this is a weird announcement to me

40:08SPEAKER'cause like setting up a bunch of different SDKs

40:11SPEAKERand a bunch of different pipelines through the game

40:14SPEAKERis difficult once, but it's not like an ongoing,

40:17SPEAKERdifficult, expensive cost.

40:20SPEAKERLike you don't, that stuff doesn't get touched.

40:23SPEAKERIt gets touched a lot early

40:24SPEAKERand it gets touched a lot during late optimization,

40:26SPEAKERbut not really kind of in between.

40:28SPEAKERThe things that are time consuming are like,

40:30SPEAKERif you're testing and you want to do testing every day,

40:33SPEAKERhaving to build five versions of the game

40:35SPEAKERfor Xbox Series and Windows and Project Helix

40:41SPEAKERand Epic Game Store and Steam is like time consuming

40:46SPEAKERand actually, it has actually expensive costs

40:49SPEAKER'cause it means that you're,

40:51SPEAKERlike the fastest time you can go from trying,

40:53SPEAKERputting something into testing it is, you know,

40:56SPEAKERmany hours in some cases.

40:59SPEAKERAnd it also increases your testing service.

41:01SPEAKERLike if they really wanted to do something awesome here,

41:03SPEAKERthey would, it would be the same binary

41:05SPEAKERon all these devices.

41:07SPEAKERAnd that means you only have to test that binary one place.

41:10SPEAKERYou can test in each of the places,

41:11SPEAKERyou make the binary once and you're done.

41:14SPEAKERAnd I don't, I haven't seen anybody talking about this.

41:16SPEAKERI didn't go to this session.

41:17SPEAKERUnfortunately, the line was really, really long

41:19SPEAKERand I think I had to be someplace else.

41:22SPEAKERBut yeah, so I don't know, we'll see.

41:25SPEAKERMore stuff will come out.

41:26SPEAKERThey usually publish their white papers

41:28SPEAKERabout what's coming on the platforms the week,

41:31SPEAKERlike the next week or the week after.

41:33SPEAKERSo it'll be on the dev centers and we'll be able to find out

41:36SPEAKERwhat the actual beaten potatoes of this is.

41:39SPEAKER- The technical implementation and what that means

41:41SPEAKERyou can do with the machine is gonna be super interesting.

41:44SPEAKERHere's the last quick bullet point that is kind of tucked

41:46SPEAKERat the bottom of that Xbox wire post.

41:49SPEAKERWe're committed to keeping games from four generations

41:51SPEAKERof Xbox playable for years to come.

41:53SPEAKERAs part of our 25th anniversary later this year,

41:56SPEAKERwe'll be rolling out new ways to play

41:57SPEAKERsome of the most iconic games from our past.

42:00SPEAKER- So that's 360, Xbox one series and Xbox next.

42:04SPEAKER- You mean the four generations?

42:05SPEAKER- That's the four generations, right?

42:07SPEAKER- No, original Xbox.

42:08SPEAKER- I think Fusion Frenzy can get fucked.

42:11SPEAKER- Well, but those games are already backwards compatible.

42:12SPEAKERA ton of OG Xbox games run on a series X.

42:16SPEAKER- Really?

42:17SPEAKER- Oh yeah, oh yeah, that was a big part of their,

42:20SPEAKERI mean, well, I don't know about a ton,

42:21SPEAKERbut it's probably a few dozen, maybe that's generous,

42:23SPEAKERbut it's definitely like your Ninja Gaiden's and gosh,

42:29SPEAKEROtogi, there are definitely Xbox games,

42:31SPEAKERoriginal Xbox games that run on series X like nicely at 4K.

42:35SPEAKER- Oh, weird.

42:35SPEAKER- Yeah, it's not a ton, not as many as 360, but.

42:38SPEAKER- Yeah, yeah, yeah.

42:40SPEAKERYeah, I mean, look, the Xbox one generation

42:42SPEAKERwas kind of a small, it was a small generation too, right?

42:46SPEAKER- Yeah, I mean, plenty, most of those games

42:48SPEAKERrun on a series X, but really what I'm asking here

42:51SPEAKERis like what new ways to play those games

42:54SPEAKERare they talking about?

42:55SPEAKERDoes that mean Xbox games on PC?

42:57SPEAKERIs that where this is going?

42:58SPEAKERBecause if they're- - I don't think so.

42:59SPEAKER- Well, but if they're going to,

43:01SPEAKERif the next Xbox effectively is a PC or running Windows

43:04SPEAKERand it's going to run those old Xbox games

43:06SPEAKERin backwards compatibility mode,

43:08SPEAKERthey're kind of already having to port

43:10SPEAKERthe Xbox compatibility layer to PC de facto.

43:14SPEAKER- And these would finally get the version of Halo 2

43:16SPEAKERwe all wanted that runs on Windows.

43:17SPEAKER- So bringing those games is brute force

43:19SPEAKERbackwards compatible?

43:20SPEAKERCan we finally play brute force on a PC?

43:22SPEAKERI don't know, anyway, like are we going to see

43:26SPEAKERall the four generations of Xbox games

43:28SPEAKERplayable on Windows finally, maybe?

43:29SPEAKER- Oh, see, I read that to mean four generations

43:32SPEAKERof Xbox games starting with the 360 and going forward, not-

43:35SPEAKER- No, because again, I think-

43:37SPEAKER- I guess they do talk about backwards compatibility

43:38SPEAKERin there, so you're probably right.

43:40SPEAKER- In fact, I think I did an interview with Jason Ronald

43:42SPEAKERabout backwards compatibility like four years ago,

43:43SPEAKERlike right at the beginning of Nextlander or something.

43:45SPEAKERBut my understanding, for the little bit I understand,

43:48SPEAKERtheir whole compatibility, like VM layer

43:51SPEAKERto run old Xbox games is fascinating.

43:54SPEAKERBut I think those games are all running

43:55SPEAKERin the same type of virtualization.

43:56SPEAKERLike, I think it's fairly trivial,

43:59SPEAKERsince they already have original Xbox and 360 games

44:01SPEAKERrunning in the same basic backwards compatibility framework.

44:04SPEAKERI think it's pretty trivial to bring all those over.

44:06SPEAKER- I mean, yeah, they're all x86, except for the 360.

44:09SPEAKER- Like, you know, they're all, I think,

44:11SPEAKERbeing kind of like machine language translated

44:14SPEAKERand blah, blah, blah, you know, just in time recompiled

44:17SPEAKERor something like that, but-

44:18SPEAKER- Wild.

44:19SPEAKER- My guess is this means maybe those games

44:21SPEAKERfinally show up on PC, but I really don't know.

44:25SPEAKER- I would like that.

44:26SPEAKERI mean, I'm not against that.

44:27SPEAKERI think it's good, you know,

44:29SPEAKERit's nice to be able to play old games.

44:30SPEAKER- Yes, I agree.

44:32SPEAKEREspecially 'cause original Xbox emulation

44:34SPEAKERis still like very, very limited is my understanding.

44:37SPEAKERI don't keep up with it too closely, but-

44:39SPEAKER- Yeah, I haven't looked at it in a long time,

44:40SPEAKER'cause I honestly don't know what I would play

44:43SPEAKERfrom the original Xboxes.

44:44SPEAKERMaybe brute force is probably it.

44:46SPEAKER- Maybe it's gotten better, I don't know,

44:47SPEAKERbut for a while it seemed like 360 emulation

44:50SPEAKERwas in a better state than original Xbox.

44:52SPEAKER- That would make sense.

44:53SPEAKER- Due to like lack of documentation and stuff.

44:55SPEAKERAnyway, all right, real quick,

44:56SPEAKERthe PlayStation 5 Pro news,

44:58SPEAKERpretty minor in light of, you know, full on next Xbox,

45:02SPEAKERbut they've rolled out a second version of PSSR

45:06SPEAKERon the PS5 Pro.

45:07SPEAKER- This is their upscaling.

45:08SPEAKER- Yeah, this is their PlayStation spectral super resolution,

45:12SPEAKERI believe is what it stands for.

45:14SPEAKER- It's a souped up, it's like a super set of FSR, right?

45:17SPEAKER- Yes. - Is the feeling I get.

45:18SPEAKER- So I think it debuted before FSR4 on PC,

45:22SPEAKERbut now they are saying this second version is downstream

45:25SPEAKERof FSR4's launch.

45:29SPEAKER- That also makes sense.

45:30SPEAKER- Quote, "With a further six months of refinement,"

45:32SPEAKERis how they describe it.

45:34SPEAKER- So I wonder who's doing the training here,

45:37SPEAKER'cause Sony is the one player

45:39SPEAKERthat doesn't have a big giant compute cloud

45:40SPEAKERto do like model training on.

45:43SPEAKER- Yeah, this blog post that Sony put up

45:45SPEAKERis written by Mark Cerny,

45:46SPEAKERand it says, you know, the new PSSR stems

45:49SPEAKERfrom our project Amethyst partnership with AMD.

45:52SPEAKERSo I don't know if maybe that means in that partnership,

45:54SPEAKERAMD is bearing a lot of the workload

45:57SPEAKERof the training on this. - It makes sense.

45:59SPEAKER- Or who knows, maybe there's some co-investment

46:02SPEAKERor something. - I mean, it could be

46:04SPEAKERthat Sony's chucking a little cheddar

46:05SPEAKERinto AMD for the power bill,

46:08SPEAKERand the rising tide lifts all ships, right?

46:11SPEAKER- Yeah, and only again, they do say this is downstream

46:13SPEAKERof FSR4, so some of that work has already been done.

46:15SPEAKERAnyway, it's better upscaling like it is,

46:17SPEAKERbut that's meaningful because a decent number

46:21SPEAKERof PS5 Pro games have gotten dinged

46:23SPEAKERby like the digital foundries of the world

46:25SPEAKERfor having pretty rotten looking image quality

46:28SPEAKERon some of their upscaling.

46:29SPEAKERLike Silent Hill F is an example of one

46:31SPEAKERthat has some like pretty obvious artifacts.

46:33SPEAKER- Like bad ghosting and stuff?

46:35SPEAKER- Yeah, like it handles grass poorly and stuff like that.

46:38SPEAKERI wanna say Star Wars Outlaws might've been another one

46:40SPEAKERat launch that did not look great.

46:42SPEAKERSo here's the interesting, this is the part

46:45SPEAKERthat actually made me bring this up

46:46SPEAKER'cause better upscaling kind of whatever,

46:49SPEAKERbut they say a bunch of those games

46:52SPEAKERthat have come out since launch

46:53SPEAKERwill be getting manual updates

46:55SPEAKERto enable this better version,

46:57SPEAKERbut they're also putting a system level toggle

46:59SPEAKERin to let you force on the new version

47:01SPEAKERin older games that do not get updates.

47:03SPEAKER- Oh, so it's all the good stuff of PC gaming

47:05SPEAKERcoming into the consoles now.

47:06SPEAKER- Pretty much, so yes, it's a little dodgy,

47:10SPEAKERand in fact, their screenshot is this,

47:13SPEAKERI don't know that I can enlarge this enough

47:14SPEAKERto read the tiny texts of the system dialogue

47:17SPEAKERthey posted, but I guess I'm of two minds about it,

47:20SPEAKERbut I kind of appreciate this about Sony.

47:22SPEAKERThey have always been like this,

47:24SPEAKERwhere when they roll out a feature like this

47:26SPEAKERthat could be forced on in older games,

47:28SPEAKERbut it might cause problems,

47:30SPEAKERthey just go ahead and let you do it

47:31SPEAKERwith a tiny little disclaimer that says,

47:33SPEAKER"Disable this if you have problems,"

47:35SPEAKERwhich again, I'm squinting at the system dialogue.

47:38SPEAKER- It says, "Use an upgraded PSSR PlayStation

47:41SPEAKERSpectral Super Resolution model

47:43SPEAKERto improve image quality in some supported games.

47:46SPEAKERTurn this off if you experience

47:48SPEAKERunexpected behavior during gameplay."

47:49SPEAKER- That's the line, it's always been,

47:51SPEAKER"Turn this off if you experience unexpected behavior,"

47:53SPEAKER'cause they did the same thing when the PS4 Pro came out.

47:58SPEAKER- Yeah, I remember this.

48:00SPEAKER- It ran at higher clocks than the base PS4,

48:02SPEAKERand they would let you turn that on

48:04SPEAKERfor unsupported games that hadn't been patched to support it

48:07SPEAKERwith the exact same disclaimer.

48:08SPEAKERJust turn this off if it causes problems.

48:10SPEAKERYou can do the same thing on a PS5 with HDR.

48:12SPEAKERYou can try to force HDR on in games that don't support it.

48:16SPEAKERLike I've-

48:17SPEAKER- It seems to be like a bad idea, Brad.

48:18SPEAKER- Maybe, I mean, it definitely goes against the console ethos

48:21SPEAKERof like everything is tested to work properly

48:23SPEAKERand is a guaranteed experience, right?

48:26SPEAKER- I don't think that's been the ethos for a while, man.

48:28SPEAKER- On the other hand, like guaranteed

48:31SPEAKERsome of these older games, like I don't know,

48:32SPEAKERlike I'm still playing through,

48:35SPEAKERfor the fifth time, "Silent Hill F."

48:38SPEAKERIt's a long story. - Wow.

48:39SPEAKER- It is a game that is designed to be played several times

48:41SPEAKERto get the full story. - Yeah, yeah.

48:42SPEAKER- Like it changes pretty significantly

48:43SPEAKERfrom one to one. - It's in here, like.

48:45SPEAKER- Yes, or a visual novel-like, I guess.

48:47SPEAKER- Okay.

48:48SPEAKER- As I've come to understand,

48:49SPEAKERbut that's a game that I actually wouldn't be super shocked

48:52SPEAKERif they don't update it with this new PSSR.

48:55SPEAKERSo I appreciate having the problem,

48:57SPEAKERsorry, not the problem,

48:58SPEAKERthe possibility of forcing it on in that game,

49:02SPEAKEReven if it's not supported.

49:04SPEAKER- I will say one of the things they talked about

49:06SPEAKERwith the DLSS update that we'll talk about in a minute

49:10SPEAKERis like updating the models

49:13SPEAKERso there's less ghosting in specific places.

49:15SPEAKERAnd like, I don't see that ghosting very much anymore.

49:18SPEAKERIt used to be, especially in the old days of DLSS2,

49:21SPEAKERit was pretty common.

49:23SPEAKERAnd these days it's much, much less of an issue.

49:26SPEAKERBut when it does pop up, you don't wanna see it.

49:28SPEAKERAnd I would hate to be stuck in a situation

49:30SPEAKERwhere I couldn't turn it off on a console.

49:32SPEAKER- Yeah.

49:34SPEAKER- But also, it's funny,

49:35SPEAKERI realize now when these new consoles come out,

49:37SPEAKEReverything's gonna have some sort of AI upscaling.

49:40SPEAKER'Cause like the Switch 2 has AI upscaling, the PS5 Pro,

49:43SPEAKERpresumably the next generations of both the Xbox

49:45SPEAKERand the PlayStation will- - Oh, absolutely.

49:47SPEAKERI made this point on the next Langer podcast this week.

49:50SPEAKERIt's been interesting seeing two parallel lines of thought

49:54SPEAKERout there on social media.

49:55SPEAKEROne of which is, man, Resident Evil Requiem

49:58SPEAKERfor a Switch 2 game looks amazing.

50:00SPEAKERLike it's obviously not as good as the PC

50:03SPEAKERor the bigger console versions,

50:04SPEAKERbut it's like shocking how good it looks

50:06SPEAKERfor a tiny little tablet thing.

50:08SPEAKERBut then there's also the like justifiable

50:10SPEAKERor understandable sentiment that why do we need new consoles

50:12SPEAKERlike these current consoles feel like they've barely been

50:17SPEAKERput to use, which is true, like I get it.

50:19SPEAKERLike there have been a lot of disruptions

50:20SPEAKERin the last five years that have made it feel

50:24SPEAKERlike these consoles have not really gotten their due

50:27SPEAKERin terms of being fully utilized.

50:29SPEAKERAll that said though,

50:31SPEAKERlike what are the things on the Switch 2

50:33SPEAKERthat the Switch 2 is benefiting from

50:35SPEAKERthat these consoles missed the boat on by like a year?

50:38SPEAKER- Yeah, I was gonna say- - It's ray tracing

50:40SPEAKERand machine learning upscaling stuff.

50:42SPEAKERLike those are the reasons the Switch 2

50:45SPEAKERis able to turn these types of results out.

50:49SPEAKER- These consoles were like a year early

50:52SPEAKERfor some real good business to hit.

50:54SPEAKER- Like not your typical iterative raster improvements

50:57SPEAKERin the way games work, which we had seen

50:59SPEAKERfor the 20 years before that.

51:01SPEAKERI guess that GeForce 3 episode last week

51:03SPEAKERwas kind of well-timed, right?

51:04SPEAKER'Cause like not a whole lot had changed

51:06SPEAKERin the way games were rendered

51:09SPEAKERfor 15 years or something, right?

51:11SPEAKERI mean- - Almost 20.

51:13SPEAKERBut then these technologies are like significant departures

51:16SPEAKERfrom how things have been done in the past.

51:18SPEAKERAnd the current consoles just barely missed that.

51:21SPEAKER- The only big jump between the GeForce 3 and ray tracing

51:23SPEAKERwas when every vendor stopped having

51:27SPEAKERtheir own shader language variant.

51:28SPEAKER- Yeah, sure.

51:30SPEAKER- But that was an iterative kind of invisible change

51:32SPEAKERto users.

51:33SPEAKER- Like there's some direct exchanges.

51:35SPEAKERI mean, there's some other stuff

51:36SPEAKERlike physically based rendering

51:37SPEAKERand like early attempts at global elimination

51:40SPEAKERand stuff like that.

51:40SPEAKERThose are still pretty iterative features, right?

51:42SPEAKERLike it's still-

51:43SPEAKER- Yeah, and the physicality based rendering stuff

51:45SPEAKERis still pretty, like it's not a universal soup to nuts

51:50SPEAKERacross the entire industry thing.

51:51SPEAKERIt's like the right choice for some games

51:54SPEAKERand not the right for others.

51:55SPEAKER- Right.

51:56SPEAKERAnyway, all I'm saying is that like yes,

51:58SPEAKERit's gonna be a bitter pill to see new

52:00SPEAKERor more expensive boxes come out.

52:02SPEAKERNot that long from now when the current ones

52:04SPEAKERstill feel like they have untapped potential,

52:06SPEAKERbut also like there are gonna be like pretty significant

52:09SPEAKERimprovements in those things that the rest

52:11SPEAKERof the games industry has just been kind of taking

52:14SPEAKERfor granted for years now.

52:15SPEAKER- Well, so it's funny.

52:16SPEAKERI spent a bunch of time with Resident Evil Requiem

52:18SPEAKERthis last week, I guess.

52:20SPEAKERAnd I was kind of taken by how good the high ray tracing,

52:25SPEAKERbut not path traced version looked and ran on a fifth.

52:29SPEAKERLike I got an entirely playable 60 plus frames a second

52:33SPEAKERon that high ray tracing setting without upscaling,

52:36SPEAKERwithout frame generating that stuff

52:37SPEAKERwith Requiem at 4K.

52:39SPEAKERAnd then when I flipped path tracing on again

52:41SPEAKERwithout the upscaling, without the frame gen,

52:44SPEAKERI was getting it like, I was getting what I think of

52:47SPEAKERas like Xbox 360 era console performance, right?

52:50SPEAKERIt was like 30 frames per second, pretty reliably at 4K.

52:55SPEAKER- Native 4K, that's--

52:56SPEAKER- Yeah, native 4K, no upscaling, no frame gen.

52:59SPEAKERAnd like, that's pretty incredible given the kind of math

53:03SPEAKERthat's happening in that game at those scenes.

53:07SPEAKERBut at the same time, it didn't look enough better

53:11SPEAKERover the ray tracing high preset,

53:14SPEAKERwhich only does like ray tracing for reflection engines,

53:17SPEAKERshadows and stuff like that,

53:18SPEAKERthat I was gonna give up 50 or 60 frames a second.

53:23SPEAKERSo anyway, we're in for a weird time.

53:26SPEAKERI'm wildly curious to see how consoles handle

53:28SPEAKERlike real ray tracing and like,

53:31SPEAKERare they gonna start releasing path traced games

53:33SPEAKERfor the Xbox and let people choose whether they want

53:35SPEAKERdecent shadows and decent reflections

53:37SPEAKERor like fully modeled lighting

53:39SPEAKERand like, it's gonna be a wild time.

53:41SPEAKER- I mean, it's gonna be interesting

53:42SPEAKERonce every current platform has caught up

53:44SPEAKERon these technologies and has very competent

53:47SPEAKERbaseline implementations of them,

53:48SPEAKER'cause the Switch already does,

53:49SPEAKERlike the Switch 2 has the stuff already.

53:52SPEAKERSo, but like consoles still largely dictate

53:55SPEAKERwhere development goes, right?

53:57SPEAKERLike you're only gonna-- - They set the baseline,

53:59SPEAKERI think, that and the Steam Deck.

54:00SPEAKER- Like you're only gonna do so much to a PC port when,

54:05SPEAKERyou know-- - Unless somebody writes

54:06SPEAKERa check. - Sure, yeah.

54:08SPEAKERBut anyway, it's gonna be, but you know,

54:12SPEAKERsupply costs, cost of living, like everything is like,

54:16SPEAKERwho knows when those consoles are even gonna launch

54:18SPEAKERand how many people are gonna be able to afford them.

54:20SPEAKERSo like, will games even get made for them?

54:22SPEAKERAre we gonna be looking at three years

54:24SPEAKERor four years of cross-gen development?

54:26SPEAKERWho knows, like it's all gonna be so bumpy.

54:28SPEAKER- It wouldn't surprise me if split dev ends up being

54:31SPEAKERthe watchword for most mass market titles

54:34SPEAKERthat aren't first party exclusives.

54:36SPEAKER- Yeah, yeah.

54:37SPEAKER- Speaking of first party exclusives,

54:38SPEAKERwe don't have this in the list,

54:39SPEAKERbut there was a rumor last week

54:41SPEAKERthat Sony's backing down from PC.

54:44SPEAKERDid anything come out officially one way or the other

54:47SPEAKERin that or is it still just like--

54:48SPEAKER- I can't imagine they will ever address that.

54:50SPEAKERYou'll just see it reflected in the release calendar.

54:53SPEAKER- Yeah. - It's certainly not something

54:55SPEAKERfor them to celebrate if that's the way they're going

54:57SPEAKERor that's not something that's gonna go over well.

54:58SPEAKERSo they will just quietly stop announcing PC ports.

55:02SPEAKER- Boo, boo.

55:05SPEAKER- Interesting times out there.

55:07SPEAKERShould we just wrap up on the DLSS 4.5

55:10SPEAKERsince we were talking about--

55:11SPEAKER- Yeah, we can talk about GDC stuff, yeah.

55:13SPEAKER- Doesn't sound like a ton new with that,

55:15SPEAKERbut there's one big thing.

55:16SPEAKER- They had a lot of interesting,

55:19SPEAKERthey had a lot of design wins as I think what I'd call them.

55:21SPEAKERSo they showed like the James Bond game that IO is making

55:26SPEAKERis gonna have full path tracing.

55:30SPEAKERThey talked about the mega geometry support

55:32SPEAKERthat originally rolled out in "Allen Wake"

55:34SPEAKERis coming to some other games,

55:36SPEAKERI think most notably with "Control Resonant."

55:39SPEAKERAnd those are things that make ray tracing

55:43SPEAKERperformant in types of areas that typically ray tracing

55:47SPEAKERwouldn't be performing in that mega geometry thing.

55:49SPEAKERIt reduces, basically groups up triangles together

55:52SPEAKERor something so that you can do fewer math calculations

55:56SPEAKERon ray tracing in really complicated scenes

55:58SPEAKERlike "Forrest" and stuff like that.

56:00SPEAKERThe thing that I think was the big win that was kind of quiet

56:03SPEAKERand people didn't get super excited about

56:06SPEAKERis that DLSS 4.5 allows you to set

56:10SPEAKERa frame gen target frame rate.

56:13SPEAKERSo you say, "Oh, I wanna run at my monitor's refresh rate."

56:16SPEAKERAnd I want you to generate frames to get to that point,

56:18SPEAKERbut not, 'cause currently on frame gen,

56:21SPEAKERif you do 2x, every other frame is generated,

56:24SPEAKERwhether that takes you to your monitor's frame rate

56:27SPEAKERor 90 frames a second,

56:28SPEAKERor two times your monitor's frame rate.

56:32SPEAKERAnd this, with the addition of 6x frame gen frame rates

56:37SPEAKERfor the DLSS 4.5,

56:42SPEAKERI really think that the,

56:44SPEAKER"Hey, just set it to my monitor's frame rate,"

56:45SPEAKERis the thing that we should have had

56:48SPEAKERfrom the beginning on this.

56:49SPEAKER- Yeah, that was my first reaction to this was,

56:51SPEAKER"Why wasn't it this way from the beginning?"

56:52SPEAKERI certainly don't know,

56:53SPEAKERbut it seems like having a more deterministic target

56:58SPEAKERmight help for optimizing for latency

57:00SPEAKERor consistency in performance.

57:02SPEAKER- It turns out this topic is fractally complicated.

57:08SPEAKER- I shouldn't even try to comment on it,

57:10SPEAKER'cause it's way beyond me.

57:13SPEAKER- It has to do,

57:14SPEAKERthere's a million places that the frame timing can go wrong,

57:19SPEAKERstarting at the beginning of the graphics pipeline

57:21SPEAKERwhen you're playing the game and the game freezes

57:23SPEAKERwhile the shader compiles,

57:24SPEAKERall the way up to the connection

57:27SPEAKERbetween the monitor's frame buffer

57:28SPEAKERand the display gets overwhelmed

57:31SPEAKERand frames come in faster for a second,

57:33SPEAKERfor a millisecond and slower for a millisecond,

57:36SPEAKERand anywhere along that way, your experience can be bad.

57:40SPEAKERIf you have everything best case, then yeah,

57:42SPEAKERit seems like this is more what I would have wanted,

57:47SPEAKERwhich is, "Hey, if the real frame is lagging here,

57:50SPEAKERit'll dump a generated frame in."

57:53SPEAKER- That makes more sense to me,

57:55SPEAKERjust to get to a specific baseline frame rate.

57:58SPEAKER- Yeah, rather than install, yeah.

58:00SPEAKER- As opposed to just give me as many as you can.

58:02SPEAKER- It seems good.

58:05SPEAKER- In a perfect world,

58:06SPEAKERI would still rather not deal with generated frames,

58:08SPEAKERbut my gut feeling is they are just like,

58:11SPEAKERFrame Gen is just gonna be a fact of life

58:13SPEAKERon the next consoles.

58:14SPEAKER- What I will say--

58:15SPEAKER- So like improvements are good in that technology

58:18SPEAKERbecause we're going to be living with it

58:19SPEAKERone way or another.

58:21SPEAKER- What I'll say is that I wasn't a huge,

58:24SPEAKERI wasn't hugely bought into Frame Gen

58:25SPEAKERon the four series cards.

58:27SPEAKERAnd I'm generally, I don't like it very much

58:30SPEAKERon the AMD cards with FSR4 or on the Intel cards.

58:35SPEAKERPlaying with the controller is fine.

58:37SPEAKERThe input latency of a controller and the kind of lag,

58:41SPEAKERthe lag that comes with the sticks is fine.

58:44SPEAKERBut one of the things I always do when I would test frame,

58:47SPEAKERwhen I'm in a demo and they're like,

58:49SPEAKER"Hey, you want to see our Frame Gen?"

58:50SPEAKERI'm like, "Yeah, let me see it."

58:51SPEAKERI grab the mouse and keyboard

58:53SPEAKERand I pick a spot on the monitor on the scene

58:56SPEAKERand I try to move my mouse and lock in

58:58SPEAKERdirectly to landing on that spot,

59:00SPEAKERwhich is something that with low latency,

59:02SPEAKERyou should be able to do like nine times out of 10

59:04SPEAKERif you play a lot of first person shooters

59:06SPEAKERwith the mouse and keyboard.

59:07SPEAKERAnd on the four series cards on Nvidia

59:12SPEAKERand on all of the AMD and Intel implementations I've tested,

59:15SPEAKERit's hard to do that.

59:17SPEAKERIt requires changing the way my brain

59:20SPEAKERinterprets mouse movement to overcome the frame latency.

59:23SPEAKEROn the DLSS4 implementation

59:25SPEAKERthat shipped on the five series cards,

59:28SPEAKERI don't notice a difference.

59:30SPEAKER- Interesting.

59:33SPEAKER- It's because they take a moment

59:35SPEAKERright at the end of the pipeline

59:37SPEAKERand shift the rendered frame to match the mouse movement

59:42SPEAKERand then fill in the pixels,

59:44SPEAKERthe gaps with machine learning generated pixels.

59:48SPEAKERAnd it works really well.

59:49SPEAKERNow there's a little bit of artifacting sometimes

59:51SPEAKERand I still don't ever turn it on for multiplayer games,

59:55SPEAKERbut on single player stuff, it's pretty indistinguishable.

59:59SPEAKER- The concerning thing to me

1:00:00SPEAKERis that that's the Nvidia state of the art,

1:00:03SPEAKERwhich AMD has not caught up to yet.

1:00:04SPEAKERSo like what frame gen capability

1:00:07SPEAKERare these consoles gonna launch with?

1:00:08SPEAKERI don't know.

1:00:10SPEAKERAre we gonna be in a situation

1:00:11SPEAKERwhere like we're like one iteration of AMD's frame gen

1:00:14SPEAKERtoo early for it to be good for another seven years?

1:00:18SPEAKER- I think that they have the hardware in place

1:00:20SPEAKERto do the same thing anybody's doing right now.

1:00:23SPEAKER- The software stack kind of evolve post launch, right?

1:00:25SPEAKER- Yeah, and also on the game pad,

1:00:27SPEAKERI don't think the latency matters as much.

1:00:28SPEAKER- Yeah, maybe.

1:00:30SPEAKER- I do think that a performance mode

1:00:32SPEAKERwhere everything's turned down,

1:00:34SPEAKERlike the thing I fear is that the new normal

1:00:37SPEAKERfor all consoles going forward

1:00:39SPEAKERis that you choose between performance

1:00:41SPEAKERand good looking mode

1:00:42SPEAKERand maybe the performance mode

1:00:44SPEAKERdoesn't have the generated frames

1:00:46SPEAKER'cause that adds a little bit of latency.

1:00:48SPEAKER- Yeah, that would be unfortunate

1:00:50SPEAKERif all the performance options are frame gen next generation.

1:00:54SPEAKERAnyway, much to find out over the coming months and years.

1:00:58SPEAKER- Okay, so let's talk a last,

1:01:01SPEAKERlet's talk about Apple's new hardware.

1:01:03SPEAKER- Yeah.

1:01:04SPEAKER- 'Cause this came,

1:01:05SPEAKERI mean, this had been rumored for a while, I think.

1:01:07SPEAKER- Yeah, there was a lot of it,

1:01:08SPEAKERbut there's only one actually new thing.

1:01:09SPEAKERI mean, they announced like M5 Pro laptops,

1:01:12SPEAKERbut that's just iterative, basically.

1:01:14SPEAKERI mean, there's some interesting stuff

1:01:15SPEAKERwith the way they're designing their SOCs now for those,

1:01:17SPEAKERbut I don't think they're doing

1:01:19SPEAKERsome vertical stacking of dies,

1:01:22SPEAKERwhich I didn't quite understand, but.

1:01:23SPEAKER- That's cool.

1:01:24SPEAKER- I don't think we have to get into that here,

1:01:25SPEAKERbut the MacBook Neo is the actual

1:01:27SPEAKERinteresting new product line.

1:01:28SPEAKER- Yeah, the top line on that

1:01:30SPEAKERis that it's a $600 MacBook,

1:01:34SPEAKERsmall MacBook running on A18 Pro,

1:01:37SPEAKERwhich is last year's iPhone Pro chip.

1:01:40SPEAKER- Yeah, which is like insane that we're at the point

1:01:43SPEAKERwhere a phone processor can now run a laptop, but.

1:01:46SPEAKER- I mean, we've been trying it,

1:01:47SPEAKERpeople have been trying it for more than a decade.

1:01:48SPEAKERIt just has kind of always sucked.

1:01:50SPEAKER- Fair.

1:01:52SPEAKER- But it's a six core, it's a six core part.

1:01:54SPEAKERIt's two performance cores, four efficient cores.

1:01:58SPEAKER- I'm sorry, can I stop you really quick?

1:01:59SPEAKER- Yes.

1:02:00SPEAKER- This cannot be relevant to the A18 Pro

1:02:02SPEAKERand the MacBook Neo because it is an existing chip

1:02:04SPEAKERfrom last year.

1:02:06SPEAKER- Did you see what they've done to the core branding

1:02:08SPEAKERon the M5 Pro and Max?

1:02:10SPEAKER- No.

1:02:13SPEAKER- The E-cores are now P-cores.

1:02:15SPEAKERThey now call their efficiency cores performance cores.

1:02:18SPEAKER- And what do they call the performance cores?

1:02:20SPEAKER- The performance cores are now super cores.

1:02:22SPEAKER- What?

1:02:23SPEAKER- Super cores and performance cores.

1:02:26SPEAKER- Are they using last gen, is this like an Intel thing

1:02:29SPEAKERwhere they're using last gen performance cores

1:02:31SPEAKERas efficient cores?

1:02:32SPEAKER- I don't think so.

1:02:33SPEAKER- Or is this just marketing?

1:02:35SPEAKER- My guess because it's Apple is that it's just marketing.

1:02:37SPEAKERI mean, I'm sure there's some performance uplift

1:02:40SPEAKERand maybe there is some difference in kind

1:02:43SPEAKERrather than degree that allows them to justify this change.

1:02:47SPEAKERI just think it's a very funny Apple-like thing to do.

1:02:50SPEAKERBut they're literally just saying like,

1:02:52SPEAKERour E-cores are better than your P-cores.

1:02:57SPEAKER- Okay.

1:02:58SPEAKER- Anyway, go on.

1:02:58SPEAKER- I have questions about naming

1:02:59SPEAKERthat we're gonna talk about in a little bit,

1:03:00SPEAKERbut the gotcha on this is that it's an eight gigabyte

1:03:06SPEAKERRAM config.

1:03:07SPEAKERSo it's eight gigabytes of LPDDR5X RAM

1:03:11SPEAKERand 256 gigs of storage on these models.

1:03:14SPEAKER- Do they still, they do still sell an eight gigabyte Air,

1:03:18SPEAKERright?

1:03:19SPEAKER- I don't think they do currently.

1:03:20SPEAKERI think the last years or year before

1:03:22SPEAKERwas the most recent eight gigabyte Air.

1:03:24SPEAKER- Let me just check real fast.

1:03:25SPEAKER- I will tell you, my wife anecdotally has an M1 MacBook

1:03:30SPEAKERfrom 2020 with eight gigabytes of RAM

1:03:32SPEAKER'cause I didn't want to spend the extra $500,

1:03:35SPEAKERwhatever it was, to get the 16 gig model.

1:03:37SPEAKERAnd Mac OS, like this is the benefit Apple has

1:03:42SPEAKERin today's current RAM constrained environment.

1:03:45SPEAKERMac OS, like Linux, pretty good on low RAM, it turns out.

1:03:48SPEAKER- Yeah, yeah.

1:03:49SPEAKERAlthough one of the ways they do that

1:03:50SPEAKERon the current MacBooks is that they page very aggressively

1:03:53SPEAKERto the SSD, which is so fast that it's an appreciable

1:03:56SPEAKERfraction of system memory speed at this point,

1:03:59SPEAKERwhich certainly helps.

1:04:01SPEAKER- Add some wear to your SSDs though.

1:04:03SPEAKER- It helps with system responsiveness,

1:04:04SPEAKERbut a little bit I've looked at it.

1:04:06SPEAKERIt's certainly slowly eroding the right tolerance

1:04:11SPEAKERon your storage.

1:04:13SPEAKER- So when those stories broke last year,

1:04:15SPEAKERI went and looked at the wear on my wife's laptop

1:04:18SPEAKERjust to see.

1:04:19SPEAKERAnd it turns out if you're mostly just using it

1:04:21SPEAKERto browse the web, you're probably fine.

1:04:23SPEAKERIf you're doing heavier workloads,

1:04:24SPEAKERyou probably want 16 gigs of RAM.

1:04:26SPEAKER- So I just looked the current MacBook Air,

1:04:29SPEAKERwhich is that their M5, yes, it is an M5 Air

1:04:32SPEAKERthat they've moved to and it is baseline 16 gigabytes now.

1:04:35SPEAKER- Yeah, which is like, I tested a Linux machine

1:04:40SPEAKERwith 16 gigs the other day and was fine.

1:04:44SPEAKERI think this is like, look, we're gonna see ads about RAM.

1:04:48SPEAKERI don't think Apple's ever gonna do ads about RAM,

1:04:51SPEAKERbut if they did, they would be ragging on Microsoft

1:04:53SPEAKERfor the amount of RAM Windows uses these days.

1:04:55SPEAKER- Sure, yeah, you can see it.

1:04:57SPEAKEROkay, so it's 599 bucks.

1:04:59SPEAKERYou can get, if you have an .edu email address,

1:05:02SPEAKERthen you can get it for $500.

1:05:05SPEAKER- Which like, this is, okay,

1:05:07SPEAKERI know this is not in Chromebook price territory,

1:05:09SPEAKERbut this is basically the closest they're ever gonna get

1:05:11SPEAKERto a Chromebook competitor, right?

1:05:13SPEAKERI mean, that's kind of what this is, right?

1:05:14SPEAKER- Well, so we talked about this on The Full Nerd

1:05:17SPEAKERa little bit this week,

1:05:17SPEAKERbut the fattest part of the PC market,

1:05:20SPEAKERfrom what we could tell based on like traffic

1:05:22SPEAKERto laptop review pages on PC World's website,

1:05:25SPEAKERis that 500 to $600 price range.

1:05:28SPEAKER- So that is definitely above the Chromebooks,

1:05:31SPEAKERor like 200, 300, right?

1:05:32SPEAKER- Well, they used to be.

1:05:33SPEAKER- Okay, I guess everything is more now.

1:05:35SPEAKER- Yeah, I mean, like you can get expensive Chromebooks,

1:05:38SPEAKERbut like there's definitely a bump at like 250.

1:05:41SPEAKERIt used to be 250 to 300 bucks.

1:05:43SPEAKERNow it's probably 350 to 400.

1:05:48SPEAKERThis is the, hey, my kid needs a laptop for school,

1:05:52SPEAKERbut I'm not buying him a gaming laptop price range, right?

1:05:56SPEAKERAnd their marketing for it strongly implies

1:05:58SPEAKERthat they're looking at,

1:06:03SPEAKERthey noted that there needed to be a product

1:06:08SPEAKERbetween an iPad that you give a young kid

1:06:11SPEAKERand a MacBook that you give to somebody

1:06:12SPEAKERwhen they go to college.

1:06:13SPEAKER- Sure.

1:06:15SPEAKER- And this seems to be filling that hole.

1:06:17SPEAKERIt's a little bit smaller keyboard.

1:06:18SPEAKERI got to get hands-on with one this week.

1:06:21SPEAKERYeah, Roman brought their review sample by The Full Nerd,

1:06:23SPEAKERand we talked about it at length.

1:06:25SPEAKERHis testing seemed to indicate that the performance

1:06:28SPEAKERwas really comparable to a 2020 era M1 MacBook Air.

1:06:32SPEAKER- Okay, that's nothing.

1:06:34SPEAKER- It's worth mentioning that last Christmas,

1:06:37SPEAKERone of the biggest sellers in the laptop space

1:06:39SPEAKERwas that $600 M1 2020,

1:06:43SPEAKERlike stripped down 2020 M1 MacBook Air

1:06:46SPEAKERthat Walmart was selling for 600 or 699 bucks.

1:06:49SPEAKER- I remember that, yeah.

1:06:52SPEAKER- It's a little bit smaller keyboard, he said,

1:06:55SPEAKERbut it feels solid in a way that laptops, PC, Windows laptops

1:06:59SPEAKERin this price range do not feel.

1:07:00SPEAKERLike it's still the unibody aluminum construction.

1:07:03SPEAKERThe keyboard's really nice.

1:07:04SPEAKERThe trackpad isn't the haptic one.

1:07:06SPEAKERIt's a regular physical trackpad with a click.

1:07:09SPEAKER- Interesting.

1:07:11SPEAKER- And it has a retina display

1:07:12SPEAKERthat has some screen resolution.

1:07:14SPEAKERIt was like 2076 by, I don't know.

1:07:17SPEAKERIt was a usable resolution.

1:07:19SPEAKERLike I said, I used it for a little bit.

1:07:21SPEAKER- Also a range of fun colors.

1:07:23SPEAKER- And a range of fun colors.

1:07:24SPEAKERAnd almost all of the marketing showed young girls

1:07:28SPEAKERand teens using a laptop.

1:07:31SPEAKER- Sure.

1:07:32SPEAKER- So to me, this says, hey, we wanna get the part

1:07:34SPEAKERof the market that doesn't care about video games.

1:07:36SPEAKER- Yep, yep.

1:07:38SPEAKER- The other gotcha is the USB ports.

1:07:43SPEAKERBecause it's an A18 and there's not a big USB bus

1:07:46SPEAKERon that thing, you get two USB-C ports,

1:07:49SPEAKERone of them's USB three and one of them's USB two.

1:07:53SPEAKER- How, well, I mean, we can answer this

1:07:55SPEAKER'cause the units are out there,

1:07:56SPEAKERbut how likely do you think it is

1:07:58SPEAKERthat they label which is which?

1:07:59SPEAKER- The front one's USB two and the back one's USB three.

1:08:02SPEAKER- But do they make any other?

1:08:04SPEAKER- Nope.

1:08:05SPEAKER- I didn't think so.

1:08:07SPEAKERUser aware.

1:08:09SPEAKER- Yeah, it seems like, I think the other thing

1:08:12SPEAKERis you can only hook one external monitor up to it.

1:08:15SPEAKER- Okay, yeah.

1:08:16SPEAKER- Which kind of makes sense given the price range.

1:08:18SPEAKERIt feels like an arbitrary, but whatever.

1:08:19SPEAKER- Well, and probably just there's some limitation

1:08:22SPEAKERon the display hardware, I'm sure.

1:08:24SPEAKER- Yeah, to me, like this feels like a big deal

1:08:29SPEAKERin that Apple's never cared about this market before.

1:08:32SPEAKER- Yeah, I mean, well, you know,

1:08:34SPEAKERbut like not on laptops, you're right.

1:08:37SPEAKERLike they've toyed with, you know,

1:08:38SPEAKERthe iPhone SE has kind of like slowly trickled out

1:08:41SPEAKERand, you know, just kind of been quietly hanging around

1:08:43SPEAKERin the background for a while.

1:08:44SPEAKERAnd then now they're doing the E models on the phones,

1:08:46SPEAKERwhich are not as discounted as I would like,

1:08:49SPEAKERbut there is at least a cheaper phone option.

1:08:51SPEAKERLike they seem to have been forced kicking and screaming

1:08:54SPEAKERto admit that there is a big market

1:08:56SPEAKERfor the lower price stuff.

1:08:58SPEAKER- Yeah, to me, this, to me, I'm not sure if this is,

1:09:02SPEAKERhey, there's a hole in our market

1:09:03SPEAKERand we're losing customers to it,

1:09:06SPEAKERwhich is kind of like, you know, like I said,

1:09:09SPEAKERyoung kids are, a lot of them have iPads.

1:09:12SPEAKER- Yeah, it's more about market growth probably, right?

1:09:14SPEAKEROr it's more of it's an untapped price segment

1:09:16SPEAKERthat they would like to expand into.

1:09:18SPEAKER- That's my assumption.

1:09:19SPEAKERAlso, I think they probably have an advantage

1:09:20SPEAKERover comparable Windows vendors in that

1:09:23SPEAKERI don't think you can ship an eight gig Windows laptop

1:09:25SPEAKERwithout people going ballistic.

1:09:27SPEAKER- Probably not.

1:09:28SPEAKERLike there are, I mean, we just described one

1:09:30SPEAKERwith the memory management and the storage,

1:09:32SPEAKERbut like there are profound advantages

1:09:34SPEAKERto vertically controlling the entire hardware

1:09:36SPEAKERand software stack.

1:09:37SPEAKER- Oh, a hundred percent.

1:09:39SPEAKERI really personally, like I want this exact thing

1:09:43SPEAKERexcept for I want an iPad that runs Mac OS

1:09:46SPEAKERand can also run iPad apps and use the touch interface.

1:09:48SPEAKER- I was, when they announced the very first iPad,

1:09:50SPEAKERI was convinced that's where things were going

1:09:53SPEAKERand they never actually got there.

1:09:54SPEAKER- I mean, this gives me hope because like I look at,

1:09:57SPEAKERI look at that, like we're literally in this situation.

1:09:59SPEAKERMy daughter's using an old hand-me-down Windows laptop

1:10:02SPEAKERat some, but her iPad is pandemic era

1:10:06SPEAKERand she's outgrown it, right?

1:10:07SPEAKERLike she needs, she does a lot of artwork

1:10:09SPEAKERand I want to be able to get her something

1:10:11SPEAKERthat she has pencil support on and also,

1:10:15SPEAKERbut also I don't want her to have four laptop size computers

1:10:18SPEAKERthat she has to keep up with.

1:10:20SPEAKERBut like when she's tried to use my iPad for school stuff,

1:10:23SPEAKERit just doesn't, like the browser's not sufficient.

1:10:26SPEAKERIt always has problems.

1:10:27SPEAKER- I mean, it's a shame because the current iPad Pro hardware

1:10:30SPEAKERis clearly capable enough to run actual Mac OS.

1:10:33SPEAKERI mean, here we have a freaking phone processor doing it.

1:10:36SPEAKERThey just don't want to do that because presumably

1:10:38SPEAKERthey would love to sell you both an iPad and a MacBook.

1:10:41SPEAKERLook, I would happily pay the price of an iPad and a MacBook

1:10:43SPEAKERthat's just, just that does both.

1:10:47SPEAKERI mean, arguably when you buy an iPad Pro and a keyboard,

1:10:50SPEAKERyou're paying the price of an iPad and a MacBook now.

1:10:52SPEAKER- Yup.

1:10:53SPEAKER- Anyway.

1:10:54SPEAKER- Yeah, can I, can I?

1:10:56SPEAKER- Yes.

1:10:57SPEAKER- I have one, what's the term?

1:10:58SPEAKERBugaboo, there's one little thing about MacBooks

1:11:00SPEAKERthat have been bugging me.

1:11:01SPEAKERI love my M1 Pro.

1:11:03SPEAKER- What's the deal with MacBooks?

1:11:05SPEAKER- Like this is the best laptop I've ever used by a lot.

1:11:07SPEAKERLike it's crazy how good they are.

1:11:10SPEAKERSo you have an error in the house.

1:11:11SPEAKERSo I guess you know what I'm talking about here.

1:11:13SPEAKERI really hate the hard edge on the,

1:11:16SPEAKERthe aluminum body.

1:11:18SPEAKER- Slice of cheese with?

1:11:19SPEAKER- Where you rest your wrists.

1:11:21SPEAKERLike Apple has got the best,

1:11:24SPEAKERApple introduced me to the term chamfering.

1:11:26SPEAKER- Yup.

1:11:27SPEAKER- Like Apple has the best automatic lathes

1:11:30SPEAKERor whatever the fuck industrial machinery for shaving.

1:11:33SPEAKER- Is what would do that, yeah.

1:11:34SPEAKER- For, you know, the types of machinery that shave aluminum

1:11:37SPEAKERinto specific shapes.

1:11:39SPEAKERThey could put just the slightest rounding on that edge

1:11:42SPEAKERon the laptop and it would feel so much more comfortable

1:11:44SPEAKERto lay your wrists on.

1:11:46SPEAKER- But then the top wouldn't line up with the bottom.

1:11:50SPEAKER- That's why they did, but that's why they could make it

1:11:52SPEAKERthe most, like the very shallowest angle of rounding

1:11:55SPEAKERon that edge possible.

1:11:56SPEAKERAnd it would still look fine when it was closed

1:11:58SPEAKERand also not slice your forearms open.

1:12:02SPEAKER- Yeah, it's still the sharp edges on this one unfortunately.

1:12:06SPEAKERThere's still sometimes a bit aesthetics over usability

1:12:10SPEAKERin some spots.

1:12:11SPEAKER- They're all about form over function.

1:12:13SPEAKER- Yeah, I know, I know.

1:12:14SPEAKER- So the one thing I wondered is this naming thing is new,

1:12:17SPEAKERright, Neo is a new name for Apple?

1:12:19SPEAKER- Yeah, and I don't know that, like, I mean,

1:12:21SPEAKERobviously, you know, Neo literally means new,

1:12:23SPEAKERbut I don't know that it communicates

1:12:26SPEAKERwhat they're trying to communicate.

1:12:27SPEAKER- Well, so.

1:12:28SPEAKER- Like, I'm not sure where they're going with this name

1:12:30SPEAKER'cause it doesn't, when you hear it,

1:12:31SPEAKERit doesn't necessarily scream, like it could mean anything

1:12:33SPEAKERin terms of like how powerful it is, is the thing.

1:12:35SPEAKERLike it doesn't communicate pricing and capability.

1:12:38SPEAKER- So I wonder if they have, if they think that the mini,

1:12:42SPEAKERthe iPhone minis didn't sell because they were called minis

1:12:45SPEAKERand nobody wants the small one for babies.

1:12:47SPEAKER- Wait, hang on, you're not saying

1:12:48SPEAKERthere's gonna be an iPhone Neo, are you?

1:12:50SPEAKER- That's my theory, yeah.

1:12:51SPEAKER- Really?

1:12:52SPEAKER- I bet that they bring back the mini as a Neo.

1:12:55SPEAKER- Interesting, that would make a lot of people happy there.

1:12:58SPEAKER- I'd love that thing.

1:12:58SPEAKER- Tons, I really like my iPhone 17.

1:13:01SPEAKERI have basically gotten used to the size

1:13:03SPEAKERand the edge-to-edge screen and everything.

1:13:06SPEAKERIt still might be a hair too,

1:13:07SPEAKEReven after two straight months of it,

1:13:09SPEAKERit still might be just a tiny bit bigger than I would like.

1:13:11SPEAKERSo I might be in the market for a mini iPhone

1:13:15SPEAKERif it became a Neo.

1:13:16SPEAKER- My daughter has a mini, the last mini, she has a 13 mini

1:13:20SPEAKERand I would, okay, I do have old guy eyes now

1:13:24SPEAKERand I have to get readers or some sort of other glasses.

1:13:27SPEAKER- Yeah, the big screen is nice for that.

1:13:28SPEAKER- Yeah, but big screen aside, it is so nice to have a phone

1:13:33SPEAKERthat your thumb can hit the entire screen on.

1:13:35SPEAKER- Yep, whatever the, what is the name for their,

1:13:39SPEAKERlike shift the entire screen down half the screen height.

1:13:42SPEAKER- I don't think they do that anymore, do they?

1:13:44SPEAKER- It's still in there, yeah, you can still do it,

1:13:46SPEAKERbut that's a poor substitute for being able

1:13:48SPEAKERto just cover the entire phone with your thumb.

1:13:51SPEAKER- Bad hack, so anyway, yeah, that's my-

1:13:53SPEAKER- Wow, that's, man, I would like to see that.

1:13:56SPEAKER- I think that like they've been dancing around

1:13:59SPEAKERdifferent ways to brand the small phone

1:14:02SPEAKERand I wonder if Neo is the new thing that means small.

1:14:06SPEAKER- Okay.

1:14:07SPEAKER- Anyway, last hardware hit,

1:14:09SPEAKERthis is the last thing I think.

1:14:11SPEAKERIntel- - Pretty minor one.

1:14:13SPEAKER- Yeah, Intel announced a new core Arrow Lake CPUs.

1:14:17SPEAKERSo these are the desktop hardware that came out end of 2024.

1:14:22SPEAKER- Yes, Arrow Lake came out like September of 2024, I think.

1:14:24SPEAKER- Yeah, and Lake Paul, I guess, yeah.

1:14:25SPEAKERI keep a decent eye on CPU news.

1:14:27SPEAKERThis is the very long rumored Arrow Lake refresh.

1:14:30SPEAKERThis has been rumored for like a year.

1:14:33SPEAKERAnd finally, it is only, in the final analysis,

1:14:36SPEAKERit's only two SKUs.

1:14:38SPEAKER- Well, it's four SKUs,

1:14:40SPEAKERbut two of them are the same as the other two.

1:14:42SPEAKER- K and KF variants of each.

1:14:45SPEAKER- The F variants are no graphics, right?

1:14:48SPEAKER- Yes, or it's the KF, right?

1:14:50SPEAKERIt's K and KF. - Yeah, the KF variant

1:14:52SPEAKERdoesn't have graphics on board, I believe is the difference.

1:14:55SPEAKER- K does, I believe.

1:14:56SPEAKERSo the rumors were, so it's core old,

1:14:59SPEAKERit's basically a five and a nine,

1:15:01SPEAKERor I'm sorry, a five and a seven, excuse me.

1:15:02SPEAKERThere is a nine.

1:15:04SPEAKERI hate that they dropped the I.

1:15:05SPEAKER- It's the mid range and the low end, but not the high end.

1:15:08SPEAKER- I5 and I7 and I9 were, for some reason,

1:15:12SPEAKEReasier to say or more identifiable.

1:15:14SPEAKER- It's just 'cause they've been around for a long time.

1:15:16SPEAKER- Well, I know, but when you just say five,

1:15:18SPEAKERthat doesn't mean anything much

1:15:19SPEAKERunless you really establish a core five, core ultra five.

1:15:22SPEAKERLike the branding, I feel like, is worse.

1:15:23SPEAKER- I think the unit, like a number without,

1:15:26SPEAKERmy chemistry teacher, Ms. Chartung, always used to say,

1:15:28SPEAKER"If you give me a number without a unit,

1:15:29SPEAKERit doesn't mean anything."

1:15:30SPEAKER- That's exactly what I'm saying.

1:15:32SPEAKER- Yeah.

1:15:33SPEAKER- That's your chemistry teacher,

1:15:34SPEAKERknew what he was talking about, she.

1:15:35SPEAKER- But yeah. - Oh, sure.

1:15:38SPEAKERSo there was a, so it's 250K and 270K,

1:15:42SPEAKERwhich build on the 245K and 265K.

1:15:45SPEAKERThere was a- - Or do they, Brad?

1:15:46SPEAKER- Well, okay, yes, it's actually complicated.

1:15:48SPEAKERWell, in the product lineup,

1:15:50SPEAKERthey'd build on those products in the internal composition

1:15:55SPEAKERof the chip, maybe.

1:15:56SPEAKER- TBD.

1:15:57SPEAKER- Maybe it's the other direction.

1:15:59SPEAKERBut the reason I bring that up is that until a month

1:16:01SPEAKERor two ago, there was a rumored 290K coming