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Discussing RDNA 4, Blackwell, Arrow Lake, AI, and PS5 Pro Design with Bryan Heemskerk (Patreon)

Published:
2024-01-06 01:54:37
Imported:
2026-06
Tags:

Content

Episode 239 of Broken Silicon will see the return of the fan favorite Bryan Heemskerk!  Bryan is the Art Director at Massive Damage, Inc who is especially good at discussing both the Hardware, and the Software behind games!  This is the type of guest you can ask ANYTHING about why things are the way they are, and what we should expect out of the future of interactive pixels.  At a minimum, we plan to discuss:

PlayStation 5 Pro Rumors - Making sense of the specs

AMD RDNA 4

Nvidia Blackwell

AMD Zen 5

AMD Zen 6

AMD Hawk Point, Strix, and Halo APUs

Intel Arrow Lake and Rentable Units

AI

Game Development 

DLSS & FSR

You have ~36 hours (Till Sunday Morning US Central Time) to write-in below, but it is always appreciated if you get in your questions a bit sooner so we can prepare!  Be respectful, use good grammar, and be as concise as possible to have your submissions considered.

Previous Bryan Episode: https://youtu.be/NDEka3tBE1g

Bryan's Twitter Account: https://twitter.com/bryanheemskerk

Comments

Adrian

My Q. would be: do either of you expect MiniPC OEMs like Minisforum to give us an HX99G type product with the 7900M GPU attached to it? I’ve been waiting all year - 2023 - for a little rig like that just so I don’t have to stare at a pet rock like my current ALIENWARE R14 which takes up too much space and is too loud… I’ll pay whatever price to make it happen. Preferably $2,000<. What’cha think?

CompressedAIBlocks

Bryan and Tom. We've had FSR, DLSS and XeSS for a decent while now. Which one do you prefer and why? I personally enjoy seeing FSR in everything that way more people can use it, but there's no denying FSR is last in terms of image quality and is up & down in terms of good or bad implementation.

CompressedAIBlocks

There seems to be more and more 240Hz or greater monitors. OLED 1440p480 were confirmed for CES. Do you guys see frame generation from either vendor being picked up quicker due to these higher refresh rates?

CompressedAIBlocks

Bryan. Does your studio or any studios you know aim to make games with upscaling and/or frame generation in mind? Is it like "Hey the RX 6700 XT can handle 1440p60 with these settings, but if we crank up the quality per pixel/settings we can do 1080p60 and FSR/DLSS it to 4K." or are these technologies still just something you add on without making the game around them?

CompressedAIBlocks

Do CPUs seem a bit boring for gaming at this point to you guys? I'm not saying that they're bad, or uninteresting for other things like AI, productivity or their actual designs BUT Zen 3/Alder Lake is realistically enough for 120/144 FPS gaming at any resolution right now. The only reason you'd want something faster (with current games) is if you're pushing for 240Hz monitors and don't have access to frame generation.

CompressedAIBlocks

What game are you guys looking forward to seeing next? I am looking forward to Alone in the Dark and FF7R Part 2.

Cleansweep

Now that the PS5 Pro is going to be a thing, do you think that pressure from game developers will get Microsoft to push refreshes of their Series consoles?

Chris Rijk

Unreal will be getting increased CPU parallelisation in version 5.4 - see https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JS5N41F4fZQ&t=26079s Obviously we'll have to wait and see for the results in actual games to determine the real world benefits but do either of you have any particular thoughts on this? Given how many games will be using Unreal 5, could this one change actually affect the CPU market (eg increase demand for more cores)?

JR

In 2023, I built my dad a gaming machine for his living room. He’s always been on PlayStation. But myself, as someone using a 4090 and an LG OLED, I know what 4k + Ray Tracing @ 120fps looks like. So, I frankly would have been embarrassed to buy him a PS5, given the massive compromises recent PS5 games have been forced to make. (See the countless 2023 PS5 games that were forced to render at 720p!). This is supposed to be the 4k generation! And 720p/60fps is not exactly an experience I would be proud to recommend to my dad. So I built him a nice system with an RTX 4080 and a Ryzen 7800X3D (to pair with his new OLED TV). Along with DLSS 2 + 3, I believe 16GB of VRAM will be key to him having a great 4k gaming experience for the remainder of this generation (through ~2028-2029). Do you agree with my calculus that 16GB is a safe amount of VRAM for someone wanting to experience new games for the next ~5 years?

CompressedAIBlocks

B&T. Say Zen 5 drops and it's 20%~ better on average than Zen 4 then Arrow Lake drops 6-12 months later and it's 10%~ better on average than Zen 5. Will this matter? We've seen Alder Lake drop with 10%+ performance advantages over Zen 3 and it did not change anything in the long term. Furthermore if it's only 10% better than Zen 5 (exclude vcache here please) in gaming but lacks SMT, this will make Arrow Lake end up ultimately being a worse performer in games, ya?

CompressedAIBlocks

Bryan. What is your ideal RDNA 4 lineup? Tom is letting us know we're getting essentially Navi 31 levels of performance for mid range. How does this look like for? If that's "all" we're getting performance wise, do you want to see a bigger push for RT, features or VRAM with these?

MultiNati

Hi Tom and Bryan. In Bryan's last BS episode I really enjoyed the two of you discuss the effects of AI toward the production of visual arts and the possibility it might hamper the development of next generation of artists. I wonder about your thoughts about the role of experienced artists in the AI future. Will experienced artists be doing something akin to an editorial role where they decide and maybe edit AI generated pictures? Furthermore, will the fundamental and basic knowledge of creating art be lost in long term future?

Cleansweep

Now that more studios are announcing or talking about how they use/intend to use AI tools in development, what's your take on the public reception to those announcements?

Chris Rijk

AMD's X3D CPUs have clearly won the hearts and minds of DIY buyers and this doesn't look likely to change any time soon. Let's say for the sake of example that the (Arrow Lake) i9 15900K will lose to the (Zen 5) 8800X3D by 10% in gaming while also costing $200 more and consuming 3x the power. Imagine you were tasked to come up with an alternative chip design by reusing Intel's existing technology in a different way that simply has the goal to win back DIY buyers while still making a profit - what would you attempt and why?

MelodicArmor

With AMD Radeon Launching a 16GB card for under $350, do you think this a card that game developers will enjoy considering the VRAM for the price/performance?

10GHz Netburst

In my assessment of the PS5 Pro I believe that upgrading the GPU architecture like they are rumoured to have done is much more of a headache for game Devs than upgrading the CPU architecture. Yet to improve performance on the CPU side they only appear to have done a clock bump. Can you speak to how the difficulties on the developer side play out for changing CPU Vs GPU architectures on a console?

10GHz Netburst

Is it just me, is it just the games I play, or is DLSS/FSR/DLAA just kinda crap? Basically every time I've tried any of them it ends up either smudgy, full of ghosting, or both, to the point that it's a noticeable downgrade to visibility and detail.

Lazarus

Avatar's implementation of FSR3 upscaling seems to have made a decent step forward in terms of visual quality. Do you guys think that this level of quality is going to be the default for FSR3 upscaling in the future? And do you have any clue why AMD decided to release FSR3 completely broken instead of just waiting a few more months?

Xavbeat03

Greetings Bryan and Tom, what kind of things do you think Nintendo can do in their upcoming console to increase their docked performance?

Cleansweep

Out of the big three (AMD, Nvidia, Intel), who had the best AI messaging, from a developer and consumer perspective? What AI related tech shown at CES has peaked your interest?

Elementus

With PCIE gen 3/4 NVME SSD's now a mainstream build choice for desktops and laptops, is there any chance that we'll see game developers starting to build games with new features which rely on fast storage? I'm thinking of things like the level shifting feature we saw in ratchet and clank: rift apart. I'm just wondering if we are ever going to get to the point where the performance specs of your SSD matters for gaming beyond the fact that its not a hard drive.

thanos AIAS

Will AMD launch a new chipset too with the Zen 5 CPU series? If so, will pci 5.0 be supported across all motherboard connections?