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Comment by aclevernickname | Hacker News Reader

So, I have a Linux Desktop PC, with 8GB of RAM, and an AMD A10 processor. I'm running XBMC (or LXDE or Front Row), and running 5 VM's on it under KVM. Cost about $450 when I bought it. price is about $570 now.

I've had this setup (with a slightly slower AMD proc) for over 2 years, and I've been running BSNES, Dolphin, PCSX2, Nestopia, and MAME fairly regularly. Today's announcement informed me that I've been enjoying much of the next-generation gaming experience already, without any of the DRM Sony and Microsoft promise to include with their systems.

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>I've been enjoying much of the next-generation gaming experience already.

You can't be serious. Although you can very soon be enjoying the next-generation gaming experience, what's exciting to me about this as a PC gamer is that all next gen games will be designed with x86 in mind, which should make porting trivial compared to this generation.

They still don't budget enough time and money towards PC ports even today. I played Metro Last Light recently (released last week) and the secondary weapon selection was basically holding tab and then the menu emulated the mouse like it was an analog stick to select knives, grenades, etc. They are making huge money on the PC platform but still can't be bothered to make a proper UI or binds for an entirely different platform.

Porting from console to PC is trivial. Getting it working well on an infinite number of configurations is not and supporting it is expensive.

That's what abstraction layers are for, think Direct X and OpenGL.

Those certainly help port it to the PC, but they don't guarantee it will work well on every combination of components.

Often it's not the problem of it not working well, it's the issue of UX. Mouse and keyboard are miles away from controller.

And these days they mostly don't even bother to do anything...

Sure I'm serious. Steam, and Front Row, are focusing on linux. Valve's making Linux X86 the target platform for their console. the Steambox is going to be another X86 PC of comparable speed to what I already run, but much smaller.

I'm an early adopter of the same hardware you're all going to be enjoying this christmas, and many of the same games. Plus, I get a Virtual Console offering that Nintendo/Microsoft/Sony only wish they could match, and a television experience with Sickbeard/XBMC that not even Netflix can match, let alone whatever soon-abandoned toy Microsoft will be including with the XBO.

You're absolutely right; Microsoft/Sony adopting the X86 platform for this generation is a perfect storm for Valve; release a Steambox running linux, and you can minimize the cost of porting to 20% of what those same efforts would require coming from a PPC architecture.

Even if you had the same GPU and CPU (which you don't, there had not been 8 core/12CU GCN APUs two years ago, I doubt you can buy them even now) you still would be far away from the console experience because the PC games cannot access the GPU directly and rely on slow and inefficient APIs.

So, maybe you can point me towards some documentation that states that the AMD A10 is somehow massively outclassed by this new AMD-created CPU/GPU combo?

I don't know what is "massively outclassed". I am just saying you don't have the same or similar hardware - there had not been 8 cpu cores in A10 series and their 6 CU GPU is not even from the same generation (it's old VLIW cores). And even if you had the same hardware - PC games could not utilize it the same way the console games can. JFYI PS3 runs modern games on the Nvidia 7800 with 256M system memory. Try just booting Windows in a 256M on PC.

Ah. so the XBO/PS4 has two more cores than my PC, and the chip itself has more in common with the Atom-clone E-450 chip than the A10. that's maybe a $120 upgrade in December if I want to match it core-for-core, and everything else is already on-par. Thanks for the agreement that there's nothing on the XBO that outclasses my little PC.

Can you point me towards any documentation on AMD using VLIW cores? I thought the VLIW movement died with Transmeta. Also, if you could provide me with documentation that AMD isn't using the same-gen GPU cores in the XBO/PS4 that they put in the A10 (Southern Islands - Radeon 7XXX), I'd really appreciate that as well.

I wouldn't dare boot windows on a 256MB PC. it wouldn't run. However, I could do the very same thing with a Linux PC (you know, a PS3) without much issue. In fact, while typing this, I used Chef to deploy a 256MB VM running Lubuntu 13.04. :)

Seriously? You think 6+2 equals 8 and 6 is on par with 12 and 18 and then ask me to point at technical documentation readily available at the AMD website? What are you going to do with that, it many grades beyond basic arithmetics.

very interesting. I was looking on AMD's website for info on the Jaguar cores, and couldn't find any. Perhaps I'm looking in the wrong place?

so, I'm not sure what Very Long Instruction Word being implemented in the A10 cores has to do with whether or not I understand basic arithmetic, so I'm going to assume you don't have any information on that, and will disregard that part of your grandparent post accordingly.

I'll take your silence about how the A10 is a much faster CPU than the low-power equivalent in the XBO/PS4 as agreement to these statements. Seems all we're doing is haggling over how much faster the GPU(s) in this unit are compared to the A10. I haven't found anything on AMD's site explaining these cores. I'd ask you to point me toward some documentation, but I expect you to return with an ad hominem again.

I'll also take your silence about how much more efficient linux can be with 256MB of RAM than windows as your agreement to these facts.

Still looking forward to any Jaguar-related documentation that you can find on AMD's site that covers my questions. thanks in advance.

I don't think you can find info on the Jaguar core on their website. Why are you looking for a CPU core info now, though? I thought you wanted to find if AMD GPU (note, letter C is not the same as G) in your PC uses VLIW, and somehow being reluctant to use web search (like this http://www.bing.com/search?q=amd+a10+vliw ). I am sorry, I cannot help you with navigating AMD website - it's dog slow and poorly organized. Also, disregard all I say, you, obviously know better. And sure, my silence means I agree with your idiocy, and not doing something else, like not checking HN comments.

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