If they were shifting away from the TFlop number, we should never know the PS5 Pro has 16.7 TFlop.
This is just full disclosure. Same way we know the total power limit of the PSU even if the actual console in operation will never naturally draw up to 390W. And take note of the one place it was officially disclosed. In the console manual. You cant say you don't see a difference between that and say how at some point the TF number would be the only thing initially marketed.
It's the best way to gauge a GPU's performance. I don't even know what the problem is with you guys and hating TFlop.
Not saying its not. But now, it's only used as exactly what it always was. A scientific marker of theoretical performance. Not the catch all buzz phrase that it was being used as before.
As for why we are hating TF? Well, because we believe the industry and the tech driving it has moved on from that. Eg... that TF number doesn't account for things like PSSR and better RT... or even bandwidth.
Are meaningful AI improvements and RT really that realistic?
I’m doubtful.
diminishing returns seems like a real thing for next gen more than ever
Of course, they are.
Think of it this way, going from 4nm to 2nm, should mean that you can fit 2x the compute in the same space. But if you are keeping your CU count the same, that means you can instead have CUs that are twice as big as the current ones at 4nm. If you aren't really touching the raster performance outside of faster clocks and better architecture, then it means you can instead invest in more RT units per CU, more AI-specific hardware, more cache, more RAM....etc.
And if looking at the geometrically dense games we have today, it should be clear that AI and RT and RAM quantity and bandwidth, are actually the things that can make the biggest visual impact in games going forward. Not more Raster performance... The same way we outgrew sprites and polygons, is the same way we are outgrowing raster performance.