Posted by
michael
on from the soon-to-be-illegal dept.
Tauvix writes: "AnandTech is running an in-depth article on the hardware of the X-box as compared to a PC, the PS2, and the Gamecube. There's some very interesting suprises and commentary on what was done right, and what could have been done better."
what's really needed is the investment into making a game that makes use of all the new geforce 3 hardware. having console games made for the xbox (then probably being very easily ported to windows) will mean a larger amount of investment in pc games in the long run.
Re:Let me get this straight
by
Anonymous Coward
·
· Score: 3, Funny
"The worst war in history occurred only 60 years ago, 22 million people were killed and you have the gall to be dicussing some games machine???? My *god*, people, GET SOME PRIORITIES!"
Prorities? Doesnt Quake 3 in 1024*768 in 32bit colour at 60 FPS mean anything to you?
Is it worth Hacking
by
slashnik
·
· Score: 4, Informative
It is said that the XBox is being sold at a loss but does that automatically mean that it is a good deal if it is hacked to make a general purpose computer. The CPU is soldered and non-upgradeable, the memory again is soldered and non upgradeable. The hard disk and PSU are "non standard"
Can an open platform, boxed general purpose computer with similar spec be built for the same or simlar money
Anyone who says that the XBox would make a good cluster node should price up a similar spec motherboard + CPU + memory + NIC+ case. I believe that this should come in cheaper and be far more upgradeable
What are the other uses for a hacked XBox
slashnik
Single page article
by
purplemonkeydan
·
· Score: 5, Informative
Protect your sanity and view the whole article on one page here, rather than clicking 'Next' 100 times and downloading heaps of ads.
From the article:
Microsoft has yet to announce their official plans for taking the Xbox online and unfortunately by default the Xbox's Ethernet port is not set to receive an IP from a DHCP server
Perhaps there some sort of Xbox ISP in the works exclusive to MS? A XMSN, if you will? If so, are Xbox owners need a membership to play games remotely?
Xbox's Ethernet port is not set to receive an IP from a DHCP server
It's not even TCP/IP! It uses Microsoft's new NetBEUI-2001 protocall. I know it's true, 'cause my OS/2 LanManager server says so!;)
--
Moneyed corporations, non-working 'poor' and criminal prisoners are turning productive citizens into tax-slaves.
Interesting Look
by
r.suzuka
·
· Score: 5, Interesting
I read through the article and perhaps I did not understand it completely but I believe the writer may have been missing the points overall.
In Japan, the market for consoles is perhaps much greater than it is in the United States. Many people have a computer but not as many as have a console. Instead of looking at the Xbox as a console, I believe it was looked at as a dedicated gaming computer. Does that make sense? Please correct me if I am unclear.
I believe that the writer missed many of the reason for the popularity and technical strength of consoles. For a console, a developer of course knows what sort of hardware his program will be running on, and he has specialized tools from the console maker to help him in his development. That is not found so much with a computer (though it is with the Xbox). Quite a bit can be done without enormous quantities of RAM as consoles through out history have shown. If you remember the Zelda game for the Nintendo 64, it would run on only 4 MB of RAM. I would like to see PC games do that ^_^
I also did not see a comparison of the Xbox to the Nintendo GameCube. I have had a GameCube since it was released two months ago and I am very pleased with it so far. I may even enjoy it more than my PlayStation 2. I believe that the GameCube is a worthy competitor to the Xbox.
I am making the point that consoles are not meant to be personal computers and they should not be judged in that way. The Xbox is a impressive dedicated gaming PC in many respects if developers will learn to fully utilize its power, but as a console, I do not prefer it.
Thank you for reading this long post of mine. Once again please correct me if I am not clear in what I say. Thank you.
R. Suzuka
Re:Interesting Look
by
EMN13
·
· Score: 3, Informative
Actually, at least according to the anand tech article, you're incorrect in assuming that consoles come with specialized which would make them easier to program for. PS2 apparently came without a c-compiler, and though I have little knowledge about consoles in particular, c is still king for most embedded applications.
I only have limited OpenGL and assembler experience, but I've seen the instruction set that the vertex shader's in the X-Box use, and they are orders of magnitude simpler (and correspondingly less flexible) than implementing such vertex transformations in x86 assembler. (This has nothing to do with the x86 architecture, it's simply that NormalizedCrossProduct EBX, EAX, ECX (psuedocode) is a lot easier than working out a normalized cross product manually, though the vagaries of the x86 FPU won't help.) Given the fact that the x86 architecture is old, as is DirectX, it should be much and much easier to program for this familiar platform, especially now that it's got a unified memory architecture.
The XBox is a console in the sense that it has hardware stability; you know exactly what you're coding for, and a PC in simplicity. I'ld expect it to be a great hit in the game-programming industry...
And as to the amount of memory, while it's true that one can make good games in little ram, some things like hi-res images, animated textures, music clips, hi-poly geometry, and whatever else I'm forgetting do take a lot of ram, and it would be sad if that turned out to be the limiting factor. A smartly structured game which loads game code and story on the fly, perhaps even compressed in some way, with code reuse done well can be very small. It's just that extra ram never hurts...
I'm not sure about this, but I think that the reason for previous generation of consoles success was hardware+software stability, and definitly not the tools supplied by the manufacturer. Those tend to be great for the PC. A small simple platform has the advantage in testing (java: write once, run anywhere - sound familiar?) and complexity. The coders don't need to worry whether the user has win95 or the osr2 version, and that is GREAT.
Re:Interesting Look
by
JabberWokky
·
· Score: 5, Funny
Anwyay, while the US is pretty fanatical about the consoles, I think the Japanese are much more so. How many times have you heard about public launch parties that drew hundreds if not thousands?
Slashdot Helpful Hint #681: When telling someone what you think it might be like in another country (oh, say... Japan), make sure that the person that you are replying to isn't, oh... say... named R. Suzuka and a student of Physics at the University of Tokyo.
--
Evan
-- "$30 for the One True Ring. $10 each additional ring!" -- JRR "Bob" Tolkien
Re:Interesting Look
by
Eil
·
· Score: 3, Interesting
Right, in the PSX's day, 2MB was a huge amount of memory for a console. Prior to that, much less memory was typically used because the storage medium of choice, the ROM cartrige, could be accessed extremely quickly.
But I've always had the impression that video game manufacturers have always had the right idea. They make the hardware extremely simple and let the programmers have free reign over how it's used. If you've ever read up on console hardware design, the first thing you'll notice is how much it resembles the basic layout of examples used in Computer Science classes. The only two things that a video game console needs to are push pixels and be able to move data around very quickly. The first is usually met with some special graphics rendering hardware and the second is achieved by giving the hardware an extremely simple but flexible and fast design.
Because of this, I initially believed the X-Box was doomed to fail simply because it was based on PC hardware. Typical PC hardware is so overly complex because the kind of software that runs on a PC... it wouldn't surprise me to hear that a modern PC game goes through a dozen or more layers of software (and hardware, think of the CISC -> RISC tranlation in modern Pentiums) before you get to the point where you're actually shooting at the bad guys.
But despite its PC origins and also despite my typically anti-Microsoft attitude (:P), I believe the X-Box is a pretty nifty piece of kit and will do quite well on the market.
I just hope M$ doesn't use the same business tactics with its console that it does with its operating systems... though I have a feeling that Nintendo and Sony would be much more difficult adversaries than Apple, Netscape, etc. I look foward to seeing how this three-way war turns out.
What was done right:
The xbox acts as a cooker itself! no need to buy a microwave to warm up that pizza, just put it on the xbox!
Expensive heating is now cut down thanks to the myraid of heat exhauts on the Xbox
Balance your Tv, VCR and kitchen sink on the xbox's overly large service
Use the controller as an inexpensive door stop: big enough for even the heaviest of doors.
With all the versetile uses of the x box, we say use this common daily appliance in your every day life, coming soon: a hack to reverse the exhauts so the xbox doubles as a vacum!
P.s. for those with no humour, yes, this was a joke post.
-- Microsoft IIS is to webserving as KFC is to healthy eating
Wonderfull Design, but Perhaps Unflexable
by
zulux
·
· Score: 5, Interesting
The XBox has some fantastic hardware, but it puts the developer in a DirectX 8.1 sandbox. If the game is a 3D, with textures and snazy vertex shading, then the Xbox hardware is wonderfull.
If the programmer needs somthing else: like generateing all the textures using algorithms, or simulating deformable shapes on a per-pixel basis, that the design like the massivly parrallel and massivly flexible PS2 really shines.
Anand had a great example of this: Electronic A rts just used one of the the PS2 vector units to encode Dolby 5.1. sound. Thats flexible.
It's kinda like compairing the Atari 2600 to the ColecoVision - the Atari was really felxible but limited in processing power, but Coleco had a wonderfull sprite chip and a great processor.
Unfortunatly the Coleco design was inflexable, and Atari programmers were able for move the 2600 from being a pong macheine, into generating alomost thoushands of colors and thousands of sounds. The Coleco had decent games, but nobody was able to coax anything truly unique out of it.
Perhaps the PS2 will do a likewise transformation.
--
Moneyed corporations, non-working 'poor' and criminal prisoners are turning productive citizens into tax-slaves.
Re:Wonderfull Design, but Perhaps Unflexable
by
TheMoog
·
· Score: 5, Interesting
If the programmer needs somthing else: like generateing all the textures using algorithms, or simulating deformable shapes on a per-pixel basis, that the design like the massivly parrallel and massivly flexible PS2 really shines.
...it shines if you like programming an almost impossible-to-debug multiprocessor system. Orchestrating four separate processors with DMA accesses flying over limited bus power is tricky. Plus Xbox, though DX8-based is not just DX8, it's superficially similar but greatly optimized and tailored specifically for Xbox.
Xbox has UMA too, which means the CPU can get in and address textures directly itself, unlike on the PS2 where DMAs have to be set up to talk to texture memory, so in fact it's easier on Xbox to generate the textures using algorithms, as you describe.
As for 'simulating deformable shapes on a per-pixel basis' I've been in the graphics trade for five years, and have never heard such a made up bunch of junk. You want deformable shapes? Cool; you can either dump polys completely and write your own renderer, in which case Xbox will beat PS2 as it has a faster processor, and none of the specialist rendering hardware in either box can help you. If you mean deformable as in morphing/procedurally modified vertices, then both machine are equal. If you mean procedural generation of geometry, then granted, the PS2 shines here, though it's not as if Xbox can't do it. As for anything 'per-pixel' the PS2 can render a single texture per-pixel at a time. Only Xbox and GameCube can do anything like arbitrary per-pixel operations.
Anand had a great example of this: Electronic A rts just used one of the the PS2 vector units to encode Dolby 5.1. sound. Thats flexible.
Granted, that is cool; but you are of course giving up 30% of your processing power to do something Xbox does in hardware. All credit to them though!
Re:Wonderfull Design, but Perhaps Unflexable
by
zulux
·
· Score: 3, Informative
Orchestrating four separate processors with DMA accesses flying over limited bus power is tricky.
Quite true, the Xbox is much easier platform to develop for if you want a typical game. PS2 is a bitch, reminds me of the Saturn. Unlike the Saturn though, the huge volume of shipped PS2 systems will give good developers the push they need to get out of their one-processor, one thread mindset.
As for 'simulating deformable shapes on a per-pixel basis' I've been in the graphics trade for five years, and have never heard such a made up bunch of junk.
The Slashdot audience is made up of computing professionals with a wide array of knowledge. I use terms to facilitate communication, not to shout to the world that I know arcane terminology.
You want deformable shapes? Cool;
No, what I want is beer and a good curry.
Don't get all hot and bothered because someone things that the PS2 has a bit of untapped potential left in it. The Xbox will do fine and there are plenty of fun games to make for it. I'm really looking forward to Myst IV.
--
Moneyed corporations, non-working 'poor' and criminal prisoners are turning productive citizens into tax-slaves.
Re:Wonderfull Design, but Perhaps Unflexable
by
zulux
·
· Score: 5, Funny
"Inflexible" and "wonderful". Failing english should be unpossible for someone who's been speaking it as long as you have.
I always thought that Slashdot needed a spell check, but who need a spell check nowadays, when there are so many useless people with so much time on their hands that they voluntarily correct your postings for you?
--
Moneyed corporations, non-working 'poor' and criminal prisoners are turning productive citizens into tax-slaves.
Earliest computer entertainment devices?
by
WowTIP
·
· Score: 4, Interesting
From article: But although PC gamers have taken the lime light recently, every true PC gamer and most PC users in general can trace their roots back to the earliest of computer-entertainment devices: videogame consoles.
Most people I know started out on Commodore 64, Sinclair or some of the other early home computers. In fact, I think most people that started out on computers are still gaming on computers (PC). Those that started out on consoles still pretty much run consoles.
But that's just my buddies... Might differ...
--
--
"I'm surfin the dead zone
In the twilight, unknown"
I find it hard to believe the XBox you mention caught on fire... And please, if it's serious, do you have any evidence? I can hardly believe microsoft would knowingly kill their reputation by selling dangerous equipment.
2 slashdot whines in the same comment!
by
Ella+the+Cat
·
· Score: 3, Informative
Does anyone have the figures for the computing power of the Penteron/Celium III
Have you tried entering "Penteron/Celium III" into Google?:-)
Pentium III 2.9 Gflops at 733MHz, PS2 EE 6.2 Gflops at 300 MHz, dunno about the GameCube.
M$ miscalculating game strategy?
by
HiredMan
·
· Score: 3, Insightful
Here's something I'm unsure of - if standardesque DirectX software is used to program the XBox then shouldn't porting those games to a Windows computer be fairly easy? I know the XBox has nifty optimizations - especially for 3D - but isn't just about ANY decent gaming computer sold today able to match the specialty hardware because it has a processor that's twice as fast and a video card that can be repeatedly upgraded?
The reason I ask is because most hardcore gamers (obviously the core XBox market) probably have a gaming computer and if I can get Halo or DOA3 or TitleX for my computer (which has better graphics than my TV set and I'm used to playing games on) why would I buy an XBox?
Why wouldn't I would buy a PS2 or a gamecube if I buy a console so I could play games NOT available on my computer....
This being said is M$ going to have to embargo the good XBox games to "XBox only" to keep the Windows game market from eating their own lunch?
If M$ doesn't have a big backlog of cool XBox only games would seem that they might be limiting their market to "gamers who can't afford a good gaming computer" and those who have enough money to buy everything out there. I don't think this is a broad enough market to support an entire platform.
Anand wrote a very good article with plenty of meat and potatos to satisfy but I think he is sort of missing a very important point. He mentions in the article how the PS2 falls behind the XBox in some way because it has less fancy graphics and sound capabilities. SONY HAS SOLD NEARLY 20 MILLION OF THE FUCKING THINGS AND HAS HUNDREDS OF GAMES AVAILABLE FOR IT. I think Anand needs to reassess his position on the PS2. It is still selling for 300$ because people are still eating it up at this price. The XBox may be able to do a bajillion polygons per second but it still doesn't have the game franchises that make bank on console systems. Nintendo's also in a good position because they are destined to get the little kids who want to play Pokemon until their eyes fall out. Who cares if Pikachu's only rendered with half a million fucking surfaces, people want to play the games not write a master's thesis on the theoretical graphic capabilities of a computer system. I bought a GC on my way home from Louisiana and since I've been home my brother's been playing Rogue Squadron almst non-stop. He hasn't yet complained about the lack of theoretical polygons the GC can render yet and I sort of doubt he will. The XBox will only truely contend with Nintendo and Sony when it has games in high demand. I thought it's launch titles were pretty crappy compared to the GC's though a little better than what the PS2 originally offered. Besides that I got a GC and two games for the price of either the PS2 or XBox.
Slashdot Mirror
what's really needed is the investment into making a game that makes use of all the new geforce 3 hardware. having console games made for the xbox (then probably being very easily ported to windows) will mean a larger amount of investment in pc games in the long run.
(also possibly a monopoly on the games market)
free (as in mp3s) electronic music
"The worst war in history occurred only 60 years ago, 22 million people were killed and you have the gall to be dicussing some games machine???? My *god*, people, GET SOME PRIORITIES!"
Prorities? Doesnt Quake 3 in 1024*768 in 32bit colour at 60 FPS mean anything to you?
It is said that the XBox is being sold at a loss but does that automatically mean that it is a good deal if it is hacked to make a general purpose computer. The CPU is soldered and non-upgradeable, the memory again is soldered and non upgradeable. The hard disk and PSU are "non standard"
Can an open platform, boxed general purpose computer with similar spec be built for the same or simlar money
Anyone who says that the XBox would make a good cluster node should price up a similar spec motherboard + CPU + memory + NIC+ case. I believe that this should come in cheaper and be far more upgradeable
What are the other uses for a hacked XBox
slashnik
Protect your sanity and view the whole article on one page here, rather than clicking 'Next' 100 times and downloading heaps of ads.
Perhaps there some sort of Xbox ISP in the works exclusive to MS? A XMSN, if you will? If so, are Xbox owners need a membership to play games remotely?
I read through the article and perhaps I did not understand it completely but I believe the writer may have been missing the points overall.
In Japan, the market for consoles is perhaps much greater than it is in the United States. Many people have a computer but not as many as have a console. Instead of looking at the Xbox as a console, I believe it was looked at as a dedicated gaming computer. Does that make sense? Please correct me if I am unclear.
I believe that the writer missed many of the reason for the popularity and technical strength of consoles. For a console, a developer of course knows what sort of hardware his program will be running on, and he has specialized tools from the console maker to help him in his development. That is not found so much with a computer (though it is with the Xbox). Quite a bit can be done without enormous quantities of RAM as consoles through out history have shown. If you remember the Zelda game for the Nintendo 64, it would run on only 4 MB of RAM. I would like to see PC games do that ^_^
I also did not see a comparison of the Xbox to the Nintendo GameCube. I have had a GameCube since it was released two months ago and I am very pleased with it so far. I may even enjoy it more than my PlayStation 2. I believe that the GameCube is a worthy competitor to the Xbox.
I am making the point that consoles are not meant to be personal computers and they should not be judged in that way. The Xbox is a impressive dedicated gaming PC in many respects if developers will learn to fully utilize its power, but as a console, I do not prefer it.
Thank you for reading this long post of mine. Once again please correct me if I am not clear in what I say. Thank you.
R. Suzuka
Welcome to the Xbox, a nerds best friend:
What was done right:
The xbox acts as a cooker itself! no need to buy a microwave to warm up that pizza, just put it on the xbox!
Expensive heating is now cut down thanks to the myraid of heat exhauts on the Xbox
Balance your Tv, VCR and kitchen sink on the xbox's overly large service
Use the controller as an inexpensive door stop: big enough for even the heaviest of doors.
With all the versetile uses of the x box, we say use this common daily appliance in your every day life, coming soon: a hack to reverse the exhauts so the xbox doubles as a vacum!
P.s. for those with no humour, yes, this was a joke post.
Microsoft IIS is to webserving as KFC is to healthy eating
The XBox has some fantastic hardware, but it puts the developer in a DirectX 8.1 sandbox. If the game is a 3D, with textures and snazy vertex shading, then the Xbox hardware is wonderfull.
o mbat.JPG
If the programmer needs somthing else: like generateing all the textures using algorithms, or simulating deformable shapes on a per-pixel basis, that the design like the massivly parrallel and massivly flexible PS2 really shines.
Anand had a great example of this: Electronic A rts just used one of the the PS2 vector units to encode Dolby 5.1. sound. Thats flexible.
It's kinda like compairing the Atari 2600 to the ColecoVision - the Atari was really felxible but limited in processing power, but Coleco had a wonderfull sprite chip and a great processor.
Unfortunatly the Coleco design was inflexable, and Atari programmers were able for move the 2600 from being a pong macheine, into generating alomost thoushands of colors and thousands of sounds. The Coleco had decent games, but nobody was able to coax anything truly unique out of it.
The Atari 2600 went from Combat http://outerspace.terra.com.br/special/historia/c
to psudo 3D Poleposition http://www.whimsey.com/z26/POLEPSN.GIF due to it's fexibility.
Perhaps the PS2 will do a likewise transformation.
Moneyed corporations, non-working 'poor' and criminal prisoners are turning productive citizens into tax-slaves.
From article:
But although PC gamers have taken the lime light recently, every true PC gamer and most PC users in general can trace their roots back to the earliest of computer-entertainment devices: videogame consoles.
Most people I know started out on Commodore 64, Sinclair or some of the other early home computers. In fact, I think most people that started out on computers are still gaming on computers (PC). Those that started out on consoles still pretty much run consoles.
But that's just my buddies... Might differ...
--
"I'm surfin the dead zone
In the twilight, unknown"
I find it hard to believe the XBox you mention caught on fire... And please, if it's serious, do you have any evidence? I can hardly believe microsoft would knowingly kill their reputation by selling dangerous equipment.
Does anyone have the figures for the computing power of the Penteron/Celium III
Have you tried entering "Penteron/Celium III" into Google? :-)
Pentium III 2.9 Gflops at 733MHz, PS2 EE 6.2 Gflops at 300 MHz, dunno about the GameCube.
Here's something I'm unsure of - if standardesque DirectX software is used to program the XBox then shouldn't porting those games to a Windows computer be fairly easy? I know the XBox has nifty optimizations - especially for 3D - but isn't just about ANY decent gaming computer sold today able to match the specialty hardware because it has a processor that's twice as fast and a video card that can be repeatedly upgraded?
The reason I ask is because most hardcore gamers (obviously the core XBox market) probably have a gaming computer and if I can get Halo or DOA3 or TitleX for my computer (which has better graphics than my TV set and I'm used to playing games on) why would I buy an XBox?
Why wouldn't I would buy a PS2 or a gamecube if I buy a console so I could play games NOT available on my computer....
This being said is M$ going to have to embargo the good XBox games to "XBox only" to keep the Windows game market from eating their own lunch?
If M$ doesn't have a big backlog of cool XBox only games would seem that they might be limiting their market to "gamers who can't afford a good gaming computer" and those who have enough money to buy everything out there. I don't think this is a broad enough market to support an entire platform.
=tkk
Bill Gates - Creationist?!?
Anand wrote a very good article with plenty of meat and potatos to satisfy but I think he is sort of missing a very important point. He mentions in the article how the PS2 falls behind the XBox in some way because it has less fancy graphics and sound capabilities. SONY HAS SOLD NEARLY 20 MILLION OF THE FUCKING THINGS AND HAS HUNDREDS OF GAMES AVAILABLE FOR IT. I think Anand needs to reassess his position on the PS2. It is still selling for 300$ because people are still eating it up at this price. The XBox may be able to do a bajillion polygons per second but it still doesn't have the game franchises that make bank on console systems. Nintendo's also in a good position because they are destined to get the little kids who want to play Pokemon until their eyes fall out. Who cares if Pikachu's only rendered with half a million fucking surfaces, people want to play the games not write a master's thesis on the theoretical graphic capabilities of a computer system. I bought a GC on my way home from Louisiana and since I've been home my brother's been playing Rogue Squadron almst non-stop. He hasn't yet complained about the lack of theoretical polygons the GC can render yet and I sort of doubt he will. The XBox will only truely contend with Nintendo and Sony when it has games in high demand. I thought it's launch titles were pretty crappy compared to the GC's though a little better than what the PS2 originally offered. Besides that I got a GC and two games for the price of either the PS2 or XBox.
I'm a loner Dottie, a Rebel.