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Tom's Hardware Reviews the Xbox
steddyj writes: "Tom's Hardware released this article which looks deep into the Xbox, its peripherals, and just about everything from every angle, and compares it to the PS. Incredibly detailed article."
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Badly, I might add; from a tech point of view anyways. The PS and PS2 are dedicated hardware. Their architecture is completely different.
It's like comparing pears to advacados. They may both be green, but it's what's underneath that counts.
Aside from that, it was a great article. Quite a bit more in depth than I'd expected. I especially liked the hardware stuff. So, if the PIII is soldered on the motherboard, could the clock be modified to overclock it?
Just can't help myself.
Does the XBox come in a rackmount? 1U preferably? I'd love to use these as commodity visualization center parts.
Beowulf anyone?
You can't legislate goodness. Let each to his own destiny, by will of his freely made choices.
Games are what matters on a console, not how many polygons it can push. The Japanese launch lineup for the Xbox is pathetic. There are 4 snowboarding games, DoA3 (a practical port of DoA2, a launch game for PS2 a year ago), and Genma Onimusha, when Onimusha has been out for more than 6 months on the PS2.
When the Japanese launch of the Xbox flops, the Japanese developers will jump ship. When the Japanese developers jump ship, the Xbox will lose about 60% of its title lineup. When 60% of the titles go to other platforms, people will stop buying the Xbox. When people stop buying the Xbox, the other 40% will jump ship to either the PS2 or the Gamecube.
To be a big player in the console industry, you have to have both countries. As a corollary, just because something does well in one country does not automatically spell success in the other country.
In 2 years, nobody will remember the Xbox. It will have entered the Gaming Lore books right along side the 3DO, Atari Jaguar, Atari Lynx, Tubro Grafix 16, and dozens of other systems that went obsolete because they had no games.
*scratches head*You can create multiple passports like I have. You don't even need to include your contact information.
>- It has two fully programmable 300mhz T&L coprocessors, of which 1 is
>really usable, the other just supports the main CPU (but can run
>independently).
>- They wonder what people are doing with the 16 pixel pipelines, as if
>implying that it renders 16 layers or something. The PS2 fills 16
>
>
What do you expect from a site that focuses on the shoddy hardware and processors typically found in the PC market? These guys are a lot like the "reviewers" working for ZDNet. If it's not found in a PC they don't know shit about it. Want a really good laugh? Just wait till these guys start reviewing the processors and hardware found on *Mainframes*....
Indeed, condidering $1 = 1.15 at today's rate, that's $417. In the USA, the Xbox is $300, which is 345. This is a complete ripoff! The days electronics were over-overpriced compared to the US are gone, this is pure extorsion(sp?)! How do they justify the extra $117? Shipping fees? Let me laugh...
For this price I can build a complete PC with a Duron 1GHz and a good graphics card (GF2 ultra or so), so COME_ON! Who's gonna pay that price for just a game console? PC prices have crashed to a point the PS2 itself is now a mere $235 where I live (Switzerland, outside the EU, I know :) so it can be sold, but the XBox will be twice the price with a hundred times less games to start with... The PS2 is hugely popular whereas Microsoft is still unknown on that market... No doubt the Xbox is a lot more powerful than the ps2, has a HD, etc... But when for the same price you could get a real PC that'll play games even better, and with which you can do whatever you want, I think M$ is trying hard to rip-off markets on which it can (still) freely impose its monopolistic dirty hands.
/jabba
-- It's always darker before it goes pitch black.
"A quick peak over to GameSpot to sneak a peak at the previews. After you remove the previews for games already out, you come up with the following:
0 1. html
.People buy console's for games not to boast about how powerfull there console is .The playstation 2 has
,because for one thing I do not think people are willing to spend money as freely as they once were due to the present economic climet and back when people were willing to spend more
GameCube has around 60 titles previewed.
Xbox was around 140 previewed.
PlayStation2 has more than 300 previewed."
taken from
http://www.actsofgord.com/Proclamations/chapter
I think this really says it all
the huge back library of ps1 games and the most new titels in the works. There are far far more playstation 2's siting in peoples house at the moment than xbox's, hence a far bigger market for
developers to sell to.
By the time the xbox is able to take full advantadge of its enhanced graphical abilities it will be to late and the ps3 will be here which
will raise the ante in terms of tech specs even more.
another point which is this also taken from the afore mentioned site,(actsofgord.com),:
"To date, Sony has sold nearly 100,000,000 PS1's. That's a lot. And for the
sake of the argument, we'll pretend Nintendo sold nearly 30 million N64's
(though sales data suggests between 20 to 24 million, but who cares). So,
assuming every N64 owner also bought a PS1, that means 70% of the market bought ONE console. One console. Just one.
Now, obviously this didn't happen. Somewhere near half of N64 owners bought a PS1. Now, so we have 15 million N64 owners who remained exclusive, and 15 million who were multi-console (and 15 of the 100 million PS1 owners).
So, you've got 85 million PS1's who belong to one system owners, and 15
million N64's who belong to one system owners. That's, well, 100 million.
Add in the 15 million owners who bought multi-systems, and there you are at a market peak of 115 million users.Basic math shows that 87% of owners owned one system."
I think this shows quite clearly that the majority of people will not buy a playstation2 and a xbox
,(ps1 v n64 days), they only bought one console.
Now back in the ps1 v n64 days a console cost alot less,(stating the obvious I know), NOW look at the price i.e back then ps1 + n64 = $200 maybe a little more , now ps2 + xbox = $650 or more and this without any games?
For that sort of money required to buy two consoles you may as well go the extra inch and just buy a gaming pc.What graphics power the xbox appears to have now has already been surpased by the pc (nvidia g4),and this gap will continue to grow as more and more 3d cards are developed by the hardware industry.The upgrade ability of the pc will mean that in the end it will surpass any console currently on the market in terms of graphics.The question I am trying to raise is is there room on the market for the xbox?The xbox will not be bought en mass by playstation2 users
as it does not offer enough NEW and signifigantly different games or features which would make the
averedge ps2 owner fork out the extra money.
I personaly think that the xbox will not gain enough of the market share to pose a serious treat to sonys domination of the console market.
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Funny, that Tom's article sounds very much like MS marketing speak, with everything being "milestone", "extraordinary" or "unrivaled". It even goes as far as telling that there is no lack of good titles. As far as I know, that's the biggest problem of Xbox. It has only a very few exclusive titles that have been hailed as interesting. And yet, Tom couldn't even spell PS2 game names right.
This is my favourite: "the xbox is definitely a generation ahead, compared to the ps2 at least"
It *is* next generation! It's funny how people are still comparing *everything* to PS2. So, you're telling me Xbox or Nintendo GameCube has better technology and more processing power than almost TWO YEARS older PS2? Ooh, *gasp*, I'm shocked! Seems like PS2 really is technically pretty revolutionary, if it's still the comparison standard for new consoles. I'd be really, really worried if that much newer machine wasn't technically superior...
And in any case, it isn't technology that matters, it's the games. Original PSX was technically the weakest of its generation, Sega Saturn (released the same year) and Nintendo 64 (released about a year later) are both far superior, but PSX reigned because of the games. They still make games for PSX (and N64 as well, but in smaller scale), though it was released in 1994!
Also check out xbox-linux.org - It' run by h07 (h07.org) and aims at eventually getting apache to run on linux on the xbox. They already got apache to run on the xbox os (a stripped down win2k) using microsofts xbox sdk.
It doesn't mount on a PC as a fat32 file system (even after doing the HD swap trick to get the PC to recognize the drive).
The filesystem is 'FATX', which appears to be very similar to FAT16/FAT32 (almost identical), but since there's no partition table, a standard Windows box won't recognize it at a filesystem level (only at a sector read level) - until someone writes a filesystem driver for the PC, that is.
Huh!? Who makes NFL 2K2? NBA 2K2? Jet Set Radio Future?
and Nintendo has settled for Game Boy.
So N64 and GameCube are just figments of everyone's imagination?
But above all, [Microsoft] has the best programming kit in the world with DirectX.
*giggles*
As far as memory is concerned, the PS2 has a 250 MHz processor, even if the two are not comparable.
Um, what does internal processor speed have to do with memory in this context?
Technically, I think the Xbox is great console--Microsoft almost got everything right. But as we all know, it is not always the "best" technology that wins...
Schrödinger's cat is not amused—maybe.
One point I found particularly hopeful (and hope it holds up) is if the system can really handle 1024x768 well in future games. One of the biggest problems with consoles have been claiming a high-resolution (for example, Nintendo 64's 640x480) then running a majority of games at a lower resolution because the system can't handle it (320x240). Graphically, many of the games are stunning on XBox right now, but I'd like to see them take advantage of HDTV setups to their full potential. If they can figure that out (and figure out how to easily set up online gaming so they don't have a Dreamcast-like bomb) they'll be able to take a signficant chunk out of Sony's market share.