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Company Sells 'Turbo' 1.4GHz Xbox
cdneng2 writes "The Inquirer has an
article about a TaiPei company that is selling a
modified Xbox running a 1.4GHz Celeron, versus the console's 733MHz
Pentium III. The firm, Friendtech is also offering an Xbox
Mod that provides S-Video, 5.1 Surround, and a hard disk upgrade
in one package." There are some pictures of the prototype on the official site, although it's unclear if the legally uncertain mod will make much practical difference to native Xbox games (Polygonmag claims "the prototype loaded data at nearly twice the speed of a retail Xbox.")
"the prototype loaded data at nearly twice the speed of a retail Xbox."
And then played the game at twice the speed, making it altogether unplayable...
fp
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I wonder if it will impact on games in terms of timing. Some games are programmed without any timing enforced (still?), they just ran as fast as the console can pump them. I remember that back on the Nintendo 64 X-treme G (the super-fast bike racing game) ran much faster (and therefore played harder) on my brothers console, than on my friends - it seems that in the year between them each buying consoles Nintendo had improved the processor.
On a similar note, I don't see any good reason why end users shouldn't be able to legally modify the hardware that they bought and resell it. I mean, no one is losing out in that situation. Sure you could make the argument, oh no, if people can run 3rd party software on an xbox they wont' buy x-box games! Whatever. I bought my dreamcast when they were super cheap in stores (~$20) and spent way way more than that on games, despite all the emulators and stuff I've tried. More Xboxes in the market (in whatever form) will only help to drive up software sales. This is a win-win situation for everyone.
The sending of this message pretty much inconveniences everyone involved.
who cares what microsoft thinks? if you bought a car and modified that, does ford or any other 'jap crap' car company sue the crap out of you and make you pay them even more money?
You bought it, you own it.
If you want an upgrade that breaks the warranty that's your prerogative.
End of story, end of fact.
This is reality. Just live with it microsoft. Be happy they bought the damn thing in the first place.
"Friendtech is also offering a mod for the Xbox which provides S-Video and A/V output", the xbox already has svideo cables out there for sale, i got one from Monster Cables.
Nothing keeps my from buying a Gateway computer, repackaging it, and reselling it (provided I make it clear Gateway has nothing to do with my product and does not support it). Why should an XBox be any different?
I am the author of the original post. Why are you posing as me?
I think I'll wait until tomorrow to call her back.
I don't know about anything else, but one of my pet peeves with the X-Box is the abysmal framerate at times. Maybe it's because I haven't played the console enough. Hopefully, a faster proc will help with the problem if not eliminate it.
-- Political fascism requires a Fuhrer.
That's it, I officially don't know what to think. The only thing I know is that I'm still not going to buy one purely because I've paid enough Microsoft tax for one lifetime.
And then there's that toggle switch. Straight from Radio Shack and the cheapest looking switch I've ever seen. Talk about blowing it. It looks like they stole it off of a mixing board from the 70's.
So it's not overly surprising to find it using off the shelf parts that work but weren't chosed for their aesthetic qualities.
Boffoonery - downloadable Comedy Benefit for Bletchley Park
Actually, this will probably break most games. In the Xbox games that I've been involved with (two of them), we have hardcoded our timers. The technical details:
There's a standard Intel CPU instruction that returns a clockcycle count (the RDTSC instruction). The Xbox is a 733MHz machine, so the number returned by RDTSC advances by 733 million every second (eventually overflowing).
If you subtract this number from the number you got on the previous frame, then divide by your clockspeed (in this case 733 million), you get the number of seconds that have elapsed since the last frame - it's a solid timer, and very accurate.
Here's the catch: On the PC you have to calibrate this value, which can take a few seconds. On the Xbox we hard-coded the value of the clockspeed - at 733 million cycles per second. If you change the CPU to 1.4GHz, calculations will still be made for a 733MHz CPU.
Most likely case in my games: the game will not know how to throttle itself correctly. It will try to run the game at twice the speed (think a videotape on fast forward). The video hardware won't be able to keep up and graphical details will be dropped because the CPU thinks the video hardware is taking twice as long to render a scene (as it thinks it's only managing 15fps rather than 30fps).
Best case in other games: Less frame hitches, but nothing much happens because it's still waiting for the vertical sync of the screen at 60 or 30 fps.
Absolute worst case: Microsoft will detect the larger 80GB drive (or the enhanced CPU speed) in an Xbox Live update. Your Xbox will be banned from Xbox Live forever, or possibly nuked so that you can't even boot it up anymore. If you attach it to their network, you play by their rules - period.
Besides, If a game is CPU bound, it's not been optimized properly. My recommendation: The "Turbo" Xbox will not be worth it, and may not work at all. Get a regular Xbox or save your money for Xbox 2.
God damn, this coffee is cold!
Mind if I heat it up on your loins?
Oh no! What a conundrum!
"Come on, let's go drink till we can't feel feelings anymore."
It's painted orange... Is that supposed to be like toy guns; painted orange == not real?
"Come on, let's go drink till we can't feel feelings anymore."
Me again. What happened three years ago?
I can't say that I am not horrified by this shortcut (optimisation - it's a matter of perspective I guess). I have not developed any X games, but I had assumed that Microsoft would be smart enough to recognise the fact that one of the greatest selling powers of the PS2 was its (mostly) backwards compatability.
Your games are now basically incompatible with the X2 unless the emulation layer adequately supports the timing resolution hack or the equivalent of the Turbo boxes processor speed switch...
Just a thought...
Q.
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Hehe, funny you should mention alcohol. (BTW, this is really me)
At her new year's party this year, I proceeded to get absolutely sloshed. Completely blasted, I ended up passing out in the back of my friend's truck. The next day, I woke up wearing one of her big sweaters (she explained that I was really cold) and I couldn't remember anything past tumbling into the back of the Tacoma.
A couple days later, I hear from my lady friend. Apparently, I spilled all the beans and professed my feelings for her. Mind you, she still had a boyfriend at this time, and I don't remember any of this. Things were akward for a little while, but things went back to normal eventually. However, I never did get her opinion on what I (supposedly) said.
Soooooo.. alchohol only served to complicate things.
My ex- says that I won't believe that she likes me until she starts taking my pants off. While I'm not that dense, I still don't know what to look for in order to build my confidence.
As for what to do, I know I need to bring it up soon. I still have the sweater she put on me, and next time I see her I'm going to give it back to her as a means to bring up what happened... and... we'll see what happens.
It was homecoming during our senior year in high school. She was going on and on about how she needed a date. I didn't really feel like she was insinuating that I take her (maybe I am dense,) so I never asked, despite the fact that I really, really wanted to. In retrospect, d'oh!
The real reason I didn't ask, though, was sorta dating a girl who lived in Japan at the time, and I was really trying to be faithful. We hadn't seen one another in quite some time, and I felt she was cheating on me (turns out she was..) We ended up breaking up about a year later, and it made all that time seem like a big waste. Near homecoming, when I wanted to ask my lady friend out, I felt tremendously guilty. Oh, what a wasted opportunity.
Anyways, so, yeah.. hindsight: 20/20.
Months later, as we were driving around, I sorta brought up that I had liked her quite a bit during homecoming season, but felt that she wasn't interested in me. She remained silent for a couple blocks, before replying "Well it wasn't like I didn't try to make it obvious." After that, we never discussed the issue again. Until New Year's, but that's already in another post.
Confidence, I think, is overrated. If she's into you, and it certainly does sound like she's interested,* maybe it's because you're not so overconfident. Maybe she thinks it's charming the way you're always second-guessing yourself. (God knows why. Your other friends probably hate you for it. :p)
I'm just curious. How are you going to bring it up when you give her sweater back to her? She won't be just like "Oh, thanks" and toss it in her bag?
* That's judging from these AC posts of yours, which is always a losing proposition.
Well, the sweater thing will only work if she takes part of the initiative. Really, the way I want to bring it up is simply asking about her current boy situation, and saying "have you ever consider going out with me?"
May work, may not. I have been waiting too long, and my chances may never be as good as this again.
If you think that's the best way to bring it up, then I agree, it probably is, as long as you think she'll pick up on your initiative and run with it. I mean, remember, the strongest she came on three years ago at homecoming was to drop hints. It really sounds to me like she's as uncomfortable with the topic of she-and-thee as you seem to be--is that right?
"May work, may not?" This has to work, goddammit. Are you looking for me to confirm that she's into you? If everything you've written so far is true, I think it's pretty clear. It would be a shame if you didn't try out a relationship with her. It doesn't have to be right now or tomorrow, but yeah, three years is a really long time for you two to have feelings for each other and not even give it a shot, in my opinion.
I don't know if I need confirmation, but I feel that discussing the issue helps. Anyways, I agree with everything you said. I'll post more here if anything comes to mind..
/. needs a "dating" channel.
Good luck with your lady, and post any further thoughts here, too.
Damn skippy. Good luck to you, too.
11 months? Is that all?
Bwhahahah!!! Amateurs!!!
I used to bulls-eye womp-rats in my pants
From the looks of it they just have a painted Xbox with a switch. I didn't see any proof that they have actually done this. Let alone testing it with games. Must likely just scam/attention thing. Or they just switched the xbox with a PC Motherboard, CPU, etc.
People that run Linux on the Xbox would love this as a superemulator. But some modern games will probably run at 2x the speed if they're not properly compiled. Of course there could be a speed switch for those problematic games.
As you correctly point out, though, modded Xboxen running other operating systems
Don't even start.
Just like how when you play Quake 2 on a P4 2.4GHz it plays the game at six times the speed at which a P2 400MHz plays it.
Oh, wait...
Quake 2 was designed to run on systems with different clock speeds. All XBox machines have the same speed and so programmers may assume that a certain thing will happen at a certain time on all Xboxen. Changing that timing may cause strainge things to happen. This may not be the best way to code, but in the console world, it happens a lot.
Xbox != PC
XBox Games != PC Games.
D
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Does the Xbox not come with S-Video out standard!?
No shit, 11 months is nothing. Come back in about 15 years and we'll talk.
Holy everloving shit! I thought I was hot shit with 2 years, but I bow in deference to your supreme drought of the ages.
I used to bulls-eye womp-rats in my pants
blaaahhhhhh...
Now it's daytime and I feel pessimistic...
Cheers,
The Above Poster