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.")

Comments

And then...

[darkov]

"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

Re:And then...

[Babbster]

Is there any problems with the current Xbox loading or playing speeds? (I don't have one, so I don't know). I mean: unless you're installing Linux on it and you need a real fast machine, what problem is this a solution for?

When comparing it to other consoles playing console games, the Xbox works just fine and loads faster than the other two most of the time - depending on the software, the Gamecube can keep up and, of course, the PS2 is dirt slow - so improving load times certainly isn't a huge incentive. For regular gaming, there's absolutely no need for a faster processor and I can't imagine a circumstance where it would be a significant advantage. After all, without upgrading the GPU (which, just as with PC gaming, is where you get most of your performance improvements) it's doubtful that you could improve the Xbox's intended performance in any meaningful way.

As you correctly point out, though, modded Xboxen running other operating systems (most notably Linux) could benefit from the speed bump. One area that I can see an advantage is in running emulation software, depending of course on what you're emulating.

This is a niche product for a very niche market. The stock processor in the Xbox is more than sufficient for most computing tasks one would want to use an Xbox for. If someone needs more, it seems like a better plan to hunt down a cheap PC.

Timing issues?

[antin]

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.

Illegal?

[rmohr02]

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?

This this will probably not help.

[Anonymous Coward]

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.

Re:This this will probably not help.

[bjb]

There are two ways of looking at this.

1. Your game is tailored for the specific console; you assume all hardware is a constant. This is relatively safe, since this was exactly how everything worked until PlayStation 2 introduced backwards compatibility in consoles. No other console has ever been backwards compatible*.

(* = We're not considering re-releases or re-designs of consoles, e.g. Intellivision I/II/III, NES, NES II, Atari 2600's and JR model. Handhelds [gameboy] doesn't count here)

2. If a console is going to come out with a new generation that claims to be backwards compatible, they need to be 100% true compatible; this means speed, etc. If they can't provide that through emulation, then they can't claim to be 100% compatible. What I mean in this is that some games might rely on the idea that their CPU is so loaded down with some operation, that the game will take a certain amount of time to do the job, and it fits the timing of the game. Having this occur any faster would be like a brief fast-foward in game time.

Of course, these are just my opinions. I prefer that games follow the correct APIs instead of doing hacks; it allows them to be usable on later iterations of machines. In the PC world, take a look at the old DOS game Alleycat, and how it was properly coded to run with any hardware (works just as well on a 4.77MHz 8086 as it does on my 2.4GHz P4-Xeon) versus how Hard Hat Mack, of the same era, is unplayable. Consider also numerous Amiga games that showed disregard for the RKM programming specs when designed for MC68000 chips, and then were unplayable on later Amiga machines.

My two cents. Take 'em or leave 'em.

Re:This this will probably not help.

[GoRK]

That is pretty poor programming if you ask me. It's easy enough to do a calibration during the opening title sequence or something where you aren't relying so much on hardware timers. I guess MS must have been very clear about the 733MHz never changing and the X2 emulation of original X-Box providing this downclocked timer, huh?

My guess is that you'll have a hell of a time with your games on X2.

Re:This this will probably not help.

[EduardoTheBastard]

Having just shipped an Xbox title that uses RDTSC for timing, I'm sorry to say that you are misinformed. It takes nowhere near a couple of seconds to determine the timing, and it is even possible to do it while other initialization is processing -- thus costing you no time at all.

I also have to repectfully disagree about your CPU-bound comment. The Xbox GPU is far more powerful than the lame PIII CPU it is saddled with (although I was continually thankful that it's not a stall-prone P4!) In most cases, the GPU ate the triangles as fast as the CPU could throw them at it. We were constantly CPU bound, and no slackers on optimzation.

I will grant that some types of games, specifically ones with large triangles where fill-rate is the determining factor, will almost always be GPU bound. But that is not all titles. A game that features good character models and animations will be processing more bone animation and denser geometry meshes than one featuring expansive terrain (for instance).

One other thing to note: The Technical Certification Requirements include making sure the title runs with faster (or larger) hardware, including hard drives. I don't recall any specific requirement about CPU speed, but didn't you at least consider that when designing your timing code? If nothing else it makes porting and upgrading your engine a lot easier.

Re:Framerate?

[AvantLegion]

Abysmal framerates?

Better than the same games on the other systems.

Some developers do create games on each system that don't run well, but that's not something you can pin on the hardware itself.

Break the future today.

[quinkin]

Very interesting, thank you for your input.

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.