Real Xbox Next Specs Leaked?

maaaaac writes "Looks like Xbox-Scene might have been sent a copy of the alleged specs for Xenon, aka Xbox Next [Spong.com has a slightly longer version of the document, apparently from Microsoft's Xbox Advanced Technology Group.] Interesting tidbits -- CPU: A 3-core (on one die) 3.5+ GHz IBM PowerPC processor w/SMT and 1MB L2 (accessible by the GPU, no less); GPU: 500+ MHz DirectX 9.0+ part from ATI, 96 shader ops per clock cycle, 4+ gigapixels/sec, 500+ million triangles/sec, 10MB EDRAM; RAM: 256+ MB of unified memory with 22.4+ GB/sec bandwidth (EDRAM has 32 GB/sec); Misc: all audio done on the CPU, 10/100 Ethernet (no wireless?), USB 2.0, VGA out (!), 12x DVD, undecided on HD but definitely as an option, at least, and what I think is one of the better improvements, 'The Xenon console will be smaller than the Xbox console.'"

Comments

Now I need to

[Tr0mBoNe-]

Go change my pants...

that has more guts than my desktop... but i bet it will crush someone when falling from 3 feet instead of 6 feet.

Re:Now I need to

[DetrimentalFiend]

Who came up with the idea of having all of that CPU and GPU power with only 256mb of ram? Many games are already demanding more ram than that while running on systems that are otherwise half of that. For example, many games are now using 1024x1024 textures (or even 2048) which would mean that the XBox would only have enough ram for 256 textures if nothing else was loaded. I know that ram costs a lot now, but I think this could be a fatal mistake, espcially if they expect people to hook the XBox up to a normal monitor or HDTV.

Re:Now I need to

[Tr0mBoNe-]

I think why these are potential specs. Cheap computers come with 256 and by the time they release this console, they will come with 512.

It's still gonna be a brick. I just wish they would use a gig of Corsair ram.

Re:Now I need to

[Rethcir]

Keep in mind that the Xbox2's operating system is much simpler than XP Home or Pro, and thus will require much less space in the RAM. For example, compare an early 486 with an SNES or Genesis.

Re:Now I need to

[fr0dicus]

Yeah, and the rigid memory size is easier for game developers to optimise for. Xbox only has 64MB, PS2 32MB. Gamecube has somewhere inbetween I believe. Certainly much less than the average PC would require to run something similar.

Re:Now I need to

[MBCook]

Here's an idea.

Now the N64 didn't need much ram because all the textures were stored on the cart and could be accessed VERY fast. Now since MS is using some fancy expensive fast EVDRAM (or something), putting a gig in (which I think would be ideal, and probably not that expensive a year or two from now when this thing comes out), they could make due with only 256. They should just make a ramdrive out of standard DDR ram or something like that! It's dirt cheap, and it could lose it's contents when power is removed. But it would be a fantastic place to store textures and such. You'd use it as a cache (not actual memory). That way you could preload all your textures for the level into this cache. When they move from one part of the level to another, instead of having to load the textures off a CD or HD (which you have to have big advanced warning for due to latency and such), you copy them out of this RAM cache which would be very VERY fast (relative to HD/DVD).

The X-Box did something like this using a partition on the hard drive, why not do it in cheap memory. You could precache sound and textures and models and stuff and have them all at near instant access times without having to buy a gig of ultra-fast-proprietary-no-one-else-uses-it-so-it's -really-expensive RAM.

Re:Now I need to

[Xentax]

You missed part of the parent's point: Given a certain screen resolution, you can quickly compute an upper limit to how much texture information you can keep in physical (that is, non-virtual) memory at once.

From there it's a short trip to see that the volume of RAM is a potential performance bottleneck.

Balanced against that is your point about the OS having a smaller footprint; the high memory *bandwidth*; and the fact that the screen resolution generally *won't* be 1024x1024. I don't know the HDTV standard screen resolution but the standard PAL or NTSC out certainly won't be needing that many pixels per frame.

VGA out will be nice, I'm one of those who like the option of getting higher resolution on a smaller screen that's not in the living room (and, thus, less likely to be contended for by significant others, children, etc.). That's assuming that it puts out a smart and/or configurable resolution to VGA out (especially for folks with LCD screens...).

Plus, it's likely to be a lot simpler to hook up to the network connection if it can be in the computer room instead of the living room...

Xentax

Re:Now I need to

[king-manic]

You forget its a console not a PC. Less ram is made up for with a monster memory bandwidth. This means that they can just demand the textures as their used instead of caching everyone for the next 4 scenes in mem. The ps2 messed up because the video ram was smaller then the textures required ina scene but having a very large cache defeats the purpose of havign a large pipe to jam them through.

Re:Now I need to

[DetrimentalFiend]

Have you seen DDR RAM prices lately? Microsoft is trying to cut way down on the price for the new XBox. There's no easy solution for Microsoft because the need for lots of RAM isn't compatible with their need for high resolution gaming.

Re:Now I need to

[DetrimentalFiend]

Um...bandwidth between what? Last time I checked a Hard Drive is at least as fast as a 12x DVD drive. PC's use Hard Drives to store game content; XBoxes use DVD drives. How is the fact that it's a console going to help anything?

Re:Now I need to

[king-manic]

A PC has a very busy and congested memory bus, thus loading all the graphics onto the Graphics card is mro eefficient. To avoid the bottle neck in the memory bus. A console isn't as busy. It's doesn't have to run OS stuff while your playing. since code is miniscule compared to textures/ graphics the memory bus is almost dedicated to graphics. thus instead of having 1/3 of a 166mzh bus, you get 9/10 of a 233mzh bus. Which means you can just jam the textures when you need them.

Re:Now I need to

[egomaniac]

I don't know the HDTV standard screen resolution but the standard PAL or NTSC out certainly won't be needing that many pixels per frame.

HDTV is either 1280x720 progressive (720p) or 1920x1080 interlaced (1080i). 1920x1080 progressive (1080p) will almost certainly exist at some point, but it isn't part of the current HDTV standard.

Re:Now I need to

[SkyWalk423]

...higher resolution on a smaller screen that's not in the living room (and, thus, less likely to be contended for by significant others, children, etc.)

Remember, this will all happen in 2005 or 2006. You'll want to hook up your Xbox2 to your brand new HDTV with a VGA-in (already standard on high-end HDTVs). What will you tell the wife and kids then?

Re:Now I need to

[KDR_11k]

Microsoft already stated they're planning 256MB now and are going to increase that if the PS3 turns out to have more than that. Sounds pretty stupid to me but then I'm not a highly paid manager...

Besides, a 1024x1024 texture eats one megabyte per channel (usually three, sometimes four) uncompressed. Noone is as insane as to use uncompressed 1024x1024 textures. Currently compression is 6:1 (before anyone posts the pidgeonhole proof, keep in mind this isn't lossless compression), I'm guessing by then we'll see more efficient compression algorythms.

Also, consoles are notoriously short on RAM, it's not like that's a first.

Re:Now I need to

[Bri3D]

The post you are replying to says nothing about the *screen size* as 1024x1024. He says the textures are often 1024x1024. Textures are generally created as one large file with a large sheet of related textures. The file is often 1024x1024. Why? You have to texture in 3D. This means even the texture's parts not visible still are loaded. So if your screen is 1024x1024, it takes up 1MB of VRAM to render in 2d, and a lot more RAM and VRAM for 3D because you have to texture more than one face at once.

Re:Now I need to

[Seahawk]

Textures are compressed(And you forgot multiplying by 4 - textures are usually 32 bits)

So a 1024x1024 32bit texture is 4MB - no idea how much it is compressed... Anyone?

Re:Now I need to

[AltaMannen]

Now the N64 didn't need much ram because all the textures were stored on the cart and could be accessed VERY fast.

Textures needed to be transferred to ram first, then to the texture cache for the N64. Not really a huge deal since the texture cache was 4 kb including palette so the textures never used up a lot of RAM. Transferring data from ROM was surprisingly slow.

Re:Now I need to

[KDR_11k]

Yeah, however, the XBox uses unified memory. There's no dedicated graphics memory. While that means you don't need to jam everything into a tiny graphics RAM, that still means you need to jam everything into the small main RAM. The only other place to keep the data would be the DVD. A PC could keep more data in memory AND load additional data faster. The problem isn't a part of the ram being too small, the entire ram is too small.

Re:Now I need to

[king-manic]

Lets go oevr an example:

PC:

Slice1: OS
slice2: Load game from hd
slice3: initialize game
slice4: OS
slice5: network monitoring
slice6: switch back to game ....
Each context switch requires a refresh form main memory and a huge huge penalty in regaurds to the predictive branching algorithm for cpu pipelining. the context switches occur often, and each time the memory bus must be ustilized to refresh the cache and resupply the pipeline.

Console (Xbox et al)
slice1: load game frm DVd
slice2: Rungame ....
little to no context switching and the biggest thing on the bus is graphics. It doesn't have any context switching and thus the memory bus is almost dedicated to the GPU, since instructiosn are about 1/100 the size of textures.

As for jaming everything, a PC graphics card know it has a small and busy bus to get it's textures, so it grabs as much as it can when the pipe is available and stores it in the video ram. While a console GPU knows the bus won't be very busy and it can grab the textures when ever. Theres a big big difference in memory bandwidth. Peak bandwidth for the highest rated DDR is theoretically 3.2 gb/s Reference. While a PS2 has a theoetical memory bandwidth of 3.2 gb per second Reference. The xbox has a bandwidth of 6.4 gb/s Reference. Now for the PC it divides this bandwidth between every device that is on the memory bus, the GPU/CPU/carious controllers and the device bus. The Xbox/PS2 dedicates it to GPU/cpu. A Pc GPU has maybe 10% of the memory bus to itself, 0.32 gigs/s while a PS2/Xbox GPU has essentially the whole bus. A scene in NTSC of PAL will never require 3.2 gigs of textures every second. But a 1260x1024 res monitor will require more then 0.32gigs/s of textures thus the high ram sizes of graphics cards.

Re:Now I need to

[shoptroll]

Well, i'd say it depends on how much ram in the video card that they're using. That's still not a large amount of RAM for a computer, but then again, they're not running WinXP or anything.

Re:Now I need to

[Xentax]

Good point - texture sheets that encompass the whole model, for example, and the engine is responsible for slapping the right parts onto the right facings of the model.

So, it's a pretty finite ceiling, which is the point we're (almost) all trying to make :)

Xentax

Re:Now I need to

[spectral]

Will you shut up and listen to what everyone is trying to say? Here, it's not hard.

BANDWIDTH DOESN'T MATTER HERE. 256MB RAM IS NOT ENOUGH to "load game frm DVd" and just leave it there. Not on the PC, not on the XBOX. The PC is beter in this regard, actually: you're likely to have 64, 128, or 256MB of Video card ram, and 256MB, 512, or even 1GB of system ram. Here, bandwidth DOES matter. And the bandwidth to get it from the PC's SYSTEM ram to the PC's VIDEO ram is a lot better than the bandwidth from ANY storage media such as hard drive, DVd [sic], or whatever.

So, XBOX has 256MB ram to deal with EVERYTHING. Game. Textures. Models. Logic. Audio. Bandwidth DOES NOT MATTER because there's NOWHERE TO MOVE THE STUFF TO.

Spout off numbers all you want, if you can't fit all the stuff in ram, you're hitting that DVD. And guess what, You won't be getting 6.4GB/sec out of a 12x DVD drive.

Re:Now I need to

[Rallion]

I've seen Unreal Tournament 2k4 use up more than a GIG of RAM. I was playing with 768MB each physical and virtual, and it minimized so XP could let me know that my swap was full. I almost shit myself. Note that other programs were using a total of 150MB at the time.

I doubt that's entirely attributable to XP overhead.

Re:Now I need to

[SilentChris]

Think you missed the plus sign there, buddy. I wouldn't be surprised if it stays 256, but 512 might be reasonable by the time it comes out.

Re:Now I need to

[king-manic]

A PC graphics requires a large On board memory because it can only trickle in the textures it needs so it must grab as much as it can. (it gets the textures form a shared device bus that runs the floppy/cd rom/HD/ethernet card ect..).

A Console GPU/video ram setup needs less ram to do the same job because it can grab much as much of the texturs as it needs almost on demand.

A Pc card must deal with 1024x768 resolution at least.

A Console GPU does 648 x 486. Hardly requires much ram.

256 unified dedicated for gaming is more then most PC dedicate to it. The OS takes up the first 360 or so megs of ram while IE can take another 32 or more and is always running and leaves about 160 megs of ram free for games on a 512 meg system. More ram helps but after a certain point more ram doesn't help at all. The video ram is dedicated for textures and scratch space for the GPU. for NTSC, 256 is fine. For HDTV it's insufficient but the penetration of Game playing HDTV is low. All porjection screen HDTV's will have problems playing games and LCD versions have the LCD refresh problem to deal with, leaving only 10k plus plasmas and a few other varieties that can play it. And their pretty rare at the moment.

New technologies will come to rectifiy this but not for the price of a Xbox.

Re:Now I need to

[spectral]

Where is this console pulling the textures from? I don't get what you're saying. If they aren't in any form of RAM, where can they come from?

No console released now would NOT take advantage of HDTV Resolutions. XBOX already does, though it's technically optional if the game maker wants to support it.

Re:Now I need to

[Xentax]

Which has its merits - the XBox Live experience is generally superior to most roll-your-own-multiplayer solutions for PC games. I'm still beholden to the mouse/kb interface for first person shooters, but Live is the way to go for games well-suited to the console-style controller, since you get reliable voice, game-matching, etc.

Why hasn't someone made a mouse and kb for the XBox, anyway? Or even a keypad suitable for gaming rather than a full keyboard?

Xentax

Re:Now I need to

[king-manic]

You have the misconception that a PC can give the Graphics card all the bandwidth on the memory bus, and that the device bus can do so as well. What I'm saying is that the textures can only trickle in from the HD when the system has time to do so. Because of this, it better for a PC to have more memory, so when it is allowed to take textures formt he HD it can grab as muhc as it needs for a whoel scene. On a console, it had direct and unhindered access to the DVD which is slower but the over all bandwidth is greater on average then the PC. As well the GPU does a lot of operations on objects in memory. A Graphics card GPU/memory has a large amount of bandwidth as well ebcause for a x4 AA scene it pulls the whole scene form Video ram and process it 4 times.

Also HDTV support on the Xbox is only the output, the textures and everything else are jut scaled up. And it will remain so for the next generation as well because HDTV is a nice geek feature that helps it sell but won't be the focus because the money is in the mass market.

So compare:
at NTSC resolutions the whole screen is 220k pixels. at 1076x768 the whole screen is 786k pixels. Thats 3 times as large at a average resolution. That means the textures are around 3 times larger and that operations are done on a dataset at least 3 times as big. So while a Pc runnign a game at 1024x768 requires a bit of ram, a console can get away with less due to
1. Higher memory bandwidth for moving textures aand so on, as well as refreshing them from disk(dvd).
2. Lower texture sizes and area to work on.

HDTV might become a factor, but likely not within this generation. There simply aren't enough people with a HDTV that can play video games. I have one, it's a rear projection.

Re:Now I need to

[dave420]

Not being funny, but they're microsoft. They've spent millions on developing computer hardware and software. I'm not being rude, but I'm pretty sure they've thought of that already.

Heat?

[Allen Varney]

And you can also use it to heat a two-story house!

Re:Heat?

[gl4ss]

the cpu sure sounds like a fantasy...

where are these specs coming? from the "it would be nice" department of xbox-scene?

three core 3.5Ghz. sounds like a fantasy for anything that would make to market even during the 2005? sure as hell sounds.

like fuck, some serious power but if they can make it cheap enough to really slap into a console I'd be more intrested in what they can produce for a desktop!

Re:Heat?

[bconway]

And it will sell for only $150! Bwaahaahaa. Seriously guys, this rumor is so implausible it's laughable. Maybe it's just because I've been hearing the same twin-turbo H6 Legacy for under $30K rumor EVERY year...

Ugh Not Again!

[wev162]

Quickest guaranteed way onto /. Games is to claim you have an "authentic" list of Xbox2 stats. I'll believe a list when I see something with a bit more evidence to back up its authenticity than just a couple paragraphs of assorted stats with no clue where they were obtained at. I'd don't want a name, just something to give me a little confidence before I get worked up over the capabilities.

Re:Ugh Not Again!

[Daetrin]

It's a great way to get free marketing for microsoft, and they can deny everything after the fact because they're not official press releases. Nintendo and Sony ought to get in on this game, just send lots of differing lists of specs to different people and let them all get leaked so everyone will get up in a frenzy about those consoles as well.

Dame baby...

[Anonymous Coward]

If that's the real specs for this thing I'll just buy one of them and run *nix and never buy a "real" computer againg. Long Live products that don't have to make a profit.

Re:Dame baby...

[Giant Ape Skeleton]

You won't be able to run any kind of *nix on the thing if these specs are accurate;
non-trusted (read: non-Microsoft)code will be locked out in the CPU itself.
Unless you are real handy with a laser, I don't see how you're gonna get around that.....

Re:Dame baby...

[marco0009]

But eventually the people dedicated to making it work will find a work around. More than likely it will be a way to fake the certification into making the XBox believe it is MS Approved code. It may take time, but it will be worked around.

Re:Dame baby...

[Magnus Reftel]

Don't worry - they'll make a mistake, or a game developer will make one. The chances that they'll have enough software that the console will sell enough to matter and that none of that software has any local root hole is so low that one can safely ignore it.

Re:Dame baby...

[alienw]

It's damn near impossible to lock code out of the CPU. They would have to do something like on-the-fly encryption so you can't just modify memory contents. Not likely with 22GB/s memory bandwidth.

Re:Dame baby...

[chrysrobyn]

It's damn near impossible to lock code out of the CPU. They would have to do something like on-the-fly encryption so you can't just modify memory contents. Not likely with 22GB/s memory bandwidth.

Certainly with modern CPUs, I'd agree with you, but the bandwidth doesn't factor into my opinion. If one wanted, one could immobilize all but the hardest-core hackers by starting things off slowly if need be. Honestly, it shouldn't be that difficult to pipeline a security bus to take 22GB/s 64 bits at a time, which is a measley 340MB/s (or so), or to share other on chip busses less than 1.5GHz by taking it 16 bits at a time. They've got some extra space to work with the data, and all it does is add latency.

If all you ever do is run authenticated code (however they choose to authenticate), hackers can't get in. Even if you only authenticate the first 100KB or so, a hypothetical hacker would need to be able to modify main memory on the fly without the OS noticing in order to run compromised code. It may be damn near impossible to lock code out of a modern CPU, but when you plan to make your money on a custom chip (or price a system below cost), you might toss in some previously unnecessary innovations to make life difficult for the "fair use" user.

Certainly the OSS / hacker community can't be counted out of this yet, there have been some noticable stupid mistakes in the past. But when these huge corporations find it in their best interest to throw their best PhDs at the problem, the competition becomes very interesting.

Re:Dame baby...

[alienw]

Well, the problem is that you need a fast encryption engine to do encryption that fast. Even if it's in hardware, I doubt you could do it without tripling the cost of your CPU.

Also, it's not impossible to modify memory contents on the fly. Today's FPGA devices have very impressive capabilities. Simply hijack the memory bus at the right time, and you can inject whatever code is necessary.

Obviously, this could be solved by using 100% custom chips, possibly with extremely inconvenient physical specifications (say, microBGA, with all important traces routed on an inner layer of a 6-layer PCB), but the problem there is that you jack up cost tremendously. This is not something you want to do with a low-margin device, because you don't want to be losing $100 on every unit sold. And the problem with custom chips is that they don't tend to fall in price very fast, if at all.

Pretty much any security measure will end up being a compromise between cost to make the device and cost to hack the device. Keep in mind that even integrating everything on one chip is not 100% secure. If you are willing to spend a few million bucks, it's possible to reverse-engineer anything. Of course, eliminating all trivial hacks would pretty much keep most weekend hackers at bay.

Re:Dame baby...

[chrysrobyn]

Pretty much any security measure will end up being a compromise between cost to make the device and cost to hack the device. Keep in mind that even integrating everything on one chip is not 100% secure. If you are willing to spend a few million bucks, it's possible to reverse-engineer anything. Of course, eliminating all trivial hacks would pretty much keep most weekend hackers at bay

Your entire argument boils down to this -- and I wholly agree. Basically, the biggest objective in such a situation is to make bypassing the security more expensive and inconvenient than the gains provided in doing so. As long as one needs to buy a $500 FPGA, in order to hijack the memory bus at the right time with the right data, it'll be a tiny niche market at best. Nobody can protect against adversaries who have millions to spend in a fab or with a focused ion beam to change / repair wires.

I take issue, however, with your statement, "Even if it's in hardware, I doubt you could do it without tripling the cost of your CPU." Understand that I won't provide any data to back my point up either, I think tripling the cost is quite an overestimate. If you know the encryption algorithm up front, just missing the PGP keys (or whatever data you need), you can heavily tune -- and pipeline -- the entire process. Please don't misunderstand, I acknowledge there is a cost adder, but tripling is extreme.

Re:Dame baby...

[alienw]

Seriously, dude, WTF is your problem? Are you the timecube guy or something?

More Marketing?

[blueZhift]

Over the last week or so, there have been a lot of XBox 2 related stories and now this "leak". I wonder if Microsoft is leaking all of this information to A) keep XBox in the news during a quiet summer and B) get some free advice from the community of interested gamers. Given its PC roots, I'd be willing to guess that XBox gamers are more technically knowledgeable as a group compared to other console gamers. If this is true, then their opinions with respect to XBox 2 specs could be valuable.

Re:More Marketing?

[Grey Ninja]

Actually, most Xbox fans I have seen have just said that the Xbox is the most powerful without qualifying that in any way. Just looking at the specs and seeing higher numbers does NOT denote more power. GameCube is more powerful in some ways, and even PS2 is more powerful in a few areas.

Now I am going to make myself look sort of like a hypocrite by not qualifying my statement in detail, but I will say that GameCube has more efficiency going for it than the Xbox could ever hope for, and THAT is where GameCube's true power lies. For a real world example, compare Rogue Squadron 3: Rebel Strike with Halo 2. Rebel Strike pushes an insane number of polys and does it with pretty much every effect imaginable. Halo 2 pushes about half that. Granted, the frame rate will probably be better in Halo 2, but my point is that the consoles really. do. stand on even ground. At least that's what developers for the consoles say (Factor 5 most notably), and I tend to trust them more than fans anyways.

As for the specs in the article, I have to say that it's looking like quite a machine. Unified Memory being the one exception of course. It seems that MS still hasn't learned their lesson...

But really, I think that the days of scaling up the hardware to make a better game are about over. What really counts is what games Microsoft will have on the console. Can they win over the Japanese developers? Can they take over Sony's spot in the lead this time? Or are they just going to be playing second fiddle to Nintendo again?

Re:More Marketing?

[fr0dicus]

It's just a shame Rebel Strike wasn't much good really.

Having the privilege of owning all three (four?) of the current generation I can't argue that the Cube certainly seems as capable as the Xbox, but no-one's really used that capability, just like the PS2, but the PS2's excuse is that it's so hard to develop for.

One could argue the lack of mature-market aimed titles is the key behind this. The Gamecube lacks exclusives in the genres that have traditionally pushed hardware, like driving, FPS (Metroid is bloody marvellous, but it's not an out and out FPS, and anyone purchasing it expecting that is going to be disappointed).

The Xbox is continually touted as the most impressive simply because it is in practice. It has more texture memory and hardware compression to consistently top the PS2 for looks in cross platform titles, and simply the range of hardware-pushing software that trumps the Gamecube, especially now that so many publishers aren't even bothering with a Gamecube port.

Re:More Marketing?

[Have Blue]

I don't think you can make meaningful comparisons between a 6-month-old game and a game that won't be out for another 4 months (and which we have seen very little of).

All the consoles can be optimized to hell and all of them can be used badly by poor programmers. They are incredibly complex machines and the limits of their capabilities are not well-defined enough to rank them in a simple sequence or even say they are equal. However, in my personal experience, developers have described the PS2 as the hardest to optimize for and the Xbox as the easiest.

Re:More Marketing?

[king-manic]

Over the last week or so, there have been a lot of XBox 2 related stories and now this "leak". I wonder if Microsoft is leaking all of this information to A) keep XBox in the news during a quiet summer and B) get some free advice from the community of interested gamers. Given its PC roots, I'd be willing to guess that XBox gamers are more technically knowledgeable as a group compared to other console gamers. If this is true, then their opinions with respect to XBox 2 specs could be valuable.

Given it's target audience is teenage American boys who enjoy sports games I would guess this is not true. The game library doesn't have much beyond Halo to attract a true geek.

Re:More Marketing?

[Zangief]

Now I am going to make myself look sort of like a hypocrite by not qualifying my statement in detail, but I will say that GameCube has more efficiency going for it than the Xbox could ever hope for, and THAT is where GameCube's true power lies. For a real world example, compare Rogue Squadron 3: Rebel Strike with Halo 2. Rebel Strike pushes an insane number of polys and does it with pretty much every effect imaginable. Halo 2 pushes about half that. Granted, the frame rate will probably be better in Halo 2, but my point is that the consoles really. do. stand on even ground. At least that's what developers for the consoles say (Factor 5 most notably), and I tend to trust them more than fans anyways.


I'd like to see some hard numbers to back that up...I'm a Gamecube fan myself, but I don't think that a GC can move more polys than a Xbox, if the same effects (well, as far as they can be counted as the "same", given the different architectures) effects are used. Yeah, they are almost at the same ground, but, the Xbox is still more powerful...

Re:More Marketing?

[bigman2003]

Enter the Matrix at 1080i.

It may not be a great game, but it squirts geek juice all over the place.

Re:More Marketing?

[king-manic]

Enter the Matrix at 1080i.
It may not be a great game, but it squirts geek juice all over the place.
... problbly not. We would have read the reviews and passed, because any true geek knows movie licence suck 99/100 time.

Re:More Marketing?

[WinnipegDragon]

Let us take a moment to curse Chronicles of Riddick for ruining that 100% average...

Re:More Marketing?

[KDR_11k]

RS throws approximately 25M polygons/s w/ bump mapping, radiosity and other stuff at the player, Halo had about 10M/s and Halo 2 is said to use lower polygon counts than Halo 1 but bumpmapping.

Re:More Marketing?

[veritron]

You can't compare relative "strength" of a console by showing two completely different programs running - you're simply not controlling enough variables for the comparison to be meaningful. The best way of clearly demonstrating that the X-Box is superior is simple: Run the X-Box version of games vs. the Gamecube and the PS2 versions. If a game's released on all three systems, the X-Box version invariably runs better and looks better than the others. It's pretty much unquestionable: take a look at all the major game review sites, they'll agree that the X-Box port is better.

And even then, comparing ports isn't the best means of comparison - system-specific optimizations have to be accounted for. The Gamecube's memory bandwidth is the worst of the three systems; the PS2 is slower; and the X-Box doesn't particularly like letting you go low-level.

Re:More Marketing?

[Grey Ninja]

Yeah. Games that are developed from the ground up on all 3 systems should be a pretty good indicator. So how about Soul Calibur II? ;-)

I somehow doubt this...

[foidulus]

The development kits that Microsoft sent out to developers runs on a modded G5 running a modified NT kernel. I would bet that the dev environment is going to be faster than the actual console, and no current G5 even comes close to what is described....

Re:I somehow doubt this...

[foidulus]

Sorry, I should have included it, Find out more info here

Re:I somehow doubt this...

[fr0dicus]

But they're early kits, to give developers time to get used to the architecture switch. Given that the next Xbox isn't even a twinkle in a chip fabs eye, it's hardly relevant. Microsoft have said that proper kits will be shipped when they're available.

Besides, I doubt they'll be putting workstation class amounts of L2 cache on them, which should allow them to up the clock speeds.

Re:I somehow doubt this...

[Quarters]

Dev kits are rarely, if ever, faster than the final console. The dev kits for the first XBox are a notable exception because the XBox was essentially being built using currently existing off the shelf parts--although the custom GPU was higher spec than any IHV part out at the time. The CPU was certainly available, though.

Any time you have custom GPU and CPU development going on for a console release you are going to have your game developers working in parallel to your HW development so you can get the console out on time and have launch titles. In that case there is no way that the dev units can be faster due to the simple fact that the custom chips dont exist yet. You'll either end up with a dev kit based on early tape-outs of the silicon or dev kits that rely on emulation. In either case they are going to be slower than the final unit.

Re:I somehow doubt this...

[gamgee5273]

Actually... according to this month's EGM both Tecmo, with Dead or Alive 4, and an untitled project from Epic Games are being prepped for the Xenon... and that DOA 4 is going to be released next year.

Yes, this is from the rumors section... but their rumors are right about half of the time. Which means that that Xenon may be closer than we all think.

Correct me if I'm wrong but...

[OverDrive33]

"The Xenon GPU is a custom 500+ MHz graphics processor from ATI. ... Xenon not only supports high-level shading language (HLSL) model 3.0 for vertex and pixel shaders but also includes advanced shader features well beyond model 3.0."

ATI doesn't have (true) Pixel Shader 3.0 development done yet... (if they did I'm sure there'd be an X800 XT Turbo or something) let alone implemented into a processor, even more ridiculous is the "shader features well beyond model 3.0".

Another thing is the technical limitations on have 3 CPUs and 1 GPU sharing the same L2 cache, while technically feasible, it's not a good idea, the bandwidth of the L2 cache would be severely taxed. It would make much more sense to have the smaller L2 cache for each processor. (Even this "locking down into segments" doesn't improve bandwidth...)

a 3 core processor each running at 3.5Ghz is pretty unlikely on a PowerPC based technology... 2.0Ghz probably... 3.0Ghz maybe. And a dual core probably not. But a 3 core... come on...

My money is on some lonely XBox fanboy made it up.

Re:Correct me if I'm wrong but...

[Have Blue]

ATI doesn't have PS 3.0+ support in their released products. The work they are doing for MS (and Nintendo) may be well ahead of the X800, and may be the reason PS 3.0 support didn't make it into the X800 itself, if they are concentrating on their console development. The original Xbox also included features that went beyond MS's PC graphics standard at the time (DX8), after all.

Re:Correct me if I'm wrong but...

[OverDrive33]

But you have to ask yourself, if it's ready (or near ready) for one product, why wouldn't they put it in their retail ones(or at least annouce that they were going to)? PS3.0 is an open standard is it not? So they wouldn't be violating any kind of NDA.
I just smell something fishy about that whole article. It wreaks of poor journalism, poor technical insight, and XBox fanboyism.

Re:Correct me if I'm wrong but...

[raygundan]

I'm not normally one to get involved in console arguments, and I think these specs are fairly likely to be made-up. But just for the sake of what you're discussing here, didn't Nvidia include more advanced shader support in their xbox part than they had available in video cards available at the time?

Re:Correct me if I'm wrong but...

[fr0dicus]

Not forgetting that we're talking about hardware that probably won't hit the market for about 15 months.

Re:Correct me if I'm wrong but...

[king-manic]

Not forgetting that we're talking about hardware that probably won't hit the market for about 15 months.


Given that the G5 have onyl started to roll out recently, and that a 3 core CPU hasn't come otu for anything yet. It's pretty unlikly 15 months will make it cheap enough to throw in a console.

Re:Correct me if I'm wrong but...

[fr0dicus]

G5 hasn't been out for a year yet, and it's already at 2.5Ghz. IBM have had dual core in their big tin for longer than that.

Not that we're necessarily talking strictly about G5 here. I doubt if the version in this console will have as much L2 cache as in an Apple workstation. It's perfectly feasible. Cost of the current stuff is irrelevant compared to this kind of mass production.

Re:Correct me if I'm wrong but...

[king-manic]

Cost of the current stuff is irrelevant compared to this kind of mass production.


2 cores took a lot of research to properly implement... 3 cores? in 15 months? in a 500$ machine? 1 mb of l2 cache is pricey too. I don't doubt the mzh. It's perfectly feasible, but not a 3 core chip and not with 1mb of shared cache. that means the cache is either wired 3 ways with the GPU or the GPU is on die with 3 other chips. if it's bussed then it's not shared any more then the currect P4's have a shared cache with the hard drive. Also, the economies of scale will work against Ms as they are not licencing but instead buying components. They don't makes the CPU/GPU thus as time goes on the cost fall slowly. And the Xbox hasn't been a high production machines. There are more P4 3.0mzh 's out then Xboxes.

Re:Correct me if I'm wrong but...

[fr0dicus]

It will be higher volume than Apple's G5 or IBM pSeries kit. Much higher. IBM have got the fact that their CPUs are going to be in every new console on the first page of every presentation remotely mentioning hardware that they've done at my office. This is just one of the many pronged push that they're adopting against Intel.

Regarding the cache, I'd expect a small amount per core and that 1MB to be L3. I hope I'm wrong, but as you say, it's a little unrealistic currently. IBM are definitely ramping up their CPU offerings massively though.

Re:Correct me if I'm wrong but...

[obeythefist]

Actually I read an earlier report posted on slashdot that mentioned the same 3.5GHz figure, whether the fanboy just read this and recycled it or not I don't know.

But one thing was apparent in that report, the 3.5GHz figure was bollocks and it was really a 3 core CPU with each "core" running at 1.16GHz. And as we know, 3 cores @ 1.16GHz != 1 core @ 3.5GHz. This is a pretty reasonable assumption because the IBM G4/G5 CPU's don't have anywhere near the optimisations to run at 3.5GHz. I also like the 3x1.16 figure, because that scales nicely with the 733MHz CPU they used in the original XBox.

In fact, 3.5GHz is pretty unrealistic for just about any modern CPU, apart from intel. Intel is a bad example - due to marketing reasons, intel has forgone all real world performance in favour of sheer clockspeed. Most of the rest of the industry (AMD, Motorola, Transmeta, Via, IBM) have decided that either performance, low power draw, low price/performance, or enhanced capabilities are much more important than clockspeed.

3.5+ GHz IBM PowerPC processor?

[N4m0r]

I'm no engineer but if Apple could only get up to 2.5 GHz in their big as a tank many fan G5 case why should we believe the new XBox is going to be able to house a 3.5+ GHz chip?

Re:3.5+ GHz IBM PowerPC processor?

[Lynxara]

Not only are we being asked to believe that the Xenon will house it, but that it will house it while also being a smaller unit than the X-Box....

Re:3.5+ GHz IBM PowerPC processor?

[fr0dicus]

Because they're talking about a smaller process and a chip that won't even see the light of day for 15 months?

Re:3.5+ GHz IBM PowerPC processor?

[CityZen]

Because these specs were probably written before Steve Jobs made the promise of "3Ghz by summer '04".

This when everyone thought Moore's "Law" would be golden down to 0.65 nm, before the full scope of scaling problems became clear to everyone.

Re:3.5+ GHz IBM PowerPC processor?

[gl4ss]

it would STILL place 3.5ghz+(three core?) cpu at the upper end of the cpu cost scale... which would mean that the cpu would either cost more than the whole console would be wise to cost or that we're going to have some cheap blazing fast(faster that can be anticipated) desktop computers in a year(for cheap)...

the specs really do look somebody just pulled them out of their hat - and if they really seem like that then that's what probably happened. at least xbox-scene got a shitload of pageviews.
.

Re:3.5+ GHz IBM PowerPC processor?

[bogie]

My thoughts as well. No way that ends up being the cpu. Even in 15 months that will still be mucho expensive to produce, especially with 1MB cache. Sorry but unless X2 is going to retail at $750 these numbers are wrong.

Re:3.5+ GHz IBM PowerPC processor?

[Creepy]

By using the new Blue Gene processors.

To quote:

Compared with today's fastest supercomputers, it will be six times faster, consume 1/15th the power per computation and be 10 times more compact than today's fastest supercomputers.
-Team XBox (see link above)

1/15th the power consumption is a heck of a lot of heat that doesn't need to be dissipated. Supposedly can be run without CPU fans, too, but it's still very experimental and that may change when they crank the speed up (the heatsink-and-fanless one for supercomputers I saw was only 700MHz... I don't know if it requires cooling for practical use, though). It's also capable of 200 simultaneous computations per cycle, supposedly.

Just my opinion...

[nege]

As far as the size of the box, I dont think that is an issue for me, personally. The xbox looks about the size of a stereo component, and I find it looks nice on an entertainment center. Unless you are carrying it around (why? its not a DS or PSP or GBA), size is the least important factor to me.

Actually...I would rather have a larger box the remains cooler than a small box that has a potential to run really hot.

Re:Just my opinion...

[Apreche]

Large size dimishes gameplay possibilities. Sure, the XboX is not a portable system, you aren't supposed to play it while you are walking around. But you are going to transport it. Bring it over to your friends house who has a bigger TV. In order to play that halo thing you people like so much I'm pretty sure you need to get more than one of these things in the same place at the same time. The gamecube definitely excels in this area because it is a party system. four players, lan gaming, it has a handle. The cube was made so that you and all your friends can get together and play 16 player mario kart. If you don't have friends adn you sit all alone playing single player games in your house, then yes, who cares about size of the console. But if you need to lay down the blue sparks...

Re:Just my opinion...

[Have Blue]

You don't need multiple Xboxes to play Halo, it supports 4-player splitscreen just like the GC.

The Xbox is really not excessively large or heavy at all; anyone in good shape can pick it up with one hand. it's a joke dating back to before its launch that has long since been beaten into the ground.

Re:Just my opinion...

[drinkypoo]

The only consoles that have ever been larger (in terms of volume) than the Xbox have been the Philips CD-i and the largest of the Neo-Geo systems*. I think there's still ground to pound that joke into. Even the colecovision is smaller than the Xbox.

* Systems with internal monitors such as the vectrex don't count.

Re:Just my opinion...

[Have Blue]

I agree, I make that joke all the time :) But anyone seriously listing it as a deficiency of the platform is either a dumbass or a troll.

Re:Just my opinion...

[newbiescum]

I think everyone's referring to system link capable games. 16 player Halo is, of course, a bigger experience than 4 player split screen Halo. It's a big deal in college dorms and apartments, and vastly more popular than 4 player Halo obviously. Still, the Gamecube is much better suited for party games with wireless controllers and a smaller console (if you've ever had to untangle 8 or more controller wires to switch one controller to a different Xbox, you'd appreciate the wavebird).

Re:Just my opinion...

[stevey]

The vectrex? Thanks for the memory.

When I was a kid my little sis was given one for her birthday, and my gaming options were the ZX Spectrum or the Vectrex.

I'd love to get my hands on one nowadays, I think I might even have a couple of cartridges lying around the place now - complete with the coloured screen overlays!

Re:Just my opinion...

[Blakey Rat]

This is an anti-GameCube post, so I'll be modded to hell...

But I really prefer the XBox having the same form-factor as a stereo or video component. It's about the same size as my 5 disk DVD changer, or surround, slightly bigger than my VCR, etc. But the main point is that it fits in EVERY entertainment center you'll ever see and looks nice. The Gamecube doesn't.

Re:Just my opinion...

[drinkypoo]

The fact is that selling something depends on marketing, marketing depends on perceptions and distortion thereof, and the Xbox is large and heavy enough to distort local space-time. Or at least, that's how it appears :)

Re:Just my opinion...

[king-manic]

The Xbox is pretty gaudy. A PS2 looks like a steroe amp. The Gc looks liek... a toy block. For it's target demographic thats fine. the Ps2 as well. The Xbox looks like a bade pop-up ad for the XFL.

Re:Just my opinion...

[DeepHurtn!]

"As far as the size of the box, I dont think that is an issue for me, personally."

It may not be a problem for you (or for me, either) but it is a problem in Japan, where floorspace is at a premium. That's why the PS2 can stand vertically, and the Gamecube is so tiny. I'm not saying its huge size compared to the other consoles is why the Xbox did so poorly in Japan, but it certainly didn't help.

BS?

[arrow]

I like how they refer to Microsoft in the first paragraph as "MS Corporation", from what I know of Microsoft, they don't like being called anything but "Microsoft Corporation" or just "Microsoft". Even on internal docs.

If your trying to shorten it to save on typing, the proper useage would be "MSFT". But why anyone would tpye "MS" then type out "Corporation"...

believe it when...

[thebdj]

we see it. That does sound might impressive but then again the xbox 2 or next or whatever you wanna call it, is how far away? Seriously these specs if even from M$ are probably still speculation to some degree. While next gen consoles (we need a new name for them) will need more power they also need to maintain reasonable prices. Giving it power and making the system cost $600 isn't exactly going to make them sell.

Granted the companies are already losing money on the consoles but you cannot expect it to all be made up for on games. Especially when you are M$ and you have a hard time selling your console outside the US. If they cannot win over console gamers in another country then they will always be playing 2nd or 3rd fiddle behind those boys at Sony and Nintendo.

---

"Friends don't let Friends play FPS's on consoles"

Re:believe it when...

[asamoth]

Granted the companies are already losing money on the consoles but you cannot expect it to all be made up for on games. Especially when you are M$ and you have a hard time selling your console outside the US.

Err what does M$ not being able to sell consoles in Japan have anything to do with not selling games. Lowered installed base = less games to sell to "recoup" costs. (Insert X-Box's only game being Halo Joke) (Follow up with snide comment on shrewd marketing of M$ delay of PC port).

I remember when the GC and M$ consoles came out an article also came out about how M$ was the only one actually selling consoles at a loss. Does anyone know if this is still true with the price drops or whatnot? Probably a closely guarded bit of info.

Re:believe it when...

[Maestro4k]

• That does sound might impressive but then again the xbox 2 or next or whatever you wanna call it, is how far away?

Many game insiders expect to see the next Xbox in 2005, Microsoft seems to have it in their heads that they MUST be the first to market in the next generation of consoles, so it may be showing up sooner than we think.

• Granted the companies are already losing money on the consoles but you cannot expect it to all be made up for on games. Especially when you are M$ and you have a hard time selling your console outside the US. If they cannot win over console gamers in another country then they will always be playing 2nd or 3rd fiddle behind those boys at Sony and Nintendo.

Actually Microsoft's the only company losing money on the console hardware. Sony's been making a profit for some time, and Nintendo pretty much refuses to sell at a loss.

Also

[Hythlodaeus]

It also features a cold-fusion power supply, egg beater, clothes washer, monopole magnet, a 50" plasma display, and platinum coated interconnects.

Seriously, I'm skeptical of these specs, as MS's supposed objective is to lose LESS money per unit sold.

Re:Also

[HAKdragon]

Yes, but can it also make thousands of julian fries?

No Wireless?

[joinder]

I guess Microsoft is enjoying getting the extra $80-$100 they are charging for the wireless adapter for the current Xbox. Where it would be really, really nice to have as an included feature, I can see where MS are trying to way the bottom line, although arguably by including it they could boost Xbox Live acceptance. In any event, I've been curious as to whether the current wireless adapter would likely work with future incarnations of the Xbox. (and if there are any other practical, cheaper wireless solutions outside of the linksys game adapter?)

Re:No Wireless?

[*weasel]

The LinkSys wireless adapter will work with any device that has a 10/100 ethernet port.
it'll work with your PC with onboard 10/100(/1000), it'll work with the neXtBox( provided it still has onboard ethernet), it'll work with your 10 year old machine with the ISA 10mbps ethernet card, it'll work with your laptop's 10/100 ethernet port, etc.

I'd strongly expect the official MS branded product to behave the same way. (particularly since their short-lived networking line was pretty solid, all said)

Cheaper than the linksys is tricky. because those products are so versatile and powerful (making any device that has an ethernet port into a wireless-capable device) -- everyone can and does charge a premium.

Re:No Wireless?

[WebGangsta]

by including it they could boost Xbox Live acceptance

Wha-huh? How would including a wireless adapter boost XBox Live participation?

1. If you currently have an XBox and are not using XBox Live at all, then you still wouldn't use it under XBox2 regardless of the type of connection.
2. If you currently have an XBox and a wireless network, just unplug the wireless adapter and plug it into the XBox2 machine. See? You're already saving money with "backwards compatibility"! Chances are these folks would already have been on XBox Live.
3. If you're running a wired home network, the inclusion of wireless into an XBox2 would certainly not make someone want to check out XBox Live if it meant having to get a new/different router to connect.

I'll grant you that there *may* be more people checking out XBox Live with the system if they currently have a wireless network and didn't already have an XBox or a wireless adapter available... but I don't see it as a major selling feature to gain new sales. ("Look mom! With this, we can be online from our rooms and dad doesn't have to run any extra cable drops! can we get it, huh, can we?")

Would it be nice to have wireless as an included feature? I guess so -- but I don't see a practical use for wireless connectivity for a product that is not intended to be moved around. Wireless for notebook computers? Sure. Wireless for a desktop computer? Silly, slower, and impractical. (fine -- people in apartments who share a connection with their roommates and don't feel like running cable get some benefit from wireless, but that doesn't mean that it's not silly and slower.)

Re:No Wireless?

[joinder]

I don't see it as necessarily increasing Xbox console sales per se, but as increasing use of Xbox Live. I can see situations where someone might have an existing wireless network at home but doesn't want to run a drop down to their home entertainment center or bother with the extra cost of a wireless adapter. In this instance, having wireless included would take away any hurdles or obstacles to having this type of customer join Xbox Live.

I'm not saying this would be the rule, but I could certainly foresee being more common than one might think. But I agree, It wouldn't necessarily drive console sales but rather further usage of Xbox Live.

Re:No Wireless?

[Creepy]

This may have something to do with the new standard. If they make the wireless adapter 802.11g and the demand is for the 802.11n by the time the new XBox is released, they're stuck with an old standard. 10/100 Ethernet has been around forever, but wireless is still developing rapidly. 802.11n will supposedly have between 100Mbps and 320Mbps, which puts it equal to or better than standard ethernet, as well as increased reliability, or so I hear (this is a real problem in my 900MHz and 2.4GHz noisy area).

Maybe MS wants to try winning the Japanese market

[Webapprentice]

We do know that in most urban areas of Japan, space is at a real premium. Many Japanese players complained about the Xbox's controller size, which eventually led to the Controller S.

So, a smaller machine form factor may just be a way to acknowledge the Japanese market.

Re:If anyone mods this troll up i will KILL THEM.

[Grey Ninja]

Normally I don't reply to trolls. But in this case I will make an exception.

GameCube has a pretty powerful GPU, and it CAN do hardware effects. Rebel Strike uses it to great advantage, and does a lot of stuff on hardware. The CPU is used for one HELL of a lot of AI, physics, and all that sort of jazz. I don't know why you would think that all the things Xbox does in hardware would have to be done on software on the GCN. I am not saying that the Xbox can't run Rebel Strike, I am saying that it would push the hardware just as much as it does on GameCube.

Unified memory also means unified bandwidth. Something that I know developers would appreciate more of on the Xbox.

Nintendo is second place worldwide. This is a fact. And I don't see PS2 lacking much western support.

Re:This is obviously bullshit.

[fr0dicus]

SMT is IBM's name for Hyperthreading, which is probably an Intel patented term.

Smaller?

[rkischuk]

The Xenon console will be smaller than the Xbox console.'

Yeah, like that's saying something? Any bigger and they might as well have made it a mini-tower.

Re:Smaller is a good move

[nukem1999]

Actually, I think they should make it *bigger* with a flat top. And a longer A/V cable. And cupholders (the DVD drive doesn't count :P). And maybe a magazine rack on the side.

Hey, it's not like I'm gonna waste good video game money on a real coffee table.

Re:loud

[fr0dicus]

make sure you've got some loud speakers to overpower the 20+ fans this thing will need to not overheat!

As the CPU doesn't exist yet, and they have full control over the physical specification of the box, that's not really a given. They could just turn the thing into an enormous heatsink, heatpipe, w/e.

audio being coded by the CPU seems like a huge waste too.. why not just include a cheap AC97 audio chip and reduce some of the CPU overhead? I don't know much about audio chips but I can't imagine it would be that hard since it seems every MOBO you buy now has onboard audio (I picked up a mobo for $8.11 that had on-board audio!).

I don't believe that there is such a thing as AC97 for PowerPC. Not that it isn't basically software driven audio anyway. Do you really think it's going to be much of an overhead on a triple core 3.5Ghz SMT CPU?

Also, why would you include a VGA out port? Arent' they trying to keep this thing away from modders? That just incourages it... plus, why use a port that's 3+ decades old.. why not a DVI port?

Why would it encourage modders? It's just a display output... this box is going to be capable of much better resolutions than the average TV is going to be capable of, so why not provide a better port? An easy argument against DVI is lack of market penetration, although as these are still rumours it doesn't actually deny that DVI is there (maybe a DVI port that can be converted to VGA?).

eh? what'd he say?

[KE1LR]

I just hope it's quieter than the current one.

With no HD it should be a big improvement but my Xbox is wayyy too loud when the disk is chattering away and the DVD is spinning.

It's even louder than my (modded with extra fan) Tivo which is right next to it in the entertainment center.

Re:If anyone mods this troll up i will KILL THEM.

[fr0dicus]

I think you're wrong about the whole 'second place' thing. I believe the Xbox passed the Gamecube at Christmas and has been pulling away ever since (look at the month before the PS2 price drop to see it as leading sales of all three).

Are you sure you're not counting Gameboy sales? If so, then Nintendo is the clear winner, but that's hardly a fair comparison.

Re:Maybe MS wants to try winning the Japanese mark

[SuiteSisterMary]

The Japanese got the Controller S from the getgo.

And yes, space is a premium, but the Xbox isn't all that much bigger in terms of length/width than a Playstation 1. I doubt it was that much of a turn-off.

Re:loud

[raygundan]

Isn't AC97 basically CPU-driven audio?

Troll

[f0rtytw0]

So this should be able to run Longhorn at medium settings right?

Re:If anyone mods this troll up i will KILL THEM.

[king-manic]

The Xbox's strength isnt Japanese games/developers, it's western games/developers, and arguably, it doesnt need Japanese games/developers to win on the world market. As for playing second fiddle to Nintendo, that is highly arguable, as the two consoles are pretty much neck-and-neck, each claiming to have a lead in sales.

Only in America. In the rest of the world it's #3 at best. Often coming in #4 or #5 to the PSone or to other systems. And yes they do need the japanese companies, they make up mor ethen 50% of the market for games. They develope around 50% of all titles.

Re:This is obviously bullshit.

[foidulus]

SMT is IBM's name for Hyperthreading, which is probably an Intel patented term.
I think you are getting trademarks and patents confused...you can patent a technology, you can't patten a name, but you can trademark a name. Whether or not Intel has patented their hyperthreading technology, I don't know, but I'm pretty sure they haven't patented the name.

Re:This is obviously bullshit.

[fr0dicus]

I don't really care that much. IBM call it something different to Intel. Probably didn't want to be associated with Intels effort.

Lowendmac

[GoRK]

Finally! A macintosh that people can actually afford!

"3 core 3.5ghz+"

[prewashedironman]

This just isnt going to happen. think about it, a new powermac G5 costs well over 1.5k($2k) at the moment, and thats only with 2x2ghz processors. Whilst i understand this is different as it is 3core on one die, it still isn't going to happen, as the price would be fenomenal, e.g. 500 ($700-800) and this would just be suicide for microsoft. They can either take a huge loss, or sell it at a ridiculous price, either way they lose.

This is all jsut hype, just like there has been with every other console ever released. Ignore it until the console is on sale.

Re:"3 core 3.5ghz+"

[fr0dicus]

I think basic economies of scale will apply here. The Xbox is going to sell in far higher quantities than the G5.

Re:"3 core 3.5ghz+"

[CityZen]

Consider the spec a wishlist, written before the (un)realities of CMOS scaling came to be known.

As with any wishlist, the easiest way to get your wishes is to modify the list.

Re:"3 core 3.5ghz+"

[prewashedironman]

that's true, but it still is either going to mean a big loss my MS at first before sales pick up (and therefore production) or theyll have to price it highly, so will price out many customers, so noone will buy it, so they dont get large scale production etc. Theres no way there will be a 3.5ghz 3 core processor in the X-box next. 1.5-2 possibly, i think its most likely going to be about a 1.8ghz processor but unlike the current X-box it will be specially designed with games in mind, as in the GC and PS2.

Re:"3 core 3.5ghz+"

[Babbster]

Wow. Just...Wow. I don't know if you've ever noticed, but Apple has charged ridiculously high prices compared to actual hardware cost and performance for years. Hell, they could be getting those 1.8GHz parts for less than a hundred bucks a pop (probably a bit higher).

Personally, I think these leaked specs are a crock. But trying to judge prices by comparing to Apple prices is like trying to judge prices on an upcoming Chrysler compared to a similar Mercedes.

That's great but...

[Fiz Ocelot]

Just to keep things in perspective, I don't really care how powerful "any" game platform is, console/pc/other. I think we are past the point of the "bit wars", or that is comparing hardware.

Today in order to survive as a console you need great games, and a large overall library. IE: if MS got something like a GTA4 as an exclusive launch title, that would do far more than just impressive hardware. It's all about the software today, and I will buy a system on the basis of where the great games are.

Re:That's great but...

[vijaya_chandra]

It's all about the software today, and I will buy a system on the basis of where the great games are.

Considering they were the ones, who had started with the idea that you can make money with software at a time when people thought that the real money's in hardware, I seriously doubt they would forget the fact.

Who knows!?! May be GTA5 is going to be an xbox2 exclusive.

(Karma be damned! I am no better than an AC anyway)

Re:If anyone mods this troll up i will KILL THEM.

[Recoil_42]

Normally I don't reply to trolls. But in this case I will make an exception. :P

GameCube has a pretty powerful GPU, and it CAN do hardware effects. Rebel Strike uses it to great advantage, and does a lot of stuff on hardware. The CPU is used for one HELL of a lot of AI, physics, and all that sort of jazz.
I wasn't aware that i had said, or even implied, that it isnt.

I don't know why you would think that all the things Xbox does in hardware would have to be done on software on the GCN.

I don't. I'm simply saying that in Rebel Strike, the resources that could be allocated to effects are instead allocated to raw polycounts. Your post seemed to imply that on top of the polys, the GC could easily add all the effects, and that the Xbox just couldnt cut it with halo 2's polycounts, ignoring all of the effects.

I am not saying that the Xbox can't run Rebel Strike, I am saying that it would push the hardware just as much as it does on GameCube.

I seriously doubt that. While it would push the hardware, it would not push it as much as a gamecube (imo, the gamecube actually as a pretty easy time with it, though, i don't see it 'pushing' the gamecube at all. Facts are facts, and the Xbox *does* have more power than the Gamecube, ask any professional/dev/journalist. Hell, go look at Splinter Cell for all three platforms -- while not much, the gamecube version WAS toned down a bit, because the gamecube DID have a slightly harder time with it.

Unified memory also means unified bandwidth. Something that I know developers would appreciate more of on the Xbox.

In this case, the advantages strongly outweigh the disadvantages. I've seen many quots from Xbox devs citing the unified memory as one of its strongest advantages. (sorry, i googled them but can't find them atm... i'll try and find them)

Nintendo is second place worldwide. This is a fact.
Got the figures, a link? Yes, the GC has better sales in Asia, South America, and parts of Europe, but the Xbox dominates it in NA, and most of the rest of Europe. The NPD figures i've seen in the past 7-8 months are always strongly in conflict -- Gamecube had a huge burst of sales when they had their ingenius 'price drop' (quadrupled sales!) and the Xbox had its recently, when it dropped to 149$US and the Halo bundle came out. -- the Xbox now outsells the PS2 in the US, even.


And I don't see PS2 lacking much western support.


Check again. Practically the only Western games coming to the PS2 outside of SCEA's own games, are all multiplatform. Go ahead, i'll wait.

I'm not trying to be a fanboy, I'm looking at facts here. And the facts are:
- Xbox is more powerful than the Gamecube. period.
- Unified memory is actually considered a huge advantage by most developers.
- Xbox has much more western support, and therefore can garner much more western sales, than the PS2 and Gamecube, which still both rely mostly on Japanese games and franchises.

I'm not fighting against you, Ninja, I'm on your side. I just hate it when people twist facts. Go read the Tauniverse Console forum, and you'll see that I'm very often quite pro-Gamecube.

256 in ram?

[aka_big_wurm]

Dident I read a story the other day about UT2k4 using up 2 gigs of ram.

Memory is cheap now a days thow a gig of ram in the box.
It will look good on paper even if it is not used, or devs can use it as a ram drive.

Re:256 in ram?

[tc]

Memory might be cheap, but when you're into a mass market device even cheap components add up.

Let's say Microsoft aim to have a PS2 level of success, and sell 50 million of these things. And let's suppose that they throw in an extra $20 worth of RAM into each box. Boom, that's one billion dollars right there. Who picks up the tab for that?

Do they pass it on to customers, driving the price of the console up? Do they up the royalties they charge for each game? Do they just eat the cost? All of those are possible, but they all have obvious downsides. Which is not to say that they might not be good ideas on balance, but just to point out that it's not as easy as saying "throw a gig of RAM in the box".

Of course, this is all pure speculation, because we don't know what the specs for the thing will be, and it's entirely likely that this "leak" is just fanboy ramblings. Maybe they will just "throw a gig of RAM in the box"?

Re:Smaller is a good move

[drinkypoo]

I think they should make it have more upper surface area but make it much thinner, like a modern DVD player. That way you could integrate it into your stereo rack. As the controllers for the new system are supposed to be PC-compatible, that pretty much means USB, which means that you could put four controller connectors way over on one side of the system so they wouldn't be in the way of the loading and control facilities of the components below it.

Re:Smaller is a good move

[FriedTurkey]

I am PS2 fanboy but the PS3 should have a power switch in the front. I understand you can hold down the power button to turn it off from the front but it never really seems "off" unless you turn it off from the back. Maybe its all in my head but everyone I know turns it off from the back.

Re:I'll be getting one....

[drinkypoo]

"Troll" is still the moderation option closest to "Not remotely funny."

Re:loud

[drinkypoo]

DVI has pins for the normal VGA functions which is why you can have a DVI to VGA adapter on your video card. It's not actually DVI to VGA, it's just DVI connector to HD15.

In fact, a display connected to your video card via a DVI cable is not necessarily doing digital video. There are analog DVI-connector devices.

Re:If anyone mods this troll up i will KILL THEM.

[Recoil_42]

If MS gets 70-80% market share in Europe and North America (very possible, if they play their cards right and SONY plays their cards wrong -- which could very well happen) like Hell they need Japan.

Tomonobu Itagaki, head of Team Ninja (DOA series, Ninja Gaiden), and Hideo Kojima (MGS series), were both recently quoted as saying that the Japanese industry is heading for a landslide, with all of the games being the same thing, and the market losing interest in them.

And its true, just go look at the sales figures, and you can see a steady rise of the popularity of western games in japan.

So really, no, you DONT need Japan to win the war, because Japan is really just a figurehead, a shadow of what it once was. (other than nintendo, imo, who is still putting out brilliant games)

The Kojima quote:
http://www.computerbuyer.co.uk/news/news_s tory.php ?id=58044

(sorry, i can't find the itagki quote)

I doubt it

[vijaya_chandra]

Seriously, I'm skeptical of these specs, as MS's supposed objective is to lose LESS money per unit sold.

Seriously, if that's MS' strategy they wouldn't even plan XBOX2 so early. The risk of being this quick has already been a /. story a few days ago.

If MS is really planning to gain the first-mover-advantage, I am sure they'd be prepared to lose a *lot* more than XBOX is costing them now. What better combination than a super cool configuration + reasonable price can you find to get on to the top in the console wars?

(Karma be damned! I am no better than an AC anyway)

Re:This is obviously bullshit.

[Anonymous Coward]

SMY = Simultanious Multi Threading. It is a term that has been around for years. It is not something unique to IBM. All it means is that you can run more then one thread at a time.

Re:I'll be getting one....

[Anonymous Coward]

(Moderators: this is "humor" not "troll")

Isn't humor supposed to be... well, you know, funny?

Re:If anyone mods this troll up i will KILL THEM.

[king-manic]

Their in a economic recession. Their games are selling as well due mostly to that. As for 70-80% market share. Only sony has that. And they have to screw up pretty bad. Even then MS had to do some amazing thigns to capitilize. MS wont' just come in and snap up that market share. they'll likyl either be 45/45/10 Sony/Ms/nintendo (very very optimistic). or 80/10/10 sony/Ms/Nintendo in America if their mutally exclusive. in the world at large it's 99/20/15 Sony/Nintendo/MS while it's 99/19/20 sony/Nintendo/MS in America. (figrues approximate).

Re:If anyone mods this troll up i will KILL THEM.

[ElleyKitten]

I think you're wrong about the whole 'second place' thing

Grey Ninja was talking worldwide. In America, Xbox is pulling past Gamecube, but in Japan, well last I heard the PS1 was beating the Xbox. So worldwide Gamecube > XBox.

Re:I'll be getting one....

[Kevin Burtch]

Humor, much like beauty, is in the eye of the beer-holder. ;)

You don't happen to think it's funny that MS lost over $1B last year on the X-box, I think it's hysterical. It's all a matter of opinion.

All PowerPC chips are NOT created equal

[sam_van]

I'm seeing a lot of incredulous posts regarding the ability of Microsoft/IBM's ability to put three cores on a die, etc. feasibly for power and/or cost reasons. However, IBM develops a number of lines of PowerPC family processors, not just those for Apple and RS-6000 workstations. My understanding is that these cores are some sort of hybrid between 4xx and 7xx (G) series processor cores. The 4xx cores are low power devices (with set-top box, printer, router applications) and are already in multi-core chips. I imagine that with a stripped down 7xx core and some of the low power features, the brains of Xenon will not melt the unit or break the banks of those poor, struggling artists at Microsoft.

Re:If anyone mods this troll up i will KILL THEM.

[Paladine97]

I seriously doubt that. While it would push the hardware, it would not push it as much as a gamecube (imo, the gamecube actually as a pretty easy time with it, though, i don't see it 'pushing' the gamecube at all. Facts are facts, and the Xbox *does* have more power than the Gamecube, ask any professional/dev/journalist. Hell, go look at Splinter Cell for all three platforms -- while not much, the gamecube version WAS toned down a bit, because the gamecube DID have a slightly harder time with it.

They are both powerful. XBox has a better GPU, Gamecube has a better CPU (while clocked slower, the PowerPPC romps an x86 anyday).

Saying that the Cube had a harder time with Splinter cell is a little misleading however. Clearly it is a port from another system. Ports are usually done hastely: they need to get to market fast. So the developers didn't spend a lot of time optimizing it for the Cube as they could have. When you have the same game ported across all systems, they will obviously not run all the same. The only way to make a fair comparison is if you took the development team, magically cloned them twice and had them develop on all platforms simultaneously.

Windows for PPC?

[isophage]

Whats next? Mac OSX for the x86? (C'mon Apple!)

Re:Windows for PPC?

[Anonymous Coward]

OSX for x86 exists. They will never release something like that though. Apple survives on (overpriced/trendy) hardware sales.

Excellent Point! Software Makes The System

[BRock97]

Just to keep things in perspective, I don't really care how powerful "any" game platform is, console/pc/other. I think we are past the point of the "bit wars", or that is comparing hardware.

Someone should mod this up; it is an excellent point! In the whole history of game-dom, hardware has never been an indicator of a system's success (except maybe once with the PS1, more on that later). The Sega Master System was more advanced than the NES. SNES was more advanced than the Genesis. Hell, the 3DO was more advanced than anything when it first came out. How did those hardware battles turn out? The opposite of the specs. Every time. It all comes down to the software support.

The PS1 was an interesting anomoly in that their system and the Saturn were built to do two different things. Sony caught the gaming industry at a time that it was being wowwed by 3d graphics. Sega chose poorly with their system design focusing on 2D, Sony chose wisely.

That does bring us back to Microsoft and the Xbox2. To be honest, I can't say that I am impressed with their software so far on the Xbox with the last game I played in any detail being Ninja Gaiden and befor that Halo. In fact, this has kept the dust layer thick on that system while my PS2 gets constant play (Jak2, VF4E, Gran Tarismo, Kingdom Hearts, etc). If Microsoft wants to win this next battle, they need to get their software quality to match up with their hardware quality.

Re:If anyone mods this troll up i will KILL THEM.

[aldoman]

Not true... Xbox sales patterns in Europe (a market twice or even three times as big as Japan if you count the new eastern euro. countries in) are very similar to N. America. So really, worldwdie Xbox > Gamecube and getting further and further away.

Japan is becoming an increasinly marginilized market with it being very expensive to translate to and from. Microsoft really doesn't care about it anymore so they are concentrating on markets they are far more sucessful on.

Re:I'll be getting one....

[drinkypoo]

I do think that's funny, but it's a fact that never leaves me. Your delivery is what was wanting, not the payload. You know, kind of like michael moore.

I think its a fake

[JediSB]

After some investigation I think it is fake. And my reasoning has nothing to do with the specs, etc. In the supposed "leaked document" the author, Pete Isenee, uses the letter 's' in spelling 'maximise' (second bullet point under "Hardware Goals".) That is not the way that word is spelled in the United Sates. It is spelled 'maximize'. The British use 's' where we use 'z'.

I found the guy's personal web site here:
http://www.tantalon.com/pete.htm

On that page he spells a similar word, 'optimize', with a 'z' and not a 's'. There would be consistency in the way he used 's' or 'z'. It looks to me that this was faked by someone in Britain.

Re:I think its a fake

[TEMMiNK]

or maybe there is a british person working for MS??? and maybe it was a typo, i dunno about you but ive read alot of internal memos written in engrish let alone with an incosistency in spelling standards.

Re:I think its a fake

[dave420]

So the guy uses british spellings. It doesn't mean it's not true. Kind of jumping to conclusions...

Re:I think its a fake

[JediSB]

It's not that he uses Bristish spellings (although I wouldn't think someone from and living in the U.S. would do so.) the point is that the British spelling is not consistent with the spellings on the author's personal home page, which happens to feature some articles on programming and the Xbox. Everything on his site uses U.S. spellings. It is inconsistent and therefore suspicious.

Re:If anyone mods this troll up i will KILL THEM.

[king-manic]

There are two, big markets for video games. Japan and north america. Japan still is about 40% of the market despite their recession, 50 million fanatical game players don't diappear, they just get too broke to buy 5 games a month. They aren't "Marginalized", you can't say 40% of the market is marginal.

Re:If anyone mods this troll up i will KILL THEM.

[KDR_11k]

From what I understood, Rebel Strike uses even more effects than Halo 2. Everything's bump mapped, lighting is done with radiosity (!), etc. But I think that's mostly due to lowlevel optimizations, I don't think Bungie does that kind of stuff.

Re:eh? what'd he say?

[The-Bus]

YOU MUST NOT PLAY WITH--

*switches off A/V receiver*

Sorry, I meant to say that you must not play with your receiver pumping out loud explosions all the time. I don't think I could hear a semi coming through my front window the way I play Halo...

Re:If anyone mods this troll up i will KILL THEM.

[KDR_11k]

You're forgetting that Nintendo is harping that very same line and if Sony falls that doesn't automatically make Microsoft the king of consoles. Nintendo is planning to make the big change that will save the japanese market and they seem to hope their next console can do that.

Besides, not only japanese people buy japanese games. I have a console just because certain games don't appear on the PC and those certain games are mostly japanese. With XNA the number of western console exclusive titles will go down further, meaning I'll be able to play those games on my PC. If Sony and Nintendo don't get a single western game that's no loss for me since I have my PC.

Xenon?

[LWATCDR]

Isn't Xenon the name of Intels big Cache Server/workstation version of the PII/PIII/P4 chip?
Also if you where going multi core wouldn't you do 2 or 4 cores and not three? Why tie the GPU to the L2 cache? wouldn't that make the whole system run slower? How ofter will the GPU and CPUs be fetching the same data or code?
All seems kind of fishy to me. Now running the NT kernel on a PPC is not strange. NT was supposed to run on the PPC, MIPS, and Alpha from the start as well as Intel. Also the PPC should give you more mips/mflops than an X86 with a lot less heat however 3.6 GHZ seems like way to high of a clock speed.
If IBM builds this please make some motherboards that will boot Linux !

Re:Xenon?

[tc]

Intel's server class processors are called Xeon not Xenon.

Why would 2 or 4 cores be more logical than 3? I mean, I know it feels like it should be a power of two, but I honestly can't think of a good technical reason why 3 isn't just as rational a choice. Doesn't it just come down to a tradeoff between how much power you want, what you can put on a die, and how much it will cost? Maybe 3 is the number that pops out when you optimize for whatever they wanted to optimize for?

The L2 cache thing does seem weird. It's either a garbled or badly worded document, a truly strange design decision, or simply evidence that this whole thing was just fantasy and aren't the real specs at all.

yes, I'm skeptical too

[jbellis]

either it's not coming out in 2005, or these are way higher than the actual specs. One or the other.

In 2005, 3.5 GHz G5-equivalents ALONE will be going for more than the $300 presumed price of a new console. Add in the price of a high-end graphics card and MS will lose money hand over fist.

I can see them being willing to lose $100 per unit but $300? No way.

Re:If anyone mods this troll up i will KILL THEM.

[gamgee5273]

Trust me... MS cares about Japan. I'm sure we will see a huge push on the Japanese market with Xenon.

As you can tell by earlier postings, I am by far not an Xbox or MS fan... but to say that MS doesn't care about Japan? No, no... they do. And a lot of money MS spends on the next Xbox will be convincing the Japanese that the Xbox is perfect for them.

I have no idea if it will work, but I'm sure some killer marketing is going to come out over there...

Re:Excellent Point! Software Makes The System

[JFMulder]

It's true that a lot of the time the number of AAA titles is important, but there's another factor you have to take into account.

While I was in school, I spent a good deal of time playing games, and my grades didn't suffer from it, thank god! But now I'm working fulltime as a computer programmer and have a girlfriend, and I don't turn much to video games now.

Before you say "But you have a girlfriend, why would you play games?" Well, firstly, she likes them and we had a blast playing Mario Kart 64 on her old N64 back at her parent's house last weekend. Anyone who thinks that you shouldn't play video games once you get a girlfriend is deluded because face it buddy, you need to have some me time. For some it's books, some it's movies, some it's games. Anyway, I'm getting from my point. My point was that as you get and less time because of work, girlfriend, cleaning up your place, cooking your stuff, doing laundry, visiting parents once in a while and going out with coworkers (if you're lucky), you spend less time in front of the TV watching movies, dramas or playing games.

Personally, I bought and Xbox (and a GBA recently), and though I'm aware that I don't have a AAA game coming out every other week and am missing a lot of truly incredible games, but reality is, I wouldn't have time to play them anyway. Got Halo, KOTOR, Ninja Gaiden and Soul Caliber 2. All bought under a one year period. And the two Golden Sun games on the GBA. I bought Ninja Gaiden 3 months ago and still haven't finished chapter 12. (Though the difficulty of the game probably has something to do with it :p). And the Second Golden Sun game I played for maybe 6 hours in the last month and a half. And I absolutely love it.

My point is, hardware doesn't matter (tough my choice was a bit influenced since I own home theater with HTDV projector, and Xbox is the only console to truly embrace the greatest audio/video technologies). LOTS of AAA software either doesn't matter because at some point you won't have much time for games. Just make sure that you're interrested on the few AAA titles that console has to offer. That's why when I bought the XBox I thought "If I can get to play through Halo, Starcraft Ghost, Sudeki and KOTOR, then I'll be happy."

Said time and time again, but this time...

[dark404]

it's appropriate: can you imagine a fecking beowulf cluster of these?

Hrm 3.5Ghz PC before apple?

[pauldy]

I would venture to guess that these specs are BS based off the fact Steve Jobs promised 3Ghz PPCs by now and we are only seeing 2.5Ghz. For those keeping score that is a 500Mhz increase in a little over a year. That means if the trend continues we will see a 3.5Ghx PPC in two more years. Given that Apple machine sell fairly well and supply of the PPC chip is relatively small expecting to meet the demands of a console market with a chip that can hardly keep up with the smaller nitch market of apple products would be expecting a bit much. Not to mention the logistics of a gaggle of high frequency chips enclosed in a smaller box and the EM produced would cause problems for the ultra high bandwidth memory on a multilayer PCB aimed at a sub $300 price point.

IMO

[TEMMiNK]

As far as size is concerned European car manufacturors have made cars smaller than the current Xbox, making it smaller is not much of an acheivement. More Power Vs Size is insignificant when the games don't play any better.

Follow-up

[Black Hitler]

http://www.eurogamer.net/article.php?article_id=55 873

Maybe someone was confused?

[cens0r]

What are the chances that this multi core chip is actually running at 1.167 GHz and some marketdroid decided that 3 cores @ 1.167 GHz = 3.5 GHz? This wouldn't be the first time a marketing guy has done something like this. Do we remember the atari jaguar?

That kind of chip would be fairly easy for IBM to make now, would still give quite a performance boost over the current X-Box, would run much cooler, and could probably be manufactured cheaply. If Microsoft truly plans to get this think out in 2005, I don't see them using a chip that doesn't even have a working prototype right now.

Besides, aren't most modern games much more dependent on the GPU than the CPU? If you have two computers running ATI X800's, how many FPS does going from and Athlon XP 2400 to an Athlon 64 3200 buy you? I think most of the upside to the new box will come from an enhanced GPU, more memory bandwidth, and an increase in memory.

Backwards compatible?

[plutoiddiamonds]

I hope that Xbox supports the old games or else someone hopefully makes a hack.