POLL: Do you believe the XBox 360 specs

[halik]

Two thing that raise the BS card in my head

a) full binary backwards compatibility. We're talking about software emulation of long x86 instruction on a RISC processor with an assload of x86-specific instruction for performance (mmx, sse etc.). No way in hell you can do that realtime

b)triple core 3GHZ g4 based processor... yeah right. Apple sells the most compact implementation of those chips and they can't get anywhere near those speeds, especailly with 3 cores. You'd need to keep that thing in a fridge considering the form factor

- Seamless transition to Xbox Live account from Xbox to Xbox 360
- Access to MMOs (additional fees may apply) (S)
- Free Xbox Live weekends (S)
- Multiplayer online gameplay
- Avatar for gamer profile(S)(O)
- Motto for gamer profile (S)(O)
- Personalized look for Xbox System Guide (S)(O)
- Offline achievments (S)(O)
- Online achievements (S)
- Access to other players' Gamer cards via Live (S)
- Cumulative gamer score (S)(O)
- Location/language profile (S)(O)
- Reputation (S)
- Enahnced matchmaking using above
- Skill level matchmaking
- Gameplay style profile (casual, competitive, etc.)
- Recent players list (S)
- Free and premium download game content(S)
- Free and premium downloadable movies, music, tv (S)
- Downloadable demos/trailers (S)
- Microtransactions (S)
- Custom playlist in every game (S)(O)
- Play music from portable devices (S)(O)
- View images from digital camera (S)(O)
- Strem media from Windows XP (S)(O)
- Interactive screen savers (S)(O)
- Track info for CDs (S) (O)
- Communication with voice, video or text (S)

The Hardware:
1. Support for DVD-video, DVD-Rom, DVD-R/RW, CD-DA, CD-Rom, CD-R, CD-RW, WMA CD, MP3 cd, JPEG photo CD
2. All games supported at 16:9, 720p and 1080i, anti-aliasing
3. Customizable face plates to change appearance
4. 3 USB 2.0 ports
5. Support for 4 wireless controllers
6. Detachable 20GB drive
7. Wi-Fi ready

Custom IBM PowerPC-based CPU
- 3 symmetrical cores at 3.2 GHz each
- 2 hardware threads per core
- 1 VMX-128 vector unit per core
- 1 MB L2 cache

CPU Game Math Performance
- 9 billion dots per second

Custom ATI Graphics Processor
- 500 MNz
- 10 MB embedded DRAM
- 48-way parallel floating-point shader pipelines
- unified shader architecture

Memory
-512 MB GDDR3 RAM
- 700 MNz DDR

Memory Bandwidth
- 22.4 GB/s memory interface bus bandwidth
- 256 GB/s memory bandwidth to EDRAM
- 21.6 GB/s frontside bus

Audio
- Mulitchannel surround sond output
- Supports 48khz 16-bit audio
- 320 independent decompression channels
- 32 bit processing
- 256+ audio channels

 

[Amplifier]

I'll tell you in 8 months.

 

[Sqube]

The more important thing is do I care whether those specs are accurate or not. The answer is no, since I'm a PC gamer. Whether those specs are accurate or not isn't very likely to have a bearing on the games that I play.

 

[Yossarian]

I heard it has a built-in coffee maker.

 

[mordantmonkey]

i don't see why people are necessarily contrasting their cores to apples. yeah it's PPC "based", but isn't it a custom implementation of it? could it actual be 3 watered down cores that were constructed to work together? how much money/time did microsoft put into developing this design. i don't know enough about processors to know. is it possible to have a custom PPC based core that is significantly different from the ones used in an apple?

 

[AMDZen]

The backward compatibility hasn't been substantiated yet, so I think thats irrelevant.

As for the rest of it, well, I'll just say I know for a fact that yes those hardware specs are indeed true. Everything out on the net, meaning everything you saw in the other thread, is true. The rest of it, no I don't know, nor does most anyone else. You will get more info in 3 days so its not like it matters.

But yes it does have a triple core processor running at 3.2 Ghz. If you don't believe that or the fact that I know its true, I could care less. Once again, 3 days and it will be a nationally known fact. Whoever said you have to wait 8 months obviously hasn't been keeping up with the times.

 

[bernse]

Cripes. How much would that cost? Or better yet, how much will MS be willing to lose for every console sold?

 

[StageLeft]

I really do think the triple cores at 3.2 is probably fantasy. Look at previous consoles, or at least the previous xbox: it was, at time of release, comporable to a pretty fast desktop. Not a top of the line one, but a very fast one. I don't see many people's desktops having the better part of 10ghz going on these days, or this year, do you?

It's not that it couldn't have these, but it would cost either a ton or microsoft woulid take an acid bath with each one sold.

 

[halik]

Originally posted by: mordantmonkey
i don't see why people are necessarily contrasting their cores to apples. yeah it's PPC "based", but isn't it a custom implementation of it? could it actual be 3 watered down cores that were constructed to work together? how much money/time did microsoft put into developing this design. i don't know enough about processors to know. is it possible to have a custom PPC based core that is significantly different from the ones used in an apple?

umm having two instruction pipelines per core is hardly a watered down version. That nearly doubles the amount of transistors on the chip. Most of the parts of the chips need to be doubled - TLB, caching mechanisms, paging etc.

Most of the people here know jack about processor design, so they fall for this crap.

 

[funboy6942]

If it is BC I hope they make the older games look better. If it is anything like a PC where you can up the res maybe it will do the same for older games making them look even better and better fill rates.

 

[halik]

Originally posted by: AMDZen
The backward compatibility hasn't been substantiated yet, so I think thats irrelevant.

As for the rest of it, well, I'll just say I know for a fact that yes those hardware specs are indeed true. Everything out on the net, meaning everything you saw in the other thread, is true. The rest of it, no I don't know, nor does most anyone else. You will get more info in 3 days so its not like it matters.

But yes it does have a triple core processor running at 3.2 Ghz. If you don't believe that or the fact that I know its true, I could care less. Once again, 3 days and it will be a nationally known fact. Whoever said you have to wait 8 months obviously hasn't been keeping up with the times.

and you know this because... (everythign on teh interweb is true!)

Most likely they put a physics engine and a floating point processor on silicon in addition to the CPU and GPU and they have all of those share the chache. Theres microsoft patent diagram somewhere out there showing something like that.

 

[mordantmonkey]

i've remember reading in february that it was supposedly 3.5+ then 3.2, now i've seen 3.0. who knows. but i'm not gonna say it's out of the realm of possibility. especially if microsoft is putting a lot of dough into processor development with IBM. i'm guessing they would love to make a limited use home "pc" using proprietary technology and software. Web browsing on HD tv is probably feasible as well. they know the value of vertical integration.

 

[Leper Messiah]

why does it only have 10MB of texture memory?!?!?

 

[halik]

Originally posted by: L3p3rM355i4h
why does it only have 10MB of texture memory?!?!?

i'm thinking that would be something along the lines of cache rather than texture memory. The cpu and gpu would probably share the ram

 

[Queasy]

Originally posted by: halik

Originally posted by: L3p3rM355i4h
why does it only have 10MB of texture memory?!?!?

i'm thinking that would be something along the lines of cache rather than texture memory. The cpu and gpu would probably share the ram

The video memory is supposed to be embedded to make it uber-fast.

I'm pretty sure that these specs aren't exactly what the actual console will be at launch. We're still a few months away from MS locking down the specs and sending it off to production.

 

[RagingBITCH]

http://www.xbox.com/en-US/xbox360/factsheet.htm

Like I said before, the specs are correct. Backwards compatibility won't be confirmed or denied until E3, but the specs are there clear as day.

According to the site, the console will boast four 2.5Ghz IBM G5 Custom cores, with 128KB of level 1 cache and a 512KB shared level 2 cache, while the graphics will be powered by a dual core ATI RN520 chipset, with 16MB of on-board eDRAM for the frame buffer.

While both of those specifications seem eminently possible - not least because IBM and ATI are confirmed as Nintendo's hardware partners for the console - we've been unable to find any confirmation or denial of the figures, simply because no developers outside of Nintendo's tightly sewn up inner circle actually have Revolution details, let alone devkits, as yet.

Specs for the Nintendo Revolution. Just for kicks.

 

[cliftonite]

jesus, these things are looking like monsters

 

[funboy6942]

The ATI video specs. What card comesclose that is out tat can do what that one is doing or does anyone know what card they are using? Like xbox now has a gforce 3 in it. Courious if that is a card that is out as well.

 

[duckdown]

i heard they run hotter than a toaster