Xbox 2 specs leaked? Multiple G6 CPUs and ATI R500. *** CONFIRMED *** ;)

[Eug]

Mercury News

Team Xbox

I dunno. Seems fishy to me. Don't shoot the messenger. We'll see soon enough I guess.

EDIT:

*** CONFIRMED ***

Well, not really confirmed, but here's another article on it.

Games Industry Biz

 

[adams828]

Originally posted by: Eug
Mercury News

Team Xbox

I dunno. Seems fishy to me. Don't shoot the messenger. We'll see soon enough I guess.

interesting. fishy... but interesting

 

[pillage2001]

R500?! :Q

 

[CrackRabbit]

What I dont understand is why MS would go with IBM Risc Chips for the XB2, if they wanted 64 bit power they could of contracted with AMD, gotten backwards compatibility and quite possibly a lower price.

CrackRabbit

 

[EngenZerO]

bleh...I call b.s.

 

[TheBoyBlunder]

That's some serious firepower if it's true...(probably not).

 

[naddicott]

Originally posted by: CrackRabbit
What I dont understand is why MS would go with IBM Risc Chips for the XB2, if they wanted 64 bit power they could of contracted with AMD, gotten backwards compatibility and quite possibly a lower price.

Since MS bought the VirtualPC software for Macs, backwards compatibility for x86 apps on IBM Risc Chips is not exactly a big technical hurdle, especially with that kind of hardware.

I agree the rumor is a bit fishy.

 

[Pariah]

"The details suggest Microsoft is far more concerned about keeping the cost of its Xbox Next console low than it is with including dazzling technological features"
"Three IBM-designed 64-bit microprocessors....Earlier versions of these PowerPC chips are used in Apple Computer's high-end G5 PowerMac machines now."
"A graphics chip designed by ATI Technologies with speeds much faster than its upcoming R400 chip for the personal computer. This chip will help the next Xbox to display games with the resolution of high-definition TV."
"The machine also will have about 256 megabytes of dynamic random access memory. But Microsoft will upgrade that to 512 megabytes if Sony puts in more."


Everyone together now:

"One of these things is not like the others,
One of these things just doesn't belong,
Can you tell which thing is not like the others
By the time I finish my song?"

 

[RaynorWolfcastle]

Almost definite BS unless you expect the console to cost $1k with Microsoft eating another $1k hit per console. I mean really, why the hell would MS need 3 high-end CPUs in the XBox Next?!?!

 

[Eug]

Originally posted by: CrackRabbit
What I dont understand is why MS would go with IBM Risc Chips for the XB2, if they wanted 64 bit power they could of contracted with AMD, gotten backwards compatibility and quite possibly a lower price.

CrackRabbit

We already knew that Xbox 2 was going IBM (and ATI). ie. AMD and Intel are out of the picture - end of story. What we didn't know is what chips IBM was gonna make for the Xbox 2. This "article" attempts to address this latter question (although I don't believe it's validity).

 

[zephyrprime]

Is that the G5 or the G6? The G5 is a derivative of the Power4 but the articles say the xbox uses something that is the derivative of the Power5.

That it uses the R500 isn't surprising. That is uses a PowerPC chipc isn't surprising either. That is uses 3 dual core powerPC chips doesn't seem possible to me. More feasibly it could use a single dual core G6.

 

[JackBurton]

It would be sweet for the next XBox to have a laptop hard drive and slot loading DVD/Blu-Ray. I think MS should come out with THEIR vision of their next console instead of trying to see what the PS3 will do. That's kind of weak.

It woul be funny if Nintendo jumped in before MS and Sony with THEIR new console and slapped both of them around. It would be funny, but unlikely.

 

[Barnaby W. Füi]

Originally posted by: CrackRabbit
What I dont understand is why MS would go with IBM Risc Chips for the XB2, if they wanted 64 bit power they could of contracted with AMD, gotten backwards compatibility and quite possibly a lower price.

CrackRabbit

"64 bit power"? What difference does 64 bit make here?

 

[RaynorWolfcastle]

64-bit does make a difference, for one thing it should allow for faster 64-bit floating point (double) calculations and allow for a long long data type if there's any use for it. Also, I assume that the 64-bit PowerPC instruction set has some enhancements based on what was missing in the 32-bit instruction set (better SIMD maybe?). How much of an impct these things make on real code is debatable but there should definitely be a performance improvement in computing certain data types, in theory.

 

[NFactor]

I dont think this is true but if it is, that box will be a monster. 3 dual core chips, no game in the next 5 years will need that power.

 

[jdogg707]

If they don't include a hard drive they'd be crazy...that's what attracted most people to the Xbox in the first place...it's a critical part of their online service and they even got Sony to develop and produce a hard drive for the PS2! The article says that they found a lot of game designers not using the hard drive..my question is, what game do you pop in and there isn't stuff loaded, stored, and retrived off the hard disk? Pure BS!

The second rant is that they would be completely stupid not to make it backwards compatible with current games! Sony made the right choice when making the current PS2 backwards compatible, because at launch when there aren't a lot of games out, a user can play their old games and reep some benefit out of their new system! This would be a very big mistake!

My final rant is how can Microsoft put three processors in one machine, market it around $300 bucks, and still make a profit? This is impossible. They are loosing money now with crappy 733MHZ Celerons...pop three chips into one machine and there is no way any money will be made...it would be a 1.5K machine! Maybe they meant three cores on one chip...but still...why?

This can be nothing more than a load of crap...but E3 is slowly approaching...so hopefully we'll know more then!

 

[Eug]

Re: Backwards compatibility. How many people actually care that much? I don't, but I guess some do. I don't want to be playing old Xbox games 2 years from now but that's just me.

I'm not sure Virtual PC is necessarily gonna help either. It's not built for 3D gaming. Rather, it's built for running business apps or whatever that exist only on Windows. The good games are ported to run natively to run on the Mac. OK, I'm not a programmer, but having VPC already might help I dunno, but at what cost?

Originally posted by: zephyrprime
Is that the G5 or the G6? The G5 is a derivative of the Power4 but the articles say the xbox uses something that is the derivative of the Power5.

That it uses the R500 isn't surprising. That is uses a PowerPC chipc isn't surprising either. That is uses 3 dual core powerPC chips does seem possible to me. More feasibly it could use a single dual core G6.

Oh, I missed the part about the POWER5 derivative in the Team Xbox article. Yeah, that would no longer be the G5. You have to wonder if Team Xbox isn't just making this up though. Where did they get the name PPC 976?

As for single dual-core CPU, that does make sense. I wondered the same thing myself (although I had been thinking along the lines of a high-GHz G5 derivative with dual cores before you pointed out the POWER5 bit). The other article makes no mention of the chip generation though, just that it's 64-bit (which many guessed it'd be anyways).

 

[ViRGE]

Originally posted by: pillage2001
R500?! :Q

There's no way they're going to use an R500. The best case senario right now is another 18 months for another generation of GPUs, and that would put the R500 in Q4, 2005; too late for a 2005 Xbox.

 

[Eug]

Originally posted by: ViRGE

Originally posted by: pillage2001
R500?! :Q

There's no way they're going to use an R500. The best case senario right now is another 18 months for another generation of GPUs, and that would put the R500 in Q4, 2005; too late for a 2005 Xbox.

Educate me with the history, because I've forgotten, but when did nForce technology come out, in relation to the Xbox?

 

[Eug]

*** CONFIRMED ***

Xbox 2 set to go multiprocessor; hard drive may not be built-in

A senior source at Microsoft has revealed that its next-generation console is set to use multiple PowerPC processors in parallel - while the hard drive may not be shipped as standard, being supplied as an optional extra instead.

This information confirms reports received from developers over the past weeks, with the first solid facts about the Xbox 2 slipping out after Microsoft briefed a number of its key development partners on the current state of the system.

Our sources indicate that the console will use "four or more" of the IBM PowerPC processors, an architecture which will force game developers to significantly rethink the way that games are programmed in order to take full advantage of it.

 

[jswjimmy]

You people are thinking price. I ibm proc can be bought for about $50. But you can?t buy a mobo for it mac would not allow it.

 

[Schadenfroh]

i call bs

 

[50]

I don't believe any of this, mainly because I highly doubt technology prices will drop that fast within the next 2-4 years in order to make a video game system affordable. Also, please remove the ***confirmed*** part, this was never confirmed, you simply added another article that has the same information. The only way it will be confirmed is when you see it from Microsoft themselves, please don't mislead people.

 

[zephyrprime]

64-bit does make a difference, for one thing it should allow for faster 64-bit floating point (double) calculations

No it wouldn't. You need to read the 64bit faq. The thing is, it's really no big deal to add 64 bit to a processor. It only adds a little die space.

I'm not sure Virtual PC is necessarily gonna help either. It's not built for 3D gaming. Rather, it's built for running business apps or whatever that exist only on Windows. The good games are ported to run natively to run on the Mac. OK, I'm not a programmer, but having VPC already might help I dunno, but at what cost?

If anything, a video game translation should run faster than a business app translation because the video game is so dependent of GPU speed while the business app is all CPU all the time.

If VirtualPC translates on the fly only, it will suck hard. But if it saves the results of it's translation to disk, it will be more than adequate. The new x86 software translator for Itanium is only ~35% slower than an equally clocked Xeon and the xbox 2 CPU(s) are certainly goining to be much more than 54% faster than the current P3 733Mhz.

 

[MazerRackham]

I would maybe believe this except for the "hard drive optional" part of it.... why on earth would they backpedal on this feature?? Makes no sense to me.