xBox One games just got a seventh core

[NTMBK]

http://www.eurogamer.net/articles/d...es-more-cpu-power-to-xbox-one-developers-blog

Good to see them focusing on actual games over "TV, TV,TV".

 

[SAWYER]

They have only been tv tv tv during the debacle of a reveal last year, ever since that showing it has been about games

 

[SPBHM]

up to 80% of another core...

 

[railven]

They have only been tv tv tv during the debacle of a reveal last year, ever since that showing it has been about games

I think that's when the hardware difference they spent a great half of 2013 and 2014 downplaying really stood out.

So many "upgrades" to the initial hardware and they're still struggling to keep parity. GPU/CPU clock bumps, OS reservation decreases, and now access to another core altogether.

MSFT is definitely going to fight tooth and nail. At this rate, expect them to drop one of the OS'es completely.

 

[Rakehellion]

However, there's no such thing as a free lunch, and the additional CPU power comes with conditions and trades attached - however, there is the potential for many games to benefit. Firstly, developers need to give up custom, game-specific voice commands in order to access the seventh core at all, while Kinect's infra-red and depth functionality is also disabled. Secondly, the amount of CPU time available to developers varies at any given moment - system-related voice commands ("Xbox record that", "Xbox go to friends") automatically see CPU usage for the seventh core rise to 50 per cent. At the moment, the operating system does not inform the developer how much CPU time is available, so scheduling tasks will be troublesome. This is quite important - voice commands during gameplay will be few and far between, meaning that 80 per cent of the core should be available most of the time. However, right now, developers won't know if and when that allocation will drop. It's a limitation recognised in the documentation, with Microsoft set to address that in a future SDK update.

They just need to ditch Kinect.

 

[SAWYER]

I like the Kinect and if I cared about the best performance I certainly wouldnt be using one of these middle of the road gaming pc's(ps4/one) and instead would be a pc gamer

 

[Cerb]

They just need to ditch Kinect.

I don't get why they don't just make Kinect and the voice commands APIs, and let the game devs have a ball with it.

It's rather obvious that management changed multiple times since the start of the project...

 

[ShintaiDK]

Its really going backwards for them. Kinect removal to boost speed. 50-80% of a 7th core after more system degrade.

And some people say the consoles aint CPU limited?

 

[Blitzvogel]

And it still doesn't match my 5 year old Phenom II x4 :awe:

 

[DeathReborn]

They can free up as much of the weak CPU as they want it will still be tied to a stupidly weak GPU.

Last gen I bought both the PS3 & 360 but the reveal of a TV Box by Microsoft meant I would never buy the Xbone. Maybe Microsoft should just admit they released an underpowered console and promise the next one will be a beast instead of slowly moving the performance goalposts with the current one.

 

[monstercameron]

They can free up as much of the weak CPU as they want it will still be tied to a stupidly weak GPU.

Last gen I bought both the PS3 & 360 but the reveal of a TV Box by Microsoft meant I would never buy the Xbone. Maybe Microsoft should just admit they released an underpowered console and promise the next one will be a beast instead of slowly moving the performance goalposts with the current one.

interesting to note that you only buy a console for its specs.

 

[tential]

They can free up as much of the weak CPU as they want it will still be tied to a stupidly weak GPU.

Last gen I bought both the PS3 & 360 but the reveal of a TV Box by Microsoft meant I would never buy the Xbone. Maybe Microsoft should just admit they released an underpowered console and promise the next one will be a beast instead of slowly moving the performance goalposts with the current one.

If you played both consoles I highly doubt you'd notice the difference.

You're splitting hairs between a weak GPU, and a weaker GPU. Both are still weak....
If you really care about GPU performance you'd buy a PC.

 

[ninaholic37]

Good to see them focusing on actual games over "TV, TV,TV".

I've never heard of this "TV Box" thing until now. Does it play games or run software? I don't watch TV so I guess if it doesn't... then I don't care either.

 

[Blitzvogel]

I've never heard of this "TV Box" thing until now. Does it play games or run software? I don't watch TV so I guess if it doesn't... then I don't care either.

I guess you didn't see any of the E3 2013 stuff? It was a pretty uninspiring showing for Microsoft........

Sony was completely winning over gamers while MS was just disappointing left and right.

 

[SAWYER]

It wasnt e3, it was the reveal of the console earlier in the year that was all tv tv tv

 

[greatnoob]

It wasnt e3, it was the reveal of the console earlier in the year that was all tv tv tv

Not "developers, developers, developers" this time around?

 

[escrow4]

Should have gone Intel and stuck an i3 up into it with a custom GPU core. Sell it at a loss, now, well. You went AMD. Oops.

 

[AnandThenMan]

Should have gone Intel and stuck an i3 up into it with a custom GPU core

GPU from who.

Sell it at a loss, now, well. You went AMD. Oops.

Both MS and Sony are just dumb, should have gone with what you think is best. Why didn't you consult them when you had the chance? Anyway it's cool to see MS using more cores for gaming, something certain experts say is not possible.

 

[Exophase]

Should have gone Intel and stuck an i3 up into it with a custom GPU core. Sell it at a loss, now, well. You went AMD. Oops.

That's what they did with the original XBox, and that ended its lifespan far in the red. And they ultimately had to kill it prematurely because things stopped working out with the suppliers.

So, do you honestly think that they'd be getting enough more sales now and throughout its life to compensate for the huge additional cost? I don't.

 

[Bateluer]

You went AMD. Oops.

Not like MS and Sony could have stuck one of AMD's many more powerful APUs or GPUs in there.

 

[Exophase]

Not like MS and Sony could have stuck one of AMD's many more powerful APUs or GPUs in there.

AMD doesn't have a commercial APU that comes anywhere close to even XBox 1's GPU capabilities. Not when XB1 or PS4 came out and not today.

Given the constraints they had to work with, what they selected is pretty much the most reasonable thing they could have went with. With the main constraint keeping it to a primarily single chip solution. Both of them pushed the die size to about as high as was practical. MS sacrificed space for GPU CUs by including eSRAM, while Sony required more expensive GDDR5. They were also limited by TDP. With all of this in mind, their best bet was to go with a more efficient and smaller CPU uarch and focus on multithreaded performance over singlethreaded performance, which is more power efficient for total compute. The nearest alternative in the same TDP envelope would have been something like a single module Piledriver with a fairly modest clockspeed (probably below 3GHz), which wouldn't have been a good tradeoff.

 

[NTMBK]

I've never heard of this "TV Box" thing until now. Does it play games or run software? I don't watch TV so I guess if it doesn't... then I don't care either.

The messaging at the XBox One launch was a total disaster. They spent most of their time talking about how it integrated with your television, and lets you watch lots of sport. (Good humorous take on it here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KOxdMQhDMIU ) They started up their own TV studio!

But things have turned around most of the leadership behind the TV push is gone (http://www.theverge.com/2014/12/29/7463949/xbox-executives-leaving-microsoft-tv-apps-dead) and they seem to have actually realised why people buy games consoles- to play games.

 

[Erenhardt]

They can't offer more GPU power so they released one CPU core? Not that any dev make a good use of those 6 available (edit: some exceptions apply).
It is MS trying hard to have something on the sony ps4. They loose badly in every metric, so at least have better cpu. The benefit is not there, but hey, more is more! And with a bit of good will from devs, it is possible to have games run better on xbone than ps4

These consoles are pretty dull. Yes it is a big and (relatively) powerfull APU, but it is uninspiring from the architectural point - ps4 more so than xbone.

I would love to have consoles be revolutionary, and not to follow general pc market. Push the boundries, innovate, force game developers to explore new possibilities.

AMD offered 8 core apu to help their situation in desktop cpu market where they offered cheap 8 core CPUs, meanwhile games were running on 2 threads only and were taunted as THE MOST CPU HEAVY GAME EVER.
2 out of 8 threads at 100% load is 25% total cpu load - nothing to sweat about.

 

[railven]

GPU from who.

Both MS and Sony are just dumb, should have gone with what you think is best. Why didn't you consult them when you had the chance? Anyway it's cool to see MS using more cores for gaming, something certain experts say is not possible.

And here we go again. Can't criticize something because "you weren't there, man! You weren't there! You didn't see what I saw, man. You weren't there!"

With a defense team like this AMD has nothing to worry about in 2015.

 

[AnandThenMan]

The same thing is brought up over and over again. And no alternative is ever offered, you're okay with that? There is no "AMD defense team" have you seen what I think will happen to AMD in the near future?