Microsoft just released the official specs of the next XBox with more info.
Official XBOX 360 Specifications Available
About The Author
Eugenia Loli
Ex-programmer, ex-editor in chief at OSNews.com, now a visual artist/filmmaker.
Follow me on Twitter @EugeniaLoli
hi
nice machine… but the price?
thanks
rumors say $299
ms will lost a lot of me if they sale it $299… at this price, i will buy one to do a linux server
you would only need one xbox to do it!
This hardware specification reads much like the sort of system you’d want to use for nuclear weapons simulations, for a very low price, even if it is more than $299.
Also, I wonder about what operations can be done with those registers: this could be a very nice encryption/decryption machine with all those available. Ah, I’m just waiting for someone to hack out how to boot something other than Microsoft-based stuff: it’d be a killer BeOS box
The hardware specs look impressive, unfortunately the casing leaves alot to be desired.
… excuse my french, but thats one bad-ass peice of equipment. If IBM is already putting out 3.2Ghz PPC cpus.. where’s the G5 3.2Ghz (I know I know – not the same and wishful thinking, but c’mon) – if this box could only be modded to run OSx .. OMG … *purrs* $300 OSx box with BAWLS… (sorry .. its late and I need some sleep – slightly dillusional)
My guess is less than a month after release.
I like it!
I am going to get one for X-Mas. Hmm, can I pre-order now? hehe.
From what we know about the Playstation 2 how does the xbox compare. From what I’ve heard the PS2 has the potential to be many times faster.
Heh, that should read Playstation 3.
Looks to me that the video card will be a bottleneck. That CPU is very impressive 3 f’n cores for goodness sakes.
Are Intel and AMD working on triple cores?
video games peaked with the snes, its been all downhill starting with the PS1.
PS3 has the potential to be much faster based on the current knowledge of it. In fact, a few weeks ago, I was putting all my chips on the PS3, despite hating Sony with a passion.
However, these specs are pretty damn impressive. Combine that with how easy the Xbox is to develop for, Xbox Live, and MS being the first to the punch… this may be the winner.
From what I hear, this is a specially modified PPC chip optimized for gaming purposes, so it’s neither a G5 (specific breed of PowerPC) nor suited for general-purpose computing. I’m not sure how much stock I put into that; I mean, people have done stranger things with worse hardware.
so those specs were spot on..
256 GB/s memory bandwidth to
EDRAM
crikey! thats a LOT of bandwidth.
Just simply DVD, only 12x speed (that’s about 16mb/s).
ms will lost a lot of me if they sale it $299… at this price, i will buy one to do a linux server
——————————————–
That would be a good waste of money. The next XBox wont be quite like the last one where it was based off of computer parts. What is with this fascination with Linux on the XBox anyways? Some silly way to try and get back at Microsoft?
if MS wants to embrace the open source community, they should provide the specs (now) instead of later so that the community can start porting operating systems to the new machine. I really hope that MS/IBM did not cripple the CPUs such that an operating system could not be used on it.
Another interesting question – can the RAM in the box be upgraded? I would like to use this machine as a general purpose computer (I understand some people would not agree with me).
Wow, that is nice! Gonna have to get me one. Does anyone know if it will run xbox 1 games? If so I’ll have a good excuse to turn my existing xbox into yet another linux box =)
Another interesting question – can the RAM in the box be upgraded? I would like to use this machine as a general purpose computer (I understand some people would not agree with me).
——————————————-
Its a game console, not a computer. Its definately not designed for upgrading major components or running a full scale OS. You can give it a try, but it probably wont be worth it (or possible) with the XBox 360 or any other gaming console.
The idea of linux on XBOX is that you can have a webserver/some other server in a cheap small box. It’s not about “getting back at MS”.
Having said that, I don’t think they will hack this one as quick as the last one becuase its some modified PPC rather than x86.
I want to get an xbox1 after #2 comes out because they make great media centres (after hacking + upgraded HDD + mplayer) and they will be dirt cheap.
I’ve only skimmed the article, but does it have reverse compatability? really that’s what is gonna determine whether i buy one right away or hold off for a while.
Its a game console, not a computer. Its definately not designed for upgrading major components or running a full scale OS. You can give it a try, but it probably wont be worth it (or possible) with the XBox 360 or any other gaming console.
The original xbox used a slimmed down and modified windows 2000 kernel so don’t say it’s not meant for running an operating system. Knowing Microsoft it probably is a slimmed down xp.
As for backwards compatibility, all signs point to yes. And it should be possible to play Halo 2 on xbox against someone with halo 2 on xbox 360.
Man, you guys need to read the fine print. First of all, 3 PPC processors at 3.2ghz each will cost over 500 dollars, at the direct price. So, 299, right.
Read the bottom of that link again, you will notice this sentence
“The information contained in this fact sheet relates to a prerelease product that may be substantially modified before its first commercial release”
And, just to bust more bubbles, the sentence that follows is this one
” Accordingly, the information may not accurately describe or reflect the product when first commercially released.”
And it doesn’t get better, here is the next sentence
” This fact sheet is provided for informational purposes only, and Microsoft makes no warranties, express or implied, with respect to the fact sheet or the information contained in it.”
My point, if something seems to good to be true, then it typically is. You can’t buy a 1.4 ghz tower for 299, let alone 3 ppc processors and the rest of the hype that’s in that document. It’s a diversion tactic, and a marketing ploy. This keeps sony and nintendo from knowing what they are dealing with, while making it sound like the best machine on the market, even though this is not what is going to be released. I don’t believe MS will take that big of a hit per unit.
I am gonna build a supercomputer out of hundred such machines running on any linux port coming out for it and look at my theoratical Floating point performance (100 TFlops!!!!!!!!!!). That will be cool.
andrew, you don’t actually believe these ppc processors are the same type found in apple computers do you? cause they aren’t…
Andrew: it would be suicide to try and sell it for more than $300 (or $369 with HD). It WILL be $300.
When it comes out at that price, I will take pride in laughing at you.
You might want to take a look at the part that says “Three symmetrical cores running at 3.2 GHz each”. It’s supposed to be a 3-cored modified (Simplified) PPC processor, not a tripple-cpu monster.
And never underestimate the power of buying things by the lot – There’s a lot to be saved that way.
I don’t believe the $299 either, but it’s not going to be as high as you say either, it simply wouldn’t sell.
256 GB/s seems impossible it may possibly be a typing error and the figure may be 25.6 GB/s.
I’m sure Xbox 1 was very easy to develop for as it ran windows 2000 on Pentium 3
However this one is running Windows on a PPC chip. Unless Microsoft have built PCAnywhere into its firmware it won’t run anything compiled for x86 PC or Windows XP. or Xbox 1
About the only directly compatible platform might be the Nintendo gamecube, which used an IBM PowerPC chip (G3-class, for Apple) whereas this is using 64-bit G5-type chips (probably not the exact same model though)
whatever. Not impressed.
Give me a Megadrive or SNES with *gameplay* anyday.
xBox releases are just a slew of cheezy americanised TV games that are poor at best. The music industry hurt itself bad by thinking they could produce rubbish endlessley and get away with it by using hype, since the introduction of Microsoft into the games arena, I see the same thing happening.
xBox releases are just a slew of cheezy americanised TV games that are poor at best. The music industry hurt itself bad by thinking they could produce rubbish endlessley and get away with it by using hype, since the introduction of Microsoft into the games arena, I see the same thing happening.
Agree! I mean in the last 5 years or so, the gaming industry totally britneyspeared on everyone. It’s like if all music were just crappy pop with one or two decent pieces per year, just to say there’s choice. Better comparison, perhaps, it is like suddenly all exhibitions everywhere started to display photo-realistic art only. I mean, it takes a great talent to do it, but it is still kind of boring.
I’ll get it most defintly, it’d be nice if wifi was built in rather than an adaptor.
Remember people MS sells lots its hardware seperatly (like xbox 1 dvd remote) which helps make up more money.
So does Sony sell most hardware in seperate packages (even their HDD in PS2) but it seems most likely that the DVD remote and/or other peripherals will be included in one package for a decent price if MS is really serious about it.
…you guys.Microsoft already paid extra for the four Xbox. With the new one, it will not be different. You don’t thinkt your mobile phone costs € 0,- , do you? Microsoft will lose a lot of money selling these things cheap. But hey, they don’t care. They will receive huge amounts of money on the games (like the phone companies do when you call or send an SMS).
Specs look great though, but it remains to be seen if they can really stick with them. On the other hand, M$ would make themselves rediculous if they didn’t (probably they don’t care, the thing will sell anyway).
I really don’t care about games and stuff (and even less about M$), but the CPU(s) in this thing is(are) impressive. They are probably optimized PPC for vercor processing. That would make them an excelent canditate for scientific supercomputing. But, I guess the floating point precision will not be sufficient for such a purpose. Still, I would like to see the first 1080i screenshots.
Maybe, the low price will lead us to lower CPU prices in general… who knows/
>The price? rumors say $299
That would be a very sweet price imo…
>How long for a Linux port?
I am preety sure it won’t be possible without hardware modifications this time…
>Looks to me that the video card will be a bottleneck.
they are clever enough not to make such an mistake
Well probably we will get a legal Xbox 360 linux port that is optimised for xbox 360s architecture (I mean a kernel recompiled for xbox 360s ppc) and then we may be able to convert it to a general purpose computer.
1 Internet Brownie point to the first person who can install linux on it, then run OSX
>>How long for a Linux port?
>I am preety sure it won’t be possible without hardware modifications this time…
I am pretty sure I don’t mind hardware modificating that baby to be able to run some relevant stuff.
I wonder if this also means that IBM will be able to launch general purpose dual or triple core processor that apple could use. Now, that would be sweet indeed. Especially if they could do so at a reasonable price.
We all know that Linux supports multi core CPUs and if this one is just a triple core version of PowerPC G5 then Linux may be able to detect it if not we have things such as hardware modifications and modified kernels to run linux. (Remember PS2 could run linux with a special kernel. The kit was sold officially which also included the HDD for PS2 that same thing can happen for XBox 360.)
Looks impressive. The only missing thing is OS/360
I guess the real question are: a) Will it run Mac OS X with an OpenFirmware modchip? b) Does it have DVI?
>256 GB/s seems impossible it may possibly be a typing error and the
>figure may be 25.6 GB/s.
That’s for the internal memory in the GPU, not external memory.
Internal memory is usually massively faster than external stuff.
Mac OS X may be able to run but what about drivers and other stuff for the non standard devices in the xbox 360(Remember its not gonna br an Apple approved mobo but a modchip may do some good.)
The device will probably have some sort of TCPA (which IBM is strong supporter) hardwired into the CPU. Taking it into account, it’ll be extremely hard to install anything nod signed by MS, and any sort of HW modifications could remedy that. Unless, the keys leak from some of MS partners. But learned with past mistake, MS will go great lengths not to let it happen.
So calm down and hope Sony will choose linux officially.
Anyboody notice the mention of the 128 bit VMX vector unit? Could they be using Altivec?
Will this mean more games for Mac or at least more programmers knowing how to program for PowerPC? I know that XBox will run a modified version of Windows.
Unless Microsoft have built PCAnywhere into its firmware it won’t
run anything compiled for x86 PC or Windows XP. or Xbox 1
wtf are talking about. PCAnywhere is a remote access client. Are you talking about virtualpc? and the xbox 360 model with the hdd is supposed to be able to play xbox 1 games.
I love how you people that have no clue post comments on stuff.
Here’s an interesting conspiracy theory, the xbox 360 may not be on the market that long if it doesn’t reach profitability quickly. The first xbox didn’t break even till Halo 2 came out. Rumor has it that at first the xbox 360 will only be easily available in major cities and the west coast spreading out from Seattle slowly. If it doesn’t break profitability in 1 year, it’s game over.
Of course this rumor has to be taken with a grain of salt, but it’s a good theory.
the presentation was rather lame and the gaming scenes looked darm pre-recorded. anyone can publish some specs without showing the actual product in action. also, if the PS3 it just half as great as Sony claims it will still outperform the Xbox 360 several times.
Wow, that is nice! Gonna have to get me one. Does anyone know if it will run xbox 1 games?
Yeh. Microsoft are going to knock up an x86 emulator for this thing overnight.
“Anyboody notice the mention of the 128 bit VMX vector unit? Could they be using Altivec?
Will this mean more games for Mac or at least more programmers knowing how to program for PowerPC? I know that XBox will run a modified version of Windows”
doubt it will mean more games for Mac sence it they will probably be using DirectX.
And yes they could and probably will be making use of Altivec.
Yeah, and maybe the PS3 will actually be able to render Toy Story in RT, like the PS2 was supposed to be able to do.
Being that Microsoft owns one, called VirtualPC, it’s a possibility.
Will the PS3 be cheaper than the Xbox?
i’ll wait till all 3 next-gens are availabel.
the last rumores i’ve heard about revolution state that it will have a quad-core ppc at 2.5ghz and a dual-core gpu.
will be an intresting summer next year
I think it would be very possibke to create clusters of XboX 360 and use it for high end computing. Xbox360 is not just a gaming console, it is a super computer. Just my opinion but I think Xbox360 makes these powerpc compters look a bit overpriced.
Seeing the lame Xbox 360 unveiling last night makes me only more curious and excited about the PS3. The only thing that became obvious is that Microsoft plans to have a firm grip on your wallet with their subscriber model. Not with me…
I still can’t believe that you are going to disregard the fine print at the bottom. I don’t care how modified those chips are, they are still PPC based, and run 3.2 ghz each. Did you read that, 3.2ghz each. If you bought a lot og regular G5 chips, that run 2.5 ghz, you would still spend over 150 per chip. You can’t even buy a 64 bit, AMD 1.8 ghz chip that cheap, and it’s inferior to the PPC chip.
Really, when this machine comes out, and lacks half of what it states in that press release, don’t be pissed at MS. They already told you that it would change substantially, at the bottom of the page. I know it says “could”, but in MS terms, could = will. They wouldn’t have posted the fine print that way, if they didn’t plan on changing it.
Speaking of xbox 1. Sure they lost a lot of money per unit, but 100-200 dollars is nothing compared to 500-1000 or more. That would add up quick, and they would have to have a ton of game sales to break even, or charge more for games, or rip off the developers more. If they squeeze more from the developers, then they will be less likely to develop for it, because it already costs over a million dollars to make a budget game.
MS is being smart, telling their competition one thing, getting the hype-mobile rolling in their favor, and at the last second, bam, different machine. But most people wont care, because they heard how great the new xbox will be, and they will still get it. Great marketing ploy, and a good way to make sure their competitors have no idea what is going to be in the real xbox 360.
Those asking about apple…
The 360 is using a PPE I think (Sony is using one PPE and multiple SPEs in their cell system), and it does things in-order, not out of order, so it can get higher clock speeds. Also, I heard this VMX unit was different than what the VMX unit was on a 970 chip.
Still, I bet its reasonably fast.
MS might have a chance to push their Xbox on the not so smart masses just in time for Christmas but we can expect much better specs for the PS3 so a smart hardcore gamer will rather wait until Jan/Feb 2006 and get a PS3.
buying in lot is cheaper, but you also have to remember that these are custom cpu’s, and custom gpu. That being said, the cost of research and development for these needs to be factored in, and will make the price higher than normal, considering the amount that will be sold.
As well as the research and development for the system itself. This xbox will outperform almost all personal computers that have already been bought, and are sitting in someone’s house or office. That being said, how could the price be 299? or even 499? It will not be released with those specs.
If the PS3 will be actually in about the same price range than you’ll get a whole lot more GFLOPS/$ with the PS3. Also, it’ll be based on open standards and a modified Linux kernel so you can tweak it and use it for anything you want.
Judging by what I’ve seen so far the PS3 seems to have far better graphics. The 2 Days to Vegas and the in-game Posession screenshots(just do a search for PS3 and screenshots) of the PS3 are breathtaking.
These specs look beyond belief, but here is the real test! Does it play Solitare? Microsoft made the XBox and did not port the most popular Windows game of all time…..shameful!
i agree. here are some screenshots:
http://www.megagames.com/news/show.cgi?&idtype=console&database=821…
http://www.steelmonkeys.by/eng/projects_eng.html
with Nvidia on board and that much processing power you can expect the P3 to have better graphics performance than the Xbox 360.
You are missing a couple of points….
1. Until something goes out the door, it is always subject to change, the disclaimers at the bottom are STANDARD. If this sucker isn’t in production right now, there is the possibility for a last second change. Even if it is MSFT, it doesn’t mean it WILL change, but could. Also, remember that HW changes are a bit harder than dropping SW features.
2. Yeah, MSFT is going to lose money on every one of these sold. However, they are going to make the money back on licensing the games, selling their own games, the monthly subscriber fees.
Look at what ELSE this box does besides play video games. This is their media center play. It’s about the photo’s, music, it’s your DVD player (Progressive Scan), it supports HD out, does anyone see a DVR upgrade & subscriber fee in the future here?
This goes after the Tivo market, it goes after Apple, Sony, all of them, and it’s all about recurring revenue, taking the loss on the HW is just the short term cost of entry.
But hey, I plan to get one, along w/ a PS3, and a Revolution. I don’t play many games, but when I see a fun one, I want to be able to just pick it up.
– Kelson
Sony has announced some time ago already that the PS3 will be fully based on open standards such as OpenGL, Cg, COLLADE, OpenMAX, OpenVG, etc. and a modified Linux kernel. Everything will be open source and available for users and developers to modify and to contribute.
How about the Xbox 360? Does anyone expect Microsoft to be that open about things give their track record?
I reckon $300 is about right, they can’t go higher or it won’t sell. I think they’re quite prepared to lose A LOT of money selling these boxes – maybe they even know they won’t recoup this money in games sales – but if they land a punch on Sony then it’ll all be worth it. I doubt MS cares about a profit at this stage of entering the industry, they just want to carve out their niche and take out the competitors, like all businesses – only difference here is MS can sacrifice a lot of time, money and energy while taking a loss for a long time in order to eventually capture the market (and THEN they’ll recoup their initial investments).
Sony should be worried by MS, but Sony also captured a very loyal fanbase when they entered/stole the market from Sega and Nintendo on their first go.
ive heard $499
PS3 has the potential to be much faster based on the current knowledge of it. In fact, a few weeks ago, I was putting all my chips on the PS3, despite hating Sony with a passion.
However, these specs are pretty damn impressive. Combine that with how easy the Xbox is to develop for, Xbox Live, and MS being the first to the punch… this may be the winner.
Yeah, you might be right about that. I hate to admit it though. I think with MS being a software powerhouse, they have the upperhand. They can create easy to use tools for game developers. More tools than just DirectX. They can pretty much give them threading libraries and a whole lot more to seduce them into the “dark” side.
I wonder if Sony has that kind of software ability. Also, I wonder what Sony will be doing with it’s online franchise. I mean, they would need something like Xbox live to complete head-to-head on that front with Microsoft. If they can do it for free, then even better. I heard that in Japan they have a Xbox-live-type of thing called BB Navigator. If they can only get that for the U.S. and the rest of the world then it might be a console war on what seems like pretty equal playing fields.
The Xbox hardware seems pretty cool though. A 3 core processor with hyperthreading. Isn’t that like having virtually 6 CPU’s? If so, then “Wow!”. I wonder how long it will take developers to figure out how to use the hardware properly. The audio is done in software, but it looks like the Xbox has enough CPU balls to handle the audio without skipping a beat. Seems like the graphics processor will be sharing system memory. I suspect the PS3 will be using the same type of tech since NVidia has it’s “Turbo-Cache” technology. All in all, it seems pretty neat.
I know I won’t be buying an Xbox and that’s for reasons of my own. I might buy a Sony PS3 though. I currently own a PS2 and a Gamecube. The Gamecube pretty much collects dust. It’s a cute little box, but I like PS2 titles alot more. Besides, I also like the DS controller alot better too.
But, as I’ve understood it the Nes revolution MIGHT be 2 core 2 thread 2.5ghz ppc970s, and 16MB EDRAM, and the regular version of ati rs520 or whatever it was called. Those specs are probably wrong anyway but who knows, the thruth might be around those. Anyway quite close to the xbox, less cpu power and pixel pipelines, more edram.
And the PS3 is supposed to be like 2.5ghz ppc970-similair core + 8 4ghz+ other cores. Rest I don’t know of
But don’t get to excited, the others will probably offer similair performance.
At least for PS3, they will be using Cell processors, not PPC-derivatives.
I think I have to correct myself, as Cell is somekind of PPC-derivative:
http://www.anandtech.com/cpuchipsets/showdoc.aspx?i=2379&p=3
4 cores in the nes revolution, not 2.
Yo Yo Yo we here at Dance 360 want to introduce y’all the next dancer on the floor to show off its stuff, XBOX 360, come on down and give it up y’all………
Might be an interesting read. Nothing about the hardware really but still.
http://www.unexplained-mysteries.com/forum/index.php?showtopic=3936…
Johan, where did you read that quad core rumour?
Andrew I don’t know if you live under a rock or something, but I can tell you that AMD owns every single processor’s a$$ in performance right now whether you like it or not.
Read the reviews:
http://www.extremetech.com/article2/0,1558,1813757,00.asp
http://www.techwarelabs.com/reviews/processors/amd_x2/index_6.shtml
http://www.anandtech.com/cpuchipsets/showdoc.aspx?i=2397&p=27
http://www.tomshardware.com/cpu/20050509/cual_core_athlon-20.html
techreport.com/reviews/2005q2/athlon64-x2/index.x?pg=16
http://www.bit-tech.net/hardware/2005/05/09/amd_a64x2_4800/7.html
http://www.theregister.co.uk/2005/05/09/review_amd_athlon_x2/page3.html
http://www.xbitlabs.com/articles/cpu/display/athlon64-x2_17.html
The specs of the new Xbox360 are everywhere even in Microsoft PressPass. So even if the small footnote indicate that the specs could change, I bet they are set in stone. The console is set to be sold in november, so they have to start producing them AND have developpers working on the REAL thing, not just false specs….
So I would say that the thing is real and final. Awsome specs and it will be a very nice console.
if the preliminary specs of the PS3 are correct it will blow the xbox 360 away. i am waiting for the real thing(PS3) instead of wasting my money on an xbox 360 and paying some horrendous monthly subscription fee to microsoft.
what about physics acceleration? ala Ageia. and will pc’s still be needed for 3d games after xbox and ps3?
I do not think that Linux and / or OSX will run on this hardware. The processor is specifically modified for XBOX 360, that means it can contain modified instruction sets. So to run Linux or OSX will require Kernel modification of these OSes. And this is a licensing problem. Previously, you could load Linux on XBOX witout special kernel-code modification. Now Linux (or OSX) kernel programmers should be authorized from MS to reconstruct the kernel, otherwise they will be sued and they will lose.
I’m sure Xbox 1 was very easy to develop for as it ran windows 2000 on Pentium 3
However this one is running Windows on a PPC chip. Unless Microsoft have built PCAnywhere into its firmware it won’t run anything compiled for x86 PC or Windows XP. or Xbox 1
But it’s still going to be a variant of Windows which uses a fork of DirectX. Jesus.
Andrew:
Well, i don’t know what to say. You’re obviously not too bright.
Ok, first off, I just have to say that of the two sites linked for screenshots, only the Vegas one looked decent, and that can be done EASILY on a 6800 or an X800.
The screenshots did not impress me at all, and were nothing beyond anything seen in Splinter Cell.
Who cares if the PS3 will be ‘open’. What good does open source do when the hardware is hard to code for to begin with. Seeing the devkit code doesn’t help. Microsoft’s DirectX, and XNA, are THE standard for gaming on Windows (with a few games being done in OpenGL). Not to mention that the console developers already know DirectX programming via the XBox 1.
I’m not siding with anybody here, but come one, let’s take off the rose colered glasses, please. Making something open source does not make it easier to program for, or even better for that matter. You say that developers can ‘contribute’ to the system since it is open source, but what would be the purpose of making changes to the OS in it when you could make games that had already been released have problems.
BTW, OpenGL is no more ‘open’ than DirectX. You still have to pay royalties on it.
A lot of you claim various things as ‘open standards’, and you do it just because it is what competes with Microsoft’s standard, eg. MP3, MPEG, OpenGL, etc…
Even if it it IS PPC based, It is so much more powerful than the Xbox-1 it could easily run Xbox-1 games in Emulation.
I don’t think it would be too far feteched for a company like Terra Soft to get Yellow Dog to run on this. I would assume that it is using OF unless MS did the BIOS from scratch.
Also the XBOX360 demos are running on G5s.
http://news.com.com/Xbox+360+demos+running+on+Macs/2100-1043_3-5706…
The VMX unit is a runs a custom instruction set made and owned by microsoft. One of the instructions is is the first ever implimentation of a dot product instruction at assembly language. MS applied for the patent for this last year.
Not compatible with altivec or SSE
German Heise has taken a look at the specs here:
http://www.heise.de/newsticker/meldung/59548
I don’t know what happens if you put this through Babelfish, but the bottom line is:
Due to memory bandwith and buffer size, you will end up with the performance of an Ati X700 with 4x AA at PAL or NTSC resolutions. As well, due to these limitations, you propbably won’t have smooth HDTV output on it — which is fine for the price… but it is definately not a super computer as all specs are inflated for press release, go figure…
Might have already been posted:
http://redruth.greenbean.org/~ben/4CR/Nintendo-ON-Revolution.wmv
I guess 512.000.000 is the amount of ram. So, if the old rumours where correct that would be something like quad-core 2.5ghz ppc970-similair 128kB cache/core, new ati-chip and 512MB ram.
With the difference they actually got some sort of vr(?)-helmet with radar and cam(?)
The question is, do people want to move around when playing games? The possibilites are great thought.
Looks nice but unfortunately I have morals so will wait for Sony’s offering.
“Andrew I don’t know if you live under a rock or something, but I can tell you that AMD owns every single processor’s a$$ in performance right now whether you like it or not.”
I’m with you. Microsoft chose PPC because of it’s poor performance. So did Sony and Nintendo. This is part of a plan to put Apple, IBM and Freescale out of business.
Microsoft chose IBM because IBM has the resources to co-develop a custom chip just for their own needs, produce in mass, and do it cheaply. I doubt if even Intel could do this.
The fact is that IBM is a research and manufacturing powerhouse.
“Looks nice but unfortunately I have morals so will wait for Sony’s offering.”
Yes, because Sony’s domination of the console market is so much different from Microsoft’s of the PC market. It’s all the same, they’re all businesses, and they all want the biggest market share. Big whoop.
But of course, you don’t mention waiting to see what Nintendo will have up their sleeve. You look like a fanboy, sorry mate.
Me: I’m waiting for at least E3 (probably will wait after at least the first two launch, just incase) before deciding.
Responding to, for example, this post:
“if the preliminary specs of the PS3 are correct it will blow the xbox 360 away. i am waiting for the real thing(PS3) instead of wasting my money on an xbox 360 and paying some horrendous monthly subscription fee to microsoft.”
Last I checked, the latest leaked preliminary specs put the power at 256 GFlops. The Xbox 360 is at 1 TFlop, officially. That means that the Xbox 360 is 4x as powerful. Of course, I don’t trust rumours, I doubt Sony would underpower it.
Other rumours put the PS3 at 1 TFlop, which is comparable to the Xbox 360. (Some sites say that possibly needs extra cell processing power from other devices, addons, whatever. It could be that fast alone, though, and I again doubt Sony will require you to buy seperate hardware for a speed increase)
In any case, your thinking is all topsy turvy sounding. If you’re falling for the “4GHZ is better than 3.5GHZ”, then you fail. For example: AMD Athlon processors run at the same speed/power as Pentium 4 ones, but are usually several hundred MHZ slower on clock speed.
The 64’s are clocked a 2ghz lower.
No one seems to realize that this box will be massively subsidized.
Microsoft, to date, has lost several Billion dollars on XBox. XBox360 will substantially increase that debt.
They counter the debt with all the Office Sales and XP sales currently running the industry.
They won’t break through against SONY and they know it. SONY owns the personal gaming home market.
GAMES, GAMES, GAMES. SONY has the broadest and deepest pool of games to draw and leverage.
This is not a CELL PowerPC, nor a POWER4/5 PowerPC. It’s at best derived from some of the CELL ideas.
SONY doesn’t have crap to worry about when it comes to game offering on the market.
Microsoft can’t manage to implement WinFS into Longhorn. How you can have confidence in their innovations in XBox is a amazing.
One of the main XBox directors left in March to work at where? APPLE.
Take care of the number given by the marketing guys at Mircosoft. They mentionned
“Overall System Floating-Point Performance”, which is not the performance of the cpu alone. that’s a trap.
Look here about the real number:
http://1up.com/do/feature?pager.offset=1&cId=3140209
The cpu has performance estimated at 115.2 gflop/s (still impressive!!) which is more realistic for a cpu alone. Maybe they count the performance of the video card to get their “Overall System Floating-Point Performance”, but even in this case, how can they get 1 teraflops. Does it mean tha the ati card performs at 884.8 Gflops, no way!!! I don’t think so…..So i wonder how they get 1 teraflops, dear Mr and Mrs Marketing???.
The Cell performs at 256 Gflops (simple precision floating point numbers)
http://www.research.ibm.com/cell/
And keep in mind that the PowerPc used in this machine is sure not a general purpose cpu as the G5, but i guess something more specialized with a more simple design. I guess that IBM use a in of-of-order design as in the Cell, and push a lot of power in the SIMD unit. This powerpc has a VMX with 128 128-bit registers for each hardware thread (according to the site), with is a lot because there are in total 6 hardware threads. The VMX unit in the G5 has 32 128-bit registers.
I would like to see this “new” VMX in the next G5…..
“The VMX unit is a runs a custom instruction set made and owned by microsoft. One of the instructions is is the first ever implimentation of a dot product instruction at assembly language. MS applied for the patent for this last year.
”
The VMX unit (called Altivec by Motorola, Velocity Engine by Apple) is a technology develpped and owned by IBM, Apple and Motorola, Microsoft has nothing to do with its design. How microsoft can introduce a set of instructions in a processor design as the Powerpc, which is not owned by them and not devlopped by them. The instruction set is defined by the cpu architects and those instructions belong to the PowerPC ISA (Instruction Set Architecture). Again Microsoft has nothing to do with this.
What you are saying is completely meaningless. Sorry!!!
I doesn’t matter to Microsoft whether they a debt ridden in Console gaming. They are making lot of money on OS/MS-Office.
They are here to say in the market for a long……… time to come.