At what point does a systems specs become locked?

[blakjedi]

Everyone's still talking about how the X2 could still have two PPC cores or three (or six)... and how the PS3 could still have 1 or 2 PPEs or 4 or 8 SPEs...

How long can a console company wait until they have to lock their spec for mass production? Obviously Sony and Nintendo has a greater benefit of time this generation but i would think if you are going to publicly show off the console at E3 the specs should pretty much be locked...?

 

[3dcgi]

These specs were probably locked down some time ago. Only a few things can be left to the last minute. Ram could easily be left to the last minute from a hardware point of view, but even that decision shouldn't be left unmade for too long as developers need to know this information. Clock speeds are probably the last thing known as they depend on yields. Of course a range of possible clock speeds is known early on in development.

 

[jvd]

I think as long as they increase things it shouldn't be a problem. Decreasing things though might be a problem

Example going from 256 megs to 512 megs isn't a problem

Going from dvd - hddvd or bluray isn't a big deal

Going backwards though would be as the devlopement will have to change and alot of cuts would have to be made

But going foward it would be the next games to be affected and in a postive way not a negative way .

So perhaps the xenon isn't locked to one cpu or two cpus . But as long as it doesn't go from two cpus down to one cpu it shouldn't be a problem.

Same with clockspeeds , They can say to devs 4ghz cell chip 1x8 and then after seeing yields they can say 4.5ghz and nothing would be affected. But saying 4.5 and then getting yields back and saying 4ghz things would be affected.

I would say around 3 months before launch is when the final specs are locked down even ram amounts and other things as they need to get boxe s read for launch

 

[Fox5]

Nintendo changed Gamecube's specs right before launch if I recall correctly.
The raise in cpu speed and drop in gpu speed was rather unexpected.
Xbox also received a raise in cpu speed and drop in gpu, but it happened much further from launch than nintendo's change.

 

[PC-Engine]

Nintendo changed Gamecube's specs right before launch if I recall correctly.
The raise in cpu speed and drop in gpu speed was rather unexpected.
Xbox also received a raise in cpu speed and drop in gpu, but it happened much further from launch than nintendo's change.

That's true but in the case of GCN, the gpu in the devkits were running at a lower clock anyway so not much interuption in the development process.

 

[Deepak]

Could it be that each console maker have multiple specs and they choose depending on various factors the most practical one?

 

[jvd]

possibly . I'm sure they have diffrent targets and depending on how close they are to the targets they drop or raise them