xbox 360 specs (unofficial, but believable)

[nAo]

that sounds absolutely in-line with the 1 dp per cycle info : )

Even if I bet X360 VMX units have a special DP instruction so it's doing 7 ops per clock, not 8.
If it also has fmadd-like instructions (and obviously it has those instructions ) this is not a big deal, that figure is still correct

 

[vliw]

Anyway guys, are those specs like......Good enough for next gen? Do they this years high end pcs or something like that?

It's a Low Cost Next gen, imho....Ps3 will be another world.

How do you fathom "low cost"?

I think about Ps3 hardware....sure i can make a mistake but we'll see in a couple of days.

 

[Shifty Geezer]

Wasn't a fast Dot Product function one of the named customizations MS requested in their processor? As such, surely it's more efficient than the 7 calculations? Otherwise what's the point of adding this implementation to the hardware?

Has this custom Dot Product implementation been scrapped? Is that where some of the CPU potential allegedly lost would have gone? Can I write a sentence without ending it in a question mark?

 

[cybamerc]

Does jvd "know" stuff, or is this your speculation?

He's just guessing. Unfortunately he likes to act as if he has solid info.

 

[ERP]

Wasn't a fast Dot Product function one of the named customizations MS requested in their processor? As such, surely it's more efficient than the 7 calculations? Otherwise what's the point of adding this implementation to the hardware?

Has this custom Dot Product implementation been scrapped? Is that where some of the CPU potential allegedly lost would have gone? Can I write a sentence without ending it in a question mark?

The reason you add it as an instruction is because sometimes (most case outside of vertex transforms) you just want to do one of them as a sequence of operations and not say 4 in prarallel.

Even outside of vertices it's probably the single most common operation in game math, having a sinngle instruction to do it is often a big win.

 

[BigGamer X]

What are you putting on the harddrive for 40 GBs to be small? I've a 40gig HD in my PC. With OS, programs, backups, data (LOTS of rednundant data as I don't clean up in case of losing something important!), I've some 20 Gb free. Short of lots of MP3s I can't see any use for multigigabyte HDs in a console, unless you have to go through the rigmarole of installing games to HD to play them.

True, true... I hope if a HDD is standard, they will have a similar "3 game cache" that they use on the current box. I'm sure instead of ~750MB per game they'd increase it to say...2- 4GB. If a HDD is not standard, I hope that DVD drive is a REALLY GOOD ONE, or else....

 

[pc999]

It is just me or this looks a bit low/strange/to rumor based for next gen.

I mean a next gen with 128bits and 512 mg :?

All in all I dont belive in this to much....


BTW

He think it is strange too, and some of you say well about he a few time ago

Quote:
CPU Game Math Performance
- 9 billion dots per second

Huh? 9 billion "dots"? WTH is that supposed to mean?

EDIT : If that's supposed to be dot products, 9 billion wouldn't quite agree with the clock speed numbers. If the cores were running at 3 GHz (as opposed to 3.2), a retire rate of one dot product per cycle on 3 cores would yield 9 billion. At 3.2, it would be 9.6 billion.

Besides which, since when are dot products used as a unit of performance measurement.

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

How does one have a 21.6 GB/sec FSB if it's sharing the same 700 MHz RAM with the GPU. 22.4 makes sense (128 bit bus * 700 MHz ram * 2 (DDR)). 21.6 doesn't make sense at all no matter how I work it out (serial protocols, ECC on same lines, whatever) -- moreover, the overall stupidity of having the CPU hog all the memory bandwidth is pretty severe. 12.6 works, but only if you include ECC codes as part of the stream, which you really shouldn't. The effective bandwidth would still only be 11.2 GB/sec. Quote:
Custom ATI Graphics Processor
- 500 MNz
- 10 MB embedded DRAM
- 48-way parallel floating-point shader pipelines
- unified shader architecture

I love these abbreviations... "Meganertz"... Unified shader architecture is about the only thing there that surprises me. Frankly, that's the one thing that I still wouldn't believe until I see it.

http://www.psinext.com/forums/viewtopic.php?p=117549#117549[/quote]

 

[therealskywolf]

lowcost as in 2-4 times less powerfull

Yeah.......right........ Man if the PS3 is for Xbox360 what Xbox was for the Ps2, i will be mighty impressed.

 

[wco81]

It will turn on many new people to online gaming that are unsure about it. Once they take the plunge on a weeked and get a taste of Perfect Dark, Project Gotham, Ghost Recon, or Rainbow 6 online they'll be hooked. Well not everyone, but many will.

Yeah I think that's MS' plans exactly. And frankly, it's a pretty good plan! I could see last generations massive losses going to a pretty profitable business within the course of a year of 360's launch.

Or, it could be an indication that subscription growth didn't meet their expectations so they have to offer some limited free access.

Maybe they found churn rate was too high or they found that after people got those free 2-month subscriptions, they didn't sign up for the full year.

Or, maybe they wanted the largest possible number of people to give out their info, including credit card numbers, so that they could claim to Wall Street and market analysts that they have a huge market for microtransactions.

They may even cite Silver members as part of the total XBL subscriber base, when it's only the Gold members who are actually paying.

 

[wco81]

Anyway guys, are those specs like......Good enough for next gen? Do they this years high end pcs or something like that?

The processor's faster than any PC processor, streamlined for games. The graphics card is better than anything available at the mo'. And all for a few hundred bucks.
To a lot of people, this isn't 'good enough' for next-gen. They're wanting a generation beyond what we have now in top end expensive PCs. Me, I see this as definitely a generation up from current-gen consoles.

No $300 PC will ever match the performance of consoles. I'm not even sure a $300 PC now would match the performance of the PS1.

Hey port AOE3 to Xbox360 with mouse and keyboard support and it may draw a lot of PC gamers over. It's already going to get the top PC FPS games. If it gets RTS games, there's no reason to buy or upgrade a PC gaming rig for a couple of years unless you have to have the bleeding edge as soon as it comes out.

Oh, you'd think MS would be cutting deals with Blizzard for a WoW port and maybe even SOE for an Everquest port. After that, what else would there be in PC gaming other than the legacy stuff?

 

[Carl B]

Or, it could be an indication that subscription growth didn't meet their expectations so they have to offer some limited free access.

Maybe they found churn rate was too high or they found that after people got those free 2-month subscriptions, they didn't sign up for the full year.

Or, maybe they wanted the largest possible number of people to give out their info, including credit card numbers, so that they could claim to Wall Street and market analysts that they have a huge market for microtransactions.

They may even cite Silver members as part of the total XBL subscriber base, when it's only the Gold members who are actually paying.

I agree with everything you said, and yet, it does absolutely nothing to diminish the validity of my own points, which I stick by 100%. 8)

As a direct question to you, do you NOT see XBox becoing profitable this gen? And do you NOT believe this whole microtransaction, Live subscription, WebTV aspect will play an appreciable role?

 

[pc999]

Just one to DeanoC or someone who can educate us.

It is here represented the hardwork from IBM

 

[V3]

How does one have a 21.6 GB/sec FSB if it's sharing the same 700 MHz RAM with the GPU. 22.4 makes sense (128 bit bus * 700 MHz ram * 2 (DDR)). 21.6 doesn't make sense at all no matter how I work it out (serial protocols, ECC on same lines, whatever)

FSB of 21.6 GB/s is from the leak diagram ages ago. 10.8 GB/s read and 10.8GB/s write.

I think I'll wait till Thursday till official spec.

 

[wco81]

I agree with everything you said, and yet, it does absolutely nothing to diminish the validity of my own points, which I stick by 100%. 8)

As a direct question to you, do you NOT see XBox becoing profitable this gen? And do you NOT believe this whole microtransaction, Live subscription, WebTV aspect will play an appreciable role?

As it happens, I had just read a WSJ article before reading this thread. In it, they cite $1.2 billion a year in losses from the Xbox. That seems higher than any other estimate but not that far out of whack.

If their losses are anywhere near that, that means XBL is probably contributing to those losses. In other places, I've seen references to MS targeting a much higher attach ratio for paid XBL subscriptions this generation. Something over 50% of all Xbox360 owners signing up and paying for XBL.

If that is what it's going to take for them to be profitable, then that may be a high hurdle for them to overcome. I just don't think there are that many people interested in online gaming, much less paying for it.

Anyways, even if these specs. are true, this is just one piece of the profitablity puzzle. The other pieces are of course pricing, games lineup, the competition, etc.

 

[Shifty Geezer]

As a direct question to you, do you NOT see XBox becoing profitable this gen? And do you NOT believe this whole microtransaction, Live subscription, WebTV aspect will play an appreciable role?

I can imagine it possible for XB360 to fail to achieve substantial profits. They would need a much larger userbase than they currently have, of which competition from Sony and Nintendo might be even stronger this time around. they'll need some clever maneouvring to take more of the market.

If console sales remain similar to XBs, MS won't have the user base to make loads from software sales.

Live! subscriptions also don't look set to take loads of money. Isn't it something like only 10% of those who have tried a free Live! introductory offer have then paid to join up? Paying for online doesn't seem popular enough to be a big earner.

The only other source of income is d'loadable content which is a bit of an unknown. How much things cost and how much MS take per transaction will determine whether this makes money or not. Don't think it's predictable how much people are willing to spend this way.

So really, not much has changed from this gen. the only way to be sure of achieving profitability is large software sales, that really needs a large user base (and non-loss making hardware). Looking at the competitors, both Sony and Nintendo have huge user-bases to make their money from. MS just doesn't have that. How they will be able to match the profitability of 100-200 million gaming units that the other companies have, I don't know.

 

[version]

Xbox 360 Prices Leaked

Earlier today, we received a nice little tidbit in an e-mail regarding the 360. As is already known, there will be two packages ready in the fall.
One consists of the bare, basic console, controller, cables, etc. It will retail for the standard $299.99 USD.

The other contains the 360, controller(s?), remote, and the HDD (with extra content). We couldn't get a comment on the chance of this package having the camera bundled. This will retail for the bargin, and fairly uninspired, price of $360 USD.

See what they did there? Xbox 360, $360. Cute.

 

[Carl B]

@wco81:

Well, I think the XBox itself is probably Microsoft's biggest hole in the pocket - I don't know why Live upkeep on it's own would cost too much. And in terms of their losses, that WSJ article actually surprised me by estimating how little they've lost - I've always heard $5-7 billion, and that puts it at the lower end of that range. So I guess different people view the same news differently. 8)

Anyway as far as Live, it had a supposed $2 billion roll-out cost. After that, like I said before I would imagine upkeep to be very reasonable.

 

[Shifty Geezer]

In other places, I've seen references to MS targeting a much higher attach ratio for paid XBL subscriptions this generation. Something over 50% of all Xbox360 owners signing up and paying for XBL.

$40 a subscription. 10 million subscribers. $400 million a year. Still leaves $800 million a year losses.

How much do they currently lose because of hardware losses? Is it really as much as $200 a console? I can't believe so, but it'd need to be that high to account for $1 billion a year losses. But moreso even, because they make money from software. If they lose $1.2 billion a year, but gross $500 million in software sales, that's actually $1.7 billion they lose. On what?! where do they spend their money?

5 million XBs a year...that's a loss of $300 per console. They ain't losing THAT much on the hardware. Before MS achieving profitability next-gen can be considered, we need to know why their not managing it this time around. Though hardware losses account for a great deal, it can't be the be all and end all of MS's problems.

 

[Carl B]

@Shifty:

I see what you're saying, but looking at the XBox divisions most recent losses last quarter, even as it stands now they're not far off. I think with the 360's advantages given in cost control down the line, the assumption of a similar software sell-through, and the additional assumption of increased revenue from online transactions, I see it breaking out of it's rut.

But whatever, we'll see in the end either way.

EDIT: By the way, keep in mind those losses of $1.2 billion a year are an average, heavily front-loaded at the beginning of the consoles life. The most recent quarters losses were *only* about ~$150 million, so not too too bad. (I guess)

 

[Teasy]

I don't think anyone hear has ever estimated anywhere close to 7 billion in losses for XBox. What crazy forums have you been hanging out on xbdestroya? I think most hear thought it was around 4 billion by now.