AMD/ATI for Xbox Next?

"Good enough" for what?
"Good enough" for my idea of an elegant solution!
An x86 CPU + ATI GPU is going to mop the floor with a Cell derivative in terms of end product in almost every case in a 2 year launch window.
By "Cell deivative" I mean a heterogenous multicore processor suitably rigged for graphics processing. This would be a step down from my ideal of homogenous cores (or at least, homogenous ISA) but better than discrete programming languages needed for separate CPU and GPUs.

I don't understand why this is sad--how is a GPU a "weak point"
Again, I'm just talking a hypothetical elegance here, not a real-world achievement. I'd rather have a powerful GPU and CPU than a mediocre all-in-one solution. I'd also rather have 5 pools of RAM if it meant far better results. But I'd prefer a single RAM pool if there were no trade-offs, and I'd prefer one single core type if there were no compromises with it. Sadly the Real World gets in the way. ;)
 
32megs of edram would do wonders for the badnwidth issue. couple that with 192bit bus and I think your fine . It will be very expensive to get the bandwidth from edram with another memory pool.



As for a cpu why not something based on Bulldozer. its rumored to be 16 cores and will hit in 2011

http://www.techreport.com/discussions.x/16797

or they can use the older Magny-Cours Take the 12 core and move it 32nm and you should get a cool running power full chip that has OOE

Magny-Cours will be the first member of the Opteron 6000 series, which will slip into two- and four-socket G34 systems with quad-channel DDR3 memory, up to 12 DIMM slots per socket, and quadruple HyperTransport 3.0 links. AMD plans nine Magny-Cours variants with 8-12 cores and ACP ratings of 105W, 75W, and 55W.
 
Didn't MS want OOE this gen and only didn't get it because of time constraints? Or so the story went. What are the odds the design itself, conceptually, has a smaller OOE CPU and a really beefy GPU setup that can handle graphics and anything that is easy parallel coding?
 
Sorry to drop the tech IQ of this thread with this post, but I just got back & had some catching up to do...

I dont understand why you want BC. Just play it on your xbox/360 if it's that big a deal to you.

I dont agree. I bought new consoles at launch, never cared if I could play my old games on it. If I want to play the old games, I already got the old console so I can always play them besides I dont buy a new console just to play old games. The same goes for new buyers I think. Why buy a xbox next if you want to play x360 games?

You guys might be able to afford to keep your old system & buy a new one when it comes out, but I can't. And I'm not so sure very many console buyers can either. Buying a console for me is investing in a platform. I invested in the original Xbox because it gave me the kind of games & experience I preferred at the time. As the platform grew, I grew with it. Just because the games get replaced with newer versions doesn't mean they stop being good games. So I want to take them with me as the platform grows. It's a lot like the PC in some ways. Yes, you can just keep the hardware, but I can't afford to do that. So I want to be able to trade-in or sell my old system & get a new, bigger & faster system, but still take my games with me. I did that with almost every PC I had before, why is it so hard to fathom that people may want to do that with a console too? IMHO, Sony had the right idea with the PS1 & PS2...

Also, do you think that Sony will have full BC with all their previous PSN download titles on PS4 as well? Nintendo on WiiHD/whatever?

Yes.

If you can do BC for almost free, only then is it worth it. In fact I see a competitive advantage waiting to be exploited if one company burdens itself with BC and the other doesn't (perhaps Sony saw this as well when they dropped BC almost as fast as it came!)

You only say that because you're a tech whore. :D I mean that in the nicest ways of course! :) But seriously for the folk that reside on this forum I can completely understand why you guys would be against BC: it's a speed bump in the way of the good shit.

What if the BC improved the performance and graphics of the last gen games? I think that's what the next Xbox will do.

PS2 supported this & it was one the coolest things about it. It was definitely something I wanted to see. It would have been great if the 360 had the ability to do this for original Xbox games. Hopefully MS understands that they have a software & services platform(not hardware) that needs to continue uninterrupted instead of starting over from scratch each generation.

Tommy McClain
 
You guys might be able to afford to keep your old system & buy a new one when it comes out, but I can't. And I'm not so sure very many console buyers can either.

You can afford a next gen console early on but you cant afford to keep your old one?

Trading in or selling an old system by the time next gen is here, isn't likely to fetch much.

Anyway, you're already in a situation where Playstation 3 has limited BC depending on model (none for a while now) and 360 as well. So nothing will change if theres not BC in the future, as we dont have it now. You wont be losing anything that you currently have.
 
You can afford a next gen console early on but you cant afford to keep your old one?

Trading in or selling an old system by the time next gen is here, isn't likely to fetch much.

It took me over a year after the launch to get my 360 & that was with a bit of help. Yes, selling my original Xbox, accessories & non-compatible titles helped pay for it. If they continue with these over $300 systems for the next round I'll have to wait again. BTW, I didn't get my original Xbox until it was $199 after the first year too.

Tommy McClain
 
Trading in or selling an old system by the time next gen is here, isn't likely to fetch much.

It did for me. Just depends on where you offload it. Sometimes friends, family or even yard sales are better than a store.

Anyway, you're already in a situation where Playstation 3 has limited BC depending on model (none for a while now) and 360 as well. So nothing will change if theres not BC in the future, as we dont have it now. You wont be losing anything that you currently have.

Yes, I will. Even more-so now. I now have a big investment in DD titles, that I didn't have before. So when I sell my old system to get the new system, I have now lost all that investment if it's not BC. Explain that to mom & pop, they won't be too happy that's for sure.

Tommy McClain
 
actual top speed looks to be 112GB/s on a 128bit bus
Thanks ;)
I read in article from early 2009 that Samsung was using 50nm process for their gddr5 ram. Do these RAM modules still use this process (the ones achieving to aforementioned bandwidth)?
Do some members can make an estimation about how much (or few :( ) can be gained in this regard by switching production to better processes?
 
32megs of edram would do wonders for the badnwidth issue. couple that with 192bit bus and I think your fine . It will be very expensive to get the bandwidth from edram with another memory pool.



As for a cpu why not something based on Bulldozer. its rumored to be 16 cores and will hit in 2011

http://www.techreport.com/discussions.x/16797

or they can use the older Magny-Cours Take the 12 core and move it 32nm and you should get a cool running power full chip that has OOE
That thing will be way too huge and intended for high end server business.
The bright side is that bulldozer is supposed to be scalable architecture. I hope that the core won't inflate tho, Intel now manages to do more than AMD with less transistors.
 
That thing will be way too huge and intended for high end server business.
The bright side is that bulldozer is supposed to be scalable architecture. I hope that the core won't inflate tho, Intel now manages to do more than AMD with less transistors.

Well that is the opteron line with most likely larger caches. I don't see why they couldn't do a 12x verison of the desktop chip at 32nm.


Mabye they can just take a bunch of amd neo's (athlon 64s) and put them together. They use about 10-15 watts each at 1.6ghz on 65nm . 8-12 of them would be a killer chip on 32nm and would use less than 80 watts . Or the new mobile phenom 2 quad cores for Danube and put a bunch together though i have no idea what thier TPD is
 
Do you guys really think that on the closed boxes we will see the end of sub-HD games? I've got to tell you that I don't think so.
 
Do you guys really think that on the closed boxes we will see the end of sub-HD games? I've got to tell you that I don't think so.

I dont mind it. MW2 looks good to me and it's subHD. If nobody told me I wouldn't have noticed on my own.

You could probably make a better looking game all around at 600p, then 720P.
 
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Native HD resolution is really really so important?

when you have a ~720p uncompressed image, and you use a good upscaler to go to 1080p, who can notice it?
 
People who look for it probably can, i depends how good the scaler is. I agree that for theaverage consumer this is a complete now issue really.
However it does depend, many game on current systems are more like 600 lines scaled up and i think that in that case when you are going down to close to PAL resolution then yes a scaled image is detectable quite easily by most players.

I am interested at howmany people think that AMD might produce some form of anthlon based x86 many cored cpu for the next xbox. To me this seemes unlikely an IBM power based unit along with whatever ATI can produce within their silicon/power budget seems more likely. I imagine this time the cores who be OOO, thing is this way give you BC so easily and and IBM are always very happy to come up with custom designs unlike hisorically the x86 suppliers.
Of course the legal side of X86 is very important. Even if AMD wanted to produce a X86 custom design for MS, MS would want to own the ip for the design, something I am not sure AMD could legally sell them due to huge complications with Intel.

Like someone else said while a 'Fusion' style cpu/gpu die might seem cheap and ellgant and allow huge bandwidth sharing between the chips the yeild trade off would probably kill of this idea stone dead.
 
People who look for it probably can, i depends how good the scaler is. I agree that for theaverage consumer this is a complete now issue really.
However it does depend, many game on current systems are more like 600 lines scaled up and i think that in that case when you are going down to close to PAL resolution then yes a scaled image is detectable quite easily by most players.

I am interested at howmany people think that AMD might produce some form of anthlon based x86 many cored cpu for the next xbox. To me this seemes unlikely an IBM power based unit along with whatever ATI can produce within their silicon/power budget seems more likely. I imagine this time the cores who be OOO, thing is this way give you BC so easily and and IBM are always very happy to come up with custom designs unlike hisorically the x86 suppliers.
Of course the legal side of X86 is very important. Even if AMD wanted to produce a X86 custom design for MS, MS would want to own the ip for the design, something I am not sure AMD could legally sell them due to huge complications with Intel.

Like someone else said while a 'Fusion' style cpu/gpu die might seem cheap and ellgant and allow huge bandwidth sharing between the chips the yeild trade off would probably kill of this idea stone dead.


Would it be a SeeBox, ShareBox, or CreateBox? :LOL:
 
Can a Power7 derivate fit for an x720?
Maybe 3/4 core smt4 with little or no L3 and removed memory controller
 
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Can a Power7 derivate fit for an x720?

Well a 4 core would be around 284mm2 which is a bit too large imho but awesomely powerful with the 16 threads.

If they could come up with a dual core derivate at somewhere north of 160mm2 that would fit and would give you 2 more threads than the Xenon plus a whole lot more.
 
Wont they need to go with a similar CPU as last time if BC is such a supposed big concern?

Dont see why the GPU has to be from ATI for BC supposedly, but they can just switch CPU vendors?
 
Offfopic:
Would having VMX units with more registers be that important next gen? VMX256 or something.

Wont they need to go with a similar CPU as last time if BC is such a supposed big concern?

Dont see why the GPU has to be from ATI for BC supposedly, but they can just switch CPU vendors?
I don't the emulating the CPU was the hard part this gen and considering the number of cores one might expect next gen I don't think it will be that hard next gen.
 
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