ATI's Xbox2 chipset : Designed at same office as R500....

[jvd]

Re: ATI's Xbox2 chipset : Designed at same office as R500...

Will MS switch the CPU supplier to AMD as well???

That's a rumor I've heard, but I think at this point anything could happen. I think the choice depends on few things. 1) Where Microsoft goes to get the GPU designed and fabricated at 2) Who they select for the southbridge. I suspect there has been some very heated discussions and contract bidding going on with probably all the PC players. Who knows when we will find out.

Tommy McClain

amd would make the most sense in terms of performance , the least sense in terms of being able to build enough chips . At least right now . ALthough amd plans to launch the k9 in 2005 . which will be a dual core chip. A dual core 64bit chip would work very well.

 

[Tahir2]

Intel is working on multiple core CPU's... and an Intel representative is quoted as saying multiple core means more than 3 cores. Well, d'uh!

Hehe... dammit all this speculation of what is in XBOX2 has really put the speculation of what will be in the N5 to the back burner.

I am curious as hell about working out how ATI can manage both products for MS and Nintendo.

Perhaps it goes a little like this:

MS design spec: you have a 250 million transistor budget for the GPU along with a 0.0xx tech with rudimentary compatibility to DX10 (pulls out preliminary spec). P.S. we don't believe in OpenGL so don't even go there. We'll sort out clockspeed and memory when we get closer to the time but assume it is 500MHz to be safe when running performance simulations and the use of GDDR3.

Nintendo design spec: you have 150 million transistor spec - this includes the APU, GPU and coffee maker. Make it as simple as possible to program for, that even the idiots at EA can use it without retraining their monkeys. We are using some SRAM tech from MoSys, NEC are promising us 0.0xx tech.. we want pretty colours and Mario's mustache must rendered in billions of shades of black. We are going to use a minute amount of PC133 SDRAM for main system memory - no need to worry we have a good idea of a new fangled compression technology that works on fractals which increases bandwidth 10x also. P.S. make it cheap and get to work. OpenGL kicks ass.

 

[London Geezer]

Intel is working on multiple core CPU's... and an Intel representative is quoted as saying multiple core means more than 3 cores. Well, d'uh!

Hehe... dammit all this speculation of what is in XBOX2 has really put the speculation of what will be in the N5 to the back burner.

I am curious as hell about working out how ATI can manage both products for MS and Nintendo.

Perhaps it goes a little like this:

MS design spec: you have a 250 million transistor budget for the GPU along with a 0.0xx tech with rudimentary compatibility to DX10 (pulls out preliminary spec). P.S. we don't believe in OpenGL so don't even go there. We'll sort out clockspeed and memory when we get closer to the time but assume it is 500MHz to be safe when running performance simulations and the use of GDDR3.

Nintendo design spec: you have 150 million transistor spec - this includes the APU, GPU and coffee maker. Make it as simple as possible to program for, that even the idiots at EA can use it without retraining their monkeys. We are using some SRAM tech from MoSys, NEC are promising us 0.0xx tech.. we want pretty colours and Mario's mustache must rendered in billions of shades of black. We are going to use a minute amount of PC133 SDRAM for main system memory - no need to worry we have a good idea of a new fangled compression technology that works on fractals which increases bandwidth 10x also. P.S. make it cheap and get to work. OpenGL kicks ass.

what would be Sony's design then? and Phantom's?

 

[jvd]

Intel is working on multiple core CPU's... and an Intel representative is quoted as saying multiple core means more than 3 cores. Well, d'uh!

Hehe... dammit all this speculation of what is in XBOX2 has really put the speculation of what will be in the N5 to the back burner.

I am curious as hell about working out how ATI can manage both products for MS and Nintendo.

Perhaps it goes a little like this:

MS design spec: you have a 250 million transistor budget for the GPU along with a 0.0xx tech with rudimentary compatibility to DX10 (pulls out preliminary spec). P.S. we don't believe in OpenGL so don't even go there. We'll sort out clockspeed and memory when we get closer to the time but assume it is 500MHz to be safe when running performance simulations and the use of GDDR3.

Nintendo design spec: you have 150 million transistor spec - this includes the APU, GPU and coffee maker. Make it as simple as possible to program for, that even the idiots at EA can use it without retraining their monkeys. We are using some SRAM tech from MoSys, NEC are promising us 0.0xx tech.. we want pretty colours and Mario's mustache must rendered in billions of shades of black. We are going to use a minute amount of PC133 SDRAM for main system memory - no need to worry we have a good idea of a new fangled compression technology that works on fractals which increases bandwidth 10x also. P.S. make it cheap and get to work. OpenGL kicks ass.

That is very dumb . Why would nitendo have a budget of the nv3x chip. Its almost a year old now . Surely by 2005 nintendo would have a budget in the 300 and ms in the 400 or even 500 .

R300 hit 325 on .15 and with revisions is not up to 400 (correct me if i'm wrong on the xt speed) So how do we know what ati is capable of on .11 and .09 . Perhaps like sony they will have huge expensive chips meant to drop in price with rapied drops in process tech .

If anything ms is in a better postion (some what ) when the process lines drop. Ms doesn't have to pay anything to upgrade a fab . They just wait and get the new tech with improved yields for about the same price . .

Of course ms can give a contract to intel for both gpu manufacturing and the cpu .


2 years is a long way off and many things will happen in the pc sector and if anything the cards of 2005and 2006 will offer more than a 10x speed increase in many areas over todays top end chips. In a year we will know much much more on all 3 systems .

 

[Tahir2]

jvd i was being tongue in cheek but you hit the nail on the head again as you can easily speculate about MS but not so easily about Nintendo.

All these transistor budgets depend on price and available tech at the time so it is a bit osf a stab in the dark for MS, Nintendo and ATI (see N3x debacle).

 

[Wunderchu]

R300 hit 325 on .15 and with revisions is not up to 400 (correct me if i'm wrong on the xt speed)

Radeon 9800 XT has default clock of 412 MHz ..... IMO quite impressive for an over 110 million transistor chip on a 0.15μm process 8)

 

[Megadrive1988]

I would think anything north of 500 Mhz would be likely for XGPU2 8)

that said, clockspeed/MHz will play almost no role in how strong the Xenon/XB2 hardware is. it will come down to sheer amount of parallel pipelines / execution units, like the Cell-based processors in PS3.

not to mention efficiency 8)