"Bringing DirectX 10 to Xbox 360"

[Rolf N]

I was absolutely not being sarcastic. Maybe I was a tad melodramatic, but also sincere.

Xenos has a specific feature set and that's it. It can execute shaders of this-and-that length, with this-and-that precision, can do all sorts of texturing, some branching, supports data formats ABC, has limitations XYZ etc.
Whatever the man says about "DX10", even the implication that the box right now is "DX9" or whatnot is a total waste of time because it doesn't change a damn thing about the feature set nor performance of the hardware and everything else (memexport yadda yadda) is software anyway. This is a console for crying out loud. Last time I've seen one there wasn't any opening for an aftermarket graphics card upgrade.

"This hardware is DX9" could be a useful abstraction if you really intended to say anything substantial with it. Unfortunately it is often used by people who don't really know specifically what is being said with that phrase and who don't give a fuck either, beyond the elementary wisdom "10 > 9". Not saying that this is here, but the guy IMO is adressing that exact audience.

This is a simple case of trying to sound as "modern" and "bleeding edge" as possible while the only way that can technically be possible is that they are admitting to be incompetent enough fools to have significantly underexposed their custom-built hardware so far.

So,
Does Xenos have a geometry shader now? No?
Does Xenos support integer bit twiddling operations in the shader ALUs now? No? Thought so.

Because those are the things DX10 exposes beyond D3D9 (and I'm not saying "enables" for a reason thx).

Or are we really talking about software?
Did Xenos get rid of caps in favor of more numerous minor revisions?
Does Xenos, the single memory controller in an UMA system, only just now start to support free-style memory access?

 

[RobertR1]

As long as Xenos can do SOME of the DX10 functions, MS will push it as "DX10 Graphics!" as the holidays and Vista gets closer.

Rarely is "tech talk" and "marketing talk" the same. Guess which one you're seeing?

 

[Rolf N]

I'm far beyond guessing actually.
I just wonder which "DX10 function" can even unreasonably be attributed to Xenos. I.e. the hardware.

Of course he is adressing an audience that is content with not knowing the difference between DX10 and DX9, because the numbers sum up so handily that the former is better

 

[mrboo]

As long as Xenos can do SOME of the DX10 functions, MS will push it as "DX10 Graphics!" as the holidays and Vista gets closer.

Rarely is "tech talk" and "marketing talk" the same. Guess which one you're seeing?

Im going to go out on a limb here and say that PS3 should be able to do more DX10 effects then 360. Purely from the help that can it get from the already extensivly talked about Cell<>RSX relationship, i think nAo has already said that Cell+VS are more flexible than DX10 geometry pipe line. Can anyone shed some light on his comment for us less technically mind'd?

Note: Apologies for spelling ( i would also welcome any corrections so that i dont spell them wrong again )

 

[zed]

Cell+VS are more flexible than DX10 geometry pipe line

well a cpu is far more flexible than even the best gpu either now or in the next couple of years, basically u can do anything with the cell/cpu eg geometry tessleation etc without restrictions (except restriction of time/memory etc) . now d3d10 gpu's whilst giving u more control than previous versions is still gonna be less capable than this.

in fact in my game i do most of the vertex processing on the cpu + just pass the resulting vertices to the gpu to shade, i admit though im doing nothing fancy with the vertice processing (its more for shadows)

 

[mrboo]

Cool, thanks for the respose zed

 

[blakjedi]

Im going to go out on a limb here and say that PS3 should be able to do more DX10 effects then 360. Purely from the help that can it get from the already extensivly talked about Cell<>RSX relationship, i think nAo has already said that Cell+VS are more flexible than DX10 geometry pipe line. Can anyone shed some light on his comment for us less technically mind'd?

Note: Apologies for spelling ( i would also welcome any corrections so that i dont spell them wrong again )

Not sure why you could not insert <anycpu>+VS would be more flexible... what if the GPU of one were more advanced... <anycpu>+"themoreadvancedVS" would not get dusted by Cell<> RSX would it? Would it?



I like how folks use comments by certain developers to support their expectations of their favorite system being better... How many devs have we heard extensively detail what the xenon<>xenos relationship could do... by my count exactly 0... for whatever reason...

 

[Acert93]

I like how folks use comments by certain developers to support their expectations of their favorite system being better... How many devs have we heard extensively detail what the xenon<>xenos relationship could do... by my count exactly 0... for whatever reason...

As much as Dave has contributed to our knowledge of Xenos, at the end of the day when we look at the active posters in the console sectioner there is 1 Xbox developer on the forums, 1 multi-platform, and nearly a dozen PS developers. I would be willing to go out on a limb and say a currently exclusive PS3 developer has given us more information on Xenon than any other source. More than a tad ironic that we know more about RSX and Cell than we do about Xenos and Xenon in many ways.

 

[NRP]

As far as I can remember, the only devs who have "hands on" experience with the 360 and have spoken about it are ERP and Fran. There may be more, but I haven't seen them.

In contrast, nAo, DeanoC, Mr. Wibble, and Faf have provided lots of interesting info about developing on the PS3.

I too wish more 360 devs would talk about the platform. Perhaps they're all just busy finishing games for a holiday '06 release?

 

[mrboo]

Not sure why you could not insert <anycpu>+VS would be more flexible... what if the GPU of one were more advanced... <anycpu>+"themoreadvancedVS" would not get dusted by Cell<> RSX would it? Would it?

You really need to take a break and stop flaming. Its my opinion based on developer comments, please respect it

 

[clem64]

I'm still wondering how much of Xenos (if anything) really is DX10 compliant. Here:

http://www.twitchguru.com/2005/11/18/xbox_360/page3.html

they kinda hint that the chip might have (in part at least) some DX10 hardware in it.

"ATI has devoted a lot of its time to developing a graphics chipset worthy of the name. Their Radeon X1000 family is based on the DirectX specifications, particularly version 9.0c (Shader Model 3.0). The Xenos (the codename for the Xbox 360's chipset) is based largely on the same specifications, but goes far beyond them. In fact, the specifications for the Xenos exceed those called for in Microsoft's Windows Graphics Foundation 2.0, aka DirectX 10."

They're being kinda vague. I'm left wondering how much of Xenos really is DX10 HW.

 

[Tap In]

I'm still wondering how much of Xenos (if anything) really is DX10 compliant. Here:

http://www.twitchguru.com/2005/11/18/xbox_360/page3.html

they kinda hint that the chip might have (in part at least) some DX10 hardware in it.

"ATI has devoted a lot of its time to developing a graphics chipset worthy of the name. Their Radeon X1000 family is based on the DirectX specifications, particularly version 9.0c (Shader Model 3.0). The Xenos (the codename for the Xbox 360's chipset) is based largely on the same specifications, but goes far beyond them. In fact, the specifications for the Xenos exceed those called for in Microsoft's Windows Graphics Foundation 2.0, aka DirectX 10."

They're being kinda vague. I'm left wondering how much of Xenos really is DX10 HW.

maybe Dave can help?

I remember reading some other comments from Dave though that pointed to it certainly being more HW compliant with DX10 than any other console GPU will be.

 

[TurnDragoZeroV2G]

please respect it

Not bringing console-vs-console debates into threads would go a long way in preventing people from flaming as well as getting people to respect your opinions. In any case, such a tangent, if it really needs to be discussed anymore, should be moved to its own topic so we can preserve the focus of this one.

I'll vote for it being a layer over the 360 API to more easily support those D3D10 features/limits that Xenos can emulate/multipass/etc.

 

[mrboo]

Not bringing console-vs-console debates into threads would go a long way in preventing people from flaming.

You are correct, please accept my apologies all.

 

[Acert93]

maybe Dave can help?

I remember reading some other comments from Dave though that pointed to it certainly being more HW compliant with DX10 than any other console GPU will be.

http://www.beyond3d.com/articles/xenos/index.php?p=09

That chart gives a detailed survey of SM2.0 and SM3.0 capability requirements and how Xenos compares. Of course it doesn't list some of the other features of Xenos (tesselation, memexport, various filtering formats, etc) I think as we learn more about ATI's D3D10 GS implimentation with streamout some of Xenos' features will come more into view. Only a couple more months to go :smile:

 

[Arty]

As long as Xenos can do SOME of the DX10 functions, MS will push it as "DX10 Graphics!" as the holidays and Vista gets closer.

Rarely is "tech talk" and "marketing talk" the same. Guess which one you're seeing?

Well SOME is better than NONE.

 

[Demirug]

This thread about the Shadermodels that are supported from XNA seems to be interesting in this context. Locks like that Xenos is not able to process PC SM3 without problems.

 

[mrboo]

This thread about the Shadermodels that are supported from XNA seems to be interesting in this context. Locks like that Xenos is not able to process PC SM3 without problems.

Were does it say that?

 

[Demirug]

Were does it say that?

PC: SM1.1 through SM3.0
XBox 360: SM 2.0 and the XBox 360 specific SM 3.0 variation

If the Xbox could handle PC SM 3.0 native the answer from Paul Bleisch should be different. In this case he had written SM 2.0, SM 3.0 and a specific SM 3.0 variation.

 

[AlNom]

If the Xbox could handle PC SM 3.0 native the answer from Paul Bleisch should be different. In this case he had written SM 2.0, SM 3.0 and a specific SM 3.0 variation.

Couldn't that just be referring to the superset of SM3.0? (What some here have called SM3.0+). We know that it has full SM3.0 specs plus a bit more. I don't quite see how he implies that PC SM3.0 does not work.