Gamespy leaks Xenon specs (?)

[Titanio]

I wouldn't wholly agree with ruds_wp, but I do think it's interesting to see how MS are trying to shift the playing field in terms of marketing and hype this generation. They want to play out the marketing war on their terms (software software software) because it suits them to do that. If they were to have a technical advantage, you can be sure they'd push it. It'll be similarly interesting to see the reactions of so many who were quite assured of the importance of Xbox's technical superiority over GC and PS2 a few years back - will they just roll over and start singing MS's tune? Funny how the table's turn...

edit - and i should say, vice versa. it'd be interesting to see PS2 advocates, and possibly Nintendo fans, suddenly start extolling the massive importance and relevance of more powerful hardware all of a sudden. Just interesting to observe fanboyism in action, i guess, especially at times like this.

 

[ruds_wp]

Precisely.

And again I want to point out the similarity between Microsoft's stance with the Xbox 2 and Sega's stance with the Sega Saturn.

And MS is making some very baffling design decisions and cost cutting..I know they didn't want to lose as much money per unit this round but this is rediculous..

A 12X DVD rom as opposed to a 16X which is only a little bit more expensive?

An Eyetoy rip-off when they could have used that money for more ram to beef up the Xbox 2's comparatively mediocre 256MB?

No hardware audio processor?

And this is just nitpicking on my part, but I really would have liked to have seen that new physics processor in it some place.

This doesn't bode well for MS and I can just see the Sony execs with a Grinch-grin, wringing their hands.

 

[j^aws]

...
2) The X2 has 3 PPC chips running at 3.0GHz, 3-6 vector units,...
...

I'm intrigued where you're getting 6 VMX units from in 3 cores, i.e. 2 VMX units per core?

The core is dual-issue, 2-way SMT.

Each core = VMX + FPU

Assuming FMADD,

VMX ~ 8 Flops per cycle
FPU ~ 2 Flops per cycle

If they include a PPU, it will be a nice booster...

 

[pegisys]

I dont know as far as specs go xbox blew ps2 out of the water but noone cared beside the ps3 is not going to be that much better no matter what the specs are it might be a few ps3 only games that rely push the hardware just like the xbox had this go round but most developer are not going to take the time to take advantage of the hardware if they are making cross-platform games.

And if MS plan to get a nice lead on the ps3 with some great launch titles they could be just like ps2 was this gen

 

[Teasy]

What are you talking about?

What are you talking about? If the resolution in U.S and European games are the same internally then downscaling the European version for a lower output resolution will surely have the effect of reducing aliasing in those games. Hence European games will be lower res but with a higher level of AA. Unless Tahir is right of course.

 

[Pugger]

Yeah Titanio, MS will push the games they are developing over the harware this time around no doubts. The will obviously push the hardware also but will do this in conjunction with the launch games. I can't see them say its X more time powerful than console Y because they won't have that advantage. MS are taking a chance in that they think the graphical differences between the PS3 and XB2 will be minor, and to be honest they are probably correct, there going to be no massive leap in the time's between the launch date of the 2 machines. Also we don't even know the CELL setup for sure although most think its 1-8 there are nuggets of info with that suggest that it maynot be the full 250Gflop rating. Anyway time will tell. Oh and ruds_wp, PS3 is almost certain to have 256 mb also and the 16X drives sound like cement mixers and are notoriuosly unreliable. Even so a 12X drive will make mean the XB2 will be around 3 times quicker than the PS3 in the loading division.

 

[Dave Baumann]

People with the "pipeline" discussion, toss it and your previous concepts of pipelines out the window, they are redundant. In terms of PPC I would expect 8, but that tells us nothing about rendering capabilities.

 

[Titanio]

Also we don't even know the CELL setup for sure although most think its 1-8 there are nuggets of info with that suggest that it maynot be the full 250Gflop rating. Anyway time will tell.

Well, 1-8 on paper at 4Ghz would be 256Gflops (or 288Gflops more precisely), on paper. We could argue till the cows come home about what can be achieved in the real world, but for now it's probably fair to compare to X2's paper max (which would now seem to be ~90Gflops). Of course, that's purely the CPU side..

 

[Teasy]

An Eyetoy rip-off when they could have used that money for more ram to beef up the Xbox 2's comparatively mediocre 256MB?

How do you know its comparatively mediocre though. We don't even know how much ram PS3 and Revolution will have yet. Unless you mean compared to a PC, which is hardly comparable anyway.

 

[Pozer]

It's all in the games. Dramcast never had that game that everyone was dying to play (Soul Caliber was close). So the system failed. PS2, Xbox, GC all did. (Metroid,Zelda, MGS2, GTA, Halo, Splinter Cell, etc.) Thats why they're all still around.

If Xbox2 has a couple of games that I have to play and is priced right ($299)
Then I'll bite. If not. I'll wait. Most consumers will do the same. They've already proven the market can support 3 consoles.

 

[Zeross]

People with the "pipeline" discussion, toss it and your previous concepts of pipelines out the window, they are redundant. In terms of PPC I would expect 8, but that tells us nothing about rendering capabilities.

Yep, that is what was indicated in the leaked diagram

max throughputs per cycle
1 vertex
1 triangle
2 2x2 pixel quads + Z/stencil

 

[BigGamer X]

Precisely.

And again I want to point out the similarity between Microsoft's stance with the Xbox 2 and Sega's stance with the Sega Saturn.

And MS is making some very baffling design decisions and cost cutting..I know they didn't want to lose as much money per unit this round but this is rediculous..

A 12X DVD rom as opposed to a 16X which is only a little bit more expensive?

An Eyetoy rip-off when they could have used that money for more ram to beef up the Xbox 2's comparatively mediocre 256MB?

No hardware audio processor?

And this is just nitpicking on my part, but I really would have liked to have seen that new physics processor in it some place.

This doesn't bode well for MS and I can just see the Sony execs with a Grinch-grin, wringing their hands.

Everywhere you look, all the DVD drives you see read at 16X. Been this way for years. It was standard even in May 01' when I bought a previous computer. I'm sure 16X has been available from 2000. Late 2005, and only 12X These consoles are all being rushed. They should have all just waited until the tech. was available to make them worthwhile.

(Min. 512 RAM, HD-DVD or Blu-Ray drive with capability of at least a 16X DVD in terms of data transfer rate, being the most important.) Looks like we'll be looking at frequent, and long loading screens next gen. Maybe WORSE than this gan!

 

[ruds_wp]

An Eyetoy rip-off when they could have used that money for more ram to beef up the Xbox 2's comparatively mediocre 256MB?

How do you know its comparatively mediocre though. We don't even know how much ram PS3 and Revolution will have yet. Unless you mean compared to a PC, which is hardly comparable anyway.

Yes sir, to the PC. I've been spoiled by the high resolution textures afforded to PC games by obscene amounts of ram.
And I certainly wouldn't be suprised to see a 512MB PS3, though I wouldn't bet the farm on it.

 

[McFly]

(Min. 512 RAM, HD-DVD or Blu-Ray drive with capability of at least a 16X DVD in terms of data transfer rate, being the most important.) Looks like we'll be looking at frequent, and long loading screens next gen. Maybe WORSE than this gan!

It would take longer to load 512MB from a 16x DVD drive than 256MB from a 12x DVD drive ... just joking.

Fredi

 

[j^aws]

...
In terms of PPC I would expect 8, but that tells us nothing about rendering capabilities.

I presume you're referring to the CPU or is it a PPU? Care to elaborate on 8 PPC cores please?

 

[DemoCoder]

The lack of HD-DVD or BluRay is almost a deal breaker for me. I guess the PS3 will be the primary center of my home and the XB2 will be a peripheral unit. I was hoping the XB2 would have HD-DVD so I'd have the ability to play back BluRay on PS3 and HD-DVD with XB2.

Also, the specs are a little disappointing as well. No audio DSP? They're so incredibly cheap, why not include one so that all of the CPU can be dedicated for physics, AI, and graphics, and not for commodity dolby encoding.

People with the "pipeline" discussion, toss it and your previous concepts of pipelines out the window, they are redundant. In terms of PPC I would expect 8, but that tells us nothing about rendering capabilities.

It tells us the fillrate which is important *sometimes*. While 4gp/s looks enough to handle 720p at high overdraw, the question is, is it enough to handle a game with heavy usage of render to texture or stencil fill? The approach "Let's dedicate enough die to fill 720p @ 60hz, and then use all the space left over for shader-ALU" might hit a snag if it turns out you need several times the fillrate to do new and interesting algorithms which don't fit into the shader paradigm.


The speed of the DVD is an issue. With no harddrive *standard* and a slow disc, how well with UnrealEngine3-style streaming techniques work?

 

[j^aws]

Also we don't even know the CELL setup for sure although most think its 1-8 there are nuggets of info with that suggest that it maynot be the full 250Gflop rating. Anyway time will tell.

Well, 1-8 on paper at 4Ghz would be 256Gflops (or 296 Gflops more precisely), on paper. We could argue till the cows come home about what can be achieved in the real world, but for now it's probably fair to compare to X2's paper max (which would now seem to be ~90Gflops). Of course, that's purely the CPU side..

Fixed it for ya! (PPE ~ 10 Flops per cycle)

Don't expect anything as high as that though if the Xenon tri-cores are clocked at 3 GHz, which indicates as much as yields, how much heat can be tolerated inside a small console enclosure...

 

[EndR]

The comments about Xenon and the "underwhelming" feeling those specs give.. I find that amuzing..

I mean, it seems like people here can like "see" what kind kind of graphics Xbox2 will be able to render in realtime..

Like people can see what a tricore at 3Ghz, an ATI GPU at 500+mhz kan produce ....

I think that those who aren´t "impressed" with Xbox2 specs are the ones that expectec 1 Tflops PS3 and anything less than that will like suck monkeys ass...

Now, these Xbox2 specs aren´t final from what I gather and of course, the higher specs, the nicer it would be, but xbox2 will still produce some sweet gfx...

you will be suprised..

/ me trying to imagine Xbox2 graphics soley based on the specs known, nope..can´t be done yet.. 8)

 

[Titanio]

Fixed it for ya! (PPE ~ 10 Flops per cycle)

Don't expect anything as high as that though if the Xenon tri-cores are clocked at 3 GHz, which indicates as much as yields, how much heat can be tolerated inside a small console enclosure...

Don't worry, I'm not, I was just making a point about how a 1-8 setup would fair. I wouldn't be surprised if we get 1-8 at a lower clock, or 1-4 at a higher clock.

 

[DeanoC]

Everywhere you look, all the DVD drives you see read at 16X. Been this way for years. It was standard even in May 01' when I bought a previous computer. I'm sure 16X has been available from 2000. Late 2005, and only 12X

Disc flutter increases error rates, spinning the discs faster just causes more errors, causing more re-reads...

Last time I heard, no vendor could supply a 16X speed drive that had a faster real world read rate than a 12X.

Its not drives that have to change but the discs (I've heard MS XP test labs have exploded discs using 16X drives)