Microsoft leaks details on Xbox Next

[randycat99]

Re: ...

At last- I get to make my own contribution to this topic!

Big blue has their own name for altivec, I can't remember it right now, and it's not important either since everybody just calls it altivec anyway.

I believe "VMX" is IBM's home-rolled version of Altivec.

 

[-tkf-]

Team Xbox has some more details:
http://www.teamxbox.com/news.php?id=5388

They say PowerPC 976 processors will be used and the GPU will have embedded memory used as the frame buffer.

Hey, they learned some more from the PS2

 

[chapban.]

PS2 was not the first graphiX with embedded ram.

 

[PC-Engine]

Specs sound FAKE...

 

[chapban.]

Specs sound FAKE...

Well DUH!

Cant say if FAKEY or not, just a mish a mash grab a here and there from various rumors. This Takahashi guy is not showing strong professionalism...i could write such an article and sent to mecurynews and earn some moneee! The title sounds more revealing than what the actual article contains.

 

[Geeforcer]

Earlier release date? That worked wonders for Saturn and Dreamcast.

Saturn early release was TEH suck. Truly blotched job by Sega and DC coming after the Saturn nightmare(bad rep + bad bank balance) didnt help. Sega was going downhill then, MS is gaining steam now.

I can see Xbox2 doing potentially better than Saturn + DC. Unless they do a funny FUBAR job. But it is MS, runs by smart geeks, should be safer. Xbox Live will be one of TEH crucial part next gen.

Why? According to rumors, MS is trying to reconcile two inehritly contradictory goals:

1) React to PSX3, reconfiguring the system if necessary
2) Beat PSX3 to the market.

They are trying to be the leader AND the follower at the same time. In addition, the lack of hard drive would undermine the content distribution aspect of Live!. The games are not getting any smaller and forcing people to save their add-ons onto memory cards is ridiculous. As it stands now, Xbox is a modest success. Why would Xbox2, with less selling points then its predecessor, do any better?

 

[cthellis42]

Well, the lead off at least lends it some credibility--Microsoft has quietly circulated the specifications for its next-generation Xbox video-game console, indicating how the company plans to carry on its war against dominant player Sony--because unless the guy is BLATANTLY LYING about everything (or being blatantly midled, either by his sources or by Microsoft TO his sources), this isn't just garden variety analyst guesses getting tossed out. And as much as some sites are prone to random guesswork in order to spur interest and attract hits, I don't really think they're up for blatant lying.

The truth (and full details) will pan out eventually, but in the meanwhile this is just a bit more solidity than normal to mull over.

 

[Dave Baumann]

On compatibiltiy - NVIDIA has already stated they can't see any reasons why NV2A can't be emulated by a newer DX architecture.

 

[chapban.]

Why? According to rumors, MS is trying to reconcile two inehritly contradictory goals:

1) React to PSX3, reconfiguring the system if necessary
2) Beat PSX3 to the market.

They are trying to be the leader AND the follower at the same time. In addition, the lack of hard drive would undermine the content distribution aspect of Live!. The games are not getting any smaller and forcing people to save their add-ons onto memory cards is ridiculous. As it stands now, Xbox is a modest success. Why would Xbox2, with less selling points then its predecessor, do any better?

I don see why both are contradictory? You need to react to act well, of coz Takahashi 'leaky' article made it sound as if MS is smelling up Sony ass and aping things closely. I dunno, but it be just what competition does, keep yeay eyes on that other guy and try to push yeay stuff better. Takahashi just made it sound so serious or something.

Beating PSX3 is what MS has always wanted. Probably that be happen in US market while Japan will either see head to head or a lil later than PSX3.

Back to early launch, for what blasting Sega got, DC sold quite well. Yeay there be some gamers waiting for PS2 hype, but what hurts DC most is the devs' lack of trust to make big games for it, waiting and waiting, gamers also waiting and waiting for the big games. In the end, you get mostly Sega doing their games on DC. Their bank dried up and no chance for DC to carry on.

This be different with the Xbox, MS has gotten good Western support and drumming up Eastern support by the day. Games made the day, and if PSX3 is delayed or if tEh shiite to program(tm), Xbox2 has got a good chance to up more support! M$ can lure them suckers with their EVIL(tm) monopoly money.

Lack of had drive? That be also a rumor, BUT if true, and obviously important to online play, nothing stopping MS with a Live 2 Starter Kit, includes 60GB hard drive! Sell it cheap, make your money back with monthly subscriptions/downloads.

Hard drive in Xbox1 is under utilise as yet, makes hacking easier and MS must think, bleh might as well sell to those who are going to need it.

AS yet, its just a rumor.

 

[hey69]

like I told it back in november :http://www.beyond3d.com/forum/viewforum.php?f=4&topicdays=0&start=200 , those specs are already months known.
you better believe they will release end of 2005 they will do whatever they can to launch before Sony.

 

[cybamerc]

I mean, surely noone with a sane mind would expect that MS would slip from their home OS throne just because some other OS offers a bit more of this and that, right?

Not really a comparable situation. For most people buying a Windows license is not a conscious decision - it is something that is forced on them when they buy a new computer. For others it's simply a matter of practicality - it's a familiar interface, it's compatible with their existing software, it has the widest software selection including games, it's easier to get pirated software for, it's what everybody else has and so forth. Few people actually have a real desire to go out and buy the newest version of Windows. Additionally you don't have any real alternatives. There's OS X but it requires the purchase of relatively expensive hardware. Or Linux which has a crappy software selection and lacks overall direction.

Not to say M$ can't be brought down but it'll be significantly more difficult than overtaking Sony in the next console generation.

 

[nobie]

Re: ...

At last- I get to make my own contribution to this topic!

Big blue has their own name for altivec, I can't remember it right now, and it's not important either since everybody just calls it altivec anyway.

I believe "VMX" is IBM's home-rolled version of Altivec.

However PowerPC 976 will use the successor to VMX, VMX2. Supposed to have better performance and more general-purpose use.

 

[Magnum PI]

Team Xbox has some more details:
http://www.teamxbox.com/news.php?id=5388

They say PowerPC 976 processors will be used and the GPU will have embedded memory used as the frame buffer.

Hey, they learned some more from the PS2

the console has more similarities w/ the gamecube

ibm PPC cpu
ATI GPU
...

 

[London Geezer]

Yeay there be some gamers waiting for PS2 hype

Yeah I'm pretty sure that would be you. And Deadmeat. People who got so caught up into what fanbois (Not Sony) were spreading on the net, without having a critical eye, that when the real thing came out, the only thing you could be was ultimately being disappointed. But i digress.

On compatibiltiy - NVIDIA has already stated they can't see any reasons why NV2A can't be emulated by a newer DX architecture.

It was a given so far, that the NV20 wasn't the problem here, the real issue is that it will be complicated to emulate the Xbox without a HDD.


I agree with whoever said that it is a questionable business model (You should know something about it, DM) to be a follower and at the same time trying to be the leader. It is true that ultimately and indirectly, Sony are building the Xbox2 specs. Ironic.
Many things can happen, the reality is, MS needs to seriously think about what they're doing, and featuring Xbox in pretty much every american sit-com doesn't help, as much as they think it does... (Did anyone notice at all?)

 

[Dave Baumann]

It was a given so far, that the NV20 wasn't the problem here

There's some discussion in the thread about the CPU's emulating NVIDIA's rasteriser IP, which really wouldn't be necessary.

 

[London Geezer]

It was a given so far, that the NV20 wasn't the problem here

There's some discussion in the thread about the CPU's emulating NVIDIA's rasteriser IP, which really wouldn't be necessary.

That's quite laughable... How could anyone think that... If the next Xgpu is a DX compliant derivative, then it should have no problem at all running what NV2A is running now. I was actually thinking what "extras" the Rx00 in Xbox2 could add on top of the original software... like AA, AF or additional resolution. Shouldn't be too hard to implement (see: FORCE IT) would it?


EDIT: BTW, Playing PDO at 720p with LOADS of AA and AF would be sweet. Although i'm sure there will be games on Xbox2 that will make PDO look "below average" in 2 years time... I'm strictly speaking in techincal terms here! PDO will always look good because the art is good, much like other games that rely on art rather than features, which is not what PDO is, but you get my point...

 

[Guden Oden]

Well, perhaps. But he did refer to the "necessary guts" being put into the XBox2, did he not?

Meaning CPU, RAM, GPU, perhaps?

there's less than a snowball's chance in hell of a PPC emulating the hardwired functionality of a modern rasterizer at anything remotely "real-time."

True. Fortunately, the CPU wouldn't have to emulate the hardwired functionality; that the GPU would happily take care of once the CPU emulated the celeron + NV2A's register-level programming interface. That's about all the work today's N64 emulators do, by the way. Oh, and do the same for sound too, but I don't know if the sound hardware is exposed on the register level, so it might not be much work at all if it's all DX function calls.

With 6 PPC cores, it should actually be feasible too, with power to spare even.

I can't disagree more.

Well, you're not wrong, you just took your train of thought TOO FAR. Should have gotten off at the previous station, man.

One multi-GHz PPC should be able to emulate both a crummy 733MHz celeron (especially since PPC can switch to little-endian mode), and the registers of NV2A. All the hardwired stuff will still be done by hardwired, umm, hardware.

(And Deadmeat's on a roll again, contradicting developers and re-making up known facts to fit his fiction... Geez.)

 

[Simon F]

The funny thing is I'd agree that Xbox isn't that much more powerful than PS2, but I'd disagree that nobody notices the difference. I find the texture quality on PS2 games is generally poor. Not licensing S3TC was a truly massive mistake.

But, surely, S3TC wasn't around at the time of the design of the GS chip in the PS2.

VQ, OTOH, was around and could easily have been incorporated (well, in a sense PS2 does have a form of VQ in the form of palette textures).

 

[Guden Oden]

Re: ...

And exactly what does that prove??? Both SSE and Vertex Shader does the same thing; Intel threw in SSE to accelerate T&L from the CPU side before the arrival of GPU side T&L, which is faster and works more efficiently anyway.

*cough*

If you actually read the piece, you'll see Tim Sweeney, your Lord and God, never even once mentions T&L.

Try to dodge that one, if you can!

And that Intel made SSE purely for T&L is as big a load of horsesh!te as you generally produce around here, amongst the first to support SSE were audio codecs, raytracers and such. Actually took longer for GAME support...

 

[Simon F]

Re: ..

PS. My reasoning against Altivec in Xbox Next
4. MS has nothing to gain from Altivec. Vertex Shader has displaced the usefulness of Altivec for T&L.

[Speculation mode] Unless, of course, they try to the cut cost of the rendering chip by moving all the VS functionality into software. If the system really does have 3 CPUs then that seems like a very powerful (and very flexible) approach.[/Speculation mode]