Next gen consoles: hints?

[Super Grafx]

X-Box2? How about the numbers, 3 & 256? Those specs are also making the rounds to developers.

3 billion polygons/sec ?

256 MB of memory ?

Japan has talked about a game using 25k model characters. Yes I know, rather meaningless without more details but that's all I know.

25,000 polygon models seems kinda low, for nextgen console standards, if we are talking about a game with 2-6 such characters on screen at once. however, if this game is a Kessen game, or some game that uses lots & lots of characters on screen at once, then that would be impressive, from a pure polygon standpoint. of course, as you said, it's all quite meaningless without more details.

 

[Super Grafx]

Quote:
The new nintendo system will most likely be the value version of whatever the r500 turns out to be


Really ? So its actually one team, developing for both N5 and Xbox2 ? I thought it was seperate team.

What are the chances that N5 and Xbox2 have the exact same chip ?

the Nintendo GCN2 aka N5, and the Xbox2 graphics processors are under development at ATI by two seperate design teams. ATI west coast in California and ATI east in or near Toronto. this has been said on several different occasions by ATI's very own Dave Orton.

also here:
http://www.extremetech.com/article2/0,3973,1220430,00.asp

Don't expect the graphics capabilities of future Nintendo and Microsoft products to be exactly the same, however, the ATI spokesman said. "Yes, we have different design teams working on them, with different requirements and different timetables," the spokesman said

ATI west, formly the ArtX team that made the Flipper for Gamecube and the R300 for PCs, is doing the Nintendo GPU for the next console, and possibly/probably the graphics for the next Gameboy also.

meanwhile, ATI east, that made the R200 (Radeon 8500) and forthcoming R420 and R500 is working on the Xbox2/Xenon graphics processor, that will most likely be a derivative of R500, a year-2005 VPU.


There are different performance goals for Nintendo and Xbox2.

Whatever PC graphics processor the Xbox2 graphics processor is being based on, it will be a next generation Radeon, of one class or another. much like the Xbox uses a derivative of GeForce3

The Nintendo chip, on the other hand, will most likely be an evolution of the previous two Nintendo console chips: the Flipper in Gamecube and its predacessor, the Reality Co-Processor in Nintendo64 ...both totally different from PC hardware.

 

[cthellis42]

100gb isn't really a lot ( About 12GBytes )

I rather assumed he was talking gigabytrs and just didn't capitalize. Hehe... I haven't seen people refer to optical disk storage in gigabits in a LONG time (if ever). About the only place that commonly uses that now is talking about broadband connections.

At any rate, 12GB would be believable and a solid-enough number.

 

[passerby]

As I mentioned before, PS3 specs are making the rounds. Japan has talked about a game using 25k model characters. Yes I know, rather meaningless without more details but that's all I know.

X-Box2? How about the numbers, 3 & 256? Those specs are also making the rounds to developers.

Yay! Guessing games can begin!

Actually Super Grafx's posts pretty much summed up the possibilities...

Although I will like to make a polite requests to those "in the know" to at least let us know if Ty's info is wrong...

 

[Super Grafx]

actually, the 256 could be referring to the width of the bus-- i would hope it is something other than memory amount, because 256 seems awfully low for memory.

 

[cthellis42]

256 isn't unbelievably low for console memory, though, as 24-64MB would be laughable in the PC arena, but can be made quite workable with today's consoles. Speed of RAM and looking at the overall memory architecture make more difference in that arena than just looking at one arbitrary pool number.

 

[Fafalada]

Actually Super Grafx's posts pretty much summed up the possibilities...

Oh come now, he didn't even put any real effort into guessing yet.
How about 3Teraflops, 3Ghz GPU, 3ATI GPUs, 3Terrabytes of memory, 3controller ports... the list goes on and on

 

[passerby]

How about 3Teraflops, 3Ghz GPU, 3ATI GPUs, 3Terrabytes of memory, 3controller ports

We mean realistic possibilities. I don't you believe those either...

 

[Tahir2]

Faf, 3? What's wrong with the number 4?

 

[Wunderchu]

ATI east, that made the R200 (Radeon 8500) and forthcoming R420 and R500 is working on the Xbox2/Xenon graphics processor, that will most likely be a derivative of R500, a year-2005 VPU.

ATI east team designed R100 , R200 , was designing R400 but then stopped working on R400 and began R500 [and are now very likely working on Xbox Next 's VPU (along with R500)] ...... ATI west (made of many ArtX ppl) is working on R420 [and are now very likely working on GameCube 2 's VPU (along with R420)] .. they worked on Flipper (when they were still ArtX), and some of ArtX people worked on N64 ...

 

[archie4oz]

Gee, I was just going to stick with 3 and 256 for Xbox...

How about 3Teraflops, 3Ghz GPU, 3ATI GPUs, 3Terrabytes of memory, 3controller ports... the list goes on and on

I think 3 controller ports would be funny, reminds me of Cylons and Zor...

 

[Grall]

You're looking at it upside down

Yeah, I noticed that myself a little after making the post, but I couldn't be arsed to correct it. Besides, even if it IS held the other way, it has a really really ODD shape that doesn't look suited at all for human hands.

Those pics HAVE to have been made by some happy amateur who's much too infatuated with shiny shine and little to no knowledge of ergonomics. chromed plastics feels very weird against the skin, it immediately gets greasy and kinda slippery.

It's like all those blue diodes we see on everything these days. Who cares if it's comfy as long as we got shiny shine in our homebrewn concept pix, right?


*G*

 

[Grall]

How about 3Teraflops, 3Ghz GPU, 3ATI GPUs, 3Terrabytes of memory, 3controller ports... the list goes on and on

You forgot: 3 blueray drives too.

*G*

 

[MfA]

At any rate, 12GB would be believable and a solid-enough number.

For a single layer (cheap) DVD sized disc with traditional red laser technology it would actually be pretty damn special, even if double sided. Even so, the NTU people were actually promising 100 GB (double sided I think). They said they should be able to put it in product form in 2004.

 

[cthellis42]

Have any good info links for that? Can't say that I've heard anything about it, and offhand if it's something feasable with capacity trumping AOD and Blu-Ray AND able to be made operational soon, you'd figure it would be getting more press.

...provided it's remotely affordable, at least.

 

[MfA]

Pulled this off google.

As for technical info, check this for an older patent of the technique spefically for recordable discs (there is a much more recent Taiwanese one, but no text for that) and a more recent one which applies the same technique to a scanning optical microscope. If they are intelligent a patent which applies it to scanning litography is under way (wether it works or not, if they cant get it to work someone else might ... it is theoretically possible with left handed materials, and you dont have to get it to work to get the patent).

 

[Super Grafx]

ATI east team designed R100 , R200 , was designing R400 but then stopped working on R400 and began R500 [and are now very likely working on Xbox Next 's VPU (along with R500)] ..... ATI west (made of many ArtX ppl) is working on R420 [and are now very likely working on GameCube 2 's VPU (along with R420)] .. they worked on Flipper (when they were still ArtX), and some of ArtX people worked on N64 ...

to reitterate:
Yes, I forgot that ATI-east made R100 (original Radeon) also. East were designing R400 before it was scrapped. I'm not sure who is making R420 now. east or west. R500 is being done at ATI-east, and it's pretty much certain that ATI-east is doing the Xbox2 graphics while ATI-west is doing Nintendo graphics.


beyond that, I am clueless

 

[Fafalada]

We mean realistic possibilities. I don't you believe those either...

I just gave some examples, the real guesswork is up to you guys.
Although frankly I don't really think 3Gigapolys is much more realistic then some of the stuff I listed.
Ok, we can do some 256 too. 256MB of embeded memory. 256bit FPU units (double precision all the way baby!)... 256shades of green on XBox logo... 8)

I think 3 controller ports would be funny, reminds me of Cylons and Zor...

Hehe, I figured you of all people might like that one, plus if that wouldn't be headline news on the net, then I don't know what Shaping controller as a number 3 would be cool too indeed.

 

[archie4oz]

Shaping controller as a number 3 would be cool too indeed.

ARGH! You thief!

Too bad this isn't Xbox3 or something, then the 3 idea would REALLY go over well... Hehe, they could emblazon xXx all over it and get sued by Sony...

Anyways in keeping with the theme of 3's how about instead of 256 shades of green, how about dark grey (or for the geek folk, #333333)?

 

[passerby]

I don't really think 3Gigapolys is much more realistic

Thanks for that input. Visualization is not my(our) specialty, so we appreciate inputs about realistic limits.

256bits FPU units... 4 double precision pipes? ATI engineering is still struggling with 32-bit precision on their GPUs aren't they? Not familiar with PowerPC Altivec though. But I think we expect(at least, I expect) the XB implementation to be GPU-centric, so I'm not sure how useful 4 double-precision pipes on the CPU is. However, I expect such a thing will be very nice for Sony's design approach.

But that "3" is still tricky to think about. 3K million polys? *shrugs*

Anyone providing approximations of R500's capabilities?

Assuming rumours about "3" and "256" are true, it will be more useful if these are "useful information for where the actual hardware is not available". For example, information about memory, polycounts, texture limits etc. so dev teams can already start working on the art assets and models.