Nextbox I/O Processor - possible candidate!

[Wiseblood]

So....why wouldn't a client benefit from having an equally fast connection?

Because it won't be a client for a fileserver, it will be either an internet client (which most of the time doesn't even approach 10Mbs) or networked to other XBox2s in a LAN. And if a game needs gigabit speeds for LAN play, then I think the developers need to seriously optimize their netcode.

The only people who might even remotely benefit from it is people who modded their console. And we all know how willing Microsoft is to cater to their needs.

 

[Fox5]

* Intel High-Definition audio codec for sound
- Possible....but xbox2 has nothing to do with intel.

It's an open industry standard, like AC97 is. Intel is just the one who developed it, and it's already getting integrated into PC chipsets. It's not an expensive fancy-pants solution like the soundstorm setup with three separate DSPs like the Nvidia custom sound hardware in the current box, yet it has raw specs that are way beyond soundstorm too; it supports 24-bit DACs and 192kHz samplerate and at least 8-channel sound too.

* Gigabit ethernet
- Doubt it, unnecessary cost that has little benefit.

Don't forget that big figures sound impressive, and the cost will be marginal to say the least. Next year practically all NICs integrated on mobos will be gigabit, since it's getting built into the chipsets themselves.

* USB2 joypad ports
- Doubt it, USB1.1 based would suffice.

You can "doubt it" all you want, but the joypad ports WILL be USB2, because that is what the root hubs built into southbridge chips offers today (and have done since...well, a long time). And the cables and connectors are exactly the same as USB1.1 too, so there is zero cost benefit.

* SATA drive interface(s)
- Umm, no, it may not even have a harddrive

LOL, it will still need an optical drive, and that will most likely be SATA. Why do you think they developed it in the first place if it wasn't cheaper and better than current parallel ATA?

* PCI Express expansion bay??? (wild speculation mode)
- Probably not, I don't think ms wants expansions.

We shall see. If the chipset offers it they might well use it. I too think it is unlikely, but an exciting and intriguing possibility nevertheless.

After all, PS2 has an expansion bay (PCMCIA interface), and GC has three...

I think it will be as barebone and cost cutting as possible.

But it won't! You think they'd stick in an expensive custom triple-core CPU and then worry about wether joypad ports are USB1.1 or USB2??? LOL, you make no sense.

NO!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! Something Intel can't be better than SoundStorm! Oh well, as long as they still include a dolby digital encoder.

And I'm basing my evidence that nothing in the xbox(except the nv2a), not even the cabling, was top of the line. Microsoft went for a powerful graphics chip, and then cut costs wherever else they could. Why would microsoft spend ANY amount of extra money on something that 99.9% of people who own xbox, even if they use the feature, would notice any difference over a cheaper and slower part? You don't need gigabit ethernet, not even for lan gmaing, you don't need USB2.0, xbox currently transfers voice, input, powers a rumble thingy, reads a memory card, etc over usb 1.0 or 1.1.
And you think an optical drive, which is slower than a harddrive, would have a speed improvement with SATA? I haven't even seen SATA optical drives yet.
And gamecube and PS2 had expansion bays, but microsoft takes a loss on hardware. Xbox had everything built in microsoft ever wanted you to use, and I suspect xbox 2 will be the same way, microsoft doesn't want to sell more hardware after the initial sale, they want you to buy software and services that have a very low upkeep. More hardware just splits the userbase and creates something else ms has to support, at no benefit to themselves.
And yes, I think they would stick a triple core cpu in(which hasn't been proven yet) and not stick in USB2.0, after spending all that money on the cpu, they'd want to cut costs wherever possible.

However, something someone mentioned in this thread, about xbox2 being used as a multimedia streamer, well ms already has something like that for xbox, and if they plan on continuing it for xbox2 then it would make sense to have gigabit ethernet....load times suck for a tv like device.
If SATA is cheaper, it will be in there.

My server is running on gigabit ethernet. It works nicely . we have 5 computers hooked into it and we can transfer files to each other very very quickly . It also cuts down the lag in lan games.

How many xbox 2's will have internet connections capable of acting as servers? And I have 2 computers on a non gigabit ethernet lan, I don't consider sub 5 pings to be lag.

 

[a688]

So....why wouldn't a client benefit from having an equally fast connection?

Because it won't be a client for a fileserver

Um....isn't Microsoft the one who wants a PC to be the center (a.k.a a server) of the entertainment and the xbox to be a client? If you don't have anything else connected then why shouldn't you be able to use the full 1 gig link. Also, if your horrible "but our internet connection is only 10mpbs max", with your realization, microsoft should have just put a modem in the xbox since thats the speed that most people have. And I guess you have never heard of "fiber to the curb" in some places where they get MORE than 10mpbs connections, not to mention the outragious speeds people can get at certain universitites and in other countries.

EDIT: Just because you don't think you'll use it all, doesn't mean that other people can't for valid reasons.

 

[a688]

whole bunch of stuff above me

I think the xbox WILL have SATA connections. Why? becuase thats what being used more and more. There are optical SATA drives out there but they arn't that popular NOW since there is not a relatively large number of people who have hardware who can support them. Also, xBox 2 is being designed DIFFERENTLY than they designed xBox 1 so using the current xBox as your base comparison tool isn't such a good idea. USB2 will be there as well, why not, I don't see companies going out to advertise they have USB1, they advertise their USB2, its not like USB2 just came out today. Its been out for a while, and it IS displacing 1.1 as the standard to have.

EDIT: Also, for gigabit connections, its not jsut the PING as you stated. If you want game worlds with a large number of people then you NEED connections with not only a low ping but ALSO a large pipe as well. If you have ever seen the excel spreadsheet put out by valve that shows what you need for a server for i think counterstrike w/ a number of people. By plugging in different number for the amount of people you want to be able to be in the world at one time the bandwidth goes sky high (this is for counterstrike only, i know differnet games have different netcode). For a large (like more than 32 or 64 players) LAN gaming session, gigbit would be nice.

 

[Wiseblood]

Again it comes down to cost vs benefit. It's obvious that after their experience with this XBox Microsoft is trying to save money wherever they can with the next XBox (even to the point of considering dropping the hard drive entirely). Unless they can get SATA and Gigabit parts for the same cost as parallel ATA and 100Mbps they're not gong to add them just so they can have an extra bullet point for marketing. I'm sure they are carefully looking at every little thing and are deciding if the added benefit is worth the extra cost. To you every tiny improvement is worth it because you'll be paying the same price no matter what. To Microsoft these things will be sold at a loss and even a price difference of a penny per unit quickly becomes a lot of money when you multiply that by millions of units.

 

[jvd]

How many xbox 2's will have internet connections capable of acting as servers? And I have 2 computers on a non gigabit ethernet lan, I don't consider sub 5 pings to be lag.

my two sisters use the xboxs on lan to play against each other. We use the lan for games.

All 5 pcs and the server ni my house are on giabit lan

 

[Qroach]

They certainly don't need to be, you aren't using that much network traffic to max a regular network, let alone one using gigabit. It's basically overkill.

You actually ran gigabit capable network cables everywhere?

 

[Guden Oden]

NO!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! Something Intel can't be better than SoundStorm!

And I'm basing my evidence that nothing in the xbox(except the nv2a), not even the cabling, was top of the line.

Southbridge definitely was. It's still pretty hot stuff in its latest incarnation with hardware firewall + gigabit ethernet (hehe), USB2 (hehe again), SATA (hehe #3) and the still very good Soundstorm setup which while not as CPU-friendly as an Audigy2 ZS still has DD encoding, an unique feature amongst any sound solutions.

You see what I'm saying? All these features are coming in as standard these days and more so at the end of next year when nextbox will be released. It won't be a saving cutting them out, quite the opposite. Instead of taking a faster mass-market chip, MS would ask their I/O provider (SiS, damn all those 3-letter abbreviations LOL... And there's an "i" in both company names too which must be why I confused the two... Yeah right! Well, I gotta blame somehting! ) for a slower custom POS, and pay MORE for it. Doesn't make any sense.

Why would microsoft spend ANY amount of extra money on something that 99.9% of people who own xbox, even if they use the feature, would notice any difference over a cheaper and slower part?

Because it's not a "part". It's already included in the soutbridge in several new and upcoming chipsets, you dummie. I've repeated this like 12 times now.

You don't need gigabit ethernet, not even for lan gmaing, you don't need USB2.0

You're unneccessarily hung up on what people "need" and what you think will cost MORE to "add in". It's ALREADY ADDED IN!!!

Try buying a new PC today without USB2 in it. Basically, you CAN'T! And you know what? It's not even costing you any more money either. USB2 has been standard fare in chipsets since the i86x/87x series which came out spring LAST year.

And you think an optical drive, which is slower than a harddrive, would have a speed improvement with SATA?

Where did I say that? SATA is obviously following the general trend of replacing old, obsolete wide parallel interfaces/buses with modern narrower serialized packetized interfaces instead (as seen with USB, Hypertransport, PCIe etc). It's done for cost reasons, convenience AND performance. In a console it would be primarily for the first two.

 

[AlNom]

SATA uses less power correct? i.e. less heat generated?

 

[Guden Oden]

If it does it's a trivial difference. The major point is it's not running at 5V TTL signal levels (or is it 3.3V these days? Almost as bad in any case), and it doesn't need 20 bleeding signal wires to control one hardware device. That's the niftyness of SATA.

 

[Fox5]

I don't think the new nforce2's with the gigabit ethernet and firewall come with soundstorm... and soundstorm is slightly more cpu friendly than an audigy 2 zs, though the sound quality isn't as good.

And sure, all the high end boards may come with these features standard, but how about the cheap $20 boards? They certainly don't. And even on my nforce2 motherboard, not all the ports were USB2, most were USB 1.1, and I think the ports built into my case didn't support USB 2.0, but I'm not sure about that.(if I hooked them up to the usb2.0 things on my motherboard, would they support USB2.0?)
Heck, certainly not every dell computer has all the features you say come for free, if they're truly free, you would think everything would have them.

Anyhow, microsoft got the integrated all in one stuff from nvidia because it was cheaper and more sensible than having a seperate sound card and ethernet card in the console.

 

[jvd]

Anyhow, microsoft got the integrated all in one stuff from nvidia because it was cheaper and more sensible than having a seperate sound card and ethernet card in the console.

and the same is going to happen this time around.

I highly doubt ms is going to handycap the xbox 2 for a few cents on the dollar .

When ms said they wanted a cheaper console i 'm sure they meant they wanted one that would scale down in price quickly . Unlike the xbox 1.

 

[aaaaa00]

When ms said they wanted a cheaper console i 'm sure they meant they wanted one that would scale down in price quickly . Unlike the xbox 1.

Good insight.

In fact, I'd argue that MS is going to have a COGS at least as much, or possibly even more upfront, to design a console that will scale down in price much faster than xbox 1.

I see the xbox 2 heavily skewing to features that can be stuck on silicon and cost reduced fast as opposed to mechanical bits and parts that have to be bought from single suppliers that will cost reduce slow or not at all.

 

[Fox5]

When ms said they wanted a cheaper console i 'm sure they meant they wanted one that would scale down in price quickly . Unlike the xbox 1.

Good insight.

In fact, I'd argue that MS is going to have a COGS at least as much, or possibly even more upfront, to design a console that will scale down in price much faster than xbox 1.

I see the xbox 2 heavily skewing to features that can be stuck on silicon and cost reduced fast as opposed to mechanical bits and parts that have to be bought from single suppliers that will cost reduce slow or not at all.

So are you saying they'll put in a flash harddrive, and maybe even a cart slot or zip drive?

 

[jvd]

So are you saying they'll put in a flash harddrive, and maybe even a cart slot or zip drive?

no but gigalan , sound , usb 2.0 , the logic for pci e and other things are built into the south bridge already. So why would they take these out ?

Even if they increase the size of the chip by 15% and a few million transistors every micron shrink all those options will get cheaper and cheaper.

Thus costing ms less and less .

IN the xbox the main money suckers were the nvidia chips.

 

[Fox5]

So are you saying they'll put in a flash harddrive, and maybe even a cart slot or zip drive?

no but gigalan , sound , usb 2.0 , the logic for pci e and other things are built into the south bridge already. So why would they take these out ?

Even if they increase the size of the chip by 15% and a few million transistors every micron shrink all those options will get cheaper and cheaper.

Thus costing ms less and less .

IN the xbox the main money suckers were the nvidia chips.

Oooh! It's like coupon shopping!

 

[accidentalsuccess]

Gigabit ethernet is a given. M$ has been saying for years how they want the console and PC to be intergral and Gates has said that he sees something like a "media center" xbox-hybrid to be the future of computing (no, I don't have linkage 'cause I'm lazy this afternoon). I'm sure there will be utils out relatively quickly to view digital pictures and related stuff from PC's and do slideshow/music etc. That may not take gigabit ethernet, but I'm sure they want to leave a lot of headroom in there. MS wants to make your PC and xbox2 talk waaay more, and if they keep the HD out of the xbox you still have to own a PC (and windoze ). It's very, VERY smart, imo.

USB 2.0, as allready pointed out, is basically all you can get anymore and since you'll need a high-powered NEW chipset to run the r420 w/o being cpu-bound, etc, you'll pretty much put usb2.0 in by default. Maybe the actual controllers and peripherals will be 1.1, who knows.

If the memory is flash/smart-card type I'm sure digital camera companies will release software to do the above-mentioned slideshows in the living room kind of stuff.

PCI-E will be in by default b/c they are using the r420. . .isn't it a PCI-E chip? no? yes? I believe it is. I don't think you'll see an expansion bay unless it is for a HD.

SATA: Who knows. My guess is yes for the optical drive just 'cause it's less wires and it is the future.

 

[jvd]

They certainly don't need to be, you aren't using that much network traffic to max a regular network, let alone one using gigabit. It's basically overkill.

You actually ran gigabit capable network cables everywhere?

yup . Its nice actually

my father got the cabling free from work

don't forget these systems may come out in 2005/2006 but people will be using them till 2010 at least adn i expect gigabit lan to be commen in house holds or at least as commen as hdtv.

 

[a688]

PCI-E will be in by default b/c they are using the r420. . .isn't it a PCI-E chip? no? yes?

First, the r420 is AGP, the r423 (IIRC) is the PCI-E varient of it, however it is most definitely NOT what is going in the xBox2.

 

[Fox5]

PCI-E will be in by default b/c they are using the r420. . .isn't it a PCI-E chip? no? yes?

First, the r420 is AGP, the r423 (IIRC) is the PCI-E varient of it, however it is most definitely NOT what is going in the xBox2.

Umm, they didn't even use agp in xbox(unless they made up like agp 24x or something), they used amd's hypertransport bus I think for a direct link between the memory and gpu......maybe....well, maybe not, I don't think that has enough bandwidth either(unless they again had their own version), but I think xbox did use hypertransport. I just think it was a direct connection between the graphics chip and the system memory.