NGGP: NextGen Garbage Pile (aka: No one reads the topics or stays on topic) *spawn*

[Alexct]

Look, if MS said "Deliver gaming box with 200-250W cap" they would probably do something like Orbis, possibly with more customized GPU.

When the higher ups tell you "We need 8GB of RAM and we are packing Kinect with it. Console should be 300$ and not a penny more". There is not much they can do. They know that they have to go with slow RAM. They know it will be insufficient for gaming so they have to go with embedded fast memory, but thats also expensive and takes quite a bit of space on die so there is not much room to go on GPU side. Obviously, there are hard limits and only reason for Durango's low compute performances is in MS higher up strategy. I have no reason to doubt these engineers at MS wouldn't do amazing job if it wasn't for that.

*They will probably do amazing job even the way its now, still, there is alot to be desired from Durango unfortunately.

I still think it is suicidal for MS.What should be the selling point of the next xbox??
The kinect and its games are no longer selling (Fable the Journey was an epic fail), the live offers most of the services only in the USA and UK ignoring Europe,games of the third party will be much better on ps4.
If all these rumors are true MS can only bet on price 249/299$ but even this may not be enough if the ps4 will be sold at 399$.

 

[Silent_Buddha]

I love how 1.5x the flops almost invariably becomes "almost 2x the flops" and turns a 50% advantage into a 100% advantage.

I was wondering about that myself. It just appears he's got a prefernce for one console over another.

As with exposing the compute abilities, noone knows if some variant of a more performant Direct Compute would be available for Developer use. As well, nothing prevents them from using OCL. I'm not sure what would be available to dev's as regards to compute resources of GCN that would be available on Orbis but not on Durango.

Is there something you can do with GCN hardware in Linux (or any other platform) now that you can't in Windows?

Regards,
SB

 

[Alexct]

I love how 1.5x the flops almost invariably becomes "almost 2x the flops" and turns a 50% advantage into a 100% advantage.

When the next xbox will be announced please tell us what MS was thinking when designing this console.
From the rumor seems to have been designed by a fool who did not know what to do and who knew nothing of what made the 360 ​​a success.

 

[MrFox]

I love how 1.5x the flops almost invariably becomes "almost 2x the flops" and turns a 50% advantage into a 100% advantage.

At one point someone turned 50% more for PS4 into 50% less for 720.
If we ever have another cycle of that logic, the new 100% more for PS4 will be 100% less for 720 and it will vanish in a puff of smoke.

 

[Acert93]

ERP's posts = best poster ever

I love how 1.5x the flops almost invariably becomes "almost 2x the flops" and turns a 50% advantage into a 100% advantage.

bkilian (not too shabby of a post coming in the top 5; but alas no cheesecake for you ): Yes, that raises an eyebrow. Without Tim knowing specifics he is really railing hard. e.g. Inflating 50% => 100% and totally ignoring any benefit of embedded memory.

The other egregious part of his post is assuming a closed console will get DX11.1 iirc Xenos had a thin API that eventually exposed all of the hardware. Why would MS ship with a GCN1/2 architecture and then not expose it?

What Tim is saying is nonsensical.

But Tim is an employee of Nvidia and, without ascribing any motive, I would note that the CEO of Nvidia has expressed quite a bit of "downplaying" of the console market that not so coincidentally has come in conjunction with Nvidia losing out on not 1, not 2, but all 3 console contracts (if rumors hold true). From that perspective alone NV's frustration with MS on both fronts (no console contract; other APIs opening more than DX) and the fact Orbis is following more traditional PC design (more closely aligns with Nvidia products) and Durango going quite a far (requiring special programming and design that is NOT beneficial to current NV hardware and, in terms of compute, could get people serious about using GCN on a small scratch pad workspace) I, well, just connect the dots.

From this position his posts make more sense--notably the parts that make no sense, like FUDGING the Orbis FLOPs and assuming MS is going to throw a crappy API on the console.

And it isn't like I haven't been raising my own arm-chair quarterback flags about Durango.

 

[Acert93]

At one point someone turned 50% more for PS4 into 50% less for 720.
If we ever have another cycle of that logic, the new 100% more for PS4 will be 100% less for 720 and it will vanish in a puff of smoke.

Of course anyone with an ounce of math skills knows 50% more = 33% less.

 

[MrFox]

Of course anyone with an ounce of math skills knows 50% more = 33% less.

You'd be surprised.
http://xbox720hotnews.blogspot.ca/2013/01/rumor-xbox-720-50-less-powerful-than-ps4.html
the horror. the horror.

 

[DJ12]

What Tim is saying is nonsensical.

Is it any more so than anyone elses ramblings?

At least he explained his theory and it makes sense. If MS are going for "forward compatibility" like we've heard his theory is likely to be bang on the money.

There could very well be no direct hardware access, everything will be done through the API* and in the future all games will work on the next (next next etc,) nextxbox.

I understand that some people might not like that, but it's hardly nonsense.

* If it's nonsense, put your theory forward for how they will do it.

 

[AlphaWolf]

That in no way means the API would be dx11.1. If they've gone with gcn2 the api will likely be designed around that and they will just stick to something like GCN 2 in a future box. In fact if they are upgrading in 2 years, they would be well into designing that system as well.

 

[Bagel seed]

I think it's due to the fact that the *spawn* threads on here are getting out of hand. Having just one big thread with all the next-gen discussion was way more comfortable (even if the discussion got a little messy).

It will be missed, and it died young too. Couldn't even make it to 20,000 posts.

 

[Acert93]

Is it any more so than anyone elses ramblings?

At least he explained his theory and it makes sense. If MS are going for "forward compatibility" like we've heard his theory is likely to be bang on the money.

There could very well be no direct hardware access, everything will be done through the API* and in the future all games will work on the next (next next etc,) nextxbox.

I understand that some people might not like that, but it's hardly nonsense.

* If it's nonsense, put your theory forward for how they will do it.

Selective reading. What you really are saying is you are ignoring what I said and are giggling at the thought of an Xbox with a bloated MS OS, API that doesn't expose the hardware features or special features (ftl 32MB memory space!), and you, too, cannot do math because you sure like the sound of 2x faster than 50%

Since you glossed over it, explain why taking Tim to task for saying 50% - 2x is nonesense?

Oh wait, you cannot. It was non-sense.

And since I am so dense, please explain why "forward compatibility" means (a) hardware features will not be exposed via the API (see: Xenos) and (b) why the bloat of a PC API expected to span 3 vendors (AMD, NV, and Intel) and multiple architectures, configurations, and performance classes has any relevance on a console? See, again, Xenos: Thin API targetting one platform; future platforms could use the API calls with a wrapper or a simple API update (if Xbox3 then x; else Xbox4 then y).

In fact, I think the whole "no access to the hardware" and only access to the "API" you propose is pretty much in left field. Tim's own posts mention Orbis using APIs Xenos and the PS3 use APIs. APIs can expose the hardware features AND be efficient like on the consoles OR on Windows add some overhead, be bloated, and cloak features of specific hardware.

The way you present APIs makes no sense to me; and how Tim presented the situation wasn't the issue of APIs but Tim suggesting Durango would be a full on Windows box with the antecedent bloat.

Which poses a problem in this regards: The 32MB is going to require hands-on programmer attention. That alone indicates it will have a unique API. Which, even if MS is thinking "forward compatibility" they are going to need to expose the 32MB of memory space. How do you defend your's and Tim's view of the API and access to the 32MB? MS dumped compute for a feature not exposed.

Because MS/AMD are idiots, got it.

Which leads to the memory in my previous post. And since you also skipped it, but want to defend his position, what of any benefits of embedded memory? Hmmm.

Yeah, my 3 complaints still stand and you are just throwing words at a wall.

 

[function]

Can't make 1920 x 1080? Then the only other option must be 1280 x 720!

 

[Ruskie]

More from Tim:



DX11.1 is that much of a drag?

Someone from MS probably pissed Tim so much that his math took a dive for worse. But really, he sounds "defensive". "GCN+GDDR5>GCN2+DDR3" thats something I wouldn't expect from him to say (not that is not true, but it totally ignores systems design focus).

It would be interesting to see if MS and AMD took another direction in next graphics tech as far as DX goes. He would probably be mad as hell since MS is only one that can do it and AMD would probably benefit greatly from it.

 

[Ruskie]

When the next xbox will be announced please tell us what MS was thinking when designing this console.
From the rumor seems to have been designed by a fool who did not know what to do and who knew nothing of what made the 360 ​​a success.

Yes, a "fool" designed next box. Probably someone who had alot of time on his hands and he didn't know what to do with it so MS gave him the chance to design it.

"log out"

 

[Alexct]

Yes, a "fool" designed next box. Probably someone who had alot of time on his hands and he didn't know what to do with it so MS gave him the chance to design it.

"log out"

Perhaps I have not explained properly I meant that the xbox next that emerges from the rumor is completely different from what we have seen with the xbox 1 and 360.Still seems to me odd that MS has decided to present a machine so weak as that described in the rumor far from the tastes of users that made the 360 ​​a success.Leave the way open to sony even on the titles of the third party that would be better on ps4 without much effort.
As I wrote(#701) in response to your other post I do not understand what should the selling point of such a console.

 

[AlphaWolf]

Reality check people, 50% gpu flops advantage is unlikely to get you from 1080p30 to 1080p60. The differences might be noticeable but they are unlikely to be glaring.

 

[Acert93]

So weak? I think that depends what part of the machine you are talking about and how it affects games.

The rumored Durango is weaker in graphics; MS diverged from Sony by going with embedded memory which may help (?), may be for BC (3x tiles can fit in), may offer up some new algorhyms and/or efficiency gains, or is just spin as the 32MB is really a cost saving mechanism. We don't know enough yet but I believe people should be skeptical until more is known. So I would agree this is one check mark against MS.

As a system it has the same CPU setup as the rumored Orbis. This is definitively in the "does not agree with the arguement that Durango is much weaker."

It also has 2x the memory footprint. This definitively falls in the "actually Durango offers a lot more memory space. Considering how slow Optical drives are this may help with load times and streaming a lot, not to mention all the stuff running in the OS portion." Mark this as a potential MS advantage in terms of "strength."

From a BOM perspective it doesn't look like Durango is far off from Orbis. The issue is they are budgeting for what we can speculate is NON gaming functions or gaming services.

For game code (same CPUs, more memory, less bandwidth, possibly more cache) Durango will be on par with Orbis and may have more game-features/services running in the OS. So that is "stronger." But pretty pixels may hurt unless MS is doing something really different (e.g. a lot more ROPs and banwdith for fillrate; or has found novel uses for the ESRAM).

 

[Acert93]

Reality check people, 50% gpu flops advantage is unlikely to get you from 1080p30 to 1080p60. The differences might be noticeable but they are unlikely to be glaring.

True in many cases.

Considering that developers have been looking at dynamic resolutions if one game is 1080p30 the other may run at dynamic resolutions. Or run at a lower fixed resolution like 880p (which is 66% of the pixels of 1080p) or could letterbox some or a combination of such.

Once you throw in old tricks like lower resolution particle buffers, lower quality AA, reducing texture resolution and filtering, LOD, etc.

Or you may see scenarios where Orbisd is 1080p and Durango has 720p with extra IQ.

There are a lot of ways to skin the cat; due to the fact a lot of people don't have 1080p sets, cannot see the difference, some things fall into diminishing returns, etc who is going to notice? Us and ?

The harder situation will be if Sony was telling developers, "Target 720p30" That would put MS in a much harder bind as there would be less room to run to. But if Sony is encouraging developers to do native 1080p30 or even 1080p60 then MS has a lot of wiggle room to have the same game look good at a slightly lower resolution. And if the CPU rumors are true it should run pretty much the same.

I think the question is are you more of a core gamer and want the absolutely best gaming experience or do all the services (paid?) MS will be offering appeal to you?

Pretty much what Dave B said a year ago.

 

[function]

Still seems to me odd that MS has decided to present a machine so weak as that described in the rumor far from the tastes of users that made the 360 ​​a success.

90% of all Xbox 360's weren't sold while it was a bleeding edge system. The tastes that made the 360 a success were related to software catalogue, services and Kinect.

Less appeal to the hardcore graphics fans (who aren't "hardcore enough" to bother with the PC) but broader appeal in general is a tradeoff MS seem to think is worth it.

As I wrote(#701) in response to your other post I do not understand what should the selling point of such a console.

Anything that made the Xbox 360 sell from 2007 onwards, plus a lot more.

 

[Albofighter]

For what its worth (probably not much), Charlie said everyone is telling him both consoles are underpowered, so no need for console wars. We can all be disappointed together.