Official Xbox Specs @ Tom's

[Phil]

So if I get this right: there's no sound chip in Xbox360, so sound specific tasks will have to rely on the 3 core CPU?

 

[Teasy]

In a lot of ways they seem to be pretty close - certainly going by EAs benchmarking and some developer comments I consider worth taking note of (lack of ram appears to have been a particular issue for multiplatform games). The GC was never really meant to stand out ahead of the PS2 though, unlike the Xbox.

Instead of looking at vague early unoptimised EA benchmarks and select comments from certain developers why don't you just look at the games? The fact that the system has what is considered by many to be the best looking game this generation on any console should tell you something. GC is closer to XBox in actual power, that's pretty clear.

 

[AlNom]

So if I get this right: there's no sound chip in Xbox360, so sound specific tasks will have to rely on the 3 core CPU?

pretty much one thread according to Tom.

 

[mech]

So if I get this right: there's no sound chip in Xbox360, so sound specific tasks will have to rely on the 3 core CPU?

There's a hardware sound decompressor, but apart from that, yes, it's all done on the CPU - but it's geared to be like that, shouldn't be a problem.

 

[LVSeminole]

So, about these 48-way shader pipelines....anyone know how many "ways" the X800 and 6800 series have in their pipes? And...just how many pipes does this GPU have? I didnt notice any specs on it.

LVS

 

[function]

If you mean Nintendo didn't focus on showing peak numbers for everything to make it seem so much more powerful then yeah that's true. But if your saying its actually not more powerful then I just don't know where to begin. The fact that the system has what is considered by many to be the best looking game this generation on any console should tell you something. Going by some vague early benchmarks from EA rather then every other bit of evidence we can draw on is really silly..

The EA benchmarks were anything but vague - infact they were highy specific and given for several different tests. Anyway, what evidence are you going on? The fact you really like Nintendo and the GC? Now that would be silly.

I'm certainly there are areas where the GC pulls well ahead, but I'm also certain there are areas where it falls significantly behind. Different games suit different platforms to greater of lesser degrees.

And while RE4 looks nice, so do lots of other games, and what you consider to be the best looking game this generation doesn't really have much bearing on how powerful the machines actually are. It's worth noting that the GC's most impressive title is getting ported to the PS2, so if it doesn't end up looking significantly impaired (and it's hard to see why Capcom would port it if it did) then that has to indicate something. Hopefully it'll let you lose the borders to get it at full resolution too...

 

[quest55720]

If you mean Nintendo didn't focus on showing peak numbers for everything to make it seem so much more powerful then yeah that's true. But if your saying its actually not more powerful then I just don't know where to begin. The fact that the system has what is considered by many to be the best looking game this generation on any console should tell you something. Going by some vague early benchmarks from EA rather then every other bit of evidence we can draw on is really silly..

The EA benchmarks were anything but vague - infact they were highy specific and given for several different tests. Anyway, what evidence are you going on? The fact you really like Nintendo and the GC? Now that would be silly.

I'm certainly there are areas where the GC pulls well ahead, but I'm also certain there are areas where it falls significantly behind. Different games suit different platforms to greater of lesser degrees.

And while RE4 looks nice, so do lots of other games, and what you consider to be the best looking game this generation doesn't really have much bearing on how powerful the machines actually are. It's worth noting that the GC's most impressive title is getting ported to the PS2, so if it doesn't end up looking significantly impaired (and it's hard to see why Capcom would port it if it did) then that has to indicate something. Hopefully it'll let you lose the borders to get it at full resolution too...

I will have to see it before I believe it that the PS2 can pull off RE4 with out sacrifices.

 

[V3]

So, about these 48-way shader pipelines....anyone know how many "ways" the X800 and 6800 series have in their pipes? And...just how many pipes does this GPU have? I didnt notice any specs on it.

LVS

Just quickly, the current gen has 6 Vertex and 16 Pixel Shaders. I think the 360 GPU has about twice the shader processing abilities compare to current PC GPU and the added flexibility of unified shader.

If you look at raw fillrate its about half of current PC GPU. With AA it becomes four times higher.

 

[ManuVlad3.0]

1 TeraFlops

 

[LVSeminole]

Yeah. I mean, on forums throughout the net(I wont believe it til I see some more specs) people are claiming 48 pipes, or a bunch of other stuff. I am VERY excited about the unified shaders though, very excited.

LVS

 

[Natoma]

I definitely want to see what Mr. Baumann has to say on the specs now that they're released to the public. Give us more r500 info Dave!

 

[quest55720]

Yeah. I mean, on forums throughout the net(I wont believe it til I see some more specs) people are claiming 48 pipes, or a bunch of other stuff. I am VERY excited about the unified shaders though, very excited.

LVS

I am am a lay person but from what I understand that there is not 48 pipelines. The pipelines work differently and can not be compared to current PC pipelines. The way I would explain it for simple terms would be the GPU is 8 pipeline design with each pipeline having 6 ALUs each. The ALUs are not bound by the pipeline and can work on any shader or vertex op that needs to be worked on.

I hope someone else can explain it better in simpler terms.

 

[Dural]

500 MHz custom-designed chip, developed by Microsoft and ATI; 48 parallel processing units (at 24 times total power)

What does the 24 times total power mean?

 

[Pozer]

Quick thoughts before bed....

1. Teasy, I didn't know Ninja Gaiden was on the GC (jk, RE4 is ONE of the best this gen graphically)

2. Xbox360 hardware seems very cascading/balanced and programmable in nature. Very similar to GC in the relation of Edram -> RAM -> GPU. No sudden stops. Can't wait to find out more about the GPU and CPU. I think it will compete well and be cheap enough for a early price war in 2006. MS seems t be taking a ps2 strategy with GC hardware.

3. From the looks of those game x360 trailers I think MS was right about software and art creation being the hurdle next gen. I saw amazing and I saw some crap. The ps3 could come out tommorow and be able to render photorealistic textures, push 100 tflops and 99 trillion polygons but it doesn't matter cause nobody can afford to create that game world! I think this is the perfect gen to launch early. I think this next gen will have the biggest quality arc from launch games to the last games.

 

[Jawed]

unified ram isn't as important since it has enough edram (more would have been nice and i stil lsay there will be more )

10MB is more than enough for 1280x720p.

I expect 1920x1080i will be nothing more than 1280x720 up-scaled.

Jawed

 

[Megadrive1988]

GameSpot:
http://www.gamespot.com/features/6124293/p-3.html

The Graphics Processor

The new Xbox will have a next-generation ATI graphics chip much more powerful than the current top-of-the-line Radeon X850 desktop graphics chip.

Microsoft will pair the IBM processor with an advanced 500MHz ATI graphics chip. The ATI chip will have "48-way parallel floating-point dynamically-scheduled shader pipelines." Today's PC desktop video cards max out at 16 pipelines, but the technologies aren't quite the same. The new ATI graphics chip will be based on a new unified shader model that processes vertex and pixels through the same multipurpose pipelines. Current PC video cards have pipelines dedicated to pixel processing or vertex processing. ATI's current top-of-the-line Radeon X850 XT PE graphics chip, for example, has 16-pixel pipelines and 6-vertex pipelines. We don't know how these new hybrid pipelines will perform compared to the older, dedicated pipeline designs, but with 48 of 'em, we're betting that the next-gen ATI chip will live up to expectations.

 

[Jawed]

http://money.cnn.com/services/tickerheadlines/for5/200505131333DOWJONESDJONLINE000958_FORTUNE5.htm

In an interview, Rick Bergman, senior vice-president and general manager of ATI's PC Group, said the XBox 360 will contain an ATI- designed graphics processing unit, the 360 GPU, as well as a companion-memory chip.

ATI's Bergman said that ATI isn't responsible for manufacturing the 360 GPU and companion-memory chip for Microsoft, a fact that will help reduce any potential friction between the companies. To date, he said the relationship has been "fantastic."

Jon Hykawy, analyst at Fraser Mackenzie, said he believes ATI will receive a royalty of about $5 for each Xbox console sold. That's similar to the royalty that ATI receives for the ATI-designed chips in Nintendo Co.'s (7974.OK) GameCube game console, he said.

ATI could generate $50 million in royatly revenue from Microsoft, assuming 10 million Xbox 360s are sold in 2006, Hykawy said. That translates to about 20 cents a share based on his calendar 2006 earnings estimate of $1.60 a share for ATI, he said.

Jawed

 

[PC-Engine]

So the EDRAM is a Enhanced DRAM module like some have predicted.

 

[Qroach]

teasy is still arguing about the EA benchmarks, again? come on and give it a rest.

 

[Titanio]

Just quickly, the current gen has 6 Vertex and 16 Pixel Shaders. I think the 360 GPU has about twice the shader processing abilities compare to current PC GPU and the added flexibility of unified shader.

Can I ask how this is derived? I'm just looking at MS's claim of 48bn shader ops per sec, but ATi claims 43bn shader ops per sec with the X850 PE (and there's talk of the R520 being north of 100bn). Are these calculated differently? I can see where the R500's is - 2 ops per ALU per cycle x 500mhz = 48bn, but where does the X850 number come from? Are they comparable figures?