predict how actual Xbox Next will differ from leaked specs

[rabidrabbit]

I too think a flash memory based mass storage will be on next gen xbox and PS3 instead of a HD (I've had that opinion since xbox launch).

Take Sony for example (I know this is xbox thread, so sorry ).
They already have TV's with Memory Stick slots, and you can record tv programmes to those memsticks (I hope they only lowered the Memory Stick prices, so that one could afford to record to bigger than 128MB sticks ).

PSP uses Memory Sticks, it could be possible to view those tv programmes recorded on Sony TV with a PSP (I'm not sure if they can). If PS3 is capable of recording from external source and TV to Memory Sticks, then the PS3 recorded (low resolution video, music) content could be viewed on a PSP.

A PS3 with a large (1 Gig or more, they could be cheap enough by then) Memory Stick would be enough to store game data such as downloadable content and saves for a five or so games (or more, or less... depends of the size of dl content of course).
Maybe some PS3 games could store some "minigames" on a Memory Stick, which could then be played on a PSP.

And don't forget there has been rumours of a Sony Home Server device (remember in that "Cell" slide, where such a server was visioned). With such a server as an accessory for those who need larger storage capacity for music, films, pictures... there's really no need for a costly (and for many, not so necessary) HD inside a gaming console.

A flash memory based removable mass storage is just so much more versatile than a fixed HD. It's also upgradable which a fixed HD is not, you just buy nore memorysticks or -cards. Maybe some games that absolutely require larger mass storage could come with a bundled memorystick, like for example FFXI was sold with a HD (at a higher price)

I'm almost 100% positive xbox 2 won't include a traditional fixed HD, but instead some removable (smaller than 8GB but larger than 32MB) size storage. Maybe some portable media player without gaming functions. There is the risk of such device being too pricey for average customer though, and it could become one of those unsuccesful console accessories...

remember that talk of several xbox models:

An xbox2 with 1 Gig memory card for basic downloadable content, with WiFi connectivity to your Windows XP PC that acts as a server storing streamable custom playlist songs, pictures, video and other media.

An xbox 2 PC that has a card reader for that 1 Gig memorycard, and a 120Gig HD which is upgradeable as there is a free HD slot that can take any standard HD's.

 

[Guden Oden]

I'm sure in the millions it will drop down to the sub 40$ range and in 2 or 3 years before they phase out 120 gig drives all together they will be 10$ to include .

That's completely nuts. The harddrive business is already very unprofitable, there's a reason almost every manufacturer of harddrives has either gone out of business or been bought up by a competitor. Margins are near razor-thin already. Ten dollars for a 120-gig drive? You're crazy. These are high-precision instruments, a swiss watch is crude in comparison!

Mabye the 500$ version could have a writable hd-dvd drive. I know many people who would pay 500-600$ for that in 2005 .

Sorry, but no you don't.

 

[Shifty Geezer]

I too think a flash memory based mass storage will be on next gen xbox and PS3 instead of a HD (I've had that opinion since xbox launch).

I'm almost 100% positive xbox 2 won't include a traditional fixed HD, but instead some removable (smaller than 8GB but larger than 32MB) size storage.

The downside is the transfer rates. A good HD can supplant less RAM by offering a fast storage for swapping files. Streaming off Optical media or MEmcard is ot an option for large data. If the next-gen only have 128-256 mb RAM, they'd benefit from a fast HD for extra functions. But I also imagine load-times would sky-rocket as 10 gb data is copied to HD before you play!

You're right about the MemStick approach though, and this is Sony's base concept in the media network, along with downloadable content, that you have this interchangeable content for movies and music. You'll record a programme onto MemStick, watch half on your PSP on the way to work, then in the evening pop round your friend's house and plug the same stick into either his TV or PS3 and finish the programme. That's Sony's vision. I've heard rumours of a portable XB media device and this might be a system MS have considred to offer the same. But agin it's hardware. MS would be happier to integrate iPod or another device. Perhaps you could use any Windows CE device and acess it's storage, and they'll leave it to the hardware manufacturers to provide the hardware solutions?

 

[rabidrabbit]

Transfer rates for next gen otical media will be quite high, so I would think that helps in making a hard disk unnecessary.

How many xbox games use the hd in-game as an extension for main memory? I think it is not very many. Streaming from optical media has proven sufficient this gen, and as next gen optical media speeds will be much faster I think it'll be used instead of streaming from HD (or flash memory)

Can someone please enlighten me, as I really don't know how HD-DVD and Blu Ray transfer rates compare to current HD transfer rates (I could search them, but am too lazy ).
And how do memory cards such as MemoryStick Pro transfer speeds compare to HD?

 

[London Geezer]

Transfer rates for next gen otical media will be quite high, so I would think that helps in making a hard disk unnecessary.

Can someone please enlighten me, as I really don't know how HD-DVD and Blu Ray transfer rates compare to current HD transfer rates (I could search them, but am too lazy )

They might be high, but still nowhere near the speed provided by a HD. I think BlueRay is around 36MB/s. Or at least i have a 36MB (or 36Mb?) number in my head from somewhere.

 

[Fafalada]

Now, I non't expect Xenon to be able to run Unreal Engine 3 based games at absolutely max detail levels, but the delta between 256 MB RAM and >3 GB RAM is huge.. with 256 MB RAM I just don't see Xenon being able to run Unreal Engine 3 at anywhere near the detail levels that it is capable of running at Crying or Very sad ...

Given that new consoles are shaping up with a lot of CPU resources with highly efficient communication methods with the GPU, I should expect we'll have the option to use compression schemes previously quite unfeasible in realtime.
Granted a PC centric codebase like U3 may not do much work in that direction right away, but I should imagine there will alternatives native to the platforms that do.

Of course, I'd still like 512MB as much as anyone .

They might be high, but still nowhere near the speed provided by a HD. I think BlueRay is around 36MB/s. Or at least i have a 36MB (or 36Mb?) number in my head from somewhere.

Afaik it's 54Mb/s for BDR, 36 for BDRE. And Pioneer apparently already has a 4xBD drive coming in Q4 this year, which I'd be pretty happy with if we get that kinda speed in PS3.
I'm still not really convinced we will though. :?

 

[rabidrabbit]

Ok, I checked some speeds:

A Sony memoryStick: Theoretical max speed 160 Mbps (20MB/s)
A 7200 rpm hard disk: Theoretical max speed 100MB/s
A Blu Ray disc: Theoretical max speed from london-boys head 36 MB/s

20MB/s, I think that is enough for streaming, as then you dont load big chunks of data at a time.
High transfer speeds as in hard discs are needed in office applications (databases, spreadsheets...) but are they really needed in dynamic media apps?

 

[London Geezer]

Ok, I checked some speeds:

A Sony memoryStick: Theoretical max speed 160 Mbps (20MB/s)
A 7200 rpm hard disk: Theoretical max speed 100MB/s
A Blu Ray disc: Theoretical max speed from london-boys head 36 MB/s

20MB/s, I think that is enough for streaming, as then you dont load big chunks of data at a time.
High transfer speeds as in hard discs are needed in office applications (databases, spreadsheets...) but are they really needed in dynamic media apps?

If anything, i see more use of high bandwidth optical media in dynamic media apps than in an office environment...

 

[rabidrabbit]

Yes, but as a high def film can be streamed at 36 MB/s, where would a game need hundreds of MB's bandwidth from external storage?
I can see the bandwidth is needed inside processors and between main memory and processor(s), but between external storage and main memory... as more is obvioulsy better, what would be the "sweet spot" for external media speed, if we consider the next gen specs to be around a high end PC or a little above it? At what point is the extra speed overkill (in games mainly)?

 

[London Geezer]

Yes, but as a high def film can be streamed at 36 MB/s, where would a game need hundreds of MB's bandwidth from external storage?
I can see the bandwidth is needed inside processors and between main memory and processor(s), but between external storage and main memory... as more is obvioulsy better, what would be the "sweet spot" for external media speed, if we consider the next gen specs to be around a high end PC or a little above it? At what point is the extra speed overkill?

Well, a game like GTA or Jak3 really could do with a faster external storage media. From what i can tell, most of their slowdowns are due to the fact that the media can't stream data fast enough, especially on GTA, where that also causes pop-in and missing textures/geometry.

 

[Wunderchu]

Transfer rates for next gen otical media will be quite high, so I would think that helps in making a hard disk unnecessary.

Can someone please enlighten me, as I really don't know how HD-DVD and Blu Ray transfer rates compare to current HD transfer rates (I could search them, but am too lazy )

They might be high, but still nowhere near the speed provided by a HD. I think BlueRay is around 36MB/s. Or at least i have a 36MB (or 36Mb?) number in my head from somewhere.

Blu-ray transfer rate = 36 Mb/s (megabits/s)

 

[Gubbi]

Blu-ray transfer rate = 36 Mb/s (megabits/s)

Which means it take one minute to load up 256MB of ram.

Cheers
Gubbi

 

[London Geezer]

Blu-ray transfer rate = 36 Mb/s (megabits/s)

Which means it take one minute to load up 256MB of ram.

Cheers
Gubbi

Yep. Hopefully they won't stick a cheapo single-speed drive in there. Who said too much speed could be overkill?

 

[Fafalada]

Which means it take one minute to load up 256MB of ram.

The BluRay pdf claims 54Mb/sec for the non rewritables, though I don't quite understand why the difference. So we could be looking at "only" 40seconds

And like I said before, 4x speed would be the sweet spot (giving roughly the same relative times as we got on PS2 DVD).

 

[Gubbi]

And like I said before, 4x speed would be the sweet spot (giving roughly the same relative times as we got on PS2 DVD).

I agree. I just meant to point out that while 36Mb/s sounds like alot, next gen consoles will have lots fo ram and hence transfer speeds should be increased correspondingly.

Cheers
Gubbi

 

[London Geezer]

And sorry to say, 1x sounds soooo SegaCD...

 

[eastcore]

if Xbox Next has only 256 MB memory, i dont expect it to last more than 4 years. it would be like if Xbox had 32 MB of memory.

I was really hoping for 1 GB of memory for all consoles. 512 MB would have been just decent. 256 MB would be skimping and the reported 128 MB external memory for PS3 is just ridiculasly bad.

MegaDrive 1988 - I respect that name. My all time favorite console I think.


Look, the X2 will blow us all away - I'd ask you all to trust me but you just don't know me.

You guys are underestimating those specs as they currently stand. Consider what has been capable on the XBox - and then look at those specs.

Take a step back, and look at the bigger picture - look at the specs as a whole, there is more there than you might first imagine.

Did none of you find Riddick to be impressive? Perhaps you never played Kingdom under Fire? What about Panzer Dragoon Orta?

This system will push more poly's and more textures than a lot of you guys seem to understand.

Have you not seen the Unreal 3 engine? That is what X2 games will normally look like - yes, with 256 MB of RAM, it will do that - easily.

I like your optimism, eastcore .. I am usually more optimistic myself ........... however, what curbs my optimism in this situation, is that Tim Sweeney himself stated the following:

If you only have a 256 meg video card you will be running the game one step down, whereas if you have a video card with a gig of memory then you'll be able to see the game at full detail.

(source: http://www.beyondunreal.com/content/articles/95_1.php )

and

It doesn't exactly take a leap of faith to see scenarios in 2005-2006 where a single game level or visible scene will require >2GB RAM at full detail.

(source: http://www.beyond3d.com/interviews/sweeneyue3/index.php?p=3 )

........


... Now.. granted, a console like Xenon doesn't have to worry about running a bloated OS , or system APPs, or utilities like virus scanners and firewalls in the background........ but there is no way that 256 MB of unified RAM is going to allow Unreal Engine 3 to run at anything more than at drastically reduced detail levels if Mr. Sweeney is talking about >2 GB of system RAM and 1 GB of video RAM (for a total of >3 GB of RAM) hinted at to be able to run the engine at maximum detail levels .........

Now, I non't expect Xenon to be able to run Unreal Engine 3 based games at absolutely max detail levels, but the delta between 256 MB RAM and >3 GB RAM is huge.. with 256 MB RAM I just don't see Xenon being able to run Unreal Engine 3 at anywhere near the detail levels that it is capable of running at ...


(I first discovered that BeyondUnreal interview from this thread: http://www.beyond3d.com/forum/viewtopic.php?t=12514 )

I'm pretty sure what Mr. Sweeney said must have been misunderstood or taken out of context.

Why? Because the Unreal 3 engine was shown running relatively smoothly on a 6800 - yes, a crappy 6800 .

(Just so you guys know, I'm not a fan of the 6800 - to much silicon, to little gain - huge waste - give me ATI any day of the week - cause I like efficiency)

Now, read the projected content load of the Unreal 3 Engine. Note that it mentions that Next Gen consoles wil be able to run the games with half the texture rez - but this is an inaccurate estimation at best - especially considering that such resolutions would be lost on the average joe's TV set.

Here are the guidelines we're using in building content for our next Unreal Engine 3 based game. Different genres of games will have widely varying expectations of player counts, scene size, and performance, so these specifications should be regarded as one data point for one project rather than hard requirements for all.

Characters

For every major character and static mesh asset, we build two versions of the geometry: a renderable mesh with unique UV coordinates, and a detail mesh containing only geometry. We run the two meshes through the Unreal Engine 3 preprocessing tool and generate a high-res normal map for the renderable mesh, based on analyzing all of the geometry in the detail mesh.

* Renderable Mesh: We build renderable meshes with 3,000-12,000 triangles, based on the expectation of 5-20 visible characters in a game scene.
* Detail Mesh: We build 1-8 million triangle detail meshes for typical characters. This is quite sufficient for generating 1-2 normal maps of resolution 2048x2048 per character.
* Bones: Our characters typically have 100-200 bones, and include articulated faces, hands, and fingers.

Normal Maps & Texture maps
We are authoring most character and world normal maps and texture maps at 2048x2048 resolution. We feel this is a good target for games running on mid-range PC's in the 2006 timeframe. Next-generation consoles may require reducing texture resolution by 2X, and low-end PC's up to 4X, depending on texture count and scene complexity.

Environments
Typical environments contain 1000-5000 total renderable objects, including static meshes and skeletal meshes. For reasonable performance on current 3D cards, we aim to keep the number of visible objects in any given scene to 300-1000 visible objects. Our larger scenes typically peak at 200,000 to 1,200,000 visible triangles.

Lights
There are no hardcoded limits on light counts, but for performance we try to limit the number of large-radius lights affecting large scenes to 2-5, as each light/object interaction pair is costly due to the engine's high-precision per-pixel lighting and shadowing pipeline. Low-radius lights used for highlights and detail lighting on specific objects are significantly less costly than lights affecting the full scene.

You should also note they say the consoles "MAY" require a reduction. And if you take a look at the memory and bandwidth that the X2 will be saving per it's design, you'll realize that it will have more memory and more bandwidth then you'd think.

The X2 will get closer to it's theoretical GPU performance limits than any other system - ever.

Besides, can Mr. Sweeney explain how a game like Doom 3 - who's minimum requirements on the PC are 384 MB of system RAM + 64 MB of video ram - runs on the XBox - which only has 64 MB of RAM?????

Riddle the following math:

384 + 64 = 448 = 64..... I guess so huh... That means the XBox runs Doom 3 with 7 times less memory... interesting when you think about it right...

(Yes I know the XBox version has less detail and all - but that has more to do with bandwidth limitations, CPU power and GPU performance and features of the console than straight up memory requirements)

(Oh, and I'm sure Mr. Sweeney could explain it - I'm sure nobody has asked him though)

 

[London Geezer]

Well, that's the whole point isn't it? Doom3 on Xbox looks totally downgraded from the original on PC, and has more loading checkpoints, that has to do with the fact that the Ram is what it is.

Unreal3 on Xbox, as it stands now, will also have to be downgraded. No "xbox2 will reach the theoretical maximum of the GPU more than any other system" crap. If there isn't enough space to store all those super-hihg resilution textures and models and normal maps and everything else, it will have to be downgraded. Or heavily compressed. No amount of processing power will make up for the need of more Ram.

 

[eastcore]

Well, that's the whole point isn't it? Doom3 on Xbox looks totally downgraded from the original on PC, and has more loading checkpoints, that has to do with the fact that the Ram is what it is.

Unreal3 on Xbox, as it stands now, will also have to be downgraded. No "xbox2 will reach the theoretical maximum of the GPU more than any other system" crap. If there isn't enough space to store all those super-hihg resilution textures and models and normal maps and everything else, it will have to be downgraded. Or heavily compressed. No amount of processing power will make up for the need of more Ram.

It's true that RAM is extremely important.

What needs to be understood is that a game on the PC that requires Gigs of HDD space, and a minimum of 448MB of RAM is able to run on the XBox which has 64MB's of RAM and a DVD drive.

The point is the X2 will be alot more powerful than the XBox - and if the X2 has to have more "checkpoints" to run a UE3 game, then so be it.

The X2 will easily handle those graphics. It's easy for anyone to say the X2 won't have enough memory and that it will be under powered - but the trueth is that most dev teams could do alot to exploit a console in ways that can't be done on the PC.

The X2 will get closer to closing the gap - it happens every console generation.

And call it crap if you want to - but consoles are pushed to their limits much more than PC's will ever be - and I happen to believe that with proper CPU usage, the GPU in the X2 will be pushed harder than ever before. It isn't hard to see.

Who the hell ever imagined that the XBox could even run a game like Riddick??? What a surprise that one was huh....

The damn console isn't even out, and it seems like half of you are already underestimating it.

 

[London Geezer]

It's not underestimation, it's being realistic and not overly optimistic.
The difference between 3GB and 256MB is a lot, even when you count the OS out of the equation.
Obviously Xbox can run Doom3, like it can run HL2, or like the Genesis could run Virtua Racing. The point is that they're heavily downgraded. Like Unreal3, in all of its bloatedness, will have to be downgraded on Xbox2 and PS3. The fact that it might require 1GB of Video Ram only should give you a hint.
No one's slating anything, it's logical that if next gen consoles have 256MB Ram, things will have to be cut down for games that require GBs of Ram to run on PC.
That's why people shouldn't be so hung up on PC games conversions. Games built for the next gen consoles, with their architecture in mind, will look much better than Unreal3 anyway. Ram or not.
Look at what Konami (ZOE2, MGS2/3) or Naughty Dog (Jak1/2/3) or many other devs got out of little old PS2, working on its strengths, and compare those titles to PC games conversions on the same platform and you'll understand.