What would devs have to do to customize for the Xenos?

[ralexand]

What will 2nd gen titles do that 1st gen won't?

What would they have to do to enable the 4X AA?

Would they need to send hints to take full advantage of the unified architecture?

Why doesn't Ruby run at 60fps on beta hardware?

Would put this in that hardware article thread but its more related to the software end of things.

 

[Titanio]

What would they have to do to enable the 4X AA?

Very little, it's expect as standard AFAIK. I'd expect it from day one.

Would they need to send hints to take full advantage of the unified architecture?

Good question. I think there'll still be more intelligent ways to send instructions to the hardware vs a dumb approach, at least. I'm not sure if you can "hint" at what's coming though, ATi's approach seems to be that the developer shouldn't be aware of or worry about what's going on or how the GPU's handling their instructions.

 

[Qroach]

Why doesn't Ruby run at 60fps on beta hardware?

1. it was ported in two weeks.
2. It was running on hardware not set at the final clock speed.
3. it's not a game demo.

 

[ralexand]

Why doesn't Ruby run at 60fps on beta hardware?

1. it was ported in two weeks.
2. It was running on hardware not set at the final clock speed.
3. it's not a game demo.

I seem to remember them saying that they didn't implement AA which I would think would be simple thing to do that's why I asked the AA question. Thanks for the responses guys.

 

[flick556]

Unqualified but here is my 2 cents

1.) Most e3 stuff looked like pc ports that target high in pc specs. I believe the dev kits are macs with high end pc graphics cards (x800). 2nd gen should use more shaders beyond what pc cards are capable of.

2.) likely the same thing they do currently the api does not need to change the driver will do anything new if anything new needs to be done.

3.) The unified architecture should have a new unified shading language for programmers. I doubt anything else will change

4.) I don't think beta kits had this graphics card in it

5.) I believe the software api does and should develop as independently from the hardware as possible. Most changes should relate to making things easier for the programmer and abstracting things about hardware.
Things like instruction limits, load balancing, etc. should be handled indirectly by the structure of the programming language itself, the compiler, and the driver.

 

[Titanio]

4.) I don't think beta kits had this graphics card in it

The beta hardware is supposed to be feature complete - it should have Xenos in there (as well as the tricore cpu). It may not be there in terms of performance, however, the clockspeeds may still be off.

 

[gurgi]

Shouldn't they be getting final dev kits out soon, at least to some developers? What was the dev kit situation like for the first Xbox?

 

[Carl B]

Shouldn't they be getting final dev kits out soon, at least to some developers? What was the dev kit situation like for the first Xbox?

They started going out last week or something, so top XBox devs should have theirs by now.

 

[Titanio]

Shouldn't they be getting final dev kits out soon, at least to some developers? What was the dev kit situation like for the first Xbox?

Beta hardware is shipping now, apparently, final hardware I'd say might come in sept/oct. The situation was pretty similar for Xbox, IIRC. Certainly they only had alpha hardware at the E3 before Xbox's launch, as with X360. The jump between beta and final should be very small from a developer perspective, if there is any at all (the only difference should be performance)..so they won't need much time to transition to it.

 

[jvd]

Beta hardware is shipping now, apparently, final hardware I'd say might come in sept/oct. The situation was pretty similar for Xbox, IIRC. Certainly they only had alpha hardware at the E3 before Xbox's launch, as with X360. The jump between beta and final should be very small from a developer perspective, if there is any at all (the only difference should be performance)..so they won't need much time to transition to it.

its my understanding that beta hardware started shipping in may and all the first party developers and alot of key 3rd parties recived them shortly after e3 . Everyone should have the kits by the end of june .

Its my understanding that these have the xenos in them but at 400mhz and the tri core cpu is in the 2.5 ghz range

The final kits start going out in july / august with most devs getting them by the end of sept and tehse should have everything with final clocks


This is just whats going around so i don't know how accurate it is

 

[gosh]

no that was the alpha hardware x800 with dual 2.5

the beta is the preview experimental hardware

 

[Pozer]

I thought the alpha kits used 9800pros.

Also I wonder hom many launch games were targetted for 256MB system ram. Curious to see if this is another reason why 2nd gen 360 games will look alot better. Anyone know when 256-->512 was officially changed?

 

[jvd]

I thought the alpha kits used 9800pros.

Also I wonder hom many launch games were targetted for 256MB system ram. Curious to see if this is another reason why 2nd gen 360 games will look alot better. Anyone know when 256-->512 was officially changed?

there were two phases of alpha . one with the 9800s and one with the x800s . As for the ram i have no clue . It may never have really been changed. It may just be that devs assumed it was 256 megs as that was what was on the grpahics cards they were working with'

 

[SanGreal]

http://www.engadget.com/entry/1234000597043723/

The decision to go to 512, that was a big, expensive decision that frankly was not where we were 3 or 4 months ago.

 

[Megadrive1988]

http://www.engadget.com/entry/1234000597043723/

The decision to go to 512, that was a big, expensive decision that frankly was not where we were 3 or 4 months ago.

it must be good to have 512 + 10 MegaBytes 8)

 

[ralexand]

http://www.engadget.com/entry/1234000597043723/

The decision to go to 512, that was a big, expensive decision that frankly was not where we were 3 or 4 months ago.

That's a funny article. MS must have breathed a huge sigh of relief when sony came in with one cell operating at 3.2 ghz. If sony had came in with multiple cells at 4.0 ghz, MS should have just packed it up.

 

[jvd]

http://www.engadget.com/entry/1234000597043723/

The decision to go to 512, that was a big, expensive decision that frankly was not where we were 3 or 4 months ago.

That's a funny article. MS must have breathed a huge sigh of relief when sony came in with one cell operating at 3.2 ghz. If sony had came in with multiple cells at 4.0 ghz, MS should have just packed it up.

Or ms would have been happy in knowing that sony would go bankrupt after selling million of them

 

[BOOMEXPLODE]

I bet they're sighing in relief that they decided to go with 512 MB. Otherwise PS3 would have basically twice the amount of RAM, that would have been a huge handicap for X360.

 

[Trawler]

I bet they're sighing in relief that they decided to go with 512 MB. Otherwise PS3 would have basically twice the amount of RAM, that would have been a huge handicap for X360.

If the 360 had 256 megs of RAM, I'm sure PS3 would've had 256 as well. I wonder who jumped up to 512 first?

I don't think either party would've wanted to go into this round with a handicap that significant.

 

[ralexand]

I bet they're sighing in relief that they decided to go with 512 MB. Otherwise PS3 would have basically twice the amount of RAM, that would have been a huge handicap for X360.

If the 360 had 256 megs of RAM, I'm sure PS3 would've had 256 as well. I wonder who jumped up to 512 first?

I don't think either party would've wanted to go into this round with a handicap that significant.

Yep, that's the real question. It sounds like developers were bitchin at MS for going with 256 and dropping the harddrive so I think they flinched first.
Sony probably had a 256 or 512 unified memory design when they were going to use the 2 cells but went with 256 when they knew they were going to need at least 256 of vram on the RSX.