X-Box 2 Speculation!

"I think Mr Nvidia said it best, PS3 will be an extension of PS2, pure vector processing. We shall see how cool that will turn out. *looks back at PS2 hype/experienc* ..shhhhivers..."

Too bad Sony isn't as stupid as you want them to be Chap. And who says PS2 sucked graphicly? For me it was everything people hyped it up to be, when I was playing the MGS2 demo for the first time, I thought to myself "this is what sony promised". Who can honestly say they were not impressed with ps2 graphics?
 
I can. It wasn't anywhere close to what sony oringinally made it out to be. Despite that, it doesn't have bad graphics, but certianly didn't live up to my expectations.
 
What did Sony promise? Are you speaking of the "toy story" graphics comment?

I can only laugh at how many times I've read that.
 
Alot of what "Sony promised" wasn't even said by them. 90% of the hype came from message boards, magazines and websites.
 
Quincy

MS and nvidia settled the dispute in court, and some people say that both sides came away as winners. either way, it's not going to have any influence on xbox 2.
Click to expand...

But they wouldn't have to settle any disputes in court if they have full control over chip production in the first place. That's not to say that I think having full control over the chip production is the most important thing to MS. I just think its something they'd be interested in.

I don't think you can say for sure that the court case won't have any influece on who produces the GPU XBox 2. It certainly won't make a deal between Nvidia and MS for XBox 2 too difficult. But I think it has to have some influence on MS's decision of who to go with.

When I say that I don't mean they wouldn't go with Nvidia because of bad feelings between them due to the court case. I mean the court case will have made MS think about the advantages of having more control over the chips in their consoles.

Just to be clear though I still think Nvidia is the company most likely to produce the XBox2 GPU.
 
anyone know what flops rating the hammer chips have in 64bit mode ? ???


Also the power vr hardware would be a wise choice for ms this time around . The last chip was the kyro chip which had the same fillrate as a tnt2 yet performed on par with a geforce 2 ultra and sometimes a geforce 3 (geforce 3s first drivers ) . It is said that they are just looking for a partner right now and they have a full dx 9 based card . If its clocked at about 300mhz it will be the fastest card on the market till the r400 and nv40 come out . Since power vr is an ip company and doesn't make its own chips it would liscense the tech to ms. Ms would then find a fab and make the chips paying whatever the liscense fee is . (Prob be very small on a console deal). Say the chip is made on .13 micron as soon as .9 micron comes around ms can use that micron and get the chips even cheaper while still paying power vr the same liscense cost . Where as nvidia charges a fixed rate for the gpu and decides when to drop the die size and how much to charge ms when the die size changes .
 
jvd, the max FP ops/cycle for the A64, in 32 bits or 64 bits mode is identical...

4 FP ops/cycle that is... In 64 bits mode they have more XMM registers and more GPRs, but they abandoned the super RISC style FPU when the K8 design was downgraded from its original ambitious specs...

The A64 FPU is identical ( well more or less ;) ) to the one in the K7 chips, yet it has SSE and SSE2... more for compatibility with all the SSE optimized code out there... as with the dual ADD/SUB and MUL/DIV FP pipes design ( plus the third unit which is the LOAD/STORE pipe ) and 3DNow we already had reached the 4 FP ops/cycle max...
 
chaphack said:
I think Mr Nvidia said it best, PS3 will be an extension of PS2, pure vector processing. We shall see how cool that will turn out. *looks back at PS2 hype/experienc* ..shhhhivers... :oops:
Click to expand...

(a) It was the CEO of ATI (Dave Orton) who stated that, not "Mr. nVidia" whom I can only guess you intended to mean Jen-Hsun Huang.

(b) Can you explain to me what, exactly, is wrong with that? Vector Processing is bad? This is news to me.

Because untill you start posting some factual or reasons behind your blanket stantements, your just going to be part of this pseudo-intellectual movement of people on this board and the larger internet who make statments based on a total lack of background knowledge. While I'm no Marco or Q myself in my technical knowledge, atleast I make statements based on logic and fact and back them up. Your just a troll.
 
Panajev2001a said:
jvd, the max FP ops/cycle for the A64, in 32 bits or 64 bits mode is identical...

4 FP ops/cycle that is... In 64 bits mode they have more XMM registers and more GPRs, but they abandoned the super RISC style FPU when the K8 design was downgraded from its original ambitious specs...

The A64 FPU is identical ( well more or less ;) ) to the one in the K7 chips, yet it has SSE and SSE2... more for compatibility with all the SSE optimized code out there... as with the dual ADD/SUB and MUL/DIV FP pipes design ( plus the third unit which is the LOAD/STORE pipe ) and 3DNow we already had reached the 4 FP ops/cycle max...
Click to expand...

Thanks for clearing that up , i was told its 20% faster when running 64bit programs over 32 bit programs so i figured it have a faster flops rating. Still though whats the flops rating for it at say 3 ghz ?
 
Actually, it's not the bitness of the program really. What's gaining that extra performance is the extra registers. It's the mode the processor is running in. I believe there are 3 modes. 32bit, 32bit with the extra registers and 64bit. I could be wrong, this is all off the top of my head from an Anandtech report long ago.

Also, 3DNow doesn't offer much more performance, well not the 3DNow part. I believe 3DNow in the A64 includes SSE/2 in it and is called 3DNow Pro or something along those lines.
 
Saem said:
Actually, it's not the bitness of the program really. What's gaining that extra performance is the extra registers. It's the mode the processor is running in. I believe there are 3 modes. 32bit, 32bit with the extra registers and 64bit. I could be wrong, this is all off the top of my head from an Anandtech report long ago.

Also, 3DNow doesn't offer much more performance, well not the 3DNow part. I believe 3DNow in the A64 includes SSE/2 in it and is called 3DNow Pro or something along those lines.
Click to expand...

Ah okay :) (haven't read up on it in a long time , normaly check out acehardware for that stuff )
 
OK I'm gonna join in the fun a little bit and post my guesttimates on what the XBOX2 will be to compete with the PS3:

CPU - Intel Pentium 4 3GHz 800MHz FSB 512K Cache
RAM - 512MB DDR-II 800MHz 128bit
GPU - NVIDIA NV4A (a cross between an NV40 and NV45) talking on a PCI XPRESS bridge
APU - Soundstorm 2 with 24bit analogue and digital 7.1 capable Dolby Certified

Unified Memory Architecture with Hypertransport 6.4GB/Second

Why I made these choices? It's more of the same, I mean PS3 is going to be more of the same from a tech standpoint compared to PS2 and the original XBOX was pretty powerful going with a similar configuration.

The only part of the XBOX that was truly cutting edge at the time was the graphics processing unit (NV2A) - the CPU was not top of the range or a custom designed exotic type because of cost. I sede something similar happening. I don't see AMD getting the contract with Hammer to be honest unless they can virtually give them away a la XBOX.

Maybe some of my specs seem a bit modest but you have to remember cost and remember the fact that XBOX2 wont be using a full blown OS like WinXP - just the kernel or maybe MS has something else underwraps entirely. SO if you think 512MB RAM is measily or that the CPU clockspeed is off (and it probably is but not by much IMHO) just remember the fact that even John Carmack stated you get much more performance (I think it was 2x) from a closed environment with a sleek efficient OS compared to an equivalent spec'd fully blown out PC. There is no way something like HALO would run on a PIII733 even with a GFFX at the FPS you get on the XBOX.

I don't see MS going the way of eDRAM or seperate VRAM this time either but I could be very wrong. Perhaps 256bit RAM will become feasible and there will be a buffer for that, maybe 32MB of it as a frame buffer, z strorage or for TBDR-like purposes (we should be seeing some kind of Gigapixel tech one day surely?)... anyway just my tuppence worth.

Everyone feel free to rip it to shreds :)
 
Since this is a speculation thread, I'll go out on a limb :) .


If Microsoft goes for performance I see the XB-2 launching at $399 with one year subscribtion Live included in 2006.

Pentium V Intel CPU [quad core] .65nm
NV5A [2 seperate cores like 3dfx's rampage and sage combo] .65 IBM
NForce 3 chipset (Hypertransport 2 and second generation MCP)
1 GB RLDRAM operating on a UMA
300 GB Harddrive
Blu-Ray DVD
 
Brimstone said:
Since this is a speculation thread, I'll go out on a limb :) .


If Microsoft goes for performance I see the XB-2 launching at $399 with one year subscribtion Live included in 2006.

Pentium V Intel CPU [quad core] .65nm
NV5A [2 seperate cores like 3dfx's rampage and sage combo] .65 IBM
NForce 3 chipset (Hypertransport 2 and second generation MCP)
1 GB RLDRAM operating on a UMA
300 GB Harddrive
Blu-Ray DVD
Click to expand...

I can't see that spec being $399 even in 2006. Even now the XBOX loses $100 per console (according to some sources) and I doubt MS will want to be in that situation again.

Also I think the launch date will be closer to 2004/5 rather than 2006.

Just more useless speculation on my part.

Edit: forgot to add pricetag being too high.. thanks for the reminder Paul ;)
 
Panajev2001a:

Based on your guesttimates on the PS3 and its potential advantages and disadvantages what do you think MS would need to make a console that was comparable in workload and the end image?

Take into account that MS will be using off the shelf technology and not any custom designs and of course cost. (This idea that MS are going to use off the shelf technology may not be true but just for this exercise we shall say it does).
 
If xbox2 launches for 400 dollars before PS3 it will fail. The promise of a more powerfull system on the horizon(PS3) plus the price being 100 dollars cheaper will turn xbox2 into a dreamcast.
 
Paul said:
If xbox2 launches for 400 dollars before PS3 it will fail. The promise of a more powerfull system on the horizon(PS3) plus the price being 100 dollars cheaper will turn xbox2 into a dreamcast.
Click to expand...

You think the PS 3 will be more powerful than what I described? :oops:
I thought those were some really powerful specs I speculated on...WOW.
 
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