xbox 360 clockspeeds

[Mendel]

Just out of curiosity...

Have the xbox 360 clockspeeds of various components actually been independently checked? How would one go about doing such a test (of clockspeeds) Is it feasible to do with an oscilloscope, where exactly would one measure from?

I'm also very interested in hearing about differences between the (various?) debug version(s) and the retail version, if any.

In short, is the xenos really running at 500MHz and the powerpc at 3.2GHz?

In particular... last time I checked, g5s were clocking in at 2.0GHz, what happened?

I heard, Microsoft was having trouble producing enough xbox360s because of shortage of graphics chips... so I wouldn't be surprised if they decided to clock them down, though I have no real reason to believe they did.

Enough with this, I'm confused, I want facts

 

[ERP]

All the clocks are as advertised, no downclocking.

 

[AlNom]

well that's good news. When's the last time a console was released with specs as advertised before launch?

 

[arjan de lumens]

Just out of curiosity...

Have the xbox 360 clockspeeds of various components actually been independently checked? How would one go about doing such a test (of clockspeeds) Is it feasible to do with an oscilloscope, where exactly would one measure from?

While you can in principle measure 500 Mhz to 3.2 Ghz with a moderately expensive oscilloscope, this is made harder by the fact that such chips nowadays usually use a ton of clock multipliers to generate high-speed clocks that never leave the chip. You might be able to measure the frequency components of the EMI noise from the chips, but large metallic heatsinks tend to make this difficult in practice. For the Xenon CPU, you can set up a program with long sequences of dependent instructions and time them, which will give a fairly reliable result; I don't know of a simple analoguous method you can use on the Xenos.

I'm also very interested in hearing about differences between the (various?) debug version(s) and the retail version, if any.

In short, is the xenos really running at 500MHz and the powerpc at 3.2GHz?

In particular... last time I checked, g5s were clocking in at 2.0GHz, what happened?

G5 has been commercially available at 2.7 Ghz for a while. The Xenon CPU additionally benefits from having a much simpler CPU core than G5, reducing the design effort needed to reach such high clock speeds.

I heard, Microsoft was having trouble producing enough xbox360s because of shortage of graphics chips... so I wouldn't be surprised if they decided to clock them down, though I have no real reason to believe they did.

Enough with this, I'm confused, I want facts

I thought the problem was established to be a CPU rather than GPU problem. But AFAIK Microsoft decided to suffer low initial yields rather than clocking down the device, so if you can get your hands on an Xbox360, it will clock as advertised.

 

[Sean*O]

I was wondering about this too. The X360 packaging (for what I was able to see) only listed the 500Mhz clock of the GPU, nothing speedwise was listed for the CPU(s). Perhaps I just missed it, or perhaps they left it off during printing because they were unsure of the final clock/yields?

 

[RavenFox]

The cpu is listed at 3.2...

 

[Nicked]

well that's good news. When's the last time a console was released with specs as advertised before launch?

Hmm, a long time ago!
Most change a bit, but not downwards. PS2 CPU was increased, GC Gekko went up but the Flipper went down, and I think Xbox CPU went up and the GPU went down (or vice-versa..).

 

[Guden Oden]

For the Xenon CPU, you can set up a program with long sequences of dependent instructions and time them, which will give a fairly reliable result; I don't know of a simple analoguous method you can use on the Xenos.

Xenon has a ton of debug and performance analysis hardware on-chip, there's got to be precision timers n stuff that could be used to check the clock speed. IMO, chances are fair there's similar stuff integrated into xenos too...

 

[Bad_Boy]

well that's good news. When's the last time a console was released with specs as advertised before launch?

PSP was most recent i think.
spec'ed at 333mhz, launched at 222mhz. :/

but there are ways around that

 

[Nicked]

PSP was most recent i think.
spec'ed at 333mhz, launched at 222mhz. :/

but there are ways around that

Sony said from the start 222~333mhz.

 

[Bad_Boy]

Sony said from the start 222~333mhz.

I dont remember that, i do remember the news articles coming out a while or so after psp's launch saying the psp might not be running at 333mhz. I might of put an article about it in my psp zine a long time ago, ill look it up and post back.

i think they said 1~333mhz in the beginning. but ofcourse no games so far seem to run above 222mhz

edit:
here are some links
http://www.firstadopter.com/fa/archives/000847.html
http://www.cdrinfo.com/Sections/News/Details.aspx?NewsId=13129
http://www.engadget.com/entry/1234000817040352/

 

[arjan de lumens]

AFAIK, the situation with the PSP is that the PSP itself is perfectly capable of 333 MHz, but Sony is not permitting game makers to go above 222 MHz; the guys doing homebrew software for it have long since found out how to run it at 333 MHz - it does get ~50% faster, but battery life suffers.

 

[Bad_Boy]

AFAIK, the situation with the PSP is that the PSP itself is perfectly capable of 333 MHz, but Sony is not permitting game makers to go above 222 MHz; the guys doing homebrew software for it have long since found out how to run it at 333 MHz - it does get ~50% faster, but battery life suffers.

pretty much sums it up. i think everybody was betting on sony allowing 333mhz games as soon as they got a new battery, which has yet to be seen. I would love to see what a psp game looks like when it was designed with the 333mhz spec in mind from the ground up.

ive played a coulple titles at full 333mhz, and like you said, framerate is alot better but battery life drops a bit.

 

[Bill]

What is the obession with this?

All clocks are final and advertised.

Do you also suspect PS3 will be underclocked?

The PPE in Xbox is a variation of the one in PS3, also clocked at 3.2 GHZ, not coincidentally.

Rumor was the Xenos might be clocked higher due to high yields, but I dont think it happened.

 

[Nicked]

Rumor was the Xenos might be clocked higher due to high yields, but I dont think it happened.

A rumour started by someone at TXB. Shocking that didn't happen :|

 

[Bill]

Oh yeah I forgot we can only have rumors of downspecs of Ms products and upspecs of Sony products.

Funny how that works.