XBox 360 hypotheticals thread

[Rockster]

With all the discussion recently regarding deferred rendering, fp16, sub-hd resolutions, and the PS3 thread in the same vein, it only made sense to create this.

1) More E-Dram Memory >= 30MB
2) More Main Memory 1GB
3) More Main Memory Bandwidth (256bit bus?)
3) HD-DVD/Blu-ray optical
4) Mandatory Hard Drive
5) x86 OoE Multicore CPU
6) Other


If MS was going to invest a bit more money in each unit, where do they get the best bang for their buck?

 

[AlNom]

definitely more eDRAM. If they had 30MiB of eDRAM, they could ensure full support for 720p + 4xMSAA across the board (FP10 + 32-bit Z). Besides that, they would also have more flexibility in implementing deferred renderers or multiple render targets.

At the same time, a glaring deficiency of Xenos is that there is the lack of hardware alpha blending supported with FP16...

Shoulda would coulda, but ultimately, I think they did the best they could given the 2005 timeframe (except for the lack of alpha blending with FP16).

 

[Rockster]

Given the additional eDram, would it not have been advantageous to allow direct sampling from eDram and not be forced to resolve render targets back out to main memory?

 

[Rangers]

I think it says good things about the design I cant say I can think of any glaring weaknesses that jump out.

I think they would get the most bang for the buck in 1GB RAM. I think that would instantly create a fairly strong technical superiority over PS3, which could lead to developers preferring 360, which could lead to defacto third party exclusives. If there's one thing in your list that would instantly "change the playing field" that would clearly be it. Heck, we already see a lot of devs griping over the PS3's few dozen megabyte deficit caused by it's bulkier OS, imagine what the scenario would be if you added 512MB to 360. It would allow better looking games through better textures of course. If there's one thing I see which really limits this gen of consoles, it's weak textures caused by only 512MB of RAM.

All the other stuff is somewhat irrelevant comparatively. Hi capacity disc would be nice, but it's not crucial and 360 already survives without it fine. It would be second on my list after RAM though.

Mandatory hard drive is a kettle of worms but personally I prefer the market flexibility on non standard HDD, so that one would actually be a negative imo once costs are accounted for. 360 DVD is fast enough to get by without standard HDD.

256 bit bus would be nice and would have eliminated the need for EDRAM and it's troubles altogether, but again it's probably a minor thing, it's not going to gain you any say, shader power.

Dual core X86 CPU would be better than the tri-core, but again it's a question of degree. Programmers can overcome the slight difficulty of the weaker 360 CPU with ease and still kick out great looking games, (and compared to it's main competitor, it's already much easier to program).

30MB EDRAM is another "nice" but ultimatly probably trivial thing, especially since Devs seem to have come to grips with tiling better lately if game such as 720P 2XAA GTAIV are an indication,

 

[AlNom]

I think they would get the most bang for the buck in 1GB RAM.

The problem with that though is the storage capacity of DVD...How do you propose to have higher resolution textures if there's no space left on the disc? It's not like they are not compressing things as much as possible right now. Also transferring those larger files from the DVD... You'll get longer loading times or very aggressive LOD issues at worst.

(btw, the buck would have been bloody expensive in 2005 for GDDR3 700MHz memory. They'd also be cutting shipments in half at the time. )

30MB EDRAM is another "nice" but ultimatly probably trivial thing, especially since Devs seem to have come to grips with tiling better lately if game such as 720P 2XAA GTAIV are an indication,

There are still hurdles with multiple rendertargets, not just MSAA... There are problems in implementing deferred rendering with AA for instance.

Tiling still has a performance penalty regardless, and considering that the ROPs were designed with 4xMSAA in mind... it seems a waste if a majority of developers only use it late in the console cycle. It's one thing to exploit a hardware to do things you wouldn't have done on a multiplatform, but this is like dangling a carrot because you know it's there.

Given the additional eDram, would it not have been advantageous to allow direct sampling from eDram and not be forced to resolve render targets back out to main memory?

Yeah, it's the catch 22 I'd think. Of course, 3x the memory would be fairly expensive from a silicon point of view.

 

[Rangers]

The problem with that though is the storage capacity of DVD...How do you propose to have higher resolution textures if there's no space left on the disc? It's not like they are not compressing things as much as possible right now. Also transferring those larger files from the DVD... You'll get longer loading times or very aggressive LOD issues at worst.

They would find a way, how do PC games use many megabytes of RAM? Haven't devs whinged about the 60 MB PS3 is missing due to it's OS? Are they saying "well, we cant stream those extra textures anyway, no need for that extra 60MB!" Heck no they want every ounce of RAM they can get. And the 5400RPM HDD in these consoles is not all that much faster than DVD so that's not it..

It's true it wouldn't be ideal to have 1GB RAM with only 7.3 GB storage, but it would definitely be better than 512MB Ram with 25GB storage, easily imo, for making better looking games.

The Crysis rip is 6GB..with many more higher res textures at higher resolution than any console game..or the fact for example, UT3 360 is going to ship with all the bonus content, and I was told it was something like 4GB after all that.

Anyways I hardly that a high capacity disc wouldn't be nice (although it would have essentially mandated a standard HDD ala PS3, which imo would be a market drawback itself as it eliminates the Arcade sku). In fact it would be my second choice after the RAM, but above all the other choices.

(btw, the buck would have been bloody expensive in 2005 for GDDR3 700MHz memory. They'd also be cutting shipments in half at the time. )

This is a "hypotheticals" thread. If we're going down that road, I doubt 30 MB EDRAM was even possible to be fabbed in 05, whereas 1GB RAM would be a cinch, as PC's had far more in 05.

 

[Rockster]

More expensive. Absolutely. Impossible??? Don't know. I mean one option would have been to take the eDram chip up to 15MB or so, change the export component on the GPU to support two eDram chips, and modify the packaging. This is a hypotheticals thread right?

 

[zed]

And the 5400RPM HDD in these consoles is not all that much faster than DVD

A/ HDD have typically much much faster seek times
B/ unlike the opticalmedia in consoles with HDD u can also store data

how hard was it to convince MS to expand from 256mb to 512mb (i think they were moaning about an extra half billion dollars it was costing) 256mb->1gb had a snowballs chance

 

[Rangers]

More expensive. Absolutely. Impossible??? Don't know. I mean one option would have been to take the eDram chip up to 15MB or so, change the export component on the GPU to support two eDram chips, and modify the packaging. This is a hypotheticals thread right?

Yes I was responding to alstrong stating some reasons why 1GB ram would be difficult. In fact, I said the same thing to him as you did to me, it's a hypotheticals thread!

But yeah, I think 30MB of EDRAM would be at LEAST as expensive as an extra 512MB of RAM in the time frame....probably much more. It would be almost akin to adding another Xcpu in die area..

 

[Rangers]

A/ HDD have typically much much faster seek times
B/ unlike the opticalmedia in consoles with HDD u can also store data

how hard was it to convince MS to expand from 256mb to 512mb (i think they were moaning about an extra half billion dollars it was costing) 256mb->1gb had a snowballs chance

If we're going down that road

30 MB EDRAM would have been even more expensive and less likely, then. If even technically feasible.

And actually, 1GB RAM wouldn't have been difficult in the slightest, and the BOM would have still been far less than PS3.

 

[Pozer]

Since its a hypothetical thread...

1. increasing Xenon L2 cache from 1MB shared to 512KB or preferrably 1MB per core.
2. Adding a pool of cheap 256MB-512MB ddr1 ram bridged primarily for general game code use or streaming. (Keeping the 512MB SMA for graphics or game code.)
3. Increasing edram to 16MiB
4. no HD-less sku.

 

[I.S.T.]

Going without a mandatory HD was frigging stupid. DLC is advertised all the time, and is even in the TV ads for GTA4! Does MS seriously expect people to buy an HD just for that? Only crazy people/people who want an HD anyway will get it just for that reason!

Having 1 gig or even 768 megs of RAM would have been nice, but IMO not having a mandatory HD hurts it worse in terms of overall usability.

 

[pipo]

It's only 'stupid' because Wii is here. Otherwise it would have been a different picture IMHO.

 

[zed]

And actually, 1GB RAM wouldn't have been difficult in the slightest, and the BOM would have still been far less than PS3.

im not suggesting it was techincally hard for it to have 1gb, just from cost viewpoint it would of (according to someone at MS) add an extra billion dollars to the manufacturing costs, making it certain that the xb360 would never actually make a profit during its lifetime.
at the end of the day they would of loved to have a HDD, more memory etc included but at the end of the day theyre still trying to turn a profit

 

[infinity4]

I don't know, but I want them to keep the standard resolution at either 720p or 1080p. I am happy enough at this resolution.

 

[PARANOiA]

Going without a mandatory HD was frigging stupid. DLC is advertised all the time, and is even in the TV ads for GTA4! Does MS seriously expect people to buy an HD just for that? Only crazy people/people who want an HD anyway will get it just for that reason!

I'd expect people who want the DLC to get the Pro with HDD, and those who don't to choose the cheaper option available to them.

Allowing openly upgradeable HDD's would be an option I think MS underestimated. The closed nature of the drive must make them a small amount of cash, but the perception of having shitty HDD limitations vs the PS3 (which comes with fairly small drives out of the box too) but not being upgradeable is completely avoidable and would make the take-up of the system that much more appealing to the hardcore audience IMO.

 

[LunchBox]

Since it Hypothetical...

I would have prefered:
Nix the E-Dram and add more RAM
higher System Bandwidth
maybe 64 Unified shaders and more TMUs/ROPs on the Gfx chip
removing the fp10 limit

 

[assen]

I'd expect people who want the DLC to get the Pro with HDD, and those who don't to choose the cheaper option available to them.

Allowing openly upgradeable HDD's would be an option I think MS underestimated. The closed nature of the drive must make them a small amount of cash, but the perception of having shitty HDD limitations vs the PS3 (which comes with fairly small drives out of the box too) but not being upgradeable is completely avoidable and would make the take-up of the system that much more appealing to the hardcore audience IMO.

The closed nature of the drive is important for security reasons, not just for making money. I suspect the upgrade market is minuscule, but reducing the attack surface is very important. The same reason they allow only music/video files on external USB drives, not savegames and demos.

 

[22psi]

i'd up the edram so tiling isn't necessary to get 720p and 4xAA

 

[Tim]

i'd up the edram so tiling isn't necessary to get 720p and 4xAA

I think that would have been a bit too expensive, a 14 MB edram for 720p 2xAA without tiling might be a improvement that could have been done at a reasonable cost.