XBOX 360: Inside & Out (NO CPU die photo!)

They could make a specialist gamer keyboard as well. A whole wad of buttons, not QWERTY neccessarily. Just like 30 keys and cursors, in an ergonomic layout.
 
Joe DeFuria said:
1) R500 has about 2x the shader op power per cycle. vs. R420
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Is this in line with expectations? Where is the R520 expected to come in?

It doesn't seem that exceptional a leap to me. I remember a time we were doubling GPU power every six months ;) I know that time has kinda faded away, but still..

I know this is a new architecture, that we may be gaining efficiency with better resource utilisation with unified shaders. But we also might be losing some versus dedicated shaders too (?)

So..what are people thinking about this? 2x R420 performance? Weren't there rumours of 10x?
 
Titanio,

Hehe...this is a major deja vu from GAF! Now I know who you are! ;)

But yeah, you're correct in this thread, as you're comparing GPU to GPU and not CPU to GPU as I initially assumed, so apologies. However, I'm still making the same point, i.e. APPLES to APPLES comparisons.

The R500 will have a 10 MB EDRAM module with additional custom logic on board this module. So without this info at this point is misleading...

10 MB of eDRAM ~ 80 mil transistors

I'd expect the the EDRAM module to have, including custom logic, 90-100 mil transistors in addition to the R500.

The R500 will have 48 unified ALUs, each capable of a vector + scalar op per ALU per cycle according to the original 'leak' last year. It will be densely packed and I'd expect the transistor count to exceed the X360's CPU's...
 
Titanio said:
So..what are people thinking about this? 2x R420 performance? Weren't there rumours of 10x?
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The 10x and 4x numbers, I believe, were theoretical. That is, it has 10x as much VS power (if all 48 ALUs are doing VS operations) or 4x as much PS power (if all 48 ALUs are doing PS operations).

The design makes sense in general because PS/VS loads can change in a game moment to moment (or level to level), different games designs may require more VS or PS power, and you never have stuff sitting idle (theoretically of course). Currently it seems VS sit idle a lot.

So instead of the rediculous 10x jump from last years Top GPUs we are only getting 2x in shader power (but less fill rate). In shader power it should be on par with top end GPUs coming out in the next few months, give or take in regards to some features.

Of course those GPUs will cost $550, use 225W of power, loud fans, and be utterly underutilized as most games support legacy cards and APIs. (True, these are rumors, but seem inline with what we should expect from a card on 110nm and 512MB of memory).

I am not sure what people are expecting. The PS3 is confirmed to be getting an adapted form of nVidias next gen product. I would assume it would be on 90nm, but they surely are not going to put a 225W chip in a box with CELL (which the new revision is 250M transistors, bigger than the one shown 2 months ago). The cooling and power issues alone would be insane.
 
am not sure what people are expecting. The PS3 is confirmed to be getting an adapted form of nVidias next gen product. I would assume it would be on 90nm, but they surely are not going to put a 225W chip in a box with CELL (which the new revision is 250M transistors, bigger than the one shown 2 months ago). The cooling and power issues alone would be insane
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They showed the latest revision. Also according to Voltage the Cell seem´s to run pretty low(heat i dont know).
As the GPU will use SOI i think that will not be a big issue.
 
Riddlewire said:
That's why you include it in the base package.
That way, everybody has it. And game developers can create games that are actually designed for M/K instead of just the oddball hacked implementation that exists now (which sucks in most cases).
I'd rather have a cheap mouse and keypad included in my retail X360 box than a stupid changeable faceplate. I'd even give up DVD functionality (without purchase of extra remote) in order to gain a M/K. They could put the stupid thing in a 40 pound oak barrel for a case, and I'd still be happy as long as I got a mouse and keypad to control my games.
There is no excuse for requiring gamers to use a poor solution to control their games (FPS and 3rd person action titles mostly) when the best possible control setup exists and can be included cheaply.
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Explain exactly how 2 gamers are supposed to use a mouse/keyboard setup on a couch comfortably.
 
Riddlewire said:
I'd rather have a cheap mouse and keypad included in my retail X360 box than a stupid changeable faceplate. I'd even give up DVD functionality (without purchase of extra remote) in order to gain a M/K. They could put the stupid thing in a 40 pound oak barrel for a case, and I'd still be happy as long as I got a mouse and keypad to control my games.
There is no excuse for requiring gamers to use a poor solution to control their games (FPS and 3rd person action titles mostly) when the best possible control setup exists and can be included cheaply.
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Try playing House of the Dead 3 with a mouse/keyboard and compare it to the original arcade setup with the 'utterly inferior' pump action shotgun if you don't belive me. It's an extreme example, but it's an adequate analogy that shows that maximum efficiency is not always desirable.
Best(as in most efficient) != most fun - and outside of work I'd go for fun over efficent anytime.

But if you really, really want a mouse and keyboard coupled with an ugly case you can just as well play on your PC. ;)
 
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