Xbox One (Durango) Technical hardware investigation

[GrimThorne]

I consider the "always on, always connected" line to mean, compared to the current 360 and PS3, you will be able to tell your system to download/cache something from the Internet like a game demo or movie and have your system turn itself on, instead of needing to be in your home and turning the system on yourself. And anyone who's owned a PS3 and doesn't have PS+ knows how terribly long it takes for the system to download and install a patch for a game or the system firmware.

Perhaps it's a passive state, like your cable/sat DVR set top box for example. Even when you cut it off it still has the ability to download, install and update.

 

[SenjutsuSage]

I have Verizon Fios TV and I have Apple TV.

I don't actually ever turn either of those things on or off. In fact, I don't think either even has a true power off button to speak of.

When I press the power button on my Fios TV receiver, it doesn't actually turn off, it goes into what I assume must be some lower power mode and up pops a screensaver. It's always there ready to go in an instant the moment I turn my tv back on and hit the menu button on my remote. The only way I've ever actually turned it off was when there was a power outage, or on the very rare occasions when I've literally disconnected the power cord from the back of it.

My Apple TV is pretty much the same way. You don't ever turn it off, and it's always on. The moment you plug it in, it's going to be on whether you like it or not. There is no power button to shut it off. It, too, drifts into a low power state, displaying a screensaver when you aren't using it for awhile. If there is a power button, then I must be looking in the wrong places, because I don't see one.

When I hear Durango and Always on, this is what I think they mean. It's literally always on. It won't be the case that you can turn it on and off the way you turn a 360 on or off. And it will still be able to do things while in that low power state, further making possible Microsoft's ambitions for a more seamless system software and game update experience. To turn off a next gen Durango/xbox, you will have to pull the power cord. And imagine if such a lower power device while in that low power mode could still muster the resources necessary to possibly allow you to use Kinect with the Xbox user interface directly on top of whatever your television service happens to be.

Always on behavior when done right works damn well. And if we want seamless game updates, then all the games need to be on the hard drive installed, because if it were up to what game discs we had in there, then only the game that we currently had inside the console would be getting the latest updates, which is the way it is right now on the 360 when you try to launch the game.

My Samsung HDTV somewhat works this way as well.

From the manual.

Standby Mode Upgrade

​

You can set the Standby Mode Upgrade
function so that the TV downloads new
upgrade software when it is in Standby
mode.​

In Standby mode, the TV is off, but
its Internet connection is active. This
allows the TV to download upgrade
software automatically, when you are
not using it. Because the TV is turned
on internally, the screen may glow slightly.​

 

[Alexct]

MS can compete with PS4 on price, Kinect and Win8 integration - not power.

Only the price No one is interested in the kinect (every game for this device is a sales flop) and the same goes for W8.For me is "jump out" after 10 years of xbox too underpowered.

 

[torbor]

Aside from clock bumps up and down (yields, thermals and cooling permitting) what else can they really do? I was under the impression that any changes this late into the game for a Christmas / holiday this year launch would probably cause a delay?.

Well, of course delaying.
It could be very well worth it if technologies like stacked ram would become available next year.
Sony,despite of a higher price, worser multiplatform games and network managed it to sell as much consoles as Microsoft so a later release isnt a dealbreaker.
Where was it confirmed that will release the console this year anyway?

 

[Betanumerical]

Well, of course delaying.
It could be very well worth it if technologies like stacked ram would become available next year.
Sony,despite of a higher price, worser multiplatform games and network managed it to sell as much consoles as Microsoft so a later release isnt a dealbreaker.
Where was it confirmed that will release the console this year anyway?

I do not think Microsoft will give Sony a 1 year headstart, that would put them in a very bad position. Stacked RAM isn't going to do much in regards to the GPU's power either, if they want to match Sony, launch later and cheaper they will need to pull of some magic or take a hit on each console.

 

[Silent_Buddha]

Only the price No one is interested in the kinect (every game for this device is a sales flop) and the same goes for W8.For me is "jump out" after 10 years of xbox too underpowered.

Really? All of them?

Dance Central is just one example selling more than 2.5 million copies (as of Aug 2011, so it is likely more). That easily fits into the Top 20 best selling games on PS3 as well as X360. As of May 2012, Dance Central 2 had sold more than 1.6 million copies.

Oh and if you think those are the only ones. Kinect Sports sold 3 million units by April 2011.

Somehow, I don't think that qualifies as a sales flop. There have been multiple titles that have moved more than a million units.

Regards,
SB

 

[(((interference)))]

This is strangely turning into a real mystery.

Mark Rein wouldn't be playing the "pretend not to know" card, he's always been very direct in his statements. And yet AGAIN, here's another developer (and the list keeps growing) who sounds like he's waiting to find out what Microsoft will do.

And why would Microsoft be trying so hard to maintain a black hole of secrecy around Durango with developers? That doesn't make any sense.

He's merely trying to drum up some excitement for the MS reveal.

Or perhaps it's a bit of a sly nudge at MS because now their console is clearly weaker than the competition and he's been asking them for MOAR POWERR for the past year

 

[silhouette]

VGLeaks just dropped us another gift: http://www.vgleaks.com/durango-xdk/

That last screen (if true) confirms a few things:

1) It's more powerful than the 360 (obviously)
2) Kinect v2 included in every system, required for the system to work.
3) System has several power states and the system is "always on", such that it will provide updates to games when the system is not in use.
4) Every system will have a hard drive.
5) The system will come with a Blu-ray drive.
6) Games must be installed before they can be played. The optical drive is NOT used to play games.
7) Related to point 6, a user will be able to play a game while it is being installed.
8) There will be changes to the controller to make it appeal to the noncore gamer (we have no idea what that means, but lets not assume the worst).

Discuss!

Funny, but a lot of those quotes are mentioned -as is- on the Sony's PS4 unveiling conference. Either, Sony have seen this document and say exactly the same thing to mock Microsoft, or vgleaks is just fabricating this by using the common knowledge and borrowing stuff from Sony. We will see..At worst, we are less than 3 months away from MS's unveiling.

 

[dumbo11]

Funny, but a lot of those quotes are mentioned -as is- on the Sony's PS4 unveiling conference. Either, Sony have seen this document and say exactly the same thing to mock Microsoft, or vgleaks is just fabricating this by using the common knowledge and borrowing stuff from Sony. We will see..At worst, we are less than 3 months away from MS's unveiling.

Would be rather strange to fabricate such tediously boring screenshots .

Although, one quirk - it was my understanding that the 360 graphics API was 'based on direct3d' (direct3d9+ says google), whereas that screenshot seems to imply that Durango's API is simply direct3d11?

 

[Rangers]

Aside from clock bumps up and down (yields, thermals and cooling permitting) what else can they really do? I was under the impression that any changes this late into the game for a Christmas / holiday this year launch would probably cause a delay?.

those things, and i dont think a ram bump to 12gb or even a doubling to 16gb is completely out of the question either. technical considerations aside, 16gb of ddr3 chips likely still costs less than half what 8gb ddr5 does (8gb of ddr3 would be more like 1/4).

many say it is, but that was the consensus before the ps4 switcharoo too, so i continue to not put much stock in the consensus.

then there's the wild card, that somehow the system wasnt what we thought in the first place, or they actually do add more cu's or something (could be contingent on the prevailing spec leaks being "old" and the like). i hope things at least get cleared up at april.

 

[Rangers]

Funny, but a lot of those quotes are mentioned -as is- on the Sony's PS4 unveiling conference

this is interesting. can you prove some examples?

i'm still sure it's real tho.

 

[Nisaaru]

Really? All of them?

Dance Central is just one example selling more than 2.5 million copies (as of Aug 2011, so it is likely more). That easily fits into the Top 20 best selling games on PS3 as well as X360. As of May 2012, Dance Central 2 had sold more than 1.6 million copies.

Oh and if you think those are the only ones. Kinect Sports sold 3 million units by April 2011.

Somehow, I don't think that qualifies as a sales flop. There have been multiple titles that have moved more than a million units.

Regards,
SB

But how many of these sales were people really wanting to buy that product or got it only because they wanted to check out Kinect? It would be more interesting to see how many Kinect titles were bought by households with an installed Kinect.

 

[SKYSONY]

Would the increase in the clocks to 2 and 1 Ghz for the CPU and GPU have any remarkable effect on performance?

 

[Shifty Geezer]

Would the increase in the clocks to 2 and 1 Ghz for the CPU and GPU have any remarkable effect on performance?

Performance increase would be directly proportional to the increase in clocks. That is, 1.6 GHz/800 Mhz to 2.0 GHz/1000 MHz would be a 25% increase in peak operations per second. If the processors are bandwidth limited or the algorithm is missing the caches though, there won't be any increase in attained calculations per second. That'll be inevitable in some cases, so you'd be looking at something less than a 25% increase, but it's impossible to say what the gain would be for sure.

 

[Phil]

Always on behavior when done right works damn well. And if we want seamless game updates, then all the games need to be on the hard drive installed, because if it were up to what game discs we had in there, then only the game that we currently had inside the console would be getting the latest updates, which is the way it is right now on the 360 when you try to launch the game.

IMO - the reason to have mandatory installs is a different one. If they believe that going download-only (or at least play with the idea to make this transition) is going to happen within this generation, it makes sense to go this way. Then it doesn't really matter what the source of the game is, as long as the installed-state is what matters. This way, you're also making it clear that every game can rely on the minimum speeds your harddrive can offer, where as going half-half (where some may have a disk version and some a fully installed one) would mean that you have to target the lowest possible speeds of the optical drive.

 

[Rangers]

IMO - the reason to have mandatory installs is a different one. If they believe that going download-only (or at least play with the idea to make this transition) is going to happen within this generation, it makes sense to go this way. Then it doesn't really matter what the source of the game is, as long as the installed-state is what matters. This way, you're also making it clear that every game can rely on the minimum speeds your harddrive can offer, where as going half-half (where some may have a disk version and some a fully installed one) would mean that you have to target the lowest possible speeds of the optical drive.

I think this is one of the more awesome overlooked aspects of Durango. It sounds like a huge performance boon all around, and done in a virtually painless fashion.

Finally all the talk of mandatory HDD increasing performance, that didn't really happen this gen, should.

 

[french toast]

Truth is if the nextgen Gears, Halo and Alan Wake get a very sizable leap in graphics then I honestly don't care if it's still a 1.2tf xbox, will get it on launch non the less. The always online part is a very bitter pill to swallow though.

Yep me too, because online gaming is better when you play with friends and all my mates use xbox live.

I would think a small bump in clocks would be enough...it wont match a machine with double the rops and a higher flops output..but it will be 'enough' to play the same games at a very high level.

As mentioned before...this GCN architecture is quite capable of running @ 1ghz at those specifications. ..so a clock around 900-950 mhz would be very achievable and probably planned for IMO.

Any hopes of silicon changes is pie in the sky.

 

[Shifty Geezer]

I think this is one of the more awesome overlooked aspects of Durango.

It's hardly overlooked when everyone's doing it. I wouldn't expect anything other than HDD installs considering a need to fill 8 GBs RAM.

It sounds like a huge performance boon all around, and done in a virtually painless fashion.

Actually I consider this a slight disadvantage, because use of optical+HDD would allow faster input. You can stream audio or video from the optical drive, say (video textures), while streaming graphical assets and writing game-world from/to the HDD. That'd be one less IO job on the HDD head. So performance is actually reduced versus a console with guaranteed optical and HDD, but we won't have noisy drives to worry about!

Finally all the talk of mandatory HDD increasing performance, that didn't really happen this gen, should.

It did happen. If those games with mandatory installs were run from optical disc, they'd perform terribly.

 

[GrimThorne]

He's merely trying to drum up some excitement for the MS reveal.

Or perhaps it's a bit of a sly nudge at MS because now their console is clearly weaker than the competition and he's been asking them for MOAR POWERR for the past year

Really? I think that would be a little out of character for Rein, he doesn't waste his time with things like that. He's always been direct in his statements. If he doesn't like something or in this case what Microsoft is doing, he would articulate it clearly and without any coyish references.

Hmm, we'll see.

 

[Rangers]

It's hardly overlooked when everyone's doing it. I wouldn't expect anything other than HDD installs considering a need to fill 8 GBs RAM.

you mean next gen or current? Sure ps4 may well do the same but I'm not aware of any confirmation. Wii U doesn't.

Actually I consider this a slight disadvantage, because use of optical+HDD would allow faster input. You can stream audio or video from the optical drive, say (video textures), while streaming graphical assets and writing game-world from/to the HDD. That'd be one less IO job on the HDD head. So performance is actually reduced versus a console with guaranteed optical and HDD, but we won't have noisy drives to worry about!

never thought of it that way, do current ps360 games actually do this?

one reason i sometimes install games to my 360 is the vague notion of "save wear on the optical drive". if what you say is correct it doesn't. and come to think of it, it reduces noise too, so i guess they arent reading from both optical and hdd.

It did happen. If those games with mandatory installs were run from optical disc, they'd perform terribly.

some dont have installs, and the installs are typically only 3-4gb right? so this is different.