Xbox One (Durango) Technical hardware investigation

[Cyan]

What are we missing here? First it was DDR3, recently it was GDDR4, and now it is GDDR5.

A Blizzard developer has said this at Neogaf (someone is wrong here, or were we just wilfully blind not to see this coming?)

http://www.neogaf.com/forum/showpost.php?p=57028434&postcount=3192

Durango has 8 gig GDDR5, always has. Sony matched, not the other way around.

http://www.neogaf.com/forum/showpost.php?p=52539330&postcount=281

I think Sony matched Microsoft on the 8GB GDDR5. Sony just beat them to the announcement punch.

p.s. thanks to bbot for the news.

 

[SteelOak]

Did you saw this guy's tag ?

 

[bagofsuck]

What are we missing here? First it was DDR3, recently it was GDDR4, and now it is GDDR5.

A Blizzard developer has said this at Neogaf (someone is wrong here, or were we just wilfully blind not to see this coming?)

http://www.neogaf.com/forum/showpost.php?p=57028434&postcount=3192



http://www.neogaf.com/forum/showpost.php?p=52539330&postcount=281



p.s. thanks to bbot for the news.

Can it be possible the dev kits with DDR3 + ESRAM was just to emulate the final memory setup with GDDR5?

 

[XpiderMX]

What are we missing here? First it was DDR3, recently it was GDDR4, and now it is GDDR5.

A Blizzard developer has said this at Neogaf (someone is wrong here, or were we just wilfully blind not to see this coming?)

http://www.neogaf.com/forum/showpost.php?p=57028434&postcount=3192



http://www.neogaf.com/forum/showpost.php?p=52539330&postcount=281



p.s. thanks to bbot for the news.

I think he is wrong at the GDDR5. I guess he is not a developer, he is an animator.

 

[(((interference)))]

Can it be possible the dev kits with DDR3 + ESRAM was just to emulate the final memory setup with GDDR5?

Nope

 

[dobwal]

How about LPDDR3? Samsung just announced it has 4 Gb 2133 LPDDR3 in production with a production increase due this year. eSRAM makes sense if one of MS' priorities with Durango is a low power design. Really scalable if it's readily employable to tabs and phones with later shrinks.

 

[XpiderMX]

Maybe I will said something "stupid" but, can the esram works like a virtual memory page table?

I mean something like this:

NeoGAF said me no, but I want to try here xD

EDIT:

AMD even spoke, at one point, about the idea of using an embedded eDRAM chip as a cache for GPU memory — essentially speaking to the Xbox Durango’s expected memory structure. The following quote comes from AMD’s HSA briefing/seminar:

“Game developers and other 3D rendering programs have wanted to use extremely large textures for a number of years and they’ve had to go through a lot of tricks to pack pieces of textures into smaller textures, or split the textures into smaller textures, because of problems with the legacy memory model… Today, a whole texture has to be locked down in physical memory before the GPU is allowed to touch any part of it. If the GPU is only going to touch a small part of it, you’d like to only bring those pages into physical memory and therefore be able to accommodate other large textures.
With a hUMA approach to 3D rendering, applications will be able to code much more naturally with large textures and yet not run out of physical memory, because only the real working set will be brought into physical memory.”
​

This is broadly analogous to hardware support for the MegaTexturing technology that John Carmack debuted in Rage.

http://www.extremetech.com/gaming/1...u-memory-should-appear-in-kaveri-xbox-720-ps4

 

[3dilettante]

Can you restate your claim?

A page table is a data structure, while the pool labeled as eSRAM is a physical device that stores state.
As data, it's at least possible to see page table entries being loaded into any memory pool, although depending on the system it could have little to do with the eSRAM. One doesn't necessarily need the other, although they could interact.

Saying, "can eSRAM act like a page table" sounds like asking how a piece of paper can act like a poem.

 

[Xenio]

http://www.neogaf.com/forum/showpost.php?p=57028434&postcount=3192

Quote:
Durango has 8 gig GDDR5, always has. Sony matched, not the other way around.
http://www.neogaf.com/forum/showpost...&postcount=281

Quote:
I think Sony matched Microsoft on the 8GB GDDR5. Sony just beat them to the announcement punch.

if they announce a 8GB GDDR5+ 32/64 MB low latency eSram will be funny, just two weeks away for the truth day

 

[Bagel seed]

GDDR5 and eSRAM, best of both worlds! The truth revealed should be a great relief for all.

 

[Cjail]

IF they reveal the specs.

 

[warb]

IF they reveal the specs.

They will.

And they'll probably talk up any efficiency gains with their low latency and move engines.

 

[Grall]

GDDR5 and eSRAM, best of both worlds! The truth revealed should be a great relief for all.

Alright, that's it! DOUBLE CONFIRMED!<TM>

 

[Cjail]

They will.

And they'll probably talk up any efficiency gains with their low latency and move engines.

If "Xbox Whatever" specs are worst than PS4 then MS gains nothing by revealing them.

 

[Xenio]

Alright, that's it! DOUBLE CONFIRMED!<TM>

I don't know about you but actually I give more credit on people that works within Blizzard than "vgleaks.com"
I believe that's a concrete rumor, anyway wait for the reveal day if you want specs confirmed

 

[Grall]

I give this whole durango-GDDR5 rumors a rolleyes. It doesn't make sense, at all. Why blow 1.5 billion trannies in the GPU on 32MB SRAM (if it is SRAM, naturally) if you're gonna go with GDDR5 anyway?

Furthermore, if it's GDDR5, why only 68GB/s bandwidth? A cut-down bus width of say 64-bit, or even 128-bit won't let MS hit 8GB RAM size.

This rumor totally doesn't add up. And that blizzard guy has been identified as an animator, not a tech guy. If that's true, his opinions don't neccessarily carry a whole lot of weight (and the overall weirdness and nonsensical nature of the rumor suggests that is the case I might add.) But you go ahead and believe this rumor if it makes you happy... I think this is a load of crap myself, tbh.

 

[DJ12]

So despite someone who worked directly on the xbox saying the specs in vgleaks are right you believe someone who probably hasn't not got a clue what memory type ia included. All he will know is theirs 8 gb and ms told him it has the same bandwidth as ps4. He probably then assumes its the same memory type.

 

[Cjail]

DDR4, GDDR5, 12GB RAM, 2GHz rumors come all from the same source, it's called hope.

 

[warb]

If "Xbox Whatever" specs are worst than PS4 then MS gains nothing by revealing them.

They'll definitely talk about the specs as they did with 360, they're revealing a new console.

GDDR5 makes no sense with esram. Just why would thier slower GPU need twice as much bandwidth as the PS4 GPU?

 

[Xenio]

I give this whole durango-GDDR5 rumors a rolleyes. It doesn't make sense, at all. Why blow 1.5 billion trannies in the GPU on 32MB SRAM (if it is SRAM, naturally) if you're gonna go with GDDR5 anyway?

Furthermore, if it's GDDR5, why only 68GB/s bandwidth? A cut-down bus width of say 64-bit, or even 128-bit won't let MS hit 8GB RAM size.

This rumor totally doesn't add up. And that blizzard guy has been identified as an animator, not a tech guy. If that's true, his opinions don't neccessarily carry a whole lot of weight (and the overall weirdness and nonsensical nature of the rumor suggests that is the case I might add.) But you go ahead and believe this rumor if it makes you happy... I think this is a load of crap myself, tbh.

who says he is an animator or what?
anyway in his position he surely can know more than all of us combined;
68 GB/s is relative at DDR3's rumor, if the machine is different, the BW and the bus will be different of course, Assuming what he's saying, durango has 8 GB GDDR5 way more before than the reveal of the 8 GB from sony.
If he's right, the vgleaks are correct, precise but outdated specs;
maybe Microsoft have two different hardware layout, only one will be in the marked, and this is one of them;
And all the software is rumored to runs on a high level layer for future "hardware compatibility purpose", remember? so if they have two design ready, they could choose which version of durango launch in mass production;

if it is the case, maybe the eSram is not here anymore, who knows.