Xbox One (Durango) Technical hardware investigation

[(((interference)))]

Especially if developer feedback is indicating that it is the #1 reasons they may not be able to have feature parity between Xbox One and PS4.

Sony increased RAM allocation for the same reasons, so it shouldn't be a surprise if Microsoft also does it if it is feasible and being requested by a large number of developers as the #1 thing they would need to achieve parity or near parity with PS4.

I never said devs mentioned it was a hindrance to achieving parity with PS4 (for one, this would be before PS4 was increased to 8 GB)

It was just what they received the most number of complaints about.

The extra ram could be used for tombstone-ing programs

Good point eastmen, they could have multiple apps tombstoned in RAM rather than using flash cache for that.

It would take an insider to rule out TSMC versus GF, 6T versus eDRAM, 28 nm bulk versus FD-SOI, etc.

It's not eDRAM as they would call it eDRAM if it was, I think it's quite safe to say its 6T SRAM, given every piece of documentation/leak from MS has called it SRAM and as shown a page or two earlier, the 5 bn transistor math works perfectly well when you have 1.6 bn transistors in there for ESRAM.

I don't see any of the other embedded memory candidates giving the kind of performance we're hearing about either.

These are various forms of local, on-chip memory. Except for the DRAM. 4T (4 transistor) SRAM takes up 4 times the space that regular DRAM does 1T-SRAM seems to be a hybrid of DRAM that allows for less latency. 6T SRAM is much faster then 4T SRAM. EDRAM is the cheapest of all - but it is also the slowest of all. SRAM is very expensive due to the size, compared to EDRAM. Embedded RAM.

http://arstechnica.com/civis/viewtopic.php?f=8&t=1191426

 

[Themrphenix]

I have never said that the added ram or upclock was fact!I only told what my insider at Microsoft told me.He said they was told to come up with some easy cheap alternative to up the specs to please developers!So extra 4 gigs of ram was requested by serval developers!Microsofts own testing showed the GPU and ESRAM could be upclocked to 875 MHZ to 900 MHZ without much variance to the yields which remain inconsistent!So they presented there finding to those above them and are waiting for the green light!If the green light isn't given within in the next week,then most likely they will not happen!

You can chose to believe me or not,but my source has been 100% correct!I also work with an Xbox One development kit every work day!So as the hip hop saying goes haters gonna hate,lovers gonna love,and players going to play!

Ps
My track record includes telling you there was no downclock on GPU when the downclock rumor started!

 

[BeyondTed]

It's not eDRAM as they would call it eDRAM if it was, I think it's quite safe to say its 6T SRAM, given every piece of documentation/leak from MS has called it SRAM and as shown a page or two earlier, the 5 bn transistor math works perfectly well when you have 1.6 bn transistors in there for ESRAM.

I don't see any of the other embedded memory candidates giving the kind of performance we're hearing about either.

http://arstechnica.com/civis/viewtopic.php?f=8&t=1191426

I disagree. My reply is moved over into the eSRAM thread.

 

[COPS N RAPPERS]

This thread became a propagation of fantasies and wishful thinking galore.
Too bad.

All of the deviations made on this "speculation" thread from weeks prior to thus so far have been started by Microsoft when they actually said that they've been working on the clock speeds of the Esram used. the info also admitted that they're still on near final silicon....which has only been a couple weeks ago compared to the leaks which are many months old. what it proves is that contrary to belief of microsoft being at the finishing line; they're are actually still stuck in the factory and are not due till months away.



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Anyone believing entirely on SuperDaE's XB1's info on Memory speeds, it was gunned down a couple weeks ago by engineers. with that being said like a lot of information based on archives will obviously not speak of future progress...that's where this thread comes in handy.

interference/b3d is famous...

https://xboxuncut.squarespace.com/m...sed-gpu-clock-and-an-increase-to-12-gb-of-ram

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Aidpg1LP9Qg

Interesting, I'm not sure if microsoft has asked about upgrades since their devkits were more then the leaks to begin with. me thinks the "asking" was done actually a couple days before E3 thus showing up on the booths. the "what is now" if you will, I'm thinking is the testing progress of the new changes because it was mentioned a couple weeks ago that they're on near final silicon.

 

[Proelite]

Interesting that interference mentioned tombstoning.

The entry here at http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tombstone_(programming) is not what tombstone means for MS internally...

Storage for tombstones definitely makes programmatical sense if tombstones mean what I think it means. Although I'll be pretty shocked if it's not already implemented with the first XDK.

 

[XpiderMX]

Interesting that interference mentioned tombstoning.

The entry here at http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tombstone_(programming) is not what tombstone means for MS internally...

Storage for tombstones definitely makes programmatical sense if tombstones mean what I think it means. Although I'll be pretty shocked if it's not already implemented with the first XDK.

http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/magazine/hh148153.aspx

 

[Pozer]

Interesting that interference mentioned tombstoning.

The entry here at http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tombstone_(programming) is not what tombstone means for MS internally...

Storage for tombstones definitely makes programmatical sense if tombstones mean what I think it means. Although I'll be pretty shocked if it's not already implemented with the first XDK.

My take on this was more along the lines of MS Active Directory / DC tombstoning. That a certain amount of cache was set aside for asset streaming from HD/storage and how long will those assets stayed cached in this location if not being used.

 

[Shifty Geezer]

This isn't the rumour thread. No-one's saying MS has changed to a different GPU. There's speculation of an upclock and/or more RAM, and the discussion, loose as it is, is trying to evaluate plausibility of these. Although sadly not on technical merit, but on conjecture based on paper-trails.

For the good of the thread I think I need to prune out the rumour stuff.

 

[djskribbles]

This isn't the rumour thread. No-one's saying MS has changed to a different GPU. There's speculation of an upclock and/or more RAM, and the discussion, loose as it is, is trying to evaluate plausibility of these. Although sadly not on technical merit, but on conjecture based on paper-trails.

For the good of the thread I think I need to prune out the rumour stuff.

I think it's only fair. Back when we were discussing downclocks or yield issues, all of that was considered not relevant to this thread. But now there's talks of major upgrades based on little to nothing.

 

[Shifty Geezer]

I think it's only fair. Back when we were discussing downclocks or yield issues, all of that was considered not relevant to this thread. But now there's talks of major upgrades based on little to nothing.

Not quite. When the talk was about the rumours ("you can't trust this guy", "you can trust that guy"), that was OT. But this is a tech investigation and rumour thread (I say, rechecking the title and contradicting my own previous post). There's nothing inherently wrong with discussing rumours, but it needs to be on the technical merits, not the heresay. COPS N ROBBERS' post wasn't contributing anything technical, so I removed it. The current rumour of overclock + more RAM + is the ESRAM tech from Roswell is still relevant as long as people stick to technical investigation and sensible questions and analysis.

 

[COPS N RAPPERS]

She's talking about the software being an early build. Your paper trail doesn't really lead anywhere new. The devkit's were super-powered, but MS's specs were well known and were partially revealed as known.

obviously she's isn't going to go into technical problems but It's more than just that, you have the engineers still working memory speeds which is evident. If the system was up to par then you wouldn't need engineers messing with memory speeds.

either way....none of that is going to be mentioned in the vids.

About the only thing of interest is they didn't mention any clock speed IIRC at the E3 tech talk, perhaps because they were still trying them out. And they said 200 GB/s BW which didn't match understanding.

this is the official xb1 information

what has been left out are -

1. GPU and it's clock speed.

2. use of Esram and it's speed.

3. CPU clock speed.

Because they were either running on near final kits or plain PCs. The conspiracy theory stuff isn't needed, this is fairly straight forward.

the target Microsoft laid out was generalized so the conspiracy theory is on there behalf. with uncertain revealed specs using an uncertain PC to display games with some of them targeting 60 fps. even with that said both rumored specs were pretty precise leading them to actual devkits.

Afaik, It's because the devkits were just built by the devs based on list with off the shelf parts. This list was provided by MS. This normal PC was running the Durango SDK and needed rather beefy specs to emulate/bruteforce the Xbone architecture. Correct me if I'm wrong.

partly correct, as PR Manager Galit Motai suggested, there IS multiple PCs configured to run the same game; so that would lead to other websites with multiple specifications if any were leaked. however if the game was built on an ordinary PC using off the shelf parts (as SuperDaE leaks proved) then you wouldn't to go out of your way.

you wouldn't need a Geforce GTX to emulate an ATI 7770. you would just need an ATI HD7770 to emulate an ATI HD 7770. as what jonathan blow stated about devkits.

jonathan blow

“Dev kits almost always have more RAM yeah. Better CPU+GPU, no…”

 

[Ekim]

obviously she's isn't going to go into technical problems but It's more than just that, you have the engineers still working memory speeds which is evident. If the system was up to par then you wouldn't need engineers messing with memory speeds.

either way....none of that is going to be mentioned in the vids.



this is the official xb1 information

what has been left out are -

1. GPU and it's clock speed.

2. use of Esram and it's speed.

3. CPU clock speed.





the target Microsoft laid out was generalized so the conspiracy theory is on there behalf. with uncertain revealed specs using an uncertain PC to display games with some of them targeting 60 fps. even with that said both rumored specs were pretty precise leading them to actual devkits.




partly correct, as PR Manager Galit Motai suggested, there IS multiple PCs configured to run the same game; so that would lead to other websites with multiple specifications if any were leaked. however if the game was built on an ordinary PC using off the shelf parts (as SuperDaE leaks proved) then you wouldn't to go out of your way.

you wouldn't need a Geforce GTX to emulate an ATI 7770. you would just need an ATI HD7770 to emulate an ATI HD 7770. as what jonathan blow stated about devkits.

jonathan blow

Blow is talking about final/beta devkits with actual final/beta silicone. Alpha devkits always have to do bruteforcing like PC gaming where devs can't cater all configurations with optimizations. To emulate a 7770 in a closed environment with all things running efficiently you need a better GPU.

 

[Proelite]

obviously she's isn't going to go into technical problems but It's more than just that, you have the engineers still working memory speeds which is evident. If the system was up to par then you wouldn't need engineers messing with memory speeds.

either way....none of that is going to be mentioned in the vids.



this is the official xb1 information

what has been left out are -

1. GPU and it's clock speed.

2. use of Esram and it's speed.

3. CPU clock speed.





the target Microsoft laid out was generalized so the conspiracy theory is on there behalf. with uncertain revealed specs using an uncertain PC to display games with some of them targeting 60 fps. even with that said both rumored specs were pretty precise leading them to actual devkits.




partly correct, as PR Manager Galit Motai suggested, there IS multiple PCs configured to run the same game; so that would lead to other websites with multiple specifications if any were leaked. however if the game was built on an ordinary PC using off the shelf parts (as SuperDaE leaks proved) then you wouldn't to go out of your way.

you wouldn't need a Geforce GTX to emulate an ATI 7770. you would just need an ATI HD7770 to emulate an ATI HD 7770. as what jonathan blow stated about devkits.

jonathan blow

Jblow doesn't know shit when it comes to the Xbox One.

 

[COPS N RAPPERS]

Blow is talking about final/beta devkits with actual final/beta silicone. Alpha devkits always have to do bruteforcing like PC gaming where devs can't cater all configurations with optimizations. To emulate a 7770 in a closed environment with all things running efficiently you need a better GPU.

You would need just more memory, for debugging and for the OS to run. visuals and features based on a "off the shelf GFX card" can be done using the least amount of work around considering their functions are fixed. even in the most efficient case of the XB1 a PC's wouldn't need to bend that far back; not unless the target has grown in some way.

Similar to Sony's case in which case they were working just fine with some kits using 4gbs of memory. there were no reports before or after their reveal using a 4x GFX card at any point whether an alpha, preAlpha or an Alpha of a PreApha.

 

[Xenus]

Guys it's time to let it go. This thread is for rumors of technical merit. Rumors of changing to a GPU 4x more power then the one they leaked 2 specs to have no technical merit they are nothing but noise. Rumors of a slight upclock or downlock or going to 12GB's of RAM fall under having technical merit and are up for discussion. Speed of the eSRAM has technical merit. Shape has technical merit though may better belong in the audio thread. Saying the that "This is not the SOC you are looking for" about the current config and coming out with some radically different config and then one or two new posters appearing out of nowhere to say yeah i heard that too does not equal technical merit. Let's try to keep everything in the technical thread at least in the realm of possibility.

 

[blakjedi]

I think its valid discussion. Dave B said performance of ESRAM based GPU when coded properly could perform better than discrete parts. Carmack said something similar about console capabilities back in 2011.

https://twitter.com/ID_AA_Carmack/status/50277106856370176

 

[Proelite]

I think its valid discussion. Dave B said performance of ESRAM based GPU when coded properly could perform better than discrete parts. Carmack said something similar about console capabilities back in 2011.

https://twitter.com/ID_AA_Carmack/status/50277106856370176

Crytek have said in interviews that Xbox One does some things better than the best pcs. I would believe that to be the same case with the ps4.

 

[Rangers]

Crytek have said in interviews that Xbox One does some things better than the best pcs. I would believe that to be the same case with the ps4.

can you link that crytek comment?

 

[Cyan]

Would you believe me if I tell you that what (((interference))) and eastmen mentioned about rumours are making into the headlines not only in many internet gaming sites but also in different forums all around the world?

I was happy with the specs so I kinda go back to the basics and if the Xbox One isn't in mass production by now, it's very close to it, imho.

The possibility of those rumours to be true is if we factor in what Penello said about a change of specs when he pointed out that he said that weeks before the E3.

The Xbox 360 doubled its RAM fairly close to release.

Other than that, I don't know....I wouldn't expect big changes -no upclock but increased RAM could be a possibility if they create basically "dev kits" consoles so to speak-

 

[Proelite]

can you link that crytek comment?

Dammit. Having trouble finding it. The Ryse dude is the same as in this interview.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=T5N91O16vas