Xbox One (Durango) Technical hardware investigation

Ah, I forgot to mention that it has been confirmed by Eurogamer that Phil Spencer is going to give a developers conference on the Xbox One, September 26th -JUST after the NDA is lifted-.

AMD have also confirmed that they are showing the new Volcanic Islands a day before, September 25th. Hence the rumour, but both news are fully confirmed.

 

Interesting,my theory * with less with do more or equal* or GCN 2.0 ? please don't kill me

 

No guessing needed to know there is no new crossfire/dual-gpu nor physics nor ray tracing chip in the Xbox One.

I will personally ban anyone who even mentions it as even remotely plausible. Silly season is over.

 

I'm sure they are somewhat inefficient. ERP has even said so.

If you run furmark it will make your GPU temp go through the roof, so much so all drivers throttle it these days AFAIK, and AMD has referred to it as a "power virus". Because it hammers your ALU's more than any games.

This would suggest ALU's are not normally fully utilized.

I'm not knowledgeable enough to know exactly how this applies to consoles and PC's though.

 

Non-technical rumour stuff moved.

 

Please don't go posting ancient rumors from 2011 that has been discussed to death already years ago.

 

Hi BRiT.

It would surely be downright crazy and way too complicated and expensive to "bolt on" an extra dGPU in the Xbox One SOC, not to mention that Microsoft would have hyped that feature, if it was ever there.

So I'm just replying to make sure you know that your message as a moderator here on Beyond3d could be seen as a confirmation/fact that there is no hidden extra gpu. I appreciate that though.

 

All that it should be seen as is an echo of reality that Microsoft themselves have stated in all of their released materials and statements.

So yes, any sane person will have realized this by now.

 

Discussion of console lifetime spawned off to it's own thread over here: http://forum.beyond3d.com/showthread.php?t=64264

 

Rumours belong in the other thread, so unless you or anyone has something more substantial to contribute to the tech investigation, it's a moot point to keep bringing up (at least until it is confirmed/busted on said date). :3

 

I'm little confused, we have devs already confirming that there is a 50% difference. yet we are told to wait down the road as the truth unfolds, and then there's also word of an other conference.

what truth?

the only thing i can muster together is that Microsoft probably has devs thinking the kits that they're using are final, when they're not. which might be correct, there was a statement saying all of gamescom's demos were running on default clocked hardware. 1.6 CPU not 1.75. (if i can find it. )

 

I think he's referring just to the fact that DDR3 vs GDDR5 bandwidth and GPU FLOPS-difference aren't actually the same thing as real world performance difference

 

Do we know the specs of the PCs used for BF4 demo (Xbox One events)?

 

well they used a 7990 for the gpu. not sure about cpu or ram amount.

 

What this mean? what is the difference between "licence model" and "silicon model"?

 

It sounds like they are buying finished chips from AMD, not licensing IP and paying a royalty.

 

Intel keeps AMD from extending an x86 license to a third party. Therefore, you have to buy the actual chips from AMD.

 

I think this is the right place...New to this forum.
Question I have is in regards to the rumors on the GPU in Xbox One

So the rumor about a dGPU just seems too far fetched to believe and I have been wondering something and this seems like the only place I might get the answer I'm looking for from people who know what they are talking about.

If there really is a AMD and MS NDA and on the 25th of this month AMD announces the Volcanic Islands GPU in Hawaii then on the 26th MS has a press conference set for Euro Gamer Expo...Is it possible that the actual deal with the Xbox One GPU is that it is based off the Volcanic Islands GPU...I mean it could still have the same specs we are aware of as far as clock speed and CU's but if its based off a different architecture than everyone is believing would that make the GPU better than what people think?
So my question really is if the GPU is based on the Volcanic Islands what does that mean exactly? Does that make it better than what is believed to be right now? Would that explain all the cryptic messaging from MS about the truth coming out on how powerful the Xbox One is?

 

Nothing that precise has been disclosed or leaked about the GPU.
However, it might not be the GPU as much as the hardware and software that ties the whole memory system together that Microsoft would be more interested in, and the software-level features of that would be something AMD would rely on the platform and OS providers to implement.

Development of Sea Islands (or the Bonaire-ish and onward cloud of features that there is no human word for) was apparently influenced by console development, so research and development isn't a one-way street.
Neither console manufacturer has completely described their system, so it seems probable to me that there are parts in the consoles that will also be present in upcoming hardware and platform announcements from AMD.

 

One positive I draw from Panello's statements is that it's a small step towards how open the manufacturers were about certain processor lines. The x86 mainline cores were a notable example, as were IBM's disclosures on Cell, sometimes POWER, and a few other non-embedded CPU lines.

The emergence of embedded, portable, and microserver core lines (edit: as the big buzz source) has had a chilling effect, with a drying up or paywalling of some traditional technical sources, a drop in the quantity of software guides, and a lack of openness about the hardware.
AMD's Bobcat was significant in that AMD really clammed up, with Jaguar being something of a change back.
ARM isn't as open, and its various licensees even less so.
Computing platform providers don't get as much of a marketing boost about any of the components they use, and we have some sparkling examples as of late of how tight-lipped or misleading they can be.

Forcing a PR tit for tat is not the same as the sort of walkthroughs and publications I remember for the big chip announcements, but I wonder if Sony hadn't pulled the tech geek gambit if both sides would have shut up and gone Nintendo as far as architectural tidbits go.
I do hope that we do get more disclosure from the architects and designers of the system, and a little less of the game of web forum telephone.