Xbox One (Durango) Technical hardware investigation

[Shifty Geezer]

Following your logic their AMD7770(1000Mhz,10 instead of 12 CUs) is sold with 12+% failure rate?

PC components are binned, so those higher clocked parts are released at a clock within their expected failure limits. You can't use binned parts in a console (unless literally using off the shelf parts), so you have to select a lower common threshold. We may see 50% of launch PS3 comfortably able to hit 550 MHz, but Sony had to set the limit to 500 MHz to hit their reliability target and set the target for devs.

Come on, the leaked Durango specs are not limited by its TDP...

Uh, I never said they were. I was talking about overclocking. Whatever clocks MS have set for Durango, they have picked for good reason. If they can easily up the clock 10% without any untoward effects, they'd have set the clock at that rate and it won't be overclocked. That can only not be true is MS's engineers don't know what they are doing, and they're too clueless to get 10% extra performance for free.

 

[Xenio]

Whatever clocks MS have set for Durango, they have picked for good reason. If they can easily up the clock 10% without any untoward effects, they'd have set the clock at that rate and it won't be overclocked. That can only not be true is MS's engineers don't know what they are doing, and they're too clueless to get 10% extra performance for free.

maybe the good reason is that they think that was enought
they can add 15% of clock freq, or higher simply with a trivial rework of system cooling for few $, just the same that a lot of graphic card makers do all the time, you have a frequency range and you can move inside this choosing the right cooling system, just look how much "overclock editions" cooled with air we have in the market.

And I believe that if the cpu is a low-energy one, it can be overclocked pretty high, more than gpu, if they go for vapor exchange tech maybe they can do more than 2.2-2.4 GHz on cpu and 1050-1100 on gpu depending on internal structure and materials.

and just to be educated, it's true that on xbox360 heat was partially distribuited on board, but the real cause of RROD was the xclamp that curves the board when its temperature was too high. I have a 360 day one still working, I've just removed xclamp from the very start, another thing is that microsoft set the "shutdown temperature" too high, almost 110° for some components and 100° for others. something easy to correct if you know where to put your hands in.

Saying that a clock higher by a 10-15% will cause the rrod problem again, is simply ridicoluos

 

[Betanumerical]

maybe the good reason is that they think that was enought
they can add 15% of clock freq, or higher simply with a trivial rework of system cooling for few $, just the same that a lot of graphic card makers do all the time, you have a frequency range and you can move inside this choosing the right cooling system, just look how much "overclock editions" cooled with air we have in the market.

And I believe that if the cpu is a low-energy one, it can be overclocked pretty high, more than gpu, if they go for vapor exchange tech maybe they can do more than 2.2-2.4 GHz on cpu and 1050-1100 on gpu depending on internal structure and materials.

and just to be educated, it's true that on xbox360 heat was partially distribuited on board, but the real cause of RROD was the xclamp that curves the board when its temperature was too high. I have a 360 day one still working, I've just removed xclamp from the very start, another thing is that microsoft set the "shutdown temperature" too high, almost 110° for some components and 100° for others. something easy to correct if you know where to put your hands in.

Saying that a clock higher by a 10-15% will cause the rrod problem again, is simply ridicoluos

I honestly do not think any kind of cooling solution, aside from say passive + fan or something along those lines is going to happen, it would cost way to much money and draw way to much power otherwise. If microsoft wanted a more powerful CPU/GPU they would of gone with it, there would be no reason for them to go with a lower power CPU/GPU then try and massively over clock them (when not all would, as Shifty explained above) then it would to just stick to the more powerful CPU/GPU in the first place and get rid of the entire yields hassle that the former would have.

 

[Cjail]

If overclocking could have be done without trade-offs or risks then MS would have done it already.
MS would not surely have waited for Sony PS4 announcement to do that.

 

[Xenio]

I honestly do not think any kind of cooling solution, aside from say passive + fan or something along those lines is going to happen, it would cost way to much money and draw way to much power otherwise. If microsoft wanted a more powerful CPU/GPU they would of gone with it, there would be no reason for them to go with a lower power CPU/GPU then try and massively over clock them (when not all would, as Shifty explained above) then it would to just stick to the more powerful CPU/GPU in the first place and get rid of the entire yields hassle that the former would have.

changing gpu? yes, I agree, but at this point they are too far, it is no more an option in my opinion
if they want to react, I think that raising the clock is possible
vapor exchange systems is still passive heats.+fan, but far more efficient, and a mere 15%+ is trivial
a lot of card makers does this all the time, without vapor exchange

 

[Betanumerical]

changing gpu? yes, I agree, but at this point they are too far, it is no more an option in my opinion
if they want to react, I think that raising the clock is possible
vapor exchange systems is still passive heats.+fan, but far more efficient, and a mere 15%+ is trivial
a lot of card makers does this all the time, without vapor exchange

But they also sell them at a premium, you won't get as good yields when you add a extra 15% ontop, plus i don't think your vapour exchange is very cheap it would add a large cost to the system and also another point of failure.

Consoles need yields you can't be too choosy with what you get, they selected 800mhz obviously because it gave them the power they wanted, and also gave them good enough yields that they could actually sell the console at a decent price, adding a 15% over clock would no doubt reduce these yields (by how much I do not know) but it would not be good, and this far into the game making such a big redesign and change (completely changing your cooling system) would probably delay the consoles release.

 

[dumbo11]

Consoles need yields you can't be too choosy with what you get, they selected 800mhz obviously because it gave them the power they wanted, and also gave them good enough yields that they could actually sell the console at a decent price, adding a 15% over clock would no doubt reduce these yields (by how much I do not know) but it would not be good, and this far into the game making such a big redesign and change (completely changing your cooling system) would probably delay the consoles release.

Something to bear in mind is that many governments are looking at power efficiency. ( "Standby power" is already limited in the EU for various devices at 0.5-1W - including STBs... I think California has suggested legislation for game consoles? etc)

If Durango has a voice activated toggle for standby->on then the kinect mics/usb/mec/analysis needs to be able to run in a 'challenging' low power mode.

Whether that would affect upscaling clocks, I don't know.

 

[Xenio]

But they also sell them at a premium, you won't get as good yields when you add a extra 15% ontop, plus i don't think your vapour exchange is very cheap it would add a large cost to the system and also another point of failure.

Consoles need yields you can't be too choosy with what you get, they selected 800mhz obviously because it gave them the power they wanted, and also gave them good enough yields that they could actually sell the console at a decent price, adding a 15% over clock would no doubt reduce these yields (by how much I do not know) but it would not be good, and this far into the game making such a big redesign and change (completely changing your cooling system) would probably delay the consoles release.

the cost of a vapor chamber is risible and some models can transport 300-1000W per piece, using heatpipes as modern graphic card, it's easy to make rock stable a more robust overclock than simply 15% from stock freq.
an another plus is that, a vapor chamber is so efficent that maybe you don't need any fan over the heatsink.

it's tiny and perfect for a device as a console

some examples:
http://www.radianheatsinks.com/VaporChamberTechnology.aspx

http://odm.coolermaster.com/manufacture.php?page_id=9

but we have a lot of vapor chamber, just search

How can it be that some people came here to talk about GCN, eSRAM etc without knowing nothing about the basic of hardware systems, as cooling solutions?

if you think that swapping cooling system need a redesign of the board or console, you're completly out of road, by several miles

 

[Betanumerical]

the cost of a vapor chamber is risible and some models can transport 300-1000W per piece, using heatpipes as modern graphic card, it's easy to make rock stable a more robust overclock than simply 15% from stock freq.
an another plus is that, a vapor chamber is so efficent that maybe you don't need any fan over the heatsink.

it's tiny and perfect for a device as a console

some examples:
http://www.radianheatsinks.com/VaporChamberTechnology.aspx

http://odm.coolermaster.com/manufacture.php?page_id=9

but we have a lot of vapor chamber, just search

How can it be that some people came here to talk about GCN, eSRAM etc without knowing nothing about the basic of hardware systems, as cooling solutions?

if you think that swapping cooling system need a redesign of the board or console, you're completly out of road, by several miles

Eh its not going to happen, I cannot find these coolers for under $50 and this is for the video card only. There is a good reason they over clocked video cards come at a premium one of the reasons is that they generally have a lower yield rate (increasing cost) also what do you plan on doing about the no doubt need for increase voltage for this OC?. You cannot just throw in any cooling solution you want for the motherboard on a console everything is designed to fit into place perfectly.

This is simply not going to happen.

If they wanted higher frequency they would of gone with it from the start, doing a over clock and needing to change a bunch of parts around will just delay the console needlessly it's worse launch after the competition by a large amount then it is to be a bit slower.

 

[Alexct]

I keep wondering in which pieces of the next xbox MS has spent on R&D.Definitely not on the GPU of 1.2 Tflops and the memory of 8 GB ddr3 both components are cheap and far from good performance graphics.MS has spent all the Kinect 2??Here too, I doubt according to the leak of vgleaks is nothing revolutionary compared to kinect 1 to component level.
At this point I think that the assumption of a very low price of 249$ is the most crebile.

 

[Xenio]

Eh its not going to happen, I cannot find these coolers for under $50 and this is for the video card only. .

so a geforce Titan that cost 100-150$ why cost 1000$?

I will be surprised if a vapor chamber will cost more than 1-2 $ to microsoft

I keep wondering in which pieces of the next xbox MS has spent on R&D.Definitely not on the GPU of 1.2 Tflops and the memory of 8 GB ddr3 both components are cheap and far from good performance graphics.MS has spent all the Kinect 2??Here too, I doubt according to the leak of vgleaks is nothing revolutionary compared to kinect 1 to component level.
At this point I think that the assumption of a very low price of 249$ is the most crebile.

we know little about orbis and almost nothing about durango, so we don't know what the R&D have done in those 8 years
anyway Kin2 have another infrared sensor plus the old depth sensor, have 4x the resolution of cams, up to fullhd, can see more points of the body, even if hided, can track full 6 players no matter if sitted down or standing, have 1/3 of latency and can do all this in the darkness
but nothing revolutionary

 

[Betanumerical]

so a geforce Titan that cost 100-150$ why cost 1000$?

I will be surprised if a vapor chamber will cost more than 1-2 $ to microsoft



we know little about orbis and almost nothing about durango, so we don't know what the R&D have done in those 8 years

We have documents that tell us exactly about the GPU of Durango, we ironically know more about it then Orbis.

 

[Shifty Geezer]

maybe the good reason is that they think that was enought
they can add 15% of clock freq, or higher simply with a trivial rework of system cooling for few $

Yes, you can increase clocks and increase cooling at increased cost.

Saying that a clock higher by a 10-15% will cause the rrod problem again, is simply ridicoluos

Which is why no-one said that. Overclocking isn't impossible, but it comes at cost.

the cost of a vapor chamber is risible and some models can transport 300-1000W per piece,

it's tiny and perfect for a device as a console

I will be surprised if a vapor chamber will cost more than 1-2 $ to microsoft

So how come MS aren't already doing this? How come their engineers haven't thought to add a $2 vapour chamber and allow them to clock their GPU at 1200 MHz and get 50% more performance for just a few bucks? If it's due to cost, and those few dollars being considered not worth it, what you suggests would mean for less money MS could instead have put in 8 CUs and clocked them 50% higher for cheaper silicon. 8 CUs at 1200 MHz would hit the same performance as 12 CUs at 800 MHz for less money. Why haven't they done that?

 

[Xenio]

We have documents that tell us exactly about the GPU of Durango, we ironically know more about it then Orbis.

can I see those documents please?

o how come MS aren't already doing this? How come their engineers haven't thought to add a $2 vapour chamber and allow them to clock their GPU at 1200 MHz and get 50% more performance for just a few bucks? If it's due to cost, and those few dollars being considered not worth it, what you suggests would mean for less money MS could instead have put in 8 CUs and clocked them 50% higher for cheaper silicon. 8 CUs at 1200 MHz would hit the same performance as 12 CUs at 800 MHz for less money. Why haven't they done that?

why Sony don't put 8 GB from the start, but first was rumored to be a 2GB machine, then 4 GB and now 8? Why haven't they done that?

vapor chamber is ok for 15-25% overclock, not 50%, don't put words in my mouth
with 50% you've to use peltier cells or some similar solution, it works, are cheap but it will consumes 50-70W

 

[Betanumerical]

can I see those documents please?

You're assuming the 'we' in my post meant me, it meant other people on this forum who have already commented, there is a collective knowledge here that what the leaks have said is pretty much completely inline with what the the document from the conf said.

Meaning they are legit.

 

[Billy Idol]

I guess that MS have enough time to react to some extend (if even necessary??). Maybe Sony press conference even helps the nextBox designers...they can now point to PS4 to argue with money suits to better take option A versus option B, although A is slightly more expensive.

 

[Xenio]

You're assuming the 'we' in my post meant me, it meant other people on this forum who have already commented, there is a collective knowledge here that what the leaks have said is pretty much completely inline with what the the document from the conf said.

Meaning they are legit.

so no real documents?

the same 1,5 year old hardware list that DAE leaked to vgleaks, eurogamers, edge, kotaku, now is "documents"?

 

[Cjail]

@Xenio
If MS wanted to have GDDR5, higer clock speed, better GPU/CPU, and so on then Durango would have had them already.
They would not have designed Durango like this in the first place and we would not have the specs at all.

And really why do you keep ignoring the fact that DF, VGeaks, Kotaku all said that the specs they published are recent, that it's all fresh stuff confirmed by multiple sources.

 

[Inuhanyou]

The entire durango unit is geared specifically to alleviate bandwidth issues from their ram choice, not in comparison to Orbis, but to leave as much headway for developers as possible.

They can not change their entire console within a year, to change it would mean delay.

 

[Xenio]

@Xenio
If MS wanted tho have GDDR5, higer clock speed, better GPU,and so on Durango would have had them already.
They would not have designed Durango like this in the first place.

And really why do you keep ignoring the fact that DF, VGeaks, Kotaku all said that the specs they published are recent, that it's all fresh stuff confirmed by multiple sources.

because their source have wrote a lot of times that are OLD could be a good reason, what you think?
from the days he gives those specs from what I know there was a change in august and some minor after november, nobody know what

anyway until the Xbox Event

http://www.vgleaks.com/rumor-durangoxbox-next-presentation-being-hinted/