Xbox One (Durango) Technical hardware investigation

Status
Not open for further replies.
astrograd said:
So MS brought this team on specifically to head up the entire architecture of the new Xbox and spend 3 yrs doing so and you think they did this just to investigate their options for BC? No...;)
]
Click to expand...

This might be a stretch, but I think those people were hired to work on the Next NextBox.
 
Love_In_Rio said:
Wait!.You are saying that it has changed?.
Click to expand...

Maybe what he was meaning is "MS once did one design with 8 x86 cores, 32MB of embedded memory, and 12 shader blocks...."

By the way, few weeks ago a dude in a spanish forum wrote the system power is <150W-160W, then he pointed this fact was in VG Leaks but I haven´t found this fact in their current page.
 
scently said:
Actually, those additions, especially the DMEs, do have a specific role to play in the architecture of the new box. They will perform tiling/untiling of textures and resources. And of course they include texture compression/decompression hardware and also texture swizzle/unswizzle. All this in addition to their typical DMA functions. They seem to be gearing the system towards virtual/mega texturing and mega meshes as they link to the pdf of id tech 5 and the lionhead's mega mesh pdf. Although this can be done by any system, it seems they are trying to provide hardware support to make it easier and cheaper to use.

And we already know what the ESRAM can do. In addition to providing the space and bandwidth for the gpu, it is low latency, something they keep pointing out as, apart from its use in compute jobs, it seems ROP are also sensitive to latency, going by the info on vgleaks. Also it doesn't have the limitations of the EDRAM in the 360. So while these components can help alleviate bandwidth bottleneck, that is not the only reason why they choose to use them. Quite simply, it seems like the have a vision on the way graphics development will go and they designed a system to support it, and one that should provide optimum performance given the resources available in it.
Click to expand...
Well, that's an excellent explanation. The most charming aspect of the console resides there, because MS seeks a highly customized and efficient console. It doesn't need to be the most powerful console.

p.s. lots of naughty boys in the forum as of late, I wonder what happened!
 
Last edited by a moderator:
Xovek said:
My turn:

Did you mean there could be another cpu design along with the one you said?
Click to expand...

Guys, it was simple as Mr. Kilian killing rumors yet at other times being silent. Glean from that which you may ...
 
A bit off topic, so I apologize ahead of time, but I've been wondering (purely hypothetically) if the design MS has come up with for the Durango GPU (12CU, 32MB esram, DMEs), as per vgleaks, would be more amenable to a multiple GPU system. That is to say, there's been some talk on B3D that MS may have optimized for a virtual texturing focused software TBDR, and I think SLI/crossfire work roughly the same, as a kind of specialized software TBDR (please, correct me if I'm wrong), so I wonder if Durango's design could make use of the DMEs and esram in order to make a multiple GPU system more viable by increasing the efficiency of such a setup?

I'm assuming the big issue (economics aside) with multiple GPUs is efficiency, which is pretty poor in PCs, as far as I'm aware, and so by driving up efficiency, it might be viable.
 
In cases where crossfire scales it usually scales quite well so I don't think it's an efficiency issue.

I don't really see the advantage of going with crossfire over just devoting more silicon to a higher performance gpu in the first place. Unless you think they really wanted a 7970, but just could not fit that into an apu.
 
memory_system.jpg


On the bottom right, theres the block that is labeled as "Display" which has an write speed of 1.1 GB/s (8.8 Gb/s), which i suppose is the HDMI video output?

If that's the case, why is the read speed 3.9 GB/s? if this is the HDMI input, seems like there might be more than 1 input?
 
AlphaWolf said:
In cases where crossfire scales it usually scales quite well so I don't think it's an efficiency issue.

I don't really see the advantage of going with crossfire over just devoting more silicon to a higher performance gpu in the first place. Unless you think they really wanted a 7970, but just could not fit that into an apu.
Click to expand...
Pretty much. The only reason I could see going for a multiple GPU scenario was if a single GPU just wasn't feasible with their constraints. I don't know, but I imagine even just doubling the purported GPU specs, something like a 24 CU, 64MB 6T-ESRAM APU, would probably be too large as a single chip, let alone properly fed.

I didn't know crossfire scaled so well, though. I had been under the impression that at best it was only a 50% increase in general performance. Ah well, I thought I had a neat idea. Thanks, alpha.
 
I am not obliged to conceal my identity but will do so, I would like to guarantee that this information is sound as of the last 2 months but cannot; the silicon should be near final from what I am told.
What I will say will not necessarily be well received nor believed, my sole reason for this is the inability for the intelligent to actually see beyond the stem of misinformation based as accuracy. Further to mention that I am actually a fan of MSFT products and felt this should be said.
The leaks you have are accurate regarding the Durango v2.2 development kits but what has gone over the heads of many is that MSFT has incorporated a dual mainboard, dual APU system. Essentially MSFT will reveal a system with 2 times what VGL has leaked in one housing.
AMD have said the PS4 has the most powerful APU ever made right now, this is true, instead MSFT decided to go with a dual setup whilst Sony have overclocked to near 2.012GHz.
You shall hear more come March 6.
 
BClifford said:
I am not obliged to conceal my identity but will do so, I would like to guarantee that this information is sound as of the last 2 months but cannot; the silicon should be near final from what I am told.
What I will say will not necessarily be well received nor believed, my sole reason for this is the inability for the intelligent to actually see beyond the stem of misinformation based as accuracy. Further to mention that I am actually a fan of MSFT products and felt this should be said.
The leaks you have are accurate regarding the Durango v2.2 development kits but what has gone over the heads of many is that MSFT has incorporated a dual mainboard, dual APU system. Essentially MSFT will reveal a system with 2 times what VGL has leaked in one housing.
AMD have said the PS4 has the most powerful APU ever made right now, this is true, instead MSFT decided to go with a dual setup whilst Sony have overclocked to near 2.012GHz.
You shall hear more come March 6.
Click to expand...

So... Welcome to b3d. Enjoy your stay.
 
BClifford said:
I am not obliged to conceal my identity but will do so, I would like to guarantee that this information is sound as of the last 2 months but cannot; the silicon should be near final from what I am told.
What I will say will not necessarily be well received nor believed, my sole reason for this is the inability for the intelligent to actually see beyond the stem of misinformation based as accuracy. Further to mention that I am actually a fan of MSFT products and felt this should be said.
The leaks you have are accurate regarding the Durango v2.2 development kits but what has gone over the heads of many is that MSFT has incorporated a dual mainboard, dual APU system. Essentially MSFT will reveal a system with 2 times what VGL has leaked in one housing.
AMD have said the PS4 has the most powerful APU ever made right now, this is true, instead MSFT decided to go with a dual setup whilst Sony have overclocked to near 2.012GHz.
You shall hear more come March 6.
Click to expand...
Interesting, but I would be highly surprised if this were true. I would love it to be true, and it would be a lot easier to redesign the main board to accommodate a dual APU system than to redesign the APU, but you would still run into lots of issues like having two independent memory controllers, and a split ESRAM pool. It just seems unlikely.
 
If the rumour of Durango is a two pc tapped together then dual APU system is possible . Otherwise u r reading mistermediax blogs too much !
 
Status
Not open for further replies.

Similar threads

F
AMD RDNA5 Architecture Speculation
2 3 4
Replies
61
Views
11K
Sega_Model_4
S
Cyan
Xbox One has finally started to be emulated. And it's fast.
Replies
5
Views
3K
see colon
S
Shifty Geezer
  • Locked
Digital Foundry Article Technical Discussion [2024]
169 170 171
Replies
3K
Views
314K
BRiT
BRiT
Shifty Geezer
Digital Foundry Article Technical Discussion [2025]
26 27 28
Replies
546
Views
42K
DavidGraham
D
Z
Its not just me, games used to be better
8 9 10
Replies
194
Views
13K
Nesh
N
Back
Top