Xbox One (Durango) Technical hardware investigation

Stop ruining our excitement with logic!

 

Going by what he said, devkits would not have changed as well. We've just been reading it wrong.

 

Not only SuperDAE but EDGE have had access to the info, neither of them talked about two APU's.

 

I'm not even sure how two APUs would be fed with the rumored memory setup. Two APUs seems overly complicated.

 

*spin* Gullibles & Rumours, Wishful Thinking, and other OT follow-up

So we've reached the stage where anyone can say anything and have people believe it as long as they're saying that Durango is secretly more powerful somehow. That was a pretty ugly time in the WiiU speculation threads where even Iwata's direct quotes were treated with suspicion and discounted with conspiracy theories.

 

If he's lying or not, he's given himself a short time table anyway.

If any new leaks come out saying he's right, his info checks out. If not, life goes on.

 

I think there is a definite line between "rumor" and wishful thinking, many people crossed that line...nay they jumped over that line ages ago.

But to get back on topic itself, not much is known about Durango's GPU. I'm wondering (Shifty or someone else feel free to educate me further) if Durango GPU does indeed only have 12CUs, would there be potential degradation in physics calculations coming from PS4 versions of multiplatform games? Assuming Durango's GPU sticks with AMD's desktop GPUs in regards to only have 2 ACEs? That and less CUs overall?

It's pretty crazy. I mean if you round up all the Durango rumors from the first murmuring to current, we apparently have a machine that has dual GPUs based on Volcanic Island, ray tracing chips, switched to GDDR5, 16 core CPU, Xbox 360 SoC, and will still be cheaper than the competition.

 

nothing wrong with speculating. Ive been wondering if this too could be possible. (Two APU's) although there's patents that MS filed that basically say the same.

There was rumors of something not like cross fire, but a system designed to split up rendering duties where each GPU would render specific 3D objects and parts of the scene before the results was merged together.

If each APU had 170Gb bandwidth, then you know MS would claim they have 340GBs of bandwidth...

Could this be a reason to stick with ddr3?

Also going with a dual APU setup, you can just turn one APU off completely if it's not needed for a specific app or game. That's something you can't do with a single chip that incorporates a single larger GPU. Probably a win as far as heat goes over all too.

Another way to look at it. if you can make it transparent to the developer regarding utilizing the second APU (not sure who this could be done) , then there would be no reason to tell them about it early on or before final hardware arrives (especially if one APU is relatively close to the competition).

You literally can't open these dev kits without MS knowing and charging you at some point for it. Could be some hardware inside the final kits that isn't enabled in firmware to date.

 

But he forfeits nothing. If the intention is to jump in and get people believing and hoping on the implausible, his job is done even if it proves untrue. That's why response to ridiculous rumours should be to ignore them, or at least address them with a considerable measure of scepticism.

Look at the architecture design. CPU+GPU+DMEs+eSRAM all on the same unit. Is MS doubling all that? 8 DMEs for the devs to worry about instead of just doubling up performance of the 4? Two APUs sharing 60 GB/s DDR3 and then with 100 GB/s local storage each, while framebuffer is supposed to be in DDR3? How do they interact and share workloads? It's a crazy design! A lot of work. Far easier to just add a second GPU and disable that for low-power functions. The whole architecture fits the design of 8 x86 cores, 12 CUs, 60 GB/s DDR3 and local eSRAM. That's a nice, compact design that'll get real cheap to make real quick and can forwards compatible. The only thing it fails on is MOARE POWWEERRRR. If people stopped hoping for MOARE POWWEERRRR, then the specs and design fit nicely into a clear picture. Trying to turn that into something else is trying to bend reality to fit a dream. What if...what if...um, how can I take the knowledge we have and somehow expand it into something I'd rather want?...what if they...stick two of these systems together into one?! That must be it!

We've seen it time and again with consoles, that information starts to build up a comprehensive picture and yet people still hope for amazing extras and interpretations to produce the box they would rather have. And it would appear some random people like to bait these hopes, and some people are still willing to believe.

 

Well one thing the DME's are supposed be transparent for the most part, aren't they? if you look at the MS patents, they say the components are connected by a single ( Communication fabric ). Not sure what that is but MS did hire a bunch of engineers to design something interesting. We still don't know what OBAN is exactly do we?

It really depends what is more important to MS.. Ease of design (for which we knew they started work designing this years ago) or developing something scalable for the future.
btw thanks for merging those posts. I was just thinking I should have done the same.

 

Better yields maybee?

 

Think some people missed the fact he said it's also got dual main boards. Cannot believe it's got over 20 posts of discussion. It's clearly absolute rubbish. Even if they were putting in two apus they would not put two main boards, how big would that be, two lots of cooling etc.

Now we pretty much know everything I guess the only way to keep the fanboy dreams going is to claim everything is in there twice.

 

Wasn't me. Must'a been the Mod fairy.

 

Two CPU socket motherboards are often called "Dual mainboard". The new poster actually said that instead of dual "main board(s)" meaning two separate motherboards as you are referring to it.

I'm not saying i believe this rumor, but its fun to speculate.

1. We heard rumors of the 720 being two pc's before ( it's not new)
2. We heard rumors of 16 cores before ( it's not new)
3. We heard rumors that that 720 will be more expensive then ps4 (despite ps4 using a few more expensive parts)
4. We heard rumors of MS needed subsidize the cost of the system with live subscriptions.
5. We seen patents from MS for systems with Dual setups like this.

Again, it's fun to speculate.

 

It's the one last dance for the secret sauce meme before it dissipates in the deep murky sea of speculation thread upon MSFT's official spec unveil. Gotta let them have their fun you know.

 

I stand corrected, never heard dual socket motherboards refered to as dual mainboard.

Anyway it's still clearly a collection of rumours that certain users who were since banned mentioned a month or so ago along with the Mars and Venus with raytracing chip.

Anyway only 3 days to wait for confirmation either way.

 

Sounds like Mars Venus Milky Way SoCoC. The followers stirring it up again

 

Is BClifford banned now? btw I must have missed something. What is occurring in a few days?

 

It's entirely possible but likely? It's fun to speculate.

I could certainly see the benefits. Better chip yields, economies of scale, fairly transparent to the OS, easily scalable for forwards compatibility. This could be the DUO SKU while the CORE uses single APU on same duo socket motherboard.

 

He went to B3D Heaven.

Spoiler

He got a warning/temp ban.

On topic: Speculation is fun, especially with how crazy the rumors can get. Better than the boring and expected rumors we've been getting so far.