Print

[2K4EVOVIII]

QUOTE(mrbelvedere @ Mar 9 2005, 05:47 PM)

There's no way this is a tri-core processor.  We don't even have dual core proceessors to market yet.  It has got to be three individual processors.

[mikeandbandit]

QUOTE(andrzejpw @ Mar 9 2005, 10:09 PM)

Uhh, no. The current dev kits is a dual G5. Not dual core, 2 seperate cpus.

[2K4EVOVIII]

QUOTE(andrzejpw @ Mar 9 2005, 06:09 PM)

Uhh, no. The current dev kits is a dual G5. Not dual core, 2 seperate cpus.

[MrPhunkee]

[miggidy]

By the way, can someone explain to me what the fudge is a "Teraflop"?

[twistedsymphony]

oh and a "flop" is a floating point operation per second. making a teraflop a trillion floating point operations per second. a gigaflop is a billion, and a megaflop is a million. etc.

for comparison the current Xbox can push 80 Gigaflops.   meaning that the Xbox 2 will have over 12 times the computing power of the current Xbox.

[DpJonny]

Wow…

I’m surprised that you people don’t’ understand what these triple processors means.  And for you comparing it to PC’s CPU... you’re wasting your time.  How about this comparison…  Take a celeron/p3 733 with 64mb ram and a geforce3 video card and try to run some of the games that Xbox runs… It’s not going to happen or at least nowhere near as well.  Xbox came out when there were PC CPU’s at about 2.5ghz.  Look how far it went with its 733mhz.  The Next Xbox has three 3.0ghz processors which are all PowerPC chips… I don’t know if you understand what a PowerPC chip is, but it’s a Mainframe CPU… 64-bits.  So, ONE of these 3.0ghz chips is much faster then a Athlon XP 3200+ since the Athlon is only 32-bit and has to work about 50% harder than a 64-bit chip.  Since this System claims to have THREE of these processors it doesn’t mean that it equates to 9ghz… lol.  When you dual up a CPU on a PC you get about a 30% performance boost but that’s not the real reason for having a Dual Processor.  When you add an additional processor it not only boosts the speed by 30% but it doubles the about of load the CPU can handle.  So if will be processing a little faster, but it will be able to do much more at once.  

For example: I used to have a Dual P3 500mhz machine and I compared it to the performance of the current fastest CPU at the time, which was a 1.4ghz P4…  The P4 BARLY beat me on CPU performance, But my Dual P3’s beat out the P4 on CPU load and capacity… Not to mention I preferred using the Dual P3 because I would be able to do more at once with out my computer lagging up, Such as Extracting an ISO, Encoding a Divx movie, having AIM, MSN and yahoo messengers open, and switching between Photoshop and Dreamweaver.  All of which had no problem at all.  But my P4 choked like hell when I tried to do stuff like that.

Anyways, if this next Xbox has three CPUs all at 3ghz… There will be NO PC that will match its speed.  Even a Dual Athlon 64 FX-55 probably won’t beat it out for gaming.

Since it has the X800 there will be a lot of cool things coming from this system.  If you remember playing Halo on Xbox when it came out it ran perfectly… And now when you play HaloPC you have to have a video card that’s around the speed of a Radeon 9600pro to match the performance.  So this X800 probably won’t be able to be touched for some time.  I believe that this Xbox will beat out the PS3 since Sony will be using new experimental hardware.  The Xbox will be using technology that’s been proven to be perfect and that will be rapidly advancing since its using DirectX and they are constantly upgrading its capability.  And with them requiring the next Xbox to support HD 720p that’s awesome.  PC’s have been running games at HD resolutions for some time now… so I’m sure this will go over very well with the X800 on this Xbox, Its not too hard for a Video card to crank out 1280x720…  That’s all for me… TTYL Contact me if you want to discuss something.

[Shinamano]

After watching Allard's speech I can safely say that M$ has struck Sony with a critical blow. Right on their grill!
 

- Got a link to the video? Thanks.

[miggidy]

Mike,
thanx for the info.
It looks like the Xbox Next is going to kick some serious ass!

[Wicked_Vengence]

Just to add my 2 cents on hardware specs....

First, if memory serves, Xenon will use the NEXT generation of chip (i.e. something beyond the x800).  To quote Gamespy... "Xenon's GPU is a generation beyond the ATI X800. Its clock speed is 500 MHz and it supports Shader 3.0" which is something that the X800 doesn't do, currently.

Second, multiprocessing.  The previous post by Mikeandbandit is useful, but still doesn't do full justice to the multiple cores...  

The greatest issue with multiprocessing is cache coherency.  Effectively, if more than one processor works one a program, they may not have the proper cache lined up (mainly because another processor was previously working on the information) and multi threaded apps (designed to add affinity to a processor to avoid cache problems) not being very common.  If the X2 is using a shared L2 cache as indicated (instead of one per processor as is typical) and the games are written to take advantage of multithreading, the 30% increase per processor could easily be much higher.

[whet1134]

I just watched the speech on IGN.  Pretty compelling information.  I liked two things that I saw/heard on it:

1. While explaining the warning system that's being implemented into the GUI, a "Controller Battery Dead" and it showed an S Controller.  I know it could just be a place holder, but that's very exciting to see that warning there because it alludes to first party wireless controllers.

2. He talked alot about being able to connect to hotspots all over the place and then he went onto explaining bringing that wireless (cellular, wi-fi, etc.) access to the Xbox2.  I guess that alludes to a wireless network card.

3. As said before, the HD Era strongly hints at HD-DVD.  I agree, the GAMES may be on DVD-9 discs, but the drive still might be able to play movies.  I'm still hopeful.

Anyway, check it out on IGN if you haven't seen it, the GUI in motion is kinda neat.

[dsl1]

[ericdude]

QUOTE(whet1134 @ Mar 10 2005, 07:54 PM)

I just watched the speech on IGN.  Pretty compelling information.  I liked two things that I saw/heard on it:

[twistedsymphony]

QUOTE(ericdude @ Mar 10 2005, 06:34 PM)

What would be the point of using an hd-dvd drive and having the games on dvd-9 discs?  It's not the media that's expensive it's the hardware.  I think it's a stupid move and that developers will be feeling the pinch of 7GB of storage sooner than MS thinks.  I know Rockstar won't be very happy.

[mikeandbandit]

if you can fit the contents of an HD movie on a DVD then why do you need to move up to
HD-DVD, its called compression and it gets better everyday. also, what is the purpose of more storage space for games? even the textures can be done procedurally so more space is not necessary. why do people continue to ask for more without realizing what they have? i had a client who said she needed to upgrade to a pentium 4 because her dial-up was slow, its like OMG. thats what people are asking for when they ask for more memory and HD-dvd, unneccesary things that will take away from more pertinent concerns. if you want unneccessary specs get a ps3 as it will have plenty of them. im not saying the add-ons arent nice or conviant, but its like added spinning rims to a neon, or investing in a base model mustang.