XBox 2 - 3.5GHz PowerPC?

[sinisterdesign]

Well, I guess this officially kicks off the 18 months of "don't buy a PMac now. Wait until the 3.5 Ghz comes out" pieces of advice.

yeah, but i think i'm going to hold out for the 3.5GHz Powerbook, thx... ;^)

 

[vannote]

I doubt MSFT will be ready by 2005. They need to re-write the Win32 API and DirectX to PPC first, then have the games ported over to the new platform, etc. We'll probably see it in 2007 timeframe.

Note, The development kit for this already ships with a stripped down NT kernel on a G5.

I am the last person to side with Microsoft but I have gotten to know their development strategy pretty well over the years and they do have excessive R&D reserves to throw at such things.

I would be willing to bet that there is an Apple G5 somewhere in Redmond (or elsewhere) sitting on a Microsoft engineers desk running a full port of Windows XP today, or damn close to it.

Cheers

 

[MorganX]

I smell troll! What are you arguing now, MorganX? I thought your first argument was that the "G5 isn't all that".

Oh yeah? Well, your Athlon 64 is wiggity wack, dog.

The discussion moved to porting DirectX.

This is a discussion forum. Not an argument forum. If you have a question about something I said quote it and I'll be happy to explain it to you.

edit: Maybe it would help to know I get here via http://www.pcrumors.com. I don't feel the need to blindly agree with the all thing Apple are God's gift and all things MS are from Satan mantra. I love Xbox, Apple hardware design, and effecient OS' and UI's. I also love good discussion/debate/disagreement. Sorry, I don't do AMD, inertia and habit I guess. Loved iMac hardware, hated the speed and software. My last Intel processor will be a 2Ghz Dothan Widescreen Notebook next month. After that, it's Xbox 2 and we'll see what happens with IBMs PPC movement. 'scuse me whilst I download iTunes 4.5.

 

[MorganX]

Maybe MSFT is planning to use this as a bridge so they can sell Longhorn on Apple hardware natively...?

I doubt that. But IBM is trying to open the PPC platform and duplicate Intel's x86 industry and Apple isn't really interested in running OS X on anything other than Apple brand hardware.

 

[kettle]

Yeah, right.

"Hello? Ibm? Yeah, I'd like to order several million 3.5 ghz CPUs, each with three cores in each chip, low power enough to fit in a console, and cheap enough so I can sell the whole unit for under $199. We'll need them in about six to twelve months."

"Sure, no problem. Good thing we have that advanced alien chip manufacturing technology from the Roswell crash site. It really comes in handy for physically impossible orders like this."

he he, good effort, you'll think I'm taking the p1$$ but, this is the only sensible post in the whole thread. Thanks for making all this reading worth while

i suppose this is called macrumors, and it seems to be the best rumour we've had in a quite some time.

 

[dongmin]

People are focussed on porting Xbox to Macs on the software level but what about on the hardware level? What if Apple licensed the XBox (i.e. the internal hardware), repackaged it, added some new goodies like firewire, and sell it as a cheap Mac box? Would it be difficult to make it OS X compatible, assuming that Microsoft and Apple are in full cooperation? People would have the ability to run it in OS X mode or XBox mode. There is no reason for Miscrosoft to NOT do it, considering that it'll help them sell more of their games and also lower the hardware cost (through higher volume production).

Imagine it...the Apple OS XBox.

 

[thatwendigo]

Yeah, if you think it would really displace that many Mac sales, which I don't think it would. Not many people want to use their TV as a monitor, for one thing. The hardware would be pretty limited for another. The OS could be limited in addition to that. At worst it would knock off a few eMac and iMac sales-- at best it would introduce new users to Mac OS with a minimal investment.

I disagree, especially if the rumors about support for HD are true, and the XBox does play well with high-definition screens. HD TVs are expensive, but as with all consumer electronics, the price-to-performance ratio will come down over time. It could very well be the case that an affordable HD monitor will be out by the time the still-vapor XBox 2 is released, in which case $2000 on something that is revolutionary in its application won't seem so bad (ah, to convince people that macs are the same...) and a $300-500 XBox2 will look pretty paltry as far as expendutres go. At the same time, salespeople will be pushing all kinds of component upgrades that will allow your humble little console to act more like the media center that Microsoft probably really wants these things to be.

Every has a TV. Not everyone has a computer. When the prices get down to where you're easily combining the two with high-end technology, people will buy.

But then, that's a serious response to a cynical response to a vindictive joke...

Now there's a serious response to yours, too.

 

[thatwendigo]

People are focussed on porting Xbox to Macs on the software level but what about on the hardware level? What if Apple licensed the XBox (i.e. the internal hardware), repackaged it, added some new goodies like firewire, and sell it as a cheap Mac box? Would it be difficult to make it OS X compatible, assuming that Microsoft and Apple are in full cooperation? People would have the ability to run it in OS X mode or XBox mode. There is no reason for Miscrosoft to NOT do it, considering that it'll help them sell more of their games and also lower the hardware cost (through higher volume production).

Imagine it...the Apple OS XBox.

Or, you know, to be really different, Apple could create its own small formfactor device to brings computing to the rest of... Oh wait, that was the iMac, and people slam it constantly.

Seriously, though, I think that we're going to see something amazing out of Apple in the next three years. My guess at this point is that we'll see the death of the iMac as we've known it, as it undergoes a transformation that is necessitated by new hardware. The G5 isn't as cool as the G4, pulls more power than the G4, and performs faster at just about every task. That much is a fact.

I'm just waiting to see what happens when an iBox, or whatever the hypothetical "low-end" Apple machine (it won't be one) costs, and how much people will complain when it's not as expandable as they want. An XBox rebranded as an Apple machine would almost certainly have zero expandability, because it's going to be as small as MS can possibly crank the size down without it blowing up or melting. Anything that small is going to have issues with expandability.

 

[shyataroo]

please dont listen to me when I say this

I say we sacrife a couple of virgins to the gods and get a 12.0exahertz (1 exahert=1024*1024 Terrahertz) G20 that uses as much power as a 10 watt lightbulb... (since this thread seemed to have turned into random rantings)

 

[airmac]

yea, it runs nicely on my 2GHz AthlonXP with my Ti4200. With a Radeon 9800 and a similar CPU, my brother is able to max out every single setting and it still runs quite nicely.
The silly diagram that was posted in China has video subsystem that would be nearly 4x as powerful as a Radeon 9800 and a CPU that is probably half an order of magnitude more powerful.

Well, that's really interesting cause i'm playing the game on Pentim 2,66 ghz and geforce ti 4200 (8x agp) with 512 ram and i was force to use the "low" settings (1024x768) if I wanted the game to run smoothly (xp profesional is the operating system). I would like to run it at least on a "medium" settings. Maybe i'm low on a physical memory?

...

 

[geran]

I belive in this rumor, in the begining of this year I heard from a well know game dev company that held a lecture on my university that the next xbox would have ~9 ghz cpu, this is not the same as a cpu with 3 cores @ 3.5 gzh, but close enough. I think this is close to the real deal, but you never know.

I know this sounds like some crap like "I heard from a friend that has a cousine that is married to a dude who's sister sleeps with a another dude that works on apple and he heard that apple will announce the iNewton on WWDC, it will run a G5 @ 5 gzh and run OSX with ALL debug code removed" .

 

[MorganX]

Well, that's really interesting cause i'm playing the game on Pentim 2,66 ghz and geforce ti 4200 (8x agp) with 512 ram and i was force to use the "low" settings (1024x768) if I wanted the game to run smoothly (xp profesional is the operating system). I would like to run it at least on a "medium" settings. Maybe i'm low on a physical memory?

...

The NVidia ti 4200 is not in the same class with the Radeon 9800. With a 2.6Ghz, 512MB, and a Radeon 9800 you would be able to run with many more features a high settings.

 

[lewdvig]

The processor in question is presumed to be a triple core CPU based off the Power5 family. the PPC 970 is based off the Power4 family. the Power5 based processors will be more powerful per cycle, they will include IBMs implemention of SMT (simultaneous multi threading, aka. Hyperthreading)... IBM is saying that their SMT is much more efficient than Intel's. IBM has said that SMT on the Power5 is providing a 25-40% increase performance already (in design still) while the P4 HT generally provides maybe +15% to -10% performance boost.

Maybe this will be a three core CPU @ 1.2 GHz?

Actually probably not. If you play with HD video much, you know how that eats CPU cycles. The next gen consoles are all going to support all NTSC HD modes and not just 480 like the XBox.

You need a 2.5GHz CPU to handle smooth decode/playback of WMV HD files so the power of the XB2 might not be overkill, and that is from a video playback perspective. Not sure why, but the Radeon 9800 in my 3.2 GHz PC does nothing when I play these files - it is all CPU.

No one else noticed the hyperthreading ATI GPU in the spec?

 

[lewdvig]

Note, The development kit for this already ships with a stripped down NT kernel on a G5.

I am the last person to side with Microsoft but I have gotten to know their development strategy pretty well over the years and they do have excessive R&D reserves to throw at such things.

I would be willing to bet that there is an Apple G5 somewhere in Redmond (or elsewhere) sitting on a Microsoft engineers desk running a full port of Windows XP today, or damn close to it.

Cheers

My guess is that it is a version of Windows CE .NET. This is based on the NT kernal and the code is ultra portable (.NET). They probably have WMP and other key apps running on it already.

The .NET framework wraps up all sorts of important Windows APIs together like a run time.

 

[lewdvig]

yeah, but i think i'm going to hold out for the 3.5GHz Powerbook, thx... ;^)

Sad really, because in the case of the PM it is so easy to pop out the CPU and replace it.

 

[lewdvig]

Over time Microsoft has drifted from their original cross-platform vision, but I'm not sure they would need to completely re-write the core Win32 API...and if they were clever, DirectX would have been written in a cross-platform manner also.

.NET Framework dude.

 

[lewdvig]

Your emulator will be out next month. Microsoft has VPC already and since they are contracting a processor from IBM with the PPC ISA (actually the Power ISA which includes the PPC ISA), the basic emulation engine already exist (the code to run x86 binaries on a chip with the PPC ISA).
What they'd need to do, however, would be to write bridge drivers for the hardware that 'emulated' the real hardware. right now, Virtual PC emulates a very old, very basic video and audio chipset. It doesn't matter if you have a Dual 1.42 G4 with a GF4 Ti video card.. when you install Windows in VPC, VPC reports the video hardware as being some nearly 5 year old video chip. You can't play any modern games in VPC because, not only is it too slow on compatible Mac hardware, but it emulates a video chipset that doesn't support any recent DX features.
MS also needs to wrap the core emulation code in a proper Windows Application. This will, after all, be Windows for PowerPC emulating embedded Windows for x86 so the Virtual PC application needs to be a Windows app too. This also shouldn't be a big deal since MS also bought VPC for Windows.

I think it's safe to say that, at this point, MS is already running xbox1 games in emulation on their test platforms. I would doubt that they play well.. because even emulating the performance of a Celeron 700 is tough... but it would be cake on a very high clocked multi-core, SMT PPC processor.

.. not that I believe the report.

S3 Virge I think. Super common in 1996 was widely referred to as a video DE-celerator!

 

[lewdvig]

So does this mean my next Powermac will cost me $199 and run "Mac OSX-Box"?

No but it might mean ecomonies of scale will help Apple when XB2 hits the stores. Maybe that is when we will see a Mac STB.

 

[MorganX]

No one else noticed the hyperthreading ATI GPU in the spec?

DirectX Next (10) is supposed to among other things, support virtual memory for the GPU and allow the GPU to process more than just graphics. Don't know too much about it though.

 

[MorganX]

I belive in this rumor, in the begining of this year I heard from a well know game dev company that held a lecture on my university that the next xbox would have ~9 ghz cpu, this is not the same as a cpu with 3 cores @ 3.5 gzh, but close enough. I think this is close to the real deal, but you never know.

I know this sounds like some crap like "I heard from a friend that has a cousine that is married to a dude who's sister sleeps with a another dude that works on apple and he heard that apple will announce the iNewton on WWDC, it will run a G5 @ 5 gzh and run OSX with ALL debug code removed" .

We do know a few things enhanced by rumors:

*The CPU will be developed by IBM, though it's not for sure they will produce it and it will be a POWER derivitive. Intel has sampled dual core Tejas' the rumor part is that they're 65nm, IBM can't be far behind and rumor is they've sampled functional 65nm CPUs but won't have a certified product for 12-18months. AMD is boasting their dual core will fit in current sockets. And Toshiba and Sony have announced they've made 65nm fab breakthroughs.

*The SDKs have gone out running an NTish Kernel (using Longhorn DirectX Next) on Dual G5 Powermacs. (As someone else pointed out, the Apex PC console will be using CE 5.0 and this could be CE or XP/LH embedded).

*Microsoft is taking too much of a loss on the existing box and want to ditch it as soon as possible. Most likely they won't wait for Playstation 3 to launch.

*ATI will be designing the GPU w/MS based on ATIs latest GPU technology.

And keep in mind regarding the CPU, with current competition, no one is going to announce too many details about how far along they are with 65nm. I really think the CPU won't have any more transistors than absolutely necessary to run Xbox2. Even MS can't continue to sustain the losses they're taking. So when Xbox drops to $99, buy one to be nasty ;>

 

[airmac]

The NVidia ti 4200 is not in the same class with the Radeon 9800. With a 2.6Ghz, 512MB, and a Radeon 9800 you would be able to run with many more features a high settings.

ffakr sad it runs nicely on 2GHz AthlonXP with Ti4200. Farcry on a 2.66 pentium with 512 ram and Ti 4200 runs like crap. I was forced to use the "low" settings.

 

[MorganX]

ffakr sad it runs nicely on 2GHz AthlonXP with Ti4200. Farcry on a 2.66 pentium with 512 ram and Ti 4200 runs like crap. I was forced to use the "low" settings.

I think his idea of nicely may be what you're saying is crap. With a similar CPU going from a Ti4200 to Radeon 9800 made dramatic difference. You would see the same. The CPU difference is only 1-3fps. The GPU is proably 10-30fps.

 

[airmac]

thx morgan

 

[oingoboingo]

Well, that's really interesting cause i'm playing the game on Pentim 2,66 ghz and geforce ti 4200 (8x agp) with 512 ram and i was force to use the "low" settings (1024x768) if I wanted the game to run smoothly (xp profesional is the operating system). I would like to run it at least on a "medium" settings. Maybe i'm low on a physical memory?

...

Unless people are posting frames per second counts, and listing exactly the resolution and detail settings they're running, statements like 'it runs nicely' aren't worth the pixels they're printed on. Some people consider 'runs nicely' to be 80fps at 1600x1200, maximum details, while others are happy if they can run it at 15fps at 640x480 in black and white. Subjective measures of application performance are utterly pointless.

 

[minstryoffunk]

Since it's a single CPU allegedly at 65nm customized for games, it may not cost as much as it you might think. I really don't think MS can sell the next box at anywhere near the loss as Xbox 1.

keep in mind that MS has the resources to run the entire company at full bore without any profit for five years. They could feasibly ship the xbox2s for free and they could come standard with a wad of $20s

granted they won't, but MS has near unlimited flexibility in pricing, and they'll take a loss again if the software revenue scheme worked