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XBox 2 - 3.5GHz PowerPC?

airmac said:
That's probably close to true. I think I said that I can't run it super high, but it does fun fine at acceptable resolutions. I can't, however, max out all the settings by any means. It looks fine to play, but Farcry can certainly use all the horsepower of a 9800.. which is about 4x as powerful as my 4200ti.

Thx, I think I got my answer. But really, the game is worth upgradng in my opinion.

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the 2ghz Athlon is most likely an athlon 3000+ (200/400FSB), while your P4 is a (133/533) FSB......
In addition not all video cards of the same model are built equal. If you have a bottom of the barrel ti4200(core+mem clock+ram) and he has a much better version of the same card, between the two you could see a significant performance difference. As for the 9800 vs the ti4200, I would say depending on which 9800 you get, you could be looking at a much higher number than 4x...
 
Such power is not needed in the Xbox 2. It will definately probably be a PowerPC, but probably along the lines of 1.6 or 1.8 ghz. Look at the Xbox, it uses a 733 Mhz Celeron and it still can handle the tasks a computer nowadays handles when it comes to games.
 
XboxEvolved said:
Such power is not needed in the Xbox 2. It will definately probably be a PowerPC, but probably along the lines of 1.6 or 1.8 ghz. Look at the Xbox, it uses a 733 Mhz Celeron and it still can handle the tasks a computer nowadays handles when it comes to games.
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Dual core usually mean slower clocks, but the voltage/reliability issue that surrounds the current incarnation of the PPC970FX -- no hope right now for 3.5GHz or even 3.0GHz in single core, much less dual-/tri-cores.

In PC math, by adding 3 1.5GHz cores together you'd get a 3.5GHz XBox2. ;)
 
I don`t think that it is so imposible as some people think. And they can use the exstrem power one on thing that is looking like going to be BIG the next 5 years. The demand for IA on a new level, that can use all that power. The graffik is not that important in games, just look at the most popular game in history Counter Strike, has bad graffik but is a very good game.
 
rumors are that the xbox 2 will be a media center, it should be able to record movies, burd dvd's, cd's, store your music, pics, films, on an hd, download...

so probably yes, it will have more than one processor, so you will be able to program it to record something of tv while you are playing your favorite game with others...

it won't be a three-core processor, there will be at least two single processors, at maximum a dual and a single... :)

rumors always exaggerate...
 
Sun Baked said:
Dual core usually mean slower clocks, but the voltage/reliability issue that surrounds the current incarnation of the PPC970FX -- no hope right now for 3.5GHz or even 3.0GHz in single core, much less dual-/tri-cores.

In PC math, by adding 3 1.5GHz cores together you'd get a 3.5GHz XBox2. ;)
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Yeah. Even AMD doesn't plan to release their quad-core FX chips till 2007 and they are the closest to creating reliable multi-core chips which so far are only dual-core.(exception of servers) The mass release of all dual-core FX-55 and FX-57 chips won't even be till Q1 and Q2 of 2005. I don't even see anybody bringing tri-core into the picture any time soon. JMO

-Although the dual-core FX-53 chips do exist, still nobody is even close to saying dual-core is in every home computer yet... Considering the FX-53 can run you about a solid $800 for the CPU alone, I don't see this X-box thing as being true at all. No way. I can see it now, $1,200 for a tri-core x-box! right.
 
CholEoptera36 said:
Even AMD doesn't plan to release their quad-core FX chips till 2007 and they are the closest to creating reliable multi-core chips which so far are only dual-core.
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I don't think that is correct. IBM is producing multicore CPUs and Intel has sampled. Even motorola is producing multi-core CPUs for cell phones already.
 
XboxEvolved said:
Such power is not needed in the Xbox 2. It will definately probably be a PowerPC, but probably along the lines of 1.6 or 1.8 ghz. Look at the Xbox, it uses a 733 Mhz Celeron and it still can handle the tasks a computer nowadays handles when it comes to games.
Click to expand...

Keep in mind the Xbox is only doing 640x480.
 
a guy above me was talking about how it will be a media pc thingy...i read something that everntually cell phones,ipods,consoles, will all be so powerful that they will do the same as a "computer" so then everything will be equal. the lines are definatly blurring.
 
Any release expected on the xbox 2? I know nintendo has 2005 date expected to release nintendo revolution. Which will come out 1st?
 
XBox 2 will never be a media-convergence-digital-lifestyle-entertainment-centre-thing, unless they work out a way to get rid of the fans. The XBox 1 sounds like a vacuum cleaner when it's turned on - there's no way I could leave mine running whilst I was trying to watch TV or listen to music.

I don't see why XBox 2 would need anywhere near this kind of power. A 1.6 GHz or 1.8GHz G5 is probably near the mark. My dual G5 1.8 barely breaks above 25% when running Halo at 1024x786 with 16 players. Unless MS are gunning for HDTV compatibility or something.
 
Multiple Cores....

AMD is by no means at the lead of Multi-core processsing.

IBM has been shipping dual core Power 4 chips for quite some time. Sun has already shipped dual core Ultra Sparcs, HP has shipped Dual-Core PA-RISC, and IBM has shipped a ton of Power 4 chips, with Power 5 chips shipping now. Sun's new niagra processors have a ridiculous number of cores. Supposedly there should be an Itanium or two showing up sometime too.

AMD is only seemingly ahead when you look at the professional/consumer market with x86 chips as opposed to the enterprise which has had dual-core aviable for some time now. Hard to say whether they'll get a dual core out before IBM releases a dual core PPC 970 variant tho. IBM already has produced _two_ enterprise level dual core chips, whereas AMD is working on their first. The dual core x86 is vapor as far as I am concerned, until it ships.

Real programmers ship - Steve Jobs.
Real engineers have available parts - Me.
 
Gee4orce said:
I don't see why XBox 2 would need anywhere near this kind of power. A 1.6 GHz or 1.8GHz G5 is probably near the mark. My dual G5 1.8 barely breaks above 25% when running Halo at 1024x786 with 16 players. Unless MS are gunning for HDTV compatibility or something.
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actually, MS is going for High Def. they already have 480p and 720p in some games.

and it doesn't need mroe pwoer if all it's trying to do is run games of today... it is going to run games over the next five years. requirements will grow drasticly and they had better be prepared or it will hurt the quality. look at PS2 games compared to XBOX or even GameCube games. it simply doesn't have the power. processing power though, it has it, but it can't graphicly putt it off. it can run some nice AI, but no pretty pictures.

not very balanced at all.

anyway, return to your discussion now.
 
NNO-Stephen said:
actually, MS is going for High Def. they already have 480p and 720p in some games.
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Agreed, have you seen sales of Plasma, LCD, HD CRT televisions? They are growing rapidly.

Next gen consoles must support HD (480p, 720p, 1080i) as a selling point. Current generation graphics cards can push that now (just about for 1920*1080 res) and computer displays are natively progressive. The hard part is figuring out what is the lowest level to support.

I've always found that pushing the limits is a given in gaming hardware, the hard part becomes what legacy stuff do you support.

For example, Counter-Strike:Source will support Geforce 4 MX video cards using a DirectX 7 path. That's pretty good legacy support, but it's simply because CS is so popular and there are a lot of people who never upgraded to play DOOM 3 because they were happy with CS performance.

It's a bit easier with consoles, closed loop environment, but still a tough question. Guess that's where two G5's would be handy in order to power emulation easily.
 
NNO-Stephen said:
actually, MS is going for High Def. they already have 480p and 720p in some games.

and it doesn't need mroe pwoer if all it's trying to do is run games of today... it is going to run games over the next five years. requirements will grow drasticly and they had better be prepared or it will hurt the quality. look at PS2 games compared to XBOX or even GameCube games. it simply doesn't have the power. processing power though, it has it, but it can't graphicly putt it off. it can run some nice AI, but no pretty pictures.

not very balanced at all.

anyway, return to your discussion now.
Click to expand...

480p = 640x480, 720p = 1024x768 + chopped screen.
That's not a high resolution compared to PC.

No way Xbox 2 will be using a PPC processor. Do you believe that Microsoft will write a OS from scratch just for the xbox market? Wait til I see they rewrite the buggy windows os first.
 
Xbox is a more mass produced product than a Mac. How will IBM ever be able to keep up with the demand? And I am surprised Microsoft dumped Intel. I thought they were tight.
 
BornAgainMac said:
Xbox is a more mass produced product than a Mac. How will IBM ever be able to keep up with the demand? And I am surprised Microsoft dumped Intel. I thought they were tight.
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This is an extrememly important question - one I have often wondered myself after all the G5/Xbox rumors began.
 
ixus said:
No way Xbox 2 will be using a PPC processor. Do you believe that Microsoft will write a OS from scratch just for the xbox market? Wait til I see they rewrite the buggy windows os first.
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Windows NT4 OS already had PPC capability. NT4 was the last PPC native version. XP and 2000 are both based on components of NT; you can dig into DLL's and other items and still see NT4 build numbers.

The PPC path was dropped for 2K/XP, along with DEC Alpha, a while back. However to get a micro-kernel of the current win32 codebase back on to a current PPC would not require writing an OS from scratch. It would be complex, but with the major increase in horsepower and the advantage of an exact known configuration for a console it would definitely be possible. Also gcc compilers for PPC in the Win32 environment are around. Finally, remember that PPC (970 included) is fully backwards compatible with earlier PPC implementations, and runs 32 bit natively.
 
Jaz said:
Windows NT4 OS already had PPC capability. NT4 was the last PPC native version. XP and 2000 are both based on components of NT; you can dig into DLL's and other items and still see NT4 build numbers.

The PPC path was dropped for 2K/XP, along with DEC Alpha, a while back.
Click to expand...

The architecture that Windows NT based OSes run off of is mostly irrelevant. The OS was designed from the start to run on a variety of architectures. The kernel is seperated from the main OS by a HAL [Hardware Abstraction Layer]. The idea is, you can modify the underlying hardware significantly yet you only really need to change the HAL. It's kind of like the black box mentality of objective programming.. all you need to do is get an expected result back from the HAL when you feed a request in. It doesn't matter to the upper layers of the OS whether or not there is a SPARC, a PPC, or a Pentium running under the HAL. (intergraph actually helped NT port to SPARC but it was never released)
 
cloud 9 said:
rumors are that the xbox 2 will be a media center, it should be able to record movies, burd dvd's, cd's, store your music, pics, films, on an hd, download...

so probably yes, it will have more than one processor, so you will be able to program it to record something of tv while you are playing your favorite game with others...

it won't be a three-core processor, there will be at least two single processors, at maximum a dual and a single... :)

rumors always exaggerate...
Click to expand...

I HIGHLY doubt it.
From Microsoft, it's most likely that the XBox 2 won't even have a HARD DRIVE anymore.

And btw, Sony released a version of the PS2 thats just like you described, and it costs like a thousand bucks or so ;)

They might release a special edition XBox, but I HIGHLY doubt the standard XBox 2 will be able to do all that unless its unbelievably expensive.
 
ffakr said:
The architecture that Windows NT based OSes run off of is mostly irrelevant. The OS was designed from the start to run on a variety of architectures. The kernel is seperated from the main OS by a HAL [Hardware Abstraction Layer]. The idea is, you can modify the underlying hardware significantly yet you only really need to change the HAL. It's kind of like the black box mentality of objective programming.. all you need to do is get an expected result back from the HAL when you feed a request in. It doesn't matter to the upper layers of the OS whether or not there is a SPARC, a PPC, or a Pentium running under the HAL.
Click to expand...

Thanks for the follow-up. I agree with you completely, and that is kind of the point I'm making, but probably not as clearly as I wanted too. As we both are saying, implementing win32 on PPC is not a complete rewrite. It's a concerted effort at the HAL and optimisation level, because a console is a specific config and so the inherent flexibility in HAL (and performance loss) can be reduced. I still maintain that the micro-kernel would be modified/optimised because it's a closed loop, so why not eke out all the performance you can.
 
any idea when Xbox2 will be released? I'd like to buy some sort of game console, like Xbox or PS2, but I'm afraid something new is going to come out in the next few months or so. Isn't Nintendo coming out with a new system (beside DS) too?
 
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