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XBox 360 Specs Released [Triple Core @ 3.2Ghz each]

PEOPLE, PLEASE!!!

Read the WHOLE thread before posting!!! If I read "MS stole the newest G5 from Apple" one more time, I'm going to go insane! I just got done reading the whole thing, and it's driving me nuts! Don't just read the first few posts in a NINE PAGE thread and post your opinion, after that same opinion has been thoroughly discussed in the next EIGHT PAGES. Come on...

/rant
 
macg4dude said:
Does Microsoft have to use the same processors as Apple just to compete with Sony's next generation Playstation. The processors that Apple uses in the PowerMacs and iMacs must be good enough for Microsoft to use in a gaming console.
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yeah, b/c games run SO smoothly on Macs, just look at Doom3.

i don't think they wanted "good enough" for their premiere next-gen, multi-billion dollar system. i think they want to push the envelope a little...
 
sinisterdesign said:
yeah, b/c games run SO smoothly on Macs, just look at Doom3.
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That has to do with difficulties of porting games. Doom3 could have run much better, but it would have cost Aspyr 3-4 times more to do it. Do you think 3-4 times the people would buy it tho? No.
 
CompUSA-Guy said:
Xbox has always been the hard core gamer's console of choice.

Xbox-1 has HD compatibility already. (most games only did 480p though)
X360 has upped the ante with all games in HD resolution (1080i and the even higher 720p is awesome). The X360 will now play DVD's in progressive mode!

How many games did the other gonsoles have that were higher than 480i?

Xbox has something PS and Nintendo doesn't. An online community of loyal gamers. Now, with X360, Xbox live service is free for everyone. Free online gaming on an already proved live network.

The first gen games for X360 won't use all of it's power. These games never do. Just look at the first gen Xbox games compared to what's been released in the last year.

So what does Sony and Nintendo have going for them?

Specific game titles. Mario, Final Fantasy, Metroid, etc.

Will they make a move to get the hard core gamer? We will see at E3, but they do have a ways to go. They must have standard high def games, free online play on an intergraded online network, etc.
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xbox live isn't free on the x360, there is 2 packages silver and gold, you will have to pay for gold which will let u play games online. silver is for free but u can't play online but u can still connect to the internet and chat with people download games and demos on the silver package and that is about it.

PS3 is what i'm waiting for, i will bet money on it that it will blow the x360 out of the water.

Also the current Nvidia GPUs, out do the current ATi GPUs on the PC side so i'll bet nvidia will carry that on with the PS3 in blowing ATi's new R500 gpu out of the water.

time will tell which one will do better, like i said my money is on PS3 becasue the "avg joe" likes sony name better then microsoft when it comes to home entertainment

EDIT: oh yea the x360 will not be backwards compaible with xbox 1 games
 
Poff said:
That has to do with difficulties of porting games. Doom3 could have run much better, but it would have cost Aspyr 3-4 times more to do it. Do you think 3-4 times the people would buy it tho? No.
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i know, i know. but i would never describe a Mac as a 'gaming machine'. i know a lot of that is due to the code not being optimized for Macs, but at the same time i wouldn't want to base my gaming console on the chips that are in current G5's.
 
best HD comes through the air

If you live in a larger metro area, the best HD quality programs come through the airwaves in the form of PBS, CBS, NBC, ABC, FOX and UPN. Depending on where you live, you just need an HDTV and a little indoor or a small outdoor antenna to get all this pristine quality programs. My cable company wanted more than $50/month for me to get the same programs passed through to me through cable!!


sinisterdesign said:
i'm in the same boat. i, too, have a 34" WEGA XBR hi-def tv...and no cable. i bought the TV almost 2 years ago, moved 7 months ago and haven't had cable since i moved.

true, it's only $40/mo for basic cable, but tack on the Digital & High Def packages on top of that & you're at about $65/mo. i just don't know if i watch $2+ worth of TV per day. it's a freakin' ripoff.

but even my old Xbox looks/sounds sweet in high def & 5.1 surround! i can't WAIT to see what this puppy can crank out. i'm tired of reading about the specs, i want to see what those specs can PRODUCE. no one buys a car for the engine, you buy it b/c of what that engine can do...bring on the E3 coverage!
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age234 said:
PEOPLE, PLEASE!!!

Read the WHOLE thread before posting!!! If I read "MS stole the newest G5 from Apple" one more time, I'm going to go insane! I just got done reading the whole thing, and it's driving me nuts! Don't just read the first few posts in a NINE PAGE thread and post your opinion, after that same opinion has been thoroughly discussed in the next EIGHT PAGES. Come on...

/rant
Click to expand...
Pour a glass of wine. Chill...

[EDIT] Forgive me. I just thought back to my Windows rant from earlier this week. Heh :p I guess I need to take a chill pill every now and then as well...
 
IBSNOWEDIN said:
xbox live isn't free on the x360, there is 2 packages silver and gold, you will have to pay for gold which will let u play games online. silver is for free but u can't play online but u can still connect to the internet and chat with people download games and demos on the silver package and that is about it.

PS3 is what i'm waiting for, i will bet money on it that it will blow the x360 out of the water.

Also the current Nvidia GPUs, out do the current ATi GPUs on the PC side so i'll bet nvidia will carry that on with the PS3 in blowing ATi's new R500 gpu out of the water.

time will tell which one will do better, like i said my money is on PS3 becasue the "avg joe" likes sony name better then microsoft when it comes to home entertainment

EDIT: oh yea the x360 will not be backwards compaible with xbox 1 games
Click to expand...


hell yeah... more good games are on Playstation and they will answer hard on that piece of sh****t coming from M$. No way Xbox2 will beat PS3? No offense, but I couldn't care less what M$ does... Just a lookin at the Xbox new controller and my eyes hurt. I cannot imagine why people buy that sh**t. ... well, I guess I am a PS2 gamer coming from a perfect world;)
 
alandail said:
I don't know why mac people are upset about the processer. It's a very good thing that MS, Sony and Nintendo are all spending a ton of money to improve IBM's processor business. They're each willing to lose money to help make the PowerPC a better platform.
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Good point!! The investment and research will lead to better chips for Macs down the road! :)
 
Well I bought an original Xbox for the games it offers and I'll be buying an Xbox 360 for the same reason. Project Gotham Racing, Perfect Dark Zero, Future Halo games etc. The only game I miss from the Playstation 2 is the Gran Turismo series.

The Xbox 360 hardware wise sounds impressive, but the online interface and Xbox Live is the main draw as this makes the games worth that much more to me.

If it goes on sale somewhere around £250 I'll buy one straight away. Anymore and I'll wait for that inevitable first price drop!
 
IBSNOWEDIN said:
xbox live isn't free on the x360, there is 2 packages silver and gold, you will have to pay for gold which will let u play games online. silver is for free but u can't play online but u can still connect to the internet and chat with people download games and demos on the silver package and that is about it.
Click to expand...

xbox live silver will allow for free weekend gaming online.
 
IBSNOWEDIN said:
xbox live isn't free on the x360. There is 2 packages: silver and gold. You will have to pay for gold, which will let u play games online. Silver is for free but, u can't play online but u can still connect to the internet and chat with people download games and demos on the silver package and that is about it.
Click to expand...
From what I read, users with the free silver package will be able to play games free on weekends.

IBSNOWEDIN said:
EDIT: oh yea the x360 will not be backwards compaible with xbox 1 games
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This has not been confirmed yet.
 
whenpaulsparks said:
sigh. just like the 1.25 GHz g4 chip in the machines was the same one in the 1.67 now, and they waited quite a while before upgrading the powerbooks to 1.67, they can easily boost the speed but making it stable is another issue. i'm sure IBM has this under control. it would have to be stable enough to be produced this summer for a november release, so i'm sure a powermac update is on the horizon.

as for the 48 pipelines, there was a leaked REAL video from microsoft, with the guy from the labs on the MTV event, describing it. it was similar to the various apple videos you see with schiller and ives talking about the details. but it distinctly said 3 cores, and 48 pipelines. it didnt mention a speed.

and ATI makes custom graphics cards, not designed for desktops, all the time. chances are this will be integrated into the motherboard. i don't see what's so unbelievable.
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ATi have already announced the specs for their next gen graphics cards, at least somewhat.

The 48 pipelines is real.

What's really amazing, to me, is not so much whether the Xbox360 is backward-compatible with the Xbox, as that nobody, even on the Xbox sites, even asks the question.

One guy said "What a great day to be an Xbox gamer." I'd disagree: If I had an Xbox, I'd be wondering if I should buy any more games, or whether I'd want to buy new versions of the games I already have... At least I'd be asking the question.

Something very strange is going on here...
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No backwards compatability unless they include an x86 core.

You can't use multiple processors to emulate one, and with the XBox 360 processors being in order while the XBox is out of order, emulation will be EXTREMELY difficult.

It's the million dollar question among nerds really. I've seen huge debates about whether BC is possible or not. Emulation seems very unlikely though.
 
Ti_Poussin said:
OK, summary time, what is it and what is not:

is not:
-The PowerPC inside the xBox is of unknow type, wich mean and can be far from the 970 (G5), 74557(G4), 750(G3) we currently know. Some PowerPc base chip are used in router at very high speed. Just take a look at the freescale PowerPC webpage, there's a lot of PowerPC for different use. It mean and can be a really strip down and optimize to do gaming only. A G4 dual cores already existe.
-A weak graphic card, who say this? It's a strong graphic one, the graphic board is optimize for floating point operation and use the same Memory as the system in DDR3. It's really overkill. The old xBox was using old nVidia chipset. It not an equivallent as your computer chipset cause less operation better bandwith, and the keyword is dynamically.

is:
-Three core chip, ok handle 1 for video and 1 for audio and 1 for AI, or something like that. It will be a killer.
-Each unit have VMX (aka Altivec for Apple), that's the name IBM give to this technology. That's a great news, see below.

Summary for Mac user:
It doesn't mean G5 at 3 cores or anything like that soon, we don't even know if it have a 32 or 64 Bit processor. The good part, is that game written for xBox 360 will be easier to port to Mac, cause instruction RISC and the VMX code. The icy cream is that game will be a lot more optimize and a lot less BS on Mac coming from xBox 360, already VMX code inside and multi core support. That's all. don't hope more then this.
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You're write until the last bit. True that it will have VMX code and multi core support. BUT they will be written for DirectX, so we still have a huge porting barrier :(
 
whenpaulsparks said:
a game written for xbox 360 won't be easy to port to mac just because it's the same instruction set. that's like saying a program for x86 linux will be easy to port to windows because they're the same instruction set. not true. (granted, the linux example isnt the greatest, because most libraries are already ported, but pretend like they aren't, like with the xbox 360).
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You missunderstand me or I say it badly sorry, but what I mean is that you optimize your code with an architecture in mind you build your code with that in mind. It will be easier to port this code on same architecture, I didn't mean you just have to recompile it. But the structure of your code will still be the same, the API call may change or the code itself too. That's why gaming on Mac currently is so slow, passing from CISC to RISC architecture without enough optimization get poor result, Doom 3 is a recent example of it.

And any progress in optimization for PPC and VMX by game programmer is really welcome overall, the more they do it, the best result we can get with those units in the futur. Even compiler may benefit from this.
 
milatchi said:
Well, in the likely or unlikely event that someone get's Mac OS X to run on an XBOX 360 then --I'M THERE!
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Same here, I might buy one JUST to run OS X if that happens. On the other hand! The Rev might be able to get the same hack.
 
Unless these chips are many many times more efficient than G5's, they have nowhere near the performance. Just think how much electrical power three 3.2GHz G5s would require? Unless this has a giant external PSU and external cooling system like supercomputers do, this is a much lower power (and performance) system then even a single G5.

And vaccum sealed water cooling? Sounds kind of like a heat pipe.

Then again, consoles are always many time more efficient than desktops for their specific purpose...

There is no doubt that this will be amazing. MS is buying a LOT of these chips from IBM, probably at a really good deal, and it's not even out yet so no sense comparing it to current computers.
 
GFLPraxis said:
No backwards compatability unless they include an x86 core.

You can't use multiple processors to emulate one, and with the XBox 360 processors being in order while the XBox is out of order, emulation will be EXTREMELY difficult.

It's the million dollar question among nerds really. I've seen huge debates about whether BC is possible or not. Emulation seems very unlikely though.
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MS owns Virtual PC - they could potentially use that technology for backwards compatibility. Out of order vs in order is irrelevant for emulation - out of order is simply a performance issue, logically the code is executed in order. If most of the graphics code is making DirectX or other OS calls, the emulator can route those calls to the native calls - just like the 680x0 emulator did/doesdoes on the PowerPC with 680x0 apps.

Not only that, they could be using a PowerPC version that supports little endian, which would make the emulation more efficient.
 
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