New Xbox info

[lsd]

wowzers............

 

[JellyBaby]

From the piece:

<< Microsoft is also not ignoring the fact that their brand name may taint the way people view their new system. >>

No way, get out of the city!

At this point Xbox is still 95% hype, 4% BS and 1% error.

 

[DaveB3D]

8x faster than NV20?


What? That is nutts. Not because it is so fast, but because it simply isn't possible. Consider:

NV20 ranks in around 50-55 million gates. Will say it is n powerful. Now NV2a and NV25 rank in around 65 million gates. Now assume there are about a few million gates per pipe-line. Add 2 texture units to each pipeline and some SRAM for a single loop-back. It just doesn't compute out correctly.

Ignore that whole factor though. You are going to be badly memory bandwidth limited because of being a UMA. I dunno, it just doesn't work out.

All IMO of course, so don't bitch at me! (my new general disclaimer )

 

[BurnedNIU]

The way i figure it the engineers building the X-box are a little better at this stuff than us, so if they say 8x, im expecting AROUND 8x. They arnt gonna say 8x and give us 4x

 

[DaveB3D]

Some things just aren't possible. It is marketing hype. That is all..


Again, all IMO so don't bitch.

 

[ChrisOh]

It's possible, the graphics chip doesn't have to do all the other stuff that PC's normally do, who knows, it might be true.

 

[DaveB3D]

It simply isn't possible because the bandwidth just isn't there. Also, they aren't going to be able to increase the clock over NV20 but by maybe 50 MHz...a lot of issues creap into play here.. I think they will have more performance than NV20, however 2x performance is much more reasonable.. if that much though.

All IMO, so don't bitch

 

[BurnedNIU]

Well, you can hype things like T-buffer, but with numbers its hard. If you claim HUGE numbers, i think its expected that youll get great ones. And nVIDIA is the most reliable company around. Im not worried about power from them. IMHO

 

[DaveB3D]

Reliable?

ROFLMAO... GTS has less than 70% hardware efficiency in best case situations. This means that can only reach 70% of what they claim. In a game this is even lower.


Note my new signature..

 

[BurnedNIU]

Ok, not expected. But i think with companys like nvidia and MS (who you dont have to like, but they do what they do better than anyone) I expect good things from them and i havnt been let down. Ok, windows isnt perfect, but you have anything better? Linux is great at some things, but not others...

 

[BurnedNIU]

I meant, if i was a developer and i needed a company i could trust to get things done, it would be nvidia and MS. They have the resources and the skills.

I think in one demo i got from nvidia i got my GF DDR to 5 million/sec. But this is a program that was specifically made for T&amp;L and high polys. A game could do that too.

The X-box and EVERYTHING about it is designed to take avantage of the T&amp;L unit. Everyone playing those games will be playing with a the same system. No need to play down to a V5500 or any other card that doesnt have a T&amp;L unit.... or a high fillrate, ie TNT2s, V3000s...

 

[DaveB3D]

That is just my point though.

You say you had a demo that pushed the GF DDR to 5 million vertices/sec. However, NVIDIA claims 15 million. This demo was designed to show of T&amp;L too. So that means in best case you are getting 5 million, so real world I'd guess you'd get about 2 million. This means you are getting about 1/7.5 of what NVIDIA is actually claiming. So if it is being claimed that NV2a is 8x faster.. how fast is it really?

 

[Deeko]

NV2A is faster than the NV25? I thought it was close in speed to the NV20? Poor Deeko's confused....

 

[Chad]

All of this is fun, but the only real question is...

How much better will the games look over the PS2?

If that is substantial enough, as Metallica says... &quot;Nothing else matters.&quot;

 

[DaveB3D]

Oh yeah, it will look much better. The real question is.. what will be, what is better: X-box or GameCube.

 

[Finality]

Its probably 8X when u consider 2X fill rate, 2X memory bandwidth 2X lighting ability (perfomance wise) and 2X transofrming ability.

Its called marketing folks you have to decipher it

BTW I already pre-ordered my X-box.

 

[piku]

<< Microsoft joked that &quot;People ask me if there will be a web browser for Xbox. I say, No, because I never heard of a game called 'web browser'.&quot; >>



And that is the way it should be.

HEAR THAT SONY?

 

[ElFenix]

screw that, if the games suck i'm not buying it. well, i might wait in line the first night cuz the first revision will be the most hackable and you know linux will be on it within two weeks. but, barring that, i wouldn't buy one just cuz the hardware is hyped to hell and back. and i won't buy one at $400 just for one game (*cough* halo *cough*). though i did buy a $150 psx for FF7. point is, i just want somewhere around 20 really good games for the entire life of the system, and i can pretty much count on nintendo for delivering on that, so thats the one system i'll stand in line for with the exception of being able to hack it a week later.

 

[BenSkywalker]

&quot;and some operations of the NV2A will be up to 8x faster than the NV20.&quot;

Certainly doesn't sound like 8X faster then NV20 to me, just it will do some operations up to 8x faster. This is fairly easy to achieve if say the NV2A supports a feature in hardware that the NV20 doesn't. Big difference then saying that it is eight times faster.

The GF2 can do some operations up to six times faster then a GF1, that is real. The GF2 certainly isn't six times faster then the GF1 though.

Dave-

&quot;You say you had a demo that pushed the GF DDR to 5 million vertices/sec. However, NVIDIA claims 15 million. This demo was designed to show of T&amp;L too. So that means in best case you are getting 5 million, so real world I'd guess you'd get about 2 million. This means you are getting about 1/7.5 of what NVIDIA is actually claiming. So if it is being claimed that NV2a is 8x faster.. how fast is it really?&quot;

I'm pushing over twelve million using GLPerf(AGP 2X), not a nVidia specific/optimized test, on a DDR. Running the MS DX8 &quot;Optimized Mesh&quot; I'm hitting over 5 million vertices/sec running AGP 1X(haven't tried AGP2X yet).

I think 15 million would require perfect optimizations, but I don't doubt that they can hit it with a GeForce if I can hit twelve million running GLPerf which certainly isn't tweaked for nVidia's T&amp;L. In game? I don't know, as soon as developers start pushing heavy poly games maybe we will have a better idea.

[]i]&quot;The real question is.. what will be, what is better: X-box or GameCube.&quot;[/i]

In terms of graphics, I think that much of this will come down to the artists/modelers working on the games. We are at the point now where artistic talent can start to be used in 3D games without having to make enormous compromises, much like 2D games on the PSX/Saturn. My money is on Nintendo, mainly because of Miyamoto, to be the overall better system, but I think that they both will clearly be significantly better then Sony's offering(and I plan on picking both up).

 

[DaveB3D]

CAD tests don't count. Nothing close to a game.

 

[Sephiroth_IX]

Cad tests count perfectly -- in PR.

 

[BenSkywalker]

&quot;Cad tests count perfectly -- in PR.&quot;

There are those of us who do use CAD Seph

 

[xtreme2k]

I think I remember it was 15million vertices not 15million triangles

 

[BenSkywalker]

&quot;I think I remember it was 15million vertices not 15million triangles&quot;

Yes, but if done properly your vertice count will barely be off of your polygon count. I can build a model with 15,000,000 polygons that has 15,000,002 vertices.

 

[DaveB3D]

There is no such thing as using polygons, it is always vertices.

And Ben, I think we both know that is a crazy assumption for any real world situation. Typically your polygon count is 1/3-1/2 your vertex count.