VGLeaks: Xbox 720 specs rumor

[Pheran]

Obviously this is unconfirmed rumor, but VGLeaks claims to have the specs on the Xbox 720:

Quick summary (more details in link):

1.6 GHz 8-core CPU
800 MHz DirectX 11.1 GPU
8GB DDR3 RAM
32MB ESRAM (embedded fast RAM)
50GB 6x BD-ROM
"Natural user interface" always present (is this Kinect 2??)
Hard drive always present

It sounds pretty good, though I think they would have been better off trading off a couple of those cores for a higher CPU clock. The claim of it going back to always having a hard drive (like the first Xbox) is very interesting. I'm happy to see Blu-ray in this rumor, I was afraid Microsoft might do something stupid like omit an optical drive.

NEW 2013-02-04 GPU Info:

Durango's GPU detailed

This article contains detailed info about how the ESRAM works in conjunction with main memory as well as a whole bunch of technical detail about the inner workings of the GPU (don't miss pages 2 and 3!).

 

[dagamer34]

The hard drive-less SKUs were such a stupid decision by Microsoft, I think in the early days that were made for the Japanese market which never really adopted the 360 in the first place. Ugh.

A bunch of numbers that make up a spec sheet aren't that interesting to me, I'd rather know what their software strategy is this time around. It's obvious that the Xbox 360 is now more a multimedia machine than a gaming one, and yet the system itself cannot multi-task (you end up hoping in and out of apps far to frequently for my tastes). Not to mention background downloading always felt like such a hack, the internal OS seemed to be sapping some resources. And did anyone ever notice that the system UI itself is still only rendered in 720?

I'm hoping they fix some of these issues in the 720, maybe even let the 720 record TV in the background so I can kill off Media Center.

 

[Aikouka]

I'm rather curious about their 68GB/s bandwidth number on the DDR3 RAM. Overall memory bandwidth is module speed x the number of channels. Dual-channel, which is common in most desktop PCs, is out because that would be 34GB/s modules, which don't even exist. Quad-channel is possible as 17GB/s modules exist, but that's DDR3-2133, which is the highest standard defined by JEDEC for DDR3. I have a feeling that Microsoft doesn't want to use those. That does leave one possibility... 8 channels using DDR3-1066.

I found this line to be a bit misleading:

from the GPU’s perspective the bandwidths of system memory and ESRAM are parallel providing combined peak bandwidth of 170 GB/sec.

First off, 32MB is practically useless when it comes to typical memory usage! It's actually the perfect size to serve as a 1080p frame buffer (1920 pixels * 1080 pixels * 16 bit per pixel color = 33177600 bits / 1024 bits per kilobyte / 1024 kilobytes per megabyte = 31.64MB). I mentioned this in another thread, but how helpful is DDR3 going to be when it comes to textures and other necessary graphics-related objects?

Although, I do find it amusing that it will use a Blu-Ray drive. :biggrin:

 

[blurredvision]

The hard drive-less SKUs were such a stupid decision by Microsoft, I think in the early days that were made for the Japanese market which never really adopted the 360 in the first place. Ugh.

Stupid? For the consumer, arguably. For Microsoft, absolutely genius. They had a $300 SKU in the market from the get-go, then Sony got cocky and released a $500 baseline SKU. It was over from there.

At the time of launch for the XBOX 360, the hard drive wasn't as much of a requirement as we make it out to be now. The Arcade was literally 6 games, DLC was still in its infant stages, no streaming apps...nothing. Microsoft made a killing on not only early adopters comparing price once the PS3 came out a year later, they probably also made a killing selling $15 hard drives for $100.

 

[reallyscrued]

Stupid? For the consumer, arguably. For Microsoft, absolutely genius. They had a $300 SKU in the market from the get-go, then Sony got cocky and released a $500 baseline SKU. It was over from there.
.

...over from there?

You know both consoles have sold pretty much the same amount, right?

The data would suggest both of their pricing schemes were equally as effective.

(Reading, 'genius' and 'Microsoft' in the same sentence set off my bullshit-detector.)

 

[TerryMathews]

...over from there?

You know both consoles have sold pretty much the same amount, right?

The data would suggest both of their pricing schemes were equally as effective.

(Reading, 'genius' and 'Microsoft' in the same sentence set off my bullshit-detector.)

Over from there might have been a slight exaggeration but your comment is playing down the fact that Microsoft ' s strategies allowed them to maneuver from a significantly behind second place position into a tied for first position.

That in itself is an accomplishment as many experts at the time didn't think Sony could be unseated in two generations, due to the built in sales from Ps2 carryovers.

 

[Bobisuruncle54]

I'm rather curious about their 68GB/s bandwidth number on the DDR3 RAM. Overall memory bandwidth is module speed x the number of channels. Dual-channel, which is common in most desktop PCs, is out because that would be 34GB/s modules, which don't even exist. Quad-channel is possible as 17GB/s modules exist, but that's DDR3-2133, which is the highest standard defined by JEDEC for DDR3. I have a feeling that Microsoft doesn't want to use those. That does leave one possibility... 8 channels using DDR3-1066.

Interesting, and I think you're right that it would have to be one channel per core. This has me concerned that these will be nothing more than modified mobile ARM cores though, not full fat processing cores, with some set aside exclusively for Kinect 2. I hope that doesn't turn out to be the case.

 

[Ban Bot]

First off, 32MB is practically useless when it comes to typical memory usage! It's actually the perfect size to serve as a 1080p frame buffer (1920 pixels * 1080 pixels * 16 bit per pixel color = 33177600 bits / 1024 bits per kilobyte / 1024 kilobytes per megabyte = 31.64MB). I mentioned this in another thread, but how helpful is DDR3 going to be when it comes to textures and other necessary graphics-related objects?

Not practically useless, see: Xbox 360 eDRAM on the daughter die.

The framebuffer, especially without MSAA, is typically has a small footprint (e.g. an 8bit framebuffer at 1080p is about 16MB; 720p about 7MB) but can consume tens--if not hundreds--of GB/s of bandwidth if the ROPs can sustain a high fillrate. e.g. Xenos had 8 ROPs @ 500MHz (4Gpixel/s fillrate) so the eDRAM was designed to support 4xMSAA at full speed (256GB/s with no compression; 64GB/s without MSAA). 32 ROPs at 800MHz (AMD Pitcairn GCN design) is 25.6Gpixel/s which would require over 409.6GB/s without MSAA or 1638.4GB/s with 4xMSAA (without any compression which modern GPUs use a bit of).

So let’s assume a 1080p 16bit framebuffer without MSAA (32MB) in a scenario with the software being fillrate bound: a 32MB client (framebuffer) is demanding 409.6GB/s of bandwidth.

But a Pitcairn class GPU usually has 150-200GB/s of bandwidth.

On a 3GB (3072MB) GPU the framebuffer (32MB) takes up 1% of the total memory footprint but wants 200% of the bandwidth—easy to see in fillrate bound scenarios the GPU’s ROPs are going to be fighting with precious bandwidth, either starving and stalling the rest of the GPU or being stalled themselves due to insufficient bandwidth (or: both).

Isolating the framebuffer (a high bandwidth client) to a high bandwidth module is a smart move if it can be done painlessly (Xenos was a mixed bag). It also opens the door to use cheaper system memory (DDR3 vs. GDDR5) which has the upside of cheaper DDR3 is also much larger than GDDR5.

We don’t know yet if the “ESRAM” is a fully read/writable by the GPU across the entire pipeline, what bandwidth it has, and what access the CPU has to it. The idea of 500GB/s of 32MB local store/workspace could open up some great compute scenarios.

On the flip side it sounds like Durango has only 12CUs @ 800MHz (1.2TF) which sounds pretty pathetic considering you can get a 2TF GPU for about $150 with retail and AIB margins tacked on—not to mention it appears the silicon footprint has dropped a lot from the 360 (sounds like Durango has 1/2 the die area). Really no excuse for this for a late 2013 console. No excuse whatsoever. But the leaked MS pdf regarding Yukon made it clear low BOM costs and aiming at more set-top uses and the casual market were the goals, not satisfying core gamers.

 

[Ban Bot]

Interesting, and I think you're right that it would have to be one channel per core. This has me concerned that these will be nothing more than modified mobile ARM cores though, not full fat processing cores, with some set aside exclusively for Kinect 2. I hope that doesn't turn out to be the case.

The rumor is they are AMD Jaguar cores. These are the follow up to Bobcat and have increased IPC in the 10-15% range. The big change is also AVX so 8 Jag cores at 1.6GHz would be about a peak flops of 100Gflops. Jag cores would be much better at real world throughput than Xenon. 8 cores, especially at 1.6GHz, is only a marginal increase considering the cores are like 4mm^2 each (e.g. Xenon cores were each about 40mm^2 and iirc SPEs about 25mm^2 with LS). Obviously Amdahl’s Law comes into view the more cores you add as well as memory hierarchies to properly feed and share data but the designs for Orbis (PS4) and Durango (Xbox 3) appear quite conservative in the CPU fronts, if not the entire design.

Considering the 8 year gap between console releases, and the prospect of having these things around for another 7-10 years, the current leaks are substantially disappointing.

 

[Sonikku]

Boneheaded design is boneheaded. Sony tried to pile on the cores on top of cores and they really struggled to find developers willing to sink the kind of time and money into using them to their fullest. Microsoft often benefited from having a far simpler design.

 

[Pheran]

Boneheaded design is boneheaded. Sony tried to pile on the cores on top of cores and they really struggled to find developers willing to sink the kind of time and money into using them to their fullest. Microsoft often benefited from having a far simpler design.

There is a huge difference between Sony's asymmetric special-purpose cell cores and a simple symmetric 8-core CPU, which I'm assuming is what this is.

 

[oivoodsio]

Boneheaded design is boneheaded. Sony tried to pile on the cores on top of cores and they really struggled to find developers willing to sink the kind of time and money into using them to their fullest. Microsoft often benefited from having a far simpler design.

This is not what happened at all, and Ps3 vs Xbox 360 in terms of sales ps3 wasn't even close. The community on ps3 is very lacking, more people use ps3's for netflix than gaming. While the ps3 has moderately better hardware it still won't produce much more than the 360 the machines are equal. Huge difference was the proprietary titles.

During the era of ps2 and xbox, sony had Socom being developed by Zipper, a very well established company for the franchise. Now to combat the hackers known on socom (code9 and or codemajic) sony opted to remove zipper as the developers for what was their biggest MP hit. Now we hit that change midway through ps2/xbox to where people really started getting into internet multiplayer, in terms of Halo 1 and 2 v.s. Socom 1-3 there is no comparison, socom was better. The zipper socom games had the absolute best hit detection to ever exist in any MP game, take COD4-BLops2, w/o a sniper rifle standing dead still a headshot takes 2-3 shots b4 it registers, in socom anywhere above collarbone is 100% lethal, and you could tell when you hit the mark, further more the 50 caliber sniper rifles were 1 hit kill w/ a chance to be a 99% dmg, health did not regen, where as current titles health is constantly on regen.

Now compare the existing titles to each other Metal gear ps3, how many people still playing and talking about it? Now lets go Xbox, Gears of war the first major 360 title, absolute bombshell compared to MGS. Further you halo which halo 3 was another bombshell the 3 subsequent socom ps3 titles were horrible, resistance while interesting didn't catch on.

This is the only reasoning behind sony faltering in comparison to microsoft, that and microsoft is a lot better on maintenance and not having random network down times, funny thing what paying can do.

Ontopic: people saying that the next gen is underwhelming forgets a few things here, rumors have circulated about 7850's being used on the 720 I cannot confirm nor deny but even so having 90% of todays "mainstream" gaming PC power is a huge leap in performance for a console, which is very very optimized to do what its doing, where as a pc is doing a million million more things at once, that being said the 720 and ps4 will be bombshells. Keep in mind on release the ps3 and 360 were about as powerful as a gaming pc of the time, and when I say gaming PC I do not refer to super overclocked c2q's w/ sli 260+'s, Im talking mainstream, and also let us not forget that the graphics while not on par w/ a 2560x1440p monitor being hosted by quad 680's, they still look good 8~ yrs later. Consoles are NOT PC's, PC gaming is not something that is going to catch on when the entirety of computer development is going mobile, what we will see is consoles overcoming PC's by the next next gen.

p.s. PC's will never stop consoles ever, not as long as we can have more than 1 child in most countries. Keep in mind 2 player games only exist on consoles, otherwise you cant sit side by side on 1 pc playing together.

 

[Aikouka]

Not practically useless, see: Xbox 360 eDRAM on the daughter die.

You quoted the entire paragraph, but I get the feeling that you stopped reading after "practically useless."

I made that comment in regard to the website's point that the GPU will see both the main system memory (DDR3) and the ESRAM as one sub-system that will provide 170GB/s of bandwidth. The reason why I called it useless is it sounds like that website is simply "fluffing the numbers" by tacking the ESRAM's higher bandwidth onto the paltry (in regard to the GPU) system memory. Essentially, they're trying to ascribe it a role that it will most likely not play as I highly doubt that it will be storing graphic assets (textures, etc.).

 

[Ban Bot]

I consider the framebuffer and associated footprint/bandwidth utilization part of "typical memory usage", that is all, so I don't consider it practically useless (I see it as no different than the memory driven decisions to segment VRAM away from system memory). 32MB could also be usable for neat compute scenarios.

Anyways.

If the ESRAM is 102GB/s I am going to throw this down as a prediction: 8 ROPs @ 800MHz. This is 6.4Gpixel/s and would require, yes, 102GB/s. (This fits pretty nicely with Xenos which had 8 ROPs at 500MHz which had 64GB/s bandwdith on the eDRAM, 256GB/s when MSAA was used).

I will also predict Orbis (PS4) has 12 ROPs at 800MHz (9.6Gpixel/s requiring 152GB/s of bandwidth for peak fillrate with uncompressed data which modern GPUs make good use of). No real need, especially at 1080p, for there to be 32 ROPs. Orbis has leaked to have 192GB/s total bandwidth.

If my above guesses are right based on the leaked data (???) Orbis doesn't only have a 50% higher compute (18CUs vs. 12CUs) but a large edge in Fillrate as well (50% more).

If the TMUs hold firm at the same ratio, then Orbis is appearing to have 50% more GPU power across the board (Compute, Texturing, Fillrate).

 

[reallyscrued]

This is not what happened at all, and Ps3 vs Xbox 360 in terms of sales ps3 wasn't even close. The community on ps3 is very lacking, more people use ps3's for netflix than gaming. While the ps3 has moderately better hardware it still won't produce much more than the 360 the machines are equal. Huge difference was the proprietary titles.

<snip>

I don't understand posts like these. Your personal gaming tastes have no correlation with how successful a platform is, sorry.

In fact, PS3 and 360 are very close in sales. "Wasn't even close" is an outright lie as far as numbers go.

http://www.vgchartz.com/

 

[Kev]

Not practically useless, see: Xbox 360 eDRAM on the daughter die.

The framebuffer, especially without MSAA, is typically has a small footprint (e.g. an 8bit framebuffer at 1080p is about 16MB; 720p about 7MB) but can consume tens--if not hundreds--of GB/s of bandwidth if the ROPs can sustain a high fillrate. e.g. Xenos had 8 ROPs @ 500MHz (4Gpixel/s fillrate) so the eDRAM was designed to support 4xMSAA at full speed (256GB/s with no compression; 64GB/s without MSAA). 32 ROPs at 800MHz (AMD Pitcairn GCN design) is 25.6Gpixel/s which would require over 409.6GB/s without MSAA or 1638.4GB/s with 4xMSAA (without any compression which modern GPUs use a bit of).

So let’s assume a 1080p 16bit framebuffer without MSAA (32MB) in a scenario with the software being fillrate bound: a 32MB client (framebuffer) is demanding 409.6GB/s of bandwidth.

But a Pitcairn class GPU usually has 150-200GB/s of bandwidth.

On a 3GB (3072MB) GPU the framebuffer (32MB) takes up 1% of the total memory footprint but wants 200% of the bandwidth—easy to see in fillrate bound scenarios the GPU’s ROPs are going to be fighting with precious bandwidth, either starving and stalling the rest of the GPU or being stalled themselves due to insufficient bandwidth (or: both).

Isolating the framebuffer (a high bandwidth client) to a high bandwidth module is a smart move if it can be done painlessly (Xenos was a mixed bag). It also opens the door to use cheaper system memory (DDR3 vs. GDDR5) which has the upside of cheaper DDR3 is also much larger than GDDR5.

We don’t know yet if the “ESRAM” is a fully read/writable by the GPU across the entire pipeline, what bandwidth it has, and what access the CPU has to it. The idea of 500GB/s of 32MB local store/workspace could open up some great compute scenarios.

On the flip side it sounds like Durango has only 12CUs @ 800MHz (1.2TF) which sounds pretty pathetic considering you can get a 2TF GPU for about $150 with retail and AIB margins tacked on—not to mention it appears the silicon footprint has dropped a lot from the 360 (sounds like Durango has 1/2 the die area). Really no excuse for this for a late 2013 console. No excuse whatsoever. But the leaked MS pdf regarding Yukon made it clear low BOM costs and aiming at more set-top uses and the casual market were the goals, not satisfying core gamers.

I know some of these words.

 

[RedRooster]

I know some of these words.

Haha, "bleep bloop".
How's it play Battlefield 4? Thats all that matters.

 

[purbeast0]

I know some of these words.

haha glad i'm not the only one.

 

[blurredvision]

...over from there?

You know both consoles have sold pretty much the same amount, right?

The data would suggest both of their pricing schemes were equally as effective.

(Reading, 'genius' and 'Microsoft' in the same sentence set off my bullshit-detector.)

Was thinking of mainly NA when I made that comment, sorry.

EDIT: Fuck it, I'm not sorry. I quoted US prices, it was obvious on a US-based forum what I was talking about. 360 crushed the PS3 in North America, both in consoles sold and software units sold. Yes, Microsoft was genius in taking out a couple of features to get the price down on the lower SKU. It worked very well for them and did so for quite a number of years, as they were almost always priced well below the PS3, regardless of features that the common public did or did not know about.

 

[Thermalzeal]

I bet that AMD has struck a deal to offer all of these components. The memory, the esram, the gpu/cpu, customized for microsofts tastes.

Has anyone had any experience with AMD's new memory offerings? They could lead a clue to performance.

 

[reallyscrued]

Was thinking of mainly NA when I made that comment, sorry.

EDIT: Fuck it, I'm not sorry. I quoted US prices, it was obvious on a US-based forum what I was talking about. 360 crushed the PS3 in North America, both in consoles sold and software units sold. Yes, Microsoft was genius in taking out a couple of features to get the price down on the lower SKU. It worked very well for them and did so for quite a number of years, as they were almost always priced well below the PS3, regardless of features that the common public did or did not know about.

Lemme get this straight, you were sorry...then did some more research and realized you had the tiniest leg to stand on, so now you're back to not being sorry?

Sounds like if you knew all the facts upfront, you wouldn't be looking for background info of your position as the debate moves forward.


This is a dumb debate, and I'll leave with this:

Pricing strategy is important but that wasn't the key to Microsoft's success with the 360, not by a long shot. Their grasp on dude-bro culture and shaping a new generation of gaming to meet wants and needs of the common gamer today is what catapulted them to the #2 spot of overall hardware sales and #1 spot of long-term popularity.

The PS3 had everything going for it; (from a familiar and historical standpoint, PS1 and PS2 being as popular as they were) it's very surprising Microsoft was able to pull this off. I also think there was a little bit of luck thrown into the mix as with any endeavor, so that's hardly worth mentioning.

I'll agree that Sony definitely doesn't do itself any favors. Sony sounds like a stuck-up Japanese company to me. It's mismanaged in its Playstation division big time (and maybe electronics too...when's the last time someone you know bought a Sony TV?) They are certainly lucky their brand image in Europe and Japan is keeping them afloat.

 

[JackBurton]

Lemme get this straight, you were sorry...then did some more research and realized you had the tiniest leg to stand on, so now you're back to not being sorry?

Sounds like if you knew all the facts upfront, you wouldn't be looking for background info of your position as the debate moves forward.


This is a dumb debate, and I'll leave with this:

Pricing strategy is important but that wasn't the key to Microsoft's success with the 360, not by a long shot. Their grasp on dude-bro culture and shaping a new generation of gaming to meet wants and needs of the common gamer today is what catapulted them to the #2 spot of overall hardware sales and #1 spot of long-term popularity.

The PS3 had everything going for it; (from a familiar and historical standpoint, PS1 and PS2 being as popular as they were) it's very surprising Microsoft was able to pull this off. I also think there was a little bit of luck thrown into the mix as with any endeavor, so that's hardly worth mentioning.

I'll agree that Sony definitely doesn't do itself any favors. Sony sounds like a stuck-up Japanese company to me. It's mismanaged in its Playstation division big time (and maybe electronics too...when's the last time someone you know bought a Sony TV?) They are certainly lucky their brand image in Europe and Japan is keeping them afloat.

Sony still makes one of the best LCD's available today. The ONLY other LCD manufacture that goes head-to-head with Sony for the top spot is Sharp (Sharp Elite specifically). So if you don't know anyone that's bought a Sony TV, it's either because they prefer plasma, or because they can't afford a Sony.

 

[clok1966]

make as story about leaked specs into the ever joyfull my console is better then your console.. how old are you guys anyways? Besides both MS and SONY have 100GB Blu ray drives specs in next gen not 50.. or so the hardware vendors have been told to be ready to make (rumors too).. I guess MS could start selling 100GB bluRay drives with MS logos's but I tend to think its for the new 360..

 

[blurredvision]

Lemme get this straight, you were sorry...then did some more research and realized you had the tiniest leg to stand on, so now you're back to not being sorry?

Sounds like if you knew all the facts upfront, you wouldn't be looking for background info of your position as the debate moves forward.

Umm, no. At first I thought I should've specified NA but then realized that I quoted US prices on a primarily US-based forum and figured it would only take an idiot to not figure out what I was talking about.

I honestly don't know what the numbers are for NA consoles and software sold, but I'd bet you $20 without that knowledge that the 360 is very well ahead of the PS3.

 

[blurredvision]

make as story about leaked specs into the ever joyfull my console is better then your console.. how old are you guys anyways? Besides both MS and SONY have 100GB Blu ray drives specs in next gen not 50.. or so the hardware vendors have been told to be ready to make (rumors too).. I guess MS could start selling 100GB bluRay drives with MS logos's but I tend to think its for the new 360..

I'm not really seeing anybody saying "my console is better than yours". It might even be a good assumption around here that most of us own both a PS3 and 360.