Xbox 2 specifications now officially available

[BenSkywalker]

Either way, both the PS3 and XB2 are going to have plenty of horsepower to spare. I don't think it will be like this gen where you can clearly state that the one console (PS2) is at a distinct hardware disadvantage.

Neither of them have close to enough horsepower to push over some of the major hurdles we have left to cover(clothing, hair- general physics; global illumination w/radiosity). Also it appears that both are going to be seriously limited by RAM. Obviously 256MB in a console can do a lot more then it can in a PC, but the chips powering these consoles can do a hell of a lot more then their current PC counterparts can also.

I think that the advantage one has over the other will display itself given time, although the initial push in to HD territory is going to be a bit for most consumer to get over.

The Sega Genesis, for a while was not only the most powerful console but it was the top seller.

I should have clarrified by stating that I meant in generational terms.

Sony is only doing to get the Blu-Ray to get more market share and it is their technology

True but it has its advantages. It is rewritable, a potentially huge plus if developers can leverage properly.

No one currently knows how powerful the Cell processor will be in the PS3. I would guess they will include one as they have had many problems manufacturing multi-core Cell processors. Which would drastically increase the price.

IBM has had issues fabbing at their plant using their older technology tools true. Not sure how that quite relates to a fab completely retooled for Cell explicitly. In terms of the power of the chips, there is plenty of documentation on exactly how many ops the chip can do in any configuration I can think of, not sure what you mean. I would say a general indicator of how powerful Cell is in relation to POWER chips is that IBM is phasing POWER chips out to be replaced by Cell offerings all the way up.

Gamecube has really poor pixel shading capability, I don't know where you are getting your information from.

Actually, it doesn't. Not sure where you are getting your information from. The GC's shader ops don't align well with straight DX specifications, and overall the NV2A certainly has more capabilities, but the GC is capable of handling certain operations that are not possible on the NV2A. If you really want to act all shocked at this, the GeForce3 is capable of handling certain operations that the X850XL PE can't.

 

[JackBurton]

Originally posted by: Koing

Originally posted by: JackBurton

Originally posted by: Accipiter22
lol@ neogeo reference...i wanted one of those things soooo bad..i was devestated when my mom told me it cost roughly 8x what she could afford

Dude, that thing was $600 BACK THEN! And I thought to myself, if I can save up enough money to buy it ($600 is pretty dang tough to save up when you're a kid), I wouldn't have enough money for the games because they cost freakin' $200 EACH!!! :Q Thankfully we have nice NeoGeo emulators now.

Dude NO LOAD TIMES for your games! The Neo Geo was SO SICK man. My email address has neogeo in it because I was such a hardcore gamer back then. People think it is a reference to "The Maxtrix"

NeoGeo true arcade experience? It was the frigging arcade unit basically!

I'll probably go with PS3 as I like the games for it, but if the games I like are on the Xbox 2 I'll probably switch to that. I love the PS2 pad. Fits in my hand great and the buttons are in a good position to play fighting games. But I really need to get a decent arcade stick and get use to it...

Either way I hope Sony get their act and get the dam online 'play' thing sorted out. MS really have kicked the sh!t out of Sony on that front.

Koing

Oh, no doubt, NeoGeo was WAY ahead of it's time. When you paid $200 for the game, you basically bought the arcade game bit for bit. But NO way could I even afford a $200 game anyway you sliced it. I'm glad I didn't pay $200 per game back then though. You can have ALL the NeoGeo games for nothing now. And talk about hard games, King of Fighters was a rediculous freakin' game. Kicking everyone's ass was pretty easy, UNTIL you got to Rugal, then it was game over! That is one cheating ass bastard! :|

 

[Eug]

Originally posted by: eclavatar

Originally posted by: doublejbass

Originally posted by: Eug
Undoubtedly they'll be taking a loss on each unit sold, but if they can make it up in software sales...

Also, the 3 GHz of a Xenon won't be like the 3 GHz of a G5, or even the 3 GHz of a P4. The core is capable of performing much less per clock. However, with 3 cores it's still a monster.

It will be interesting to see how the games pan out.

Xenon is gonna have 3 moderate speed cores. Run the code on just one core and the game may just suck. The coders are gonna have to really try to make use of all three cores.

Cell is gonna have a much faster clocked CPU with a PPE core very similar to Xenon's core, but most of the work is supposed to be done by the SPE vector units, of which there are a ton of them.

Porting and optimization of these games from one platform to the other is gonna prove interesting...

Well said.

That isn't well said considering it factually inaccurate. All sources point to the cores being more powerful than normal Power PC G5.

Heheh, no, not even close. Each 3.0 GHz Xenon core alone would be destroyed in most code by the current G5 at 2.5 GHz. The benefit though is that there are three of those cores in Xenon.

 

[dguy6789]

Originally posted by: BenSkywalker

Either way, both the PS3 and XB2 are going to have plenty of horsepower to spare. I don't think it will be like this gen where you can clearly state that the one console (PS2) is at a distinct hardware disadvantage.

Neither of them have close to enough horsepower to push over some of the major hurdles we have left to cover(clothing, hair- general physics; global illumination w/radiosity). Also it appears that both are going to be seriously limited by RAM. Obviously 256MB in a console can do a lot more then it can in a PC, but the chips powering these consoles can do a hell of a lot more then their current PC counterparts can also.

I think that the advantage one has over the other will display itself given time, although the initial push in to HD territory is going to be a bit for most consumer to get over.

The Sega Genesis, for a while was not only the most powerful console but it was the top seller.

I should have clarrified by stating that I meant in generational terms.

Sony is only doing to get the Blu-Ray to get more market share and it is their technology

True but it has its advantages. It is rewritable, a potentially huge plus if developers can leverage properly.

No one currently knows how powerful the Cell processor will be in the PS3. I would guess they will include one as they have had many problems manufacturing multi-core Cell processors. Which would drastically increase the price.

IBM has had issues fabbing at their plant using their older technology tools true. Not sure how that quite relates to a fab completely retooled for Cell explicitly. In terms of the power of the chips, there is plenty of documentation on exactly how many ops the chip can do in any configuration I can think of, not sure what you mean. I would say a general indicator of how powerful Cell is in relation to POWER chips is that IBM is phasing POWER chips out to be replaced by Cell offerings all the way up.

Gamecube has really poor pixel shading capability, I don't know where you are getting your information from.

Actually, it doesn't. Not sure where you are getting your information from. The GC's shader ops don't align well with straight DX specifications, and overall the NV2A certainly has more capabilities, but the GC is capable of handling certain operations that are not possible on the NV2A. If you really want to act all shocked at this, the GeForce3 is capable of handling certain operations that the X850XL PE can't.

:roll: Uh huh, yea, um, PROVE IT.

 

[PrayForDeath]

Originally posted by: otispunkmeyer

Originally posted by: dguy6789
Heh. So it is set in stone, Xenon is faster than PS3.

xbox is faster than ps2, but i dont see a racing game on the xbox that looks as impressive as GT4. the PS2 is still a mighty powerful machine, just 90% of devs could never tap into its true potential

ill probably buy the sony, for the GT4 regardless which is better, my bro will buy the xbox anyway so im not gonna lose out

PGR2?

 

[Pr0d1gy]

Yeah once you start talking consoles all the fanboys & haters crawl out from under their rocks.

They got rid of the hard drive because of all the lame ass modders stealing their revenue instead of getting jobs & paying for games & movies like decent people.

 

[JackBurton]

Originally posted by: Pr0d1gy
Yeah once you start talking consoles all the fanboys & haters crawl out from under their rocks.

They got rid of the hard drive because of all the lame ass modders stealing their revenue instead of getting jobs & paying for games & movies like decent people.

You know, I LOVE the hard drive and I'm sad to see it go, but that seems like a valid reason for MS to axe the hd on their next gen console.

 

[BenSkywalker]

Uh huh, yea, um, PROVE IT.

Assuming you are talking about the GC's shader capabilities-

Link.

The GameCube is centered on a fixed function geometry pipeline, and its per-pixel effects won?t be as dynamic as pixel shaders (one texture = one map, with changes to map done on the host CPU). Even so, in the current generation of games, the GameCube can produce excellent images through clever use of its rich multi-texturing possibilities. The Flipper is very flexible in terms of the type of math operations that can be done on textures, and some of the capabilities on the GameCube are those features found in Pixel Shader 1.4 technology.

From software dev-

Planet GameCube: In a recent IGNinsider article, Greg Buchner revealed that Flipper can do some unique things because of the ways that the different texture layers can interact. Can you elaborate on this feature? Have you used it? Do you know if the effects it allows are reproducible on other architectures (at decent framerates)?

Julian Eggebrecht: He was probably referring to the TEV pipeline. Imagine it like an elaborate switchboard that makes the wildest combinations of textures and materials possible. The TEV pipeline combines up to 8 textures in up to 16 stages in one go. Each stage can apply a multitude of functions to the texture - obvious examples of what you do with the TEV stages would be bump-mapping or cel-shading. The TEV pipeline is completely under programmer control, so the more time you spend on writing elaborate shaders for it, the more effects you can achieve. We just used the obvious effects in Rogue Leader with the targeting computer and the volumetric fog variations being the most unusual usage of TEV. In a second generation game we?ll obviously focus on more complicated applications.

If you weren't talking about the Cube's shader hardware, then specify which issue it is you would like me to show you more information about.

 

[Malladine]

Originally posted by: rikadik
If that comes out for ~$300, then I'll be getting one.

Does anyone get the feeling that one day people just won't bother with PCs for gaming? I'm close to it you know, because it just makes financial sense. With a console you don't get caught up with the constantly improving technologies, like a new better GPU every 3 months. And you also KNOW that anything you buy for a console will work beautifully, unless its broken. The next few years will be very interesting.

What's everyone think?

PC gaming, imo, could become a niche market for RTS and large scale world sims mostly. Games that require lots of keystrokes and micromanagement don't sit well with consoles. Consoles already pretty much own the driving genre, 100% own the Beatemup genre and even fps are extremely popular and becoming more so. Perhaps a split in popular belief along the lines of consoles for fast paced action oriented games, pcs for slower paced more thought intensive games (i'm already thinking this way to a certain extent) will occur.

You have a good point on "and you also KNOW that anything you buy for a console will work beautifully...". That's my main gripe with pc gaming. But then it just takes a little more effort and i can usually make any game run console smooth.

Anyway, I'm not worried about pc gaming going out of business

 

[bunnyfubbles]

Originally posted by: Eug
Wireless controllers standard? Not a chance.

Its a GREAT idea, not a chance? Wavebird is hands down the best controller for any of the current three systems, at least to those I know who have all three systems or have used all three controllers and can give an unbiased opinion.

Someone did meniton how they thought the dual shock is most in need of a redesign, which I agree with. The original dual shock was rush attempt to "fix" their lack of joystick when the n64 proved it was here to stay. It hasn't significantly changed since.

Just think, if a system has wireless controllers as a standard, there wouldn't be a need for an extra adapter like on the GC, AND the console could probably support 16 players right out of the box. Granted such a game would be crowded...8 players would be a possibility, especially with high def allowing a feasible 8 way split screen, and no mess with cords which is bad enough at 4, certainly not any better with any more.

 

[imported_X]

From what I have heard, MS is likely to offer wireless controllers along with the Xbox, but you will also have the option to go with wired controlers if you prefer. Personally, I don't want to deal with recharging and would rather have a wired controller.

 

[Eug]

Wireless controllers can be great but:

1) They're expensive.
2) They are sometimes less reliable than wired controllers. And I'm sure MS doesn't want to deal with the extra support calls.
3) They're expensive.

Although I still think it's unlikely, I suppose I could see the console having some sort of wireless capability built-in, but the actual shipping product would still be with wired controllers. Any wireless controllers would be moderately priced add-ons.

 

[Regs]

Pft - what's all this fuss about not using computers? If the x-box can connect to my computer monitor and I could use my keyboard/mouse with the controllers, I'll just use both. Hell, that sounds sweet! Best of both worlds.

 

[ZimZum]

Originally posted by: BenSkywalker

Either way, both the PS3 and XB2 are going to have plenty of horsepower to spare. I don't think it will be like this gen where you can clearly state that the one console (PS2) is at a distinct hardware disadvantage.

Neither of them have close to enough horsepower to push over some of the major hurdles we have left to cover(clothing, hair- general physics; global illumination w/radiosity). Also it appears that both are going to be seriously limited by RAM. Obviously 256MB in a console can do a lot more then it can in a PC, but the chips powering these consoles can do a hell of a lot more then their current PC counterparts can also.

I think that the advantage one has over the other will display itself given time, although the initial push in to HD territory is going to be a bit for most consumer to get over.

.

Sure there is always room for improvement. But in terms of general performance, when the XB2 and PS3 launch even the top flight PCs wont be able to touch them. As was the case with the 1st Xbox. Of course PCs have since left the Xbox in the dust.

 

[Regs]

What im interested about is how the console will have a triple core. This means....what? That developers will make multi-threaded games by the end of this year? Who's pushing who here? Is the hardware industry pushing the software companies like usual or did the developers tip the hardware industry off to their limitations due to their hardware?

 

[BenSkywalker]

What im interested about is how the console will have a triple core. This means....what? That developers will make multi-threaded games by the end of this year?

Perhaps not by the end of this year, at least not in meaningful terms. Given the launch date one of the elements that are likely to be less then optimal to get launch titles shipping will be their multi threading. Given that current Xenon dev kits are dual core while the final shipping product should be tripple core will also cause some issues in terms of offering a good platform to work out the optimal choices in terms of threading.

Who's pushing who here?

Nobody is pushing anyone around. If anything, the software companies will end up pushing each other around. We are not going to see any of the first parties refuse to validate a game for underutilization of the multiple cores, but those devs that exploit the full potential of the multi chip setup will be the ones offering games with major advantages over the competition.

Is the hardware industry pushing the software companies like usual or did the developers tip the hardware industry off to their limitations due to their hardware?

If they were seriously listening to developers I think that both Sony and MS would be looking to reduce the power of their cores a bit to increase the amount of RAM they are using. If 256MB ends up being the final number we are looking at a four fold increase in available RAM beyond the XB with two orders of magnitude greater computing power- and the amount of RAM was already a major limiting factor on the XBox.

 

[Eug]

More details from IGC

Optional wireless will be RF. Shipping controllers are wired and similar to current ones.
Camera is 1.2 Megapixel and can be used for video chat, etc.
Optional 2.5" laptop hard drive... to allow backwards compatibility with current Xbox games??!?
64 MB to 1024 MB memory cards (with 8 MB of those reserved for system use).
Size smaller than original PS2 but bigger than current PS2.

 

[slash196]

If they have decent games, a normal-human controller, and it's decent sized I might actually buy this one. Unless, of course, you are REQUIRED to have XBox live. In which case, screw that.

 

[CidHighwind]

I would guess this is the wrong place to say...

GRAPHICS ARENT EVERYTHING!

 

[ZimZum]

Originally posted by: Eug
More details from IGC
Size smaller than original PS2 but bigger than current PS2.

That will be some feat if they can cram all that into a box smaller than the original PS2. Certainly hope they leave enough room for us to put a mod chip.

 

[ZimZum]

Double post

 

[Eug]

Functionality of Xbox 2 camera with Xbox Live

 

[Lonyo]

Originally posted by: Eug
More details from IGC

Optional wireless will be RF. Shipping controllers are wired and similar to current ones.
Camera is 1.2 Megapixel and can be used for video chat, etc.
Optional 2.5" laptop hard drive... to allow backwards compatibility with current Xbox games??!?
64 MB to 1024 MB memory cards (with 8 MB of those reserved for system use).
Size smaller than original PS2 but bigger than current PS2.

I read somewhere (I think it was in a write up from either GDC of CeBIT) that the XBox Next wouldn't have any backwards compatability, because, according to whoever it was, all it did was give a greater catalogue of games on release.
But I'm not totally sure, and I can't recall where I read it (may have been an Gamespy article).

 

[Eug]

http://www.activewin.com/xbox/articles/2005/2.shtml

360 Hardware:
1. Support for DVD-video, DVD-Rom, DVD-R/RW, CD-DA, CD-Rom, CD-R, CD-RW, WMA CD, MP3 cd, JPEG photo CD
2. All games supported at 16:9, 720p and 1080i, anti-aliasing
3. Customizable face plates to change appearance
4. 3 USB 2.0 ports
5. Support for 4 wireless controllers
6. Detachable 20GB drive
7. Wi-Fi ready

Custom IBM PowerPC-based CPU
- 3 symmetrical cores at 3.2 GHz each
- 2 hardware threads per core
- 1 VMX-128 vector unit per core
- 1 MB L2 cache

CPU Game Math Performance
- 9 billion dots per second

Custom ATI Graphics Processor
- 500 MNz
- 10 MB embedded DRAM
- 48-way parallel floating-point shader pipelines
- unified shader architecture

Memory
-512 MB GDDR3 RAM
- 700 MNz DDR

Memory Bandwidth
- 22.4 GB/s memory interface bus bandwidth
- 256 GB/s memory bandwidth to EDRAM
- 21.6 GB/s frontside bus

Audio
- Mulitchannel surround sond output
- Supports 48khz 16-bit audio
- 320 independent decompression channels
- 32 bit processing
- 256+ audio channels

2 types of Xbox Live:
Xbox Live Silver (no subscription required)
Xbox Live Gold (subscription benefits)

Features for Gold service
* Also for Silver
# Also for Offline

- Seamless transition to Xbox Live account from Xbox to Xbox 360
- Access to MMOs (additional fees may apply) *
- Free Xbox Live weekends *
- Multiplayer online gameplay
- Avatar for gamer profile * #
- Motto for gamer profile * #
- Personalized look for Xbox System Guide * #
- Offline achievments * #
- Online achievements *
- Access to other players' Gamer cards via Live *
- Cumulative gamer score * #
- Location/language profile * #
- Reputation *
- Enahnced matchmaking using above
- Skill level matchmaking
- Gameplay style profile (casual, competitive, etc.)
- Recent players list *
- Free and premium download game content *
- Free and premium downloadable movies, music, tv *
- Downloadable demos/trailers *
- Microtransactions *
- Custom playlist in every game * #
- Play music from portable devices * #
- View images from digital camera * #
- Strem media from Windows XP * #
- Interactive screen savers * #
- Track info for CDs * #
- Communication with voice, video or text *

 

[Baked]

And the price? $1K! But it's all worth it, 'cause MS made it and it's a XBox!