Xbox 2 specifications now officially available

[Sunner]

Originally posted by: Wingznut

Originally posted by: Sunner
I just can't fathom how anyone can stand to play FPS's on consoles with their controllers.
I've tried a few on both an XBox and a PS2, but I find myself just giving up pretty quickly, FPS's just aren't playable using controllers.

Sure, the kb/mouse precision can't be beat, but that doesn't make a controller less fun. (At least to me.) And yes, most FPS' are better on the PC, but not all.

Doom 3 and both Halos are good examples of FPS' that I enjoy more on the Xbox than the PC. Sitting on the couch in front of a widescreen HDTV, surrounded by 5.1dd sound, beats the hell out of sitting at a desk.

So, to say "they aren't playable..." is pretty much hyperbole.

Nah, it's opinion, but I'm so used to the mouse/kb combo that a controller just feels awkward enough to me that's it becomes boring, but to each his own and all that

 

[mwmorph]

Originally posted by: Sunner

Originally posted by: Wingznut

Originally posted by: Sunner
I just can't fathom how anyone can stand to play FPS's on consoles with their controllers.
I've tried a few on both an XBox and a PS2, but I find myself just giving up pretty quickly, FPS's just aren't playable using controllers.

Sure, the kb/mouse precision can't be beat, but that doesn't make a controller less fun. (At least to me.) And yes, most FPS' are better on the PC, but not all.

Doom 3 and both Halos are good examples of FPS' that I enjoy more on the Xbox than the PC. Sitting on the couch in front of a widescreen HDTV, surrounded by 5.1dd sound, beats the hell out of sitting at a desk.

So, to say "they aren't playable..." is pretty much hyperbole.

Nah, it's opinion, but I'm so used to the mouse/kb combo that a controller just feels awkward enough to me that's it becomes boring, but to each his own and all that

i had the opposite problem. i was so used to xbox controls having played so many hours, halo 1 for pc felt awkward and i just gave up on it.

 

[Acanthus]

Originally posted by: Wingznut

Originally posted by: Sunner
I just can't fathom how anyone can stand to play FPS's on consoles with their controllers.
I've tried a few on both an XBox and a PS2, but I find myself just giving up pretty quickly, FPS's just aren't playable using controllers.

Sure, the kb/mouse precision can't be beat, but that doesn't make a controller less fun. (At least to me.) And yes, most FPS' are better on the PC, but not all.

Doom 3 and both Halos are good examples of FPS' that I enjoy more on the Xbox than the PC. Sitting on the couch in front of a widescreen HDTV, surrounded by 5.1dd sound, beats the hell out of sitting at a desk.

So, to say "they aren't playable..." is pretty much hyperbole.

Wireless mouse, wireless keyboard, HDTV-out on a Leadtek 6800, THere, now you have sitting on the couch in front of a widescreen HDTV surrounded by 5.1dd sound. At about triple the image quality.

 

[BenSkywalker]

Wireless mouse, wireless keyboard

Works real well on a couch.....

The PC can not touch consoles when it comes to overall gaming experience. A couple of genres PCs do well(FPS, RTS), everything else is done better on the consoles. What is interesting this generation is that the PC failed to take a significant lead by the end of the current generations life cycle- and with low caliber displays becoming commonplace for PCs it appears that the future of high resolution gaming is moving towards consoles too. With USB built in to XB360 the mouse/keyboard issue becomes a non factor. What major advantage will the PC have left when this generation hits even after a few years?

 

[Sunner]

Originally posted by: BenSkywalker

Wireless mouse, wireless keyboard

Works real well on a couch.....

The PC can not touch consoles when it comes to overall gaming experience. A couple of genres PCs do well(FPS, RTS), everything else is done better on the consoles. What is interesting this generation is that the PC failed to take a significant lead by the end of the current generations life cycle- and with low caliber displays becoming commonplace for PCs it appears that the future of high resolution gaming is moving towards consoles too. With USB built in to XB360 the mouse/keyboard issue becomes a non factor. What major advantage will the PC have left when this generation hits even after a few years?

All opinions.
I've yet to see a single game that would make me wanna buy a console, which of course depends on the fact that I mostly enjoy the very generes you mentioned, FPS and RTS.

Halo was decent I guess, but nothing earth shattering by a long shot, and that is the feeling I get from pretty much every console game.
Granted, most PC games suck as well, but the PC tends to get the true gems IMO, while the consoles only get piles of mediocre(at best) games.

As has been said many times, it's all about the games, and that's a highly individual measurement.

Must be said though, I'd love to go all console since I could then run Linux everywhere.
I guess I could now, but I'm too lazy to mess with WINE.

By the way, regarding the discussion about POWER and Cell, do you have any info about this?
I'm a bit curious as I've yet to see anything indicating that Cell would be used for anything involving commercial workloads.

 

[Eug]

Originally posted by: BenSkywalker

Since when are IBM's servers dependent upon vector performance?

Huh...? Why would they be? Obviously in a server based environment you could reduce/eliminate the need for vector throughput and instead focus on the highest amount of general purpose cores and cache the fabrication process will allow.

Indeed, and thus Cell's PPE becomes much less desirable in this context.

 

[BenSkywalker]

Granted, most PC games suck as well, but the PC tends to get the true gems IMO, while the consoles only get piles of mediocre(at best) games.

Check GameRankings DB- out of the top twenty games of all time the PC has four, one of those was a port from a console and all of the titles that are on the list for the PC are either already on or are coming to the consoles. The other sixteen are console offerings. Of course this is based on perspective, but you are certainly in the minority. Bump it up to the top 50 titles btw, and the PC still only has ten. Most people seem to think consoles get the overwhelming majority of gems. You are at a rather huge disadvantage in this discussion however, as I have not biased myself enough towards any platform to miss out on any of the others. I have my gaming rig sitting in the same room as my GC, PS2 and XBox. I play them all all the time. I play games, not platforms. The consoles collectively easily demolish the PC in terms of amount of games that most people want to play- this is reflected in the marketplace and from critical reviews.

By the way, regarding the discussion about POWER and Cell, do you have any info about this?
I'm a bit curious as I've yet to see anything indicating that Cell would be used for anything involving commercial workloads.

Over at the console forums at B3D every element of Cell's development and future plans have been discussed in extreme details over the past couple of years with a large archive of quotes from people working on the project(for Sony and IBM) and what it was going to be used for.

Indeed, and thus Cell's PPE becomes much less desirable in this context.

Cell's power savings, transistor savings and flexibility remain extremely desireable in all contexts. All of the processor manufacturers are moving towards a Cell style architecture, IBM is just doing it much sooner then the rest(Intel and AMD believe that we need to have a considerably more advanced process technology prior to switching over).

 

[Sunner]

Originally posted by: BenSkywalker

Granted, most PC games suck as well, but the PC tends to get the true gems IMO, while the consoles only get piles of mediocre(at best) games.

Check GameRankings DB- out of the top twenty games of all time the PC has four, one of those was a port from a console and all of the titles that are on the list for the PC are either already on or are coming to the consoles. The other sixteen are console offerings. Of course this is based on perspective, but you are certainly in the minority. Bump it up to the top 50 titles btw, and the PC still only has ten. Most people seem to think consoles get the overwhelming majority of gems. You are at a rather huge disadvantage in this discussion however, as I have not biased myself enough towards any platform to miss out on any of the others. I have my gaming rig sitting in the same room as my GC, PS2 and XBox. I play them all all the time. I play games, not platforms. The consoles collectively easily demolish the PC in terms of amount of games that most people want to play- this is reflected in the marketplace and from critical reviews.

Oh certainly, my taste tends to differ greatly from most people, so I'm used to that
I don't like HD based mp3 players.
I don't like cell phones.
I think pretty much every car made after 2000 is ugly as hell.
I like Solaris.
And so forth

Oh and I hate TV, so I don't have one to hook my console to anyway

By the way, regarding the discussion about POWER and Cell, do you have any info about this?
I'm a bit curious as I've yet to see anything indicating that Cell would be used for anything involving commercial workloads.

Over at the console forums at B3D every element of Cell's development and future plans have been discussed in extreme details over the past couple of years with a large archive of quotes from people working on the project(for Sony and IBM) and what it was going to be used for.

I don't hang over there, though I do read RWT quite a bit(one of the few forums where one can find insightful and mature discussions about hardware, especially enterprise geared hardware.
But I've yet to see any official sign of IBM moving towards Cell-like architectures for their i,p, and z series.
Supposedly they will consolidate around POWER6 though, with even the zSeries running those CPU's, but as usual with IBM, this isn't official either.
Of course, PS3 could just be an IBM testing ground to see how Cell works out.

Indeed, and thus Cell's PPE becomes much less desirable in this context.

Cell's power savings, transistor savings and flexibility remain extremely desireable in all contexts. All of the processor manufacturers are moving towards a Cell style architecture, IBM is just doing it much sooner then the rest(Intel and AMD believe that we need to have a considerably more advanced process technology prior to switching over).

We have yet to see how well all of this works out, as I mentioned above, IBM is extremely hard to get some info from.
As far as I know they haven't even released TDP figures for the 970FX.

Time will tell.

Oh and sorry about the formating of this post, if FT could make the damn reply window a little larger it would make it just a tad easier to organize.

 

[fishmonger12]

i'll buy a console when they make games like ut 2k4 look as good on them and play as well on them.

 

[BenSkywalker]

I don't like HD based mp3 players.

Agree with that.

I don't like cell phones.

I'm not terribly fond of phones in general- unfortunately having a cell is now a necessary evil

I think pretty much every car made after 2000 is ugly as hell.

I'm rather fond of the C6, but my tastes do tend to lean towards the older vehicles(my first car was a '71 Chevelle-Malibu).

I like Solaris.

Can't recall the last time I used Solaris was, a decade ago at least IIRC.

Oh and I hate TV, so I don't have one to hook my console to anyway

Something wrong with your rig? Use your monitor

I can appreciate your not following the crowd, but in terms of gaming there are so many elements completely missing on the PC you do end up losing out on a lot. A few examples- God of War, Resident Evil4 and Forza MotorSports. There is nothing on the PC that is remotely comparable to any of them- not even a real viable lesser alternative. These are just a few games that came out in the last few months, not pulling up golden oldies or anything. I honestly have a hard time contemplating what it would be like to walk in to EB and only be able to check out one section of games..... shudder...

But I've yet to see any official sign of IBM moving towards Cell-like architectures for their i,p, and z series.
Supposedly they will consolidate around POWER6 though, with even the zSeries running those CPU's, but as usual with IBM, this isn't official either.

The indications that were given seemed to imply that the future POWER products would all be based on Cell's design.

We have yet to see how well all of this works out, as I mentioned above, IBM is extremely hard to get some info from.
As far as I know they haven't even released TDP figures for the 970FX.

They do state their design goals quite clearly though, and they also state exactly what Cell was designed for(and these match almost to the letter). Read up on most of the information coming out of IBM and the main thrust of what you hear is how many threads the architecture can compute at once and that it is designed to have the bandwidth to feed them all. Sony obviously is approaching it from their design goal ATM in regards to the PS3(although lower power alternatives should be tooled up soon for other consumer devices) and they are hyping it as such(a vector supercomputer on a chip). Cell is simply the moniker they are using for the new design philosophy of creating simplified cores that can be arranged and tailor made to suit a wide variety of needs. Everything I have seen out of the company in regards to their future plans indicates that Cell is going to be the basis of all of their processors in the not too distant future.

 

[Eug]

You must be reading different stuff than I have been then, because my impression is that IBM views Cell as simply another addition to the POWER architecture. A great addition, but by no means the defining standard of POWER.

 

[aeneas3]

sorry if this is answered elsewhere but...will xboxnext be able to play xbox games?

 

[Sunner]

Can't recall the last time I used Solaris was, a decade ago at least IIRC.

Well, join us in OS sometime and you'll see that I'm pretty alone on this one

Something wrong with your rig? Use your monitor

I can appreciate your not following the crowd, but in terms of gaming there are so many elements completely missing on the PC you do end up losing out on a lot. A few examples- God of War, Resident Evil4 and Forza MotorSports. There is nothing on the PC that is remotely comparable to any of them- not even a real viable lesser alternative. These are just a few games that came out in the last few months, not pulling up golden oldies or anything. I honestly have a hard time contemplating what it would be like to walk in to EB and only be able to check out one section of games..... shudder...

Don't know about that, as I said, I've played a few console games, and none have come anywhere close to making me wanna buy a console.
Halo was the prime example, everyone was raving about it like it was some kind of ultimate gaming experience, in the end I found it to be decent, but nowhere near Half Life(1, not 2), Far Cry, etc.
Kinda makes me wonder what the not-quite-as-good-as-halo games are like.

my impression is that IBM views Cell as simply another addition to the POWER architecture. A great addition, but by no means the defining standard of POWER.

Yep, this is pretty much my impression as well.
With POWER taking over more and more of IBM's enterprise product lines, from the cheapo OpenPower systems all the way up to their mainframes(with POWER6 if rumors are to be believed, though I'm still a tad sceptical) it seems like a shift to Cell based CPU's for these categories of systems would be far into the future, if it will happen.

For workstations, supercomputers, visualization systems, etc, it makes perfect sense though.

 

[Acanthus]

I dont get why people want xbox compatiblility.

If you need xbox compatibility, you have an xbox, and dont need xbox compatibility.

 

[Matthias99]

Originally posted by: Acanthus
I dont get why people want xbox compatiblility.

If you need xbox compatibility, you have an xbox, and dont need xbox compatibility.

If it has XBox compatibility, and you have an XBox, you can sell your XBox and any old games you don't want anymore to finance buying the new system. Otherwise, you have to keep the XBox around if there are any XBox(1) games you still want to play.

If it has XBox compatibility, people without an XBox are more likely to buy it because of the effectively larger game library. Of course, there are about four decent XBox-exclusive games (IMO), so I'm not sure how big a factor this will be.

 

[live2game]

First stop this stupid sony vs. microsoft and Second if windows can't run on current powerpc procs then what makes you think they are going to have one in xbox 360. Xbox uses a custom version of windows 2000 I can't believe this it is prbably going to be a amd64 dual core or intel dual core so they can keep price down so the next battle of the councils is not one of see you can get the highest price. And Altevic is for apples not windows windows will not support apple instruction every! Microsoft hates apple so they do not support their instructions.

 

[RussianSensation]

Does anyone know what time the console is being unveiled on MTV tomorrow?

 

[mwmorph]

Originally posted by: RussianSensation
Does anyone know what time the console is being unveiled on MTV tomorrow?

9 or 10 pm. I almost certain it's it's 10pm though.

 

[Excelsior]

Originally posted by: mwmorph

Originally posted by: RussianSensation
Does anyone know what time the console is being unveiled on MTV tomorrow?

9 or 10 pm. I almost certain it's it's 10pm though.

9:30 PM EST.

http://www.mtv.com/asp/xbox/

 

[Eug]

Anyways, Sony has confirmed their Cell core runs at 4.0 GHz.

Link

Originally posted by: live2game
First stop this stupid sony vs. microsoft and Second if windows can't run on current powerpc procs then what makes you think they are going to have one in xbox 360. Xbox uses a custom version of windows 2000 I can't believe this it is prbably going to be a amd64 dual core or intel dual core so they can keep price down so the next battle of the councils is not one of see you can get the highest price. And Altevic is for apples not windows windows will not support apple instruction every! Microsoft hates apple so they do not support their instructions.

Heheh. You're so out of the loop it's amusing.

 

[Eug]

Screengrab of official specs from magazine article about Xbox 360

 

[thegimp03]

I'd really like to see them release a triple 3.0GHz core CPU and modern high end graphics technology for $300. I really don't see it happening.

Exactly. Graphics alone will cost them 500. Add that proc in there and it'll be upwards of 900-1000.

$300 = price 3 years from date of release.

 

[pyrosity]

LOL I just finished watching the MTV special; the launch games look terrible. There's maybe two or three games from maybe 10+ that they showed that even look better than current generation console games. That show was pathetic and sickening, and I'm not just talking about the whole "playa culture" that MTV was trying to tap and the presentation of the console. I'm talking about the games shown. The graphics were sickening!

Gotta love the focus on Perfect Dark Zero...from what I saw, it's no surprise that former Rare employees were mocking the project...

E3 had better have a MUCH better showing game-wise for the 360.

 

[jabamayne]

I just wanted to mention to everybody here that Microsoft can launch XBOX and never make a penny if they wanted... all with the intentions of just making a name for itself in the gaming community while chipping away at Sony's dominant market share.

Microsoft made $1.03/ a share last quarter...

Earnings estimates for the fiscal year 6/05 are at $1.29/ a share and for the fiscal year 6/06, estimates are at $1.42/ a share!

Microsoft has 10.8 BILLION shares out...

http://moneycentral.msn.com/investor/invsub/results/hilite.asp?Symbol=msft

In the last 12 months, Microsoft has 38.92 Billion in Sales and 11.24 Billion in INCOME!

Do the math people...

This quarter alone, Microsoft reported $1.03/ a share in earnings....

$1.03 X 10.8 Billion (shares) ....

Just so you know, Microsoft is generating over $1,000,000,000 a month in income (cash) every month ... (there are 12 months in a year! lol)

Microsoft has enough CASH to do whatever they want... even if that means not making a penny off of Xbox 360...

In my opinion, Xbox 360 is just a little side project Gates and Steve Ballmer (CEO) wanted just to add more "b.s." diversity and evolution to the company name..

 

[Eug]

* VMX-128 vector unit per core; three total
* 128 VMX-128 registers per hardware thread

So, as people have been postulating, this is NOT the normal Altivec.

So what the heck is it?