They can't do that - I would want to have both.
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VGLeaks Durango specs: x64 8-core CPU @1.6GHz, 8GB DDR3 + 32MB ESRAM, 50GB 6x BD...
- Thread starter Shikoro
- Start date
They can't do that - I would want to have both.
Interesting. So why do they put 2GB in their surface tablets? Is there a limit on how much memory a single app can use?
specialguy
Banned
i dont remember the details, but bkilian posted once that console cant use "virtual memory" from the hard drive like pc's.
for some reason it's just forbidden on all consoles. something about predictable memory access.
it seemed to imply why durango reserved so much. it's ram or nothing.
Windows RT has full desktop mode, it runs full version of Office 2013, preinstalled, exactly same as desktop. you need 2GB for that to use it effectively, Xbox console won't be running Microsoft Office. Windows RT is a perfect port of Windows 8 to ARM,
I read on that blog of that FXAA guy, he didn't know what Windows RT is, looks like a common misconception with this product! it doesn't run just metro, if you 'jailbreak' you can recompile desktop apps and run on it, MS just blocked it.
and of course an active app can take some memory, using xbox music app for example it can easily reach 300MB (it's a pretty bad, unoptimized app btw).
Kill Your Masters
Member
We already have some sort of Metro UI on the Xbox 360 with a lot less total system memory. I can't believe the Durango OS would even need 1gb to work flawlessly. As someone mentioned, Windows 8 is crafted for different types of hardware.
A Console is a closed, unified system with lots of optimisations and no unknown entities such as what type of software users install (that run in the background, that take up system memory etc) and on what kind of hardware they run their system.
A Console is a closed, unified system with lots of optimisations and no unknown entities such as what type of software users install (that run in the background, that take up system memory etc) and on what kind of hardware they run their system.
http://www.examiner.com/article/fir...-and-xbox-720-game-from-left-4-dead-developer
They are just drawings so don't get too excited but run the slide show.
They are just drawings so don't get too excited but run the slide show.
I imagine controlling what's cached on the disk isn't possible, you can monitor memory access and block unauthorized access and writes, but a hard drive for example can be manipulated externally quite easily by monitoring data and it's slow enough for implementing some system like that, writing something in the cache and then loaded into memory by the OS to jailbreak the security. makes sense, still I imagine they can use a built in flash based memory for caching.
Kill Your Masters
Member
Well the evolution of the 360 OS is also radical in a way, looking back how it was and how it is now. And all without sacrificing features (cross game chat, guide blades, custom music while in a game) and working with limited amounts of memory.
iamshadowlark
Banned
Man, what are you going on about?
Psychotext
Member
The problem with that is that features they added were very minimal, nothing really game changing and the baseline features stayed the same. At its core they were mostly visual refreshers, not real feature refreshers. The biggest thing I can remember them adding was install-to-harddrive feature. Instead now of a visual upgrade, they can radically change those baseline features and hopefully expand on those ideas.
All I wish is that Halo 2 demise (which they cite as holding back the friends list quota) was not in vain.
They were seen before, I think CNET had it also in an article last december iirc.
I think party chat was pretty huge, how it changed online gaming on the platform (not necessarily for the best mind you).
Oh yeah, forgot about that. Think about those advancements, but on a more regular pace being added overtime without limitations. Could either be amazing or add nothing, we will see.
Kinect in?
Old and just a mock-up of what it could have/look like. Kinect-in can't be like that. Not everyone can place their console in front of their TV facing them so the camera can see them.
Psychotext
Member
Oh it's not realistic for sure, was just saying I like it. 
To me the interesting part is bothering to do the math.
IMO his scenario is a bit of a best case one - efficiently streaming nearly everything. It's what you would aim for if you are making a large continuous game, but if you are making a small indie game it might load everything into memory, or load things a level at a time. Also in terms of bandwidth I didn't see anything about bandwidth consumed by say writing back, for example rendering on the GPU then having to resolve that texture to main memory, but that would make the end result lower available read bandwidth and lower required memory pool.
Basically the idea if that there is stuff you need right now, stuff you need soon, and stuff you won't need for a while. The stuff you need right now needs to fit in the available bandwidth, the stuff you need soon needs to fit into RAM, the stuff you need eventually can sit wherever.
If you increase the amount of RAM and decrease it's speed you are shrinking that amount of data that is available now and increasing the amount of data that is available soon. But if you need lower bandwidth because your aren't eating through that much data you should also have less data you need to cache as drawing a frame doesn't take that much bandwidth. So, in general, as you increase RAM amount you should increase bandwidth and vice-versa.
Which means either Orbis has too little room for cache and so can't make use of it's bandwidth because it has to go back to disk too much (Orbis also has a faster BR drive IIRC - could be why) or Durango has too little bandwidth to use it's RAM effectively. (Though to be fair eDRAM could change this in some ways)
Now, to be fair, if you have a lot of RAM relative to bandwidth that would accomodate rapidly changing scenes faster - scenes that have very fast movement, instant travel, scenes where the geometry can transform into a Dark World variant, etc. Having a lot of RAM also means you can get by with less efficient streaming and caching and spend more time on other stuff.
Edit: Never mind this edit, it didn't make a ton of sense!
iamshadowlark
Banned
Why would it come down to this though? 4GBs seems like plenty.
But what applications would need to run at the same time as the game? Note, not just be accessible during the game, but run at the same time?
And if "high-fidelity background apps" are running at the same time as games, we need to consider their impact on CPU usage, caches and memory accesses as well as just their memory usage. And then you basically have a PC.
I still think there is some mystery there.
dragonelite
Member
Wizard jizz brah...
There is a solution to this issue. I'll PM it to you when I get home today.
a, Durango has secret depths
or
b, trying to pull the wool over our eyes and we're not buying it
or
c, both
or
d, specs mecks. Let's see the boxes they are housed in already.
Tripp Daily
Member
The things keeping AMD from running to Sony or vice versa are contractual law, confidentiality agreements, and I'm sure conflict of interest disputes. To say that the Microsoft/AMD team stumbled onto some sort of architecture that is light years above what has been done so far is a stretch, but if that is the case, saying that AMD would run to the Sony camp and tell them is even more ridiculous. Microsoft wouldn't allow it and if it did happen Microsoft would sue the pants off of AMD.
Also, Aegeis has already pointed out that there are certain aspects to the PS3 and 360 that took over a year to come to PCs. These are highly customized architectures that are made to do less than a PC. It is not far fetched to believe that the technology that goes into them are not available to PCs and the public yet.
Edit: Less = not as many functions. Media device =/= home PC type of thing. (this probably makes it more confusing)
Let's say you want a console that is capable of performing all the following during gameplay
Kinect body tracking of multiple people simultaneously (i.e. Kinect system resources are from the reserved pool, not taken from the game).
+ second screen functionality (tablet or phone)
+ internet music streaming as a custom soundtrack
+ IE with multiple loaded tabs
+ facebook/twitter/hotmail push notifications
+ gameplay video encoding and capture
+ DVR functions
+ the basic OS stuff such as Skype voice chat and messaging
Then I think 3GB RAM and 2 CPU cores is realistic.
ShinobiFist
Banned
You rather be safe than sorry. Look at how slow the 360 UI got over the years. It was very snappy with the blades UI. But after that, it kept getting slower.
I remember the blades UI being very slow at first actually, then the 2007 spring update sped it up nicely IIRC.
Clay Davis
Member
Kinect in?
like the look of the controller, although how comfortable it would be is another matter.
Tripp Daily
Member
That is basically just a beefier dual shock with the joysticks placed there. I would much rather microsoft keep the 360 controller and offer minimal corrections such as the d-pad.
What does it mean for an app to be "accessible" during a game?
Is it sitting in RAM in the background doing nothing? That's what I assume happens on WiiU - you can leave the browser open while you play a game and the browser is just sitting there, using no CPU but using RAM. That would explain why there is 1 gig reserved for OS and why you can only have one app open at once. (On a side note, I hate the term "OS" here...) That would also explain why launching an app is slow but going back to a launched app is much faster. (Spitballing here a little)
Is it accessible in that you can launch it from scratch? Ok, but then you need to launch it from scratch, you aren't just pausing it. Which means the exact state is presumably lost, you have to boot the app and/or load the app from some place.
Is it accessible in that it's memory is dumped to disk when not in use and read back later? Disk is probably too slow for that. Flash RAM also too slow.
In addition, although that recent fake leak was fake, the idea of something like video chat in the corner of a game, streaming your game in real-time, etc, seems very much in line with someone MS would do. In that case the app would be both running and using memory in parallel to the game.
That would be a lot closer to a PC, but MS is moving more towards a services / set top box, so that isn't out of the question. There would still be a certain amount of memory and memory bandwidth and cores reserved just for games - it wouldn't be completely variable like on a PC.
Kydd BlaZe
Member
This seems pretty sensible.
Clay Davis
Member
oh crap, you're right. I don't know why but I thought the sticks were in the same position as they are on on the 360 controller. silly me for forgetting to click the picture.
no one talks about the CPU, really is this, a low entry, low end laptop level CPU, going to be enough? all the tech demos we saw last year were on ultra high end Core i7s.
specially only two core of it for handling stuff like this:
programming and synchronizing 6-7 threads are going to be really painful too, specially for low performance cores like this, task scheduling isn't trivial at all. it's not like you can easily scale up things linearly, looks like you would need really careful utilization here to get acceptable performance and not bottleneck the game by CPU.
specially only two core of it for handling stuff like this:
programming and synchronizing 6-7 threads are going to be really painful too, specially for low performance cores like this, task scheduling isn't trivial at all. it's not like you can easily scale up things linearly, looks like you would need really careful utilization here to get acceptable performance and not bottleneck the game by CPU.
Isn't that what the audio and video processors are for? Alleviating a lot of CPU resources.