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Rumor: Xbox 3 = 6-core CPU, 2GB of DDR3 Main RAM, 2 AMD GPUs w/ Unknown VRAM, At CES

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duk

Banned
720's gpu will be pretty cutting edge (for a few months) just like xenos was im sure

i think 720's platform will be just like 360 in terms of complexibility and flexibility
 

eastmen

Banned
Thunder Monkey said:
I was making a point.

You guys seem to want these console to stand up to the most beastly of beastly gaming computers. Consoles have never had to be in order to stand up to the best of PC's.

Something that "weak" would be able to produce a game at 1080p that eclipses the Witcher many times. But there's still a larger issue. Cost of development.

I never want an industry in which only EA and Activision have the money to push hardware. Thankfully I doubt I ever have to. The jumps will be more and more marginal with each passing generation. Tools need more of an improvement than hardware does.


Um high end pcs circa 2005 were

Amd athlon 64 FX-55
1 gig of ddr 400
radeon x1800 512 megs

So it had a single core cpu clocked at 2.6ghz that cost $800 bucks and a video card that cost $400

The xbox 360 had a tri core cpu with 512 megs of ram.

Its not far off that a next gen system would come in close to standard pcs today


So i5 2500k + 8 gigs of ram + 1 gig vram video card.
 

Proelite

Member
eastmen said:
why would they use a 2010 gpu ?


AMD already has 28nm gpu's in the pipe using a brand new design , they should be out in the next few months .


It would be silly for MS to go with anything less than this. Remember the xbox 360 recieved a fully custom chip from ati and i doubt they would give amd a 2 year old low end gpu.

MS and AMD are absolutely going with a cutting edge customized design for their GPU. The chip can be advanced without being expensive or hot.

I'll be really surprised if the GPU in the next xbox isn't at least a 7000 series derivative.
 

guek

Banned
eastmen said:
Um high end pcs circa 2005 were

Amd athlon 64 FX-55
1 gig of ddr 400
radeon x1800 512 megs

So it had a single core cpu clocked at 2.6ghz that cost $800 bucks and a video card that cost $400

The xbox 360 had a tri core cpu with 512 megs of ram.

Its not far off that a next gen system would come in close to standard pcs today


So i5 2500k + 8 gigs of ram + 1 gig vram video card.

It's a lot more complicated than that. There are many different options when it comes to different types of cpus, ram, gpu tweaks, etc. It's just not as simple as saying "well pcs have this so consoles should as well." I really wish people would stop acting like that's the case.

For example, you don't need 9 gigs of ram. You just don't. You don't even really need 8gbs system ram to play PC games on max settings. The ram itself is also not directly comparable between console and PC ram. MS will likely use a much smaller amount of very fast ram in a single pool shared between the cpu and gpu. You don't need 8gb of XDR.

edit: Ok, I think I slightly misread your post. I think they'd be able to outperform your proposed PC equivalent with less than 4gb of shared ram though. But really, it seems like it'll depend less on the actual amounts of this or that and more on architecture.
 

duk

Banned
I bet the box total will have 3GB to 4GB of ram, really doesn't need more than that.

just look what 512mb can do, pretty impressive overall.
 

Blackface

Banned
eastmen said:
Um high end pcs circa 2005 were

Amd athlon 64 FX-55
1 gig of ddr 400
radeon x1800 512 megs

So it had a single core cpu clocked at 2.6ghz that cost $800 bucks and a video card that cost $400

The xbox 360 had a tri core cpu with 512 megs of ram.

Its not far off that a next gen system would come in close to standard pcs today


So i5 2500k + 8 gigs of ram + 1 gig vram video card.

It won't be close to current PC specs in terms of power. But I think it will be significantly better then what we have now. The combined GPU's will probably be on par with whats out NOW. But not by the end of 2012.

You also have to remember by 2006 the 8800 and E8400 were out. Which were both WAY better then whats in the 360. Also, more people had 4gb of ram in 2005 then have 8gb of ram today. Isn't the state, according to steam, something like 99 percent of users have 4gb or less.

4gb of ram can run a game, browser, skype, ventrilo, streaming programming, music, and background tasks easily.

I think the new Xbox having 2gb is more then enough. People also have to think about cost. 2gb more of ram might cost Xbox say $10 extra, maybe a bit more. However the extra engineering costs to add it into the design will be millions. If they sell 90 million consoles in it's lifetime, it's almost a loss of 1 billion in profits for Microsoft.

Would I like them to use 4gb? Sure. But current high end PC only titles don't even use 2. Battlefield 3 maxed out doesn't even use 2gb. Now account for all the console optimization and the ram being completely dedicated to the game. I think 2gb is a great amount.
 

Allonym

There should be more tampons in gaming
Damn all this talk has gotten me giddy with the idea and visualization of the PS4 and the accompanying unveiling of Killzone 4, God of War 4, Uncharted 4 and Gran Turismo 6 on it when its announced!
 

eastmen

Banned
guek said:
It's a lot more complicated than that. There are many different options when it comes to different types of cpus, ram, gpu tweaks, etc. It's just not as simple as saying "well pcs have this so consoles should as well." I really wish people would stop acting like that's the case.

For example, you don't need 9 gigs of ram. You just don't. You don't even really need 8gbs system ram to play PC games on max settings. The ram itself is also not directly comparable between console and PC ram. MS will likely use a much smaller amount of very fast ram in a single pool shared between the cpu and gpu. You don't need 8gb of XDR.

edit: Ok, I think I slightly misread your post. I think they'd be able to outperform your proposed PC equivalent with less than 4gb of shared ram though. But really, it seems like it'll depend less on the actual amounts of this or that and more on architecture.

Yea you miss read.

6 core cpu is certianly possible , they could simply put two waternoose (xbox 360) cpus on a single chip and there you go 6 core cpu.

I think 2x2 for ram is most likely , mabye we get lucky with 2x4
 
Allonym said:
Damn all this talk has gotten me giddy with the idea and visualization of the PS4 and the accompanying unveiling of Killzone 4, God of War 4, Uncharted 4 and Gran Turismo 6 on it when its announced!
But then you'll have to wait a year or so to see what the games actually look like.
 

Blackface

Banned
Mindlog said:
It would be very helpful if someone could produce an average power supply chart for PC gaming over the last 10 years.
It went up then got stagnant. PC components are now becoming energy efficient. You don't have to go looking for some massive PSU to build a PC anymore.

I have a 600 Watt PSU from Corsair I bought when I built my E8400 system. I used it for my new 2500k build. It still powers everything with TONS of room to spare. I will use this thing until it dies or a new connection type comes out. I will never buy anything over 600 watt's as I will never need anything over it.

The power consumption of new products isn't increasing at a huge rate. In many cases, particularly with GPU's, it's going down.

You could build a PC 5 years ago with a 500 watt PSU, and you could build a modern day PC using the same PSU today. It's turning into the one constant, stable item in PC building.
 
eastmen said:
Um high end pcs circa 2005 were

Amd athlon 64 FX-55
1 gig of ddr 400
radeon x1800 512 megs

So it had a single core cpu clocked at 2.6ghz that cost $800 bucks and a video card that cost $400

Athlon 64 X2 4800+ were out in 2005, as well as 7800GTX/7800GT, etc. You could also get the AMD FX-57 and AMD FX-60.
 

Allonym

There should be more tampons in gaming
Thunder Monkey said:
But then you'll have to wait a year or so to see what the games actually look like.
Lol, I think Sony have learned their lesson when it comes to showing off target footage, I don't think they'll be doing that again. Not only is it a lesson learned but I'd like to think next gen game graphics will rival cg so much that cg wont be necessary in games. For example characters that have the detail of Cloud in Advent Children or Woody in TS3. If not that, Onimisha 3 or Starcraft 2 caliber cg in character detail will suffice for me. But then again maybe I'm a big dreamer who's doomed to be disappointed but from a detail perspective it doesn't seem too hard, scale is where I'd see creating these high fidelity visuals would be a problem
 

eastmen

Banned
Blackface said:
It won't be close to current PC specs in terms of power. But I think it will be significantly better then what we have now. The combined GPU's will probably be on par with whats out NOW. But not by the end of 2012.

You also have to remember by 2006 the 8800 and E8400 were out. Which were both WAY better then whats in the 360. Also, more people had 4gb of ram in 2005 then have 8gb of ram today. Isn't the state, according to steam, something like 99 percent of users have 4gb or less.

4gb of ram can run a game, browser, skype, ventrilo, streaming programming, music, and background tasks easily.

I think the new Xbox having 2gb is more then enough. People also have to think about cost. 2gb more of ram might cost Xbox say $10 extra, maybe a bit more. However the extra engineering costs to add it into the design will be millions. If they sell 90 million consoles in it's lifetime, it's almost a loss of 1 billion in profits for Microsoft.

Would I like them to use 4gb? Sure. But current high end PC only titles don't even use 2. Battlefield 3 maxed out doesn't even use 2gb. Now account for all the console optimization and the ram being completely dedicated to the game. I think 2gb is a great amount.


I doubt they will use two gpus. Its most likely just the development kits that have 2 gpus just like the original xbox 360 dev kits that used x800s in crossfire.


They will most likely go with a custom verison of amd's new core gpu tech debuting in january /febuary of next year. Perhaps they will do a 30-40MB edram on the gpu . That should be enough for 1080p .

I'm also sure that instead of using older antialasing modes they will use amd's MLAA to save performance . I've been using that mode alot and it can be quite stunning. A developer designing around that could make some amazing things .


With the cpu I see two options . 1) they go power pc again . Either with an enahnced verison of waternoose or a power 7 chip (most likely with smaller caches) or 2) Amd gave very good deals on either the phenom core or bulldozer core. Amd can use all the cash they can get , liscensing say bulldozer or even a thuban(ph II x6) would bring in a nice cash flow for the company. MS wouldn't have to worry about having yet another cpu tech to support ( windows 8 supports arm and x86 but not power pc) Developers will like it because they can just strait port to the new console and amd will love it (esp if its bulldozer or pile driver ) because developers will be coding specificly for their chip helping them alot on the desktop.

For ram they can go with 2 pools of ram . 1 of ddr 3 since its cheap and if they go with amd the cpu will already support that. They could do 2 to 4 gigs of ram very easily. The cpu doesn't need super fast ram. For the gpu they can go GDDR 5 (mabye 6 if its ready) and go with 2 gigs of ram. GDDR 5 is more expensive per GB than DDR3 . When you look at isupply break downs of gpus the GDDR 5 1 gig of ram costs more to the board manufacturer than 8 gigs of ram costs us to buy at a store (which has many more hands in the pie)

They can also go with all GDDR5 ram. Perhaps 4 gigs of it , but that would be very expensive most likely more so than adding an extra bus to support the ddr3 . They can go the xdr 2 ram way , that would give them the most bandwidth however nothing uses xdr 2 ram so costs per GB will be much higher than GDDR 5 ram which is used in millions of graphics chips each year. A new console wont be able to match that prduction amount to get scale to kick in .


For a hardrive , i think it will be standard . 2.5inch will most likely give us a 500gig drive in 2012 that is single platter.


I'd love to see them ditch optical and go with Flash for games. Its much faster and makes no noise and has no working parts so its very hard to damage and the console will last longer. Of course i don't think gamers will want to spend $5 more per game because of it.
 

eastmen

Banned
Angelus Errare said:
Athlon 64 X2 4800+ were out in 2005, as well as 7800GTX/7800GT, etc. You could also get the AMD FX-57 and AMD FX-60.

just did a quick search. Besides for games the fx 55 would be faster than the dual cores.
 

eastmen

Banned
Mindlog said:
It would be very helpful if someone could produce an average power supply chart for PC gaming over the last 10 years.


what do you need to know ?


http://www.anandtech.com/show/5091/...-bridge-e-review-keeping-the-high-end-alive/7



IDLE

i5 2500 uses as little as 76 w while the phenom x5 uses as much as a 110w . The i7 3960x(6 core sandy bridge e ) and the bulldozer fx 8150 use only 79 and 85 watts


Under load . Doing x264 converisons

The i5 2500 uses as little as 133w while sandy bridge e uses 211 and bulldozer is at 229w

The system includes

Mobo (intel z68 / amd 990fx / intel x79)

2 SSD's

8 gigs of ddr 3 1600 ram
Radeon hd 5870


The numbers posted include these components .


To give you an idea the xbox 360 at launched used 200w or so while gaming
 
SomeDude said:
If it doesn't have 8 gig then I won't be purchasing the new microsoft console.
I figure this is a joke.

But if not? You probably won't have a reason to buy any of the three.

I doubt any of them have more than 3 gigs.
 

SomeDude

Banned
Thunder Monkey said:
I figure this is a joke.

But if not? You probably won't have a reason to buy any of the three.

I doubt any of them have more than 3 gigs.


Wow, it looks like many people want the next xbox to go the nintendo route.


I don't agree with that at all.
 

guek

Banned
SomeDude said:
Wow, it looks like many people want the next xbox to go the nintendo route.


I don't agree with that at all.

Are you trolling? Or do you just not know what you're talking about?

Yes, these are your only two options.
 

SomeDude

Banned
guek said:
Are you trolling? Or do you just not know what you're talking about?

Yes, these are your only two options.


I'm not trolling at all. Certainly there are many here that can see that having an system with 2 gig of ram is and absolute joke.
 
duk said:
720's gpu will be pretty cutting edge (for a few months) just like xenos was im sure

i think 720's platform will be just like 360 in terms of complexibility and flexibility

Microsoft is in the perfect position to deliver a top end GPU because they already dictate what tech goes into DirectX x.x
 

alphaNoid

Banned
SomeDude said:
I'm not trolling at all. Certainly there are many here that can see that having an system with 2 gig of ram is and absolute joke.
Its a joke if you know nothing about architecting a system, yes. So for you, its a joke because you don't have a clue. Most all memory complexities of a modern PC do not exist in a console platform, but you knew that already ...
 

SomeDude

Banned
alphaNoid said:
Its a joke if you know nothing about architecting a system, yes. So for you, its a joke because you don't have a clue. Most all memory complexities of a modern PC do not exist in a console platform, but you knew that already ...


how do you know what the world will be like in 5 years in terms of technology?
 

Durante

Member
alphaNoid said:
Its a joke if you know nothing about architecting a system, yes. So for you, its a joke because you don't have a clue. Most all memory complexities of a modern PC do not exist in a console platform, but you knew that already ...
I know a lot about system architecture. It seems to me that most of the claims of 2GB being sufficient are made on the basis of short-sighted extrapolation from the current state of games and some nebulous concept of each byte of console RAM being worth 4 bytes of PC RAM (which is frankly ridiculous) -- not based on any well founded architectural analysis.

For example, one argument that is often repeated is that the cost of asset creation would prevent more RAM from being used effectively. Whenever someone actually in the industry comments that assets are created at far higher resolution than they are shipped in already, such comments are just ignored and a page or two later the same invalid arguments are repeated. It's really quite annoying.
 
SomeDude said:
how do you know what the world will be like in 5 years in terms of technology?

We are probably not jumping on a complete new architecture on how stuff works.
And to be honest for desktop if your only gaming 3 gig is enough for system ram Vram is more important. I only got 8 gig because it just that cheap.
 
eastmen said:
Yea you miss read.

6 core cpu is certianly possible , they could simply put two waternoose (xbox 360) cpus on a single chip and there you go 6 core cpu.


Eww, that would be underwhelming really.

You should see 8X+ improvements in everything else (RAM, GPU execution units, etc), only 2x the CPU would be a problem.

The number of cores isnt so relevent as how "beefy" they are. Out of order would be great.
 
I remember when 360' specs were revealed, everyone said 512mb (when PC rigs used to have 2gb DDR2 iirc) was a joke, 6 years later you can see how that decision worked, in my opinion it wasn't bad at all, just the opposite.

of course the more, the better, but console systems ram usage shouldn't be campared with PCs
 
SomeDude said:
how do you know what the world will be like in 5 years in terms of technology?

BF2 was pretty much the first commercial game that demanded more then 1GB for high settings. That was 2005, RAM usage hasn't skyrocketed, only thing that skyrocketed was GPU RAM (256 to 1GB being norm).
Its logical to assume 8GB wont be needed in 5 years.
 
intheinbetween said:
I remember when 360' specs were revealed, everyone said 512mb (when PC rigs used to have 2gb DDR2 iirc) was a joke, 6 years later you can see how that decision worked, in my opinion it wasn't bad at all, just the opposite.

of course the more, the better, but console systems ram usage shouldn't be campared with PCs


especially when running a console OS versus Windows Vista.
 
SomeDude said:
Wow, it looks like many people want the next xbox to go the nintendo route.


I don't agree with that at all.
Going the Nintendo route would be 1-1.25 gigs.

What I'm saying is more or less the realistic expectation. Though I doubt Loop has any more than 2 gigs myself of a unified system RAM.

Which is a fairly sizable jump. I doubt MS is in a hurry to lose another billion just because a very very small subset of their owners expect more. Better yet, why lose money at all? Give your consumers something powerful, but not bankbusting on either end.
 

duk

Banned
dragonelite said:
Microsoft is in the perfect position to deliver a top end GPU because they already dictate what tech goes into DirectX x.x

It will be plenty powerful and comparable to anything Sony will put out. If PS4 comes within 6 months, both will be comparable once again.
 

Durante

Member
nephilimdj said:
BF2 was pretty much the first commercial game that demanded more then 1GB for high settings. That was 2005, RAM usage hasn't skyrocketed, only thing that skyrocketed was GPU RAM (256 to 1GB being norm).
How could RAM usage skyrocket if the main target platform for most games has 512 MB?
 

El'Kharn

Member
SomeDude said:
how do you know what the world will be like in 5 years in terms of technology?

I know that in five years time you'll still be a troll.
Anything more than 2 gig would be pointless overkill.
 

pottuvoi

Banned
duk said:
how much edram do they need for 1080p and 8xaa?
If they still use 32bit framebuffer it would be ~66MB, for a 64bit framebuffer it would be ~133MB.
Durante said:
How could RAM usage skyrocket if the main target platform for most games has 512 MB?
Another problem is the limit set by 32bit operating systems, happily that is changing.
 
Durante said:
I know a lot about system architecture. It seems to me that most of the claims of 2GB being sufficient are made on the basis of short-sighted extrapolation from the current state of games and some nebulous concept of each byte of console RAM being worth 4 bytes of PC RAM (which is frankly ridiculous) -- not based on any well founded architectural analysis.

For example, one argument that is often repeated is that the cost of asset creation would prevent more RAM from being used effectively. Whenever someone actually in the industry comments that assets are created at far higher resolution than they are shipped in already, such comments are just ignored and a page or two later the same invalid arguments are repeated. It's really quite annoying.

Yep this is something you see in every next gen thread .
Specs can't be to high cause the cost of asset creation would make Pubs go bankrupt .
When they are already made much higher than what you are seeing now.
Perfect eg for this is GT5 where cars are made so good they can be on PS4 hardware already .

2GB of ddr3 ram is really not that much for next gen i was expecting 3-4GB of DDR5 (if i can dream XDR2)
If they do go with 2GB ddr3 they have to be using another type of ram for GPU i hope.
2Gb for whole system plus all the multimedia things they going to be doing seem very short sighted
 
gundamkyoukai said:
Yep this is something you see in every next gen thread .
Specs can't be to high cause the cost of asset creation would make Pubs go bankrupt .
When they are already made much higher than what you are seeing now.
Perfect eg for this is GT5 where cars are made so good they can be on PS4 hardware already .

2GB of ddr3 ram is really not that much for next gen i was expecting 3-4GB of DDR5 (if i can dream XDR2)
If they do go with 2GB ddr3 they have to be using another type of ram for GPU i hope.
2Gb for whole system plus all the multimedia things they going to be doing seem very short sighted
One portion of asset creation is already ready for extremely high specifications. Models. Taking depth, normals, and specular from an insanely high poly model and applying that to a "low" poly model.

You guys don't seem to realize they'll likely do something similar anyway. Too many polygons opens up a huge range of issues we have yet to deal with.

But again, that's just one portion of asset creation. You don't think costs will skyrocket when someone is making a 12,000x12,000 pixel texture? Just so every rock in an environment looks individualistic?

There's a reason Pixar movies cost $100 million to make. And that's for 2-3 hours of content. Spread that over a 20 hour game.
 
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