• Hey, guest user. Hope you're enjoying NeoGAF! Have you considered registering for an account? Come join us and add your take to the daily discourse.

Xbox 3 Rumor: Dev Kit Silicon In Prod, IBM CPU/HD 7000 Series GPU, 2013 Release

ignores the sea change in mobile gaming? Well then so does the 3DS. Perhaps both companies predict that there will be a large enough market for dedicated handheld gaming devices to justify launching a device?


Actually if anything, I'm slightly disappointed in the Vita. Its almost *too* off the shelf. Where is the amazing custom processor of the PS1, the insanity of the GS from PS2, or the CELL from PS3? Its just a slightly newer PVR chip than others have - you'll probably see tablets with that in this year or early next (doesn't mean you'll get the same out of them, or see the same games obviously)

Its the first console where we could literally see exactly the same chips in another machine. Actually, how standard was xbox 1?
Agree with all the above. Previous platforms needed custom chips to provide support for features Sony thought were needed. This is the first generation where off the shelf is good enough.

Now SONY has to be a Software company providing Developer SDKs not hardware features to make their platforms attractive. Vita is a new platform with a lack of developer features....at least so far. The intellectual property lists for the Vita include Handwriting to text, Voice recognition and more but we haven't seen them yet. Also the unfinished Vita Browser is telling. The next 3 months will be interesting. Feb 22 may have many more HTML5 features in the Vita including voice recognition which is supported in webkit and by Netfront Access NX. UNIX (Vita is Free BSD Unix) webkit ports are supposed to have the webkit2 API done before March 28th.
 

Luigiv

Member
Xbox 1 used very little custom silicone, know the CPU and gpu were essentially off the shelf parts

Silicon not Silicone. Silicon is the pure element which is a pseudo-metal. Silicone is a type of rubber comprised of multiple elements (including Si, hence the name).

Computer chips are made with the former. Breast implants and dildos are made with the latter.
 
This thread has killed some of brain cells. If the gpu is only DX11 compliant and not DX11.1 its not going to break dream. The games that even make use of great DX11 tech is less then a dozen and pretty recent. The 7000 series chip is most likely going to be 77xx series to keep power consumption down, great upgrade but not bleeding edge. Hurray we get a new system that has better graphics with no extra learning curve, you will see improvements but not what we have been accustomed too.

The wii U barring the DX11 effects will be able to play anything that comes out at lower effects and lower assest more like high and medium settings both at 720p. Next gen will be a much more even playing field over all.


I hope EPIC can get Samaritan demo running on a single GTX580 this year so it will be possible on Xbox 3 next year!

A single 580 still shits on almost everything in 7000 series except 7970 and 7950, not going to happen without alot of stuff being fudged.
 
Silicon not Silicone. Silicon is the pure element which is a pseudo-metal. Silicone is a type of runner comprised of multiple elements (including Si, hence the name).

Computer chips are made with the former. Breast implants and dildos are made with the latter.
Thanks but I know the difference, iPhone's auto correct however doesn't take word context into consideration, and that late at night I'm typically not checking every autocorrected word
 
What im interested in, is what features exactly do you all think will be in DX12 that will just push the gpu beyond what we have now? This isn't a PC, the API has way less impact in a console.
 
Well, given the conventional wisdom that the BRD was directly responsible for the PS3's price and therefore its market failure, somewhere between $6 billion (direct cash losses on the PS3) and $8-10 billion (delta from expected performance of a reasonably-priced PS3 to what they actually saw instead.)

Correct me if I'm wrong, but wasn't the PS3 delayed because of the BRD?
So without BRD the PS3 would have been cheaper and launched earlier.
 
Correct me if I'm wrong, but wasn't the PS3 delayed because of the BRD?
So without BRD the PS3 would have been cheaper and launched earlier.

Right, just about. Specifically I doubt they'd have actually moved up the late-2006 position, but they might've been able to manage worldwide (instead of letting Europe slip to 2007.)
 

KageMaru

Member
I could be wrong, but IIRC a good while ago someone at Epic commented on the possibility that DX12 could be the return of software rendering. This was back in the days when Larrabee was still a reality, so who knows how close to the mark he was.

That said, I'm not sure what new hardware features would be included in DX12 over 11.1, but the more I think of it, the less likely I think anything will be included in the next xbox's GPU. I still expect it to be a custom GPU derived from a specific architecture, but I question if any future technology would be mature enough for MS to include it in their design plans.

If stuff like ray-tracing doesn't become commonplace I honestly doubt that even the hardware in the Wii U successor will differ much from a DirectX 11.1 compliant spec.

lol

Actually, how standard was xbox 1?

IIRC basically a beefed up GeForce 3 with an extra vertex shader unit.
 
For some reason I:

1.) Can't imagine a Spring launch for the console. I guess competition could force it...but it seems so...unnatural for a major console.

2.) Can't imagine it will be based of the 7000 series if it comes out in the Fall (which just feels more natural).

Look, the 7000 series has already launched. At the beginning of 2012. far more likely that the tech will be based off whatever AMD is working on NOW (8000 series), rather than what they've already launched. Or, that's how I recall it going down this gen for MS. Tech in the 360 console was based on tech that was *about to come out* on PC (in a beefier version).

Though...if hitting the market at the most reasonable price point is the priority rather than being on the bleeding edge of GPU tech (which is entirely possible), I can see it. But count me in the camp that would rather pay $399 for 1 year newer technology than $299 for something 20% less powerful and capable. Especially for something that will be on the flagship on the market for the next 7-10 years.
 

androvsky

Member
Right, just about. Specifically I doubt they'd have actually moved up the late-2006 position, but they might've been able to manage worldwide (instead of letting Europe slip to 2007.)

Cell yields were apparently a major problem too, hence Sony having to disable a core. Between the Cell yields, the expensive Rambus memory, the crazy interface the Rambus memory required on both the Cell and RSX (iirc), and the extra complicated motherboard that had to accommodate an entire PS2 (and the costs associated with that custom chipset), I'm not convinced going with a DVD drive would've changed much beyond depriving the system of the one thing it did very well early on.
 

StevieP

Banned
For some reason I:

1.) Can't imagine a Spring launch for the console. I guess competition could force it...but it seems so...unnatural for a major console.

2.) Can't imagine it will be based of the 7000 series if it comes out in the Fall (which just feels more natural).

Look, the 7000 series has already launched. At the beginning of 2012. far more likely that the tech will be based off whatever AMD is working on NOW (8000 series), rather than what they've already launched. Or, that's how I recall it going down this gen for MS. Tech in the 360 console was based on tech that was *about to come out* on PC (in a beefier version).

Though...if hitting the market at the most reasonable price point is the priority rather than being on the bleeding edge of GPU tech (which is entirely possible), I can see it. But count me in the camp that would rather pay $399 for 1 year newer technology than $299 for something 20% less powerful and capable. Especially for something that will be on the flagship on the market for the next 7-10 years.

The AMD 8000 series is a long long long ways off, while Xbox engineers are currently knee-deep in late design stages of the console. This isn't 2005.
 
Cell yields were apparently a major problem too, hence Sony having to disable a core. Between the Cell yields, the expensive Rambus memory, the crazy interface the Rambus memory required on both the Cell and RSX (iirc), and the extra complicated motherboard that had to accommodate an entire PS2 (and the costs associated with that custom chipset), I'm not convinced going with a DVD drive would've changed much beyond depriving the system of the one thing it did very well early on.

What was that?

I think Sony would have definitely lost less cash with a DVD drive instead (although that's debatable since we don't know what the retail price would be on such a system), but I do agree their market situation wouldn't really be any different than it is now. The ps3 would still be expensive and the Wii would have still stormed out of the gates crushing the competition. A DVD ps3 that launched in spring just might have been a bit more competitive against the 360 early on, but Sony has long since nullified the gap anyway so even that's not a big deal in retrospect.

Overall I think it's myopic to blame all the ps3's cash problems on the BD drive. There was Cell, XDR RAM, RSX (more expensive yet weaker than Xenos!), and the entire ps2 chipset eating up costs. MS got more or less the same graphics capability in the 360 for a lot less money going with AMD and conventional RAM.
 

TUROK

Member
If stuff like ray-tracing doesn't become commonplace I honestly doubt that even the hardware in the Wii U successor will differ much from a DirectX 11.1 compliant spec.
Ray-tracing will probably never become commonplace. A hybrid rasterizer/ray-tracer, sure, but never just ray tracing.
 

xemumanic

Member
Cell yields were apparently a major problem too, hence Sony having to disable a core.

I don't know if it was ever true or not, but I remember the idea was *supposed* to be that the disabled core was all a part of the plan. Make Cell chips at the yield standard of 8 DSPs, and so if one didn't pass muster, it didn't matter, the plan was for 7 anyway. Kind of like how PC CPUs that don't pass certification at a certain clock speed, but do at a lower, are sold at the lower end.

I always thought that it was a lie/excuse/spin for the low yields, since the yields were crap early on anyway.
 

itsgreen

Member
Hmmm just though of something C-r-a-z-y...

What if MS would do a two tier next gen console... a base model with a SoC (with lower end spec GPU) and a high end version with an additional AMD Crossfired chip...

A 720p version of the console and a 1080p version... I know it's a crazy stupid idea, but it also has its advantages...
 
Hmmm just though of something C-r-a-z-y...

What if MS would do a two tier next gen console... a base model with a SoC (with lower end spec GPU) and a high end version with an additional AMD Crossfired chip...

A 720p version of the console and a 1080p version... I know it's a crazy stupid idea, but it also has its advantages...

Like what exactly?
 

Marco1

Member
Hmmm just though of something C-r-a-z-y...

What if MS would do a two tier next gen console... a base model with a SoC (with lower end spec GPU) and a high end version with an additional AMD Crossfired chip...

A 720p version of the console and a 1080p version... I know it's a crazy stupid idea, but it also has its advantages...

But couldn't they already do this with the 360 ?
It would be a great forward thinking idea and not fragment the Xbox live community.
I also agree that we are not getting a powerhouse console.
This could very well put the ball in sonys court.
 

androvsky

Member
What was that?

I think Sony would have definitely lost less cash with a DVD drive instead (although that's debatable since we don't know what the retail price would be on such a system), but I do agree their market situation wouldn't really be any different than it is now. The ps3 would still be expensive and the Wii would have still stormed out of the gates crushing the competition. A DVD ps3 that launched in spring just might have been a bit more competitive against the 360 early on, but Sony has long since nullified the gap anyway so even that's not a big deal in retrospect.

Overall I think it's myopic to blame all the ps3's cash problems on the BD drive. There was Cell, XDR RAM, RSX (more expensive yet weaker than Xenos!), and the entire ps2 chipset eating up costs. MS got more or less the same graphics capability in the 360 for a lot less money going with AMD and conventional RAM.
It was one of the best and cheapest blu-ray players around, especially near launch. :) But yeah, I agree with what you posted; Sony (Kutaragi) put too much money in all the wrong places and removing one or two components here or there wouldn't have solved anything.
 

itsgreen

Member
Like what exactly?

The ability to fight the good fight on two fronts...

A cheaper console that's less power hungry...

But couldn't they already do this with the 360 ?
It would be a great forward thinking idea and not fragment the Xbox live community.
I also agree that we are not getting a powerhouse console.
This could very well put the ball in sonys court.

Not really... you would have to plan it if you don't want to actively split your base.

There were rumours of two consoles a small while back right? 1 launching in 2013, and 1 launching in 2014...

They could plan the architecture and for an actual mid life update... Crossfire 7 series seem to scale pretty good...

Also doesn't help that that timeline is from MSnerd's and that it doesn't coincide with these rumours and their CES things didn't also pan out...

It is of course the wet dream of any tech company to have a product follow the Apple model... improve your product every year and maintain a high price... Ah crazy ideas and speculation... party like it's 2005!
 

Mindlog

Member
It was one of the best and cheapest blu-ray players around, especially near launch. :) But yeah, I agree with what you posted; Sony (Kutaragi) put too much money in all the wrong places and removing one or two components here or there wouldn't have solved anything.
There's a clear reason why it was the cheapest early player. That's the discussion at hand.

Most hardware manufacturers have spent a lot of time scrutinizing their builds trying to remove a component here or there. A stronger performance in Western markets would have really paid off considering their 1st party development emphasis.

Quick, estimated loop power draw?
 

itsgreen

Member
There's a clear reason why it was the cheapest early player. That's the discussion at hand.

Most hardware manufacturers have spent a lot of time scrutinizing their builds trying to remove a component here or there. A stronger performance in Western markets would have really paid off considering their 1st party development emphasis.

Quick, estimated loop power draw?

My guess, based on the words SoC? 130-150 watt... 30 watt idle (dashboard)...

(Yeah I know 360 has much higher idle state, but with AMD's formidable idle power consumption and other improvements made in technology that will be the biggest win)
 
I could be wrong, but IIRC a good while ago someone at Epic commented on the possibility that DX12 could be the return of software rendering. This was back in the days when Larrabee was still a reality, so who knows how close to the mark he was.

That said, I'm not sure what new hardware features would be included in DX12 over 11.1, but the more I think of it, the less likely I think anything will be included in the next xbox's GPU. I still expect it to be a custom GPU derived from a specific architecture, but I question if any future technology would be mature enough for MS to include it in their design plans.

Does this impact GPU design:

http://www.khronos.org/assets/uploa..._ISO_SC24_Update/Khronos-SC24_Seoul-Nov11.pdf
 

StevieP

Banned
The ability to fight the good fight on two fronts...

A cheaper console that's less power hungry...



Not really... you would have to plan it if you don't want to actively split your base.

There were rumours of two consoles a small while back right? 1 launching in 2013, and 1 launching in 2014...

They could plan the architecture and for an actual mid life update... Crossfire 7 series seem to scale pretty good...

Also doesn't help that that timeline is from MSnerd's and that it doesn't coincide with these rumours and their CES things didn't also pan out...

It is of course the wet dream of any tech company to have a product follow the Apple model... improve your product every year and maintain a high price... Ah crazy ideas and speculation... party like it's 2005!

There are no advantages to fragmenting your software userbase, and there are additionally no conceivably good reasons to go multi-GPU in a console.
 
The AMD 8000 series is a long long long ways off, while Xbox engineers are currently knee-deep in late design stages of the console. This isn't 2005.

the 8000 series is a long way off, but the ideas and tech going into the 8000 series is well underway, of course. if you'll recall, it was also quite awhile after the launch of the Xbox 360 that we saw the technologies inside it added to AMD cards across the board.

No reason to assume that they and AMD haven't come up with some ideas/designs that will not be in the 7000 series and will be instead incorporated into their next generation 8000-series cards. That was the point. I'm not talking about die shrinks, but concepts and ideas.

Also, yes I'm aware it's not 2005. It's 2012. Not sure what pointing out the year has to do with anything, but feel free to enlightenment as to the relevance of the point.
 

StevieP

Banned
the 8000 series is a long way off, but the ideas and tech going into the 8000 series is well underway, of course. if you'll recall, it was also quite awhile after the launch of the Xbox 360 that we saw the technologies inside it added to AMD cards across the board.

No reason to assume that they and AMD haven't come up with some ideas/designs that will not be in the 7000 series and will be instead incorporated into their next generation 8000-series cards. That was the point. I'm not talking about die shrinks, but concepts and ideas.

Also, yes I'm aware it's not 2005. It's 2012. Not sure what pointing out the year has to do with anything, but feel free to enlightenment as to the relevance of the point.

The reason I mention the date is because there is no "DirectX 12" on the horizon, and the next AMD GPU series ("Sea Islands" or "Canary Islands" or whatever the final name of the 8000 series will be) will be a continuation of the current GCN architecture on 28nm in 2013 (at the earliest). There is no drastic changes on the horizon like there was in 2004.
 
The reason I mention the date is because there is no "DirectX 12" on the horizon, and the next AMD GPU series ("Sea Islands" or "Canary Islands" or whatever the final name of the 8000 series will be) will be a continuation of the current GCN architecture on 28nm in 2013 (at the earliest). There is no drastic changes on the horizon like there was in 2004.

I love this guy.
 

mhayze

Member
DX 11.1 (the .1 part is the important bit) is the latest iteration of Direct X (not out yet.) There is not even a mention of what's going to be in 12, AFAIK. There is not much of a chance that the Xbox Next is DX12 compliant if silicon is already out to fab, because there would need to be a spec first, and that spec would require developer and vendor feedback which Microsoft has not yet solicited.
 

Parl

Member
I'd rather not get into this too much, but this sort of black and white reasoning is nonsense. Sony has out sold their competitors at certain points with changing strategies. if Sony is keen on the small successes while facing their overall failures it can help keep them away from these issues in the future. having those points of changing tides can be crucial in the success of future playstations. you can count the small successes in spite of an overall failure for a console generation. consider business war, you can lose many battles and still overcome defeat. so many wars in history were won when little hope was left.

Sony has fucked up a ton this generation, but they have also given gamers a shit ton of great exclusive content. I would count many successes for Sony this hardware generation even with the overall losses they've incurred.
The success of a product is mostly measured by its profitability (to the company, so blu-ray royalties considered) and how it alters its strategic position. PS3 lost $6-7 billion before is started making a profit. It will end with at least a few billion dollars loss, and have put Sony in a worse position in the market than they were in the PS2 era.

Relatively minor successes in the context of an overall loss-making failure does not alter the scale of the overall loss-making failure. That Sony managed to do damage control with their platform and bring it back to profitability was merely preventing an even larger failure. Their success is in only failing a lot.

This shows that Sony should do more of what they did later in the generation and less of the "let's make a platform that loses us billions on the hardware sales" when working on PS4. I expect they'll try to keep their costings under control this time.
 

DCKing

Member
The GPU probably compared to the HD6670 because of the following:
1. Next Xbox will use a SoC
2. Therefore hardware has been made with a SoC GPU on the CPU
2. Or with an equivalent chip as a seperate GPU
3. AMD's best SoC GPU at this time has 400 SPUs
4. HD6670 also has 400 SPUs
5. Therefore, next Xbox GPU seems comparable to the HD6670

Someone had that idea in the other thread, and it probably makes the most sense with two of the most reliable rumours at this point. It seems likely that it will be upgraded once AMD comes up with SoC GPUs based on Southern Islands.
 

Maximilian E.

AKA MS-Evangelist
(I wrote this in the other NXbox thread)

My guesstimation for NXbox specs have always been something like the power equivalent of an AMD phenom II X6 (1055 edition) and double the performance of an ATI 5970.
Of course with some tweaks and improvements.

I think having these specs should allow for a nice jump but still allowing for selling the machine "rather" cheap or at least not at a loss.
Also, if kinect2 is included, then something like this makes somehow sense. I don't think we should expect more.

So basically, this performance (albeit tweaked/enchanced), plus perhaps some kind of HDD or even SSD as standard (hopefully), 3Gb+ RAM and kinect2 for 299/399. If MS manages to squeeze this into the box, selling it with profit (plus/minus 0).. its not too bad..
MS would want (I guess) to start selling as many as fast as possible of these babies to establish NXbox as a lead platform for next gen but also to fence of and further establish a leading platform against apple and google TV..
 
I was reading a mike capps Epic interview from OCt 11 somebody linked in another thread, it totally convinced me more then ever MS isn't going to go low power (considering Epic is one of their closes allies)

http://www.develop-online.net/features/1462/Epic-Games-next-gen-manifesto
Do you want to engage with the console manufacturers before their new systems come out? Do you want to influence them on hardware specifications?


That’s absolutely our plan. I can’t say much more than that. Okay, let’s say, a year ago that was our plan, and I can’t tell you whether we’ve done it or not yet.

Our Samaritan concept, if you look at PC hardware in two or four years’ time, is something that the next consoles can achieve. It was just that no one knew what a next-generation game would look like – so that was our idea, to show people what we can achieve.

I mean, The Samaritan is a real-time demo that looks like an animated movie from about five years ago – the tech is getting that sophisticated. So our goal was to show off some of the technologies we would like to see on the next-gen platforms, and also to have The Samaritan as the benchmark. We believe what we’ve demonstrated is achievable at a reasonable development cost, so it’s what gamers should be demanding for next generation.

Clearly Capps is referring to Samaritan as an example of something they'd like to see next gen. He also hints around that they've already worked with a console maker, (very likely MS), to help achieve that.

Do you really think with all this talk from Epic of Samaritan, the bar for next gen, working closely with console manufacturers (hmm, I wonder who that could be) etc, there's really going to be a 6670 in Xb720?

Otherwise he would have to basically only be talking about Sony, and note he said "consoles" plural, because there's no way a 6670 is even sniffing Samaritan.

I'm 99% certain all these low spec leaks arent even close. Xb720 will be a high power machine and likely doesnt even exist in firm form at this time. It will likely launch end of 2013 or just as likely imo, perhaps even becoming more likely, 2014. In the meantime that gives Microsoft 2+ years to drop 360 prices, develop next gen games, rake in profits, and sell you a Kinect at a fat margin.

And another side evidence, Mark Rein on that recent CES roundtable on Justin Tv, also seemed adamant the next gen would be "a box with more compute power" (as opposed to facebook or the cloud as proposed by another speaker). 6670 barely even fills that requirement. IIRC he also spoke a lot as usual about next gen needing to be sure there was a huge visual difference that everybody can see before proceeding, again pointing at high spec consoles, and again noting that Rein likely has knowledge of MS plans.
 
Top Bottom