View Full Version : Xbox 360 specs
Grave_Addiction
02-15-2005, 07:38 PM
4 “Pipelines”
32 Texture Units
96 Arithmetic Logic Units (ALU)
192 Shader Operations per Cycle
700MHz Core
134.4 Billion Shader Operations per Second (at 700MHz)
256-bit 512MB 1.8GHz GDDR3 Memory
57.6 GB/sec Bandwidth (at 1.8GHz)
300-350 Million Transistors
90nm Manufacturing
Shader Model 3.0
ATI HyperMemory
ATI Multi Rendering Technology (AMR)
Launch: Q2 2005
Performance: Over 3x Radeon X800 XT !!! (for single R520)
16x stochastic FSAA
FP32 blending, texturing
Programmable Primitive Processor/Tesselator
-joystiq.com
And where did you get these 'specs' from?
Greetard
02-15-2005, 07:42 PM
I don't know what any of that means, but nonetheless.....YESSSSSSS
bignick
02-15-2005, 07:42 PM
Sounds legit to me.
kaji7p56
02-15-2005, 07:45 PM
If those specs are accurate then it should look great.
evilmax17
02-15-2005, 07:46 PM
Are pipelines controller ports?
Speaking of which, whats the over-under on the PS3 having 2 controller ports?
CaseyRyback
02-15-2005, 07:52 PM
Speaking of which, whats the over-under on the PS3 having 2 controller ports?
I gotta go with PUSH!!
and I will believe the Xbox is that powerful when I see it. I thought MS was going to try and keep costs low, and this does not seem like it will be cheap to manufacture
cthcky33
02-15-2005, 07:55 PM
Are pipelines controller ports?
Speaking of which, whats the over-under on the PS3 having 2 controller ports?
they should go with 3 controller ports, just to be crazy and different
4 “Pipelines”
32 Texture Units
96 Arithmetic Logic Units (ALU)
192 Shader Operations per Cycle
700MHz Core
134.4 Billion Shader Operations per Second (at 700MHz)
256-bit 512MB 1.8GHz GDDR3 Memory
57.6 GB/sec Bandwidth (at 1.8GHz)
300-350 Million Transistors
90nm Manufacturing
Shader Model 3.0
ATI HyperMemory
ATI Multi Rendering Technology (AMR)
Launch: Q2 2005
Performance: Over 3x Radeon X800 XT !!! (for single R520)
16x stochastic FSAA
FP32 blending, texturing
Programmable Primitive Processor/Tesselator
-joystiq.com
Aaaahhhh. It all makes perfect sense to me now...
RaekwonThaChef
02-15-2005, 07:56 PM
wtf, those all look like GPU specs to me....
and four pipelines is awfully unimpressive, yet all those other specs look quite nice....doesn't quite add up if you ask me...
epobirs
02-15-2005, 07:59 PM
4 pipelines but 3X the performance of the current top of the line GPU? I don't think so.
The number of pipelines is a critical performance factor in GPUs. The rpimary difference in high-end and low-end chips right now is those pipelines. Clock speed factors into it also but a 4 pipeline chip would need to run immensely faster to outperform an 8 pipeline chip.
It's possible they taken an approach similar to PCI Express. A narrower bus but so many times faster as to still set a much higher throuput mark but this is a complete reversal of everything ATI (and Nvidia) has been doing for the past several years. It strikes me as incredibly unlikely that work on this wouldn't have leaked out into the PC community that watches GPU developments like a 13 year old boy watches porn.
To make this work, especially in light of the number of function units per pirpeline described (assuming they're evenly distributed as typical) would require a frighteningly deep pipeline on top of what is already the very deep DirectX 9 pipeline. The penalty for even the minorest stall could be disastrous. This is one of the problems that caused Intel's P4 to run aground and reduced the rate of performance growth through clock rate increases to a near standstill compared to recent years.
Lucy, you got a lotta 'splaining to do.
And where did you get these 'specs' from?
quoting for answer
epobirs
02-15-2005, 08:08 PM
http://3dxtreme.net/index.php?id=atix800xtpevsevga6800ultra1
A comparison of two of the current top-end video cards including a chart with some tech details. The clock speed described above is not going to make a 4 pipeline device of similar structure (as one would expect if shopping for parts from the same company) outrun the X800XT, probably not even approach two-thirds of its throughput.
CaseyRyback
02-15-2005, 08:13 PM
And where did you get these 'specs' from?
quoting for answer
read the very bottom of his post. That was what the edit was for
epobirs
02-15-2005, 08:19 PM
Are pipelines controller ports?
Speaking of which, whats the over-under on the PS3 having 2 controller ports?
In this context, a pipeline is a internal structure of a GPU that takes in data and instructions at one end and produces a pixel of the specified color at the other end. In between, a hell of lot can happen to that pixel to make it appear in conjunction with all of the other pixels forming the frame to be something more attractive than earlier generations allowed. The complex pipelines of current GPUs make it possible to apply much mathematical effort to tasks like modeling the reflectivity of different surfaces, for instance.
With the major increases in pipeline complexity the number of pipelines has also grown to compensate for the workload's potential slowdown of overall operations. Otherwise you might end up with a card that produced prettier pictures but lagged at keeping up with the game's interactive needs. This is also why video chips have moved past CPUs in having the highest transistor counts. In many ways these chips are highly specialized multiprocessing units. Such things still present a lot of problems for general prpose computing but graphics are ideally suited to be spread among many processing elements. The recently ballyhooed Cell processor is also designed around this concept. It should be great for graphics but offer little or nothing for common task like office applications.
And where did you get these 'specs' from?
quoting for answer
read the very bottom of his post. That was what the edit was for
Oops. Didn't see the edit. Thanks.
epobirs
02-15-2005, 08:21 PM
Hey, the article on Joystiq says 24 pipelines! Which makes sense!
If you're going to cut and paste from other sites every character counts.
RaekwonThaChef
02-15-2005, 08:24 PM
Hey, the article on Joystiq says 24 pipelines! Which makes sense!
If you're going to cut and paste from other sites every character counts.
Glad you cleared that up. Having four pipelines, coupled with the other specs the article mentioned had me questioning its validty. 24 pipelines certainly sounds much more logical, if not practical (how much is this thing gonna cost?!).
Grave_Addiction
02-15-2005, 08:37 PM
Hey, the article on Joystiq says 24 pipelines! Which makes sense!
If you're going to cut and paste from other sites every character counts.
Hah hah, damn I'm sorry about that one fellas.
epobirs
02-15-2005, 08:42 PM
Of course, now the question is, why the asymmetrical number of texture units? Are there going to be pipelines with differing levels of texturing capability? It is possible that such a design could have advantages in some situations but such asymmetry is pretty unheard of in the GPU field.
THey may be listing texture units associated with vertex shaders but that isn't the way thing are normally done. Vertex shaders as independent functions with their own texture units are expected to be subsumed within the pixel shaders in the coming generation, making it more unlikely of an explanation.
Grave_Addiction
02-15-2005, 10:10 PM
Of course, now the question is, why the asymmetrical number of texture units? Are there going to be pipelines with differing levels of texturing capability? It is possible that such a design could have advantages in some situations but such asymmetry is pretty unheard of in the GPU field.
THey may be listing texture units associated with vertex shaders but that isn't the way thing are normally done. Vertex shaders as independent functions with their own texture units are expected to be subsumed within the pixel shaders in the coming generation, making it more unlikely of an explanation.
No, no, no. The real question is will the system be 256 bit. You know that bits are the only thing that really matters when talking consoles!
Bits!
Bits!
Bits!
Bits!
Bits!
whoknows
02-15-2005, 10:14 PM
I bet they sell it for a lot. (A lot being more than I am willing to pay) but the specs look good. What matters is if they use it to its full potential and have good games on it.
Chris in Cali
02-15-2005, 10:15 PM
Why don't home console has 802.11 wireless? Wouldn't it be easier, or would there be lag?
Kaijufan
02-15-2005, 10:17 PM
There is no way that GPU will be in the Xbox 360 if it going to come out this year.
whoknows
02-15-2005, 10:20 PM
There is no way that GPU will be in the Xbox 360 if it going to come out this year.
Thats what I'm thinking, I think they are just trying to get the hype up...
Kaijufan
02-15-2005, 10:22 PM
There is no way that GPU will be in the Xbox 360 if it going to come out this year.
Thats what I'm thinking, I think they are just trying to get the hype up...
I think that someone just made it up.
whoknows
02-15-2005, 10:27 PM
There is no way that GPU will be in the Xbox 360 if it going to come out this year.
Thats what I'm thinking, I think they are just trying to get the hype up...
I think that someone just made it up.
Yeah, probably.
Legolas813
02-15-2005, 10:37 PM
I have no idea what these specs mean, but I'm guessing they are good. I guess we'll see if they are accurate or not.
Reality's Fringe
02-16-2005, 12:46 AM
So, will it play games, or is the DVD drive just going to break and cost me $75 to fix?
epobirs
02-16-2005, 05:15 AM
There is no way that GPU will be in the Xbox 360 if it going to come out this year.
Thats what I'm thinking, I think they are just trying to get the hype up...
I think that someone just made it up.
It appears to be a fairly accurate assesment of what ATI is working on for their next generation but there is no evidence whatsoever that the part used by Microsoft will be a direct derivative. It certainly doesn't make much sense if there is any validity to the claims of a multi-core PPC CPU. Allof those cores are going to be underutilized if matched up with something the ATI chip described since it will already be the target of the game code that most lends itself to parallelization.
Similarly, the part Nvidia supplies Sony for the PS3 is not going to be a derivative of their PC parts. It makes no sense to have a behemoth GPU when you've also invested a fortune in a monster vector processing CPU. One or the other is going to spend a lot of time twiddling its thumbs since both cover too much of the video generation process. Just as the Cell resembles an Emotion Engine on steroids, the Nvidia chip will likely bve a fairly simple part like the PS2's Graphic Synthesizer.
In both case haveing too much CPU and GPU will also make for terrible expense. Microsoft is willing to subsidize hardware, as is Sony but I'm confident both are making every effort to reduce their break even requirements this time around.
epobirs
02-16-2005, 05:26 AM
Why don't home console has 802.11 wireless? Wouldn't it be easier, or would there be lag?
Go take a look at the price for building 802.11b into a device at the time the current console had their designs frozen and headed towards manufacturing. It would have been prohibitively expensive and very few people would have seen it as an attractive feature since wireless for consumer networks was just starting to build up some steam at the time.
You might just as well ask why so few laptops then had wireless built in. It was an undeniably useful feature for that market but the cost kept it out of sub-$1,800 units at the time Xbox and GameCube were launching. Xbox broke new ground just by having Ethernet built in as standard. It cost you extra on the GameCube and the PS2 until recently. I was shopping for my current laptop at that time and had to forego built-in wireless because it was just a bit too expensive. Today the cost is about a sixth of what it was then.
epobirs
02-16-2005, 05:33 AM
Of course, now the question is, why the asymmetrical number of texture units? Are there going to be pipelines with differing levels of texturing capability? It is possible that such a design could have advantages in some situations but such asymmetry is pretty unheard of in the GPU field.
THey may be listing texture units associated with vertex shaders but that isn't the way thing are normally done. Vertex shaders as independent functions with their own texture units are expected to be subsumed within the pixel shaders in the coming generation, making it more unlikely of an explanation.
No, no, no. The real question is will the system be 256 bit. You know that bits are the only thing that really matters when talking consoles!
Bits!
Bits!
Bits!
Bits!
Bits!
Here's two bits, kid. Go play Donkey Kong.
Grave_Addiction
02-16-2005, 12:15 PM
Of course, now the question is, why the asymmetrical number of texture units? Are there going to be pipelines with differing levels of texturing capability? It is possible that such a design could have advantages in some situations but such asymmetry is pretty unheard of in the GPU field.
THey may be listing texture units associated with vertex shaders but that isn't the way thing are normally done. Vertex shaders as independent functions with their own texture units are expected to be subsumed within the pixel shaders in the coming generation, making it more unlikely of an explanation.
No, no, no. The real question is will the system be 256 bit. You know that bits are the only thing that really matters when talking consoles!
Bits!
Bits!
Bits!
Bits!
Bits!
Here's two bits, kid. Go play Donkey Kong.
Bah! I've never been a Donkey Kong kinda guy. Maybe we should help you out a bit. You seem to have the intelligence down, but now we need to help you out on the whole humor part of your personality. Get some, old timer.