"PR To The Rescue" Department: XBox 360 at E3 only running at "1/3rd power"

[KaneRobot]

http://xbox360.ign.com/articles/615/615667p1.html

While I seriously doubt there will be a 66% performance increase between now and launch, I guess it's nice to know for those who are underwhelmed by some of what they saw. I certainly thought that Call of Duty 2 trailer was chugging along at a pretty crappy framerate.

[Quackzilla]

Actually, if it is running at 1/3 and it goes to 3/3 that would be a 200% increase, not 66%.

[Snake2715]

Actually, if it is running at 1/3 and it goes to 3/3 that would be a 200% increase, not 66%.

Then i'll say it....

I doubt we will see even a 66% increase between now and release....

jk

[evilmax17]

pfffffffff

[MaxBiaggi2]

Microsoft should have put their best foot forward for E3. There's no excuse for an underpowered, underperforming new system at E3. If they want to be competitive next generation, they will have to do better than this.

[mcwilliams132]

After watching the E3 coverage last night on G4, I'm disapointed in MS.

I want the X360 to blow everyone out-of-the-water but with their lackluster showing, lack of spectacular demos, or killer games, it'll be hard to garnish the hype.

The G4 crew hit it on the head when they stated that MS was all over the map in their conference and going on and on about the XBLive marketplace, and every service they're offering.

As much as I'm excited about X360 and the new XBLive service, I want to see some killer games - only one's that've caught my eye, so far, are Gears of War and PGR 3 (and I'm not a racing fan in the least but it looked cool).

Come on MS...you can/could do better with a system that's 99% complete, there should have been more to show off. Sony did - even if there stuff was mostly cg. Show some tech demos, show off the power.

Just bring it!

[Admiral Ackbar]

But why would a public relations person lie? WHY??!?

[WildWop]

Come on MS...you can/could do better with a system that's 99% complete, there should have been more to show off. Sony did - even if there stuff was mostly cg. Show some tech demos, show off the power.



It may be 99% in terms of specifications, but it does not seem that their production is all set up to churn out actual systems -- I don't think ATI is done with the GFX chipset, for one. Also, if you'll recall from that vunderbar MTV special, the PDZero demo was running on alpha hardware with one (of three) cores and a generic ATI video card. I'd think that one week wouldn't be enough time to put together a more tuned-up piece of hardware.

If they had something other than this early hardware, I'd think they'd use it. Makes no sense not to.

CG tells you dick about what a system can do. I'd prefer this generation to forego CG entirely and do everything in-game (a'la RE4). It's the crap legacy that Sony has left on the market that CG is a viable marketing method for a system's power.

My Pentium II 333MHz laptop from 1998 can play movies too! It's teh uber-system!

[Reality's Fringe]

"What?! The crowd thought the Xbox 360 looked crappy?! Uh oh....uhm........Ok, Sarah, take down this release: The Xbox 360 was only functioning at 1/3 it's TRUE ability. Rest assured that the final product will be TWICE as good!"
"Got it, sir"
"That oughta fool 'em, all the way to the bank."

This gives them a little time to fix things up, but I doubt it. However, in the event that the system IS 200% better than what was shown, I owe Microsoft an apology.

[zewone]

It may be 99% in terms of specifications, but it does not seem that their production is all set up to churn out actual systems -- I don't think ATI is done with the GFX chipset, for one. Also, if you'll recall from that vunderbar MTV special, the PDZero demo was running on alpha hardware with one (of three) cores and a generic ATI video card. I'd think that one week wouldn't be enough time to put together a more tuned-up piece of hardware.

If they had something other than this early hardware, I'd think they'd use it. Makes no sense not to.

CG tells you dick about what a system can do. I'd prefer this generation to forego CG entirely and do everything in-game (a'la RE4). It's the crap legacy that Sony has left on the market that CG is a viable marketing method for a system's power.

My Pentium II 333MHz laptop from 1998 can play movies too! It's teh uber-system!

Agree, I fucking hate CGI and just about everything from Sony (except for I-8) didn't impress me. I love in-game graphics over FMV any day of the week.

[dcfox]

"What?! The crowd thought the Xbox 360 looked crappy?! Uh oh....uhm........Ok, Sarah, take down this release: The Xbox 360 was only functioning at 1/3 it's TRUE ability. Rest assured that the final product will be TWICE as good!"
"Got it, sir"
"That oughta fool 'em, all the way to the bank."

This gives them a little time to fix things up, but I doubt it. However, in the event that the system IS 200% better than what was shown, I owe Microsoft an apology.
You forgot the evil laugh after "all the way to the bank".

[peteloaf]

Just wanted to point out: Remember when Sony claimed the PS2 could run the CGI cut scenes from FFIIIV in real time? Yea...

[Zman310]

Just wanted to point out: Remember when Sony claimed the PS2 could run the CGI cut scenes from FFIIIV in real time? Yea...

FFIIIV? I'm not familiar with that one :D

[peteloaf]

FFIIIV? I'm not familiar with that one :D
Doh! I mean VIII, my brain is only running at 1/3 the power...

[Strell]

Then that means you are only using roughly 3.33% of your brain's total power. :p

[Scahom1]

My brain hurts after reading this thread.

[psiufoxx2]

What is... "brain"?

[epobirs]

This is pretty normal for new systems at E3 and CES before that. Many systems of the past decade were not in final form on the show floor before reaching store shelves, especially when the first launch region is Japan.

The problem goes beyond not having feature complete hardware while developing those first games. It also is a matter of the learning curve once that hardware is delivered. Recall how mediocre most PS2 launch titles were. They seemed like enhanced PS1 games and that is exactly what they were. The PS2 has enough things in common to its predecessor that you can pretend it is a PS1 on steroids. This ignores most of the PS2's features and just imporves resolution, color depth, and polygon rates. We've seen since then what the machine can really do.

A lot of early Xbox 360 games will be like that. Rather than using the whole machine they'll be what Mac users would see if the top of the line G5 systems with high-end DX9 class video cards were targeted for games and older Macs ignored. Or if someone wrote a PC game to run exclusively on a P4 Extreme Edition and the current best ATI card.

So the stuff can still be a huge leap on Xbox visuals but not really tapping into the full 360 hardware. Most game developers have little experience of SMP multi-threaded code and so most of the CPU power will simply be ignored until those skills are mastered. Is anyone really suprised anymore if a game published two years after a console's launch looks better than any of the launch titles?

[epobirs]

FFIIIV? I'm not familiar with that one :D

THe way it reads would suggest Final Fantasy 2 from the NES. I would really hope the PS2 could manage to replicate any part of that game in real-time. Along with replicating the whole machine.

[shipwreck]

I think Microsoft saying the 360 is only running at 1/3 power is a heck of a lot more believable than Sony saying everything they showed was in-game engine.

[KaneRobot]

I think Microsoft saying the 360 is only running at 1/3 power is a heck of a lot more believable than Sony saying everything they showed was in-game engine.

ZING!

[DesertEagleXIX]

I talked with a Sega Rep showing Full Auto.

He said the 360 systems were running with 256Megs of Ram instaed of the 512M the retial will use. He said the performance will improve 'somewhat'.

As for Call of Duty 2 chugging. I didn't see that, but Condemed seem to be.

[Quillion]

But why would a public relations person lie? WHY??!?

Best post ever.

[Sk]

I talked with a Sega Rep showing Full Auto.

He said the 360 systems were running with 256Megs of Ram instaed of the 512M the retial will use. He said the performance will improve 'somewhat'.

As for Call of Duty 2 chugging. I didn't see that, but Condemed seem to be.

No Sir, you are wrong. The man on G4 thats part of the team making Full Auto confirmed that this game is only using 1/4th of the 360's power and its performance will greatly increase. Even the Frame rate will increase beyond 60FPS. Currently Full Auto is running at 30FPS and he thought that was pathetic for a driving game. Not only that but the visuals should greatly improve too.

I think Microsoft saying the 360 is only running at 1/3 power is a heck of a lot more believable than Sony saying everything they showed was in-game engine.

True that.

[DesertEagleXIX]

No Sir, you are wrong. The man on G4 thats part of the team making Full Auto confirmed that this game is only using 1/4th of the 360's power and its performance will greatly increase. Even the Frame rate will increase beyond 60FPS. Currently Full Auto is running at 30FPS and he thought that was pathetic for a driving game. Not only that but the visuals should greatly improve too.



True that.

I'm not wrong. The Sega rep was, if your info is correct.

[Quackzilla]

Saying something is using a percentage or fraction of it's power is bullshit, by the way.

[Drocket]

He said the 360 systems were running with 256Megs of Ram instaed of the 512M the retial will use. He said the performance will improve 'somewhat'.
I can believe and understand that they don't have their final video card hardware. I can believe and understand that they haven't worked out the kinks and bottlenecks in the system design. That they couldn't have managed to find an extra 256M stick of RAM, though...

Seriously, if its true, somebody deserves to be fired for that. You don't show off your system in front of the whole world when you can't even manage to get the right amount of RAM.

[ViolentLee]

This is why I don't look at E3 posts. When they say the Xbox 360 games at E3 are running at only 1/3 capacity, it's not bullshit. The reason is because not only are the games very early and not optimized, but they're running on alpha hardware. They're basically running off of PCs that equal the specs the Xbox 360 will have -- not the optimal game environment by any means.

As someone who's seen more alpha versions of games than I can count, I can assure you that there is a big difference between how a game looks/plays when it's released compared to 6 months prior -- and that's not taking into account brand new hardware like the Xbox 360 games. It's the engine that usually gets implemented first, with things like framerate fixing and graphical shine being tended to in the last quarter or so of the development process.

I'm going to save my editorial opinion on the Xbox 360 and other next-gen games (because I have a lot of editorializing left to do tonight that I actually get paid for), but I wanted to put this issue to rest.

[Ravaged]

So we could say the same about the PS3 right?

[electrictroy]

Just wanted to point out: Remember when Sony claimed the PS2 could run the CGI cut scenes from FFIIIV in real time? Yea...If you don't know your Roman numerals, just type FF8. It's easier. Anyway, I've seen PS2 scenes that match FF8's pre-recorded scenes. The background's not quite as good, but the people look far more realistic (instead of stick figures).

Kingdom Hearts only used 2 pre-recorded movies - beginning & end. Everything in between was 100% PS2-generated.



Microsoft had an advantage this last generation, because they basically took a Celeron PC, and put it in a box.... thereby making it roughly 1.5 times as powerful as a GameCube. But now with the MS 360, it's going to be a near-equal technology.

It will be the *games* that determine the winner during 2006-10.

troy

[peteyrose]

I was actually at E3 and saw the hardware some of the 360 games were running off of. They weren't hooked up to Xbox360 machines, but instead were running off G5s. Clearly it's still alpha hardware, and the games should look much, much better by the 360 launch. I mean, just look at Perfect Dark Zero. What was shown to the media this week was phenomenal stuff.

[epobirs]

Microsoft had an advantage this last generation, because they basically took a Celeron PC, and put it in a box.... thereby making it roughly 1.5 times as powerful as a GameCube. But now with the MS 360, it's going to be a near-equal technology.



No, it was a Pentium III, not a Celeron. This is a common misconception due to the cache size but that is not the determining factor. One of the differences between P-II and P-III was the upgrade to a four-way L2 cache design that improved performance but at somewhat greater cost in cache controller size. The P-III based Celerons used the older two-way design as part of the cost cutting.

The cache SRAM is the most expensive part of the chip in terms of transistors used and game engines tend to be smaller code blocks, so using a P-III with just 128K cache instead of 256K saved a good chunk of cost. Many of these were probably P-III with a defective SRAM block that otherwise might have been scrapped, so this arrangement allowed still lower cost. It wasn't the first time such a thing happened. In the 486 era the integrated FPU was the leading cause of defective chips. Offering those chips with the defective FPU disabled at a heavily discounted price offered a big win for Intel while still creating an upgrade from a 386 system. Demand soon grew to the point of creating a real separate 486SX that had no FPU.

Everybody is anticipating manufacturing problems in their next gen chipsets. The PS3's Cell will ship with a disabled SPE due to a high percentage of units not having a full set of 8 SPEs functioning. Likewise, the ATI VPU for the 360 has redundant elements that allow for certain types of defects in production of that chip. Even if a chip comes out perfect those redundant elements will be disabled to meet the spec.

[electrictroy]

No, it was a Pentium III, not a Celeron. This is a common misconception Then why does the Xbox CPU have a Celeron model number?

(shrug) Who cares? It doesn't change my point:

Microsoft had an advantage this last generation, because they basically took a ______ Intel PC, and put it in a box.... thereby making it roughly 1.5 times as powerful as a GameCube. But now with the MS 360, it's going to be a near-equal technology with the competition.

It's the *games* that will set one console apart from the rest.

troy

[eastx]

Don't know about the model #, but I've always heard Xbox uses a Pentium 3 as well.

[schultzed]

This is pretty normal for new systems at E3 and CES before that. Many systems of the past decade were not in final form on the show floor before reaching store shelves, especially when the first launch region is Japan.

The problem goes beyond not having feature complete hardware while developing those first games. It also is a matter of the learning curve once that hardware is delivered. Recall how mediocre most PS2 launch titles were. They seemed like enhanced PS1 games and that is exactly what they were. The PS2 has enough things in common to its predecessor that you can pretend it is a PS1 on steroids. This ignores most of the PS2's features and just imporves resolution, color depth, and polygon rates. We've seen since then what the machine can really do.

A lot of early Xbox 360 games will be like that. Rather than using the whole machine they'll be what Mac users would see if the top of the line G5 systems with high-end DX9 class video cards were targeted for games and older Macs ignored. Or if someone wrote a PC game to run exclusively on a P4 Extreme Edition and the current best ATI card.

So the stuff can still be a huge leap on Xbox visuals but not really tapping into the full 360 hardware. Most game developers have little experience of SMP multi-threaded code and so most of the CPU power will simply be ignored until those skills are mastered. Is anyone really suprised anymore if a game published two years after a console's launch looks better than any of the launch titles?

Nice post! This is why I'm not that excited about any of the next next gen systems right now . . . I've been reviewing EGMs from 2001 and early 2002 and most of the early games for our current systems were crap . . .

As others have pointed out, until I see some really high quality games . . . I'm not making any decisions.

I did buy a Gamecube at launch . . . I really wanted Rogue Squadron, Super Monkey Ball, and Pikmin (go figure). I got the PS2 one year after release for MGS2 (which I didn't play much of), Jak and Daxter (ditto) and GTA3 (which I LOVED and which single-handedly saved Sony's ass). I held off on Xbox because I only wanted Halo . . .

So, last time . . . for me there had to be at least three games out that I wanted.

All the talk about power won't matter much to me . . . show me highly desirable titles . . . more than first-person shooters, racing games or sports as well.

[electrictroy]

I wouldn't put much stock in this "1/3rd" stuff. I suspect that number was pulled out of a saleman's ass. Most salespeople don't know anything... they just make it up. I suspect if you asked an engineer, he'd probably say, "This prototype is running 80-90% of the final design."

troy

[ViolentLee]

I wouldn't put much stock in this "1/3rd" stuff. I suspect that number was pulled out of a saleman's ass. Most salespeople don't know anything... they just make it up. I suspect if you asked an engineer, he'd probably say, "This prototype is running 80-90% of the final design."

troy

I don't know about engineers, but a bunch of developers -- including those from Rare and Epic of Perfect Dark Zero and Gears of War respectively -- also talk about the alpha hardware problem and how games are running at 1/3 their estimated speed/power.

[epobirs]

Then why does the Xbox CPU have a Celeron model number?

(shrug) Who cares? It doesn't change my point:

Microsoft had an advantage this last generation, because they basically took a ______ Intel PC, and put it in a box.... thereby making it roughly 1.5 times as powerful as a GameCube. But now with the MS 360, it's going to be a near-equal technology with the competition.

It's the *games* that will set one console apart from the rest.

troy

Another misconception. For game coding puroses the P-III is no great advantage over the customized PPC in the GameCube. The primary factor in the Xbox's strength is the XGPU from Nvidia. The addition of hardware shaders made it trivial to do things on the Xbox that only a small number of developers can extract fromt he GameCube. At the time the Xbox shipped most PC game developers were still learning to use shaders in those cases they felt it was worth the effort to create stuff that only worked on the latest video chips from a single vendor. On a game console that wasn't an issue since every Xbox would have the capability.

The choice of X86 CPU was quite simply the fastest way to get the product to market using their existing codebase and in turn making the product appeal to the large base of developers already familiar with DirectX. It also drove up the cost a good deal since a desktop/server CPU brings with it functionality that does little for game development. The initial embedded orientation and further customization of the Gecko CPU by IBM played a big part in keeping the GameCube price so low. It lacks a lot of stuff you'd find in a Mac system and had a lot of high end functions altered. For instance, registers for handling 64-bit numbers that would rarely be applied in a game were altered to handle processing of dual 32-bit values, which was very useful to game work. This offered some of the benefits of a SIMD setup without any investment in additional transistor real estate.

THere is a very good reason Microsoft is moving their console hardware from X86 despite giving up ease of compatibility. They want a machine that will scale down in cost well and doesn't waste a lot of silicon on functions they don't need for gaming and multimedia delivery. Neither Intel or AMD is interested in selling parts for this purpose for the necessarily low margins involved. IBM is much more inclined to deliver custom products of this sort and thus plays a role in every next generation console.