Xbox 2 Specs Leaked *Update*

[Never anonymous Bud]

And you have complete and utter proof of this, how?

Easy. It's called 'history'...







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[Zackman]

Not for Eva Mendes it wasn't......

OUCH! I GOT PWNED!

-Z-

 

[Tony Hill]

SMT?! Is that like PMT but with the emphasis on 'Severe'?!

SMT = Simultaneous Multi-Threading, ie running two threads at the same
time in one processor. We've got this now in Intel's newer P4
processors (Intel calls it "Hyperthreading") and IBM will be
implementing it in their Power5 processor. It's a good way to keep
modern processors chugging while one thread is stalled waiting for
data.

 

[R420]

I truly doubt that xbox next will use 3 cpus with 6 cores (SMT or
multiple cores, whatever). This doesn't make too much sense in gaming
machine like xbox.

Power4 has die size of 400+ mm^2 at 130 nm process with 2 cores on die.
So same chip at 65 nm would be big as about 100-130 mm^2. Multiply that
by 3 and that's just too big (300-400 mm^2 on same die or three
separated 100-130 mm^2 chips). Too big too expensive.

As name of chip is Power 976 that means that 970 was probably base for
new xbox cpu. 970 is much smaller (I believe that it was about 110 mm^
2), and scaled down to 65 nm probably would be somewhere about 60-70
mm^2. If they use SMT for multithreading whole chip with 3 SMT cores
would be about 150-200 mm^2. Highly depends on cache design but it is
still too big for efficient power/money design for which they long for.

Even if they take this road memory bandwidth is still too limited for 3
cpus (6 particularly). SMT is not needed in this kind of console. Also,
hardware becomes too complicated with additional CPUs and finally that
is probably too much power for r500 based gfx. It doesn't sound balanced
at all.

I would chose one cpu, one core but with multiply Altivec units. That
makes sense. Make cpu small and power efficient like on all other
consoles (PS2, DC and GC). Deliver high multimedia power thorough
multiple Altivec and combine that with R500 and new star is born.

Anyway I am very suspicious toward multiple chips. One cpu with SMT -
passable, anything else isn't efficient.


On other hand integrated framebuffer with r500 does have much sense.
In DirectX 10 framebuffer has much bigger role than in previous
iterations of dx so integrating framebuffer with gpu is good way to
take. However standard shaders in dx10 are v4, not v3. So I believe that
we will see v4 in xbox 2.


I would be disappointed if new xbox will not feature hdd.


And I doubt that it will feature backward compatibility.

Bariole, exellent post.

much appreciated. your points are all very much agreeable and I can
tell you're well informed, most likely more than I am

I agree that 3 CPUs / 6 cores (and now the "4 or more PowerPCs" is
probably way too much CPU power for a $300~$400 console.

I expect a single CPU, perhaps even a duel-core CPU at most. but not
more than 1 CPU die, or more than 2 cores.

I think duel GPUs (ala NAOMI 2 arcade board) would be *better* than
lots of CPUs. but even that is unlikely.

I think the basic ATI R500 core will be beefed up much like the NV20
was, into NV2A, which doubled the Geometry & Lighting unit (Vertex
Shader) of the NV20/GeForce 3.

Hopefully Xbox 2 will have very fast performance for VS/PS 2.0 and 3.0
(DX9) - as well as having shaders 4.0 thanks to it being a DX10
machine, much like you said in your post.

Dreamcast and Gamecube both had very efficient single CPUs for their
day. I think Xbox2 will have a strong single CPU chip, with the
possibility of 2 cores on the one chip.

 

[Bao H. Lammy]

Dreamcast and Gamecube both had very efficient single CPUs
for their day. I think Xbox2 will have a strong single CPU chip,
with the possibility of 2 cores on the one chip.

How do you feel about the probability that Xbox2 will be hacked
so we can use them as cheap yet very powerful computers? Sort
of like with Xbox now, but much more power!

 

[Andrew]

How do you feel about the probability that Xbox2 will be hacked
so we can use them as cheap yet very powerful computers? Sort
of like with Xbox now, but much more power!

A powerful PC without a harddisk and unable to play any worthwhile PC
games? Ooh, talk about mouth watering!

 

[Bao H. Lammy]

A powerful PC without a harddisk and unable to play any worthwhile PC
games? Ooh, talk about mouth watering!

I was obviously thinking of an Xbox2 that either had a hard
drive or else had the ability to accept one as an expansion.
After all, we don't know if a HD will be omitted anyway.
Finally, I wasn't referring to hacking it to play PC games,
but to use as a computer.

 

[Zackman]

Wow, look who's right for a change! Yay!

KICKED WHILST DOWN!

-Z-

 

[Dr.z3n]

OUCH! I GOT PWNED!

Wow, look who's right for a change! Yay!

Dr.z3n

 

[Nil Einne]

I was obviously thinking of an Xbox2 that either had a hard
drive or else had the ability to accept one as an expansion.
After all, we don't know if a HD will be omitted anyway.
Finally, I wasn't referring to hacking it to play PC games,
but to use as a computer.

Which can't do anything but run stuff that teh Xbox Next already
features or which someone was willing to port? That sure sounds
cool.... Not!

 

[Nil Einne]

Jesus told me. He came to me in a dream and said, 'Zack, my son, consider
this: The Xbox 2 will be using different GPU chipsets, a different CPU and
different architecture. The only way they could make Xbox 2 compatible is
through emulation, and we all know that's spotty as best, especially since

Virtual PC does it acceptable and given that they will only have a
limited number of programs (games) to work with it might be okay. That
and the fact Microsoft acquired Connectix makes you wonder...

some Xbox games make use of some very specific features of the Nvidia GPU
that would be extremely difficult to emulate properl - not to mention
there's no way Nvidia is going to cooperate in that respect. And to say the

I'm not an expert on this but how important is it to emulate them
properly? As long as you can emulate it acceptable might be enough.
Bear in mind it's still DirectX.

Also, interestingly, they might be able to get help from their
developers who have ported Xbox games to the PC (and ATI who have had
to help developers with problems).

Xbox 2 would be backwards compatible with some games but not others would
probably piss off more people that it pleased. So, my young Zack, you must

Well the PS2 is compatible with some but not all PS1 games.... I
suspect this might be true for the PS3 as well....

 

[John]

Virtual PC does it acceptable and given that they will only have a
limited number of programs (games) to work with it might be okay. That
and the fact Microsoft acquired Connectix makes you wonder...

They apparently purchased it for the PC version of Virtual PC (I shit
you not!) This allows you to run multiple PC OS's without rebooting and
was suggested for their server market.
Make you wonder about MS if they have to buy a small Mac-based company
to try and get their OS stable.........

Anyway I used to run the Mac version of Virtual PC and while it was
fine for "work" apps it was of no use whatsover for action games of any
kind. Games usually make low-lovel hardware calls and VPC could NOT
emulate this as the chip was fundamentally different. This may of
course change when they migrate to the G5.

I'm not an expert on this but how important is it to emulate them
properly? As long as you can emulate it acceptable might be enough.
Bear in mind it's still DirectX.

Yes but DirectX never existed on the Mac or it's architechture, part of
the reason why some games took so long to port. Again iirc there is a
comapny that has very recently done something with making the DirectX
code more transportable onto the Mac.

For me the rumour that Xbox2 will support OpenGL is much more exciting.
At last MS may finally support an open standard and the use of OpenGL
would tie in with the fact that Apple (and hence the IBM chips) has a
very good adherence to the OpenGL standard as testified by Cormack

 

[Bao H. Lammy]

Which can't do anything but run stuff that teh Xbox Next already
features or which someone was willing to port? That sure sounds
cool.... Not!

Think harder. Much harder if you have to.

 

[ammonton]

They apparently purchased it for the PC version of Virtual PC (I shit
you not!) This allows you to run multiple PC OS's without rebooting and
was suggested for their server market.

Parts of it is currently used in their WindowsCE/PocketPC/whatever it's
called this week platform development kit.

-a

 

[bariole]

I agree that 3 CPUs / 6 cores (and now the "4 or more PowerPCs" is
probably way too much CPU power for a $300~$400 console.
I expect a single CPU, perhaps even a duel-core CPU at most. but not
more than 1 CPU die, or more than 2 cores.
I think duel GPUs (ala NAOMI 2 arcade board) would be *better* than
lots of CPUs. but even that is unlikely.

I assume that raw design of xbox2 will be similar to xbox. That is CPU
and GPU will share one memory pool (UMA), nothing like data throughput
machine like PS2 is or PS3 probably will be.

Given that this is machine intended for playing videogames any kind of
multiprocesoring doesn't make much sense. Even as simple as dual cores
or SMT.

I am not familiar with Naomi but as far as I know it is nothing like
xbox with additional cpu. It is like two xboxs working together on
delivering unified gaming experience. It features two separated pipes
for crunching code much closer in design ideas to Saturn than to Xbox.
Every pipe has its own CPU and own gpu. Parts of hardware which are
shared are main memory and T&L chip which probably had enough
performance to fill both pipes or else every pipe would use its own T&L
chip.

Multiprocesoring in xbox hardware doesn't have much sense for me. Xbox
is GPU centred architecture, meaning that most of videogame code depends
on feature set and strength of GPU; and directx 10 will just strengthen
that idea. CPU is something which process rest of code like AI, I/O,
physics and synchronization of all parts of systems. Even most of sound
is done outside of CPU. Memory is shared between all parts of system so
balanced memory performance is more crucial than any other part of xbox.
Strong CPU and gpu do not make sense if memory is slow. This
automatically means that cache is something of big importance. In normal
situations game which constantly has cache misses will work few times
slower than it should. On xbox this effect is amplified. Just compare
performance of Serious Same on P3 and P3 Celeron. Engine was too big for
128k cache which Celeron had and because of that P3 was much better
performer although P3 and P3C are more or less same chips.Performance of
code on xbox highly depends on size of cache of its cpu(s) especially
because main memory of xbox is not exclusively cpus memory.

Dual cores effectively halves amount of cache on xbox and it halves
amount of memory bandwidth per cpu core. Negative aspects of this
behaviour can be clearly seen on Penitum4 chips where Hyperthreeding
sometimes cripples performance instead improving it. On power4 enabling
second core improved performance only for abut 60%. However power4 is
richer in cache than one xbox CPU will probably ever be. Also computers
built around power4 do not have many plagues which xbox2 will have
(xbox2 = $300, power4 computer = $ X0000 and more) so one cannot expect
60% power improvement with second core on xbox's cpu. And as with
additional core stress on memory will be bigger even fall performance
can occur (UMA remember). Also chip is bigger (higher cost for chip but
also for cooling and main board).

SMT doesn't have any sense. SMT has sense in p4 which is intended for
general processing. Most of time PC struggles with more than one program
and SMT has sense in that kind of situations. However SMT will not
improve performance if one program has big emphasis on one part of CPU
as most of games do. Hyperthreading doesn't improve gaming performance
or rendering and similar stuff. So there are no benefits in gaming code
with SMT.

Multiple cpus are out of question. This is wrong way because it will
kill memory performance and at same time price will skyrocket. And for
what one needs 2 or 3 G5+ cpus in xbox? There is not real use for that
unless R500 is very very very fast gpu which will need extraordinary CPU
to keep its pipes filled. But I doubt that because G5 is excellent
performer.

Maybe they will do something radically different so all I said can be
ignored. I don't know.

I think the basic ATI R500 core will be beefed up much like the NV20
was, into NV2A, which doubled the Geometry & Lighting unit (Vertex
Shader) of the NV20/GeForce 3.

Hopefully Xbox 2 will have very fast performance for VS/PS 2.0 and 3.0
(DX9) - as well as having shaders 4.0 thanks to it being a DX10
machine, much like you said in your post.

Framebuffer integrated with R500 is good idea because in dx10
framebuffer is much more written and read from than in previous dxs.
Also part of integrated memory can hold textures and geometry which will
improve performance of R500 and be kinder towards using memory bandwidth
at same time. How R500 will be tweaked I don't know.

Dreamcast and Gamecube both had very efficient single CPUs for their
day. I think Xbox2 will have a strong single CPU chip, with the
possibility of 2 cores on the one chip.

I agree. Both consoles are fine examples of efficient designs.

 

[bariole]

How do you feel about the probability that Xbox2 will be hacked
so we can use them as cheap yet very powerful computers? Sort
of like with Xbox now, but much more power!

I belive that customer can do with product what ever it wants. Burnt it,
thrash it, spit on or take it apart and find new use for it. Moding is
legal from my point of view and also same from point of view of italian
courts.

However majority of modded xboxs do have illegal bioses in them and they
are used for illegal playing. This is wrong.

Howere if xbox next will be hacked in a way that it will be real
computer (not just linux to tv crap which is xbox now) I will do it as
fast as I can.

 

[Bao H. Lammy]

I belive that customer can do with product what ever it wants. Burnt it,
thrash it, spit on or take it apart and find new use for it. Moding is
legal from my point of view and also same from point of view of italian
courts.
However majority of modded xboxs do have illegal bioses in them and they
are used for illegal playing. This is wrong.

I agree, though I wouldn't consider backing up games I own
to the hard drive so they load faster, keep the wear on the
optical drive to a minimum, the discs better-protected, etc.,
as illegal playing -- though Microsoft might.

Howere if xbox next will be hacked in a way that it will be real
computer (not just linux to tv crap which is xbox now) I will do it as
fast as I can.

Exactly. Think of all that power for such little money, assuming
that it will be priced like consoles are priced, and no reason
to think it won't be. In fact, it has to be priced low or else it
will surely fail.

Maybe all that power will attract more intense hacking so we
can get more use out of it. I can't wait.

 

[bariole]

I agree, though I wouldn't consider backing up games I own
to the hard drive so they load faster, keep the wear on the
optical drive to a minimum, the discs better-protected, etc.,
as illegal playing -- though Microsoft might.

That is illegal because one needs to use illegal software to do that
(xbox's hacked bios). It is wrong thing to do. Software is not like
hardware. Software is 100% knowledge and intellectual work it doesn't
belong to one who bought a cd with software on it.

However if somebody wrights bios which can boot xbox's games and that
bios is not related to MS's it would be OK to do such things from my
point of view. But even then it would be mostly used for illegal
actions.

Currently I am not concern with this because I am can get any game fully
legal and for free. Ideal isn't it? Unfortunately I don't play much.
During last year I accumulated maybe about 150 hours of playing on my
xbox.

Running Linux on current xbox can be done without breaking any law.
However actual use of that Linux is limited.

 

[michael]

Wait, what? I'm pretty sure the PS2 and Cube are both
little-endian as well "despite" being RISC.

PS2, Xbox, PC are little endian

Cube is big endian.

 

[Tony Hill]

Yes but DirectX never existed on the Mac or it's architechture, part of
the reason why some games took so long to port. Again iirc there is a
comapny that has very recently done something with making the DirectX
code more transportable onto the Mac.

Who gives a shit if DirectX exists for Mac or not! The XBox2 will
definitely NOT be running MacOS! Microsoft will be porting some form
of Windows to the PPC/Xbox2 platform. I believe WinCE already runs on
PPC (or at least it did at one time) and even WinNT was available for
PPC way back in the day.

Macs have absolutely NOTHING to do with the console, nadda, zipo,
zilch! It'll be a Windows box, it will support the Win32 API and
DirectX.

For me the rumour that Xbox2 will support OpenGL is much more exciting.

Why in the hell would Microsoft want to support OpenGL?! They make
DirectX, they'll use DirectX.

At last MS may finally support an open standard and the use of OpenGL
would tie in with the fact that Apple (and hence the IBM chips) has a
very good adherence to the OpenGL standard as testified by Cormack

What in the hell are you talking about?! OpenGL is almost entirely
handled by the video drivers, and what isn't handled by the video
drivers is handled by the operating system. The processor play no
part here!

Just because the console might use PowerPC processor that doesn't make
it in any way shape or form a Mac! Hell, a bunch of (all of?) Cisco's
routers use PowerPC processors, but they sure as hell aren't Macs!
Macs run MacOS on PowerPC chips, Cisco runs IOS on PowerPC chips, IBM
runs AIX and Linux on PowerPC chips, and Microsoft will run Windows
(of form or another) on PowerPC chips.