Xbox 360: equivalent video card would be?

[pigdos]

What video card would the Xbox 360 video hardware be equivalent to (from a
performance standpoint)? Why is the incredible lack of texture memory on the
Xbox 360 not an issue?

 

[John Lewis]

What video card would the Xbox 360 video hardware be equivalent to (from a
performance standpoint)? Why is the incredible lack of texture memory on the
Xbox 360 not an issue?

X1800XL, pegged at 1280x720x60Hz, with all AA/aniso turned on would be

the closest.

John Lewis

 

[abc]

Possibly because when you watch TV you sit further away then you do from a
PC monitor, so chances are you don't notice the textures, (The further you
are away from the screen the less the resolution matters), so not much point
in developers putting them in, so no need for much texture memory.

 

[pigdos]

John, are you serious? I did want a serious answer. Even if I google the
specs on an Xbox 360 chances are those would be marketing specs. The
marketing specs on the Xbox 360 make it seem like a $600.00 supercomputer. I
think the only reason COD runs well on the 360 is that the game was designed
to the 360's strengths/weaknesses. I'd love to see them try to port FEAR,
Far Cry or Battlefield2 to the 360. I'd bet hard money they would all run
like crap.

--
Doug

What video card would the Xbox 360 video hardware be equivalent to (from a
performance standpoint)? Why is the incredible lack of texture memory on
the
Xbox 360 not an issue?

X1800XL, pegged at 1280x720x60Hz, with all AA/aniso turned on would be

the closest.

John Lewis

 

[Luke Curtis]

John, are you serious? I did want a serious answer. Even if I google the
specs on an Xbox 360 chances are those would be marketing specs. The
marketing specs on the Xbox 360 make it seem like a $600.00 supercomputer. I
think the only reason COD runs well on the 360 is that the game was designed
to the 360's strengths/weaknesses. I'd love to see them try to port FEAR,
Far Cry or Battlefield2 to the 360. I'd bet hard money they would all run
like crap.

Battlefield 2 is coming in a couple of months as Battlefield: Modern
Combat and the pictures I've seen make it look better than the PC
version, and Far Cry Instincts looks very good on the XBox 1, let
alone the 360....

(for the record I have the PC versions of both games and will probably
get the 360 version of BF:MC for the live play)

 

[Benjamin Gawert]

What video card would the Xbox 360 video hardware be equivalent to (from a
performance standpoint)?

The XBox uses a modified X700 core. Due to some of the modifications
comparing it with a generic PC gfx card is quite difficult, but it
should be around X700-X800 somewhere...

Why is the incredible lack of texture memory on the
Xbox 360 not an issue?

Because lower texture resolution usually isn't noticeable even on high
end TV sets...

Benjamin

 

[John Lewis]

John, are you serious? I did want a serious answer. Even if I google the
specs on an Xbox 360 chances are those would be marketing specs. The
marketing specs on the Xbox 360 make it seem like a $600.00 supercomputer. I
think the only reason COD runs well on the 360 is that the game was designed
to the 360's strengths/weaknesses. I'd love to see them try to port FEAR,
Far Cry or Battlefield2 to the 360. I'd bet hard money they would all run
like crap.

I was being kind.

Benjamin suggested X700 or X800 ( again pegged at 1280x720x60 ). That
is a lot nearer the mark. Surprising what a bunch of marketing BS
combined with long-lag but bright wide-screen LCD monitors in the the
Xbox360 booths can do for Joe Blow's perceptions. The lag hides the
60Hz flicker very successfully. And the initial novelty of wide-screen
gaming diverts from a truly-critical look at the graphics quality.

John Lewis

 

[pigdos]

I've noticed getting any sort of hard facts about anything about the Xbox
360 is impossible. All I can find is marketing spin. The GPU is only running
at 500Mhz right? It would seem to me that the 700Mhz DDR memory would be
stalled out waiting on that GPU (at least after the first line is fetched).

What I'd really like to see is some SpecINT and SpecFP benchmarks on the
Xbox 360 CPU. If it's based on the PowerPC architecture (and not the IBM
Power5 architecture) it would probably be surprisingly slow. Does anyone
know if it's based on the PowerPC or Power5 architecture? The Power5
architecture is certainly impressive (at least in SpecINT and SpecFP
benchmarks), but there are still no SpecFP or SpecINT benchmarks for the
Athlon 64 X2. At least that I could find.

 

[Benjamin Gawert]

Benjamin suggested X700 or X800 ( again pegged at 1280x720x60 ). That
is a lot nearer the mark.

Well, that's basically what's inside. ATI just used a cheap COTS core
and did some modifications for the different requirements of a game
console compared to a gaming PC...

Surprising what a bunch of marketing BS
combined with long-lag but bright wide-screen LCD monitors in the the
Xbox360 booths can do for Joe Blow's perceptions. The lag hides the
60Hz flicker very successfully. And the initial novelty of wide-screen
gaming diverts from a truly-critical look at the graphics quality.

But You know, every console _always_ has been that super-duper small and
cheap supercomputer that kicks every highend PCs ass because it has that
great cpu and gfx power from other dimension ;-) Of course, every
console failed to deliver the performance, at least if you had a
somewhat objective look on it...

The funny thing is that the naive folks always believed the hype that
has been produced around every console in the past. Of course it's also
the case with the XBox360, and it will be the case with the PS3...

Benjamin

 

[Benjamin Gawert]

I've noticed getting any sort of hard facts about anything about the Xbox
360 is impossible.

Sure, since it would harm marketing.

All I can find is marketing spin. The GPU is only running
at 500Mhz right? It would seem to me that the 700Mhz DDR memory would be
stalled out waiting on that GPU (at least after the first line is fetched).

What I'd really like to see is some SpecINT and SpecFP benchmarks on the
Xbox 360 CPU. If it's based on the PowerPC architecture (and not the IBM
Power5 architecture)

The XBOx360 uses a modified PowerPC with three cores. It's not a generic
PowerPC but a special processor based on PowerPC technology. To push it
up to 3.2Ghz IBM had to make several modifications...

it would probably be surprisingly slow.

Nope, it's amazingly fast. However, it is only amazingly fast at a
handful of operations (like other highly specialized processors which
are optimized for a certain task and dog slow in everything else like
the ones in other game consoles). A normal PowerPC is probably slower
when performing the same operations, but on the other side is much more
versatile...

Does anyone
know if it's based on the PowerPC or Power5 architecture?

It's a PowerPC. POWER5 doesn't reach 3.2Ghz (and probably never will)...

Other interesting things are the limitations the XBox360 has and which
no-one seems to think of. For example the ultra-fast (256GByte/s) 10MB
eDRAM inside the gfx processor. This is barely enough for max. 2xAA at
720p (1280x720), forget about AA at 1080i (1920x1080). Higher AA
settings would require swapping into the GDDR3 main memory. Sadly, the
memory performance of this GDDR3 RAM is only 22,4GB/s (around the
performance of midrange gfx cards, i.e. a 6800GT has higher memory
performance) which would mean that swapping means a heavy bottleneck.

Benjamin

 

[pigdos]

How do you know it's "amazingly fast"? What does it have the fastest NOP
execution unit? The PowerPC architecture has long ago given up the title
crown of fastest CPU in any Spec benchmark. There are plenty of x86 CPU's
that are faster than the fastest PowerPC CPU's ever made. Note that this is
not the Power5 architecture. The lack of speculative execution means more
bus contention for the three cores as well (relative to any x86 multi-core
CPU).

On another note, does the video hardware in the 360 support things like
anisotropic filtering or geometry instancing?

 

[Benjamin Gawert]

How do you know it's "amazingly fast"? What does it have the fastest NOP
execution unit? The PowerPC architecture has long ago given up the title
crown of fastest CPU in any Spec benchmark. There are plenty of x86 CPU's
that are faster than the fastest PowerPC CPU's ever made. Note that this is
not the Power5 architecture. The lack of speculative execution means more
bus contention for the three cores as well (relative to any x86 multi-core
CPU).

Seems there is a lot of chaos in your brain ;-) First, the cpus usually
found in consoles have not much in common with the cpus found in "real"
computers. So comparing SPEC numbers of POWER5 and generic PowerPC
processors simply is plain stupid here. The processors found in consoles
usually are derivates of generic CPUs found in PCs, Macs or
Workstations, but they have been heavily modified to fit the task of a
game console. These processors are more like a DSP which also is
superfast on a handful of operations but slow in everything else (or
simply incapable of doing them). The XBox360 is a supercomputer because
MS measured the cpu performance in single precision while real
supercomputers do that in double precision. Just reading numbers and
comparing them is like comparing apples to oranges....

On another note, does the video hardware in the 360 support things like
anisotropic filtering or geometry instancing?

Yes, as does the Radeon X700...

Benjamin