DescentBB

Holy Sweet Mother of Chribt!

http://www.xbitlabs.com/news/mmedia/dis ... 30133.html

I wonder how long after release it'll be before it get's linuxified? Call me Mr. Red Hat!

Blah.

Here are the highlights I picked up:

Good:
- 3x3.5GHz custom IBM PowerPC processors, ea with 32 KB of independent L2 cache and 1 MB of shared L2 cache. For some reason each processor can only run two threads at a time, but that's okay, since most games are single-threaded anyway. Now there is a distinct advantage to double- or triple-threading the game engine.
- 500 MHz custom ATI Graphics card w/ 256 MB of texture RAM and built-in instructions for alpha blending and 4x FSAA, as well as support for High Level Shader Language model 3 and a pixel fillrate of 4 gigapixels/sec (without anti-aliasing, 16 gigasamples/sec with FSAA) and a vertex processing rate of 500 million+ vertices/sec.
- Built-in support for 720p (HDTV), as well as 1080i! Woohoo!
- 256 MB of RAM, with 22.4 GB/sec of bandwidth total (shared between the main RAM, which is on the GPU, and the FSB on the CPU).
- The USB 2.0 ports are standard shape and size, unlike on the Xbox where they were enlarged so that only controllers and other MS-approved hardware would fit.
- Goodbye black and white, hello buttons that are actually accessible!
- The console will be smaller than the Xbox.

The Bad:
- No Wi-Fi built in. Was hoping for the MS answer to the Wavebird here.
- Only 10/100-BaseT networking. Gigabit Ethernet would have been a very welcome addition here.
- Probably not going to have a hard drive. IMO this was the single strongest selling point of the original Xbox. Ripping tracks and playing them back in Tony Hawk 3 or Project Gotham 2 is so much more enjoyable than listening to the schlock that comes with the game.

The Weird:
- Ability to communicate with cameras and stuff.
- Memory units connect to the console, not the controller.

DCrazy wrote:The Weird:
- Memory units connect to the console, not the controller.

Why is that weird? The PS1 and PS2 both do the same thing, and doesn't the GameCube? The N64 and Dreamcast were the only systems I know of that attached memory cards to controllers.

As nice as it sounds, I'm a Sony man myself. I try not to support the Evil Empire .

Forgive me for skimming, but how much is this beast gonna cost?! 3 processors, a beefy vid card, and 256mb RAM aint gonna be cheap.

Technically, its not 3 processors, its a triple die processor (singular) for a total of 10.5Ghz (3.5ghz each die) - And I think they should put at least a 512megs of ram in it, I mean, why not? Hell, put a gig in the sucker. It all takes up the same space and the thing is going to cost a fortune anyway, so they might as well beef it up.

the real question is how much money MS is willing to lose to get thise beast to market.

damn thats badass.

Speaking from the standpoint of game development, more RAM is always welcome. Everyday I do battle with the PlayStation 2's paltry 32MB of RAM. 256MB seems like a painful bottleneck for tomorrow's applications.

They should up it to 512 MB...

or provide an easy method of adding more memory.

Yay for paging to the flash card!

La-De-Frickin-Dah

DCrazy wrote:Here are the highlights I picked up:

The Bad:
- No Wi-Fi built in. Was hoping for the MS answer to the Wavebird here.
- Only 10/100-BaseT networking. Gigabit Ethernet would have been a very welcome addition here.

The Weird:
- Memory units connect to the console, not the controller.

Umm, why would anyone want to connect to their controller with WiFi? The last thing you need is your fricken game controllers causing problems with your wireless network. I can see it now, a tiny screen on your controller so you can enter the SSID and a 128bit HEX WEP key, ugh. Bluetooth would be a much better option for controllers. If they throw a class 1 transmitter in there the range is 100m.

Only 10/100 Ethernet? Good lord why does the thing need gigabit? The only thing the network card is good for is playing on Xbox live, and that requires a Broadband connection that is, at max, 5 mbps. That leave 995mbps of that connection completely wasted. Sounds pretty ridiculas to me.

Of course the memory cards should be into the Xbox, that way you can use wireless controllers and still plug in a memory card.

512 MB of RAM would be very welcome, especially since there's no HDD.

Which is a major flaw IMO. I'd be happy with a 2GB HDD. I didn't need the 8GB in the original Xbox, but the lack of internal HDD space pisses me off. I don't want to buy a memory card.

Arch, the WEP keys and stuff would be done on the Xbox like all other configuration. But yeah, RF would be simpler.

I dunno about you, but I find Halo LAN parties very fun. We've hit bandwidth capacity with 8 people (4 on each Xbox). Xbox Live is only one of two things that can be done with the network adapter.

Never thought about wireless controllers + memory cards.

DCrazy wrote:Here are the highlights I picked up:

Good:
- Built-in support for 720p (HDTV), as well as 1080i! Woohoo!

I forgot to mention this one in my last post. The current Xbox already has this, so I wouldn't call this a new feature.

It has support for 1080i? Damn... missed that one then.

Arch wrote: Only 10/100 Ethernet? Good lord why does the thing need gigabit? The only thing the network card is good for is playing on Xbox live, and that requires a Broadband connection that is, at max, 5 mbps. That leave 995mbps of that connection completely wasted. Sounds pretty ridiculas to me.

i agree y would u need gigabit cause i dont see aney DSL/Cable modems even needing some thang like that, hell putting 100 on thoes modems is kinda of a wast.

What about LAN? (see above)

man, have any of you guys seen XBox bandwidth consumption over ethernet networks..........it barely breaks 10Mbit with 4 Units linked

DCrazy wrote:It has support for 1080i? Damn... missed that one then.

Yep it does, although not many games support it because going beyond 480P requires the developer to do more work to ensure that it runs smoothly. I think only a few games offer 1080i and they all pretty much suck.

Soul Caliber 2 supports 720p and looks hella sweet on my 32'' Sony HDTV.

Ace, one of the features of the Xbox 2 will apparently be communication with PCs and DVRs (TiVo-type devices or even WinXP Media Center Edition PCs) on your network. The gigabit bandwidth could come in handy for that.

Ill stick to my computer thank you.

One advantage that computers will always have over consoles is flexibility (mods, patch fixing, tweaking, and of course, the PC always catches up and goes beyond consoles soon enough). The chip on that Xbox is impressive, but not enough to make me switch my main gaming platform. And the ram is abysmal compared to that CPU, what were they thinking?

i wonder if those 3x 3.5GHz CPU's can be used in other devices

heh wit all this crap being put it in its gona be twice as big as it was before.

Top Wop wrote:And the ram is abysmal compared to that CPU, what were they thinking?

Wow... thats a lot of memory without Windows running,..

Zero! wrote:heh wit all this crap being put it in its gona be twice as big as it was before.

Read the article. The Xbox 2 will be smaller than the Xbox.

DCrazy wrote:

Zero! wrote:heh wit all this crap being put it in its gona be twice as big as it was before.

Read the article. The Xbox 2 will be smaller than the Xbox.

So their shifting more size to the controllers then?

Even for LAN, why would you need gigabit Ethernet? Are you running 200-player servers from your console?