Xbox 2 specs leak

Posted:
in Future Apple Hardware edited January 2014
http://theinquirer.org/?article=13928

http://theregister.co.uk/content/54/35265.html



see for your self, just read it. This maybe coming our way eventually.
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Comments

  • Reply 1 of 120
    Wow. Those specs look amazing. Three 976 G5s? Each dual core?







    Those specs blow the current G5 right out of the water.



    I'm guessing the single core 976 is the chip that takes the G5 to 3 gig this year. (Not called the '980' then?)



    I guess it will go dual core next year?



    It's kind of revealed Apple's hand in the cpu arena over the next year or so...



    All of a sudden, waiting for Rev B 970fx G5s doesn't sound so cool.



    If Apple could release a Mac under 1K with specs like that? They'd sell 10 million of them!



    Crikey, after all those years stuck on the G4? All of a sudden, Mac cpu power is going to go through the roof...



    Lemon Bon Bon
  • Reply 2 of 120
    smirclesmircle Posts: 1,035member
    Hmm three PPC 97x going into this console? Sounds a wee bit pricy to me, as the 976 mentioned is said to be a dual-core chip Apple would market as the G6. I mean, even with the reduction to 65nm, this thing is going to cost...



    Nevertheless, if true, this is great news for Apple, since IBM can spread the money they invest into the 97x family much better. Makes me wonder what kind of MS-only features in the XBox CPU will be withheld from the Macs. And how Apple marketing is going to explain that they are selling Dual-G6 Towers for $2000 containing one less CPU than MS's $199 console
  • Reply 3 of 120
    I like this quote:



    "Internally, Microsoft has begun developing game prototypes, and it is using G5 systems to do so."



  • Reply 4 of 120
    Quote:

    Originally posted by Ensign Pulver

    I like this quote:



    "Internally, Microsoft has begun developing game prototypes, and it is using G5 systems to do so."







    These games, I'm sure, will be very, very difficult to emulate on the PC side for a decade.



    Shame there aren't many emulator programmers on the Mac to experiment emulating consoles that have very similar instruction sets as G3/G4/G5s (ie Gecko in the GameCube).



    Ports of these games will probably be easier to do (well, the MS games won't be easier to do because MS won't ever allow their games to be ported off their console) and, god forbid, have G5 specific optimizations that will help get much better performance out of them than ever before.



    Who knows though...I haven't seen many GameCube games come our way so why would Xbox2 games be any different.
  • Reply 5 of 120
    jlljll Posts: 2,713member
    Perhaps G5s MS bought a couple of months back were for their Xbox2 development team?



  • Reply 6 of 120
    Quote:

    Originally posted by Smircle

    Hmm three PPC 97x going into this console? Sounds a wee bit pricy to me...



    True but the original Xbox cost almost $400 to make and still sold for under $200. MS told its shareholders that it expected to lose a billion dollars...that's billion with a 'b'...in the first two years. Of course their plan is to get people off other gaming platforms and dominate that market the same way they do with PCs. Only MS has the resources -- and the complete lack of ethics -- to do this.
  • Reply 7 of 120
    tak1108tak1108 Posts: 222member
    I say bogus.



    why would a GAME console need 3 processors? let alone 3 dual core processors?



    that's like people saying there are 16 CPU powermacs coming out! It's not going to happen.



    I say it will get 1 processor. It will have to come with a Hard drive, and probably contain some DVR functions as well. It has to offer some serious improvements such as DVR, HDTV, etc if they are not going to be backwords compatible.



    on the other hand, nintendo is also not backwards compatible, so maybe it won't be such a bad deal. But if the choice is to get a PS3 that will play all of my PS, PS2, and PS3 games, or an XBox 2 that will only play new games, I'll be sticking with Sony.



    On the other hand, maybe IBM in a meeting said the following



    MS "What is Sony using in their PS3?"



    IBM "Cell technology chip"



    MS "We want those in our Xbox."



    IBM "Can't do that. They will only go into the PS3"



    MS "Well... What do you have that would be equivalent"



    IBM "to get the same power, you would need 3 or 4 of these top of the line 65nm G5s."



    MS "Great! We'll take 3 for each Xbox!"



    Xbox 2 will be the size of the current G5 tower!
  • Reply 8 of 120
    a_greera_greer Posts: 4,594member
    i beleve these specs ... and i also beleive that santa will bring me one and the tooth farry will give me 1000$ for games and the eastre bunny is due to lay tiffany cuff-links any minute now
  • Reply 9 of 120
    eugeneeugene Posts: 8,254member
    The Mercury News is San Jose's legit newspaper. The Register seems to be embellishing the actual leak with fabricated details as usual. If XBox 2 PPC is for real, then what would be the point of the using x86-64 or IA-64 as a development platform? How far off would Windows XP Pro 64-bit edition for PPC be?
  • Reply 10 of 120
    Quote:

    Originally posted by tak1108

    It will have to come with a Hard drive, and probably contain some DVR functions as well.



    For as long as I've known, the XBox 2 hasn't included a hard drive.
  • Reply 11 of 120
    Quote:

    Originally posted by Eugene

    The Mercury News is San Jose's legit newspaper. The Register seems to be embellishing the actual leak with fabricated details as usual. If XBox 2 PPC is for real, then what would be the point of the using x86-64 or IA-64 as a development platform? How far off would Windows XP Pro 64-bit edition for PPC be?



    Related Info....



    (1) MS now owns Virtual PC. By the time XBox2 comes out, they should have it tuned pretty well for the G5/G6. A 2 processor (doesn't anyone else find "3" odd?) XBox2 might do a decent job of emulating a PC. Not perfect, of course. Not good enough for games. But why do you need PC games when you can get XBox2 games? But maybe good enough for legacy apps.



    (2) MS has WebTV experience and is getting semi-serious about Media Stations as well.



    (3) MS has Windows NT 4 running on the PPC. Besides the pretty interface, there's not all that much different between NT4 and XP. Like Apple keeping OSX ready to run on X86 if it's ever needed, MS could be keeping XP ready to run on PPC if it's ever needed.



    Why purchase both a PC AND a game station AND a set-top box when you can get all three for one low price (low compared to the combined cost of all three). Only want the game station? Fine. Don't buy VPC or WindowsXP-PPC and save some cash. Don't need to emulate the old stuff, but still want Windows? Cool. Buy everything but VPC then.



    The only thing holding them back will be the DOJ, and they've got a couple years to figure that one out.
  • Reply 12 of 120
    If they manage to release it at >$150(not $149) and it has half of what they are touting, it'll probably knock nintendo and sony around quite a bit.



    Xbox wasn't very popular at first, but I think in the past few months it's really hiked up it's popularity, I haven't seen sales figures, but certainly they have ramped up the exposure/advertising, they seem to have found their niche with they(seemingly) excellent online service.



    While the Xbox was never going to dethrone sony, it has set up a huge market, allowing Xbox2 a lot more foot room.



    It's weird how these days so many people own multiple game systems, I remember back maybe 6-7 years we had a SNES, and that was like it, and that was a big deal! and I had some friends with SNES or Genesis, they never(or rarely) had both, it was almost taboo to have both.



    now a days though it seems that more and more people are getting PS2s AND gamecubes or Xboxes AND PS2s...etc.





    Either way, I never thought I'd say this, but the xbox2 sounds like it will be a pretty awesome console.
  • Reply 13 of 120
    Hmm... How much power would 3 dual cored chips need???
  • Reply 14 of 120
    wizard69wizard69 Posts: 13,377member
    Hey tak1108 see a differrent perspective below.





    Quote:

    Originally posted by tak1108

    I say bogus.



    why would a GAME console need 3 processors? let alone 3 dual core processors?







    Simple multiprocessing is the wave of the future. There is simply no way for the game developers to get the performance increases they need without adding additional compute resources.



    Look at it this way some PC games are now built to gain significant performance increases from SMP machines. This same advantage can be offered to a game console. The other relaity is that it will be cheaper to go with multiple CPU's running at a reasonable clock rate than to try to get a system that runs one cpu at 8GHz.



    Then there is cell which contrary to popular belief is nothing more than a massive SMP system. For MS to effectively compete against such systems it has no choice but to go with SMP machinery.



    Finally I'm not a gamer; but I do have to wonder why anyone would complain about more performance in a game box. PC's certainly are far from performing at an acceptable level, considering gaming is even more demanding I can't see where any rational gamer would object to more power.

    Quote:



    that's like people saying there are 16 CPU powermacs coming out! It's not going to happen.



    Well again I have to disagree, SMP is the future (near future anyways) PC manufactures have no other recourse to meet the demands of software. Now we may not see 16 CPU PowerMacs this year but there is a very real possibility of seeing machines handling 4 thread of execution by the end of the year. OK maybe just inside next year.



    The fact remains that IBM has already anounced that it will be supporting its version of SMT in future processors. That and the relaity that dual core PPC processors are a very real posibility at 90 nm much less 65 nm, the thought of having 8 threads of execution running on a PowerMac with in a year or so becomes a possibility.



    Before you say we don't need it I'd have to say sit back and cool off a bit. How the current software base would make use of all those threads of execution is a toss up. Some packages would certainly take advantage of the resources, others would not. You can bet your bottom dollar though that software will be written quickly to take advantage of that capability. Actually I see Java as taking on a new significance in the face of easily accessible multiprocessing.

    Quote:



    I say it will get 1 processor. It will have to come with a Hard drive, and probably contain some DVR functions as well. It has to offer some serious improvements such as DVR, HDTV, etc if they are not going to be backwords compatible.



    Again I'm not a gamer but I'd have to believe that MS has some capability to provide backwards compatability. Emulating an old i86 processor is a piece of cake these days.

    Quote:



    on the other hand, nintendo is also not backwards compatible, so maybe it won't be such a bad deal. But if the choice is to get a PS3 that will play all of my PS, PS2, and PS3 games, or an XBox 2 that will only play new games, I'll be sticking with Sony.



    Well if MS was serious about the market they would add a compatability mode for PS2 also.

    Quote:



    On the other hand, maybe IBM in a meeting said the following



    MS "What is Sony using in their PS3?"



    IBM "Cell technology chip"



    MS "We want those in our Xbox."



    IBM "Can't do that. They will only go into the PS3"



    MS "Well... What do you have that would be equivalent"



    IBM "to get the same power, you would need 3 or 4 of these top of the line 65nm G5s."



    MS "Great! We'll take 3 for each Xbox!"



    Yep I could certainly see that conversation taking place.

    Quote:



    Xbox 2 will be the size of the current G5 tower!



    This is where things get interesting, IBM has demonstrated significant power usage improvements in the 90 nm 970, if they can extend this then all will be fine at 65 nm. I would not expect that the PPC chips if used would be running at full speed anyways. Maybe 2 GHz per chip, maybe a bit less depending on power usage. Remember by that time 2GHz will be considered slow by PC standards.

    Quote:





  • Reply 15 of 120
    wizard69wizard69 Posts: 13,377member
    An intersting question indeed. If IBM can continue their rahter dramatic power level drops then I can see such a processor running in the 10 to 15 watt range at maybe 1.5 GHz. It is a given that MS will not be using the fastest chips available, the pricing structure does not support this. So looking at it from this perspective they will probally look for a procesor that meets thermal limits more than clock rate desires.



    The key here is that at 65 nm and with a little good luck for IBM nad their new process we may be seeing 2GHz in a thermally cool processor. Maybe that is a stretch, as I've suggested I don't expect MS to go top of the line anyways as the gameing environement can make much better use of SMP than it is today.



    Dave







    Quote:

    Originally posted by tfworld

    Hmm... How much power would 3 dual cored chips need???



  • Reply 16 of 120
    vinney57vinney57 Posts: 1,162member
    Er...yeh, whatever...now back to Janet Jackson....8)
  • Reply 17 of 120
    powerdocpowerdoc Posts: 8,123member
    Quote:

    Originally posted by Lemon Bon Bon

    Wow. Those specs look amazing. Three 976 G5s? Each dual core?







    Those specs blow the current G5 right out of the water.



    I'm guessing the single core 976 is the chip that takes the G5 to 3 gig this year. (Not called the '980' then?)



    I guess it will go dual core next year?



    It's kind of revealed Apple's hand in the cpu arena over the next year or so...



    All of a sudden, waiting for Rev B 970fx G5s doesn't sound so cool.



    If Apple could release a Mac under 1K with specs like that? They'd sell 10 million of them!



    Crikey, after all those years stuck on the G4? All of a sudden, Mac cpu power is going to go through the roof...



    Lemon Bon Bon




    Great news : i will buy one, and remove the three CPU : very nice and cheap upgrade for my G5
  • Reply 18 of 120
    franckfranck Posts: 135member
    Quote:

    Originally posted by wizard69



    Remember by that time 2GHz will be considered slow by PC standards.



    2GHz is considered slow for a few months in the PC world.
  • Reply 19 of 120
    jcgjcg Posts: 777member
    Quote:

    Originally posted by tak1108

    I say bogus.



    why would a GAME console need 3 processors? let alone 3 dual core processors?



    that's like people saying there are 16 CPU powermacs coming out! It's not going to happen.




    Games typically have many computing tasks going on that could easily benefit from MP systems. From computing the physics of the thousand rounds of ammo flying across the scene, to the behavioral computing for the AI units of each "enemy" in and out of the scene, as well as any other game relate computing task including taking care of user interaction.



    As for desktops, well if the Hub is fully realized then there could be many calls to the central computer from any and every node of the hub at any one time. MP systems are better able to handle this type of multi tasking than SP computers.
  • Reply 20 of 120
    rokrok Posts: 3,519member
    Quote:

    Originally posted by JCG

    As for desktops, well if the Hub is fully realized then there could be many calls to the central computer from any and every node of the hub at any one time. MP systems are better able to handle this type of multi tasking than SP computers.



    so basically what you're saying here is that a "mini-cluster" central computing hub could become as necessary as a water heater?
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