Xbox 360 question

S

SiDiuS

Weaksauce
Joined
Mar 6, 2003
Messages
120
Ok so they say the new xbox 360 is supposed to be running 3 symmetrical cores at 3.2 GHZ each which are custom IBM POwerPC based CPU's, which will do 1 teraflop of data a sec.
http://www.xbox.com/en-US/xbox360/factsheet.htm

And it's selling for 350 dollars lol, wtf kind of cpu's are those. Are we going to see half life 2 graphics or better on the new xbox? And this is kind of a weird question, but what kind of setup (graphics, cpu, memory ect) would it take to run the same graphics as the new xbox?
 
im pretty sure the PowerPC cores are the same one's we find in G5's.

Id also like to note that they use a form of watercooling in the xbx360 :D

edit: apparentally the Cell processor for the ps3 can do 2 terraflops per second
 
Yeap and when the ps2 game out it was supposed to revolutionize gaming graphics....

ALl this stuff is on paper. It's not actuall performance yet. Believe it when you see it.
 
http://forums.macrumors.com/showpost.php?p=1455283&postcount=192
Hodgjy of Macrumors said:
Ok, everyone needs to chill a little bit.

From what I've read here, and elsewhere on the rumor mills, this is what I've concluded:

1) The processor is not a G5.
2) The processor has similar characteristics to the power core, but that's it.
3) It has a very reduced instruction code--specific to the regular needs of the Xbox.
4) It only calculates in-order operations.
5) Because of #3 and #4, it is able to bump up the speeds.
6) High clock speeds does not mean more performance.
7) The cpu is designed for gaming graphics. It won't run spreadsheets or Pagemaker, or Filemaker as well as a real G5.
8) Apple and Steve Jobs did not get shafted by IBM. The cpu is "custom," designed for the Xbox, and it's highly stripped down. I'm sure IBM is hard at work making improved "true" G5s for Apple and others to use.

What does this mean for Mac users?
1) It's not a G5. The current G5 is a better processor--more versatile and powerful. I'm sure IBM has the next gen G5s in the works.
2) It won't run Linux or OS X worth a crap because it has such a reduced instruction set and no out-of-order instructions. To even run Linux or OS X, you'll probably have to use an elaborate emulator, which will butcher performance even more. Even if some savy programmer could port a native version of OS X to the XBox cpu, it still won't run anywhere as good as on a "true" G5.
3) The 3.2 Ghz speed doesn't necessarily mean overall performance. It's a stripped out chip designed for gaming.
Click to expand...
 
Still most of what Sony showed was CG, and I would not put it past microsoft that the Gotham racing 3 demo was also CG.

If it is not CG, then Killzone is amazing! However, I just can't comprehend the PS3 being that great of a leap. Maybe the PS5 or 6....

XBox 360 looks good also, but more of a home integration machine than a gaming only console. Hopefully the xbox live addition will be even better than now.
 
Calis said:
im pretty sure the PowerPC cores are the same one's we find in G5's.

Id also like to note that they use a form of watercooling in the xbx360 :D

edit: apparentally the Cell processor for the ps3 can do 2 terraflops per second
Click to expand...
they use heat pipes.
 
the 360 and PS3 both have around 300gflops of CPU power. They just added the GPU power(700gflop and 1.8tflop) to the numbers. :cool:
 
Last I heard, these numbers are just for FP calculations. I'd like to see what it can do in some integer benchmarking...
 
first of the post from the mac guy is waaayyyy off.
the xbox 360 cpu is not a stripped down g5 or pwer core.
its a power 4/5 derivitive as it would be cheaper to re-engineer a multi core cpu than build one from scratch out of a single core cpu such as g5. and the g5 and power 5 processors are not cisc based but risc cpu's with simd floating point registers and operational pathways tacked on.

there is no "stripping" down a risc cpu it already is a stripped down cisc architechture and just re-works code/data internally through several specialized/stripped down areas of the cpu to acheive the same result as a more complex instruction set would do in one pass. also it does have out of order execution as it is a pre-requisite of risc and hence g5 and power 5 cpu's method of working. you cannot do risc without oop as it takes an instruction and starts working on it and while that is running through it grabs the next instruction it can fit through a different section of the cpu to be worked on while the first one is still in the "pipe". this is how a less complex cpu can acheive better results than a more dedicated instruction handling cpu. so his surmising is all crap and bad speculation.

my surmise

1. xbox360 is based on power 5 architechture instead of power 4 as it will allow ibm to test yields on their next gen server part on microsoft's dime and xbox360 won't use all the features/areas of the cpu so they can optimize the new cpu. if a non-neccesary to xbox piece fails they just sever ties to broken areas and still attain high enough yields to make it a worthwhile test run and also see how high they can crank the different areas of the power 5 architechture and what they need to tweak to achieve full yield for the ibm roll out.

2. xbox 360 is not a mac. sorry kyle but you editorialized a bit too [H]ard on that one point. it basicaly is mac "like" and could compile mac code and you could compile xbox code on a mac but the legality of microsoft owning xbox 360 hardware and usage of hardware in each eula will preclude osx fom being ported to xbox 360 as well as xbox 360 games from working correctly on a mac without the emulator/dev kit license. plus the hardware is specific and the gpu is specific with free antialiasing so for starters no anti aliasing as the gpu does it without being told to. so all xbox code will be missing anti aliasing on a mac. not to mention no boot from hard drive or optical disc, system bios will contain the only os allowed to boot from. there will be no xbox drivers for mac. microsoft will protect those drivers and the hardware with LARGE lawsuits directed at anyone who tries. no more chipping the box as it will all be owned lock stock and barrell by microsoft this time and not be off the shelf parts. there is still the possibilty of osx running in a very generic video mode and put together by clever hackers but watch and see how microsoft defends unathorized use of it's proprietary hardware and the eula that comes with every xbox 360. they wanted to own the hardware this time for a reason. that reason is they don't want chipped xbox360s out in the world as they are selling them at a loss.
 
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