Xbox 720 Hardware guess from IGN

renixinq

Limp Gawd
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IGN is reporting the GPU will be roughly 6x more powerful than current hardware. And based on the 6670.

http://www.ign.com/articles/2012/01/24/xbox-720-will-be-six-times-as-powerful-as-current-gen

They also are calling for a 2013 release. If true I'm going to guess they're going roughly the route of the Wii with less than top of the line hardware. A 6670 can't even run current games at max settings on 1080p. Granted a lot of stuff can be optimized with a dedicated gaming unit but I'm still a little disappointed that we could be getting a roughly 3 year old architecture next year and not even a top of the line chip at that.
 
I don't get why people will think it will be "Xbox 720".

Playstation went from 1 to 2 to 3, but Microsoft skipped 359 numbers and went "SEE? 360 IS WAY BETTER THAN 3!"

They gotta slow that down. The next Xbox should be Xbox 361. They'll still be 357 numbers ahead of the PS4 without another drastic jump. Unless, of course, Sony makes a PS719 and forces Microsoft's hand.
 
6670?

Sure, but they'll probably cherry pick the good bits from the 7 series...

They might start focusing on cloud gaming down the line....
 
I don't get why people will think it will be "Xbox 720".

Playstation went from 1 to 2 to 3, but Microsoft skipped 359 numbers and went "SEE? 360 IS WAY BETTER THAN 3!"

They gotta slow that down. The next Xbox should be Xbox 361. They'll still be 357 numbers ahead of the PS4 without another drastic jump. Unless, of course, Sony makes a PS719 and forces Microsoft's hand.

Xbox 666
Actually it'll probably have live in the name somewhere.
"xbox live" ?

x-live!
 
I don't get why people will think it will be "Xbox 720".

Playstation went from 1 to 2 to 3, but Microsoft skipped 359 numbers and went "SEE? 360 IS WAY BETTER THAN 3!"

They gotta slow that down. The next Xbox should be Xbox 361. They'll still be 357 numbers ahead of the PS4 without another drastic jump. Unless, of course, Sony makes a PS719 and forces Microsoft's hand.


um obviously you missed the explination that was given early on by microsoft with the 360 name which has to do with the complete redesign of the console from the original xbox, thus the 360. and while i agree 720 probably won't be the next consoles name i have a feeling it will end up being xbox 1080 specifically to advertise the fact that the system runs and supports 1080p natively, its common sense marketing. the actual numbers have absolutely nothing to do with playstation and their using the playstation 1 2 3 or 4.


If true I'm going to guess they're going roughly the route of the Wii with less than top of the line hardware. A 6670 can't even run current games at max settings on 1080p. Granted a lot of stuff can be optimized with a dedicated gaming unit but I'm still a little disappointed that we could be getting a roughly 3 year old architecture next year and not even a top of the line chip at that.

there is a huge difference though between PC level graphics and console level graphics. if you really think the 6670 won't do that good, go look at BF3 on the 360 using a 7+ year old hybrid HD2000 series GPU. if that can play BF3, i'm pretty sure the 6670 will do just fine.
 
there is a huge difference though between PC level graphics and console level graphics. if you really think the 6670 won't do that good, go look at BF3 on the 360 using a 7+ year old hybrid HD2000 series GPU. if that can play BF3, i'm pretty sure the 6670 will do just fine.

Play the pc version of BF3 at VGA resolution and all settings on ultra low and it will look exactly like the console version
 
there is a huge difference though between PC level graphics and console level graphics. if you really think the 6670 won't do that good, go look at BF3 on the 360 using a 7+ year old hybrid HD2000 series GPU. if that can play BF3, i'm pretty sure the 6670 will do just fine.

But can it run at 1920x1080 with any reasonable level of graphics quality? In a PC, it struggles to do that, according to the couple of reviews I just flicked through, many current games even on low settings can't be run at 30fps on a 6670 at 1920x1080.

We know the 360 will run BF3 at shit settings at an uber low resolution... a 7000 series card of similar vintage to the 360 might be able to do that as well, has anyone tested it? :p

What we want to know is whether the new 6670 powered Xbox will run at 1920x1080.
 
6x the current hardware speed is incredibly slow, top end PCs are already about 20x faster than the consoles, too little too late for a 2012 release date much less a 2013 one.

They'll be lucky to get a lot of the older games running smoothly at 1080p much less any meaningful updates in graphics settings, if we're to see any DX11+ effects on the new consoles they're going to be back at running 720p or less.
 
6x the current hardware speed is incredibly slow, top end PCs are already about 20x faster than the consoles, too little too late for a 2012 release date much less a 2013 one.

They'll be lucky to get a lot of the older games running smoothly at 1080p much less any meaningful updates in graphics settings, if we're to see any DX11+ effects on the new consoles they're going to be back at running 720p or less.

even if it could play BF3 at 1080p from the get go, it certainly wont be ale to play bf4 at 1080p as no doubt DICE will up the eye candy yet again and consoles will struggle AGAIN, rinse repeat
 
6670 and 6x cpu power

Its going to be slower than a smartphone from 2014
 
there is a huge difference though between PC level graphics and console level graphics. if you really think the 6670 won't do that good, go look at BF3 on the 360 using a 7+ year old hybrid HD2000 series GPU. if that can play BF3, i'm pretty sure the 6670 will do just fine.

Well for sure the difference between the 6670 in a PC and a 6670 in a dedicated gaming console will be large. But, as is already pointed out, the difference between PC BF3 and 360 BF3 is HUGE! Don't get me wrong I think BF3 looks "good" on the 360. But it's not being rendered at 1080p, it's being upconverted. Additionally, it doesn't have half the eye candy as the PC and MOSTLY importantly the 360 is only running 24 players out there instead of 64.

I would like to see what a 6670 in my system would push BF3 to at 1080. I'd guess a mix of low and medium settings with no AA. I'm not going to make any decisions based on IGN's guess and definitely not before I see some games but I will say if next gen consoles can't offer at least a healthy bump in graphics and a HUGE bump in player caps in multiplayer games (chief complaint I have for consoles) I'll be sorely disappointed.

And seriously people, who cares what the name is. I put 720 because that's what IGN did. I could care less what they name it. From now on I'll just refer to it as Next-Box so I don't offend anyone.
 
If Microsoft is just rushing their next console, just to to have it out before Sony, I wonder what color would be their new "Red Ring of Death". Let's speculate on that heh.
 
It'll be purple.
Anyway, so that's just the GPU. What else is going to be in there? That all factors in too. More memory = higher texture resolution.
 
i agree that a 6670 isnt enough. remember that this isnt just for 2013. this 6670 will still be used for 9YEARS after that. you will be running a 6670 in 2022. thats absurd. in addition to the fact that this is 1080 we're talking about, which the 6670 cant handle on PCs and would probably barely handle on a console, they are also supposed to support 3d gaming, which means that it would have to be twice as powerful as if it was running regular 1080p. (unless of course they cut to 30fps for 3d, which is also ridiculous.) i was planning on buying the next gen of consoles because i finally got out of college and have a job and money, but man i think i'll just stick to PC gaming if this is how its gonna be. games are cheaper and better, cant beat that.
 
but man i think i'll just stick to PC gaming if this is how its gonna be. games are cheaper and better, cant beat that.

It's always been like that lol! PC gaming is becoming more viable by the minute. Even die hard console fanboys are starting to see the light. I know of 2 personally that have jumped ship to PC. Who can blame them? I sure as hell wouldn't want to stomach those piss poor graphics on a locked down platform..


I predict this next xbox (NextBox) will be more of the same. They'll focus on social media and kinect bullshit. Every page of their dashboard will be an advertising bombardment of overpriced services/media. I would say that it will be outdated by the time it arrives, but if these specs are true it's already outdated. Outdated before it's announced. That's a new one.
 
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Lens of Truth have some more info by way of fudzilla.

Another month goes by and another new “Next Xbox” rumor is swirling around. This report comes from Fudzilla who says the power behind the next Xbox will be a PowerPC CPU married to a modified ATI Southern Islands 7000 series GPU. The codename for the 32nm chip is Oban.

It seems now that recent speculation that the new main System on a Chip (SoC) for the Next Xbox (or Xbox 720, if you like) began production is apparently accurate; the SoC did indeed start production in late December of 2011. Sources tell us that the code name for the chip is Oban, and it is being produced by both IBM and Global Foundries for Microsoft.

If speculation is correct, which our sources believe it is, the power behind the next Xbox will be a PowerPC CPU that is married to an ATI Southern Islands GPU, or modified 7000 series. Continued rumors of an x86 compatible CPU seem to be bunk, just based on where the chip is being fab’d.
 
Hmm, i was expecting more than that. Hopefully some devs are going to bitch about it and they will beef it up some more before they lock the specs. Or perhaps they are going to bundle it with Kinect so they're trying to keep the costs as low as possible. We'll see.

What i would like to know is if they are even thinking about raising the number of players in MP games, or are we stuck playing maps designed for 24 players for the rest of our lives? Nobody ever mentions that...


*** So much about Avatar-like graphics huh? :p
 
That LoT rumors seems more reasonable.


A spin off 6670 would be a joke. It would mean MS is only trying to beat Nintendo and not even compete with Sony on the graphics front.

A 6670 next gen Xbox would probably have to be replaced within 4-5 years.
There is no chance such a weak system could go the distance.
 
It's always been like that lol! PC gaming is becoming more viable by the minute. Even die hard console fanboys are starting to see the light. I know of 2 personally that have jumped ship to PC. Who can blame them? I sure as hell wouldn't want to stomach those piss poor graphics on a locked down platform..


I predict this next xbox (NextBox) will be more of the same. They'll focus on social media and kinect bullshit. Every page of their dashboard will be a advertising bombardment of overpriced gay services/media. I would say that it will be outdated by the time it arrives, but if these specs are true it's already outdated. Outdated before it's announced. That's a new one.

well ive always been a pc user and always will be, but i was thinking about getting the next gen just because i have disposable income now and it would be nice to play a console online since i dont have any pc gaming friends. but yeah my standards just dont go that low.

one thing ive been wondering is will the next xbox be bluray? it only makes sense, but maybe they want backwards compatibility or are just too stubborn to admit defeat.
 
one thing ive been wondering is will the next xbox be bluray? it only makes sense, but maybe they want backwards compatibility or are just too stubborn to admit defeat.

I'd say there is a 99% chance it will have Blu-ray. DVD won't cut it.
HD-DVD is dead. It could use a proprietary BD like Wii-U, but I think that is unlikely too. If they want an all in one living room media/entertainment device, it will have to play BD movies.
 
When xbox 360 launched in 2005, the 1800XT variant was near the high end for PC graphics.

I'd hope the gpu performance of the 7000 series derivation they'll use would be comperable to the 7000 series mid-range part and be comperable to a Radeon 6950/6970.

If they stick with a chip similar to the 6670, that will be sadly lacking for graphics throughout the life of the console.
 
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I hear some talk(rumors) that the next xbox will not play "used" games. It seems that their next console will focus heavily on DRM. If this is true, forget about taking your games to a friends house, trading games, selling games. New games that you buy will forever be tied to your xbox. It will be somewhat like what steam is doing.
 
But isn't there something strange about that "raw graphical power 6 times that of xbox360" figure?

The HD6670 comes nowhere near that:

GFLOPS:
----------------
Xenos: 240
HD 6670: 768

Bandwidth:
----------------
Xenos: 32 GB/s
HD 6670: 64 GB/s

Texture Fillrate:
----------------
Xenos: 8 GT/s
HD 6670: 19,2 GT/s

Forgive me if I'm wrong, but I see only a 2.5x improvement every time, not 6x. If Xbox-next IS six times as fast however, it will most definitely NOT be based on a 6670, that's for sure.
 
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I hear some talk(rumors) that the next xbox will not play "used" games. It seems that their next console will focus heavily on DRM. If this is true, forget about taking your games to a friends house, trading games, selling games. New games that you buy will forever be tied to your xbox. It will be somewhat like what steam is doing.

I wouldn't be too surprised. Cloud gaming/computing is getting very mainstream now.

My assumption is something like this: Your games will tie to your MS live account like steam as you said. If you didn't register your game to your account, many features (like MP) will be disabled. Big publishers (EA) are starting this already with a paid reactivation for MP. Just a logical guess of course.

Now the console crowd can feel a bit of the PC squeeze :p
 
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Forgive me if I'm wrong, but I see only a 2.5x improvement every time, not 6x. If Xbox-next IS six times as fast however, it will most definitely NOT be based on a 6670, that's for sure.

It's marketing. You can't apply logic to it. This will only bring you pain.
 
When xbox 360 launched in 2005, the 1800XT variant was near the high end for PC graphics.

I'd hope the gpu performance of the 7000 series derivation they'll use would be comperable to the 7000 series mid-range part and be comperable to a Radeon 6950/6970.

If they stick with a chip similar to the 6670, that will be sadly lacking for graphics throughout the life of the console.

would be nice, but too cost prohibitive for a $300/400 console price point; especially due to ms working on an upgraded kinect to include in every next gen xbox. hope sony doesn't go the cheap route with the ps4 and goes with at least a 6850/7750 level gpu. 6950/7850 would be nicer still but highly unlikely. no reason for them not to if they launch the system up to a year after ms does, especially considering the cost of the included kinect 2 will come into play as well in pricing. be kinda funny and sad if all three console manufacturers use all similar cpu/gpu/ram configurations for the next gen consoles. guess we won't be seeing much of a leap in graphics on the pc either for many years to come if these specs are true.
 
http://www.kotaku.com.au/2012/01/so...-play-used-games-and-will-introduce-kinect-2/

But that disc detail could be far less impactful to the next generation of game consoles than the assertion I’ve heard from one reliable industry source that Microsoft intends to incorporate some sort of anti-used game system as part of their so-called Xbox 720.

It’s not clear if that means that the system wouldn’t play used games or how such a set-up would work. Obvious approaches — I’m theorizing here — like linking a copy of a game to a specific Xbox Live account could seemingly be foiled by used-game owners who would keep their system offline. My source wasn’t sure how Microsoft intended to implement any anti-used game system in the new machine.

Good way to piss of your user base and open yourself up to lawsuits which establish precedent that its lawful to mod your console to enable users to play used games.
 
Minus the awesome sales and being free.

This * 1,000!

I adore what Steam has done for PC gaming, and it's part of the reason I don't play consoles anymore. Simply put, I hate dealing with discs. They take up space, they get damaged and are useless, blegh. I'll take a big hard drive and a fast internet connection over disc based media any day.

However, the difference lies in the fact that Steam has competition. You can still buy PC games at B&M stores, as well as from competing download services. On a closed console platform, you don't have that luxury. You pay the price on XBL, or you don't play. This is the same reason the PSP Go failed, so I don't expect that to happen.

The most appealing option to me would be a blu-ray based system, but have EVERY title also available for download. CD-Keys for physical media (and the ability to tie them to your XBL account) would be great as well. I know that kills the second hand market, but I guess I don't really care about that. This would create a digital distribution environment that is still forced to compete with B&M sales, which will hopefully keep things priced reasonably.


http://www.kotaku.com.au/2012/01/so...-play-used-games-and-will-introduce-kinect-2/
Good way to piss of your user base and open yourself up to lawsuits which establish precedent that its lawful to mod your console to enable users to play used games.

How would that be any different than current trends in PC gaming? A good portion of games coming out these days are tied to Steam or Origin. That's just the way things are headed, and I've never seen a PC developer get any guff for requiring Steamworks. I honestly wouldn't be surprised to see an internet connection being required for a one-time game activation on future consoles. With the increasing trend of fully networked homes, and the fact that every house on the planet has Wifi, as long as they make it easy to get online, I don't think its far fetched.
 
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the difference is that if you dont allow second hand sales then it costs less. for consoles the game originally sells for $60 and that game is played all the way through by 3 or 4 people. thats an average of $15 each for the publisher, and probably equates to $60 or so to the second hand sellers. (first person pays $60, second pays 30, third pays 20, last pays 10.) when steam sells me a game for $15, i am the only one with a key and each of the other 3 people has to buy it for that price too. the publisher makes the same amout of money, and gamestop makes none. the best part is that all 4 of these people can now play that game as many times as they want forever, whereas on the xbox it was more like a rental and only the last owner gets to have it years from now.

clearly, locking a game to a certain xbox can be fair since its very similar to a steam user being the only person with access to the game they purchase. the only way xbox can excuse this is if they lower the prices of their games significantly. and they will have to make provisions for people buying a new xbox (like when hdmi models came out, or when they RROD'd and users got a replacement) probably by locking it to your account instead of to the actual machine. the idea of locked games in itself does not worry me, whats worries me is that i doubt they'll decrease the prices of the games at all when they do it.
 
How would that be any different than current trends in PC gaming? A good portion of games coming out these days are tied to Steam or Origin. That's just the way things are headed, and I've never seen a PC developer get any guff for requiring Steamworks.

Completely different dynamic and demographic of users. Generally speaking PC gaming in inhabited with semi sophisticated users who can afford a decent PC and therefore can afford to buy new games.

Compare that to the console user base which is generally populated by younger unsophisticated users who are either dependent on others to purchase hardware/software or where money constraints are an issue. One oft cited reason for why people pick consoles is because its cheaper than PC gaming, which will no longer hold true in at least one respect if people are unable to buy/borrow/rent used games.

Moreover, steam and origin don't lock games to a particular set of hardware but to an account, and after an install the physical medium becomes redundant. Its a different proposition with a disc which is used to stream data because lending it/on selling it to another person deprives the original owner of the ability to use it, which is pretty much the basic rationale as to why the first sales doctrine can apply to movies, music and games on physical medium.

I honestly wouldn't be surprised to see an internet connection being required for a one-time game activation on future consoles. With the increasing trend of fully networked homes, and the fact that every house on the planet has Wifi, as long as they make it easy to get online, I don't think its far fetched.

Approximately only 30% of the world's population has an internet connection, and probably only a fraction of that have a decent connection. Console manufacturers would only be cutting their nose off to spite their face, but given the self entitlement in this industry I would not be surprised.
 
Completely different dynamic and demographic of users. Generally speaking PC gaming in inhabited with semi sophisticated users who can afford a decent PC and therefore can afford to buy new games.

Compare that to the console user base which is generally populated by younger unsophisticated users who are either dependent on others to purchase hardware/software or where money constraints are an issue. One oft cited reason for why people pick consoles is because its cheaper than PC gaming, which will no longer hold true in at least one respect if people are unable to buy/borrow/rent used games.

Moreover, steam and origin don't lock games to a particular set of hardware but to an account, and after an install the physical medium becomes redundant. Its a different proposition with a disc which is used to stream data because lending it/on selling it to another person deprives the original owner of the ability to use it, which is pretty much the basic rationale as to why the first sales doctrine can apply to movies, music and games on physical medium.

Maybe I missed something... was it suggested in one of these articles that there would be data streaming and/or a hardware tie in? I don't think for a second that Microsoft would tie the game to the specific machine. That means if a machine breaks, the games go with it. Same goes for upgrading to new hardware revisions and such. That would be a nightmare. That's why I mentioned CD's keys, akin to Steam. You can either buy a license to the game and have it attached to your Xbox Live account, or else you can buy physical media that comes with a CD-Key that you tie into your account, thereby rendering the media useless, aside from the initial game download/install.

As far as cost is concerned, I've never heard of media cost being a point in consoles favor. Games (usually) release at a higher price point on consoles, and take longer to drop in price. There are no sales akin to Steam sales, which exist quite frequently from any number of different channels in the PC gaming scene. The trade off has always been consoles = cheap hardware, expensive software; PC = expensive hardware, cheaper software. So, while killing off second hand sales and the ability to lend games would be bad, IF consoles could adopt of model of distribution that closer mirrored PC digital distribution, hopefully lower first-hand software sales would negate this.


Approximately only 30% of the world's population has an internet connection, and probably only a fraction of that have a decent connection. Console manufacturers would only be cutting their nose off to spite their face, but given the self entitlement in this industry I would not be surprised.

I don't doubt that figure, but how many of that 70% lacking internet do you really think are in the market for game consoles? As far as a decent connection goes, I don't think that would really be an issue for a one time authentication system. It's not as if that's going to be a data intensive process.

I can see where it would be intrusive to some, but I have to imagine that the lost sales over people unable to comply would be outweighed by the elimination of the second hand market.
 
Cool , so every 3-6 weeks are we going to get more and more bullshit IGN articles leading up to E3 about "guessing" specs on the "Xbox 720" or the "PS4" from some random source (probably the drive through worker at In-and-Out) so they can artificially drive up traffic??

Alright , just making sure.
 
Back in 2005 or whenever the 360 came out, GPUs on the PC didn't use massive huge blowers and require 2x 6pin PCI-E connectors. It'd be very hard from a thermals/power consumption standpoint for a next gen console to come close to a top end PC.

But the beauty is that they don't need to. Something Radeon 6790 class would probably be more than great. Die shrunk and integrated with a PPC, it'd be a nice, low power, high performance solution.

I don't really get why everyone's expecting GTX 580/Radeon 7970 class hardware for next generation consoles.
 
Back in 2005 or whenever the 360 came out, GPUs on the PC didn't use massive huge blowers and require 2x 6pin PCI-E connectors. It'd be very hard from a thermals/power consumption standpoint for a next gen console to come close to a top end PC.

But the beauty is that they don't need to. Something Radeon 6790 class would probably be more than great. Die shrunk and integrated with a PPC, it'd be a nice, low power, high performance solution.

I don't really get why everyone's expecting GTX 580/Radeon 7970 class hardware for next generation consoles.

Here is a card with a massive blower and a 2x molex power requirement. It was released in 2004.http://www.nvnews.net/reviews/bfg_geforce_6800_ultra_oc/bfg_huge.shtml

If the new console uses ATI's 7000 series 28nm tech (not necessarily 7970 level performance), the power requirements should be very reasonable
 
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Back in 2005 or whenever the 360 came out, GPUs on the PC didn't use massive huge blowers and require 2x 6pin PCI-E connectors. It'd be very hard from a thermals/power consumption standpoint for a next gen console to come close to a top end PC.

But the beauty is that they don't need to. Something Radeon 6790 class would probably be more than great. Die shrunk and integrated with a PPC, it'd be a nice, low power, high performance solution.

I don't really get why everyone's expecting GTX 580/Radeon 7970 class hardware for next generation consoles.

We aren't expecting 580 or 7970... but the article was talking about 6670... 6670 can barely manage 1920x1080 at 30fps and low settings in many games. A 6790 is quite a bit more powerful.
 
We aren't expecting 580 or 7970... but the article was talking about 6670... 6670 can barely manage 1920x1080 at 30fps and low settings in many games. A 6790 is quite a bit more powerful.

yeah i would not consider a console with a 6670. i would consider one with a 6790.
 
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