There's been a few articles posted today regarding some apparent leaked specs and info for Microsoft's next iteration of the Xbox, supposedly simply named "Xbox". According to the leaks the new Xbox will demand an internet connection at all times to function. This ties in with another rumour that the games will be shipped with an activation code that locks the game to your console forever, effectively eliminating the preowned games market and heralding the doom of brick and mortar game stores, also simply lending games to your mates will become a thing of the past. Along with the rumours there was an image that details the specs for the console which obviously goes straight over my head but you guys will be able to make something of it. http://bostinno.com/2013/02/06/xbox-720-release-date-xbox-720-is-coming-heres-everything-we-know-about-it-photos/#ss__294102_271816_0__ss What do you guys make of this information?
Re: Next Xbox leaked info and discussion thread These rumours have been around for weeks.... http://www.tomshardware.com/news/xbox-720-infinity-hardware-specs,20623.html I also saw a story somewhere saying that someone basically emailed a load of game sites pretending to be an XBOX tech and gave them fake information which they all published in the past couple of weeks. Not sure if it was these specs but I would seriously take them with a pinch of salt at this stage. EDIT: Not sure if it was these specs but here is the story about the guy who got fake XBOX information posted on loads of big sites in January. http://x-surface.tumblr.com/post/41282771026/x-surface-dont-believe-everything-you-read
Re: Next Xbox leaked info and discussion thread I think the 8 core/1.6 Ghz/ 8 GB DDR3 RAM predates the hoax about the gaming tablet. Seems like the only major difference for internals between the next Xbox and PS4 (as far as the rumors go) is that the PS4 might have GDDR5 RAM instead of DDR3, might be 4 GB or 8 GB, and has a different GPU. 8 core/1.6 Ghz seems to be identical for both as far as the CPU goes.
Re: Next Xbox leaked info and discussion thread Did someone assume "always on" (power to the console) meant that the console must be always online? There's a graphics processor in the GPU? Holy shit!
Re: Next Xbox leaked info and discussion thread Both Durango and Orbis look like pretty well rounded systems. Not as high end as last time, but you can't go sticking a 230w high end PC GPU into a tiny box. The power ceiling for PC has increased a lot since 2005. Orbis (PS4) does look better based on current rumours, even with half the RAM. If it only had 2GB as was initially rumoured, Durango would have definitely had some big advantages on it, despite having a weaker GPU and less main memory bandwidth. Of course these rumours could be fairly off the mark, but I think they make sense. Perhaps the GPU's are indeed a little closer that what has been leaked, that would make them very similar systems. I think that while Orbis looks potent on paper, Durango could deliver much more performance that the raw specs indicate. This upcoming generation is about efficiency - what can be done with the FLOPS! Not all that theoretical number e-peen stuff from the current gen with high clocked many core mega CPU's that in practice deliver 0.2 IPC or are hard to code for and only properly used for doing the vector work for an imbalanced archaic GPU.
Re: Next Xbox leaked info and discussion thread For fun I took a look at the high end Alienware laptops. Looks like you could get an i7 mobile CPU and 680m in SLI under load at around 300W. Something like that would run Battlefield 3 in 720p at 80+ fps. BF3 is a good reference because the next Mass Effect will use the same engine. However, the cost of a laptop like this is around $2400 so it's not really a console solution.
Re: Next Xbox leaked info and discussion thread You also can't use mobile GPU's as an example of power usage in a console. In a console every chip has to be used or discarded. Mobile GPU's are the best yielding chips on the wafer, using the least power for the specific clock speeds they target. The other, lesser power friendly chips go to desktop, where they can run at higher voltage to hit higher clocks at the cost of more power usage. The defective chips, go into the lower teir parts (Radeon 7x50, Geforce 670, 660Ti etc.). They don't have any of these options with consoles. Any chips which fail to meet the leakage, clockspeed or defect goals must be thrown away. So they cannot specially bin chips for lower power, like NV and AMD do with laptop parts. Console chips may also be designed with redundancy in mind, like cell for example. Pitcairn has 20CU's while Orbis reportedly has 18. It's quite possible that those extra 2CU's are still there, just disabled for redundancy. Although, quite possibly not with how mature the process and architecture is this time around. Looking at desktop parts I think we can expect around 100w to 120w for the GPU side of the SoC, and jaguar is supposedly 25w for a faster clocked 4 core including a GPU with probably 2CU's. So 25-30w for 8 cores alone at 1.6GHz seems reasonable. Then 25-35w for memory, drives and misc. I think for Orbis we'll be looking at around 170w all up for the system, and around 150w for Durango. Lower than the start of this gen, which is probably a good thing. Yes, this time they would have factored in lead free solder, but it seems like 200w gets expensive to cool and difficult to control failure rates none the less.
Re: Next Xbox leaked info and discussion thread So we are talking how much powerful than the current console XB360?
Re: Next Xbox leaked info and discussion thread This new generation has not got me excited like the last few before. I hope the Nextbox does but I doubt it will like the PS4 last night.
Re: Next Xbox leaked info and discussion thread 6x if we look at just the raw performance. When next generation, more efficient methods are used in game engines, it'll be 10x or higher. April 17, give or take a month.
Re: Next Xbox leaked info and discussion thread This gen was about big peak numbers that looked great on paper but didn't deliver in reality. Also keep in mind that high end PC's used about half the power a high end PC uses today. It's simply not feasible to cram 300-400w into a tiny box and sell it for a reasonable price and have it be reliable for 5+ years. This coming gen delivers efficient, well rounded systems that will deliver well above what their PC counterparts will ever hope to achieve. As chairmansteve said above, expect a 10x improvement.
Re: Next Xbox leaked info and discussion thread Microsoft’s Next Xbox to be Revealed on May 21st, 2013. http://www.technobuffalo.com/2013/04/24/microsofts-next-xbox-to-be-revealed-on-may-21st-2013/
Re: Next Xbox leaked info and discussion thread It's going to suck compared to the PS4 unless they do something new or better, but I cannot see M$ doing that sadly.