Amiga.org
The "Not Quite Amiga but still computer related category" => Alternative Operating Systems => Topic started by: asian1 on May 10, 2005, 09:49:09 AM
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Three days before the official launch at MTV, the specification was leaked to the public. The console have 3 PowerPC based custom CPU:
http://news.gaminghorizon.com/media2/1115678065.926.html
Custom IBM PowerPC-based CPU
3 symmetrical cores at 3.2 GHz each
2 hardware threads per core
1 VMX-128 vector unit per core
1 MB L2 cache
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What, no "is it possible for AmigaOS4 to be ported to this platform" question?
Your slipping! ;-)
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I'll be getting one of those.
Half a Gig, a bit more RAM than a lot of people were guessing.
I wonder of one of those cores will be dedicated to Physics Processing (PPU) as was hinted at some time ago?
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coldfish wrote:
I'll be getting one of those.
Half a Gig, a bit more RAM than a lot of people were guessing.
I wonder of one of those cores will be dedicated to Physics Processing (PPU) as was hinted at some time ago?
Only 10MB Video RAM though, which i find odd when ATI sell PCI-X cards with half a gig on them.
I would have though 32MB would be a minimum these days.
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Thats a typo or something, its got 512MB GDDR3 video RAM from what I understand.
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Acill wrote:
Thats a typo or something, its got 512MB GDDR3 video RAM from what I understand.
Thats system RAM size.
The GPU has 10MB embedded DRAM
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Impressive. The new console wars are starting. :-)
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x56h34 wrote:
Impressive. The new console wars are starting. :-)
I think Father Christmas might be bringing one of these for my son this year! ;-)
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But how much is all this gonna cost?
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You`ve read the spec,
now see the pic.
(http://media.ign.com/thumb/110/1104913/xbox-360-faq-20050428074528991_thumb.jpg)
Expand (http://xbox360media.ign.com/xbox360/image/article/608/608394/xbox-360-faq-20050428074528991.jpg)
from
here (http://media.xbox360.ign.com/articles/608/608394/imgs_1.html)
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My Amiga will survive that monster too. :-)
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As ugly as a hat full of ar**holes!
IMHO.
What is the point of having front-loading systems if you can't use it as a shelf?
(Which is all XPeeCees were good for?)
benJamin
"I wish I was drunk."
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If the DRAM is embedded into the GPU then it may be more like L1 cache for the graphics.
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guys guys guys.
please dont go overboard with this s h i t box. the ps3 will eat this thing alive.
put it this way, the ps3 will be able to emulate the xbox 360
HAHAHAHAHA! microsoft sux.
what a joke current day dvd tech>? that sure is limited.
wait for the ps3 guys if you dont, you will most certainly be a loser...
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The embedded graphics ram is why the Gamecube is a texturing monster and it only had 3MB. ATI did the GC chip and has implemented it's features into newer chips. This texture RAM lets the GC do texturizing in one pass vs. two on other chipsets.
Microsoft's X360 just copy's features from the PS2 and GC and throws in XBL and more power. Even it's ram is coming from NEC who coincidentally is using Mosys memory that all the haters in this thread: http://www.amiga.org/forums/showthread.php?t=13903 shot me down for. For more info see: http://cube.ign.com/articles/611/611577p1.html
Also, the specs listed have been questioned as to accuracy: http://www.gamesindustry.biz/content_page.php?aid=8571
The controller is plain and looks like a Dreamcast controller in a way. Gee, lets stand it on it's side like the PS2, let's use all the same suppliers as Nintendo so we can actually make an efficient and profitable machine. Gee let's include wireless controllers like Nintendo has announced. Oh no, free-online play on Revolution, let's have a free and pay XBL service.
It's a "me too" console. It will have less power than the other 2. And luckily, Nintendo isn't showing it's entire hand yet.
I expect the PS3 to be like the PS2. Difficult to program for in order to thwart piracy and over-hyped. The PS2 was supposed to have way more power than it has ever shown. Just like that demo of the 'CELL' shown in Feb. The PS3 will not have a 10 core 4.6GHz version of CELL. It's so new, I doubt an effiecient compiler will be around it's first year and a half. Look at how long Intel's Itanium took to get a decent compiler written for it.
ATI is once again doing the Nintendo chipset which should outperform Microsoft's version. Probably a 600MHz. Afterall ATI got dissed in favor of NVidia the first time around. IBM is once again designing Nintendo's processor with Special Nintendo mods (like the G3 Gekko's faster fsb and altivec instructions in the 'Cube). I expect a multicore G5/6 that is 100% backwards compatible with it's G3 Gekko. It's known and it works well. Probably a 3 GHz and 600MHz fsb to match the GPU.
Nintendo has stated that Revolution will use the GC's api (developers keep costs down since the system is known already) and has also announced backwards compatability with GC software. They felt this was a key selling point of PS1->PS2. I agree. Sony and MS have not announced backwards compatability.
viva la Revolution
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@mdma
The 10Mb Edram is on the GPU the 512Mb is unified RAM meaning memory rescources can be shared with GPU or among the 3 dual-threaded CPU cores.
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To the naysayers, at least with this system we have confirmed specs and featureset.
Nothing but hype has come out of Sony as yet.
I cant wait to see just how powerful those 8 Cell-SPE's really are? From memory, they only contain around 7M logic transistors each and a 4Ghz Cell operates very hot, at 70+ degrees C. Also the architecture should be fun for traditional programmers to get around.
I wonder if it'll live up to the hype?
I wouldnt be too surprised to see that Nin's revolution and Xbox360 are one and the same system. Just marketed in Japan under Nintendo's trusted name. It could be a win-win for both co's.
hint* - 360 = Revolution...
US prices are:
$360 for the full spec system, with removable Hybrid-HD media.
$299 for the non Hybrid-HD system (which you can add a drive to later)
*Hybrid-HD = a combo of Flash/nand-RAM and traditional magnetic media in one "micro" case.
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Hmmm...
Sounds good to me already.
3x ppc 3ghz cpus!
Ok, no the stupid question:
Assuming that it will cost about 800eu, so there is no pc that can match that cpu power in this price, is there a way of getting linuxppc on that to run screamnet or something? It would be nice to use it as a renderer (lightwave etc.) next to my pc or amiga :)
:-P
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mdma wrote:
Acill wrote:
Thats a typo or something, its got 512MB GDDR3 video RAM from what I understand.
Thats system RAM size.
The GPU has 10MB embedded DRAM
My guess is that it will be like the current X-box which uses Unified Memory Architecture (UMA). There is no need to upload the textures to the graphics chip like on the PS2. The 10 megabytes of onchip cache would ideally be able to share memory access to the same 512 meg pool of ram as the CPU does. And 10 megs of cache is nothing to laugh at.
In contrast, the PS2 has 32 megs of ram, but the graphics chip has its own exclusive pool of 4 megs and the *cache* is measured in *kilobytes*. Half of this space is taken up by the screen buffers. That leaves a megabyte or so for textures. Without texture compression, this means it is unlikely that a whole scene can be rendered without having to stop for texture uploads to occur. While the processors can be churning away while this happens, the DMA still has only so much bandwidth it can allow. So it's not the rendering of textured polygons itself that can slow a PS2 game down, but long latencies for memory transfers to the graphics chip memory.
On a PC, the graphics card needs to sport more than enough memory than the whole scene can take up. This means that it doesn't have to wait for texture and geometry data to make it's way down the AGP bus. Vertex shaders also mean that most geometry effects can be done completely on chip, rather than modifying the geometry on the CPU and then uploading it to the graphics card. You know when your cards exausted it's memory when you've set the texture settings way high and suddenly everything goes at 10 fps (especially when looking around the scene).
Xbox has the best solution, and it looks like the 360 follows the same idea. It's a little like onboard graphics on nForce boards and such (I believe the Xbox board was based around the nForce design? not sure?), but the memory access is split up nicely between the CPU/graphics/sound hardware... not sure how it all works. I just know that this is a very sound way to run a console. (Wasn't Amiga a big proponent of UMA?)
Sorry in advance, for any mistakes or misrepresentations.
Jarrod
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Compare with this: http://www.gamesindustry.biz/content_page.php?aid=8658
from the wording, it seems each of the 4 cores will have it's own 128k L1 cache and they will share 512k L2 cache.
also, Revolution seems to have an extra 6MB of eDRAM (10 vs. 16) and a dual core ATI RN520.
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jarrody2k wrote:
mdma wrote:
Acill wrote:
Thats a typo or something, its got 512MB GDDR3 video RAM from what I understand.
Thats system RAM size.
The GPU has 10MB embedded DRAM
My guess is that it will be like the current X-box which uses Unified Memory Architecture (UMA). There is no need to upload the textures to the graphics chip like on the PS2. The 10 megabytes of onchip cache would ideally be able to share memory access to the same 512 meg pool of ram as the CPU does. And 10 megs of cache is nothing to laugh at.
In contrast, the PS2 has 32 megs of ram, but the graphics chip has its own exclusive pool of 4 megs and the *cache* is measured in *kilobytes*. Half of this space is taken up by the screen buffers. That leaves a megabyte or so for textures. Without texture compression, this means it is unlikely that a whole scene can be rendered without having to stop for texture uploads to occur. While the processors can be churning away while this happens, the DMA still has only so much bandwidth it can allow. So it's not the rendering of textured polygons itself that can slow a PS2 game down, but long latencies for memory transfers to the graphics chip memory.
On a PC, the graphics card needs to sport more than enough memory than the whole scene can take up. This means that it doesn't have to wait for texture and geometry data to make it's way down the AGP bus. Vertex shaders also mean that most geometry effects can be done completely on chip, rather than modifying the geometry on the CPU and then uploading it to the graphics card. You know when your cards exausted it's memory when you've set the texture settings way high and suddenly everything goes at 10 fps (especially when looking around the scene).
Xbox has the best solution, and it looks like the 360 follows the same idea. It's a little like onboard graphics on nForce boards and such (I believe the Xbox board was based around the nForce design? not sure?), but the memory access is split up nicely between the CPU/graphics/sound hardware... not sure how it all works. I just know that this is a very sound way to run a console. (Wasn't Amiga a big proponent of UMA?)
Sorry in advance, for any mistakes or misrepresentations.
Jarrod
We call it chipram! :-D
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PS3 won't eat the Xbox 360 alive, it will be long dead before it ever gets a chance. :-)
Funny how there is still people out there hating a product just because Microsoft released it. Xbox stomps PS2 by miles. Dreamcast whomps on a PS2 anyday.
Meh, im not here to start warz. Only opinions. :-D :-)
So heres the deal. You buy what you want, and keep it to yourself! :-)
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kd7ota wrote:
PS3 won't eat the Xbox 360 alive, it will be long dead before it ever gets a chance. :-)
Funny how there is still people out there hating a product just because Microsoft released it. Xbox stomps PS2 by miles. Dreamcast whomps on a PS2 anyday.
Meh, im not here to start warz. Only opinions. :-D :-)
So heres the deal. You buy what you want, and keep it to yourself! :-)
You're right, as only opinion, such words from yourself and others about performance really aren't going to determine final sales figures. The PS3 has unbelieveable peak performance, but as with the PS2 (but to a lesser degree), it's very hard to achieve anywhere near peak. In fact it takes years to manipulate the architecture to it's ideal usage. For years now, people have been trying to push more out of the PS2. This anal pursuit of performance by PS3 is somewhat like they are shooting themselves in the foot.
Though, with the PS2, Sony had the back-catalogue of PS1 titles to offer. Backwards compatibility is excelent. I heard they promised this with the PS3. As long as emulation doesn't blow out the timeline of the PS3, it may add some value to their product. And they have to, because with unique hardware for each new generation, they have *completely* different APIs.
With an XBOX game, you theoretically only need the new XDK with the newer version of DirectX, and with some tweaking (while never trivial with any upgrade) the game will run. So even without backwards compatibility, the XBOX has a real chance of having an extensive catalogue of games to sell with their new machine (though people may be cheesed at having to throw away their old games).
Ease of development, however, is always on the Xbox's side. PS3 like PS2, will almost be solely reliant on various 3rd party middleware. And even then, to really have some ground breaking features on the box, low-level programming will be needed. But the amount of titles alone aren't going to sell the machine..
Both Sony and Microsoft are excellent marketers, so first blood will be important. Who can come out first with a reasonable amount of killer titles will get the glutony of initial sales.
Both machines are somewhat equally specced and have similar targets. So both companies are likely to get a fair markup on the retail price. Though perhaps their marketing ploy will be to use the actual box as a loss leader? Xbox was forced to do this due to high production costs.
Which means money comes down to inhouse published titles... and with rubbish figures floating around like 150-200 AUD per high-quality 3rd-generation game, I wonder how many people are going to be sold on the idea that high realism = better game = value per dollar. It may be that these machines will be before their time!
It will be a slow start for these giants, and there will be tears no doubt. As for who will win? In war, there are only losers.
Jarrod
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Looks like a SKY+ box to me!!, I like my XBOX for gaming but it's no sub for a good Multimedia machine.
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IBM is once again designing Nintendo's processor with Special Nintendo mods (like the G3 Gekko's faster fsb and altivec instructions in the 'Cube).
WTF are you talking about?!
You make yourself look quite foolish when you say things like "altivec instructions in the 'Cube." As for the FSB, the reason the FSB sucks on the G3/G4 is due to the MAXbus.
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Phoenix wrote:
Looks like a SKY+ box to me!!, I like my XBOX for gaming but it's no sub for a good Multimedia machine.
What are you talking about? I have some 80 odd Divx films occupying my Xbox HDD along with hundreds of CDs. Not to mention almost every game for every console. The Xbox rocks at multimedia.
Back onto topic everyone I speak to is excited about 360 so I reckon Sony need to release the PS3 as soon as they can, even if it means rushing the development, or else they will be left for dead.
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Nintendo plan to launch their new console next week. The product will be released to the market in 2006.
Does the new console use Quad Cores PowerPC G5?
From Reuters:
Nintendo Co. will launch its new video game console sometime next year, missing the key 2005 holiday shopping season and putting it a step behind Microsoft Corp. in the battle for the next-generation game machine, the Nihon Keizai Shimbun reported on Saturday. The report comes two days after Microsoft announced its new console, called Xbox 360, will be in stores in time for the 2005 year-end shopping season, giving it a head-start on the competition if Sony Corp. and Nintendo don't introduce their new consoles until next year. The Nihon Keizai said it obtained the information from Nintendo on Friday, without citing sources. Nintendo has not officially set a date for its next generation console, code-named "Revolution," although a 2006 launch has been widely expected.
Nintendo officials were not immediately available for comment.
Based in the ancient Japan capital of Kyoto, Nintendo was the dominant brand in home video game consoles for much of the 1980s and early 1990s until Sony entered the market with its PlayStation and Microsoft later introduced its Xbox machine. Nintendo has said that Revolution will be ready for wireless Internet gaming and be backward-compatible with the current generation GameCube, which is now in third place in the console market behind Sony's PlayStation 2 (PS2) and the Xbox.
The new console will be powered by a chip developed by IBM code-named "Broadway" and a graphics processor from ATI Technologies Inc. code-named "Hollywood." Revolution will use 12 cm optical discs and be about the size of three DVD cases stacked together, the Nihon Keizai said.
Sony has not said when it will release its next-generation console, tentatively named PS3, although industry watchers generally expect it to hit stores sometime next year. Sony, Nintendo and Microsoft are expected to show off their next-generation gaming consoles to developers next week at the annual Electronics Entertainment Expo, or E3, as all three companies seek to entrench themselves deeper into living rooms with advanced computing, graphics and multimedia features.
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strobe wrote:
IBM is once again designing Nintendo's processor with Special Nintendo mods (like the G3 Gekko's faster fsb and altivec instructions in the 'Cube).
WTF are you talking about?!
You make yourself look quite foolish when you say things like "altivec instructions in the 'Cube." As for the FSB, the reason the FSB sucks on the G3/G4 is due to the MAXbus.
And WTF are you getting pissy at me for?
http://www.anandtech.com/printarticle.html?i=1566 and
http://www.extremetech.com/article2/0,1558,29619,00.asp
The 'Cube's version has some SIMD instructions thrown in. It's easier to say to the masses that it's altivec to get the point across. And the 'Cube's bus is 165Mhz. It can run at just over 200 but... http://news.zdnet.com/2100-9595_22-503797.html?legacy=zdnn
Also, I've seen pictures on a website that opened up the cube and found that the GPU was actually the 202.5 MHz version...later on in a more 'official' website, I saw pictures of the 162 MHz version... Nintendo is tightly lipped about all their system's true performance. It's own site lists: Main memory bandwidth : 2.6GB/second (Peak) yet other sites have said it can do 3.2... Nintendo always downplays it's systems' true power and are still doing this even with Revolution...
That's a big problem on this site. Everyone is ready to start a flame war over the slightest wording in a post... Sad...
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Todd Holmdahl, the designer of Xbox 360 chipset:
http://xbox360.ign.com/articles/612/612995p1.html
"We want to design the most powerful, elegant and useful design for developers to create games with Xbox 360," said the impressively tall, lanky Holmdahl. "With the Xbox we had a merchant semi-conductor relationship. With Xbox 360 we have designed and own the chipset, so we can go to whomever we want with it. We're not paying Intel and Nvidia this time," he explained, referring to the exorbitant price paid out each time an Xbox was manufactured.
The heart of Microsoft's new system is the CPU, a triple core of 3.2 GHz processors, each capable of running two threads simultaneously, meaning the CPU can generate six threads at once. This power enables, among other things, programmers to give an immense amount of commands to the Central Processing Unit without strain. It also provides programmers with the ability to invent new algorithms in the future, giving them a healthy flexibility in the way they code games. General memory bandwidth is 5.4 GHz, with 21.6 gigabytes per second on the frontside bus connecting the CPU and the GPU.
The CPU is an amazing piece of technology, as it's built with 165 million transistors in it, many the size of mere nanometers. IBM had three plants working on the development of the chips.
The CPU is joined by the GPU, the Graphic Processing Unit, which handles the graphic output of the system (and which has 150 million transistors in it), the Southbridge, which enables all of the Ethernet and controller issues, and the TV encoder, which handles resolution issues, such as progressive scan, interlacing and other TV related issues.
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woohoo :-) (http://ctrlaltdel-online.com/images/comics/20050205.jpg)
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People seem to be missing the important part here and that is which system has the best games?
And we all know the answer to that: Nintendo :)
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Samanosuke: ...I reckon Sony need to release the PS3 as soon as they can, even if it means rushing the development, or else they will be left for dead.
Hardly. Sony is the ultimate hype machine. I never thought PS2 would manage to dominate 80% of the industry with its awful complexity and poor visual quality... not to mention that it looked terrible. A black box with 1980's-style cooling fins? I couldn't believe that people said Dreamcast looked "off-the-shelf" while they drooled over Sony's rectangular box with a blue sticker.
Then again, Microsoft and Nintendo basically handed the market over to Sony the first time around. Xbox 360 is smaller and definately not a PC clone this time. Hopefully Nintendo will get their licensing strategy straight sometime soon.
Lou Dias: And the 'Cube's bus is 165Mhz. It can run at just over 200 but... [Link]
Most manufacturers have multiple versions of their products. They rarely know what they are going to release until the last second.
Also, I've seen pictures on a website that opened up the cube and found that the GPU was actually the 202.5 MHz version
Depends when it was manufactured. It's impossible to manufacture a chip to run at an exact frequency, so taking a faster chip and underclocking it isn't unusual. The PS2 has also been redesigned internally a few times, and I don't mean the stupid "mini" PS2.
Nintendo always downplays it's systems' true power and are still doing this even with Revolution...
Well, it should be a given that Revolution will be faster than XBox and whatever seeing how it will be released much later.
I wouldn't say they downplay the power of the system. They just don't make it the end-all of existence like Sony does.
Lou Dias: That's a big problem on this site. Everyone is ready to start a flame war over the slightest wording in a post... Sad...
I vote this Ironic Statement of the Year.
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I don't think that has translated into console sales for Nintendo, certainly not in Australia, where the shelf space for Gamecube is about one third of xbox or PS2. Quality marketing is what will determine success of failure: the Amiga is a case in point, as is Dreamcast. Incidently I just bought my first console for my son a PSone. I can't believe how crap the 3d graphics on this machine are and it just goes to show how marketing won it for Sony. As for gameplay I think there are only about 10 titles worth having and at $10Aus each I'm not complaining...
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...PSone. I can't believe how crap the 3d graphics on this machine are, and it just goes to show how marketing won it for Sony. As for gameplay I think there are only about 10 titles worth having...
Its easy enough to think that, -in hindsight-.
Back in 1995, when my PS1 displaced my A1200 as my primary games machine, I have to say I was pretty impressed with the PS's GFX and gameplay in comparison!
Is there anything that even comes close to Castlevania-SOTN for sheer brilliance in a 2D game on Amiga?
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Is there anything that even comes close to Castlevania-SOTN for sheer brilliance in a 2D game on Amiga?
Nope :D SOTN rules.
But I wonder what would have happened if the Amiga had been big in Japan? I don't think there's much going on in SOTN that couldn't have been pulled off on a A1200, atleast if it had some Fast Ram.
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Piru wrote:
woohoo :-) (http://ctrlaltdel-online.com/images/comics/20050205.jpg)
Now replace Nintendo and PS2 with OS4 and Morphos (in no particular order)
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Waccoon wrote:
I vote this Ironic Statement of the Year.
Hey, I was fighting back. :P
By the way, I agree with everything else you said...There is hope for you yet. :D
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Quote by fx:
Nope :D SOTN rules.
But I wonder what would have happened if the Amiga had been big in Japan? I don't think there's much going on in SOTN that couldn't have been pulled off on a A1200, atleast if it had some Fast Ram.
Me too, one of my biggest disappointments when I bought the A1200 was how badly it's hardware resources were underutilized by software developers. Most games were just slightly tweaked ECS titles.
You only have to look at the 32bit, '020 equipped arcade machines (like; Elevator Action returns, Dungeon Magic, Gunbird) to get a rough idea of what the 1200's potential was.
http://www.mameworld.net/maws/
A HD equipped vanila A1200 can probably do anything the NeoGeo can do, and just look at some of the awesome games on that platform, Metalslug1-5, Blazing Star, KOF-94-2002 ect...
Ah well, long live emulation!
-sorry for the off topic-
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It seems the PS3 is PowerPC based too.. AND MUCH BETTER!!! I shall wait for the good stuff!!! :)
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PS3 -is- much better...
...if you believe the hype.
However, Sony themselves have quoted performance of 1.8 terraflops (theoretical) and the 360 has a -theoretical- performance of "over a Teraflop" so my guess is the performance comparisons between the two will be much the same as this or any other console generation, and once again, it will come down to the individual's own brand preference.
I'll be getting a 360 mainly because I have an Xbox and want to continue with many of the exclusive titles I enjoyed, like Halo and Morrowind.
Later, I'll probably get a PS3 for and/or Revolution, depends on price at the time and the quality of titles that catch my eye.
Pfft, Just like this (and every other) generation really...
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samanosuke wrote:
Phoenix wrote:
Looks like a SKY+ box to me!!, I like my XBOX for gaming but it's no sub for a good Multimedia machine.
What are you talking about? I have some 80 odd Divx films occupying my Xbox HDD along with hundreds of CDs. Not to mention almost every game for every console. The Xbox rocks at multimedia.
Back onto topic everyone I speak to is excited about 360 so I reckon Sony need to release the PS3 as soon as they can, even if it means rushing the development, or else they will be left for dead.
What about multimedia periphals?
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I really don't get why people bought the XBOX and will buy the 360.
What is the point to run the same games that runs on a PC in a lower resolution, with less detail etc ? Are there some very good XBOX games that never had PC versions ?