X-Box 2 specs

2000AD · Post by **2000AD** » 2005-03-09 09:51am

Gamespy has the lowdown on the X-Box 2 (codenamed Xenon) from the GDC

part1
part 2

The Guts of the Next Box

# CPU - Xenon's CPU has three 3.0 GHz PowerPC cores. Each core is capable of two instructions per cycle and has an L1 cache with 32 KB for data and 32 KB for instructions. The three cores share 1 MB of L2 cache. Alpha 2 developer kits currently have two cores instead of three.

# GPU - Xenon's GPU is a generation beyond the ATI X800. Its clock speed is 500 MHz and it supports Shader 3.0. Developers are currently working with an alpha 2 GPU. Beta GPU units are expected by May and the final GPU is slated for a summer release. The final GPU will be more powerful than anything on the market today; in game terms, it would handle a game like Half-Life 2 with ease.

# System Memory - Xenon will have 256 MB of system RAM. Keep in mind that this number should not be equated to typical PC RAM. The Xbox has 64 MB of system RAM and is a very capable machine.

# Optical Drive - As many have speculated, Xenon will not use Blu-Ray or HD-DVD. Games will come on dual-layer DVD-9 discs. While the media is the same as that of the current Xbox, the usable space on each disc is up to 7 GB. The drive is slated to run at 12X.

# Memory Units - Xenon will use 64 MB to 1,024 MB memory cards. 8 MB is reserved for system use, leaving a 56 MB to 1,016 MB for user data.

# Hard Drive - As many have speculated, Xenon's hard drive is optional. 2 GB of the drive will be used as game cache. The final drive size is still being determined.

# Camera - Xenon will have a USB 2.0 camera. It's capable of 1.2 megapixel still shots and VGA video. Photos can be used in-game and for gamer profiles. The camera can also be used for video chat. It's unknown if the Xenon camera will allow for EyeToy-like gameplay. Developers are currently using a simulated camera driver.

# Sound Chip - Xenon does not have an audio chip in the traditional sense. Decompression is handled by hardware, while the rest of the chores are handled by software. DirectSound3D has been dropped in favor of X3DAudio. The former was deemed too inflexible.

wautd · Post by **wautd** » 2005-03-09 10:22am

looks pretty scary

Faram · Post by **Faram** » 2005-03-09 10:34am

Well I do hope I can fire up XBMC in xbox2 soon after it's release.

Dooey Jo · Post by **Dooey Jo** » 2005-03-09 10:43am

Right... and how much is it gonna cost again?

Praxis · Post by **Praxis** » 2005-03-09 11:01am

Like I said in the other thread, those PowerPC processors are probably extremely stripped down like the PPC core in the Cell processor (perhaps even to the point of lacking AltiVec, which would make it essentially a highly clocked 64-bit G3). Thats the only thing that makes sense: a tri-core 3 GHz G5 would probably cost more than the XBox 2!

As for the camera, they seem to imply that its built in, but they say its a USB 2.0 camera, so it seems to me its a seperate addon.

XBox 2 will use 7 GB disks. Ha. Ha. Ha.

*snicker*

They're repeating Nintendo's mistakes. Nintendo had 1.6 GB disks for the GameCube when everyone else was using 4.7 to 9.4 GB DVD disks- that gave them problems. Now, Nintendo will have HD-DVD and Sony Blu-ray. 54 GB vs 30 GB vs 7 GB.

I can't imagine how powerful the PS3 and Nintendo Revolution will be. Remember, the Revolution will launch after the XBox 2 but before the PS3. And its using the same IBM processors and ATi graphics cards (only later versions), so it'll probably be more powerful, unless the XBox 2 is gonna cost $500 or something and the NR only costs $300.

256 MB of RAM is fine for gaming, but will it be enough to run VirtualPC? Will the XBox 2 be able to emulate the first one, and run XBox 1 games? VPC currently has no graphics card support, and it'd have to emulate an NVidia graphics card off of an ATi one, so I doubt we're going to see XBox 1 compatability.

MS skimped on the optical, hard drive, and sound chip to boost the GPU and CPU. I suspect one of those cores will be set aside for sound processing (at least partially).

The thing is, the XBox 1's fans are the people who want the best graphics, or the hard drive. The XBox 2 will likely have the worst graphics and no hard drive unless you buy it seperately (and btw, even the PS2 had a seperate hard drive buyable).

General Zod · Post by **General Zod** » 2005-03-09 12:30pm

bah. i'll remain unimpressed until i see a game lineup with demos.

Arthur_Tuxedo · Post by **Arthur_Tuxedo** » 2005-03-09 01:32pm

The way I see it, MS might be making a few mistakes, here, if they want something that will last 4 years.

1. 256 MB of RAM may be enough for today's games, but to compete with PC games 4 years from now?

2. No hard drive standard means no virtual memory, so that 256 MB is a hard and fast limit.

3. Why shunt the sound onto the CPU? That would only make sense if the CPU power was overkill relative to the rest of the system, and there will be plenty of CPU power to spare no matter what's going on. If so, would it not be cheaper to drop one of the cores and include a sound card?

Perhaps they want excess CPU power to be able to emulate X-Box 1's hardware. If so, would it not still be cheaper to drop a core and include a P3 733?

4. Optical drive. 7 GB at 12x speed is not very impressive, but I don't really know whether games in the near future will need the extra space or not. Time will tell.

Gerard_Paloma · Post by **Gerard_Paloma** » 2005-03-09 02:13pm

Praxis wrote:I can't imagine how powerful the PS3 and Nintendo Revolution will be. Remember, the Revolution will launch after the XBox 2 but before the PS3. And its using the same IBM processors and ATi graphics cards (only later versions), so it'll probably be more powerful, unless the XBox 2 is gonna cost $500 or something and the NR only costs $300.

If MS (or any of the big 3, for that matter) doesn't hit the $300 price point, their console will be dead in the water. If they want to have a $400-500 option that includes a hard drive or other extras, that's fine, but if there isn't a version of the console at $300, the launch will fail.

SPOOFE · Post by **SPOOFE** » 2005-03-09 02:39pm

Yeah, the lack of next-gen disc drive is rather stressing. Now that we "know" what's going into the system, now all that's left to do is wait until we see what it can do.

desertjedi · Post by **desertjedi** » 2005-03-09 02:41pm

I have a feeling that there will be different versions of the Xbox 2, some with HDDs, some not. As for the RAM, this is pretty much a dedicated game system, so 256MB should be mor then enough. Look at the current Xbox, it only has 64MB and the graphics are great. The sound being pumped through a full CPU is overkill, but I'm sure those extra clock cycles could be put to some other use. As for the Optical drive, yeah not impressive at all.

Hamel · Post by **Hamel** » 2005-03-09 03:26pm

How they would fit Doom3, with full pc quality, into Xbox2 ram, let alone next gen games, is bizzare and will probably never happen. Blurry-ass textures, here we come.

Praxis · Post by **Praxis** » 2005-03-09 04:26pm

Arthur_Tuxedo wrote:The way I see it, MS might be making a few mistakes, here, if they want something that will last 4 years.

1. 256 MB of RAM may be enough for today's games, but to compete with PC games 4 years from now?

2. No hard drive standard means no virtual memory, so that 256 MB is a hard and fast limit.

3. Why shunt the sound onto the CPU? That would only make sense if the CPU power was overkill relative to the rest of the system, and there will be plenty of CPU power to spare no matter what's going on. If so, would it not be cheaper to drop one of the cores and include a sound card?

Perhaps they want excess CPU power to be able to emulate X-Box 1's hardware. If so, would it not still be cheaper to drop a core and include a P3 733?

4. Optical drive. 7 GB at 12x speed is not very impressive, but I don't really know whether games in the near future will need the extra space or not. Time will tell.

1) Its not too bad, considering XBox 1 was 64 MB and PS2 was 32 MB and the N64 was 4 MB. Though since we're talking about HDTV's, the textures might need to be higher res.

2) Virtual memory is too slow anyway unless we're talking 15000RPM SATA dries.

3) Absolutely agree. Though I think adding a P3 would be more expensive since you need to add an extra slot on the motherboard and a full processor, not just a core.

4) I agree its not very impressive, but I should point out, that its already being maxed out. A number of games out there (HL2 anyone?) are 5 GB already, and since the XBox 2 is designed for HD resolutions, textures will need to be higher quality. Ingame movies...they'll have to settle for SD, since HD would fill up the disk in minutes. And the next gen games will be even bigger than HL2.

Time has already told. 7 GB is too little compared to 30 GB and 54 GB of the other consoles. With disks that big, Spider-Man 3 could very well have the entire movie (in SD of course) in addition to the game on one disk. Think of the special editions we'll get!

Nobody thought 1.6 GB would be used up by a game easily 5 years ago when Nintendo announced their 1.6 GB minidisks.

Praxis · Post by **Praxis** » 2005-03-09 04:30pm

Hamel wrote:How they would fit Doom3, with full pc quality, into Xbox2 ram, let alone next gen games, is bizzare and will probably never happen. Blurry-ass textures, here we come.

Don't forget though, that it doesn't need to be running Windows in the background (explorer.exe is 30 MB alone), so that should save a great deal of RAM space.

Doom 3 is already out on XBox 1 (though with lower quality) and that has a mere 64 MB of RAM.

I'm not being an apologist for MS, I think MS is making some big mistakes.

But RAM size is not one of them- the NR is rumored to be 256 MB as well. Consoles need MUCH less RAM than PCs. As long as the VRAM is up to spec (at least 128 MB), 256 MB system RAM is plenty.

The N64 and Nintendo DS only have 4 MB of RAM. The PS2 only has 32 MB. XBox is 64 MB. 256 is enough.

EDIT: If they try to emulate the XBox 1, 256 MB of system RAM might be a problem. Just try running VPC on 256 MB of RAM. Its hideous.

Praxis · Post by **Praxis** » 2005-03-09 04:31pm

There is one question though:

Can it run Linux?

Or better yet, Mac OS X?

Now THATS something I wanna see!

Hamel · Post by **Hamel** » 2005-03-09 05:05pm

Don't forget though, that it doesn't need to be running Windows in the background (explorer.exe is 30 MB alone), so that should save a great deal of RAM space.

CS:S, HL2, and Doom3 take well over 256 megs of ram, usually 512 or more.

For a next gen game, texture data alone is going to take up hundreds of megs, just as they are now. For many 3d games, you're going to need bump/normals/parralax/shadowmaps/stencils and specular on top of traditional diffuse textures, and they need to be high res. They can compress them, but it will look like ass unless we're talking 3dc for the normals.

Doom 3 is already out on XBox 1 (though with lower quality) and that has a mere 64 MB of RAM.

You could cut almost anything down to the point where it'll run on 64 megs, but more and more has to be sacrificed to do so.

But RAM size is not one of them- the NR is rumored to be 256 MB as well. Consoles need MUCH less RAM than PCs. As long as the VRAM is up to spec (at least 128 MB), 256 MB system RAM is plenty.

Xbox2 is 10 megs edram to drive the high resolution with 256 megs of system ram. There is no ram dedicated to video for the console. It's shared. PCs are better at dealing with low ram. If video memory is taken up, the system can utilize the main ram at a performance cost, or if worse comes to worse, use the hard disk as virtual memory. There are no fallbacks for a console like this - 256 megs is the absolute, hard limit.

The N64 and Nintendo DS only have 4 MB of RAM. The PS2 only has 32 MB. XBox is 64 MB. 256 is enough.

The N64's vid ram shortage, as well as the catridge format, are what made everything look like blotches on angular surfaces. I remember seeing comparison shots of N64 and Playstation textures in one particular forum. Ocarina of Time had many 16x16, 32x32, 64x64 textures while the Playstation game had larger ones. This is why IMO many Playstation games simply looked nicer despite the lack of texture filtering.

EDIT: If they try to emulate the XBox 1, 256 MB of system RAM might be a problem. Just try running VPC on 256 MB of RAM. Its hideous.

Kekekeke, we might as well forget about emulation then.

My point is this: the Xbox2 has more than enough processing power, but not nearly enough storage for media assets.

Darth Fanboy · Post by **Darth Fanboy** » 2005-03-09 05:14pm

XBox2 backwards compatible or no?

Praxis · Post by **Praxis** » 2005-03-09 05:23pm

Darth Fanboy wrote:XBox2 backwards compatible or no?

Depends if its fast enough (and has enough RAM) to emulate the XBox 1. The hardware is so different there is no way it could natively be backwards compatable.

Most likely no.

Hamel · Post by **Hamel** » 2005-03-09 05:25pm

Arthur_Tuxedo wrote: 4. Optical drive. 7 GB at 12x speed is not very impressive, but I don't really know whether games in the near future will need the extra space or not. Time will tell.

Going with standard dvd is dissapointing, but regarding the drive speed, according to what I've read at beyond3d, 16x is much noiser and doesn't have a real world speed increase.

General Zod · Post by **General Zod** » 2005-03-09 05:28pm

Praxis wrote:

EDIT: If they try to emulate the XBox 1, 256 MB of system RAM might be a problem. Just try running VPC on 256 MB of RAM. Its hideous.

there's still problems emulating N64 and PS1 games successfully. i don't predict successful x-box anything emulation for at least a goodly number of years more.

desertjedi · Post by **desertjedi** » 2005-03-09 05:30pm

You could cut almost anything down to the point where it'll run on 64 megs, but more and more has to be sacrificed to do so.

But remember, the RAM is in a dedicated gaming box. It has a small OS and nothing else taking resources to have the game run. Plus, there's tech in the game that the V-card in the Xbox doesn't doesn't support, like the DX9 shaders and lighting stuff... I think.

Cabwi Desco · Post by **Cabwi Desco** » 2005-03-09 05:30pm

Well fuck this. 'Online Awareness'? I live in an area where there are two options for Internet, Satelite (which is hideously expensive), or 56k which we all know Live DOESN'T support.

I dont wan't to have to buy a dozen memory cards just because microsoft wants me to.

Optional HD? dear lord how much will THAT cost.

I'm not really sure on the texture issues. They had screenies of ES:IV Oblivion and it looked awe inspiring.

Hamel · Post by **Hamel** » 2005-03-09 05:31pm

Darth_Zod wrote:
Praxis wrote:

EDIT: If they try to emulate the XBox 1, 256 MB of system RAM might be a problem. Just try running VPC on 256 MB of RAM. Its hideous.
there's still problems emulating N64 and PS1 games successfully. i don't predict successful x-box anything emulation for at least a goodly number of years more.

MS hired professionals to research and possibly develop emulation for the Xbox2. That's quite different from amatuer coders spending their free time on PCs with different hardware configurations..

desertjedi · Post by **desertjedi** » 2005-03-09 05:33pm

With my 30inch LCD TV, I think the HD support will be great. Crimson Skies looks great on my TV witht he component cables and it's only 480p. Man, this made me realize I need to pick up some newer games.

SPOOFE · Post by **SPOOFE** » 2005-03-09 07:15pm

I dont wan't to have to buy a dozen memory cards just because microsoft wants me to.

That's what everyone said about the PS1.

Arthur_Tuxedo · Post by **Arthur_Tuxedo** » 2005-03-09 07:18pm

I hope Nintendo wins this round, and its looking as likely as any outcome right now. Microsoft seems to be following the SEGA strategy, and we all know how that's worked out. They're bound and determined to be first to market, even though that means going with the current generation of optical drives, when waiting a few months equals a vast leap in technology.

Everyone who doesn't remember back 5 years is going apeshit over the PS3, but I remember a very similar song and dance from Sony over the PS2, with no delivery on the hype. I don't necessarily predict that the PS3 will be the most powerful of the bunch, but I don't discount it entirely, either.

Nintendo might very well have the most powerful console this time, and if they can do a better job with 3rd party support, they've got this round won, which is what I hope happens. It's not even that I particularly like Nintendo, it's that if they lose big again, they might get out of the console-making business, and an oligopoly of 3 companies is better for the consumer than 2.