15 replies to this topic

[Keatah]

http://arstechnica.c...le-industry.ars

[Metal Ghost]

Very interesting read, thanks for linking.

[Rex Dart]

Or in the xbox's case, back to x86.   I'm a little disappointed; always been a fan of PPC for no good reason.

[godslabrat]

Odd that the author compares the 360 to the "contemporary" Pentium 4.  The Pentium D was on the market by then.

[Enig]

So, Sony and Microsoft are doing heavily limited PCs for gaming use.


Damn, now Nintendo might be the only one trying to not be a cut-down PC seller.

[BillyHW]

I never understood why Microsoft went with Power for the 360.  Why not just stay with x86 and keep everything perfectly backward compatible forever?

[godslabrat]

BillyHW, on Thu Apr 5, 2012 10:26 AM, said:

Why not just stay with x86 and keep everything perfectly backward compatible forever?

It hasn't exactly worked for Windows

[Mord]

"Consoles will still have their advantages-the range of peripherals, the plug-and-play simplicity, the reduced maintenance, the low up-front cost..."

Um. I hope they have other advantages to offer.

Range of peripherals essentially mean either gimmicky things that are unnecessary, or expensive required addons.

plug-and-play simplicity is now a matter approximately like "plug game in, install to harddrive, agree to new butt-raping TOS and update to new, potentially bricking firmware, download latest bug patches, then potentially play after waiting for the game to check for DLC to advertise or advertisements to display"

Reduced maintenance is a matter of how many times you have to send your console in for warranty repairs.

And "low up-front cost" is relative. I could see them trying to sell the new consoles for 500-700 dollars even if these rumours are true about the more off-the-shelfish nature of the hardware.

[Keatah]

godslabrat, on Thu Apr 5, 2012 9:22 AM, said:

Odd that the author compares the 360 to the "contemporary" Pentium 4.  The Pentium D was on the market by then.

but the Pentium 4's performance, or lack of, was very commonly known. What is a Pentium D ?? ? ? ? ?

[Rex Dart]

I think...
Desktop version of their mobile CPU at the time; tech from it eventually became the original Core Solo & Core Duo line.  Much better performance & power consumption than P4.

[Keatah]

Mord, on Thu Apr 5, 2012 11:03 AM, said:

"Consoles will still have their advantages-the range of peripherals, the plug-and-play simplicity, the reduced maintenance, the low up-front cost..."

Um. I hope they have other advantages to offer.

Range of peripherals essentially mean either gimmicky things that are unnecessary, or expensive required addons.

plug-and-play simplicity is now a matter approximately like "plug game in, install to harddrive, agree to new butt-raping TOS and update to new, potentially bricking firmware, download latest bug patches, then potentially play after waiting for the game to check for DLC to advertise or advertisements to display"

Reduced maintenance is a matter of how many times you have to send your console in for warranty repairs.

And "low up-front cost" is relative. I could see them trying to sell the new consoles for 500-700 dollars even if these rumours are true about the more off-the-shelfish nature of the hardware.

The essence of simplicity of console gaming is lost. Too much complexity and requirements and tedious activities surround the gaming experience.

[Keatah]

Rex Dart, on Thu Apr 5, 2012 12:14 PM, said:

I think...
Desktop version of their mobile CPU at the time; tech from it eventually became the original Core Solo & Core Duo line.  Much better performance & power consumption than P4.

I know what the Pentium D is. How many other folks know? The point being is that the author referenced a "household" name as opposed to a specific variant.

[Rex Dart]

Oh.  It's Arstechnica, not cnet.  I'd hope they'd do better than that.

[Bruce Tomlin]

BillyHW, on Thu Apr 5, 2012 10:26 AM, said:

I never understood why Microsoft went with Power for the 360.  Why not just stay with x86 and keep everything perfectly backward compatible forever?

Actually they changed the GPU too, which probably did more to make BC difficult than the CPU change.

And I knew when they decided to use Cell that PS4 wouldn't be BC with PS3, at least not without doing what they did for PS2 BC.

[Hyper_Eye]

You guys didn't pay attention to the article. The news there is the idea that Sony is moving to x86. The article says:

Quote

Xbox 360's replacement, purported to be named "Durango", is also rumored to use an AMD GPU—either a Southern Islands variant or an equivalent to a Radeon HD 6670—this time paired with a PowerPC CPU.

This is a similar platform to what they are using now. I would suspect the ppc chip will be quite a bit more powerful and have more cores. What is now called "AMD" GPU was "ATI" GPU when the 360 released. This would be essentially upgrading the architecture the 360 is using to the kinds of clock speeds and core counts modern CPU's and GPU's can handle. That would be a good thing. That means they should have no problem adding complete hardware-based backwards compatibility and there would never be a reason to remove it. It would be similar to GC compatibility with the Wii but without the legacy controller ports and memcard slots that warranted the removal of BC in the latest Wii incarnation. Powerpc is a good architecture. I think there is a pretty good change the next Xbox will have a powerpc CPU and an ATI GPU. That would be the safe bet.

My guess:

6-8 core ppc 64-bit CPU (with the same 2 threads per core?)
Modern ATI (sorry, AMD) GPU
Built-in Kinect (this is what they care about)

[Tr3vor]

the pentium D is not a laptop processor, that would be the pentium M

Pentium D is a dual core processor based off of the pentium 4, having 2 dies instead of having multiple cores per die like they do today.