Originally posted by TheSammer
Ok... ok... marketing "it\'s not a PC"..."it\'s not a PC"... call it as you wish... but... what i see it\'s a Intel P3 700 with an NVidia GPU and 64 Mb shared with vid mem.
PLUS:
- DirectX
- a sort of Windows OS.
So... if they ship directX N.. or new version of vid/audio drivers.. or patch for its Win OS (ahem... remember.. the wrong DLL on kiosks)... users must download/install it. (like PC).
The software house can ship unfinished games because they can patch later... buy today-play tomorrow...(like PC).
bah... the "it\'s not a PC" it\'s only a marketing mantra.
The games are directX so if they can run on a P3 700 and 64 Mb of ram (+nvidia GPU) + Windows, they will do the same (or better) on Nvidia GPU PC sytem.
I know, the XBox is cheaper than a PC... but the XBox will have the same problems of PC.
My 2 euro.
First of all Welcome TheSammer
...only one thing...do you really care about the components of a Console ? ...when the hardware is so powerful and friendly to develop for ?
...when a system has this kind of specs :
Xbox CPU (modified PIII Coppermine): Clockspeed: 733MHz
Transistor: 28.1 millions
Process: .18 micron
Die size: 10.29 mm x 10.29 mm (or 106 mm2)
Voltage: 1.1 - 1.7 Volts
L1 cache: 32KB (16KB for instructions + 16KB for data)
L2 cache: 128KB running at core clock (733MHz)
L2 cache\'s bus width: 256-bit at 733MHz
L2 cache\'s bandwidth: 11.7 GB/s
Front side bus: 64-bit at 133MHz
FSB bandwidth: 1.064 GB/s
Interger precision: 32-bit
Interger performance: 1985 MIPS
Floating-point precision: 64-bit
Floating-point performance: 2.9 GFLOPS
Registers: 128-bit
Xbox GPU (Nvidia NV2A): Clockspeed: 233MHz
Transistors: 64 millions
Process: .15 micron
Fully programmable vertex shaders: 2
Fully programmable pixel pipelines: 4
Max pixel fillrate: 932 Mpixels/s
Max texel fillrate: 1864 Mtexels/s
Max texture per pass: 4 textures
Memory: 128-bit, 200MHz DDR-SDRAM
Memory bandwidth: 6.4 GB/s
Supports:
S3TC (6:1)
Vertex compression
Z-compression (4:1)
Z occlusion culling (capable of rejecting 4 Gpixels/s)
Multi-sampling FSAA and Nvidia\'s HSAA (Quincunx)
Nvidia DASP (reduces memory lactency)
Nvidia Crossbar Memory Controller (4 sub controllers each can process 64 bits of data per clock)
Modified DX8 (192 contants, vertex programs can be 136 instruction long)
Effects
Procedural deformation, geometry compression, morphing, fur rendering, skeletal animation, keyframe interpolation, per vertex motion blur, layered/volumetric fog/smoke, enviroment bump-mapping, embross bump-mapping, dot3 bump-mapping, anisotropic lighting, phong shading, light and gloss maps, 8 hardware lights, reflection, refraction, shadows, spotlights, texture morphing, texture coordinate transformation, projected textures, etc.
Particle performance: 116.5 millions/s
Polygon performance:
1 infinite light, 1 texture: 79.2 Mpolys/s
1 infinite light, 2 textures: 65.3 Mpolys/s
1 infinite light, 2 spotlights, 2 textures: 18.7 Mpolys/s
Xbox MCPX: Clockspeed: 200MHz
Transistors: 6 millions
Process: .15 micron
Processing power: 6 billion operations per second
Max bus bandwidth: 800 MB/s
APU (audio processing unit): 1
DSP (digital signal processor): 2
Dolby Digital encoder: 1
Dolby Digital encoding in realtime: Yes
2D sound channels: 256
3D sound channels: 64
Positional 3D sound support: Yes (positional 3D sound is fake 3 sound using 2 stereo speakers)
Compression: ADPCM (4:1)
Fidelity: 16-bit, 48 KHz (CD quality)
DirectX Audio support: Yes
Effects: looping, enveloping, reflection, reverb, occlusion, obstruction, Doppler, etc. (to meet I3DL2 specifications)
Communication interfaces: USB, IEEE 1392, Ethernet, 56K, high-density I/F (hard drive, optical disk drive)
...and huge support from the best developers...who does care if the X-Box uses a modified P3 or a Nvidia GPU...
IMO Look at the X-Box as an ultra powerful console...not as a mini PC !...ops...another little thing...
The games are directX so if they can run on a P3 700 and 64 Mb of ram (+nvidia GPU) + Windows, they will do the same (or better) on Nvidia GPU PC sytem.
well...maybe in 2 or 3 years...you forget that X-Box is a fixed,balanced,optimized piece of hardware(unlike PCs) and developers will be able to fully push it to its limits(unlike PCs)
