8-Core CPU Heads Xbox One's Hardware Specs

Steven Bogos

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Jan 17, 2013
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8-Core CPU Heads Xbox One's Hardware Specs


The Xbox One will have an 8-core CPU, 8 gig of RAM, a 500GB hard drive and a Blu-Ray disc drive.

Unlike Sony's PS4, who was a bit camera shy when it came to getting a shot of the actual console and its innards, Microsoft have been pretty forward with how the Xbox One looks both inside and outside. Heading its internal hardware will be an impressive 8-core CPU, supported by 8 gig of RAM, a 500GB hard drive and a Blu-Ray disc drive. It will also come with three 802.11N Wi-Fi radios, Ethernet, USB 3.0, and HDMI in and out.

The graphics card, arguably the most important piece of hardware, will actually be combined with the 8-core CPU. It will be a heavily customized AMD GPU tailored for DirectX 11.1 graphics, with 32MB of high bandwidth embedded eSRAM memory. Microsoft says that the CPU/GPU will consume around 100 watts of power, which is slightly higher than the current Xbox Slim and PS3, but it promises noise from the cooling fans will be "four times quieter."

Oh, and that new Kinect thing, sporting a 250,000-pixel infrared depth sensor as well as a regular 720p web cam, will also be packaged with every Xbox One

These stats seem pretty impressive, but without the clock rates and other specifics, its pretty hard to place it in terms of similarly priced PC components. For instance "8-core processors" run as low as $2,000 for Intel's Xeon E5-2687W [http://www.amazon.com/AMD-FX-8150-8-Core-Processor-FD8150FRGUBOX/dp/B005UBNLFK/ref=sr_1_2?s=electronics&ie=UTF8&qid=1369205149&sr=1-2&keywords=octo-core+processor]. If we are using modest comparisons to components already on the market, we are looking at around $500 worth of hardware.

It is also worth noting that the 8 gig of RAM in the Xbox One is standard DDR3 RAM instead of the fancy-pants GDDR5 that the PS4 is boasting. The console will also be switching to a much more PC-friendly x86 architecture.

Microsoft also claims that three separate 802.11n radios are included to allow the console to communicate with its controller (over a form of WiFi Direct) as well as other devices, such as phones or tablets, without losing its connection to the internet.



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A'tuin

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As a PC player who has never used Xbox or never will, the specs are actually a lot better than I feared. Finally game devs can start making games for the next gen, or the "current gen" of PCs. I'm glad about the jump from 512MB to 8Gb in RAM, though the difference between DDR3 and GDDR5 remains to be seen.
 

EstrogenicMuscle

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It is too bad all 8 cores are being wasted on a completely locked down system with some obscene DRM.

Well, it sounds like a lot of games today will be using more than four cores, at the very least. There's an actual reason to buy AMD CPUs then. I have a home theatre PC I built with an AM3+ motherboard. Probably now is a good time to buy a Vishera.

I've kind of wanted an excuse to buy a Vishera, but it hasn't really made much sense since almost nothing is using 8 cores and my Intel 2500k is superior for most things. The XBOX One is doing nothing to change that, though. Since nobody is actually going to develop games for the XBOX One.
 

mad825

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Steven Bogos said:
It is also worth noting that the 8 gig of RAM in the Xbox One is standard DDR3 RAM instead of the fancy-pants GDDR5 that the PS4 is boasting. The console will also be switching to a much more PC-friendly x86 architecture.
Either I'm being stupid or this is the worst gobbledygoo I've heard in a while.

There are two kinds of RAM, system and graphical. While you can have system RAM on the GPU, you cannot have GDDR on the system ; Quite frankly my old 9800GT had GDDR3 and the standard for most DX11 GPUs is GDDR5 and the standard for most for system RAM is DDR3 .

It's switching to a 32-bit system? How can it use more than 4GBs of RAM?
 

LongAndShort

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May 11, 2009
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Welp, I have little to no idea what most of that means, but it sure as hell sounds impressive. I think. Maybe. Is it? I'm gonna remain mildly impressed until a few comments down when a few members of the Master Race talk about how pathetic it is compared with their own machines.
 

VladG

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Well, the only thing that actually interests me, as a PC gamer, is the x86 architecture, which should mean cheaper, better PC ports.
 

wgar

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A said:
As a PC player who has never used Xbox or never will, the specs are actually a lot better than I feared. Finally game devs can start making games for the next gen, or the "current gen" of PCs. I'm glad about the jump from 512MB to 8Gb in RAM, though the difference between DDR3 and GDDR5 remains to be seen.
Except I don't want shinier, I want better. Sound design, gameplay testing, story writing, and creative game mechanics have fallen to the wayside for 'MOAR PIXELS', which is the primary reason the new console generation is underperforming in terms of hype compared to last genre; even the average person wants more than just shinier. We're on HD TVs, we can justify going from analog to digital but can't justify going to higher resolutions. Give us something creative.
 

Albino Boo

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The CPU is going to be based on the AMD jaguar, an 8 cored CPU with an ATI Radeon 7000 HD series on chip. This is the same as the PS4. As yet the this line of CPUs have not been released into the consumer marketplace.
mad825 said:
Steven Bogos said:
It is also worth noting that the 8 gig of RAM in the Xbox One is standard DDR3 RAM instead of the fancy-pants GDDR5 that the PS4 is boasting. The console will also be switching to a much more PC-friendly x86 architecture.
Either I'm being stupid or this is the worst gobbledygoo I've heard in a while.

There are two kinds of RAM, system and graphical. While you can have system RAM on the GPU, you cannot have GDDR on the system ; Quite frankly my old 9800GT had GDDR3 and the standard for most DX11 GPUs is GDDR5 and the standard for most for system RAM is DDR3 .

It's switching to a 32-bit system? How can it use more than 4GBs of RAM?

For a start its the AMD jaguar which is 64 bit not 32 bit. As I said above the gpu is on the chip and is without native memory. So using 8gigs GDDR5 as the main memory will produce better graphics performance than using 8 gigs of DDR3
 

mad825

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albino boo said:
For a start its the AMD jaguar which is 64 bit not 32 bit. As I said above the gpu is on the chip and is without native memory. So using 8gigs GDDR5 as the main memory will produce better graphics performance than using 8 gigs of DDR3
Re-read my post.

I never stated it was 32-bit but questioned it. I understand the difference between DDR and GDDR, bonus points; GDDR5 does not process 64-bits but rather circa 32-bits.
 

Snow Fire

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edit: I'm pretty excited about the new Xbox, just need some concerns addressed before I intend to buy it.
 

Joccaren

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albino boo said:
For a start its the AMD jaguar which is 64 bit not 32 bit. As I said above the gpu is on the chip and is without native memory. So using 8gigs GDDR5 as the main memory will produce better graphics performance than using 8 gigs of DDR3
First part of this is correct, then you mixed your consoles up.

The PS4 with its dedicated graphics [If memory serves] chip is using 8Gb GDDR5. The Xbox One with its CPU integrated graphics is using DDR3. Really, if they each wanted the best performance, they should be swapped around. Or, better yet, 2-3Gb GDDR5 on the Xbox and 5-6Gb DDR3.
 

mad825

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Snow Fire said:
mad825 said:
Steven Bogos said:
It's switching to a 32-bit system? How can it use more than 4GBs of RAM?
x86 comes in many flavors x86 16bit, x86 32 bit, x86 64bit(also knows as x64 for short, this is where the Xbox One will be, used in most PCs), x86 128bit, x86 256bit, and x86 512bit. So, no worries, all that RAM will be used,
I don't know where you're from but x86 refers to 32-bit (0r less). Hell, even my OS is telling me this.
 

oliver.begg

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mad825 said:
albino boo said:
For a start its the AMD jaguar which is 64 bit not 32 bit. As I said above the gpu is on the chip and is without native memory. So using 8gigs GDDR5 as the main memory will produce better graphics performance than using 8 gigs of DDR3
Re-read my post.

I never stated it was 32-bit but questioned it. I understand the difference between DDR and GDDR, bonus points; GDDR5 does not process 64-bits but rather circa 32-bits.
longstory short it transfers faster, hence why its used in vram for modern gpu's (part of the reason GPu's are no longer a pc's bottle neck)


both seem to be using the colective pool concept (where ram and vram share the same memory pool) that the xbox 360 uses (512mb split) instead of the ps3's 256 each.

the higher transfer speed means that ram won't be this gens bottle neck for a while, processor use speed will be


the diffrence for the user is probally texture load times and level load times being longer on the xbone



edit: a 64 bit pc processor, is a x86 64 processor. the actually design of the core is called x86
 

Snow Fire

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mad825 said:
I don't know where you're from but x86 refers to 32-bit (0r less). Hell, even my OS is telling me this.
X86 goes from 16bit up to 512bit, the current Windows line, from XP to 8 all support x86 64 bit.
 

mad825

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oliver.begg said:
the actually design of the core is called x86
That depends on how old you are...

OT:Does anyone want to go back to my original question? Do any more people want to lecture me on things I already know?
 

Ishigami

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Well it was already rumored that the XO would be a tad slower than the PS4. They have yet to unveil the GPU specs but since both system are more or less build around AMD technology and probably aim at the same price tag it is fair to say that they are probably very similar.
I guess the end result will be that in this generation multi-platform title will indeed look and perform the same on XO and PS4.
Anyway the hardware seems competent enough to me. Lets see what games they up their sleeve.
 

mad825

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Snow Fire said:
mad825 said:
I don't know where you're from but x86 refers to 32-bit (0r less). Hell, even my OS is telling me this.
X86 goes from 16bit up to 512bit, the current Windows line, from XP to 8 all support x86 64 bit.
well done, but x86 isn't x64. All it says that it supports on x64 systems not necessary with the benefits which x64 comes with.
 

Thamian

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oliver.begg said:
mad825 said:
the actually design of the core is called x86
Somewhat annoyingly this guy is actually kinda right. Looks like the x86 instruction set has undergone multiple word-legth extensions over it's lifetime, with the AMD64 instr. set (also known as x64, and hilariously Intel 64) being x86-64.

Given the 8gigs of RAM, it's probably just sloppy writing on the part of either Mr. Bogos or the microsoft marketting wonk he got it from, although they could have done the same with some odd (and custom) processor design, while still running 32-bit worded code.

Actually, thinking about it, given the integrated graphics, my guess would be that the memory's just divided up between the GPU and CPU. Yeah that makes more sense.



Leaving all that to one side though, and bearing in mind that I'm a embittered, purebred PC gamer, I'm overjoyed by these specs, especially the fact that the graphics are a Radeon chipset. Finally! The AAA games market is no longer held in total obeisance to the rip-off merchants at Nvidia!
 

SpAc3man

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mad825 said:
Steven Bogos said:
It is also worth noting that the 8 gig of RAM in the Xbox One is standard DDR3 RAM instead of the fancy-pants GDDR5 that the PS4 is boasting. The console will also be switching to a much more PC-friendly x86 architecture.
Either I'm being stupid or this is the worst gobbledygoo I've heard in a while.

There are two kinds of RAM, system and graphical. While you can have system RAM on the GPU, you cannot have GDDR on the system ; Quite frankly my old 9800GT had GDDR3 and the standard for most DX11 GPUs is GDDR5 and the standard for most for system RAM is DDR3 .

It's switching to a 32-bit system? How can it use more than 4GBs of RAM?
You can have GDDR being used as system RAM. No one does it and you can't do it in the normal way in a PC because DDR is better as system RAM while GDDR is optimised for highly parallel operations (e.g. graphics). The reason the PS4 does it is because Sony decided having RAM that is optimised for graphics would be better. Microsoft have gone for a more traditional setup.

x86 does not necessarily mean 32 bit. x86 is the name of the instruction set architecture that Intel designed. Of which there is a 64 bit version.
From Wikipedia:
x86-64 (also known as x64) is a 64-bit extension of IA-32, the 32-bit generation of the x86 instruction set.. ..The original specification was created by AMD, and has been implemented by AMD, Intel, VIA, and others. It is fully backwards compatible with 16-bit and 32-bit x86 code.. ..Prior to launch, "x86-64" and "x86_64" were used to refer to the instruction set. Upon release, AMD named it AMD64. Intel initially used the names IA-32e and EM64T before finally settling on Intel 64 for their implementation. Some in the industry, including Apple, use x86-64 and x86_64, while others, notably Sun Microsystems (now Oracle Corporation) and Microsoft, use x64 while the BSD family of OSs and the Debian Linux distribution use AMD64.