CES: Natal Will Consume 15% of Xbox 360 CPU

[Snork Maiden]

Do they mean 15% of one of the three cores, or 15% on all of the three cores? Or 5% on all of the three cores? I am not particularly looking forward to natal (looks like a dumb gimmick), but I am pretty sure the XB360's graphical bottleneck is the GPU (Xenon), not the CPU(Xenos) anyway.

This. I was under the impression that bottlenecks elsewhere mean modern processors actually sit idle a lot of the time (they certainly do on the PC at any rate). Could be wrong, though.

Of course, whether you're looking forward to Natal or not did anyone *really* expect games with Forza graphics? Natal IS a gimmick (which isn't necessarily a bad thing) - the draw is on the whole concept, and the fact that the idea should be fun. The draw (rightly or wrongly) won't be on the super shiny graphics and mega physics that you find in regular games, so the fact that the Xbox loses power shouldn't change the appeal of Natal if you've already made your mind up on it.

 

[hypothetical fact]

Hopefully this will fail within a month so companies can finally get the message and give up on this motion control crap.

 

[Hippobatman]

Right, I'm a bit curious about this product. I'm looking forward to reading the reviews and testing it myself. Only then will I be able to decide if this is awesome or useless.

And pardon my thinking, but would it recognize your penis if you started flailing it in front of the screen?

Just curious, honest!

 

[Shy_Guy]

I really doubt the 360's tri-core processor running at 3.4Ghz is the bottleneck. Even today, that's a damn good processor. This is coming from a guy with a Quad Core running near those speeds.

And remember, 360s don't have to run a complex OS, so that power is really focused on games. Now, if Natal used 15% of the GPU's full capabilities or 15% of the total RAM, I'd be worried. As it is, I think people are exaggerating and I do believe Microsoft released this information as a way of saying, "Hey, even at it's max it only uses a measly 15% or a superfast tri-core processor so don't worry about graphical degradation of any sort with Natal games!"

I guess I'm the only one here who still thinks Natal looks really fun...