Next Xbox "to have 16 core processor"

[targren]

In other news: Oil prices plummet from November through March as every single Xbox 720 owner decides they no longer need heating oil.

 

[Wintermoot]

isn't that a bit of a overkill? it,s not like gamers are pulling the full power from those 16 cores.

 

[zidine100]

getting that to even work sounds like a feet in itself, let alone the fact that im quite sure that would make game programming helish i mean even more hellish than it already is.

 

[Vigormortis]

Congrats people! Die-hard console fans will finally have a piece of hardware vastly better than any PC gamer!

You're joking, right..?

Um...yes. I thought the rest of my post (which you seemed to have omitted, oddly) made it quite clear I was being sarcastic.

Curse written texts natural inability to emote. *shakes fist in the air*


A quick caveat though, just so no one decides to be a jerk and insinuate that I'm a "PC elitist". I've nothing against consoles, per se. I grew up on 'em and own several to this day. Hell, I've consoles ranging from the Atari and NES up to the Wii, 3DS, and 360. In effect, I've owned at least two platforms from every generation of consoles. Still, PC has become my platform of choice over the years and it wasn't until the current generation that I've started to dislike consoles. Hence, my somewhat confrontational statements about the next proposed line of consoles.

 

[Zer_]

lolwut!?

We're not even thinking of 16 core CPUs for hardcore gaming PCs. AMD have only just released an 8 core CPU which is still a hefty amount. A Radeon HD 7000 equivalent seems a little far fetched as well having seen how far they can push what's in the current xbox's card.

Either this thing's gonna cost a bomb or I'm underestimating Microsoft.

And that the fact that the Bulldozer CPU is a complete joke, add to that the fact that several 7000 series GPU's are just 6xxx chips with a new sticker.

Yeah, PC's will still be performance kings. Good luck optimising console games for more than 4 cores. Good luck selling said consoles to console gamers who just want the latest installment of "point and shoot: the middle east"

Actually, Bulldozers are quite good. Do you remember when Hyperthreading first came out? Yeah the idea for Hyperthreading is quite a good one. At the time, though, Windows XP didn't know what to do with two virtual threads, so performance took a big hit... Same deal for Bulldozer.

Same deal with Bulldozers. BD processors actually run very well in comparison to Core i7 in Linux. Microsoft released a "Hotfix" for Windows 7, but it was buggy and incomplete, so they quickly pulled it. Now we're forced to wait for Windows 8 for the Bulldozer performance fix, which is fucking dumb of Microsoft.

 

[Xpheyel]

It'll still run like shit because Microsoft will outsource everything to suicidal Chinese workers

Every single thing in your PC was outsourced to suicidal Chinese workers. Amazingly, PC parts aren't forged by the Dwarves of Moria.

My Mithril aftermarket CPU heat sink says otherwise!

 

[Something Amyss]

You've written a novel? Well played sir. Have you got a publisher, or are you still shopping around?

Two, actually. Seeking on the first, polishing the second so I have it ready if I ever get the first one.

 

[juyunseen]

So... Microsoft are going to completely ignore the fact that
A: a console that had only a bit more power than a PS2 won this generation,
and
B: the 360 was a simpler system that could be pushed a long way, thus keeping it cheaper?

Well looks like I'm either going Wii U or PS4 this generation, the PS4 depending on if they try to make another behemoth or not.

 

[TorqueConverter]

What hardware will the nextbox have? Who knows? What were the specs on the devekit passed around prior to the release of the Xbox 360? It's probably best to look at the past if we want to have any semblance of insight into the near future. I wasn't much of a PC gamer in 2004-2005 so were the specs of a high end gaming PC at that time? Were fast dual cores and 512 dedicated cards the standard of high end hardware at the time?

I fully expect the nextbox to be comparable to a contemporary high end gaming PC of today in terms of it's CPU and GPU partitions. What I don't understand is what importance a 16 or 8 core CPU over a CPU of similar power with fewer cores for nextbox. Will kinect 2 benefit from, or require, more cores and multi-threading? There's got to be a reason behind this push for more cores/threading in this devkit.

I don't think that there's going to be much improvement, the problem with High-end PCs today are that they produce alot of wasted power; heat, efficiency has been very poor. This has been too much of an issue with the latest gen (emphasis on the 360). GPUs are the devils sidekick in this matter alone.

Also, this is the future of transistor CPUs, the only real way in which CPUs can be drastically improved in terms of performance and efficiency is by increasing the number of cores. We are moving ever so near Moore's law.

That all said, Microsoft used a tri-core (3 physical/logical), a bloody tri-core in the 360.

My limited understanding is that the game consoles typically use smaller dies of existing chip sets similar to how mobile gaming hardware works in gaming laptops. My old 8700m was very much a nVIDIA 8000 series card but packaged into a smaller die with less heat generation. It was a far cry from a 8800GTX but still a 512 dedicated dx10 card at the end of the day.

I can see the nextbox debut with a GPU partition similar in performance to a contemporary high end desktop card of today. Equal in performance? Probably not. Similar enough to be considered comparable? I would believe so.

As far as the CPU goes, who knows but there is most likely a reason behind passing around a 16 core devkit. My money is on Kinet 2 requiring the use of 'more cores' to track player movements and gestures rather than raw power. The thing could have a bazillion cores and still have a limp wristed clock.

OT:

Did the 360 actually have cooling issues or was the hardware failures something else entirely with overheating as a false culprit? I have a hard time believing overheating can cause a hardware failure short of de-laminating the memory. Was the red-ring even a hardware failure or just a mode the machine went into to say "have me looked at cuz somthins' not right". Hell, I overclocked the dog shit out of my 8700m in its final days as a gaming rig and that thing was generating some serious heat. It's hard to kill electronics with heat.