Next Xbox "to have 16 core processor"

[razerdoh]

Just watch, there will be rumours about it have 6 gigs of ram or something next.

it needs to have atleast that now days... 4gigs is starting to be on the very low end...

 

[MorganL4]

And twice what the PS3 has, though doesn't this seem a bit excessive? 4 to 6 with a good bus would be plenty. Though I can see a console this generation bringing in neat a little ARM processor.

You are forgetting, this thing is going to have to last almost a decade, 360 cameout in 2005 it is now 2012 and the 720 probably won't hit shelves until 2013 maybe 2014, in other words just short of a decade.... what seems excessive and crazy now, will seem mediocre 5 6 7 years from now. It is the nature of technology.

 

[sabercrusader]

I really, really doubt this. 8 cores is probably what it'll be, and even that's pretty high. I sure hope the price isn't too high, but I'm sure it will be with this amount of cores. Hell, honestly, the thing I care most about it making sure the damn thing doesn't break so damn easy. I love my Xbox, but they break a lot.

 

[isometry]

From everybody`s reaction here it sounds like that is a real shit ton. Its making me kind of hope this rumor is actually true. I am actually really doubting that this is true though. It just seems like it is to early for people to be getting dev kits.

One thing people need to remember though is a company like microsoft can get technology like this before it goes on the market and far cheaper then anybody else.

It's believable, considering that Intel didn't start selling quad core CPUs to consumers until over a year after the Xbox 360 released (of course, most games at that time were still completely single-threaded).

It's funny, extra cpus could be used to make more proficient AI opponents, such as bots for shooters, but I guess that would give the games too much replay value: it would be harder to sell next year's shooters if people could play matches full of high-quality bots any time on the games they already have.

That wouldnt make a difference since the core crowd who buys those shooters doesnt give a fuck about bots. They want to be playing against actual people. Plus you know you get better faster against real people as well.

Yeah, but their opinion would change if the bots became as challenging and interesting to play against as human opponents.

The problem with current bots is that they eventually become predictable, because they can't adapt to new levels of competitive play that human players will push themselves to. Instead of pre-programmed bots, a more sophisticated idea would be to have AI bots could constantly learn by studying the tactical patterns of 1000s of successful players every day. This kind of machine learning is not some futuristic pie-in-the-sky technology, it is the same technology that underlies things like chess playing supercomputers (they don't just compute future moves by brute force, they mostly rely on expert strategies).

Hopefully that manages to convey why I think the simple bots we've seen so far in shooters are only the tip of the iceberg for the better bots that will be possible in the future. In addition, there are a lot of people who buy shooters for the single player campaign but find the multiplayer modes too difficult and full of douchebags, so these guys would welcome the addition of good bots. Lastly, a big part of why people buy new shooters every year is because older games don't have enough players to support good multiplayer matches, so someone who wants to play an older game would welcome the addition of bots to make it playable.

 

[dessertmonkeyjk]

16 cores? Someone try running the Heaven DX11 Benchmark on max see if it breaks.

And what makes you think a 16-core CPU can break a GPU benchmark?

I was talking about the console itself unable to do it, not the benchmark. You see what I'm getting at?

 

[Lunar Templar]

It'll still run like shit because Microsoft will outsource everything to suicidal Chinese workers and the consoles will still break down at the hint of a small breeze.

this.

i look forward to hearing about it 'RRoD'ing 50% of the time on launch day.

 

[tyytedde]

16 core processor, fuck off! what is this NASA's xbox?

 

[F'Angus]

That's gonna be costly... don't think it'll sell all too well if it's over £500/600

 

[Not G. Ivingname]

Unless those "cores" are off of a NES, that thing is going to be way to much power for anything it could need to do. The main problem with Xbox right now is disk space, not raw power.

 

[Treeinthewoods]

I vote for "not likely.". That's a pretty crazy idea for a console, what the hell would be the benefit of such lunacy?

I just want MS to admit Blue-ray is the way to go, any word on that? Switching discs is lame.

 

[Waaghpowa]

DAAAAMN! Thats a lot of power! If this is true and they manage to keep to price within the 300 area, that will be impressive. Might shut the PC elitists up about consoles being shit.

You REALLY need to read the rest of the thread before you start banging on about elitism.

 

[YawningAngel]

Can we inject a note of realism into this? We need only compare Sandy Bridge gaming performance to Sandy Bridge-E to see that modern games do NOT benefit from massive core counts, and a PowerPC architecture is unlikely given that MS have already shown interest in unifying the PC and Xbox in the past and can't do so if the Xbox isn't x64.

 

[Jaeke]

Well there's our leap ahead of PC's! ( for about 6 months )

 

[Cowabungaa]

It's funny how people call this so very outlandish, while it isn't really, in terms of tech. I mean sure, it's probably still not true because it'd be too expensive, but it's not that impossible. Pointless, yes, but not impossible.

Still, I don't care much about all this horsepower if the rumours about it needing to be online at all times are true. That'd be an instantly lost sale for me.