Xbox One Gets Last Minute CPU Boost

[Saucycarpdog]

-snip-

We might agree if it were simply that they said they "wouldn't" be changing it.

But they didn't. They originally stated that it "couldn't" be changed because such a change would be difficult, if not impossible at this stage in development. Which is very much different. And the revelation that they could, in fact, change it with a simple software patch makes their original statements lies. Let's stop playing spin doctor on this and call it what it is.

And frankly if you find the use of the word "naive" insulting, then I do hope you understand that I mean no offense when I tell you that I really don't care that you chose to take personal offense at a perceived slight. That's on you. I was referring to the attitude that a company which has proven itself untrustworthy should be taken completely at their word and given full trust and faith. That is "naive". That's essentially a textbook definition of the word. It's a clear demonstration of a lack of experience with the situation at hand, and a decided lack of proper judgment.

It's not "insulting" a person to point out that their point of view doesn't reflect the reality of the situation and relies heavily on goodwill that has not been demonstrated. I didn't "insult" anyone. You just got offended by what you felt was a slight at you. And that's your own problem, I'm afraid.

Please point out where they said it was "impossible", and not just difficult. Cause that's what it would be if you change something that was supposed to be a core feature.

It was both the naïve, and the condescending tone you were using. I'm afraid if you think hurling insults supports you're arguments, you look even sillier than anything you're saying.

And yeah, what you basically said in the last paragraph was that "it is not insulting to point out their opinion is wrong because I say so". It's his opinion. Get over it, and stop being silly.

 

[Ed130 The Vanguard]

I do find this a bit perplexing.

Microsoft has had problems with their communication for some time now, so I'm not really surprised..

Saying MS has communication problems is a massive understatement.

I'm honestly surprised by this news, generally you want to lock in your hardware months before production starts so you can iron out all the bugs before full scale production.

This increase can be seen as a bad thing, 3 months to test, build and ship isn't much. If they miss something or the console goes boom after 6 months then MS will be trouble.

There's nothing to say that they haven't been testing this change for more than a year now, and announced it once the testing passed successfully (as nearly any company would).

Yes, however this is the same company that brought RRoD into common usage.

Betting $500+ that they were smart (which considering the DRM plan they wanted to use) and that they didn't repeat their past mistakes isn't what I would call a sure bet.

 

[masticina]

Still kills me that they're running clock speeds that would be low-end on a laptop from 4 years ago... I mean sure, it's 8 cores, and it's standardized hardware... but seriously? Slower per core than the shitty laptop I'm typing this on? Slower than my roommate's phone?

...though if you want it back on topic... still inferior hardware for more money. If I were buying any console this gen, it'd be the PS4. No need, though... they're all x86 now, so I'll be waiting for the next round of 8-core 4+Ghz CPUs to come out. Hopefully this means a paradigm shift away from single-thread only bullshit in game development (and widespread integration of DDR5 system memory. Waiting on that too). Pretty sure I'll be able to outlast this console generation on an $800 build... sometime next year.

The 4Ghz is dead, Microsoft tried to reach it with the Pentium but their models over 3Ghz ran very hot and we're addicted to power. As in much of the electricity they drank in just turned into warmth.

A paradigm was reached, speed didn't add more. Instead every 100mhz added more and more heat with little to show for. The Prescots we're pretty much the worst Pentiums you could own.

How more cores how harder it is to get higher CPU speeds it seems. Just to much heat created. yes you can overclock an octo core if you like but it is harder to reach the speeds you get on a single core. That is reality!

But I agree that the new game consoles at least should lead to the paradigm shift we require. Games can use multi core support, I know synchronizing threads will be a female dog of a job but that is the only way we get forward now. And as long as games are kept Monocore with a few added side effects.. we won't get far.

 

[The White Hunter]

My PC is my multimedia monolith : D

Ironically, despite now having an HDMI hookup from my PC to my TV, I still use my PS3 for much of it.

Less for games, though. Weird.

Why the hell would they test a tiny boost in the clock speed for a year? A days stress to ensure it doesn't burnout or crash would suffice just fine for a stable overclock.

To be fair, why would Microsoft release an incomplete console after spending like a billion man-hours redesigning the controller?

But yeah, they probably didn't put anywhere near that much thought into it.

I spend most of my time at my desktop due to the layout of my tiny room -_- so it's the media hub for me. The PS3 is an excellent DVD player though.

They're just floundering under the pressures of the internet hating them.

 

[Eliam_Dar]

I wonder if they have considered the increase in temperature when increasing the CPU clock speed. And, was it really necessary, it won't make a huge difference in performance.

 

[Saucycarpdog]

Here's a fun game, go back to my original post and point to the actual insults I used. If you can't find any (and you won't, because the only statement that could be remotely construed as one is the use of the word "naive", which I explained earlier), then I'm just going to do what I should have done several posts ago and ignore your input on this subject, as it's relatively clear you just felt like getting offended over nothing. Which, again, is your problem, not mine. Get over it, yourself.

And yet you're getting offended by the other guys opinion? Contradiction much. I'll drop this part of the argument since we basically are just having an annoying shouting match at this point. So how about we BOTH get over it?

OT:And Microsoft did say that most of their games are going to make use of the always on DRM. How would that be not difficult to change?

 

[Something Amyss]

They're just floundering under the pressures of the internet hating them.

You'd think they'd be used to it by now. I mean, they don't exactly have a smooth history.

 

[Something Amyss]

Please point out where they said it was "impossible", and not just difficult.

difficult, if not impossible

That's not saying it's impossible.

Remember, they can't change it.

 

[loc978]

Still kills me that they're running clock speeds that would be low-end on a laptop from 4 years ago... I mean sure, it's 8 cores, and it's standardized hardware... but seriously? Slower per core than the shitty laptop I'm typing this on? Slower than my roommate's phone?

...though if you want it back on topic... still inferior hardware for more money. If I were buying any console this gen, it'd be the PS4. No need, though... they're all x86 now, so I'll be waiting for the next round of 8-core 4+Ghz CPUs to come out. Hopefully this means a paradigm shift away from single-thread only bullshit in game development (and widespread integration of DDR5 system memory. Waiting on that too). Pretty sure I'll be able to outlast this console generation on an $800 build... sometime next year.

The 4Ghz is dead, Microsoft tried to reach it with the Pentium but their models over 3Ghz ran very hot and we're addicted to power. As in much of the electricity they drank in just turned into warmth.

A paradigm was reached, speed didn't add more. Instead every 100mhz added more and more heat with little to show for. The Prescots we're pretty much the worst Pentiums you could own.

How more cores how harder it is to get higher CPU speeds it seems. Just to much heat created. yes you can overclock an octo core if you like but it is harder to reach the speeds you get on a single core. That is reality!

But I agree that the new game consoles at least should lead to the paradigm shift we require. Games can use multi core support, I know synchronizing threads will be a female dog of a job but that is the only way we get forward now. And as long as games are kept Monocore with a few added side effects.. we won't get far.

ummm... first off, it was intel, second, we're getting more heat from running APU/SOC (what the consoles are running, damn good idea for low-wattage systems, but needs a big ol' fan because all of the processing power is in one place) than from more speed (though that is quite similar to putting more cores on one chip). A 100W quad-core CPU with a base frequency of 3.8Ghz doesn't automatically produce a whole hell of a lot more heat then a 95W quad-core CPU with a base frequency of 2.7Ghz (the difference is, surprise, 5%. Wattage). Depends on the architecture (and yes, I'm speaking from first-hand experience, those are two computers in my house, a Vishera and a Yorkfield).

Mind you, it's obviously not easy to engineer something to reach those speeds without overclocking... but it really does make a difference, just not as much difference as it used to, and not as much as intel's core-supporting architecture... due to most games still running a single processing thread.

 

[Denamic]

My 2012 video card (7850 HD 2GB) pulls about 1.7 TFLOPS, you aren't impressing this PC gamer Microsoft.

Why is it console systems are always behind the times with PC architecture?

Mine is a 2012 GTX 660ti, and it does about 2.4 TFLOPS. It's really hard to be impressed when the specs they're trying to sell are barely higher than my mother's laptop.

 

[Lightknight]

OT: I didn't know the consoles had such shitty CPUs.

Doesn't matter anymore. CPUs don't actually do the brunt of the processing anymore, their job is to offload the processing on the GPU and RAM. Your CPU should stick around 0-10% use as long as there's RAM available. At some point RAM became so damn cheap that it was the obvious answer to bottlenecking in CPU improvements.

So you don't need a powerful CPU. You need a powerful GPU/RAM combo with an OS and software optimized to assist the software in passing the work on along. A weaker CPU with multiple cores would be ideal for that with cost in mind.

 

[Strazdas]

Sounds more like a OC than a actual icnrease in power, which leads to more heat, and unless they redesigned the whole system (no they didnt), its going to have overheating problems. dont buy it at launch. at least wait for a month to see whether its failure rate is low enough. this last minute adjustments sounds scary knowing how well microsoft treated overheating in the past.

OT: I didn't know the consoles had such shitty CPUs.

Doesn't matter anymore. CPUs don't actually do the brunt of the processing anymore, their job is to offload the processing on the GPU and RAM. Your CPU should stick around 0-10% use as long as there's RAM available. At some point RAM became so damn cheap that it was the obvious answer to bottlenecking in CPU improvements.

So you don't need a powerful CPU. You need a powerful GPU/RAM combo with an OS and software optimized to assist the software in passing the work on along. A weaker CPU with multiple cores would be ideal for that with cost in mind.

As a person who has a stronger CPU than GPU, i curse every developer that thinks like that.

My 2012 video card (7850 HD 2GB) pulls about 1.7 TFLOPS, you aren't impressing this PC gamer Microsoft.

Why is it console systems are always behind the times with PC architecture?

Mine is a 2012 GTX 660ti, and it does about 2.4 TFLOPS. It's really hard to be impressed when the specs they're trying to sell are barely higher than my mother's laptop.

Well, to be fair, my 5 year old laptop does not even do 1 TFLOPS, so it is better than that.

 

[Lightknight]

As a person who has a stronger CPU than GPU, i curse every developer that thinks like that.

The needs of the many...

Going forward you've really got to invest more in the GPU. While it won't matter for the consoles, this does mean that games will be designed with offloading in mind. That really isn't being caused by consoles, the consoles are just catching up with the times, but these will expedite the transition in computer software that was already heading that way. So whether wanted or not this will end up impacting pc owners. Fortunately, the CPU does pick up the slack if other resources get maximized but you're also talking about crusing for a burnout if your GPU is running on the highest settings all the time.

I can't think of any reason why developers wouldn't go this route. It is extremely efficient and GPU/RAM is a lot cheaper and/or a lot more upgradeable than the CPU is nowadays. I still regret having gone for a new i7 over a comparable i5. I could have spent that $100 on a second video card at the time to double my performance. Now I can't find the same video card for sale even though my motherboard would allow me to bridge three. So I'm loaded up on 16GB of 1866 mhz of RAM that I can turn into 32GB as needed with a decent video card that will end up being my weak point in another four years. So why do you think developers should go the least efficient and most expensive route?

My 2012 video card (7850 HD 2GB) pulls about 1.7 TFLOPS, you aren't impressing this PC gamer Microsoft.

Why is it console systems are always behind the times with PC architecture?

Designing a console isn't about designing a cutting edge console. It's about designing the best machine they can within a price range consumers will buy it in. It is a terrible idea to roll out a $600+ machine and expect consumers to go for it as Sony already learned. That one video card you're talking about is around $180 bucks by itself. That would be almost half the price of the ps4.

People who expect to be shocked or impressed by consoles don't get what the point of a console is. It's an affordable all in one gaming system that you can plug and play without worrying about anything. The developers are able to then push the standard hardware beyond any other computer in that power range because they can optimize it whereas the number of hardware configurations on the pc level are almost infinite and so can't be optimized for.

What's important is that these machines are multiple times more powerful than the already very capable current generation. That's moving the ball significantly albeit not as significant as the leap from ps2/Xbox ->ps3\360. Still, as machines get more and more powerful you shouldn't expect to maintain the same multitude of times of improvement. Improving 10 units of whatever by ten times isn't nearly as significant as improving 100 units of something by three times.

Also, mark my words. There will come a day when the amount of available processing outstrips the demands of even the most demanding video games. Just as there was a time when word processing actually taxed computers and we eventually outstripped that, games will get to a point where innovation is the limited resource. We've been getting very impressive graphically. I expect this generation to be more about improving physics and AI than necessarily just graphics. Though improving physics actually will improve graphics as our brain knows when things aren't behaving properly.

 

[devotedsniper]

Woooooow! a whole 150Mhz, I can get a whole 1GHz extra (stable) just by changing the multiplier on my pc, you've really achieved something there. Clock speed isn't everything mind you but for 2013 hardware I expected more, come on even my phone has a 1.6GHz quad core.

 

[Strazdas]

As a person who has a stronger CPU than GPU, i curse every developer that thinks like that.

The needs of the many...

Going forward you've really got to invest more in the GPU. While it won't matter for the consoles, this does mean that games will be designed with offloading in mind. That really isn't being caused by consoles, the consoles are just catching up with the times, but these will expedite the transition in computer software that was already heading that way. So whether wanted or not this will end up impacting pc owners. Fortunately, the CPU does pick up the slack if other resources get maximized but you're also talking about crusing for a burnout if your GPU is running on the highest settings all the time.

I can't think of any reason why developers wouldn't go this route. It is extremely efficient and GPU/RAM is a lot cheaper and/or a lot more upgradeable than the CPU is nowadays. I still regret having gone for a new i7 over a comparable i5. I could have spent that $100 on a second video card at the time to double my performance. Now I can't find the same video card for sale even though my motherboard would allow me to bridge three. So I'm loaded up on 16GB of 1866 mhz of RAM that I can turn into 32GB as needed with a decent video card that will end up being my weak point in another four years. So why do you think developers should go the least efficient and most expensive route?

Yeah, i know, thats why i was forced into widescreen monitors (i still like 4:3 better).
And yep my next machine will be i5 with a top of the line GPU since i7 seems moot at this point.
If only my CPU would pick up the slack. i see my games being bottlenextked at GPU while the CPU is cruising at 30% load do the thing your designed to - process stuff -.-
I dont know about GPU being cheaper (big amounts of RAM Is great and i fully support that), but it certainly is more upgradable. what with intel now wielding thier CPUs into motherboards and whatnot. I still dont think you souls need 2 graphic cards though. Enough is enough, if 1 cant run it maybe they should start optimizing the game then.

They shuold not go mroe expensive and inefficient route. they should go for a route that balances users resources and allows maximum performance, rather than bottlenecking GPU while the rest is closer to idle than to full load.

 

[Lil devils x_v1legacy]

Are they changing the actual CPU or just overclocking it? If they are changing the actual CPU, that is good, if they are overclocking it in that small box without adding the extra cooling needed, it is going to greatly reduce it's lifespan because it is going to cook. Hopefully they are not stupid enough to overclock it without adding cooling. Anyone who has overclocked knows that, you would have to have a serious case of the dumbass to do that.