I can believe everything except the 3Ghz number. That seems just a tad high considering:

a) Dedicated devices tend to use significantly lower-clocked processors than PCs (like the first Xbox, which ran at 700mhz).

b) I find it hard to believe that IBM has a triple-core chip running at 3Ghz, even in the lab, when they can't even get a 3Ghz single-core chip out to market.

c) Consoles, due to their compact, CE nature, are much more difficult to keep cool. Much like laptops. I suspect that the level of warranty returns/exchanges would be through the roof with such a beefy proc. That's the last thing MS wants.

Meh, I could be wrong, but the 3Ghz number just doens't sound realistic to me at all.

here's what i don't understand:

How are they going to make this affordable in 2005? the fastest consumer powerpc processor out there runs ar 2.5 ghz and costs an arm and a leg. The gpu is going to be a full generation ahead of the current, 500 dollar lot? So this entire system is going to be bleeding edge, and even though the PC equivalent would cost around 1,000 dollars, they are going to sell it for 300?

Are they making the same decision to lose money on the console just to get the system out first? Is there any way PS3 wont blow this out of the water when it arrives a year later and has seen what Xenon can do?

According to http://arstechnica.com/articles/paedia/cpu/amd-hammer-1.ars/6

Each A64 core issues 3(a)(b) X86 instructions per cycle; with dual cores this totals to 6. This Xenon's PPC only issues 2 instructions; with triple cores this totals to 6.

a. 3 from hardware decoder.
b. Not factoring additional ~1 instruction per cycle from micro-code decoder.

PS;
PowerPC 7400, issues 2 instructions + 1 branch.
2 Fixed Point Execution Units (IU1 & IU2)
1 Floating Point Unit (FPU)
1 Load & Store Unit (LSU)
1 Vector Permute Unit (VPERM)
1 Vector Arithmetic-Logic Unit (VALU)
1 branch unit
(process up to 2 instructions; front end limit)

PowerPC 970 issues 4 instructions + 1 branch.
2 general purpose fixed point execution units
2 floating point units (FPU)
2 Load & Store Units (LSU)
1 Vector Permute Unit (VPERM)
1 Vector Arithmetic-Logic Unit (VALU)
1 branch unit
(process up to 4 instructions; front end limit)

PowerPC 7450, issues 3 instructions + 1 branch.
3 simple fixed point execution units
1 complex fixed point execution unit
1 floating point unit (FPU)
1 Load & Store Unit (LSU)
1 Vector Permute Unit
1 Vector Simple Integer Unit
1 Vector Complex Integer Unit
1 Vector Floating Point Unit
1 branch unit
(process up to 3 instructions; front end limit)

At a given Mhz, Xenon's PowerPC core seems to be weaker than PowerPC 970 core...

Nah, it should have damn quad core are much better than triple core processor. Xbox 2 will have 256 memory ram?....oh well, it should 512MB or higher memory ram. If they wants...then that's fine :S

Bad enough that Athlon 64's run hot enough to require a fan thats loud enough to piss me off. The fastest Athlon 64 is 2.6 Ghz AFAIK.

So what's the decibel level of three 3 Ghz PowerPC chips with a 500 Mhz ATI chip? I'm sure water cooling is out of the question. I could probably heat my house with just a few Xbox 2's and maybe a PS3 for the living room. Four years later Microsoft will ship a smoke detector when defective fans stop working and systems catch on fire.

Sony and Microsoft are creating multi CPU systems that will have a decibel level of 50 dBA and enough heat to probably heat a room. I can almost hear the marketing department getting ideas to include head phones because the darn thing will be so loud.

Anyone ever thought how much an Xbox 2 or PS3 will cost? I wouldn't be surprised if we saw console systems reaching past $500.

Will PCs be replaced by consoles? That's a silly question because you know the answer is never.

Technically console systems are using PC hardware. So console systems are really just playing catch up to PCs. Xbox 2 may have 3 PowerPC Cpus but they're all sharing 1 MB of L2 cache. Plus have a total of 256 MB of memory from what I read.

You know by the end of this year PCs will have the new ATI graphic chips and dual core Athlon 64s. Plus there's lots of talk about that Physics Processor from Ageia.

Am I a PC fanboy? No I'm a gamer who owns a sweat PC, GameCube, and Xbox. The reason I play PC games and console games is because I can't play every game I like on just one machie. I can't see myself playing 3D shooters on a console system and I can't see myself playing Zelda on my PC.

As much as you think that you can make one system play every type of game you will be wrong. 3D shooter's and mmorpg's have always belonged to PC. You can never bring fighting games, sports, and etc to PC.

PC > console ..... and you all know it.
just like rock > pop
and coffee > tea
and right > wrong (or left if you prefer to refer to them as left)
and maudio > creative
and techreport > rage3d
and vacation > work
and work > being tied to train tracks covered in ants

Here is a big thing that people keep forgetting in the console v.s. pc gaming threads:

Consoles wont LOOK BETTER then PCs unless people have an upgraded display (HDTV, Projector, etc...)

That is the main reason I DON'T game on a console; the output looks like crap. I hear that a Xbox looks good when the component out option is used, but after playing Doom 3, HL2, and watching my brother play WoW on hi-res 20" screens, Halo 2 looks like crap to me.

When I started gaming on my PC, I stopped going to arcades because the games looked like crap compared to what I have at home.

No to mention that after playing a LAN game where each person has there own monitor, playing 2 way or 4 way split screen sucked A$$.

Here is a huge thing that would get me to buy one of these new systems; an option for VGA or DVI outpuet, so those of us with nice displays can get the most out of them.

If players upgrade their TVs to go along with these next consoles or have the option to use a computer display, then it should be great to game on them; if not, then 480i, 720P, or 1080i output will still look like crap if fed to a standard tv via RCA or SVHS.

Does the name 'Xenon' seem dumb to anyone else, given the existence of the Intel Xeon?

Dual core would be fine... Dual core GPU would do better than triple core CPU

People have been wondering about die size and heat/power for a three core PPC. Some numbers:

IBM's 90nm 970FX single core PPC is running at 2GHz or slightly more (on 24.5W); adding cores shouldn't slow it any. The Cell, which (along with the 8 SPEs) incorporates a PPC core very similar to the one specified for the Xbox, has samples running at 4GHz on the 90nm process according to IBM. It's unclear if IBM is planning to switch to 65nm for the final version of these processors; given that time is short and the 65nm node is unproven, I doubt it, but you never know.

In terms of area (all numbers in square mm): the 970FX die is 62(including cache), so three cores plus cache (which is as big as a core) would probably run about 120 (this seems roughly right from looking at PPC/cache part of the Cell as well). For comparison, Newcastle (130nm) is 150, Winchester (90nm) is 85 and Prescott (90nm) is 112. The Cell (which again has one PPC plus eight SPEs) is enormous: 221mm (which tends to argue for a process shrink asap).

IBM said Cell prototypes dissipated 50W-80W at 4GHz -- which is a lot for a console, but they're prototypes (hence the huge variation). I'd expect the final version to be at the low end of that range; the Xbox chip will probably be in there somewhere as well. That is quite hot for a console, though considerably less than the 80W-150W you see in Athlon64 or P4 systems. Since the boxes are sealed units one can imagine a Shuttle-like heat pipe design and careful ducting to keep thermals and noise to a minimum.

I think it's doable, though just barely.

UberGerbil - Less chance of backwards compatibility makes me think PPC wasn't the best arch choice.

Come now, P-M's or low voltage Athlon64's (Cough TURION hahaha) makes a heck of a lot more sense IMO...but then again, I'm not Microsoft and not as knowledgable as yourself. So I guess my opinion means less, but I'll stick with it for a while :D

The rig I'm sitting next to has 3 low-speed 80mm, 1 medium speed 80mm, one medium speed 92mm on my CPU (OC'd 2500+)...two 92mm fans in my PSU, and then one relatively quiet fan on my 9600 Pro.

I don't particularly mind.

Very Short History of Consoles VS PC's

1. Console X is introduced. It is amazing upon release. Blows PC's out of water.
--A few months pass--
2. PC's retake lead, hold on to it for 3-4 years...

DukenukemX - I hardly see how it requires a fan loud enough to piss you off...Never heard of 120mm low speed fans?

Holy crap, did anyone stop reading after the first line and think, "Microsoft gaming console on a PPC chip? Wil we be able to run Windows on a Mac soon?"

Heh, more RAM and one less processor would probably do them better.

This 3 Core information was leaked ages ago. This is only confirmation.

So. . . . .how many prostitution rings will I have to start to buy one?

The interesting thing about the disclosure at the GDC was that the cores in the neXtBox chip are very similar to one of the cores in the Cell. The Cell has a eight "SPE" asynchronous processors and a master processor. The master is a PPC derived, dual-issue, static execution core with split L1 cache (32K code/32K data), an AltiVec/VMX unit, FPU and integer units. Each of the three cores in the neXtbox would appear to be a PPC-derived, dual-issue core with split L1 cache (32K code/32K data), and presumably an AltiVec/VMX unit, FPU and integer units. There may be significant differences, but at this level they look awfully close.

It looks like IBM is arming both sides of the next console war with some of the same ammunition. Of course they're not all that similar when you take everything else into account (1MB of L2 cache and 3 cores for the nExtBox, the eight SPEs for the Cell; different GPUs and storage and online designs, etc) -- coding for each of them will definitely be different. Still, it's kind of interesting.

One question I have always had is with all this being made over three cpus in the next Xbox, do three cpus stand a chance compared the the Cell processor in the PS3? It seems everything I read about the Cell says that it should be faster than any combination of traditional cpus.

One question I have always had is with all this being made over 3 cpus in the next Xbox, do three cpus stand a chance compared the the Cell processor in the PS3? It seems everything I read about the Cell says that it should be faster than any combination of traditional cpus.

/quote "The question now may become: will dual-core PC processors have the beans to keep up with a triple-core Xbox?

man...Console gaming will always blow even with that so-called service Xbox Live!

fp.. I hope !

I heard this a while back and I didn't believe it, I hear it again and well... I still have a hard time believing it.

will it have the beans to keep up.... no not really. that kind if dedicated hardware will take a while to catch up with.... but on the other hand its gonna be alot more difficult to program for.

the thing to note is that we are watching the dying throughs of pc gaming, its sad ad i grew up on pc gaming, but when i walk into EB and see 8:1 ratios of console vs pc games its a sad fact...

and frankely i blame the industry itself, dell,gateway, pc vendors, all you a$5h03les who sell "2.7 ghz pc today for 400$!!!!" to unsuspecting users, congrats you monkeys, you just pretty much kill the market for mass public, and made it a expensive confusing nightmare for anyone who wants to game on pc....

i have a girfriend who works ad dell in roseburg, helli have to explain to her why a dothan laptop is more powerfull than a p4 laptop, and why 256 megs of video ram isnt great with a 5200nivida proccessor...

this is why consoles will win, its ben said before, i agree with it.

you #$%%'s made the pc world to confusing. right along with you pudd loving virus writters who have such small Genitals that you feel the need to Pwn someone...

rant
rant
/sigh/