Inside the Xbox 360, part I

Archived from groups: alt.games.video.xbox (More info?)

Thomas Jespersen <thomas@lucky-music.dk> wrote:
>http://arstechnica.com/articles/paedia/cpu/xbox360-1.ars
>
>"Codenamed Xenon, the multicore PowerPC CPU that IBM designed for the
>Xbox 360 boasts a number of unique features that set it apart from any
>microprocessor seen to date. The present article covers these features
>in detail, from the processor's triple-core design, to its caches,
>deep pipeline, lack of an instruction window, and expected
>performance."

Highly recommended article. (not that I'm a technical whiz, of
course.)

--
John Tesh: NBC's Counselor Troi.

Archived from groups: alt.games.video.xbox (More info?)

"emolsen" <emolsen@comcast.net> wrote in message
news:MKWdnV6vEd0RcgnfRVn-rQ@comcast.com...
> As a die-hard Sony fanboy, I admit to feeling a growing
> sense of doom. Could Ken Kutaragi and Sony be lying
> to me again?! No!!!. =)
>
> Seriously though, the more I read about the xbox 360, the
> more impressed I am becoming. Both the xbox 360 cpu and
> gpu are highly innovative and optimized for game performance.
>
> People seem to forget that until last fall, Sony had planned
> to use multiple cell chips to do the graphics, and only hired
> nvidia after they discovered that wouldn't work. Ok...back
> to the drawing board - I know - let's use a modified nvidia
> pc gpu!
>
> Anyway....when the dust settles in a couple years, it will be
> interesting to finally learn which system is superior. My hunch
> is that the xbox 360 will outperform the PS3, and not by a little.
>

During that read about the cpu of the 360, there was a couple links to the
PS2 (cell) articles. they are on the second to last page. I think reading
those should restore your confidence in ps3. From what I gathered in
reading, the cell not only has a multithread PowerPC core, but it also has 8
more SPE cores much like "small vector computers" that run independently of
one another but can cross talk if needed. Granted all of this means nothing
without great programmers, and great games.

Archived from groups: alt.games.video.xbox (More info?)

"Thomas Jespersen" <thomas@lucky-music.dk> wrote in message


All this procedural rendering, blah blah blah, sounds really good. The way
I see it, there are a few problems with it.

1. We've been promised this before. David Perry of Shiny Entertainment was
evangelizing this sort of process for their game, Messiah, back in the
latter half of the 90's. Maybe its time has come, maybe not, but it fell
flat back then.

2. This is a radically new process, which means it's going to come with a
learning curve. And it's a hardware feature, which means if you don't use
it, you're letting some of the hardware's power go to waste (which will
already be a problem for X360 and PS3 both, with their multiple PPEs and
SPEs, etc). And if you're 'supposed' to do your graphics like this, you
lose some flexibility, which is what Nvidia's always on about with their
programmable shaders.
In the end, though, here's my point: NO game at E3 was using this. NO demo
showed this. Why should we believe that this is how games will be made on
the X360 if all these games are already underway and NOT using this great
new technique?

3. The competition can do it, too. Sony actually showed a demo of a
procedurally rendered landscape, about an hour into their press conference.
Microsoft didn't. But we're supposed to believe that the X360 is hardwired
to do it, and it'll be a big advantage? Sony's stuff may be bullshit
(again), but it still looks bad when your competition shows off a technique
your hardware is built around, and you don't. Microsoft's hardware is done,
supposedly, and I've seen firsthand what things look like on it, and they
are no great leap. A lot of them looked terrible--current-gen graphics and
atrocious framerates.

So I'm not going to get excited over an article. I'll wait until I see an
actual GAME doing any of this stuff before I decide whether it's impressive.
Messiah wasn't, and neither was Microsoft's showing at E3.