[citation][nom]bjaminnyc[/nom]I imagine when you buy blocks of 500,000 units the price goes down substantially, if they actually buy them from IBM rather than just buying licencing rights to the chip design. I would think the volume of chips MS would require for the Xbox would double the annual output of what IBM makes for their servers.[/citation]
IBM designs, not fabricates. The previous IBM processors for the game consoels are all made by other companies such as Globo Foundries (they make at least the Xbox 360's Xenon CPU, if not more chips than that for the consoles).
[citation][nom]analytic1[/nom]I was reading many years ago that microsoft were doing a lot of research and development for their next console , looking into cpu design as well as many other functions that a console uses .I have read many times that having a 16 core cpu is impossible , what makes a company with billions of dollars resources less intelligent than the man on the street ? even if they did intend to use a 16 core processor who says it will cost $300 ? it could be low powered and the way it processes data is the job of somebody who has knowledge in computer science .Anyway , from a accounting point of view , if you have a contract with a company for 30 million processors over a period of lets say 7 years , even if the processors cost $200 each today with the said company have a 15% profit margin included in that price and that is the cost of production , every year that product will deprecate in production cost and after a few years will become old tech .So a deal to supply 30 million processors at least over a period of time could be put into a percentage ratio per console , lets say 25% as a example and it deprecates at 1% a year or what ever the deal details ....I done a calculation and i guess the processor will cost microsoft roughly $100 per processors per console over its life cycle , as a lot of research and development has already been done by microsoft over the last 5 years , microsoft is not just some stupid company with no idea or money ,and just to add , when you look on the inter net and see a $300 16 core cpu that price also includes packaging , production , transport , research and development cost , advertisement , the retailers profit margin , plus tax ......Just a thought , could you imagine a game played on a 400sq island with 30 plus players where you are able to talk with the AI using kinect which have a basic data base of responses , can you imagine leaving your console while its still running and players are still playing , while you fly over to another island =console with another 400sq island , just because they haven't done things like this yet doesn't mean it can not be done , you don't need a powerful GPU for consoles as they work on 1080p tv's ..I think PC's are cool and can be very much more powerful than consoles , but are develops programming for the PC ? what i mean by that is optimization of the standard set of tech in a console can be much more effective than the different tech you find in a PC .....[/citation]
Being used on a 1080p TV does not mean that the consoles don't need powerful graphics. In fact, that means just the opposite, that they do need powerful graphics.
[citation][nom]ajaxmaru[/nom]After 3 years how many cores will pc processor have maybe 16 or more. They design these product to last longer. They will be very happy if they can sell their products for as many years as possible. 16 cores maybe over kill now but for how many years???.[/citation]
Going over 4 cores on a desktop is still not useful if you're not a professional user who needs highly threaded media creation/transformation performance or stuff like that. We are still adopting quad cores, 16 is a long way off, if ever with current types of CPUs on a desktop. The only 16 core X86 processors are AMD's 16 core Interlagos Opteron server processors. Also, they aren't high power CPUs. Some of them use less power than the quad core desktop CPUs because of their low clock frequency (power usage increases exponentially with linearly increased clock frequency, so reducing clock frequency linearly reduces power usage exponentially too, this is why some super computers run at half the recommended frequency for their processors)
[citation][nom]shloader[/nom]Do all you guys still commenting on the '16 cores' rumor think the 4-core-16-thread group is spewing BS or do you simply not read comments? 4 core is a better route for all of us. Think about it. Sony's 8 core only uses seven cores due to yield issues so there's a 12.5% loss in processor capacity right off the top, and one core is dedicated to the XMB menu. With a 4 core (16 thread, don't forget) if a core is bad that's a 25% loss is processing capacity. This would be unacceptable at every level. No handicapped processors in consoles.[/citation]
The chances of a CPU having a defect in a core or anywhere else decreases exponentially with smaller die sizes. If this new CPU has a smaller die size than the very first Xenon chips for the Xbox 360 (it undoubtedly will), then it probably won't need to have a core disabled. Unless you haven't noticed, a lot of CPUs and GPUs and other such chips don't have parts of them disabled and most of them that do have it disabled for marketing reasons and such, not because it is defective. The Xenon was a large chip and with one core disabled, it was much more likely to pass binning successfully. Despite it's loss of one core and the second to the other work, it was and still is a very fast CPU.
[citation][nom]traumadisaster[/nom]Im just asking if its possible, not that its likely. Could the cores be under clocked at launch with a plan to "upgrade" at a later date with the purchase of some $99 fan kit or something and then ms would speed up the cores? Wasnt there some sort of cpu that did that, you buy access to more speed?[/citation]
Can't do that on a console because all of the consoles of a specific generation must have the exact same performance.
[citation][nom]thegame8019[/nom]I would be more worried about the amount of ram, the 6670 isn't top of the line but it isn't bad......until you get into 3D lol.[/citation]
The 6670 can't even handle 720p with the quality settings, AA maxed out in a lot of modern games. It is a slow, low end, entry level card and nothing more. Doing 3D on it would effectively halve it's performance as it would with any other graphics system, so it can't even handle 800x600 in modern games with the settings maxed out with AA.
Basically, it can't give you a good enough picture to compete with $400 to $500 PCs. A console is supposed to offer better gaming performance and picture quality than a PC of a similar and even somewhat greater price. Unless the 6670 can be optimized to the point where it will run about 4 times faster, it won't even handle proper 1080p on a 2D display.
[citation][nom]thegame8019[/nom]Hmmm maybe Toms should do a little more research before writing an article EVERY where online is stating that the GPU is going to be a Radeon 6670 .[/citation]
Back in mid 2011, everywhere online was reporting that the 7970 had a 256 bit XDR2 interface. It's ALL just rumors and speculation, regardless of how who said what whenever they said it at whatever place that they said it at
Facebook
Twitter
Instagram