Rumor: Xbox 720 to Have 'Ridiculously Powerful' 16-Core CPU

[blazorthon]

[citation][nom]Gold guy[/nom]Most likely it wouldn't be a true 16-core processor, there will be 3 or 4 actual cores, followed by SPE's to compensate for the massive calculations, like floating points etc...[/citation]

Maybe, but given how poorly that sort of concept turned out in the PS3 what with being incredibly difficult to write code for, I'd think that they'd learn a lessen and do something else.

 

[invlem]

Sorry, can't believe this one...

I would expect them to have learned from Sony on this one... Sony had their fancy cell processor, which was not only nightmare to work with, they paired with a (comparatively) under power graphics chip. As a result the PS3, while higher tech than the 360 ended up being pretty much on par performance wise, while being more expensive to build...

If MS follows in those foot steps with the 720, then I'm not sure what they're thinking.

Hardware needs to be paired appropriately, having a ridiculously overpowered component means nothing if the rest of the hardware bottlenecks it's abilities.

 

[cats_Paw]

Rumor=Advertisment.

 

[oxiide]

It'll "pack something along the lines of AMD's Radeon 7000-series." Wow, that narrows it down.

 

[ToastyMozart]

I call BS.
The extra cores in the devkit are likely just to help out with debugging and what not.
Assuming that they mean a 16-threaded CPU, I don't think there would be much you could do with that many threads in a console. (Physics, input handling, world controlling, AI, collision detection, OS... and that's about it) It would take some really complicated/convoluted programming to actually make that useful. Especially for a system that has to cost

 

[ToastyMozart]

[citation][nom]oxiide[/nom]It'll "pack something along the lines of AMD's Radeon 7000-series." Wow, that narrows it down.[/citation]

BRB, Upgrading my 6970 to 7750!

Seriously, what a pointless "detail."

 

[blazorthon]

[citation][nom]ToastyMozart[/nom]BRB, Upgrading my 6970 to 7750!Seriously, what a pointless "detail."[/citation]

It's not pointless, it's just vague. At least we know the rumored generation of the GPU here. We could simply have been given nothing at all and wonder if it's even a DX11 GPU or not.

 

[ToastyMozart]

[citation][nom]blazorthon[/nom]It's not pointless, it's just vague. At least we know the rumored generation of the GPU here. We could simply have been given nothing at all and wonder if it's even a DX11 GPU or not.[/citation]

Fair enough, though if they didn't pick something DX11-capable they would be crazy.

 

[amstech]

The CPU was never the problem. Even the original 360 has decent CPU power still.
Many CPU's are quite capable. Its the GPU that needs the real power.

 

[blazorthon]

[citation][nom]amstech[/nom]The CPU was never the problem. Even the original 360 has decent CPU power still.Many CPU's are quite capable. Its the GPU that needs the real power.[/citation]

Fair enough, but the CPU at least needs to be decent, at the least, especially considering that they're probably going to use at least some physics processing, Kinect, and more.

 

[apone]

16 cores? Hope the Xbox 720 case has adequate ventilation and cooling as I can imagine the crazy heat build-up in such a small form factor. (*cough* Red Ring of Death*)

 

[blazorthon]

[citation][nom]apone[/nom]16 cores? Hope the Xbox 720 case has adequate ventilation and cooling as I can imagine the crazy heat build-up in such a small form factor. (*cough* Red Ring of Death*)[/citation]

Core count in no way denotes power consumption. For example, most single core Pentium 4 CPUs consume more power than the 512-core Radeon 7750's Cape Verde Pro.

 

[Guest]

16-cores, now it can lock up and crash faster than everyone else!
I bet SONY is so terrified that it locked itself up in the employee bathroom, but forgot to take in the executive keys to unlock the toilet paper (and unlock the toilet and unlock the bathroom stall door and unlock the light switch and unlock the water faucets and unlock access to walking on the floor and unlock...)
Meanwhile Nintendo is releasing the WII U (pee-U) an underpowered system that is only 2 decades behind even the cheapest PC's minimum hardware specs.

And these companies are still making money, WHY?!?

 

[blazorthon]

[citation][nom]matrix29bear[/nom]16-cores, now it can lock up and crash faster than everyone else!I bet SONY is so terrified that it locked itself up in the employee bathroom, but forgot to take in the executive keys to unlock the toilet paper (and unlock the toilet and unlock the bathroom stall door and unlock the light switch and unlock the water faucets and unlock access to walking on the floor and unlock...)Meanwhile Nintendo is releasing the WII U (pee-U) an underpowered system that is only 2 decades behind even the cheapest PC's minimum hardware specs.And these companies are still making money, WHY?!?[/citation]

I could attack your attack on Sony, but I'll just state how your example of the WiiU is extremely false. It's using fairly modern technology. Not the newest, but not too far off. It's stuff isn't more than a few years old and even then, it's all modified from its roots, so it's better than those which its components are based on. Furthermore, it is not underpowered for the job that it's intended for: A general-purpose and home-use console that bases its gaming experience on more than just the graphics quality, but also the quality of the games and interface with them.

 

[mamailo]

I think 16 cores are correct.

Simply because the most badass 4 core dual threaded i7 cant keep with Borderlands 2 PhysX smoothly. The frame rate dips in some parts and you can feel it.

And this is a x86 core with out of order execution,branch prediction and a CISC instruction set, capable of summing and multiply floating point datasets with a single instruction.

NOTHING compares to the raw performance of a modern X86 core.Is the main reason why PC games get away with only 2 to 4 cores. That and the fact they play ports/adaptations of console games.

You can not put a x86, 16 threads CPU (HT or AMD modules) and keep costs, thermals and bandwidth under acceptable parameters for a consumer product. So it must be a IBM Oban or a ARM design (AMD does owns an ARM license) both theoretically would fit the bills.
Oban design did not manufacture well when transfered to silicon; if IBM can fix the Dies yields on time; M$ will take it.If not; there is AMD.

This is a NEXT gen gamming console and to keep up; needs to do real time Physics;Dynamic and reactive environments, particle effects and hopefully peer to peer gaming (which needs real time HD video encoding/decoding), etc.

So a (not x86) 16 cores CPU is feasible

 

[Guest]

I don't see the point of using a 16 core processor when you're using Radeon HD 7000 series; I don't have anything against ATI since i have 2 7970s, but the keyword in the XBox 720 is "Next Generation", so i was hoping for a new line of GPUs to take the load and be able to run Next-gen games very smoothly.
And you don't really need an amazing CPU to run high-end games, that's been long established, but this is Next-gen games we're talking about so I may be mistaken.

 

[Duckhunt]

I think they need all the power they can get. So far the games are not the great. We need 1440p and 1600p as the minimum standard.

 

[jewie27]

I call bullshit because even the next gen consoles will run at 30fps...

 

[razor512]

multiple cores does not mean a ton of performance, (eg the 8 core AMD FX chips compared to the quad core core i5 chips)

 

[groundrat]

So what is it, 16 core or an A8 off the shelf? I am hearing both and don't believe either. We will see what’s there when they release specs, not before. This IS MS we are talking about. No leaks.

 

[envymert]

[citation][nom]Duckhunt[/nom]I think they need all the power they can get. So far the games are not the great. We need 1440p and 1600p as the minimum standard.[/citation]

On gaming consoles .....why the hell would they make the standard 1600p? Last time i checked 1080 is still the gold standard in LED/LCD/Plasma Televisions. No one is going to be using a console hooked up to a 30 inch Dell ultrasharp.

 

[blazorthon]

[citation][nom]razor512[/nom]multiple cores does not mean a ton of performance, (eg the 8 core AMD FX chips compared to the quad core core i5 chips)[/citation]

The eight core FX CPUs have greater total performance than the quad core i5s. You should use better and more accurate examples if you ant to prove your point. Yes, core count != performance, but the opposite is equally possible.

 

[warlordianx]

Yo dawg I bet AMD will get ther bulldozer 8 core hyperthreaded, I bet it's only quadcore hyperthreaded, super hyperthreaded

 

[blazorthon]

[citation][nom]warlordianx[/nom]Yo dawg I bet AMD will get ther bulldozer 8 core hyperthreaded, I bet it's only quadcore hyperthreaded, super hyperthreaded[/citation]

AMD's eight-core models are true eight core CPUs. AMD also can't use Hyper-Threading because Hyper-Threading is owned by Intel. If AMD wanted to, they could make their own SMT technology, but that is unlikely.

 

[Non-Euclidean]

[citation][nom]NewbieTechGodII[/nom]Also breaking: Bigfoot was seen riding a unicorn...no details on which flavor of Mountain Dew he was drinking.[/citation]
Bigfoot doesnt drink Mountain Dew. He does eat jerky though. I know, because I saw it on TV.