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[Rolf NB]

Oh. I thought it was a given it would be 256bit.

Well ... 256bit * 2 (because DDR and such) gives you 512 bits per clock=64 bytes per clock.

176GB/s / 64B = 2.75GHz

Unless I completely missed some amazing new memory technology that can achieve that bus speed in mass quantities and in time for launch, I don't think this is realistic.

 

[THE:MILKMAN]

Well ... 256bit * 2 (because DDR and such) gives you 512 bits per clock=64 bytes per clock.

176GB/s / 64B = 2.75GHz

Unless I completely missed some amazing new memory technology that can achieve that bus speed in mass quantities and in time for launch, I don't think this is realistic.

I think it is quad data rate? or I'm reading it wrong!

 

[Melchiah]

176 GB/s = 5500 MT/s GDDR5 * 256 bit (8 chips for 4 GB total) from other thread.

So the system does have a 256-bit bus? That's what I was hoping for, as 128-bit would have felt kinda lacking, as the past two PS generations (AFAIK) have already featured the same.

 

[Perkel]

The SPU's are not cpus but really fast little SIMD processors. Same thing the 410gflop modified 4CU's specialize for compute are going to be excellent at. Many people pointed out its not how many ghz it is, 64bit vs 128bit, or how many flops each can theoritically achieve, but what it can do per frame/sec or cycle may have been the word. Basically all those numbers are irrelvent when your comparing it to a processor from 2013.



I thought some rumors were saying it would be 2.5D? Or was that only if it ended up being DDR4?

We know it is 4GB GDDR5 on 512MB chips which is fresh thing. Up until this point 256MB chips were used i believe and this is why 4GB GDDR5 was possible in Orbis.

Someone mentioned earlier in other thread 4GB GDDR5 on 256 chips would be problematic in orbis.

 

[Respawn]

Talking about those 3 gigs being used up in Durango. Check out the latest news about their surface tablets I read on the Verge today...


Microsoft's Surface Pro tablet, due on February 9th, will have a smaller amount of storage space than expected. A company spokesperson has confirmed to The Verge that the 64GB edition of Surface Pro will have 23GB of free storage out of the box. The 128GB model will have 83GB of free storage. It appears that the Windows 8 install, built-in apps, and a recovery partition will make up the 41GB total on the base Surface Pro model.

http://www.theverge.com/2013/1/29/3929110/surface-pro-disk-space-windows-8

Interesting even though it is different. The recovery partition seems to be the meat there. You can remove it but how many average consumers can do that or want to?

 

[FlutterPuffs]

Reading back, why are some arguing if the PS4 will or will not be backwards compatible? Of course it will be. The question is WHEN it will be implemented.

 

[Proelite]

Talking about those 3 gigs being used up in Durango. Check out the latest news about their surface tablets I read on the Verge today...


Microsoft's Surface Pro tablet, due on February 9th, will have a smaller amount of storage space than expected. A company spokesperson has confirmed to The Verge that the 64GB edition of Surface Pro will have 23GB of free storage out of the box. The 128GB model will have 83GB of free storage. It appears that the Windows 8 install, built-in apps, and a recovery partition will make up the 41GB total on the base Surface Pro model.

http://www.theverge.com/2013/1/29/3929110/surface-pro-disk-space-windows-8

Interesting even though it is different. The recovery partition seems to be the meat there. You can remove it but how many average consumers can do that or want to?

Not relevant to Durango at all. Durango will not have stock x86 Windows 8 OS, otherwise ban me.

 

[CLEEK]

Not relevant to Durango at all. Durango will not have stock x86 Windows 8 OS, otherwise ban me.

The Windows RT Surface had the same issue. It doesn't really matter what flavour Windows your rock, the net result will be the same. Enormous bloat.

The next Xbox will have a variation on Windows 8 for sure. Even if its cut down heavily, it will eat up a ton of resources.

 

[whitehawk]

Not relevant to Durango at all. Durango will not have stock x86 Windows 8 OS, otherwise ban me.

I smell a ban coming.

 

[saunderez]

The next Xbox will have a variation on Windows 8 for sure. Even if its cut down heavily, it will eat up a ton of resources.

Yeah ok....Microsoft designed a OS that can run in 64MB for the 360 but the feat will be absolutely impossible for them to reproduce next gen. They've forgotten how to make an OS with low resource usage.

 

[Felix Lighter]

People think the next Xbox is going to be running full blown Windows 8? That seems so unlikely.

 

[PSGames]

The Windows RT Surface had the same issue. It doesn't really matter what flavour Windows your rock, the net result will be the same. Enormous bloat.

The next Xbox will have a variation on Windows 8 for sure. Even if its cut down heavily, it will eat up a ton of resources.

The amount of space Windows 8 uses on a hdd/ssd has nothing to do with how much RAM it needs to run. Full Windows 8 only uses 1GB of RAM.

 

[thuway]

I smell a ban coming.

You are a fool to bet against him.

 

[THE:MILKMAN]

Yeah ok....Microsoft designed a OS that can run in 64MB for the 360 but the feat will be absolutely impossible for them to reproduce next gen. They've forgotten how to make an OS with low resource usage.

That is the 64 million dollar question. Why is it that the 360 went 8 years with a fixed 32MB reserved for the OS and now there is talk of ~2.5GB for Durango?

What could they possibly have planned to need that?

 

[Jack_AG]

this is ot but I could argue the same about Halo 4. Hence it's subjective, they don't compare. Same for GT5 vs forza, their phsycis handling is vastly different, so just because one developer put emphasis into graphics, the other into physics again, they don't compare.

We're talking about straight-up muscle here and you now want to bring this into the argument? You serious?

No. You compare the complete package to the complete package. Sure, each will bring their own set of pros/cons - but you look at the whole picture and not just pick apart what fits your argument. That's not how this is done.

 

[CLEEK]

Yeah ok....Microsoft designed a OS that can run in 64MB for the 360 but the feat will be absolutely impossible for them to reproduce next gen. They've forgotten how to make an OS with low resource usage.

The 360's OS wasn't a variation on Windows though, so your point is moot.

It should be patently clear to all that MS core direction is to try to unify all their various product streams. Visually, that means Metro UI for everything, which we already have with Windows 8, Server 2012, Windows Phone and the 360 dash. And then shared kernal under the hood.

Ultrabooks and Surface shows how unsuited Windows is for low resource computing. The OS alone eats up the majority of resources, from storage to CPU cycles to RAM. Surely you can see that the decision to dedicate a couple of cores and a whopping 3GB of RAM to the OS shows that the OS has some serious requirements.

The amount of space Windows 8 uses on a hdd/ssd has nothing to do with how much RAM it needs to run. Full Windows 8 only uses 1GB of RAM.

I put Windows 8 on my test work laptop. It has 2GB RAM and just using Windows and the OS is paging like crazy. Windows 7 and 8 need a minimum of 2GB to run, and 4GB+ if you want to any actual computing on them.

Edit: Even MS state the minimum RAM for Windows 8 x64 is 2GB.

http://windows.microsoft.com/en-AU/windows-8/system-requirements

 

[RoboPlato]

I asked this before but it got lost in the midst of another debate, would the +4 CUs be able to be set for different tasks separately or is it all set for one use. Say a game wanted to dedicate 16CUs to rendering and 2CUs to physics processing, would that be possible? I can only see first party games getting into things like that but it seems like it would really add a lot of flexibility to the machine.

 

[Felix Lighter]

The 360's OS wasn't a variation on Windows though, so your point is moot.

It should be patently clear to all that MS core direction is to try to unify all their various product streams. Visually, that means Metro UI for everything, which we already have with Windows 8, Server 2012, Windows Phone and the 360 dash.

Ultrabooks and Surface shows how unsuited Windows is for low resource computing. The OS alone eats up the majority of resources, from storage to CPU cycles to RAM. Surely you can see that the decision to dedicate a couple of cores and a whopping 3GB or RAM to the OS shows that the OS has some serious requirements.



I put Windows 8 on my test work laptop. It has 2GB RAM and just using Windows and the OS is paging like crazy. Windows 7 and 8 need a minimum of 2GB to run, and 4GB+ if you want to any actual computing on them.

Edit: Even MS state the minimum RAM for Windows 8 x64 is 2GB.

http://windows.microsoft.com/en-AU/windows-8/system-requirements

Unifying their products with the Metro interface makes sense but that doesn't mean their next console will be running a varient of Windows 8.

 

[nib95]

That is the 64 million dollar question. Why is it that the 360 went 8 years with a fixed 32MB reserved for the OS and now there is talk of ~2.5GB for Durango?

What could they possibly have planned to need that?

Probably a slew of new features, including desktop OS style multitasking, and maybe even capability to run Windows Mobile OS, the apps and games, to tie in with the phones, XBL cross platform, mobile and desktop eco system etc.

 

[CLEEK]

Unifying their products with the Metro interface makes sense but that doesn't mean their next console will be running a varient of Windows 8.

The next Xbox will have an App Store. It will have IE. It will act as a home media PC / home server. It runs on x86.

Just how much its OS is derived from Windows 8 is unknown at this moment, but it most certainly won't have a completely unique OS. The new console shares too many goals and technology with their core Windows OS for them to go back to the drawing board and create something new.

Windows Phone 8 is based on the Windows kernel, so shares many components with Windows 8. Previous Windows Phone versions were not based on Windows NT, so were completely separate from the core Windows OS. As MS look to unify their product, they will all share as much code as possible.

The Xbox OS will likewise be a variation on the core Windows kernel.

 

[KimonoNoNo]

Something I'm curious about.

Can anybody tell me why Sony chose a rather weak gpu in the Rsx for the Ps3?

Was it for cost reasons, a plain oversight or something else?

 

[RoboPlato]

Looking at the PC screens of the Crysis 3 beta really makes me want SMAA 2x and 4x in next gen games. It looks great.

 

[nib95]

Something I'm curious about.

Can anybody tell me why Sony chose a rather weak gpu in the Rsx for the Ps3?

Was it for cost reasons, a plain oversight or something else?

Not entirely sure, but I don't think they were happy with how it panned out, and Nvidia could have been somewhat to blame, hence why Nvidia were left in the cold this time around. The ambitions were much grander gpu wise, the reality was quite different.

 

[PSGames]

I put Windows 8 on my test work laptop. It has 2GB RAM and just using Windows and the OS is paging like crazy. Windows 7 and 8 need a minimum of 2GB to run, and 4GB+ if you want to any actual computing on them.

Edit: Even MS state the minimum RAM for Windows 8 x64 is 2GB.

http://windows.microsoft.com/en-AU/windows-8/system-requirements

Yes because that minimum RAM requirement includes an amount for other programs and multitasking. Windows 8 is significantly more efficient than windows 7: http://blogs.msdn.com/b/b8/archive/2011/10/07/reducing-runtime-memory-in-windows-8.aspx

I've owned a couple windows RT device with just 2GBs of RAM and have never ran into any issues multitasking. Besides hdd space Windows 8 is a very efficient OS.

Any variant they use for Durango will be highly streamlined and efficient. If it requires a large amount of ram it won't be because of bloated inefficient OS but because of all the things you'll be able to do at the same time (DVR) for example.

 

[Saberus]

Something I'm curious about.

Can anybody tell me why Sony chose a rather weak gpu in the Rsx for the Ps3?

Was it for cost reasons, a plain oversight or something else?

I believe they wanted to go with two cell chips at first, but changed their mind at last moment, then Nvidia promised the moon and under delivered . I'm sure ill be corrected about this

 

[CLEEK]

Something I'm curious about.

Can anybody tell me why Sony chose a rather weak gpu in the Rsx for the Ps3?

Was it for cost reasons, a plain oversight or something else?

Their original plan was that they would design their own GPU. As time went on, this wasn't looking possible, so they had to go out to market to find a 3rd party GPU they could incorporate. That is why the RSX had little console specific modification, as it was effectively just a PC card shoe horned into the console late in the day.

Both the next Xbox and PS4 seems to have been designed from the ground up with console considerations in mind. This should remove any obvious bottlenecks from last gen like the RSX.

 

[Jack_AG]

The next Xbox will have an App Store. It will have IE. It will act as a home media PC / home server. It runs on x86.

Just how much its OS is derived from Windows 8 is unknown at this moment, but it most certainly won't have a completely unique OS. The new console shares too many goals and technology with their core Windows OS for them to go back to the drawing board and create something new,

One simply needs to look at what MS is doing with every piece of MS hardware and Win8 to deduce they will use a derivative in Durango. There's a reason they want to create an singular Windows ecosystem to run all of their products. Its a move I like and dislike. I like it because it unifies the MS experience - I dislike it because it is becoming closed (ot, more of a PC debate).

Anyhow - it makes sense to bring a version to Durango, IMO.

 

[Glorified G]

Anyway, I think it's kind of funny that we actually in some senses know slightly less about Orbis's setup now than we did before this latest vgleaks.

The question over the '14+4' and whether that simply means 4 are tweaked in a different way, or 4 live in a distinct world away from the other 14...has some non-negligible repercussions in terms of different tradeoffs and design goals. And we don't have a solid answer yet.

Yup. We came up with more questions then answers. I wonder if those 4 CU's are gimped in anyway for rendering compared to the other 14.

 

[Felix Lighter]

The next Xbox will have an App Store. It will have IE. It will act as a home media PC / home server. It runs on x86.

Just how much its OS is derived from Windows 8 is unknown at this moment, but it most certainly won't have a completely unique OS. The new console shares too many goals and technology with their core Windows OS for them to go back to the drawing board and create something new,

Will there be any Windows code in the Durango OS? I don't know but to not design the OS around the closed system would just be wasteful. I don't see them being lazy with the OS and wasting the valuable system resources for the console that they are going to be spending so much money manufacturing. It seems too shortsighted.

 

[Jack_AG]

I believe they wanted to go with two cell chips at first, but changed their mind at last moment, then Nvidia promised the moon and under delivered . I'm sure ill be corrected about this

From what I recall the CELL was it. Just one. RSX came when Sony realized it wasn't up to snuff to use alone and was tacked on rather than built with the rest of the system in mind.

 

[oversitting]

According to this
http://www.hotchips.org/wp-content/...-3-ManyCore/HC24.28.315-AMD.GCN.mantor_v1.pdf

Pitcairn is 2.8 billion transistors, so it may be reasonable to believe the Orbis SOC to be a bit above 3 billions.

I don't think they will be using the entire pitcairn.

Rambus was the only one who could have provided the fast necessary ram at the time for the cell.

3.2 ghz blazing fast cell processor is pointless if you are bandwidth starved and thats what XDR is for

XDR is all marketing, they could have had the same performance with DDR. Rambus ram is overpriced and nobody buys them. Except sony for the ps3.

 

[SneakyStephan]

Something I'm curious about.

Can anybody tell me why Sony chose a rather weak gpu in the Rsx for the Ps3?

Was it for cost reasons, a plain oversight or something else?

Nvidia was full of shit with ridiculous performance claims that Sony for some reason bought.
Nvidia are still doing it (they recently did with tegra) , they'll basically just say whatever.

 

[CLEEK]

Will there be any Windows code in the Durango OS? I don't know but to not design the OS around the closed system would just be wasteful. I don't see them being lazy with the OS and wasting the valuable system resources for the console that they are going to be spending so much money manufacturing. It seems too shortsighted.

There is Windows code in Surface (a closed system with limited resources) and Windows Phone. It allows for easy porting of apps from Widows 8 to Windows Phone and vise versa. The same will be true of Windows Xbox (or whatever you want to call it).

The next Xbox is not going to be a gaming console. It will be an device that does a fuck load of things, including playing games.

The arguments against using a flavour of Windows makes perfect sense if the next Xbox is just a games console. But when you factor in the other goals MS have for it, it makes far more business sense for it to be based on Windows. Apps will be just as big a focus for MS as games in pushing the next Xbox into people's homes.

 

[pharmboy044]

Reading back, why are some arguing if the PS4 will or will not be backwards compatible? Of course it will be. The question is WHEN it will be implemented.

How can you be so certain? Know something that we don't?

 

[oversitting]

Nvidia was full of shit with ridiculous performance claims that Sony for some reason bought.
Nvidia are still doing it (they recently did with tegra) , they'll basically just say whatever.

both sony and nvidia were full of shit. Cell and RSX were both so full of shit from the "specs" that sony put out.

There is Windows code in Surface (a closed system with limited resources) and Windows Phone. It allows for easy porting of apps from Widows 8 to Windows Phone and vise versa. The same will be true of Windows Xbox (or whatever you want to call it).

The next Xbox is not going to be a gaming console. It will be an device that does a fuck load of things, including playing games.

The arguments against using a flavour of Windows make perfect sense if the next Xbox was just a games console. But when you factor in the other goals, it makes far more business sense or it to be based on Windows. Apps will be just as big a focus for MS as games in pushing the next Xbox into people's homes.

why is windows phone 8 only need 1GB of total ram then? And there will not be full windows.

Windows phone doesn't have anything like full windows. RT is windows on ARM which is actually full windows recompiled. Surface isn't a closed system, Its a reference platform for windows tablets which all run windows RT or windows 8.

Do you even know whats inside windows? There is tonnes of legacy code, a ton of security for legacy code. A ton of security for normal things. A ton of services checking your programs both from microsoft or third parties. All the general drivers and things.

you don't have an argument.

 

[Death Dealer]

Someone mentioned earlier in other thread 4GB GDDR5 on 256 chips would be problematic in orbis.

Yeah I'm not any expert, but all I've read for the past year is more than 8 memory chips in a console gets to be ridiculously expensive and complicated because of the motherboard. So yeah, with 512MB chips, 4GB is the highest practical amount it can have. And using 256MB chips would need 16 of them for 4GB. Which as I said, it's too expensive to have more than 8 total chips.

 

[grimshawish]

Nvidia was full of shit with ridiculous performance claims that Sony for some reason bought.
Nvidia are still doing it (they recently did with tegra) , they'll basically just say whatever.

I have to say whatever state AMD are in I just can't see Nvidia being in consoles. Their incredibly unreliable - like to a mental degree.

 

[DopeyFish]

both sony and nvidia were full of shit. Cell and RSX were both so full of shit from the "specs" that sony put out.

All semiconductor companies are full of shit

 

[Can Crusher]

the problem is that exclusives play to the strengths of the consoles and aren't directly comparable. If one of the console has exclusive a, with fantastic texture and shaders, but lacks top quality lighting, and the other console, exclusive b has great lighting but with weak texture and shaders, how are you supposed to directly compare these 2 thing?

this becomes an art argument, it's subjective to the viewer. (hence why people argue 360 exclusives >|< ps3 exclusives) On the other hand, multiplatform games tend to play less to the strengths, and allows for the console to determine performance and IQ, a more objective comparison.

I don't agree at all. Multiplatform tends to favor the lead platform.

It's pretty easy to understand when you apply the logic to the Ps2 generation. Multiplatforms couldn't possibly be an indicator of system "potential" at all in 99% of the cases.

 

[KageMaru]

The next Xbox will have an App Store. It will have IE. It will act as a home media PC / home server. It runs on x86.

Just how much its OS is derived from Windows 8 is unknown at this moment, but it most certainly won't have a completely unique OS. The new console shares too many goals and technology with their core Windows OS for them to go back to the drawing board and create something new.

Windows Phone 8 is based on the Windows kernel, so shares many components with Windows 8. Previous Windows Phone versions were not based on Windows NT, so were completely separate from the core Windows OS. As MS look to unify their product, they will all share as much code as possible.

The Xbox OS will likewise be a variation on the core Windows kernel.

I could be wrong but IIRC the 360 OS was based on Windows NT kernal. Though it could be argued it's a new OS after all was said and done. No reason the same can't happen with Durango.

Something I'm curious about.

Can anybody tell me why Sony chose a rather weak gpu in the Rsx for the Ps3?

Was it for cost reasons, a plain oversight or something else?

There really wasn't anything wrong with the RSX. It was based on NVIDIA's mainline architecture at the time, though downgraded.

 

[-ImaginaryInsider]

There is Windows code in Surface (a closed system with limited resources) and Windows Phone. It allows for easy porting of apps from Widows 8 to Windows Phone and vise versa. The same will be true of Windows Xbox (or whatever you want to call it).

The next Xbox is not going to be a gaming console. It will be an device that does a fuck load of things, including playing games.

The arguments against using a flavour of Windows makes perfect sense if the next Xbox is just a games console. But when you factor in the other goals MS have for it, it makes far more business sense for it to be based on Windows. Apps will be just as big a focus for MS as games in pushing the next Xbox into people's homes.

There is a huge difference between an OS kernel based on Win 8 and it being stock Windows 8, it can still be custom and based on 8 or RT. Dragging and dropping full Windows is a weird arguement to be make.

 

[Respawn]

I don't think they will be using the entire pitcairn.

XDR is all marketing, they could have had the same performance with DDR. Rambus ram is overpriced and nobody buys them. Except sony for the ps3.

Please stop posting like we're idiots. Show me where DDR is faster than XDR. Only recently DDR is closing the gap to XDR. IN 05-06 DDR could not touch Rambus XDR. I know I used in in my P4 setup.

 

[oversitting]

Please stop posting like we're idiots. Show me where DDR is faster than XDR. Only recently DDR is closing the gap to XDR. IN 05-06 DDR could not touch Rambus XDR. I know I used in in my P4 setup.

and your p4 setup was faster than a normal p4 setup how? post some real world benchmarks plox.

 

[Death Dealer]

There really wasn't anything wrong with the RSX. It was based on NVIDIA's mainline architecture at the time, though downgraded.

IIRC, RSX is actually larger than Xenos' logic. So yeah, Sony didn't purposefully ask for a weak GPU. Nvidia was just a year behind AMD with developing their unified shader tech. PS3 was originally supposed to launch before it was ready. They did hurt Sony by selling them a design with a bug that screwed up the scaling. AMD hit a homerun for MS on 360. I'm happy Sony went AMD this round. Also it's a myth Sony went with Nvidia at least minute instead of dual Cell sans GPU. That was only a very early proposal.

 

[KimonoNoNo]

Their original plan was that they would design their own GPU. As time went on, this wasn't looking possible, so they had to go out to market to find a 3rd party GPU they could incorporate. That is why the RSX had little console specific modification, as it was effectively just a PC card shoe horned into the console late in the day.

Both the next Xbox and PS4 seems to have been designed from the ground up with console considerations in mind. This should remove any obvious bottlenecks from last gen like the RSX.

Not entirely sure, but I don't think they were happy with how it panned out, and Nvidia could have been somewhat to blame, hence why Nvidia were left in the cold this time around. The ambitions were much grander gpu wise, the reality was quite different.

From what I recall the CELL was it. Just one. RSX came when Sony realized it wasn't up to snuff to use alone and was tacked on rather than built with the rest of the system in mind.

So it wasn't planned and rather last minute decision then.
A bit like when Sega stuck a second cpu in the Saturn to try and beef it up.

I have to say whatever state AMD are in I just can't see Nvidia being in consoles. Their incredibly unreliable - like to a mental degree.

Yeah they seemed to have burned their bridges with all 3 console makers.

 

[oversitting]

IIRC, RSX is actually larger than Xenos' logic. So yeah, Sony didn't purposefully ask for a weak GPU. Nvidia was just a year behind AMD with developing their unified shader tech. PS3 was originally supposed to launch before it was ready. They did hurt Sony by selling them a design with a bug that screwed up the scaling. AMD hit a homerun for MS on 360. I'm happy Sony went AMD this round. Also it's a myth Sony went with Nvidia at least minute instead of dual Cell sans GPU. That was only a very early proposal.

I thought Sony went to AMD first and they got declined because it was too last minute.

 

[REMEMBER CITADEL]

That is the 64 million dollar question. Why is it that the 360 went 8 years with a fixed 32MB reserved for the OS and now there is talk of ~2.5GB for Durango?

What could they possibly have planned to need that?

Kinect, apps, simultaneous serving of content to multiple devices (SmartGlass devices, but also your Xbox 360; Microsoft people have said you'll want to keep it even after the next platform launches, hinting at some sort of extender functionality), a part of it reserved for future upgrades (Fortaleza glasses? IllumiRoom projector?).

In any case, there's zero chance Durango will run anything resembling the full version of Windows, and perhaps it will even have a largely unrelated OS, just like its predecessors.

 

[Death Dealer]

So it wasn't planned and rather last minute decision then.

No. That's a myth. That story began at the start of the PS360 generation and it's wrong.

Sony announced they have been collaborating with Nvidia on a GPU for the next playstation in 2004, two years before it launched. That's not last minute. All console companies come up with multiple designs. It's true they had thought about creating their own GPU or using a Cell as a GPU, but I think they realized it would be unfeasible pretty early. The whole story is really BS that I think was started to make an explanation for why Sony's console had the weaker GPU, since Xenos was obviously superior from the announcement of the specs.

 

[H_Prestige]

Kinect, apps, simultaneous serving of content to multiple devices (SmartGlass devices, but also your Xbox 360; Microsoft people have said you'll want to keep it even after the next platform launches, hinting at some sort of extender functionality), a part of it reserved for future upgrades (Fortaleza glasses? IllumiRoom projector?).

In any case, there's zero chance Durango will run anything resembling the full version of Windows, and perhaps it will even have a largely unrelated OS, just like its predecessors.

They don't need anywhere near the rumored amount of RAM to do all of that.

They only need 2-3GB reserved if it's running some kind of Windows OS, which it obviously will since MS wants to unify all their products. The Xbox isn't going to be the odd man it, expect Windows branding all over the place.

 

[Azelover]

Am I right in assuming that this time the low end and the high end will be closer for home consoles than current generation?