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[Router]

For everyone bitching about 2 GB, understand this: The vast majority of PC games can be run cranked up and still not break 2GB of system RAM usage. And consoles and PCs are vastly different. A console with 2GB is perfectly reasonable.

The article says 2GB for CPU. Not 2GB total memory anyway.

Or am I reading it wrong?

 

[blu]

We've basically confirmed a Wii-like jump in power in the speculation thread. That means Wii-like support.

You are aware there was a generational gap in GPU tech between wii and ps360, right? Right?

 

[BurntPork]

Not to mention made by AMD, imagine the heat lol

... And you think that NVidia dual GPUs run cooler?

 

[Jira]

Six cores? How big is this thing gonna be? lol

And the 2GB of RAM rage in this thread is glorious.

Let me get this straight...you bash him for not knowing the difference between hexa and octa and you go on to equate the number of cores to physical console size?

 

[X26]

2GB of ram for a console will get better performance than your Pc with 2GB.

yep, something people always forget

comparing a dedicated gaming machine to a PC isn't a direct comparison

 

[Hesemonni]

What's more interesting is how they're going to fill that RAM. What kind of HDD and Optical Drive? (Or we're going to embrace our DD overlords alltogether, lol no)

But anyway, herewego.gif because of new console specs start leaking in.

 

[jonremedy]

This sounds really wrong, for some reason.

 

[Nirolak]

A single GPU would (and do) feature 'lots of cores'. You don't need a multi-GPU set up for that.

I don't know, though. Maybe there's a new trend in GPU design coming where it's actually more efficient to use multi smaller GPUs vs one BIG gpu, and we're not entirely familiar with it yet. Although that seems slightly counter-intuitive right now.

I've a feeling it's more likely, from how the report puts it (a AMD dual-GPU 'prototype') that it's something in dev kits that's being used to expose all the power of a final chip to devs now, rather than something that represents the form of the retail configuration. For example, maybe their custom GPU is intended to have high tesselation performance, and they need to rig together two of AMD's cards today to emulate that feature. Or some other such feature.

We need more info though. With this info you can actually reasonably speculate in either direction - either toward something conservative or something quite beastly, depending on the missing pieces. Someone put out the 01net signal!

Well, my biggest qualms with the rumor are:

1.) Xboxygen has no track record to my knowledge.
2.) This showed up after tons of other people put out rumors already.
3.) It takes concepts like "Loop" from other rumor and changes them slightly: "It's now the name of the group making the operating instead of the system. The hardware group is called Infinity."
4.) It also pulls the CES rumor from another rumor.

There's not much here in terms of significant technical details outside of broad categorizations like "6 core CPU". There's no vendor, clock speed, in order/out of order execution, and there are also absolutely zero details the GPUs, yet for some reason they were able to get the type of RAM that existed, as well as details about the internal structure of Microsoft's Xbox division.

 

[Jinfash]

I haven't followed the Wii U spec speculation ever since the mega thread was created. What's the (reliable) word one the street about the final specs?

 

[Tom Penny]

2 gig of ram is more than enough for consoles. Probably overkill.

 

[strata8]

2gb is about what I'd expect from a console looking to survive off of Kinect alone.

grrr.

 

[jax (old)]

when I read the original thread title; I was like "xbox 720?". Guess the new thread title sort of reflects that. Looking forward to this. 2Gb of ram ain't much but it ain't a pittance either.

 

[1-D_FTW]

The article says 2GB for CPU. Not 2GB total memory anyway.

Or am I reading it wrong?

Technically they're the same thing (if you're talking CPU vs System). But, yeah, GPU is usually counted separate on PC. When I was running into continuous RAM issues early this year and spent like 3 months running a series of sticks that only amounted to 2GB of system RAM (which only Bulletstorm, cranked, wanted more), I still had my GPU with 1GB of VRAM.

If they're not sharing RAM and the system and GPU each have their own, it only makes 2GB even more generous for a console.

 

[angular graphics]

RAM should be 4 gigs. 2 is too little.

inb4 "but console ram is fast!" Did I say it's going to be slow? No, only that it's not large enough.

 

[BurntPork]

You are aware there was a generational gap in GPU tech between wii and ps360, right? Right?

Yeah, but scaling down to that pathetic amount of power would still be an issue. It might be fine for a year two, and even after that it'll still get the Sonics and the MegaMans and the Batmans and whatever other less-demanding games are made, but things like Battlefield or Souls or Metal Gear or GTA or main series Resident Evil? The big games that really matter still won't have Wii U versions because the graphics downgrade would just be too much.

Let me get this straight...you bash him for not knowing the difference between hexa and octa and you go on to equate the number of cores to physical console size?

dat heat

 

[Corky]

2 gig of ram is more than enough for consoles. Probably overkill.

Nobody will ever need more than a 10mb HDD

 

[Kenka]

RAM should be 4 gigs. 2 is too little.

inb4 "but console ram is fast!" Did I say it's going to be slow? No, only that it's not large enough.

Costs a lot to go 4GB. 2GB is fine, rest assured.

Regarding the GPU, bus width and frequency rates are more important me think. But guess what, there is more:

Specifications

On the chip, the shader units are organized in three SIMD groups with 16 processors per group, for a total of 48 processors. Each of these processors is composed of a 5-wide vector unit (total 5 FP32 ALUs) that can serially execute up to two instruction per cycle (a multiply and an addition). Thus each of the 48 processors can perform 10 floating-point ops per cycle. All processor in a SIMD group execute the same instruction, so in total up to three instruction threads can be simultaneously under execution.

500 MHz 10 MiB daughter embedded DRAM (@256GB/s) framebuffer on 90 nm process[citation needed].
NEC designed eDRAM die includes additional logic (192 parallel pixel processors) for color, alpha compositing, Z/stencil buffering, and anti-aliasing called “Intelligent Memory”, giving developers 4-sample anti-aliasing at very little performance cost.
105 million transistors [2]
8 Render Output units
Maximum pixel fillrate: 16 gigasamples per second fillrate using 4X multisample anti aliasing (MSAA), or 32 gigasamples using Z-only operation; 4 gigapixels per second without MSAA (8 ROPs × 500 MHz)
Maximum Z sample rate: 8 gigasamples per second (2 Z samples × 8 ROPs × 500 MHz), 32 gigasamples per second using 4X anti aliasing (2 Z samples × 8 ROPs × 4X AA × 500 MHz)[1]
Maximum anti-aliasing sample rate: 16 gigasamples per second (4 AA samples × 8 ROPs × 500 MHz)[1]
500 MHz parent GPU on 90 nm , 65 nm or 45nm TSMC process of total 232 million transistors
48 floating-point vector processors for shader execution, divided in three dynamically scheduled SIMD groups of 16 processors each. [3]
Unified shading architecture (each pipeline is capable of running either pixel or vertex shaders)
10 FP ops per vector processor per cycle (5 fused multiply-add)
Maximum vertex count: 6 billion vertices per second ( (48 shader vector processors × 2 ops per cycle × 500 MHz) / 8 vector ops per vertex) for simple transformed and lit polygons
Maximum polygon count: 500 million triangles per second[3]
Maximum shader operations: 96 Billion shader operations per second (3 shader pipelines*16 processors*4 ALUs*500 MHz)
240GFLOPS
MEMEXPORT shader function
16 texture filtering units (TF) and 16 texture addressing unit (TA)
16 filtered samples per clock
Maximum texel fillrate: 8 gigatexel per second (16 textures × 500 MHz)
16 unfiltered texture samples per clock
Maximum Dot product operations: 24 billion per second
Support for a superset of DirectX 9.0c API DirectX Xbox 360, and Shader Model 3.0+
Cooling: Both the GPU and CPU of the console have heatsinks. The CPU's heatsink uses heatpipe technology, to conduct heat from the CPU to the fins of the heatsink. The heatsinks are actively cooled by a pair of 60 mm exhaust fans. The new XCGPU chipset redesign is featured in the Xbox 360 S and integrates the CPU (Xenon) and GPU (Xenos) in one chip and is actively cooled by a single heatsink rather than two.

Seriously, how does the amount of RAM mean anything without mention of all these other factors for the GPU ? Are we seriously throwing an uneducated discussion here ? The amount of RAM just means more room for information to be treated on short-term. Nothing else.

 

[vg260]

Bitching on a forum won't change anything, so hopefully developers convince them for more RAM. I'd happily pay a little extra for the console for more power/life.

 

[Backfoggen]

Epic should show them what Samaritan would look like with 4 GB instead of 2.

 

[Vanillalite]

Even if it's 2 gigs total including the VRAM that's fine. You could still have like 512 dedicated for the OS which would be overkill and have 1.5 left over for VRAM. Consoles max target is 1920x1080 res wise because that's what all TVs max out at so we aren't even dealing with 1920x1200 let alone 2560 x 1600 like some PC gamers use.

None of this sounds cheap though. I'm not saying it sounds PS3 $600 level of price, but it doesn't sound like anything that would ship @ $300 either. I expect another $400 entry point. Considering the track record of both current HD consoles (especially the 360) in terms of their 1st hardware design crapping out, you can get back to me post price drop/redesign.

 

[BurntPork]

Even if it's 2 gigs total including the VRAM that's fine. You could still have like 512 dedicated for the OS which would be overkill and have 1.5 left over for VRAM. Consoles max target is 1920x1080 res wise because that's what all TVs max out at so we aren't even dealing with 1920x1200 let alone 2560 x 1600 like some PC gamers use.

None of this sounds cheap though. I'm not saying it sounds PS3 $600 level of price, but it doesn't sound like anything that would ship @ $300 either. I expect another $400 entry point. Considering the track record of both current HD consoles (especially the 360) in terms of their 1st hardware design crapping out, you can get back to me post price drop/redesign.

The OS would probably use more like 100-200MB.

 

[Majanew]

The more RAM they use and the more "beast" they make the system, will allow MS to keep it on the market even longer than the 360 and maximize profits even more over the years.

 

[Hyuga]

It will ship with more than 2GB RAM.

Can I have your crystal ball?

 

[ThoseDeafMutes]

Even if it's 2 gigs total including the VRAM that's fine. You could still have like 512 dedicated for the OS which would be overkill and have 1.5 left over for VRAM.

Uhh. The OS is not the only thing aside from the GPU that needs memory.

 

[Vanillalite]

Uhh. The OS is not the only thing aside from the GPU that needs memory.

The current 360 OS is sub 100 megs right now in terms of usage. That leaves you with a shit ton of RAM left over for other things. Fuck MS now has Windows 8 out of the box only using like 300 megs and change now. It's been a big MS push as a whole.

 

[captscience]

Infinity and Loop? Isn't Infinity Loop Apple's headquarter's address?

I call fake or LOL.

 

[Kenka]

Brain_stew, for the love all things holy, please come and enlighten us.

 

[blu]

Yeah, but scaling down to that pathetic amount of power would still be an issue.

Yes, and the GPU architecture gap had nothing to do with it. While we got UE3 on the ipad, where the gpu is apparently on par with Xenos power-wise. Gotcha, Burnt.

It might be fine for a year two, and even after that it'll still get the Sonics and the MegaMans and the Batmans and whatever other less-demanding games are made, but things like Battlefield or Souls or Metal Gear or GTA or main series Resident Evil? The big games that really matter still won't have Wii U versions because the graphics downgrade would just be too much.

Let's see. Since we are mainly on the subject of memory in this thread, Souls2 got its arguably definitive version on the Cube - with less than half of Xbox's memory (0.375x, to be more precise).

BTW, you are aware that wii has ~1/8 of ps360's ram, right? Right?

 

[Bowler]

Infinity and Loop? Isn't Infinity Loop Apple's headquarter's address?

I call fake or LOL.

MS and Apple partnership confirmed.....












Mind Blown/

 

[NekoFever]

Microsoft wouldn't have a problem using Blu-ray if it came down to it. MS's VC-1 codec is part of the format standard so it already gets a cut from every player sold, and it's not a proprietary Sony format like many seem to think. Panasonic has a bigger cut of the format than Sony, IIRC.

Infinity and Loop? Isn't Infinity Loop Apple's headquarter's address?

I call fake or LOL.

An infinite loop is a programming term.

 

[nubbe]

hex core, ddr3, dual gpu and to be shown at CES

lolololololol

If they use DDR3... there is no reason to not put 16GB in it

 

[Always-honest]

Sounds pretty great imo. But wtf do i know.
Sure, you can always ask for more... but sounds like this could be pretty insane if they can make all the components work together in pefect harmony.

In fact, i wouldn't mind if it was JUST a dedicated gaming machine. Fuck pc stuff on a gaming box. But that won't happen, i know.

 

[Jocchan]

Brain_stew, for the love all things holy, please come and enlighten us.

wsippel and blu are already in this thread. They both know their shit.

 

[DieH@rd]

hex core, ddr3, dual gpu and to be shown at CES

lolololololol

If they use DDR3... there is no reason to not put 16GB in it

Except it comes in the chips that are 256megs large. You would need 64 of them fused into motherboard. Even if they manage to find 512ones, that still 32 chips. Logistical nightmare for motherboard pathways and cooling.

 

[RedSwirl]

So wait, why are people saying the Wii-U is going to be almost as powerful as this?

And what I'm stuck on is the "2AMD GPUs" thing. I thought somewhere we agreed that crossfire/SLI just wasn't gonna happen in a console.

 

[Router]

Infinity and Loop? Isn't Infinity Loop Apple's headquarter's address?

I call fake or LOL.

Infinity/Loop codenames have been known for a while now.

 

[MarkMclovin]

2gb of RAM should be fine.

I'm more interested on finding out what optical drive that'll be used.

 

[Globox_82]

Since many of you are mentioning Samaritan, am I the only one not that impressed with that ...video or demo?

 

[Takuya]

It's going to need 16GB if it plans on running any Windows OS. ;D

 

[Vanillalite]

2gb of RAM should be fine.

I'm more interested on finding out what optical drive that'll be used.

Consider me intrigued on this fact as well.

It's going to need 16GB if it plans on running any Windows OS. ;D

Except you can't even use that as a joke anymore when it became a big company push from Vista onward to curtail memory usage and clean up the code. Vista --> 7 and 7 --> 8 each made big strides in this regard.

 

[Globox_82]

2gb of RAM should be fine.

I'm more interested on finding out what optical drive that'll be used.

I am more interested in NEW IPs.

 

[iceatcs]

2gb of RAM should be fine.

I'm more interested on finding out what optical drive that'll be used.

Obviously it will be DVD drive.

 

[subversus]

Since many of you are mentioning Samaritan, am I the only one not that impressed with that ...video or demo?

yes, you ARE...

Spoiler

not

 

[x-Lundz-x]

We are already seeing and have been the effects of limiting the 360 to 512 megs of ram in today's games. How much better would things be if it had 1 gig?

2 gigs of ram is not enough, it needs to be at least 4.

 

[thepotatoman]

Rage has proven 512 MB is already becoming a huge problem and we still have at least a year, maybe two to go before the new one is released. You don't want it just about maxed out right at release. On the consumer side 2 GBs is about 14 dollars and 4 is about 21 dollars, and it would cost microsoft much less for either. I know 7 dollars is a lot when you multiply it by units sold but remember that this is pretty much the cheapest component, and letting the cheapest component cap your system just doesn't make since to me. 7 dollars would probably go much further in ram then it would in video or cpu.

 

[MarkMclovin]

Obviously it will be DVD drive.

Obviously?

 

[AshMcCool]

Is RAM really such a big money issue that they just can't go to 4GB RAM? It's pretty cheap at the consumer level, I think I bought 4GB a couple of month ago for 30€ or something like that...

 

[Diablohead]

hex core, ddr3, dual gpu and to be shown at CES

lolololololol

If they use DDR3... there is no reason to not put 16GB in it

Money
Cooling
Overall size
Motherboard space

there's 4 reasons for you.

 

[wsippel]

Except it comes in the chips that are 256megs large. You would need 64 of them fused into motherboard. Even if they manage to find 512ones, that still 32 chips. Logistical nightmare for motherboard pathways and cooling.

Not to mention the memory alone would draw 20 - 30W according to Samsung.

 

[RedSwirl]

Heh.

Sounds like Loop and WiiU are gonna be port buddies.

Now to see Sony's move. Are they going to be odd manufacturer out this gen?

I still don't see why you guys think this?

And is the "2 AMD GPUs" really not a surprise to anyone?