How the Xbox 360 affects PC gamers

1167 Views 11 Replies 8 Participants Last post by benitojuarez, May 15, 2005

Excalibur

Discussion Starter · May 15, 2005

"48 pipelines is simply bonkers."

The graphics system uses the R500 GPU from ATI. Whilst all sorts of information has been flying round, here's what we know. R500 is an Xbox-only chip. R520, ATI's next PC part, is nothing like it. It won't be until R600 - possibly this time next year, or even early 2007 - that we see the Xbox-esque features on the PC. The GPU itself uses a unified shader architecture. That is, unlike PC graphics boards - which use a pixel shader pipeline and vertex shader pipeline - just one pipeline is used for both, which will, it is said, lead to more efficient programming and better performance. This is the one aspect of the Xbox 360 that has been debated already. Nvidia have gone on record as saying that they think a unified shader architecture is a bad idea, whilst ATI have gone on record as saying they think it's the way forward for PC graphics. Unfortunately for Nvidia, it's really Microsoft, with the DirectX specification (soon to be renamed Windows Graphics Foundation, when Longhorn finallly turns up) that writes the rules. Whilst WGF will support separate pixel and vertex pipelines, there can be little doubt that the coding will favour a unified architecture, and consequently, ATI.

Whilst ATI may have had to work incredibly hard, and divert a lot of resources to the Xbox 360 project to get everything to work properly, the payoff may well be a headstart over Nvidia when the next-generation PC graphics wars kick off.

Oh, and here's a number for you: 48 pipelines. The X850 uses 16, the R520 is mooted to have 32. 48 pipelines is simply bonkers.

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What it will mean PC game hardware companies will be forced to push out their latest technology at a faster rate and at a cheaper price in order to compete.

Who wants to pay $350 for a graphic card when you can spend that money on a Xbox 360?

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Viper_Viper

· #3 · May 15, 2005

RZetlin said:
What it will mean PC game hardware companies will be forced to push out their latest technology at a faster rate and at a cheaper price in order to compete.

Who wants to pay $350 for a graphic card when you can spend that money on a Xbox 360?

Yea, and the newer cards will cost over $400 each. I wonder why ATI can't put that much power into their PC cards... (cause microsoft is paying them not to)

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benitojuarez

· #4 · May 15, 2005

i dont know how this is going to work tho, from what ive heard it has this special custom ati card discussed above with 48 pipes , it has the 3 3.2 ghz cell cpus and supossedly it has water cooling too, i dont see how the price point can be any lower than 499.99 without substantial losses on hardware costs, ill stick with my pc for now.

on another note nice to see some xfire users in here

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Viper_Viper

· #5 · May 15, 2005

benitojuarez said:
i dont know how this is going to work tho, from what ive heard it has this special custom ati card discussed above with 48 pipes , it has the 3 3.2 ghz cell cpus and supossedly it has water cooling too, i dont see how the price point can be any lower than 499.99 without substantial losses on hardware costs, ill stick with my pc for now.

on another note nice to see some xfire users in here

no no no, there are no cell processors in the Xbox 360, and ive never heard of the watercooling.

PS i just got it like last weekend.

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benitojuarez

· #6 · May 15, 2005

Viper_Viper said:
no no no, there are no cell processors in the Xbox 360, and ive never heard of the watercooling.

PS i just got it like last weekend.

im going by what one of my friends said who insists there are cells in the xbox 360, i said he was thinking of ps3 but whenever i argue with him about hardware i always end up wrong, but thats why i put the supposedly in there haha

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hellmasterx

· #7 · May 15, 2005

well in the water cooling part he's right the xbox 360 is going to use two fans and water cooling, if the price is good il probably end buying one.

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ChankastRules

· #8 · May 15, 2005

i dont see how the price point can be any lower than 499.99 without substantial losses on hardware costs

I can't see how MS can sell this xbox 360 without losses, it's really beyond me. My only guess is that they're counting on losses for each console sold, but that the new live, will earn it back for them, by the virtual marketplace.

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n0estoy

· #9 · May 15, 2005

isnt that how it always is. hardware is always a loss?

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darian

· #10 · May 15, 2005

Definitely no cell processors. And they're gonna post losses with this thing, which I think is kind of odd because that means people won't want to invest in them, which is one of the reasons M$ is so rich. It probably means live will have advertising or something else that we don't want. They just want everyone to buy it so that Sony and Nintendo dissappear and in the future we become slaves to the only console out there, the "xbox backflip" or something stupid like that. I'm still gonna buy it though.

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ChankastRules

· #11 · May 15, 2005

isnt that how it always is. hardware is always a loss?

With consoles it's like that.. I should have said that it feels like it'll be a larger loss this time around though.

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benitojuarez

· #12 · May 15, 2005

ChankastRules said:
With consoles it's like that.. I should have said that it feels like it'll be a larger loss this time around though.

ginormous is more like it.

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