Viewing Thread:
"Xbox Specs"

Now, All the Spec-Freaks out there its time to tell you some of the juicy things the Xbox holds, After a few arguements in the Nintendo forum I decided to rewrite this to show the Xbox's power.

Xbox Processor - Custom Intel 733mhz
Graphics Processor - nVidea NV2 GPU (Graphics Processing unit)
RAM - 64MB
Sound - 256 Channels with Dolby Digital 5.1 surround support
Storage Medium - 8GB Hard Drive (Roughly 8,192MB)
Online Connectivity - Ethernet port, Allowing access to broadband gaming through a service called "Xbox Live"
Added extras - DVD Drive using 7GB DVD9 Discs, access to DVD home movies via remote (£19.99 RRP)

All of this allows: -

116.5 million polygons per second at a maximum resolution of 1920 x 1080, full-screen pixel-free anti-aliasing, Surround sound through both home theatre and stereo speakers.

You control this via: -

Fully analogue forc-feedback control pad, 4 controller ports, which support 4-way simultaneous play.

Xbox is the most powerful console ever and its been designed primarily for one thing - TO PLAY GAMES!

Background Information: -

Microsoft maybe new into the console market, but over the past few years its quietly becoming one of the worlds most important PC game developer/Publisher. This allowing the company to have an ideal position to move up and take on the Console market with Japanese giants - Sony and Nintendo

Comparisons: -

Processor speed: -

Microsoft Xbox - 733 Mhz
Sony Playstation 2 - 295 Mhz
Nintendo Gamecube - 405 Mhz

The Graphics chip or "GPU" allows things only other companys could dream of, It allows developers to use Vertex Shading, Anti-aliasing, Graphics routing,Real-time shadows, Reflection Mapping, Texture definition, Bump-Mapping, Superior polygon processing, Texture compression,Simultaneous Textures.

The advantages of this "hardwiring" of routines is that they can be put with the game software without additional strain on the Processor. The processor is left solely to the pure-power the heavy mechanics of the game allowing programmers to build convincing game enviroments and detailed scenarios.

Polygon count comparison: -

Microsoft Xbox- 116.5 Million polygons per second
Sony Playstation 2- 66 Million polygons per second
Nintendo Gamecube- 8 Million polygons per second all effects enabled

The Xbox is the first console to come with a built in hard drive, allowing persistant internal memory. The 8 Gigabytes of available memory has huge implications for the types of games made for Xbox and the different expericances they'll be able to offer to the player.

The benifits of the Hard drive are huge, and simple thanks to the management system on the Xbox dashboard. The hard drive allows quick loading times, Huge gameworlds and tempory information can be stored during play to load textures and big levels quickly without interering with save game files. Also the hard drive enables upgrades and downloads though the Online service. Even music CD's can be saved to the Hard Drive, letting you listen to them whilst playing certain games.

Hard Drive Comparison: -

Microsoft Xbox - 8Gb built-in Hard-drive
Sony Playstation 2 - No Hard drive, One available as optional extra (£100+)
Nintendo Gamecube- No hard drive.

Memory Bandwidth Comparison: -

Microsoft Xbox - 6.4GB per second
Sony Playstation 2 - 3.2GB per second
Nintendo Gamecube - 2.6GB per second

Networking and connectivity Comparison: -

Microsoft Xbox - 4 controller ports, Broadband built-in, Xbox Live service
Sony Playstation 2 - 2 controller ports, Multi tap avalable (£20), Broadband gaming via additional purchase (£100+)
Nintendo Gamecube - 4 Controller ports, Online service rumoured

Sound comparison: -

Microsoft Xbox - 256 channels, Dolby Digital 5.1 surround sound in-game!
Sony Playstation 2 - 48 Audio channels, Dolby Digital 5.1 during FMV sequences
Nintendo Gamecube - 64 Audio channels - Dolby Pro Logic 2 in-game

Resolution Comparison: -

Microsoft Xbox - 1920x1080
Sony Playstation 2 - 1280x1024
Nintendo Gamecube - 640x480

Phew! There you have it, Then theres all the excellent games,

Bonus wrote:
> Have you seen the games which are released concurrently on all 3
> platforms?? You cannot seriously tell me that the textures and
> lighting on Timesplitters 3 are the same as on the Xbox?

Havent seen it. PS2 is the worst console for graphics I know that but people are so into a higher spec number in mhz for a processor is better, ot what ever. XBox is the best without a doubt then the GC then the PS2. GT3 on the PS2 is impressive and Splinter Cell is looking ok but not as good as XBox version.

VRAM is the let down for PS2 and I remember laughing and saying how crap it would be before it was released. Still got one on launch day though :).

Have you seen the games which are released concurrently on all 3 platforms?? You cannot seriously tell me that the textures and lighting on Timesplitters 3 are the same as on the Xbox?

I agree that the PS2 has by far the best processor of all 3 consoles, I also agree that it is very good at throwing around polygons. The only thing I say it can't do very well is textures.

If anyone needs evidence that the PS2 has a damn fine procesor, it's the fact that SSx Tricky has dolby 5.1 in game support. EA used one of the vector units of the MIPS 5900 chip to solely handle Dolby 5.1. Yep, that's just one part of the PS2s 3 pronged processor running realt time dolby 5.1 software, damn that's impressive.

I'm not arguing against the PS2, or saying it's a bad console, because it;s not, I'm just saying that it;s graphics capabilites are limited by the fact that the PS2 has the worst graphics processor set-up (including VRAM) of the 3 major consoles.

If you want to see the best article comparing the PS2 to the PC architecture, go to www.arstechnica.com and look up their 2 articles in the gaming section on the PS2, it rocks.

Bonus wrote:
> Right, that's garbage.
>
> I'm doing a games tech course at uni, I can tell you straight off,
> that anything you want to have on the screen must be stored in VRAM.

I know you do need to store textures thats why new PC games like Doom 3 will need 128mb graphics cards. But if the PS2 can run games that are consoles with higher VRAM capabilities. The Dreamcast had 8mb and that was older. The PS2 with its 4mb VRAM much use the 48GB bandwidth to help with this, the CPU is completely different to the other consoles as well. I have read quite a few technical documents on the PS2 detailling the fact that it can stream the data through. You have to admit the PS2 must use alternative methods or otherwise how could it keep up graphically with the likes of the GC and XBox, even the Dreamcast would be able to cope with the PS2 games.

Right, that's garbage.

I'm doing a games tech course at uni, I can tell you straight off, that anything you want to have on the screen must be stored in VRAM.

So for the PS2 there are two frame buffers (or one for a higher resolution) already taking up some VRAM. Then you need to store all of the textures etc. that you want to display on the screen in that VRAM. There is no texture compression so this is a very small amount for a modern gaming system, on any platform. The VRAM to GS does have 48Gb bandwidth, but nothing else in the system does. All of the textures need to be read from the DVD drive which is only a few Mb per second, or from the main system memory which is only has a bandwidth of 3.2Gb. There is nothing in the PS2 to fill the memory fast enough for it to run at it's full capacity. The reason this VRAM is so fast is because it's embedded into the GS.

The Gamecube has 24Mb RAM and 16Mb secondary Ram (which is usually used by games developers as a disc cache to reduce loading times. However, it does not have a specifically defined VRAM at all. It does have a 2Mb dedicated Frame buffer (for storing 2 frames for a double buffering set-up) and it also has a 1Mb embedded texture cache. Now unlike the PS2, 1Mb is enough for the Gamecube, due to the fact that the Gamecube has hardware 8-1 texture compression, which gives the 1Mb texture cache a theoretical 8Mb storage.

The Xbox is totally different in that it has 64Mb which the developers can split up for whatever they like, it's centralised and has 0 boundaries. There is also a hard-drive which can be used as a virtual memory system, and it has an Nvidia GPU capable of hardware texture compression at 16-1.

Bonus wrote:
> The PS2 has admittedly the best processor out of the 3 consoles, but
> it's limited 4Mb VRAM and poor GS chip make it look nowhere near as
> good as the processor is capable of.

Yes but in all fairness it does have a bandwidth of 48GB/sec and only the newest Geforce FX can match that. Basically it doesnt even really need to store anything in the VRAM as it moves in and out so quickly. Yes 4mb does sound very small and it probably could do with more but PS2 can handle it self against the other consoles. Games that are on all 3 consoles are basically the same. Splinter Cell on the PS2 doesnt look as good as the XBox. PS2 is older than the other 2 so technolgy has moved on since then, in which the XBox and GC have taken advantage and released a better spec console.

As I said before all consoles work in different ways. The PS2 has 32mb RAM 4mb VRAM, XBox has 64mb undefined and GC has 24mb RAM and 16 VRAM. Also processors work in different ways, as well as different bandwidths and technics used to pass textures etc. All 3 consoles are basically as powerful as each other. The XBox is probably the best in performance and then the GC, but all 3 produce stunning looking games.

There are some blatant oversights in that post, such as the fact that the Xbox CPU is only 32bit whereas the others are 128bit.

There is no mention of hardware graphics capabilities, only a theoretical maximum untextured, unfiltered, unanythinged polygon rates.

At the end of the day polygon rates are succumbing in the PC industry to picture quality. How good textures look, how good efeects look and how good many other thing look rather than raw unashamed power is much more important.

The Xbox wins this hands down due to hardware support for 16-1 texture compression, pixel and vertex shaders full-scene AA etc. But one thing is for sure, it's held back by the damn dirty Intel 733 coppermine P3. Anyone played Unreal online or with a full game of bots? Get several people on the screen at the same time and the processor almost dies under the strain.

The only advantage the Xbox has over the other two is a unique relationship between the DirectX team and Nvidia specially writing massive parts of he DirectX API to suit the Nvidia hardware, that's why Xbox games can look so good.

The PS2 has admittedly the best processor out of the 3 consoles, but it's limited 4Mb VRAM and poor GS chip make it look nowhere near as good as the processor is capable of.

Maverick42 wrote:
> True. Didn't you write this yonks ago, gamezfreak?

PGFX days.....

(Pre-Gamezfreak-Xbox-days)

Woa! Did'nt mean for this post to be a blatent disrespct towards other consoles...

The thing about the resolution, Yes normal Tv's can churn out a 800 x 600 resolution, I was just stating to the fact that the Xbox can go up to that maximum resolution.

Some good points, Bonzo. Those of which I can understand..

Whitestripes wrote:
> The GC specs there are sooo wrong.

True. Didn't you write this yonks ago, gamezfreak?