GDC goodness

You can figure out the spec of the next generating by doing the following:

Visit DELL.com
Find the cheapest new PC
Half the CPU speed by two
Half the RAM by two

and you have the next generation of console.

Same deal with the XBox 1 for its time (it is a 750Mhz machine!).

[Note: I did read the spec listed but keep two points
in mind, first it isn't coming out today so you half
the spec the day it appears in the local shops.
Second point is that XBox 1 devel kits had a 1.1Ghz
CPU yet the actual console doesn't .. they know the
reviewers look at these demo boxes so boost them so
people opt for thier box over the alternatives]

[Note #2: Last I heard Microsoft themselves are
still struggling on how to utilise duel / multi-core
CPUs; with that in mind, how do they expect game
developers to use these three 3Ghz cores when
Microsoft haven't figured it out yet?]

[Note #3: Notice how the alpha 2 devel kit has
reduced spec .. talk about manipulating the media! I
wonder if the third devel kit will go down even
further, my guess is YES! ]

[Note #4: I love this line -
"Xenon will have 256 MB of system RAM. Keep in mind
that this number should not be equated to
typical PC RAM. The Xbox has 64 MB of system RAM and
is a very capable machine."

- yes, because on a PC ram is used to hold game data
(e.g. textures and sound) while on an X-Box it
somehow stores more with less? Wait, that isn't even
logical.. duh ]

Minh wrote:

Normal PC Ram is used up by Windows. The XBox O/S is minimal & all of system resources is dedicated to 1 program.

Agreed to a point... My current system with XP Pro is
using about 100Mb on OS stuff alone, the XBox (1)
uses about 30Mb which is better but not wonderful.


I've seen the pictures of the XBOx 2 and the OS looks
a little bit more sophisticated, e.g. more hardware
support, fancier GUI and various other features. I
also expect XBox 2 to be a media centre extension by
default thus increasing the size still further.

Half Life 2 as a good example of a modern game uses
55Mb while active. Now Half Life 2 has a LOT of
loading within game-play the reason being that the
game producer can't predict exactly how much free ram
the machine has so they have settled on 128Mb (55~Mb
Half Life 2, 65Mb OS stuff). On the XBox they know

exactly how much ram the machine will have.. so
they can reduce loading by using up most of it.


It comes down to one simple fact, the more ram a
games machine has the less it's going to need to load
mid-play. In theory if you had enough you could do
background caching and never have to interrupt game-play
to load more game data. I think Microsoft wants to
save some cash and figured by sticking a high-speed
DVD drive and CPU in the machine the game makers can
background cache some data and reduce the problem;
but I think in reality the DVD drives (particularly
dirty ones) will cause the game to lag and maybe
freeze while it catches up with un-cached data.


Really how much would it cost on top to add an extra
256Mb chip (512Mb)?

stephbu wrote:

Manip - where were you driving with you comment around we [MS] were still figuring out what to do with multi-core CPUs?

It was from a blog entry I was reading... It wasn't a poke or anything just a point that it isn't at all easy to use a multi-core CPU and Microsoft hasn't been able to create a solution (abstraction?) to make it any easier.