LOL, G5's Running All the 360 Demos @ E3!

Posted: Sat May 21, 2005 5:49 am

lol this is funny & sad at the same time, ( Laughing

+

) its good 2 here that the xbox 360 will have 5 times more power, yay!

Read the full story http://www.anandtech.com/tradeshows/showdoc.aspx?i=2420&p=5

Posted: Sat May 21, 2005 6:28 am

The Xbox 360 is going to have a custom IBM PowerPC proccessor, essentially crosscompatable with the Apple G5 PowerPC proccessor, to my understanding.

I bet M$ never made any consoles for E3... I bet 'someone' was a bit late on their shipment of special Xbox software. Anyone else thinking of longhorn Laughing

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Posted: Sat May 21, 2005 7:33 am

netdroid9 @ wrote:

The Xbox 360 is going to have a custom IBM PowerPC proccessor, essentially crosscompatable with the Apple G5 PowerPC proccessor, to my understanding.

I bet M$ never made any consoles for E3... I bet 'someone' was a bit late on their shipment of special Xbox software. Anyone else thinking of longhorn Laughing

.

im starting 2 think that the MTV special was a roze also Shocked

Posted: Sat May 21, 2005 7:57 am

The original developement kits for 360 were run off of G5s, sooooooo it's not THAT unbelievable now, is it? Rolling Eyes

Posted: Sat May 21, 2005 10:58 am

Gwasshi @ Thu Jan 01, 1970 12:00 am wrote:

The original developement kits for 360 were run off of G5s, sooooooo it's not THAT unbelievable now, is it? Rolling Eyes

So basically that means all the launch titles were made on G5ves?

Man M$ is cheap. I suppose all the launch titles'll look like the ones at E3 Razz

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Kai Admirer Joined: 21 May 2004 Posts: 378

Quote:

So basically that means all the launch titles were made on G5ves?

Man M$ is cheap.

LOL!! have you seen the price on a G5? not exactly buttons are they!

..and besides, who cares if M$ had their demos running on the dev platforms? at the end of the day what you've seen at e3 is what your getting when you get your own machine at home -if not better. Dunno bout you, but some of the games look not too bad to me.

and its not like this is the first time a company has done what M$ have done for shows. im sure it won't be the last either.

Team XLink Moderator Joined: 21 May 2004 Posts: 1536

haha exactly...them G5 is out of my price range Razz

but X-scene reports that 2 G5 was used to display X360 games...and cos the X360 is even more powerful they had to chop the textures and no AA in the games demos Shocked

Team XLink Administrator Joined: 11 Nov 2004 Posts: 5024

[MF]wishy @ Thu Jan 01, 1970 12:00 am wrote:

..and besides, who cares if M$ had their demos running on the dev platforms? at the end of the day what you've seen at e3 is what your getting when you get your own machine at home -if not better. Dunno bout you, but some of the games look not too bad to me.

I really don't care what they were running it on either... And I don't think it was MS - it was the game developers. It's good to see that games will run on a G5 though because now we know that developers have had a huge head start on getting their stuff ready for launch. I'm not sure, but I doubt the same can be said for the PS3.

Kai Regular Joined: 13 Jan 2005 Posts: 87

Quote:

So basically that means all the launch titles were made on G5ves?

Don't think it matters what its made on, code is code no matter what OS you program it on, what architecture you program it for is a different story though Smile

. Aren't xbox games made on PC's running Windows? LOL. Correct me if im wrong Razz

Kai Admirer Joined: 21 May 2004 Posts: 324

Originaly the Xbox 360 was supposed to be poswered by the G5 processor.... thats was early on.

Posted: Mon May 23, 2005 3:45 am

I;m more concerned about the fact the launch titles might not use the Xbox 360's fully power...

Team XLink Moderator Joined: 21 May 2004 Posts: 1357

edit: xc said it better. Laughing

Posted: Mon May 23, 2005 5:55 am

netdroid9 @ wrote:

I;m more concerned about the fact the launch titles might not use the Xbox 360's fully power...

thats what i was thinking also, you know how launch titles like Halo look when compard to Halo 2, they look like shit. I just hope the Devs take the time to use the dev kits 2 there full power nd make great games

Posted: Tue May 24, 2005 11:27 am

L OL

Posted: Sat May 28, 2005 4:19 pm

Not sure if it's been mentioned, but the Anti Aliasing wasn't even in full use on the demos at E3 !! And that will be enabled at X4 for ALL Xbox 360 titles by default, they are going to all look better than anything shown at E3, ...microsoft could have hosted the consoles properly at E3 but they chose not to, its a marketing thing ....I guarantee it.
The Xbox 360 vs PS3 wars have already begun, and fact remains ...the 360 is technically superior and has more bandwidth so will be around at the top longer, pretty much how things are now with the Xbox over the PS2!! ..... wait and see, later in the summer REAL demos will start to leak on the run upto Xmas, its a typical old Microsoft plot , but one that's secured them as the biggest software supplier worldwide, Gatezilla wants domination and soon he'll have it lol

Posted: Sat May 28, 2005 6:39 pm

XC @ Sat May 21, 2005 5:49 am wrote:

lol this is funny & sad at the same time, ( Laughing

+

) its good 2 here that the xbox 360 will have 5 times more power, yay!

Read the full story http://www.anandtech.com/tradeshows/showdoc.aspx?i=2420&p=5

It had BETTER have 5 times the power. Considering the lag we saw, and the fact that AA wasn't on.

Why's it sad?

Posted: Sat May 28, 2005 6:42 pm

TA_Superman @ Sat May 21, 2005 6:15 pm wrote:

Quote:

So basically that means all the launch titles were made on G5ves?

Don't think it matters what its made on, code is code no matter what OS you program it on, what architecture you program it for is a different story though Smile

. Aren't xbox games made on PC's running Windows? LOL. Correct me if im wrong Razz

Not true. You don't program for a processor architecture, you COMPILE it for a processor architecture. You PROGRAM for the OS.

Writing a Windows application, you have to wright it using the Windows API and then compile it for x86 (Intel and AMD) processors.

With XBox games you write it using the Windows API the XBox uses and compile it for x86 processors.

For XBox 360 games you write it for the Windows API it uses and compile it for PowerPC processors.

Posted: Sat May 28, 2005 6:44 pm

Damolee @ Sat May 28, 2005 4:19 pm wrote:

Not sure if it's been mentioned, but the Anti Aliasing wasn't even in full use on the demos at E3 !! And that will be enabled at X4 for ALL Xbox 360 titles by default, they are going to all look better than anything shown at E3, ...microsoft could have hosted the consoles properly at E3 but they chose not to, its a marketing thing ....I guarantee it.

Actually the reason is that right now they are running on Alpha versions of the hardware.

Quote:

The Xbox 360 vs PS3 wars have already begun, and fact remains ...the 360 is technically superior and has more bandwidth so will be around at the top longer, pretty much how things are now with the Xbox over the PS2!! ..... wait and see, later in the summer REAL demos will start to leak on the run upto Xmas, its a typical old Microsoft plot , but one that's secured them as the biggest software supplier worldwide, Gatezilla wants domination and soon he'll have it lol

XBox 360 is superior? Laughing

Sorry, you've just made my day. Hilarious. lol. You weren't serious, were you?

Sorry, the PS3 is definitely technically superior. As for bandwidth, LOL. The PS3 has much higher processor bandwidth. Only one small part of the XBox 360, the EDRAM, has higher bandwidth than the PS3, the rest of the RAM is equal and the processor has less bandwidth. The bandwidth between the Cell and graphics card is the most important part, not the total system bandwidth.

Not to mention 50 GB disks vs 8.5 GB disks.

You don't honestly think a system that will launch up to half a year later at a higher price point will be SLOWER, do you?...

I assume you read that Microsoft propoganda over at IGN. You know, the one in which the author doesn't even understand what he's talking about when he speaks of processors.

Posted: Sat May 28, 2005 7:16 pm

The cell is far from what Sony claim it is, if you read into it a little. It's essentially 7 floating point co-processors.

I would take the 360's tri-core design anyday - the cell is smoke and mirrors marketing rubbish.

People discuss things like bandwidth, clock cycles etc. and make every effort to sound like they actually know what they're talking about - even marketing guys from Sony and MS - the truth is, it's less about the processor and more about the code which is built to run on it. Again, Sony will see a huge percentage of it's PS3 titles running horribly, using only the main PPC core and 1 of the SPEs as a floating point unit - because any company who makes games for > 1 console will *not* spend the time porting the stuff into software cells to use the SPE's properly. End of story. MS has been pretty smart - the 3 SMP cores can easily be used by someone porting a title designed for all 3 major consoles - and they can pretty much use them all fully. So to summarise, in my opinion, you're going to see just the same as last time... Sony's titles looking terrible alongside equivalents on the 360 - the real battleground will be in games designed specifically for one platform. PS2 has gt3 and gt4 essentially, MS has Halo. Ever wondered why Allard is trying to round up studios to work on exclusive titles? Well now you know..

Let's take an example - I dunno - say FIFA 2008 or whatever - it will be written using a standardised library, probably developed inhouse by EA. This lib will have implementations for the 360, PS3, Revolution etc. The lib will do as much as it can with the code it has - it will support threading, but will *not* turn cross platform code into software cell code, so you would have an arrangement something like this:

360 implementation: Using 3 cores, 6 threads.
PS3 implementation: Using 1 core, 1(2?) threads.

In other words, for 90% of the PS3 games which get released, I can pretty much guarantee you, only the equivalent of 1 PPC core and 1 floating point unit will be used - meaning it will fall flat on it's face against the "already-how-we-do-things-and-how-all-of-our-libs-already-work" 360 approach with a fairly standard SMP configuration.

The disc size is not relevant - I cannot think of one single game which uses more than one DVD for xbox.. and it looks like the 360 will ship with HDDVD anyway now.

For this generation, I think the 360 will make inroads into Sony market share - but will probably just stop short of overtaking them. If it gets that far, round 3 will see Bill cleaning up, I'm afraid. Sony have, in my opinion, made a mistake with the cell - sofware engineering companies just don't work the way Sony wants them to.

Posted: Sat May 28, 2005 8:05 pm

XCondor @ Sat May 28, 2005 7:16 pm wrote:

The cell is far from what Sony claim it is, if you read into it a little. It's essentially 7 floating point co-processors.

I would take the 360's tri-core design anyday - the cell is smoke and mirrors marketing rubbish.

I would take the 360's design in a desktop PC. The Cell is useless in a desktop.

But floating point is precisely what you need for physics and games. In a game console I perfer the Cell processor. And maybe a video editting machine. In anything else, Cell sucks bad.

I agree that a ton of terms are being thrown around. Read the IGN article and you'll see what I mean.

The reality is, the Cell will outperform the X360 proc by 2x to 3x in floating point calculations, and the X360 will outperform the Cell by about 3x in integer calculations. They will each do better at different tasks and it is nigh impossible to say which is better. However, the floating point performance gives Cell a huge edge in physics.

Graphics cards are difficult to compare as well as neither have released all the details.

In the rest of the hardware Sony has a clear superiority though. Blu-ray > DVD-9. The ability to run two TV's at 1080p, while Microsoft supports only one at 1080i or 720p. Same amounts of RAM though. Microsoft doesn't have any areas where they are superior to the PS3. Sony has a few areas where they are superior, a few where they are equal, and a few that are incomparable, but is not inferior in any aspect.

Quote:

So to summarise, in my opinion, you're going to see just the same as last time... Sony's titles looking terrible alongside equivalents on the 360 - the real battleground will be in games designed specifically for one platform. PS2 has gt3 and gt4 essentially, MS has Halo. Ever wondered why Allard is trying to round up studios to work on exclusive titles? Well now you know..

Now you're being silly. PS2 was so far behind in graphics for two reasons:
1) The PS2 launched one YEAR before the XBox, at a lower price point. By price point I don't mean what it sold for, I mean, the XBox cost $400 to build, Microsoft took a huge loss. A $400 system sold one year later obviously is far superior to a $300 system one year earlier.
2) Some mistakes in the Emotion Engine, it was bandwidth starved.

#1 is the primary one. When we get the next gen consoles, Microsoft is the one coming out first, and they won't be taking the same huge loss. So they will be MUCH closer, though the PS3 will probably be a bit faster because it is coming out a few months later at a higher price point. That's precisely why the XBox was faster.

Quote:

The disc size is not relevant - I cannot think of one single game which uses more than one DVD for xbox.. and it looks like the 360 will ship with HDDVD anyway now.

I cannot think of one N64 game that shipped on two cartridges, therefore we didn't need to go to DVD's on the current consoles. See the logic flaw?

The XBox 360, which will be designed for HDTV's (6-7 times the pixels), will need much higher resolution textures and models. It will definitely need bigger disks. Maybe not the launch games, but later on in the life it will be a big deal. Otherwise we'll see the same thing as we saw on GameCube, how games with FMV sequences for example have much lower quality video, or multiple disks (RE4 for example).