New X-Box Info

[Bantam]

So It'll be all over the news tomorrow, but here's the picture of the new X-Box and some details about it (from Endgaget);




360 HW:
1. Support for DVD-video, DVD-Rom, DVD-R/RW, CD-DA, CD-Rom, CD-R, CD-RW, WMA CD, MP3 cd, JPEG photo CD
2. All games supported at 16:9, 720p and 1080i, anti-aliasing
3. Customizable face plates to change appearance
4. 3 USB 2.0 ports
5. Support for 4 wireless controllers
6. Detachable 20GB drive
7. Wi-Fi ready

Custom IBM PowerPC-based CPU
- 3 symmetrical cores at 3.2 GHz each
- 2 hardware threads per core
- 1 VMX-128 vector unit per core
- 1 MB L2 cache

CPU Game Math Performance
- 9 billion dots per second

Custom ATI Graphics Processor
- 500 MNz
- 10 MB embedded DRAM
- 48-way parallel floating-point shader pipelines
- unified shader architecture

Memory
-512 MB GDDR3 RAM
- 700 MNz DDR

Memory Bandwidth
- 22.4 GB/s memory interface bus bandwidth
- 256 GB/s memory bandwidth to EDRAM
- 21.6 GB/s frontside bus

Audio
- Mulitchannel surround sound output
- Supports 48khz 16-bit audio
- 320 independent decompression channels
- 32 bit processing
- 256+ audio channels

Hmm. Apple white eh? Also, the Power-PC CPU is actually a G5 so it's a triple core G5 64-Bit unit. Wow. Is funny because the development servers they shipped to the games development teams were Apple Mac G5 PC's with the apple branding removed and their own OS installed .

The OS on this unit, by the way, is the Microsoft Media Centre software custom built for this box.

Mark.

[ian.smyth]

Any idea of cost Mark ?

[Finless]

Doh, I've just bought a Gamecube (although having lots of fun). I have got straight back into waving the controller about as if that will help with steering, hitting or jumping.

I can't believe that the Gamecube isn't supplied with some memory so that users can store game info! I had to go back to Chavargos to by a memory card (under £5). Why do they do that????

[turbanator]

Mmmm, matches my Sony TV more than my PS2 does

[JAG]

Tiger Woods 2005 - North Troon in Tour Mode - 49 shots!!!! Woohoo!!!

[vulcan]

Originally Posted by Finless

Doh, I've just bought a Gamecube

No Doh about it, expect some "cheaper " games releases. The counterfeiters identified the copyright circumvention towards the begining of this year and there is a growing trade in copied discs; when this happens its not unusual to see the originals come down in price for a while. The earlier copied discs aren't up to much, the first examples cropped up in the Barras, Glasgow.....now there's a surprise!!

[Bantam]

Originally Posted by ian.smyth

Any idea of cost Mark ?

I would hazard a guess at the £350 area, but may be cheaper if they want to kill off the old X-Box quickly.

[Dangerous Dan]

"What is not known is if gamers will be able to play current Xbox games on the 360. The price of the console has yet to be announced but some speculate it could go on sale in the US for $300 (£162). "


Full report here
http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/technology/4541961.stm
and
http://www.tomshardware.com/game/200505121/index.html

[Fathoms Down]

One of the interesting points which these articles are missing is the way the new X-Box will integrate with Microsoft Media Center (which combines music library, video library, photo album, DVD player and live TV recoder) to allow people to access their media through the X-Box. Microsoft seem to have stolen the march on their competitors and have also licensed the technology out to others (so you can control your house lighting and curtains through it) so its going to be interesting how Sony are going to fight back against this value add.

[Ruby]

Looks a damn sight better than the old one I've got, I needed a crane to get it into my bedroom!