Is the Xbox 360 a computer?

[Press any key]

Is the Xbox 360 a computer?

Why not?

Am I the only one who's crazy?

The Xbox 360 it is not a personal computer in the sense of PC as a productivity tool. However, its hardware capabilities and technical specifications make the Xbox 360 more powerful than any desktop computer available on the market at this time.

Higher capacity hard disk, DVD-RW, Windows 3D OS - where is my SUPER COMPUTER!

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

Microsoft's Todd Holmdahl

Along with seeing the final CPU, GPU, TV encoder, and Southbridge chips in the flesh, we were told how the CPU's three cores are capable of running at a whopping 3.2 GHz each -- each core supporting two threads making for a total of six threads running at any one time. The CPU is a custom-built IBM PowerPC-based chip. The GPU is also a powerhouse, and Holmdahl seemed confident that the graphical grunt of the 360 is around twice as powerful as the most powerful PC chipset architecture currently in circulation. With a clock speed of 500 MHz, the GPU (designed by ATI) is able to support up to 48 different pixel shaders (advanced shader language) at any one time, something which will allow developers and artists to use some truly gorgeous rendering and special effects in their games.

The CPU and GPU are linked together by a blisteringly fast data bus which can transfer operations at an incredible 5.4 Gb per second. Couple this together with the TV encoder chip (responsible for the various high-definition output modes that connect to HD-compatible displays) and the Southbridge chip which deals with a variety of functions like audio, and the core of the 360 shapes up to be incredibly efficient and extremely powerful. The bottom line? Games for the Xbox 360 have the potential to be very, very special. After all, the overall system floating-point performance of the machine is an astounding 1 TFLOP!

Custom IBM PowerPC-based CPU:

# 3 symmetrical cores running at 3.2 GHz each

# 2 hardware threads per core; 6 hardware threads total

# 1 VMX-128 vector unit per core; 3 total

# 128 VMX-128 registers per hardware thread

# 3 symmetrical cores running at 3.2 GHz each

# 1 MB L2 cache

CPU Game Math Performance:

# 9 billion dot product operations per second

Custom ATI Graphics Processor:

# 500 MHz

# 10 MB embedded DRAM

# 48-way parallel floating-point dynamically-scheduled shader pipelines

# Unified shader architecture

Polygon Performance:

# 500 million triangles per second

Pixel Fill Rate:

# 16 gigasamples per second fillrate using 4X MSAA

Shader Performance:

# 48 billion shader operations per second

Memory:

# 512 MB GDDR3 RAM

# 700 MHz DDR

# Unified memory architecture

Memory Bandwidth:

# 22.4 GB/s memory interface bus bandwidth

# 256 GB/s memory bandwidth to EDRAM

# 21.6 GB/s front-side bus

Overall System Floating-Point Performance:

# 1 TFLOP

Storage:

# Detachable and upgradeable 20 GB hard drive

# 12X dual-layer DVD-ROM

# Memory unit support starting at 64 MB

I/O:

# Support for up to 4 wireless game controllers

# 3 USB 2.0 ports

# 2 memory unit slots

Optimized for Online:

# Instant, out-of-the-box access to Xbox Live features, including Xbox Live Marketplace for downloadable content, Gamer Profile for digital identity and voice chat to talk to friends while playing games, watching movies or listening to music

# Built in Ethernet Port

# Wi-Fi Ready: 802.11 A, B and G

# Video Camera Ready

Digital Media Support:

# Support for DVD-Video, DVD-ROM, DVD-R/RW, DVD+R/RW, CD-DA, CD-ROM, CD-R, CD-RW, WMA CD, MP3 CD, JPEG Photo CD

# Stream media from portable music devices, digital cameras, Windows XP PCs

# Rip music to Xbox 360 hard drive

# Custom playlists in every game

# Windows Media Center Extender built in

# Interactive, full screen 3D visualizers

HD Game Support:

# All games supported at 16:9, 720p and 1080i, anti-aliasing

# Standard definition and high definition video output supported

System Orientation:

# Stands vertically or horizontally

=================================================

The Xbox 360, like all video game consoles, is just a computer with hardware and software dedicated to the function of running video game software. The original Xbox was in essence a Windows PC with a modified Pentium III processor, some relatively powerful graphics and audio hardware and a modified version of the Microsoft operating system Windows 2000, all packaged in that distinctive black box.

Edited March 24, 2006 by Press any key

[noguru]

Off course it is a computer, it has a CPU, memory and input and output. That's a computer for me.

The question you are asking is why can't I buy such a wonder PC for that price?

Well, because the Xbox is sold for less than half of its production price. The expensive games make the money.

Also, this wondermachine still needs to be competitive in a few years time when your PC will be a lot faster than today.

But I totally agree, I wish I had a machine with those specs that you sum up so nicely.

[ripken204]

my friend has an xbox 360 and i compared it with my computer, and the specs on the 360 "look" better.... but my computer load games much faster and the graphics are better and their are much more games.

noguru- i am confused with what u said. are u saying that the 360 is better than current computers?

[nmX.Memnoch]

noguru- i am confused with what u said. are u saying that the 360 is better than current computers?

It had the potential to be faster than any desktop PC currently available. From what I gather the CPU architecture from IBM isn't all it's cracked up to be though (the Cell processor Sony is using in the PS3 is based on the same architecture).

The XBox 360 is, for all intents and purposes, a computer. So was the XBox, so was the original Playstation, PS2, Dreamcast.....even the original Atari. They're just specialized computers geared towards doing specific tasks, unlike a desktop PC that's built to do thousands of different types of tasks.

If you really stop and think about it...even a simple calculator is a computer. You could even say the same for your mobile phone you carry around.

[ripken204]

well im just saying that the specs on the 360 are impressive compared to my computer, but i guess not..

[puntoMX]

I needed to post this , just check the link

[nmX.Memnoch]

Did you mean this link?

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Computer

[LLXX]

Definitely is a computer, it has all the components of one. Not a desktop PC though...

Even my programmable calculator is considered a computer.

[puntoMX]

Did you mean this link?

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Computer

Both are correct, but not all people know where the word computer is coming from or know the meaning of compute; this is why I posted compute . If you can add 1 and 1 and you give the answer 2 (or 3, if you know what I mean), then you are computing

[noguru]

my friend has an xbox 360 and i compared it with my computer, and the specs on the 360 "look" better.... but my computer load games much faster and the graphics are better and their are much more games.

noguru- i am confused with what u said. are u saying that the 360 is better than current computers?

No ,I am saying that you can't buy a machine with specs like this for the price of the Xbox. But I would like to have this IBM processor, wouldn't you?

To bad IBM stopped producing CPU's for the PC. I long time ago I had this IBM 486SLC2-50 that ran Win95 like a Pentium.

[Press any key]

Well it seems to me it just needs an operating system, graphic and sound apps written for it, etc, and it would blow Vista away with 3D and performance. And sound quality, WOW, plus high definition monitor performance. I would pay double the price if it was a normal PC! But remember, Vista has taken five years, and now delayed til Jan or Feb, 2007.

So how long would it take Microsoft to develop an OS for this ... be out of date ..

The Xbox 360 is also a specially packaged computer, but once you look inside, you realize that this console has quite a bit

under the hood.

Custom IBM PowerPC-based CPU

* Three symmetrical cores running at 3.2 GHz each

* Two hardware threads per core; six hardware threads total

That's six, or SIX, or 6 __ 3.2 GHz processors running!!!

Microsoft has outfitted the 360 with a 165-million transistor, multi-core processor running three 3.2-GHz PowerPC cores. (Perhaps MS should be in the hardware business, oh, wait, they are - China mouse, China Keyboard.)

(A core is another name for a processor. Recently, hardware manufacturers have started combining several cores, or processors, onto one chip. This is a multi-core processor. Multi-core processors offer a combination of tremendous computing capabilities and efficient power consumption. They split heavy work loads over multiple powerful processors rather than giving all the work to one super-powerful processor.)

Microsoft devised a cooling system that combines a small, vacuum-sealed, liquid-cooled system with fans to maintain a comfortable temperature inside the 360. The system regulates the temperature of the cores and adjusts the flow of liquid and fan speed accordingly. Additionally, the cooling system monitors the core's workload: If one or more cores are not needed for the job at hand (for instance, if you were using the Xbox 360 to watch a DVD), then the unused cores are automatically turned off.

Custom ATI Graphics Processor

* 10 MB of embedded DRAM

Have you got a graphic processor with ten, or TEN, that's 10 ____ 10MB Ram? Not 128K, 256K or 512K.

Memory Bandwidth

* 21.6 GB/s front-side bus Not 400 or 800 FSB - but 21 Gigabytes.

Digital Media Support

#Support for DVD-Video, DVD-ROM, DVD-R/RW, DVD+R/RW, CD-DA, CD-ROM, CD-R, CD-RW, WMA CD, MP3 CD, JPEG

Photo CD.

#Ability to stream media from portable music devices, digital cameras and Windows XP-based PCs.

#Ability to rip music.

# Built-in Media Center Extender for Windows XP Media Center Edition 2005

# Interactive, full-screen 3-D visualizers

High-Definition Support

# Standard-definition and high-definition video output supported

Audio

* Multi-channel surround-sound output

* Supports 48-KHz 16-bit audio

* 320 independent decompression channels

* 32-bit audio processing

* More than 256 audio channels

This Xbox thingy appears to only be 12 inches tall? Is that right. And you can change hard Disk from the outside (top of) box. Admittedly they are Notebook 2.5 inch disks that cost more.

All you need is an OS, rewritten Photoshop, Dreamweaver, IE, mail, burners and players, Firefoxes, etc. TASK IS TOO BIG TO CO-ORDINATE. MS cannot even co-ordinate Vista. The WHOLE software industry would have to write programs for a SUPER COMPUTER. Dream on ...

[ringfinger]

All I know is that I want one

[puntoMX]

Press any key,

You are stating to mix up things, c´mon, listen:

The Xbox 360 is just a gamecomputer dude, not a supercomputer. Hardware is almost the same as a normal computer only they trow in the newest stuff like DDR3 and a good GPU. The CPU isn´t that good and as far as I know it´s a RISC based CPU made for only calculacions and not a instructions processor like we have in our computers (altrough the are mixed now, some RISC processor parts are now included).

The GPU has 10MB buffer-RAM and usses the internal 512MB DDR3 700MHz RAM for it´s graphics. So, do you realy think that graphics will be the same on the XBOX360 as on a PC? Right, most of us have 256MB Video cards and 1GB of normal RAM (lets say 128MB less for WindowsXP).

“21.6 GB/s front-side bus Not 400 or 800 FSB - but 21 Gigabytes.”

Listen, 21.6GB/s is throughput, no speed in MHz.

DDR2-667

PC2-5300, 333 MHz, 5.3 GB/s in single mode, 10.6 GB/s double mode

DDR2-800

PC2-6400, 400 MHz, 6.4 GB/s in single mode, 12.8 GB/s double mode

Still is has 2 times the throughput as DDR2 I know, but DDR2-1066 is also out

Other hardware isn’t special at all in the Xbox 360, believe me .

[nmX.Memnoch]

The GPU has 10MB buffer-RAM and usses the internal 512MB DDR3 700MHz RAM for it´s graphics. So, do you realy think that graphics will be the same on the XBOX360 as on a PC? Right, most of us have 256MB Video cards and 1GB of normal RAM (lets say 128MB less for WindowsXP).

This is the only point that needs a little correction/clarification.

The GPU in the XBox360 has 10MB of integrated memory. What this means is that the GPU chip has 10MB of memory built into it...unlike current desktop GPUs. It's basically like a Level 2 cache for the GPU. Supposedly desktop GPUs will get there in the next generation (the XBox360 GPU is heavily based on the current line of ATI desktop GPUs, or rather it's the other way around).

[puntoMX]

The next generation ATI chips will be indeed the same, although I don’t think they will use 10MB of integrated memory for the PC version.

10MB of L2 cache is big and pretty expensive, you know that the latest Intel CPUs have 4MB and they cost a lot more then the 2MB version. Also, the XBox 360 has only 512MB of RAM so why would they use that 10MB as a L2 cache? I’m almost sure it’s a buffer of 10MB, working for example on double the speed as the normal RAM, let’s say 1400MHz. But to tell you the truth, I still didn’t look at the specs that much and how the XBox 360 is build; why not? B/c I can´t change parts of the Xbox and with the PC I can, making the PC more interesting .

Edit; some changes in spelling

Edited March 26, 2006 by puntoMX