All of this talk on power on these systems, and from what Acert says, it will be 3-5 times faster than 360, has me considering a SteamBox. I wonder if Valve will release definitive details on SteamBox at E3 this year? The new Xbox was supposed to be rumored at 6x more powerful. I guess if I see the new 360 pulling off Samaritan and Unreal Engine 4 graphics without sacrificing baked in lighting, I won't worry. I just hope what they show or promise isn't BS in the end.



I remember seeing hyped up Racing Destruction vids for Xbox360, and hyped up images of Madden on 360, back in the day.

This is what were told they hoped it would look like, I remember the term projected:


Uploaded with ImageShack.us
This is what we got:


Uploaded with ImageShack.us

I'll believe it when I see it, at this point. I'm really hyped and excited for the new Xbox, but at this point, I'm taking a wait and see approach, because I'm not getting great vibes from
Acerts comments here and on beyond3D.

They won't be able to BS even if they wanted to, we know what these machines can do, most people can see CGI vs realtime. The problem is people are all too happy to eat the spin and not believe their own eyes, how many bought into the PS3 cgi and madden as you showed above. I would say madden will be much closer to the faked 2005 vid now, image quality will be much improved, poly counts on characters will be improved and tesselation will help round out the models aswell. Textures will be MASSIVELY improved just because of the improved memory pool. We will also probably see more cloth simulation etc to make the characters look that bit more real. The likes of grass and crowds i'm not sure on, could be improved but full 3d crowds and fields of 3d grass are perhaps still prohibitively expensive.

I'm just disappointed that the gpu in either machine is the equivalent of mobile parts that are already on the market, thats pretty much never been the case.

Lol, I love that argument. Theres no doubt coding to the metal and closed boxes help, but they dont suddenly make a 460GTX into a 680GTX. At most you might upgrade a couple of card levels within the same generation. It certainly didn't help the 360 and ps3 gpus keep up with the pc, last I saw they were sub 720p struggling to hit 30fps with bad textures and bad filtering. Comparing crysis 3 beta shots on 360 and PC is damn funny, even on low settings on PC it looks FAR better.

I'm in the same boat with my PC, running a 560TI and have very little incentive to upgrade, think I can wait a while aswell and spend what I woulda spent on the 720 on a new gpu.

I'm sure the xbox will find a market, same way as the Wii U will find a market. It just won't be in the public eye, it will shrink back to being a novelty system for exclusives or party games. The xbox market share is already contracting, the last thing they want to do is consolidate that loss by releasing something that nobody in their right mind would want.

Exactly, just bring the games and the sales will follow!!

Grift, all that gpu info I discussed directly above your post is from the exact same information you posted.

Correction, Tomarru, the new Xbox design, despite the leak suggesting a weaker gpu than what some were expecting (although I honestly believe this is a moving goal post for most fans whether they realize it or not), I think is a gpu design that, in the grand scheme of things, looks very well put together and balanced. Only thing that can be said is some wanted to see an even more advanced or stronger gpu, and even then this information is still February 2012 levels of old (that's how old this info is), but this system is far from a turd. I see a very balanced design that looks focused towards being surprisingly efficient at what it does. It would still, if final, represent a significant jump over what the 360 was capable of, and for anyone underestimating what this gpu can pull off inside the new xbox, well, I guess you'll have to see. But looking at this gpu too much from the viewpoint of how their closest relative or counterpart performs in a pc environment is, I feel, missing a far larger, more vital picture that will almost certainly ensure this gpu punches far above its weight, making irrelevant what's listed on its spec sheet.

That said, a console isn't just its gpu, there's a lot of other things this console will be doing right, key among them is the fact that it has 8GB of ram. I've said it before, but I'll go with a higher capacity of slower ram over a smaller capacity of faster ram anyday. Even with a supposed 3GB OS reservation of some of that ram -- something I still doubt, and that can be decreased with time if true -- there's a lot that can be achieved with 5GB of ram. Yea, yea, I already know that it doesn't automatically mean the new xbox can, at any one time, supposedly use all of that ram in every frame of a game, but that isn't the only way all that memory can be used. It can be used to significantly shorten or essentially erase some load times altogether, and it can be used to facilitate a very seamless stretch of gameplay through fairly large gameplay environments. That way, the system need not be able to access all of that ram per frame in any sort of insane amount, because not all of that level would ever need to be visible all at once, that way devs can stay within their allotment of ram per frame whilst still getting the benefits of all that extra ram. Hell, it's being overlooked just what this is going to mean on the optimization side of things alone. Code optimization will be a huge benefactor of all that ram. It's being heavily overlooked why ram was, perhaps, the single most requested huge boost request coming from devs headed into the new gen of consoles. I remember a time when nobody thought 8GB would happen on these next gen machines. It was mostly seen as a pipedream.

And I'll tell you this as well. If I had a choice right now between making the Xbox's gpu stronger, but decreasing the total ram from the expected 8GB, I would choose to leave the 8GB of RAM and GPU precisely as is. I don't know what their BOM budget, their overall marketing plan, or their plan for profitability, or lack there of, is on release of the new xbox, but I'm happy to see that plan apparently places a premium on having 8GB of ram.

I just don't want to get into the PC race again, with having to upgrade parts every 18months to 2 years. I like the closed systems, and the fact that the chat system is consistent with Xbox LIVE.

All the video card upgrades, software update procedures, headaches, ventrillo this... chat that. I just like it all figured out for me. The only cost on hardware I've really spent on my 360, was a wheel, a couple of headsets, extra controller, etc.

Don't mean to turn this into a console vs. PC war, but that is why I'd maybe consider a steambox.

Hah, that isn't even close to PC vs Console. It's just a very core argument for why so many find a console convenient, even if not a total guarantee of having the most superior gaming experience possible. Because as long as pcs exist, and they will continue to exist, the pc will always be the place where you can get the most superior gaming experience, if your pc is powerful enough. However, in a lot of instances, I find myself glad to trade that for a slightly scaled back experience where you don't need to worry about optimizations, setting configurations, tweaks, drivers, or buying and building a powerful enough computer, knowing full well that, for what I spend, the time will come when it will be insufficient. I don't get that same feeling with consoles. Your console, after all, can never be insufficient for games strictly designed to be played on that console.

Correct you are, Grift. Microsoft has a lot of spending power, and combined with some good marketing, and a few important pieces in place, things might not be so doom and gloom for Microsoft as some on the internet are now believing. They aren't invincible and they can totally muck this entire thing up, but I just don't think the will. They seem confident that they can go toe to toe on an overall plan for software, features and services and do exceedingly well with the new xbox that way.

Oh, and EXPECT bullshots from both sides. You will see some videos of stuff from Microsoft and Sony that will be one load of crap, and that will, in no way, be representative of what we'll actually get. That said, that doesn't mean we won't still get some things that blow our collective minds, but prepare to be deceived :)

It still makes me laugh even now. The hyped specs, particularly in the flops department, for the PS3 are higher than or equal to the reported specs for both the new xbox and ps4. Sony said RSX was 1.8 teraflops, and that all games would be full 1080p. All PS3 titles, the big ones, were suppose to be in 1080p. Both Microsoft and Sony claimed their systems were in excess of 1 teraflop, and now the new Xbox GPU is rumored to just be 1.2tflops. So, needless to say, I plan to be deceived, and won't believe anything until I see it being controlled for real. That said, I will be excited, just not fooled.

For those as curious about flops as i was...

wii-U ~ 176 GFLOPs
PS3 ~ 228.8 GFLOPs
360 ~ 240 GFLOPs

And just for comparisons sake, the original Wii was ~ 11 GFLOPs

Doesn't really help me understand, but you can at least see the jumps made.

That is quite eye opening. Especially the WiiU. Yeah like Optimus had mentioned... getting a game up and running, and dealing with drivers, graphic settings, etc. And years ago, it just became a headache... I understand it has improved, but I've spent all kinds of hours trouble shooting my PC woes. But like I said, I was very blown away by the tech demos for Unreal Engine 4, and Samaritan. If these new consoles can pull that level of graphics off, in real-time, not a cut scene, then I'll be satisfied. But from what I hear Epic is worried, since Unreal Engine 4 doesn't used baked lighting solutions, like this generation of games currently does, and that is very taxing for hardware.

Well, I still do believe they are monsters, but you have to understand the perspective I'm coming at it from when I say that. I'm basically removing the pc from the equation. I'm speaking purely in the context of consoles and consoles only. They are monster consoles, not monster gaming pcs. That's really all I'm saying.

Just going off of historical evidence, with what we got out of the ps3 and 360 with just under 512MB of ram, far weaker in order execution cpus and much weaker and less efficient graphics cards, we are in for a treat with the new machines. I don't see consoles as competing against pcs. So 99% of the time when I say how powerful these consoles will be, I'm not somehow saying that with respect to monster pcs, but current monster consoles instead.

The consoles won't be monsters compared to a high end gaming pc, but they will likely produce more than just a few results that seem worthy of such. Not because they actually are, but because PCs, as powerful as they can be, are still held back by some key factors. We didn't see all that a 7800GTX class gpu could do until the PS3. However, we all know that if we take a typical monster pc today and then throw that inside of a console, then the PS4 and next Xbox would be flat out embarrassed by comparison. These are things that we know. What is also important, though, is that there are serious development advantages afforded to weaker hardware being in a console box that stronger hardware being inside of a pc doesn't have, where pcs have to take into consideration the extraordinary demands of a full windows operating system, various API overheads, what have you. This stuff all gets in the way and rarely exposes even high end gaming pcs to what the hardware inside them would truly be capable of without all the various roadblocks that are in the way. These walls are torn down for consoles, exposing things that are not so well exposed on the pc. The creator of FXAA that works for Nvidia says with certainty that there will be games that look better than Crysis 3 on these consoles, and I'm sure he doesn't say that because these consoles are more powerful than high end pcs today that can run Crysis 3, but because consoles will simply be packing hardware that's powerful enough when combined with console level optimizations to make that sort of thing possible.

I see consoles and pcs as having a very complimentary relationship. PC will always be stronger, but I think consoles play a key role in keeping the PC gaming space on its toes and pushing it to do more with all the raw horsepower. I'm sure there will be plenty that's shown on these consoles that should impress even the most hardcore pc gaming enthusiast.

cool.Agree, these new consoles will give us a big jump, and i for one cant wait to see what second and third generation games bring.

Grift, that's where you are mistaken. The Nvidia employee, while he knows his shit, was going based off of leaks, just as most of us are, the same exact leaks. Everything he said was on the premise of the leaks that we've seen, but one thing wasn't based on the leaks: What he said about the next xbox was his own fabrication of a worse case scenario for the new xbox, something that will simply not happen. That assumption he made was so nonsensical that I think even Acert pointed out how bizarre it was. He made this crazy assumption that Microsoft's next xbox will be a full fledged windows operating system personal computer with a huge api getting in the way, preventing to the metal access to the hardware. Not happening, so there goes the bloatware OS holding back the console claim.

Hell, you're almost tempted to question his agenda for making such statements, which I think even Acert did in a more articulate way than I could. No leak ever made such a crazy suggestion about the new xbox being such a thing. The Xbox 360, for example, wasn't close to such nonsense, and there are still no signs that it will be true of the new xbox. He literally imagined a worst case scenario where Microsoft would be that stupid. If they are, then they are definitely doomed, and nothing they do can save the next xbox. ;)

You say you believe in optimization, but if you really did, you would know that these specs, as leaked, can, and will, produce games that look better than Crysis 3 on next gen consoles. And when I say look better than Crysis 3, I'm not talking about the console version of crysis 3, I'm talking about the PC version, and so was the Nvidia employee who said, for example, that Uncharted 4 and the new God of War on ps4 are guaranteed to look better than Crysis 3. Does this fact, highlighted by the very person from Nvidia that we are talking about, not qualify these consoles as pretty damn powerful? What, as long as pcs are capable of better, consoles can never be classified as strong? Because that's what it sounds to me you're saying.

Consoles should only be compared to PCs at a very base level, and then from there we must acknowledge that there are a lot of things that make them too different. As powerful as pcs can be, they do have disadvantages compared to consoles where it concerns development, and these aren't insignificant.

Alright, tell me, what kind of ram do you have inside your computer right now? Is it not DDR3? Would you call that slow? But for some reason the ram inside the new xbox, just because it's also DDR3 is slow? The ram inside the new xbox is supposedly 2133... That's faster than what's inside my computer. But you're referring to bandwidth, right?

Well, this gpu here is the closest thing to the gpu in the next xbox.

http://www.amd.com/us/products/desktop/graphics/70...

It has 72GB of bandwidth.

The new Xbox's bandwidth on the main memory is 68GB/s, not that far away from that 72GB of bandwidth. But the new xbox also has access to 32MB of ESRAM, which has a bandwidth of 102GB/s. The leaked documents also basically confirm that the xbox gpu has more or less access to both pools simultaneously, so it would be fair to combine them and say the new Xbox gpu will have access to 170GB/s. (Yea, I know it needs to feed an 8 core cpu, but then so does the PS4) When you toss in the fact that the xbox gpu has a superior 256 bit memory interface and 2 more compute units, it becomes further evident that this gpu should be quite a bit more efficient than the pc 7770GHZ edition. Why is DDR3 all of a sudden slow now? Because the PS4 has GDDR5? Let's be serious here. The R memory inside the PS3 was also quite a bit faster than the GDDR3 inside the Xbox 360. I don't think it made that big a difference... GDDR5 is faster than DDR3, but there's still twice as much ram inside the new xbox as the ps4, and that isn't insignificant, no matter how much people would like to invent a bloated OS that severely limits the console. What if it isn't true that 3GB of that 8GB is reserved to the OS? And even if it is true, why can't the amount of reserved space drop, just like it did on the ps3 and the 360 before it?

Grift, DDR5 doesn't exist. Neither yet does DDR4, at least not in any commercial product that I'm aware of. The GDDR5 inside the PS4 and inside most modern GPU, inside mine right now and inside yours, is based on DDR3 SDRAM technology.

GDDR4, used before GDDR5, is also based on DDR3.

Yes, configured into GDDR5, it can be faster, generating more bandwidth, but according to leaks the differences aren't monumental. Sure, there is added complexity on development for the new xbox because Microsoft has their main ram bandwidth and ESRAM bandwidth separate, whereas the PS4 has a far more simple to work with 4GB of GDDR5 that is a combined 176GB/s of memory bandwidth, but developers can handle it.

But then wouldn't you agree that these consoles being able to run and handle games with the level of tech of a Crysis 3, is a huge jump in power for consoles? I'm not just referring to a boring throwing together of tech here, I'm referring to the fact that console developers, making the whole range of games that you commonly see appear on consoles, will have this kind of power to play around with. Uncharted with this kind of power? God of war with this kind of power? Halo with this kind of power? Forza and Gran Turismo with this kind of power? New, exciting, big budget project ips where we know that things which were only possible on high end pcs will now largely be possible on consoles, and it won't be a laugher to assume that the consoles can pull it off? That's a big friggin deal. Crysis has a lot of impressive tech, but I've never liked the games that much. So while it's impressive on a technical level, I'm not interested in seeing these consoles play Crysis 3. I'm interested in these consoles having the kind of power to handle for real the stuff that makes Crysis 3 so technically impressive, but applied to more of the kinds of games that I and others like to play on consoles.

So Crysis 3 the game may not be next gen, but tons of console games that will be released on the next gen playstation and xbox having that kind of power, with all sorts of unique art styles, gameplay ideas, universes and characters? That, on the other hand, is what I call next gen console games. That's what I or anyone else wants out of these consoles. We aren't looking for them to reinvent the wheel. We want much more powerful consoles that make more and more incredible things possible in real-time gameplay. It's a fair argument to disagree about how much more powerful they should have been, but since none of us here can change it, we have to live with it. I already know I'm getting both all 3 new machines, including the Wii-U, so it doesn't matter to me one way or the other.

For such an optimistic little fellow, optimus sure likes to dream small.

Or maybe you guys have misinterpreted what I've been saying this entire time. Games for the 360 and PS3 have been getting by with not being able to handle, to any decent degree, some of the more meaningful visual niceties that would go the longest way towards making our games look far more incredible, and the kind of power that could make possible while giving us those visual niceties, the kinds of animations and gameplay enhancements that people want to see.

Do I dream small, or am I being more realistic? Which is funny, because I'm suppose to be the unrealistic and overly optimistic one on this forum :P I can tell you right now, I have confirmation that tons of games, on both consoles, even major exclusives, will target 720p. Why are they doing that? Clearly most of them feel people can't tell the difference between 1080p and 720p, and even if they could, they feel that the extra bells and whistles that they would put on at 720p, would more than justify their decision not to go 1080p.

However, this should please many of you, while not as many as those that have chosen to go 720p, some important devs, some that you guys here love to death (and I mean love, probably even worship), will do 720p at 60fps.

How excited are you now? This excited?

It still seems like you're dreaming small.

You're constantly saying how much better the games will look compared to current gen. But current gen is 7 years old. It damn well better. But your dreaming small in regards to what it SHOULD be able to do. You're idea of greatness is current gen resolutions, current gen performance, using slow current gen tech standards (DDR3), and weirdly, you're optimistically OK with that? I just don't get it. Makes no sense to me. As i've said previously, it would be like someone from 7 years ago having incredibly low standards, yet still being excited by the resulting mediocrity?

After 7 long years, i AT LEAST expect the consoles of NEXT FUCKING GEN to match the current accepted standard that the PC has had for the last 5+ years. Ie. a res that matches the display you're using (in the case of living room gaming, 1080p TV's), vsync on, 60fps if possible. To accept less would be like taking a step backwards from the trends of previous consoles that exceed the PC's capabilities at launch.

If crysis is your benchmark and the extent of your dreams of next gen visuals, then as grift said, we've already seen it. there is litterally nothing to be excited about.

In the end isn't it more about the sum of the parts that are easiest to dev games for? Rather than power/speed?
Don't PS3 games often suffer because of poor architecture even though it's technically more powerful than the 360?

In my statement though it's less about console vs pc, the conversation currently happening, and more about the components of PS4 vs 720

I also think it's worth thinking about how much the latest tech in PC's is being utilized truly, when comparing them to these new consoles.
We can say how much faster the newest PC tech is, but on what level does that matter

Even though PC's now are leagues beyond the current gen consoles, the difference between them isn't that staggering (in games I see at least).