New Xbox One Hardware In The Works

[The_D27]

With the lower power comes more importantly lower heat and quieter operation if it's anything like the variants of the 360 were I'd wait a little.

With consoles I don't mind about heat, unless it overheats drastically which I can't see happening as my friend has one and we played FIFA for quite some time and it didn't overheat.

 

But noise could matter I didn't pay that much attention to the acoustics of the Xbox One, the noise I can hear is mainly from the Disc Drive and Hard Drive imo.

[daemonowner]

Xbox OnePointTwo lol. Microsoft won't upgrade the hardware sufficiently. Will cost too much with limited returns. And imagine how the people who recently bought the Xbox One will feel if their new console is already being left behind by a new Xbox.

[Victorious Secret]

Even if that rumour were true, it would not be a comparable situation to now. Those 256MB consoles never saw the light of day. If they made any 256MB consoles first, they were upgraded to 512MB before ever reaching the public. The gaming experience thus, is still unified for the entire 360 product cycle.

 

It's much much too late for Microsoft to do that now. If they want to change performance specs, then they'll have to wait and release a whole new "console"

 

I am so disappointed that people keep missing this simple point. 

 

Consoles that have done the upgrade path have failed, for a very great reason. But what do you expect from a forum whose circle jerking rivals that of PCMR? Everyone knows that consoles are weak. Everyone knows PCs offer better. Everyone doesn't know that we are the ~5% of the market, that the 95% is decided by NORMAL PEOPLE. Not "peasants", not "casuals". Normal consumers, who buy based off personal wants, needs or marketing. 

I sense so much ignorance, arrogance and pedantry lately, especially when it comes to a few topics around here. But thats what you get with the age group that seems to have flooded in. 

[ComradeHX]

Normal consumers, who buy based off personal wants, needs or marketing.

You only got one part correct.

 

It's all marketing.

 

Everyone knows that the "normal consumers" are uninformed and are allowing peasant companies to get away with all the bullshit they have been pulling lately.

They are called peasants not as a simple insult, but as more of a metaphor(focus on the ignorant part).

[Lazmarr]

I'm pretty sure the Xbox 360 always had 512MB of shared memory.

Yep, the 360 never received any hardware upgrades that would meaningfully impact the performance. A working 1st gen 360 will play a game just as well as a current gen 360 Slim will.

 

They won't change the performance with this upgrade. It's been stated 100 times this thread already as to why that's a terrible business and consumer decision.

MS had originally planned to include 256MB of RAM, but opted to change it after Mark Rein and Tim Sweeney showcased to them, MS, Gears of War on a 512MB unit compared to a 256MB unit.

MS seeing the potential revised the hardware, and it is thought that it costed MS around 1 billlion dollars in total to make this change and produce Gears of War.

[Deletive]

I think ddr4 on xbox one slims would be an improvement... even if games didn't use it, it'll still be put to good use.

[Linusinium]

@LinusTech talked about about this towards the end of the WAN show past Friday, ~1h 23m 17s to be specific.

 

Linus implied that there will be actual hardware upgrades rather than just a die shrink and slimmer form factor versions of consoles.

As much as I would enjoy watching the ensuing riots, I don't think he is correct. I'm surprised Luke didn't jump in to correct him and remind of the previous slim versions.

 

The die shrink should allow them to squeeze out at least a dozen more chips per wafer, that's primary reason they opted for for the 20nm APU's.

The power requirement and heat output reductions allow for the console size reduction that Microsoft and Sony will use to boost sales.

 

Using the gains from the die shrink towards performance not only hurts the ability to make a slim version, it takes away the last benefit that consoles traditionally had, the life cycle piece of mind.

If you bought the 360 at launch you had the current platform for the next 7 years. If they take that away...

I would go as far as to claim that introducing market fragmentation onto the console user base is a suicidal move for either console maker.

 

These are most recent market adoption rates for the newest consoles. It would take some balls to attempt fragmenting this. Keep in mind that the primary expectation behind these purchases is to have a console that will last until the next generation arrives:

 

 

[nchilds98]

Honestly I love when few companies battle it out to produce new technology. But when you have the Xbox One and PS4 going up against PC, that's like Apple and Windows Phone going against Android. You can keep arguing that the new iPhones are "20% FASTER!!!!!!" and "MORE ADVANCED THAN EVER" but you will never catch up to the master race.

[RexinOridle]

It makes me upset to know games like sunset overdrive are not available for PC.

[Ren]

No one realizes that the die shrink is gonna reduce production cost a bit. With some alterations to the actual console layout they may be able to shave quite a bit of the production cost off.

 

Could mean many things:

 

- They pocket the savings and continue selling Xbox One revision 1 @ discount $399.99 - makes them dig less of a hole for themselves financially

 

- Drop price to $349.99 year-round, $299.99 seasonally, and potentially "big sale" price of $249.99. They can modify this with more bundled peripherals/games/etc. at various prices and make the pot seem a lot sweeter to the consumer as well.

 

-  Sell at $399.99 still, but abuse the savings by pushing forward different hardware.

 

 

#1/2 seem like really obvious, good business decisions. Most people here expect a form of one or the other to go into effect anyway but it'll be much more significant if they can drop the price of manufacturing and just throw shit at the Xbox until it becomes top dog. No one is going to want a PS4 if you can play any console game at 1080p30/60 100% guaranteed. Which is where the hardware thoughts come in.. What could they change? People say they hate the brick, I say it's a sacrifice worth living with if you get other things in return.

 

 

Two things I wanted to mention: Why is seemingly everyone concerned about a slightly bulky brick when we still have cables for everything? It's not like that power brick or cord is going anywhere important. I can understand if it's hard to position but I highly doubt it really is.

 

Other thing is that I was wondering how possible it is for AMD to set up dual-graphics mode on the Xbox One. Puma/Jaguar cores do not have HSA, but these are custom chips for the consoles and in the HSA wiki page, both the PS4 and the Xbox One are referenced. I would assume it's possible to toss some dual-graphics in there and not worry about heat all that much. If Gigabyte and other companies can make a computer that's the size of a turkey sandwich, AMD/Microsoft should be able to put together an Xbox One that's much smaller and more powerful than the first.

 

 

With the die shrink already happening, I'm wondering how much room is left for that level of support. That, even if the Xbox costed the full $400-500, might be worth it to the average console gamer. If there were some deal where you could trade in your gen 1 to get a discount on the 2nd, even better.

 

 

 

The whole point is that even without anything happening, they have about 50 different, positive options to choose from that won't harm anyone. Except maybe Sony. They make terrible products anyway.

[Linusinium]

They pay per wafer, so (assuming yields are high) if they got 50 chips from a single wafer, after the die shrink they could be getting 70 per wafer with the 20nm APU's.

Like I said earlier, I expect the gains from the die shrink to improve their bottom line and the consoles to undergo cosmetic changes. I don't think they dare fragment their markets.

People buy consoles with the expectation of equal performance until the next generation. Throw that equation out, entire formula is blown to pieces.

[MEC-777]

I don't consider new hardware to include transistor lithography changes or even hardware integrations because at the end of the day, it's the same hardware.

 

Semantics. It's a new/different chip and most likely a new/different motherboard, yet the performance and function will be the same. Call it what you want. It's not the same hardware because it's physically different. Ergo, I'd call it "new" hardware.

 

No one realizes that the die shrink is gonna reduce production cost a bit. With some alterations to the actual console layout they may be able to shave quite a bit of the production cost off.

 

Could mean many things:

 

- They pocket the savings and continue selling Xbox One revision 1 @ discount $399.99 - makes them dig less of a hole for themselves financially

 

- Drop price to $349.99 year-round, $299.99 seasonally, and potentially "big sale" price of $249.99. They can modify this with more bundled peripherals/games/etc. at various prices and make the pot seem a lot sweeter to the consumer as well.

 

-  Sell at $399.99 still, but abuse the savings by pushing forward different hardware.

 

 

#1/2 seem like really obvious, good business decisions. Most people here expect a form of one or the other to go into effect anyway but it'll be much more significant if they can drop the price of manufacturing and just throw shit at the Xbox until it becomes top dog. No one is going to want a PS4 if you can play any console game at 1080p30/60 100% guaranteed. Which is where the hardware thoughts come in.. What could they change? People say they hate the brick, I say it's a sacrifice worth living with if you get other things in return.

 

 

Two things I wanted to mention: Why is seemingly everyone concerned about a slightly bulky brick when we still have cables for everything? It's not like that power brick or cord is going anywhere important. I can understand if it's hard to position but I highly doubt it really is.

 

Other thing is that I was wondering how possible it is for AMD to set up dual-graphics mode on the Xbox One. Puma/Jaguar cores do not have HSA, but these are custom chips for the consoles and in the HSA wiki page, both the PS4 and the Xbox One are referenced. I would assume it's possible to toss some dual-graphics in there and not worry about heat all that much. If Gigabyte and other companies can make a computer that's the size of a turkey sandwich, AMD/Microsoft should be able to put together an Xbox One that's much smaller and more powerful than the first.

 

 

With the die shrink already happening, I'm wondering how much room is left for that level of support. That, even if the Xbox costed the full $400-500, might be worth it to the average console gamer. If there were some deal where you could trade in your gen 1 to get a discount on the 2nd, even better.

 

 

 

The whole point is that even without anything happening, they have about 50 different, positive options to choose from that won't harm anyone. Except maybe Sony. They make terrible products anyway.

 

There's no benefit to increasing performance of a console in anyway. The games have fixed graphics/performance settings and frame rates/resolutions are locked down. 

 

It's pretty much beating a dead horse at this point to speculate if they will increase performance. 

[Ren]

MEC-777, on 02 Nov 2014 - 12:06 AM, said:

There's no benefit to increasing performance of a console in anyway. The games have fixed graphics/performance settings and frame rates/resolutions are locked down.

 

So wait a sec.

 

 

The Xbox and PS4 have relatively equal specs overall, right. Why would there ever be a difference in resolution between the two consoles in any game, then?

[Victorious Secret]

It's pretty much beating a dead horse at this point to speculate if they will increase performance.

Welcome to this forums newest hobby. Beating to death and circle jerking to the same old shit, and then saying "NoNoNo it's important we talk about it!"

[MEC-777]

So wait a sec.

 

 

The Xbox and PS4 have relatively equal specs overall, right. Why would there ever be a difference in resolution between the two consoles in any game, then?

 

Because the PS4 actually has slightly stronger specs than the XB1. It has faster GDDR5 ram compared to DDR3 in the XB1 and the GPU is stronger as well.