PSX Emulator (FAO Jari, Dag & Friends)

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Yes, in a few years time, PC will have better graphic effects than of X-Box. So what? In few years time, the X-Box will drop in price ( as the case with PS ) and having it is much more viable as you can play with X-Box games ASAP and don't have to wait for any porting process to happen!Probably in few years time, X-Box2 is already out using NV40 and Pentium6 and will be futhrer ahead of that time PC technology have to offer.

it's sure is worth a look if in few years time, a decent X-Box emulator will already come out or not.
 
cHiBiMaRuKo: "Who say X-Box is just another PC? X-Box is MUCH faster than equivalently clocked PC. It don't have to deal with the superslow AGP and PCI connectors. It have almost dedicated high-speed bus to every component of the console, ie. RAM, HDD etc. Developers will surely take this into consideration and probably will put more texture processing that probably even AGP 8x couldn't handle."If I had a PC that was optimized for gaming, I'm sure that I could get results not much lower than the X-box's "stats". The X-box and its routines are optimized for gaming, so yeah, there probably would be a difference, but nothing as large as you're supposing. Also, as Ficedula has been saying, we won't know the *real* stats/performance of Gamecube/X-box until they're released. Until then, the hype is all fluff--nothing more.

"I've see that you agree with my point of an X-Box game have to be massively rewritten for porting to PC. But I don't think that porting PS2/Gamecube games MUST be harder than porting X-Box games. For example the Summoner Demo for PC. Still looking very good for me here. After all, PS2 games still use large potion of C/c++ language."

Summoner was designed from the ground up for *both* the PS2 and the PC. IIRC, same deal with Oni.

"Also I don't agree with the statement that say when X-Box come out, more hardware will have 'DirectX-8 support". For the second time, I must stress that DirectX8-supporting hardware IS DIFFERENT with DirectX8-compliant hardware. If a DirectX8 driver for Voodoo5 have come out, will it automatically made Voodoo5 to have the same features as NV20? No. Radeon2 ( which should support Directx 8 ), don't have a fixed release date yet. I don't think that there will be a lot of DirectX-compliant hardware out there when the X-Box come out."

So? The X-box isn't supposed to be released until fall sometime. More than enough time for PCs. How often do new versions of DirectX come out? Pretty often. I wouldn't be surprised if DirectX 9 is being used on PCs when the X-box comes. New graphics chips come out roughly every 6 months. We're due for some new ones that are a step above anytime now. When new stuff comes out, the price of the now "obsolete" cards (i.e. Radeon) comes down to reasonable levels.

"Yes, in a few years time, PC will have better graphic effects than of X-Box. So what? In few years time, the X-Box will drop in price ( as the case with PS ) and having it is much more viable as you can play with X-Box games ASAP and don't have to wait for any porting process to happen!"

I think by fall, when 1GHz systems are approaching the mid-range standard (as in, the slowest stores will sell), someone will be hard at work on an X-box emulator as soon as it is released. I mean, what's hard to emulate? The P4 has a 400MHz BUS, compared to the X-box's 200. I'm sure the new Athlon machines will have something similar to the P4's so that they can compete effectively. Same with other features. RAM? Not a problem. Sure, it operates differently, but nothing that can't be emulated. Hard drive? 8GB is pretty small these days. etc. etc.

Ficedula: ..."except in a few years time, when the PC produces better effects than the XBox."

I'm guessing it'll actually only be 1 1/2 years or less before the PC is once again firmly in the lead. Why? Well, the Athlon 1.7GHz should be out sometime soon. From there, it's just a matter of Moore's Law.

[This message has been edited by Srethron Askvelhtnod (edited March 04, 2001).]
 
can u lot shut the hell up all readY!!!!
Xbox is gonna be a m$ console and a pc by then will be soo much faster, like the 3rd generation of athlons at 1.9MHz or 3rd generation pentium4s at 2Ghz not enuff for u?
Yes consoles r high bus bandwidth machines hence the RDRAM in ps2 and N64s but thats only 400MHz of memory bus speed where DDR is reaching 2100MHz!!!
put thats not in a consoles' price range... yet!90% chance X-box software houses will see the profitability in the easier porting for a PC release.
On the other hand the guys who r making that abbe's oddysey think did convert it to xbox inside a week....
 
So? The X-box isn't supposed to be released until fall sometime. More than enough time for PCs. How often do new versions of DirectX come out? Pretty often. I wouldn't be surprised if DirectX 9 is being used on PCs when the X-box comes. New graphics chips come out roughly every 6 months. We're due for some new ones that are a step above anytime now. When new stuff comes out, the price of the now "obsolete" cards (i.e. Radeon) comes down to reasonable levels.
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Define pretty often. In the past, new release of DirectX is out roughly once a year. But for now, there's still no news about DirectX9. I've been beta-testing DirectX for Microsoft since DirectX 6 days and up to today, there's still are no inside news for DirectX 9. I think it wouldn't come out this year at least, because no news for it as of yet ( as opposed to the last time ).

If it truly X-Box will come out this US fall, PC is highly likely won't have time to catch-up. New graphic card every 6 months? How long NV20 takes to come out? More than 1 full year since NV15 released. Radeon2 will still don't match NV25 speed even if ATI released them in time ( which is hould be now ). Note the word if. The graphic chip market now seems to have beeen slowing down it seems. No competition. And I don't see that NV20 prices will come down before X-Box launch at least.


I think by fall, when 1GHz systems are approaching the mid-range standard (as in, the slowest stores will sell), someone will be hard at work on an X-box emulator as soon as it is released. I mean, what's hard to emulate? The P4 has a 400MHz BUS, compared to the X-box's 200. I'm sure the new Athlon machines will have something similar to the P4's so that they can compete effectively. Same with other features. RAM? Not a problem. Sure, it operates differently, but nothing that can't be emulated. Hard drive? 8GB is pretty small these days. etc. etc.
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I do want to see how those emulator programmers try to emulate the way X-Box handles data streaming, Dolby Digital AC-3 processing and large texture handling routine in PC; that 3 are just for examples.

P4 may have 400Mhz FSB, but their PCI and AGP still operate at 33Mhz and 66Mhz respectively, a hindrance for some of X-Box features to be emulated in PC effectively. AMD P4 contenders like Palomino, Thoroughbred and Claw/SledgeHammers CPUs, won't come out before 2002 as AMD don't regard P4 as a threat for them.
 
can u lot shut the hell up all readY!!!!
Xbox is gonna be a m$ console and a pc by then will be soo much faster, like the 3rd generation of athlons at 1.9MHz or 3rd generation pentium4s at 2Ghz not enuff for u?
Yes consoles r high bus bandwidth machines hence the RDRAM in ps2 and N64s but thats only 400MHz of memory bus speed where DDR is reaching 2100MHz!!!
put thats not in a consoles' price range... yet!
90% chance X-box software houses will see the profitability in the easier porting for a PC release.
On the other hand the guys who r making that abbe's oddysey think did convert it to xbox inside a week....
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How a PC will be so much faster when X-Box come out? There's will be no peers for NV25 yet for PC at that time. Clock speed isn't everything. A 1Ghz P3 isn't 2x performance of P3 500Mhz in real world applications.

Consoles like X-Box and PS2 are high-bandwidth machines, and that's what setting them apart from PCs, which is a low bandwidth machine. DDR at 2100Mhz? Where do you get that figure? RDRAM is not 400Mhz, but a lot higher than that.

Intel and AMD roadmaps is a good indications of what's in store form them when X-Box come out.
 
hmm was it 1200mhz?
nope , o here it was: [url="<a]http://www.xbitlabs.com/cgi-bin/archives.cgi?category=1&view=2-01[/url]" TARGET=_blank>http://www.xbitlabs.com/cgi-bin/archives.cgi?category=1&view=2-01
(page takes a while to load)scroll down to the taiwan memory sales table, see the 128mb pc 2100? so thats 1050mhzDDR ram for u?
i reckon that by the time xbox is mainstream the next geforce will be ready to ship, dont you?
 
oh, and i am refering to amd and intel raodmaps thank u.
amd r set to release there new athlon core in about Q2 this year, followed by a newer core in Q3 that makes it a 4th generation athlon? at about 1.6 to 1.8Ghz?
and p4 is set to come out with there new core very soon. and also new p3 core will debut too. along with a final p4 revision in Q3 leading up to the 2GHz late in the year.
true?
 
Remember that X-bOX DDR-RAM is 128-bit not 64 bit as in your article. It's so much faster than DDR-RAM for PC. Next GeForce4 is ready by the time X-Box launch? With no competition, will you think nVidia will do that? That move will hurt themselves. Probably GeForce3 MX is more viable product that will come from nVidia at that time.Both AMD ands Intel will have 2Ghz CPU by the end of this year, but seriously I don't think if those 2Ghz machines can match X-Box in terms of performance when all you have is NV20 as the best VGA card you can get. Another thing you have to remember is that a 2Ghz CPU+NV20 combo will be VERY EXPENSIVE, so anyone is better off buying an X-Box anyway.
 
You forget:a) 2GHz + GeForce 2 is still cheaper than 2GHz + GeForce 2 + X-Box. You *need* the PC anyway, so while graphics cards and such can be upgraded for a not so high cost the x-box comes *in addition* to your PC equipment. The x-box is great for people who don't need a PC but we don't belong to those.

b) Multiple processors. 2GHz processors will be expensive but why buy that when you can get two 1 GHz processors on the same board for a much smaller cost? More and more games support it and there's no drawbacks in applications.

In some years we won't be running 10GHz processors, we will be emulating windows on many small RISC processors. The Pentium platform (CISC) is a step in the wrong direction, RISC processors (PowerPC ones for instance) rules...
 
chill man
what i mean is that nvidia WILL release gforce4 by middle next year and by then xbox will be mainstream.
why? coz ati r casing them down the throat.
BUT it is still chaeper to own a xbox than a pc.
but what the hell can you do on a xbox that u cant do on a pc?
surf,emails, games, etc.
 
a) 2GHz + GeForce 2 is still cheaper than 2GHz + GeForce 2 + X-Box. You *need* the PC anyway, so while graphics cards and such can be upgraded for a not so high cost the x-box comes *in addition* to your PC equipment. The x-box is great for people who don't need a PC but we don't belong to those.
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Why do you need a 2Ghz PC when you already have a X-Box? My computer is perfectly fine for the moment, and I'll only upgrade when I can't play games with this anymore. If only for Internet surfing or typing, even my computer is an overkill. Chances are, if I were to buy an X-Box, I won't buy those overpriced 2Ghz, at least before their price dropped. If I must buy a 2Ghz computer just to use a X-Box emulator, I'll rather buy the console itself, which is surely cheaper.


b) Multiple processors. 2GHz processors will be expensive but why buy that when you can get two 1 GHz processors on the same board for a much smaller cost? More and more games support it and there's no drawbacks in applications.
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Now which 1Ghz processors you want to buy and make an SMP system? AMD? Intel? While Durons/TBird CPUs technically support SMP, but where's the chipset? Intel 1Ghz CPU? Do you think it support SMP? Depending on the stepping and batches, some support SMP but others aren't, or none of them support SMP anyway. You'll have to check against Intel database to know if your CPU support SMP or not.

How many games support SMP? Too little, I can count all SMP-enabled games with my hands. And a 2Ghz system will be faster than a system with 2 1Ghz CPUs in SMP mode. Point of diminishing return anyone?


In some years we won't be running 10GHz processors, we will be emulating windows on many small RISC processors. The Pentium platform (CISC) is a step in the wrong direction, RISC processors (PowerPC ones for instance) rules...
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Duh! Who say RISC CPU is more superior than of CISC CPU? It's been proven wrong long time ago. This is a good read for you.    [url="<a]http://www.emulators.com/pentium4.htm[/url]" TARGET=_blank>Click here  


chill man
what i mean is that nvidia WILL release gforce4 by middle next year and by then xbox will be mainstream.
why? coz ati r casing them down the throat.
BUT it is still chaeper to own a xbox than a pc.
but what the hell can you do on a xbox that u cant do on a pc?
surf,emails, games, etc.
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Dreamcast with Windows CE already can be used to surf the Internet, wrote e-mail etc. So it's not too ambitious to say if X-Box could do it too, even I don't remember Microsoft have said that.

[This message has been edited by cHiBiMaRuKo (edited March 05, 2001).]
 
cHiBiMaRuKo: "Define pretty often. In the past, new release of DirectX is out roughly once a year. But for now, there's still no news about DirectX9. I've been beta-testing DirectX for Microsoft since DirectX 6 days and up to today, there's still are no inside news for DirectX 9. I think it wouldn't come out this year at least, because no news for it as of yet ( as opposed to the last time )."Point taken. What about DirectX 8.1?

"If it truly X-Box will come out this US fall, PC is highly likely won't have time to catch-up. New graphic card every 6 months? How long NV20 takes to come out? More than 1 full year since NV15 released. Radeon2 will still don't match NV25 speed even if ATI released them in time ( which is hould be now ). Note the word if. The graphic chip market now seems to have beeen slowing down it seems. No competition. And I don't see that NV20 prices will come down before X-Box launch at least."

Release dates:

Geforce 256: September 1999
Geforce 2: Spring 2000
Geforce 2 Ultra: Late september 2000
NV20/GeForce 3: February 27, 2000


NVIDIA Introduces GeForce3 for the PC
Industry's Most Advanced Processor Ever is the Core of Both DirectX 8.0 and Xbox Game Console
INTEL DEVELOPER FORUM - SAN JOSE, CA - February 27, 2001 - Just 5 days after the original announcement for the Macintosh platform, NVIDIA Corporation (NASDAQ: NVDA) announced today the GeForce3TM GPU (graphics processing unit) for the PC. The GeForce3 GPU is based on a radical new graphics architecture that will offer breakthrough graphics to multiple markets, including the desktop PC and the Macintosh® platforms. This groundbreaking GPU includes the same core technology as NVIDIA's highly anticipated Xbox GPU (XGPU) for Microsoft's XboxTM game console.
  [url="<a]http://www.nvidia.com/Pages.nsf/pages/pr_022701[/url]" TARGET=_blank>>>Read on  
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Like I said, every 6 months. The earliest the X-box could possibly be out is 6-7 months from now.

"I do want to see how those emulator programmers try to emulate the way X-Box handles data streaming, Dolby Digital AC-3 processing and large texture handling routine in PC; that 3 are just for examples."

I'm no programmer. Explain briefly what the problems are and I'll try to answer.

"Remember that X-bOX DDR-RAM is 128-bit not 64 bit as in your article. It's so much faster than DDR-RAM for PC. Next GeForce4 is ready by the time X-Box launch? With no competition, will you think nVidia will do that? That move will hurt themselves. Probably GeForce3 MX is more viable product that will come from nVidia at that time."

Where'd you get that from? My understanding is that:
1. The X-box only has 64MB RAM
2. It's Unified RAM, not DDR

"Both AMD ands Intel will have 2Ghz CPU by the end of this year, but seriously I don't think if those 2Ghz machines can match X-Box in terms of performance when all you have is NV20 as the best VGA card you can get. Another thing you have to remember is that a 2Ghz CPU+NV20 combo will be VERY EXPENSIVE, so anyone is better off buying an X-Box anyway."

Even if the market does slow a bit, nVidia has 10 months till the end of the year. More than enough time to develop and release a post NV20 card. If they don't, someone else will. Otherwise, PC Gamers in the US (very hardcore bunch) will kill.
I don't see how a P3 733MHz with an NV20 based card will be able to match a 1-2 GHz processor with a second or third generation NV20 card in terms of FPS. I'll be happy to compare framerates with you when the time comes, provided I have one of those PCs.

"Why do you need a 2Ghz PC when you already have a X-Box? My computer is perfectly fine for the moment, and I'll only upgrade when I can't play games with this anymore. If only for Internet surfing or typing, even my computer is an overkill. Chances are, if I were to buy an X-Box, I won't buy those overpriced 2Ghz, at least before their price dropped. If I must buy a 2Ghz computer just to use a X-Box emulator, I'll rather buy the console itself, which is surely cheaper."

Lot's of reasons:
1. A P733 MHz, no matter *how* optimized, will never be as fast as a 1466+ MHz processor.
2. Console and PC Games are in most cases very different. I'd prefer it stayed that way. If I ever want to play console, I go to a friend's or get the emulator.

I still don't think a 2GHz processor will be necessary for X-Box emulation. Probably 1GHz with a GeForce 3 will be enough.

[This message has been edited by Srethron Askvelhtnod (edited March 05, 2001).]
 
Point taken. What about DirectX 8.1?
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It wasn't a major release. Even the folks at the Microsoft beta newsgroups are caught off-guard by it release.


Release dates:Geforce 256: September 1999
Geforce 2: Spring 2000
Geforce 2 Ultra: Late september 2000
NV20/GeForce 3: February 27, 2000
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GeForce2 NV15 is released on March 2000 and it's successor NV20 come out in February. Clearly they've missed their 6-month release cycle. I don't consider GF2 Ultra as a new card because it use the same chip as GF2 GTS.


I do want to see how those emulator programmers try to emulate the way X-Box handles data streaming, Dolby Digital AC-3 processing and large texture handling routine in PC; that 3 are just for examples."I'm no programmer. Explain briefly what the problems are and I'll try to answer.
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How the programmers of any X-Box emulator want to simulate the way X-Box transfer the high-res textures on high speed data buses ( talikng about gigabytes of data per second ) on an AGP 4x port which don't even reach 1Gigabytes per second in bandwidth?

How the programmers will try to emulate Dolby Digital AC-3 processing ( which could take a lot of CPU time ) on today soundcards and also dodge the posibble legal issues from Dolby Laboratories?

Those 2 are only the examples. More issues about DVD data transfer mechanism etc. must be also taken into account.


Where'd you get that from? My understanding is that:
1. The X-box only has 64MB RAM
2. It's Unified RAM, not DDR
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Which RAM will you think X-Box will use? Dreamcast use SDRAM, PS2 use RDRAM. As far as I know, Micron will supply the DDR for Microsoft. The "unified RAM" terms means that all 64 MB RAM are used by all parts of the console, ie; textures, sound buffer, game data, etc. But X-Box itself use DDR-RAM 128bit that were commonly used only in videocards.


Even if the market does slow a bit, nVidia has 10 months till the end of the year. More than enough time to develop and release a post NV20 card. If they don't, someone else will. Otherwise, PC Gamers in the US (very hardcore bunch) will kill.
I don't see how a P3 733MHz with an NV20 based card will be able to match a 1-2 GHz processor with a second or third generation NV20 card in terms of FPS. I'll be happy to compare framerates with you when the time comes, provided I have one of those PCs.
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I believe that there's will be no nVidia new videochip, judging for their current competitors condition. Unless ATI or Matrox or others like NEC can come out with a worthy competition to NV15, there's no reason for nVidia to continue their policy of 6-moths-one-product-release, as the policy is effective only when there's competition. Futhermore, nVidia have already making steps to enter the soundcard market, making them busier.

The hardcore bunch only make a very tiny market for nVidia products, so highly unlikely that they will make nVidia suffer. It's those OEM deals from Dell, Compaq and others that nVidia were interested in, and those companies don't give a damn whatever nVidia will release new chipset every 6 months or 1 year as they themselves are resellers. I'm confident if ATI and Matrox can give a worthy competitors to NV20, nVidia will resume the 6-months policy again. That's why competitions are good.


Lot's of reasons:
1. A P733 MHz, no matter *how* optimized, will never be as fast as a 1466+ MHz processor.
2. Console and PC Games are in most cases very different. I'd prefer it stayed that way. If I ever want to play console, I go to a friend's or get the emulator.I still don't think a 2GHz processor will be necessary for X-Box emulation. Probably 1GHz with a GeForce 3 will be enough.
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Why need 1433Mhz when 733Mhz ( it 667Mhz actually, Microsoft have slowed X=Box down ) will get the job done? The X-Box is fast NOT only because of CPU processing power, but also of kick-ass video processor, operating with a lot more bandwidth that NV20 can only dream of, and also the whole system operate using data buses much faster ( 200Mhz )than the limitations of PCI ( 33Mhz ) and AGP ( 66Mhz ) buses inside of PCs. Not only the CPU, the whole console is optimized for gaming ( and others ? ). The sound processor, the graphics etc.

Don't know if a 1Ghz with a NV20 can emulate X-Box, but even AC-3 will take a lot of CPU time already.  

[This message has been edited by cHiBiMaRuKo (edited March 06, 2001).]
 
Go here [url="<a]http://www.xbox.com/xbox/FLASH/specs.asp[/url]" TARGET=_blank>http://www.xbox.com/xbox/FLASH/specs.asp The main graphics chipset for the X-Box is joint developed by Nvidia and Microsoft. What's stopping Nvidia for doing the same thing for the PC?

Go to nvidia.com and readup, the geforce 3 is supposed to surpass or equal the xbox in everyway. If you're talking bout the RAM it uses, the GEFORCE 3 will not be using DDR RAM or RDRAM, it will be using something new.
 
XBox has 64MB of RAM for *everything*? Jesus, that's crap. The PC doesn't *need* an incredibly fast data bus because it has more RAM, generally speaking. With only 64MB RAM I can see the XBox will be frantically swapping data in and out of memory to make room for textures and sound effects .... PC won't have that problem, once it's loaded into RAM once, that's it. Same with the PS2; it has an overfast data bus to compensate for the fact that it has (compared to a modern PC) little RAM to store textures etc in.The fact remains most people already *have* a PC so I doubt the XBox would be cheaper than upgrading. Say I wanted to fully upgrade my PC to a 1Ghz+ monster. What'd it cost?

New M/Board. < 100UKP
New CPU    100UKP
New GFX card.   100UKP
Oh, that's it.

Monitor? Got a nice one already. Case? That too. Hard disk? UDMA66 already, good enough for me. Sound card? Live! CD? DVD drive already. RAM? 192MB of PC100 is plenty good enough, but I could upgrade it to 133 pretty cheaply.

The XBox, for anyone with a half-decent PC already, is more expensive than upgrading and won't give you much better performance. I'm not planning on buying a PS2, but at least it's not more than majorly upgrading my PC, and the price *will* fall.
 
The main graphics chipset for the X-Box is joint developed by Nvidia and Microsoft. What's stopping Nvidia for doing the same thing for the PC?
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Without any competition, nVidia won't make available the technology to PC users. Do you think nVidia is mad to release a new chip ( let say NV25 )that will only compete with  their own product NV20? It's just business strategy from nVidia. If ATI or others can't release a worthy product that can compete with NV20, nVidia won't likely release a new chip because if they do so, nVidia will found out that they are competing with their own product ( NV20 ), which is bad in bussiness sense. nVidia can do it of course, but the timing of release must be also taken into account.


Go to nvidia.com and readup, the geforce 3 is supposed to surpass or equal the xbox in everyway. If you're talking bout the RAM it uses, the GEFORCE 3 will not be using DDR RAM or RDRAM, it will be using something new.
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GeForce 3 will use DDR-SDRAM just like GeForce2 Ultra ( 4ns 128bit DDR-SDRAM ). It's only that NV20 will have much better memory controller than what of NV15 had offered, thus more efficient use of the bandwidth available.


XBox has 64MB of RAM for *everything*? Jesus, that's crap. The PC doesn't *need* an incredibly fast data bus because it has more RAM, generally speaking. With only 64MB RAM I can see the XBox will be frantically swapping data in and out of memory to make room for textures and sound effects .... PC won't have that problem, once it's loaded into RAM once, that's it. Same with the PS2; it has an overfast data bus to compensate for the fact that it has (compared to a modern PC) little RAM to store textures etc in.
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Micron DDR-SDRAM for X-Box have a total of 6.4GB per second bandwidh thus I'm sure that flushing textures in and out is easy.


The fact remains most people already *have* a PC so I doubt the XBox would be cheaper than upgrading. Say I wanted to fully upgrade my PC to a 1Ghz+ monster. What'd it cost?New M/Board. < 100UKP
New CPU 100UKP
New GFX card. 100UKP
Oh, that's it.
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You can get a GeForce3 ( which is now have a MSRP price of 600 pound sterling )at 100 pound sterling at the end of the year? Or did you want to buy only a GF2 MX? Don't think that NV20 price will drop so fast, unless ATI and other give nVidia very intense heat.


The XBox, for anyone with a half-decent PC already, is more expensive than upgrading and won't give you much better performance. I'm not planning on buying a PS2, but at least it's not more than majorly upgrading my PC, and the price *will* fall.
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Did Microsoft released the price for X-Box already? No I don't think so. So how do you know that X-Box will cost more than 300 pound sterling? I'll keep my opinion on X-Box price till Microsoft announce them out, then only I'll say if upgrading PC is cheaper than buying a X-Box.
 
oh guys about psx emulators:
good news for the next release of epsxe (due in about 1-2weeks) its gonna feature dual shock / force feedback support and, AND.....
Wait for it....
SAVE STATES/ FREEZE SAVES!!!!
so say good bye to sodding psx crappy memory card problems!! and so hello to Zsnes style saving!!
 
No, MS haven't declared the price of the XBox. They haven't declared release dates, either (and before you say the end of this year or something, Gates was quoted as saying he wouldn't release it until he got 3x the graphics performance of his rivals). All the estimates say that at $300 MS would be selling at a big loss. While they probably will sell at a loss, there is a limit. So more than $300 looks likely, and European prices always go through the roof compared to the US.As for memory bandwidth ... yes, that's the whole point. It *has* to have fast bandwidth 'cos it has a truly pitiful amount of RAM compared to the PC. The fast bandwidth lets it move textures etc in and out very fast ... on the PC, you wouldn't *need* to move them at all, since you could store them all in RAM permanently.

Add to that the fact that specs haven't even been finalised yet - so games can't be relied on to come out at a particularly fast rate - and the XBox does not look like a good bet. I walked into a high street shop a few weeks ago, and they had PS2's for sale over the counter, and a pretty respectable range of titles for it. Now, MS aren't releasing XBox in Europe to start off with, so even if they DO make a release date by the end of the year (I suppose it *could* happen) it'll never make it to the UK before mid-late 2002 - so it'll be 2003 before you can buy it over-the-counter. By Moores law, in 2003 the average PC will be running well over 1GHz, and a top-end model will be at least 2Ghz. Hmmm. Not much competition, I feel.

Oh yes: Specs. Microsoft is well known for sticking to "predicted" specs, isn't it? Remember the required specs for Win95? A 386 with 4MB RAM. Yes, MS, I think that'll work. All the graphics we've seen so far are based on "predictions" of what the XBox can produce. Nobody actually knows what it'll do in reality

[This message has been edited by ficedula (edited March 06, 2001).]
 
Duh! Who say RISC CPU is more superior than of CISC CPU? It's been proven wrong long time ago. This is a good read for you. Click here
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I've only skimmed the article, but from what I see it is all about how bad CISC cpus are. Perhaps you got the terms mixed up? Remember, Intel = CISC!
 
True. Haven't read the article, but from what I've learnt at fast clock speeds RISC is far better than CISC.For those who aren't sure about the difference: RISC processors complete an instruction very fast (maybe in one clock cycle) but only have very simple instructions.

CISC processors can take a while to do an instruction - up to 10 clock cycles or so - but have lots of instructions which can do slightly more complex things.

So if you have a 500MHz CPU and it's CISC, it might only be executing 50M instructions per second, if those instructions all took 10 cycles. Of course, other things like waiting for disk access/other devices to do things slow it down further.

In contrast, a RISC processor could execute 50M instructions per second with a clock rate of only 100MHz, or maybe 200MHz - because each instruction executes so quickly.

You might say "So what? Surely it takes more instructions to do everything with RISC because each instruction only does one simple thing". Yes - in theory. In practice, nobody codes in assembler, so no program ever uses the full potential of the hundreds of different commands on a CISC CPU. Compilers aren't always 100% correct about the absolute most efficient CPU instructions to generate.

Whereas with a RISC, because there aren't so many instructions, it's quite easy for compilers to generate code which does use the most efficient instructions - there aren't many possibilities to choose from!

So on modern PC's, RISC generally outperforms CISC unless you handcode everything in assembler, and noone does that. It takes too long.
 
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