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XBOX 360 Spec's released
Entered on: May 10, 2005 2:53 AM by Creeko
specifications of Xbox 360 have been released. Still unconfirmed, most of it sounds pretty true. WiFi ready, DVD-RW, 3 USB ports, and 512 GDDR3 RAM. Wow! That?s all I have to say.  
 
Specifications:  
 
* Support for DVD-video, DVD-Rom, DVD-R/RW, CD-DA, CD-Rom, CD-R, CD-RW, WMA CD, MP3 cd, JPEG photo CD  
* All games supported at 16:9, 720p and 1080i, anti-aliasing  
* Customizable face plates to change appearance  
* 3 USB 2.0 ports  
* Support for 4 wireless controllers  
* Detachable 20GB drive  
* 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 front side bus  
 
Audio  
 
* Multi channel surround sound output  
* Supports 48khz 16-bit audio  
* 320 independent decompression channels  
* 32 bit processing  
* 256+ audio channels

NEWS 286 - 9 Comments
From: Jackzilla Entered on: May 10, 2005 8:11 AM
But will it be hackable? If you can't play a homebrew Xlime game on it, what's the point?  
 
Seriously, if there's some sweet launch titles (I heard Perfect Dark Zero is the new Halo plus a dozen or so other titles will be out), I can see me picking this puppy up on release day. I don't think I've ever done that with any game system.  
 
Don't forget: The MTV Xbox360 unveiling is Thursday, May 12.
 
From: Ross Entered on: May 10, 2005 8:14 AM
I actually bought the original Xbox on release day, believe it or not. I was so pissed that MS made Bungie only release on Xbox, and I wanted to play it so badly, that I succumbed. And after playing thru it, the Xbox gathered dust until I learned about modchips...  
 
Anyway, those specs are outrageously sweet. 512 MB of RAM for a game console is unheard of. I also wonder what DVD-RW means? Will it have a burner? Does that even make sense? Because as it stands the current Xbox can READ DVD-RWs.
 
From: Jackzilla Entered on: May 10, 2005 8:49 AM
But the original xbox can only read DVD-RWs once modded, right? It sounds like they're making the 360 more of a multi-media player right out of the box. I remember I found it annoying that the xbox unmodded couldn't even read music CD-Rs into the dashboard's ripper (you have to use retail cds). The 360 will have XBMC-like features built right in.
 
From: Ross Entered on: May 10, 2005 9:20 AM
Well, either the laser in the drive can or cannot read the discs. It's mostly a hardware issue. But you're right in that by chipping the box, you're now allowing it to run software that would even try use other formats for any reason. I believe the CD-R issue is actually a problem with the drive as well - as far as I know, even a modded box can't read CD-Rs. Even if that's not true though, I could definitely see MS putting in code to detect the diff between CDs and CD-Rs and not allowing the latter - but see, in that case, it would be a matter of REMOVING support rather than adding it. But when I think of "DVD-RW" support - I think writing, not reading. Reading them is a trivial matter of installing a typical DVD-ROM drive.
 
From: Jackzilla Entered on: May 10, 2005 10:11 AM
Without chipping the xbox, it won't read other formats. That's not a hardware issue, but a software issue (the retail bios won't allow it). Hopefully, M$ gives up some of that control in the 360 and allows support for all the different disc formats (as it sounds it will).  
 
A DVD writer would be sweet, wouldn't it? Another reason for people to pick up a "game machine." (Kind of like people originally buying PS2's for the DVD movie capability). I bet this beast has TiVo type features built in.
 
From: Ross Entered on: May 10, 2005 11:37 AM
I think we're saying the same thing - but we're speaking about two different definitions of "support" - like I said, reading the various formats is supported in the hardware - that's the hard (and expensive) part. You're talking about DISABLING that support via the BIOS (firmware). It's supported but disabled by default, so in a sense unsupported, at the end of the day. So it's kind of semantics - claiming "support" for something already inherent in hardware is like saying "we're giving the ability to use what you already paid for"
 
From: Ross Entered on: May 10, 2005 11:13 AM
Also, I forgot to mention that built-in WiFi flips out and kicks ass!
 
From: Jackzilla Entered on: May 19, 2005 5:02 PM
Nintendo's Revolution console "will be three to four times more powerful than GameCube, as opposed to the far higher multiples being quoted by its rivals."  
 
Awesome Nintendo! Welcome to third place in the console race!
 
From: BigFatty Entered on: June 8, 2005 8:11 PM
I am loving my wireless Xbox set up!! I can watch shows stored on my computer (in my bedroom) on the big TV upstairs. I have had very little problems. It is sweet!! I became a little more of a networking expert in the process too.  
 
Of course the power went out a few days after the sweetness was set up and the router was reset. I quickly learned the crap that causes. But, thanks to Bert, I was able to set up some static IPs without too many fornifications.
 

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