Xbox 720 Will Be Six Times as Powerful as Current Gen

[Druid]

The next Xbox will ship to retailers in late October or early November of next year with six times the processing power of the Xbox 360, sources close to the project have told IGN.

Following initial reports from tech blogs Fudzilla and SemiAccurate, our sources have confirmed that mass production of the system's GPU will indeed begin by the end of 2012 but will not, however, be based on AMD's 7000 series Southern Islands GPU. Instead, the processor will be derived from the 6000 series, which was introduced last year. More specifically, it will be akin to the Radeon HD 6670, which offers support for DirectX11, multidisplay output, 3D and 1080p HD output. The chip currently has a market price of upwards of $79.99.

In real terms, the Xbox 720's raw graphics processing power is expected to be six times that of the Xbox 360 and will yield 20-percent greater performance than Nintendo's forthcoming console, the Wii U.

Developers are likely to receive development kits based on the system's final configuration in August. Projected pricing for the console was not provided.

source - Xbox 720 Will Be Six Times as Powerful as Current Gen - IGN

6670... I am disappoint.

[c0rr0sive]

What, you expect them to have the latest and greatest in there? You need to realize, these consoles don't have to output at high resolution, "HD" is NOT high res, so these cards will be more than enough for a TV, especially since the OS, and games can actually take full control of the hardware.

If I remember right, the current xbox has what, an x1500 or something along those lines?

[Druid]

From what I remember, it is some radeon thing equivalent to one of the 7000 series Nvida cards. What is a 6670 like? 9800GT or GTX? That is ****. The 7000 series was the latest and greatest when the xbox came out. And yeah, it does need to do full 1080p this time around I feel. It's been standard in pc gaming for about two years now.

[PP Mguire]

IIRC current consoles DO 1080p, the problem is the textures aren't high res. You have to realize, that these consoles can be coded to squeeze every bit of power out of them and don't need redundancy like PCs do for gaming. Think of it this way, look at the graphics consoles are capable of with DX9 standard and the equivalent of an X1800XT (Xbox) and 7900GS (PS3). They rival those of budget and some medium range PCs that can do DX11 AND AA. With that being said, think of what a 6670 can do compared to those 7 year old machines. Now think of how much RAM these older consoles had. The Xbox has 512MB of RAM shared through the whole system. It accomplishes what most PCs take at least 2GB to do WITH dedicated graphics RAM. When this Xbox started development the 6000 series was the latest and greatest, so it is getting quite a hefty upgrade. Good news here, is at least PC gaming wont completely be held back anymore as newer consoles will have DX11 support. And we aren't even talking what the CPU might be for these boxs. Final point on the hardware is, they have to take heat into consideration when making toys that will be stuffed into entertainment centers. If you drop a 6950 or 7950 in an Xbox people will 99.9% always over heat them due to lack of sufficient cooling. I know the 7000 series being 28nm would have been better, but I think it was to late to the game to make a difference for current consoles. I'm at least glad to see "multi-display support" in that list. Maybe that means you can have 4 players on 4 different screens. That would give me a good chub right there.

Now, who was saying Microsoft wont release a new console early because of Kinect?

[c0rr0sive]

From what I remember, it is some radeon thing equivalent to one of the 7000 series Nvida cards. What is a 6670 like? 9800GT or GTX? That is ****. The 7000 series was the latest and greatest when the xbox came out. And yeah, it does need to do full 1080p this time around I feel. It's been standard in pc gaming for about two years now.

Umm, you REALLY need to learn how cards compare, a radeon 6670 is well above an nvidia 9800, and 1080p is low resolution IMO.

Hell, there are already TV sets being produced and sold that support and DISPLAY QFHD, 3840×2160, and computer monitors with resolutions higher than that have been around for awhile, though very expensive and well out of hands of consumers.

But the fact is, a 6670 will push "HD" monitors very easily.

[Druid]

They are capable of displaying in 1080p, but the games are always native 720 or sometimes even lower, so it doesn't matter. Both of those cards you listed were more advanced for the time of the current consoles than the 6670 is even today. There is still almost 2 years left before this thing comes out. It will be dated hardware upon release. It is unlikely since the consoles like to be similar in performance, but I really hope Sony does better than this.

Umm, you REALLY need to learn how cards compare, a radeon 6670 is well above an nvidia 9800, and 1080p is low resolution IMO.

But the fact is, a 6670 will push "HD" monitors very easily.

bro

http://www.neowin.net/graphics-card-rankings-list

[PP Mguire]

The software being native at a lower resolution is not the fault of the hardware at hand though. The current consoles are fully 1080p capable.

You are still missing the point that a 6670 will be vastly ahead of what the current gen is using. They wont require crossfire 7970s to do on a console like we require on PCs. Also, if development of games is to start in august then they will need a chosen set of hardware to base their development on. You should at least be happy that they aren't deciding to use inferior hardware capabilities like the Wii U and are instead moving ahead in the API game to catch up to modern PCs.

Edit: Charles, 1080p is still the given HD standard for usual consumers. We wont see any higher than that in anything mainstream for a long while. Especially where consoles are concerned.

Edit2: Also have to realize, this is ALL still speculation. There could be something different sitting under the hood in the retail product. Take a grain of salt with all information until solid proof comes around.

[Druid]

I just feel like it isn't too much to ask for the new console to overpower my 3 year old pc, almost 5 year old pc by the time this comes out. And yeah, it is the hardware's fault we don't get native 1080p. We have it on pc. We just don't have it on consoles because they don't have enough power to display the quality that is being developed for 720p in 1080p.

And I am aware that this will be a significant improvement over the last console generation, but it isn't enough of an improvement. As I stated before, the the current generation at least used current hardware.

[c0rr0sive]

Sony probably wont, lets look at some history.

Original xbox, released in late 2001, used basically a pentium 3, and an nvidia geforce 3, had 64mb of RAM, it worked great and lasted nicely with hardware that was ancient till ~2007
Xbox 360, released in late 2005, uses a custom tri-core CPU, and a GPU similar to an x1850, with the x19xx line taking some of the enhancements and adding them into it self.
Next Gen, unknown release, unknown cpu, POSSIBLY using a 6670, which is not proven yet, as microsoft has said nothing about it from what I can find.

There is a very good chance, it is based upon the 6670, or even a 7xxx, but here is one thing microsoft has learned. Use MATURE tech, not be a pioneer of technology, and take a risk like they did with the 360 and it bite them back. The GPU they do use though, will not be a consumer grade GPU, it will be something that has been customized, and improved, in 2-3 years, the 6670 will still be a good GPU in a console, where things are controlled. Hell, even a 3850 is still a "good" GPU today if you think running at 1080 with 30FPS on a TV is good. Now, what I worry about, is what I am hearing about them stopping the use of used games, honestly, this will cause me to pirate, even more.

[Yami]

And I am aware that this will be a significant improvement over the last console generation, but it isn't enough of an improvement.

This. The 360 was released near the end of 2005. We're at the start of 2012 now, so let's call that doubling four or five times (since Moore's Law is meant to be between doubling each year and a year 1/2). It should be somewhere like twenty times more powerful, not six.