A Look at the Xbox 360

Posted by By Ron Swerdfiger on: 2005-07-25 22:42:06

Next Spring is promising to be an exciting time for gamers, with the release of the new Xbox 360. Officially announced on MTV, Microsoft unveiled their all new console. With a sleek design, an impressive CPU, and a slew of many other new features, the Xbox will continue to prove Microsoft’s dominance at the top of the video game console market.

What We Know

Following the path of the new Nintendo Revolution and the Playstion 3, Xbox had decided to go the route of a new compact design. Continuing with the ascetics, the new Xbox 360 will come with interchangeable faceplates allowing owners to give their console a custom look. Furthermore the Xbox 360 will have the ability to be mounted both horizontally and vertically.

The look of the new console is fine and dandy, but what is under all that cool looking plastic? Microsoft has developed an impressive system capable of amazing processing power never seen before in a home video game console. As well as new IBM PowerPC-based CPU running at 3.2GHz, and over a half a gigabyte of RAM, the Xbox 360 will showcase a new ATI video card capable of advanced antialiasing and shader effects. What this means to gamers is 720p and 1080i wide-screen HDTV, almost double the resolution of the original Xbox which maxed out at 480p The system will also support up to four wireless controls..

Arguably Microsoft can attribute a great deal of its success to the hugely successful online capabilities. The new Xbox 360 will continue with the online feature and develop it even further. Xbox 360 will offer two tiers of online function, silver and gold. With silver being a basic package for users to connect and play online, and gold offering other services such as additional downloads and content.

Microsoft has also provided additional resources for their new gaming console. The Xbox 360 will have the ability to operate as a general media centre, with the ability to stream media directory from a PC running Windows Media Player, as well as other portable devices which are supported by Microsoft.

Below is a full Spec Breakdown of the New Xbox 360

Custom IBM PowerPC-based CPU:
· 3 symmetrical cores running at 3.2 GHz each
· 2 hardware threads per core 6 hardware threads total
· 1 VMX-128 vector unit per core 3 total
· 128 VMX-128 registers per hardware thread
· 3 symmetrical cores running at 3.2 GHz each
· 1 MB L2 cache

CPU Game Math Performance:
· 9 billion dot product operations per second

Custom ATI Graphics Processor:
· 500 MHz
· 10 MB embedded DRAM
· 48-way parallel floating-point dynamically-scheduled shader pipelines
· Unified shader architecture

Polygon Performance:
· 500 million triangles per second

Pixel Fill Rate:
· 16 gigasamples per second fillrate using 4X MSAA

Shader Performance:
· 48 billion shader operations per second

Memory:
· 512 MB GDDR3 RAM
· 700 MHz DDR
· Unified memory architecture

Memory Bandwidth:
· 22.4 GB/s memory interface bus bandwidth
· 256 GB/s memory bandwidth to EDRAM
· 21.6 GB/s front-side bus

Overall System Floating-Point Performance:
· 1 TFLOP

Storage:
· Detachable and upgradeable 20 GB hard drive
· 12X dual-layer DVD-ROM
· Memory unit support starting at 64 MB

I/O:
· Support for up to 4 wireless game controllers
· 3 USB 2.0 ports
· 2 memory unit slots

Optimized for Online:
· Instant, out-of-the-box access to Xbox Live features, including Xbox Live Marketplace for downloadable content, Gamer Profile for digital identity and voice chat to talk to friends while playing games, watching movies or listening to music
· Built in Ethernet Port
· Wi-Fi Ready: 802.11 A, B and G
· Video Camera Ready

Digital Media Support:
· Support for DVD-Video, DVD-ROM, DVD-R/RW, DVD+R/RW, CD-DA, CD-ROM, CD-R, CD-RW, WMA CD, MP3 CD, JPEG Photo CD
· Stream media from portable music devices, digital cameras, Windows XP PCs
· Rip music to Xbox 360 hard drive
· Custom playlists in every game
· Windows Media Center Extender built in
· Interactive, full screen 3D visualizers

HD Game Support: · All games supported at 16:9, 720p and 1080i, anti-aliasing
· Standard definition and high definition video output supported

System Orientation:
· Stands vertically or horizontally

Customizable Face Plates:
· Interchangeable to personalize the console

Like the new Nintendo Revolution and the Sony Playstation 3, Microsoft has spared no expense in developing a system which will launch gamers in to the “next generation” of home video game consoles. With an incredible CPU and Video card, combined with a focus on online multiplayer, the 360 will no doubt be a huge hit for Xbox fans around the world. However Microsoft has decided to develop their system as an all round media centre, capable of much more than gaming. Is this a wise move? Will the new system be a huge success like its predecessor, or just an expensive media centre? I guess we’ll find out in 2006.

Ron is the CTO for Dice Ventures Inc an internet holdings and development company. Some current projects include a hosting forum and a Linux forum