drkohler said:
Look, the newest devkit has an 8core AMD processor in it. You can't shell out dev kits with such a processor and then release a box with lower cores cpu and yell "Fooled you". (Regardless that current PC software rarely uses 4 cores at its fullest). Add the point that Kinect2 probably requires 2-4 cores on its own, an FX8xxx processor is a logical choice (PS4 probably could get away with a 4-6core FXxxx processor). 125W TDP means that 8cores are fully running, something that probaly is not happening in real life at all. Add a refresh generation and clock a little slower and you are _way below_ 100W actual use. The rule is simple: You want something that is 2-3 times as fast as an XBox360/PS3, you will generate more heat than an XBox360/PS3. |
Any 'XBox 720' development kit that has been released by Microsoft at this point in time is likely a pre-alpha development kit and the hardware in it will not be similar to what is actually released.
If I was to guess I would suspect that the pre-alpha development kit would run a virtual machine to roughly approximate the performance of the 'XBox 720', and any advanced features that would be built into the GPU would likely be emulated on the CPU (as best as they could be). With this kind of approach you could provide a development kit 2+ years before you released your system, while most development kits that are based on system hardware only become available 6 to 12 months prior to the release of the system. Of course, the VM would (likely) not be a true emulation of hardware, and lower level development would have to wait for more final hardware.
Ultimately, the real downside to this approach is that your CPU has to be dramatically more powerful than what you're going to actually release because it has to run the VM and emulate GPU features at the same time. If this was the approach Microsoft was taking, they might choose a CPU like the AMD FT-8350 as their pre-alpha CPU even though their final CPU would be a quad core PowerPC processor that had far less processing power; because you could get development kits produced and on the desks of developers for a little over $1000 per system. In fact, if this software development kit was well created, it would enable indie and small developers to target the performance of the 'XBox 720' without ever needing to pay for an expensive hardware development kit from Microsoft.
