Hm, isn't FX-8100 rated at 95W? But yeah, they are quite weaker in current games vs Intel's CPUs - than again, when you look at highly threaded applications, they pretty much hold their own, plus they are much cheaper, so guess dev teams will probably have to learn how to highly optimize their code for 8 cores. Though, it would be nice to see Intel Inside, but I doubt that anyone can afford that in a console.

@HoloDust: There's also the option to go with IBM, like they used to.

But yes, devs will have to code with 6-7 cores in mind (asuming they reserve 1 or 2 for the system and Kinnect)

There are Sandy Bridge-E chips with 8 cores tho they are technically referred to as "Sandy Bridge-EN" or "Sandy Bridge-EP" they are of the same family that is collectively called Sandy Bridge-E. 

I would assume that the CPUs would be very low clock for heat/power reasons. In fact I would guess they are planning to use a varaint of Steamroller posibly even Jaguar cores for final hardware, something low power. They are probably just using underclocked FX CPUs while they wait for the Steamroller derived chips to be finalised.

Highly multithreaded CPUs does seem to be the future with UE4 being designed to scale to dozens of cores. Tho that will cause some issues for some workloads which just aren't suited to parallelisation so it is a risk. I mean most PC games don't even scale to 4 cores well today so it will probably cause a lot of issues in the early days. Which may be why they have decided to go for a x86 CPU so they can ease the transition a bit. They probably went with a AMD CPU thanks to the work with tight intergration of CPU and GPU with unified address space etc that AMD have been pushing for their APUs, I imagine that tech would be very helpfull in a console. That and AMD probably gave them a great licensing deal and having the design of the CPU and GPU under one roof probably helps simplify the overall system design process.

For the GPU it will be interesting to see what Sea Islands performs like, they focused heavily on GPGPU with GCN and at the expense of gaming performance per watt. I think that Sea Islands will focus on optimising power usage and gaming performance.

Interesting link zarx and thanks for the minor slap at the OP.

I would point out that initial configuration in the item you quoted essentially matches the OP. It also been noted in this thread before (this was many many months ago) that there were rumors MS was switching from Intel to full AMD like Sony's rumors. At the time it was only one rumor, but this correlates that with more specifics.

I'll have to search a bit to see if this is gaining traction before I go through the trouble of updating the OP and 2nd post.

I do note that this would have a very high heat and cost for a console. I personally doubt this is legitimate for those reasons alone, but I will look to see where else this is being reported or discussed and go from there.

As always, thank you for the tip.

I can't see MS using a graphics card (sea islands) that isn't' even out yet in a brand new box. The yields would be too low and cost significantly too high. That part simply makes no logical sense and has to be BS.

8GB memory could be right on a dev unit and then the retail unit having 4GB or 6GB. neXtBox will likely have a good amount as the OS will be windows 8 and on PCs that requires 2GB alone. Then have it reduced due to neXtBox being more streamlined and increased due to the likelihood of an enhanced Kinect. However, it still is on the high side and likely will end up with the most logical of 4GB max with ~2GB for games and 2GB for OS/Kinect or something similar.

The CPU... idk. A lot of play room there. However, the original rumor when it switched to AMD was that it was going with the next high-end APU (same as Sony).

However, there has been a more recent rumor that stated MS had to push back initial plans as they had issues with yields in their new CPU/GPU. That would make sense if it is technically a 2013 model based APU, i.e. the Steamroller series that then matches the general layout of this rumor.

Hmmm... I still think the 2013 chips will have too much cost, heat, and power usage to be put in any console.

I suspect x86 CPUs could be used only in early dev kits and that later dev kits and definitive models will use Power CPUs.

I only see 6 core Power 7 bassed CPU and AMD 7000 series GPU plus 4GB RAM under Next Box, where the intial config was 8 core Intel X86, GTX570 and more than 8GB of DDR3. There is nothing even close...

And don't you think it's time to remove the 4870 and 6770 GPUs from the Wii U? We have seen the physical Wii U chip and the die is far too small to be anyhting close to those GPUs, even if the die sisn't include a large amount of eDRAM.

There are now several sources for x86 bassed next Xbox, and for a very high end box such as this one http://semiaccurate.com/2012/09/04/microsoft-xbox-next-delay-rumors-abound/ and to a lesser extent (don't seem very reliable but do add to the general trend) http://www.kitguru.net/software/gaming/jules/microsoft-chooses-amd-fusion-ii-for-xbox-720/ and http://www.vgleaks.com/whats-inside-durangos-alpha-kit/. I think it's at least worth including 8 core x86 CPU and the high end GCN bassed GPU even without specifics.

Oh also http://www.crn.com/news/components-peripherals/240009355/amd-to-lay-off-15-percent-of-workforce-in-wake-of-weak-q3.htm?pgno=2

"Our semi-custom APUs already have a number of confidential, high-volume design wins in place," Read said. "We expect our embedded business will comprise approximately 20 percent of our quarterly revenue by the fourth quarter of 2013, up from 5 percent today."

Custom APU desgins for high volume sounds like consoles to me. 

You know what... its late, I'm not thinking. I was really only thinking of the memory as 8GB would be dev kit and a lot more but 4-6GB would be retail. OP is also talking about IBM vs Intel or AMD CPUs and its the later rumors GPU that's close. Just ignore that entire part of my previous post sorry.

I do agree that there is becoming a trend where neXtBox does seem to have an x86 processor. However, it just doesn't seem logical that it will be the ultra-highend (2013 models) that this rumor would have you believe. Tomorrow I'll refresh the OP with parts of this info as they are now becoming more common on other sites and even GAF. This way I can also get the details needed for the 2nd post for real comparisons.

As for WiiU, I've seen arguments on GAF that the sizes prove one of those or other GPUs, so I'm leaving it until it launches and it is validated one way or the other.

well,FX8300 is 95W

Windows8+KInect just won't use 2GB,and you know xbox360 dev kit was 512mb before 2009(then it upgraded to 1GB)

If they keep using DDR3 RAM in retail one,it will have 8GB RAM