The design was obviously not final, and something like that can be easily changed, should they wish to do so before launch.

Too much misinformation in this thread it's driving me bonkers. First thing, the TG-16 (PC-Engine in Japan) was an 8 bit system. It launched in 1987 in Japan. It had an 8 bit CPU and 16bit GPU. It is relevant because it was the most popular system in Japan until the Super Famicom (SNES) took off after it's launch in 1990. Mega Drive (Genesis) launced in 1988 and it basically had a 360 like userbase. It tanked in Japan but did much better in the west.

The SNES was more poweful than the Genesis overall. The Genesiss one advantage was the speed of it's CPU. The SNES trumped it in ever other facet. The SNES could render in a higher resolution, render more sprites, and render larger sprites. It also had effects paralax scrolling and Mode 7 scaling that the Genesis lacked. TG-16 was a mixed bag. It could render more colors on screen than the Genesis but less than the SNES. Genesis was more powerful over all but the TG-16 was quite capable. As it's ports of SF2 and Cadash showed.

The Neo Geo  lauched in 1990 was marketed as 24 bit but it was a 16 bit console. Calling the Neo Geo as 24 bit console would be like calling the Sega Saturn a 96 bit console. Why? The Nego Geo had a 16 bit (Motorola 68000) CPU and an 8 bit (Z-80) Co-processor. Oddly enough the Neo Geo CPU was faster version of the Genesis CPU and the Co-processor  was same as the Master System CPU. As for my Saturn proclamation, the Saturn had two 32-bit CPUs (Hitachi SH-2's) and a 32-bit Co-processor (Hitachi-SH-1). The Neo Geo was more powerful than the SNES in everyway but it was so expensive that remained a niche console. Although it did remain on the market for quite sometime.  I think the last Neo Geo game was release in 2004.

The Neo Geo was the most powerful 4 Gen console but the SNES "won" the generation.

Well thanks, capt. obvious. That's because GDDR5 is a handicap for CPU.

I have no clue as to your answer being something that should be considered "clever" but obviously you have not the slightest clues as to what my answer means and how processors talk to memory.

Well if GDDR5 were desirable for general system RAM in PCs, it would go without saying that the memory controller and physical interfaces would be modified to suit. My point is that GDDR5 is less suitable for general purpose CPU tasks.

Can I just mention, that 8GB DDR3 +eSRAM will be sufficient bandwith and size wise? If Microsoft really needed/wanted to up something from the leaked specs rumour it should be a CPU or GPU upgrade

Agreed, we don't know how the latency problem will show itself.  Sony may be shooting itself in the foot with GDDR memory - or it could be great - time will show.

One think I think we do know for certain is Microsoft isn't worried, or it would have delayed the Xbox 720's announcement.  I think they are completely confidant with what they are going to be announcing in less than 2 months.  It should be exciting.

Latency from GDDR5 on a CPU is a PC issue, while it's still an issue in a console configuration, it's much, much less of an issue, much less of an issue than microsofts solution, but the direction theyre going with the console sees a focus shifting away from hardcore games anyway.

It could very well just be that Microsoft knows it's too late to change and is going to make the best of what they have, lets face it if microsoft stalled now, the first thing every single person would say is 'sony got them scared'.

To be honest, the leaked Xbox specs showed a lot of ESRAM and other fancy move engines or whatnot. The specs included some custom tech to make the data access "faster" than the DDR3's data rate limit. It may be a tad different to program for, but if the end results are very similar data transfer speeds with considerably less cost, MS may go that route and have a $100 cheaper console than Sony with once again very similar level of graphics/performance.

To me, that is a very smart move and will open up a lot more profitability for them as long as 8GB of DDR3 is enough to handle everything they want the box to do. But, if their custom hardware requires a lot of different and complex programming, they may get the PS3's Cell treatment and take much longer to get optimized games or suffer the poor port fate. It is anybody's guess here until we know the confirmed specs from Microsoft.

The amount of profit MS makes on the 360 at this point, with no price cuts for the last 4-5 years, must be astounding since it was already making $75 profit way back in 2007 before the slim down. So I would not be surprised if they go the "almost as good" route in order to make profit returns faster on their hardware.

I don't the RAM issue is a big one. I think the GPU is. If the leaked specs are accurate the PS4 GPU is 50% more powerful than Durango's.