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Forums - Microsoft - [solved]XBOX 360: WHY wasn't it x86?[NEW QUESTION]How hard would it be for MS to emulate/go BC with original Xbox games?

Krusnik on 10 August 2013
Pemalite said:
darkknightkryta said:
As Mark Cerny researched; x86 isn't actually good for games. It's just gotten to a point where it's good enough and not worth investing more money in other technologies.


Funny joke, x86 has always had an edge over PowerPC in many tasks.

The problem lies completely with cost.

With the origional Xbox, Microsoft used a Celeron/Pentium 3 Hybrid due to cost instead of a full-on Pentium 3, even then the CPU was dwarfed in clockspeed by Desktop chips at the time and Microsoft still paid for the premium in having x86.

Microsoft then went with PowerPC with the Xbox 360 because the Cost/Performance ratio was against x86 at the time. - Back then you didn't have high performance x86 cores that would cost anywhere from $30 - $60 that would fit into a console.

Both consoles were launched where low-end x86 CPU's weren't common place. - Then came the Netbook and Tablet revolution with cheap-to-manufacture Atom and Brazos "Good enough" processors, AMD followed Brazos up with Jaguar just before this generation was about to kick off.

For the first time in console history x86 was viable in a Price/Performance/Power ratio to drop into a console all thanks to Netbooks, Tablets and low-end laptops, but don't kid yourself, the next generation consoles CPU's aren't going to be spectacular in any performance metric just like the previous generation.

Remember the PowerPC CPU's the Xbox 360 and PS3 uses are low IPC, In-order architectures and are thus low cost solutions, perfect for a cost sensitive device.
They provided adequate performance relative to Intel and AMD at the time, but they never out-performanced processors like the Core 2 Quad Q9700 which despite being 7-8 years old... Can still run every console port just fine today with better image quality and a "bloated OS" with other applications all at once.


I think if you are going to mention the cost on the original xbox it would be remiss not to mention the conjob Nvidia did regarding the GPU.



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AnthonyW86 on 10 August 2013
Stinky said:
While the 360 was in design, the PC market consisted of Athlon and P4. There was no C2D, no Athlon64. PPC was still is use by the Apple Mac and the vector units were a mile ahead of anything else; important for gaming. The RISC design was also amenable to the simplified, multi-threaded, high-clock design which was also suited to gaming, considering that there was no other multi-core on die CPU available to consumers at the time. The high clockrate was also an advantage for the 360's innovative GDDR3 architecture.

In hindsight for us as players, staying x86 would have been preferable for BC. But MS was burned badly by Intel, and AMD possibly didn't have the facilities to spec an Athlon for them at the time. But the 360's CPU is no slouch, don't forget it can emulate the xbox P3 CPU at full-speed.

Athlon 64 was released at the end of 2003. Microsoft probably could have gotten access to it before the end of 2002. And Athlon 64 trumps the PPC Xenos cpu clock for clock.

Maybe you are right and AMD didn't have the means to produce it.



Pemalite on 10 August 2013

 

 

Stinky said:


That's not actually true. One example is G4 which slaughtered any x86 CPU in all benchmarks at the time. Also C2Q never came out until late 2008.


Wrong! The Core 2 Quad came out in 2006, I bought one on release.
Also, the PowerPC G4 didn't slaughter x86 at all. - http://www.anandtech.com/show/1702/9
That compares the G5 (Which is faster) against the Netburst Xeon (Regarded as Intels worst processor architecture, ever.)

Everyone knew the Pentium 4 was a slouch even in it's prime, the PowerPC G4 processor was also Out-Of-Order, the consoles CPU's were In-Order designs because, again, cost.
You are not going to be whacking a Core i7 and an nVidia Titan in a console, it's just simply impossible from a cost and thermal perspective.




www.youtube.com/@Pemalite

Stinky on 13 August 2013
Pemalite said:

 

 

Stinky said:


That's not actually true. One example is G4 which slaughtered any x86 CPU in all benchmarks at the time. Also C2Q never came out until late 2008.


Wrong! The Core 2 Quad came out in 2006, I bought one on release.
Also, the PowerPC G4 didn't slaughter x86 at all. - http://www.anandtech.com/show/1702/9
That compares the G5 (Which is faster) against the Netburst Xeon (Regarded as Intels worst processor architecture, ever.)

Everyone knew the Pentium 4 was a slouch even in it's prime, the PowerPC G4 processor was also Out-Of-Order, the consoles CPU's were In-Order designs because, again, cost.
You are not going to be whacking a Core i7 and an nVidia Titan in a console, it's just simply impossible from a cost and thermal perspective.


I see, the kentsfield quad did come out in 2006 my mistake. But still, it was a two x dual-core package. As for the G5 vs Xeon, I don't see how that relates to the G4 which came out in 99.



Pemalite on 13 August 2013
Stinky said:


I see, the kentsfield quad did come out in 2006 my mistake. But still, it was a two x dual-core package. As for the G5 vs Xeon, I don't see how that relates to the G4 which came out in 99.


You brought up the older PowerPC processors.
The point was, they were never *always* faster than x86, heck they aren't even comparible to the cheap console CPU's due to some very large basic differences that impacts performance.

Besides, the only time the G4 was faster than the Tualatin and AMD's Thunderbird was when software took advantage of the Velocity Engine (AltiVec) in the G4, Intel has long since left IBM in the dust in regards to performance. - There is a reason Apple left the world of IBM and got into bed with Intel afterall.




www.youtube.com/@Pemalite

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trollmaster85 on 13 August 2013
snyps said:

 Once they had built an incredible game library on the 360, shouldn't they have stayed with the powerpc architecture for backwards compatibility?

Well, i doubt PS2 compability help much PS3 sales (by removing hardware support in console, Sony basically admit - it doesn't cost it).

And if 10x Xbox 360 power - true, it is quet possible to write software emulator, but are you really need this thing?

 

Also, Wii U can run Wii games, doesn't help sales either.



Zappykins on 15 August 2013

A difference kind of question.

Since DirectX, at least on the PC, is always backwards compatible, with limitations on some things being stuck at DX 9C, it would seem to me not impossible for Microsoft to make Xbox One somewhat backwards compatible. (Where certain games run like the Xbox 360/Xbox Original.) So it looks like they could if they really wanted too.

I think they dropped all the backwards compatibly stuff on the Xbox One so it would be easier to optimize. I got that from a talk from Mark Whitten. There was a big break between DirectX 10 and everything before it as far as how it does things- which can cause computability issues. Xbox One used DirectX 11.2 - which is a mature refined version of the lasted DirecX set.

In addition to the hardware differences, the way the Xbox One's DirectX does things is also different. So perhaps with all these changes they just decided it wasn't worth it? (Plus that 100 million cost on the controller - doubt there was too much 'back wards compatible' budget left over.)



 

Really not sure I see any point of Consol over PC's since Kinect, Wii and other alternative ways to play have been abandoned. 

Top 50 'most fun' game list coming soon!

 

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