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Forums - Microsoft Discussion - Major Nelson on X1 Power: "I can't wait for the truth to come out."

Machiavellian on 07 September 2013
Mmmfishtacos said:

Why don't you just black out anything that can be traced back to you and post it? Even if they are restricted by the NDA there was nothing stopping them from telling everyone that the Xbox has 2 GPU's, and not going into details. That alone would have been enough to shut a lot of people up. But instead they bring up how superior their programing is. When you take into account that MS said that kinect 2 cost just as much as the box and expect to break even on the system just shoots this whole damn rumor in the head. So back it up. 


Why do you keep making this statement.  It really shows that you do not know how a NDA works.  You cannot disclose anything, not make any reference cannot say something exist or could exist or might exist.  You cannot make any reference that leads to people knowing that something exist.  If under NDA you basically just say no comment and leave it at that.  What you definitely cannot do is say you have something that can only lead to a product not announced by the company that put you under the NDA.  Its really that simple.

The NDAs we have companies sign when they use our software is pretty intensive.  One mistake by someone releasing this info has huge penelties. The reason for NDAs is because the company does not want their competition to get wind of their stuff and try to match it at the same time as you bring out your product.



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hinch on 07 September 2013
misterymedia said:
hinch said:
misterymedia said:
Hi

I've just registered on this forum.

I'm going to banned for saying this, but none of this post is false in anyway. I am not an Xbox fanboy, I do not own an Xbox and never have. The last console I bought was a launch PS3 which I stopped using after MGS4. I do however, work in the tech industry and my job involves the production of silicon wafers (not for consoles).

On the 29th of September you will realize that the rumors that have been flying around regarding a dGPU are entirely true.

A very reliable source from a well known first party developer (who are creating a title for the xbox one's launch) who I've known for a while mentioned that Microsoft had granted them a higher level access from the devkits than almost all other developers. When combined with the APU, the amount of performance in TFLOPs rises from 1.41 to somewhere closer to 3.2 (ish). It's not quite the 5.31tf+ that Misterxmedia is predicting, but some of what he says is true.

He also told me that the dGPU is the reason the console is fairly large. That one die needed massive cooling to begin with. The CPU was also initially clocked at 1.35ghz in the first dev kits to be issued in 'console' form, to offset heat-production from the GPU components of the APU and the dGPU. A massive cooling solution was used to control temps and that's why vents were placed directly above it, to ensure good airflow. It turns out after testing, the heatsink/fan was more than capable to cool the entire die at '100% theoretical load', something that applications would hardly demand. That's what warranted the increased clocks.

I also learned that while 53mhz+ was applied to the GPU core in the APU, it was not applied to the dGPU. This was because the dGPU was already running at 853mhz. What's odd is that the dGPU is granted higher bandwidths to the ESRAM than the GPU core on the APU. No reason was given as to why, and I don't want to pretend like I know.

The NDA is pretty much spot on. But please, don't take my word for it. You'll find out pretty much from the source on the 29th (or possibly the day after depending on how Msoft and mjrnelson or penello want to announce it!).

Look forward to it!

Are you MisterXMedia by any chance? xD


No. I just saw his posts and decided that I might as well use a variant. He ( or she!?) has roughly the right idea, but he's blowing it way out of proportion. 5.31tf? That's a joke, I don't know how he worked that out.

Well ok.. I'l let that one fly. I just assumed from your play on that username that you could be "that guy". Anyway, its still I'll believe it when I see it situation for me and that probably goes for most people here commenting on this, and rightfully so. I mean why on gods name would they put a dedicated GPU AS WELL as an APU in there. It's far more cost efficient to go full APU or keep the traditional CPU and GPU separate. Not only does it increase complexity in design, but its just doesn't make a lick of sense considering how much they invested in their custom APU - the Octo-core CPU, GPU, 32mb eSRAM, move engines fitting onto one 28nm die. Only to throw another GPU in there.

I mean from the last couple of months we've have all heard the PR from Microsoft saying that the hardware doesn't matter.. And that they haven't been aiming for the top high end graphics, downplaying the differences in performance at every opportunity they got and hyping their own hardware updates. It just comes off as the old PR BS to me. Especially when you see some multiplatform devs, who've actually got their hands on both dev kits.. coming out to say that the PS4 is ahead of Xbox One in sheer performance.

I'm sorry but honestly, the whole dGPU talk sounds like a lot of old crap.



Machiavellian on 07 September 2013
the-pi-guy said:
Machiavellian said:
Mmmfishtacos said:

Why don't you just black out anything that can be traced back to you and post it? Even if they are restricted by the NDA there was nothing stopping them from telling everyone that the Xbox has 2 GPU's, and not going into details. That alone would have been enough to shut a lot of people up. But instead they bring up how superior their programing is. When you take into account that MS said that kinect 2 cost just as much as the box and expect to break even on the system just shoots this whole damn rumor in the head. So back it up. 


Why do you keep making this statement.  It really shows that you do not know how a NDA works.  You cannot disclose anything, not make any reference cannot say something exist or could exist or might exist.  You cannot make any reference that leads to people knowing that something exist.  If under NDA you basically just say no comment and leave it at that.  What you definitely cannot do is say you have something that can only lead to a product not announced by the company that put you under the NDA.  Its really that simple.

The NDAs we have companies sign when they use our software is pretty intensive.  One mistake by someone releasing this info has huge penelties. The reason for NDAs is because the company does not want their competition to get wind of their stuff and try to match it at the same time as you bring out your product.

Whose NDA is it and why though?

The rumor states its AMD NDA because they are releasing info on their Next APU/GPU on the 29th.  If AMD will have a dGPU on their APU then this is something they want to release and pimp for their chips.  It could give AMD a advantage over Intel for APUs when they are announce for whatever product they will be used for, Probably very slim laptops.  



Machiavellian on 07 September 2013
hinch said:
Well ok.. I'l let that one fly I just assumed from your play on that username that you could be "that guy". Anyway, its still I'll believe it when I see it situation for me and that probably goes for most people here commenting on this, and rightfully so. I mean why on gods name would they put a dedicated GPU AS WELL as an APU in there. It's far more cost efficient to go full APU or keep the traditional CPU and GPU separate. Not only does it increase complexity in design, but its just doesn't make a lick of sense considering how much they invested in their custom APU - the Octo-core CPU, GPU, 32mb eSRAM, move engines fitting onto one 28nm die. Only to throw another GPU in there.

I mean from the last couple of months we've have all heard the PR from Microsoft saying that the hardware doesn't matter.. And that they haven't been aiming for the top high end graphics, downplaying the differences in performance at every opportunity they got and hyping their own hardware updates. It just comes off the old PR BS to me. Especially, you see some multiplatform devs who've actually got their hands on both dev kits coming out to say that the PS4 is ahead of Xbox One in sheer performance.

I'm sorry but honestly, the whole dGPU talk sounds like a lot of old crap.

I think the point is not why MS is doing this but why AMD is doing it.  Its a design by AMD not MS so what is the advantages of having a dGPU on a APU.  One thing is that you can have crossfire setup without having a separate card.  If both share the same memory then you probably would have faster performance than having 2 GPU cards tied together using the PCI bus.  



richardhutnik on 07 September 2013

Why did Microsoft up the CPU speed on the ONE, if there is some sort of "secret sauce" in there?



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Machiavellian on 07 September 2013
the-pi-guy said:
Machiavellian said:

The rumor states its AMD NDA because they are releasing info on their Next APU/GPU on the 29th.  If AMD will have a dGPU on their APU then this is something they want to release and pimp for their chips.  It could give AMD a advantage over Intel for APUs when they are announce for whatever product they will be used for, Probably very slim laptops.  

While that might be possible, I doubt it.  It seems to go against MS's messaging and I can't imagine that APU + dGPU would be a big enough deal to save it like that.  That isn't really the way I want to say it, but you should know what I mean.  

I agree it does not look likly that the X1 does have a dGPU but if it did, it would definitely be a big difference.  Just think of 2 AMD cards in a crossfire setup.  So basically having 2 GPUs of the same type (because thats what required for crossfire) on the same die, sharing the same memory operating on the same graphics parts would be more efficient than 2 separate vid cards in crossfire doing the same thing over the PCI bus.  It really would separate the X1 from the PS4 and there would not need to be any additional coding required.  It would just work just like crossfire works today.



ListerOfSmeg on 07 September 2013

Most powerful console hasn't won a single generation.
Last gen was won by Wii
Previous gen by PS2
before that is was PS1
All of them were inferior to other consoles on the market.
I am not sure why people think power matters when they don't have a single fact to back that claim up.
If power really mattered everyone would game on PC.
People who argue against that are only showing that power doesn't matter. Whatever reason they provide is more important than power.



Mmmfishtacos on 07 September 2013
Machiavellian said:
Mmmfishtacos said:

Why don't you just black out anything that can be traced back to you and post it? Even if they are restricted by the NDA there was nothing stopping them from telling everyone that the Xbox has 2 GPU's, and not going into details. That alone would have been enough to shut a lot of people up. But instead they bring up how superior their programing is. When you take into account that MS said that kinect 2 cost just as much as the box and expect to break even on the system just shoots this whole damn rumor in the head. So back it up. 


Why do you keep making this statement.  It really shows that you do not know how a NDA works.  You cannot disclose anything, not make any reference cannot say something exist or could exist or might exist.  You cannot make any reference that leads to people knowing that something exist.  If under NDA you basically just say no comment and leave it at that.  What you definitely cannot do is say you have something that can only lead to a product not announced by the company that put you under the NDA.  Its really that simple.

The NDAs we have companies sign when they use our software is pretty intensive.  One mistake by someone releasing this info has huge penelties. The reason for NDAs is because the company does not want their competition to get wind of their stuff and try to match it at the same time as you bring out your product.

 

There's nothing, and I mean nothing that would stop MS from telling everyone they have 2 GPU in their systems. And not telling how they are linked together. That's the only part they should have left out and the only part that that needs to be addressed right now. They didn't need to have the hotchips discussion and leave half the crap out, they didn't have to show the mother board. They could have just had a few slides like Sony, detailing what's in the box and nothing more. 

So their master plan was to lose an ass load of ground to Sony, only to come out when it's too late and tell the world they've been lied to yet again? 

So either 1 of 2 things happened. 

1. it isn’t true and this is all made up by the internet. or 

2. They've made the biggest blunder ever in the history of video games and quite possible electronics.

And there’s still the fact they MS them self’s stated that the Kinect cost just as much as the box and they expect to break even on each system sold. It just doesn’t add up. Why go for two GPU’s when you could have used one with twice the power for the same cost?

 

 



riderz13371 on 07 September 2013
ListerOfSmeg said:
Most powerful console hasn't won a single generation.
Last gen was won by Wii
Previous gen by PS2
before that is was PS1
All of them were inferior to other consoles on the market.
I am not sure why people think power matters when they don't have a single fact to back that claim up.
If power really mattered everyone would game on PC.
People who argue against that are only showing that power doesn't matter. Whatever reason they provide is more important than power.

OUYA to win next gen race confirmed?



Hynad on 07 September 2013
misterymedia said:
Hi

I've just registered on this forum.

I'm going to banned for saying this, but none of this post is false in anyway. I am not an Xbox fanboy, I do not own an Xbox and never have. The last console I bought was a launch PS3 which I stopped using after MGS4. I do however, work in the tech industry and my job involves the production of silicon wafers (not for consoles).

On the 29th of September you will realize that the rumors that have been flying around regarding a dGPU are entirely true.

A very reliable source from a well known first party developer (who are creating a title for the xbox one's launch) who I've known for a while mentioned that Microsoft had granted them a higher level access from the devkits than almost all other developers. When combined with the APU, the amount of performance in TFLOPs rises from 1.41 to somewhere closer to 3.2 (ish). It's not quite the 5.31tf+ that Misterxmedia is predicting, but some of what he says is true.

He also told me that the dGPU is the reason the console is fairly large. That one die needed massive cooling to begin with. The CPU was also initially clocked at 1.35ghz in the first dev kits to be issued in 'console' form, to offset heat-production from the GPU components of the APU and the dGPU. A massive cooling solution was used to control temps and that's why vents were placed directly above it, to ensure good airflow. It turns out after testing, the heatsink/fan was more than capable to cool the entire die at '100% theoretical load', something that applications would hardly demand. That's what warranted the increased clocks.

I also learned that while 53mhz+ was applied to the GPU core in the APU, it was not applied to the dGPU. This was because the dGPU was already running at 853mhz. What's odd is that the dGPU is granted higher bandwidths to the ESRAM than the GPU core on the APU. No reason was given as to why, and I don't want to pretend like I know.

The NDA is pretty much spot on. But please, don't take my word for it. You'll find out pretty much from the source on the 29th (or possibly the day after depending on how Msoft and mjrnelson or penello want to announce it!).

Look forward to it!

Please. Stop.

Now look at this:


http://images.anandtech.com/doci/6972/20130514-XBOX-ONE-TEARDOWN-015.jpg

There's really nothing more to say about the subject.