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Bill Gates lifts the curtain off the Xbox at CES 2001. |
The Intel-developed Xbox CPU is based upon the company's Pentium III line of processors and clocks at 733MHz. While chip architectures vary, making them virtually impossible to compare, the PlayStation 2's CPU runs at 294MHz, and the GameCube CPU clocks at 486MHz. Needless to say, Microsoft's upcoming console can more than compete with the competition where computational operations are concerned. The Xbox will come with 64MB of unified DRAM, compared to just 32MB of the same memory in the PlayStation 2 and 43MB of total RAM for the GameCube. The Xbox's memory can be allocated however the developer sees fit, eliminating the bottlenecks associated with the PlayStation 2's limited amount of VRAM.
The 250MHz Xbox GPU was initially announced as 300MHz and is developed by Nvidia, the company behind the popular GeForce video cards for the PC. Specifically, the Xbox GPU is based upon Nvidia's recently released GeForce 3 technology and is classified as the NV2a. Dubbed the X-Chip, the Xbox's graphics processor is capable of a multitude of onboard special effects including full-scene antialiasing, four simultaneous textures per object, fog, environment mapping, pixel and texel shaders, bump mapping, and real-time lighting. Despite the X-Chip's ability to display just four textures per object compared to eight for the GameCube, the Xbox's textures should be a marked improvement over those on the PlayStation 2, thanks to onboard texture compression at a 6:1 ratio. The Xbox's unified DRAM should also aid in texture clarity since developers have the freedom to allocate it however they wish. The X-Chip can display graphics at a maximum resolution of 1920x1080.
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The Rock joins Bill Gates on stage at CES. |
Microsoft's specifications for the Xbox state that it is capable of displaying 125 million raw polygons per second, but this figure is misleading. The most visually impressive Xbox games shown at E3 looked to be running at around 10 million polygons per second, and some with drastic frame rate problems. In Microsoft's defense, the games were running on unfinished development kits, but it may have been a better idea to hold back games that weren't running smoothly to maximize a positive response. While most weren't overly displeased with the Xbox's performance at E3, what was shown failed to demonstrate that the Xbox is three times more powerful than its competition, as Microsoft has stated.
One definitive advantage the Xbox has over its competition is producing sound. Despite the fact that Xbox development kits still lack sound hardware, the Xbox will ultimately be capable of in-game Dolby Digital surround sound--a first for video game consoles. The Xbox will also be capable of broadcasting 256 simultaneous stereo voices through 64 different channels. Dolby Surround will be a snap for the Xbox, and overall, the auditory experience found in Xbox games should be superior to that of both the PlayStation 2 and GameCube.
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The Xbox's Dashboard. |
The Xbox architecture is said to make it easy to develop games for the console, and PC developers have found it to be the same environment they've become accustomed to working with. Microsoft has had somewhat of a spotty history where the Xbox hardware is concerned. Even now, major third-party developers are still waiting for final Xbox development kits. Microsoft had previously stated that completed kits were shipped to developers prior to E3, but the ship date was missed. The latest kits developers received are fairly complete, and Microsoft will upgrade them with software instead of supplying developers with entirely new units. As mentioned previously, developers have stated that the Xbox beta kits still lack sound hardware. Apparently, developers are still constructing the sound for Xbox games from specifications given to them by Microsoft.
