XBOX Queries

[SteveC]

Hi all,

A couple of XBox questions for you oh-so-intelligent forumites:

First, does the stepdown converter need to be anything special? I seem to recall them needing to be a certain voltage.

Second, If I bought one now, will I always have to buy games from the states? Will games that are released here (next year when the xbox is out over here) work on it?

Third, what do they (imported) normally go for here in the UK?

Fourth, are they worth it?

[Helevitia]

I can't answer the first three, but I think I can answer the last even though I don't own it. I actually looked a lot into it and I feel it is not worth it if you own a PC nnd plan on upgrading it all the time(like most of us do). First of all. you will be sorely disappointed withe grphics since 99% of all people will be watching it on a non-HDTV television. There is just no comparison to computer graphics. IF you have the luxury of owning an HDTV then you will be able to appreciate it much more. The visual quality will be on the lines of 75% better, approaching computer quality graphics. Unfortunately, there is still no games that support true HDTV and probably will never be that many as the hardware limitation is a huge factor in that. The Xbox also supports Dolby Digital so if you don't have a system to hook it up to, you will miss out on that feature as well. The DVD player is mediocre at best and you have to buy a seperate kit just to get it to work. When I say mediocre, it doesn't support progressive scan(this is a moot point if you don't have an HDTV), and there are other visual quality problems with it.
Let's look at games now. Halo seems to be a fun game that everyone wants to play(myself included), but it will come out on the PC and will probably look much better since it comes out later next year and will have time to be polished just in time to use it with the next gen Matrox card . DOA3 is supposed to be outstanding graphically but the bottom line is, it's just another fighting game like Street Fighter, Tekken, etc... Then there is Madden 2k2(which is a,so out for the PC and looks pretty damn close to it). I played it in the stores and it looks amazing. the fluid motion of the players along with the better AI makes this game very fun. I would love to see it in widescreen so I can see all of my receivers.
The next part is, what makes it better than a PC? You can play with up to 4 of your friends all in the same room. The hardware never changes so bugs are few and far between. Keep sthe kids busy for a while

So there is my 2 cents.

Dave

[SteveC]

Thanks Hele! I completely understand where you're coming from, but I want something I can just pick up and play with a few mates, and completely wow them (oh and prove their PS2 is old technology!)

For me, I'll still keep up with PC upgrading for the latest games, but my brothers won't.

Don't worry about these questions anymore! The reason I asked them was cos someone offered me one for what I thought would be loads of money so I was debating getting it. However, I ended up getting it for like a quarter of it's normal cost!! So it was worth it

Now, I do have one question - is it possible to download ANYTHING for it? Like Demos, games whatever? I haven't got a single game, and have no way of getting any till the new year

[Gurm]

Problem is, the Xbox is "older" technology than the "old" technology in the PS2. Let's face it, the Xbox is a stripped-down, wussed-out version of the PC I built two years ago.

Yeah, it has a GF3 in it. Big whoop. It has a small hard drive, a tiny amount of memory, and a wimpy (by today's standards) chip. All linked to a display driver that is optimized for displays running at 300x300. Not exactly rocket science.

- Gurm

[Wombat]

Steve, I haven't been paying that much attention to the X-box thing, but from what I've heard, the X-box games <B>do</B> have region encoding. I would really check into it if it's a concern.

[Beezer]

To find out more about the available games, I would recommend going to your local news stand and pick up a gaming magazine dedicated to the Xbox. A couple of them include demo disks too.

I picked up an Xbox for the kids (they have to wait til Xmas). One night when they were at grandma's house, I hooked it up and previewed a couple games on it (Halo and Project Gothem Racing). They looked ok, but it's going to take a lot to get used to -- doing everything on a game pad, and not having the screen 18 inches from my face.

.... did I mention it was for the kids?.....

[borat]

gurm i normally agree with almost all of the posts which you make but saying that the xbox uses older technology than the ps2 is completely false. the main processor in the xbox is more than twice as fast as the ps2's and the graphics processor is almost twice as fast. given that moores law states that processor spedds double every 18 months i would say that the xbox is at least 18 months ahead of the ps2. anyway the ps2 was released 2 years ago in japan so it was out when we were building our pc's around xbox technology and the reason that the pc technology was not used in the ps2 was because it was so advanced that it would have been far too expensive bak then

[Gurm]

*ahem*

Ok, let me explain.

but saying that the xbox uses older technology than the ps2 is completely false.

Or completely true, as I will shortly demonstrate.

the main processor in the xbox is more than twice as fast as the ps2's

Not so. The "megahertz" number is twice as big. But you cannot say that it's "twice as fast". The PS2 uses a RISC processor. The XBox uses a P3.

and the graphics processor is almost twice as fast.

At 300x300? I seriously doubt it. The GeForce3 would shine at 1024x768 and above, but since nobody owns HDTV they crippled the chip in the XBox, optimizing it for a regular VHS display.

given that moores law states that processor spedds double every 18 months i would say that the xbox is at least 18 months ahead of the ps2.

You could say that, but it just isn't so. The XBox is a P3 system, and not a very good one. It's a little itty bitty PC. Reformat the hard drive and you have a crappy PC, simple as that. In addition, that isn't exactly what Moore's law states.

anyway the ps2 was released 2 years ago in japan so it was out when we were building our pc's around xbox technology and the reason that the pc technology was not used in the ps2 was because it was so advanced that it would have been far too expensive bak then

No, it's because the PS2 is a console machine, and there's really no point in putting a general-purpose, CISC chip, along with all the necessary motherboard stuff for general-purpose PC use into a game machine. End of story.

- Gurm

[SteveC]

My xbox is still sitting here with no games yet delivered

Wombat - No problem about the games - I'll simply order them from the states/Canada No-one know for sure if UK/european games will work in american Xboxes cos there's none released. No big deal - they're cheaper over the 'net anyway!

Gurm - the geforce 3 in the xbox is infact not only optimised for NTSC/PAL (getting on for 600 lines with at least 340 pixels across - near enough 640x480...), but also HDTV resolutions of 640x480 and the higher res (can't remember exactly, but a little over 1024x768)
Also, it may have PC-based hardware, but the OS is massively stripped down and optimised. Anyway - who cares what is in it!? As long as it does it's job (high-quality gaming) for a reasonable cost it's OK. I wouldn't care if it had a Z80 CPU and a wobbly 16Kb RAM expansion pack on it if it played Halo like it does
Oh - and it's not a P3, but more like a Celeron

Reformat the hard drive and you have a crappy PC, simple as that.

Go on then! If you can work this out, you'll be famous! There's a LOT of people currently working on breaking microsoft's protection on this big black box.

[borat]

gurm you say that if you reformat the xbox's hard drive you have a poor pc. try adding a hard drive to the ps2 and you will have an even worse pc. and how can you seriously say that the ps2's graphics engine is superior to the gf3 in the xbox

[superfly]

Gurm....

The main advantage of any console is that it uses a much faster unified system bus architecture for transfering data between cpu-->memory--->graphics card,which is anywhere between 2 to 3 times faster than any current pc(at 6.4 gig/sec).


Add that the resolution that most tv's accept is 640*480 means that all that extra bandwith can be used to radically increase the poly counts on x-box,which is something that it can do far better than on any current pc,which even when equipped with fast cpu's,video cards,are crippled somewhat by the relatively slow system buses they use.


So while a 733 mhz cpu is quite outdated by today's standards,you can bet it's being used to it's fullest,unlike pc's where you have cpu's running up to 20 times faster than the motherboards themselves and have to settle for agp 4x's puny 1 gig/sec max transfer rate.

[rugger]

Nope

Wrong superfly

The xbox utilizes the nforce chipset (but with an intergrated Geforce 3), which is also avaliable for athlon systems.

Also, the hardware required to do LOTS of polygons is completely different to the hardware required to do HIGH resolution. For lots of polygons, high cpu speed is required, high bus speed is required (to the AGP card)

Of course, that doesn't mean the Xbox can't do lots of polygons, since the UMA of the xbox allows the graphics system to read the displays lists (which contain co-ordinate data) without the overhead of AGP, the CPU and at full DDR-RAM speed.

The main worry I have over the Xbox is the hard drive. If it fails, it would be nice if microsoft could sell replacements at a reasonable price.

[Wombat]

I don't know what kind of chipset the X-Box uses, but it can't be an nForce. nForce has an EV bus, not a GTL+. I can't imagine the contracts that must be involved to keep Intel and nVidia from slugging it out in the chipset space if they did the north bridge.

[rugger]

It is the nforce chipset

The nforce chipset can be mated to either the P-III or the Athlon CPU. Besides, what other avaliable chipset has an INTERGRATED Geforce 3 :-)

[GT98]

Theres a nice write up on Anand Tech on the XBOX hardware here: http://www.anandtech.com/showdoc.html?i=1561&p=1

As for me I've been screwing around with my Xbox since Christmas with the Following Titles: HALO, Project Gotham Racing and Madden 2002. So far I've been pretty impressed at well they play on the Xbox, but I have come to one deduction...I'm not really digging the controls for HALO...nothing can beat the Keyboard/Mouse combo for controlling a FPS. The Current set up works alright, but I'm used to the previous combo, and that makes controlling the game much more natural.

Madden 2002 is a blast to play, though I suck at it. I haven't really been playing PGR since HALO and Madden have been taking up all my time. For my brief experance with it...its ok so far...need to screw around with it more.

I'm finding the biggest problem I'm gonna have is with Games coming out for the XBOX..most of the titles are also coming out on the PC also...I think I'll stick with the FPS on the PC and arcade/sports games on the XBOX.

The biggest advange that the XBOX has over my PC is its ablitly for 1 vs. 1 gaming..something that is sorely lacking on the PC unless you do online gaming, which has its own snafus with it.

The XBOX is my first console system since I went over to PC based gaming with my Commodore 128! The Last console I played games on that was in my House was my Atari 5200 Super System back in 1984.

Thats my .02 cents.

Scott