Nvidia gets $200m X-Box injection

[alessandro]

Look the new at theRegister!!!!

This means that Nvidia will get Extra-support from game-developers

-What you think about this x-box console?
I will still buy the PSX2 over the x-box!

[Taz]

I can't see the point of it, all they've done is shove a PC into a small box. I don't know what they are supposed to be charging for one but if you were to build a PC with that spec, (PIII 600, GeoForce, 8Gb HD, DVD drive, 64Mb RAM etc.), it would cost around £600-£800. For that money you might as well buy a PC at least you can use it for other things apart from games. The other misleading thing is the comparison between the x-box spec and that of the PSX/2. Processors of difering types cannot be compared purely on clock speed, they have to take into account the number of cycles to perform specific instructions to give an idea of relative performance.

As you can probably tell my moneys on Sony!

[DentyCracker]

Actually I think for what they are going to get the parts from *ntel and *vidia they will be able to sell it reasonably cheaply. I think it will kick PS2's ass in terms of quality.

[Sensei]

The X-Box seems like a great idea to me. The Nvidia chip will do all the graphics processing and the Intel P3 will do all the physics and AI. Plus, it'll have LOADS more power and memory than the PS2. The PS2's one weakness (and it's a glaring one) is that it only has 4 MB of texture memory. The moment you go up to 640x480, that drops to 1 MB of available texture memory. With the X-Box having 64 MB of RAM AND 8 GB of HD space, that'll never be a problem. Ok..enough of my X-Box plugging. Hehe.

Sen

[alessandro]

First of all the x-box will be out fall 2001 and until then the PSX2 will have at least 500 second generation full optimized games.
If i remember right the x-box will use a variation of the windows 2000 kernel.Is it to little RAM(64MB) for a win2000 kernel
Anyway using direct-X and a x86 for a console is a loss of time
By the way if the x-box is using a hard-drive(or else a game-patch-updates storage medium HAHA!!!!),how much time a kid or a young owner will take to destroy the hard drive......2 seconds ...

For me the x-box is a instant failure ...much like Apple's Pippin

[Jammrock]

First off, the X-box's final specs have not been set so everything is still speculative. Billy Gate only annouced that M$ is working on it and gave possible specs and manufactures they are using.

Second off, M$ can use a modified Win2k kernel very easily. The hardware specs on the X-box will not change (with the exception of PC Card/USB/IEE 1394 devices which autodetect anyway) they can drastically minimize bootup time and kernel size. Since they don't have to worry about network security, log-ins, hardware ultilities, command prompts, office apps, print spoolers and that other background PC stuff, so they can make the kernel very small and light-weight. All they need is the basics with Direct X and away they go.

Thirdly, I highly doubt they will use a standard motherboard so the graphics bus is probably going to be huge! As in no bottlenecks between the CPU and GPU, audio, etc.

These are mostly speculations on my part, but basically the X-box is going to be a pure gaming PC that is not upgradable. Now if M$/Intel could make a pure gamers PC that is user upgradable, I would be very happy.

nVidia must be sitting very pretty right now. They have sgi engineers helping with their cards, getting cash injections from M$ and their booming stock and is one of the top 3D accelerator manufactures (ATi is still the largest due to their OEM market). I feel sorry for the other companies. Matrox is still sitting pretty, because OEM's and graphic designers love Matrox cards, and some gamers like me, but 3dfx and S3 are probably quaking right now.

My $0.02.

Jammrock

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Athlon 650, Biostar board, 128 MB PC133 (Crucial), G400 32 MB DH, SB Live! w/ Digital I/O, 10/100 NIC, lots of case fans, etc...

[Sensei]

If I'm not mistaken, Nvidia is designing the actual board (I'm not sure where I read that). They say that they will get rid of all the bottlenecks that plague PCs today. Now, whether they can do it, I don't know, but I wouldn't put it past them. Another thing, have you used a Dreamcast? You would never know it's using Windows CE. It is totally transparent to the end user. I expect the X-Box to be the same. It will be so stripped down that there will be virtually no sign that it IS using Windows except to the developers who get to use an API that they're used to in DirectX. I think the X-Box is going to blow everything away.

Sen

[alessandro]

Sensei,

Yes , the Dreamcast is actully using Windows CE BUT the majority of DC-games are not using it!!!!!!!!!!!!!!(Maybe because winCE is crap).
If you go into a DC-related site you will find that only crap DC games are using WinCE .
For example take Soul-Calibur,Soul-fighter both are not using WinCE at all.........

Read this excelent article about Microsoft and x-box and tell me what you think.....
http://www.pbs.org/cringely/pulpit/pulpit20000316.html

[Buuri]

First, X-box beats PS2 on all the features.
Second, consoles are always sold cheap while the real money comes from the overpriced games. That is why X-box will be prised as competitive products.

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B

[alessandro]

Buuri,

Correct me if I’m wrong, but this X-box features are made by Microsoft and Nvidia.
Now if you know well this two companies, than we are facing a extremely–HYPED system. I doubt it the actual system will have this features at all…….

[Buuri]

Rest your eyes on this article: http://www.firingsquad.com/features/gdc2000/xbox/
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B

[alessandro]

Don't worry , for the last 9 days i've read at least 25 acticles about this X-box and i know all the specs that MIGHT have the x-box on the 1Q of 2002(It's a Microsoft product!!!!!).
Using SGI demos(the robot) and some real time demos using a 600Mhz CPU and a NV15 does change my belive that it might by pure vaporware............