XBox 2 Specs Revealed And Analyzed

[Suhit Gupta]

<div class='os_post_top_link'><a href='http://www.xbitlabs.com/news/mmedia/display/20040627030133.html' target='_blank'>http://www.xbitlabs.com/news/mmedia/display/20040627030133.html</a><br /><br /></div>In case you hadn't heard, the XBox 2 specs were revealed all over the place last week. Most people are listing the next generation Xbox as having a 3.5GHz IBM Power PC Processor, a 500MHz ATI graphics processor, 256MB of RAM, and a 12X DVD drive. There is no mention of any internal hard drive however, I am sure that most people can just add an external drive cvia USB or over the network. Of course, since the console is not slated for release until late next year or the year after (competing with Longhorn I see ;-)), things can change.<br /><br /><img src="http://www.digitalmediathoughts.com/images/xbox2.jpg" /><br /><br />Anyways, <i>"Xbit Labs has a whole slew of hardware specifications for Microsoft upcoming Xbox 2 gaming console. It looks to be quite a powerhouse for sure: The Xbox 2's central processing unit is a custom processor based on PowerPC technology. The CPU includes three independent processors (cores) on a single die. Each core runs at 3.50GHz speed of faster. The Xbox 2 microprocessor can issue two instructions per clock cycle per core. At peak performance, Xenon can issue 21 billion instructions per second."</i> Read on to find out a lot more.

[David Horn]

Seems a bit weird only supplying 256MB of RAM. It's like sticking bicycle wheels on a hot rod.

[rzanology]

i agree....thats always been the bigest complaints when it comes to console gaming. "not enough ram...not enough ram" Its dirt cheap maaaan....why not stick a gig in there and kill them dead from the get go!!!! I have faith though. From what i read a while back, no hard drive because they're working on some new form of flash media. I'm a complete xbox and xbox live fan boy, after a strong showing by the first xbox it can only get better!!!

[Zack Mahdavi]

Considering that the XBox will be using the blistering hot 3.5Ghz IBM PowerPCs, I don't see how quiet or small this console could possibly be. Sure, IBM could design cooler chips by the end of 2005, but they haven't even released a chip faster than 2.5 Ghz in the IBM 970 design!

I'm just hoping the next Xbox will feel more like a console and less like a PC... :?

[Suhit Gupta]

Well, presumably they intend to do a lot more computation in the memory built in on the graphics card. The machine is not going to be doing intense computations outside of that. Of course, this is just my reasoning for their stupid decision, I totally agree that there should be more RAM.

Suhit

[klinux]

What's the power consumption of this sucker? 300, 400, or 500 watts?

[foldedspace]

It's not running XP Pro, is it? This is hard for me to say, but maybe it doesn't *need* more than that....