Grrrrrr!
Now that nVidia has completed the video and audio heart and lungs of the Xbox, the PC gaming world is starting to sit up and take note.
The XGPU (Xbox Graphics Processing Unit) will be able to throw around about 125 million polygons per second. When this is compared to nVidia’s top PC card that can handle up to 31 million, it becomes easy to see where the interest is being generated. The leap forward in graphical capabilities stems from the unique architecture the Xbox employs. The graphics chip and the console’s CPU will share the same portion 64 MB double-data rate memory meaning that there will be no bus between the graphics chip and the CPU. Are you following this?
nVidia’s Tony Tomasi explains. “There's absolutely no way you could render 125 million polygons a second across an AGP bus. The entire architecture of the XGPU is built around unified architecture where it shares memory with the processor, as opposed to shuttling it across a bus. So that changes the way the whole thing works.”
The audio component manufactured by nVidia is also causing quite a stir. The Media Communications Processor for Xbox (MCPX) handles the audio output from the console and the broadband connection.
Jon Peddie of Jon Peddie Associates and a respected authority on media devices said, "It is an amazingly powerful part. The sound is just gonna knock your socks off. If the game developers put the sound in their games, which they will want to do, it will play games with extraordinary 3D sound. The Xbox has the potential of being the ultimate home entertainment system."
The XGPU (Xbox Graphics Processing Unit) will be able to throw around about 125 million polygons per second. When this is compared to nVidia’s top PC card that can handle up to 31 million, it becomes easy to see where the interest is being generated. The leap forward in graphical capabilities stems from the unique architecture the Xbox employs. The graphics chip and the console’s CPU will share the same portion 64 MB double-data rate memory meaning that there will be no bus between the graphics chip and the CPU. Are you following this?
nVidia’s Tony Tomasi explains. “There's absolutely no way you could render 125 million polygons a second across an AGP bus. The entire architecture of the XGPU is built around unified architecture where it shares memory with the processor, as opposed to shuttling it across a bus. So that changes the way the whole thing works.”
The audio component manufactured by nVidia is also causing quite a stir. The Media Communications Processor for Xbox (MCPX) handles the audio output from the console and the broadband connection.
Jon Peddie of Jon Peddie Associates and a respected authority on media devices said, "It is an amazingly powerful part. The sound is just gonna knock your socks off. If the game developers put the sound in their games, which they will want to do, it will play games with extraordinary 3D sound. The Xbox has the potential of being the ultimate home entertainment system."
Companies:
Microsoft
Read More Like This