Specifications have been leaked for the 360's successor.
With E3 approaching closer as each day passes, there's going to be more and more salt being thrown at consumers from sources who wish to either leak valid details about Microsoft's next generation Xbox console, or stir up false rumour. The latest information comes from VGleaks, who doesn't have a significant track record, but has published detailed articles surrounding the Playstation 4, WiiU and Xbox.
So what's been said about the next Xbox that's believed to succeed the current generation of hardware - the Xbox 360? Well, to cut it short, we'll be looking at an 8-core X64 chip running at 1.6GHz, 8GB DDR RAM, USB 3.0 and a 50GB 6x Blu-ray player to leave DVD behind.
The specifications are actually detailed at some length:
CPU - using the x64 Architecture, 8 CPU cores, each running at 1.6 gigahertz (GHz), will be powering the best games available with each thread sporting 32KB L1 instruction and data caches. Each individual module of four CPU cores has a 2MB L2 cache (with a total of 4MB L2 between them). If that wasn't enough, each core has one fully independent hardware thread with no shared execution process and all threads can issue two instructions per clock.
GPU - Utilising a custom D3D11.1 class 800MHz graphics processor, the next generation Xbox would boast 12 shader cores, providing a total of 768 threads. Each thread can perform a single scalar multiplication and addition operation (MADD) per clock cycle. When at peak performance, the GPU can effectively issue 1.2 trillion floating-point operations per second. Pretty neat, eh? Lastly, High-fidelity Natural User Interface (NUI) sensor is always present.
Storage / Memory - 8GB of DDR3 RAM will be available on-board with 32MB of embedded SRAM (with a combined total peak bandwidth output of 170GB/sec). Hard drive for multimedia and other content, and of course the 50GB 6x Blu-ray player.
Networking - As expected, Gigabit Ethernet and WiFi as standard.
The following will aso be sported by the console, should information in the leak be accurate:
- Move engines
- Image, video, and audio codecs
- Kinect multichannel echo cancellation (MEC) hardware
- Cryptography engines for encryption and decryption, and hashing
If the above specifications are true and the leak is accurate, Microsoft will be packing some serious gear in the next generation of its console. The Xbox 360 has enjoyed a healthy lifecycle (excluding the teething issues and RRODs), which the company will undoubtedly hope to replicate with the next refresh.
The inclusion of an NUI sensor sounds as though Kinect will be implemented deeper into the console, which is to be expected with Microsoft pushing more into sensor technology (with its Research division trialing projector visual experiences). This should also open up Kinect gameplay to all potential consumers who will pick one of these beauties up, potentially leading to more games being produced.
The leak will also please those who make use of a WiFi network at home (or in the office). Connecting the video game console to the Internet with built-in wireless should provide a more stable experience online, especially since the current adapters perform poorly. The gigabit interface will enable those who enjoy streaming media to make the most of available bandwidth.
We're pretty excited to see just what Microsoft has to announce at E3, and we're sure you all are too. How the next Xbox will further integrate with both Windows and Windows Phone will reveal just where the company is planning to take its three-screens vision.
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