It’s cheap and it’s more powerful than the current Xenos, so why not? Of course, that’s not exactly saying much as the Xenos is well over 6 years old, but a budget approach would certainly reduce costs for Microsoft’s next system as the cards are currently selling for $70 to $100 and has roughly the same performance as a GTS 450.
Naturally, those who are itching for a peak at AMD’s cutting-edge chips would be disappointed if the rumors hold true, but it would also allow profitability (and possibly, sooner price cuts) as compared to the approach of the Xbox 360 launch where it sold at a $126 loss for each console.
The actual launch date, according to IGN, will be 4th quarter 2013, around October and November.
Source:
IGN
Except that the next xbox has the cpu and gpu integrated onto one die which would make it a lot cheaper to produce than being on a discrete chip……
and if they optimize it like hell and add in edram like they did with the xbox 360 gpu, it can definitely push 1080p with like 4x AA.
Hmm, the 6670 isn’t a lot of muscle in the grand scheme of things, but I guess if they optimize it enough it could be decent like Killerhurtalot said.
I’m not sure that the 6670 is what they are going to use. It seems a bit on the weak side, but this all rumor anyway. Microsoft could probably get away with a better GPU and still have room for some profit. After all when you buy a product in bulk the price is drastically reduced. So, if it were the 6670 that $70 figure per GPU is more like $35. It could be even less than $35 considering they aren’t buying a card that comes with a housing and PCB, but the GPU itself, which reduces the price considerably. Not to mention that this will be an on-die GPU, which as Killerhurtalot stated, will also reduce the cost.
EDIT: It’s a good thing that this was posted as a rumor. On IGN this is not the case, and the article is a big citation needed type of deal. It appears that they threw in the 6670 just because they looked on newegg and thought, oh this may be reasonable. They most likely ignored everything I posted above in terms of manufacturing, buying in bulk, and the fact that this will be an on-die GPU not a PCB with an enclosure. I question their sources since it all seems a bit too iffy. Either way, this news makes for an interesting discussion/debate on Microsoft’s new system.
There’s also the rummor that said the new xbox will have some ARM processor or something and be a sort of wii 😛
So yeah, we’ll know once they actually tell us.
Yeah, that’s true. But, it’s the fact that IGN didn’t even state that this was a rumor which they should have done. This news should obviously be treated as a rumor considering the GPU selected is an unlikely pick for the next XBOX.
Well. Theoretical performance for the Xbox 360GPU caps it at like 240 Gflops and the theoretical performance for a 6670 is 768 Gflops. So theoretically it’s 3 times as powerful.
With all that optimization resulting in what Xbox 360 is pushing out now with the gpu (mostly 720p games pc equivalent of medium settings) if they slap a 1 gb GDDR5 memory and add in some EDRAM onto the 6670 equivalent, I really don’t see why they can’t push 1080p graphics at a decent setting (mix of medium/high settings) for games in the next 5 years.
(hell, my 5 year old go 7900 gs in my laptop’s pushing even current gen games at 1280×800 at medium settings at 30+ fps…) (can’t run battlefield 3 though 🙁 )
If I’m not mistaken the Wii U may use the 4870 which has 1200 GFLOPS (1.2 TFLOPS) which would be a significant performance increase over the 6670. So, the 6670 pick is looking more and more like a fallacy, especially since they claim it will be capable of 20% more performance than the Wii U.
Well, even better case against the 6670 then lol. But knowing nintendo, it’s kind of doubtful they’ll throw something that’s like 4870 into the Wii U because cause the wii has like 30 mm fan… and high end graphics cards aren’t exactly known for how big of a cooler they need to disperse heat they generate… (and 4850s ran pretty hot for a 150w TDP card…)
Even then… if you want to add 20% performance onto the 4850 in theoretical performance, you’d have to have to go literally up to a 6850 (or a overclocked 6770). (which costs almost double the price of a 6670)
(which is funny because the 6850 performs a lot better than 20% over the 4850 lol)
It could be possible to use a 4870 if they use a die shink (maybe going from 55nm down to 32nm). It may even be slightly under clocked so that it can work in a smaller space with less stringent cooling requirements. Or, they might just go with the 4850 (since it is so similar to the 4870) and a die shrink. Still, as you mentioned above, the 4850 or 4870 are both better performers than the 6670, which makes the 20% figure unlikely to achieve with such a low end GPU.
The thing is we all look at this from a perspective of a PC gamer. MS looks at it from a perspective of someone who plays on a console. HD 4670 will make a huge difference to visual quality comparing to current Xbox GPU. It can do 1080p with great textures, full dynamic lightning and AA if you develop to the hardware on low level.
I this is true. I’m pretty sure we would see visuals beyond BF3 or Metro 2033 in a year or two after Xbox release.