Is console gaming dead? Nope and pretty much everyone expects that both the Sony PS4 (Orbis) and Microsoft Xbox 720 (Durango) will launch this year. Although most believe Sony will be first out the gate, today the big console news is all about Redmond’s pre-holiday game console revision — are you ready for Xbox 720 specs?
Though you might be done with consoles, Microsoft isn’t and VGLeaks has heard the news of what the faithful can expect inside the Xbox 720 when it arrives sometime in the Fall of 2013:
• CPU:
– x64 Architecture
– 8 CPU cores running at 1.6 gigahertz (GHz)
– each CPU thread has its own 32 KB L1 instruction cache and 32 KB L1 data cache
– each module of four CPU cores has a 2 MB L2 cache resulting in a total of 4 MB of L2 cache
– each core has one fully independent hardware thread with no shared execution resources
– each hardware thread can issue two instructions per clock• GPU:
– custom D3D11.1 class 800-MHz graphics processor
– 12 shader cores providing a total of 768 threads
– each thread can perform one scalar multiplication and addition operation (MADD) per clock cycle
– at peak performance, the GPU can effectively issue 1.2 trillion floating-point operations per second• Storage and Memory:
– 8 gigabyte (GB) of RAM DDR3 (68 GB/s)
– 32 MB of fast embedded SRAM (ESRAM) (102 GB/s)
– from the GPU’s perspective the bandwidths of system memory and ESRAM are parallel providing combined peak bandwidth of 170 GB/sec.
– Hard drive is always present
– 50 GB 6x Blu-ray Disc drive• Networking:
– Gigabit Ethernet
– Wi-Fi and Wi-Fi Direct• Hardware Accelerators:
– Move engines
– Image, video, and audio codecs
– Kinect multichannel echo cancellation (MEC) hardware
– Cryptography engines for encryption and decryption, and hashing
With an 8-core CPU and 8GB RAM, the Xbox 720 looks to be something of a beast. However, it is obvious that the big CPU is being balanced against a decent, but not compelling, 800MHz GPU.
Do these rumored Xbox 720 specs have you drooling or are you finally done with console gaming?
Inquiring minds want to know…