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Reader Comments (16)

Posted: Aug 24th 2010 8:47PM BlackedOut said

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I can understand why they'd try to keep the run speeds the same, kinda sucks that new hardware is being held back for it though.
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Posted: Aug 24th 2010 9:26PM Integral said

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@BlackedOut actually this is fairly common practice in all computers since the early 90's. The CPU, RAM, etc. are rarely running at the same rate so usually the CPU will stall for the slower memory to catch up. CPU speed has been wasted for decades.
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Posted: Aug 24th 2010 9:55PM anonim1979 said

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@BlackedOut
The "FSBraplacement" doen't even keep CPU clock the same - CPU does it by itself.
It EMULATES delays that were in original hardware - the CPU and GPU were a few centimetres apart and when they had to comunicate using FSB (front side bus) send data etc. - there is delay - signals had to be send, stablized, recived etc.
You cant cheat physics - it isn't instantaneous.
So now when it is one silicon die you have to delay those signals by those single clock cycles (one tact of 3,2GHz for example) to keep as possible to 100% accuracy.

Any talk about "speeding" X360 PS3 Wii is crazy. Stupid firmware change can break any game, messing with hardware is infinite times worse...
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Posted: Aug 24th 2010 9:58PM PiiSPii said

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@BlackedOut - Sony locked out the extra hardware resources on the 2000's when they first came out, but eventually unlocked it.

Most likely Microsoft will unlock the hardware in the not too distant future, requiring a littl ebit of code on the development side to use.
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Posted: Aug 24th 2010 8:48PM killer rin said

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Wait... First of its kind?, Wow I just assumed it was already done
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Posted: Aug 24th 2010 8:51PM Rhamsey said

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I read this last night on engadget, and still have no idea why it would need to self lag? Are the games programed for a specific processing speed? And if so, that doesn't seem to be a problem on PCs.
Tom, please explain.
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Posted: Aug 24th 2010 8:56PM killer rin said

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@Rhamsey

The Reason is becauce PC Games are made with a wide Range of Hardware in mind, while an Xbox 360 game is designed with 1 hardware set in mind. If you didn't self induce lag, then some newer games wouldn't work on the old Xbox 360, but would work on the new Slim Xbox 360.
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Posted: Aug 24th 2010 8:58PM Rhamsey said

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@killer rin
Thanks Tom.
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Posted: Aug 24th 2010 9:02PM killer rin said

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@Rhamsey

no problem
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Posted: Aug 24th 2010 9:32PM Integral said

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@Rhamsey all computers do this.
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Posted: Aug 24th 2010 9:37PM anonim1979 said

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@Rhamsey
The new CPU should be able to work much faster than 3.2GHz (the speed of Xenos).

But games that rely on presise timing could brake.

The same was with each revision of PS3/PS2/Xbox/etc - "new" console must be identical as possible.
There are for example 18 revisions of PS2.
And there are some problems with certain games not working on some as those had some minute diffrences - small but enough to break something.

On the other hand some games are much more tolerant to CPU speed variations (the games are typicaly programmed and debuged on PCs so if not hand optimized they might work OK).
In Xbox 1 you could exchange CPU from 700Mhz Celleron to 1,4GHz one and put additional 64MB of memory (so double it to 128MB) -
and some games still work or even do it better.
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Posted: Aug 25th 2010 12:33AM Raffi256 said

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@(Unverified)

I really doubt any modern games depend on precise timing, at least not intentionally. In the old days pretty much every console game depended on precise timing at some point, especially to do various raster graphics effects. But today, with multiple cores and all this asynchronous stuff going on I doubt it.

Not saying that increasing the CPU clock couldn't introduce bugs in games, but they could be patched or opt-out or something. It could be done if they really wanted to.
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Posted: Aug 24th 2010 9:05PM Angel Mass said

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They are so showy
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Posted: Aug 24th 2010 9:53PM psych7111 said

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Wish there were more demoscenes and benchmarks to run on consoles to compare with pc hardware. Best one by far is "Conspiracy" running on 360 in 2007. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_QcmcgxbSQM
It'd be fun to try and unlock the potential in this hardware and compare it with different revisions and dare I say it, overclock it!
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Posted: Aug 24th 2010 10:59PM Jacksy said

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very nice. You can be sure MS knows what it'll use for its next big thing..or at least playing with something awesome.
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