Why the XBox 360 Has Three Cores ?

[saran_js]

Excerpt from 'the inq' (http://www.theinquirer.net)

Last week in a meeting with an XBox360 engineer, the truth was revealed. It seems that flat out, the graphics pipeline takes two cores, both threads from each, to 'fill'.

If you code things right, that will leave you with a single core for the 'game' parts, basically everything but graphics. According to another MS person, a single core is more than sufficient to make a great game, and you have effectively double that if you are exploiting every last drop of GPU capability.

Read more here (http://www.theinquirer.net/?article=27359)

[bapenguin]

Wouldn't that defeat the purpose of a dedicated graphics chip? No sir...I don't buy it.

[Morratut]

Its the Inquirer. I don't buy it either. This is what a GPU is for. I don't imagine you would need two 3.2ghz cores dedicated to feeding a GPU.

I'm not a computer architecture engineer though :confused:

[alienchild]

Bullcrap. Pure and simple bullcrap, like most of the gamer-articles comming from The Inq.

[Draft]

Mr. Saran_JS is maybe not aware that the Enquirer website is as untrustworthy as the Enquirer bird cage liner.

[BlindSwordsman]

This piece does not make any sense and the graphics pipeline sure as hell does not take 2 cores for us. Each core has 2 hardware threads - that would be 4 threads - insanity.

Sounds like the reporter became a bit confused with some technology terms here: GPU, CPU, multiple cores, multi-threading.

[earthworm48]

Indeed. The Enquirer is generally worthless.

[Roc Ingersol]

Someone misunderstood the procedural content generation spiel.

[Dracula-X]

I don't buy the story. The reporter must have misunderstood something.

Not to defend the Inquirer (they are a game/hardware site), but I think some people are confusing them with the Enquirer, the crap US tabloid.

[NoName]

Last week in a meeting with an XBox360 engineer, the truth was revealed.
This article not only sounds ridiculous, but they have no reliable references to back their claims...

[Roc Ingersol]

Not to defend the Inquirer (they are a game/hardware site), but I think some people are confusing them with the Enquirer, the crap US tabloid.
Maybe one or two. But there's really only a couple poorly photoshopped fish-boy pics worth of difference. ;)

Seriously though, the Inq ain't quite as bad as the Enq, but they do have a well deserved reputation for putting sensational headlines on unverified 'light on facts' articles.

[Demo_Boy]

I read the article.
It makes no sense at all.
Move along.

[The Iron Weasel]

The latest Enquirer (or another magazine like it) has the funniest picture i've ever scene on it. It has "Poodle Boy" I was working Parcel Pickup at the store when i saw it, i nearly fell over laughing at it. People where staring and everything.

[Coriolis]

Didn't the Inquirer also say that not a single Xbox 360 title uses more than one hardware thread? This isn't any more true than that.

Call of Duty 2 uses all 3 cores efficiently. Only one thread talks to the GPU.

There is a simpler reason for 3 cores. Counting the GPU, there are 4 processors that all access the same memory. 4 is a very nice number for computers.

[disc]

I like the inquirer and their articles but they're relying on leaks so they cannot really change the information.

This however is shit. Two cores needed to fill the GPU pipeline? The CPU cores have nothing to do with that, its an artist talking not a programmer.

You create a sufficiently nasty vertex and pixel shader and it will make that GPU crawl to a halt as well.

[Sloth]

Xbox360 Engineer was probably the guys IRC nick. The interview was conducted in #!!!!!!!!!!!!!!100%REALTEENGIRLNUDEPICS100%!!!!!!! !!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

[see colon]

Xbox360 Engineer was probably the guys IRC nick. The interview was conducted in #!!!!!!!!!!!!!!100%REALTEENGIRLNUDEPICS100%!!!!!!! !!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
sounds like a credible source to me. inq is crap. why is this even on the front page.

in fact, i showed this to my friend with a learnig disability, and he told me this was retarded.

[MStiles]

The MS engineer the Inq spoke to (if they even spoke to one...I wonder sometimes), was probably referring to using the CPU to do some pretty hefty procedural synthesis stuff and then feeding it off to the GPU. And true, if you were doing this to a really large degree you'd eat up a lot of CPU time.

But the ever-dubious Inq doesn't actually give us the quote from the engineer itself, or the question they asked him, or puts their little statement in any context at all.

File this one under "more useless crap from the Inquirer."

[Achilles]

Um, didn’t this same “news source” say just a little while ago that there weren’t any multi threaded games yet? But if all of them need to be multi-threaded, aren’t they just making stuff up? Oh yes, that’s right, they’re just making stuff up.

Every game on the 360 is multi-threaded. It has nothing to do with what this article claims that it does. Both these articles are rumor mongering, and that's hard to do to a company that has so many authentic leaks as MS does.

[saran_js]

Actually, most of what the inq. does put out does have some semblance of truth to it. Though, sometimes they may not be printing the whole thing, but they do have their sources and most of the time it is true.

Regards.

[Twigz'N'Berries]

sounds like a credible source to me. inq is crap. why is this even on the front page.

in fact, i showed this to my friend with a learnig disability, and he told me this was retarded.
Laughing my a$$ off! Good for one laugh a day at least is EA!

[ElectricMonk]

The latest Enquirer (or another magazine like it) has the funniest picture i've ever scene on it. It has "Poodle Boy" I was working Parcel Pickup at the store when i saw it, i nearly fell over laughing at it. People where staring and everything.

that was the weekly world news. and the stories can be pretty funny in there sometimes. i like their slogan of "the world's only reliable newspaper".

[Rangoth]

that was the weekly world news. and the stories can be pretty funny in there sometimes. i like their slogan of "the world's only reliable newspaper".

You know what scares me about Weekly World news? People SUBSCRIBE to that paper. See, thats just wrong.