CPU and Graphics
Intel and AMD battled for the XBox sales area, but AMD failed and Intel popped to the pot, with there Coppermine solution for the XBox, the advantage of running the Intel unit is that it does indeed run cooler than AMD solutions but we can not comment too deeply on this as we do not know exactly what AMD offered. The Intel CPU which they ended up using was a Coppermine Pentium III, but was lacking cache and only had 128KB L2 present. The CPU is more than likely just a Pentium 3 with 1/2 the cached burnt off / disabled.
So it ISN'T a Celeron which people are claiming due to certain aspects - which I will not be going in to in this write-up.
Within the core of the CPU other things were not changed, there is no SSE2 support, and also it has the 16KB L1 cache, and 16KB Data Cache - both of these are used with the 133FSB. As we already know the fast FSB is needed for a performance system. As we are seeing today the .13 Micron P3 and P4s do indeed perform better than the older .18 Micron CPUs. This BGA is a mobile unit and it is soldered directly to the mainboard of the system this means that there is no need for a socket, and also stops people wanting to upgrade.
The board is made by Intel using a 4 layer PCB. The system is powered via the AT connector - 10Pins, there is no PSU casing - which is fine as you are not to take apart the console.
So Microsoft have got the CPU now they need the graphics engine, with 3dfx out of the way and NVIDIA producing some extremely powerful cards, it was envitible that they would win the contract. Microsoft was very impressed with the nFORCE platform. NVIDIA do not own a license from Intel to produce the chipsets for the Pentium 3, but Microsoft owns a license for the P6 bus which means that nFORCE and Pentium 3 would happen.
The final chipset for the graphics unit is a derivative of the nFORCE 420-D, this was the initial nFORCE platform. The IGP runs like a north bridge chipset does currently only it houses a more powerful graphics core, similar to a Geforce 2 MX Card. The XBox has a different IGP - the NV2A this has the performance between a Geforce 3 and the Geforce 4 TI 4600 [NV25].
The core runs at 233 MHz and it has 4 pixel pipelines, similar to that of the Geforce 3 core. It has dual vertex shaders and 8.1 DirectX support - this is a big improvement the second vertex shaders kicks out a large performance increase, the reason for this is that games tend to use the vertex shaders to the maximum. So the secondary Vertex shaders kick out a lot more power. The IGP also supports the Anti Alias functions which are very important as when rendering at 640*480, this is where you see bad aliasing.
This GPU is without any questions a far superior GPU to any which we have seen on the market, NVIDIA have done very well developing this. With full T and L present the GPU used in the XBox is the way forward; I can see people like Nintendo wanting to work with NVIDIA on future systems. The advantage of the T and L being generated and dealt with by the GPU is that the CPU can be used for full processing. The MCPX - the "Southbridge" is connected via the Hyper transport Bus to the IGP. This is an 800MB/s bandwidth - both ways. This means there can be dedicated bandwidth for memory and networking. This MCP is the same as on the nFORCE board for main systems with full Dolby 5.1 Surround sound encoding. This is the most superior sound system on any console to date. It means you can have surround sound without any need for 6 channels out the back of the console. This has brought 5.1 to the masses - instead of limiting it to the PC users. The development doesn’t appear to have been done with full consideration for the 5.1 sound.
