According to Xbox World magazine, the third generation Xbox console will boast a 16-core GPU by IBM. In short, the 720 may have “too much power”.
As the Electronic Entertainment Expo draws ever closer the internet is filled with news about the next generation of home gaming consoles. Whether it was reports of Sony codenaming their next console the ‘Orbis’ or Microsoft codenaming their console the
‘Durango’ there has been an increasing amount of information being made available.
It should be noted that the only official news to come from the platform developers mouths have been the fact that both have confirmed that they are working on next-gen consoles and that neither of the two consoles will be revealed at E3 this year.
That has done little to curb the increasing amount of speculation surrounding the two consoles as the latest report claims to have the inside scoop on what specifications the 720 will boast.
According to Xbox World, devkits for the 720 have been dispatched to developers for them to become familiar with the hardware capabilities of the upcoming console. It is a common practice in the industry and allows for platform developers to have new titles
available for launch alongside the release of the console.
The magazine claims that the Xbox 720 will have a 16-core IBM Power PC CPU; this type of processor is top of the line and is direct competition for AMD’s 16-core processor which was released in November last year.
Very few PCs have the processor, which is set to remain top of the line for quite some time in the future as well. Some analysts are worried that the processor may be overdoing it for a video game console.
The magazine read, “It’s a ridiculous amount of power for a games machine – too much power, even.” Yet, it also conceded that the next generation of Kinect would need the extra muscle as well.
“Kinect 2 could chew up four whole cores tracking multiple players right down to their fingertips, so it’ll need a lot of power.”
It is worth reminding readers that everything at this stage should be taken with a bit of salt as none of the reports have been confirmed by Microsoft, although it would certainly be a major talking point if they did.
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