GravyPlaya TechBlog

The boys at GameSpy are claiming that via inside channels they’ve gotten the specs on alpha Xbox 2 (or as we’ve come to know it, the Xbox 360) decks. We won’t keep you waiting on what we might be able to expect—but as always, remember that being this isn’t from the horse’s mouth, not only are these subject to doubt, but even if they weren’t they’d be highly subject to change, even at this point in the game:

* CPU will use three 3.0GHz PowerPC cores, each with 32KB L1 cache, 32KB instruction cache, and the three share 1MB of L2 cache. Later alpha decks only featured two cores.
* The graphics will be handled by a 500MHz ATI X800
* There will be 256MB RAM—no word on what type; memory cards will range from 64MB to 1GB
* There will be no “next-gen” (i.e. Blu-ray or HD-DVD) drive, but instead a dual-layer DVD
* There will be an optional hard drive (as we heard before)—no word on final size
* There will be a USB 2.0 camera for 1.2-megapixel shots and VGA-quality video
* 5.1-channel audio is handled in software—X3DAudio to be exact (no word on in/outs)

Apparently developers are being told to shoot for hi-def screens as the lowest common denominator—720p, to be exact (that’s 1280 x 720 at 60fps); thank god, but it was bound to happen eventually. Apparently the 360 will also play VC-1 (aka WMVHD, one of the Blu-ray codecs) files out of box, as well as MP3 and WMA. No word yet on all that wireless biz we’ve been hearing about, either.

Will the next xbox be all its cracked up to be???