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News Xbox 360 Elite ripped open and examined

Discussion in 'Article Discussion' started by The_Pope, 20 Apr 2007.

  1. devdevil85

    devdevil85 What's a Dremel?

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    I can most assuredly tell you that I couldn't find any new upcoming 360 games that will be supporting 1080p. If I'm wrong please correct me. Also, regarding the rendering power of the 360, tell me why friends of mine on Xbox Live, who have been running Virtual Tennis 3 in 1080p, notice substantial lag whenever there is a lot going on. For example whenever they do the cone challenges: when they all fall the FPS is dropped to a very low count and you can visually see lag. The lag doesn't happen whenever they run it in 720p. Honestly, Idk what the reasoning for it is......
     
    Last edited: 23 Apr 2007
  2. whisperwolf

    whisperwolf What's a Dremel?

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    Okay I'll bite, how is it hampering 1080p?
     
  3. devdevil85

    devdevil85 What's a Dremel?

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    I edited it....sorry
     
  4. devdevil85

    devdevil85 What's a Dremel?

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    I must admit though that 1080p is a little impractial right now for games and it would only hit a very small target audience that can even afford such a TV. Also, idk how hard it is to develope a game to support 1080p from a developer's standpoint, but either way 1080p right now is really just for bragging rights, but at the same time the key term for any person buying an expensive game console is this : "future proofing".
     
  5. mclean007

    mclean007 Officious Bystander

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    As I said above, to produce a 1080p image you need a compatible output (which Xbox 360 now has) and a display capable of receiving a 1080p signal, but in order to achieve smooth animation you also need graphics processing hardware that is capable of processing that many pixels. 1080p is 1,920x1,080 = 2,073,600 pixels per frame, so if your graphics hardware (in this case the Xenon chip inside the X360) can't produce that many pixels, many times per second, you will get a stuttering image. Now, I haven't got an X360, but it may be that in some highly detailed scenes in VT3, the Xenon chip hasn't got enough processing power to achieve smooth frame rates at 1080p. Certainly that is what it sounds like from your friends' experience.

    Compare this to 1080i, which only renders half the pixels with each frame, or 720p, which requires only 720 x 1,280 = 921,600 pixels per frame, and you can see that the chip doesn't have to be as powerful to produce a smooth frame rate at these resolutions as it would need to be to produce a smooth 1080p image.

    Hope this is clear - think of it like your graphics card and monitor in your PC. Just because you might have a 30" LCD capable of displaying 2,560 x 1,600 pixels, doesn't mean you can play STALKER smoothly at that resolution, unless you also have a monster PC with GeForce 8800 GTX SLi. Both X360 and PS3 now have the capability to output a 1080p signal, but if X360 doesn't have the graphics processing power to keep up, it will be limited to upscaling 720p or 1080i images instead.
    It's not that it's technically hard to develop a game at 1080p, it just requires careful balancing to ensure that it will play smoothly at that resolution, given that X360 seems to be at the limit of its capabilities with VT3 at 1080p.

    Why is it just for 'bragging rights'? PS3 over 1080p looks awesome, and you can get that experience now for a reasonably affordable sum - 1080p TVs are now available under £1,000. And as for future proofing, X360 will still look decent on a 1080p screen even with upscaled games that only support 720p. It will still be compatible, so I wouldn't worry if I were you.
     
  6. devdevil85

    devdevil85 What's a Dremel?

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    mclean007, thanks for the reply. All I was meaning by my VT3 example was that if the 360 is having trouble with a game like this now, how are most games (such as GOWII, GTAIV, Madden '08, NBA '08, etc). supposed to support 1080p. I do agree with you that 360's way out will be through upscaling. I haven't seen 720p or 1080i upscaled to 1080p yet, but I can bet that you'll notice artifacts especially from1080i to 1080p, but that is just my opinion. Of course it will always depend on your TV's ability to upscale.

    As for the "bragging rights". As of right now, how many people own a 1080p TV? Like 5% of all HDTV owners, and how many of these owners own a 360 or a PS3? Like maybe 2-3%, so as of right now it's just for bragging rights to say, "Oh! Well I can run COD at 1080p instead of 720p". Yes, I do agree 1080p looks twice over what 720p looks like, but as of right now it's more of a novelty (in the eyes of most console owners) due to the cost of the TVs, but once 1080p TV's are the mainstream, 1080p will be a huge feature that consumers will be expecting.
     
  7. mclean007

    mclean007 Officious Bystander

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    I would expect that, if you have a TV capable of accepting a 1080p signal, the upscaling would be done internally by the X360. All 1080i LCD TVs internally upscale images to 1080p anyway, as LCD is, by its very nature, a progressive scan technology.
    Cool, I get what you're saying. I thought you meant bragging rights in the sense that a 2kW PC power supply is just for bragging rights, in that there is absolutely no reason why you would need one or see any benefit from one.
     
  8. Vash-HT

    Vash-HT What's a Dremel?

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    I've always wondered where the upscaling was done with this. I have a 1080p TV and I've run it both with component at 1080p and with VGA at 1920x1080. I realize those are the sam resolutions, but does changing the resolution on a 360 effectively do the same thing as changing it in a PC game?

    I always figured it wasn't so simple because of all this talk of games being natively 1080p or 720p, but I suppose that could be some kind of marketing scheme. I mean if the resolution scales the same way as in a PC game, is there any point to saying the game is 720p or 1080p since you could just run it at the higher res anyway?
     
  9. devdevil85

    devdevil85 What's a Dremel?

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    Good question. My opinion is this: raising the resolution over the VGA on 360 to equal that of HD formats such as 480p, 720p & 1080p will (and I am almost 100% on this) not allow the same affect when the connection is carried over Component, DVI, HDMI, Display Port, etc., due to VGA being an analog connection. I would expect progessive scanning to need higher bandwith and to have a true digital connection. Someone correct me on this if I'm wrong, but that's how I understand it; the connection needs to be a true digital connection for the image to be displayed progressively.
     
  10. sui_winbolo

    sui_winbolo Giraffe_City

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    I'm happy with 720p, it looks fantastic, good enough for me. I just want the games to look purty, not perfection.
     
  11. mclean007

    mclean007 Officious Bystander

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    Actually, both component video (an analogue connection) and VGA (also analogue) are quite capable of carrying a progressive scan 1080 line image (i.e. 1080p), or at the other, lower, resolutions you list (480p, 720p).

    Consider yourself corrected! :D
     
  12. devdevil85

    devdevil85 What's a Dremel?

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    Damn it, I should've known to include Component as an analog. I thought it had to do with total bandwith. I guess the only reason why VGA isn't used for Home Theater is that it doesn't have HDCP. Anyways, crap!, I think my dad's HDTV (which can only do 480p) has a VGA port on the back of it that can do 1024 X 768 or something like, which I think is better than 480p (again correct me if I'm wrong), so I may go ahead and try that cause 480p just isn't cutting it, hopefully whatever the VGA can put out will look better.

    One question arises: Why does Component exist if VGA can still put out 720p & 1080p? Is it cost? Is it size? What is it?
     
  13. Lazlow

    Lazlow I have a dremel.

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    480 isn't HDTV, it's standard definition. 1024x768 is better than 480p (640x480) but I think you need to re-read the specs on his 'HD'TV.

    I believe the only reason VGA isn't solely used is the lack of HDCP.
     
  14. mclean007

    mclean007 Officious Bystander

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    But neither does component, which is used for home theatre. HDCP (high-bandwidth digital content protection) is only applicable to compatible digital interconnects (principally HDMI for home theatre and DVI for PCs with compliant graphics cards and monitors). This could lead to problems for people using component video as a high definition interconnect, because the HD disc formats provide for a so-called "image constraint token", which instructs the player to degrade its output over non-HDCP connections to SD definition. AFAIK no content currently applies the image constraint token, but it may happen in future, when the studios deem it appropriate. At that point, bye-bye to HD content over analogue or non-HDCP digital interconnects.
    Remember that not all analogue connections are born equal and resolution is not the only factor. With a digital connection, provided there is sufficient bandwidth, you stuff bits in one end and the same bits (in theory) pop out the other, so you should see no difference in quality between (say) HDMI and DisplayPort. In contrast, there can be a HUGE difference between two analogue signals of the same resolution. Cable length, shielding, conductor material, positioning etc. can all lead to tiny changes being made to the electrical signal in the cable, which degrades the picture. This can cause picture noise, cross-talk between colour channels, ghosting, image stability problems and all sorts.

    The point is, both VGA and component can carry signals in RGB format, where the red, green and blue signals are carried separately. As such, you can get adaptor cables that will pass a VGA signal to a component display and vice versa. However, I would suggest that true component to component will give the best picture over the longer cable runs often used in home cinema because they will typically have thicker conductors and better (e.g. gold plated) terminals and it is possible to keep the three signals physically better separated to minimise cross talk.

    Finally, the advantage of digital over analogue (other than its support for HDCP and its massively higher tolerance to signal interference) is that, with a digital source (digital cable, satellite or terrestrial TV, DVD, HD-DVD, Blu-Ray, PC or games consoles) and a digital display (most commonly LCD), using a digital interconnect keeps the signal in digital format all the way to the screen, while an analogue interconnect introduces two unnecessary conversions - one from digital to analogue in the source, and a second from analogue to digital in the display. This is a further source of image degradation, as the digital image recovered will always be slightly different to (i.e. by definition worse than) the original digital image transmitted.

    Hope this helps.
     
  15. mclean007

    mclean007 Officious Bystander

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    Bear in mind that in America you can call just about anything HDTV, and they've ended up in a whole mess of confusion with terms like "HD compatible", "HD ready" and "HD compliant". Here in Europe things are much more stringent - a TV can only be labelled "HD ready" (the only recognised label) if it has a resolution of at least 720 horizontal lines in wide aspect, has component AND HDMI/DVI connections, supports HDCP over its digital connection and will accept at least 720p and 1080i inputs.

    The US definition requires only that the TV accept a 720p or 1080i signal over either component or HDMI/DVI. It doesn't have to support HDCP, and it doesn't have to display the image at the input resolution - it can, for example, receive a 720p image and display it at 320 x 240 and still be a US HD Ready TV.
     
  16. devdevil85

    devdevil85 What's a Dremel?

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    Oops. For gaming I only game in Progressive so that's why I said "only 480p" not 720p or 1080p. My dad's TV can do 1080i which it had to do before Mitsubishi could label it "HD". The thing that sucks about his TV is that it is 4:3 instead of 16:9 so HD is pushed down. I can't stand it! Anyways, sorry for the confusion.

    Well I will need to try out VGA since 1024x768 is better than 480p. Thanks Lazlow for the reply, and also mclean007 for the VGA vs. Component vs. Digital information!
     
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