Computer stuff -> Microsoft XBox

Introduction

The XBox was released on 15 November 2001 in the USA as a competitor for the Sony Playstation 2. On 22 February 2002 it was released in Japan and on 14 March 2002 in Europe. The XBox was Microsoft’s first shot at dominating the video game console market and they did quite good. Maybe the XBox didn’t sell as good as the Sony Playstation 2, but it can still be called quite a great succes. In September 2005 the XBox was succeeded by the XBox 360, which I don’t have.

The XBox was the most powerful console of it’s generation. It’s slightly more powerful than the Playstation 2 and considerably more powerful than the Nintendo Gamecube. As with all consoles though, it’s not just the hardware that makes it successful. A console without games isn’t worth much and that is also where Microsoft hit the right spot with the XBox. Every console, including the XBox, needs an iconic game or character to boost it’s popularity. Nintendo has Mario for each of it’s consoles and Sony had Crash Bandicoot, WipeOut and Twisted Metal on the Playstation and Sega had Sonic. Microsoft didn’t take long to come with their own iconic game that became the most succesful game of the XBox: Halo. I’m personally not a fan of Halo (quite the contrary), but that doesn’t mean that it was one of the biggest selling points of the XBox. It made the XBox the popular console that it has become and without Halo, the XBox would very likely have been overshadowed by the Playstation 2.

Specifications

CPU

• 32-bit 733 MHz, custom Intel Pentium III Coppermine-based processor in a Micro-PGA2 package (though soldered to the mainboard using BGA). 180 nm process.
• SSE floating point SIMD. Four single-precision floating point numbers per clock cycle.
• MMX integer SIMD
• 133 MHz 64-bit GTL+ front-side bus to GPU
• 32 KB L1 cache. 128 KB on-die L2 cache

Shared memory subsystem

• 64 MB DDR SDRAM at 200 MHz; in dual-channel 128-bit configuration giving 6400 MB/s
• Supplied by Hynix or Samsung depending on manufacture date and location

GPU and system chipset

• 233 MHz “NV2A” ASIC. Co-developed by Microsoft and Nvidia.
• Geometry engine: 115 million vertices/second, 125 million particles/second (peak)
• 4 pixel pipelines with 2 texture units each
• 932 megapixels/second (233 MHz × 4 pipelines), 1,864 megatexels/second (932 MP × 2 texture units) (peak)
  • Peak triangle performance (32pixel divided from filrate): 29,125,000 32-pixel triangles/s raw or w. 2 textures and lit.
    • 485,416 triangles per frame at 60 frame/s
    • 970,833 triangles per frame at 30 frame/s
• 8 textures per pass, texture compression, full scene anti-aliasing (NV Quincunx, supersampling, multisampling)
• Bilinear, trilinear, and anisotropic texture filtering
• Similar to the GeForce 3 Ti500 PC GPU in performance
• Resolutions: 480i, 480p, 576i, 576p, 720p, 1080i

Storage media

• 2×–5× (2.6 MB/s–6.6 MB/s) CAV DVD-ROM
• 8 or 10 GB, 3.5 in, 5,400 RPM hard disk. Formatted to 8 GB. FATX file system.
• Optional 8 MB memory card for saved game file transfer.

Audio processor

• NVIDIA “MCPX” (a.k.a. SoundStorm “NVAPU”)
• 64 3D sound channels (up to 256 stereo voices)
• HRTF Sensaura 3D enhancement
• MIDI DLS2 Support
• Monaural, Stereo, Dolby Surround, Dolby Digital Live 5.1, and DTS Surround (DVD movies only) audio output options

Other features

• Integrated 10/100BASE-TX wired ethernet
• DVD movie playback (Add-on required)
• A/V outputs: composite video, S-Video, component video, SCART, Digital Optical TOSLINK, and stereo RCA analog audio
• Controller ports: 4 proprietary USB 1.1 ports
• Weight: 3.86 kg (8.5 lb)
• Dimensions: 320 × 100 × 260 mm (12.5 × 4 × 10.5 in)

Source: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Xbox#Hardware

Pictures

Under construction