Why is the CPU in the new Xbox One barely more powerful than the Xbox 360's?

S

svbarnard

New Member
Hi all,

I'm a console gamer but I have had this question in my head since last year and now its time to get it answered by the experts. I put this in the CPU forum and not the game forum because this is a technical question needing technical expertise to sufficiently answer, so please dont move it or it may not get answered correctly.

Ok if we look at the console generations there has always been a huge leap forward in hardware. For instance the (fifth generation) Playstation 1's CPU ran at 33.8688 MHz. The (sixth generation) first Xbox's CPU ran at 733 MHz. The (seventh generation) Xbox 360's CPU was a triple core clocked at 3.2 GHz, per core (am I right here when I say "per core"?). So as you can see here whenever we see a new generation we're seeing exponential growth between them.

Ok but now here is where I am confused. The (Eighth generation) Xbox one's CPU is two quad core chips clocked at 1.75 GHz, per core (again am i correct here?). So if we do the math here, the CPU in the xbox 360 had a top speed of 9.6 GHz, and the CPU in the brand new Xbox One has a top speed of 14 GHz. So we have 9.6 GHz to 14 GHz, this is just a 31 percent increase. Thats just not typical of a next gen system.

Everything else for the Xbox One has been exponential, on the memory side the 360 had half a gig of DDr3 and the Xbone has 8, the GPU in the 360 could do 240 GFLOPS while the Xbone's GPU can do 1.31 TFLOPS.

So why the 9.6 GHz to 14 GHz for the CPU? I mean this isn't a huge leap at all. And its been eight whole years seperating them. Does it have something to do with there being more cores? Whats the advantage to having 8 cores as opposed to 3? There is eight years seperating the 360 and Xbone, so why are the CPU's so close to each other in power, someone please explain to this worried gamer why it wasn't such a huge increase in power as it should have been?

p.s. I've been pondering this since early last year when the specs were announced, why there isn't much of a difference between the CPUs
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Xenon_(processor) xbox 360 CPU
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Xbox_one#Hardware
 
Not to insult your intelligence, but just by the fact that you think it's appropriate to multiply the clock speed by the core count makes it clear that you don't know enough on the subject to actually say that there isn't a big power difference.

Each core can run at the given clock speed. Meaning each process runs at that speed (more cores, more simultaneous processes). You don't add the speeds together for anything.

Besides that, there's more to a CPU's processing power than just clock speed and number of cores. It's also built on a much newer and much more efficient architecture. This new x86 processor vastly out performs the old one based on the PowerPC architecture.
 
its got better efficiency, architecture, more transistors etc.

on top of that the cpu and gpu not only are on the same die but they dip into the same memory pool increasing efficiency and overall performance.

that being said I think its a pathetic excuse for an upgrade too. nowadays they should run 1080p and 60fps and they don't because the console makers wanted to keep it at $400-500. the ps3 for instance was originally launched with a $600 price point.
 
Yeah you can't just multiply cores and clock speeds.

More cores = more people working on something at the same time so to speak. It's not a direct doubling of speed if you go from 1 core to 2 core or 2 cores to 4 cores and so on.

Also the newer CPU's are way more efficient. You can't directly compare clock speeds with clock speeds in computers or consoles. Intel chips for example are way better clock for clock than an AMD chip. That is to say that a 3.0GHz Intel chip would beat the crap out of a 3.0GHz AMD chip. That is assuming of course you're talking about CPU's from the same time roughly like a 3570K and an 8350 or something.

The consoles have twice as many cores and are significantly more efficient, so yeah, there's a pretty big increase. For what they sell them at they're pretty powerful machines.
 
As stated, there is more than clock speed. Also, it's a single 8 core unit with an integrated GPU on-die. The performance offered graphically is somewhere between a 7850 and 7870 on the desktop side, which a 360 certainly cannot touch.

But, I agree. Traditionally newer consoles have been more impressive for advancements. This generation was largely about manufacturing and market costs. It's still a decent upgrade, though.
 
You must log in or register to reply here.
Back
Top