[citation][nom]kinggraves[/nom]Why not use the 7xxx series which isn't even out yet for consumer use?[/citation]
Um:
what is this, then? It's been there for more than two weeks now.
[citation][nom]kinggraves[/nom]Except there's been very little change between the low end 5xxx, 6xxx, and 7xxx series, pretty much the same thing.[/citation]
That's because the lower-end parts recycle old GPU designs; the 6770 and all below it are, in fact, evergreen GPUs, and the 6790/6800 series' "Barts" was NEW, but still based off of the Evergreen's VLIW5 architecture, rather than the Northern Islands' VLIW4. A similar story goes for the Radeon 7000s; the 7300 unashamadly uses the antiquidated Cedar core, while up to the 7670 still uses the VLIW5 architecture akin to the 6800. And the 7700 series appears to be based off of VLIW4, not GCN.
If a console wanted to be on the cutting edge here, it could still downsize a bit, but instead just rely on a newer architecture; such as taking GCN, and while still only having 480 or 640 SPs, use the more-effective GCN architecture.
[citation][nom]kinggraves[/nom]Something around 6670 level can do 1080p, and 1080p is the maximum the new XBox needs to do, not anything higher, not a ton of graphics bells and whistles, just 1080p with low power draw and heat output. It doesn't have to do multi monitor, or high resolutions, or any of the other things your PC GPU can do.[/citation]
But what good is it that, once the the cost for upgrading to 1080p from 576-720p (a lot of Xbox games fail to render even 720p, such as
Skyrim) the amount of power left over only allows for incremental improvements to things like shaders and effects? No one would've called the Xbox 360 visually impressive if the only major technical graphical improvement was that it rendered at 1280x720 instead of the Xbox's 720x480.
[citation][nom]kinggraves[/nom]PC gamers, you're missing the big picture here. A 6xxx level GPU means DX11 and tesselation. That means when games are ported from the new XBox, they can be ported in DX11 with tesselation, unlike the DX9 locked console ports now. You're getting ports anyway as long as consoles are still making money, better take what you can get.[/citation]
That's a horrible attitude; I still would prefer a return to the 5th- and 6th-generation eras, where consoles got ports from the PC, not the other way around. An upgrade so that those ports from the consoles will start using what the PC already technically is capable of isn't something to PRAISE, it's something with which someone says "it's about darned time already."
[citation][nom]zak_mckraken[/nom]For around 300$? Nowhere.[/citation]
Actually, that's quite feasible. As IGN pointed out, the GPU currently costs about $80US. (some on Newegg go for as low as $70US) You could readily pack in the rest of a PC for $220US. Also, don't forget it's very likely the Xbox 720 will MSRP at $400US, not $300US.
[citation][nom]zak_mckraken[/nom]but how about multi-player on separate screens? Hell yeah! LAN gaming on a single console![/citation]
That would require adding multiple physical display connectors to the machine: those would add extra cost that would NEVER go down with miniaturization, (unlike the silicon parts) and be of dubious added value. (not many people would have the multiple displays on hand, etc.) I'd prefer that developers start implementing split-screen multiplayer more often.