The Xbox 720 could be with us in October 2013 if reports that its new, super-charged chipset have entered production are true.
The AMD GPU is on its way to the manufacturing plant, according to IGN, whose sources tell it that mass production will begin by the end of 2012.
Based on the AMD 6000 series, it will be similar to the Radeon HD 6670, bringing support for DirectX11, multi-display, 3D and 1080p HD graphics, with a current market value apparently somewhere above $80 (£50).
If this latest rumour is true it would mean some rather disappointing graphical hardware in the supposedly 'next-gen' console.
By the time the new Xbox is scheduled for release in 2013 AMD will have already released its entire lineup of HD 8000 series graphics chips, meaning the GPU component of the Xbox chip (code-named Oban) would be at the very least two generations behind.
Previous rumours had stated that the graphics portion of the Xbox chip (the CPU part probably being an IBM PowerPC) would be based on the current HD 7000 series of graphics chips which in turn are being used in AMD's next generation of APUs, code-named Trinity.
Still, this current production run of the chip with Global Foundaries and IBM is only going to be for the first initial dev kits, so there is a chance the silicon will change significantly before the final launch.
What's in a name?
If the rumours are indeed true, the next Xbox's graphics processing power is going to be 20 per cent better than the Wii U and six times the Xbox 360's. So, by rights, we should start calling it the Xbox 2160.
We can't see that catching on, sadly, and there's still no real clue as to what the console will be called when it is released in 2013 – although names as disparate as the Xbox 720 and the Xbox Loop have been bandied about.
What is looking more likely, though, is that we'll see an announcement about the next-gen Xbox from Microsoft at E3 2013, with IGN adding that devs should be getting access to the SDKs and final system configurations in August 2012.
Exciting times - fan the flames of excitement with our next-gen Xbox video of exactly what we'd like to see:
From IGN
Your comments (7) Click to add a new comment
reincarnator
January 25th
7. @drmips, What would 6x more detail give? A GTX580 is well over twice as powerful as my HD4870. It give better graphics, but not twice as good.
When the 360 was released, the graphics card basically an x1800 with some HD2k features. It was still current when it was released. If this leak is true, the 720 would be extremely outdated upon release. This is worrying because games would quickly start to stagnate again.
Gears of war, or the entire xbox library is not impressive for graphics. Compare gears 3 to even UT3 and you will see a massive difference. Compare that to the Samaritan demo. The leap between that and current console games is staggering
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ibanezlewis
January 25th
6. You seem to all be forgetting that this is just a rumour at the moment. If it turned out to be true, I would be disappointed.
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buffig
January 25th
5. At the time the xbox 360 came out, it's graphics chip had been available as a pc component for about 12 months. It was current at the time the announcement was made. The 6670 will be, what, 4 years old? They're 50 odd quid on amazon. I know consoles can utilise their power much better, but thats still disappointing.
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drmips
January 25th
4. @reincarnator, yes but have you seen what's possible on the current 360. 6 x more detail on Gears of war would be better than any PC game I have seen with current hardware.
Developers can get a lot more power out of a 6670 on Xbox than they could on the PC as on the PC they don't get optimised as well.
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reincarnator
January 25th
3. @drmips, The 6670 is a already a low-mid range card today. It isn't very far ahead of modern integrated graphics. It is far from something one would stick in a monster PC. Even in a prebuilt, you would be getting ripped off over £500 or so if it came with that
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drmips
January 25th
2. @munichlondon, yes this is true, but only if you build a monster PC costing thousands. I bet less than 1% of pc owners will have anything as fast.
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munichlondon
January 25th
1. 6x as fast and the release is only in Oct. 2013? By then PCs will be WAAAYYY ahead both in CPU and GPU power. Also, will this be enough to make Kinekt really shine?
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