Xbox 360 Overview
The Xbox 360 is a video game console developed by Microsoft and released in 2005. Its hardware specifications are impressive, with a custom IBM Power PC-Based CPU that has three symmetrical cores running at 3.2 GHz each, and two hardware threads per core, totaling six hardware threads. The console's CPU also has a VMX-128 vector unit per core, three total, and 128 VMX-128 registers per hardware thread. Its CPU Game Math Performance is capable of delivering 9.6 billion dot product operations per second.
The Xbox 360 also features a custom ATI Graphics Processor with a 500 MHz processor and 10MB of embedded DRAM. It has 48-way parallel floating-point dynamically scheduled shader pipelines and a unified shader architecture. It delivers a polygon performance of 500 million triangles per second and has a pixel fill rate of 16 giga-samples per second fill rate using 4x MSAA. The console's shader performance is capable of delivering 48 billion shader operations per second.
The Xbox 360 has 512MB of GDDR3 RAM and 700 MHz of DDR. Its memory architecture is unified, and its memory bandwidth is impressive, with 22.4 GB/s memory interface bus bandwidth, 256 GB/s memory bandwidth to EDRAM, and 21.6 GB/s front-side bus. Its overall system floating-point performance is rated at 1 teraflop.
For storage, the Xbox 360 has a detachable 20GB hard drive that can be upgraded to 2TB. It also has 12x dual-layer DVD-ROM and memory unit support starting at 64MB. In terms of I/O, it can support up to four wireless game controllers, three USB 2.0 ports, and two memory unit slots.
The Xbox 360 is optimized for online gaming and features instant, out-of-the-box access to Xbox network features with broadband service, including downloadable content, gamer profile for digital identity, and personalized home screen. It has multiplayer capability and free games, which require an optional Xbox Live Gold membership. It also has a built-in Ethernet port, is Wi-Fi ready, and has video camera support.
The Xbox 360 also supports digital media with the ability to play DVD-Video, DVD-ROM, DVD-R/RW, DVD+R/RW, CD-DA, CD-ROM, CD-R, CD-RW, WMA CD, MP3 CD, and JPEG Photo CD. It can also stream media from portable music devices, digital cameras, and Windows PCs. It has the ability to rip music to the Xbox 360 hard drive, custom playlists in every game, and a built-in Media Center Extender for Windows XP Media Center Edition 2005.
The console also supports high-definition games at 16:9, 720p, 1280 x 720 pixels, 1080i, anti-aliasing, and upscale on 1080p TVs. It has a multichannel surround sound output and supports 48 kHz 16-bit audio, 320 independent decompression channels, 32-bit audio processing, and over 256 audio channels.
The Xbox 360 can stand vertically or horizontally and has customizable faceplates to personalize the console. With its impressive hardware specifications and support for online gaming and digital media, the Xbox 360 is a top-of-the-line video game console that delivers an immersive gaming experience.