Xbox technical specifications

The Xbox technical specifications describe the various components of the Xbox video game console.

The Xbox uses standard computer DVD and hard drives.

Central processing unit

• 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.^[1]

• SSE floating point SIMD. Four single-precision floating point numbers per clock cycle.
  • MMX integer SIMD
  • 133 MHz 64-bit GTL+ front-side bus (FSB) to GPU (1.06 GB/s bandwidth)^[1]
  • 32KB L1 cache. 128 KB on-die L2 cache

Memory

• Shared graphics memory sub-system
  • 64 MB DDR SDRAM at 200 MHz; in dual-channel 128-bit configuration giving 6400 MB/s (6.4 GB/s)^[1]
    • Maximum of 1.06 GB/s bandwidth accessible by CPU FSB
    • Theoretical 5.34 GB/s bandwidth shared by rest of the system
  • Supplied by Hynix or Samsung depending on manufacture date and location

Graphics processing unit

The Xbox motherboard.

• GPU and system chipset: 233 MHz "NV2A" ASIC. Co-developed by Microsoft and Nvidia.
  • Floating-point performance: 5.8 GFLOPS
  • Geometry engine: 115 million vertices/second, 125 million particles/second (peak)
  • 4 pixel pipelines with 2 texture units each
  • Peak fillrate:
    • Rendering fillrate: 932 megapixels/second (233 MHz × 4 pipelines)
    • Texture fillrate: 1864 megatexels/second (932 MP × 2 texture units)
  • Realistic fillrate:
    • Rendering fillrate: 250–700 megapixels/second, with Z-buffering, fogging, alpha blending and texture mapping^[2]
    • Texture fillrate: 500–1400 megatexels/second (250-700 MP × 2 texture units)
  • Peak triangle performance: 29,125,000 32-pixel triangles/s, raw or with 2 textures and lighting (32-pixel divided from peak fillrate)
    • 485,416 triangles per frame at 60 frame/s
    • 970,833 triangles per frame at 30 frame/s
  • Realistic triangle performance: 7,812,500–21,875,000 32-pixel triangles/s, with 2 textures, lighting, Z-buffering, fogging and alpha blending (32-pixel divided from realistic fillrate)
    • 130,208–364,583 triangles per frame at 60 frame/s
    • 260,416–729,166 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
  • Performance is comparable to the GeForce 3 Ti500 desktop GPU

Storage

• 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 with FATX file system
  • Optional 32 MB memory card for saved game file transfer

Audio

• 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

Connectivity

The Xbox has a standard AC in, A/V connector and Ethernet port.

• 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
• Resolutions: 480i, 480p, 576i, 576p, 720p, 1080i
• Controller ports: 4 proprietary USB 1.1 ports

Physical specifications

• Weight: 3.86 kg (8.5 lb)
• Dimensions: 320 × 100 × 260 mm (12.5 × 4 × 10.5 in)^[3]

References

1. "Anandtech Microsoft's Xbox". Anandtech.com. Retrieved 2010-11-11.
2. Graphics Processor Specifications, IGN, 2001
3. Original Xbox Technical Specifications Archived October 10, 2010, at the Wayback Machine.