Intel to shelve new desktop, server chips

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Do you often discuss such things with Bill Gates?

MS's decision to use PPC on the X-Box has nothing to do with if Intel sucks or not; it is a business decision. Did it occur to you that they also did not use an AMD64 chip? AMD would not be Intel, would it? x86 is the cheap desktop 32 bit processor so that is what Windows is written for. Apples are more expensive for a reason (not necessarily because they are better).

Thinking that you would design a product around a CPU would be the case of narrow vision. Designing embedded systems isn't done by simply choosing a CPU and building your system around it. It is probably more the case that the *other* components of the motherboard when combined with CPU is the reason that MS picked the 64 bit PPC. When designing an embedded system motherboard you don't need to worry about backwards compatibility with prior version of Windows or if someone's printer driver and modem with work with it so you can make some cost cutting decisions that you would otherwise not make. I'd be willing to bet that even if the new X-Box used Pentiums that you would not be able to install a common version of Windows on it and expect it to work. A lot of embedded systems are designed using PPC cores and so there might have been more support for a G5 in the embedded component market, that may have also had something to do with the decision.

That, and possibly the fact that everyone will need to buy new versions of all of the favorite MS X-Box games to run on the new X-Box. If they used another P4 that would not happen. >:) Sorry, I could not help but slide that one in.

Posted by: balsover   Posted on: 05/10/04 You are currently: a Guest | Members login | Terms of Use

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