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The original Xbox switched from an AMD to Intel CPU at the last second as AMD engineers watched the reveal from the front row

canderous

canderous

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Jun 12, 2020
8,701




Thought this was an interesting bit of history. I can only imagine how gutted those AMD engineers would've been to find out this way, especially since those original demos were running on AMD hardware they helped develop. Obviously all water under the bridge now since Xbox 360, Xbox One, and Xbox Series all use AMD hardware. Also based on the replies the swap was not for technical reasons, just a relationship/politics thing.
 

Deleted member 17184

User-requested account closure
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Oct 27, 2017
5,240
And it's interesting because the development of the Xbox 360 started in 2003, I think? Not too long after the OG Xbox.
 
Fisty

Fisty

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Oct 25, 2017
20,235
He kinda skirts around it, but it doesn't seem like he's taking ownership of the actual switcheroo. I can definitely understand the cringe at having to present that but hopefully it was just him as messenger lol
 
Vagabond

Vagabond

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Oct 26, 2017
3,329
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Was it AMD+ATi or AMD+nVidia?

I do remember the threads when it was leaked that the CPU in the silver X was actually AMD, but I think it still used a nVidia GPU
 
scitek

scitek

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Oct 27, 2017
10,077
It's something AMD never recovered from and one of the reasons they have little involvement in the console business today.
 
Elandyll

Elandyll

Avenger
Oct 25, 2017
8,828
Funny considering MS famously pulled another "fast one" with the 360 after that, literally getting IBM engineers to help them use chips co-developped between Sony/ IBM and Toshiba, with secret meetings involved.
Another wild story...

The_Race_Game_Machine_x200.jpg
 
Mabase

Mabase

Member
Oct 29, 2017
1,040
Jeezus that's brutal. Heart-breaking. I mean come on, can you at least tell these poor folks right before the show and let them exit to help them save face?
 
Bill Gaitas

Bill Gaitas

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Oct 25, 2017
2,673
Well, at least Sega cut ties with 3Dfx before the proper announcement of the Dreamcast, doing this on the day of the announcement is brutal.
 
hikarutilmitt

hikarutilmitt

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Dec 16, 2017
11,429
Yeah I remember hearing about this and felt super horrible for the AMD folks who were there and the MS people who might not have know prior.

To be fair the 360 only used AMD hardware because AMD acquired ATI the year after the 360 launched. The fact the consoles after that generation both use more or less the same hardware is actually weird but a good move for AMD.
 
Herne

Herne

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Dec 10, 2017
5,319
DopeyFish said:
and that one is because 3Dfx decided to run their mouth. They doomed their company when they likely had it in the bag.

Idiots, all of them.
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While I'm sure that helped Sega's decision, wasn't that more of yet another Sega of Japan vs. Sega of America thing? Japan developed a chipset with NEC, America with 3dfx.

As is my understanding?
 
DopeyFish

DopeyFish

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Oct 25, 2017
10,796
Herne said:
While I'm sure that helped Sega's decision, wasn't that more of yet another Sega of Japan vs. Sega of America thing? Japan developed a chipset with NEC, America with 3dfx.

As is my understanding?
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3Dfx announced they were working with Sega and that pissed Sega off as it basically confirmed the Dreamcast.

3Dfx was the best in the business, so it was their contract to lose, and they did.
 
Herne

Herne

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Dec 10, 2017
5,319
DopeyFish said:
3Dfx announced they were working with Sega and that pissed Sega off as it basically confirmed the Dreamcast.

3Dfx was the best in the business, so it was their contract to lose, and they did.
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Sure, but it's my understanding that Sega Japan had been developing a chipset with NEC for PowerVR, while simultaneously Sega America had been developing a chipset with 3dfx. It was more likely for Sega of Japan to pick a Japanese company to work with, so while I understand that 3dfx destroyed any chance of their project going forward I'm not convinced they absolutely had it in the bag. Sega of Japan had a tendency to overrule their American branch even when they had better strategies.
 
BabyDontHurtMe

BabyDontHurtMe

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Dec 9, 2018
21,125
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It goes to show how last minute this industry could be sometimes, at least back then. There was a similar story when Nintendo partnered with Sony to make a CD add-on for the SNES but later partnered with Philips without telling them, and the rest, as they say, is history. The original Xbox has such a fascinating development history.
 

Fafalada

Member
Oct 27, 2017
3,067
Lagspike_exe said:
Intel was competitive in 2000
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"Competitive" is stretching it as far as consoles go. That chip was one of the reasons original XBox was a lossy venture for its entire time on the market. Then again a lot of other parts in it were stupidly pricey - including NVidia's chip...

Herne said:
Japan developed a chipset with NEC, America with 3dfx.
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Interesting - I never did associate PowerVR with Japanese branding - but indeed all the GPU chips back then were NEC.
Politics or not though - it for once led to picking the better tech (albeit, 3DFX possibly could have gotten them more dev-support early on).
 
Koukalaka

Koukalaka

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Oct 28, 2017
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scitek said:
It's something AMD never recovered from and one of the reasons they have little involvement in the console business today.
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Joking aside, AMD have had an insane turnaround in under a decade.

I remember tons of "AMD are doomed" articles which made it sound like we'd only have Intel in the high-end CPU space and Nvidia in the GPU space in the near future.
 
Bill Gaitas

Bill Gaitas

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Oct 25, 2017
2,673
Koukalaka said:
Joking aside, AMD have had an insane turnaround in under a decade.

I remember tons of "AMD are doomed" articles which may it sound like we'd only have Intel in the high-end CPU space and Nvidia in the GPU space in the near future.
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The Bulldozer days really were something, it's impressive how Zen turned them around.
 
Koukalaka

Koukalaka

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Oct 28, 2017
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Herne said:
Sure, but it's my understanding that Sega Japan had been developing a chipset with NEC for PowerVR, while simultaneously Sega America had been developing a chipset with 3dfx. It was more likely for Sega of Japan to pick a Japanese company to work with, so while I understand that 3dfx destroyed any chance of their project going forward I'm not convinced they absolutely had it in the bag. Sega of Japan had a tendency to overrule their American branch even when they had better strategies.
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SEGA in the 90s was some wild shit, it's incredible that a major, global company was run like that. That Peter Moore story about him telling Yuji Naka to go fuck himself and the translator telling him there's no real way to say that in Japanese cracks me up every time.
 
Futaleufu

Futaleufu

Banned
Jan 12, 2018
3,910
IIRC it was Pentium III vs Athlons at the time, with the former having a great performance advantage over the AMD products. However, it wasn't long before AMD launched the Athlon XPs and later the Athlon 64 CPUs, and those were a lot better bang for your buck than any of the early Pentium 4 processors.
 
jroc74

jroc74

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Oct 27, 2017
28,999
Damn, and I thought MS started going hard with stuff like this with the development of the 360.

Elandyll said:
Funny considering MS famously pulled another "fast one" with the 360 after that, literally getting IBM engineers to help them use chips co-developped between Sony/ IBM and Toshiba, with secret meetings involved.
Another wild story...

The_Race_Game_Machine_x200.jpg
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I see I wasnt the only one remembering this, lol.
 
Kalem

Kalem

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May 23, 2019
444
Futaleufu said:
IIRC it was Pentium III vs Athlons at the time, with the former having a great performance advantage over the AMD products. However, it wasn't long before AMD launched the Athlon XPs and later the Athlon 64 CPUs, and those were a lot better bang for your buck than any of the early Pentium 4 processors.
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Not really, the 733MHz Pentiums of the era were on par with the Athlon 700s, but the Xbox got the half-cache version so it definitely took a little bit of a dive there.
 
DopeyFish

DopeyFish

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Oct 25, 2017
10,796
Herne said:
Sure, but it's my understanding that Sega Japan had been developing a chipset with NEC for PowerVR, while simultaneously Sega America had been developing a chipset with 3dfx. It was more likely for Sega of Japan to pick a Japanese company to work with, so while I understand that 3dfx destroyed any chance of their project going forward I'm not convinced they absolutely had it in the bag. Sega of Japan had a tendency to overrule their American branch even when they had better strategies.
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nah, under the circumstances it was absolutely no contest. 3Dfx at that moment were well beyond every other company.

It's really sad, too... because that action basically inadvertently also dragged Sega out of the console market because their product was no longer competitive and Sega technically acted out of line and had to pay 3Dfx when 3dfx sued them. On top of that? Electronic Arts was furious over it and buried Sega because of them dropping 3Dfx which led to Sony having all the EA Sports games and Sega having none.

It was the dumbest self own by 3dfx and even dumber self own by Sega.
 
Herne

Herne

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Dec 10, 2017
5,319
Futaleufu said:
IIRC it was Pentium III vs Athlons at the time, with the former having a great performance advantage over the AMD products. However, it wasn't long before AMD launched the Athlon XPs and later the Athlon 64 CPUs, and those were a lot better bang for your buck than any of the early Pentium 4 processors.
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I think your timing is a little off, I remember Athlon's destroying Pentium III and especially IV performance before the XP series arrived. Specifically the 1GHz Thunderbird was a hugely successful product for AMD. The XP's came later after the Pentium III had stopped being produced.
 
jelly

jelly

Banned
Oct 26, 2017
33,841
Didn't Microsoft get taken to the cleaners by Intel and Nvidia for Xbox, maybe it was more the latter but basically the price of the parts never went down and they wouldn't negotiate with Microsoft so the original Xbox was bleeding money like crazy until the end.
 
steejee

steejee

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Oct 28, 2017
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Intel was all about throwing its weight around to keep AMD from gaining ground in those days. I remember working an IT job and having the Dell sales reps straight up lie to me repeatedly about why they didn't have any AMD chips.
 
Futaleufu

Futaleufu

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Jan 12, 2018
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Kalem said:
Not really, the 733MHz Pentiums of the era were on par with the Athlon 700s, but the Xbox got the half-cache version so it definitely took a little bit of a dive there.
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Herne said:
I think your timing is a little off, I remember Athlon's destroying Pentium III and especially IV performance before the XP series arrived. Specifically the 1GHz Thunderbird was a hugely successful product for AMD. The XP's came later after the Pentium III had stopped being produced.
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You are right, I just watched some benchmarks and by early 2000 the tide was already changing in AMD's favor. I must've been remembering the Pentium 2 vs K-6 era.

So instead of going with the performance leader MS decided to go with Intel for other reasons, that costed them a lot of money
 

Lagspike_exe

Banned
Dec 15, 2017
1,974
Fafalada said:
"Competitive" is stretching it as far as consoles go. That chip was one of the reasons original XBox was a lossy venture for its entire time on the market. Then again a lot of other parts in it were stupidly pricey - including NVidia's chip...


Interesting - I never did associate PowerVR with Japanese branding - but indeed all the GPU chips back then were NEC.
Politics or not though - it for once led to picking the better tech (albeit, 3DFX possibly could have gotten them more dev-support early on).
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I wanted to say that Intel was more competitive vs. AMD and IBM in 2000 than 2003.
 
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