Xbox 2 chip finished

THE XBOX 2 CHIP MIGHT be already finished, according to a German web site. According to Gamestar.de, the graphics core is finalised and it may be used by both XboX 2 and a future Nintendo console. It seems that both Microsoft and Nintendo will license the same marchitecture and it's possible we will end up with the same graphic chip for both consoles.

Knowing Microsoft, I don't see this happening and I would imagine that Nintendo might flee from ATI due to the nature of the Microsoft-ATI deal. I don't think that Microsoft would be happy knowing that Nintendo would have the same core.

Last time I heard, this chip was codenamed R500, not the R520 that will be used for graphic cards only and will be directly derived from the R520 "Fudo" chip. We can expect at least Shader 3.0+ compatibility but we are not sure about the chip's specification.

We were told not to expect this console before the end of 2005 so it's still quite some way away.

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