AOU 09: Sega's new arcade hardware

You might have heard rumors about a new piece of hardware from Sega called either Ringedge or Ringwide. Well, they're not rumors anymore! Sega officially announced both Ringedge and Ringwide today at AOU. They'll be serving as the company's next generation arcade hardware.

Yes, Sega is developing two separate boards. Ringedge appears to be the higher end of the two, with Sega's press release stating that it's on the technological forefront. Ringwide, on the other hand, promises "cost performance," suggesting it will be more of a budget board.

Both boards have some similarities. They both promise a 30% cost down over Sega's current boards. Game development is based off Windows PC. Additionally, the two will support the ALL.Net networking system.

The first game to utilize Ringedge is Border Break, which is being demoed here at AOU only to a few select guests (I'm not one of them, so don't expect impressions or anything). This title will see release some time this year. Both boards have already entered production.

Here are the specs as listed in Sega's press materials. I'm not much of a techie, so excuse me if some of my translations from the Japanese are strange.

RINGEDGE:

The two new arcade boards from Sega

CPU

Intel Pentium Processor E2160 running at 1.8GHz

Main Memory

DDR2 SDRAM PC2-6400 1GB

GPU

NVIDIA GPU, GDDR3 Memory 384MB, Shader Model 4.0, Output to two screens, max resolution 1920 x 1200

Sound

High definition audio, 192KHz/32bit, 5.1ch output

Storage

SATA SSSD 32GB

OS

Microsoft Windows Embedded Standard 2009

RINGWIDE:

CPU

Intel Celeron Processor 440 at 2GHz

Main Memory

DDR2 SDRAM PC2-5300 1GB

GPU

AMD GPU, GDDR3 Memory 128MB, Shader Model 4.0, Output to two screens, max resolution 1920 x 1200

Sound

High definition audio, 192KHz/32bit, 5.1ch output

Storage

CF 8GB

OS

Microsoft Windows Embedded Standard 2009