the PS3 excitement got started so early. read it! 1000x PS2!

[megadrive]

the Playstation 3 annoucements started before PlayStation 2 hit Japan.

here's the Next Generation magazine, December 1999 article about PS3. was it the first time we got any info on PS3? no. almost. but it was probably the first major article in a major U.S. gaming magazine about PS3. there were articles and info on the internet before the Dec '99 Next Gen mag hit news stands. well anyway, here's the magazine article for you to enjoy.


thanks to Shogmaster on GAF for scanning these:

http://img111.exs.cx/img111/5751/ps319sa.jpg

http://img111.exs.cx/img111/9094/ps327zv.jpg

[Nfactor]

I have that issue, and I fondely remember just how great Next Generation Magazine was, I was a yearly subscriber. It shows you that Playstation 3 is going to be a absolute monster of a system. Future history told in the past. 5 1/2 years later, bam, there it is.

[TEEDA]

yup and right now Nvidia announced ps3 to be only 50 times more powerfull than the actual ps2 .

[Rallyracr420]

The graphics processor is only 50x more powerful. I'm sure Ken Kutaragi was talking about PS3's CPU, aka Cell. Sony hasn't released any info on how many Cells will be in the PS3 or how much data they'll be able to process. I'm guessing alot more info will be released in January to counter MS's XBox2 unveiling.

[megadrive]

true.

Sony, Ken Kutaragi, other Sony top brass all said that PlayStation3 would have 1000 times the performance of PlayStation2. that was in 1999, 2000, 2001 and 2002.

they seemed to have backed off those statements, at least somewhat, in 2003 and 2004. I am not saying they've taken their words back, but I am saying they are not tooting the '1000 x PS2' horn as loudly or as often.

now Nvidia's CEO comes out to say that they expect PS3's graphics processor to be in the area of 50 times more powerful than the PS2 graphic chip, Graphics Synthesizer. but that could mean almost anything. much like Sony's 1000x PS2 claims.

we'll have to read Sony and now Nvidia's wording very carefully from now on, as PS3 is now just almost on the horizon (Xbox2 should see its dawn at CES or GDC) and PS3's dawn at E3 and fall TGS.

[Rallyracr420]

God I hate waiting. Sony needs to feed us news more often.

[Dralor]

You should know by now that is how the game is played never let the competitor see your hand until it is to late. Along those lines for all we know the reason the are't blowing the x1000 horn is lul Microsoft into thinking they didn't reach their performance goals. :P

[semiconductor]

PS3 is going down,no 1Tflops,no 512MB ram(it can be only 128MB mainram),only 32Mb ram videocache.There is no way we see photorealistic render Graphics,for that we need a big texture memory,
only a high polygocount cannot push good graphics,perhaps if the
nvidia/cell combination can make raytraycing effects in realtime,it can be nice.

Ps.:The 1000x faster speak was a pure marketing show.

[Domination]

PS3 is going down,no 1Tflops,no 512MB ram(it can be only 128MB mainram),only
32Mb ram videocache.There is no way we see photorealistic render
Graphics,for that we need a big texture memory, only a high polygocount
cannot push good graphics,perhaps if the nvidia/cell combination can
make raytraycing effects in realtime,it can be nice.

Ps.:The 1000x faster speak was a pure marketing show.

I'm not saying you're wrong, but how can you be so sure of any
of this when you, too, haven't seen it.? :?

[GTShotoKen]

Hey guys, Do you all remeber the controversy over the PS2's advanced architecture allowing it to have the capability to launch a nuclear missle.? Ahhhh, good times. :lol:

I thought it kind of funny because if the PS2 can launch a missle then what can the PS3 do.............create wormholes? lol :lol:

[julps31]

PS3 is going down,no 1Tflops,no 512MB ram(it can be only 128MB mainram),only 32Mb ram videocache.There is no way we see photorealistic render Graphics,for that we need a big texture memory,
only a high polygocount cannot push good graphics,perhaps if the
nvidia/cell combination can make raytraycing effects in realtime,it can be nice.

Ps.:The 1000x faster speak was a pure marketing show.
Is it me or does Semiconductor kinda you of deadmeat? Anyway I remember reading something like that in an old issue of PSM back in 1999 and I still haven't forgot that issue.

[The_One]

PS3 is going down,no 1Tflops,no 512MB ram(it can be only 128MB mainram),only 32Mb ram videocache.There is no way we see photorealistic render Graphics,for that we need a big texture memory,
only a high polygocount cannot push good graphics,perhaps if the
nvidia/cell combination can make raytraycing effects in realtime,it can be nice.

Ps.:The 1000x faster speak was a pure marketing show.
Is it me or does Semiconductor kinda you of deadmeat? Anyway I remember reading something like that in an old issue of PSM back in 1999 and I still haven't forgot that issue. What are you talking about? semiconductor has been a faithful member of this forum way back when the site was still called PS3i... That was also before Deadmeat showed up too :roll:. He's simply expressing his views, nothing wrong with that. Heck, even 128MB of XDR RAM is a lot -- compared to 128MB of DDR at least :mrgreen:.

[Rallyracr420]

Why would there be a limit at 128MB ram?

[kevindenoyette]

i'm going to go out on a limb here, but damn it i'll eat my own shoe if it comes with less than 256 mb ram.

[Nfactor]

If all goes well, I think they'll go with a minimum of 512mb of XDR-Ram, maybe even 1Gb if were lucky and I have faith IBM & Sony have economically has they can fabricate this machine well enough for this to be a real possiblity. E3 I can't wait :)

[Rallyracr420]

I doubt 1GB just because Sony always tries to go as cheap as possible on ram. Didn't the original PS have like 2MB system ram and 1MB video (or close to it)? And the PS2 has 32...way less than what it could have used. The PSP originally had only 8MB of ram but the game company devs all said that was ridiculous.

I think it depends on how the XBox2 does. If it does well Sony might up the ram on the PS3 just to have better specs. Other than that my money is on 256MB.

[amod20002004]

I think we will able to see playable version of ps3 at E3. And on that time we might get complete specification of ps3. [I am confused here. I don’t know exact time about the playable version of ps3. Is it at E32005 or TGS2005]

[Stelio]

i'm going to go out on a limb here, but damn it i'll eat my own shoe if it comes with less than 256 mb ram.


:lol:
If you're wrong, it would bring new meaning to eating your words. Hey, do any of you remember when earlier this past summer there was a bet between a couple of reporters on CNN (I forget the bet was over :s) and the loser was to eat his own shoe? Well, after the reporter who sugguested that idea lost the bet, you guessed it, he ate his own shoe on national tv. It was hillarious. They boiled the shoe b4 he ate it. Of course he didnt eat much of it, it was still great. Make sure you use plenty of spices buddy, I hear it doesnt taste too nice :p

[Z]

It is more speculated that we’ll see a demo at E3, and MAYBE playable at TGS. Things might change, but keep inmind that seeing the final specd is highly unlikely. The most recent example is PSP. It changed since its E3 unveiling, both in looks and specs- most notably the RAM doubled 4 times from 4 to 32!!
I think it will be a more of a ‘teaser’ than the final version. After all, PS3 is roughly a year and a half away, at best.

[Stelio]

It changed since its E3 unveiling, both in looks and specs- most notably the RAM doubled 4 times from 4 to 32!!

:lol: Perhaps you already know that 4 to 32 is quite a bit more than 4 times? :lol: I know, I know...typo :wink:

It's a safe bet that PS3 is infact going to be the most powerful system on the market as far as next gen systems are concerned. Although all three systems are going to be great, rest assured that PS3 will once again dominate the industry. Some rather interesting rumors...Xbox Next or whatever its going to be called is going to be the least powerful. Albeit not by much. Similar to what PS2 is to Gamecube. This will become a war of marketing more than anything else between all three companies.

I remember a time, back when I was playing RE2 on PS1 and seeing a cutscene on with a bunch of (from what I recall) SWAT special teams rushing a laboratory where a couple of scientists were creating the T-virus. The lead scientist got shot and the SWAT members left with a briefcase of stuff (either the T-virus, cure, data, or something). Anyway, What I'm getting at is I thought that was the most incredible cutscene I had ever seen at the time. I always wanted to see a game with those GFX come out. PS2 is able to pull that off now with no problems (minus the lighting). I have no doubt that PS3 will do the same with Onimusha 1 intro to say the least (give or take a few things), but with all the "trickery" programmers can do to decieve our eyes, I do believe we're in for a treat. :D

[Rallyracr420]

It is more speculated that we’ll see a demo at E3, and MAYBE playable at TGS. Things might change, but keep inmind that seeing the final specd is highly unlikely. The most recent example is PSP. It changed since its E3 unveiling, both in looks and specs- most notably the RAM doubled 4 times from 4 to 32!!
I think it will be a more of a ‘teaser’ than the final version. After all, PS3 is roughly a year and a half away, at best.

I'm 90% sure the PSP started with 8MB of mem and not 4MB. Even so, going from 4 to 32 only doubles the amount of memory 3 times (not 4) But Sony never even thought about 16MB...they went right from 8 to 32.

[Z]

It changed since its E3 unveiling, both in looks and specs- most notably the RAM doubled 4 times from 4 to 32!!

:lol: Perhaps you already know that 4 to 32 is quite a bit more than 4 times? :lol: I know, I know...typo :wink:
no, I didn't say 'multiplyed'. I said 'doubled'. that means multiplyed by 2, eight times. slik, huh 8)


Xbox Next or whatever its going to be called is going to be the least powerful. Albeit not by much.

as time goes by, I have more and more serious doubt about Ninty. and their statements about graphics, power and technicalities being unimportant only adds to my suspicions.

[Stelio]

:lol: Perhaps you already know that 4 to 32 is quite a bit more than 4 times? :lol: I know, I know...typo :wink: [/quote]
no, I didn't say 'multiplyed'. I said 'doubled'. that means multiplyed by 2, eight times. slik, huh 8)


LOL - I dig...

[The_One]

i'm going to go out on a limb here, but damn it i'll eat my own shoe if it comes with less than 256 mb ram. Well, don't hold your breath. My bets still on 128MB. 256MB IF they figure out some way to drastically reduce the price of the RAM (Sony switched from 512Mb to 256Mb simply for the reason of price -- Price IS a bottleneck, despite what most people think about Sony).

[cpiasminc]

Well, don't hold your breath. My bets still on 128MB. 256MB IF they figure out some way to drastically reduce the price of the RAM (Sony switched from 512Mb to 256Mb simply for the reason of price -- Price IS a bottleneck, despite what most people think about Sony).
True, but I'd rather they cut back a little on the CPU and give us more RAM than cut back on RAM and give us a powerful CPU that can't be well fed. The biggest motivation for more RAM is simply the HD resolution aim. There's no way that you can do with 256x256 textures if you're going to be targeting 1080i. Because of the interlacing, though, 1024x1024 is really just about enough. And that's especially terrible if you have HDR textures and HDR render contexts. I mean, an HDR render context at 1920x1080 by itself is 31.6 MB. Although, if it's guaranteeably for HDTV exclusively you can technically get by with a 1920x540 render context. Even otherwise, you need to be able to allocate memory blocks for potentially up to 16 MB textures (1024 HDR).

ATI is only putting a little bit of eDRAM on their GPU, which is why Microsoft is shooting to go for at least 512 MB main memory on Xenon. 512 would be nice on PS3, but with XDR, it sounds infinitely unlikely.

[kevindenoyette]

i'm going to go out on a limb here, but damn it i'll eat my own shoe if it comes with less than 256 mb ram. Well, don't hold your breath. My bets still on 128MB. 256MB IF they figure out some way to drastically reduce the price of the RAM (Sony switched from 512Mb to 256Mb simply for the reason of price -- Price IS a bottleneck, despite what most people think about Sony).

I hear ya, but I meant 256 atleast, for total onboard ram. I think sony would risk too much by putting 128 mb in, masses would think xenon and others overpower it, cause they don't know about xdr.

[senas8]

Well a year from now ram is going to be cheap ...alot cheaper from todays price!

[cpiasminc]

Well a year from now ram is going to be cheap ...alot cheaper from todays price!
Granted, but RAM never goes down in price, up in speed, up in capacity as quickly as CPUs. Typically, it's about 3x slower growth.

Besides which, how many manufacturers produce XDR DRAMs -- how many other high volume platforms will run on XDR? In that light, Xenon has a small price advantage in using DDR2/3 because almost every RAM manufacturer will be continually ramping up DDR2 production over the next few years.

[Brandon]

Well a year from now ram is going to be cheap ...alot cheaper from todays price!
Granted, but RAM never goes down in price, up in speed, up in capacity as quickly as CPUs. Typically, it's about 3x slower growth.

Besides which, how many manufacturers produce XDR DRAMs -- how many other high volume platforms will run on XDR? In that light, Xenon has a small price advantage in using DDR2/3 because almost every RAM manufacturer will be continually ramping up DDR2 production over the next few years.
Yes, but XDR DRAM is superior to DDR to a great extent, and I'm only going to buy one PS3, so I don't mind spending a little more on a system supporting superior RAM for better performance ;)

XDR DRAM uses Rambus' XDR memory interface technology, formerly code-named Yellowstone. Running at 3.2GHz, XDR DRAM offers 8x the bandwidth of today's best-in-class PC memory. As Rambus announced earlier this year [2003], Sony Corporation and Sony Computer Entertainment Inc. have licensed the XDR memory interface for utilization in future broadband applications with "Cell."

Initially XDR DRAM will be offered at 3.2GHz with a roadmap to 6.4GHz and beyond, enabling memory system bandwidths up to 100GB/s. XDR DRAM will be available in multiple speed bins, device densities, and device widths. With densities ranging from 256Mb to 8Gb, and device widths ranging from x1 to x32, XDR DRAM satisfies the needs of both high-bandwidth and high-capacity systems. XDR memory's novel matrix topology allows point-to-point differential data interconnects to scale to multi-GHz speeds, while the bussed address and command signals allow a scalable range of memory system capacity supporting from one to 36 DRAM devices.

[cpiasminc]

Yes, but XDR DRAM is superior to DDR to a great extent, and I'm only going to buy one PS3, so I don't mind spending a little more on a system supporting superior RAM for better performance ;)

Actually, I was referring to the price on the part of the manufacturer who intends to put x amount of RAM into a machine. In that range of 256 MB up to 1024 MB is generally where you tend to cross that line of 1:1 cost difference. That is to say, there's a point in that range where doubling your RAM from here on out means more than double the cost. I'm not sure if it's 256->512 or 384->768 or wherever... but it's there somewhere, IIRC. And it exists because the higher capacity incurs the need for more total DRAMs and hence, more motherboard complexity -- something that really depends on the density that can be achieved and how small the whole unit itself needs to be. The main thing is that Sony needs to put in some decent amount of RAM into the PS3, but they need to be able to fit it within a certain price point.

There is the fact that with RDRAM, you had prices starting out more than double the price of DDR, and then eventually came down to total parity with DDR, and Sony just bore the cost with PS2 knowing that it wouldn't be a problem for good... theoretically, that could happen again with XDR, but the difference this time is that there's no major PC platform driven by XDR like there was with RDRAM (Intel), so it's doubtful that history could repeat itself.

And with Xenon, Microsoft has the advantage of going with a memory platform that will eventually be used throughout the PC market and is already used on Intel's current top-end platforms. So there's a guarantee that it will come down in price.

[megadrive]

It is more speculated that we’ll see a demo at E3, and MAYBE playable at TGS. Things might change, but keep inmind that seeing the final specd is highly unlikely. The most recent example is PSP. It changed since its E3 unveiling, both in looks and specs- most notably the RAM doubled 4 times from 4 to 32!!
I think it will be a more of a ‘teaser’ than the final version. After all, PS3 is roughly a year and a half away, at best.

I'm 90% sure the PSP started with 8MB of mem and not 4MB. Even so, going from 4 to 32 only doubles the amount of memory 3 times (not 4) But Sony never even thought about 16MB...they went right from 8 to 32.


PSP originally had a total of 12 MB memory. I think 8 MB of that was main memory. but all of this memory, 12 MB was embedded onto PSP's SoC.

*now* the PSP has a total 36 MB memory. only 4 MB of it is embedded. the other 32 MB is external main memory.

so, Sony has tripled the amount of total memory in PSP. from 12 MB to 36 MB, but have reduced the amount of memory that was embedded from 12 MB to 4 MB.

[Danji Ikari]

Man, that picture of dark cloud is horrible compared to the final product..

The PS3 is going to have demos (non-playable) at E3 2005 and playable ones at TGS 2005 according to the Sony Roadmap. Also I do think that it will come with 256MB of XDR-RAM. I don't think it's possible that there will be more but it is more possible that there will be less.

I am really anticipating a full spec list, more so than I have ever anticipated anything regarding consoles or hardware.

[The_One]

True, but I'd rather they cut back a little on the CPU and give us more RAM than cut back on RAM and give us a powerful CPU that can't be well fed. I agree. No point in having a powerful CPU if it can't be utilized to it's full potential, eh ;)?
I hear ya, but I meant 256 atleast, for total onboard ram. I think sony would risk too much by putting 128 mb in, masses would think xenon and others overpower it, cause they don't know about xdr. Agreed. PS3 will need at least 256MB in total RAM, excluding eDRAM.