More 360:PS3 Graphics Comparisons/Info (Watch Impress Article)

[xbdestroya]

Ok, well I should have seen this earlier to be honest - but I'm seeing it now and thought I'd post it here.

Anyway this is from the ever-interesting 'Game Impress' Japanese site, with the heads up and mini-synopsis provided by the legendary 'One.'

I've provided his mini-synopsis below, but I've included a direct link to the original article and Babelfish, which you'll want to use to translate it. (It's big and long... and slightly technical, so not for everyone) Try to keep questions reasonable and console trashing to a minimum!

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Zenji Nishikawa has uploaded the latest issue of his article series about 3D game technologies. The subject of this article is the concern about sub-HD rendering in the next-gen consoles. Since most issues explained by Nishikawa in the article have already been discussed in this forum I make a summary of them. It also contains anonymous developers' quotes, all of which I translate here.

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The RAM bandwidth of Xbox 360 GPU is almost equal to RADEON X1600 XT and shared with CPU by UMA.
Without the eDRAM pixel processor doing 4xMSAA, the fillrate of the GPU core itself is 4 billion texel/sec and almost equal to GeForce 7600 GT.
While the Xbox 360 has a 3.5 times broader bandwidth than the original Xbox, 720p pixels require a 3 times broader memory bandwidth. It leaves only 0.5 times headroom which is insufficient for multiple texture lookups by complex shaders.
eDRAM is implemented to mitigate the impact of the low memory bandwidth. But FP10 + 2xMSAA requires Predicated Tiling.
Tile rendering has many performance demerits.

In games with many chracters like N3 the cost of overlapped geometry grows large unless LOD is implemented.
Lens effect, refraction, HDR effects such as bloom and glare, and other frame buffer filtering cause overlapped drawing near tile boundaries.
Objects that cross boundaries can't use the cache efficiently.
CPU L2 cache locking is practically unusable.
Since textures are stored in the shared 512MB RAM, regardless of the eDRAM size or use of tile rendering, texture lookup consumes the shared memory bandwidth. Normal mapping and shadow mapping require many texture lookups.
So the last resort is to use Display Controller to upscale the image without using tile rendering, for example rendering FP10-32bit / 960*540 / 2xMSAA / 32bit Z (8MB).


Developer A: Even 2xMSAA is not required by Microsoft anymore.

Developer B: FP10-32bit / 880x720 / 32bit Z / 2xMSAA (9.9MB) rendered to look right when upscaled to 16:9 is also possible.

Developer C: You can render it in a certain low-res then to display it you can create a 720p frame by your own shader. In converting the original low-res frame into a 720p frame by the shader you can do color dithering, which may result in smooth color expression or alleviation of the resolution deficiency in FP10.

Developer D: At any rate I want to reduce jaggies. Since the eDRAM pixel processor is penalty-free upto 4xMSAA, it will be interesting if it's fully exploited. Though it becomes 640x480 with 4xMSAA and FP10-32bit if it's not tile-rendered, aliasing-free images will be totally different from what we have seen in older games.

Developer E: If you think HDR rendering as a premise, PS3 is worse than Xbox 360.


Since PS3 doesn't support FP10-32bit buffer, if FP16-64bit HDR is used it requires twice the bandwidth of Xbox 360 but PS3 doesn't have eDRAM like Xbox 360 to mitigate the impact. It's possible that pseudo-HDR employed in Xbox and DX8 that use a conventional 32bit buffer (8bit int per ARGB) is often used in PS3. Besides the display controller may be used to upscale sub-HD images to a HD resolution.

Developer F: As for resolution I think if it's modest it's OK. Since RSX in the PS3 is a shader monster, adding more information to a pixel by executing ultra-advanced shader and then antialiasing it completely must make it look more real. I'd like to give priority to the reality charged in one pixel rather than to HD resolution.


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http://babelfish.altavista.com/

http://www.watch.impress.co.jp/game/docs/20060426/3dhd.htm

[LaLiLuLeLo]

And this means...what in laymens terms?

[Old_Timer!]

so it seems the eDram in the Xbox allows for better HDR! where is our resident Dev (Cpi) lol

[xbdestroya]

Wow you guys are slow to pick up on the meaning of this - worse HDR for RSX is hardly even scratching the surface of what's being said here. I just don't want to be the one to steer anyone to any conclusions. :smoke:

[LaLiLuLeLo]

Wow you guys are slow to pick up on the meaning of this - worse HDR for RSX is hardly even scratching the surface of what's being said here. I just don't want to be the one to steer anyone to any conclusions. :smoke:

WELL EXCUUUSE ME for being a mere mortal!
Please just spell it out man.

[diOndOrAntt]

I think hes saying that the performance of the ATI gpu isnt that good :monster:

[NeoPlayStation]

Anyone know of any Xbox 360 games that are being upscaled (except PGR3)?

[xbdestroya]

Well, basically the 360/Xenos architecture is in a lot of ways ill-equipped to handle output at 720p. I don't want to put more emphasis on things than already provided in the quoted text above, but basically devs are saying the tile-rendering is not delivering on it's promises, in part due to the overall architecture of the 360.

For starters, remember the MEMEXPORT functinality in 360? Well maybe a lot of you don't; but basically it's either MEMEXPORT or tiling - you can't effectively use both at once. So between the two, that basically means no MEMEXPORT if you want a competetive looking game. So it basically becomes a non-feature.

The devs quoted/paraphrased are also talking about the overall memory bottlenecks within 360 due to the UMA architecture, and in particular about the bandwidth constraints when trying to do multiple texture lookups.

For RSX's part, they point out what we've talked about for quite some time here - that bandwidth is a concern. They say that HDR in particular should put a severe strain on the bandwidth, but then point out that alternative means of HDR rendering (such as methods similar to NAO32) will circumvent the problem in the situations in which they are used, due to the excess of pixel shading power.

[LiquidEagle]

The lack of a true translation definitely isn't helping at all :'(

From that synopsis though, it seems like the 360's hardware has some real issues if you want premium effects added to the game, but yet that small amount of eDRAM helps it over the PS3 when it comes to HDR...

meh, I give up, this is really hard to understand for me. If they're implying that HDR can't be really done on PS3, why does MGS4 have it?

[Arnaud_M]

What I can decipher is:

* Xbox 360 has just enough bandwidth to accomodate the upgrade in resolution from Xbox 1, not much more for fancy effects (could justify the "Xbox 1.5" nickname ;-))

* For instance, complex textures (such as ones using color, bumps, *and* shadow maps) are difficult to use together due to bandwidth limitations. But some of them may be easily use at the same time.

* PS3 also have shortcomings, particularly because high dynamic range rendering will impose a much severe penalty than on Xbox 360 in terms of bandwidth consumption, due to the lack of support of an optimized format for representing floating points number (which Xbox 360 supports).

* Both consoles may have to resort to render game in NON HD RESOLUTION, and then do an up-scaling before displaying on TV. This is quite the news, after all the talk about the "new HD-era" !!

* RSX may have the advantage due to its power: it can use very complex shaders. Due to this, the image may still be rendered in quite high resolution (even though not strictly enough to be considered HD, that is, 720p) and with lots of "realistic" effects including AA, and the upscaling may be minor.

Arnaud

[Arnaud_M]

Ah, XB and Liquid beat me to it :-)

Arnaud

[Viper]

What it means is the same thing we've read every new generation. The hardware though incredible is lacking in certain areas.

Hardware A is good at this but bad at that while hardware B is good at that and bad at this.

[VG Aficionado]

We've seen several HDR examples on PS3. MotorStorm (GDC demo), Vision Gran Turismo (TGS 2005), Fifth Phantom Saga (TGS 2005), MGS4... If PS3 has some trouble using HDR but it can outperform 360 in many other ways, why worry so much?

If I understood everything somewhat correctly, is it likely that we'll see PS3 games with higher and steadier framerates than on 360?

By the way, I thought PS3 VS 360 threads were forbidden ;)

[yoshaw]

It basically means that Xbox360 is bad at high-resolutions. Either that or the Japanese devs haven't grasped the unified architecture wholeheartedly. Not to mention this is just few developer quotes. Maybe others have made progress and might be in the wraps for E3. But with this article, devs am cry with the 360 res and that part where it says even 2xMSAA isn't needed. Ouch!

PS3 should be fine at HD resolutions according to this. HDR affected ofcourse in return for high-res. So far of what I've seen of Xbox360 and PS3. I'm all for this article. Sounds extremely to the point as far as games to date are concerned.

[xbdestroya]

Well I don't know that it's as simple as that Viper - what we're faced with here is a situation in which even the 'reasons to be' for the inclusion of some of Xenos' features are rendered sub-optimal in execution due to, basically, the system tripping over itself in other areas.

[Old_Timer!]

Ahhhh well said guys, thanks for clarifying

[Domination]

Didn't Deano C. explain something about this already, and how he and his team came up with a simplier, more effective solution?

[xbdestroya]

Didn't Deano C. explain something about this already, and how he and his team came up with a simplier, more effective solution?

NAO32 (http://forums.e-mpire.com/showthread.php?t=49423)

[LiquidEagle]

devs am cry

No offense if English is your second language or something, but when I read that aloud to myself I had to laugh, thanks :-p

So XB, what you're saying is that Xenos gave developers 2 ways of implementing nice, next-gen features into their games (MEMEXPORT or tiling), and they have to use one or the other. Yet MEMEXPORT is essentially useless and tiling is a last resort (if you can call second choice that) that developers have to go with if they want to make a great-looking/functioning game.

It certainly doesn't sound like developers are too happy with the 360 hardware, but then again this could be some pretty skewed information in terms of developer sentiment. We all had to wade through the BS people like Lorne Lanning propagated while Kojima & Naughty Dog kicked major booty with the PS2 hardware. At the end of the day I hate to say that I'm waiting for this, but I'll have to wait until I see what Bungie does with the hardware, since they'll be wihout a doubt the most well-equipped and supported developer for the 360. It's all about practical applications instead of theoretical maximums, so once we see Bungie's next XBox game I think we'll know its limits...

[xbdestroya]

I'd like to slow things down a little at this point also and say it's not all doom and gloom for 360; a lot of this stuff was honestly already known, although I'd never thought about the difficulties MEMEXPORT would face tiling before - so that was new to me. But titling still has it's uses, and will still do a good bit to alleviate bandwidth constraints. It's just that Microsoft's prior cookie-cutter vision on tiled games all with 4xMSAA for 'free' has evaporated and been replaced with a reality where different games require different methods - not all of them benefiting as much from the eDRAM as they would have from other hardware considerations.

[Domination]

NAO32 (http://forums.e-mpire.com/showthread.php?t=49423)

I so get those two mixed up everytime, but yeah.

[xbdestroya]

So XB, what you're saying is that Xenos gave developers 2 ways of implementing nice, next-gen features into their games (MEMEXPORT or tiling), and they have to use one or the other. Yet MEMEXPORT is essentially useless and tiling is a last resort (if you can call second choice that) that developers have to go with if they want to make a great-looking/functioning game.

It certainly doesn't sound like developers are too happy with the 360 hardware, but then again this could be some pretty skewed information in terms of developer sentiment. We all had to wade through the BS people like Lorne Lanning propagated while Kojima & Naughty Dog kicked major booty with the PS2 hardware. At the end of the day I hate to say that I'm waiting for this, but I'll have to wait until I see what Bungie does with the hardware, since they'll be wihout a doubt the most well-equipped and supported developer for the 360. It's all about practical applications instead of theoretical maximums, so once we see Bungie's next XBox game I think we'll know its limits...


No no, I'm not saying anything like that about it. :)

Tiling has been the plan for Xenos from day one - the MEMEXPORT was kind of like the bonus one could say; but honestly I don't know why or how, because tiling was really expected to make it's way into nearly every title. With that philosophy in mind I don't know why they ever included MEMEXPORT - but they did, and if you don't use tiling, you can use it along with whatever else you do.

The eDRAM is still very useful, it's just that tiling is the way to make the most use of it, and tiling isn't always something that will work with your (the devs) specific goal. You'll note - as Arnaud mentioned - that there's an explicit mention of using the eDRAM for non-tiled operations and then upscaling the end result. I wonder how much of that we'll see this gen...

[Arnaud_M]

Ok, please, you (yes you!) with an Xbox 360, we need your help for a crucial experiment. Please start up your 360, launch a game on it (no, actually, do this for all the games in your collection please, it's for the Science man!), and pause the game. Now, on you HDTV, go closer. Yes. Closer now. Ok. Now, count for us the number of DIFFERENT pixels on, say, the first row on top of the screen. Yes, it's tedious. But we rely on you ! Ok, now, how many did you count ? Armed with this precious information, we will be able to know what kind of upscaling (if any) was performed. So please, everyone, be courteous and contribute ;-)

Arnaud

[xbdestroya]

LOL, Arnaud you're out of your mind man! :pirate:

Anyway PGR3 is the only title I know to be upscaling so far - I don't think any of the other present titles are. It would certainly be something to discover one though.

[sudzy]

Ok, please, you (yes you!) with an Xbox 360, we need your help for a crucial experiment. Please start up your 360, launch a game on it (no, actually, do this for all the games in your collection please, it's for the Science man!), and pause the game. Now, on you HDTV, go closer. Yes. Closer now. Ok. Now, count for us the number of DIFFERENT pixels on, say, the first row on top of the screen. Yes, it's tedious. But we rely on you ! Ok, now, how many did you count ? Armed with this precious information, we will be able to know what kind of upscaling (if any) was performed. So please, everyone, be courteous and contribute ;-)

Arnaud

LOL, that's too funny man...

[LiquidEagle]

:lol: is that a serious question?

Thanks for the clarification xb. Where can I go to be smart like you? I want to get more familiar with these hardware architectures & stuff but I feel like I'm jumping in the pool without taking swimming lessons. Did you take classes on these kinds of things or is this stuff you picked up on your own through the internet or a job?

[Arnaud_M]

:lol: is that a serious question?


Well, maybe I can convince someone :-D

Well, no, actually, I don't think so. People are not willing to help each other nowadays, aaah .... *sigh*

(back to serious mode)

Arnaud

[The_One]

Isn't it possible for someone who has conversion hardware to convert the output into a PC input and then take a screen shot then go into some sort of paint/picture editing software (Even MS Paint will do) then check the resolution (or "attributes" in MS Paint) of the pic?

Unless doing all that conversion skewers the original resolution?

[jaxmkii]

Ok, please, you (yes you!) with an Xbox 360, we need your help for a crucial experiment. Please start up your 360, launch a game on it (no, actually, do this for all the games in your collection please, it's for the Science man!), and pause the game. Now, on you HDTV, go closer. Yes. Closer now. Ok. Now, count for us the number of DIFFERENT pixels on, say, the first row on top of the screen. Yes, it's tedious. But we rely on you ! Ok, now, how many did you count ? Armed with this precious information, we will be able to know what kind of upscaling (if any) was performed. So please, everyone, be courteous and contribute ;-)

Arnaud

that would be fine except many HD sets upscale or down scale to fit its own native rez

[yoshaw]

No offense if English is your second language or something, but when I read that aloud to myself I had to laugh, thanks :-p


None taken. Because to make it funny was my intention in the first place. I just twisted the words around, heard someone say 'Xbots am Cry' in the comments section of some Xbox360 website. I thought that was very funny to represent someone crying :evillaugh LOL

So I twisted it into my explaination of 'Devs am cry'. :pleased:

PS: LOL @ Arnaud's question.

[xbdestroya]

Thanks for the clarification xb. Where can I go to be smart like you? I want to get more familiar with these hardware architectures & stuff but I feel like I'm jumping in the pool without taking swimming lessons. Did you take classes on these kinds of things or is this stuff you picked up on your own through the internet or a job?

Liquid let me take your question as an opportunity to encourage anyone that thinks this stuff is above them, believe me it doesn't have to be. I do come from a technical/science/math oriented background - so ok that helps - but I've certainly never taken a class on any of *this* stuff we're talking about.

I have a very strong interest in it all, and it started ~6 years ago when I decided to build my first PC. I got quite interested in computer architecture and just started researching the differences between this component and that component... and as the years go by if you keep up with things - interconnect technologies, RAM advances, processor designs, GPU architectures - you start to pick up a lot of basic architectural knowledge. My interest in Cell peaked in 2004, and that saw me come here to learn more about it. My first post was actually a question directed at Cpi! (Cpi truly is a font of knowledge)

Believe me, the 'me' of six years ago would not have a clue about what I'm writing about these days. It's all really about whether one has the desire to learn or not, and it comes down to this: next time one feels the urge to ask a question like: 'which of these is better?' instead ask 'why is this better?'

The door to learning is as much a philosophy as it is anything else. :smoke:

[Arnaud_M]

Isn't it possible for someone who has conversion hardware to convert the output into a PC input and then take a screen shot then go into some sort of paint/picture editing software (Even MS Paint will do) then check the resolution (or "attributes" in MS Paint) of the pic?

Unless doing all that conversion skewers the original resolution?

You would only get the resolution of your capturing hardware in this way, so it would not be that informative :-)

Arnaud

[jaxmkii]

It's all really about whether one has the desire to learn or not, and it comes down to this: next time one feels the urge to ask a question like: 'which of these is better?' instead ask 'why is this better?'

The door to learning is as much a philosophy as it is anything else. :smoke:

truer words have never been spoken :toad:

[Phryne Astynome]

:lol: is that a serious question?

Thanks for the clarification xb. Where can I go to be smart like you? I want to get more familiar with these hardware architectures & stuff but I feel like I'm jumping in the pool without taking swimming lessons. Did you take classes on these kinds of things or is this stuff you picked up on your own through the internet or a job?

The stuff that is usually discussed on the forums such as Beyond3D is pretty basic. Even when the developers get technical, it is not difficult to understand. You can learn these things on your own through the internet/library or at an introductory computer science class at your local community college (or university such as Harvey Mudd, although that is usually more mathematical/theoretical).

I have to say from the looks of it, it seems like ATI's Xenos technology is still rather immature. It may have been a good move by Sony after all to stick to the older but more developed and more mature Nvidia G70 technology. Also, I am surprised a lot of people believed in ATI's "efficiency" schtick. If Xenos was as efficient as ATI claimed it to be, it probably would have won a Turing Award. That being said, nothing is wrong with ATI's technology and I don't think it is inferior or anything.

[cpiasminc]

so it seems the eDram in the Xbox allows for better HDR! where is our resident Dev (Cpi) lol
CPI is busy in overseas conference calls, juggling mountains of emails, writing up 60 pages of documentation, and getting into holy wars over file formats and being the only person who seems to think raw data shouldn't be rife with context-sensitive members!!! Oh... and apparently giving people Japanese lessons on top of it.

In any case, you might want to pay attention to the fact that all their examples of HDR buffers fitting with 360's eDRAM w/o tiling are FP10. FP10 is pretty low quality (only 7 bits of color precision), and because of the lack of precision overlap in larger range spans, you can lose a few bits of accuracy in the process as well, which causes major color banding (one of the lovely things about floating point is that a*b does not always equal b*a). They're actually relying on the upscaling process, which occurs in RGB8888, to smooth out the results. Which might work out fine, but will always be more blurry than if you were rendering non-HDR at full resolution.

FP16 is an improvement (10 bits of mantissa), but even that still doesn't compare to something like NAO32 or even I10/I16.

[martel]

Liquid let me take your question as an opportunity to encourage anyone that thinks this stuff is above them, believe me it doesn't have to be. I do come from a technical/science/math oriented background - so ok that helps - but I've certainly never taken a class on any of *this* stuff we're talking about.

That said, I have taken classes in this kinda stuff, four years of Uni the last few focusing on more game related areas such as graphics and AI. Add to that 3D graphics (through LightWave) being the family business and having a few techie jobs like being a HP systems engineer and a Java tutor, and other nerdish persuits like PC building and related research. I've also been on here sapping knowledge since pretty much the beginning.

However, when Cpi gets into full swing I'm often as lost as the next man :-( (;)), so although it is possible to understand the basics with just a little learning, there will probably still be some stuff that goes over your head unless you really start dedicating yourself to game deving and related technologies.

[venomv]

Ok, please, you (yes you!) with an Xbox 360, we need your help for a crucial experiment. Please start up your 360, launch a game on it (no, actually, do this for all the games in your collection please, it's for the Science man!), and pause the game. Now, on you HDTV, go closer. Yes. Closer now. Ok. Now, count for us the number of DIFFERENT pixels on, say, the first row on top of the screen. Yes, it's tedious. But we rely on you ! Ok, now, how many did you count ? Armed with this precious information, we will be able to know what kind of upscaling (if any) was performed. So please, everyone, be courteous and contribute ;-)

Arnaud

Hmm, I might get on that, if I had an HDTV or a 360 for that matter, lol.

[xbdestroya]

@Martel: Well yeah I didn't mean to imply getting a degree in engineering was readily attained via forum discussion. ;) BUT at the same time, to the dedicated mind... isn't it? Definitely though some information is easier to pick up than other information.

Let's not derail things any further though with the 'education' tangent - and I take full responsibility for derailing in the first place! - and let's take it back to console architecture.

[EvilTaru]

so it seems the eDram in the Xbox allows for better HDR! where is our resident Dev (Cpi) lol

Unless they use a alternate method, wouldn't the xbox360 just be stuck with FP10? And isn't FP10 worse than FP16?

[xbdestroya]

Unless they use a alternate method, wouldn't the xbox360 just be stuck with FP10? And isn't FP10 worse than FP16?

The RSX definitely has the option of superior HDR, it's really just a concern over how much bandwidth FP16 soaks up. But of course that's where NAO32 and other alternative methods come in; not that each respectively doesn't have it's own drawbacks and advantages. It'll really be a per game basis for a lot of this stuff.

[EvilTaru]

The RSX definitely has the option of superior HDR, it's really just a concern over how much bandwidth FP16 soaks up. But of course that's where NAO32 and other alternative methods come in; not that each respectively doesn't have it's own drawbacks and advantages. It'll really be a per game basis for a lot of this stuff.

It seems from pretty much all of the GDC demos have pretty nice HDR lighting, I wonder which technique they used. Warhawk has HDR AND 4XAA, how is that possible? Is it teh powah of Nao32? ~_~

[Crossbar]

Bear in mind we are early on in the life cycle of the 360 and the PS3 is not even out on the market yet. It will take time for devs to master the hardware just like it took for PS2 and Xbox, somethings will be harder than expected for some devs, some devs may have expected it. We've heard devs bashing cell saying it's hard to master, we don't hear much of that anymore.

We will get great looking games on both consoles anyway. We've seen some already, within two weeks we will have seen some even better looking ones and within two years we will have seen ....:buldge:

[Crossbar]

It seems from pretty much all of the GDC demos have pretty nice HDR lighting, I wonder which technique they used. Warhawk has HDR AND 4XAA, how is that possible? Is it teh powah of Nao32? ~_~
Very hard to know it means in reality for Warhawk, we don't know if it's the whole truth. We don't know if it is implemented all over the screen or even in every scene of the game.

[version]

at present , best rendering technice is 2 pass rendering

1. rendering everything only to Z buffer without shader
2. rendering visible polygons with shader

if we do it on rsx, we waste more shader power , because first pass not use it
maybe possible first pass on cell , second pass on rsx
we get better results if we has 2 gpus , a GS like without shader and another with shader
but simpler with a unified gpu

effects,shadows and transparent polygons other thing, NEED MORE BANDWITH

[Goki]

All I can understand with that text is that people shouldnt hurry to get a 1080p able screen anytime soon. Im starting to doubt quality titles (not silly puzzle games) will ever come to the holy grail of 1080p withouhg massive performance hits in the likes of lags and loading screens

[overclocked]

I think the 360hardware is optimized in itself the best way where RSX will be more brute and when you tame it you will be able to get wonderfull results.

Another thing that strikes me and that i have thought of earlier is i dont expect games to have 720*1280 in the future but lowered one step if the pixelquality needs it. Hell all the games i played on 640SD 360 looks great and on 720p it looks cripser of course but i think a balance will come whetever we know it or not. Ie dont belive all you read folks!

Having got more understanding from devs now and so i think having just a Cpu with 25+GB for itself witch IMO will be what separetes the two in the middle/end. Cell is in my opinion around 3x the Xcpu and seems to be even 10times in other cases. Where its not i expect as in a close enviroment to code to the streghts and not the weakness.


Edit REMINDER

Sony holds their quarterly conference call today, (its after the markets close) read things like that gives you all members understanding more about the buisness in general, just a tip

[woundingchaney]

The RSX definitely has the option of superior HDR, it's really just a concern over how much bandwidth FP16 soaks up. But of course that's where NAO32 and other alternative methods come in; not that each respectively doesn't have it's own drawbacks and advantages. It'll really be a per game basis for a lot of this stuff.
There is no apparent reason why an alternative method of hdr rendering similar to the theories behind NAO32 couldnt be used on the 360 correct. If infact this is being geared towards the PS3 couldnt "similar" solutions be used on the Xenos. Correct?????

Edram doesnt have to be used specifically for AA it has many other intetions as well. I thought that MS intended for AA to be on a list of features that were to be used in a game not that AA must be used, though could be wrong.

None of this comes as much of a surprise, as devs. become experienced with hardware different problems and solutions arise.

[overclocked]

There is no apparent reason why an alternative method of hdr rendering similar to the theories behind NAO32 couldnt be used on the 360 correct. If infact this is being geared towards the PS3 couldnt "similar" solutions be used on the Xenos. Correct?????

Edram doesnt have to be used specifically for AA it has many other intetions as well. I thought that MS intended for AA to be on a list of features that were to be used in a game not that AA must be used, though could be wrong.

None of this comes as much of a surprise, as devs. become experienced with hardware different problems and solutions arise.

It dont work on all engines(nAo32). Dont know if its harder to implement on 360 then on PS3.
One ex was that "Killzone-PS3" wouldnt use nAo´s HDR because of their engine, it simply didnt fit.

As you say EDRAM doesnt have too be used to 4xAA but that was/is the whole point with the solution on xbox(printed in PR and in saluted to the hills!). In other words they didnt have to implement time/money to integrate logic+edram on one die and the rest on the other.
They simply could used regular Edram so its there for 4xAA alright.

And the FP10 is one thing many Xbots took as an advantage before they knew better, it sounds better right. But it isnt.. ;)

[Rubbernek]

I always suspected there were serious problems with Xenos.
This just confirms it.

Xenos facts:
Taped out November 2004 (nearly 1.5 years ago!)
Final silicon in June 2005 (10 months ago)

ATI release 2 TRADITIONAL GPU's after Xenos - not yet risking a new architecture in their main business until they learn the lesson from Xenos. Microsoft basically gave them a nice care-free test-bed. I predict the R600 will reap the benefits.

Why is a game optimised for a 6800 (VF5) looking better than a game developed for Xenos (DOA4) - and by a dev team that produced one of the best looking XBOX games?

At the end of the day it's not theoretical performance that matters but real world performance. Xenos has not lived up to the "100% efficiency" hyperbole.

This reminds me of the dev quote in PSM from last year: "People are finding that the [xbox] 360 has some stupid bottlenecks."

Can RSX do any better in the real world?
Answers in the coming weeks...

[Darkon]

There is no apparent reason why an alternative method of hdr rendering similar to the theories behind NAO32 couldnt be used on the 360 correct. If infact this is being geared towards the PS3 couldnt "similar" solutions be used on the Xenos. Correct?????



yes NAO32 can be used on xenos and according to Deano

First off: FP16 HDR runs perfectly fine, we render everything in RGB Colourspace into a FP16 buffer. Then run a tonemapping algo to bring in down to LDR for display on a monitor/tv. The 'normal' way of HDR. Its all runs at the speed you would expect and it quite playable.

But RGB space is **** for lighting calculations, its simple the wrong place. Why? Originally RGB colour space was defined on the range [0,1] for each channel. With a 1 being the most strongest pure colour *POSSIBLE* in that channel. So RGB<0,1,0> is the most purest green possible. RGB was designed (long long time ago) as an absolute colour space. But even a trivial look tells you as you move to simple HDR (allow values above 1) its a vast waste of space. What exactly does the colour RGB<0,1000,0> mean? Something that 1000x purest green?

The reason is because you haven't sepereated hue (colour) from lumonsity. When we talk about HDR we not talking about more colour range but more lumonsity. So we change the colour space to one where lumonsity can go very high but the colour range just keeps the same range as before.

So what we do (Marco will have to give the details) is at the end of each pixel shader tap on a RGB->ColourSpace converter (its about 5 instructions I think). This colour space is much more quantizable, so it looks virtually the same packing it into an INT8 versus a RGB FP16 framebuffer. We still have the same range of lumonsity as FP16, still have the same colour fidelity but we just save bandwidth (and other things) by using a few shader instructions. Its also handy when it comes to tonemapping, as that involves calculating the scenes lumonsity.

Its got nothing to do with the current speed of FP16 rendering, its because we worked out how to do HDR better. FP16 rendering is slower on ALL hardware versus INT8 rendering (more memory access and having to process floats).
Its clever software beating hardware, you'd probably want to use this on PC, X360 (its much better then FP10), PS3, Rev etc. Its simple a better HDR method... Its beats FP16 HDR in almost all cases, so as I've said why wouldn't you use it?

Ironincally for the X360 ******s its even more relevant on X360... X360 sucks at FP16 HDR, particular because of the tiling (64 bit framebuffers use twice as many tiles). Swap to our colour space and the X360 gets FP16 HDR quality without the lose in speed it suffers from if you use real FP16 HDR.

So just to reiterate (in condensed form for cut and pasted on various forums...)
We DON'T use ARGB8 HDR we use a custom colour space HDR that has the quality of FP16 HDR but takes half the space. This is a win on every platform in the world and nothing to do with PS3 capability.

[Crossbar]

I always suspected there were serious problems with Xenos.
This just confirms it.

Xenos facts:
Taped out November 2004 (nearly 1.5 years ago!)
Final silicon in June 2005 (10 months ago)

ATI release 2 TRADITIONAL GPU's after Xenos - not yet risking a new architecture in their main business until they learn the lesson from Xenos. Microsoft basically gave them a nice care-free test-bed. I predict the R600 will reap the benefits.

Why is a game optimised for a 6800 (VF5) looking better than a game developed for Xenos (DOA4) - and by a dev team that produced one of the best looking XBOX games?

At the end of the day it's not theoretical performance that matters but real world performance. Xenos has not lived up to the "100% efficiency" hyperbole.

This reminds me of the dev quote in PSM from last year: "People are finding that the [xbox] 360 has some stupid bottlenecks."
Don't jump to conclusions on just a few devs complaining that things could be better, that will never change whatever you throw at them, believe me.

[Rubbernek]

yes NAO32 can be used on xenos and according to Deano


NAO32 won't be usable in all situations - suitability will be down to a game by game basis (eg. I think Guerilla mentioned it won't be suitable for KZ).

Deanoc mentioned FP16 ran fine on PS3 but going to NAO32 allowed them to add AA.

PS3 has the option of FP16 HDR with blending without AA.
XBOX 360 does not.

For the most part I foresee XBOX 360 games sticking to FP10.

[xbdestroya]

Dean has actually mentioned that they'll be using both FP16 and NAO32 - simply on a conditional basis. Indeed though you're right Wounding, the NAO32 technique should be applicable to 360 as well. They'll probably stick to FP10 though just to keep it simple and avoid any Alpha blending issues - besides it's less of a bandwidth concern for Xenos to begin with. I guess we'll see though.

Anyway I didn't start this thread to explicitly rag on Xenos - which is why I didn't want to post my thoughts in the beginning - it was almost more to show: 'see, 360 has it's own graphics snags' for those that are worried RSX is going to 'suck.' Which it won't.

Welcome to the forum by the way Rubberneck! :smoke:

[Darkon]

NAO32 won't be usable in all situations - suitability will be down to a game by game basis (eg. I think Guerilla mentioned it won't be suitable for KZ).

Deanoc mentioned FP16 ran fine on PS3 but going to NAO32 allowed them to add AA.



As far as i remember NAO32 won't be well suited for games with lots of fog , i could be wrong though

[RavenFox]

Interesting read and the comparison to the X1600 and 6800 as far as performance goes[for a next gen conole] is not looking good. Then we have the lack of AF issues on 360. Im my opinion even if 'Yes Devs will try and do their best and work it out' stuff like this should not be such an issue in this cycle of GPU technology.

[cpiasminc]

Dean has actually mentioned that they'll be using both FP16 and NAO32 - simply on a conditional basis.
And FP32, for that matter. The difference is that they never said anything about using FP32 framebuffers or color data. Things like a Z-buffer copy might go in an FP32 buffer, but since it's one component, it's just a regular 32-bit texture in the end. Similarly, I'm fairly sure the FP16 usage probably refers to textures or backbuffer copies that have been post-processed or something. At least, I'd guess as much since my recollection of that thread is a bit hazy.

They'll probably stick to FP10 though just to keep it simple and avoid any Alpha blending issues - besides it's less of a bandwidth concern for Xenos to begin with. I guess we'll see though.
I believe that if it's a win for the given game, it's a win on any platform, since it's a relatively small pixel shader cost for lesser bandwidth, and several times higher color resolution than FP10.

As far as i remember NAO32 won't be well suited for games with lots of fog , i could be wrong though
It's not so much a matter of fog as alpha blending in general. Because of the fact that it's a non-linear color space that separates luminance from chrominance, simple alpha blending won't work. It's fine for blending operations that won't involve radically large color differences (e.g. antialiasing) since the error will be pretty small, but not for blends that have large color differences (e.g. fog, particles, anything alpha blended). You either have to sample the framebuffer, convert back to RGB, do the blend, and then convert back to NAO32 per pixel. Or do everything opaque first, and then convert the whole framebuffer to RGB8888 and then start rendering your alpha blended stuff on top of it.

The former is more costly, obviously, but the advantage over the latter is that you can blend in HDR. However, it's not very often that you actually need to do HDR alpha blending anyway. When you do, it's usually a whole framebuffer operation or something.

[liver_kick]

This quote had me thinking...


Developer F: As for resolution I think if it's modest it's OK. Since RSX in the PS3 is a shader monster, adding more information to a pixel by executing ultra-advanced shader and then antialiasing it completely must make it look more real. I'd like to give priority to the reality charged in one pixel rather than to HD resolution.

I wonder if some of these complaints about Xenos (and RSX) among the Japanese devs referenced in the article may be related to their games targeting 60fps (as opposed to most western studios who will "concede" 30fps more often). I have nothing to really substantiate that, just some lazy conjecture on my part. :)

[Domination]

The RSX definitely has the option of superior HDR, it's really just a concern over how much bandwidth FP16 soaks up. But of course that's where NAO32 and other alternative methods come in; not that each respectively doesn't have it's own drawbacks and advantages. It'll really be a per game basis for a lot of this stuff.

I was going to say something similiar. From what I know, no such shortcuts have been discovered for the 360's hardware, or at least those who were pretty open about it. There's still time to learn its tech, though, but I can't say that I didn't see some of these things coming, not to sound like a pure pessimist or anything.

[Domination]

All I can understand with that text is that people shouldnt hurry to get a 1080p able screen anytime soon. Im starting to doubt quality titles (not silly puzzle games) will ever come to the holy grail of 1080p withouhg massive performance hits in the likes of lags and loading screens

I believe Polyphony was one of the few to achieve a resolution that wasn't even touted for the PS2 for GT4. Seeing how 1080p is touted, I'm sure it'll be achieved. The question is who and when.

[woundingchaney]

I always suspected there were serious problems with Xenos.
This just confirms it.

Xenos facts:
Taped out November 2004 (nearly 1.5 years ago!)
Final silicon in June 2005 (10 months ago)

ATI release 2 TRADITIONAL GPU's after Xenos - not yet risking a new architecture in their main business until they learn the lesson from Xenos. Microsoft basically gave them a nice care-free test-bed. I predict the R600 will reap the benefits.

Why is a game optimised for a 6800 (VF5) looking better than a game developed for Xenos (DOA4) - and by a dev team that produced one of the best looking XBOX games?

At the end of the day it's not theoretical performance that matters but real world performance. Xenos has not lived up to the "100% efficiency" hyperbole.

This reminds me of the dev quote in PSM from last year: "People are finding that the [xbox] 360 has some stupid bottlenecks."

Can RSX do any better in the real world?
Answers in the coming weeks...


DOA4 was built off of the previous DOA engines not due to a lack of hardware capability.. We arent really going to know the true advantages of USA until pc grfx cards are released using the tech sometime in the fall (I believe), I personally look for it to be considerably more efficient than traditional arch. but not to the extent of the ATI numbers (100% is ridiculous).

Tile rendering and overall use of the edram is going to improve simply because devs are experiencing difficulties within the first 6 months of system dev doesnt indicate that there is going to be continued bottlenecks throughout the systems life. Xenos isnt performing at comparable power primarily due to a current cpu bound, there isnt any examples (used in games, that Im aware of) of multi core processing being used right now that is superior to single core thus the Xenos isnt being fed fast enough (seeing as to how the Xenon cannot run using a single core, at least that is my understanding here). As processor techniques continue to evolve I expect considerable usage of the Xenos architecture.

Reading one article doesnt indicate that there are serious problems with the Xenos any more than articles about the cell stating problems. If that were the case both the 360 and the PS3 would be crippled hardware as there has been a plethora of negative articles concerning both architectures.

If we are concerned with real world performance then both the Cell and RSX should be suspect as well due to most of there figures coming from utopian circumstances (this of course applys to all figures concerning hardware of this nature).

It is important to note that this article is only presenting a doom aspect of developing here, and is under much controversy throughout the internet amongst many sites (of course not all of them fanboy derived lol). I expect many of these statements represent concerns but are by no means etched in stone as to the capablilities of the Xenos.

[liver_kick]

We arent really going to know the true advantages of USA until pc grfx cards are released using the tech sometime in the fall (I believe)

PC cards arent going to tell us anything beyond how those specific PC cards perform. Xenos is one implementation within a closed system, not the standard for the USA. The only thing it can be readily compared to is its nearest closed box competitor, the RSX.

"True advantages" in this space will show up when Xenos is doing things beneficial to the image RSX cant (and naturally vice versa).

I personally look for it to be considerably more efficient than traditional arch.

The desired end result is always performance, isnt it? Efficiency is great for doing more with less, but if the total performance isnt greater than a "less efficient" design its nothing more than a bullet point.

Tile rendering and overall use of the edram is going to improve simply because devs are experiencing difficulties within the first 6 months of system dev doesnt indicate that there is going to be continued bottlenecks throughout the systems life.

True, a lot of these examples have to be considered worst case for the specific needs of their games at this time. But one case where there does seem to be an indefinite bottleneck is cache locking, rendering MEMEXPORT "unusable" if you're using tiling. It looks like an either or proposition, which I wasnt expecting.

Xenos isnt performing at comparable power primarily due to a current cpu bound

Hadn't heard this before?

[Smokey]

things will evolve look at the ps2 they kept saying it wouldnt do this & that but it done these things & more. right up until now peopl are still amazed at what it can do.

[overclocked]

DOA4 was built off of the previous DOA engines not due to a lack of hardware capability.. We arent really going to know the true advantages of USA until pc grfx cards are released using the tech sometime in the fall (I believe), I personally look for it to be considerably more efficient than traditional arch. but not to the extent of the ATI numbers (100% is ridiculous).

Tile rendering and overall use of the edram is going to improve simply because devs are experiencing difficulties within the first 6 months of system dev doesnt indicate that there is going to be continued bottlenecks throughout the systems life. Xenos isnt performing at comparable power primarily due to a current cpu bound, there isnt any examples (used in games, that Im aware of) of multi core processing being used right now that is superior to single core thus the Xenos isnt being fed fast enough (seeing as to how the Xenon cannot run using a single core, at least that is my understanding here). As processor techniques continue to evolve I expect considerable usage of the Xenos architecture.

Reading one article doesnt indicate that there are serious problems with the Xenos any more than articles about the cell stating problems. If that were the case both the 360 and the PS3 would be crippled hardware as there has been a plethora of negative articles concerning both architectures.

If we are concerned with real world performance then both the Cell and RSX should be suspect as well due to most of there figures coming from utopian circumstances (this of course applys to all figures concerning hardware of this nature).

It is important to note that this article is only presenting a doom aspect of developing here, and is under much controversy throughout the internet amongst many sites (of course not all of them fanboy derived lol). I expect many of these statements represent concerns but are by no means etched in stone as to the capablilities of the Xenos.

The points those devs laid forward wasnt directctly tied atleast to my responses, i think its something we heard/wondered about for long.

---All i write is only is my thoughts and *no* facts---

Of course the games will be better looking in the future but to point out "some" weak spot that PS3 dont have but 360 have is the Bandwidth to the Cpu imo. I dont belive that it will be enough for 3CPUs to be fully utilized the way its architectured. And SPEs is imo pure SIMD engines witch will leapfrog the xCpus performance. Many developers have already hinted/stated it and i belive them.

The thing with U-Shaders is that it seems to require lots of logic to control it.
With a part such small as Xenos could it be worth it?

What ATI/MS have done is creating a part said to be effecient from the very beginning, you dont have to do anything to "affect" the U-Shaders cause that is all controlled in hardware in 99% of the cases.
This optimization is all related to hardware

So my reasoning here is that just in a closed enviroment there will not be as much
to optimize compared to a G7x part. And as we all know they program to the streghts of a console, so in other worlds there could be lot of transistors in Xenos that is there to optimize the architecture while in RSX these efforts are replaced by the devs instead witch in turn leaves more transistors to pure brute power to play with.

Xenos has logic(transistors) for northbridge or southbridge also if i remember right.

[casualkiss]

Xenos isnt performing at comparable power primarily due to a current cpu bound, there isnt any examples (used in games, that Im aware of) of multi core processing being used right now that is superior to single core thus the Xenos isnt being fed fast enough (seeing as to how the Xenon cannot run using a single core, at least that is my understanding here).

Correct me if I am wrong, but didn't Kameo and PGR3 use all 3 cpus with a suprisingly large amount dedicated to decompression?

Here is some info from http://www.beyond3d.com/forum/showthread.php?p=728899


- Kameo Core Usage
C T Software Threads
0 0 Game Update
0 1 File IO
1 0 Rendering
1 1 ---
2 0 XAudio
2 1 File decompression

- PGR3 Core Usage
C T Software Threads
0 0 Update, physics, rendering, UI
0 1 Audio update, networking
1 0 Crowd update, texture decompression
1 1 Texture decompression
2 0 XAudio
2 1 ---

C = Core, T = (Hardware) Thread

[Domination]

things will evolve look at the ps2 they kept saying it wouldnt do this & that but it done these things & more. right up until now peopl are still amazed at what it can do.

Amazed is an understatement, IMO. The thing has performed quite a number of times on the Xbox's level. We are talking about a console that is practically two years older than its competition. That's nothing short of phenomenal, I'd put it.

[Arnaud_M]

The PowerPoint llinked in the thread on Beyond3D contains lots of very interesting information. It has probably been discussed on this other forum, but in case some people here were not aware of it, here are two pieces:

XBOX 360:
* Some games are spending 100% of a core on cloth animation

* Kameo: Multi-threading was added very late—~6 months before launch—but it worked. Note that one hardware thread is unused. That's okay—it ensures that rendering runs at top speed. There were a few other threads (audio processing, etc.) but not many—roughly one CPU intensive thread per core. Cores 0 and 1 were ~80-99% utilized, and core 2 was typically 50% utilized

Arnaud

[woundingchaney]

PC cards arent going to tell us anything beyond how those specific PC cards perform. Xenos is one implementation within a closed system, not the standard for the USA. The only thing it can be readily compared to is its nearest closed box competitor, the RSX.




Pc cards will give us a comparable arch. scenario, to better understand the overall effectiveness of USA as is seems there is nothing to gauge its abilities in Xenos.

[frosty]

umm.... well the GFX xenos produces are a good way to guage it...

[liver_kick]

umm.... well the GFX xenos produces are a good way to guage it...

Thank you. :)

The point is PC cards wont be a comparable scenario because there will be different implementations of unified architectures and they will be used within a completely different environment (open system). Xenos is a first go at USA for a proprietary console. Its not out in the wild, its part of a static configuration. The "effectiveness" (ie budget spent) of the USA can only be gauged by how its leveraged by the developers themselves, and how it compares to its nearest neighbor.

[woundingchaney]

Thank you. :)

The point is PC cards wont be a comparable scenario because there will be different implementations of unified architectures and they will be used within a completely different environment (open system). Xenos is a first go at USA for a proprietary console. Its not out in the wild, its part of a static configuration. The "effectiveness" (ie budget spent) of the USA can only be gauged by how its leveraged by the developers themselves, and how it compares to its nearest neighbor.
I wasnt intending to compare the Xenos specifically here guys but the USA architecture itself and any pluses or minuses to its intentions.

There has yet to be seen any relevant information available for USA architecture from the Xenos, other than graphics to this date (which depend on much more than the USA architecture itself). However when the pc cards are released I expect a large amount of data on USA architecture from the comparison of other architectures.

[woundingchaney]

The PowerPoint llinked in the thread on Beyond3D contains lots of very interesting information. It has probably been discussed on this other forum, but in case some people here were not aware of it, here are two pieces:

XBOX 360:
* Some games are spending 100% of a core on cloth animation

* Kameo: Multi-threading was added very late—~6 months before launch—but it worked. Note that one hardware thread is unused. That's okay—it ensures that rendering runs at top speed. There were a few other threads (audio processing, etc.) but not many—roughly one CPU intensive thread per core. Cores 0 and 1 were ~80-99% utilized, and core 2 was typically 50% utilized

Arnaud

Moving to a multithreaded architecture late in development is not an accurate way to gauge the Xenon capabilities. Where as cores can be ruuning at such levels the coding itself was most likely poorly done (although Kameo is the best example so far I believe). A core can be running at such levels but is by no means an accurate example of its capabilities.

[woundingchaney]

The points those devs laid forward wasnt directctly tied atleast to my responses, i think its something we heard/wondered about for long.

---All i write is only is my thoughts and *no* facts---

Of course the games will be better looking in the future but to point out "some" weak spot that PS3 dont have but 360 have is the Bandwidth to the Cpu imo. I dont belive that it will be enough for 3CPUs to be fully utilized the way its architectured. And SPEs is imo pure SIMD engines witch will leapfrog the xCpus performance. Many developers have already hinted/stated it and i belive them.

The thing with U-Shaders is that it seems to require lots of logic to control it.
With a part such small as Xenos could it be worth it?
What ATI/MS have done is creating a part said to be effecient from the very beginning, you dont have to do anything to "affect" the U-Shaders cause that is all controlled in hardware in 99% of the cases.
This optimization is all related to hardware

So my reasoning here is that just in a closed enviroment there will not be as much
to optimize compared to a G7x part. And as we all know they program to the streghts of a console, so in other worlds there could be lot of transistors in Xenos that is there to optimize the architecture while in RSX these efforts are replaced by the devs instead witch in turn leaves more transistors to pure brute power to play with.

Xenos has logic(transistors) for northbridge or southbridge also if i remember right.


SPEs are still under scrutiny from many devs right now, there are instances of praise as well as demeaning. I personally stand somewhere in the middle as to their overall effectiveness.

[The_One]

I believe Polyphony was one of the few to achieve a resolution that wasn't even touted for the PS2 for GT4. Seeing how 1080p is touted, I'm sure it'll be achieved. The question is who and when.
Wasn't one of Sony's in house devs that's creating a new action RPG (Untold Legends) that's targeting 1080p? Anyways, we can obviously see the lack of "graphical beauty", if you will, present in Untold Legend; most likely due to the fact that they're aiming for 1080p and want to nail a solid framerate. I guess 1080p is too much to ask for a first gen game, and I doubt much people even have the television capable of enjoying the game in true 1080p.
there could be lot of transistors in Xenos that is there to optimize the architecture while in RSX these efforts are replaced by the devs instead witch in turn leaves more transistors to pure brute power to play with. A lot of transistor in the Xenos was spent on the 10MB of eDRAM. I believe if we remove the transistor necessary for the 10MB of eDRAM, the RSX has more logic transistors than the Xenos (I can't remember the exact number, but it's definately in the a-hundred-and-something million transistors that the eDRAM took up).

[overclocked]

A lot of transistor in the Xenos was spent on the 10MB of eDRAM. I believe if we remove the transistor necessary for the 10MB of eDRAM, the RSX has more logic transistors than the Xenos (I can't remember the exact number, but it's definately in the a-hundred-and-something million transistors that the eDRAM took up).

But you cant really count that way because the whole system is built around the chip and the eDRAM as framebuffer.
However i think the eDRAM is 80million(memory)+20/25m of logic.
The mother die is 232m so the Xenos is at most 257m transistors if we count that way.

My main reasoning is that the logic that controls it*maybe* is better "spent"
on an GPU like G7x (we dont know yet, maybe Xenos is better or worse or equal. I lend towards the later though) cause its in a closed enviroment and can be a little rough on the edges.

There must be some "threeshold when a unified shader is better but when is that? In other words when does IHV get more performance per
mm2 than on a traditional GPU? Is it 200m/250m(Xenos)/350m/500m/700m transistors??? We dont know...

[Pistolero]

/SPEs are still under scrutiny from many devs right now, there are instances of praise as well as demeaning. I personally stand somewhere in the middle as to their overall effectiveness./

You play the card of skepticism often when Cell is concerned, yet you seem pretty confident in the fact that Xenos is a better-performer than RSX (No need to extract some of your older posts); strange given the fact that none of Xbox360 games on the market screams next-gen (at least to me)...It's either one way or the other..

[woundingchaney]

/SPEs are still under scrutiny from many devs right now, there are instances of praise as well as demeaning. I personally stand somewhere in the middle as to their overall effectiveness./

You play the card of skepticism often when Cell is concerned, yet you seem pretty confident in the fact that Xenos is a better-performer than RSX (No need to extract some of your older posts); strange given the fact that none of Xbox360 games on the market screams next-gen (at least to me)...It's either one way or the other..
Its simple personal opinion. Surely there are several topics in which anyone's opinion differs, very few people are compltely pessimistic and/or optimistic.
Do I expect the Xenos to outperform the RSX to some extent I do, however, I dont believe the Xenos to be the second coming nor do I expect it to outperform RSX by a tremendous amount (I also expect it to be weaker in some areas). This article is somewhat misleading because many points made are misleading, every console ever made has issues and peculiarities that are taken into consideration during programming.


I havent seen a PS3 game that screams next gen either. Although Im willing to bet that E3 changes everyone's outlook.

[frosty]

I havent seen a PS3 game that screams next gen either. Although Im willing to bet that E3 changes everyone's outlook..

Lair?

[woundingchaney]

.

Lair?
screenshot

[Pistolero]

Cell is a beast and, if exploited decently, will certainly ouperform Xenon by a healthy margin. As far as RSX is concerned, well, I am ready to bet 1000 dollars that it will AT LEAST match Xenon. The only area that seems grey is memory. If, for X enjoyable reason, Sony decided to abd, say, 100 MB to alleviate the problem of OS charges, the picture will be perfect.
Hum...concerning games, Lair, Heavenly Sword and MGS4 already show very, very impressive technology (I am not talking purely in terms of visuals)...

[frosty]

http://tinypic.com/sdmuko.jpg

I just don't see any current gen even dreaming of pulling this off.

[VG Aficionado]

I havent seen a PS3 game that screams next gen either. Although Im willing to bet that E3 changes everyone's outlook.You need to get your eyes checked and find out more about PS3 games. Definately don't miss E3.

[woundingchaney]

You need to get your eyes checked and find out more about PS3 games. Definately don't miss E3.
I think your missing my point VG
:spiral:

[Rubbernek]

Cell is a beast and, if exploited decently, will certainly ouperform Xenon by a healthy margin. As far as RSX is concerned, well, I am ready to bet 1000 dollars that it will AT LEAST match Xenon. The only area that seems grey is memory. If, for X enjoyable reason, Sony decided to abd, say, 100 MB to alleviate the problem of OS charges, the picture will be perfect.
Hum...concerning games, Lair, Heavenly Sword and MGS4 already show very, very impressive technology (I am not talking purely in terms of visuals)...


You don't need to pander to the Xenos apologists anymore.

This is not 10 months ago when the buzzwords associated with the chip had not been put to real world scrutiny. We are seeing real-world results and comments from devs who've ACTUALLY USED IT describing the "stupid bottlenecks" in the architecture that will limit the system and may account for the "XBOX 1.5" moniker.

I can confidently say RSX is more powerful than Xenos and the devs all agree and not just the one who's described it as a "shader monster" in this article:

XBOX 360 developer Uchida agrees PS3 has the more powerful graphics chip.
Carmack agrees PS3 has the graphics edge.
The dev in the Kikizo article agrees PS3 has the graphics edge.

Developers have had 10 MONTHS with the final Xenos and people are STILL making excuses for it. Get over it. Anandtech was right - it's nothing more than a 24 pipe R420.

Marco from Ninja Theory (nAo on B3d.com) has said the Unified shaders don't offer much of an advantage in a closed box. He says it's usefullness is in an open platform (PC) where devs can't optimise for one particular configuration.

You cannot replace power with efficiency. Unified shader technology will be going into mobile phones. They might be 1000% efficient and draw energy from some quantum field but that will not making them more powerful than the latest graphics cards.

At the end of the day it's results that matter and so far Xenos has yet to match PS3 Beta kit graphics so people can save the excuses because it rings hollow.

[VG Aficionado]

I think your missing my point VG
:spiral:No, I am not. You said "I havent seen a PS3 game that screams next gen either". Whichever the context is, that's by no means true, specially in ten days from now.

[Hawk]

Developers have had 10 MONTHS with the final Xenos and people are STILL making excuses for it. Get over it. Anandtech was right - it's nothing more than a 24 pipe R420.


I agree:
Pixel Rate
x360 4 Gpix/s
X800XT 8+ Gpix/s

Triangles or vertices
x360 500 Mtriangles/s (575 Mvertices/s)
X800XT 652 Mtriangles/s (750Mvertices/s)
vertices are approx 1,15*triangles

Shader operations:
X360 48 billions/s
X800XT 46 billions/s

Gflops:
x360 240 Gflops
X800XT 220 Gflops

Memory Bandwith:
X360 22,4 GB/s
X800XT 32+ GB/s

[venomv]

@Rubbernek There is still very little we know of the RSX, I wouldn't be so sure that it is better then the Xenos, it is very possable and I think it will be, but as we know very little it is also possible that it isn't as good as Xenos. But as long as it isn't horrible I think the CELL will still be enough to make up for it.

[Rubbernek]

@Rubbernek There is still very little we know of the RSX, I wouldn't be so sure that it is better then the Xenos, it is very possable and I think it will be, but as we know very little it is also possible that it isn't as good as Xenos. But as long as it isn't horrible I think the CELL will still be enough to make up for it.

I'm not going on what I know about the RSX - because frankly that's irrelevant nor am I going to listen to forum posters who haven't smelled the plastic of a development kit.

I'm going by the words of developers and what I've seen with my own eyes.

I think Xenos is weaker than the 7800GTX that was in the PS3 Beta kits over 7 months ago producing graphics still not matched by Xenos half a year later.

I will be ASTOUNDED if PS3 does not maintain superior graphics (and physics) through-out the entirety of this coming generation.

Look me up in 6 years... ;)

[yoshaw]

I wouldn't be so sure that it is better then the Xenos, it is very possable and I think it will be, but as we know very little it is also possible that it isn't as good as Xenos. But as long as it isn't horrible I think the CELL will still be enough to make up for it.

What's your reason for saying that? Care to elaborate.

[xbdestroya]

Rubberneck to be fair I've spoken with... some people... and basically the consensus is that the edge enjoyed by either chip will be situational in nature; there are instances in which they expect Xenos to outperform RSX, and vice versa. So let's not be building any coffins yet, ok? ;)

[version]

http://www.kuroda.elec.keio.ac.jp/projects/TeamWL/images/fig3.jpg

[Rubbernek]

Rubberneck to be fair I've spoken with... some people... and basically the consensus is that the edge enjoyed by either chip will be situational in nature; there are instances in which they expect Xenos to outperform RSX, and vice versa. So let's not be building any coffins yet, ok? ;)


The only instances where Xenos may outperform RSX is probably particle effects (bit like the PS2 versus XBOX this gen).

Even though PS2 could do some effects better than XBOX it was clear that XBOX had the superior graphics overall.

I expect the same situation here. What do you expect...?

[xbdestroya]

The only instances where Xenos may outperform RSX is probably particle effects (bit like the PS2 versus XBOX this gen).

Even though PS2 could do some effects better than XBOX it was clear that XBOX had the superior graphics overall.

I expect the same situation here. What do you expect...?

Well, I don't expect that extremity of situation myself...

It's hard to really pin down how I *do* feel about it honestly. I will say that I expect PS3 to deliver the better and more complete gameplay experience overall, via physics, objects on screen, interaction, etc etc. Purely graphically, well I think we do have to acknowledge that as developers familiarize themselves to Xenos and start to build their engines around it, that the bandwidth offered will in certain instances allow them to insert effects that otherwise could not be taken for granted when developing on RSX. This is not to say that I think Xenos better - I don't - but I do think there were design considerations made that although one could argue overall they were the wrong decisions, do grant advantages in certain areas when utilized properly.

In all honesty, I'm not even worried about any one specific thing such as particle performance, because I have a feeling PS3 devs will be able to tap into an SPE when they need the particles.

I'm just giving Xenos it's due - and not in a Xenos apologist sort of way! :smoke:

In the end, when I say there are 'certain situations in which Xenos might outperform RSX,' I'm just relaying what I've heard from, again, 'people.' And you can understand that I can't say more than that. :)

[Old_Timer!]

Rubberneck have you had the privilidge to see a PS3 dev kit in action? Just wondering if you're in the industry?

[xbdestroya]

Rubberneck have you had the privilidge to see a PS3 dev kit in action? Just wondering if you're in the industry?

I think what he's saying is that he'll take the word of developers over that of non-developers. Which of course makes total sense.

[section]

It will, for some type of people, eventually boil down to their console preference. They don't want to see or even try to accept that their favourite console is "inferior" to the competition in any way even if it was. This has always happened and always will.

I usually won't touch these type of threads with my writings because most forums are on the either side of the "competition" and their users won't ever accept facts. On this forum it's great to see that people defend the "competition's" achievements, even if in some occasions there isn't even any reason to do so.

Still I'm happy with how RSX is starting to look like. We still don't know enough about it and there are tons and tons of forums and articles downplaying the Nvidia and RSX technology even if RSX isn't yet fully revealed so it's great to occasionally read at least something positive about RSX.

[venomv]

I'm not going on what I know about the RSX - because frankly that's irrelevant nor am I going to listen to forum posters who haven't smelled the plastic of a development kit.

I'm going by the words of developers and what I've seen with my own eyes.

I think Xenos is weaker than the 7800GTX that was in the PS3 Beta kits over 7 months ago producing graphics still not matched by Xenos half a year later.

I will be ASTOUNDED if PS3 does not maintain superior graphics (and physics) through-out the entirety of this coming generation.

Look me up in 6 years... ;)

Fair enough, but I have seen very little developers say they like the RSX, while I have seen tons say they like the CELL and the overall PS3 design from a proformance stand-point, but not much in terms the RSX almost nothing. Could you give me some links to devolopers saying they think the RSX is better then the Xenos, not just PS3 is better then X360, because that is not what I ment.

I will also be pretty suprised if it isn't the most powerful in graphics and physics, but that is because of what we know of CELL, not because of RSX.

What's your reason for saying that? Care to elaborate.

Hmm, because I know almost nothing, and because I know almost nothing and just about everyone else who isn't under an NDA know's very little more, it is hard to say. All I was saying was that we shouldn't be saying that RSX is better then Xenos unles we know that it is, and from what I have read no one here really knows, except for possably a few people, who can't say anything.

[cpiasminc]

This is not 10 months ago when the buzzwords associated with the chip had not been put to real world scrutiny. We are seeing real-world results and comments from devs who've ACTUALLY USED IT describing the "stupid bottlenecks" in the architecture that will limit the system and may account for the "XBOX 1.5" moniker.
I'm lost as to how that's really all that special. PS3 is loaded with crippling bottlenecks, too. So is every other machine that will ever be made. Just because they're not the same ones, doesn't mean they aren't there.

I can confidently say RSX is more powerful than Xenos and the devs all agree and not just the one who's described it as a "shader monster" in this article
I don't think anybody ever denied that part of it. Not even Microsoft disagreed with that point. What MS fights back with is claims of expressive power, and of course, the first to really make use of that will surely be first-party. And of course, it's also the first-party developers who will have the most to prove.

Developers have had 10 MONTHS with the final Xenos and people are STILL making excuses for it. Get over it.
Excuses? AFAIK, everybody has been working around the hassles because there still isn't a written-from-scratch Xbox360 engine in existence. Building an engine from the ground up around an architecture will certainly work, but history has shown that taking an existing engine and squirming it into working on a new platform isn't likely to produce better than a quarter of your limits. The same will be true of PS3.

About the only people I'd really expect to be apologetic or making excuses would be the first-party developers. I don't think it's possible for any developer to be completely happy with any new platform no matter which it is.

And it might be worth mentioning that PS3 developers have had the Cell CPU (at a lower clock) and some decent (at least compatible) GPU for quite longer than 10 months.

Marco from Ninja Theory (nAo on B3d.com) has said the Unified shaders don't offer much of an advantage in a closed box. He says it's usefullness is in an open platform (PC) where devs can't optimise for one particular configuration.
Mmmm... I don't know that I would say that of the concept of Unified Shaders in general. I would agree that is the case of Xenos' shader units though. The latter point has less to do with unified shaders so much as a unified standard spec layout for them.

The only instances where Xenos may outperform RSX is probably particle effects (bit like the PS2 versus XBOX this gen).
I'd include some aspects of lighting&shadowing as well since Xenos can do a hell of a lot more lights in a single pass than PS3 ever could, and it covers up latencies nicely. In addition, I don't expect quite as huge a difference in alpha blended polys mainly because the framebuffer bandwidth difference between the two platforms is not as large (though the latency difference is there).

I'd also wager that Cell has a big hand in PS3's graphics, though. Even aside from the power of either GPU, putting together characters who have 100k+ polygons would be ridiculous on RSX or Xenos if you're processing in the vertex units.

[Rubbernek]

Well, I don't expect that extremity of situation myself...

It's hard to really pin down how I *do* feel about it honestly. I will say that I expect PS3 to deliver the better and more complete gameplay experience overall, via physics, objects on screen, interaction, etc etc. Purely graphically, well I think we do have to acknowledge that as developers familiarize themselves to Xenos and start to build their engines around it, that the bandwidth offered will in certain instances allow them to insert effects that otherwise could not be taken for granted when developing on RSX. This is not to say that I think Xenos better - I don't - but I do think there were design considerations made that although one could argue overall they were the wrong decisions, do grant advantages in certain areas when utilized properly.

In all honesty, I'm not even worried about any one specific thing such as particle performance, because I have a feeling PS3 devs will be able to tap into an SPE when they need the particles.

I'm just giving Xenos it's due - and not in a Xenos apologist sort of way! :smoke:

In the end, when I say there are 'certain situations in which Xenos might outperform RSX,' I'm just relaying what I've heard from, again, 'people.' And you can understand that I can't say more than that. :)


Fair enough.

I guess as always it's a wait and see situation. Although I feel within the first 6 months of a console you can pretty much see the "level" of graphics that you're going to get from that system. Sure there will be improvements but not massive ones eg. DOA3 is still one of the best looking XBOX games and it was a launch game.

From what I've seen so far though I do prefer the "look" of PS3 games to XBOX360 games.

XBOX 360 games seem to have that ultra-clean hard-edged "PC graphics" look to them.

The realtime PS3 footage has looked more natural, organic and in some instances CG level (lair, R&C). This is probably due to it being a shader, polygon and post-processing monster.

Anyway, E3 is only a week or so away... :)

[venomv]

That's all I was saying too Rubbernek, I agree with everything you said. Except for the first 6 months thing.

[LiquidEagle]

I'm just glad the last page of discussion hasn't gone over my head :-D

The proof is in the pudding though, and even if the Xenos has specs to match the RSX, it certainly isn't usable since Warhawk, Lair, and MGS4 look much better than anything on 360 so far. I think I mentioned it in this thread though that a 1st party company like Bungie needs to show us what they can do on the system. Halo 2 was pretty underwhelming in a way with its LOD problems (though it wasn't as bad as Killzone's issues IMO), but they still made the premier graphical showcase on XBox, save for maybe Team Ninja's Ninja Gaiden/DOA.

[Smokey]

i dont adree with the first 6 months thing either it took a long time for the ps2 to shine. but i was expecting better advancement this time around because therye both so close to pcs so ive read (well 360 was touted as easier to write for than ps3)

[xbdestroya]

Well almost doubtless PS3's launch titles will look 'better' than 360's, but they should be compared to their contemporaries, which will mean Gears of War, et al. We haven't seen a 'blast' of new screens out of Microsoft recently like we did with Phil Harrison at GDS, so I think that E3 will be a good place to recalibrate the comparison meters. I'm certainly looking forward to it. :)

The next Halo will supposedly be demo'd at E3, so by neccessity that will probably be the exemplar of 360's graphical capabilites at the show. It will be interesting to see who will emerge as Sony's 'champion.'

[LiquidEagle]

MGS trailers on next-gen hardware (MGS2 back in 2000, and this year it'll be MGS4) have a history of making grown men cry, and I'm not even a grown man, so I'm pretty sure I'll be nothing short of bawling once we all see that trailer -- that's Sony's "champion" if ya ask me :-p

But yeah, as it is I feel Halo is the most overrated game series this gen (next to GTA), so I hate to contribute to the notion that it's the end-all be-all of next-gen graphics, but as far as the 360 is concerned I have no doubt it'll be on the cutting edge. I'm a lot more interested in Orion (the supposed Halo-themed MMOFPS) than I am in Forerunner though (they didn't finish Halo 2 so they could give us a Prequel????).

[yoshaw]

Hmm, because I know almost nothing, and because I know almost nothing and just about everyone else who isn't under an NDA know's very little more, it is hard to say. All I was saying was that we shouldn't be saying that RSX is better then Xenos unles we know that it is, and from what I have read no one here really knows, except for possably a few people, who can't say anything.

Oh, welcome to the 'know it all yet still don't know at all' club ;) :cheers:

[Domination]

Wasn't one of Sony's in house devs that's creating a new action RPG (Untold Legends) that's targeting 1080p? Anyways, we can obviously see the lack of "graphical beauty", if you will, present in Untold Legend; most likely due to the fact that they're aiming for 1080p and want to nail a solid framerate. I guess 1080p is too much to ask for a first gen game, and I doubt much people even have the television capable of enjoying the game in true 1080p.
A lot of transistor in the Xenos was spent on the 10MB of eDRAM. I believe if we remove the transistor necessary for the 10MB of eDRAM, the RSX has more logic transistors than the Xenos (I can't remember the exact number, but it's definately in the a-hundred-and-something million transistors that the eDRAM took up).

I was speaking from a more open point of view, for the most part. I'm also getting mixed information on the true resolution for this game. Some have it 1080i while others may have it at 1080p. Since it was a translated message, it's hard to tell. But that's beside the point. Untold Legends is not only an early build, Untold Legends is not only from SOE, but i can just about gamble my head on Polyphony being a more talented developer than anyone from SOE, and one of the few from SCEI. They were able to do something that wasn't even claimed to spec, which neatly supports the last piece of my conclusion in which I will share with you.

My original point, and what I was also trying to make pertaining to the comment posted earlier, is a visual, eye candy game will be possible on the PS3 at 1080p since it is mentioned to spec and more than half way achieved in programming this early by certain teams. The question now is, who and when this will occur?

[Domination]

I try to give credit where it is due the marjority of my time, but I have to go with my gut on this Xenos/RSX debate. I honestly think time has the Xenos beat. Sorry, guys, but I have always been a strong believer of this - especially when the architecture is not done in-house. A few small advantages, I can believe (that has been proven may times before,) but not raw performance. Microsoft would have to go all in on a GPU for that to happen, I feel. But if they are cutting cost, I can't say that I'm all that convinced that such a GPU ever crossed their mind.

[edoshin]

Is there a significant difference between 1080i and 1080p? Is it worth the effort the extra effort to squeeze out 1080p? I'm not trying to be a smart alec asking rhetorical questions .. I was just wondering.

[Domination]

Is there a significant difference between 1080i and 1080p? Is it worth the effort the extra effort to squeeze out 1080p? I'm not trying to be a smart alec asking rhetorical questions .. I was just wondering.

Is there a difference? Yes - a very big difference. Is it worth it? That depends on how important graphics are to you. Me, I care about content before anything else. Everything else extra is icing to top the experience.

[venomv]

I don't think the proformance is ever worth it to go up from interlaced to progressive (those are what they stand for right?), to me anyway.

[woundingchaney]

Interlaced to progressive is definetely a personal opinion, but there is a difference some value it more than others. I personally prefer the progressive signal but once again that is an opinion.


I honestly think time has the Xenos beat

Im doubting time has anything to do with the equation at all here. I think Sony has been looking at incorporating the Cell and Blu Ray they may have botched a little on the RSX to keep pricing low. But time will tell (lol).

[cpiasminc]

Is there a significant difference between 1080i and 1080p? Is it worth the effort the extra effort to squeeze out 1080p? I'm not trying to be a smart alec asking rhetorical questions .. I was just wondering.
To the developer, there is basically no difference between 1080i and 1080p. Rarely if ever do you fill in a framebuffer that only covers half your lines and alternate fields, so in both cases, you're likely to be using a full 1920x1080 framebuffer. You theoretically could alternate fields, but it wouldn't be safe unless you could guarantee full framerate matching all the time, because you have to maintain that sync with the screen refresh.

[Crossbar]

To the developer, there is basically no difference between 1080i and 1080p. Rarely if ever do you fill in a framebuffer that only covers half your lines and alternate fields, so in both cases, you're likely to be using a full 1920x1080 framebuffer. You theoretically could alternate fields, but it wouldn't be safe unless you could guarantee full framerate matching all the time, because you have to maintain that sync with the screen refresh.
Xbox 360 supports 1080i. Is that done just through some scaling or what?

[cpiasminc]

1080 framebuffer is just 2 Mpixels... at 4 bytes per pixel (32-bit), it's 8 MB. Plus another 4 MB for Zbuffer. Making 12 MB. So the only way to make it fit is do it by tiles. Granted, if MS had listened in the first place when a few thousand developers all said 12 MB eDRAM and rather than 10, you wouldn't have to ask.

[Darkon]

1080 framebuffer is just 2 Mpixels... at 4 bytes per pixel (32-bit), it's 8 MB. Plus another 4 MB for Zbuffer. Making 12 MB. So the only way to make it fit is do it by tiles. Granted, if MS had listened in the first place when a few thousand developers all said 12 MB eDRAM and rather than 10, you wouldn't have to ask.

and with 12 mb edram you wouldn't have to do tilling for 720p correct ? which makes me wonder why MS didn't opt for 12 mb. yes it would have been more expensive but not by much i assume plus this would have pleased devs and may have gotten a few more devs on board

[Domination]

Interlaced to progressive is definetely a personal opinion, but there is a difference some value it more than others. I personally prefer the progressive signal but once again that is an opinion.




Im doubting time has anything to do with the equation at all here. I think Sony has been looking at incorporating the Cell and Blu Ray they may have botched a little on the RSX to keep pricing low. But time will tell (lol).

Sorry, but in history of gaming, that has never happened. And with Sony just as ambitious, if not more, than Microsoft on this front, I am just not convinced that they would shoot for anything average to combat them in this area. I seriously believe time has Xenos beat. It was finalised way too early.

[cpiasminc]

and with 12 mb edram you wouldn't have to do tilling for 720p correct ? which makes me wonder why MS didn't opt for 12 mb. yes it would have been more expensive but not by much i assume plus this would have pleased devs and may have gotten a few more devs on board
Yep, that's about right. Though you don't need tiling at 720p anyway *if* you're not going to use hardware AA. But with 12 MB, you could do 2xMSAA w/o tiling at 720p (720p is just shy of 1 Mpix * (32bpp + 16bits/Z) = ~6 MB * 2 samples = 12 MB). My best guess is they had a pretty hard-set transistor budget, and if they went with too few shader pipes on the parent die, Xenos would have been too weak on raw power.

[woundingchaney]

Sorry, but in history of gaming, that has never happened. And with Sony just as ambitious, if not more, than Microsoft on this front, I am just not convinced that they would shoot for anything average to combat them in this area. I seriously believe time has Xenos beat. It was finalised way too early.
I believe that with this gen Sonys ambitions lay with BR everything else comes second (including Cell). I havent seen anything to suggest that the specs of RSX have changed since announcement (unless im missing something) infact i doubt anything has changed with the system since announcement. Blu Ray has held the playstation from being released not RSX or Cell development.

What about the Rev it will be releasing approx 1 year after the 360 with lower specs, a first in the history of gaming.:pleased:

[LaLiLuLeLo]

It's called Wii, now.
And uh....what about it? Nintendo's distancing themselves from gamers like us as much as possible.

[Domination]

I believe that with this gen Sonys ambitions lay with BR everything else comes second (including Cell). I havent seen anything to suggest that the specs of RSX have changed since announcement (unless im missing something) infact i doubt anything has changed with the system since announcement. Blu Ray has held the playstation from being released not RSX or Cell development.

What about the Rev it will be releasing approx 1 year after the 360 with lower specs, a first in the history of gaming.:pleased:

LOL! Actually, devkits DID hold the PS3 back from an early release date as well as Blu Ray. Ken mentioned this in the apology conference and I believe it was also mentioned at GDC. ;) The artical is on this site somewhere. I believe it went something like, Blu Ray wasn't the only thing that held PS3 back. I may look it up later on for you. :)

I do agree, though, that Blu Ray is Sony's main focus for this generation. But that does not mean that it has distracted them from the PlayStation business. Actually, it has allowed them to become more serious about it this time so that Blu Ray does have an opportunity of success. Compare the last PlayStation to this one, and you will see what I mean.

As far as Nintendo Wii, I said it before, and I'm going to say it again... I don't buy the rumors at all. I believe it's going to be slightly more powerful than the 360. For one, it wouldn't make sense to hold off this long just to deliver very, very old tech and rely completely on innovation. I think Nintendo is going to try to stay within range of the others with their console without shooting for any records, yet still concentrating on what matters most to them; fun games.

What I do believe is the CPU in the 360 being much more capable than the one in Wii. There GPUs, I believe, is going to be roughly equal to one another with Wii having a slightly different architecture to allow for somethings to be done better than those on Xenos.

EDIT:

Here you go, Wounding: Blu-ray not the only reason for PS3 delay? (http://www.gamespot.com/news/6146440.html?q=Bluray not the only reason for PS3 delay)

[EvilTaru]

It's called Wii, now.
And uh....what about it? Nintendo's distancing themselves from gamers like us as much as possible.


Seriously though I think this is a mistake, the revolution is a good name, the name wii basically does nothing but invites all kinds of wii-wii jokes.

[cpiasminc]

Nintendo's distancing themselves from gamers like us as much as possible.
I don't know about that... Red Steel, for instance, isn't exactly a far removed game design from what many people might be playing on PS3 or 360. It's the interface that's different, and that's just fine.

The real thing is that Nintendo is trying is to widen the market. When you get down to it, the cost of development has grown 350x more than the size of the market since the NES days, so you have to find some way to enlarge the whole thing, and they're banking that the Wii-mote(?) will do that.

[Viper]

http://revolution.ign.com/articles/703/703727p1.html

Read that, esp if you're a Madden fan, and tell if it makes you want to play it or not.


*looks back at topic* oops.

So not is the medium limiting their HD capabilities but so is the hardware? HD Era my ass.

[EvilTaru]

I don't know about that... Red Steel, for instance, isn't exactly a far removed game design from what many people might be playing on PS3 or 360. It's the interface that's different, and that's just fine.

The real thing is that Nintendo is trying is to widen the market. When you get down to it, the cost of development has grown 350x more than the size of the market since the NES days, so you have to find some way to enlarge the whole thing, and they're banking that the Wii-mote(?) will do that.

But will watering down the visuals and perhaps other levels of interactivity in the game world, and introducing a different set of controls really work for them? This is NOT the handheld market which Nintendo has dominated FOR YEARS with an iron grip, being the only game in town more than a decade.

[Viper]

If that's what you perceive the Wii to be, you've listened to too many fanboys.

[EvilTaru]

But if you think about it, going from the PS1 era to the PS2 era, we're talking about even games like RE Gunsurvivor back on the PS1 having 20 people on the team working on it (according to the interview with the team featured in the official chinese game guide published by Capcom Asia Ltd), games were already expensive to make, developing for a souped-up GC isn't exactly going to bring development costs back down to levels FOUR generations ago, it's still going to be expensive, except the final product will likely look clearly downgraded compared to the competition.

[EvilTaru]

If that's what you perceive the Wii to be, you've listened to too many fanboys.

Do you actually believe that it's realistic to even expect the same level of visuals as the competition albeit non-HD? Or that the difference will only be the graphics? Not physics? Not how many interesting AIs you can put on screen? Not different ways that the game world can be manipulated? Especially considering the hardware speed is so much slower as well as the competition having 8 or 9 times the amount of memory? Do you expect developers to really push the wii and NOT the competition's consoles which are much more powerful, especially a few years down the line?

[Viper]

Its the art that raises the cost. PS3 and X360 will require more artists for HD. Cpi can explain that much better.

[EvilTaru]

Its the art that raises the cost. PS3 and X360 will require more artists for HD. Cpi can explain that much better.

Well, I respectfully disagree with this "PS3 and xbox360 art will be so much more expensive to create because it's 'HD'" argument, God of War for the PS2 had an art team of 30-40 strong, that's a huge art team, a lot of their art doesn't make it into the game because the hardware wouldn't allow it, do you honestly believe that we'll see their art team doubling next-gen... because it's "HD"? I doubt it.

It's not like they would need to hand-paint every piece of texture, or that having a game at a lower resolution would mean they wouldn't prefer just painting the textures normally and then just lowering the resolution to get it down to the proper size, or that they wouldn't prefer not having to manually fake the lighting and shadows (because the hardware is less capable) but instead just let the graphics engine do the work with self-shadowing and lighting (because the hardware is more powerful and can handle it better). If you want a game to have good art, you would need a big art team even if one is to hypothetically develop for "the wii", except your art team might not have as much room to express themselves if the hardware itself is more limiting.

[Viper]

Hey, I'm only pointing out what developers and Cpi have stated many times before, its the art that is jacking up the price.

[EvilTaru]

Hey, I'm only pointing out what developers and Cpi have stated many times before, its the art that is jacking up the price.

No doubt, that's because we're moving forward from current-gen to next-gen, but that's not just for the PS3 and xbox360, going from GC to "the wii", we'll also see higher development costs as well in terms of artists.

[Infernal]

Were the specs of the "Wii" ever officially announced? I thought the insanely low specs were just rumors.

[Viper]

No official specs were released nor does N even plan to. The 'released' specs came from IGN based on developers with early dev kits.

[xbdestroya]

Dom I have to say, I really think Rev is going to have the lowest of the specs - in fact if it's specs alone we're going on, I'd say the leaked specs probably won't be far from the truth. I've witnessed a number of discussions on the matter and never have I seen a dev claim them to be BS, so...

At the same time though, I mean I don't think the raw specs are integral to what Nintendo's trying to achieve.

Let's try to keep the thread focused on the technical aspects though rather than a general 'console philosophy' discussion - not that it's not a great discussion point, just that tis thread has been so good thus far as being focused on the tech aspects.

[LiquidEagle]

At the same time xb, I think the Gamecube is the most underrated of all the current consoles in terms of hardware and capabilities. It was capable of absolutely amazing things but devs never tried to exploit it. When developers did get intimate with the hardware, we got amazing results like RE4. Developers never rushed to save the Gamecube's face when people talked about hardware power, and I think Revolution very much could be the same case.

Of course you could be right though, and it would certainly pitch in to Revolution being much cheaper than the other 2 (we don't know the exact price point but we do know it'll be noticably cheaper by Nintendo's own admission). I'm a little curious why Nintendo went out of their way to have Broadway & Hollywood designed custom by big names IBM & ATI if they were only going to use average-power stuff -- that sounds like a waste of time, money, and resources if you ask me -- why not just toss in a pretty good CPU with a pretty nice video card if hardware power isn't your real focus?

[frosty]

because then they would have to spend a lot of $ on R&D to create said hardware, when they could just go to IBM and buy a power PC processor and go to ATI and buy a GFX card that is based on their already available tech and thus not requiring much if any R&D for a much lower cost.

[liver_kick]

I'm a little curious why Nintendo went out of their way to have Broadway & Hollywood designed custom by big names IBM & ATI if they were only going to use average-power stuff -- that sounds like a waste of time, money, and resources if you ask me

Hardware vendors having "big names" doesnt preclude them from providing quality mid-range solutions. Quite the contrary, they do it all the time.

[LiquidEagle]

Frosty, that's what it sounds like they did -- they spent money on this R&D for custom stuff from IBM and ATI when they could have saved that money (thus passing more savings on to the consumer and keeping money for themselves to distribute among dev. studios or whatever) and just used currently existing technology for a better price...

[xbdestroya]

At the same time xb, I think the Gamecube is the most underrated of all the current consoles in terms of hardware and capabilities. It was capable of absolutely amazing things but devs never tried to exploit it. When developers did get intimate with the hardware, we got amazing results like RE4. Developers never rushed to save the Gamecube's face when people talked about hardware power, and I think Revolution very much could be the same case.

Of course you could be right though, and it would certainly pitch in to Revolution being much cheaper than the other 2 (we don't know the exact price point but we do know it'll be noticably cheaper by Nintendo's own admission). I'm a little curious why Nintendo went out of their way to have Broadway & Hollywood designed custom by big names IBM & ATI if they were only going to use average-power stuff -- that sounds like a waste of time, money, and resources if you ask me -- why not just toss in a pretty good CPU with a pretty nice video card if hardware power isn't your real focus?

I do think the GameCube was a little underappreciated power-wise, but at the same time most everyone acknowledges that it was right behind XBox. Rev is just not going to be that same system - th case size and dimensions alone demand low-wattage chips; and that normally translates into available power to an extent as well. It makes sense though that Nintendo went with IBM and ATI again, as they are the ones that designed the CPU and GPU in the GameCube.

[LaLiLuLeLo]

gamecube was no doubt the most underused console of this generation.
That's a fact, jack. It's sad too.
It's more powerful than ps2, but only just. And the reason is ps2's low vram. If it weren't for that, ps2 would be inherently more powerful. But gamecube was designed better than ps2 was I think....PS2's specs were based on theoritical maximums, but gamecube's specs were based on 'all fx on' calculations... too bad it didn't gain enough momentum from devs..

[woundingchaney]

LOL! Actually, devkits DID hold the PS3 back from an early release date as well as Blu Ray. Ken mentioned this in the apology conference and I believe it was also mentioned at GDC. ;) The artical is on this site somewhere. I believe it went something like, Blu Ray wasn't the only thing that held PS3 back. I may look it up later on for you. :)

I do agree, though, that Blu Ray is Sony's main focus for this generation. But