View Full Version : MS wants XBox2 out before PS3?
megadrive0088
31-Oct-2002, 19:32
here is an interesting discussion going on at Gaming-Age about XBox2 and the thought that MS wants it out BEFORE the next Playstatiion.
here's the GA thread:
http://pub111.ezboard.com/fgamingageforumsfrm17.showMessage?topicID=22056.to pic
here's the article with Ed Fries talking about XBox2 and PS3:
FRIES LEVELS UP TO PS3
Microsoft boss Ed Fries has become the second senior company exec to point to Xbox launching before Sony's next hardware effort
14:54 Ed Fries, Microsoft's head of first-party development for both Xbox and PC, has reiterated in an interview that the company plans to hit retail with Xbox's successor before the launch of the next PlayStation.
Speaking in Japan to the Hihon Kezai Shimbun, Fries confirmed that Xbox 2 - or whatever it ends up being dubbed - is currently in the first stages of development and would indeed hit before PlayStation 3, now expected in 2005.
Both Sony and Microsoft have been holding meetings with publishers for some time regarding the next wave of gaming hardware.
Fries also attributed relative failure of Xbox in Japan so far down to cultural differences, stating that Microsoft's education through mistakes will lead to the eventual success of the machine in the territory.
Again, without a hostile takeover of Enix and Square, I don't see Japan warming up to the Xbox any time soon. I don't think Sony would have wrestled control of the livingroom from Nintendo if not for those two companies.
zurich
megadrive0088
31-Oct-2002, 19:57
Agreed. I don't see XBox or XBox2 doing well in Japan unless MS takes over both Square and Enix... or at least one of them. But even if MS continues to bomb in Japan, the other to markets, U.S. and Europe. are large enough (roughly 2/3rd of the global market) that MS would want to stay in the console wars with XBox2. I don't believe MS will have XBox2 ready until 2005 though, and I doubt they'll have more than a 3 month lead on PS3, if any.
That would mean less than 3 years between introductions for the XBox and it's successor in Japan?
Unless they started development in earnest as they were introducing the Xbox (as in spending a couple 100s of millions in R&D on hardware) this would cut the options for Xbox-2 down to Hammer/Prescott and some derivative from NVIDIA/ATI's DX9 PC architectures.
Decidedly unimpressive, PS3 would kill them in IQ (if Sony spend their money right, there is always the potential for failure ... but hopefully they learned from PS2 to not to try to invent their own shape of wheel entirely, at least as far as the graphics chip is concerned). Maybe they took this approach because they realised they were too late to do enough research to rival Sony+IBM, since they prooved they can make a console from PC technologies in a very short timeframe maybe they thought that if they couldnt beat them in performance (unless they decided to lag them by half a cycle) the only alternative would be beating them to market.
Doubt it, Take-2's CEO said that SCE is hell bent on milking the PS2 for all its worth, and we probably wont see a PS3 till 2006. (Xengamers)
I'm sure MS won't have any problems with this either. I think both know that if they changed over to like 3 year cycles, it'd destroy the industry.
I dont think m$ wants to get into the same situation they are in now though, so they will probably have a shorter cycle than the rest of the industry whatever happens at least this time around.
just watch. it will launch in japan first...
Mr. Angry Pants
31-Oct-2002, 21:09
Why do people think Microsoft buying out a noteworthy Japanese development house would help their situation in Japan? If anything it would have the opposite effect, with the Japanese public seeing it as an aggressive take over (which it likely would be) by a foreign company.
Microsoft definately needs a change of strategy, but if anything they need to get their nose out of Square/Enix/Capcom's arse, stop bribing developers to make games and for once try to come off as having a monochrome of integrity (closing down those stupid cafes would be a good start).
CaptainHowdy
31-Oct-2002, 21:13
If MS did this, being its 2005, that would be shooting themselves in the foot, giving thier console less than a 4 year life..
less being most people just got one this year, and the bulk of games did not really hit until this year. It would be suicide even in America. People who got the Xbox, got it because its the most powerful, and is supposed to outlive the rest.
Mephisto
31-Oct-2002, 21:32
SONY will lose with the next generation. It's an old Microsoft strategy to win the race with quicker improvements over time. IE was a bad product but got better with every release while Netscape remained where it was. WinCE sucked and was unsucessful, today it's the best PDA OS. We will see the same development in the mobile phone market as well as in the game console market. SONY is sitting on their pearls, idling around, while MS is quickly adopting fast developing PC technology for the console market. MS can cheaply benefit from huge R&D investments by PC semiconductor companies like AMD, Intel, NVIDIA and ATI, while SONY thinks they're able to do all themself with a little help by IBM, a software/service company.
Mephisto
31-Oct-2002, 21:36
If MS did this, being its 2005, that would be shooting themselves in the foot, giving thier console less than a 4 year life..
Microsofts target is not to gain money with Xbox 1. The cost for the hardware and marketing is too high to pay it back with software royalities. The target is to beat SONY and Nintendo in the long term. This is a very long term strategy (~10 years). They will put money in that market until there is no real competition left. Then they can start making huge amounts of money.
Mr. Angry Pants I think you mean hostile takeover ... do those companies even have a majority of their shares outstanding? Ignoring whatever Sony and Nintendo own too (looked on Square's page, but their investors page on the English part of the site is MIA).
MS just don't want to gave Sony another 12+month lead.
Trying to convince a publisher that they should change primary skews after they've invested millions of dollars in developing technology for the market leader is pretty much a losing proposition.
I think it's likely that XBox2 and PS3 will be released very close to each other. I know of at least one publisher who will be starting their first PS3 title First or Second quarter next year. I also know the first Xbox2 titles will be being developed in the same timeframe. Most of this early development will just be planning and it's doubtful, they'll be anything approaching a devkit next year. But it serves to indicate that both Xbox2 and PS3 are likly going to happen very close to each other.
megadrive0088
31-Oct-2002, 21:51
If PS3 is not out until 2006, that will give the XBox a longer life span. Lets say PS3 comes out in Japan in March 2006, and late 2006 in the U.S. MS could launch XBox in late 2005 in all territories, spred out over 2005, before PS3, but not too much before. Another possibility is launch XBox2 first in Japan against PS3 in March 2006, then later in the U.S. against the U.S. launch of PS3. By 2005, Nvidia should have NV50 ready and ATI something beyond R500 which would both be well beyond any version of DX9. More like DX10 or DX11. An XBox2 based on NV40 or R500 would have a hard time against PS3, most likely. But NV50 should be another archietecture completely. So should R600. Whatever the case, MS would not want to launch XBox2 too early, otherwise PS3 will cream it will better performance. Best not to give Sony any length of time to change PS3. So MS should launch a few months before PS3 but not too much in advance.
SONY will lose with the next generation. It's an old Microsoft strategy to win the race with quicker improvements over time. IE was a bad product but got better with every release while Netscape remained where it was. WinCE sucked and was unsucessful, today it's the best PDA OS. We will see the same development in the mobile phone market as well as in the game console market.
You are comparin apples and orange. Nobody can force people to buy MS products in the console market. In the business market, MS is the leader and the companies want and pay for that monopoly. It make them feel better to have the whole line of MS products and support.
Things are not the same in the console market. Unless MS start to force retailers to bundle the xbox with any ps2 ;)
I have a feeling that NVIDIA and ATI have much more agressive R&D habits than Sony. If MS sticks with NVIDIA, I dont think they'll have to worry about inferior tech. NVIDIA's business _IS_ graphics, and good drivers/apis to work with them.
Oops yeah I meant to say DX10.
NVIDIA and ATI can research their but off, but the big IDMs have a big process advantage that is not going to go away.
If PS3 is not out until 2006
Uhh... I posted slides that showed a network based on Cell launching in 2005. The previous slide, which shows the network tomography as of now contains PS2's. I think the point is demonstrated well enough.
I'd say it launches in Japan earlier and Christmas 2005 in the US.
MS could launch XBox in late 2005 in all territories, spred out over 2005, before PS3, but not too much before. Another possibility is launch XBox2 first in Japan against PS3 in March 2006, then later in the U.S. against the U.S. launch of PS3.
By 2005, Nvidia should have NV50 ready
Your joking me right? It's basically 2003 now, the NV30 will be the first new product based off the new CineFx core - which will be the base for the next ~4-5 years. It won't launch untill 2003, NV35 in late 2003/early 2004.
If they intend to launch in 2005, they need production started in early 2005 -> Back-end design done in late 2004 -> Giving 4-5 months for resigns/test/layout fixes brings you to early/mid 2004 for the front-end completion.
NV3A based core that meets MS's specifications.
ATI something beyond R500 which would both be well beyond any version of DX9. More like DX10 or DX11.
ATI will be on a R400 derivative by then. DX9 isn't even out yet, right? DX10 - if their even going to use it.
An XBox2 based on NV40 or R500 would have a hard time against PS3, most likely.
Huh? Um, I think your wrong. But then again, graphics will only be part of the NGConsole.
PS. Anyone disagree with my timings? I'd appreciate some factual rebuttals :)
NV30's delay does not necessarily have any impact on NV40's schedule, independent teams and all, even if they are shooting for a 2 year cycle on average nowadays NV40 could be ready in time.
I have a feeling that NVIDIA and ATI have much more agressive R&D habits than Sony. If MS sticks with NVIDIA, I dont think they'll have to worry about inferior tech. NVIDIA's business _IS_ graphics, and good drivers/apis to work with them.
They have much more aggressive PR, you mean. Sony do not have to talk on its current RD before the ps3 unveiling, unlike ATI/Nvidia and their yearly release schedule. MS will not have inferior tech, and Sony wll be competitive too. The xbox is like a ps2 with one more year and half of maturation. Launching at the same time should yield to comparable power (unless one make a RD breakthrough).
megadrive0088
31-Oct-2002, 22:47
Perhaps NV50 is too far off for it to be apart of XBox2, however, there is no way XBox2 will be based on a NV3X chip. the whole NV3X line will be outdated by the time XBox2 is ready to go, and NV3X will be no where near good enough to be competitive with PS3 in 2005-2006. We are talking NV4X series in XBox2 at least. correct me if you think this is wrong here.
Look back to the first rumors of X-Box in 1999. At that time Nvidia had NV10 (Geforce256) out. It was thought at that time that X-Box would use an NV10 for graphics. a few months later, it was thought that XBox would use NV15. When XBox was officially annouced in March 2000, the graphics chip was going to be NV25. now things got a little confused and it turned out that XBox would use a modifed NV20/GeForce3, called the NV2A which turned out to be inbetween NV20 and NV25.
NV30 is 2002 technology launching in late 2002 or early 2003. I highly doubt an "NV3A" would be used in XBox2, even if NV3A was a little bit beyond NV35. At the very least, XBox2 is going to be DX10 and NV40, it well could be DX11 and NV50, but certainly not DX9 and NV30 or NV35.
unless MS was launching XBox2 in late 2003/early 2004 which is extremely doubtful.
megadrive0088
31-Oct-2002, 22:52
NV30's delay does not necessarily have any impact on NV40's schedule, independent teams and all, even if they are shooting for a 2 year cycle on average nowadays NV40 could be ready in time.
well said, and I agree.
NV40 would be the absolute minimum that I would expect XBox2 to be based on. IMHO. I believe that NV40 will be the starting point for XBox2 development since the NV4X series is the most likely architechure for XBox2.
megadrive0088
31-Oct-2002, 22:56
keep in mind, that XBox2 is 3-4 years away. NV3X will be old, old technology by then. whatever XBox2 uses for graphics, the actual XBox2 version of this chip has not yet been designed, nor its base architecture.
We are talking NV4X series in XBox2 at least. correct me if you think this is wrong here.
Ok, I think this feeds into it:
NV30 is 2002 technology launching in late 2002 or early 2003
We don't know what the Nv30 implimentation of CineFx is capable of. While we know much about CineFx, we don't know the architectural details of the NV30 and I, for one, feel that we're going to be in for a surprise. There is much that can be done to increase the pathetic effeciency of current IMRs (which totally embody the "bruteforce" ideal) and that such schemes - which would allow for the computational effeciency that nVidia spoke of - would allow developers to actually utilize complex shaders to a high degree. Something that your not seeing with present solutions, something that would take a normal IMR several generations to achieve with the rudimentary and strictly evolutionary progression we're currently seeing from the likes of ATi....
But this is just my gut feeling - although it's worked out well in the past.
Look back to the first rumors of X-Box in 1999. At that time Nvidia had NV10 (Geforce256) out. It was thought at that time that X-Box would use an NV10 for graphics.
Actually, anyone read the Opening the XBox book? IIRC, the rumor had validity as MS was internally debating the form that XBox was to take...
It was thought that XBox would use NV15. When XBox was officially annouced in March 2000, the graphics chip was going to be NV25. now things got a little confused and it turned out that XBox would use a modifed NV20/GeForce3, called the NV2A which turned out to be inbetween NV20 and NV25.
Yeah, I know this :) I think you've told the tale of the evolution of MS's vision of the XBox as the project progressed - not that people were just lying and totally off. I think theirs alotta validity in the above comments, but in the way that the rumors were based on factual information that evolved with the 'box.
At the very least, XBox2 is going to be DX10 and NV40, it well could be DX11 and NV50, but certainly not DX9 and NV30 or NV35.
Whats this infatuation with big numbers? You do realise that nomenclature mean nothing, right? You don't know anything concrete about the NV3x implimentation of CineFx, and you sure as hell don't know of their timetable - but we do know their contemporary history and the time it takes to go from a product specification (Which MS just sent out) to implimenting these in an architecture and getting a completed netlist - then to finish up the back-end layout of the design and get an GDS-II tape from the netlist. We also know product ramping times for XBox (Anyone rememeber?). So, stop throwing out the biggest number possible and do the reverse math.
DirectX? Do we even know if the XBox will use a conventional 'API' such as this? I'm interested to see how high the level of extraction becomes in time - I've heard one developers comment on programming to an OS ;)
CaptainHowdy
01-Nov-2002, 01:10
If MS did this, being its 2005, that would be shooting themselves in the foot, giving thier console less than a 4 year life..
Microsofts target is not to gain money with Xbox 1. The cost for the hardware and marketing is too high to pay it back with software royalities. The target is to beat SONY and Nintendo in the long term. This is a very long term strategy (~10 years). They will put money in that market until there is no real competition left. Then they can start making huge amounts of money.
think you missed my point, my point was, noone will adopt a new console so soon after its previous generation.. Xbox doesnt have a strong enough user base to take such chances, it needs to wait and keep its support on the first one long enough that every owner feels satisfied.
they were told for years that it would last well beyond the other consoles because of how much more powerful it was, thinking your going to get a good 6-8 years of gaming out of it, sure it was a hella sweet deal, even at $299..but to have spent that, to find a new console is on its way so soon, I would be mad.
Actually, IMHO, your best bet would be to figure on a December 2005 launch, then using XBox figures as a base - trace the time back threw stockpiling and manufacturing ramp-up and then use an average of 3-4 respins during the back-end phase and get to a date [roughly] when the completed netlist is delivered. Then look at what Lithography processes and libraries are availiable or projected for that time and go from there with whats possible and not - both temporally and physically [on the die].
keep in mind, that XBox2 is 3-4 years away. NV3X will be old, old technology by then. whatever XBox2 uses for graphics, the actual XBox2 version of this chip has not yet been designed, nor its base architecture.
You stated a 2005 launch. It's basically 2003. Thats 2 years of solid development or research leading upto it. 3-4 years away is pretty ignorant considering they have to lock the specs and manufacture/stock-pile the thing.
megadrive0088
01-Nov-2002, 02:06
yeah but look, NV30 is most likely completed now, and its ramping up right? you don't seriously believe that XBox2, a console that is 3-4 years away from release, and probably 2 years from being completed would use 2002 technology, or do you?
Now, I never said that Xbox2 would not use CineFx. CineFx might span several generations of Nvidia GPUs --- and Nvidia works on several GPUs at one time. NV30 is done now, most likely. NV40 is being designed as we type, and NV50 is at least a twinkle in Nvidia's eye, at least on paper some of its specs are down. I would bet you ANYTHING that XBox2 uses some varient of NV40 at least, not NV30.
Unless XBox2 is launching next year, which it is not, it would not be using NV30 or anything in the NV3X line. IMHO, saying today that XBox2 would use NV30 or NV35 is like being in 1999 and saying XBox will use NV10 or NV15. No one really knows what XBox2 will use other than the fact that it will not use current technology NV30 is current technology as far as Nvidia is concerned, and its about to be current technology for the consumer, in a few months. Xbox2 is simply too far away for NV30 to be used. but as I said, possible not CineFx. XBox2 in 2004 with NV3X... that kind of talk also reminds me of a year or so ago when some people and websites thought that Sony would have PS3 out by 2003 using EE2 and GS2. I will leave it at that.
As for Japan, MS need to change its strategy, that is all. Japanese goes with the fashion, if you can set the trend, it will sell.
You don't need good games, or anything, basically set the trend. That's all there is to it.
BenSkywalker
01-Nov-2002, 02:17
You stated a 2005 launch. It's basically 2003. Thats 2 years of solid development or research leading upto it. 3-4 years away is pretty ignorant considering they have to lock the specs and manufacture/stock-pile the thing.
Remember that the NV2A was several months ahead of its PC counterpart. If the XB2 were to launch today it is likely it would ship with NV30(MS would find a fab that could pull it off costs be damned, I think we have seen that enough). If need be, I could see them approaching Intel or AMD and using their fab capabilities(Dresden has plenty of room ATM) tied in to landing the CPU for the XB2.
Looking at late '05 I think that NV5X is not unlikely, nor is a DX11 implementation. It would serve MS's interest to have the next generation of XBox launch with a DX revision that exceeds what is available on the PC at the time(at least in a public fashion). Given that nV has completely seperate dev teams for their generations and the hold up with the NV30 has been the fab capabilities it is likely that NV40 is less then eighteen months away right now(although they may push it back depending on market conditions). NV50 ready in three years for the XB2 launch I see as more likely then not. It may be pushing it, but it is possible that we could see an early NV6X part by the end of '05 for the XB2 launch(given how late the NV3X is it is possible that NV4X is less then a year off).
megadrive0088
01-Nov-2002, 02:25
Remember that the NV2A was several months ahead of its PC counterpart. If the XB2 were to launch today it is likely it would ship with NV30(MS would find a fab that could pull it off costs be damned, I think we have seen that enough). If need be, I could see them approaching Intel or AMD and using their fab capabilities(Dresden has plenty of room ATM) tied in to landing the CPU for the XB2.
Looking at late '05 I think that NV5X is not unlikely, nor is a DX11 implementation. It would serve MS's interest to have the next generation of XBox launch with a DX revision that exceeds what is available on the PC at the time(at least in a public fashion). Given that nV has completely seperate dev teams for their generations and the hold up with the NV30 has been the fab capabilities it is likely that NV40 is less then eighteen months away right now(although they may push it back depending on market conditions). NV50 ready in three years for the XB2 launch I see as more likely then not. It may be pushing it, but it is possible that we could see an early NV6X part by the end of '05 for the XB2 launch(given how late the NV3X is it is possible that NV4X is less then a year off).
Ahhh THANK YOU. Finally, someone who is understanding what I am saying, and that has a reply that makes total and complete sense. :)
Now, I am not saying that XBox2 will use NV6X or NV5X, but I can say with near certainty that XBox2 will not use NV3X. My honest best guess is NV4+ (meaning between NV40 and NV45) at the least and NV55 at the most. A late 2005 release seems most likely at this point, with reports going around that Sony wants to keep PS2 around as long as possible, not launching PS3 until 2006 (which is not late, according to their 1999 plan) XBox2 in late 2005 seems perfect timing, giving the XBox a full 4 years before introducing a more powerful machine.
megadrive0088
01-Nov-2002, 02:38
of course, a similar outlook could be estimated if MS chooses to go with ATI. An ATI Radeon powered XBox2 would obviously use no less than a R500. It's well known that both R400 and R500 are being worked on simultaneously. Perhaps R600 would be ready in time for XBox2 since R600 will likely be ahead of NV60 in timeframe. If R400 is a 2003 product, R500 a 2004 product, certainly R500 is the least we could expect from an ATI based XBox2. R600 is probably pushing it, but could be ready in 2005 especially if ATI is really speeding up its chip development like they appear to be doing. ATI would be more than willing to speed up development of an chip that might just be able to make XBox2's timetable. ATI would like nothing more than to score the XBox2 contract, specially if Nintendo drops out of the console race.
Sorry to tell history over again but I wanted to make this point: You can also look at the MS/GigaPixel situation back in 2000. GigaPixel had only prototypes of its GP1 chip. yet it was going to try to deliver a GP4 chip for XBox--A chip several generations beyond what they had silicon of (GP1) So we really cannot know what XBox2 will use, all we can know for certain is that it will not use what is about to be current technology.
aaaaa00
01-Nov-2002, 04:35
You stated a 2005 launch. It's basically 2003. Thats 2 years of solid development or research leading upto it. 3-4 years away is pretty ignorant considering they have to lock the specs and manufacture/stock-pile the thing.
"Inside the Xbox" states basically that entire project was completed in about 20 months.
The initial idea for Microsoft to build a console was proposed in mid-1999.
The second half of 1999 was research, feasability studies, and "wouldn't it be cool if..." discussions.
February 2000 was when the final approval for the project came down and real design started happening.
March 2000 was when the project was announced at GDC.
February 2001 was when the NV2A and MCPX were finalized and taped out.
September 2001 was when manufacturing started for launch.
November 2001 was the launch.
All said, 18 months from approval to manufacturing, 20 months in total from approval to retail.
The XGPU is essentially an NV25 (more or less). The PC version (GeForce 4 Ti) launched aproximately Feb 2002, or about 4 months after the xbox.
So given NVidia's patterns (assuming NVidia maintains their 6 month cycle, and NV30 launches in January), we can probably expect them to be at something resembling an NV50 or NV55 by the time we hit the end of 2005, which is when any console launch for 2005 would be planned.
Presuming xbox2 follows the pattern set by xbox1, initial studies will occur in the second half of 2003, design work will start in early 2004 with lockdown in early 2005, and the final product will release in late fall 2005 with something resembling an NV55.
Note this is all highly speculative (ie. pulled out of my ass :D) and relies on many things which could change at any time, like NVidia's release schedule and chip numbering schema, or ATI being chosen as the supplier, or even Microsoft deciding to go with a custom architecture and designing their own chips.
Looking at late '05 I think that NV5X is not unlikely, nor is a DX11 implementation....
It may be pushing it, but it is possible that we could see an early NV6X part by the end of '05 for the XB2 launch(given how late the NV3X is it is possible that NV4X is less then a year off).
Woah boy... NV6x in 3 years? I guess this comes down to a fundimental question of how nVidia's timetable will stay. I see a slower paced enviroment, with the pace set by less frequent, but more radical DX revisions.
I don't see the continued investment of producing entirely new cores or major revisions every year. CineFX is here for awhile - just as the TNT core lasted all this time as the foundation of nVidia's products.
Given that nV has completely seperate dev teams for their generations and the hold up with the NV30 has been the fab capabilities it is likely that NV40 is less then eighteen months away right now
What? Um, I smell something odd....
nVidia conference call, no Nv30 tape out => August
http://www.beyond3d.com/forum/viewtopic.php?t=2112
NV30 just completed INITIAL tape-out (this week)
-First OEM samples end of October
-Foundry is TSMC, not UMC
-There were several things that had to be dropped in the design when they realized they were going to be very late with the part. This decision was made several months ago. The most notable feature was the primitive processor. This will show up in NV35.
http://www.beyond3d.com/forum/viewtopic.php?t=2385&start=0
AFAIK, the CEO (whose name eludes me) has stated several times when pressed that no tape-out occured untill early September. The problem - while the Fab's early problems add to it - probobly stem from the influx of ideas injected into the NV30 project when the 3dfx aquisition took place. The design was probobly too ambitious for the temporal and lithography contraints. This, together with the lithography production problems caused the problem their in now.
But, keep in mind why it took to long to tape-out. I mean, allowing 1 spin for production quality silicon on a new architecture? Thats insane.
NV50 ready in three years for the XB2 launch I see as more likely then not.
Well for nVidia's sake, lets home your hardware predictions are better than your software ones ;)
megadrive0088
01-Nov-2002, 09:08
The XGPU is essentially an NV25 (more or less). The PC version (GeForce 4 Ti) launched aproximately Feb 2002, or about 4 months after the xbox.
XGPU is a bit less than the NV25, but more than the NV20. I think of it as a "NV23" :)
So given NVidia's patterns (assuming NVidia maintains their 6 month cycle, and NV30 launches in January), we can probably expect them to be at something resembling an NV50 or NV55 by the time we hit the end of 2005, which is when any console launch for 2005 would be planned.
Presuming xbox2 follows the pattern set by xbox1, initial studies will occur in the second half of 2003, design work will start in early 2004 with lockdown in early 2005, and the final product will release in late fall 2005 with something resembling an NV55.
sounds about right to me. I mean, none of us really knows what Nvidiia's scheduel will be like over the next 2-3 years, but your estimate is something I would go along with. I buy it :)
Note this is all highly speculative (ie. pulled out of my ass ) and relies on many things which could change at any time, like NVidia's release schedule and chip numbering schema, or ATI being chosen as the supplier, or even Microsoft deciding to go with a custom architecture and designing their own chips.
All very true. but at least you are taking into account most of the major possibilities. I think MS going with ATI is a much greater possibility than MS designing their own chips, but there is a slight chance of that happening. my best bet is still on Nvidia though, with all the patents, IPs and engineers (3Dfx, GigaPixel, some SGI) they have... Although ATI has a hell of alot now too (ArtX, some GE/Real3D) It'll come down to who can deliver the most impressive tech for the fewest dollars. ATI has a real shot IMO. Though Nvidia is still probably the frontrunner.
Remember that the NV2A was several months ahead of its PC counterpart. If the XB2 were to launch today it is likely it would ship with NV30(MS would find a fab that could pull it off costs be damned, I think we have seen that enough). If need be, I could see them approaching Intel or AMD and using their fab capabilities(Dresden has plenty of room ATM) tied in to landing the CPU for the XB2.
I really do not think that was the case. For once NV25 could arguably have been released two - three months earlier (there was an article on EETimes regarding its dev. cycle). IMO the reason they did not release it last years christmas were their GF3 TI line of gpus, which became their fall part as a response to ATIs R200. There were interviews in Summer 2001, where Nvidia employees stated that their fall part would be an architecturaly new thing (i.e. nv25), yet with the release of ATIs R200 they probably favoured going with a faster clocked Gf3 (i.e. TI) and keeping the performance crown, instead of leaving that perk to ATI for the two months it would have taken to get NV25 out of the door. And nv2a was released well after GF3, which is certainly the tech. generation it and nv25 belongs to as changes were rather minor (about a five percent increase in trans. count, addition of a second vertex shader, and some reorganizations of their piplines TMUs). BTW how does XBOX perform in regards to aniso, more in the way of GF3(rel. small hit), or like GF4?
Regarding graphical capabilities for ng consoles, i suppose that the diffrences will be rather technical in nature, for all 2005-2006 architectures will probably have the ability to render at PAL/NTSC resolutions with all bells and whistles (10+ passes per pixel, AA, and AS). What i mean is that at that time to have visibly superior graphics for John Public (@ standard res.) one of the vendors would have to have a serious advantage in graphics processing power (2x - 3x) over the competition which is probably not going to happen (E.g. take radeon9700 to gf4-TI4600, while all us geeks would probably agree that that the ati card is lots more powerfull for dx8 content, showing UT2003 running at 1280*1024on gf and 1600*1200 (both @4x AA) on rad. would not make John P. think that this a difference like night and day, but rather that a latter looks subtly improved.)
SONY is sitting on their pearls, idling around, while MS is quickly adopting fast developing PC technology for the console market. MS can cheaply benefit from huge R&D investments by PC semiconductor companies like AMD, Intel, NVIDIA and ATI, while SONY thinks they're able to do all themself with a little help by IBM, a software/service company.
Don't make the mistake of thinking the console market can be made to work like the PC market. Yes, IE won over the world with frequent "sequels", but it was and is free. No one is going to complain about downloading a new browser every so often when it doesn't cost anything...
Consoles on the other hand, are a very expensive part of the console gamers budget. Only a tiny hardcore group will be willing to buy a console if it will only last you three years.
Besides, we have already seen that specs or launch dates don't give you any significant sales. Brand value is what sells your console these days - and Sony has tons of it, Xbox has next to none. And releasing Xbox2 early will only chip away at what little there is, especially outside the US where few give a green damn anyway.
Sony is sitting very pretty for the next gen also, and MS can only hope to keep a foot in the door and slowly build up their brand. To do this, they need to offer value in all departments - price, games, shelf-life etc.
megadrive0088
01-Nov-2002, 18:38
Even if NV25 had been released as PC cards by fall 2001, the NV2A was still a little bit ahead of it. NV2A taped out in Feb while NV25 was at least a couple months later, spring , summer or fall tape out, don't know exactly when though.
As for XBox2, since NV30 is done right now, Nvidia has engineers working on NV35 and NV40 at this moment. I'm sure they've been working on NV40 for at least a few months now. I am sure that sometime in 2003, perhaps when another development team is freed up (not the NV40 one)
that NV50 will enter serious development. While everything depends on how fast Nvidia is developing new chips, it's almost certain that an NV4X or NV5X will form the basis of XBox2 graphics.
Perhaps XBox2 will use a radically enhanced NV4X or NV5X, or perhaps multiple GPUs. Since PS3 is going to be obsenely powerful with many, many CELLs in parallel, and no doubt many pipelines as well, I would favor MS/Nvidia using 4 of the most advanced GPUs they can come up with in XBox2. Perhaps 4 enhanced NV45s or enhanced NV55s. I doubt Nvidia is going to have a single chip by 2005 that can outperform the PS3. While I believe Nvidia (and ATI) will be significantly ahead of Sony in terms of image quality and feature set, Sony will likely have a large advantage in bandwidth and parallism with EE3+GS3 in PS3.
If Sony is going to have massive parallelism in PS3, why not have at least a high degree of parallelism in XBox2. ATI's R300 was design with massive parallel processing in mind. you can combined upto 256 R300 GPUs in one system. NV30 probably has a similar capability. Even though Nvidia has never favored multi chip approach (and I still think NV30 is one chip btw) times are changing.
IMHO todays concoles are much too small, and have far too little memory.
even XBox is pretty small compared to where I think they should be. consoles should be the size of VCRs or DVD players. Think about how much more room you'd have to put in memory and other processors, WHILE STILL being at consumer price points. Just because you have a larger piece of equipment like a DVD player doesnt mean its expensive. DVD players go for at little as $99, perhaps less now. I have a feeling that PS3 and XBox2 will be larger than their predasessors. Tehy're both likely to have 1GB or more memory. With PS3, I dont see all of that fitting
into a box the size of PS2 with all of those CELL chips inside as well.
Since both PS3 and XBox2 are aiming to become the hub of the living room (I know, whasn't this suppose to happen with Ps2 and Xbox?) I see the consoles growing in size conciderabley. There should be enough room in XBox2 to have 4 GPUs a CPU, audio chip, HDD, and lots of memory. An elegant example of multi chip processing would be the NAOMI2 with its twin PowerVR2DCs rasterizers + ELAN T&L + SH-4 CPU + over 96 MB memory. Even 3Dfx had single PC cards with 4-8 or more chips on them. XBox2 will be conciderably larger than a PC card, even XBox1 is. And MS can easily easily swallow the cost of multi GPU XBox2, they will almost have to if they want to stay in the race with Sony.
BoddoZerg
01-Nov-2002, 20:03
Applying the PC model to console games *might* work if MS keeps the DirectX framework for complete backward and forward compatitibility.
That is, if three years from now there is an Xbox, an Xbox2, and an Xbox3, and every game that runs on one of the Xboxes can run on all the other xboxes (at highly different graphics settings - just like any PC game) then it might actually be a viable business model. People wouldn't have to upgrade directly from an Xbox bought in Christmas 2001 to an Xbox2 in Christmas 2003 and an Xbox3 for Christmas 2005, because any game that runs on xbox2 would be exactly the same on Xbox, just lower graphics settings.
Of course, this is pure speculation, based on my admittedly PC-slanted worldview.
Megadrive1988
01-Nov-2002, 22:16
An XBox3 is many, many years away. I cannot see MS bringing out a new XBox every 2-3 years. maybe every 4-5 years. consoles need a life cycle.
2 or 3 years isn't really a life cycle because the best games usually come in years 3 and 4 of a console's life.
XBox2 might be out by late 2005. XBox3 maybe by 2009-2010
archie4oz
02-Nov-2002, 06:18
IMHO todays concoles are much too small, and have far too little memory.
People always say this, yet don't realize no matter what happens next, they'll continue to say systems don't have enough memory. Coming from systems with only a couple of MBs of RAM to today's systems feels like taking in a fresh breath of air. Today's sytems have 8-20 times the memory of the previous generation, do you honestly think that just adding more memory will make things better? It'll just get used up and you'll be saying the same thing about the following systems needing more memory...
even XBox is pretty small compared to where I think they should be. consoles should be the size of VCRs or DVD players.
Really? You do realize that not everybody has big houses, or lives by 19" rack standards. Some also like to pack their console in their backpack to take to their friends' place, or grandma's. BTW, some DVD players can be quite large (weighing in at 10-15kg) and can be quite small. You statement does seem rather broad...
Tehy're both likely to have 1GB or more memory. With PS3, I dont see all of that fitting
into a box the size of PS2 with all of those CELL chips inside as well.
You do realize that there are DIMMs of 2GB capacity today right? Memory of all things is the first to benefit from process advances. Regarding chip size, even a 180nm I-32 GS fit rather easily in the palm of my hand, and it contained more than twice as many transistors as NV30 is predicted to have, and EE+GSs are coming out in single chips nowadays. There's plenty of room to go still...
While I believe Nvidia (and ATI) will be significantly ahead of Sony in terms of image quality and feature set,
I'm not sure image quality is going to be something that's going to be a distinguishable factor in a couple of years. It's rather easy to generate very high image quality with today's hardware. We're getting to the point of diminishing returns, and the content (or how much of it can we cram) of what we display is going to be of more critical importance than how we display it. Likewise audio may finally get it's time in the limelight (as audio has become more so lately. And finally AI (which has become probably the most critical and busy topic as of late), and how it affects gameplay will become the most critical factor...
SCE is great and all, but I don't see how people can think that their engineers > NVIDIA's engineers. Its kind of like comparing Trident of Tseng Labs to, well, NVIDIA. With their sick SGI patent portfolio, I really don't see how SCE+IBM+Toshiba can beat NVIDIA at graphics tech, it just doesn't seem feasible.
zurich
zidane1strife
02-Nov-2002, 13:19
hey, talking about patents... is it true that sony bought the rights to transistor yrs ago.... read that from some reputable sources...
Anyways we all saw how sony crammed quite a chunk of transistors at .25m with the original GS... that's about 2/3rds what Nv dared to do at .15m...
Combined with the fact that the gphx rendering is likely to be split between two processors in the ps3 design... sony seems to have quite a larger transistor budget then Nvidia and their projected 300m transistor Gpu...
Ohhh, and about cell, if it weren't showing great possibilities in the current R/D it would've already been dumped... many seem to think sony is aming for crazy unrealistic ways of obtaining power thru the use of broadband.... let's just say they have people in the know(who clearly are aware this is not possible.), and clearly that's not the case.
Xbox2 will still be able to produce better looking games than PS3.
Being release ealier or later(within 1 year), it does not matter much.
Xbox totally obliterated PS2 and GC, graphically, even though they are in the same generation.
Proves that using third party current developed PC technology is better than long in-developing custom projects.
We do not even know whether the much hyped CELL will be in PS3.
Dont be surprised if PS3 uses a souped up multiple EE2 and GS2 brute force combination again.
If so, NV? + DX? shall whoops their sorry arses again.
Hype will not save them this time.
I am still amazed at how superior Xbox is to the competiton.
I cannot recall when was the last time that a console is so much better and yet affordable than its competitors in the same time fame.
MS is GOD. MS is too damn good....
MS shall use their godly powers to crush all their rivals, again. :oops:
hey, talking about patents... is it true that sony bought the rights to transistor yrs ago.... read that from some reputable sources...
yeah right... :roll:
Perhaps XBox2 will use a radically enhanced NV4X or NV5X, or perhaps multiple GPUs. Since PS3 is going to be obsenely powerful with many, many CELLs in parallel, and no doubt many pipelines as well, I would favor MS/Nvidia using 4 of the most advanced GPUs they can come up with in XBox2. Perhaps 4 enhanced NV45s or enhanced NV55s. I doubt Nvidia is going to have a single chip by 2005 that can outperform the PS3. While I believe Nvidia (and ATI) will be significantly ahead of Sony in terms of image quality and feature set, Sony will likely have a large advantage in bandwidth and parallism with EE3+GS3 in PS3.
If Sony is going to have massive parallelism in PS3, why not have at least a high degree of parallelism in XBox2. ATI's R300 was design with massive parallel processing in mind. you can combined upto 256 R300 GPUs in one system. NV30 probably has a similar capability. Even though Nvidia has never favored multi chip approach (and I still think NV30 is one chip btw) times are changing.
I really do not see any of this happening. Consoles are all about hitting a high performance/cost ratio with a heavy emphasis on price. IMO PS3 will as PS2 be about high level integration on as few dies as possible, following embedded systems design philosophy. MS will yield econimies of scale and include off-the-shelf mainstream technology from the x86 world with what will be nvidias high-end graphics tech. @ release date.
Anyways we all saw how sony crammed quite a chunk of transistors at .25m with the original GS... that's about 2/3rds what Nv dared to do at .15m...
Comparing logic transistors to Edram transistors is really pointless imho. If that would be a relevant measure for technological archievement, Micron, Samsung, Infineon, etc. would "rule the world" with their GBit Drams....
Like i said, MS Xbox2 will still be better than PS3.
Mark those words of wisdom.
Sony will be spending too much time money on the CELL research.
While MS can concentrate on marketing, DX and XBL networking, Nvidia will do the graphics card hardware and Intel will look into the new XCPU2.
Put them together and we have a Sony Playstation killer at hand. :oops:
Being release ealier or later(within 1 year), it does not matter much.
60% more transistors for the same price matters much, add on top of that that m$ was willing to take a greater loss on the launch which might even turn out to be a loss over all (which Ill assume they dont want to do a second time).
A lot of the money Sony is investing is in manufacturing technology, even if they have to ditch Cell they can always leverage that and switch to say SuperH (which because of its design should be relatively easy to shoehorn into a multi-core die) writing off "only" a couple 100's of millions in the process.
Marco
MS will spend more.
They, MS/Nvidia/Intel, know that consoles are the 'next' big thing.
Sony and Playstation struck fear in them and their PC empire, they will want to kill off Sony fast.
And if MS wants, MS gets.
If the justice department could not stop MS, there is noway puny Sony can.
MS is too darn good. :oops:
If they are willing to take a loss on another generation then maybe, but that is different from saying it is the choice of technology which is making the difference.
Marco
PS. I see SuperH is actually planned to go multi-core by design by 2005, interesting ... Ive always liked that line of processors, although their pricing for "normal" third parties is ridiculous at times, pity Sega is out of the picture :(
Yes they will.
You and i know they will. :)
They have spent so darn much now, that it is worse for them to stop.
MS will do their utmost to get rid of that pesky Sony ASAP.
Sony Playstation shall die. :oops:
Yes they will.
You and i know they will. :)
They have spent so darn much now, that it is worse for them to stop.
MS will do their utmost to get rid of that pesky Sony ASAP.
Sony Playstation shall die. :oops:
Ms already failed in the past.
CaptainHowdy
02-Nov-2002, 19:16
"Xbox totally obliterated PS2 and GC, graphically, even though they are in the same generation. "
lol.. ok..not yet, we keep seeing screenshots, but we are waiting for the games to back it up.
it has some graphical strengths, but also has many a weakness, like for instance, I like my blacks to be black, not grey, I like vibrant color, and most times games tend to turn out washed out on the XBox. Its more powerful ues, but OBILTERATED is as farfetched as it gets.
megadrive0088
02-Nov-2002, 20:32
really do not see any of this happening. Consoles are all about hitting a high performance/cost ratio with a heavy emphasis on price. IMO PS3 will as PS2 be about high level integration on as few dies as possible, following embedded systems design philosophy. MS will yield econimies of scale and include off-the-shelf mainstream technology from the x86 world with what will be nvidias high-end graphics tech. @ release date.
maybe not, but perhaps if XBox2 has two major chips, but each chip has several cores. First, I think that XBox2's CPU will be more specialized than XBox's PIII/Celeron hybrid. Or at the very least, more impressive.
I see MS going for a multi core (single die) CPU solution from AMD (Hammer) or Intel (Prescott, or something else) then for graphics, I see the NV40 or NV50 being the basic building block of XBox2's graphics hardware. Would it not be possible to put several NV40 or NV50 cores onto a single die? I believe Nvidia did this, in a way, with GeForce256. It was basicly two TNT2 cores combined with a T&L unit and some other stuff. or at least, it was 2 sets of TNT2 pipelines (2 each) combined with T&L. the same might apply with ATI if MS chooses them for XBox2 instead of Nvidia. Take several R500s or R600s, put them on one die, or the basic elements of those cores, putting several together. whatever it takes to out perform PS3 by a significant margin. while still only having
2-3 major chips in XBox2 (CPU, GPU, APU)
Gosh, those tunnel-visioned, gushing Microsoft lovers are embarrassing. :roll:
Kolgar
Brimstone
02-Nov-2002, 20:49
MS will spend more.
They, MS/Nvidia/Intel, know that consoles are the 'next' big thing.
Sony and Playstation struck fear in them and their PC empire, they will want to kill off Sony fast.
And if MS wants, MS gets.
If the justice department could not stop MS, there is noway puny Sony can.
MS is too darn good. :oops:
The combination of MS, Intel, and Nvidia is really intresting. Sony is very much a threat to all 3 of these companies in the long term. Sony fooling around with Linux and shunning Direct X API's has to bother Microsoft and also stating they don't like the MS strategy of .net had to really tick off Steve Balmer. Sony using a MIPS design in the last two Playstations, and now having some sort of alliance with IBM must have gotten the top level managment at Intel a bit concerned. For Nvidia, Sony using their own home cooked graphic chip solution limits their market penetration.
MS probably has a very motivated partner in Intel. They can't be happy about millions of consumer devices being sold without an Intel based architecture. I'm guessing Intel wont just try to rain on the Sony/IBM parade of technology, they will bring a furious hurricane to the picnic. Of course this is assuming Intel is involved not AMD.
I would not be 100% certain about Intel, I dont think m$ will have much custom work done on the processor ... so they can just wait a while longer. IF AMD gets a better financial footing again in the future then IMO m$ is sure to let them at least bid against Intel, and if NVIDIA is the choice for the graphics processor that might give AMD a small edge in the bid.
archie4oz
02-Nov-2002, 23:45
SCE is great and all, but I don't see how people can think that their engineers > NVIDIA's engineers. Its kind of like comparing Trident of Tseng Labs to, well, NVIDIA.
I take it you've never been to any of their fabs, or seen any of their R&D facilities?
Nobody's saying that Sony's engineers are necessarily > than NVIDIA's. However NVIDIA isn't end-all to be-all either...
Comparing logic transistors to Edram transistors is really pointless imho. If that would be a relevant measure for technological archievement, Micron, Samsung, Infineon, etc. would "rule the world" with their GBit Drams....
Yeah, but fabbing them onto a package in a manner that allows interfacing to very wide IFs and eventually a wide logic array, masking refresh latency all 2 years ago no small undertaking...
MS probably has a very motivated partner in Intel. They can't be happy about millions of consumer devices being sold without an Intel based architecture.
I doubt that... Intel's always been pretty small peanuts when you factor in all the embedded devices in the world. That's where 68k and all the diaspora of Z80 floating around. Even today it's pretty much 68k/Coldfire, MIPS, ARM and PowerPC. Hell everybody and their grandmother licenses MIPS and ARM cores. Then there's the DSP market where Intel doesn't even exist, and is pretty much the domain of TI, Lucent and Motorola... Intel's best efforts led to their supercomputer failure i860, and short flash with the i960. The best thing they have now is the blessing of DEC's demise that killed Intel's biggest large-scale MPU threat, and delivered DEC's fabulous ARM efforts into Intel's hands...
I'm guessing Intel wont just try to rain on the Sony/IBM parade of technology, they will bring a furious hurricane to the picnic. Of course this is assuming Intel is involved not AMD.
More like doing continuing to invest more into fab-space to price AMD (who I might add has gotten into the MIPS market) and any IA-64 competitor out of the market.
Speaking of partnerships, it's interesting as this so-called 'Xbox partnership' has two hardware partners who have had a tendency to avoid one-off designs to get where they are today, yet everybody here seems to expect them to just stop doing what got them where they are today. Intel's pretty much been a mass producer of a limited lineup, and Nvidia who's leveraged their existing IP through their entire product line, exploiting their venture into core-logic to win the Xbox contract.
Where as Toshiba and IBM have made quite a business leveraging their R&D facilities into doing one-off designs for their customers...[/quote][/code]
OUM might be commercialized by 2005 though, that could give Intel a pretty big advantage.
MS is like a big bad behemoth, i am sure many of you anti MS guys fear them.
You are afraid that MS will put an end to your beloved Playstations and Nintendos. :lol:
:oops:
Chap, do you have anything intelligent to say other than saying how microsoft is good and bill gates is god? Maybe you have to get your head out of Bill's ass and start using logic again.
What's the acronym OUM stand for?
Tehy're both likely to have 1GB or more memory. With PS3, I dont see all of that fitting into a box the size of PS2 with all of those CELL chips inside as well.
Um, what are you talking about - seriously. In addition to the corrections that Archie made, your so completly wrong about the whole "all of those Cell chips inside" comment wich just reeks of not only the wrong idea, but questions your knowledge and that you'd even beleive or consider such a multi-chip scenario.
In addition, the underlying principle behind said Cellular Computing is to move a large amount of the memory on-die - where it can be accessed quickly to keep each computing element 'fed'.
Listen up to Marco and Archie - their both really smart guys.
We're getting to the point of diminishing returns, and the content (or how much of it can we cram) of what we display is going to be of more critical importance than how we display it. Likewise audio may finally get it's time in the limelight (as audio has become more so lately. And finally AI (which has become probably the most critical and busy topic as of late), and how it affects gameplay will become the most critical factor...
Amen!
Is it just me, or does anyone else get the distinct impression that Sony [in it's more personified form - maybe Aibo?!] raped Chap's mom? :wink:
Sorry guys, but i am very impressed with MS first foray into the console industry.
Bill Gates have already said that Xbox will be their 2nd utmost priority, behind Windows, where MS is ready to spend and outspend their rivals to take over the console world. :D
MS will change how things work in console gaming.
Again, if MS wants, MS gets.
:oops:
PC-Engine
03-Nov-2002, 07:08
What's the acronym OUM stand for?
http://www.ebnonline.com/story/OEG20020301S0068
From reading that link it seems that , OUM is a non-volitile memory technology that might someday replace Flash.
What application would it have in a game console? I guess it could be used as a memory card medium. But it doesn't sound like it would be fast enough to be used as a RAM or EDRAM replacement.
Its speed does not prevent it from competing with DRAM (it will be faster at the feature sizes used in 2005 most likely) reliability might though (at present it can only stand ~1e12 reset cycles ... which is fine for replacing flash, but obviously a bit of a problem for embedded RAM).
Magnum PI
03-Nov-2002, 09:35
Sorry guys, but i am very impressed with MS first foray into the console industry.
Bill Gates have already said that Xbox will be their 2nd utmost priority, behind Windows, where MS is ready to spend and outspend their rivals to take over the console world. :D
MS will change how things work in console gaming.
Again, if MS wants, MS gets.
:oops:
MS have enormous power on the PC because of its OS monopoly.
but consoles market is different and while PC gamers have to buy MS OS in order to play on their PC, there is nothing that makes consumers have to buy the xbox instead of its competitors.
and even having lots of money to spend could not be enough to beat sony and nintendo.
randycat99
03-Nov-2002, 09:40
FWIW, I'm tempted to believe this chap chap is the same guy as a certain NEC Avenue that appeared at another web forum long ago. Of course, it is just as likely that there are just many literal clones of this guy with the same mindset running about the Internet... [cut to Sulu's dramatic interjection: "M-y G-o-d..."]
a sample:
http://forum.granturismo.com/showthread.php?s=&threadid=34023
a medly (http://forum.granturismo.com/search.php?s=&action=showresults&searchid=94570&sortby=lastpost&sortorder=descending)
chap = chap.
I think deep down inside most of you, you will have that lil feeling that MS is going to take over the console world. I sense insecurity in most Sony and Nintendo fans. :D
randycat99
03-Nov-2002, 10:08
Yes, your "perceptiveness" of what people are thinking has been most impressive so far. :roll:
Magnum PI
03-Nov-2002, 12:07
chap = chap.
I think deep down inside most of you, you will have that lil feeling that MS is going to take over the console world. I sense insecurity in most Sony and Nintendo fans. :D
you got the faith in microsoft.. you are a believer !
who cares about lil feelings here ?
CaptainHowdy
03-Nov-2002, 13:08
chap = chap.
I think deep down inside most of you, you will have that lil feeling that MS is going to take over the console world. I sense insecurity in most Sony and Nintendo fans. :D
wouldnt that require
A) making some good games and
B) selling some consoles outside of the US?
Xbox is already dead in Japan, its doing better in Europe but not great.
they are only using the Xbox to try to get some dedicated fanboys such as yourself, but I think your going to find it a hard letdown, because they are going to be putting a lot into the XBox 2, hoping it will be the one to bring in the money(instead of sucking up thier funds like the Xbox). if this thread is true, that wont be too far off, I would not pay $50 for a VCR if I knew it would only last me 4 years.. I sure as heck wouldnt pay $200 for a console with that lifespan.
BenSkywalker
03-Nov-2002, 13:49
Vince-
Woah boy... NV6x in 3 years? I guess this comes down to a fundimental question of how nVidia's timetable will stay. I see a slower paced enviroment, with the pace set by less frequent, but more radical DX revisions.
I don't see the continued investment of producing entirely new cores or major revisions every year. CineFX is here for awhile - just as the TNT core lasted all this time as the foundation of nVidia's products.
NV30 taped out in early September of '02, looking at the XB2 we are looking at a Q4(likely mid November) '05 timeframe. Roughly 38 months between the two. As I stated I don't think NV6x is likely, although I see it as an outside possibility. NV5X should be a given barring a complete implosion at nVidia. From '99 to '02 nV moved from nV10 to nV30, now in the next three years they will only introduce one new core? I see NV6X as far more likely then a NV4X core(although NV5X is where my money would be).
Yes, the TNT core was with us for ~four years. Compare the TNT to a GeForce4 and see exactly what that means though ;)
AFAIK, the CEO (whose name eludes me) has stated several times when pressed that no tape-out occured untill early September. The problem - while the Fab's early problems add to it - probobly stem from the influx of ideas injected into the NV30 project when the 3dfx aquisition took place. The design was probobly too ambitious for the temporal and lithography contraints. This, together with the lithography production problems caused the problem their in now.
And you think this will hold up every future nV product?
Well for nVidia's sake, lets home your hardware predictions are better than your software ones
Which of my software calles have been off so far? It looks like I was a bit too low on Mario(despite being quite a big higher then anyone else) but their are outside factors that I did not see happening(revolving around WM).
On the topic of Grid, IBM had a conference outlining their plans for it. Before the conference I thought it was a half witted idea, now I see that it is all clearly a joke. Have all computers connected to a BB setup so that their non used CPU cycles can be used by others and making the people pay for it.....? Its distributed computing with a financial model that can only benefit IBM and cost the overwhelming majority of users money for something that they already have too much of(they are going to charge for CPU time, which as of right now most users have 90%+of free, as a utility).
They state that businesses who have some PCs not in use will be able to have other machines on their Grid, which you have to pay to be on, use the spare cycles. You know, so those people on their 2GHZ P4/Athlon systems can grab that extra power for those spell checks :roll:
The only practical applications they could come up with for this was places that needed massive computing power but couldn't afford a super computer(scientific modeling). Right now these places would be forced to start up a free distributed computing project, but IBM will let them do it and pay them.
Grid in terms of PS3s is an absolute non issue. Perhaps IBM is planning on giving Sony a kickback for CPU time taken from consoles(like people are going to leave it on when they aren't using it), it can not benefit the PS3 in any meaningful way. You can not predict how many spare cycles will be available at any given point in any particular area which mean there would be no way for developers to deal with latency. That is assuming that IBM could actually have this up and running by the time PS3 launched and assured BB access to all potential PS3 customers within the next four years.
Do you remember network computers? They are what replaced PCs(the reason why noone has PCs anymore :lol: ). It was an idea hatched from one of the largest computer companies and it certainly had more worth then Grid did. Just like IBM they have all sorts of supposedly smart people, the problem was that like IBM they seem to base their scheme on 'how can we generate revenue' instead of 'what does the market want'.
Archie-
Speaking of partnerships, it's interesting as this so-called 'Xbox partnership' has two hardware partners who have had a tendency to avoid one-off designs to get where they are today, yet everybody here seems to expect them to just stop doing what got them where they are today. Intel's pretty much been a mass producer of a limited lineup, and Nvidia who's leveraged their existing IP through their entire product line, exploiting their venture into core-logic to win the Xbox contract.
Where as Toshiba and IBM have made quite a business leveraging their R&D facilities into doing one-off designs for their customers..
Is this why the PS2 is so much more powerful then the XBox? ;)
I don't consider Intel part of the XB2 equation, they had very little to do with the original XBox. nVidia will more then likely handle the design and hand it off to a group almost assuredly including former SGI engineers. AMD and Intel simply provide one of their mass produced parts which have been closing the performance gap with specialized designs for years now(particularly when looking at single die offerings).
I am in complete agreement with you statements about diminishing returns on the visual end(artists are likely to be the key to the best visual next gen), I am interested in hearing your take on how much computing power you think it will take to significantly improve the state of AI.
Where as Toshiba and IBM have made quite a business leveraging their R&D facilities into doing one-off designs for their customers..
I would like to hear your opinion about whether you think that this approach will still be financialy viable in the future. Despite all its shortcomings x86 undoubtly is the "successfull" ISA from a Darwinistic POV yet. Currently it is aggressivly expanding into other markets (into embedded vs. MIPS/SuperH (see XBOX & various x86 MCUs (~10% market share)), low to medium end workstation (that is almost a complete takeover by now (Sun & PowerPC have single digit market penetration) and pushing aggressivly into low to medium end server markets (up to 50000$) & they are complementing this with their ARM/IA64 ISAs) while being unchallenged in its home market (mainstream personal computing). Intel by now even seems to be fairly ahead of IBM on process technology (look at their ramp @.13 micron & their plans of having .09 mainstream (for prescott) at the end of next year). Just to come full circle for me the x86 camp Intel & AMD seems stronger than ever, for all major competitors failed to really introduce a serious competitor, that could profit from similar economics of scale. (I still have hopes for IBMs 64Bit Power4 mainstream derivate but i feel it will be too little too late by 2004). Toshibas & IBMs microprocessor bussineses are just drwafed by Intels & AMDs nowadays.
Megadrive1988
03-Nov-2002, 18:15
It is just rediculas to expect any NV3X GPU (NV30,NV31,NV35,etc) in XBox2, a console that's not coming out for at least 3 years.
Even if Nvidia slows down massively the pace of GPU development, it's inconcievable to me that XBox2 would use anything less than an NV40. The NV40 should have been a late 2003 product, but even if it slips to late 2004, that's still a year or so away from any XBox2 release. In that case, the base NV45 or NV50 GPU would probably be likely choices for an XBox2 varient.
The most I would think that is possible is NV55, or some varient of it. Not that I would mind an NV60 powered XBox2, though :)
Whatever MS/Nvidia (or ATI) decide on, I just hope it has really fantastic FSAA capability (as I do with PS3) - with lots of samples of the best method of FSAA possible.
archie4oz
04-Nov-2002, 03:51
Sorry guys, but i am very impressed with MS first foray into the console industry.
Well you're certainly welcome to be... I guess some of us are less impressed because Sony already demonstrated that a relative newcomer can succeed (and their success is arguably more impressive), leaving Microsoft's foray somewhat less impressive in comparison...
MS will change how things work in console gaming.
I'm curious, what do you expect them to change?
Currently it is aggressivly expanding into other markets (into embedded vs. MIPS/SuperH (see XBOX & various x86 MCUs (~10% market share)), low to medium end workstation (that is almost a complete takeover by now (Sun & PowerPC have single digit market penetration) and pushing aggressivly into low to medium end server markets (up to 50000$) & they are complementing this with their ARM/IA64 ISAs) while being unchallenged in its home market (mainstream personal computing).
I don't know if I'd consider Xbox an aggressive expansion into the embedded space. I guess maybe an Intel/x86 platform win perhaps, but x86 has always had a small piece of the microcontroller market (where CISC code density matters more than performance), it's just that that's primarily been filled by non-Intel x86 which in turn has been small peanuts compared to Motorola's m68k/ColdFire and various other microcontroller vendors (Hitachi, Toshiba, NEC, Sony, Mitsubishi).
As for desktop MPUs (whether they be consumer, professional workstation, or mid to high-end server), Intel has always been the dominant force there (maybe not in performance but definitely in size and influence). Being IBM's choice for their PC, and subsequently all major cloned systems, pretty much meant that economy of scale (along with M$'s dominance on the software side) would permit them to dominate that segment in all but the most specialized sectors. That pretty much meant the all the RISC competitors never really had much of a chance (including AMD and Intel's own RISC designs). The market for competitors really hasn't changed much in that area with the exception of AMD actually providing competition with Intel on the high end to some degree. There's still non-Intel low-cost x86 solutions around (Via and Transmeta instead of Cyrix and AMD). High-end wise, even with the relative improvements of McKinley over Merced, it hasn't done all that well (hence it's more affectionately known nick 'Itanic'). As far as their ARM solutions go, it's probably been a total blessing the DEC's demise dropped their ARM7 based work (StrongARM) into Intel's lap. While StrongARM did fairly well as a high-end solution, I don't know if Xscale (ARM10) will do the same. While ARM moves on (ARM11) and other ARM vendors compete with high-end Xscale offerings (like Samsung), not to mention their use of Xscale in comms where it's dominated by Motorola and IBM's PowerPC offerings. The real market for ARM is in the low-end where Intel doesn't really compete (I'd even speculate that Nintendo sells more ARM devices than Intel does).
Intel by now even seems to be fairly ahead of IBM on process technology (look at their ramp @.13 micron & their plans of having .09 mainstream (for prescott) at the end of next year).
I'm not so sure that necessarily makes Intel 'ahead' of IBM on process technology. IBM's CMOS8xx (.13µm) has been around longer than Intel's and CMOS9xx (90nm) will likely be available as well next year, not to mention they're solidly on their way to 65nm with CMOS10xx. That also neglects to mention their SiGe BiCMOS processes for mixed signals ICs as well (although there are rumors of Intel making a big push with 90nm SiGe, that remains to be seen). Then there's Toshiba who's already sampling .10µm devices (Sony makes the verification equipment for it), and has pretty solid plans for 90nm, 75nm and 55nm... In fact 90nm is a goal for a lot of people next year (foundries, embedded, memory, etc)...
Just to come full circle for me the x86 camp Intel & AMD seems stronger than ever, for all major competitors failed to really introduce a serious competitor, that could profit from similar economics of scale. (I still have hopes for IBMs 64Bit Power4 mainstream derivate but i feel it will be too little too late by 2004). Toshibas & IBMs microprocessor bussineses are just drwafed by Intels & AMDs nowadays.
Well considering IBM made x86 the defacto for the PC, nobody really could challenge it unless you wanted to make x86 processors yourself and the only one who's really given Intel a run for their money has been AMD. RISC vendors never really had a chance because there was no popular software platform for them to flourish (other WindowsNT for MIPS, Alpha and PowerPC of which the Alpha version only lasted any decent amount of time, and are now all gone aside from the rumored existence of Win2k builds for Alpha maintained internally). Linux and BSD of course change that (and perhaps gives IBM's PPC970 some path to popularity although I doubt it as both IBM's AIX and Linux solution will likely be too expensive for general consumers and Apple will probably be the best chance for a regular end-user to get their hands on it), but in the end they've come about too late to have any *real* influence.
As for IBM and Toshiba's microprocessor businesses. I'd say they're fairly comparable in size considering while semiconductor business represents only portions of each companies business while Toshiba is twice the size on Intel and IBM three times... I'd attribute Intel's visibility to it's core market being the more 'glamorous' desktop MPU and core-logic categories...
Is this why the PS2 is so much more powerful then the XBox?
Hehe, well considering I first saw GS hardware in late '98 and EE hardware in early '99, when Xbox wasn't even a paper spec, I'd say it does a fair job of competing...
I don't consider Intel part of the XB2 equation, they had very little to do with the original XBox. nVidia will more then likely handle the design and hand it off to a group almost assuredly including former SGI engineers.
Another interesting approach that nobody has mentioned is an all Intel solution. While it goes against what I previously argued about Intel's business patterns, considering the amount of production capability they spending on (while mainly to kill AMD, it'll be 'too much' once AMD would be dead so perhaps they plan on providing foundry services for others as well), they could possibly build a totally custom solution. It's not out of the realm of possibilities, as Intel does have the 'know-how', large-scale reliable fab-space, core-logic design experience. Perhaps something like Banias, although with more emphasis on higher performance and embedded graphics than I/O...
I am in complete agreement with you statements about diminishing returns on the visual end(artists are likely to be the key to the best visual next gen), I am interested in hearing your take on how much computing power you think it will take to significantly improve the state of AI.
Well it's hard to determine since AI has gone from "as long as it doesn't hurt frame-rate" to gaining enough significance to be critical component of a game's engine (in some cases being *the* feature basis for a game). Basically meaning that even without processor improvement, AI is benefitting from gaining a larger share of existing processor cycles. Also there's the shift away from academic methods (genetic algorithms, neural nets), to more traditional methods that yield 'more' for less cycles. Of course like any other aspect, AI can consume vicious amounts of cycles if you're willing to go there (just look at all of the computer vs. human chess competitions).
I only mention AI (as there's other aspects to consume processing cycles) as it's one of the larger determinants of gameplay and in spite of popular belief I don't think online gameplay is the be all to end all...
Oh well, enough rambling...
Another interesting approach that nobody has mentioned is an all Intel solution. While it goes against what I previously argued about Intel's business patterns, considering the amount of production capability they spending on (while mainly to kill AMD, it'll be 'too much' once AMD would be dead so perhaps they plan on providing foundry services for others as well), they could possibly build a totally custom solution. It's not out of the realm of possibilities, as Intel does have the 'know-how', large-scale reliable fab-space, core-logic design experience. Perhaps something like Banias, although with more emphasis on higher performance and embedded graphics than I/O...
According to "Opening the Xbox", Intel had its own console in the planning stages during the Xbox development (unbeknownst to each other). Intel and MS basically approached each other, MS to secure Intel hardware, and Intel to secure MS software. As the story goes, once Intel suits found out about the Xbox's existence, their system basically died a cold death. The Intel box was part of their consumer division (the guys who made the microscopes and such), so I don't think they were nearly as ambitious as MS in this regard.
zurich
zidane1strife
04-Nov-2002, 04:47
Is this why the PS2 is so much more powerful then the XBox?
Ps2 and the cube where dev. without the knowledge that MS would get that seriously involved.... but now they do... cube2 is to come later than ps3 ... and ps3 is being dev. with the knowledge of MS being involved....
Rest assured that whatever is thrown out by sony will eclipse by several orders of magnitude any gphx card that's thrown out in 2004 and it will be DESIGNED with the intention of surpassing any Xbox1 like upgrades such cards could get...
I dunno who actually expects the Ps3 R/D staff to actually see future gpus on the market, and future DirectX versions... and completely ignore such things...
Anyways with Nintendo launching a console later, it will be the one to hold the gphx trone next gen....
you will have that lil feeling that MS is going to take over the console world. I sense insecurity in most Sony and Nintendo fans.
.... hmmm.... i think MS is gonna push too many buttons in the near future.... maybe even as soon as with their next so called end-all win rev... and like a powerful caesar they'll be stabbed to death by the rest of the threatened industry....
Fafalada
04-Nov-2002, 05:08
Do you remember network computers? They are what replaced PCs(the reason why noone has PCs anymore ). It was an idea hatched from one of the largest computer companies and it certainly had more worth then Grid did.
Network computers are actually still around, believe it or not, but granted the concept failed to gain any notcieable popularity (and probably never will in that form). However, the idea behind it was nonetheless, a sign of things to come.
It doesn't matter if it'll be Grid, .Net or whatever else, that pushes it forward into mainstream... I'm very confident it's what will eventually replace the concept of personal computers as we know them today.
Mind you, I'm mainly Not referring to any kind of distributed computing with this, although that would eventually play some role as well.
Personally Id like to keep my data local, I wouldnt mind an encrypted backup somewhere else ... but as long as my processing is local there is no reason for my data and programs not to be, except for presenting new and better ways to bleed money from me. I dont think I like the future very much ;)
Personally Id like to keep my data local, I wouldnt mind an encrypted backup somewhere else ... but as long as my processing is local there is no reason for my data and programs not to be, except for presenting new and better ways to bleed money from me. I dont think I like the future very much ;)
I wonder if anyone said the same thing a few hundred years ago when some outragous guy proposed to forever banish the private water well and instead have the city produce and maintain it. But, what if someone poisons the supply? No thanks, I'd like to keep my Water local, thank you. Or a few hundred years after that when some forward looking man said, in the future the home will have no generating source of power. Well, how insane is that? We need local power generating, what if the main supply is knocked out? We'll be without power or heat for who knows how long. No thanks, the demand is here; I'll supply my own power thank you. Or the agricultural revolution when they took the art of farming forever out of the local man and put it instead in highly complex and high-yeilding farming complexes. But, no! My food could be poisoned or infected! How do I know who sees it or tampers with it? Hell no, I'll keep it to myself thank you!
Computing will oneday be a utility - not all will be networked, but much will. Once you remove the BS incompatability and security issues the whole paradigm changes. You don't question the security of your drinking water or your power or your food, it's a given. You simply plug an applience in the outlet and it works - this is the future of mass market computing. Will it come soon, no? But the more important question is will it come? And the answer is yes.
I'm not so sure that necessarily makes Intel 'ahead' of IBM on process technology. IBM's CMOS8xx (.13µm) has been around longer than Intel's and CMOS9xx (90nm) will likely be available as well next year, not to mention they're solidly on their way to 65nm with CMOS10xx. That also neglects to mention their SiGe BiCMOS processes for mixed signals ICs as well (although there are rumors of Intel making a big push with 90nm SiGe, that remains to be seen). Then there's Toshiba who's already sampling .10µm devices (Sony makes the verification equipment for it), and has pretty solid plans for 90nm, 75nm and 55nm... In fact 90nm is a goal for a lot of people next year (foundries, embedded, memory, etc)...
Exactly, I can't imagine how people still believe that SCE/IBM/Toshiba are going to use a 0.10um process for a chip due out in 2005 when they will have eclipsed it in 2002. I think people need to read the press releases about the three of them developing advances lithography and manufacturing processes.
IMHO, 0.10um SOI liecense = Integrated EE/GS
PS. While on this topic, I have a question for those so inclined: How many transistors can be fit on a 50-micron SOI process with a die size thats within consumer limits and heat/power limits.
Fafalada
04-Nov-2002, 06:10
Well I was about to post a lengthy reply but Vince summed it up with his analogy better then I have. So I'll shorten it up a bit...
Personally Id like to keep my data local, I wouldnt mind an encrypted backup somewhere else ...
I'd expect some limited local space might stay, but very likely it would still be llimited to what the vendor allows you to store. No doubt other not exactly legal storages will still be avaiable to those willing to do it, but mainstream piracy could very well be completely eliminated this way.
but as long as my processing is local there is no reason for my data and programs not to be, except for presenting new and better ways to bleed money from me. I dont think I like the future very much ;)
Well, what Vince said. ;)
Also... consider computing without buggy upgrades, without even more buggy installers, not to mention constant patch downloading... having almost no need for system software maintenance, as well as next to need for constant hw upgrades.
Yes, negative aspects are there, some even scary, but IMO there are more positive ones still.
You cant compare PSX with Xbox, times have changed. It is impressive how MS can still carved out a market for themselves with the Playstation dominance. But things will change once MS secured themselves this generation. 8) :lol:
MS Xbox has already brought gaming audio to the next level, that with the built in HD and HDTV support, Xbox has done more than PS2 and Cube.
Live looks to kick start online console gaming, something which Sony and Nintendo can only hope to do with the PS3 and Cube2. :D
GS and EE(no pixel effects? LOL) proves that custom tech might not be too cool this time round.
CELL/EE2/GS2 might just fail to live up to the hype.
Do you think NV? will make them its bitches again? :P
:oops:
marconelly!
04-Nov-2002, 06:38
Live looks to kick start online console gaming, something which Sony and Nintendo can only hope to do with the PS3 and Cube2.
Funny, that means all those people playing online on PS2 and Dreamcast have been lying to us all this time.
GS and EE(no pixel effects? LOL) proves that custom tech might not be too cool this time round.
It was pretty damn cool when the console launched
and
Do you think NV? will make them its bitches again?
If the Xbox launched the same day PS2 did in Japan, we can only specualte who would be a bitch, tech specs wise... It's easy to come up with something 1.5 years later, and brag around about better technology, don't you think?
Computing will oneday be a utility - not all will be networked, but much will. Once you remove the BS incompatability and security issues the whole paradigm changes. You don't question the security of your drinking water or your power or your food, it's a given.
I dont care about security, I care about costs ... simply put, I expect computation to be commoditized to the point that the advances in technology and the decreases in costs they bring will make parts of the industry as it stands unsustainable. At that point the big boys might just decide that it is more in their interest to sell us cycles and just stop selling us computers and our own software altogether. We already have a an example that a virtual monopoly can arise in the computing world and cause lots of trouble, if we give that much control out of hand the potential for abuse is larger still.
Xbox Live is the true online plans, what Sony and (maybe)Nintendo hoped to achieve .
DC and current PS2 online is pretty basic in terms of what Sony wished to do.
So MS online infrastructure and plans are ahead of Sony, which would be crucial come next gen. :)
DC had dot3 support....and texture kompression :P
GC came out <6 months and Xbox is still way superior...
marconelly!
04-Nov-2002, 06:54
DC had dot3 support....and texture kompression
Er, so what?
GC came out <6 months and Xbox is still way superior...
GC launched before the Xbox, and at the lower price. Is it that weird that it's not superior?
Mfa: You worry to much. Your still fitting in to the mold of the people I used as examples in the previous post. These things have a way of working themselves out.
Chap, in the old days I would have just told you to Shut the Fuck Up; but I'm reformed :wink: so I'll go threw the trouble of actually explaining the wrongness in your though-process:
It is impressive how MS can still carved out a market for themselves with the Playstation dominance. But things will change once MS secured themselves this generation.
Whats impressive is that PS2 is selling at 5 Times XBox sales at TRU last week according to GA and PS2 has 77% of the marketshare, which is amazing considering all it's supposed disadvantages:
http://pub111.ezboard.com/fgamingageforumsfrm17.showMessage?topicID=22467.to pic
MS Xbox has already brought gaming audio to the next level, that with the built in HD and HDTV support, Xbox has done more than PS2 and Cube.
Gaming Audio to the next level, right. More than the PS2 and Cube? If anything, I'd say the latter consoles have done more than XBox in that they've brought gaming even further into the mainstream - something MS has yet to chart a course into.
Live looks to kick start online console gaming, something which Sony and Nintendo can only hope to do with the PS3 and Cube2. :D
I can play PS2Online, I can't Live! Around 400,000 NA's were sold in the US. SOCOM and Madden 2002 were/are the best selling games for the PS2. Don't even start.
GS and EE(no pixel effects? LOL) proves that custom tech might not be too cool this time round.
While it's true that fragment/pisel shading isn't avalable nativly on the Graphic Synthesizer, lets look at some facts. As stared previously by Archie or Faf - they saw a GS sample running in '99. Your beloved nVidia was just finishing their NV10 - which is nothing more than 2 tweaked TNT raster cores in parallel with a new setup and front-end with T&L that uses like 15M tranistors (my memory is fading). Meanwhile Sony had a Graphics chip with 48GB/sec of sustained bandwith, 2400MPixel/sec bandwith on a 0.25um process with 40-odd Million transistors.
The diffrence is all in the temporal diffrence between the times each's front-end design was completed. I mean, the Graphic Synthesizer has 7M transistors dedicated to Logic - the NV2A has over 50Million for logic. Get a clue.
CELL/EE2/GS2 might just fail to live up to the hype.
Do you think NV? will make them its bitches again? :P
Failt to live upto hype? Maybe, hype is a bitch. Fail to impress? Perhaps, but I doubt it.
nVidia is the badass 'devil' and I respect their accomplishments, but their not infallible. Then again, my feeling is that the architectural diffrences in designs will be profound and cause many good discussions - but the visual diffrences will be negligable to all those who can rise above the meaningless nomenclature and 'dick meausring' of specs - Why do I have the feeling that you won't be one of the latter group?
Er, so what?
so PS2 aint that cool for its time. :P
GC launched before the Xbox, and at the lower price. Is it that weird that it's not superior?
Ok then, lets look at the Xbox or how about the DC. :D
Whats impressive is that PS2 is selling at 5 Times XBox sales at TRU last week according to GA and PS2 has 77% of the marketshare, which is amazing considering all it's supposed disadvantages:
Xbox is a total newbie, and it managed to do very well(in terms of hw/sw sold and 3rd party support), amidst strong competition from the old boys Sony and Nintendo. That is very impressive for MS first try. :)
Gaming Audio to the next level, right. More than the PS2 and Cube? If anything, I'd say the latter consoles have done more than XBox in that they've brought gaming even further into the mainstream - something MS has yet to chart a course into.
Cant see how anyone can argue about the audio thing.
Yes, Playstation did well to bring gaming mainstream, guessed its time Xbox brings online gaming to the mainstream. 8)
The diffrence is all in the temporal diffrence between the times each's front-end design was completed. I mean, the Graphic Synthesizer has 7M transistors dedicated to Logic - the NV2A has over 50Million for logic
Thats the point. Xbox2 might still get the advantage should MS chose to use Nvidia "current" technology.
Failt to live upto hype? Maybe, hype is a bitch. Fail to impress? Perhaps, but I doubt it.
I think Xbox impresses more than PS2, even when we consider time-time difference, do you not? :oops:
I agree I worry too much, but moreso because worrying doesnt change a thing than because it will all work out for the best ... because it simply does not always happen.
marconelly!
04-Nov-2002, 07:19
so PS2 aint that cool for its time.
How many games use DOT3 product on Dreamcast?
.
.
.
I thought so.
DOT3 could be done on Dreamcast in two passes. It takes four passes on PS2. Considering the much lower fillrate of Dreamcast, having it actually in the game is more feasable on PS2.
Chances of it being used in the upcoming DC games? Zero.
Chances of it being used in the upcoming PS2 game? Small, but not zero.
Ok then, lets look at the Xbox or how about the DC.
Xbox launched last and was more expensive. DC launched first and is the least powerful/least feature rich. What is your point again?
My point is, since you spoke about when console first launch and their pricing and their impressiveness....
well, DC launched in 1998 with built in 56k; its features are more impressive than PS2 for its time, at a cheaper price. and virtually all DC games run in 480p. :P
same with Xbox, 2001, built in HD and ethernet, at the same price with ps2, but with more feature riched than the competition.
sorry if i sound incoherent, too tired now. :D
:oops:
Thats the point. Xbox2 might still get the advantage should MS chose to use Nvidia "current" technology.
Step 1:
Wow, I figured you'd catch on by my transistor argument and think about it without me needing to write it all, but no.
Due to XBox1's later launch, it used a much newer lithography techology -0.15um (actually it might have been trgeted to 0.13um, Ben?) - to pack over 60M transistors dedicated to logic into the design.
The Graphic Synthesizer used the 0.25um process and was only able to pack 7M transistors of logic in with the eDRAM - which brought the total count upto ~40M transistors.
The current Cutting edge from nVidia that would launch several months after the GS - the NV10 - had around 15M transistors on a 0.22um process.
The Graphic Synthesizer I-32 uses the 0.18um process and packs over 280Mtranistors; encompassing 32MB of EDRAM.
We can deduce the following from this:
a) The GS has >65% of the aggragate transistor count of the NV2A using a process thats several, several times larger and hotter.
b) The GS had almost 3X the aggragate transistor count of the NV10 - which launched right after the GS.
c) The GS I-32 has almost 2.8X the transistor count of the NV2A using a process thats 3(?) times larger than the NV2A's 0.15um (I forget, but it's geometric).
d) Due to lithography constraints on the GS - Which wouldn't have been there if it was on a more modern/contemporary process like the 0.18 or 0.15 process used by the NV20A; the GS's raster core is comprise of only 7M transistors + EDRAM. THE GS I-32 shows what can be done on a more modern process thats still 3X larger than the NV2A's.
e) If the XBox launches @ the same time/ time before the PS3 - it's general units will be inadequate compared to the specilized ones of Sony and no longer have the upperhand like it does now. Look at the following for proof of lithography/transistor count usability:
-GS (40M+) vs. NV10 (~15M)
-GS I-32 (280M+) vs. NV2A (~65M)
*Even in these cases the Sony parts use inferior lithography technologies. 0.25um compared with 0.22um & 0.18um compared with 0.15um.
f) Using the above numbers we can derive the following statistics using the patented How to lie with Statistics (tm) method used by many XBox supporters.
At lithography equivalency, SCE historically has around 4X the transistor denisty per die than nVidia
So much for OEM = Better. <makes farting noise and thumbs down>
Step2:
Prepare for enevitable reponce by Ben ;)
Transistor count is cool and all, but we all know that PS2 is still texture limited, is no bumpmapper(something even GF1 is capable of) and has a pisspoor image quality. ;)
:oops:
PC-Engine
04-Nov-2002, 08:38
Just want to reiterate what Simon F. said in the 3D forum. All of Nvidia's and ATI's GPUs were/are designed for PCs (except for Flipper in GCN), therefore they have to make a profit from the hardware itself right from the start. SONY's GS, EE, etc. however enjoyed subsidies from game sales therefore they can afford to make hardware that wasn't profitable at launch. In other words SONY could push .25 fab tech to the limits because cost would be offset by software sales. Nvidia or ATi could've pushed the limits of .25u fab tech also, but then they would have to sell their chips at astronomical prices because they didn't have software sales to offset a loss. Also none of Nvidias GPUs had embedded memory because the design philosophy was different not because they couldn't push the limits of fab tech. Imagine what Nvidia could've made with 50 million transistors at the time if they chose to push fab tech and had subsidies to offset the astronomical costs.
Like, are you trolling / playing Devil's Advocate / raving phanboy Chap?
The Xbox is superior because it came out later. The DC had superior IQ because of its radically different rendering methods (TBR). The PS2 was superior at not being superior early in its life because of its utter lack of middleware, tools, etc.
Fact is, the PS2 was a very impressive piece of tech when launched however many years ago.
Fact is, Xbox will NOT bring online gaming to the mainstream because America sucks at rolling out broadband at bargain basement prices (sorry, had to :lol: ).
Bottom line is, the Xbox is doing well for a v1.0 MS product, thats that.
MS is a terrifyingly fast learner, and I expect Xbox v2.0 to be the real fight (see MS vs Palm for more details!).
zurich
ps: weren't you the guy who was upset with their Xbox because the guy at EB said PGR had better graphics than GT3?
Yes, MS will make sure Xbox2 will be a very very interesting product. :D
MS products are always equal or better than their competitors.
No way will MS allow PS3 hardware > Xbox2 hardware, they never did cut any slack to their rivals, it wont start with the Xbox2. 8)
ps: weren't you the guy who was upset with their Xbox because the guy at EB said PGR had better graphics than GT3?
Nope, GT3 looks nice and all but it lacks somemore polygons here and there, and it has too much shimmering. :oops:
Xbox should do alright, as long as it doesn't pull a Sega Saturn, it will do alright. If not Xbox2 will be a Dreamcast.
-GS (40M+) vs. NV10 (~15M)
-GS I-32 (280M+) vs. NV2A (~65M)
*snip*
At lithography equivalency, SCE historically has around 4X the transistor denisty per die than nVidia
GS, 40M+ of which 32M+ is in Edram
GS I-32, 280M+ of which 256M+ is in Edram.
DRAM being optimized for density and low leakage (power), what is the surprise here ?
Talk die size and power dissipation, everything else is misleading when comparing an Edram system with one without.
Capacity != capability.
The PS2 launched with a super fast rasterizer with sub-Voodoo 1 capabilities (no mipmapping). Not exactly state of the art in 2000.
Cheers
Gubbi
Magnum PI
04-Nov-2002, 11:06
MS products are always equal or better than their competitors.
how could someone say this seriously ?
so you think kabuki warriors is >= its competitors ?
just an example..
The PS2 launched with a super fast rasterizer with sub-Voodoo 1 capabilities (no mipmapping). Not exactly state of the art in 2000.
Peace. 8)
That is why i fear for the PS3.
so you think kabuki warriors is >= its competitors
kabuke wariors is a MS game? :oops:
Thowllly
04-Nov-2002, 11:11
The PS2 launched with a super fast rasterizer with sub-Voodoo 1 capabilities (no mipmapping). Not exactly state of the art in 2000.
The PS2 has hardware support for both bilinear and trilinear mipmaping.
The PS2 has hardware support for both bilinear and trilinear mipmaping.
Too bad most, as in really most, the games dont show. :P
Magnum PI
04-Nov-2002, 12:28
The PS2 launched with a super fast rasterizer with sub-Voodoo 1 capabilities (no mipmapping). Not exactly state of the art in 2000.
Peace. 8)
That is why i fear for the PS3.
so you think kabuki warriors is >= its competitors
kabuke wariors is a MS game? :oops:
oops, nope...
developped by lightweight and published by crave entertainment...
so another example: bloodwake, fuzion frenzy
as they were published by MS they count as MS productx.
i personnaly wouldn't bet that every MS was > or = to its competitors.. because of the great number of different products MS has released it seems very unrealistic.
BenSkywalker
04-Nov-2002, 13:26
Archie-
It's not out of the realm of possibilities, as Intel does have the 'know-how', large-scale reliable fab-space, core-logic design experience. Perhaps something like Banias, although with more emphasis on higher performance and embedded graphics than I/O...
I would see this as viable only if MS wanted to follow Sony's example of creating a very difficult to work with platform. Given Intel's failure in producing competitive products in the consumer 3D market(even after they purchased a company explicitly for that reason) they would almost assuredly rely on CPU power to fill in for dedicated hardware. Another aspect is that they would be turning their back on DirectX which I don't see happening. I suppose it is within the realm of possibilities, but the power and ease of development in terms of the XBox are something that I haven't seen any argue MS got wrong.
Basically meaning that even without processor improvement, AI is benefitting from gaining a larger share of existing processor cycles. Also there's the shift away from academic methods (genetic algorithms, neural nets), to more traditional methods that yield 'more' for less cycles. Of course like any other aspect, AI can consume vicious amounts of cycles if you're willing to go there (just look at all of the computer vs. human chess competitions).
This is the general impression that I have gained from observing AI in action(I've never even see an AI script before so I have absolutely no idea what they even entail). The AI in Half-Life, just to use a very outdated example, still seems to be considerably better then what we see in most new games. More intelligent and simply more real then what we are seeing today.
Given the general direction that we see MS and Sony headed in, it appears nearly certain that Sony will follow their route(monster CPU) while MS will follow theirs(monster GPU). It is fairly obvious that with the amount of graphics power that the next gen will have it will almost certainly take an educated pair of eyes to spot the differences in the visuals, I am currently under the impression that the same scenario is going to play out on the AI/Physics side of the coin. We are going to reach a point, moreso then already, where coding skills determine how well AI/Physics work on a given platform and even taking that into consideration you will still need a trained pair of eyes to spot the difference between the AI physics between the two likely platforms(not many people will notice if a Vette is pulling an extra .05Gs over what it should on an off camber decreasing radius turn as an example ;) ).
Faf-
I'm very confident it's what will eventually replace the concept of personal computers as we know them today.
Are you talking one hundred, or two hundred years out? A T3 line can't match my hard drive, not even close, and I can't even get DSL where I live(in the north eastern US). Much of the idea of Grid was hatched due to the immense venture capital that poored in to the telcoms to buld more bandwith, and it took them a decade to reach the state that they are at now. Now, the venture capital is gone and the BB expansion has slowed to a trickle. At its current rate it will take another five years or more before the majority of consumers have BB in their homes, significantly longer until it has the penetration that PCs have. Even then, the amount of bandwith available is an insignificant pittance to what will be required before the idea of a network computer is a viable replacement for PCs.
Look at the driving forces in PC marketing; actually, you may not see them where you are at so I'll fill you in on the US. The big things the companies are pushing over here is digital video and audio manipulation. Two areas where you really should have hundreds of MB/sec bandwith at least. With current actual transfer rates rarely exceeding 500KB/sec for bb users we are an extremely long way off from network computing being a viable option.
The amount of local data transfer I handle on my PC in a month would cost me over $1500 on the net(I've spent a great deal of time looking at bandwith options lately as my sites host shut down). That is ignoring the plethora of other issues with the technology(compatibility, security etc).
Vince-
Your utility comparisons are a bit off-
I wonder if anyone said the same thing a few hundred years ago when some outragous guy proposed to forever banish the private water well and instead have the city produce and maintain it.
Wells were still hand pumped when they figured out how to use forced water to supply a city. The new utility had numerous advantages versus the one it replaced(like indoor plumbing).
Or a few hundred years after that when some forward looking man said, in the future the home will have no generating source of power. Well, how insane is that?
Why exactly would anyone care that homes didn't have any way to generate electricity when noone used electricity? It isn't like people were wondering how they were going to power their gas lamps ;)
For all the other utilities they provided a new service or greatly improved on one(cable didn't take off until cable tv came about and exceeded the limits of air waves). Computing as a utility has no meaningful upside for consumers and increases costs.
The PS2 launched with a super fast rasterizer with sub-Voodoo 1 capabilities (no mipmapping). Not exactly state of the art in 2000.
The PS2 has hardware support for both bilinear and trilinear mipmaping.
Bilinear obviously works. I stand corrected on the mipmapping, which then poses another question: Why isn't anybody using it (or if they are why are they using über-aggresive LOD settings) ? Is it expensive ?
Cheers
Gubbi
Fafalada
04-Nov-2002, 14:39
The PS2 launched with a super fast rasterizer with sub-Voodoo 1 capabilities (no mipmapping). Not exactly state of the art in 2000.
Must be magic that we've been using then, making missing features appear.
Besides...
XBox launched with a super fast T&L unit with sub N64 capabilities. (no flow control of any kind). Not exactly state of the art for end of 2001.
8)
Ben,
I don't feel prophetic enough these days to go into actual time estimates. But you're skipping steps at any rate, I seriously doubt we could go from what is today to a network PC in one step. For instance, having online distribution of digital content much sooner then fully functional network PC's seems kinda likely.
And There's enough disbelief surrounding that relatively obvious step already, so let's not get ahead of ourselves ;)
Though I would mention that speed of BB expansion depends on the country you live in. From what I know, in Japan, BB has been spreading like wildfire for last year or two.
Megadrive1988
04-Nov-2002, 14:54
I really wonder if Sony will even match DX9 features and IQ in the PS3 rasterizer (Graphics Synth 3, right?) That's probably the most they would be able to get in to it, since Sony is on roughly a 4-5 year development period with PS3, where as Nvidia/ATI GPUs are developed in 1-2 years.
PS3 specs should be taking fairly solid shape next year, and set in stone sometime in 2004, depending on the year of its release, in 2005 or 2006.
Megadrive1988 said my thoughts exactly. :oops:
marconelly!
04-Nov-2002, 16:59
I really wonder if Sony will even match DX9 features and IQ in the PS3 rasterizer (Graphics Synth 3, right?)
Just think about it this way. The day PS2 launched in 2000, it had at least one technically more advanced game than anything on Dreamcast (Tekken Tag) Today, it's the same hardware that is running MGS2, J&D, BG:DA, Burnout 2... and the same hardware that will be running ZoE2 and SH3. At the time of it's launch, the best looking games I could run on my PC with the latest graphic card, were looking pretty bad comapred to any of the listed PS2 games. Features or no features, PS2 hardware allowed for some very impressive looking games - better looking than any hardware before it allowed for. I see no reason why that will change with PS3.
Strangely, i find Shenmue 2 looking better than Gateaway. :P
SC/DOA2(Dreamcast) -> TTT < TTT -> DOA3
Dont forget that PC games are not as optimised for the hardware as consoles. I am still surprised at how Xbox can run 720p games considering the puny bandwidth and memory.
And if we are to believe Carmack, Xbox can also run D3 with the same graphics fidelity as a high end PC. :o
Halo2 looks cool too. If it does run at 720p widescreen..... :o
Magnum PI
04-Nov-2002, 19:11
And if we are to believe Carmack, Xbox can also run D3 with the same graphics fidelity as a high end PC. :o
did he say such a thing ?
my sister's PC can too, with its celeron 450 and its tnt2...
the only problem is it is so sloooowww...
Your utility comparisons are a bit off-
Actually their not, and I'll show you. I see a lack of thinking and imagination on your side, coupled with resentment of anything thats not plainly in your idea of the future. I fear you may be one of those people who Van Doren stated think strictly algabraically, in a world where technical advancement is geometric.
Wells were still hand pumped when they figured out how to use forced water to supply a city. The new utility had numerous advantages versus the one it replaced(like indoor plumbing).
Ok, nitpicking. But the new computing utility has numerous advantaged as well. It's realitivly centralized processing can be several orders of magnitude more expensive, suck in more power, and be much more vast in scope (ie. Array) than your desktop can.
It's hassle-free (Thank you God). Nomore worrying about WindowsXP not reformatting everything or the quircky bugs on your desktop that keep crashing and loosing your data. No more technical worries at all - This has been the progression of human societal evolution when it comes to specilization and education. We no longer need to worry or know how to farm, produce energy, get and make sure the water is clean - Their's no reason we need to fuck with the problems of a desktop PC.
If you want computing or need it for something, you merely plug it in or it's already wirelessly connected, ect. The point is, it (computing = utility) could become as seemlessly integrated into everything we do as the present utilities, to a point where we don't even know it's there.
Why exactly would anyone care that homes didn't have any way to generate electricity when noone used electricity? It isn't like people were wondering how they were going to power their gas lamps ;)
Ben, this is retarded. Your: a) being an asshole, b) disagreeing to disagree, c) nitpicking things that aren't there, d) All of the above
First off I never said "electricity" for a reason, I said power generation. People used several forms of power generation like taming the Wind, Flowing water, et al to help with manufacturing. Not everyone is as limitied in vision as you.
2nd of all, These forms of power generation were replaced during the industial revolution when the steam engine becam commonplace... Now adays we have no local power generation at al! Instead we rely on utilities like the Nuclear Plant that produce a steady stream of power thats millions of times more effecient and power producing.
For all the other utilities they provided a new service or greatly improved on one(cable didn't take off until cable tv came about and exceeded the limits of air waves). Computing as a utility has no meaningful upside for consumers and increases costs.
Not true again. I stated a few reasons above. Their are many more - try thinking a few up tonight and turn them in by tomorrow, ok? :wink:
marconelly!
04-Nov-2002, 20:12
Strangely, i find Shenmue 2 looking better than Gateaway.
SC/DOA2(Dreamcast) -> TTT < TTT -> DOA3
That's cool. Some people like certain things, others don't.
It's undeniable, however, that TTT was technically more advanced game than either DOA2 or SC, just as PS2 was the technically ahead of other consoles in time of it's launch.
Panajev2001a
04-Nov-2002, 21:25
Must be magic that we've been using then, making missing features appear.
CAUGHT!!! i finally found your secret... let me go around and spill the beans...
"Developers go back to voodoo class to enhance their games"
:p :P :p
zidane1strife
05-Nov-2002, 03:41
No way will MS allow PS3 hardware > Xbox2 hardware, they never did cut any slack to their rivals, it wont start with the Xbox2.
Well, xbox1 has less fillrate, Vram bandwith... and a less powerful cpu for 3d and it came out 20Months later, without the competition knowing MS plans....
So DX10 cards will be released, DX11 plans will be flying around.... and sony engineers will just get high and forget about it? hmmmm.... after two gens of winning, sony will clearly risk EVEN greater $$$ loss on h/w in hopes of being the top.... and unless MS stockholders are really dense they won't allow xbox2 to have comparable losses....
Well, xbox1 has less fillrate
Not multitextured.
Vram bandwith...
Both the PS2 and Xbox are pretty UMA, the PS2 has 1.2gigs from GS<->RDRAM, the Xbox has 6.4gigs from NV2A<->DDR. As for FRAMEBUFFER the PS2 has a higher bandwidth.. but yet still struggles to output 480p ;)
and a less powerful cpu for 3d
I'd reckon that 733mhz XCPU > 300mhz R9500. Again, this comes down to design philosophy, with Core+VUs on one die vs CPU + VS seperate. The nod goes to the VUs for advanced flow control and programmability and such, but if devs kill themselves trying to get performance out of them.... :P
It would be interesting to see what some of the bigger studios could do with the Xbox if it had the budget and support that the PS2 currently has.
zurich
Panajev2001a
05-Nov-2002, 05:50
next gen is not tooooooo far ;)
That's cool. Some people like certain things, others don't.
It's undeniable, however, that TTT was technically more advanced game than either DOA2 or SC, just as PS2 was the technically ahead of other consoles in time of it's launch.
Yes, but the technical jump from SC to TTT is much smaller than TTT to DOA3.
Yes again, but overall PS2 was just slightly ahead of other consoles in some ways and slightly behind or equal in others. :P
That is why i dont see any reason why Xbox2 will be any worse than PS3, earlier or not(+/- 1 year).
archie4oz
05-Nov-2002, 07:40
According to "Opening the Xbox", Intel had its own console in the planning stages during the Xbox development (unbeknownst to each other). Intel and MS basically approached each other, MS to secure Intel hardware, and Intel to secure MS software. As the story goes, once Intel suits found out about the Xbox's existence, their system basically died a cold death. The Intel box was part of their consumer division (the guys who made the microscopes and such), so I don't think they were nearly as ambitious as MS in this regard.
I'm not too surprised... Back before Timna was canned, Intel used pitch a lot of noise about set-top boxes as well.
You cant compare PSX with Xbox, times have changed. It is impressive how MS can still carved out a market for themselves with the Playstation dominance.
Indeed times have changed. While the PSX had the benefit of Sega goofing in it's strongest market (North America), it still faced a good 2 years of neck to neck competition in it's home market. You could also say that the PSX benefitted from Nintendo's tomfoolery with the N64, but the BigN did offer a more graphically capable machine, and did still sell quite well even if it wasn't the dominant platform...
One can also draw similar comparison's with Xbox. While Sony did/does sit in a more unified and powerful position than the PSX competitors faced, one cannot deny the benefit of one of the most innovative (both in software and hardware) platform providers (SEGA) in not only bowing out, but also going on to provide software support for Xbox. Nintendo is no longer the big bully it once was, and has seemingly been content to profit from it's position while owning the handheld market. One could also argue that the success of the PSX helped bring videogaming even more, expanding the market providing a point of entry for Xbox...
MS Xbox has already brought gaming audio to the next level, that with the built in HD and HDTV support, Xbox has done more than PS2 and Cube.
I'd like to know how Microsoft has brought gaming audio to the next level? Perhaps in the aspect of underutilized hardware (although the Saturn and Dreamcast offer pretty stiff competition in that aspect)? Pushing spacial audio on a console was already accomplished last generation, and in the end with the current gen of hardware, whether you use DICE (Xbox), DTS Interactive (PS2), basic Dolby Surround (PSX, DC) or DPLII (GCN, PS2), it all amounts to basically a transport mechanism of which the console is only half of the hardware equation.
More importantly, software has been a more determining factor. Off the top of my head the amalgamation of music and 'Simon Says' by Konami in the Beamani series, Samba de Amigo, Rhapsody (musical RPG), and innovative audio based titles like Vib Ribbon, Rez, and Frequency (none of which are present on Xbox), have done far more for 'taking gaming audio to the *next* level' than one could argue Xbox has done so far...
As far as high definition support goes, none the current machines have really demonstrated anything significant in that regard (and no 480p is not 'hi-def'). I mean even the Saturn had Bomberman in a beautiful 704x488 progressive mode (assuming you had a Hi-Vision or NTSC-J monitor to support it). Xbox certainly has the most potential to do so, but really exploiting high definition TV means more than just higher resolution output. In order to really take advantage of HDTV, you also need your art assets to exploit the wider gamma and color fidelity, and as static textures represent one of the non-resolution independent, pre-calculated aspects of rendering, obviously means textures will have to grow to accommodate HDTV's resolution increase. Of course to really do all this, you also need higher HDTV market penetration than what currently exists...
As far as the hard drive goes, Sony did release theirs first, however Microsoft makes more extensive use of theirs so I'll give you that one. FFX and XI are the only titles I know that use it (and it's only been available Japan anyways). Of course you could factor in the Linux kit, dunno how you wanna rate that...
Live looks to kick start online console gaming, something which Sony and Nintendo can only hope to do with the PS3 and Cube2.
Live is indeed rather nice, however it's not without it's own drawbacks where Sony's approach is more accommodating...
Just want to reiterate what Simon F. said in the 3D forum. All of Nvidia's and ATI's GPUs were/are designed for PCs (except for Flipper in GCN), therefore they have to make a profit from the hardware itself right from the start. SONY's GS, EE, etc. however enjoyed subsidies from game sales therefore they can afford to make hardware that wasn't profitable at launch.
Well seeing as neither Nvidia's or ATi's graphics components are PC components, I'm not sure that's a complete argument. Nvidia does benefit in general by having other immediate markets that can (and did, or you could say it's console contract benefitted from other markets) inherit the technology during the console contract thus amortizing development costs to other markets. ATi's part is even less beneficial as it has no direct relation to any of it's PC or set-top components. In the end you've got ATi and Nvidia designing a part as part of a contract (with a relatively rich patron), in which the customer (who is relatively unique meaning no other real competitors for said part) is a system integrator that is pretty much stuck with whatever cost you the chip designer set to cover your costs. In the case of Nintendo, their desire to make a profitable machine means the ATi part via NEC is sold at relative cost. In the Nvidia case, you've got Microsoft selling an expensive system at loss. Microsoft being the beneficiary of software subsidies, has to absorb the cost of parts as the component vendors will not, thus Nvidia sells the part at above cost.
In other words SONY could push .25 fab tech to the limits because cost would be offset by software sales. Nvidia or ATi could've pushed the limits of .25u fab tech also, but then they would have to sell their chips at astronomical prices because they didn't have software sales to offset a loss.
You're partially right. Not so much because of software subsidy directly, but because the entire process was in-house. In the end even if ATi or Nvidia did benefit directly from the software subsidies, they would still be at the mercy of the capabilities of their foundries (NEC and TSMC respectively), and as we've seen with the NV30, an outside foundry can introduce issues not foreseen and/or make planning contingencies more difficult.
In the case of Sony, the chip design, foundry, and any additional related capital (e.g. software) is all in-house (or with close partner Toshiba). Building fab space of course isn't exactly cheap either, and doing so probably something Nvidia isn't looking at getting into. Of course Sony also has other chip business outside of the PS2 with memory, DSPs, microcontrollers, mixed-signal (DACs, ADCs, CCDs, etc.), so even if the PS2 had flopped they'd still have a useful investment in fab space (I think they something like 7-9 fabs now). While Sony did push .25µm rather hard, it was very costly to them because it was .18µm that they had planned on mass production of the GS and the Nagasaki fab's (the initial one that is) spin up problems led to the small, low-capacity, initial .25µm fab to not only fill orders for Japan, but also for the US launch (hence the PS2 shortage). This is also means they have significant facilities to toy around with ultra-high-density ICs (e.g. I-32) to feel out how mature their processes are at each significant design rule reduction to see how well they handle large, complex designs and address any issues before it need go into production...
I would see this as viable only if MS wanted to follow Sony's example of creating a very difficult to work with platform. Given Intel's failure in producing competitive products in the consumer 3D market(even after they purchased a company explicitly for that reason) they would almost assuredly rely on CPU power to fill in for dedicated hardware.
Why? Is it inconceivable that Intel can design an SoC that's not "difficult to work with?" I mean their PXA and IOP SoCs are pretty slick and I haven't heard any complaints about PocketPC dev'ing being difficult on any of the PXA processors (granted they're ARM)... Other than them not wanting to do so, I can't see them being incapable. Hey I'm probably the farthest thing from an x86/IA-32 fan (or IA-64 for that matter), but I'm willing to give Intel the benefit of the doubt. Do you think they're a bunch of incompetent buffoons? The P6, Athlon, Netburst, and Banias are all x86 compatible yet they're all different microarchitectures. I personally was thinking of an Athlon like execution core (symmetry wise), shallower and wider (for lower execution latency) perhaps a 2 simple + 2 complex pipeline setup (both in integer and floating-point). Or simply just leverage the micro arch of Banias on a more complex SoC (CPU core, on-chip bus or network, USB or some other I/O structure, one or more DSPs (and caches or scratchpads) for audio computation), with the GPU as the second IC either as a discrete package or a second die on the same package. Or it could be something more like the GCN setup where the GPU is wrapped up with N and S-bridge functionality in one chip with the second simply being one of their COTS parts...
As for Intel's 'failure' in the graphics chip market, can you really say they've given the high-end a really serious attempt? Hell even Apple's purchased a graphics company. Considering Intel's never ventured beyond the scope of what the i740 entailed, yet they're one of the largest graphics core vendors I'd say they're doing alright, or have your forgotten about their core-logic business? Sure it's not as glamorous as the high-end chips but it's obviously an important sector otherwise ATi and Nvidia wouldn't be so antsy to get involved.
Another aspect is that they would be turning their back on DirectX which I don't see happening. I suppose it is within the realm of possibilities, but the power and ease of development in terms of the XBox are something that I haven't seen any argue MS got wrong.
Now why would they abandon DirectX? You *do* realize the whole point of DirectX is to provide a uniform interface for for a rather diverse range of hardware? As far as ease and power of development, you haven't seen anybody argue that Nintendo got it all wrong with the GCN either. Is it an automatic assumption that Nintendo is going to go with a PowerPC/ATi/Macronix solution again?
This is the general impression that I have gained from observing AI in action(I've never even see an AI script before so I have absolutely no idea what they even entail). The AI in Half-Life, just to use a very outdated example, still seems to be considerably better then what we see in most new games. More intelligent and simply more real then what we are seeing today.
Well to be realistic, not all games can be AI masterpieces. Nor are people going to want nothing but AI masterpieces (in the strategy sense). I mean there's some pretty damn phenomenal AI systems in some of today's chess software (and I'm talking at the consumer level), but you don't see people knocking down doors to buy up chess games (hell the variant of GNU chess that comes with my mac is more than adequate for me).
It is fairly obvious that with the amount of graphics power that the next gen will have it will almost certainly take an educated pair of eyes to spot the differences in the visuals, I am currently under the impression that the same scenario is going to play out on the AI/Physics side of the coin. We are going to reach a point, moreso then already, where coding skills determine how well AI/Physics work on a given platform and even taking that into consideration you will still need a trained pair of eyes to spot the difference between the AI physics between the two likely platforms(not many people will notice if a Vette is pulling an extra .05Gs over what it should on an off camber decreasing radius turn as an example).
Well in comparison graphics have been a relatively easier problem to solve. We've had the tools (languages, APIs, mathematical and programming models) to do fairly convincing jobs, basically waiting for design and manufacturing to provide us with hardware that allows us to do in real-time what we've done off-line with our existing tools.
AI and physics propose a somewhat more complex computational problems. You could even argue that graphics (and audio for that matter) are simply just components of physics (modeling the behavior of light and sound). Yet in terms of what we do with both is a mere pittance compared to graphics. There's so much more to be done in those fields compared to what we do today.
I really wonder if Sony will even match DX9 features and IQ in the PS3 rasterizer (Graphics Synth 3, right?) That's probably the most they would be able to get in to it,
Well for one thing, mind pointing out the specification in DX9 for "Image Quality?" Secondly, why aim for DX9? Why not OpenGL 2.0 or how about a real-time RIB processor. With graphical hardware migrating towards a more general programming model, bullet point 'features' are becoming an anachronism. After all, the VUs for the most part exceed the capabilities of the DX9 VS...
Not multitextured
Considering reasonably complex fragment programs can render that pointless, nor does it benefit off-screen draw-performance, I'm not sure if that's as important as it's other more beneficial features. I guess for tri-linear performance it matters...
but yet still struggles to output 480p
I'd like to know how setting a few registers amounts to "struggling?" :-?
It would be interesting to see what some of the bigger studios could do with the Xbox if it had the budget and support that the PS2 currently has.
Well EA, Sega, Konami, and Namco are about as big as they come... :wink:
I guess that's enough hot air for today... :oops:
The MCP specs sure look like a very interesting hardware.
Give it time, and should games like Vib Ribbon Rez appear on Xbox, you can be sure that the sonic experience from such games, on the Xbox will be a step up compare to any other consoles today. :D
Some Xbox games can run at 720p and more 720p games are coming. No big deal to the PC gamers, but amazing and a stepup nonetheless, considering the limited Xbox hardware. :o
Sony will likely turn to the XBLive approach once PS3 is out, with built in HDD and NA. Their current free-to-play attitude is more of a temp measure and a coverup, due to the PS2 hardware limitation(ie no built-in online parts).
Oh and Sega, EA, Konami, Namco arent really pushing the Xbox hardware enough, with all those sloppy ports.
Well, maybe Sega with PDO(which somewhat highlights the poW@R of Xbox).
Look to Bungie for Halo 2 people. :oops:
I'd like to know how setting a few registers amounts to "struggling?"
Didn't the PS2s trouble with 480p stem from the need to preserve resolution bandwidth to put out a pretty picture for the vast majority of systems out there (480i)?
It was said a while back that SCE R&D found a way around this, and was going to start distributing the specs to developers soon, so maybe the end result was just a register amounts? :P
Well EA, Sega, Konami, and Namco are about as big as they come...
Well aside from Sega's fetish for reusing DC assets, none of the rest have put out a truly big name Xbox exclusive, whereby a title was designed ground up for the system. DTR and MGS2:S are not exactly what I'd call titles that were engineered at birth for the Xbox... :P
Panzer Dragoon Orta looks like a good start from Sega...
What I meant was, if big studios like Square and Konami would have spent the 2-3 years and millions of dollars on Xbox titles, rather than PS2. Unrealistic, but it'd be interesting to see what the end result would be.
zurich
Fafalada
05-Nov-2002, 08:58
Didn't the PS2s trouble with 480p stem from the need to preserve resolution bandwidth to put out a pretty picture for the vast majority of systems out there (480i)?
No.
It was said a while back that SCE R&D found a way around this and was going to start distributing the specs to developers soon, so maybe the end result was just a register amounts?
No again 8)
Truth is that parts of CRT registers were, and still remain officially undocumented, and stuff pertaining switching scanning modes is part of that.
If you were brave, and had a few displays that you didn't mind destroying, you could likely reverse engineer the proper settings required to display various SVGA/HDTV resolutions.
But in the end it would do you little good because even now that the high resolution support has been officially included in basic SCE libraries, you still have to request Sony's approval to include any kind of progressive scan support in your title.
Trying to do so before they made the "P-scan" support official would probably never pass the Q&A.
PC-Engine
05-Nov-2002, 09:22
Well seeing as neither Nvidia's or ATi's graphics components are PC components, I'm not sure that's a complete argument. Nvidia does benefit in general by having other immediate markets that can (and did, or you could say it's console contract benefitted from other markets) inherit the technology during the console contract thus amortizing development costs to other markets.
Isn't the GPU in Xbox basically a slightly modified GF3 though? In other words the design was initially targeted for PCs therefore it had to be profitable in the PC space at launch. I do agree that fabless companies like Nvidia have more difficulty pushing fab processes though. Better safe than sorry I guess.
maskrider
05-Nov-2002, 09:39
As far as the hard drive goes, Sony did release theirs first, however Microsoft makes more extensive use of theirs so I'll give you that one. FFX and XI are the only titles I know that use it (and it's only been available Japan anyways). Of course you could factor in the Linux kit, dunno how you wanna rate that...
There are some more titles that use the hard disk in addition to FF-X and FF-XI, e.g. Wild Arms Advanced, Virtual Fighter 4, and at least one or two RPGs right off my head.
The BB Navigator software (you can download game demo and view new games information on the game channels) also need the hard disk and the BB Unit.
aaaaa00
05-Nov-2002, 10:19
Pushing spacial audio on a console was already accomplished last generation, and in the end with the current gen of hardware, whether you use DICE (Xbox), DTS Interactive (PS2), basic Dolby Surround (PSX, DC) or DPLII (GCN, PS2), it all amounts to basically a transport mechanism of which the console is only half of the hardware equation.
Of all the consoles, my understanding is only the xbox gives you this basically for free.
Given a mono audio source sample, you can tell the MCPX where in 3D space you want the emitter to be, and the MCPX will figure out all the HRTFs and cross-fading, and generate the correct final mixdown to be delivered in DD5.1 to the output device, at virtually zero cost -- my understanding is enabling the final DD5.1 mixdown is as easy as turning it on.
If you want to get more sophisticated, you cast some rays into your game's world database, assign a velocity, direction, and a propagation cone, and tell the MCPX to apply the right doppler, echo, reverb, filters, effects, etc. Maybe calculate first and second order reflections and setup the echo parameters. Get as sophisticated as you like.
Again, basically free in terms of CPU usage once you've figured out what parameters you want to use. And the 5.1 mix is generated on the fly by the MCPX for free -- no CPU intervention.
Anyway my impression is that I don't think any of the other consoles have audio hardware that's quite at this level of sophistication, but I could be totally wrong.
Ozymandis
05-Nov-2002, 11:21
Xenosaga is another game that I believe supports the hard drive.
Question- is the HDD code removed from Final Fantasy X's North American version? I'm just curious if anyone has tried it...
Ozy, I bet it ran off with the Dolby Digital cutscenes and got married ;)
zurich
BenSkywalker
05-Nov-2002, 13:30
Vince-
Actually their not, and I'll show you. I see a lack of thinking and imagination on your side, coupled with resentment of anything thats not plainly in your idea of the future.
Analyzing the potential market for a product is something I spend a good deal of time doing at my 9-5, there are a slew of marketing issues which I'll get into in a bit but for now I'll cover your analogies in more depth.
It's realitivly centralized processing can be several orders of magnitude more expensive, suck in more power, and be much more vast in scope (ie. Array) than your desktop can.
And how many users utilize a decent fraction of their current CPUs? You have three main groups of users who match the criteria, pro artists, engineers/scientists and gamers. For gamers it is a non issue, the latency would make games unplayable(you would be dealing with 1/2 second input latency at least). That is the, by far, largest segment of users who could utilize extra cycles removed from the idea right off. We can look at Quake3, a game that is three years old, for an example of a title that shows a significant improvment moving from SDRAM to DDR or RDRAM, the bandwith and latency of remote computing has no chance of working in the gaming market.
For pro artists you have 2D, 3D and video. 2D is nearly done in terms of drastic speed ups. With video your limiting factor the majority of the time is I/O, not CPU power(although for certain functions it is possible they could benefit by load balancing). For 3D artists test renders and final renders are the only things you would really need the extra power for, and both of those are starting to move over to the GPU. By the time IBM has anything remotely like their ideal vision of Grid working, test render will likely be a non factor with final rendering being the only real push there(and for that Grid would fit perfectly). Engineers and scientists can always use the power(although how many of them lack supercomputers is another subject entirely).
You are talking about supplying the overwhelming majority of people with something that they simply don't need. Try and think of computing intensive applications in the future that are going to come close to outpacing the advancement of consumer hardware. For Grid to work as a marketplace item they would need a killer app that isn't too time sensitive(as latency is going to be at least two orders of magnitude higher then on a PC).
It's hassle-free (Thank you God). Nomore worrying about WindowsXP not reformatting everything or the quircky bugs on your desktop that keep crashing and loosing your data. No more technical worries at all - This has been the progression of human societal evolution when it comes to specilization and education. We no longer need to worry or know how to farm, produce energy, get and make sure the water is clean - Their's no reason we need to fuck with the problems of a desktop PC.
I wish I had a copy of OS2 to send your way, IBM create a seamless utility for an OS :lol:
Let's say that they started researching it now and could get it figured out in fifteen years(companies that have proven significantly better then IBM in the field have already spent longer then that). What makes you think that between Apple, MS and Linux one of them won't be able to do the same on a standard PC? Doing it on a PC is quite simple in comparison to some monster data warehouse/server. If we look at pain free devices that compromise the functionality of a PC, they have already been tried and failed(WebTV likely the most noteable- delivered everything it promised and it wasn't close to enough).
The point is, it (computing = utility) could become as seemlessly integrated into everything we do as the present utilities, to a point where we don't even know it's there.
We certainly don't need Grid/network computers, or anything like them, to get us there. Do you want to pay a monthly fee for something you don't have to now? Something that would reduce the abilities you already have? It won't sell.
First off I never said "electricity" for a reason, I said power generation. People used several forms of power generation like taming the Wind, Flowing water, et al to help with manufacturing. Not everyone is as limitied in vision as you.
I'll pull up your quote-
Or a few hundred years after that when some forward looking man said, in the future the home will have no generating source of power. Well, how insane is that?
The home is what I was replying to and it represents a major shift in your end of the argument. If you were stating that industry had uses for power generation that would have been something entirely different from homes. I live in central New England, their are two 19th century houses across the street from me(and thousands in the area where I live), I'm quite familiar with exactly what homes of that time era entailed and power generation was a non factor.
This may seem like nitpicking but it certainly isn't. Stating that Grid may have some uses in industry is worlds different then saying it has a viable place in the home.
Those are simply logical problems, nothing compared to the nightmare of trying to market this to consumers. Connecting online is the top reason most people have PCs which would seem to indicate that an appliance type device would be perfect for the market. This has already been tried and backed by tens of millions in marketing and it was built around an honest 'turn it on and go' product, WebTV. It was significantly cheaper then a PC and still failed to gain widespread acceptance. Why? It compromised functionality. Despite people's prime concern being access to the net the inability to handle other operations killed any chance WTV ever had in terms of marketplace acceptance. And, they didn't want you to pay an additional monthly fee.
How would you sell Grid to the average consumer? You have to assume that technologies are going to be developed and only applied to it for it to be close to viable(a hassle free computing experience as a general example). You think that IBM is going to come up with some new ideas that haven't been attempted before? Grid works on the principles of a render farm or distributed computing, IBM simply thinks(they certainly didn't come up with the idea) that people will pay them a fee for something they can already do.
Archie-
Why? Is it inconceivable that Intel can design an SoC that's not "difficult to work with?" I mean their PXA and IOP SoCs are pretty slick and I haven't heard any complaints about PocketPC dev'ing being difficult on any of the PXA processors (granted they're ARM)... Other than them not wanting to do so, I can't see them being incapable. Hey I'm probably the farthest thing from an x86/IA-32 fan (or IA-64 for that matter), but I'm willing to give Intel the benefit of the doubt. Do you think they're a bunch of incompetent buffoons?
When it comes to designing a 3D rasterizer? The i740 when first launched was supposed to be a high end part(complete with the price tag) and was supposed to set a new standard in 3D graphics. It failed miserably. How many companies in the world have proven that they can produce a feature complete 'GPU'? I can only think of a small handful; 3DLabs, SGI, ATi and nVidia.
Why did I state that an Intel platform would be more difficult to work with? Based on their history I don't see them coming up with a feature complete part capable of exploiting the HLSL in up to date(let alone ahead of the curve) DX revisions. They have failed to release a DX7 level part to date, I don't see them pulling out the engineers to accomplish such a task when they specialize in processor centric applications. If the design were to fall to Intel I see them almost assuredly following Sony's design theme(reliance on CPU power to fill in for GPU functionality). Even with their sole attempt to enter the high end consumer 3D market they relied on other platform technology to help them cover design issues(the i740 add in AGP boards had no on board texture memory... WTF were they thinking?).
BoddoZerg
05-Nov-2002, 13:55
Grid computing will become popular the day every person in America is comfortable using Linux, every home in the US has a T3 line, PC games run Global Illumination in realtime, and dotcom companies are more profitable than bricks-and-mortar.
Oh yeah, and did I mention the flying pigs, Hell freezing over, and Israel making peace with Palestine?
Grid computing is an impractical attempt to answer a problem that does not exist and has never existed.
marconelly!
05-Nov-2002, 15:33
Yes, but the technical jump from SC to TTT is much smaller than TTT to DOA3.
ANd yet again, Xbox launched a year and a half after PS2. Btw, if you think there's a huge technical jump between Soul Calibur 2 on the PS2 and DOA3, I beg to disagree...
That is why i dont see any reason why Xbox2 will be any worse than PS3, earlier or not(+/- 1 year).
Has there ever been documented that a computer/console hardware appearing on the market *one year* after another hardware was less powerful? If there was, I'd say such occurences were extremely rare or placed in the non-competing environments.
But PS2 -> DC time difference is about there too. :D
THe jump from PS2 to Xbox is bigger than DC to PS2.
Some developers have said that PS2 and DC are actually quite similar.
This is why i am impressed with MS and where i believe Xbox2 will more than match PS3. 8)
BoddoZerg
05-Nov-2002, 17:16
Xbox2 to PS3 will likely be the same as PS2 to Xbox... The ps2 can keep up with the xbox for a while, but the next generation (Halo2, DOOM3) far surpasses what the PS2 is capable of. If there are 2nd generation Xbox2 titles competing with 1st gen PS3 titles, they will likely look similar, but after a while the PS3 will own the Xbox2.
PC-Engine
05-Nov-2002, 17:20
Xbox2 to PS3 will likely be the same as PS2 to Xbox... The ps2 can keep up with the xbox for a while, but the next generation (Halo2, DOOM3) far surpasses what the PS2 is capable of. If there are 2nd generation Xbox2 titles competing with 1st gen PS3 titles, they will likely look similar, but after a while the PS3 will own the Xbox2.
Huh?
Fafalada
05-Nov-2002, 18:53
Something OT first, I just watched first two episodes of .Hack Sign, and to say the least, I'm very impressed/hooked. I was also interested in the game before, now it's more.
And Archie, seeing that You made me curious about it in that other thread, I blame you if I miss any deadlines in following weeks :P
Back on topic, something that slipped me earlier but I wanted to comment on.
Gubbi,
Bilinear obviously works. I stand corrected on the mipmapping, which then poses another question: Why isn't anybody using it (or if they are why are they using über-aggresive LOD settings) ? Is it expensive ?
On the contrary - mipmapping on PS2 is pretty much a 'must' to get really good performance. Not using mipmaps is just wrong for performance in more ways that I even want to count right now.
It IS true that many, particularly early, titles completely ommited mipmaps - and although I couldn't know exact reasons, I am pretty sure most of them were due to misconceptions about the workings of PS2 hw.
It IS true that many, particularly early, titles completely ommited
mipmaps - and although I couldn't know exact reasons, I am pretty sure most of them were due to misconceptions about the workings of PS2 hw
It always amazes me some of the assumptions developers make.
This is why second generation software is better than first generation software, the mental model you have of the hardware is considerably more accurate when you start development of a second title.
You should tell them how much fillrate you loose if your scaling the texture down by a significant margin.
I know given the embedded memory I was somewhat surprised by the figures.
randycat99
06-Nov-2002, 02:43
It always amazes me some of the assumptions developers make.
This is why second generation software is better than first generation software, the mental model you have of the hardware is considerably more accurate when you start development of a second title.
This seems to be especially true for fellow Xboy fanatic, chap. :oops: ...being a critical armchair conniseur (sp?) of hardware architecture specs (undoubtedly inspired through marketing channels) and having programmed a grand total of ZERO games, yet frequently carries himself as THE industry voice and "insider" to all future events. :oops:
Ozymandis
06-Nov-2002, 06:38
Something OT first, I just watched first two episodes of .Hack Sign, and to say the least, I'm very impressed/hooked. I was also interested in the game before, now it's more.
I just finished that series a couple of weeks ago. I loved it as well.
Does drag at times, but they captured a certain element; the characters are all stereotypes of Internet personas (for the most part), and fairly accurate ones IMO.
Also as a Phantasy Star Online player I was impressed by the obvious PSO-influences :D
Ben,
I'm quickly becoming irratated with your inability to think about things outside of your little scope and percpetions... common now.
The vast majority of future computing uses (ie. total, not just PC based) will be in smaller devices (cell phones, PDA's, digital news papers/cloths/et al) that don't require near instantaneous access and will be used for email, internet, commiunications, simple programs, education purposes, video, ect. It's for these devices that computing will become a utility first.
Unlike you, who I feel may get off one tinkering with your PC and fixing every error that pops up, most people don't. They're going to want to buy a device, plug it in and have it work. They don't want to install continually new versions of MS Encarta, and Windows, and Word, and Office, and any other god damned software that has patches or updates.
For these people (ie. The ones who have lives keeping them too busy to play for hours getting WindowsXP to work), computing as a utility will be a godsend. Have it threw broadband, wireless, who cares. I pay, say, $40 a month and I can plug in (or wirelessly connect) all my electronic devises and they work and communicate with eachother - allways updated and working flawlessly. Hell, it allows for me to access volumes of programs and electronic media seemlessly aswell...
Also, I never said GRID or IBM - so where the hell did that come from? All I mentioned was computing as a utility. I mean, just because you don't see a use for it.
archie4oz
06-Nov-2002, 22:30
Their current free-to-play attitude is more of a temp measure and a coverup, due to the PS2 hardware limitation(ie no built-in online parts).
What does free-to-play have to do with an RJ-45/11 PHY not being built onto the hardware? Mind elaborating on that a little more (or perhaps sharing some of that glue with the rest of us)?
Isn't the GPU in Xbox basically a slightly modified GF3 though?
Wanna show me a GeForce3 with two vertex shaders, an AGTL and a HyperTransport bus?
The BB Navigator software (you can download game demo and view new games information on the game channels) also need the hard disk and the BB Unit.
I forgot about the BB Navigator... My VF4 is the US one so I haven't tried it with an HD.
Of all the consoles, my understanding is only the xbox gives you this basically for free.
Considering DTS Interactive is relatively 'free' (4-6% on the cpu), I'm not sure that's much of a big deal... As for the GCN, since it lacks any digital audio output (not including the Q), it's not something that you're going to worry about. At most you'd just mixdown your positional audio to DPLII...
Anyway my impression is that I don't think any of the other consoles have audio hardware that's quite at this level of sophistication, but I could be totally wrong.
Well not in a single chip. You'll get no argument over the relative capabilities of the MCP (I enjoyed by brief time on an XDK and spent many hours on the one on my roommate's nForce system). Now the most significant things about the APU IMO (since that's the portion of the MCP we're talking about) are the sheer number of channels, DICE, and the setup engine. In comparison say, to the PS2 you've got the choice of a couple of output formats (it really depends how your game leverages the hardware, and how wide an audience you wanna target, i.e. more people are going to benefit from Surround or DPLII, than DTS), of which none really put a significant load on the CPU. The IOP pretty much does with the APU setup engine does. As far as signal processing goes, they're fundamentally the same (i.e. setting up banks of audio channels and ping-pong samples between them). It's just in the case of SPU2 you've got 2 cores (CORE0, CORE1) with 24 channels to set up (you can do more via software), whereas with the MCP you've got 8 sets with 32 channels each. So in that aspect the APU pretty much beats the pants off of pretty much anything out there short of professional gear...
If we look at pain free devices that compromise the functionality of a PC, they have already been tried and failed(WebTV likely the most noteable- delivered everything it promised and it wasn't close to enough).
Conversely if you look at the functionality of the PC that compromises many of the pain free devices we use today, for all it's power and flexability it's failed to replace them...
This has already been tried and backed by tens of millions in marketing and it was built around an honest 'turn it on and go' product, WebTV. It was significantly cheaper then a PC and still failed to gain widespread acceptance. Why? It compromised functionality. Despite people's prime concern being access to the net the inability to handle other operations killed any chance WTV ever had in terms of marketplace acceptance.
Well I can counter your WebTV argument with DoCoMo... However one fundamental problem with your argument here is that you're comparing a device to a service. So if we compare say device to device, I'll use game consoles as a counter argument. Game consoles have been a pretty much 'functionally limited' device used for the sole purpose of playing videogames. Yet the PC has been around doing the same thing for just as long, and some would argue does a better job (not to mention offers more options in terms of game expansion and end-user contribution), yet the game console market hasn't died, or failed, but rather flourished (with some arguing at the expense of PC gaming)...
As far as the whole grid computing thing goes. It's not like it can be utilized in every single aspect of all games. However it does display an awful lot of potential for massively multiplayer persistent online worlds whether it be an Everquest/Galaxies type, or a persistent online Sims, or Starcraft...
When it comes to designing a 3D rasterizer? The i740 when first launched was supposed to be a high end part(complete with the price tag) and was supposed to set a new standard in 3D graphics. It failed miserably. How many companies in the world have proven that they can produce a feature complete 'GPU'? I can only think of a small handful; 3DLabs, SGI, ATi and nVidia.
The i740 was never intended to be a high-end part. You're confusing it with the R3D-1000 and 100 (the i740 was derived from the 100). As for it's success for failure, I'd say it did fair. It offered comparable performance to it's primary competitor (the Riva128 and ZX) with better image quality (and was cheaper), and outclassed pretty much everything else (Rage II, Rage Pro, Rendition, M3D, Voodoo) 'till Matrox released the G200. Of course there was the Voodoo2 which was in a class of it's own (which cost a lot for one let alone 2 for SLI, and didn't offer any 2D either).
As for feature complete 'GPU', mind pointing out the specifications for what a 'feature complete GPU entails?' It would sure be interesting since Nvidia coined the term 'GPU' with the NV10 (yet still product 'GPUs' with more 'features'). I guess one could just say that Nvidia is the only one in that category. I guess if you want to be generous you could include Matrox and ATi. SGI has never really made any 'GPUs', and 3Dlabs doesn't either (they've got a lot of high-end solutions which comprise many chips, dunno if any one of the are GPU, or course they've got those new-fangled 'VPU' thingies though)... ;) :P
(BTW, I kinda forgot that the Wildcat lineup came from Intergraph, and the Oxygen line came from Dynamic Pictures...)
I guess if you want to get a little more broad-minded and generous, you could say Nvidia, ATi, Matrox, 3Dlabs, VideoLogic/PowerVR, Intel, SiS, Via, SGI, HP, IBM, Sun, TI, Fujitsu, Hitachi, Mitsubishi, E&S (they still around?), and to be really nice I'll throw in Sony and Toshiba have all comprised significant enough contributions to 3D (at least on the hardware side) to be considered 'experienced'...
Why did I state that an Intel platform would be more difficult to work with? Based on their history I don't see them coming up with a feature complete part capable of exploiting the HLSL in up to date(let alone ahead of the curve) DX revisions.
I'd think the off and on animosities between the two would be a bigger obstruction. As for "the HLSL" which would that be? Last time I checked there was a single standard. Hell I can think of several off the top of my head (Renderman, Pfman, RTSL, ISL, ESMTL, Cg, whatever's in OpenGL 2.0)?
They have failed to release a DX7 level part to date, I don't see them pulling out the engineers to accomplish such a task when they specialize in processor centric applications.
Perhaps because they do quite fine (downright dominant) with the capabilities of their core-logic designs? Again, if it wasn't a significant market why would Nvidia, ATi (Via, and SiS for that matter) be getting so involved with that sector? In case you haven't noticed, the high-end consumer 3D hardware market isn't all that large, it's costly, and not very profitable. At best it's good for pride, and if it's your core business and you're good at it then it can give you some good 'trickle-down' hardware at the low-end level and if the parts are good enough some business at the high-margin pro-level.
As for Intel 'pulling' engineers. Perhaps from an existing project per se. Of course they've got so much stuff going on, I doubt they don't have the engineering resources for such a task. In case you haven't notices, it's not a far reach to go from CPU design to 'GPU' design (one could argue that CPU is probably more difficult at the logic level). Of course there's the analog side to GPU design as well, but considering Intel's efforts to catch up to IBM in mixed signal processes I don't think that aspect would be too difficult. And they've obviously got the software knowhow... (And yes I know 3DR was weak sauce).
If the design were to fall to Intel I see them almost assuredly following Sony's design theme(reliance on CPU power to fill in for GPU functionality). Even with their sole attempt to enter the high end consumer 3D market they relied on other platform technology to help them cover design issues(the i740 add in AGP boards had no on board texture memory... WTF were they thinking?).
Well one can see Intel focussing on a 'CPU' centric theme (after all they've pushed it with their CPU extensions). Also, you're idea's about Sony's design is somewhat flawed in comparison. Intel's extensions have relied on using the CPU's execution resources to accomplish all the computation, whereas Sony has gone the route of relying heavily on dedicated execution resources to avoid being CPU bound (while providing functionality to allow the CPU to have control and direct access to some of the dedicated functionality).
As for what Intel was thinking on the i740. How about actually utilizing the full spec of the bus? I mean besides it, the Rage chips were the only other ones to really leverage AGP. And I'm afraid I'm going to have to call bullshit on the lack of texture memory on the i740 boards. I had a Starfighter and it had 8MB of memory. Now if you specified DME in it's DX settings, then it would allocate main memory for textures. You could still DMA textures to the board for execution however. That had to be allowed for the PCI cards to get any texture data, of course those were weird as they had 16-24MB of memory (8-16MB allocated for textures) in which half or more was made to believe it was behind the AGP bus... Anyway at that time DME wasn't so bad as the differential in memory performance between graphics cards and main memory wasn't nearly as bad as it is today...
I was also interested in the game before, now it's more.
I was rather interested in their approach to releasing the game in pieces across 4 discs...
And Archie, seeing that You made me curious about it in that other thread, I blame you if I miss any deadlines in following weeks
Sorry? :P
PC-Engine
06-Nov-2002, 23:54
Wanna show me a GeForce3 with two vertex shaders, an AGTL and a HyperTransport bus?
NV2A is based on the GeForce3 design with some functions taken out and some added to facilitate it's console centric target platform. In other words it's a modified NV20 therefore the development costs came mostly from the NV20.
Reznor007
07-Nov-2002, 00:23
Considering DTS Interactive is relatively 'free' (4-6% on the cpu), I'm not sure that's much of a big deal... As for the GCN, since it lacks any digital audio output (not including the Q), it's not something that you're going to worry about. At most you'd just mixdown your positional audio to DPLII...
Actually that is wrong. Every Gamecube made has capability for digital audio output. It outputs digital audio via the digital A/V output jack, in DAI format. You can build a small board to convert that to S/PDIF, and when connected to a decoder, you get 48KHz 16bit stereo PCM.
Kudos to Nintendo for cutting corners! That said, its highly unlikely that a GC will ever find its way into my room, simply due to the lack of an spdif (yes I love my receiver that much).
Ozymandis
07-Nov-2002, 03:02
Ozy, I bet it ran off with the Dolby Digital cutscenes and got married ;)
zurich
Did we get the DD cutscenes or not? I thought we did... haven't used my Ps2 on a DD receiver yet :(
I know the Bouncer had them :)
MrSingh
07-Nov-2002, 03:19
Actually that is wrong. Every Gamecube made has capability for digital audio output. It outputs digital audio via the digital A/V output jack, in DAI format. You can build a small board to convert that to S/PDIF, and when connected to a decoder, you get 48KHz 16bit stereo PCM.
great! now if a big enough group of us GC owners install this small adapter, the developers will support it? :D
Ozy: NOPE, no DD cutscenes.
MGS2 had the most laughable DD support out of anything though.. options to turn it on all over the menu, the DD logo printed on the box and DVD, etc etc, and yet, what is there? The intro (mildly cool), and the ending JAZZ SONG. Man oh man, what a load of crap.
I think I would have preferred the cut scenes to be rendered in game, yet recorded into mpeg (like XenoSaga), and then have DD playback. But I guess Kojima-san really wanted to prove to the world that his game was real-time:P
Reznor007
07-Nov-2002, 03:22
Kudos to Nintendo for cutting corners! That said, its highly unlikely that a GC will ever find its way into my room, simply due to the lack of an spdif (yes I love my receiver that much).
Well, I have a $1,200 receiver, and I use my Gamecube on it...ProLogic2 is actually pretty nice.
I'm kinda surprised Nintendo didn't add an SPDIF converter to the component video cable kit though.
Reznor007
07-Nov-2002, 03:25
Actually that is wrong. Every Gamecube made has capability for digital audio output. It outputs digital audio via the digital A/V output jack, in DAI format. You can build a small board to convert that to S/PDIF, and when connected to a decoder, you get 48KHz 16bit stereo PCM.
great! now if a big enough group of us GC owners install this small adapter, the developers will support it? :D
Well, it's supported in all games in a technical sense...but it would probably be easy for a dev to add a DTS encoder.
BenSkywalker
07-Nov-2002, 03:59
Vince-
I'm quickly becoming irratated with your inability to think about things outside of your little scope and percpetions... common now.
I'm thinking about this thing called reality. It is not my scope or perception, it is the marketplace reality.
The vast majority of future computing uses (ie. total, not just PC based) will be in smaller devices (cell phones, PDA's, digital news papers/cloths/et al) that don't require near instantaneous access and will be used for email, internet, commiunications, simple programs, education purposes, video, ect. It's for these devices that computing will become a utility first.
These things all work now. Tell me how they would be improved by you paying $40 a month?
Unlike you, who I feel may get off one tinkering with your PC and fixing every error that pops up, most people don't. They're going to want to buy a device, plug it in and have it work. They don't want to install continually new versions of MS Encarta, and Windows, and Word, and Office, and any other god damned software that has patches or updates.
This is likely your biggest problem with the vision you have. You think that the only way to achieve this is by having computers act as a utility? Auto updating software already exists(and has for some time for that matter). It is your vision that is very narrow here. You are implying that this can only be done if computing becomes a utility. I am saying that the two things are entirely different subjects.
For these people (ie. The ones who have lives keeping them too busy to play for hours getting WindowsXP to work), computing as a utility will be a godsend. Have it threw broadband, wireless, who cares. I pay, say, $40 a month and I can plug in (or wirelessly connect) all my electronic devises and they work and communicate with eachother - allways updated and working flawlessly. Hell, it allows for me to access volumes of programs and electronic media seemlessly aswell...
None of this is tied in to computing becoming a utility. You are talking about two completely seperate things as if they were one and the same. Hassle free computing is something I see as entirely desireable, I would like you to explain why that would be exclusive to computing becoming a utility.
Access to electronic media is a good example where you are dealing with loads of different corporations, having one of them involved with a utility structure would likely make things more complicated then they would be on an open market.
I mean, just because you don't see a use for it.
Tell me the use for it that is exclusive to it. You tell me what you could do having computing as a utility versus not.
Archie-
So if we compare say device to device, I'll use game consoles as a counter argument. Game consoles have been a pretty much 'functionally limited' device used for the sole purpose of playing videogames. Yet the PC has been around doing the same thing for just as long, and some would argue does a better job (not to mention offers more options in terms of game expansion and end-user contribution), yet the game console market hasn't died, or failed, but rather flourished (with some arguing at the expense of PC gaming)...
Start charging people a monthly fee for consoles and watch what happens.
As far as the whole grid computing thing goes. It's not like it can be utilized in every single aspect of all games. However it does display an awful lot of potential for massively multiplayer persistent online worlds whether it be an Everquest/Galaxies type, or a persistent online Sims, or Starcraft...
OK, so you have a use for one millions computer users out of a billion plus.
The i740 was never intended to be a high-end part. You're confusing it with the R3D-1000 and 100 (the i740 was derived from the 100).
I still have the print publications from when it launched as the i740 in the Starfighter games.
It offered comparable performance to it's primary competitor (the Riva128 and ZX) with better image quality (and was cheaper), and outclassed pretty much everything else (Rage II, Rage Pro, Rendition, M3D, Voodoo) 'till Matrox released the G200. Of course there was the Voodoo2 which was in a class of it's own (which cost a lot for one let alone 2 for SLI, and didn't offer any 2D either).
The V2 was the same price as the Starfighter when it launched(I still have the original comparisons).
As for feature complete 'GPU', mind pointing out the specifications for what a 'feature complete GPU entails?'
Full DX feature set. Given that we are talking about the XBox I mistakenly assumed that would be a given. As far as using the term GPU, it is quicker then typing out "graphics rasterizer chip" over and over so I will continue to use it :)
I guess if you want to get a little more broad-minded and generous, you could say Nvidia, ATi, Matrox, 3Dlabs, VideoLogic/PowerVR, Intel, SiS, Via, SGI, HP, IBM, Sun, TI, Fujitsu, Hitachi, Mitsubishi, E&S (they still around?), and to be really nice I'll throw in Sony and Toshiba have all comprised significant enough contributions to 3D (at least on the hardware side) to be considered 'experienced'...
Matrox hasn't raised the bar since the G400, and even that had only a couple of months prior to the GF hitting. PVR has never been close to having a complete(class leading or at the minimum full DX feature set at the time of release) feature set. SiS and Via have always been decidedly low end. HP's fx line, while extremely powerful for its limited market, does not cut it as a viable solution for gaming graphics. Sun, IBM and E&S(they are still around- or at least they were last I was aware) aren't competitive.
As for "the HLSL" which would that be? Last time I checked there was a single standard. Hell I can think of several off the top of my head (Renderman, Pfman, RTSL, ISL, ESMTL, Cg, whatever's in OpenGL 2.0)?
Apologies again, I thought it would be a given that I was talking about DX's HLSL.
Perhaps because they do quite fine (downright dominant) with the capabilities of their core-logic designs? Again, if it wasn't a significant market why would Nvidia, ATi (Via, and SiS for that matter) be getting so involved with that sector?
That is akin saying Hyundai(sic?) could compete in the LeMans series it's just they don't because they make money in their current market. Intel does not have the hundreds of engineers who specialize in the particular application we are discussing.
In case you haven't notices, it's not a far reach to go from CPU design to 'GPU' design (one could argue that CPU is probably more difficult at the logic level). Of course there's the analog side to GPU design as well, but considering Intel's efforts to catch up to IBM in mixed signal processes I don't think that aspect would be too difficult. And they've obviously got the software knowhow... (And yes I know 3DR was weak sauce).
Actually, it is an enormous difference switching between CPU design and 'GPU'. CPU design at Intel has a roughly five year product cycle and every transistor is hand tuned where 'GPU' design has about one third that amount of time and most of it isn't hand tweaked(that's a paraphrase from an Intel engineer who has been working on IA64 for some time, I've had this discussion before). The entire design philosophy is significantly altered along with the execution of it.
Well one can see Intel focussing on a 'CPU' centric theme (after all they've pushed it with their CPU extensions). Also, you're idea's about Sony's design is somewhat flawed in comparison. Intel's extensions have relied on using the CPU's execution resources to accomplish all the computation, whereas Sony has gone the route of relying heavily on dedicated execution resources to avoid being CPU bound (while providing functionality to allow the CPU to have control and direct access to some of the dedicated functionality).
So you don't consider the EE in its entirety the CPU of the PS2?
And I'm afraid I'm going to have to call bullshit on the lack of texture memory on the i740 boards. I had a Starfighter and it had 8MB of memory. Now if you specified DME in it's DX settings, then it would allocate main memory for textures. You could still DMA textures to the board for execution however. That had to be allowed for the PCI cards to get any texture data, of course those were weird as they had 16-24MB of memory (8-16MB allocated for textures) in which half or more was made to believe it was behind the AGP bus...
Intel is the one that made the claim of not having on board texture memory for the AGP parts(again, I'm going by print publications from the time and Intel's own quotes).
Anyway at that time DME wasn't so bad as the differential in memory performance between graphics cards and main memory wasn't nearly as bad as it is today...
Roughly half as fast.
archie4oz
07-Nov-2002, 11:28
Start charging people a monthly fee for consoles and watch what happens.
Well people do it for TV even though TV is available for free (hehehe depending on where you live)... :P
The V2 was the same price as the Starfighter when it launched(I still have the original comparisons).
The only ones I remember being in the same price range as the Voodoo2 was the PCI Starfighters (16 and 24MB). I paid $129 for my AGP Starfighter (8MB)...
Matrox hasn't raised the bar since the G400, and even that had only a couple of months prior to the GF hitting. PVR has never been close to having a complete(class leading or at the minimum full DX feature set at the time of release) feature set. SiS and Via have always been decidedly low end. HP's fx line, while extremely powerful for its limited market, does not cut it as a viable solution for gaming graphics. Sun, IBM and E&S(they are still around- or at least they were last I was aware) aren't competitive.
Well feature-wise, Parhelia raised the bar (albeit temporarily). As for some of the others, even though PowerVR is focussing on embedded cores now, they did at least do a console part. SiS and Via don't look to be staying low-end forever (well SiS at least looks to be pushing the Xabre line more). As for HP, Sun, and IBM (did you forget about Sun's Creator3D, Elite3D Expert3D, and XVR1000 boards? Or IBM's PowerGXT accelerators? They're along the same lines as HP's fx), while mainly niche high-end are simply mentioned to point out the Nvidia, ATi, and SGI don't have a monopoly on 3D. After all ArtX was pretty much a nobody with an N-bridge controller that flopped, yet went on to produce Flipper...
That is akin saying Hyundai(sic?) could compete in the LeMans series it's just they don't because they make money in their current market. Intel does not have the hundreds of engineers who specialize in the particular application we are discussing.
Well they could... They participate in WRC (along with several other rally series) and various sports car series. Mazda's racing record was rather abysmal and non-existent (despite actually producing a couple low-cost sports cars), yet they went on to be the only Japanese auto manufacturer to actually win the 24 heurs du Man, whereas Toyota and Nissan, having much more illustrious racing histories and devoted far more resources at LeMans, yet neither have won (although Nissan finishing all 4 entries in the top 10 was *very* impressive). Look at MG, gone for eons then they come out with the hottest LMP675 prototype out there (that's able beat the pants off of some of the LMP900 prototypes above it). The same could be said for Bentley as well regarding their EXP Speed8 in the LMGTP class...
Actually, it is an enormous difference switching between CPU design and 'GPU'. CPU design at Intel has a roughly five year product cycle and every transistor is hand tuned where 'GPU' design has about one third that amount of time and most of it isn't hand tweaked(that's a paraphrase from an Intel engineer who has been working on IA64 for some time, I've had this discussion before). The entire design philosophy is significantly altered along with the execution of it.
Well considering how many different processors Intels released over the past 'couple' of years, and how much Matrox has milked the G400 core, and Nvidia's milked their register combiners the whole life-cycle argument is kinda weak. As for hand-tweaking the architecture, it does indeed happen on GPUs (just not as much).
It is funny that you mention IA-64, since it basically tries to take general computing along the GPU path of massive resources and parallelism. Take an R300 and an Itanium2 what do you have? Essentially a big, fat parallel processor with lots of resources (registers, caches, execution units), that steps through in-order, predicated data. Hey this is not problem for the R300. But an Itanium2 has a problem, programmers (and more explicitely, their compilers) are throwing a ton of small, branchy, code blocks with all sorts of memory dependencies. Get rid of that problem, and suddenly all the ILP extraction hardware (and compiler sophistication) isn't needed and you can devote more resources to deal with data computation...
So you don't consider the EE in its entirety the CPU of the PS2?
One could call it that for lack of a better word, I call the EE, the "EE." I consider the EEcore to be the "CPU."
Roughly half as fast.
Well at least on the i740 it wasn't even that bad... Depended on the memory you had (some had 66MHz SDRAM, some 100MHz). My Starfighter had 100MHz SGRAM and my PC had PC66 (PC100 came out shortly later)... DME did have it's plusses at the time as well (mainly giving your GPU a crap load of bandwidth)...
Oh and BTW, IIRC Intel does have a DX7 part in the 845G (dunno about the 830, and 810). It supports DXTn, cube maps, DOT3 bump-mapping, point sprites, multi-texturing (4-stage), etc... Not exactly a real barn-burner, but at least it's a lot more modern than the i740...
BenSkywalker
07-Nov-2002, 12:08
Well people do it for TV even though TV is available for free (hehehe depending on where you live)...
Don't know about where you live, but where I live I can grab a whopping two channels for free :)
The only ones I remember being in the same price range as the Voodoo2 was the PCI Starfighters (16 and 24MB). I paid $129 for my AGP Starfighter (8MB)...
List price that I have states $199(although that isn't street, neither was the V2's $199 tag).
Well feature-wise, Parhelia raised the bar (albeit temporarily).
I thought P10 hit first?
did you forget about Sun's Creator3D, Elite3D Expert3D, and XVR1000 boards? Or IBM's PowerGXT accelerators? They're along the same lines as HP's fx
Didn't forget about them, haven't seen one that is competitive in a couple of years(compared to fx or even the Wildcats).
while mainly niche high-end are simply mentioned to point out the Nvidia, ATi, and SGI don't have a monopoly on 3D. After all ArtX was pretty much a nobody with an N-bridge controller that flopped, yet went on to produce Flipper...
The ArtX team was SGI :)
Well considering how many different processors Intels released over the past 'couple' of years, and how much Matrox has milked the G400 core, and Nvidia's milked their register combiners the whole life-cycle argument is kinda weak. As for hand-tweaking the architecture, it does indeed happen on GPUs (just not as much).
The life cycle difference I bring up as Intel tends to hand tune everything and takes ~five years to complete a project(although they have dozens of projects under design at once). They don't have the experience attempting to compete with the specialists in the field. nVidia and ATi have rather large advantages in nearly all areas of 3D(those two in particular, although SGI seems to be holding on to their niche).
Look to Intergraph(who had to sell out to 3DL), 3DLabs, Sun, DEC, IBM and HP(SGI too though they haven't fallen as badly) who utterly dominated the high end 3D market up until three years ago. Now, the mass market companies are threatening to eclipse nearly all of their advantages for the pro markets simply as a by product of advancing consumer/gamer 3D cards. The scales of economy have had nV and ATi hiring all(well, as much as they can) of the top talent in the industry. They simply have significantly more money then the other player's in the 3D arena. Now if we were talking about Intel making an honest attempt at entering the 3D market I think they certainly could do it, but them landing the XB2 deal without a more serious stance for the industry at large I see them relying on platform technologies over raw 'GPU' power which is what MS is very clearly planning on(look at DX).
It is funny that you mention IA-64, since it basically tries to take general computing along the GPU path of massive resources and parallelism. Take an R300 and an Itanium2 what do you have? Essentially a big, fat parallel processor with lots of resources (registers, caches, execution units), that steps through in-order, predicated data.
And it would appear to lend itself quite nicely to software computation of what would be 'GPU' tasks doesn't it ;)
One could call it that for lack of a better word, I call the EE, the "EE." I consider the EEcore to be the "CPU."
Fair enough. From a coders standpoint I would assume that you would have to tend to pay a decent amount of attention to what is handling what within the EE.
Well at least on the i740 it wasn't even that bad... Depended on the memory you had (some had 66MHz SDRAM, some 100MHz). My Starfighter had 100MHz SGRAM and my PC had PC66 (PC100 came out shortly later)... DME did have it's plusses at the time as well (mainly giving your GPU a crap load of bandwidth)...
PC100, in a theoretical sense, didn't offer any edge as AGP 2x was limited to ~512MB(real world obviously you had other devices utilizing memory although this was almost certain to cover more then the gap between the two in terms of bandwith). IIRC, wasn't 128bit bus standard on graphics cards by that point? If so, even assuming you hit peak AGP 2x rates all the time, it still was less then half as fast as on board RAM.
Oh and BTW, IIRC Intel does have a DX7 part in the 845G (dunno about the 830, and 810). It supports DXTn, cube maps, DOT3 bump-mapping, point sprites, multi-texturing (4-stage), etc... Not exactly a real barn-burner, but at least it's a lot more modern than the i740...
Do you have a link? Honestly curious here as everything I've seen on the 845G states no hard TnL and no EMBM(not that the latter is a major issue).
archie4oz
07-Nov-2002, 18:11
Don't know about where you live, but where I live I can grab a whopping two channels for free
That's sort of why I threw in the qualifier. I used my parent's place, since the Inland Empire (in conjunction with LA, Ventura, and Orange counties) is a pretty massive sprawl of area, where you can typically get 10-20 channels on the air. Of course no matter where you are you can always seemingly depend on televangelism to provide you with a channel... :-?
Of course in Japan you're practically guaranteed to be able to get NHK, but you *do* have to pay for that... :(
List price that I have states $199(although that isn't street, neither was the V2's $199 tag).
Really? I always remembered them easily being over $250 (12MB version), hence the infamous $600 for SLI rigs...
I thought P10 hit first?
You might be right, although I believe some of Parhelia's functionality was more accessible, whereas the P10 is one to be explored...
The ArtX team was SGI
Well a bunch of SGI guys... But you can pretty much find SGI guys all over the place...
Now if we were talking about Intel making an honest attempt at entering the 3D market I think they certainly could do it, but them landing the XB2 deal without a more serious stance for the industry at large I see them relying on platform technologies over raw 'GPU' power which is what MS is very clearly planning on(look at DX).
Well I *was* implying an 'honest' attempt. Although mainly at them building something similar to Nforce (although even more capable) to fill in the higher end integrated market...
PC100, in a theoretical sense, didn't offer any edge as AGP 2x was limited to ~512MB(real world obviously you had other devices utilizing memory although this was almost certain to cover more then the gap between the two in terms of bandwith). IIRC, wasn't 128bit bus standard on graphics cards by that point? If so, even assuming you hit peak AGP 2x rates all the time, it still was less then half as fast as on board RAM.
Actually it did as it could fill AGP command and data buffers faster than PC66 (even though the bus transfer would be the same). Plus PC100 could service more or longer data tenures to it's clients in same amount of time. Also, considering the size of on-board memory at the time (4MB-8MB) texture page misses weren't exactly uncommon. DME in this respect was definitely better as it performed operations on a frame basis, and could release bus grants quicker than a DMA'd texture across AGP (or worse, PCI).
Also it had a 64-bit bus too. 128-bit busses didn't start appearing until the TNT/TNT2, G400, and Rage128...
Do you have a link? Honestly curious here as everything I've seen on the 845G states no hard TnL and no EMBM(not that the latter is a major issue).
Well it doesn't have TnL, that's what the big, nasty P4 is for (and fits nicely with your CPU centric model for Intel). :wink:
Besides, fixed-function TnL would've been a waste for low-cost integrated graphics. Besides it would go idle anyway with any vertex shader based title...
Oh and here's you're feature link:
http://developer.intel.com/support/graphics/intel845g/feature.htm?iid=ipp_dlc_chip_graphics+info_2d3d&
zidane1strife
18-Nov-2002, 15:55
We'll i'll just resurrect this thread... with something that came to my mind recently....
If sony plays it's cards right MS even if they manage to outdo ps3 in some areas won't be able to brag about it, or even hype it.
Why do i believe this, u ask?
Well here goes....
We have all seen how the ps2 outdoes the xbox in some areas, and it's still uneclipsed in a few areas even by the latest gpus which have come nearly 3yrs later... areas like fillrate and bandwith have not been significantly surpassed(several fold increase...) considering the amount of time that has passed.
On another note also see that MS used their Mhz to boast about their cpu and claim it to be more powerful than the ps2 cpu.
We see too that ps2 severily lagged in the gpu features arena, and that the gs v-ram and performance was also hindered do to low manufacturing tech...
Now what does this all mean?
If sony does ps3 press releases right, MS won't be capable of outdoing them...
For example instead of giving Mhz speed, they just completely obmit that and concentrate on the "SUPER computah on a chip", they give many stats showing it to be among the top... i dunno 100-10 supah computahs... they say how it's dozens of times better than the latest intel pentiums etc.... this will basically guarantee that any pentium MS touts will be laughable...
As for the gpu area sony just has to focus on peak specs that aren't likely to be surpasses, fillrate, v-ram bandwith, poly rate(if they do achieve 75B peak, they should just give that figure, and forget about it.), etc... again not mentioning areas were they'd be surpassed...
Now to the demos, head demo, car demos, etc... many like the head will clearly outdo anything outhere, nearly undistinguishable from the real thing... people would think all char.s would be that level of detail... and the cars should be nigh photoreal... This would guarantee that no demo MS threw afterward would outshine ps3's demos...
What would this all do?
When MS announced their xbox2 it would just be a ME TOO... a ME TOO without GTA... a METOO WITHOUT a SUPAH COMPUTAH and with an average desktop cpu in the eyes of the media... with no noticeable improvement above ps3... it would go really nasty....
Nupraptor
19-Nov-2002, 05:55
And people complain about having to upgrade your computer every few years. Sheesh! ;)
Megadrive1988
19-Nov-2002, 07:47
[off-topic]
Archie - if Lockheed had brought out R3D-100 as a consumer/gamer 3D card and used it against Voodoo1 and even Voodoo2, how well do you think it would have done, in terms of performance, feature set, image quality, ease of development, etc? I pretty much have my own idea but wanted to see if other people's thoughts were similar.
You think developers would have embraced R3D-100 instead of Voodoo/Glide, if priced at $180-200 ....the price originally mentioned in 1995 for a Lockheed PC card, but wasn't actually for -100, it would be the later i740.
Also, you say i740 was derived from R3D-100. I wonder how much. No doubt R3D-100 was in a totaly different class than i740.
From what I understand, i740 was a single chip - it was also just a 3D accelerator, it lacked a geometry processor (what would later be called a T&L unit in the Nv GPU era) where as the R3D-100 was a complete graphics processing chipset, which included a seperate geometry processor, in addition to graphics processor and texture processor. So unlike the i740, the -100 provided its own geometry and lighting, not burdening the CPU for those things. (also unlike Voodoo and all the others)
I strongly believe if -100 was introduced intact in 1996 or even as late as 1997, as a gaming card it would have provided extremely good polygon throughput on almost any CPU, along with unrivaled texture mapping & image quality.
IIRC, R3D-100 specs were 750,000 polys/sec with every feature on.
33M pixels/sec ....not as low as it sounds to the typical PC gamer given the features & image quality.... no doubt these specs were much more robust and held up extremely well in reality compared to other 3D accelerators with higher paper specs such as 3Dfx, ATI, Nv, Rendition, PowerVR, Trident, S3, etc.
It's too bad that the $180-$200 LM graphics card turned out to be the i740 and not the R3D-100. I would have bought a -100 without hesitation even over Voodoo2.
I'm pretty certain from everything I've read over the years that Sega had concidered both the R3D-100 and the i740 (and probably derivatives of both) for a console chipset.
what a shame LM R3D never really made it in the consumer market. they shined so brightly in arcades. At least some of their engineers are now at ATI (i think) perhaps some of talent was put to use in R300/Radeon9700.
One thing I've noticed about your posts Megadrive, is that you looooooove "what ifs" and phantom specs. :)
Not having a go, just commenting. I find it interesting to read all your ideas on what could have happened.
megadrive0088
19-Nov-2002, 13:06
yeah, lots of possibilities. things that were on the verge of happening in the gaming and comsumer 3D industry.
no pun intended ;)
IIRC, R3D-100 specs were 750,000 polys/sec with every feature on.
R3D-1000 ? is that what you mean ? I don't think R3D-100 has that kind of spec.
JF_Aidan_Pryde
19-Nov-2002, 15:26
Hi Ben,
You must remember that you are speaking from the perspective of an IT person. My parents haven't even heard of the X-BOX *Gasp*. Give them a computer, the most they can do is turn it on and find Winword in the start menu. If it fails to post, or the HDD fails, they don't have a first damn clue what to do.
You say that computing as a utility is independent of trouble free computer, I disagree. As long as the basic computing hardware (HDD, Motherboard, CPU, etc) is at the consumer's end, there will be never ending trouble. Software has improved dramatically recently (Xp is a God send) but hardware still fails and gives totally random errors (sometimes freezes, sometimes not. take it to a repair shop, problem disapperas, take it back, frozen again) that ordinary consumers just can't stand. We are here talking because we've all been through the shits, people *SHOULDN"T* have to go through it in this 'information age'.
By separating the PC hardware from the consumer and instead getting them to use the information through a reliable, un-expandable device, you basically eradicate all problems. No more motherboards failing, no more CPU over heating, no more HDD clicking to death etc etc.
The bottom line is, no matter how much more friendly software gets, consumers will still suffer issues which can't be solved without re-thinking the entire 'computing' architecture. If the burden of operating such a device is reduced to a level of a Palm handheld, then we have pretty much opend the market to x fold more peope at many magnitudes the ease.
We can all agree that computers will never get "fast enough"; we'll always want more speed. That rules out having a non-expandable 'computing' platforms at the consumer's end - they can't upgrade. If they use a expandable platform, they'll run into problems, no questions asked. People NEED to be separated from the hardware. Hardware idealy should be managed by professionals on the back end, with the consumer accessing what the WANT, be it information, entertainment, whatever.
As SA said a while back. People don't buy a computer for the physical item, they buy it for the power to COMPUTE. So if the POWER to COMPUTE is available troublefree through the airwaves, who'd choose a clumsy, troublesome desktop box?
archie4oz
19-Nov-2002, 19:03
Archie - if Lockheed had brought out R3D-100 as a consumer/gamer 3D card and used it against Voodoo1 and even Voodoo2, how well do you think it would have done, in terms of performance, feature set, image quality, ease of development, etc? I pretty much have my own idea but wanted to see if other people's thoughts were similar.
It would've been nice I guess... Considering that they couldn't get the cost down though it's a rather moot point. Also, having that much trouble launching a consumer product, it would've been outclassed by later parts that relied on more powerful CPUs... Very similar to what happend to the XZ graphics option on the SGI Indy, when the R4600, R4400 and R5000 variants came out...
You think developers would have embraced R3D-100 instead of Voodoo/Glide, if priced at $180-200 ....the price originally mentioned in 1995 for a Lockheed PC card, but wasn't actually for -100, it would be the later i740.
If it had come out sure...
Fafalada
19-Nov-2002, 19:44
Fair enough. From a coders standpoint I would assume that you would have to tend to pay a decent amount of attention to what is handling what within the EE.
Well, you don't need to pay any attention to it, but then you'll literally end up using R5900 core alone and nothing else - which only confirms Archie's point :P
megadrive0088
19-Nov-2002, 20:57
R3D-1000 ? is that what you mean ? I don't think R3D-100 has that kind of spec.
I did mean R3D-100, not the Pro-1000
I'm quite certain the R3D-100 had 750,000 polys/sec performance, and I *think* that was with all features on, but it was at least with texture mapping. the 33M pixel/sec fillrate was also for the -100.
The Pro-1000 had a 66M pixel/sec fillrate that could and did go higher.
(200M pixels/sec i believe)
BenSkywalker
04-Dec-2002, 13:48
JF-
Since you obviously wanted me to reply :)]
As long as the basic computing hardware (HDD, Motherboard, CPU, etc) is at the consumer's end, there will be never ending trouble.
You are going to have hardware at the end user no matter what. Hardware failure is almost always due to cheap hardware or excessive age. Hardware dies over time, that is an excepted norm for all consumer devices(even non electrical). The issue on that end currently is simply getting people to buy a high quality PC instead of the cheapest or 'best deal' they can get. For every quality custom built rig that dies there are likely twenty emachines, ten Compaqs and five Dells :)
randycat99
04-Dec-2002, 19:25
For every quality custom built rig that dies there are likely twenty emachines, ten Compaqs and five Dells :)
So that is 20 crap machines for every 1 good machine. Sounds like a good market to delve into when it comes to releasing the consumer of unwanted hardware/OS/software liability. I think you could easily convince that customer to subscribe to a service for troublefree computing vs. persuading them to buy a "ripped" machine and still have to maintain it themself.
BenSkywalker
05-Dec-2002, 01:17
So that is 20 crap machines for every 1 good machine.
Huh? That's 20 junk machines for every one junk machine.
Sounds like a good market to delve into when it comes to releasing the consumer of unwanted hardware/OS/software liability.
Most consumers don't have many problems as it is. Windows 3.1 or Win95 aren't exactly pervasive any more. Once every few months I do have to reboot when I update a driver, however if I wasn't gaming with my rig(which wouldn't be viable for a utility based PC) not even that would be required(and I spend next to no time on PC maintenance, start defrag once every few weeks and even that could be handled by task scheduler but I loathe TSRs).
I think you could easily convince that customer to subscribe to a service for troublefree computing vs. persuading them to buy a "ripped" machine and still have to maintain it themself.
What maintenance? You get a good enough rig, have task scheduler set up and that's pretty much it already, even if we forget that they continue to improve upon it.
randycat99
05-Dec-2002, 01:46
That's the problem- the people who have the most problems with computers aren't you, and they probably are still running Win95/98/ME unless they recently bought new. These people don't know a "good rig" from a "task scheduler", nor do they care. They just want something that works, will continue to work, and likely don't want to deal with it when it stops working. To say your experience with a computer "built from the pinnacles of Windows harmony (to the extent of your personal PC knowledge)" is indicative of all other computer users who bought off the shelf from a store is quite a leap.
In case you misunderstood my earlier comment that came from your comment- that is 20 crap machines bought for every 1 quality-built machine from someone who "knows". Obviously there is the potential alternative market for those customers of the 20 crap machines.
BenSkywalker
05-Dec-2002, 02:12
They just want something that works, will continue to work, and likely don't want to deal with it when it stops working. To say your experience with a computer "built from the pinnacles of Windows harmony (to the extent of your personal PC knowledge)" is indicative of all other computer users who bought off the shelf from a store is quite a leap.
The point is that building a nigh pain free PC is easily done already today. MS and Intel are making considerable efforts to make this the norm instead of the exception. Considering it will take at least a decade or two to build anything resmbling Grid, I find it far more likely that PCs will be nigh trouble free prior to that. Consider it has only been seven years since Win95 first hit store shelves. A mere five years ago it was still the best alternative we had. PCs have improved by massive leaps since then, enough so that I find the odds of needing a utility fifteen years from now to give trouble free computing amusing if anything.
randycat99
05-Dec-2002, 02:35
The point is that building a nigh pain free PC is easily done already today.
Yes, you keep going back to the qualifier "building". I have no doubt that you can build a computer to your satisfaction. Not everybody is building their own computer, though. If you consider the total installed base of PC's out there, you'll probably find the DIY'ers are just a mere drop in the bucket. As surprising it is to imagine, it's just not everyone's cup of tea. Perhaps you could help my friend with her computer. It's an utter mess right now, and she knows a bit more about computers than most (but not you, of course).
MS and Intel are making considerable efforts to make this the norm instead of the exception.
Ah yes, endless wizards, keep up with the exploit patch of the week, rollback features, what have you... :P (Sorry, couldn't resist- don't get your shorts in a knot)
Considering it will take at least a decade or two to build anything resmbling Grid, I find it far more likely that PCs will be nigh trouble free prior to that.
"nigh trouble free"? This is Windows we are talking about, right, or are you predicting some future paradigm flip in mainstream OS's? The bigger this Windows OS gets, the more places there will be for bugs, holes, and exploits to hide...just IMHO. The birth of the Grid is irrelevant for this discussion. We are simply discussing computering as a service/utility, and possibly broadband is the only real prerequisite infrastructure for that. Ironically, M$ is already moving toward an over the wire strategy, wouldn't you say?
PCs have improved by massive leaps since then, enough so that I find the odds of needing a utility fifteen years from now to give trouble free computing amusing if anything.
They've certainly become more powerful and gigantic in scope. I'd say the increased complexity has washed the inherent reliability quality, overall. ...But if you find remote computing amusing, fair enough- it's only an opinion. I don't have a great need to keep beating this dead horse topic, do you?
BenSkywalker
05-Dec-2002, 02:52
Yes, you keep going back to the qualifier "building".
I do that because someone has to build it. There is nothing in the world stopping companies like Dell or Compaq from building actual quality PCs. Alienware and the like already do it. When I reccomend a system to people I always pick one of the 'specialty' builders if they insist on going OEM. Building a quality PC certainly doesn't require much intelligence nor knowledge, search out the best components and slap them together. Building a quality PC is actually extremely easy, doing it while maintaining the margins companies want at a price people want it the only tricky part. Once more companies realize that 'obsolete' quality hardware will land them more long term customers then low quality 'cutting edge' parts things will improve.
The bigger this Windows OS gets, the more places there will be for bugs, holes, and exploits to hide...just IMHO.
Win95 or Win 3.1 v WinXP.... nuf said ;)
We are simply discussing computering as a service/utility, and possibly broadband is the only real prerequisite infrastructure for that.
BB isn't close to enough for a computing utility. It may have been in this thread that we discussed it although I don't recall at the moment.
Ironically, M$ is already moving toward an over the wire strategy, wouldn't you say?
And it's not catching on in any way with non business consumers.
I don't have a great need to keep beating this dead horse topic, do you?
I'll beat a dead horse until its rotted pulp ;)
randycat99
05-Dec-2002, 03:07
And it's not catching on in any way with non business consumers.
I'd expect AOL to pull it off before M$ did- just my hunch.
Megadrive1988
21-Oct-2003, 22:12
I'm now thinking either
PS3-2005, Xbox2-2005
or
PS3-2006, Xbox2-2006
If X-Box2 launches in H1 2005 (the earliest possible IMO) it should use R500 technology (as that's what will be in PCs at the time). In that's case it will beat PS3 to market by atleast a few months (PS3 will be holiday season 2005 or later). OTOH look at what happened to Dreamcast, which had a HUGE lead on PS2. I think it would be wiser for MS to wait until 2006, and take advantage of better fabs to get some huge clock speeds.
MrSingh
23-Oct-2003, 05:45
Japanese public seeing it as an aggressive take over (which it likely would be) by a foreign company.
I don't think the Japanese public cares, there are many japanese companies being bought over (and controlled) by foreign companies. Nissan, Shinsei bank, etc. the company I work for owns >80 golf courses and a crap load of other property in Japan...
The Xenophobia is overblown.
nonamer
23-Oct-2003, 05:58
If X-Box2 launches in H1 2005 (the earliest possible IMO) it should use R500 technology (as that's what will be in PCs at the time). In that's case it will beat PS3 to market by atleast a few months (PS3 will be holiday season 2005 or later). OTOH look at what happened to Dreamcast, which had a HUGE lead on PS2. I think it would be wiser for MS to wait until 2006, and take advantage of better fabs to get some huge clock speeds.
I agree fully. Going with r500 tech that early will put them exactly in the Dreamcast/PS2 situation. Get a DX10 GPU for XB2 is my advice the MS.
If X-Box2 launches in H1 2005 (the earliest possible IMO) it should use R500 technology (as that's what will be in PCs at the time). In that's case it will beat PS3 to market by atleast a few months (PS3 will be holiday season 2005 or later). OTOH look at what happened to Dreamcast, which had a HUGE lead on PS2. I think it would be wiser for MS to wait until 2006, and take advantage of better fabs to get some huge clock speeds.
I agree fully. Going with r500 tech that early will put them exactly in the Dreamcast/PS2 situation. Get a DX10 GPU for XB2 is my advice the MS.who's to say its not dx 10. Ms is the people who make dx. They of course would know what dx 10 chips are. Which should come out with longhorn in 2005. Ati beat dx 9 to the market by a few months so if they are under the fold with ms they might be able to beat dx 10 by more tha na few months
Clashman
23-Oct-2003, 07:00
Jesus. I didn't realize I was reading a year-old post. Half the stuff at the beginning of the post makes very little sense when taken in today's context. I was so damn confused.
Shows you what a year can change. :?
epicstruggle
23-Oct-2003, 09:49
Jesus. I didn't realize I was reading a year-old post. Half the stuff at the beginning of the post makes very little sense when taken in today's context. I was so damn confused.
Shows you what a year can change. :?
yeah, i started reading the thread, saw oct, thought it was fresh. Got to vince's thread when it dawned on me that something was way off. some of the post clearly dont make sense today. ;)
later,
epic
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