Strengths and weaknesses of GameCube relative to its peers *spawn

The other day I saw that the XBox scene has some guys hacking loads of game executables to run at 720p. You need to have soldered in another 64MB RAM for most games to fit in memory at 720p, but it's interesting that it can be pulled off with some minor hex editing in many cases. I saw they even got Doom3 going at 720p.
https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1HpxKGQ6wVTRevUdQ6_4rkuyF_ZugOgc2C4tXnZxBZCk/edit#gid=0


This HD capability really separates the XBox from the other consoles IMO.
 
Last edited:
While hd was great for the xbox, I won't factor it into convos about the console's power because it's a feature, not a measure of power. Technically there's nothing stopping the ps2, let alone something like wii running games in hd besides the feature just not being there. For example Doesn't baldur's gate on ps2 have some crazy supersampling going on? Might be close to 720p pixels there. Any sort of advanced game like soulcal 2 in hd really struggled in its framerate on Xbox.

I recently played the og xbox version of doom 3 and man it is ugly.. really low poly counts (on PC as well) and textures but it was a solid 30fps and the lighting was pretty advanced for the time at least.
 
Doom3 has relatively low poly counts because of the stencil shadows and the impact on performance more polygons has on that.

The XBox version is interesting because it is highly tuned for the console. Lots of work was done to fit it into 64MB RAM, optimize it for NV2A's characteristics, Dolby Digital, etc. It also has an exclusive coop mode.
 
Last edited:
Did riddick use stencil shadows? It looked better than doom. Silent hill 2 on ps2 has them simulated. I believe shattered memories on Wii might have real stencil shadows and that's at 60fps.

Doom is just very poor visually compared to its competition besides lighting. Like i'm not just detracting from xbox here I think it looks poor on PC as well.

Edit : riddick does indeed have stencil shadows so i'd use that as a benchmark for Xbox, it's a much better looking game.
 
Last edited:
Did riddick use stencil shadows? It looked better than doom. Silent hill 2 on ps2 has them simulated. I believe shattered memories on Wii might have real stencil shadows and that's at 60fps.

Doom is just very poor visually compared to its competition besides lighting. Like i'm not just detracting from xbox here I think it looks poor on PC as well.

Edit : riddick does indeed have stencil shadows so i'd use that as a benchmark for Xbox, it's a much better looking game.

I don't remember being that much better looking, but it's been a long time. Riddick apparently uses dynamic resolution on xbox though.
 
Unless the GCN and Wii can use tiling, AFAIK the embedded framebuffer on the graphics processor is too small for a 720p render.

Perhaps on Gamecube I could see it being the case, nintendo designed it with very specific graphics targets in mind. Doubt the slow audio ram would've helped there.

But with Wii and its 64 megs of additional memory that's exactly as fast as xbox's? Nope. In fact I recall a posting by climax studios on the game overlord dark legend where they used the 64 meg pool exlusively and didn't touch the edram or 1tram. Not only was wii faster devs didn't have to spend so much time on memory optimusing unless they wanted to of course.

Honestly none of xbox's impressive games run at 720p. It's mostly ps2 ports like hulk and matrix.
 
Last edited:
I don't remember being that much better looking, but it's been a long time. Riddick apparently uses dynamic resolution on xbox though.

It really does look that much better. The guys at starbreeze were really talented. In fact I think in this thread a year ago I lumped it with doom 3 on my crusade but yeah doom just doesn't compare.
 
Perhaps on Gamecube I could see it being the case, nintendo designed it with very specific graphics targets in mind.

But with Wii and its 64 megs of additional memory that's exactly as fast as xbox's? Nope. In fact I recall a posting by climax studios on the game overlord dark legend where they used the 64 meg pool exlusively and didn't touch the edram or 1tram. Not only was wii faster devs didn't have to spend so much time on memory optimusing unless they wanted to of course.

Honestly none of xbox's impressive games run at 720p. It's mostly ps2 ports like hulk and matrix.

The sequel to wreckless ran at 720p.



Honestly looks almost like a mediocre 360 game.


It really does look that much better. The guys at starbreeze were really talented. In fact I think in this thread a year ago I lumped it with doom 3 on my crusade but yeah doom just doesn't compare.

Doesn't riddick drop a lot more frames though? IIRC, Doom 3 was locked to 30 fps or pretty close.
 
Perhaps on Gamecube I could see it being the case, nintendo designed it with very specific graphics targets in mind. Doubt the slow audio ram would've helped there.

But with Wii and its 64 megs of additional memory that's exactly as fast as xbox's? Nope. In fact I recall a posting by climax studios on the game overlord dark legend where they used the 64 meg pool exlusively and didn't touch the edram or 1tram. Not only was wii faster devs didn't have to spend so much time on memory optimusing unless they wanted to of course.

I'm not sure if the GCN and Wii only output directly from the 2MB z/framebuffer or could output a composited tiled frame from the 24 MB "graphics memory". The thought has crossed my mind and could be what some reportedly drunk Nintendo engineer meant by the "Wii could do HD, but not fast enough to matter". It was some rumored story from 2007 I think.
 
I'm not sure if the GCN and Wii only output directly from the 2MB z/framebuffer or could output a composited tiled frame from the 24 MB "graphics memory". The thought has crossed my mind and could be what some reportedly drunk Nintendo engineer meant by the "Wii could do HD, but not fast enough to matter". It was some rumored story from 2007 I think.
My point was if a Wii game could get away with just using the 64 megs of gddr3, it should be able to do it if xbox can. I can't break it down like an engineer though.

Indeed, you wouldn't want to do HD on Wii and that goes for xbox as well. Theoretically maybe if Wii's gpu was clocked at 380 mhz or something . 2.5x gc's speed to account for the 480p> 720p jump.

@dogen That yakuza game doesn't look terrible but kinda simplistic too. If soulcal 2 didn't have performance issues i'd be impressed with that. Or maybe burnout 3 if they got that to 720p by dialing the textures back to ps2 level?

Not sure if riddick runs worse than doom, but honestly the visual difference is so huge I doubt i'd care lol. I'll have to get my hands on it I guess
 
Last edited:
I was highlighting the output problem. If the system reads and outputs only directly from the 2MB eDRAM z/framebuffer, tiling into the 24 MB main RAM won't matter because you can't output from it in the first place. The Xbox didn't use eDRAM, and it's entire 64 MB was fair game because that's where finished frames were stored.
 
I was highlighting the output problem. If the system reads and outputs only directly from the 2MB eDRAM z/framebuffer, tiling into the 24 MB main RAM won't matter because you can't output from it in the first place. The Xbox didn't use eDRAM, and it's entire 64 MB was fair game because that's where finished frames were stored.

The Wii doesn't need to work exactly like the cube or are you just talking about cube? I'll try and find that developer quote.
 
The Wii doesn't need to work exactly like the cube or are you just talking about cube? I'll try and find that developer quote.

The Wii fundamentally still works just like the Gamecube, and the GPU still has the same size embedded DRAM buffers which put their own limits on both the GCN and Wii hardware.
 
While hd was great for the xbox, I won't factor it into convos about the console's power because it's a feature, not a measure of power. Technically there's nothing stopping the ps2, let alone something like wii running games in hd besides the feature just not being there. For example Doesn't baldur's gate on ps2 have some crazy supersampling going on? Might be close to 720p pixels there. Any sort of advanced game like soulcal 2 in hd really struggled in its framerate on Xbox.

I recently played the og xbox version of doom 3 and man it is ugly.. really low poly counts (on PC as well) and textures but it was a solid 30fps and the lighting was pretty advanced for the time at least.

Ive seen people saying PS2 could run doom 3, but never have i seen D3 720p, PS2 doesnt have any game running at that resolution. It has some 1080i games but they arent even 1080i, its not even better then 480p according to many. Going to try 480p and 1080i modes to see myself on GT4.

I do think rendering resolution is a measure of power, and the xbox set itself apart during the 6th gen, offering for almost all games 480p as standard, with some 720p and 1080i games too. Baldurs Gate aint D3 either, totally different games/engines. Lair 3D in 1080i doesnt really struggle, so doesnt Amped 2 in 720p either, the latter being very smooth, with nice graphics for its time to boot.

D3 ugly? Played it some months ago, and i didnt think it was ugly at all, it has shortcomings but it was impressive for the time.

The XBox version is interesting because it is highly tuned for the console. Lots of work was done to fit it into 64MB RAM, optimize it for NV2A's characteristics, Dolby Digital, etc. It also has an exclusive coop mode.

Yeah exactly, thought it was very impressive, not just a straight port like half life 2 and many other pc games (unreal 2, dues ex etc). Doom 3 co-op on og xbox? Over network must be, not splitscreen atleast?

Honestly none of xbox's impressive games run at 720p. It's mostly ps2 ports like hulk and matrix.

It atleast runs them at that resolution, and thats probally ps2 ports.

. If soulcal 2 didn't have performance issues i'd be impressed with that.

SC2 isnt the only 720p game on OG xbox, Amped 2 seems technically more advanced yet runs very smooth at 720p, doesnt look too shabby either.
I really like the PS2, but i can admit that the over one year later launched xbox was much more capable in almost all areas, which isnt a shame seeing it came later and was much more expensive to manufacture.
 
Last edited:
It's really not a bottleneck for Gc or wii at 480p, only in this hd hypothetical which frankly is a waste on all 6th gen machines.

Wii can output 854x480 true widescreen so that's not HD but it is more than gc was able to do. I could not find the overlord quote but from what I can tell of the Wii, the gddr3 is external but the 1tsram is on the gpu die itself unlike the cube which probably makes a difference?

I'd say we need more concrete info on this before going further.
 
Yeah exactly, thought it was very impressive, not just a straight port like half life 2 and many other pc games (unreal 2, dues ex etc). Doom 3 co-op on og xbox? Over network must be, not splitscreen atleast?
It's a network coop mode IIRC. Two XBox consoles linked.
 
It's a network coop mode IIRC. Two XBox consoles linked.

Okej gotta try just for the heck of it :p Played the co-op mod on pc, but the xbox port is intresting in many ways. Hoping DF is going to cover some more 6th gen consoles and with that more in depth D3.
 
I remember the Gamecube has a color depth limitation that caused banding to be a problem. 16-bit color depth maximum if using alpha blending? That's something I remember noticing when I had Cube. That and the occasional lack of mip mapping (memory conservation?) and that causing distant texture aliasing.

It also has only supersample AA which isn't exactly efficient. XBox games sometimes use MSAA or Quincunx (MSAA+filter). Technically NV2A has all of the AA modes from the desktop GeForce 3/4.

The Splinter Cell games use NVidia shadow buffers. The author of DGVoodoo2 has been reimplementing this in his wrapper recently.
 
Last edited:
Back
Top