Sony's Next Generation Portable unveiling - PSP2 in disguise

[thop]

IMO battery is the least of its problems. It's massive, so fits massive batteries.

What I've been wondering about: can you even reach the middle of the rear touch panel when holding the NGP in its default position? I quite like the general idea, but the problem is that you won't know which point on the panel exactly corresponds to which point on the screen, until you touch it, which reduces practical accuracy in games. Unless it has some kind of very accurate proximity sensor to indicate this on the screen.

 

[Megadrive1988]

The current kits are built on the 45nm node, PSP-3000 uses 65nm chips and has the wasteful UMD drive. I understand that NGP will launch with the 45nm parts, but Sony want to get 32/28nm parts for an internal revision out of the door.

Interesting piece of knowledge. If Sony had waited until 2012 to launch they could have gone with a slider design by using 28nm chips and lowering the cooling requirements. In the end it was decided that waiting for foundries to get to 28nm was too hit and miss and went with the brick design. I remember talking about 28nm delay at the end of last year, this is what prompted that talk. Sony decided against slider on a number of foundries' inability to deliver 28nm this year.

Interesting bits of info there, thanks.

 

[Entropy]

I think we've established so far that the NPG won't be running Android.

Well, tbh, DeanA established that the NPG isn't running Android. But I'm inclined to believe him. He should be in a position to know, which makes his statement about the "battery life" claims of the power adapter driven dev kits rather authorative as well.

What I would like for him to say, but I'll understand if he won't, is his reaction to the device. Is it a game changer, or the same old only more of it? He's bound to be biased, but - how does it feel. There are some things that are subtle that you can't really evaluate without hands-on experience, such as how having an extremely fast OLED screen affects responsiveness. Is it noticeable, or lost in the input -> software -> output chain? Screen size - grip ergonomics - viewing distance - pixel density - how does it all fall into place? Or not. Those subjectives that are so important, and so hopeless to glean from a spec sheet, are those NDA'd?

 

[whome0]

I believe they did not talk about UltraViolet DRM certification or anyone had asked them about it?

 

[ltcommander.data]

I think we've established so far that the NPG won't be running Android.

Well, the NPG won't be running Android as the core OS, but wouldn't they need to do some abstraction Android like layer with OpenGL ES to run cross-platform Playstation Store games shared with Android? Which is why I thought it kind of curious that Sony looks to be going with a Qualcomm Snapdragon with Adreno 205 for the Playstation Phone. Going something similar to what Apple is rumoured to be doing in the A5 with dual core Cortex A9 and SGX543MP2 would have allowed direct hardware compatibility between a Playstation Phone and the NGP so you could optimize for the CPU and GPU architecture or even offer a direct hardware interface on the Phone comparable to the NGP. At the very least it would have allowed developers to standardize on PVRTC between the devices.

 

[babcat]

Since closed my thread I will ask the question here.

Is the PSP 2 as powerful as the PS3 or not.

Several people have said that it is. Is this the truth or a lie?

For example, can the PSP 2 output as many polygons as the PS3?

Can the PSP 2 hold as many textures as the PS3?

Does the PSP2 have a greater fill rate than the PS3?

Does the PSP2 have a more powerful processor than the PS3?

 

[Nano]

Since closed my thread I will ask the question here.

Is the PSP 2 as powerful as the PS3 or not.

Several people have said that it is. Is this the truth or a lie?

For example, can the PSP 2 output as many polygons as the PS3?

Can the PSP 2 hold as many textures as the PS3?

Does the PSP2 have a greater fill rate than the PS3?

Does the PSP2 have a more powerful processor than the PS3?

I think it's pretty much a certainty that the PS3 is more powerful from a CPU and GPU perspective.

PS3 has larger scale, higher clocked architecture and the Cell processor almost certainly has superior vector processing performance compared to the Quad Core ARM CortexA9 (along with more cores and higher clock frequency).

We don't have full details on the amount of available memory the PSP2 has, so how much data it can hold, including textures isn't known.

 

[babcat]

Then Sony and developers need to stop lying.

If they claim that this system is as powerful as the PS3 we need to hold them to that.

 

[NathansFortune]

Since closed my thread I will ask the question here.

Is the PSP 2 as powerful as the PS3 or not.

Several people have said that it is. Is this the truth or a lie?

For example, can the PSP 2 output as many polygons as the PS3?

Can the PSP 2 hold as many textures as the PS3?

Does the PSP2 have a greater fill rate than the PS3?

Does the PSP2 have a more powerful processor than the PS3?

No.

Not really a lie the experience will be comparable and translate well to a lower resolution.

No.

No.

No.

No.

Don't forget that PS3 targets 1280x720p while NGP only has a 960x544 screen and that is around half the number of pixels to push. Also 960x544 is the max resolution, there is nothing stopping devs rendering at a lower resolution and scaling like they do on PS3 or 360 (Alan Wake is rendered at 960x540 and scaled to 720p output for example, COD:BO is rendered at the same res on PS3 and it looks fine).

It's a different system really and the experience isn't comparable directly.

 

[babcat]

I heard two things in the conference that made me wonder.

They rendered a scene from MGS4 in real time.

They rendered a scene from an XBox 360 game in real time.

If this system can render PS3 games without any change in textures, polygon count, etc does that mean it is as powerful as the PS3

 

[phenix]

Since I didn't see anyone mentioning bluetooth I wonder if WiFi Direct is supported for PSP2 to PSP2 or PSP2 to PS3 communications and will there be a way to stream content to TV via wireless?

 

[Nano]

I heard two things in the conference that made me wonder.

They rendered a scene from MGS4 in real time.

They rendered a scene from an XBox 360 game in real time.

If this system can render PS3 games without any change in textures, polygon count, etc does that mean it is as powerful as the PS3

Well, NGP runs at nearly half the resolution of 720p, the MGS4 scene was also running at a lower frame-rate (a 3rd lower). It was very impressive though.

Seeing those examples doesn't physically make the system as powerful as PS3. However, in it's own right the architecture is very sophisticated and has many perks from the perspective of advanced shader effects and performance/efficiency.

The NGP architecture is almost certainly easier to program for, looking at the general consensus on ARM/PowerVr technology, compared to the Cell BE. MGS4 doesn't take advantage of the PS3's hardware to nearly the extent of later titles. If we start throwing in SSAO, sophisticated global illumination, lot's of physical simulations and so on, we probably wouldn't expect the same performance, even in a cut-scene...

Personally, I think the NGP's architecture should be considered on it's own merits. Developers can often produce much more from the hardware than we see in games, and hand-helds themselves give another set of opportunities to get the best out of the confines of the technology. Right now, I wouldn't be surprised if better results than MGS4 are produced on a handheld now in 2011, considering it was an engine developed in 2005 and the first time the team made a production based on shader based architecture, or anything near as complex as PS3.

Also bear in mind, they would have had to make significant considerations to the engine running on completely different rendering and processing architecture, giving rise to an opportunity to tailor the tech demo/scene for the portable.

 

[Xenus]

The only thing I would question is the Texture one. It might physically be able to hold more textures and or better textures depending on final ram amounts and usage. However whether it has the power to display all those high res textures is another matter.

 

[babcat]

Well, NGP runs at nearly half the resolution of 720p, the MGS4 scene was also running at a lower frame-rate. It was very impressive though.

Seeing those examples doesn't physically make the system as powerful as PS3. However, in it's own right the architecture is very sophisticated and has many perks from the perspective of advanced shader effects and performance/efficiency.

The NGP architecture is almost certainly easier to program for, looking at the general consensus on ARM/PowerVr technology, compared to the Cell BE. MGS4 doesn't take advantage of the PS3's hardware to nearly the extent of later titles. If we start throwing in SSAO, sophisticated global illumination, lot's of physical simulations and so on, we probably wouldn't expect the same performance, even in a cut-scene...

Personally, I think the NGP's architecture should be considered on it's own merits. Developers can often produce much more from the hardware than we see in games, and hand-helds themselves give another set of opportunities to get the best out of the confines of the technology. Right now, I wouldn't be surprised if better results than MGS4 are produced on a handheld now in 2011, considering it was an engine developed in 2005 and the first time the team made a production based on shader based architecture, or anything near as complex as PS3.

Also bear in mind, they would have had to make significant considerations to the engine running on completely different rendering and processing architecture, giving rise to an opportunity to tailor the tech demo/scene for the portable.

1) Where did you hear that it was running at a lower frame rate? Is there a transcript of the entire conference?

2) If you had to compare the SGX543+ to the RSX which do you think would be more powerful?

 

[Exophase]

Well, tbh, DeanA established that the NPG isn't running Android. But I'm inclined to believe him. He should be in a position to know, which makes his statement about the "battery life" claims of the power adapter driven dev kits rather authorative as well.

At the very least, Sony could probably get away with offering Android on PSP2 later.

One good thing about OLED is that we shouldn't be cursed with any outrageous ghosting problems this time.

 

[Gitaroo]

are we going to see difference like this in same special effects on NGP and PS3?

http://www.pcgameshardware.de/screenshots/medium/2007/08/Fur_Shader.jpg

the NGP GPU support SM 4.1 right?

 

[Nano]

1) Where did you hear that it was running at a lower frame rate? Is there a transcript of the entire conference?

Kojima/Konami mentioned it in the press conference.

http://www.engadget.com/liveblog/live-from-sonys-tokyo-event/

20fps.

2) If you had to compare the SGX543+ to the RSX which do you think would be more powerful?

As a direct comparison, the RSX *should* be a lot more powerful.

Being a multi-core version should give it a comparative performance boost however. When ImgTec revealed the architecture of the SGX543 they claimed each core core delivers a performance of 35 million polygons per second and a fill rate of 1 Gigapixel per second at 200 MHz.

Epic Games also referred to it as being anywhere up to 4x as powerful as smart-phones. Though we don't know that as an exact performance measure or if it takes into account optimisation of the closed platform.

 

[onQ]

if the 128MB of VRAM is true I would love to see how easy it can run wii ports just for the hell of it lol isn't that more VRAM than the Wii has total RAM?


& I think this will be perfect for Dreamcast games on PSN , Dreamcast had a PowerVR GPU with 4MB VRAM & the NGP has a PowerVR SGX543MP4+ GPU with 128MB of VRAM 32 x more VRAM alone this should make lite work of Dreamcast EMU .

right?

 

[eastmen]

1) Where did you hear that it was running at a lower frame rate? Is there a transcript of the entire conference?

2) If you had to compare the SGX543+ to the RSX which do you think would be more powerful?

1) He is assuming that since it was running on the NGP it was limited by the NGP's screen resolution which has 4 times less pixels than what Metal gear pushed on the ps3

2) Depends on what your trying to do , I'm going to say the RSX wins every time .


THe NGP is able to put such pretty graphics on the screen vs the ps3 for two simple reasons. 1) The ps3 was designed in 2005 2) The NGP runs at a lower resolution.

 

[Megadrive1988]

if the 128MB of VRAM is true I would love to see how easy it can run wii ports just for the hell of it lol isn't that more VRAM than the Wii has total RAM?


& I think this will be perfect for Dreamcast games on PSN , Dreamcast had a PowerVR GPU with 4MB VRAM & the NGP has a PowerVR SGX543MP4+ GPU with 128MB of VRAM 32 x more VRAM alone this should make lite work of Dreamcast EMU .

right?

Dreamcast had a custom PowerVR2 graphics chip with 8 MB RAM.