Was GC more or less powerful than PS2? *spawn

GC's max polygon rate was 32 million for the GPU and of course the CPU could chip in for more. PS2 could in no way easily do 30m polys per second, though it could maybe just about do that if you focused on geometry at the cost of everything else.

In which case the Graphics Synthesizer could render 75 million per second with 1 vertex colour. EE could transform 66 million polygons per second. So apples to apples you're looking at twice the geometry performance on PS2.

BTW who set the wayback machine to 2001?
 
Nintendo numbers are conservative real world performance.
Sony's are ideal peak performance.

ie: not comparable.
 
EE could transform 66 million polygons per second. So apples to apples you're looking at twice the geometry performance on PS2.

You aren't no, simply because comparing EE's theoretical geometry performance to Flipper's isn't apples to apples.

66M polys per second is the theoretical performance of VU0 and VU1 combined, but both units had other significant tasks to perform for games. Including physics and any graphics functions that PS2's rather limited graphics chip couldn't perform (of which there was plenty). On the other hand GC's T&L unit was for nothing other than transformation and lighting.

Of course the VU's were more flexible than Flipper, but Gekko (GC's CPU) was designed to help out for geometry/lighting tasks that Flipper wasn't capable of. Its all quite a complicated comparison given the different designs of both systems. But in the end they're pretty similar in real world geometry performance in game. You only have the look at the games at the time to see that really, GC stood out ahead of PS2 on the quality of textures and effects, but geometry wise they were very similar.
 
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Both systems were comparable, Ghost Hunter on PS2 was amazing and is easily right up there with Game Cubes best efforts.

It has so many effects that were thought to be impossible or too costly to use on PS2 and a rock sold frame rate!
 
You aren't no, simply because comparing EE's theoretical geometry performance to Flipper's isn't apples to apples.

66M polys per second is the theoretical performance of VU0 and VU1 combined, but both units had other significant tasks to perform for games. Including physics and any graphics functions that PS2's rather limited graphics chip couldn't perform (of which there was plenty). On the other hand GC's T&L unit was for nothing other than transformation and lighting.

Actually I think it's more like 85M, and it's apples to apples for that particular metric. No one's talking about game loads if you're comparing rendering performance on untextured polygons.
 
Actually I think it's more like 85M, and it's apples to apples for that particular metric. No one's talking about game loads if you're comparing rendering performance on untextured polygons.

If you want to compare the polygon performance of EE vs Flipper then the numbers would be 66m vs 32m yeah. I was just trying to clarify that it didn't mean real world performance on PS2 was twice as good as some people could be mislead into thinking it was.

After reading your first post again I think you've misunderstood my post (the one you initially replied to). The two sentences were not meant to be connected, they were meant as two separate points.

1 - GC's maximum poly rate wasn't 10m, it was 32m

2- PS2 couldn't easily push 30m polys in real games.

I wasn't suggesting that those two bits of info were directly related (as in GC could push 30m easily in games, because obviously it couldn't). As I said from the start, I think GC and PS2 geometry performance in game was pretty similar. It was other areas were GC stood out.
 
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According to nomad's post, 32 million is for 1 vertex colour and no texture.

Sorry wasn't commenting on those numbers (which I didn't double check), I just remember the numbers Nintendo & Sony published and what games could really do back when they were announced and fanboys were getting stupid (like usual) about hardware specs.

(It's Friday, I'm half working at best ;p)
 
PS2 was probably better when it came to pushing polygons in a more dynamic environment or with a shit ton of characters on screen at once. The T&L unit in Flipper was no vertex shader so it was stuck doing static geometry. Games that took advantage of that looked great, especially Factor5 games.

As everyone else has said, Gamecube was just a more efficient machine with the advantage of having a graphics processor that could render images and make them look beautiful. The games were generally sharper, the textures more vibrant, less aliasing, less washed out looking. TEV was a good addition that allowed for so many different effects. Neither of them were the Xbox though, which bested both in just about all aspects of graphics.
 
Doesn't matter if you could transform a shit ton of polys if you can't light shade and texture all of them...

Now in terms of total GFLOPS, the GC was rated higher at 13...
 
System Wars - B3D edition :)

GC exclusives were generally better looking than PS2. But there are titles like Gran Turismo 4 and especially God of War 2, which in my opinion are two best looking games of the generation (including XBox titles).
 
szymku said:
System Wars - B3D edition :)

GC exclusives were generally better looking than PS2. But there are titles like Gran Turismo 4 and especially God of War 2, which in my opinion are two best looking games of the generation (including XBox titles).

Some games that relied a lot on particles and geometry were up there too. Like ZOE2 and the Rachet and Clank series. Silent Hill 3 looked outstandingly good as well. That game in particular surpassed what I thought possible on the console. I wouldnt forget Soul Calibur 3 either. The screen was filled with detail and animated backgrounds. I swear some parts of the stages looked as if they had some form of a normal map
 
Wasn't anything that could touch PS2 on particles and transparency, even today's consoles would probably choke to hell and back trying to recreate ZoE2.

GC was a nice system though, physically small, very quiet. The black cube was nicer looking than the purple one though, dunno what the hell Nintendo was thinking when they decided on purple. :LOL:

Guess it was same dumbfuck idea as when they decided to not name the system "Starcube", which is simply vastly more epic.
 
Wasn't anything that could touch PS2 on particles and transparency, even today's consoles would probably choke to hell and back trying to recreate ZoE2.

Advantage of the eDRAM? I remember bringing my PS2 to it's knees, especially on the middle level with the massive amount of enemies coming in mass where you had to protect the LEVs. It was fun shooting off a whole bunch of missiles and seeing the framerate drop into the teens.

I always envisioned the PS2 as having better theoreticals and of course a more flexible set of features. Of course, the vertex/polygon processing on the VUs directly affected other things, but a good programmer could do great things with the PS2. I wonder at the what ifs though. What if the EE had three or four VUs instead of two, or a higher clock speed. What if the GS had proper multitexturing silicon. What if the PS2 had had 64 MB of memory instead of 32, or more eDRAM.

Someone explain me this (if you would indulge me): how exactly did the z-buffer process work in the PS2? Was it handled by the pixel pipelines since I assume there wasn't any proper ROPs?
 
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The Gamecube was a marvel of engineering in comparison to its competitors of that particular generation. The unified GDDR3 pool (be it 1GB or 1.5gb) will be helped out by the EDRam.

I'm not sure where the "weaker than PS360" crap is coming from, because at the very least the console has more ram and a much better CPU.

Lets me explain this guy post sense he hasnt posted again. Some poster were asking about why we are back in 2001.

This is because some posters on gaf they have been putting out the gamecube was a "marvel of engineering" which is pretty funny but anyway. So they been trying to use this to prove the wiiu is better than the ps360.
 
Advantage of the eDRAM? I remember bringing my PS2 to it's knees, especially on the middle level with the massive amount of enemies coming in mass where you had to protect the LEVs. It was fun shooting off a whole bunch of missiles and seeing the framerate drop into the teens.

Partly down to the eDRAM, partly down to the fact it had 16 pixel pipes. GS actually had two pixel pipes for every texture unit, so it could only texture half the pixels it could output. Very unusual considering most systems have at least 1 or 2 texture units per pixel pipe. But combined with the very high bandwidth eDRAM it made particle effects a real strong point of the system.

Its an exaggeration to say that current consoles would choke to hell and back trying to recreate ZoE2 though IMO (well ironically maybe PS3 would).
 
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Comparing Resident Evil 4 between Playstation 2 and Gamecube seems to suggest otherwise...

Using RE4 is a very bad example since the PS2 version is just a port and wasn't built from ground up to take advantage of the PS2 capabilities. There are many games on the PS2 that are a lot more impressive looking than RE4 (GC version).


The best-looking GC games look way better than the best-looking PS2 ones, IMO.

This is completely untrue, especially the "look way better part". There are many..many.. great looking PS2 games out there that easily surpass the best looking GC games. Jak series, Ratchet & Clank series, Onimusha series, GoW 1&2, GT4, Torrist Trophy, MGS3, Silent Hill 3, Ghost Hunter, ZOE2, VF4, Soul Calibur 3, Tekken 4, Tekken 5, Ace Combat 5, Transformers, Yakuza, Shadow of The Colossus, Okami etc..etc.. all clearly beat the very best that the GC can can pushes out
 
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We shall expect fanboys to link to marketing screenshots to prove their point at any time now, shall we not ?
Please don't feed the trolls, in case you didn't notice a number of people didn't bother commenting taste (ie better looking this than that.)
 
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