I'd wager that you are pulling those numbers out of your arse. There is no official numbers AFAIK.
PS2 vs PC at launch [Necro-Tech]
- Thread starter vipa899
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You guys are comparing very different kinds of power like they are the same.
It's like comparing the Cray 1 to the Illiac IV.
For the number of pixels I was build to output the PS2 had everything beat when it came out and a good number of years after that. And I'm talking the whole system here, not just parts of it.
Whether it ever was able to live up to that potential is a whole other and more complicated story.
It's like comparing the Cray 1 to the Illiac IV.
For the number of pixels I was build to output the PS2 had everything beat when it came out and a good number of years after that. And I'm talking the whole system here, not just parts of it.
Whether it ever was able to live up to that potential is a whole other and more complicated story.
It certainly was the best regarding pixels and some other stuff, but that doesnt make the PS2 superior to a high-end pc from the time (or other systems). Theres more then just pixels, fillrate and polygons.
Of course not. I speak about average PC for that time.
No it wasn't.
Xbox 360 was released on November 22, 2005.
As I said, I compare Xbox 360 to average PC what was available to majority of people. And Xbox 360 was impressive even in comparison to high-end PC when it was released.
Like what?
Textures, lightning, things i can come and thinkoff. The PC didnt have severe memory limitations aswell. I think you know....
PS2 wasnt better at every point in comparison to a high-end pc, though better price-point.
Texture throughput is still the result of memory, bandwidth and texture fillrate.
32 Mb was pretty good compared to the usual graphics card at the time, It was top of the line memory too.
But then up till that time RAM size had never been consoles forte.
They got away with it due to output resolution, mostly unified memory, single platform to optimize for, no legacy mud, OS, API and being able to rely on a known storage medium.
Geometry and lighting is the same in the processor and the fillrate for either Gouraud shading or reflection mapping is superior on the GS. Same goes for various other lighting and shading techniques.
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But almost everything else was better on a high-end pc. That 32Mb wasnt dedicated to the GPU either. Geforce 2 GTS could have 32Mb or 64 just for the GPU alone.
PS2 had 32mb main ram which the GS could access and 4mb edram. They didnt really get away with it either as for almost all multiplatform games pc version was looking better.
The PS2 wasnt impressive, yes there was MGS2, GOW etc, but they werent on pc so hard to compare, that we can compare is multiplaform games, would the ps2 be that powerfull/better it would be noticed. Just like games where generally better looking on xbox/gc compared to PS2 with multiplatform games.
Sure could be done on the CPU as it was vastly more powerfull then the R5900 in the PS2. GF2 taking care of T&L and other effects freeing the CPU.
The game GIANTS was made for PS2 first, then to pc, the pc version reviews pointing to better visuals. Maybe characters had more polys but that didnt favour in reviews. Effects aint the only thing that matters. (which could be done in software on pc too).
PS2 had 32mb main ram which the GS could access and 4mb edram. They didnt really get away with it either as for almost all multiplatform games pc version was looking better.
The PS2 wasnt impressive, yes there was MGS2, GOW etc, but they werent on pc so hard to compare, that we can compare is multiplaform games, would the ps2 be that powerfull/better it would be noticed. Just like games where generally better looking on xbox/gc compared to PS2 with multiplatform games.
Sure could be done on the CPU as it was vastly more powerfull then the R5900 in the PS2. GF2 taking care of T&L and other effects freeing the CPU.
The game GIANTS was made for PS2 first, then to pc, the pc version reviews pointing to better visuals. Maybe characters had more polys but that didnt favour in reviews. Effects aint the only thing that matters. (which could be done in software on pc too).
Cool story bro.
Very cool actually, as the GS could do some intresting effects using the VU1, but im sure most would take the higher render quality/resolution of the PC over PS2's additional fancy effects.
Even with AGP the VRAM was where most of the games asset data per frame and often per level or area resided. Sending stuff per frame was simply not worth it. Ask yourself why VRAM continued to grow despite AGPs promise of being able to extent VRAM into main mem.
PS2 had a fast drive that could be relied on to fill the 32Mb perhaps not quite as fast as a burst from HD and main memory, but with a fixed drive and architecture to optimize for, not too far from it. Just look back at how often there was load points in PC games back then.
MGS2 and GOW wasn't particularly impressive technically. They had some nice art techniques, but they did not push the hardware in any kind of way.
Again as I wrote earlier, very few games did for a number of reasons.
Some of the most impressive, or at least the ones that uses some of the unique power in the PS2 best is Burnout III, Shadow of the Colossus and Okami.
VU1 was far more powerful than the TnL on any card of the era. What it might have lacked in raw throughput it more than made up for in flexibility and output.
It could create geometry, animate it on most ways imaginable and render stuff other than just polygons. Also, alone or combined with the VU0 it could cull and clip geometry to only send the necessary vertices to the GS, saving bandwidth on geometry, textures and overdraw.
The CPU core combined with the VU0 either in slave mode or not was a very powerful CPU for its time.
There is a total of 80 Kb of on-die memory and cache on the EE, Very comparable to the larger but slower L2 and L3 caches of the Intel and AMD offerings at the time.
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"PS2 had a fast drive that could be relied on to fill the 32Mb perhaps not quite as fast as a burst from HD and main memory, but with a fixed drive and architecture to optimize for, not too far from it. Just look back at how often there was load points in PC games back then."
this is very optimistic, PS2 had 4x DVD, that's not very fast at all, compared to hard drive + 128-256MB ram.
talking about load points, the multiplat and PC to PS2 ports as mentioned earlier often had levels split, slow load times and lower quality textures, memory was certainly limited for the PS2, even at launch, even older PC games ported to the PS2 suffered with it.
this is very optimistic, PS2 had 4x DVD, that's not very fast at all, compared to hard drive + 128-256MB ram.
talking about load points, the multiplat and PC to PS2 ports as mentioned earlier often had levels split, slow load times and lower quality textures, memory was certainly limited for the PS2, even at launch, even older PC games ported to the PS2 suffered with it.
How was sending data to the GPU worth it on PS2 but not for an AGP 4x video card? The GS's external bus is only 150MHz * 64-bit = 1.2GB/s. AGP 4x is 32-bit and 66MHz but quad pumped to perform 4 transfers per clock, giving a total bandwidth of 1.056GB/s. It's almost as high as PS2's interface, and with less need to send the same primitives multiple times it'd go further.
I'm sure data was streamed to the GPU more on PS2 than PC but more because it's a reliable fixed platform and lacked various software overheads.
DVD 4x has a maximum bandwidth of only 5.28 MB/s and a latency that's through the roof compared to hard drives. When PS2 came out ATA/66 hdds were available which could theoretically transfer up to 66MB/s, and in practice could deliver 46MB/s in raw burst tests:
http://www.storagereview.com/articles/9908/990823ata66vs33b.html
I'd guess one reason PC games of the time had more visible loading is because they were using larger, higher fidelity assets.
In no reasonable metric is this true, EE core was well behind the technology curve of Pentium 3s and Athlons of the time and VU0 doesn't add enough to overcome this.
This is an incredibly strained comparison. You should at least have the courtesy of including the L1 caches in the processors you're comparing with if you're going to do this. Even in your terms, the only 2000-era AMD or Intel processor that had a level of L2 cache that was very comparable to 80KB was the hobbled Duron with a paltry 64KB, but this was largely offset by the comparatively huge 64KB+64KB L1 caches.
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Cause the GPU world was moving on? PS2 certainly wasnt anything forward, it reminds me of the very fast SGI systems with their multipass bruteforce of the mid 90s i think it was.
4x dvd wasnt fast even then, i remember having a Acer 16x dvd drive in my pc by then (around 2000). Maybe fast enough for its intended application but you sound like it was the PCI-E SSD of 2000
Loading points/times werent exactly PS2s strong point, it was one of the worst experiences ive ever had regarding load times. Blame the 'lazy' devs or whatever, but anything loading wasnt anything to brag about on PS2. On pc (and xbox) loading times and points where less/faster.
MGS2 and GOW where about the max of the PS2, GOW2 wasnt that much better then GOW, not worlds different, and GOW2 pushed PS2s limits for sure.
You say GOW was about art, but many have said shadow of the colossus was more about art then technical, SotC could really struggle on the PS2 btw, almost unplayable, i mean 20fps or below it felt like.
If like Exophase (and others have said), a nerfed 733 P3 from the xbox is faster then the CPU of the PS2 (thats VU0/EE, VU1 must help out GS for being a full GPU), that means pc of the time, a 1ghz P3 or even better, athlon thunderbird over 1ghz would be whole lot better then PS2 CPU.
Then we have left GPU chip, for PS2 that is GS + VU1, for pc that would be something like a Geforce 2 GTS or ATI R100. Im not an expert, maybe others can answer, but i think any of those GPUs would fare better in most games. Perhaps miss some effects but better at other departments. With in the end the pc in total being able to output better games graphically, not talking about optimizations.
Blazkowicz
Legend
With the best hardware possible, perhaps Pentium 3 with the FSB ran at 150 and 384MB of low latency RAM, geforce 2 GTS or Pro or Ultra with 64MB you even have a shot at running Doom 3 on low setting. It should run poorty, you can even try lower than 640x480 by setting a custom res in the console but it'll run with the normal maps and lighting! Using the register combiners feature on geforce 1/2 hardware.
This came years later though, might make sense on Geforce 2 Ultra and Geforce 4 MX460 and not much else, and it's the only game I know of that does that. Using a hardware specific OpenGL extension from nvidia. I didn't try, never had geforce 2 or 4MX hardware w/ 64MB. Though I might have tried on geforce 4 Ti.
This came years later though, might make sense on Geforce 2 Ultra and Geforce 4 MX460 and not much else, and it's the only game I know of that does that. Using a hardware specific OpenGL extension from nvidia. I didn't try, never had geforce 2 or 4MX hardware w/ 64MB. Though I might have tried on geforce 4 Ti.
Yeah should be possible, xbox has a version of Doom 3, much of things cut down from the pc version but its there. p3 733/geforce 3 ti with added vertex shader
Had a friend who had a GF4 MX440 64 running doom 3 quit nice, not that much he missed out, was in combination with a athlon xp 2100 though.
You should also have in mind that Doom 3 wasnt optimized for the Geforce 2 GTS, would run better if it was. PS2 is doing alot of tricks to get effects done, remember reading about shadow of the colossus how they did the fur on the animals for exempel.
All in all, pretty sure pc hardware bested PS2 around launch time, a P3 1ghz or athlon tbird well over ghz mark, with a Geforce 2 GTS or radeon R100 (which could do environmental bump mapping), with 256mb ddr or more would give better game graphics, in special if optimized like ps2.
On pc with creatives soundblaser live you could have think it was called EAX which give pretty good sound for its time, anyone remember in half life?
This card could also output DTS/DD5.1 via its digital in/out.
But others maybe have more accurate answers about how GF2 fares against GS/VU1...
Some related videos to the thread for fun
(around PS2 launch build)
(doom 3 on voodoo5)
(doom 3 on voodoo2 sli)
Had a friend who had a GF4 MX440 64 running doom 3 quit nice, not that much he missed out, was in combination with a athlon xp 2100 though.
You should also have in mind that Doom 3 wasnt optimized for the Geforce 2 GTS, would run better if it was. PS2 is doing alot of tricks to get effects done, remember reading about shadow of the colossus how they did the fur on the animals for exempel.
All in all, pretty sure pc hardware bested PS2 around launch time, a P3 1ghz or athlon tbird well over ghz mark, with a Geforce 2 GTS or radeon R100 (which could do environmental bump mapping), with 256mb ddr or more would give better game graphics, in special if optimized like ps2.
On pc with creatives soundblaser live you could have think it was called EAX which give pretty good sound for its time, anyone remember in half life?
This card could also output DTS/DD5.1 via its digital in/out.
But others maybe have more accurate answers about how GF2 fares against GS/VU1...
Some related videos to the thread for fun
Worked well with less effects on a GF4 MX (GF2 level gpu), i had a TI4200 64mb and doom 3 worked great on it, most settings high. Not suprising as a TI4200 is faster then xbox nv2a.
Think its the least you want for doom 3 as its not optimized for anything below that really.
Anyway doom 3 never made it to the PS2 for various reasons. Seeing as GOW2 taxed the ps2 to its limits and that game not even being technically that impressive, just well done with art/large scale which gives a certain impression.
Think its the least you want for doom 3 as its not optimized for anything below that really.
Anyway doom 3 never made it to the PS2 for various reasons. Seeing as GOW2 taxed the ps2 to its limits and that game not even being technically that impressive, just well done with art/large scale which gives a certain impression.
In response to the motion blur effect, this seems to be possible on DX7 hardware according to this article?
http://www.gamasutra.com/view/feature/131806/rendering_to_texture_surfaces_.php
http://www.gamasutra.com/view/feature/3399/rendering_to_texture_surfaces_.php?print=1
The gamespot review of NFS Underground states that all the console versions have equal amount of blur effect, thats gamecube too.
In the review you can also read the pc port having better reflection updates. Perhaps the motion blur effect was possible on DX7 GPUs if optimized.
http://www.gamasutra.com/view/feature/131806/rendering_to_texture_surfaces_.php
http://www.gamasutra.com/view/feature/3399/rendering_to_texture_surfaces_.php?print=1
The gamespot review of NFS Underground states that all the console versions have equal amount of blur effect, thats gamecube too.
In the review you can also read the pc port having better reflection updates. Perhaps the motion blur effect was possible on DX7 GPUs if optimized.
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