PS2 EE question

Just read some discussions about GCs gekko cpu, how does that one compare to the EE+VU0 and XCPU? Arent both gekko and XCPU X86, so easier to compare? If the 733 is faster, then how does it compare to the similar clocked Wii hollywood cpu?

None of them are x86, but IBM PowerPC based. OG Xbox, PS4 (Pro) and Xbox One (X) are the only consoles using x86.
 
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Ok, so how did the XCPU fare against the GC cpu? If it was faster, how about the Wii, which had it clocked almost at the same speed.
 
Ok, so how did the XCPU fare against the GC cpu? If it was faster, how about the Wii, which had it clocked almost at the same speed.

Depends on the workload. SIMD workloads hugely favor the XCPU since it's pushing 4x 32 bit SIMD (SSE) max versus the Gekko's 2x 32 bit. I also can't remember if the XCPU technically has an FPU + Vector Processor for it's SSE implementation.

Non SIMD workloads could favor the Gekko despite the clock speed deficit with it's 4 stage pipeline. SIMD/FPU workloads were only 7 stages IIRC. Pentium III was 10 stages for non-SIMD. The Wii's clock boosts certainly helped narrow the gap, but it's really hard to just say one is better than the other. Both the Wii and Xbox have their share of some very busy game worlds with alot going on. For the latter I think Halo 2, for the Wii I think Xenoblade. At least with the Xbox CPU you can easily sorta simulate what it could theoretically handle by playing PC games on a similarly clocked Pentium III. The Gamecube and Wii's PPC750s are not all that different from the Apple G3 versions, but of course there are much fewer games on Mac to make [Fuji] apple to [Granny Smith] apple comparisons.

I don't think the GC or Wii could've handled Half-Life 2 all that well (clearly built with SSE in mind). We saw how Far Cry (FC: Vengeance) played out on the Wii at launch, which definitely was a rushed job. Aside from graphics, physics were much more paired back compared to the Xbox versions.
 
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@Mobius1aic

So your assesment is that XCPU was more capable overall then GC's gekko?

Yes. But I would love to see a real developer's assessment of the Gekko/Broadway vs XCPU to get a better perspective. The 50% uptick in clock with Broadway on the Wii was probably a real revelation for veteran Gamecube devs, but you know what they really wanted was Altivec.
 
@Mobius1aic
Both Gekko and XCPU where out-of-order designs which where pretty uncommon in consoles, even the 7th gen being in-order. PS2 being the only one being in-order of the three.
Wikipedia states that broadway is indentical to the PowerPC 750CL. Abit weird a console launching 2006 having a slower CPU or perhaps equal to the Xbox's 733 pentium, and less capable GPU? in a time where hardware was advancing fast.

Never got much into gamecube, which seems too bad as i recenly tried Fzero GX and the first metroid, GC was really capable and small/low priced too.
 
@Mobius1aic
Both Gekko and XCPU where out-of-order designs which where pretty uncommon in consoles, even the 7th gen being in-order. PS2 being the only one being in-order of the three.
Wikipedia states that broadway is indentical to the PowerPC 750CL. Abit weird a console launching 2006 having a slower CPU or perhaps equal to the Xbox's 733 pentium, and less capable GPU? in a time where hardware was advancing fast.

The Wii didn't need bleeding edge hardware to accomplish what it did. Reusing the Gamecube's architecture at a smaller process node made it readily backwards compatible, leveraged developers with GC experience, and of course was really freakin' cheap. Plus I believe it was Iwata that wanted a console the size of a few DVD cases in thickness, which along with process node and architecture put a damper on how hard the CPU and GPU could be pushed.

However I am in the camp that they could've and perhaps should've ditched the GC hardware for something more capable and modern. A ~1.5 GHz PowerPC 7448 paired with a Radeon X1600 always stuck out to me as pretty worthwhile solution and certainly more capable, yet relatively cost effective. Wii developers would've had much more capabilities akin to the other consoles and PCs like Altivec SIMD, programmable shaders and HD resolution capability. Port jobs to and from the system would've been much better. I could've perhaps had Battlefield 2 or FEAR with Wii controls :cool:
 
@Mobius1aic

Yeah, just a overclocked GC, but the concept wasnt bad as it sold the most of the generation and just as you say 3 dvd cases together :p
Someone said here on beyond3d, cant find right now where, that the GC cpu was about as fast as the P3, clock for clock. With that in mind, the Wii cpu should be about as fast as the P3 733, or abit slower then the P3 733?
 
Someone said here on beyond3d, cant find right now where, that the GC cpu was about as fast as the P3, clock for clock.
As Mobius already mentioned, Gekko might have had an edge there thanks to its shorter instruction pipeline, maybe. Theoretically it's a possibility. Of course, other architectural differences might have evened things out, or tilted the favor in the opposite direction. For example, I've heard it said that Gekko's speculative superscalar execution was a bit crude*, while it's well known that the Pentium3 was quite robust in that regard.

*Citation needed... No idea how true this really is.
 
Have or are there been GC devs around here, or devs that worked on all platforms? Someone named ERP said XCPU was faster, sometimes much faster then EE, but he never said something about Gekko, not that i have found atleast.
 
Have or are there been GC devs around here, or devs that worked on all platforms? Someone named ERP said XCPU was faster, sometimes much faster then EE, but he never said something about Gekko, not that i have found atleast.

This is from distant memory, and second hand, but as I recall a multi-platofrm developer here once said that GC CPU and Xbox CPU were broadly similar clock for clock. The big advantage came from XCPU clocks.

They were quite different chips. PPC 750 was efficient and small, but couldn't scale to the same clocks on the same node for the same power. P3 OTOH had many more pipeline stages and could clock high, and was true OoOE, and had better branch prediction. Scaling to higher frequency doesn't just cost power, it costs die area for more pipeline stages. And to mitigate stalls you need better branch prediction and more effective OoOE.

For the performance envelope PPC 750 targeted, it was a fantastic chip. But for the performance envelope P3 targeted, there wasn't anything better at the time. Well, potentially AMD, but MS swapped to Intel late on because of 'deals'.
 
Have or are there been GC devs around here, or devs that worked on all platforms? Someone named ERP said XCPU was faster, sometimes much faster then EE, but he never said something about Gekko, not that i have found atleast.

Aside from any heavy uses of VU0, I would place Gekko as much faster with it's better FPU, shorter pipeline, nice clock advantage and basic OoOE capabilities. As I said earlier, the ability for the upclocked Broadway PPC750 variant to run some nextgen engines with some features intact was pretty impressive. Though some of those physics heavy simulations probably could've been ran on the EE's VU0 with enough developer know-how and manpower. But that in itself highlights a major problem with the PS2, and in many ways the beginning of the HD era, especially the PS3.
 
I would surmise that the gekko line tips the scales a tad because of the lower latency of the 1T-Sram present in GC and Wii and a faster fsb. Not sure if latency mattered as much back then but certain exclusives probably got something out of that. GC still being a good deal slower due to clocks ; fundamentally the Pentium and gekko are on par clock for clock.
 
Gpu does not do this on PS2 either. VU0 + VU1 did.
As we were discussing Pentium vs. Gekko, I thought your post odd as the Xbox gpu is handling the deformation in that version, not the pentium. As Xbox and GC are more gpu focused machines, the lack of burnout 3 on GC would be the gpu's fault.
 
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