"2x the power of the GC," can someone clarify what this means? (ERP)

For what it worth

I'd take any information about the Revolution GPU performances with a grain of salt, for the moment.
 
Li Mu Bai said:
Not really, just playing armchair designers. dark, you most admit that the GC's 16mb of dedicated A-ram solely for the Macronix DSP was overkill, & with this next-gen if they follow a similar architectural scheme, (as has been confirmed) cheap but much faster & more efficient ram would be readily available for use. I just recommended sound & OS support.

yep, one can definitely find many applications of the aux ram. while i personally am not a big fan of full-blown os/dashboard/supervisor layers running alongside your game, such activity can possibly be delegated to the aux ram. but the question is, would nintendo add abund amounts of aux ram to an already ~50% upped core mem? if they go for that, of course.
 
Ingenu said:
Well since we don't really have any feature list neither performance data regarding the Revolution it's pretty hard to tell whether next gen engine will run on it or not.

Assuming it's R3xx level or better, then yes, next gen engine will run, provided the CPU follows...

Basically the Revolution would (according to our hints and assumptions) play the same games as competitors but at lower resolution.
If ram is as low as expected. Ram constraints should prove a substantial impediment.(heck 256MB of ram was considered lacking for this new generation, and 512MB barely enough for next gen content. 1GB of vram has been suggested as apt. for max detail on engines like UE3 on pcs.). When even some early titles for more powerful platforms ps3/x360 are having to resort to 30fps to achieve content worthy of the next gen title, I just dunnoh if rev. will hold up.
 
zidane1strife said:
If ram is as low as expected. Ram constraints should prove a substantial impediment.(heck 256MB of ram was considered lacking for this new generation, and 512MB barely enough for next gen content. 1GB of vram has been suggested as apt. for max detail on engines like UE3 on pcs.). When even some early titles for more powerful platforms ps3/x360 are having to resort to 30fps to achieve content worthy of the next gen title, I just dunnoh if rev. will hold up.


Ram on pc and console are don't function the same way. besides rev isn't using slow ass ddr ram 1-t sram Q is what the rev is using, read Liu mai psot on the efficenies of the ram
 
Thanks for the complements on the post guys. God knows I read & re-read seemingly every tech article, PDF, white paper, etc. available out there in addition to the ones I already possessed. (even my brother-in-law chimed in) There are some aspects I didn't focus on, such as the 1T-SRAM-Q's capicator being built vertically into the bit cell, (specifically for the FAC) whereas the 1T-SRAM's capacitor was built horizontally.

What I tried to do is use language that would appeal to the techies, aspiring techies, (myself included) & even the non-techies who come to these boards seeking technical insight. Before my next lengthy post there were some comments made I would like to address.

Ooh-videogames said:
Do developers need the exact same number of pixel pipelines in Xenos/RSX, just to have features like Volumetric Clouds, Soft Shadows, Realtime Ambient Lighting be technically possible on Revolution?

No, they do not have to possess duplicate pixel pipelines in order to acheive the same effects. There are many different approaches a programmer can take to realize the same effect, some which differ drastically in their implementation. As early examples of some aspects which were demonstrated in the Crytek engine, take the volumetric fog & soft shadows (Eternal Darkness, RSIII) that were both accesible features on the GC w/out the luxury of a dedicated GPU. Although I am unsure if the volumetric fog featured on the ground of Eternal Darkness interacting with it, engulfing its surface was rendered in real-time. (iirc though, this was the claim & it is a feature supported by the hardware via the Flipper's TEV) As most fog in software this gen. was strictly using layered alpha images afaik. What was done in RSIII on the forest floor of Endor is a perfect example of true soft shadowing. As Eagle-vision said on pg. 6 of this thread:

soft shadows covering the forest (and everything on it) while subtly moving around are really amazing.

Indeed it was, & was done wide-scale this generation on the GC. (albeit even if on one title) Of course the soft shadowing shown for Crysis differentiated itself solely by the sheer amount of different foliage casting shadows in that scene, the level of detail, & nigh-photorealistic texture clarity. Volumetric clouds & the ambient lighting shown in the GDC demo presentation by Crytek for Crysis are much, much, more difficult to utilize, but also what we saw was running on a dev. PC of unknown requirements with a DX10 SDK no less. Btw, did anyone else notice that the fire shown paled in comparison to RE4's?

And the v-clouds while impressive, were simply a camera fly-through. (which is no easy task, light-scattering, cloud dynamics, texture maps, & shading for cloud opacity, etc.) Although once you begin adding planes, characters, etc. interacting in the sky the algorithm bounds in its complexity. I know that there are various versions of the Crytek engine in development for the 360/PS3 (it is EA afterall, even a Rev version is rumored) but will it look identical is the question? In order to accomodate so many various differing architectures (as well as power) one must assume that it will be extremely scalable. The PC is still ahead, did you not see Will Wright's GDC powerpoint presentation "What's Next in Design" specifications?

OS: Windows QP
RAM: 2 Terrabytes of DRAM + 256 Qbits QRAM
Molecular Storage: 2.5 liter polymerese lattice sol
Video: GeForce 12-8 gig of VRAM

WTH?!! The generation following this one (Rev, PS3, 360) in another 5 yrs won't be able to scratch this, but back on topic. The Rev doesn't have to match the 360/PS3 feature for feature, plainly put it cannot computationally. But volumetric clouds can also be faked quite convicingly with height maps, I remember so many people thought they were truly witnessing HDR lighting in the Splinter Cell series.

Ingenu said:
That exhaust fan is no bigger than the NGC one, and likely smaller in fact, according to Iwata 3 DVD case stacked size.
I don't think anyone expected passive cooling anyway...

function said:
That's what I thought. Heck, they may even be using the same fan as for the GC (which would be a shame, as it can be a bit high-pitch and noisy like the DC!).

Quite unlikely they're incorporating the same fan as the GC function. You all haven't been paying very close attention to nearly every Iwata quote regarding the Revolution since E3 '05. "Small, quiet, low-power consumption, loading times, affordable, etc." The silence of the machine while in operation seems to have taken on a very high priority on Nintendo's list, as they have stressed this point & it has been repeated numerous times like a company mantra.

Iwata-san said:
Nintendo is applying the benefits of advanced technology, but we're using it to make our machines more power-efficient, quieter and faster to start.

http://cube.ign.com/articles/522/522559p1.html

Vysez said:
I'd take any information about the Revolution GPU performances with a grain of salt, for the moment.

Vy, you mean other than the fact it will be capable of DX9 level functionality?

zidane1strife said:
If ram is as low as expected. Ram constraints should prove a substantial impediment.(heck 256MB of ram was considered lacking for this new generation, and 512MB barely enough for next gen content. 1GB of vram has been suggested as apt. for max detail on engines like UE3 on pcs.). When even some early titles for more powerful platforms ps3/x360 are having to resort to 30fps to achieve content worthy of the next gen title, I just dunnoh if rev. will hold up.

Actually, 256mb was the original set number, but then MS (being urged on by Bungie) upped the ante forcing Sony's hand iirc. You also must remember the target resolution, the bandwidth, fillrate, nor the pixel pushing capabilities need to be on par with the 360/PS3's. That said, games designed from the ground up expoiting the architecture's strengths & weaknesses should be worthy of the "next-gen" moniker. The XBX didn't even have a truly dedicated 64mb for textures, (due to the UMA, no e-DRAM) yet it is still somewhat hard to distinguish what titles couldn't be done from the XBX to the 360 currently. (as ERP said) I do realize that the central processor has a much steeper learning curve, & many of these titles have jumped platforms, yet & still. I'm not blind however, regarding any form of port (unless completely redesigned) would be more than significantly glaring on the Rev.
 
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Li Mu Bai said:
Thanks for the complements on the post guys. God knows I read & re-read seemingly every tech article, PDF, white paper, etc. available out there in addition to the ones I already possessed. (even my brother-in-law chimed in) There are some aspects I didn't focus on, such as the 1T-SRAM-Q's capicator being built vertically into the bit cell, (specifically for the FAC) whereas the 1T-SRAM's capacitor was built horizontally.

What I tried to do is use language that would appeal to the techies, aspiring techies, (myself included) & even the non-techies who come to these boards seeking technical insight. Before my next lengthy post there were some comments made I would like to address.



No, they do not have to possess duplicate pixel pipelines in order to acheive the same effects. As early examples take the volumetric fog & soft shadows (Eternal Darkness, RSIII) that were both accesible features on the GC w/out the luxury of a dedicated GPU. Although I am unsure if the volumetric fog featured on the ground of Eternal Darkness interacting with it, engulfing its surface was rendered in real-time. (iirc though, this was the claim & it is a feature supported by the hardware via Flipper) As most fog in software this gen. was strictly using layered alpha images afaik. What was done in RSIII on the forest floor of Endor is a perfect example of true soft shadowing. As Eagle-vision said on pg.6 of this thread:



Indeed it was, & was done wide-scale this generation on the GC. Of course the soft shadowing shown for Crysis differentiated itself solely by the sheer amount of different foliage casting shadows in that scene, the level of detail, & nigh-photorealistic texture clarity. Volumetric clouds & the ambient lighting shown in the GDC demo presentation by Crytek for Crysis are much, much, more difficult to implement, but also what we saw was running on a dev PC of unknown requirements with a DX10 SDK no less. Btw, did anyone else notice that the fire shown paled in comparison to RE4's?

And the v-clouds while impressive, were simply a camera fly-through. (which is no easy task, light-scattering, cloud dynamics, texture maps, & shading for cloud opacity, etc.) Although once you begin adding planes, characters, etc. interacting in the sky the algorithm bounds in its complexity. I know that there are various versions of the Crytek engine in development for the 360/PS3 (it is EA afterall, even a Rev version is rumored) but will it look identical is the question? In order to accomodate so many various differing architectures (as well as power) one must assume that it will be extremely scalable. The PC is still ahead, did you see Will Wright's GDC powerpoint presentation "What's Next in Design" specifications?



WTH?!! The generation following this one in 5 yrs won't be able to scratch this, but back on topic. The Rev doesn't have to match the 360/PS3 feature for feature, plainly put it cannot computationally. But volumetric clouds can also be faked with height maps, I remember so many people thought they were truly witnessing HDR lighting in the Splinter Cell series.





Unlikely. You all haven't been paying very close attention to nearly every Iwata quote regarding the Revolution since E3 '05. "Small, quiet, low-power consumption, affordable, etc." The silence of the machine while in operation seems to have taken on a very high priority on Nintendo's list, as they have stressed this point & it has been repeated numerous times like a company mantra.



Vy, you mean other than the fact it will be capable of DX9 level functionality?



Actually, 256mb was the original set number, but then MS (being urged on by Bungie) upped the ante forcing Sony's hand iirc. You also must remember the target resolution, the bandwidth, fillrate, nor the pixel pushing capabilities need to be on par with the 360/PS3's. That said, games designed from the ground up expoiting the architecture's strengths & weaknesses should be worthy of the "next-gen" moniker. The XBX didn't even have a truly dedicated 64mb for textures, (due to the UMA, no e-DRAM) yet it is still somewhat hard to distinguish what titles couldn't be done from the XBX to the 360 currently. (as ERP said) I do realize that the central processor has a much steeper learning curve, & many of these titles have jumped platforms, yet & still. I'm not blind however, regarding any form of port (unless completely redesigned) would be more than significantly glaring.

LiMuBai, as ever greatpost. IN your own thinking, do you think the Rev will come with 256 mg of Ram also the falsh memory I think will be upgraded to 1gb, considering the prices at which flash memory cost and nintnedo is in good partenrship with a flashmemmory producer Panasonic. I don't see why the can't opt for 1 or even 2 gig flash emmeory.
 
Thunder Emperor said:
LiMuBai, as ever greatpost. IN your own thinking, do you think the Rev will come with 256 mg of Ram also the falsh memory I think will be upgraded to 1gb, considering the prices at which flash memory cost and nintnedo is in good partenrship with a flashmemmory producer Panasonic. I don't see why the can't opt for 1 or even 2 gig flash emmeory.

Well TE, it is most likely that Nintendo will expand their memory via peripherals, specifically the SD memory card. Upwards of 2 & eventually 4gb SD memory cards will be available by the time the Revolution launches at significantly reduced prices (the 2gb SD's for certain) especially since there will be specifically Nintendo licensed ones. (as always) In addition Nintendo will be ordering in bulk quantities, esp. due to the virtual console capability, whose library is consistently growing. (more studios to officially announce support come E3)

Who exactly will be providing the "officially licensed" Nintendo cards has not yet been officially announced, but I'm sure (as well as have heard) that it's Panasonic since they were originally supposed to be responsible for the 32-64mb SD Digicards that never materialized upon the GC. The other peripheral for playing DVD's will supposedly be provided by Panasonic as well. (circumventing having to pay the DVD consortium fees ala the XBX remote) So yes, Panasonic & Nintendo are indeed very close, providing these two peripherals alone will reap significant profits even moreso than providing more accessible onboard flash memory.
 
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zidane1strife said:
If ram is as low as expected. Ram constraints should prove a substantial impediment.(heck 256MB of ram was considered lacking for this new generation, and 512MB barely enough for next gen content. 1GB of vram has been suggested as apt. for max detail on engines like UE3 on pcs.). When even some early titles for more powerful platforms ps3/x360 are having to resort to 30fps to achieve content worthy of the next gen title, I just dunnoh if rev. will hold up.

You seem to be forgetting that Revolution will be focusing on 640x480 resolution. Though if, by as low as expected, you mean 88MB then I'd agree. But then I don't expected that amount of ram in the final system.
 
Teasy said:
You seem to be forgetting that Revolution will be focusing on 640x480 resolution. Though if, by as low as expected, you mean 88MB then I'd agree. But then I don't expected that amount of ram in the final system.
I don't know what to expect, but I really would like 256MB. (or more ;) )
 
Thunder Emperor said:
LiMuBai, as ever greatpost. IN your own thinking, do you think the Rev will come with 256 mg of Ram also the falsh memory I think will be upgraded to 1gb, considering the prices at which flash memory cost and nintnedo is in good partenrship with a flashmemmory producer Panasonic. I don't see why the can't opt for 1 or even 2 gig flash emmeory.

Lets suposse they can, would they want? I mean 512Mgs is enought to have a few games saves, upgrades (online etc...) and a few DC (old games etc...) but probably not many of them, I mean this is enought for start gaming or for someone how dont play much or wants to save money but it is also little enought to make gamers buy additional memory cards.
 
Li Mu Bai said:
Btw, did anyone else notice that the fire shown paled in comparison to RE4's?

i think the names of the team who made re4 should be placed in the eternal hall of gamedevs fame, and the guys themselves should be locked in a cellar, provided with unlimited amounts of wine and women and kept there until they release several more titles like re4 and thus justify the existence of this shit of an industry. yesterday i was re-playing it (for n+1 -st time) and the lighting and volumetric effects in this game are out of this world. and i'm saying this not as a fan of the game but as a professional.

pc999 said:
I mean 512Mgs is enought to have a few games saves, upgrades (online etc...) and a few DC (old games etc...) but probably not many of them

you don't mean dreamcast games, do you? as in size they are mostly anywhere from 0.5 to 1GB.
 
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Ingenu said:
Basically the Revolution would (according to our hints and assumptions) play the same games as competitors but at lower resolution.

lower resolution, lower texture resolution, lower physics, lower AI, more loading time
and depending on gpu, lower number of effects (HDR, etc)

if it will end near 2x the gamecube, with 128 MB of mem, its first software gen titles will be barely differenced by an xbox1 game of 3th software gen
 
darkblu said:
yesterday i was re-playing it (for n+1 -st time) and the lighting and volumetric effects in this game are out of this world. and i'm saying this not as a fan of the game but as a professional.

I say this not as a professional, but as a fan of the game...what's really "out of this world?" I thought the fog was very nice (all I've played is the Cube version), and the water was cool, but I couldn't really put my finger on anything else.
 
fearsomepirate said:
I say this not as a professional, but as a fan of the game...what's really "out of this world?" I thought the fog was very nice (all I've played is the Cube version), and the water was cool, but I couldn't really put my finger on anything else.

the volumetrics are not just in the fog - they are an unobtrusive blend of volumetric lights and volumetric particles (dust and fog). in re4 they're a landmark.

diffuse lighting is done right - this is something 90% of the titles today can't brag about - it's a matter of the scene dynamic lightsources matching the pre-baked luminocity of the scene so that actors don't seem 'pasted' over from a different light setup.

then come the proper speculatities. although some corners are cut (pre-baked speculatities here and there) they're done with mastery and the important shapes have their specularities impeccably implemented through masked reflection maps.

overall, re4 is the sole game from last (i guess we already can say that) gen that i'd love to see ported to the current gen _without_ any fixes and enhancements in the presentation techniques, just with more texture memory (some textures here and there lack fidelity) and higher fill-rate for better anti-aliasing (necessary only at progressive).
 
Griffith said:
lower resolution, lower texture resolution, lower physics, lower AI, more loading time
and depending on gpu, lower number of effects (HDR, etc)

if it will end near 2x the gamecube, with 128 MB of mem, its first software gen titles will be barely differenced by an xbox1 game of 3th software gen


i doubt that, nintendo stated they were also going for less load time, as withthe GC most GC games hard almost no load times.
 
Thunder Emperor said:
i doubt that, nintendo stated they were also going for less load time, as withthe GC most GC games hard almost no load times.

there's few that you can do to avoid loading time
compression, compression, compression

but with 88-128 MB the loading times will be huge (decompression takes time too)
 
Griffith said:
there's few that you can do to avoid loading time
compression, compression, compression

but with 88-128 MB the loading times will be huge (decompression takes time too)
I can see load times being more frequent, due to this, but not longer. The limiting factor in loading times would be the speed of the DVD drive. Also, if the cache memory is smaller, loading times will be shorter. Filling a 40 MB cache will go much faster than a 256 MB cache.

So load times should be far, far shorter rather than longer.
 
darkblu said:
then come the proper speculatities. although some corners are cut (pre-baked speculatities here and there) they're done with mastery and the important shapes have their specularities impeccably implemented through masked reflection maps.

I didn't see any specularities to speak of. Now I really wonder what you're talking about. I do wish the game had at least 2x FSAA...it's gotta be the jaggiest game on the Cube.
 
fearsomepirate said:
I didn't see any specularities to speak of. Now I really wonder what you're talking about. I do wish the game had at least 2x FSAA...it's gotta be the jaggiest game on the Cube.

if you didn't see any specularities "to speak of" in RE4 then i'm affraid we'd be wasting each other's time discussing them *shrug* ([ed] i guess that's the effect on the general public from the recent wave of games which output in-your-face specularities as if the life of the game producer depended on those)

jaggies-wise, not much to be seen in interlaced mode, but i'd assume the game may exhibit enough over progressive output, that's why i said i'd love to see it in progressive with fsaa.
 
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