2003 already - where's my GScube?

[JF_Aidan_Pryde]

100x PS2 model, anybody know what happened?

Are they going to just focus on CELL and let it take over the role?

 

[Panajev2001a]

The GSCube was a two phase prototype, an R&D project to test the feasibility of parallel rendering...

The EE1-2-3 project was not followed according original plans when Cell came into the picture...

 

[JF_Aidan_Pryde]

The GSCube was a two phase prototype, an R&D project to test the feasibility of parallel rendering...

The EE1-2-3 project was not followed according original plans when Cell came into the picture...

<Hannible Lector voice>Then by implication the parallel computing test was a success..</>

 

[Lazy8s]

16 board Naomi architecture > GSCube

 

[Panajev2001a]

you forget the GS I-32 put in the GSCube 32 MB of 48 GB/s e-DRAM for each GPU

GSCube with 32 MB GS > 16 Naomi

 

[Bowie]

Here's the specs for GScube:

- CPU 128Bit Emotion Engine x 16
- System Clock Frequency 294.912MHz
- Main Memory Direct RDRAM
- Memory Size 2GB (128MB x 16)
- Memory Bus Bandwidth 50.3GB/s (3.1GB/s x 16)
- Floating Point Performance 97.5GFLOPS (6.1GFLOPS x 16)
- 3D CG Geometric Transformation 1.04Gpolygons/s (65Mpolygons/s x 16)
- Graphics Graphics Synthesizer I-32 x 16
- Clock Frequency 147.456MHz
- VRAM Size 512MB (embedded 32MB x 16)
- VRAM Bandwidth 755GB/s (47.2GB/s x 16)
- Pixel Fill Rate 37.7GB/s (2.36GB/s x 16)
- Maximum Polygon Drawing Rate 1.2 Gpolygons/s (73.7Mpolygons/s x 16)
- Display Color Depth 32bit (RGBA: 8 bits each)
- Z depth 32bit
- Maximum Resolutions 1080/60p (1920x1080, 60fps, Progressive)
- Merging Functions Scissoring

http://ps2.ign.com/articles/082/082490p1.html

 

[Panajev2001a]

- Pixel Fill Rate 37.7GB/s (2.36GB/s x 16)

bad IGNPS2, bad...

It is - Pixel Fill Rate 37.7GPixels/s (2.36GPixels/s x 16)



the specs for the GSCube were impressive as I think that shrinking to 90 nm the EE+GS I-32 chip you could have built a much cheaper GSCube...

But it was good in order to understand where PS3 R&D could be headed...

 

[archie4oz]

16 board Naomi architecture > GSCube

Hehe... Not even close... Never mind that I (nor my Uni roommate) has ever even seen a Naomi setup greater than 4 boards (unless you're going to cound chained multi-player setups).

At least there was *one* GS64 prototype...

 

[PC-Engine]

Actually if SEGA and NEC wanted, they'd just design something with multiple PowerVR chips each rendering a tiny portion of the screen. No need for multiple boards. NAOMI 2 only uses 2 PowerVR chips and could've easily scaled to 32 chips..that's what it was designed for

 

[Guest]

How would a GSCube take on today's GFFX and Radeon 9700?

 

[Tagrineth]

How would a GSCube take on today's GFFX and Radeon 9700?

It would happily bitch-slap them.

I bet even pixel shaders could be simulated at speed on that monster.

 

[Guest]

GeForce FX Specs:

- 500MHz core clock speed
- DDR2 Memory clocked at 1GHz or higher
- 0.13-micron GPU
- 125 million transistors
- FCPGA packaging
- AGP 8X support
- 128-bit memory interface (4x32-bit load-balancing memory controllers)
- Above and beyond DX9 Pixel & Vertex Shader support
- 8 pixel rendering pipelines, 1 texture unit per pipeline
- 16 textures per pass
- A single parallel Vertex Shader engine
- 128-bit Floating Point color
- Up to 4:1 color compression

RADEONâ„¢ 9700 PRO Visual Processing Unit (VPU)

--Memory Configuration--
128MB of double data rate SDRAM

--Display Support--
VGA connector for analog CRT
S-video or composite connector for TV / VCR
DVI-I connector for digital CRT or flat panel
Independent resolutions and refresh rates for any two connected displays

--Features--
Eight parallel rendering pipelines
Four parallel geometry engines
256-bit DDR memory interface
AGP 8X support
SMARTSHADERâ„¢ 2.0
Programmable pixel and vertex shaders
16 textures per pass
Pixel shaders up to 160 instructions with 128-bit floating point precision
Vertex shaders up to 1024 instructions with flow control
Multiple render target support
Shadow volume rendering acceleration
High precision 10-bit per channel frame buffer support
Supports DirectX® 9.0 and the latest version of OpenGL®
SMOOTHVISIONâ„¢ 2.0
2x/4x/6x full scene anti-aliasing modes
Adaptive algorithm with programmable sample patterns
2x/4x/8x/16x anisotropic filtering modes
Adaptive algorithm with bi-linear (performance) and tri-linear (quality) options
HYPER Zâ„¢ III
3-level Hierarchical Z-Buffer with early Z test
Lossless Z-Buffer compression (up to 24:1)
Fast Z-Buffer Clear
TRUFORMâ„¢ 2.0
2nd generation N-Patch higher order surface support
Discrete and continuous tessellation levels per polygon
Displacement mapping
VIDEOSHADERâ„¢
Seamless integration of pixel shaders with video
FULLSTREAMâ„¢ video de-blocking technology
Noise removal filtering for captured video
MPEG-2 decoding with motion compensation, iDCT and color space conversion
All-format DTV/HDTV decoding
YPrPb component output
Adaptive de-interlacing and frame rate conversion
Dual integrated display controllers
Dual integrated 10-bit per channel 400 MHz DACs
Integrated 165 MHz TMDS transmitter (DVI 1.0 compliant)
Integrated TV Output support up to 1024x768 resolution
Optimized for Pentium® 4 SSE2 and AMD Athlon™ 3Dnow!

--Mode Tables--
2D DISPLAY MODES
Resolutions, colors and maximum refresh rates (Hz) in 256, 65K or 16.7M colors Monitor Resolution Hz
640x480 120
800x600 120
1024x768 120
1152x864 120
1280x1024 120
1600x1200 85
1920x1080* 16:9 75
1920x1200 75
1920x1440 75
2048x1536 60

*16:9 aspect ratio monitors are supported on 1920x1080 and 848x480 on Windows® XP, Windows® 2000 and Windows® ME. The complete list of resolutions depends on the driver version and operating system. NOTE: that resolutions are limited by the performance of the attached monitor.

--MAXIMUM 3D RESOLUTIONS--
(with 128MB Frame Buffer) 65K colors 2048x1536
16.7M colors 2048x1536

How would a similarly priced GSCube compare to them?

 

[V3]

How would a similarly priced GSCube compare to them?

It would still happily bitch-slap them.

 

[Tagrineth]

How would a similarly priced GSCube compare to them?

Well similarly priced would be around PS2-strength which wouldn't compare that favourably.

But that's the point, the object of GSCube is to be not cost effective.

Disgustingly high-end stuff like that generally has really, really miserable looking price/performance ratios, but at that point price/performance is nearly irrelevant (it's only factored in when a more reliable brand part performs the same and is cheaper).