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

[darkblu]

1. NES CPU sucked against Master System CPU, SNES CPU sucked against Mega Drive CPU, the only exception was N64 but Gamecube CPU sucked against the Emotion Engine.

how come?

 

[pc999]

So you could very well have "somewhat better than Xbox" raw specs, but massively better in-game graphics than Xbox could do just by making all the right architecture/instruction set improvements.

If you speak of raw specs as "polys/s" then that is true, althought I would like to see a "polys" performance increase too.

Gamecube CPU sucked against the Emotion Engine.

That depends on the code, the word is that besides flops, both Gekko and XCPU are significantely faster in everything else

what I strongly believe is that we have here a "nintendo DS" thing

Be carefull that may be hard to define.

 

[RedBlackDevil]

t depends on how the games stack up against the competition, and my understanding is that they will not," continues Braben. "The Revolution is closer in performance to the fourth generation (of home consoles) than the fifth - so it should focus on the niche appeal which it undoubtedly does have, both for the controller and for Nintendo's heritage, and perhaps for price."

"Undoubtedly the controller is novel, and should work brilliantly for certain games types," offers Frontier's Braben. "But there will be some resistance, particularly with established styles of games, for which new mechanisms will need to be found. There is also a potential downside - assuming it is a huge success, it could be a pyrrhic victory; I am not convinced that others - third or first parties - can't offer similar styles of controller for Xbox 360 and PlayStation 3, eroding the Revolution's advantage."

http://www.gamesindustry.biz/content_page.php?aid=15119

 

[ninzel]

I've always been curious as to just how much potential power they could pack into the Revolution due to it's limited size.
I looked at the Mac mini for comparison due to it's closeness in size.If the Rev had comparable specs to the latest Mac mini would that represent a very good gaming machine in terms of power and graphics?

 

[pc999]

I've always been curious as to just how much potential power they could pack into the Revolution due to it's limited size.
I looked at the Mac mini for comparison due to it's closeness in size.If the Rev had comparable specs to the latest Mac mini would that represent a very good gaming machine in terms of power and graphics?

See my first or second post there you can see that a Core Duo is as very capable for games even compared to the latest Pentium, althought the gfx chip is very bad.

Based on this specs for the Mac mini.

 

[ninzel]

See my first or second post there you can see that a Core Duo is as very capable for games even compared to the latest Pentium, althought the gfx chip is very bad.

Based on this specs for the Mac mini.

So can we expect better or worse than that from Revolution? Better VPU but worse CPU maybe ?

 

[pc999]

According too IGN, yes (better VPU and worst CPU).

 

[darkblu]

See my first or second post there you can see that a Core Duo is as very capable for games even compared to the latest Pentium, althought the gfx chip is very bad.

Based on this specs for the Mac mini.

AAMOF the gma950 beats ati xpress200 under comparable conditions in some contemporary titles. don't be quick to write it off.

 

[pc999]

AAMOF the gma950 beats ati xpress200 under comparable conditions in some contemporary titles.

Who cares, it is not able to play at all games like D3 , HL2 and SC:CT, that run on a XB, a better XB, like they say, should at least be able to play those very well.

 

[Megadrive1988]

"The Revolution is closer in performance to the fourth generation (of home consoles) than the fifth"

while the Revolution may very well be closer to the PS2-GCN-Xbox generation than the X360-PS3 generation, Gamesindustry.biz has a funny way of counting generations of consoles.

the way I see it

1st gen: Fairchild Channel F - Atari 2600 - Intellivision
2nd gen: ColecoVision, Atari 5200
3rd gen: NES, Atari 7800, Master System
4th gen: TurboGrafx-16, Genesis, NEO-GEO, Super NES
pre-5th gen: FM-Towns Marty, CD32, 3DO, Jaguar, 32X
5th gen: Saturn, Playstation, PC-FX, Nintendo 64
6th gen: Dreamcast, Playstation2, Gamecube, Xbox

'new generation': Revolution

7th gen: Xbox 360, Playstation3

 

[darkblu]

Who cares, it is not able to play at all games like D3 , HL2 and SC:CT, that run on a XB, a better XB, like they say, should at least be able to play those very well.

you surely meant the console ports of those games (as the xbox would have hard time producing interactive fps from the pc versions). again, if you're basing your idea of the capabilities of that gpu on those tomatoes-to-submarines 'expert comparisons' from the likes of the article you originally linked to then you're doing a disservice to yourself. what do you think made apple pick the part for their new mini? they could have used the same intel chipset sans the IGP, you know.

 

[Li Mu Bai]

I think that nobody is saying that the gpu will suxx

I think that we are trying to understand the "2x cube" that came from devs

what I strongly believe is that we have here a "nintendo DS" thing

a lot less powerfull in 3d
a lot less heat, energy to power it
innovative controller

and this time, a lot less space taken from the whole machine

this drive to:
a) low clocks, low voltages

this make sense, just look how much is little the revolution chassis, it's impossibile to put a powerfull machine in a such few space, they are going to something different, as I sayed

Well in reality, space truly isn't a limiting factor when determining the potential power of a machine, nor are the cooling solutions for the Rev's estimated size: 1.9"(H) x 6.5"(W) x 8.5"(D) = 105 inches cubed For further clarification check this thread for some relevant examples: http://www.beyond3d.com/forum/showthread.php?t=22058

Due to the Revolution's projected price-point however, they are moving in a less power-centric design, how much less will be determined by its overall architectural design as I stated earlier. Take their selection of MoSys as a primary ram provider for example. Nintendo's choice of 1T-SRAM-Q (over XDR coincedentally, although NEC also had a hand in this decision) due in part to its favorable ratio to bit cell circuitry also translates directly into reduced power dissipation characteristics. Shorter wires, fewer parasitics, & lower voltage combine to reduce Quad-core's dynamic power requirements w/out impacting its speed. With its improved SNR in addition, 1-TSRAM-Q can take advantage of additional available timing margins to further speed performance & reliabiity aspects for applications that do not necessarily require clock rates at the edge of the envelope.

It would be logical then to assume the whole architecture is designed around the principle of controlling thermal output efficiently, w/out necessarily having to trade off performance.

 

[Ty]

Well in reality, space truly isn't a limiting factor when determining the potential power of a machine, nor are the cooling solutions for the Rev's estimated size: 1.9"(H) x 6.5"(W) x 8.5"(D) = 105 inches cubed For further clarification check this thread for some relevant examples: http://www.beyond3d.com/forum/showthread.php?t=22058

Well I don't believe that thread definitively disproved the theory that a small case can indeed negatively impact potential cooling solutions.

In the end, watts in (electricity) equates to watts out (heat dissipation). We're pretty sure that 90nm will be used (unlike the 65nm that was hoped for) and that liquid metal cooling will not used despite the previous postulations that it would.

Therefore we're left with relatively simple mechanisms for removing heat, like simple fans with potentially some sort of heat pipe. The greater the air volume used for cooling, the greater the noise, and I somehow doubt Nintendo will be making a small but noisy box.

So in the end it's my belief that the cooling system will be something quiet but wholly adequate for the relatively lower wattage. (i.e. it won't be throwing out a lot of heat because it won't be using a ton of watts. It won't be using a ton of watts because it won't have a ton of transistors. It won't have a ton of transistors because Nintendo didn't want something in the performance ball park of PS3/X360.)

 

[EndR]

So in the end it's my belief that the cooling system will be something quiet but wholly adequate for the relatively lower wattage. (i.e. it won't be throwing out a lot of heat because it won't be using a ton of watts. It won't be using a ton of watts because it won't have a ton of transistors. It won't have a ton of transistors because Nintendo didn't want something in the performance ball park of PS3/X360.)

I agree with this statement..

 

[Urian]

Gamecube GPU is an equivalent of a GeForce2 with few tweaks like the TEV, a more powerful geometry engine... but it was an equivalent to a DX7 card in the end of 2001.

¿Is wrong from my part to think in a RV370x2+Embedded 1T-SRAM-Q?

Remember that Flipper can be defined like an overclocked Aladdin7*2 and the Radeon 9200/RV370 is one of the most used GPU in the portable market.

 

[Rodéric]

From what I heard the Revolution GPU is NOT based on any ATI PC chip design.

 

[Urian]

I know that this has little relationship with Revolution but since the people is worried about the size of the Revolution and its performance relationship I prefer to use a comparative with an equivalent system in size, the MacMini:

The SuperDrive drive is the top part, the middle part is the 5400 R.P.M. disk and the lower part is the mainboard.

The mainboard is powered by a Core Duo with 31W of power consumption, an Intel GMA 950 (I don´t know how many it can eat), a Firewire setup (it need 8W) and 512MB DDR2-SDRAM.

In this design the CPU is the most important part but in the design of Revolution I believe that the most hot possibility for the CPU will be around the 15-16W (PowerPC 970FX 1.6Ghz) and the lower around 7W (PowerPC 750GX 1Ghz) leaving the rest for the RAM and the GPU.

Perhaps I am very conservative, but I believe that from the visual point of view the jump from an OpenGL 1.0+T&L GPU to a OpenGL ES 2.0 GPU is enough, not huge but is enough and sufficient for a significant graphical upgrade.

 

[Teasy]

I think that we are trying to understand the "2x cube" that came from devs

Its not that hard to understand once you realise what kind of hardware these developers were/are working with.

In a recent interview with Engadget, Nintendo of America's executive vice president of sales and marketing suggested that software houses everywhere should be able to get their hands on a Revolution development kit in the near future, if not already.

"We have shipped over a thousand controller dev kits to developers so that they can begin getting experience with the controller mechanics," Fils-Aime elaborated.

The majority of kits out there clearly aren't anything close to Revolution development kits. They're "controller" development kits used only so that developers can get experience with the new controller. But the hardware itself is nothing alike, its just an overlocked GC.

IGN Revolution has been in talks with a half dozen studios around the globe for further details about the nature of the kits. While the fundamentals of the innovative new controller can be experienced with the barebones development hardware available to most developers, the majority of kits out there are hardly representative of the final Revolution system.

Developers we spoke to confirm that - at least so far - three revisions of the development kits have been sent out to studios. The first development kit was, quite literally, a GameCube console with a wired Revolution controller attached. The second was the same with a few minor tweaks. And the third prototype, which was shipped to most studios about a month ago, follows the same structure, but also shows some boosts in CPU power, according to sources.

Insiders allege that some big-name publishers have recently received a more complete Revolution development kit - we call it revision three and a half -- complete with internal hardware more reflective of the 'new generation' system and a wireless Revolution controller. However, most uncommitted third parties will not gain access to this unit for several weeks, if not longer.

 

[fearsomepirate]

If you speak of raw specs as "polys/s" then that is true, althought I would like to see a "polys" performance increase too.

Nvidia claimed something like 115m polys/sec out of XGPU. In-game, they got nowhere near that. The handful of Xbox games with large geometry rates, such as Jet Set Radio Future, had very little in the way of fancy shader effects. And when you look at games like Halo 2, Thief 3, Deus Ex 2, Chronicles of Riddick, Doom 3, etc that had lots of normal mapping, self-shadowing, etc, polygon rates came crashing down to Voodoo-era levels. So say that Hollywood's max theoretical vertex rate is 130m polys/sec, but in game situations such as those seen in the aforementioned games, you can achieve an actual performance of 30m polys/sec instead of the 3m polys/sec (or whatever, it wasn't a lot) that those games did due to a very targeted, efficient hardware design. It would be a massive visual improvement over current-gen, but not a massive improvement in theoretical performance. And of course, 30m polys/sec would be well-within a "3x improvement," but now we're (in imaginary land) able to apply far more effects to those polygons than Cube or Xbox could.

I'm not saying that's how it'll be, just that there was such a huge gap between theory and implementation in Xbox that you don't have to get your theoretical performance any higher if you can get your in-game performance much greater.

 

[pc999]

Darkblu, fair enought, plus indeed this does have higher theorical specs and just one game is runing at reduced quality, I should reread what you said.

Fearsomepirate, I did agree with you, althought I didnt express myself very well ( probably because it as late and I as also doing a work to the faculty, sorry about that) up to 36Mpolys/s (better use vertexs probably) using a DX9 environment of complex shaders should improve a lot the image when compared to GC (althought if we count the power of the console using eg flops like the 80Gflops from XB or the 1-2Tflos from next gen it would be much more than 3xGC, as it is showed by XB). But I dont dont think that it would be in the imaginary land (at least from a tech POV, meybe from a price POV but even then I doubt) as UE3 uses from 1M up to 1,5M per scene (at 60 FPS it would be 90M).

Anyway if they designed it from scratch it will, given the advantages, probably be a unified design (even Dave had said that they now do work with a prymary design in mind for all teams, or something like), so the second part of my comment about more vertex power does not make much sense.