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

[function]

What PS2 delivered was far from what it was capable of at launch though. If you compare the latest games of now with the best a PC could manage, which is about as hardware bound then as now so advances in techniques haven't improved the output of 5 year old PC tech, you get to compare what the PS2 hardware was in comparison to PC hardware of the period.

What any console delivers at launch is far from what it will eventually deliver, and we also know that fixed platforms get much better performance extracted than the PC. I don't think it's necessarily fair then to compare 6+ year optimised PS2 specific titles to current PC games on old hardware. The old hardware's drivers will no longer be being advanced, and new software probably won't target the old hardware as effectively.

I think it's hard for a layman to judge PS2 and year 2000 PC hardware this way. That said ...

there were also games of outstanding visual quality for the period that set PS2 beyond PCs. GT3 was an incredible step in my experience. What this would need really though is comparable images of PC games from the period, because I've never followed graphics that closely on PC and wouldn't know what the top-end, expensive machine of the time can produce and how that compares with what PS2 hardware is capable of.

When you consider that Half Life 2 will just about run on a GF4 MX (pretty much a a GF2 iirc) and still looks pretty good, I think the top end year 2000 PC tech is keeping its end up pretty well!

 

[darkblu]

http://www.nvidia.com/content/timeline/time_99.html

August, 1999
NVIDIA launches GeForce 256�, the industry's first graphics processing unit (GPU).

yep, at which time that videocard was widely available to a ... SIGGRAPH audience! a darn good market availability, no argument about it. try again.

 

[see colon]

yep, at which time that videocard was widely available to a ... SIGGRAPH audience! a darn good market availability, no argument about it. try again.

IIRC the first GF256's hit the market by Oct99 and the DDR varients sometime around giftmas of that year.

 

[darkblu]

IIRC the first GF256's hit the market by Oct99 and the DDR varients sometime around giftmas of that year.

oct is q4.

 

[Li Mu Bai]

This is a Rev thread.



In relative (half qualitity per pixel/vertex) or absolut terms (ie the ~450Gflops)?

Personally I would bet on equal (or near) in realtive terms which should be around 1/3 meybe a bit more (at least for many cases). One year after that should be very cheap to get. I am more worried with the CPU.

THANK YOU pc999, all systems have both their merits as well as bottlenecks. I believe it is safe to say that no one would call the PS2 "underpowered" by any means see colon. Select software titles on the platform alone visually & technically disprove this. Going back comparatively in time as to what the PC could accomplish during its launch is somewhat irrelevant. Because PCs will forever be ahead, its the GPUs that must catch up. Toy Story was done on a PC, Golem, I, Robot, aspects of The Matrix trilogy, etc, etc. Specialized workstations & programs to be sure, but PC nonetheless.

Back on topic, why are you concerned about the CPU pc999? This was supposedly the achilles's heel of the GC in terms of geometry & animation, but as I said in my 1st post I have yet to see many games surpass the Sanctuary Fortress (MP:Echoes) in terms of sheer geometry, & TWW's animation was superb. I believe Nintendo knows how to strike an even balance. 40-50% sounds plausible enough in absolute terms, although how that translates into the actual games & their gameplay is undetermined. You must remember that the XBX was supposed to be 50% or more powerful than the PS2, & the GC around 33%. (coming from the respective companies' own mouths) But were they? Did it show overwhelmingly in the software?

 

[Urian]

This is a Rev thread.



In relative (half qualitity per pixel/vertex) or absolut terms (ie the ~450Gflops)?

Personally I would bet on equal (or near) in realtive terms which should be around 1/3 meybe a bit more (at least for many cases). One year after that should be very cheap to get. I am more worried with the CPU.

Cost of 300 milions transistors GPU at 90nm= 120$
Cost of 200 milions transistors GPU at 90nm= 80$
Cost of 200 milions transistors GPU at 65nm= 40$

If Broadway is a a PowerPC 750GX the cost is going to be 21+$ and the price of 1Mb of 1T-SRAM-Q is 1,032 ¥.

In other words, I was talking in price and complexity of the processor.

 

[function]

Just something to think about, but why would you put something with half the power of the 360 in a system with 88MB of ram?

You wouldn't.

 

[darkblu]

Just something to think about, but why would you put something with half the power of the 360 in a system with 88MB of ram?

You wouldn't.

actually ALU power is never enough. ask any coder around here

 

[StefanS]

Cost of 300 milions transistors GPU at 90nm= 120$
Cost of 200 milions transistors GPU at 90nm= 80$
Cost of 200 milions transistors GPU at 65nm= 40$

If Broadway is a a PowerPC 750GX the cost is going to be 21+$ and the price of 1Mb of 1T-SRAM-Q is 1,032 ¥.

In other words, I was talking in price and complexity of the processor.

Urian, where do you get your figures from?

 

[function]

actually ALU power is never enough. ask any coder around here

Ah, so you're meaning the likes of pixel and vertex shaders? No doubt you're right, but I just have this PC-centric image of a 6800Ultra and a Pentium 4 plugged into an Xbox.

 

[fearsomepirate]

Ah, so you're meaning the likes of pixel and vertex shaders? No doubt you're right, but I just have this PC-centric image of a 6800Ultra and a Pentium 4 plugged into an Xbox.

Imagine an Xbox with fat enough bandwidth and efficient enough memory subsystem to actually make use of all its processing power, and we're on the right track.

 

[pc999]

Back on topic, why are you concerned about the CPU pc999? This was supposedly the achilles's heel of the GC in terms of geometry & animation, but as I said in my 1st post I have yet to see many games surpass the Sanctuary Fortress (MP:Echoes) in terms of sheer geometry, & TWW's animation was superb. I believe Nintendo knows how to strike an even balance. 40-50% sounds plausible enough in absolute terms, although how that translates into the actual games & their gameplay is undetermined. You must remember that the XBX was supposed to be 50% or more powerful than the PS2, & the GC around 33%. (coming from the respective companies' own mouths) But were they? Did it show overwhelmingly in the software?

Mostly because it seems that a good CPU to match such a GPU is becoming a bit over budget, I did cheeck and a 970 (and probably not enought (does a two core 970 with 512Kb only would be good?)) does have a die size of ~60mm^ (Gekko does have 42mm^) and a X1600 (the Avivo (~25M transistores, right?) tech out and, transistor wise, you get the ~3Mgs edram) is 150mm^(Flipper does have around 120mm^) I now that with a "good" design that can change (a 7600 does have more transistores and lower die size) but still seems low for it unless they use exotic tech like Fast14... but it does not seem the case.

And a GPU with that power should be able to play very nice (AA/HDR probably dependet on edram, if there is) games like Crysis or UE3 and that pushes a lot for the CPU and taking in account what Fafalada said (quote, quite a few posts ago) about 5-10x the power of Gekko to run HL2 I imagine how much more to those. Plus I personally hope (and sinserely I think it is probable) for micro somehere that would use even more power and the controler themsef or the secret should also take a bit more (at least from a interative POV). It would be a waste if it cant do.

But I agree with you Nintendo will probably do a balanced design (but I am really corious to know how will they do at a low cost).

Urian, where do you get your figures from?

I would like to know too, how do you do the maths from #transistores to die size/price, and what are the exeptions that make the X1600/7600 case?

Just something to think about, but why would you put something with half the power of the 360 in a system with 88MB of ram?

You wouldn't.

Why would someone pick info from two diferent and contraditory surces and deduce something that inst : one of them is WRONG! (which one, is the big question , adimiting that only one is wrong)

 

[Urian]

My father works as a stock manager of an important robotic company from Europe and he has the list of prices from MoSys but I don´t know if I am allowed to post it in a public forum becuase is confidential material.

 

[StefanS]

My father works as a stock manager of an important robotic company from Europe and he has the list of prices from MoSys but I don´t know if I am allowed to post it in a public forum becuase is confidential material.

That would explain the MoSys number, but what about the others? Are they a estimate? If yes, what are they based on?

EDIT: If you're not sure about whether you're allowed to post it, leave it. Don't get your father in trouble.

 

[Urian]

That would explain the MoSys number, but what about the others? Are they a estimate? If yes, what are they based on?

http://www.beyond3d.com/forum/showpost.php?p=721778&postcount=74

PD: more than MoSys number is the NEC number.

 

[ERP]

actually ALU power is never enough. ask any coder around here

I'll take more memory over ALU ops anyday!

 

[fearsomepirate]

I'll take more memory over ALU ops anyday!

If you had to choose, would you rather have more memory or faster memory?

 

[OtakingGX]

If you had to choose, would you rather have more memory or faster memory?

More and faster! Bring back the cartridge!

 

[darkblu]

I'll take more memory over ALU ops anyday!

so you're a turing admirer, i see : )

 

[ERP]

If you had to choose, would you rather have more memory or faster memory?

Not quite that simple, bit of a balance.
Memory needs to be fast enough to be widely useful and the GC 16MB's isn't.

Talking of cartridge, in practical terms (as in for use in game) the N64 cartridge actually had somewhat worse transfer rate than a DC's GDRom drive. Although it didn't obviously have the latency issues.

It was a far cry from Genesis/SNES where generally all code would run out of ROM.