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

[Ty]

I doubt Nintendo sat down when they started Revolution development and said "We want this thing to suck." I bet those early meetings were more about brainstorming what sort of technology they could expect in 5 years, and how to balance the performance of their machine given the price constraints they are working with.

I agree with you with the addition of the above underlined portion.

 

[nintenho]

I think that (if it is indded a modern CPU) we may find at least some key architetures to be present, ie, unified shaders edram, tesselator/displacement mapping tech (or something even better for reduced dev cost, something like processedural works)....

Why would you have displacement mapping in a 3d engine?

 

[Teasy]

I can see your point, but I think I see things a little differently. Both the GBA and DS were what you'd call "low power" devices, that could be sold cheap and manufactured for less. The GC, while not on the same curve as the DC->PS2->Xbox, wasn't too far behind and was pretty close in many ways - it's not what I'd call top "top end" but it isn't "low power" either (to horribly overuse quotation marks for a moment).

The Revolution will probably represent a step down from the relative (to their competitors) performance of the GC, to something cheaper still. In that sense a "generational" leap as seen from SNES->N64->GC wouldn't make sense. A relatively smaller jump will see them position themselves to where they want to be in the next generation.

A bit off topic, but I'd also like to add that if they can avoid the £50 price tag of new xbox 360 games, and hit about £35, they'll further endear themselves to budget concious gamers.

Nintendo's handhelds (the major releases not the revisions) have kept the same kind of power increase over there predecesors. So why should looking at GBA to DS tell us that Revolution will be a lesser increase over GC then previous Nintendo consoles? That's what I don't understand here. You even said yourself that though you consider GBA to be low power you don't consider the console Nintendo released around the same time to be low power. Therefore why does DS's relative power have any baring on Revolution?

By the way, Nintendo are already planning on avoiding the £50 price tag of 360 games by not going HD.

 

[function]

Nintendo's handhelds (the major releases not the revisions) have kept the same kind of power increase over there predecesors. So why should looking at GBA to DS tell us that Revolution will be a lesser increase over GC then previous Nintendo consoles? That's what I don't understand here. You even said yourself that though you consider GBA to be low power you don't consider the console Nintendo released around the same time to be low power. Therefore why does DS's relative power have any baring on Revolution?

By the way, Nintendo are already planning on avoiding the £50 price tag of 360 games by not going HD.

I was simply trying to explain why, just because DS represented a big jump over GBA, Revolution doesn't need to a be a big jump over GC. Revolution isn't trying to compete with the Playstations and Xboxes of this world in terms of performance as the GC was, so a much smaller jump in power is needed.

I don't buy that HD is solely responsible for the jump to £50 games btw. An Xbox game running at 640 x 480 probably costs as much to make as games I've been playing at 1280 x 1024 on my PC for a couple of years. The Revolution can house and benefit from uber expensive games just like the PC. I think the industry has wanted to push up game prices for a few years, the change in generations is just a particularly good time to do it.

 

[ninzel]

Ya I think the GBA-DS comparison is not an exact metric in terms of power, but I think it hints at GC-REV comparisons in terms of the general ideas like less power than their competitors, lower dev costs, and features and innovation rather than raw power.

 

[pc999]

I'm sure that whatever Hollywood can and can't do will be perfectly complemented by Broadway. Many people have said that Revolution will suck at physics and AI. I haven't done any physics simulations myself, but if it's anything like finite element method, then it's just lots of arrays and Gaussian elimination thereof. PowerPC is known for its superb vector performance and if Broadway is based on anything close to a PPC 970 I can't see physics being limited at all. Also it seems that an out-of-order execution processor would be equally adept at AI.

That is interesting, I think that most people think that because (from the articles) it seems that it is just a "overclocked Gekko" and in that case there will not be much improvements over GC (and GC dont even have "great" physics or AI in their games), instead of a new CPU that could really be good in those areas.

Why would you have displacement mapping in a 3d engine?

Why not? Xenus already had a very nice architeture to displacement mapping as you can see in the Dave article

The combination of the shader array and tessellation unit can now make the, oft spoken of but rarely seen, capability of displacement mapping an attainable method to use as this truly becomes a single pass algorithm for Xenos.

, flipper´s GC GPU already have displacement mapping tech inside and as far as a I understand this (like processoral works) can reduce the amount of heavy work in the models that make the games production so costly and still reduce some bottlenecks like BW (of curse the trade of is less power) but to me it seems great to make games cheaper and faster to produce.

 

[Urian]

If ATI is going to use comercial and image advantage from Revolution they cannot use an existing PC architecture that will be outdated when Revolution is going to be in the market.

Xenos Mobile or Xenos Lite makes sense since Microsoft aren´t the people with the patent rights over the unified shader architecture of Xenos.

 

[OtakingGX]

Since Nintendo started working with ATi first could you really consider Hollywood to be a "Xenos Mobile" or "Xenos Lite"? I doubt after months and years of planning and technology creation that Nintendo heard that ATi would be supplying Microsoft with a GPU and went back to ATi and said, "Give us what you're giving them, but about half the power."

Unified shaders are the next logical progression in desktop GPUs. How do you optimize the pixel shader to vertex shader ratio in your design? Easy, just make shaders that can do both and dynamically switch between either task. In an interview ATi's PR manager commented that Hollywood is nothing like a PC design, which, considering unified shaders are coming to the PC with the X1900, hints that such a design isn't present in Hollywood.

You're precisely right, Ty. Nintendo is cost conscious. I bet they're making sure every penny they gave ATi for the development of Hollywood is well spent.

I really don't see 2-3x Gamecube as Xbox+, especially since most people will admit that Resident Evil 4 or Metroid Prime 2 easily look as good as Xbox titles. Wouldn't that make 2-3x Gamecube = 2-3x Xbox?

 

[AlNom]

In an interview ATi's PR manager commented that Hollywood is nothing like a PC design, which, considering unified shaders are coming to the PC with the X1900, hints that such a design isn't present in Hollywood.

X1900 doesn't have unified shaders. I think you mean R600.

 

[OtakingGX]

X1900 doesn't have unified shaders. I think you mean R600.

Yeah, you're right, R600 is to have unified shaders. I haven't kept up on Rxxx = Radeon Xxxxx as of late.

Honestly, I get the feeling that when Nintendo approached ATi all they heard was "shaders shaders shaders shaders" and told them to slow down with all the shader talk. Shaders are all anyone in the 3D hardware world knows anymore. And obviously, more of them means better. As far as die space real estate, though, maybe they're not. We'll see when Hollywood details are available (if they ever really are) how those conversations panned out.

 

[pc999]

Honestly, I get the feeling that when Nintendo approached ATi all they heard was "shaders shaders shaders shaders" and told them to slow down with all the shader talk. Shaders are all anyone in the 3D hardware world knows anymore. And obviously, more of them means better. As far as die space real estate, though, maybe they're not. We'll see when Hollywood details are available (if they ever really are) how those conversations panned out.

Seeing the X1800-X1900 there is only a difference of 6xM transsistores and Xenus itself is considerable lower transistores count than the top end 7800 and X1800 so I cant see why you say that, plus from next game engines it looks that shaders is the main force to its gfx, so why told them to slow down with shaders?

 

[Li Mu Bai]

You mention TP and a new trailer my question for you is, do you have any idea when we're going to see this new trailer? On GAF one of the writers of a new Nintendo Magazine publication in the UK said that Nintendo's been working hard on the game since the last screenshots were shown and that when we saw the game we'd see what he meant. He also said something about how they were supposed to have an exclusive scoop on TP but then said they couldn't get it in time, he mentioned something interesting though. He said that the game would defenitely be well worth the long wait. Also do you have any idea what this new trailer will contain at all? Like new gameplay elements, locations, bosses etc?

I cannot answer any specifics, as I have already said I have a buddy working at the Treehouse on its localization. (& he's not talking much, NDAs) Note that all the footage we've seen thus far was pre-motion captured movement. He's simply telling me that this alone, along w/the animations are superbly done. Many of the locales once sparse, have recieved more attention & detail. Also that many areas of the game are simply beautiful artistically.

Edit: The new trailer won't surface until E3 unfortunately.

 

[Li Mu Bai]

I wasn't impressed with what I've seen of Zelda:TP so far. After seeing the kinda of graphics games like RE4 and Metroid Prime 2 put out, I expect more from Nintendo themselves.

One is set in a futuristic sci-fi setting, the other was aiming for a photorealistic look & detail. Zelda is a completely different fantasy-realm setting, just wait. Things have progressed rather nicely since last E3.

 

[Li Mu Bai]

Back on topic, correct me if I'm wrong, but didn't the XBX's power come primarily from the NV2A & it requisite feature-list & not its central processor? It indeed had more available ram, but it certainly wasn't truly 64mb for texture usage. Everything from the Z-buffer to the DD 5.1 had to draw from this same pool due to its UMA, thus further reducing this number.

 

[pc999]

Back on topic, correct me if I'm wrong, but didn't the XBX's power come primarily from the NV2A & it requisite feature-list & not its central processor? It indeed had more available ram, but it certainly wasn't truly 64mb for texture usage. Everything from the Z-buffer to the DD 5.1 had to draw from this same pool due to its UMA, thus further reducing this number.

IIFC Fafalada said that Gekko is better in latency bound code (or something like) but only on that, althought (as a side note) in the anandathech or gamespot (one of them) article about GC they said that in bechmarks (publics ie not from the consoles) it should be better (given the speed, the Gekko would be equivalent to a 80xMhz intel CPU) but I guess that the superior feature set of NV2A would be make it up anyway.

Anyway I think I never saw in GC games with AI/physics/CPU tasks close from Halo1/2, HL2, Doom3 etc...

 

[dukmahsik]

Bethesda says the 360 is around same as a X1900

 

[fearsomepirate]

Anyway I think I never saw in GC games with AI/physics/CPU tasks close from Halo1/2, HL2, Doom3 etc...

HL2 and Doom3 were awful on the Xbox (did you actually play them?), so I can't say the Xbox was up to the task of those games, either (Doom 3's physics and AI weren't out of this world to begin with). From an AI standpoint, the GC handled Pikmin 2 rather nicely. There were some cross-platform games with pretty good AI as well. There aren't as many action games on the system, but in the ones that it has, you'll find your share of enemies that flank, dodge, flush you out, take cover, etc.

Don't forget that Flipper also has more far more bandwidth to work with than NV2a. What it lacks in features, it makes up in consistency of execution. There just aren't a whole lot of Cube games with framerate problems (Jade Engine games ran REALLY nice), especially not among the exclusives...there are a couple, but not many. "Cube exclusive" generally means a modestly reasonable, but not unreasonably small set of SFX and a consistent 30 or 60 fps (some games, like MP2, have more SFX than you realize...when you see them run on an emulator that doesn't support indirect texturing, a lot of the "pretty" is gone). I'd be happy to see this doubled and the kinds of possible SFX improved with increased programmability, all while keeping the same bandwidth/efficiency philosophy.

 

[pc999]

Only on the PC and even the words is that it is significantely worst than on it, still is better than not having those at all (I remember that JC said it would be XB exclusive because the others consoles cant do it, and I think that GN from valve said something like this too).

Yet that do not invalidate the affirmation that really there is no game in GC that you play and say nice physics it is fun to play with them , or nice AI etc...


But, comparing apples to apples, picking Halo1/2 (one that we all know) there is no FPS on GC that have so many guys on screen with physics, good AI (not only in combant, but also in atmosfere like coments etc...and it is hard on the HW as it use ray casts for every one), large scenes, cars and good animation if we compare it too the best FPS on the GC ( probably MP2) there you cant blow and use things, the AI is made from a few paterns, there are few guys on screen, smalere scenes etc...and everu multiplatform game (in GC too) does have worst AI physics etc than Halo

There are also games like FCI, BIA, FSW, Black that really uses those things and are very fun because of that.

Plus with higher controls (eg in FPS) the games also get easier so a quick port of those will not be good as games may get to easy so there is a need from more power to better AIs.

Anyway my point is that overall the worst AI/physics/etc... is on GC and there is no peak that surpasse others games on others consoles, so I think it is safe to assume that Gekko is the one that it is worst suited for such tasks.

 

[DuckThor Evil]

HL2 and Doom3 were awful on the Xbox (did you actually play them?), so I can't say the Xbox was up to the task of those games.

Oh so that's why Doom 3 has 88 on metacritic and Half-Life 2 90 on Xbox.

 

[greg3d]

I have the sneaking suspcicion that we'll be hearing a lot about physics and AI (oh, how I hate that term applied to games) in the future when Revolution comes out. I think that's because no matter how the visuals are, people can always say, "The physics would have been much better on PS3/360" without having to back themselves up.

And believe me, I'm not attacking you when you say this, pc999, but this comment:

"Yet that do not invalidate the affirmation that really there is no game in GC that you play and say nice physics it is fun to play with them , or nice AI etc..."

Doesn't hold true for me and IMO is a way that people are going to use something intangible to put down the Nintendo machine. How do you qualify what's good phyics? "Well, this is good physics, and this isn't good physics."

Only on the PC and even the words is that it is significantely worst than on it, still is better than not having those at all (I remember that JC said it would be XB exclusive because the others consoles cant do it, and I think that GN from valve said something like this too).

Yet that do not invalidate the affirmation that really there is no game in GC that you play and say nice physics it is fun to play with them , or nice AI etc...


But, comparing apples to apples, picking Halo1/2 (one that we all know) there is no FPS on GC that have so many guys on screen with physics, good AI (not only in combant, but also in atmosfere like coments etc...and it is hard on the HW as it use ray casts for every one), large scenes, cars and good animation if we compare it too the best FPS on the GC ( probably MP2) there you cant blow and use things, the AI is made from a few paterns, there are few guys on screen, smalere scenes etc...and everu multiplatform game (in GC too) does have worst AI physics etc than Halo

There are also games like FCI, BIA, FSW, Black that really uses those things and are very fun because of that.

Plus with higher controls (eg in FPS) the games also get easier so a quick port of those will not be good as games may get to easy so there is a need from more power to better AIs.

Anyway my point is that overall the worst AI/physics/etc... is on GC and there is no peak that surpasse others games on others consoles, so I think it is safe to assume that Gekko is the one that it is worst suited for such tasks.