500 Million Poly? What is that in real game performance?

[Acert93]

So what? what should they quote? average numbers based on games that do not even exist?

Nintendo did just that with the GCN. It hurt them in PR of course... that also had to do with Nintendos design. They were not trying to make one or two pieces with huge abstract numbers that would never be realized because they are irrelevant to how a game is designed. They aimed at a balanced machine across the board. Who cares how many flat shaded polygons you can do, how many can you do with full features and 8 HW lights like a game will use?

Anyhow, it is possible. Sony could have quoted the performance of the chip in game like situations (e.g.texturing, lighting, and other effects that would be used in typical AAA games...) But that is not the best PR move and most developers can push through the bull in the first place... so why?

Just give the biggest number possible!

 

[Phil]

Actually, they gave a few sets of numbers, not just one. Nintendo didn't show they're numbers because they would have been lower which would have painted a very different picture, so they went the "conservative" route making an apple vs apple comparasment futile. It not difficult to grasp how marketing works. You trump what you can.

As for Xbox360's spec: I wonder how many people remember the Xbox's 300 million [micro] polygons... and if those that still do, if they'd be a bit underwhelmed with the 500ish number. Not that it will change anything expect perception.

 

[nAo]

Nintendo did just that with the GCN. It hurt them in PR of course... that also had to do with Nintendos design. They were not trying to make one or two pieces with huge abstract numbers that would never be realized because they are irrelevant to how a game is designed. They aimed at a balanced machine across the board. Who cares how many flat shaded polygons you can do, how many can you do with full features and 8 HW lights like a game will use?

Too bad PS2 has not fixed hardware T&L, you can't quote a number saying it can shade N triangles per second with M lights and so on..
This doesn't make any sense on PS2.

Anyhow, it is possible. Sony could have quoted the performance of the chip in game like situations (e.g.texturing, lighting, and other effects that would be used in typical AAA games...)

They gave out pretty accurate GS peak numbers regarding rasterizing with texturing and fog. what's the problem?

Just give the biggest number possible!

Sometimes the biggest number tell you about potential performance, 5 years after PS2 launch I'm not feeling cheated by Sony, do you?

 

[BOOMEXPLODE]

I don't feel cheated by Sony because I don't consider Sony my girlfriend...

 

[nAo]

I don't feel cheated by Sony because I don't consider Sony my girlfriend...

LOL

 

[wco81]

Regardless of these benchmarks, or the benchmarks they might have had if they released next year, the same time as Sony and Nintendo, it seems like one reason MS is releasing early seems to be that the 360 wouldn't benchmark well if it went head-to-head?

MS talks about not letting Sony get a head start but it seems even if they waited until next year, they would not necessarily be able to boost the specs enough to match up with the competition.

 

[blakjedi]

MS talks about not letting Sony get a head start but it seems even if they waited until next year, they would not necessarily be able to boost the specs enough to match up with the competition.

Maybe but I think if MS waited a year they would get a R600 class GPU and then it would be NO comparison.

 

[PC-Engine]

Regardless of these benchmarks, or the benchmarks they might have had if they released next year, the same time as Sony and Nintendo, it seems like one reason MS is releasing early seems to be that the 360 wouldn't benchmark well if it went head-to-head?

MS talks about not letting Sony get a head start but it seems even if they waited until next year, they would not necessarily be able to boost the specs enough to match up with the competition.

That's why they didn't, they know PS3's supposed power advantage will be good on paper, but on a tv screen it's irrelevent.

 

[wco81]

My suspicion is that Sony won't have a hard drive anyways because they want to make you buy Memory Sticks or whatever storage format they use.

Hard drive would be available as an optional accessory. Sony has talked about microtransactions but then again, they've talked about Netscape and AIM clients and those never happened so I'll believe it when I see it.

Memory cards or Memory Sticks are guaranteed money for Sony whereas microtransactions may or may not become a new revenue stream which would compete with the memory card revenue stream. They haven't been able to duplicate the iTunes' success with their own download service so it's doubtful some movie or music download service for a game console would be a significant business.

(BTW, it appears the focus of the HDD on the 360 is on microtransactions, not necessarily enhancing gameplay or improving performance).

Then there's a lot of skepticism here about how much RAM Sony will provide so maybe the Xbox 360 will be more competitive than one might expect.

 

[Acert93]

(BTW, it appears the focus of the HDD on the 360 is on microtransactions, not necessarily enhancing gameplay or improving performance).

I am sure, with 512MB of RAM and as 12x DVD drive it is a given they will be using some of the HDD to stream game data. From what I am reading online, a 12x DVD will do a max of just under 16MB/s transfer.

That means at the fastest part of the disc you are still looking at 32seconds to fill the memory. You add in having to jump around the disc, reading from both the inside and outside of the disc, etc... and you are looking at even longer. Now developers, if they had the time, would stream more and load only as much as necessary to begin and then continue loading as the player begins to play... but still. MS really needs to use the HDD to decrease load times. I would expect as much as the Xbox does just that.

PS- MS did a smart thing with the 512MB of memory IMO. MS went with cheaper 128bit memory, and Sony has the expensive XDR. So to match size Sony is going to be spending a pretty penny. But that plays to MS well in design because if the quasi-official info is correct, the GPU is ~150M transisters (not counting eDRAM and logic) and the CPU is 165M.

MS will be in a position when 65nm becomes the norm next year to shrink and even can think about putting both on the same chip; even if they cannot due to heat they will be able to by 45nm. Simiarly, when the 1Gb 256bit GDDR3 modules come down in price they can switch over to 4 1Gb 256bit modules from the 8 512Mb 128bit modules I assume they are using now.

So MS looks to have a machine that will be cost effective down the road and should be able to enter a pretty competitive pricing war.

 

[Megadrive1988]

Probably specs similar to the PS2's 70 million poly's per second, which it never did, just PR bullshit. Once you get AI, interactive environments and most importantly multiple shaders on it probably won't see anywhere near that.

no I think that Xbox360's 1.5 billion / 1500 million vertices per second is similar to PS2's 66 million transformed per sec.

I think Xbox360 is more than 7.5 times as powerful as PS2.
(500m divided by 66m)

22 times (1500m divided by 66m) sounds about right.





PS2's 25 million with everything except biezer curves and 13 million with, that is probably comparable to Xbox360's 500 million, because the 500 million is meant to be with textures, g-shading, z-buffering, filtering, anti-aliasing, pixel shaders, etc.

with textures and lighting and effects:

X360: 500m divided by PS2's 25m = 20 times. that sound about right.


CPU wise: PS3 should be in the area of 40 times as powerful as PS2
(Cell vs EE)
GPU wise: PS3 should be roughly 50 times as powerful as PS2
(GS vs Nvidia GPU)

 

[quest55720]

MS talks about not letting Sony get a head start but it seems even if they waited until next year, they would not necessarily be able to boost the specs enough to match up with the competition.

Maybe but I think if MS waited a year they would get a R600 class GPU and then it would be NO comparison.

IMO it would not matter because sony would spend enough to beat a Xbox 360 released next year. They could just add another GPU since NVidia does support SLI. The console business is one of or the big money maker for sony. There is no way they give it up with out a fight and no way they launch with an inferior console. MS might want the console market but they are not willing to eat money like sony would and will.

 

[Wunderchu]

The spec seems pretty clear.

- 48 ALUs, each capable of one scalar and one vector operation per clock.
- 8 pixel pipelines, each capable of writing one 32 bit color, and one 32 bit Z per clock, along with Z compare and multi-sample expansion.

Current ATI graphic processors have one ALU per pipeline (one scalar & one vector operation per clock, not two ALUs per pipeline). So a 360 pipeline is just the ending part of what we now call a pixel pipeline. A configuration a lot like how pipelines worked before pixel shaders.

- Old and busted: Add pixel shaders to the pipelines.
- The new hotness: Leave the pipelines alone. Add pixel shading as it's own unit (and lump them together with the vertex shaders).

The 360 graphics processor would make for a fairly mediocre PC graphics card. All the old games (with no pixel shaders) would run the same as an 8 pipeline ATI card. Games with longer pixel shaders would run like a 48 pipeline (if one existed) ATI card. Sounds like a good trade off to me.

One thing I worry about is Z pre-calculation passes, and shadowing. Really any render pass that is fill rate heavy, and light on shader calculations. I wonder if Doom3 would run very well on this chip. I don't think so without a major re-write.

One clarification: the X360 does not have pipes like you speak of them. It just has limits to the tech surrounding the ALUs. That's why it has a theoretical limit of 500 million polys/second: it can only setup 1 tri per cycle. If you devoted every ALU to a simple vertex shader, you could get WAY more polys than that. And the chip is also limited to 8 pixels output per clock, but that's not an indication of the number of ALUs processing pixels.



Quote:
Originally Posted by xpfeil
One thing I worry about is Z pre-calculation passes, and shadowing. Really any render pass that is fill rate heavy, and light on shader calculations. I wonder if Doom3 would run very well on this chip. I don't think so without a major re-write.

Wrong, actually. Writing to the color buffer is turned off for Z passes and stencil operations. If the leak is accurate, the chip can do 16 pixels per cycle in a Z/Stencil only pass. Expand that with anti-aliasing and you have more than enough fillrate.

[source: http://forum.teamxbox.com/showthread.php?t=345091&page=4&pp=15 ]

 

[DuckThor Evil]

MS might want the console market but they are not willing to eat money like sony would and will.

I think MS have already eaten more money than Sony.

 

[nAo]

Wunderchu: we have discussed R500 capabilities here many many times, I don't think team xbox forum, with all respect, has nothing to teach us

 

[Jawed]

Wunderchu: we have discussed R500 capabilities here many many times, I don't think team xbox forum, with all respect, has nothing to teach us

Au contraire, I think xpfeil's point:

The 360 graphics processor would make for a fairly mediocre PC graphics card. All the old games (with no pixel shaders) would run the same as an 8 pipeline ATI card. Games with longer pixel shaders would run like a 48 pipeline (if one existed) ATI card. Sounds like a good trade off to me.

is a good one.

Jawed

 

[nAo]

Au contraire, I think xpfeil's point is a good one.
Jawed

I never said xpfeil's point is not good, I said we already discussed here the same stuff A LOT of times, just use the search button

 

[Jawed]

Au contraire, I think xpfeil's point is a good one.
Jawed

I never said xpfeil's point is not good, I said we already discussed here the same stuff A LOT of times, just use the search button

I'm sorry, you said that we have nothing to learn from a foreign forum. Unless xpfeil's post was on B3D.

This specific point hasn't been made already.

Jawed

 

[nAo]

Oh sure, fine, whatever

 

[Acert93]

X360: 500m divided by PS2's 25m = 20 times. that sound about right.

GPU wise: PS3 should be roughly 50 times as powerful as PS2
(GS vs Nvidia GPU)

How do you get that the R500 is 20x as powerful as the GS, but the PS3 GPU is roughly 50x more poweful Where is then information on this GPU indicating it is 2.5x more powerful than the R500?