A New Feature of the RSX has been REVEALED!

[London Geezer]

Fifth, according to the human eye I see the PS3 pulling off some pretty stunning graphics.

I'm still amazed people need to discuss about this kind of thing.

Of course PS3 will pull out some amazing graphics. Whether the RSX is faster than a NV47, slower than a G80, slightly slower than Xenos or whatever it is in the end, of course it will pull out some amazing graphics. It's a closed architecture, Cell is there to help, it has a decent amount of memory and bardwidth, its games run mostly at 30fps, mostly at a relatively low resolution compared to what we get on PCs (unless you push for 1080p), the thing would pull out amazing graphics even with a Radeon9800!

 

[Bohdy]

The problem is ..they are not writing drivers but applications..

So why the flip do the drivers make you poll when the hardware itself can just fire off an interrupt?

 

[nAo]

So why the flip do the driver's make you poll when the hardware itself can just fire off an interrupt?

What I was trying to say is that some features are only exposed at the driver level, not at higher level, and as you know for sure, developing on a console can let you access things at a way lower level than you can do on a PC.

 

[Fafalada]

do you hear voices in your head telling you to poll the GPU?

Polling is for wussies, real men code with cycle counting so all their code auto synchronizes

Unless of course you prefer to use looping self-modifying DMA lists with stall control. Those are acceptable as well.

 

[nAo]

Unless of course you prefer to use looping self-modifying DMA lists with stall control. Those are acceptable as well.

This is immoral and not acceptable!

 

[Bohdy]

Polling is for wussies, real men code with cycle counting so all their code auto synchronizes

So "real men" are the reason I can't play some dos games on my fast computer without an emulator, and why Sony and MS's Backwards Compatibility experts can't sleep at night?

 

[-tkf-]

So "real men" are the reason I can't play some dos games on my fast computer without an emulator, and why Sony and MS's Backwards Compatibility experts can't sleep at night?

Real men think about now and not tomorrow

 

[London Geezer]

Real men don't talk about real men. They talk about cars. And boobs. And beer.

 

[Fafalada]

So "real men" are the reason I can't play some dos games on my fast computer without an emulator, and why Sony and MS's Backwards Compatibility experts can't sleep at night?

What tkf said, and hey, emulator guys have families to feed too - if the emulation all just worked easily, there'd be no work for them.

This is immoral and not acceptable!

You mean immoral like flushing texture cache for every triangle?

 

[nAo]

You mean immoral like flushing texture cache for every triangle?

Emh.../me runs away..

 

[Corwin_B]

Real men think about now and not tomorrow

Real men don't eat quiche.

 

[babcat]

nAo,

So you are telling me that if I have a 2048x2048 DXT1 texture with all its mipmaps (2.66 MBytes worth of data) RSX can fit it all in its texture cache!! WOW! almost 3 megabytes of cache!
[note for the reader: I'm being sarcastic ]

Quite frankly, Barbarian stated a while back that the RSX has such a function and that he heard it during a presentation. I believe it's true. How does this function really work? What aspects of the DXT1 texture does it cache? I don't know! Barbarian apparently didn't share that with us. But I'm supporting Barbarian on this and your sarchasm (when you obviously know one way or the other because your working on the PS3) instead of silence or responded nicely once again makes me think your trying to put the information he gave "back in the box" so to speak. The 96KB of texture cache per quad must be used somehow!

Secondly, we have the larger post lighting and transform vertex cache.

where did you get this?

From this very forum by some brave and fearless soul that you already know on this forum that had the courage to share some information with us! After he confirmed it other developers around the net more or less basically confirmed it! Don't tease me about this and don't be silly when you were participated on the same threads this was discussed! The 63 vertices of post lighting and transfrom vertex cache (which can hold only 45 vertices in the G70) has been clearly leaked on this forum and others.

What would you expect them to say? welcome to the world of fixed function GPUs?

Well, since they are repeatedly talking about the PS3's shader path ways, how the PS3 shader pathways are unique, and how the power of the RSX is "all about shaders" then it tends to indicate that the RSX must have a few extra shading features. Even Barbarian shared that it had a few extra shading instructions along with some extra texture lookup logic. Obviously, I'm grasping at straws because that's all I have to grasp right now.

Yeah.. anyone could come here, claim he has signed an NDA, breaking it trying to tell you something about RSX..and getting it wrong at the same time

You know what, your right. Your absolutely right. Honestly, all I have to go on is what people on a bunch of public forums have said. Also, you can look on the internet in google searches and go to publically available websites and read a few facinating comments from people. Trust me, I have probably google searched for thousands of hours about this issue. I don't have much, but have heard some interesting things. These folks could be lying. They could be giving the wrong information. Maybe the rumor that I have heard about the RSX having an extra mini-ALU is totally false. That's possible. That one bit of information did not come from these forums. But I respect the people on this forum tremendously and do indeed feel that what Barbarian has commented in is true. Could he have lied? Could he have known nothing and made up information? Yes, it's true. But he is a respected developer JUST LIKE YOURSELF from what I can tell and I honestly don't feel he would lie to us. However, I am stunned by your sarcasm in your reponses.

This is what you should care about in the end. Would you buy a machine with amazing specs that produces shitty graphics? I don't think so.

I do care about the graphics. I appreciate all the individuals such as yourself who are working day and night, earning little pay, and sacrificing so much to make games with great graphics. However, until I can PLAY THOSE GAMES myself about the only thing I can do is research the technical side of what's creating them and the biggest mystery about that for the PS3 is it's GPU named the RSX.

By the way, a machine with amazing specs would not produce bad graphics. Because amazing specs does not mean just high numbers. It means specifications that match each other well and would work together well. Just one high number doesn't matter in a console. A GPU that produced 10 gigaflops of performance per second wouldn't matter all by itself. But amazing specs in RELATION to one another is important. If a machine can only produce bad graphics then it's numbers MIGHT BE HIGH but something is wrong in it's design so it's specifications are not really all that amazing if you ignore the big numbers.

 

[Platon]

Quite frankly, I wish Sony would stop trying to hide this strong piece of hardware and act like they have a little bit of pride in the GPU of their latest console. They need to show it off and tell us all about it instead of trying to stick 100 layers of NDA's on top of it.

But what if the GPU is yesteryears news, what if they are not really proud of it?

What is this obsesion with the secret hidden abilities that RSX have? Maybe they just simply don't care to promote the GPU, they have nothing to win on it, they maybe rather talk about cell and BR, technologies they have developed and technologies they have to win a lot from if they become successfull.

They are betting the house on the BR tech, no doubt they will be talking about as soon as a chance is given. Why would they promote Nvidia tech? They rather show of great graphics and talk about Cell and BR being the cornerstones of their console. Isn't those things enough, must there also be a G80 in their as well? There will be GPUs that stump all over RSX and Xenos soon enough on the PCs, maybe getting one of those would be a good idea if the best GPU is what you are looking for, if you are prepared to pay as much for one single card as for the whole console that is...

 

[Platon]

By the way, a machine with amazing specs would not produce bad graphics.

Hey, give me a PS3 dev kit and I promise, I can produce a game that would make even pong look next gen...

 

[Panajev2001a]

Polling is for wussies, real men code with cycle counting so all their code auto synchronizes

Don't give Sony an idea for a new SDK... .

Unless of course you prefer to use looping self-modifying DMA lists with stall control. Those are acceptable as well.

At least you admitted to have crazy human-soul-devouring ideas and being one foot in the big white room with big fluffy pillows on the walls already .

 

[Panajev2001a]

What tkf said, and hey, emulator guys have families to feed too - if the emulation all just worked easily, there'd be no work for them.

True, but it feels like the "hey with too much free time on your hands you would get too bored and waste your life away" excuse the boss gives you to explain why he declined your request for vacation time .

 

[Simon F]

Unless of course you prefer to use looping self-modifying DMA lists with stall control. Those are acceptable as well.

That sounds like a Turing machine to me.

 

[nAo]

nAo,
Quite frankly, Barbarian stated a while back that the RSX has such a function and that he heard it during a presentation. I believe it's true. How does this function really work? What aspects of the DXT1 texture does it cache? I don't know! Barbarian apparently didn't share that with us.

What about using your own brain to actually understand if something makes sense or not?
You're already writing in the best forum ever if you want to learn you new stuff about GPUs.
I would start with this: http://graphics.stanford.edu/papers/texture_cache/ and then I would use the powerful search function to read all the past threads where texture caches architectures had been discussed.

But I'm supporting Barbarian on this and your sarchasm (when you obviously know one way or the other because your working on the PS3) instead of silence or responded nicely once again makes me think your trying to put the information he gave "back in the box" so to speak. The 96KB of texture cache per quad must be used somehow!

What sarcam? If you want to mindlessy believe to anyone as long as he or she is filling your wild RSX related dreams is not my fault. You can't ask me to talk about stuff I can't talk about, but I can give you good reasons to not believe to everything you hear.

From this very forum by some brave and fearless soul that you already know on this forum that had the courage to share some information with us! After he confirmed it other developers around the net more or less basically confirmed it!

Well..then we have more data to say they should not only give specs to customers but even to some developers, if they can't even understand basic stuff

Well, since they are repeatedly talking about the PS3's shader path ways, how the PS3 shader pathways are unique, and how the power of the RSX is "all about shaders" then it tends to indicate that the RSX must have a few extra shading features.

I fail the say any logic in this statement, but hey..I'm not an exegete!

By the way, a machine with amazing specs would not produce bad graphics.

You are soooo wrong on this.

 

[Shifty Geezer]

The 96KB of texture cache per quad must be used somehow!

All GPU's have texture cache (you don't really want to be reading every bit from straight from main memory for every texture read...). 96 KB isn't going to fit a full sized DXT1 texture. so when you say

"First of all, we have the extra large texture caches which are large enough to hold DXT1 compressed textures."

what you mean to say is

"First of all, we have the extra large texture caches which are large enough to hold bits of a DXT1 compressed texture, the same as every other GPU but with a little bit more texture being held at any moment."

As for RSX being signficantly different to NV47, does a 20% increase in 5% of it's operation consitute a significant difference? Because that's the sort of figures you're talking about with these largers caches/buffers. FliexIO is a significant difference. A few more KB of SRAM at no architectural change isn't.

I really don't know where you're coming from in these RSX posts of yours. It's like you're looking at a 2006 VW Golf GTi 2.0T FSI 200PS in black, and next to it a 2006 VW Golf GTi 2.0T FSI 200PS in Midnight Blue and with a tricked-out rear spoiler, and saying the two vehicles are totally different. To everyone else they're pretty much the same car, just a little different. Perhaps you could consider RSX a 1.8 litre version of a 1.6 litre motor, or a diesel version, or an automatic vs. a manual, but it's still the same car overall and not significantly different.

 

[expletive]

Quite frankly, I wish Sony would stop trying to hide this strong piece of hardware and act like they have a little bit of pride in the GPU of their latest console. They need to show it off and tell us all about it instead of trying to stick 100 layers of NDA's on top of it.

Quite frankly, I wish you would stop caring because we end up wasting precious posts from people like nAo debunking stuff like this as significant when he could be providing valuable insight on something else.