A Pretty Nifty Gamecube Tech Demo

[Kaotik]

Did anyone even state (and I mean people with credibility to begin with) that "Two to tango" and "Ping pong" techdemos ran at 120fps!?

And it is 700MHz custom Celeron since it had some improvements over a PC celeron and it is CPU + GPU regarding Xbox HW layout with separate dedicated chips. That means the CPU isn't processing graphics related stuff as the EE would have to do.

And the last one is the pre-rendered one isn't it since it looks very different from the realtime screenshots and I doubt a NV15 could pull that off. Since I used to own a Geforce 2 GTS and saw what it was cappable of with it's techdemos vs the Geforce3 Ti200 I later bought and it's techdemos. Massive difference.

And I've yet to see any impressive techdemo for X generation/PC HW generation run above 60fps at that time, heck even 60fps might be very rare. And I said impressive techdemos.

IIRC the CPU in XBox was something in between Celeron and P3, the differences weren't big but there wasn't really anything "custom" about it, just less things disabled/lowered compared to P3 than with real Celerons

 

[Dargakis]

Most impressive then since it was demonstrated live with controller input, realtime. And the graphics handling with a NV15 (Geforce 2 GTS) chip instead of the way more potent NV2A that was in the final Xbox.

even the geforce 1 could be able to push that detail, the point is that the physics calculations could not be done on the xbox processor. 1000 ping pong balls with 1000 mousetraps, all interacting in realtime at 120 fps?

 

[Neb]

IIRC the CPU in XBox was something in between Celeron and P3, the differences weren't big but there wasn't really anything "custom" about it, just less things disabled/lowered compared to P3 than with real Celerons

True, it was either cache amount, bus width or both IIRC.

 

[Neb]

even the geforce 1 could be able to push that detail.

Not at 120fps. Imagine all the shading/mapping the could have added for free if they used the NV2A.

the point is that the physics calculations could not be done on the xbox processor. 1000 ping pong balls with 1000 mousetraps, all interacting in realtime at 120 fps?

It was a realtime demo demonstrated live with the representative using a controller to move the camera and interact with functions. Whether the phsyics engine was running at 120Hz or both the physics engine and framerate I don't know but judging by the speed of the objects etc it looks like 60-120fps.

And it was realtime, period. I am also interested in your "the point is that the physics calculations could not be done on the xbox processor" comment. Is it just some form of denial (as in PS2 vs Xbox fan crap stuff) or do you have some foundation for it as in facts/dev comments etc?

 

[Shifty Geezer]

The thing to remember about that physics clip is it's spheres and cuboids, both very easy to calculate. And I don't think there's a 1000 of each. Where'd you get that number? Looks like an array of 20x30 mousetraps to me from a quick guaging. It is certainly an impressive feat, but a highly optimized engine just for calculating spheres and fixed-sized mousetraps, with zero OS overhead unlike on an equivalent PC, may be doable. That's the joy of tech-demos - they show your hardware off in a far better light than it will ever manage in real use!

 

[fearsomepirate]

Maybe someone should start a thread about pretty nifty old Xbox tech demos...

 

[I.S.T.]

True, it was either cache amount, bus width or both IIRC.

Exact CPU specs(Copied with formatting changes from Wikipedia):

* CPU: 32-bit 733 MHz Custom Intel Coppermine-based processor in a Micro-PGA2 package. 180 nm process.
* SSE floating point SIMD. Four single-precision floating point numbers per clock cycle.
* MMX integer SIMD
* 133 MHz 64-bit GTL+ front side bus to GPU
* 32 KB L1 cache. 128 KB on-die L2 "Advanced Transfer Cache"

 

[Mintmaster]

even the geforce 1 could be able to push that detail, the point is that the physics calculations could not be done on the xbox processor. 1000 ping pong balls with 1000 mousetraps, all interacting in realtime at 120 fps?

That's easy stuff. You don't have the ping pong balls in a heap with collisions happening all at the exact same time. I would guess that some of the Cell demos (with tons of boxes collapsing upon one another) need 100x the processing power. This is not to say that Cell is 100x more powerful than a 700MHz Celeron, but the XBox demo is really easy to pull off. I've written a physics engine and am speaking from experience.

 

[Kaotik]

Exact CPU specs(Copied with formatting changes from Wikipedia):

* CPU: 32-bit 733 MHz Custom Intel Coppermine-based processor in a Micro-PGA2 package. 180 nm process.
* SSE floating point SIMD. Four single-precision floating point numbers per clock cycle.
* MMX integer SIMD
* 133 MHz 64-bit GTL+ front side bus to GPU
* 32 KB L1 cache. 128 KB on-die L2 "Advanced Transfer Cache"

In other words; Celeron with 133MHz FSB instead of the usual 66 or 100MHz (depending on model)

 

[Teasy]

Interesting but NV15 is much weaker than the NV2A in the xbox. So they could have done far more impressive techdemos on the NV2A. Or did I miss something?

What about the big difference in memory size? A standard Geforce 2 GTS had 32Mb of video memory and a standard PC of the time would have had 512MB of system ram. The XBox had 64MB total.

 

[I.S.T.]

What about the big difference in memory size? A standard Geforce 2 GTS had 32Mb of video memory and a standard PC of the time would have had 512MB of system ram. The XBox had 64MB total.

I think you mean 256... 512 was still a high amount of memory in 2003, let alone 2001.

 

[Neb]

What about the big difference in memory size? A standard Geforce 2 GTS had 32Mb of video memory and a standard PC of the time would have had 512MB of system ram. The XBox had 64MB total.

Like I.S.T said 256Mb system ram is more accurate at the launch of the Xbox. But then how about VRAM bandwidth? That might play a role. I think the GTS or Ultra had the edge with ~5.5-7GB/sec..

 

[AlNom]

But then how about VRAM bandwidth? That might play a role. I think the GTS or Ultra had the edge with ~5.5-7GB/sec..

In that ballpark. One of the issues was that the Xbox only had that 6.4GB/s for everything though.

 

[ken_masters]

To remember hw specs.

http://www.anandtech.com/showdoc.aspx?i=1566&p=1

 

[Teasy]

I think you mean 256... 512 was still a high amount of memory in 2003, let alone 2001.

Yeah I suppose most would have had less system memory. I should really have said a gaming PC rather then standard PC.

Like I.S.T said 256Mb system ram is more accurate at the launch of the Xbox.

It would yes, but don't forget we're talking about a system used to develop a tech demo, no doubt it would have had a reasonably high end spec.

 

[Fafalada]

It would yes, but don't forget we're talking about a system used to develop a tech demo, no doubt it would have had a reasonably high end spec.

One could note here that most tech-demos are small apps that use very little memory(unless they are demonstrating something specifically memory-related).
What would be the purpose of unreasonably inflating the tech-demo hw specs anyway? Isn't that what FMV demos are for?

 

[Teasy]

One could note here that most tech-demos are small apps that use very little memory(unless they are demonstrating something specifically memory-related).
What would be the purpose of unreasonably inflating the tech-demo hw specs anyway? Isn't that what FMV demos are for?

Obviously the only point of doing that would be to produce a tech demo that the developer can interact with.