ATI - PS3 is Unrefined

[speng]

why do people keep wishing rsx is more than a souped up G70/1? (yeah like Sony's gonna make the ps3 even more expensive to manufacture than it already is)

A customized chip different from G70/1 would likely be cheaper to manufacture That may even be the precise reason why they wouldn't go with G70. The ability to manufacture the GPU cheaper and for longevity and the shrink in 5 or so years.

That still doesn't mean it wouldn't be based on G70/1 technology though. Whatever is in the PS3 as GPU will be more than adequate. I've seen the real-time demos and they look great so far.

Speng.

 

[Tahir2]

why do people keep wishing rsx is more than a souped up G70/1? (yeah like Sony's gonna make the ps3 even more expensive to manufacture than it already is)

if it was a beefed up 7800 GTX it WILL be fantastic already

Is a non-souped up G70 already more powerful than Xenos?

 

[dukmahsik]

Is a non-souped up G70 already more powerful than Xenos?

who knows? all we know is G70 and X1800 is about same right? and rsx > G70 and xenos > X1800... so that equals what? great looking games. isn't that all that matters?

eof

 

[Kabbage]

why do people keep wishing rsx is more than a souped up G70/1? (yeah like Sony's gonna make the ps3 even more expensive to manufacture than it already is)

if it was a beefed up 7800 GTX it WILL be fantastic already

Why aren't you wishing it is more than a souped up G70?

Yes lets all wish for it to be less than a souped up G70, its fun to be weaker.

 

[aaronspink]

It has been proven over and over that Sony and Nvida have been working together for 3 years now.

RSX is not a last minute effort...

So says you. Have you ever stopped and thought that maybe Nvidia was working on things with sony that weren't exactly hardware related? Nvidia has a wealth of experience in things other than hardware, cg for instance.

Aaron Spink
speaking for myself inc.

 

[centerofadmiration]

I would just like to throw a few of my opinions into the ring for the fun of it. I personally think the RSX will be a rather unique design once it is reveiled based on what I've heard and what I've seen. For one, the RSX was in development since 2002. When Sony and Nvidia came out with their announcement in early 2004 that they were working together, they said " we have been working together for the past 2 years ". The RSX from Day 1 of design was built around the 90nm process, which opened up alot of stuff for Nvidia to put into the design. The RSX from Day 1 was built to work hand in hand with the Cell Processor, which again would make it considerably different then any PC GPU. And the RSX was only completed last month, many many months after the G70 was RELEASED meaning Nvidia has had an extra 6-7 months of development for the RSX after they completed the G70 line of processors.

The only card even coming out of Nvidias offices that will be at 90nm are the G71, G72 and G73 series of cards, so you can't seriously compare the possibilities of the RSX with an old 110nm process card like the G70.

I'm not really going to talk about the ATI stuff because well, they can't even produce already known information when they try to slam Nvidia and Sony about the PS3. Back when the UT2007 demo was created for the PS3 during E3 the 7800GTX didn't even exist, so how could Epic use an SLI 7800 setup that didn't exist in the world at that time? Also, Epic themselves have stated already they used the PS3 development kit to run the demo and make it. Hell they said that on the stage during the E3 presentation. So to hear some guy at ATI say it was done only on a high-end PC that didn't exist is pretty hilarious.

I think the RSX will suprise alot of people with its design decisions and capabilities. Thats the bottom line for me.

 

[Farid]

Of course all console parts will be eclipsed by their PC counterparts in fairly short order, but that not the point – the point is that parts that are designed for the PC are designed for that short lifespan, not for the long haul, and that will have ramifications on what is designed in there. Although I doubt you’ll hear many say it now, prior to their involvement with PS3 NVIDIA have openly stated that they design in such a fashion. However, is that necessarily the best approach when designing for a part that will last 4-5 years?

That is to assume that thing are going to visually change, and tha radically, in the next 5 years in the graphical pipeline. And that would also assume that one of the two machines (CPU+GPU), we're talking about, is already capable of providing this "visual" difference.

The thing is that the only real diference I could imagine would be in the performance when doing vertex texturing, seeing that one of the machine has an advantage here.
And even that, after a talk with some Devs, it might be possible to come with some solutions close to that result using some other methods (Other than vertex texturing) when doing, for instance water/wave effects.
Also, Steep Parallax Mapping, makes VT redudant in quite a few situations.

I may be the case that if devs start targeting large-scale vertex processing on Xenos this could cause issues on non-unified processors.

Multi-support development chooses to support the lowest common denominator, therefore there shouldn't be any problems of the sort.

Richard’s European Dev Rel., and as such wasn’t even at E3 – I doubt he’s followed the minutia of the undertaking there, and subsequent “who did what” that eked out over several weeks post the event.

The fact that he decided to make a "precise" comment on it was an error, indeed.

And that's why people could call him on his claims and when they dismiss all what he said without giving it a second chance.
When you're factually incorrect once, especially in a "bash PR" move, you can't expect people to discuss all your points fairly and honestly.
Also, Agressive PR talks have never been extremely conducive to calm and intelligent debate.

I think that the discussion in this thread was quite better than I would had expected. It's not great, sure, but looking at the premice, it could have been worse.

No but with DX10 looking likely to last a few years, having a console with a GPU that's reasonably close to DX10 is better than a console with a souped-up SM2a GPU.

Oh, man...

 

[dukmahsik]

Why aren't you wishing it is more than a souped up G70?

Yes lets all wish for it to be less than a souped up G70, its fun to be weaker.

because im a realist

 

[Hardknock]

I'm not really going to talk about the ATI stuff because well, they can't even produce already known information when they try to slam Nvidia and Sony about the PS3. Back when the UT2007 demo was created for the PS3 during E3 the 7800GTX didn't even exist, so how could Epic use an SLI 7800 setup that didn't exist in the world at that time? Also, Epic themselves have stated already they used the PS3 development kit to run the demo and make it. Hell they said that on the stage during the E3 presentation. So to hear some guy at ATI say it was done only on a high-end PC that didn't exist is pretty hilarious.

It was a PS3 devkit with a prototype 7800 in it. What other GPU do you think was in it? As you say RSX wasn't tapped out til last month.

 

[dukmahsik]

"Multi-support development chooses to support the lowest common denominator, therefore there shouldn't be any problems of the sort."

tell that to ubisoft

 

[centerofadmiration]

I believe Sony said the first development kits would be SLI'ed 6800's, not 7800's. 7800's werent avaliable when the first SDK's for the PS3 were sent out.

I believe the lineage was

Alphas: 2.4Ghz Cell, SLI'ed 6800's.
Betas: 2.4Ghz Cell, 7800GTX
Final: 3.2Ghz Cell, RSX, HDD and 512MB of XDR instead of 256MB like in the other devkits.

Those finals, or " reference kits " were sent out from the start of this month if the E3 slides were correct in their timing.

 

[Brimstone]

It was a PS3 devkit with a prototype 7800 in it. What other GPU do you think was in it? As you say RSX wasn't tapped out til last month.

Where are you getting the RSX tapped out last month from?

 

[Geo]

I think that the discussion in this thread was quite better than I would had expected. It's not great, sure, but looking at the premice, it could have been worse.

The man said he was being "combative" in reference to more than one of his answers, so he got some combative in return.

 

[m1nd_x]

You guys have to keep in context with the quotes you're taking...

For instance, he was referring specifically to the GPU the entire time. He said the GPU that was in there was an SLI'd prototype of the 7800GTX. So, by him saying "high-end pc", it is quite obvious he's referring to the GPU only still. You're arguing semantics and it's pretty easy to see that is what he was referring to. Just because the wording isn't perfect does not mean that you didn't know exactly what he was talking about. Keeping it in context and not picking it apart, this is what you should've gotten: UT2007 was high-end pc GPU demo.

Seeing as there wasn't much cpu use with the demo because it was a controlled demo, it's obvious that it was there purely to show off the high-end pc gpu, where the RSX is going to be. I don't see why there is so much of an argument over this, because thats what I got when I read it without looking into it too much

 

[Hardknock]

Where are you getting the RSX tapped out last month from?

Ask centerofadmiration. I'm not sure, I was only quoting him. Sorry.

I would just like to throw a few of my opinions into the ring for the fun of it. I personally think the RSX will be a rather unique design once it is reveiled based on what I've heard and what I've seen. For one, the RSX was in development since 2002. When Sony and Nvidia came out with their announcement in early 2004 that they were working together, they said " we have been working together for the past 2 years ". The RSX from Day 1 of design was built around the 90nm process, which opened up alot of stuff for Nvidia to put into the design. The RSX from Day 1 was built to work hand in hand with the Cell Processor, which again would make it considerably different then any PC GPU. And the RSX was only completed last month, many many months after the G70 was RELEASED meaning Nvidia has had an extra 6-7 months of development for the RSX after they completed the G70 line of processors.

 

[Titanio]

"Multi-support development chooses to support the lowest common denominator, therefore there shouldn't be any problems of the sort."

tell that to ubisoft

It doesn't really matter anyway, as the issue presented by Dave isn't so much of an issue if you zoom out and look at the capability of the systems as a whole rather than just GPUs. Cell+RSX together could throw about as much power at each of vertex and pixel processing simultaneously as Xenos could at one of these at any one time. The amount of pixel shading power on RSX is fixed and constant, but if you do weight Xenos toward vertices, you are eating into your pixel shading budget so to speak. The flip side of that is if you need more vertex shading than RSX can handle, you have to spill over onto the CPU. But few will, I think..

Regardless, I don't think too many devs are going to be heavily weighting their processing towards vertex work anyway..

 

[weaksauce]

You guys have to keep in context with the quotes you're taking...

For instance, he was referring specifically to the GPU the entire time. He said the GPU that was in there was an SLI'd prototype of the 7800GTX. So, by him saying "high-end pc", it is quite obvious he's referring to the GPU only still. You're arguing semantics and it's pretty easy to see that is what he was referring to. Just because the wording isn't perfect does not mean that you didn't know exactly what he was talking about. Keeping it in context and not picking it apart, this is what you should've gotten: UT2007 was high-end pc GPU demo.

Seeing as there wasn't much cpu use with the demo because it was a controlled demo, it's obvious that it was there purely to show off the high-end pc gpu, where the RSX is going to be. I don't see why there is so much of an argument over this, because thats what I got when I read it without looking into it too much

But what's the point of saying that, when the first 360 kts were PC's all the way through?
I guess he want's us to believe that the high-end PC is better than the ps3, but it's obvous it's going to be better (well atleast for me).

2x7800gtx's seem overkill for that demo, why are you saying it had those?

 

[m1nd_x]

But what's the point of saying that, when the first 360 kts were PC's all the way through?
I guess he want's us to believe that the high-end PC is better than the ps3, but it's obvous it's going to be better (well atleast for me).

2x7800gtx's seem overkill for that demo, why are you saying it had those?

The point of me saying that should've been very clear... the "high-end pc" argument is baseless when everyone knew exactly what he was talking about, so that needed to end so the topic can progress.

As far as what he was referring by saying it, I think he was showing that is something that you should expect for initial PS3 games, as opposed to the 'Killzone'-CG. Seeing as he is saying that the RSX is essentially a 7800 pretty much and then goes on to say, "but I think the movies are overstating what we think the PS3 is capable of..." I thought everything he said was fairly clear... now of course it is opinion, and it is Sony's opinion that Killzone level detail is possible. In my opinion I think we'll see something "like" Killzone, but I definitely don't think we'll get the whole package for obvious reasons.

BTW, Why am I saying it had 2x7800's? I'm not saying that myself, that is what it said in the article... I'm not saying it's true or whatever, I have no clue, seeing as I wasn't there first hand. I heard rumors of it being the 7800, I also heard rumors of it being two 6800's. The 7800 in SLI mode is what it states in the article...

 

[Jawed]

... but if you do weight Xenos toward vertices, you are eating into your pixel shading budget so to speak.

A lot of Xenos's vertex/geometry work will take place in render-phases that require no pixel shading.

With RSX running roughly six times slower at vertex shading during these phases, and not having anything like as rich a feature set (can't create or delete vertices, can't vertex-texture worth a damn) you're forced to soak up lots of Cell FLOPs (with an instruction set that doesn't have implicit load/store/permute (swizzle) and can't co-issue part-vector operations, hence less effective FLOPs than a GPU) to keep up.

Jawed

 

[Hardknock]

You guys have to keep in context with the quotes you're taking...

For instance, he was referring specifically to the GPU the entire time. He said the GPU that was in there was an SLI'd prototype of the 7800GTX. So, by him saying "high-end pc", it is quite obvious he's referring to the GPU only still. You're arguing semantics and it's pretty easy to see that is what he was referring to. Just because the wording isn't perfect does not mean that you didn't know exactly what he was talking about. Keeping it in context and not picking it apart, this is what you should've gotten: UT2007 was high-end pc GPU demo.

Seeing as there wasn't much cpu use with the demo because it was a controlled demo, it's obvious that it was there purely to show off the high-end pc gpu, where the RSX is going to be. I don't see why there is so much of an argument over this, because thats what I got when I read it without looking into it too much

Exactly, this is what I've been trying to say the whole time. Thanks.