ATI Talks Lithography

[V3]

Geforce 2 MX ?

That's probably why it ran badly. It should be a crime for NVIDIA for selling people this pos.

 

[DeanoC]

To be fair GF2MX is lacking quite a bit of fill rate for what SH2 pushes around, if we weren't pumping out loads of layers of fog we were doing fullscreen quads for shadows, noise and special fx.

Thats my excuse and I'm sticking to it ;-)

With even a middle grade processor (>1Gig) your purely fillrate bound with SH2PC.

 

[zidane1strife]

Yes so will the gpus that come out in the same year.

In the research arena I doubt they've devoted 500+engineers, are using the tech of 3 companies, and paid billions, and devoted about half a decade for r&d.

It's also unknown wether they'll be using two huge chips solutions, they certainly won't be sold at a huge loss, that's for sure.

I'm sorry are you comparing a playstation 1 video game to quake 3 ? There is no comparison. Quake 3 blows it away. At the time of the psx and saturn computers hadn't moved into the 3d arena .

Well, I'm talking about models with individual moving fingers(round ones if IIRC), facial expressions with geometry, etc... if my memory doesn't fail me.

Those painted blocks that stood for char.s in quake/half life, certainly can't compare to that

The ps2 has many bandwidth problems and bottlenecks which keeps it from hitting its max number and the numbers drop quickly as you add more things . There are many things in which the geforce 2 owns the ps2 in .

As I have said neither completely owns the other in terms of specs and when you look at games that are targeted at the platform you will see that the final image is equal.

Well, I've got a low end gf fx, the iq seems similar to what I've seen in some ps2 games, yet it slows down even on some older games.

The use of a few features to sprinkle a few objects with, does not substitute for its innability to deal with massive amounts of data or really complex animated geometry due to the lack of vram bandwith, no vs, etc.

As for the peak perf remember that since the ps2's gs has embbd mem it can achieve nigh theoretical perf in ingame situations, while the bandwith starved gf2 most likely never comes near it in ingame situations.

PS2 also used a cutting-edge process with very very large chips (for its time). Just because it used large chips didn't mean it had great IQ, cutting edge features, or even basic features like texture compression. I just wonder if PS3 will be another piece of quirky overhyped hardware. I'm thinking ATI has the ability to make something competitive or superior with far fewer transistors and much lower cost. And I'm pretty convinced that given the same transistor budget, ATI could design a better piece of hardware than Sony.

.25micron was not that cutting edge back then, Imagine... what if they'd use .15?

As for trans. budget that's what I'm saying, sony's got a two chip solution, likely two massive chips, thus ATI would have to yield comparable perf with less than half of sony's trans budget unless they go for two chip solution.

a regular GF2 could run SH3.

Well, people have already commented about it, but here are my two cents...

Well then what's the big fuss about vs, I mean if sh3 models and complex facial animation, that are quite good even compared to upcomming pc games, can be accomplished with excellent perf without vs then why do we need them?

And what about when dealing with particles, motion blur, etc? What about the vram, the GS can throw all that geom thanks to the fact it's an embbd ram solution, why embdd mem when external one miraculously gives you the same perf?

 

[chaphack]

zidane,

how i love your quirky selected comparison. YOu should compare like with like. BTW which ps1 games have rounded individual moving fingers + solid facial expressions? :?

 

[zidane1strife]

BTW which ps1 games have rounded individual moving fingers + solid facial expressions?

Well, I think a few of the boss models for later gen. psx rpgs, featured quite nice detail, I think the one that called my attention is one from chrono cross, again, if my memory serves me right.

Yes I know the char. models in those rpgs are usually quite blocky, but as always even if it's summon/spells/bosses if the models impress, they certainly do.

Say if some bosses/summons/spells/etc in say baten kaitos surpass the char. and monster models for half life 2 or/and doom 3, I'll be talking about'em next gen. that's for sure.

This is not a technical comparison, I know... after all many a yrs separe the introduction of the h/w... but If I or a casual observer observe bttr gphx even if it's within a short time frame during ingame situations, you can be sure we'd certainly comment about it.

edii

 

[chaphack]

You gotta remember that different games have different aims and thus resources are allocated differently. i say upcoming pc games certainly have much more available resources to wrok with, compared to any consoles.

Still i cannot recall any rounded + well animated fingers/faces in a ps1 game. blocky lowres stiff are more like it. You must be thinking of the FMVs.

 

[zidane1strife]

Still i cannot recall any rounded + well animated fingers/faces in a ps1 game. blocky lowres stiff are more like it. You must be thinking of the FMVs.

Nope, ingame battles, IIRC... although since they're only dealing with between 1-3 models with a few 100 polies, and battles often take place inside painted cubes, that is rooms with walls with flat floors and flat walls, all resources are pretty much available for the boss model.

i say upcoming pc games certainly have much more available resources to wrok with, compared to any consoles.

Indeed, which would make any game featuring superior models on console quite impressive indeed, even if it's aiming for something else/of a different genre.

 

[Josiah]

PS2 also used a cutting-edge process with very very large chips (for its time). Just because it used large chips didn't mean it had great IQ, cutting edge features, or even basic features like texture compression. I just wonder if PS3 will be another piece of quirky overhyped hardware. I'm thinking ATI has the ability to make something competitive or superior with far fewer transistors and much lower cost. And I'm pretty convinced that given the same transistor budget, ATI could design a better piece of hardware than Sony.

.25micron was not that cutting edge back then, Imagine... what if they'd use .15?

I believe the GS was initially .18 micron and considered to be pushing the limits of what could be done with silicon at the time. It was certainly large and expensive to manufacture.

As for trans. budget that's what I'm saying, sony's got a two chip solution, likely two massive chips, thus ATI would have to yield comparable perf with less than half of sony's trans budget unless they go for two chip solution.

This could very well be true. I also feel Sony is much more willing to take a large loss on its hardware than MS or Nintendo. At the end of the day PS3 will likely cost more to manufacture than anything else in 2005. However that fact alone does not mean it will be a good design, history is littered with designs that were big and expensive and didnt perform up to expectations (PS2 is an example of this).

a regular GF2 could run SH3.

Well, people have already commented about it, but here are my two cents...

Well then what's the big fuss about vs, I mean if sh3 models and complex facial animation, that are quite good even compared to upcomming pc games, can be accomplished with excellent perf without vs then why do we need them?

For flexibility. A pure hardwired T&L unit will be faster than a programmable VS. But with the VS you can do more.

And what about when dealing with particles, motion blur, etc? What about the vram, the GS can throw all that geom thanks to the fact it's an embbd ram solution, why embdd mem when external one miraculously gives you the same perf?

There is plenty of hardware that is considered superior to PS2 that does not use embedded ram. Konami is making a PC version of SH3, and no PC GPU uses embedded RAM, so obviously it's not required.

All I know is that a GF2 can run SH2 fine. I think it could also run SH3 fine. Both games use the same engine and do similar things.

 

[clem64]

I believe the GS was initially .18 micron and considered to be pushing the limits of what could be done with silicon at the time. It was certainly large and expensive to manufacture.

IIRC the initial NA shipments were manufactured using .25, and a few months later they went to .18.

 

[Citan]

Wasn't the initial NA shortange blamed on problems transitioning the GS from .25 to .18?

 

[zurich]

Josiah,

Actually they use a whole new engine for SH3. Watch the 'making of'

 

[zidane1strife]

For flexibility. A pure hardwired T&L unit will be faster than a programmable VS. But with the VS you can do more.

What the? But if the fixed/pure hw T&L can handle all the particle, T&L, and even the complex geom with advanced facial animation with equal or superior perf, what then I ask you is gained?

All the flexibility to do far more complex geom/animations appears to be available/possible on gf2 with equal perf to boot or no?

ed

 

[Josiah]

For flexibility. A pure hardwired T&L unit will be faster than a programmable VS. But with the VS you can do more.

What the? But if the fixed/pure hw T&L can handle all the particle, T&L, and even the complex geom with advanced facial animation with equal or superior perf, what then I ask you is gained?

All the flexibility to do far more complex geom/animations appears to be available/possible on gf2 with equal perf to boot or no?

GF2 does not have the ability to run shaders. That is what VS/PS are needed for. VS compliment PS. If you want to know what shaders can do just look at Shadermark or any of the demos by ATI/Nvidia.

I believe the GS was initially .18 micron and considered to be pushing the limits of what could be done with silicon at the time. It was certainly large and expensive to manufacture.

IIRC the initial NA shipments were manufactured using .25, and a few months later they went to .18.

I was probably wrong about that, but it WAS certainly large and expensive.

Josiah,

Actually they use a whole new engine for SH3. Watch the 'making of'

Haven't seen the making of, but the games look so similar I tend to think it is just an updated SH2 engine. Some parts of SH2 are even duplicated 1:1 (the streets outside for instance).

 

[Paul]

Visualizer is a GPU, unlike Graphics Synthesizer, because Visualizer has PUs+APUs which can provide floating point computations for T&L and/or Vertex Shading capability. Therefore, the Visualizer could seemingly provide its own geometry & lighting calculations for itself

Your right, it is a GPU. I was so caught up with dev's running shader programs on the APU's I forgot that VS could do it's own geometry.

However I do not see too many devs using VS's APU's to do geometry as you have a whole 1TFLOPS VPU that can crunch all of that. I'm really seeing PS3's GPU not having too many features locked into hardware but rather you program your own shader via it's APU's.

 

[zidane1strife]

GF2 does not have the ability to run shaders. That is what VS/PS are needed for. VS compliment PS.

So what you're saying is that outside of complimenting the ps, the vs has no other advantage over the old h/w T&L? So if we've got no ps there is no advantage gained? Is that what ye be saying? That is all the added flexibility is worthless if it's not in conjunction with a ps, iow it doesn't facilitate more complex T&L/gphx calcs?

ed

 

[Megadrive1988]

Your right, it is a GPU. I was so caught up with dev's running shader programs on the APU's I forgot that VS could do it's own geometry.

However I do not see too many devs using VS's APU's to do geometry as you have a whole 1TFLOPS VPU that can crunch all of that. I'm really seeing PS3's GPU not having too many features locked into hardware but rather you program your own shader via it's APU's.

Yeah I agree with you Paul.


I was going to write something like that in my post up there, that developers probably wouldn't use Visualizer's APUs for geometry & lighting, they would save them for pixel shading / effects / custom graphics features, etc. while the CPU provides all or most of the calculations for geometry & lighting.

 

[jvd]

SH3 is great, but as someone else said graphically it's nothing a Geforce2 couldn't handle (I remember playing the PC version of SH2 on my $40 GF2 MX, with better IQ than the PS2 version).

I also played SH2 on my 1700+ and GF2 MX + 256 DDR, and it sucked. Frame rate was never above 20. Situation was worse in fog....and with noise filter ON. It was simply unplayable. And also I dont like PC "type" graphics....I love console "style"...

I'm sorry but what ress were u running it at ? Run it at 640x480 and it will run fast enough.

whatever resolution, games like J&D2, ZOE2 and to a certain extent SH3 (remember how many polygons are on those beautiful models) would NOT run at a decent framerate on a GF2. hell, ZOE2 doesnt run a perfect framerate even on PS2...

Res makes a big diffrence and if you compare a game runing on a pc at 800x600 to a game running at 640x480 on a console thats an invalid comparsion.

 

[Josiah]

GF2 does not have the ability to run shaders. That is what VS/PS are needed for. VS compliment PS.

So what you're saying is that outside of complimenting the ps, the vs has no other advantage over the old h/w T&L? So if we've got no ps there is no advantage gained? Is that what ye be saying? That is all the added flexibility is worthless if it's not in conjunction with a ps, iow it doesn't facilitate more complex T&L/gphx calcs?

No, VS is independant of PS, although in future versions of DirectX they may be combined into one universal model. VS as it is today can be used for an almost limitless number of things, including lens distortion effects, shadow volumes, fur, and even advanced particle effects and facial animation as seen in Half Life 2.

 

[V3]

I believe the GS was initially .18 micron and considered to be pushing the limits of what could be done with silicon at the time. It was certainly large and expensive to manufacture.

I think the 32 MB GS was initially on 0.18u. The PS2 GS was initially on 0.25u at around 280mm2, pretty damn big, even by today standard.

Edit: also that GS I-32 is around 460mm2, if I remember right.

 

[London Geezer]

However that fact alone does not mean it will be a good design, history is littered with designs that were big and expensive and didnt perform up to expectations (PS2 is an example of this).

well, it all comes down to personal expectations. personally, never in a million years would i have expected PS2 to churn out some of the INSANE things going on in ZOE2. and also some things going on in SH3.
but if people were SERIOUSLY expecting CGI level graphics, then it's their problem.
i do agree with pretty much everything else u said...
SH3 does use a new engine though. the games look similar because they are about the same situations in the same places, but apart from IQ, some IN-GAME cutscenes in SH3 look BETTER than the pre-rendered stuff in SH2... but maybe thats just me... and of course, art and design plays a big part in that "opinion" of mine...