Can this hardware project be done for consoles?

[PREDATOR 227390]

Hi, I am not a hardware expert or anything, but I've always had this idea and I want to discuss it with you, great graphics can be achieved on consoles and we can clearly see that in some current gen titles such as Gears of War, Killzone 2, Resident Evil 5...etc, however there are always sacrifices, and that sacrifice being made is usually the framerate, the games I have mentioned before all run at 30fps on consoles and the reason is clear, hardware limitations, is it possible for a GPU manufacturer such as Nvidia or ATI to produce an optional secondary seperate GPU for the console they've developed it's main GPU and link it to that console then use the extra processing power to up the framerate to 60fps so every 30 fps console game would be automatically upscaled to run at 60fps?, or would every game need to be patched seperately to enable such thing?, thanks in advance.

 

[Laa-Yosh]

No.

 

[dragonelite]

Do you mean something like this.
http://www.engadget.com/2006/07/28/ati-to-release-power-hungry-external-video-card/

What article says is there isn't a external interface that can handle the bandwidth.

 

[Rangers]

It's tiresome repeating but, framerate is all about priorities.

Any gen of consoles can deliver all games in 60 FPS. The majority of people would rather have better graphics and 30 FPS, so that is what the majority of games use.

 

[Shifty Geezer]

Echoing Laa-yosh, no. There's no expansion bus deisgned to route graphics to an external card. Hypothetically speaking you could create a USB card and have software use that as a USB device, but no-one would, and it wouldn't be an expansion of the internal workings that would seemlessly improve eixsting games either.

 

[Laa-Yosh]

Even if you could somehow add graphics horsepower, the game engine's internal speed can't be adjusted. If physics, AI, game code etc. only work at 30fps then you can't do anything.

Increasing the rendering resolution would be a bit more simple as it only effects rendering, but only theoretically, seeing how a lot of titles use SPUs on the PS3 to do post processing and sometimes even actual rendering. Those resources would remain limited unless you'd add an entire extra console.
It'd also be a nightmare for Q&A, support, and so on.

All in all, consoles are OK the way they are. The ability to patch games and replace HDDs is already stretching the concept way too close to a PC in my opinion.

 

[Dungeonscaper]

If you gave devs this extra power they'd still leave it at 30fps and bump up the graphics.

 

[BRiT]

No.

 

[Billy Idol]

It would be crazy if I could connect two PS3 or two Xbox360 to pump up the gra!!
This option would be really cool and I would certainly do it!!
It is allowed to have dreams right, they can controll our lives but not our dreams!!

 

[Shifty Geezer]

Networking consoles is actually a little different, and it would be possible to, say, network a couple of PS3s together over gigabit to improve visuals of a game, but it would have to be coded to do that. And seriously, no dev is going to attempt that. If it's not an option for GT where they'll do anything for their cars, it's not an option for any sane developers. The closest you get is multiscreen veiwing like Forza, using two boxes to render two screens instead of improve the visuals on a single screen.

 

[Billy Idol]

Networking consoles is actually a little different, and it would be possible to, say, network a couple of PS3s together over gigabit to improve visuals of a game, but it would have to be coded to do that. And seriously, no dev is going to attempt that. If it's not an option for GT where they'll do anything for their cars, it's not an option for any sane developers. The closest you get is multiscreen veiwing like Forza, using two boxes to render two screens instead of improve the visuals on a single screen.

Head explodes....so in theory, this could be possible!!

I demand from now on that GG implements a 3D mode in KZ, where I can use two PS3 to get full blown out HD!

Every sane dev should start to implement a 3D mode with 2 PS3 connected (I hope you guys understand: each PS3 for one eye ) now!

 

[Fafalada]

And seriously, no dev is going to attempt that.

That's not entirely true. Polyphony Digital built this into at least two iterations of GT (GT3, which IIRC has multi-machine->multi-screen support in commercial release, and some GT5 demos which so far remain unreleased).

Granted it's just an exception to the rule, but still

 

[Shifty Geezer]

I don't know if I was aware of that or not, but I did highlight if anyone was going to try it just to get the best possible visuals and hang the costs and consequences, it would be Polyphony.

 

[Billy Idol]

That's not entirely true. Polyphony Digital built this into at least two iterations of GT (GT3, which IIRC has multi-machine->multi-screen support in commercial release, and some GT5 demos which so far remain unreleased).

Granted it's just an exception to the rule, but still

Now if that you say this: wasn't this the demo where they used a ridiculous high resolution for GT5, achieved with multiple PS3s connected together?

Here is a crazy guy:

http://www.gtplanet.net/forum/showthread.php?t=124200

Now seriously: why not provide gamers with a 3D mode using 2 PS3 in GT5?!?

 

[Deepak]

It would be crazy if I could connect two PS3 or two Xbox360 to pump up the gra!!
This option would be really cool and I would certainly do it!!
It is allowed to have dreams right, they can controll our lives but not our dreams!!

This what the great Ken Kutaragi had in mind with CELL.

 

[Scott_Arm]

A 1 GigE connection is really slow relative to the internal bus. Not sure you could get any real gains out of that. Better than USB, I guess, but not usable in any way for that purpose.

 

[Lucid_Dreamer]

A 1 GigE connection is really slow relative to the internal bus. Not sure you could get any real gains out of that. Better than USB, I guess, but not usable in any way for that purpose.

Do you mean like GT5: Prologue running at 3840x2160p and 240fps on 4 PS3s?

http://kotaku.com/5093592/gran-turismo-5-prologue-running-at-240-fps--3840x2160-resolution

 

[Shifty Geezer]

A 1 GigE connection is really slow relative to the internal bus.

You synchronise the game data just like a LAN game, but have each console render only a part of the view, and combine on the main console for output.

 

[Scott_Arm]

You synchronise the game data just like a LAN game, but have each console render only a part of the view, and combine on the main console for output.

Gotcha.


Even better would be to have 2 PS3s and 2 360s each rendering 1 quarter of a multiplatform game. It would be the ultimate tech equivalent of a friendly handshake.

 

[joker454]

Even better would be to have 2 PS3s and 2 360s each rendering 1 quarter of a multiplatform game. It would be the ultimate tech equivalent of a friendly handshake.

I had joked about doing distributed load with Rage sometime ago, where you use the PS3 as the data mine with blu-ray for storage and the spu's to fetch and prepare texture data, then feed it to a 360 which renders everything. Would be pimp, but of course would never happen.