Game graphics that surpassed Doom3?

[Legion]

Does this mean Xbox won't have any problem running Doom 3 once it's been ported? I thought it ran slow even on a high-end PC with a P4 and Radeon 9700?

From what i have seen and played i am certain Carmack could have his crew allow the game to run at around 30 fps on the xbox most of the time.

the only thing i am really bothered by is some strange method of audio processing the engine appears to be doing. I receive a noticable fram rate increase (around 25fps) when running without sounds.

 

[Saem]

I believe you're using the alpha, so who knows what sound code they have in there.

This is exactly why iD doesn't/didn't want alphas to get leaked -- you get people drawing conclusions about code that could be quite hot. Besides, it could be the sound card or it could just be place holder code for development purposes, you can't really tell.

 

[BoddoZerg]

The sound code in teh DOOM3 alpha is definitely broken! Just listen to the Intro.

Judging an engine by an alpha is the stupidest thing you could possibly do. Its exactly why companies hate alpha leaks!

 

[bbot]

Yea well bbot you gotta remember, Xbox only has 64mb of ram and a processor that isn't meant for gaming. xbox will run the game decent with some compromise, coming from some of the textures and lighting im guessing.

Paul,

"a processor that isn't meant for gaming". I don't get it. Doom III was written for PCs that uses Intel processors. It also supports Nvidia gpus. The Xbox uses a Intel processor, a 733MHz Pentium III. And it uses the equivalent of a 233Mhz GeForce 4 gpu (Ti4200). So in what way is Xbox's processor not meant for gaming?

 

[Paul]

xbox's CPU (an intel celeron 2) is a huge POS for games, especially PC games when it comes down to it.

The GPU is alright, processor is not. Especially since DOOM 3 for Xbox is basicly going to be a shovelware port i'm guessing.

 

[Tagrineth]

xbox's CPU (an intel celeron 2) is a huge POS for games, especially PC games when it comes down to it.

It's neither a P3 nor a Celeron.

Celerons are P3's with the L2 literally cut in half.

XCPU's L2 cache is cut in half in terms of size... but the associativity isn't.

In summary:

P3: 256k 16-way associative L2
XCPU: 128k 16-way associative L2
Celery: 128k 8-way associative L2

 

[bbot]

Paul,

Do you mean you'll need a P4 to run Doom III well?

 

[Paul]

Lol Tag, that's why I called it a Celeron 2

bbot, a mix between an Intel celeron and a P3 isn't good for playing games..

If carmack and his crew spend time actually programming the game to work with xbox's cpu it'll work pretty good.

For the actuall PC game, a celeron even with a average gpu will make the game run like ass.

 

[Tagrineth]

Lol Tag, that's why I called it a Celeron 2

bbot, a mix between an Intel celeron and a P3 isn't good for playing games..

If carmack and his crew spend time actually programming the game to work with xbox's cpu it'll work pretty good.

For the actuall PC game, a celeron even with a average gpu will make the game run like ass.

Well, the thing is, there IS such a thing as a Celeron 2 in the PC space.

P3 is one fantastic CPU, by the way.

To be fair, the main MAIN reason the P3 Celerons were so crippled is FSB, above everything else. It took over 700MHz before they were moved off 66MHz.

 

[bbot]

Paul,

One more thing I've discovered about the Xcpu: Intel disabled SSE2 on it. Now why would Intel take a cpu that according to you is crappy and make it more crappy by disabling SSE2? They must have been confident about its performance to do that. If Intel wasn't sure about its performance, they would have kept everything in order to maximize its performance.

Geforce4 average? 115 million tri/sec peak versus 66 million tri/sec peak for EE? And GS has 16 pixel pipelines but ony half of them have a tmu, which means the effective fillrate is halved when 1 texture layer is used. Most games use texturing so what was Kutaragi and company thinking when thay made that design decision? I also remember Kutaragi complaining once that CG companies should stop concentrating on perfomance and more on quality. (They did anyway, with features such as AA and programmable vertex and pixel shaders.) I presume he meant art direction. Art direction is important but so is giving the developer a wider palette of tools to work with.

 

[Paul]

Uhh no.


They probably did it to cut costs, or the fact that the CPU in the Xbox really doesn't do much anything besides some physics and whatnot, most everything is done on the XGPU. The xCPU IS crap for games, it's not meant for running games. Let's see someone run new PC games on a cpu like that.

While this is fine for a game specificly programmed for the system, I am curious as to how it will work for DOOM III.

The Xgpu just will not be able handle the might which is doom 3 alone if they just shovel doom 3 right to Xbox.

However if they really program some things towards the xbox version and dumb it down a bit, i'm sure it could run decent.

 

[Magnum PI]

Paul,

One more thing I've discovered about the Xcpu: Intel disabled SSE2 on it. Now why would Intel take a cpu that according to you is crappy and make it more crappy by disabling SSE2? They must have been confident about its performance to do that. If Intel wasn't sure about its performance, they would have kept everything in order to maximize its performance.

SSE2 wasn't on the PIII core on wich the xcpu is based.
so they didn't have to disable it.

it only appeared with the pentium IV core.

 

[bbot]

Well according to Anandtech, sse2 was disabled. And PIII is actually faster than P4 of the same speed, but P4 is able to compensate for this by being able to be clocked at higher speeds.

 

[Grall]

BBot:

SSE2 has NEVER been present in any P6-class CPU core so regardless of what Anandtech's said, how can it ever have been disabled?

Tag:

The Celeron in the XB *HAS* halved associativity. That's what happens when you halve the cache.

Only difference between it and a normal celery is it's set to a lower multiple so it can run at a higher bus speed.


*G*

 

[Tagrineth]

Let's see someone run new PC games on a cpu like that.

On my P3 800 with single-channel, high-latency (=bad) PC800 DRDRAM, 133MHz FSB, with a Radeon 9500 Pro, I can run any new PC game you throw at me just fine, thank you very much. And that, keep in mind, is not very optimised code compared with what Xbox code should be.

SSE2 has NEVER been present in any P6-class CPU core so regardless of what Anandtech's said, how can it ever have been disabled?

Not entirely true. Pentium M is a P6 derivative and supporst SSE2.

But yes, Pentium III does not and never will support SSE2. It wasn't disabled for XCPU because it wasn't there to begin with!

Tag:

The Celeron in the XB *HAS* halved associativity. That's what happens when you halve the cache.

Only difference between it and a normal celery is it's set to a lower multiple so it can run at a higher bus speed.

No, Intel custom-designed the core to have full associativity in half the space.

 

[bbot]

Tag,

You're right.

 

[Paul]

Still bbot, my point stands. The xbox's CPU isn't meant for high end graphics, it's more suited to open word and powerpoint. It's not particularly well suited for graphics at all.

Not that xbox even needs a high end CPU, because of the XGPU doing everything. But that's a different matter.

 

[Saem]

Still bbot, my point stands. The xbox's CPU isn't meant for high end graphics, it's more suited to open word and powerpoint. It's not particularly well suited for graphics at all.

This argument seems to be out of your league. Think back for a second, there used to be a time where 700MHz PIIIs used to be choice, the fastest Intel offering. They used to be in gaming rigs all over the place. I have one in use right now. I play games, it seems to be working fine.

Now if you're talking about a CPU for graphics, well most people know, we have those, they're called graphics processors, they do graphics. So we don't have CPUs for graphics. We have CPUs for general purpose computing, which is what they were meant for.

 

[zurich]

Still bbot, my point stands. The xbox's CPU isn't meant for high end graphics, it's more suited to open word and powerpoint. It's not particularly well suited for graphics at all.

Not that xbox even needs a high end CPU, because of the XGPU doing everything. But that's a different matter.

You're forgetting an important point, namely that the P6 architecture is so tried, tested, and true, that its compilers eat the competition for breakfast.

 

[Tagrineth]

Still bbot, my point stands. The xbox's CPU isn't meant for high end graphics, it's more suited to open word and powerpoint. It's not particularly well suited for graphics at all.

My statement stands:

On my P3 800MHz with single-channel, high-latency (=bad) PC800 DRDRAM, 133MHz FSB, with a Radeon 9500 Pro, I can run any new PC game you throw at me just fine, thank you very much. And that, keep in mind, is not very optimised code compared with what Xbox code should be.

With mediocre optimisation and incredibly poor main RAM, I can play, for example, Unreal Tournament 2003 at 60fps.