HD problems in Xbox 360 and PS3 (Zenji Nishikawa article @ Game Watch)

[fearsomepirate]

I don't get this:

While the Xbox 360 has a 3.5 times broader bandwidth than the original Xbox, 720p pixels require a 3 times broader memory bandwidth. It leaves only 0.5 times headroom which is insufficient for multiple texture lookups by complex shaders.

Isn't this irrelevant, since the framebuffer goes in the eDRAM and doesn't eat any main memory bandwidth?

 

[Titanio]

I don't get this:

Isn't this irrelevant, since the framebuffer goes in the eDRAM and doesn't eat any main memory bandwidth?

I think it's referring to texturing. X number of look-ups per pixel, from main memory. There's cache between the texture units and main memory of course, but they seem to be referring to look-ups that spill out into main memory.

And of course, I guess the contribution of everything else fed by main memory bandwidth, "per pixel".

 

[scooby_dooby]

MGS4 didn't seem to be behind any curve to me..

MGS4 is the lone standout, but when is it coming out? 2007?

It definately seems that developers like Ubisoft, Epic and Gearbox(and of course Ninja Theory), are setting the bar for graphics, while projects like N3, Dead Rising, & Lost Planet are certainly nice, but not in the same league.

Anyways it was just something I read, thought it was worth some discussion. I don't put alot of weight in it myself, as I think it's more a matter of X360 japanese titles being lower budget. It is interesting to consider though that japanese developers probably have a larger learning curve since they were so predominately PS2 focused.

 

[rounin]

MGS4 is the lone standout, but when is it coming out? 2007?

It definately seems that developers like Ubisoft, Epic and Gearbox(and of course Ninja Theory), are setting the bar for graphics, while projects like N3, Dead Rising, & Lost Planet are certainly nice, but not in the same league.

Anyways it was just something I read, thought it was worth some discussion. I don't put alot of weight in it myself, as I think it's more a matter of X360 japanese titles being lower budget. It is interesting to consider though that japanese developers probably have a larger learning curve since they were so predominately PS2 focused.

Then again, you have to consider that one of the few (if not the only ) X360 game running at a locked 60fps at full 720p w/ AA with no slowdown is made by a __________ dev Yes, I'm talkin about DOA4.

It seems to me that its just a matter of what people want to trade off. Japanese developers seem to want to hit that 60 fps whereas others just don't feel its worth the trade off in image quality. I feel your statement will only be validated when we can compare the visual fidelities of games made by Japanese devs versus non-Japanese devs running at the same framerate.

 

[rabidrabbit]

Or it might be just that we've seen virtually nothing that is being developed for PS3 in Japan, other than MGS4 (which looked on par, if not better than anything) and some Final Fantasy VII, Tekken, GT, Devil May Cry and "Eyedentify" demoes, of which at least the FFVII looked superior to anything I've seen.
It might be down to that they're just artistically superior, but at the same time those demos that we can assume wererunning "realtime" on PS3 devkits didn't show any flaring signs that the Japanese devs were somehow inferior at programming the PS3 (not just RSX, as it's debatable how much of the "RSX" was on those demos).
Edit: This was about the PS3 only, as with xbox360... sadly it seems the Japanese developers are just not using as much resources and effort as the western developers.

 

[Dave Baumann]

btw, i'd like to second [maven]'s question, anybody care to commment on the "L2 cache locking useless" remark?

Giving that this was bulleted in the context of tiling, I think this was already known. I forget the tarty name MS gave to the principle of rendering vertex data from the CPU and streaming it directly to Xenos, but this is known not to work with tiling - the processing need to be recalcuated per tile.

 

[czekon]

so without tiling everything is fine, kind of strange bad concept or something 2 main features not working together

 

[scooby_dooby]

I feel your statement will only be validated when we can compare the visual fidelities of games made by Japanese devs versus non-Japanese devs running at the same framerate.

I feel it can only be validated when we see the true big budget ps3 japanese titles, and we can see how those match up. Right now though, western dev's are on their 2nd lap, and japanese dev's haven't even left the gates.

btw, it's not 'my' statement, as much as a possible theory I raised for discussion.

 

[darkblu]

Giving that this was bulleted in the context of tiling, I think this was already known. I forget the tarty name MS gave to the principle of rendering vertex data from the CPU and streaming it directly to Xenos, but this is known not to work with tiling - the processing need to be recalcuated per tile.

you mean that trick with feeding the gpu directly from L2 cache? IIRC for it it was essential to lock cache.

 

[Platon]

Thankfully I don't care, being on SDTV, and I think buckets of AA at SD res will suit me fine. Give me TV quality photorealism at SDTV over PC quality 2000x1500 any time

I so agree, I would like them to first target photorealism at SD resolutions, or whatever resolution they can fit in the EDRAM untiled and then try if they can have it "true" HD. Never got this crazy idea of maximizing the res as soon as possible concidering there are so many other things that can be worked upon instead, that can have much higher impact in image quality and photorealism...

 

[Mefisutoferesu]

It's probably going to piss everyone off and you can beat me for it if you feel the need, but hearing all this stuff I can't help but think that the 360 really was originally intended to have game run at 480p and not 720p. I know I know, but if you're gonna rip me apart and tell me I'm wrong, please, do explain why I'm wrong for thinking this way.

 

[fearsomepirate]

Other than PGR3, anyone know of any Xbox 360 games that are being upscaled?

 

[mckmas8808]

I brought a HDTV, so yes I do want a console that runs HD resolution games with no upscaling. Forget about SD.

 

[stisoas]

I brought a HDTV, so yes I do want a console that runs HD resolution games with no upscaling. Forget about SD.

so wait for PS3. or buy a computer tower.

 

[!eVo!-X Ant UK]

Good article, but after seeing games like Lair and the R&C footage i dont really care. It all depends on the talent of the Dev team.

 

[Titanio]

I brought a HDTV, so yes I do want a console that runs HD resolution games with no upscaling. Forget about SD.

The resolutions quoted as examples aren't SD. They're generally about twice that. They'll probably still look better on a HDTV than a SDTV.

 

[BigGamer X]

I don't know what you have been reading but both consoles seem to be getting equal amout of heat from devs and in both cases it seem to be about bandwidth and memory personally i think this gen started a bit to early

I've felt this way too. For me, optical drives needed to be MUCH faster, or 160+ GB HDDs needed to be standard, along with 1GB or RAM, ASIDE from having a bit more CPU and GPU power. As much as I love Oblivion, the loading and pop up is getting very annoying. Also the Jagged edges on the top of my car roofs in PGR 3 and RR6 tick me off a bit....

 

[Gholbine]

MGS4 is the lone standout, but when is it coming out? 2007?

What does that matter? It's looking as good as it is right now, err 6 months ago... that's what counts.

It definately seems that developers like Ubisoft, Epic and Gearbox(and of course Ninja Theory), are setting the bar for graphics, while projects like N3, Dead Rising, & Lost Planet are certainly nice, but not in the same league.

Anyways it was just something I read, thought it was worth some discussion. I don't put alot of weight in it myself, as I think it's more a matter of X360 japanese titles being lower budget. It is interesting to consider though that japanese developers probably have a larger learning curve since they were so predominately PS2 focused.

Just curious, which Japanese developers are you basing this off? The only Japanese developed game I can remember being demoed on the PS3 is MGS4, and that seems to mop the floor with anything on either console.

 

[Geo]

Good stuff, one.

Have we seen any AA'ed Xbox360 games? Because it sounded like an apologia for why there wouldn't be HD games. . . in order to provide AA instead.

The tiling boundary thing sounded a bit odd. . .as someone noted, it's not like these are 64x64 tiles we are talking about.

Any chance of getting a response from ATI on any of this, since so much of it seems aimed at Xenos?

Do we know how much devrel help ATI has been providing re implementing tiling in these titles? Staff? Samples? Best practices? etc?

 

[Fafalada]

you mean that trick with feeding the gpu directly from L2 cache? IIRC for it it was essential to lock cache.

Hence the remark about cache locking being "useless".
Anyway designing a renderer around tiling does introduce extra complexities and considerations you otherwise don't need to make - which makes me wonder if that's actually the source of most complaints there (ie. - damn thing doesn't 'just work', we have to reimplement our pipelines for it).

It'd be nice to have official confirmation on the AA mandates for XB360. Have they really dropped the mandatory AA?

Afaik it was never mandatory, but my info could be outdated. But from what I've read they included both 720P w/o AA, and 1066x600 (or something thereabouts) with 2xAA as "minimum allowed" resolutions.