How can Nvidia be ahead of ATI but 360 GPU is on par with RSX?

[BlueTsunami]

Right, I'm just sayign I don't think they were there to show the techical prowess of CELL as a GPU, so much as to add to the "OMG CELL is so amazing..." mentality for Joe Q. Public.

But wouldn't showing a environment created by CELL and only CELL show the technical prowess of it? There was no numbers and technical information BUT all in all in the end it showed what the product can do...which is what really matters. CELLs capabilities to render images was shown with the Getaway demo...if it also added the "OMG CELL is so amazing" then that would be a by product of showing such a DEMO...what else would you have them show?

Also...about Hype....its a weird line. In one hand...you have a product you want to show off. Imagine it gets good comments and people go crazy for it. You would consider that hype for it. But hype is usually used in a way to convey false excitment over something...what you saw with the Getaway DEMO was said to be CELL and purely CELL. How is that Hype? It would be far worse to NOT show off their product. I don't undertand that.

The Killzone demo, however, was ONLY there to hype people up, since it had nothing to do with Cell or PS3. :smile:

First time using it but

QFT

Killzone was purely hype. It seems to be its intended purpose. They couldn't even back up the assertion that it could be done on the PS3...just rendered to spec. Now the CELL Getaway DEMO was done with an actual CELL. *shrugs* can't get more clear than that.

 

[London Geezer]

Right, I'm just sayign I don't think they were there to show the techical prowess of CELL as a GPU, so much as to add to the "OMG CELL is so amazing..." mentality for Joe Q. Public.

Well they're largely correlated. Unless you think that the demos were lies, and that Cell is not a powerful chip, the demos were there to show the things it can do, which are quite neat, and they're showing that to work the hype machine. They're not separate things.

So, they WERE there to show the technical prowess of CELL, which in turn hypes people up. I'm talking about the real-time demos (Getaway, Duck, Leaves, Terrain).

The Killzone demo, however, was ONLY there to hype people up, since it had nothing to do with Cell or PS3. :smile:

 

[Titanio]

Side note, but anyone know why we didn't see more of this?

It was apparently another Cell rendering demo, but it didn't get any further showtime :/

 

[scooby_dooby]

Well actually it showed what 2 of the products could do, since they used 2 CELL processors(at least for the ray tracing demo). So they weren't exactly a demo of "what CELL can do" but I don't want to take this thread off track, it was simply in response to Alpha's comment that "they didn't show the demo's for nothing" and he was theorizing their motive was to push the CELL as a GPU.

IMO, it was more to build the CELL hype, which has grown to mammoth proportions.

I don't want to take this great thread off track...so I'll just leave now...*tip-toes away *

 

[expletive]

Oh and you're trying to tell that the Gateway London demo and terrain scenes were mocked up?All this game trailers you've saw runs with SLIed G70s at most.The RSX isn't even involved yet it's already equivalent if not better than some Xbox 360 games?

What makes you think that the RSX is close to the performance of SLI'd 7800GTXs?

Comparing rendered trailers to actual gameplay is apples to oranges. Particularly when 360 developers are focusing on readiying games for launch and dont have any spare months to put together an optimized trailer for public consumption.

IMO, its entirely possible the PS3 beta kits are MUCH closer to final hardware then any of the non-final 360 kits were. This will be especially true if the RSX does turn out to be largely based on the G70 architecture.

J

 

[BlueTsunami]

Well actually it showed what 2 of the products could do, since they used 2 CELL processors(at least for the ray tracing demo)

I don't want to get this thread of track either but we where talking about the Getaway DEMO not the Raytracing one. If the Raytracing one did use 2 CELLs (which i'll take your word for) then yeah...it has no **relevance to the PS3 but you have to remember that CELL isn't only being marketed for the PS3.

*Tip toes away also*

**No relevance in that it uses TWO CELLs to render the image and do Raytracing where the PS3 would have just one. Which would put the DEMO itself out of the PS3s capabilities.

 

[zifnab]

In regards to the development of the RSX this is what was said in Dec. 2004:

Jen-Hsun Huang, president and CEO, NVIDIA: "Over the past two years NVIDIA has worked closely with Sony Computer Entertainment on their next-generation computer entertainment system. In parallel, we have been designing our next-generation GeForce GPU. The combination of the revolutionary Cell processor and NVIDIA’s graphics technologies will enable the creation of breathtaking imagery that will surprise and captivate consumers."

This is admittedly somewhat speculative, but by the way it’s phrased it sounds to me like they were working with Sony in regards to the cell (in terms of a cell only setup and/or how it might work in relation to something like the G70) whilst they were developing their next-gen gpu (the G70) from which the RSX spin-off came later on.

 

[BlueTsunami]

In regards to the of the RSX this is what was said in Dec. 2004:

Jen-Hsun Huang, president and CEO, NVIDIA: "Over the past two years NVIDIA has worked closely with Sony Computer Entertainment on their next-generation computer entertainment system. In parallel, we have been designing our next-generation GeForce GPU. The combination of the revolutionary Cell processor and NVIDIA’s graphics technologies will enable the creation of breathtaking imagery that will surprise and captivate consumers."

This is admittedly somewhat speculative, but by the way it’s phrased it sounds to me like they were working with Sony in regards to the cell (in terms of a cell only setup and/or how it might work in relation to something like the G70) whilst they were developing their next-gen gpu (the G70) from which the RSX spin-off came later on.

Do you have a link to that statment (in any form) that would greatly help. Your probably going to be hounded for it anyways...so I thought I would take the initiative and ask

 

[blakjedi]

We've no new information, really, on Xenos or RSX that we hadn't had before.

I thought Dave's posts shed a little more light on how Xenos works then even what was written in his article.

 

[Titanio]

Well actually it showed what 2 of the products could do, since they used 2 CELL processors(at least for the ray tracing demo). So they weren't exactly a demo of "what CELL can do"

Well it was. But your point is valid as it relates to PS3's Cell. The dual-Cell setup was used for the terrain demo, though likely not The Getaway, since that was a SCEE job. The dual-Cell, however, was running at 2.4Ghz. In figures released later, a 3.2Ghz Cell was shown to have 2/3 of the performance of the 2.4Ghz dual-Cell in that demo - likely still realtime (assuming at least 24fps with a dual-cell setup - it was probably a good deal more than that).

 

[zifnab]

Do you have a link to that statment (in any form) that would greatly help. Your probably going to be hounded for it anyways...so I thought I would take the initiative and ask

But of course - forgot to post it. Here it is: http://www.scei.co.jp/corporate/release/pdf/041207e.pdf

 

[hugo]

Well it was. But your point is valid as it relates to PS3's Cell. The dual-Cell setup was used for the terrain demo, though likely not The Getaway, since that was a SCEE job. The dual-Cell, however, was running at 2.4Ghz. In figures released later, a 3.2Ghz Cell was shown to have 2/3 of the performance of the 2.4Ghz dual-Cell in that demo - likely still realtime (assuming at least 24fps with a dual-cell setup - it was probably a good deal more than that).

Was the terrain demo using all the PPU and SPEs available at one time for dual Cell setup?I remember that most of the games at that time had only the PPU running.

 

[Titanio]

Was the terrain demo using all the PPU and SPEs available at one time for dual Cell setup?I remember that most of the games at that time had only the PPU running.

It was using the PPU and 6 SPUs for the "actual" work of the demo. A seventh SPU was used for image encoding, to compress the framebuffer for transmission over a network.

I thought Dave's posts shed a little more light on how Xenos works then even what was written in his article.

In this thread? I've looked over his posts again in this thread, and I don't see any new info unfortunately.

 

[Alpha_Spartan]

Hey, whoa, hey! Hold your horses mister! Just skimming your post (MGS discussions are so last week IMO ) I have to pull you up on this one. If you have DOF, what's the point of using highres textures in the background? That's a waste of resources. And you want DOF for 'realism', even if you've got infinitely highres textures. Claiming it's an effect just to disguise low-grade graphics is kinda 'out-there'.

We are in agreement. I know it doesn't make sense to render a high detail scene when you don't have to. My point was that there was nothing MGS4 did that was exceptional graphically. I used some graphical "flaws" I noticed to prove this. Who cares why certain effects were used, the fact remains that it's not the graphical tour de force that some overzealous MGS fans make it out to be.

 

[Alpha_Spartan]

You made the suggestion that devs wouldn't be able to prioritise, for example, between graphics and physics or whatever. "Let's hope they have the freedom to do that". That suggests there would be a predefined allocation of resources for certain tasks.

No, it suggest no such thing. It suggested that Sony would take a PSX approach with the PS3 and developers would have to use Sony's libraries and tools instead of their own. However Sony implements resource allocation is what the developers have to use. I don't know for sure if Sony's taking a PSX or PS2 approach or maybe a little of both.

 

[Dave Baumann]

Oh come on Dave, don't you think I know the thread title and the context of the discussion?! Anyway it was a natural extension on your load balancing theme and was a precursor to my subsequent comments.

It's clear from the architecture that the pool of SPUs are the load balancing resources in PS3, to aid the PPE and RSX as required. Where as Xenos' pool of ALUs act as X360's load balancing resource, especially with MemeExport...

I'm trying to type something here to convey the stupidity behind this reasoning, and I'm finding it difficult....

Yes, the graphics is comprised of the whole of a system, but trying to pin an automatic, hardware controlled, independant load balaning of computational resourses within a single graphics chip as equivelent to load balancing between a CPU and graphics processor, something which is going to have to be developer controlled and hardly going to be dynamic, is quite another thing.

Memexport is not really to do with load balancing either.

 

[Acert93]

We are in agreement. I know it doesn't make sense to render a high detail scene when you don't have to. My point was that there was nothing MGS4 did that was exceptional graphically. I used some graphical "flaws" I noticed to prove this. Who cares why certain effects were used, the fact remains that it's not the graphical tour de force that some overzealous MGS fans make it out to be.

Come now, MGS4 from what we have seen is one of the very best pieces of footage we have seen, period. The art, quality, and direction are excellent and the animation for the cut scene is a pure example of artistic genius. That capture the essense of human expression and have a very exciting trailer. The tech and the art are paired perfectly and the quality screams big budget.

I don't really care what platform it is on, what rendering tricks it uses, etc... it was great. That video is all MGS fans needs to be sold on the concept and I am sure it made a lot of PS fans really excited (and quite a few Xbox fans envious!) Really, the game looks great. The cut scene is in the Ruby class in quality and the choreography is second to none--I would put it as a tie with KZ (which, btw, if were a movie I would pay $8 to watch!)

As for whether it was exceptional or not, from a technical standpoint, is kind of pointless in that all games use shaders, particle effects, etc... Whatever rendering methods they used were obviously wisely chosen to emphasis the art. And to that degree I am not sure I can think of 5 other titles that have such a great dynamic between Art+Tech. So in that regards it is exception IMO.

 

[Dave Baumann]

"We Know"????? We don't know. For all intents and purposes, we know that it was a late move.

Realistically we do know it, its just that many here don't want to hear/believe it so its easier not to say it.

 

[Titanio]

No, it suggest no such thing. It suggested that Sony would take a PSX approach with the PS3 and developers would have to use Sony's libraries and tools instead of their own. However Sony implements resource allocation is what the developers have to use. I don't know for sure if Sony's taking a PSX or PS2 approach or maybe a little of both.

I'm pretty sure it's a choice to use middleware on the CPU or not. The middleware being provided seems to be mostly third party also.

 

[Nemo80]

Yes, it works alright until you have some detailed shadows to render. I'm talking about peak bandwidth, not average.

Jawed

Well just to add my stuff - the shadows in MGS4 look and peform better than anything else seen so far on the PC or Xbox 360.

Otherwise the R500 has evolved from the R400 which was once planned for the PC market. Guess why it never appeared? ATI went for shaderpower instead of going the technology way (and released the r420) which they have done to win the "performance bar" comparisons because the technology side was simply not yet future-proof and i doubt that it is now. Comparing those two ALU by ALU is bs that's right and the Xenos is also more "capable", but that doesn't mean it's faster at all.
The opposite is the truth. Those ALUs are much less performant when it comes to "raw" pixel shading or raw vertex shading and it is yet to be seen if the pure number of them (48) is able to outperform a highly specialized 1337 pixel shader like in the RSX ,even if there are only 24 of them (+8 VS).