Impact of EDRAM-free design on PS3

[ShadowRunner]

EDRAM doesnt mean you have to tile. Not having enough is what brings that comprimise. If ps3 was as it is now but with enough EDRAM for 720p 4xAA then it would of course be much improved. It would also be more expensive, which would probably be more hurtful for PS3 overall.

The inclusion of EDRAM may actually hurt 360 in a way, very few normal people would be able to tell the difference between a 360 that used EDRAM and one that didnt. It could be that 360 would sell just as well without EDRAM while being cheeper to produce.

Given a fixed transistor budget though would using up transistors for EDRAM give better gains than improving the core GPU?

From a technical point of view, and not taking into account the silicone budget, EDRAM would always be a plus. From a buisness point of view, or when given a fixed amount of transistors to work with, its not so clear cut.

 

[Dr. Nick]

Am I just completely daft?
Lack of EDRAM hurts PS3?
Why doesn't it hurt my PC?

I assume that your PC card has at least a 256bit bus. When a console GPU only has a 128bit bus to work with it would be a good idea to find another solution to help out with bandwidth but as we have seen you can still do a great deal with that limited bandwidth.

I did suspect that blood was an issue with Ninja Gaiden 2 Sigma but we will never know for sure in that games case as people have pointed out in this thread the blood did land them a cero Z with NG2. Though through programing they could have still found a way for US gamers to get the same amount of blood that was in NG2. It's clear that both games got the same rating while one had muted violence.

 

[Shifty Geezer]

The inclusion of EDRAM may actually hurt 360 in a way, very few normal people would be able to tell the difference between a 360 that used EDRAM and one that didnt.

Without EDRAM, XB360 would be severely starved of bandwidth with the framebuffer ops, and it would definitely show! The alternative would have been either two pools of RAM or a 256bit faster ram bus that wouldn't scale down as EDRAM does. The size of EDRAM is a disappointment on XB360. Perhaps the biggest disappointment is the fairly unidirectional nature of it, and it were more flexible it would be a huge plus for the system.

 

[ShadowRunner]

While it could well have been a performance issue that was the reason for removing the blood there is nothing beyond speculation as proof. Looking at GOW3 i dont subscribe to it myself.

 

[Dr. Nick]

Without EDRAM, XB360 would be severely starved of bandwidth with the framebuffer ops, and it would definitely show! The alternative would have been either two pools of RAM or a 256bit faster ram bus that wouldn't scale down as EDRAM does. The size of EDRAM is a disappointment on XB360. Perhaps the biggest disappointment is the fairly unidirectional nature of it, and it were more flexible it would be a huge plus for the system.

The system would end up carrying over the problem that the xbox1 had.

 

[GuestLV]

Lazy porting hurts for sure, but EDRAM has little to do with that.

Most ports from xbox360 on PS3 shows otherwise
PS3 can not handle effects in games which heavily use EDRAM on par with xbox

And it is nothing about ''Lazy''

 

[assurdum]

Most ports from xbox360 on PS3 shows otherwise
PS3 can not handle effects in games which heavily use EDRAM on par with xbox

And it is nothing about ''Lazy''

If you porting from 360 to ps3 surely. It's natural. The most of multi engine benefits more of unified shaders & EDRAM. The 360 hardware is more friendly in the development. Try to ports unchy 2, gt5 or kz 2 & will see the opposite on 360 with limited edram.

 

[SG79]

Very good discussion going on here now. Cool your jets guys.

 

[swaaye]

It's been said on here that the 360 should have had a bit more EDRAM but it wasn't feasible. The amount that it has is troublesome and unfortunate. They were so close to really having an awesome design there.

PS3 on the other hand has its split memory banks which is its own special issue.

 

[patsu]

Most ports from xbox360 on PS3 shows otherwise
PS3 can not handle effects in games which heavily use EDRAM on par with xbox

I think 360's edram is an innovative design. The advantages of free AA (where applicable) helps developers to create high quality work.

However, I don't think the game industry should stop there. The screen space AA discussion opened up another avenue to generate higher quality AA with pure software too. Would be cool to see more Saboteur-quality AA in PS3 and 360 titles.


As for porting software, we already know many factors that can stall developers (e.g., SPUs, split memory pool, vertex limits). The fact that developers have one year less of PS3 working experience may contribute to not so great ports too. In general, I do think the ports will be closer and closer if the developers want to make them look identical.

 

[AlNom]

Thread not going anywhere with a lot of deleted posts.