Interview with Epics Tim Sweeny

I like these parts quite a bit!

 

"Most of Unreal Engine 3's effects are bound by fill-rate rather than by higher-level features like hardware geometry processing, so the real impact of DirectX 10 is incrementally better performance rather than entirely new features."

Major advantage for the 8800 series over the x2900 series?

 

There's an existing thread on this in the GPU forums (though the link in that one points to a thread in the epicgames forum which links to the interview from there).

http://forum.beyond3d.com/showthread.php?t=41658

 

Request thread merge?

Any idea what he meant? It's a contradiction of the gains he mentions for multicore.

 

Memory size probably, both system and graphics. Plus graphics memory bandwidth is probably a factor too.

 

Even low-end PCs have dual-core CPUs.

 

Tim Sweeny seems to disagree.

 

There are two low ends. Low end that you can buy new today, and the low end of the entire PC user base. They are two very different things.

For example the Xbox 360 is around the mid range compared to a gaming PC you could buy new today, however its very near the top end compared to the entire PC user base.

Unfortunatly thats why we still get crappy PS2/Wii ports like Pirates of the Caribbean: At Worlds End

 

maybe sweeney is referring to worldwide pc sales data?

 

Bullocks. Where's those STEAM stats when you need them? Sweeny is spot on with his numbers assumption.

EDIT: Aye...this is what I was looking for... http://www.steampowered.com/status/survey.html

 

It hinges around the word "sold" and if you mean ones you can buy right now I agree with Todd for the most part even the Walmart computers have dual cores (just priced a new dual core rig for $350 for a shop I work at...), now if it means as in sold and existing base then the Steam survey would be much more accurate.

 

Right, there are issues that are addressed there with the streaming tech they've implemented for Gears, which is useful for limited memory space as well as utilizing memory bandwidth more effectively (sending textures and geometry on the fly).

But I was referring to him talking about how development on the 360 pushed multi-core development and then proceeding to say that it helped low end single-core systems.

 

Perhaps he was referring to single threaded performance. If the game is bound by a primary thread and they needed to get it working on the 360, that would probably translate well to low/medium end PC CPU's.

 

Ah... right. Forgot about that. The optimizations for the in-order cores to alleviate stalls should translate quite well for the OoO desktop CPUs.

 

Not even one question about Wii, that is too bad, I would like to know if they plan to suport (with engines/tools) it or not and if yes then will they suport it.

 

Mark Rein pretty much said, "That's what UE2.0 is for", so I wouldn't expect support just yet. They could change their minds if they figure developers are flocking towards the Wii install base for instance.

 

Where did he said that? Specially given that UE2 is such a bad engine for GC/Wii.