joint Nintendo-NEC console?

[cybamerc]

Teasy:

> The fact is that appart from GameCube Nintendo do not have a record
> of putting out cheap consoles AFAICS.

Nonsense. Every console from NES to GameCube has been launched at $199. Of course, you need to factor in inflation but the NES was still cheap compared to some of the other offerings at the time.

> So the people of ArtX were still SGI when they designed N64

Yes.

> But still SGI had no highend graphics card in the PC space did they.

There weren't any high-end gaming cards for PC when the N64 launched. Sure you had your S3 Virge and Rendition Verite chips but they weren't great performers. 3dfx was the first company to offer a proper 3d gaming card for PC and it was made by ex-SGI ppl as well. Before 3dfx high-end essentially consisted of Matrox and a bunch of 3d add-on manufacturers making very expensive professional 3d cards.

SGI had as much experience as anyone. Well, more really. The only question was if they could make the tech cheap enough.

> Which is what I was saying, having a highend graphics card in the PC
> space isn't all tha matters

Certainly not but Nintendo clearly seeks out the best talent or the best technology. Something PowerVR doesn't possess. That's no to say PowerVR isn't a good company with good products, ATI is just better.

> Well they had the graphics chip in the fastest console out for quite a few
> years

Only because Sega launched the DC inbetween the normal cycles of the industry.

> and even when PS2 came out DC still stood up to in overall

And when Cube and Xbox came out PS2 still stood up to them in general. Comparing 2. or 3. gen software developments with launch software is unfair. The best looking PS2 games completely destroy the best DC has to offer.

 

[Teasy]

Nonsense. Every console from NES to GameCube has been launched at $199. Of course, you need to factor in inflation but the NES was still cheap compared to some of the other offerings at the time.

Err, wait a moment, as I remember it N64 was released at £299 here, so it must have been released in the U.S for $299 not $199.

The fact is GameCube is cheap and efficient because it could be that and still be more powerful then PS2. If Nintendo had needed to release GameCube at $299 to make it faster then PS2 then they would have done that.

There weren't any high-end gaming cards for PC when the N64 launched.

Highend just means the fastest card around, so of course there was a highend chip around then. ArtX have never had a highend card out, Nintendo still used them for GameCube, so as I said having a highend PC graphics chip in the market is not important. The technology is the important thing, whoever has whats best for Nintendo at the best price will get the deal, its as simple as that.

Certainly not but Nintendo clearly seeks out the best talent or the best technology. Something PowerVR doesn't possess. That's no to say PowerVR isn't a good company with good products, ATI is just better.

How do you know? How do you know that PowerVR don't have the best technology for Nintendo's next console? If you'd said, when GameCube was being thought up, "who has the best technology around" would anyone have said "ah that'd be ArtX" I don't think so, they would all have said Nvidia. Which is my point, having the fastest chip around in the PC space does not give you the best technology for a console. Yet another example of this is DC. If when DC was being made you'd have asked "who has the best tech around" the answer would have been a resounding "3DFX" because they had the best cards around in the PC space. But who did Sega choose, PowerVR, simply because they showed them their tech and it was the best around at the time.

Only because Sega launched the DC inbetween the normal cycles of the industry.

When the console was brought out is utterly irrelivant. PowerVR got their chip in DC because they had the best technology when DC was built, its as simple as that. Who's the say who will have the best technology for Nintendo when they build their next console?

Just to finish off here, you show me where being the best around in the PC space got any company a contract for a console? The only time I can think of that happening is Nvidia with XBox. Appart from that I can't remember any console company choosing the big PC graphics developer for their console's graphics chip.

As I said, I think ATI/ArtX are favourite for Nintendo's next console. But I just don't agree that having the best cards in the PC space has any baring on the choice of a company like Nintendo. They just look at what tech people can offer, and at what price, and they choose the best for their console for the time frame needed.

 

[megadrive0088]

Err, wait a moment, as I remember it N64 was released at £299 here, so it must have been released in the U.S for $299 not $199.

No, N64 launched at $199 in the United States in Sept 1996.

the original set price that had been in place since the original Project Reality annoucement in 1993, through the Ultra64 in 1994-1995, was a $250 pricepoint for the console in the U.S. but Nintendo made a surprise annoucement at E3 1996 that the newly named Nintendo64 would be only $199

 

[megadrive0088]

in 1997, when Sega was making it's choice between PowerVR, Real3D, and 3Dfx, (only 3Dfx and PowerVR were highly publicized) Sega choose PowerVR because of it had the best price/performance ratio of the three. Lockheed and 3Dfx were more expensive. While 3Dfx's technology on offer, Banshee and Voodoo2, was inferior to PowerVR's second generation range of chips.

 

[megadrive0088]

Cybamerc, I totally agree with your statements about SGI, ArtX, ATI and Nintendo. however the small paragraph from Theregister about future chips from Nvidia, their transistor counts and polygon performance is utter bunk. they made that up most likely.

ATI R300 in the Radeon 9700 already pushes 325M polygons peak. the next generation of consoles will probably push several billion polygons(although not 33Billion!) in todays terms, though polygon performance won't be as important then as it used to be.

 

[Gollum]

Err, wait a moment, as I remember it N64 was released at £299 here, so it must have been released in the U.S for $299 not $199.

No, N64 launched at $199 in the United States in Sept 1996.

the original set price that had been in place since the original Project Reality annoucement in 1993, through the Ultra64 in 1994-1995, was a $250 pricepoint for the console in the U.S. but Nintendo made a surprise annoucement at E3 1996 that the newly named Nintendo64 would be only $199

So upon release the N64 cost considerably less than HALF in the US compared to the UK (299£ were about 495$ back then)? Ouch! That'd be one HUGE rip-off (not that we aren't used to that by now), even worse than the horrible price debut of Xbox in Europe!

 

[cybamerc]

Teasy:

> Highend just means the fastest card around, so of course there was a
> highend chip around then.

The market for consumer 3d chips was extremely young when the last gen of consoles launched. Every chip before Voodoo was pretty much a joke and was priced much lower than Voodoo cards. 3dfx established the market for high-end consumer 3d (in the PC space).

> ArtX have never had a highend card out

No but the same very engineers had worked on both extremely high-end 3d (workstation gfx) and consumer 3d (N64) while at SGI. ArtX wasn't your average unproven upstart. Nintendo knew what it was dealing with.

> How do you know that PowerVR don't have the best technology for
> Nintendo's next console?

I don't, but there's no reason to think it will.

> When the console was brought out is utterly irrelivant.

Not when arguing performance. Of course it was the fastest... there was no competition.



megadrive0088:

> however the small paragraph from Theregister about future chips from
> Nvidia, their transistor counts and polygon performance is utter bunk.
> they made that up most likely.

Multiple sites have reported on it and considering the time those comments were made I'd say the numbers are suprisingly spot on. Just forget it says GF6... what he's describing is pretty damn close to GFFX.

Clearly Nvidia seems to believe that there are more important things than brute force power.

 

[clem64]

People are so concerned about performance. I hope that, like the GC, its successor will offer a good price/value ratio. I think that's all anyone should hope for. I wouldn't want them to release something too cheap and underpowered or very powerful but too expensive. So anywhere from 200 to 300$ if fine by me. N usually spends a lot of time and money on R&D for its consoles so I'm sure the value will be there no matter what pricetag it has.

 

[fbg1]

Do you guys think Nintendo will be going with ATI again?

Question is, will ATI want to supply a console chip? It was a good deal for ArtX, who was a speciality supplier at the time, and ATI bought them for their technology and their design talent. But ATI might not see making a console chip as a good deal, though. They seem to attribute Nvidia's recent faltering and missing their product cycle to Nvidia's involvement with Xbox, and ATI may decide they don't want to repeat Nvidia's mistakes. ATI may choose to devote all their resources to the PC GPU market, and avoid being sidetracked and thrown off pace by branching into the console business.

 

[megadrive0088]

ATI wants the Nintendo contract. they've publicly said so multipule times.
Nintendo and ATI are likely in R&D already. probably since over a year ago. Nintendo Technology Design and one of ATI's teams (the one with the most ArtX people) are probably working on the next console right now. Unless some massive shift in 3D comes along in the next few years, I don't see Nintendo working with anyone but ATI. ATI wants to be inside game consoles. that's one reason why they bought ArtX in 2000. ATI will likely adapt one of its future chips (i.e. R500, R600, R700) for Nintendo, tayloring it to Nintendo's wanted specifications and price/performance ratio.

Also, I do not believe Nvidia is behind because they focused too much on XBox. The XBox GPU was simply a slightly specialized version of one of Nvidia's desktop PC chips. it falls inbetween NV20 and NV25. Nvidia's late-ness is much more likely due to TMSC's 0.13 process troubles and getting brand new technology, NV30, with 3Dfx's technology to work. being a massive 125M transistors probably didn't help matters. I doubt this will affect NV35 and NV40's tape out schedule much at all.

 

[fbg1]

I see, thx for the clarification. Interesing how things are shaping up, with MS and Nintendo relying on PC industry architectures, while Sony goes it alone in a new direction with IBM. Regardless of the inevitable hype wars, I'm already looking forward to seeing what they come up with for their next gen consoles.

 

[jvd]

If the xbox2 has nvidia tech and a faster intel cpu , say 3ghz p4(which for 2005 should be cheap) and say an nv 50 modded ( who knows just a guess as to what they would have ) and gamecube 2 goes with a faster chip mabye a 2 ghz gekko chip modded a bit or a new kind of chip and goes with whatever ati has at the time it would be much much easier to make it backwards compatible. Sony on the other hand would either need to shrink both the psx and ps2 and put it in the ps3 or hope to god they can make a bleem type deal to emulate it(ps2 has a psx in one chip inside the console)

 

[Lazy8s]

I would love to see Nintendo and/or Microsoft go with PowerVR. The fascination with them is because they have a proven trackrecord of delivering in a big way with Dreamcast and the Naomi line of arcade hardware.

If we assume the PS2 was well designed with respect to price/performance/time-of-release, then we can use that as a frame of reference for Dreamcast. N64 came out in 1996, Dreamcast came out in 1998, and PS2 came out in 2000. Would the best looking N64 games look acceptable among the Dreamcast library? Many N64 games didn't even run in high res, let alone support Dreamcast-level color depths, z-buffer accuracies, progressive scan, etc. They would be more out of place.

There are lots of Dreamcast games among the PS2's library (which don't look as good as their original DC incarnations even), and those games fit in just fine - Rayman 2, MDK 2, Test Drive LeMans, F355, Tennis 2K2, Resident Evil: Code Veronica, NFL 2K2, NBA 2K2, Ecco the Dolphin, Headhunter, etc.

And you have to remember, the PS2 isn't even directly comparable to Dreamcast. $ony's console was designed to launch at a pricepoint 50% higher than Dreamcast's. What would've happened if the PS2 had to launch at the DC's design budget? The system certainly wouldn't exist as we know it... it's not like you could reduce some RAM and cut the cost down.

At DC's pricepoint, I doubt the whole concept of using emdedded RAM at all in the system would have been viable, especially with how much difficulty $ony faced with low production yeilds on their PS2 chips in the beginning as it was. At that time, fabs just didn't support wafers of that size, and $ony weathered some really poor run rates, driving early manufacturing costs sky high, just to support all those extra transistors for the 4 MB of embedded RAM on the GS. A $199 budget launch PS2 would have probably just been designed in a much different way architecturally. Simply put, the PS2's design was budgeted for a higher performance class than Dreamcast's, which makes the Dreamcast's considerable ability to compete all the more special.

 

[StefanS]

Do you guys think Nintendo will be going with ATI again?

Question is, will ATI want to supply a console chip? It was a good deal for ArtX, who was a speciality supplier at the time, and ATI bought them for their technology and their design talent. But ATI might not see making a console chip as a good deal, though. They seem to attribute Nvidia's recent faltering and missing their product cycle to Nvidia's involvement with Xbox, and ATI may decide they don't want to repeat Nvidia's mistakes. ATI may choose to devote all their resources to the PC GPU market, and avoid being sidetracked and thrown off pace by branching into the console business.

In their last press release about profits ATI specifically mentioned their profits of Flipper, so I don't see them quitting console business when everything is going fine.

 

[fbg1]

If the xbox2 has nvidia tech and a faster intel cpu , say 3ghz p4(which for 2005 should be cheap) and say an nv 50 modded ( who knows just a guess as to what they would have ) and gamecube 2 goes with a faster chip mabye a 2 ghz gekko chip modded a bit or a new kind of chip and goes with whatever ati has at the time it would be much much easier to make it backwards compatible.

Would it? I think that would depend on how many Xbox games are coded purely to the DX API, and how many use assembly or a combination of assembly and DX. If most games use assembly, then I don't see how Xbox 2 can be backwards compatible, unless it contains the original XCPU and XGPU. For example, would assembly written for a GeForce 3 work unmodified on the GeForce FX? The two chips are significantly different architecturally, as are P4 and P3 (XCPU). That's the backwards compatibility issue facing Xbox2, as I see it.

Sony on the other hand would either need to shrink both the psx and ps2 and put it in the ps3 or hope to god they can make a bleem type deal to emulate it(ps2 has a psx in one chip inside the console)

They've already shrunk the EE and GS into a single chip, and I know no reason why they won't stick it in the PS3 like the did with the PSX's chip in PS2. And by 2005, the ~10 year old IOP should be quite cheap, enough to include in PS3 too. Sony may not do that, but I think it would be cool for PS3 to be backwards compatible with the entire PS and PS2 libraries.

Imo, I think Sony will have an easier time making PS3 backwards compatible.

 

[fbg1]

Also, I do not believe Nvidia is behind because they focused too much on XBox. The XBox GPU was simply a slightly specialized version of one of Nvidia's desktop PC chips. it falls inbetween NV20 and NV25. Nvidia's late-ness is much more likely due to TMSC's 0.13 process troubles and getting brand new technology, NV30, with 3Dfx's technology to work. being a massive 125M transistors probably didn't help matters. I doubt this will affect NV35 and NV40's tape out schedule much at all.

All of what you say is true, although now that I think about it, Nvidia did more than just add an extra vertex shader to GF3. They also made the MCP and memory system. Essentially they made everything but the XCPU. So I can see how devoting some of your finite engineer resources to that could slow them down on GFFX. But obviously the .13 UMC and TSMC problems didn't help either.

 

[fbg1]

In their last press release about profits ATI specifically mentioned their profits of Flipper, so I don't see them quitting console business when everything is going fine.

Thanks for the update. It'll be interesting to see b/c this time they'll actually have to design the chip themselves. Last time, ATI bought ArtX after ArtX had already designed Flipper.

 

[tupelo]

(only 3Dfx and PowerVR were highly publicized) Sega choose PowerVR because of it had the best price/performance ratio of the three. Lockheed and 3Dfx were more expensive.

If I remeber correctly(and this could be totally incorrect), Sega ditched 3dfx and went with powerVR at the urging of MS. .

This could be totall bullshit ... I just remember reading it during the blackbelt/dural days.

 

[megadrive0088]

It'll be interesting to see b/c this time they'll actually have to design the chip themselves. Last time, ATI bought ArtX after ArtX had already designed Flipper.

Yes I agree. it'll be interesting with ATI designing the next graphics chip for Nintendo. there are potentially a lot more recources behind the next Nintendo GPU/VPU with ATI than with a smaller start-up like ArtX.

 

[fbg1]

If ATI uses an Rx00 derivative, won't the next GC be DX and OGL compatible also? That's a weird thought. Maybe they'll call it the Nintendo OGLBox, and base the API on OGL2.0 or something. lol.