MS's "secret weapon" against the PS3 (Arstechnica)

[MobiusOne]

From this Arstechnica article dated January 2, 2007: Head start: the Xbox 360 and the next generation

Ana is a bot

It's time to put the systems in the room to the test and check out how the games look and how the Xbox 360 and PS3 handle upscaling. "If you really wanted to be mean you would have run these tests in 720p or 1080i," I say, referring to the issues that Sony is having with those two resolutions. I appreciate the fact that they wanted to show the PS3 looking as good as possible, and I'm surprised this is something they didn't bring up earlier. They realize what I'm talking about, and Scott Henson opens a small package and shows me what's inside.

"Is that it?" I ask. He nods.

"We call it Ana. This is the scaling chip that's in the 360," he tells me.

It's odd to see it—a tiny little chip—but this may be one of the secret weapons the 360 has against the PS3. The PS3 has no internal hardware scaler, which means games that are 720p native can only be shown in 720p or 480p; there is no scaling up to 1080p or 1080i. This causes people with older HDTVs to have issues with the available resolutions, and keeps them from playing the games in anything but 480p. It's a vexing problem for a system that's supposed to be HD, and this issue is one of the most challenging that Sony faces. I ask the Microsoft guys how important it was for them to include a scaler in the 360.

"It was a critical design decision; we wanted the 360 to be high-definition, not just 1080p or some other standard. That's why we included component cables in the box; there is no HDTV that doesn't have a component in," said Greenberg.

Good read although it's info we already knew. Not too shabby for hardware that was supposedly "inferior."

 

[kyleb]

It's clear they hope to use that year-long head start to its fullest. We put in Call of Duty 3 on both systems. Again the PS3 drops the resolution to 720p. We play a bit of the game, and honestly I can't tell a lot of difference between the two versions of the game. The 360 does look a touch better upscaled into 1080p, but it's a subtle difference. They both look great, with only a few differences in coloring. If it wasn't for the resolution advantage of the 360, I don't know if there would have been any real way to tell the difference between the two systems.

Funny, the PS3 is actually the one with the resolution advantage in that title as it renders the game at 1280x720 where as the 360 renders the game at about 2/3s that resolution. The 360 does have the benefit of 2xAA and running smoother thanks to the lower resolution though, which shows the real benefit of the 360's internal scaler. Shame the guy writing the article obviously doesn't understand such things.

Oh and what you bolded was just silly:

It's odd to see it—a tiny little chip—but this may be one of the secret weapons the 360 has against the PS3. The PS3 has no internal hardware scaler, which means games that are 720p native can only be shown in 720p or 480p; there is no scaling up to 1080p or 1080i.

Of couse there is scaling to 1080p or 1080i, on 1080p and many 1080i displays that is as such displays handle the scaling themselves.

 

[-tkf-]

From this Arstechnica article dated January 2, 2007: Head start: the Xbox 360 and the next generation

Good read although it's info we already knew. Not too shabby for hardware that was supposedly "inferior."

Arstechnica the new 360 fans?

Supposedly the scaler chip in the PS3 is broke (acording to Joker4554334), well could the scaling be handle by 1 SPE? Specificly the 1 SPE that is set aside for the OS. Couldn´t sony "simply" enable a scaler option which disables the OS during play and uses the SPE for scaling?

Ohh well, maybe i´m the only one who is annoyed that a complete SPE is used for "background downloads" when i would rather i working on the game i play

 

[StefanS]

Hardly a technical article / topic. Thus moved.

 

[Acert93]

Funny, the PS3 is actually the one with the resolution advantage in that title as it renders the game at 1280x720 where as the 360 renders the game at about 2/3s that resolution. The 360 does have the benefit of 2xAA and running smoother thanks to the lower resolution though, which shows the real benefit of the 360's internal scaler. Shame the guy writing the article obviously doesn't understand such things.

Has that ever been confirmed in regards to the resolution CoD3 runs on the 360?

 

[Carl B]

If this is the secret weapon, then MS needs either a) better secrets (because we've known about this forever) or, b) better weapons (because this gives 360 an edge only with owners of outmoded RP CRT HDTVs)

 

[Acert93]

If this is the secret weapon, then MS needs either a) better secrets (because we've known about his forever) or, b) better weapons (because this gives 360 an edge only with owners of outmoded RP CRT HDTVs)

True on a, mostly true on b. Another area it gives an advantage is latency. There were some complaints last year when the 360 was released and people allowed the TV to do scaling. The internal 360 scaler is like "quality control" on the image. It gets there at the best resolution the set can receive and means little to no processing on the TV end.

Kind of shocking the PS3 scaler is broken (or not present/available). With all the various native resolutions of displays (even outside 720p and 1080; e.g. off the top of my head 1280x768, 1024x768, 1366x768, and so forth). While newer TVs may be fine the reality is that your don't want to spurn the initial install base.

I wonder: Does HDMI have anything to do with this? Digital signal, so how does this impact the ability for scaled images? You would think it would be straight forward for someone like NV seeing as DVI has been around for a while.

 

[one]

An analog device that hinders HDMI is a secret weapon now? Too stretching if you ask me...

 

[Ty]

The internal 360 scaler is like "quality control" on the image. It gets there at the best resolution the set can receive and means little to no processing on the TV end.

The point is that unless the game runs (renders) natively in the resolution of the TV's pixel structure, then the scaling occurs somewhere, either within the 360 or within the TV itself. For lower end TVs, it's possible that the 360 does a better job, but I doubt that is the case with current mediocre and up TVs.

 

[pipo]

The scaler has the advantage of native VGA output also.

I know quite a few people who use this, because a lot of last years LCD screens have it as an input.

My 1280x720 native projector is pretty happy with it too.

 

[Shifty Geezer]

I think Acert is saying that the scaling is executed to a suitable quality and speed that all users get the right experience. In PS3's case, if leaving the TV to scale, you may experience lag and low-quality scaling.

 

[TurnDragoZeroV2G]

I wonder: Does HDMI have anything to do with this? Digital signal, so how does this impact the ability for scaled images? You would think it would be straight forward for someone like NV seeing as DVI has been around for a while.

Hmmm...

Scaling is a digital process.

 

[Tagrineth]

Considering the widespread quality issues with PS2 games that don't use standard resolutions, even on high end TVs, I'd say PS3 does have scaling issues.

 

[Acert93]

The point is that unless the game runs (renders) natively in the resolution of the TV's pixel structure, then the scaling occurs somewhere, either within the 360 or within the TV itself. For lower end TVs, it's possible that the 360 does a better job, but I doubt that is the case with current mediocre and up TVs.

And hence "quality control" because not every HDTV owner has a "current mediocre and up TV".

The arguement that current TVs have low latency, scale well, and so forth is exactly why Sony has the problem they do with scaling. It was either a poor assumption on Sony's part or a decision based on the size of the market with less than ideal scaling & display and/or desire for people to upgrade to the newest/biggest/greatest 1080p/HDMI set which Sony has been strongly pushing since they first announced the PS2 in spring 2005.

Either way, the point is that the broken scaler in the PS3 does mean users with outdated CRT HDTVs or users with poor scalers (or ones with high latency when scaling or using image enhancing technologies) are in for a less than ideal ride. A functional scaler means everyone, even those with crappy HDTVs, can get the best possible image their set can receive.

And personally, as a gamer who plays action oriented games like FPS online and racing games the thought of added latency is a negative. As a game device that will be delivering media that is latency sensative taking this into consideration in your design is a pretty important design choice. Of course I absolutely plan to play next gen games on a PC monitor (CRT at this point) which avoids the whole problem of TV based scalers but further accents the issue of no scaler at all. e.g. Currently most 360 games take the 720p image and will add a letterbox around it when displayng it on a monitor via the VGA cables. Kind of auto letterboxing. Of course you can choose a 4:3 format as well. Whatever you prefer. While I am hopefully the PS3 will support VGA cables at some point, the fact it lacks a hardware scaler would most likely mean hit and miss support.

I guess this means I should stop being such a tight wad and go buy a 1080p HDMI HDTV!

 

[Acert93]

I think Acert is saying that the scaling is executed to a suitable quality and speed that all users get the right experience. In PS3's case, if leaving the TV to scale, you may experience lag and low-quality scaling.

Heh, ever to the point

But yes, that is what I ment--and in a much more orderly and concise fashion I must admit!

 

[Rolf N]

The lack of a flexible, working scaler in the PS3 is a real, tangible mistake IMO. As opposed to, you know, not so real mistakes that frequently get brought up as mistakes.

I don't give a damn about the issues with 1080i sets, those are not only a rounding error quantity, but they are demonstrably not HDTVs. Anyone who bought one should probably just lift it 10m above the the salesman who pretended it was and then drop it.

But:
PS2 games looking like shit for everyone is a pretty big deal.
PS3 games looking like shit on SDTVs (no automatic supersampling) is a pretty big deal.
Losing the ability to make decisions and tradeoffs in fill vs fps vs over/undersampling that are independent of the dispay that's hooked up is a pretty big deal. It triples the QA test matrix.

I hope they can implement a working solution on that reserved SPE, or work around whatever other issues there may be purely with firmware.

 

[Rainbow Man]

I don't understand why people say the scaler is broken or there is no scaler chip etc.

I know on all my nvidia graphics cards with dvi on them there's been an option in the control panel to set scaling to either display or graphics card. and there is no separate scaler chip on pc graphics cards.

So there has to be a scaler on the chip itself. And PS3 has a PC graphics chip from what I understand. So why would it be broken when it works on PCs?

Hrm. Maybe I'm simply to oold. Explain using big words please.
Peace.

 

[Dave Baumann]

I know on all my nvidia graphics cards with dvi on them there's been an option in the control panel to set scaling to either display or graphics card. and there is no separate scaler chip on pc graphics cards.

So there has to be a scaler on the chip itself. And PS3 has a PC graphics chip from what I understand. So why would it be broken when it works on PCs?

That would presuppose a.) there is a display pipeline in RSX .b) if there is a display pipeline it is being used.

IIRC comments in the "RSX Vertex limited" thread mentioned that that the AA downsampling at the DAC that is used on NVIDIA PC chips isn't in operation I would guess that NVIDIA's display pipeline isn't in operation.

 

[Dave Baumann]

An analog device that hinders HDMI ...

This is a poorly thought out connection.

 

[Acert93]

That would presuppose a.) there is a display pipeline in RSX .b) if there is a display pipeline it is being used.

IIRC comments in the "RSX Vertex limited" thread mentioned that that the AA downsampling at the DAC that is used on NVIDIA PC chips isn't in operation I would guess that NVIDIA's display pipeline isn't in operation.

Good eye Dave. It was mentioned on NV GPUs that, e.g., the buffers for a 720p 4xMSAA image would be ~28MB each but on the PS3 the frontbuffer being output for display is resolved down and depth and sample data are discarded so you have about a 3.5MB frontbuffer. A very nice VRAM savings, but this could indicate (as you noted) that RSX's display pipeline isn't being used. Conjecture of course, and it would be great for a dev confirmation if possible, but this seems like a plausible theory. IIRC another dev said there was a scaler in the PS3 but they were not allowed to use it.