New Technical Information About RSX???...But In Japanese

You can say that about anything on either system. They both have strengths and weaknesses.
Console developers play to the strengths of each console.

 

What difference would an abstraction like DX10 have on R500 development? More specifically, having been developing around the architecture for approximately a year, what has been the impediment to implementing those "sophisticated pixel shad[ers]"? Furthermore, even compensating for the learning curve, is there any indication that there will be such an increase attributable to the architecture?

 

however, Xenos has more a modern shader level, closer to that of shader model 4.0 something RSX cannot boast. also, without the help of Xenon or CELL CPUs, the Xenos can produce more polygons than RSX can.

 

Well Xenos isn't a DX10 part, I'm sure we can both agree on that, but you may be misunderstanding what I'm saying. I think it would be fair to call it a 'pre' DX10 part. The point is though, that it's not just a matter of devs having had a year to familiarize themselves with it... sure, this is the case when looking at first-party devs maybe, but the majority of the (Western) third/second-party support MS enjoys is coming from PC-familiar devs, and in that sense their approaches tend to reflect PC thinking.

As DX10 comes on the scene - and even now - the trend seems such that it should shift increasingly towards dynamic branching in shaders, which Xenos is well-equiped to handle. As those practices take hold, they will see use on Xenos where RSX is somewhat constrained in that respect.

Now, to what extent these practices will take hold, and what ultimately it will mean for visuals on the screen vs more 'conventional' methods, we just have to wait and see. But I was simply reasserting Acert's position that although RSX has the 'power,' there are aspects of Xenos' architecture we're not really seeing come into play yet.

 

XBD has it. It really is all up to devs and devs on both sides of the fence are gonna do some great stuff. Personally, I think games are more art constrained than anything else. Technical excellence is only one aspect of graphics. Pairing up great technology with the right art style is important, likewise asset quality. TF2 on Source is a great example of such, likewise Trusty Bell.

Anyhow, topic has been beaten to death. Time will tell one way or another, and if companies keep leveraging middleware it may be years before we get a solid indication of anything!

 

Megadrive,

Remember that Barbarian told us the RSX has had a few shader instructions added. Perhaps that will make it a tad closer to Shader Model 4.0.

 

No, not by any stretch. Well, I guess it depends on your definition of 'tad'. But there's no point thinking RSX's shaders are SM3.5 or the sort because of a few more instructions.

 

I should have said very small ammount closer to Shader Model 4.0. Every little tiny bit helps.

 

I dont think they say Xenos lacks shader power at all...

It says, *some* developers are having poor alu perfomance... Going by that could be a million factors causing this, including the concurrency in shaders, because if i remember correctly xenos is also a heavy threadly design...

I also remember a slide of an Epic presentation where they claimed they resolved concurrency issues in their shaders allowing to use much more alu ops.

Since its a japanese web site, i'm guessing thats japanese developers talking, and judging by the avarage 360's games coming from there I would say they are not using any shaders at all...

Thats of course a problem Ms needs to adress, it should be easy to develop for X360, and achieve at least a mininum graphical bar, at least its what she claims...

 

Yes, remember, Capcom haven't had any problems with shading capacity, but rather with fillrate and textures. Although you also have to admit that Lost Planet isn't making such a big use of shaders on most surfaces, and the wide open enviroments and many effects do usually stress the parts of the GPU they are having problems with. So it's more likely that bottlenecks depend on the design and goals of each particular engine.

 

Personally, if shading is such a special strength of the RSX then I would like to know what exactly about it's shading ability is enhanced or unique. We recently learned it had some extra texture lookup and fast vector normalize instructions added. But is this the extent of what makes it so good at shading?

 

Nothing about the RSXs shading capability is enhanced or unique - it is simply that by putting 24 NV47-class pixel pipes in there, it has the ALU advantage over Xenos in that regard.

 

I'm surprised they had problem with textures..

 

Not sure if it already has been posted here:

http://ps3forums.com/showthread.php?t=30662

Some stuff....

 

If you don't have enough bandwidth for HDR+AA you can be more clever and use less bandwidth
If you don't have enough fillrate for your uber particles effects you can be more clever and use less fillrate.
If you don't have enough computational power for your shaders you can be more...no sorry, you're f&%£"d

 

Fixed it for you bud.

 

Yeah. I guess it comes with the job...

 

....that was a joke ....bud

 

Yes, it was

 

You've got your smilies mixed up then.