Nintendo 3DS hardware thread

Better shots courtesy of Siliconera

 

I can see jaggies, so obviously not much in the way of anti-aliasing. Wasn't this thing supposed to do 4xAA as standard or something?

 

Thanks sfried. Nice shots. I did comment on some before, where you could see the biggest compromises were made in the backgrounds. That's probably to be expected for a fighting game.

I do kind of wonder why those shots have been slightly cropped.

Grall; So far I don't think we've seen anything that has AA except some shots that I think were labeled as not native renders. Where did you see 4xAA standard cited?

 

Given the general level of sophistication in the rest of the hardware I would be surprised if it supports framebuffer compression ... without which MSAA support in other parts of the pipeline becomes mostly irrelevant.

 

Heh, looks slightly better than PSP...

Just kidding.

About the lack of AA, is it really that big of a problem? From these screens, the jaggies aren't really that noticeable unless you're looking at relatively straight objects like the belt or Ryu's super attack. Looks like you can turn off the ink shading effects too. I really didn't like it in the PC version.

 

Nothing stated per se as Nintendo hasn't even announced what GPU they're using I believe, much less its full specs... It's just some impression I may have erroneously picked up in this thread, I don't really know.

 

made a huge post on this but i got owned, anyway.

answer to yoru question yes and no.

I hate edges, dont want them, dont like them. While you or other people hardly notice them, i get kinda frustrated about it.

Is it a priority for nintendo, no ofcourse not. after finding a gpu which can throw out way better graphics, and into 3d + long lasting battery, they surely aint gona place a option like that in it which hardly adds anything usefulls towards there 99% of there buyers. Ofcourse there is that 1% that does matter, but there is always a group that isn't happy about something.

no edges = better ofcourse, but if it results in a reduce on the graphical deparment in order to substain the steady smooth fps, no ty.

Its just pefectly normal that people get used to the already known stuff, and want more to just perfect it. but at the end the reality kicks in and does its job.

But its always dam nice to analyse stuff in order to see if stuff gets used or not, because such thing can really make de 3DS for somebody or Break it for himself.

ofcourse is the 3DS better looking graphics etc then the PSP. Wouldn't make sense for nintendo to place the same gpu inside the 3DS as teh PSP after so many years, when there are actually more faster usefuller and better gpu's around.

anyway my 50 cent.

 

They are perfectly capable of it

Someone is saying that the stereoscopic effect attenuates a little the edges

 

yes ofcourse it does. what AA does is nothing more then breaking edges down with multiple colors a pixel.

The same thign happens if you watch teh game through 2 different sides. while you see the edge at the 1 screen, the other screen will see a different color probably. and it cuts it down.

Atleast this is what i looks like to me.

wii-ds crew released today there exprience with the 3DS. What they did say it looks like HD, equal to better then the wii graphics. and the edge do not show themself basicly.

So i dont think the edges are going to be a huge problem to start with.

Dont forget that all those pictures on the internet are from the 2D side. and not the 3D. Which is the side that doesn't reduce the egdes at all.

 

No, it doesn't work like that. Your eyes will converge to map the edge pixels of the same object from different viewpoints. A lack of AA combined with depth makes edges stand out even moreso in stereoscopic rendering, as reported by Sony while investigating best rendering practice for 3D.

 

From the Marvell Q2 CC:

Wait.. what? Is it possible that the 3DS SoC was custom designed by Marvell with a DMP GPU and their in-house ARM CPU core? It would be a very strange partnership, but if one of the reasons Tegra got dropped is Nintendo got annoyed at one of their Japanese partners (which is plausible I guess), then maybe. Alternatively maybe it's a two-chip solution: ARMADA 100 (no 3D) + DMP chip. Or maybe this is just Marvell using very poor phrasing and it's really not a 'gaming platform' that drove their revenue growth. We'll see.

 

Whatever it is, it'll provide a good look at Marvell's take on ARMv7.

 

Yep - well... unless it's Armada 100-based (i.e. 2 chips with a separate DMP 3D chip), in which case it'll provide a good look at Intel/Marvell's take on ARMv5

 

We've already had that look, it wasn't a very impressive one.

Since Kirkwood is what made it into SheevaPlug and I'm not aware of any ARMv7 and dual issue Armada CPUs being out there in anything commercial (if someone has something give me a link please) I think this is what we're more like to see in 3DS (if it's really a Marvell CPU). But I think that also fits pretty well.. I fully expect 3DS to be around ~500MHz ARM11 level. However, in this case it could mean with 256KB of L2 cache, which makes a tremendous difference.

However, I do hope the CPU has an FPU; I'm seeing conflicting information on whether or not the ARMv5 Armadas actually do. Anand says yes, but I can't see any mention of it in any of the product briefs, which seems like a strange thing to omit. On the other hand, it seems strange for up to 2GHz ARM CPUs not having FPUs too.

EDIT: Okay, I guess they have FPUs - not clear what ISA it uses though (the v6/v7 CPUs do use VFPv3).

This is an interesting read for more on Marvell CPUs:

http://www.linleygroup.com/pdf/WP_MRVL.pdf

 

my understanding was that VFPv3 appeared in v7, and v6 was predominantly VFPv2, no?

 

Yeah, but they say the CPUs "support both ARMv6 and ARMv7", which I think just makes them ARMv7 and the stuff about supporting v6 is just pointless marketing talk. The block diagrams say "FPU v3.0" which I assume is VFPv3.

 

Marvell's chip is for MS Natal, not 3DS, and not the main processor.
But anyway, it's a very good deal for Marvell.

 

Cheers, that makes a lot more sense. And indeed that's a pretty good deal and fits better to their strengths (obviously not as big a deal, but that's not the point)

 

Didn't want to make a new thread, but Apple today said that iPod Touch outsells PSP and Nintendo DS combined.