Nintendo DS 3d performance

[Megadrive1988]

AFAIK the N64 has a primitive t&l unit.

isn't that the RSP (Reality Signal Processor) portion of the RCP?

Will this thing give voodoo1 level graphics? How about voodoo2?

well, going by 120,000 polygons rendered/displayed on screen, I'd say sub-Voodoo1. because Nintendo 64 is sub-Voodoo1 and DS is roughly on par with Nintendo 64, maybe a bit less than N64.

however if you go by DS's 4M verts/sec, then you could say it's on the same level as Voodoo2 (which was 3M verts peak, i think) in that respect. Although I would say no, DS is not on Voodoo2's level, because fillrate on DS is 30M pixels/sec, while Voodoo2 was 90M pixels/sec

I'd go with... DS is less than Voodoo1 and roughly on par with N64, to put it simply

 

[PC-Engine]

You have to keep in mind that DS has a lower resolution to fill so 30M pixel/s doesn't mean it's worse than V1.

 

[Shogmaster]

Sonic:

> I don't see Shogmaster doing anything wrong right now in regards to trolling.

You would if you were familiar with his posting record on GAF.

Let's see, the only threads I "troll" on at GA is the Mac v PC threads so which one of those Mac guys are ya?

BTW, Hey Gordon! How's Vancouver!

 

[Lazy8s]

I'm not sure that's the same Dural...?

 

[Lazy8s]

Errr, sorry, I see you were actually talking about Edge.

 

[Guden Oden]

Re: ...

AFAIK the N64 has a primitive t&l unit.

Not really true. It was fully programmable and handled transforms, lighting and clipping, could do skinning etc, so it's more advanced than what's in a GF2, or even first-gen Radeon series. It's just slow, and/or poorly utilized in many titles, that's all. Factor 5 was one of the few really pushing the RSP and its vector processor, but then again it seems Nintendo was stupid and didn't allow low-level access to the RSP to many devs either.

 

[gurgi]

I'm more interested to see what Nintendo develops for the DS than seeing the DS itself.

As for Sony, I think they are going to have to come down in price for the PSP to be successful. I'm getting one at launch (is that 2k5 now?).. but I just don't see many non game fanatics making the plunge at that high a price point.

 

[Fox5]

AFAIK the N64 has a primitive t&l unit.

isn't that the RSP (Reality Signal Processor) portion of the RCP?

Will this thing give voodoo1 level graphics? How about voodoo2?

well, going by 120,000 polygons rendered/displayed on screen, I'd say sub-Voodoo1. because Nintendo 64 is sub-Voodoo1 and DS is roughly on par with Nintendo 64, maybe a bit less than N64.

however if you go by DS's 4M verts/sec, then you could say it's on the same level as Voodoo2 (which was 3M verts peak, i think) in that respect. Although I would say no, DS is not on Voodoo2's level, because fillrate on DS is 30M pixels/sec, while Voodoo2 was 90M pixels/sec

I'd go with... DS is less than Voodoo1 and roughly on par with N64, to put it simply

Hmm, I thought the n64's raw specs in some area were somewhere in between voodoo and voodoo 2, but it was severely lacking in some areas and very inefficient.

BTW, where did the rogue squadron games use the RSP? If anything I'd expect Rare's games too, as they had some shiny effects and stuff in perfect dark and conker's bad fur day that still can't be emulated properly.

 

[Edge]

Shog, Vancouver is great these days, come up for a visit! Stop being an Xbox fan, and get yourself a real console (GCN!!!)

 

[Tagrineth]

BTW, where did the rogue squadron games use the RSP? If anything I'd expect Rare's games too, as they had some shiny effects and stuff in perfect dark and conker's bad fur day that still can't be emulated properly.

Try running Rogue Squadron or Battle for Naboo on an Emulator.

Go on, I dare ya.

 

[Fox5]

BTW, where did the rogue squadron games use the RSP? If anything I'd expect Rare's games too, as they had some shiny effects and stuff in perfect dark and conker's bad fur day that still can't be emulated properly.

Try running Rogue Squadron or Battle for Naboo on an Emulator.

Go on, I dare ya.

Well, I can run the PC demo, and I don't think I remember anything special. What, were the ships shiny, or did it have good lighting?

 

[Tagrineth]

BTW, where did the rogue squadron games use the RSP? If anything I'd expect Rare's games too, as they had some shiny effects and stuff in perfect dark and conker's bad fur day that still can't be emulated properly.

Try running Rogue Squadron or Battle for Naboo on an Emulator.

Go on, I dare ya.

Well, I can run the PC demo, and I don't think I remember anything special. What, were the ships shiny, or did it have good lighting?

Neither of them run at all, or they might get through the menus but will crash in-game.

An older version of Nemu64 can get in-game, but with no textures (all black surfaces) and many clipping problems.

 

[Guden Oden]

BTW, where did the rogue squadron games use the RSP?

ALL N64 games use the RSP for transforms and sound at minimum, sometimes more. Most titles do use Nintendo's libraries though, which is why so many titles can be high-level emulated pretty easily too. The Rogue Squadron titles and some others from major developers use custom RSP microcode. RS uses the vector co-processor for realtime lighting for the laser blasts, possibly landscape generation etc. Indiana Jones & the infernal machine (also Factor 5) have custom microcode too that works out the RSP/vector processor for dynamic lighting, skinning etc.

These games can't be high-level emulated, since you can't intercept any standard library function calls (they don't have them)...

 

[gurgi]

Maybe I'm showing my n00bness here, but why not emulate the metal then?

 

[Fox5]

Probably lack of knowledge, and maybe lack of power. Geforce 4 MX and a ghz processor are considered high end for the emulation community. Maybe there are just no easy equivilents on PCs for some of the stuff?

 

[Fleet-C]

New news/rumors about the DS

http://www.jeux-france.com/news3747.html

-Final name won't be Nitro nor DS
-Compatible with GBA
-Less than 150 euros
-220MIPS

Now, I know that you won't believe it right away, and it might be in fact completly wrong BUT, they are usualy right, it's not a fansite and they know a lot of people in the industry, mostly from Infogrames/Atari I believe.

 

[Deadmeat]

...

http://spong.com/detail/news.asp?mode=news&type=n&cid=&pid=&vid=&prid=6355

According to various development sources in the US and Europe, there are development models of Nintendo's intriguing DS twin screen console doing the rounds complete with a two level of the unilaterally acclaimed Mario 64.

Although this news is as smoky as it is mirrored, it does point towards the expected Nintendo 64 software release explosion, widely predicted to grace the DS upon its release towards the end of this year.

Another interesting point to note is that Nintendo does love to launch its hardware with a Mario game available from day one. Given the fact that, under the bonnet, the NDS is a very similar beast to the Nintendo 64, a ported remake of Mario 64 now seems closer to reality than ever before - great news for gaming and, when coupled with the looming Mario 128, great news for Nintendo and its fans.

No Nintendo official was available for comment - or 'no comment', as would surely have been the case - at time of press.

Expect the full unveiling to be something of a carnival when it takes place in Los Angeles this May.

So, DS can handle N64 quality graphics indeed. Why did Nintendo then not use iQUE chipset instead???

 

[Guden Oden]

Deadmeat;
I can't believe you take anything Spong posts seriously. Those guys have made up more bogus articles than just about anyone else in the biz. (Excepting the inquirer perhaps). As a matter of fact, I would barely trust them if they said water is wet...

Anyway, I have a sneaking suspicion Ique or WTH the thing's called wouldn't make a good portable chipset because it's got RDRAM in it which is expensive and sucks power. The entire chipset might be poorly suited for portable use from a power-useage standpoint.

Gurgi:
I don't know if there are any "to the metal" N64 emus. It'd certainly be possible, but it would require some talented guys to sit down and reverse-engineer the instruction set etc for the RCP, if there aren't full docs available for the thing already. They're doing that with the coprocessors for various SNES games, but maybe emu writers simply like that machine better than they do N64?

 

[Evil_Cloud]

Re: ...

http://spong.com/detail/news.asp?mode=news&type=n&cid=&pid=&vid=&prid=6355

According to various development sources in the US and Europe, there are development models of Nintendo's intriguing DS twin screen console doing the rounds complete with a two level of the unilaterally acclaimed Mario 64.

Although this news is as smoky as it is mirrored, it does point towards the expected Nintendo 64 software release explosion, widely predicted to grace the DS upon its release towards the end of this year.

Another interesting point to note is that Nintendo does love to launch its hardware with a Mario game available from day one. Given the fact that, under the bonnet, the NDS is a very similar beast to the Nintendo 64, a ported remake of Mario 64 now seems closer to reality than ever before - great news for gaming and, when coupled with the looming Mario 128, great news for Nintendo and its fans.

No Nintendo official was available for comment - or 'no comment', as would surely have been the case - at time of press.

Expect the full unveiling to be something of a carnival when it takes place in Los Angeles this May.

So, DS can handle N64 quality graphics indeed. Why did Nintendo then not use iQUE chipset instead???

- Power usage
- Processing power for two screens
- Backwards compatibility with GBA
- Architecture, Nintendo DS is meant to be programmer friendly.

IQue was only meant for direct conversions of N64 games (in China!), not to create new games...

 

[Paul]

I can't believe you take anything Spong posts seriously. Those guys have made up more bogus articles than just about anyone else in the biz. (Excepting the inquirer perhaps). As a matter of fact, I would barely trust them if they said water is wet...

It's true. PS3 specs revealed at GDC 2003 anyone? Mind you they were *Dead* certain about it too.