Provocative comment by Id member about PS2 (and Gamecube)!

[cthellis42]

Try playing Wild Arms 3 and then going back to Suikoden 3.

Well you'll certainly get some whiplash going from one game to another, but it doesn't change the fact that the extra frames will pretty much go to waste. If one is throwing lots of live attacking or tricky jumping into one's RPG, then you have a lot more credence for wanting it.

 

[Simon F]

Tag just summed up my ENTIRE point in one reply. Thanks.

A majority of high end Xbox games are 30fps while many of the high end ps2 ones are 60. Case closed, I'm not the only one who thinks this..

One, likely, possibility is that the 60Hz games on PS2 are 60Hz 640x240, i.e. only doing field rendering. (in order to work around limited internal memory)

I suspect that the XBox & GC approaches might be similar to that used on DC, where the 50Hz(PAL) | 60Hz(NTSC) images were rendered at a full frame resolution (640x480) and were down-filtered/antialiased to produce each 50/60Hz 640x240 field. This results in a flicker-free yet sharp image.It does require twice as much fill but it is worth it.

 

[chaphack]

Well i have nothing against 30/60fps as long as the game is smooth. Though for all other things being equal, higher fps does rock. I brought up Suikoden 3 because the game is having dippy 30fps, FFX has a much more stable 30fps.

 

[Qroach]

Ok, I think the majority of us can agree that what Paul said about bandiwdth being limited on xbox compared to PS2, and bandwidth being the reason many games run at 30 frames persecond simply isn't true.

Regarding the 30 fps nonsense, you can find games on both platforms that are 30 or 60 fps. Both plat forms have their fair share of these games, and it's always a design consideration by the developer on what they want to achieve. it certainly isn't some sort of fault of the hardware.

As Simon and others have noted, there are many advantages and disadvantages to both architectures, and you can't claim one to be a big winner over the other in badwidth due to the platforms being so different. Arguing with numbers doesn't tell you how that bandwidth (high banwidth on ps2 needed to upload textures on the fly, and xbox having reach texture caches and lot's of system memory.) is being used.

Not only that, many PS2 games as simon noted run in lower resoloutions then other consoles, so it's not always a apples to apples comparrison. Something also has to be said for visual quality in the argument. Anyway I think all that need to be said, has been said on this topic. If paul can't see how he was wrong in his comments, then there's no point in arguing further...

 

[chaphack]

OK, so if I'd counted my conclusion would've been different. Well, that's an interesting one to think about... the proportion is actually about the same.

Exactly. 30fps/60fps is all over the shop, nothing "Xclusive" to the Xbox. I can name a few hotshot GC games that does 30fps, does that mean GC has a problem with 60fps too? Same with DC/PC games.

Paul is totally baseless in his Xbox = 30fps dreamy dreams. It is just like Nvidia/ATi cards, some games run better on Nvidia's while others run great on ATi's, but there is no issue that ATi has the better IQ of the two. Simple? Let Paul be, he is just upset about the reality of PS2 IQ problems.

 

[chaphack]

Insomniac has their own opinion as to why many high end Xbox games run at 30hz.

Beyond pipeline issues, we also use the IOP chip to decompress data on the fly in order to get the most out of the RAM space. Then there is the issue of shuffling several megabytes of textures into VRAM through the DMA each frame. To put it simply, I don't think anyone has ever overstated the complexity of programming for the PS2. But, on the other hand, the Xbox libraries won't allow you anywhere near the actual hardware, so there is little room for optimisation. Plus, the Xbox doesn't have the high speed vector units of the PS2, which may be why even the best Xbox games run at 30Hz. I seriously doubt we would have been able to make Ratchet and Clank run at 60Hz on the Xbox without drastically reducing the number of moving objects. So, ultimately, I think we've made the best platform choice for our game.

Not saying that it's true or not, but it's something to think about.

Yup, at the same thing dont forget to think about what ID/Itagaki/MotoGP-team has to say about the Xbox vs the rest too.

 

[notAFanB]

that's not what he was saying the the post. ie it was not intended to be a pissing context among devs.

 

[chaphack]

Same thing with me. No pissing contest intended

Simply pointing out what developers had to say. Dont you find devtalk about GC/PS2 != D3 + MotoGP having AI beyond PS2 capabilities + 2mths DOA2 port running at 120fps on Xbox in , interesting? Just something to think about.

DANG, TXB forums is down now, else i could have linked to what teh developer said.

 

[jvd]

This is now the third time I have deleted posts from this thread. One more time and I will lock this thread.

 

[Qroach]

who had a post removed? I didnt' even see it...

 

[jvd]

who had a post removed? I didnt' even see it...

Paul , randy and chap have all had posts removed.

 

[Qroach]

Sounds like a good collection of offenders.

 

[Panajev2001a]

There are several games on PlayStation 2 which run at 60 fps and do not use field rendering: GT3, GT4, Z.O.E. 2, TR: AOD, etc...

Qroach, I agree that in itself bandwidth on Xbox might not be a problem, but there are some considerations to make:

1) We are assuming that the caches, under the test workload, will be as efficient as nVIDIA planned them and cache efficiency is dependent on the workload the chip has to perform. If their efficiency is low then you can expect to see the bandwidth wall to show up.

2) Bandwidth might be a problem if we are trying to push lots of pixels per second ( make full use of the chip's fill-rate ), we have a good amount of textures per frame and T&L lots of triangles as I do believe that there is the possibility, not even a too remote possibility, that you would end up being bandwidth limited before being T&L + Fill-rate limited.

6.4 GB/s ( better say 5.4 GB/s as you need to allocate bandwidth to the CPU too ) for a processor capable of the fill-rate and T&L like NV2A is not that much.

Yes, even at 640x480.

MGS2: SOL on Xbox showed what converting PlayStation 2 origined rendering algortihms can yeld.

The way SOL did things on PlayStation 2 was slow on Xbox.

 

[chaphack]

But aint SOL just a quickie PCish/Xport? Still it ran/look fine aside from a few hiccups during the rain..

 

[notAFanB]

MGS2: SOL on Xbox showed what converting PlayStation 2 origined rendering algortihms can yeld.

But aint SOL just a quickie PCish/Xport? Still it ran/look fine aside from a few hiccups during the rain..

yea they 'could' have handled it better but SOL was a real fillrate killer anyway, and finding workarounds I guess just wasn't profitable.

 

[zurich]

Like I said before though, doesn't NV2X have more Z-tricks/crossbar controller/mem saving tricks than the other two consoles? I really don't think bandwidth should be a problem..

 

[Dave Glue]

There are several games on PlayStation 2 which run at 60 fps and do not use field rendering: GT3, GT4, Z.O.E. 2, TR: AOD, etc...

Considering one of the largest criticisms of PS2's TR: AOD was the poor framerate, I'm curious as to why you thought to include that in your list?

 

[_phil_]

2mths DOA2 port running at 120fps on Xbox in , interesting? Just something to think about.

in fact ,it is more complicated :it's the dreamcast engine at the begining.

 

[chaphack]

There are several games on PlayStation 2 which run at 60 fps and do not use field rendering: GT3, GT4, Z.O.E. 2, TR: AOD, etc...

Considering one of the largest criticisms of PS2's TR: AOD was the poor framerate, I'm curious as to why you thought to include that in your list?

Same thing with ZOE2. Highly unstable framerates when things get messy. No idea how it compares to AOD though..

 

[London Geezer]

...and GR3 is field rendered....