PSP: Playable on show floor, impressions inside.

[Lazy8s]

With multimedia cores using MBX solutions already selling for $17 in quantity, there's no margin for significant cost savings in a comparable chip by going with in-house production.

 

[archie4oz]

With multimedia cores using MBX solutions already selling for $17 in quantity, there's no margin for significant cost savings in a comparable chip by going with in-house production.

Yes and no... Depends on what "in-house" capabilities I have... It's not just the simple matter of in-house or outsource that you guys are painting it to be...

Besides since we're talking portable *GameCube* how many MBX solutions are integrated with PowerPC currently (Any CoreConnect support?)? And while the MBX can deliver impressive fill-rates I haven't seen any MBX solution exceed 5million Tris/sec yet...

 

[Lazy8s]

archie4oz:

And while the MBX can deliver impressive fill-rates I haven't seen any MBX solution exceed 5million Tris/sec yet...

While PSP is looking good and all, I haven't seen some kind of performance advantage. Though, maybe the current demos of games aren't a good indicator of the new spec.

 

[Fox5]

archie4oz:

And while the MBX can deliver impressive fill-rates I haven't seen any MBX solution exceed 5million Tris/sec yet...

While PSP is looking good and all, I haven't seen some kind of performance advantage. Though, maybe the current demos of games aren't a good indicator of the new spec.

Have we seen anything done on mbx yet? MBX is like within 20% of the power of the dc, even the dc game with the most polygons plus 20% wouldn't come close to what PSP is already doing in some games.

 

[jvd]

archie4oz:

And while the MBX can deliver impressive fill-rates I haven't seen any MBX solution exceed 5million Tris/sec yet...

While PSP is looking good and all, I haven't seen some kind of performance advantage. Though, maybe the current demos of games aren't a good indicator of the new spec.

Have we seen anything done on mbx yet? MBX is like within 20% of the power of the dc, even the dc game with the most polygons plus 20% wouldn't come close to what PSP is already doing in some games.

I disagree with that . It may not have as many ploygons but it will have much better filtering and effects going on. Not to mention fsaa for free

 

[Fox5]

archie4oz:

And while the MBX can deliver impressive fill-rates I haven't seen any MBX solution exceed 5million Tris/sec yet...

While PSP is looking good and all, I haven't seen some kind of performance advantage. Though, maybe the current demos of games aren't a good indicator of the new spec.

Have we seen anything done on mbx yet? MBX is like within 20% of the power of the dc, even the dc game with the most polygons plus 20% wouldn't come close to what PSP is already doing in some games.

I disagree with that . It may not have as many ploygons but it will have much better filtering and effects going on. Not to mention fsaa for free

Well, I was only referring to polygon counts...and those do make a big difference, dc beats ps2 in pretty much every other area but the amount of polygons that ps2 can do is what puts it over dc in graphics.

 

[Ty]

I disagree with that . It may not have as many ploygons but it will have much better filtering and effects going on. Not to mention fsaa for free

Do we know what kind of filtering and effects the PSP supports (along with performance cost of them?) And I thought the FSAA on the MBX wasn't quite "free".

 

[jvd]

JVD:

DOesn't matter

How so? How about explaining why it doesn't matter? Simply negating my argument with your personal belief doesn't hold much weight in this debate nor in reality unfortunately.

I explained why later in my post. Read it
{quote}

Yup your point ?

The point that having other companies do fabbing for you costs money. You can't expect to have the same price for shrinking chips as your competitor that is in control over their entire process. Going through other external companies will make prices go up. Fail to recognise this and your belief or your simplistic calculation is damned to fail.[/quote]

Right because having your own fab and running it doesn't cost anything right ? Not only that but the tech to make the fabs was free ?

Please

Well how much power would the geko and filper draw running at the current speeds on 90nm tech ?

How much would they use with modifications for running in set up like this ?

Heh. you're the one that is trying to convince us that a portable GameCube would be possible at a price at $250 or lower. Seeing the way Sony designed their PSP and the rumoured price of $299 or higher makes it quite evident to me that it obviously isn't as easy. If PS2 were that easy to shrink and give it the price of a portable GC that you are dreaming of, I have absolutely no doubt Sony would have done that. Afterall, lower price and easier portable PS2 <-> PSP portings == no aditonal effort. Plus considering a PS2 portable at that price would even give them the advantage that SDK's are already available, developers can re-use their libraries for existing PS2 projects... The benefits of "JVD" scenario (no offence intended) are limitless... BUT wait! No, Sony however didn't go with a portable PS2 - they went with a PSP that isn't all that different to beginn with, but nonethless. Why JVD, why?

I'm asking for concrete numbers because i don't have them on hand and don't want to use wrong numbers .

Ps2 is already shrunk. Or is deadmeat right and its a 130 nm chip and not a 90nm chip ?

After all i remember many saying that it was in fact a 90nm chip. Which means the tech is already there. THey would have spent less money running it through the die shrink and mods to have it run cooler

I will also argue that the psp is hugely diffrent than the ps2 . Perhaps sony justs knows that the ps2 is a bitch to program for and wanted to provide a speed increase and other features the ps2 is not capable of . You know it being from 99 and all .

Is it because of insufficient battery life? Costs? I don't know, but I do know that it must be a pretty good reason why Sony decided to go with a slightly modified design. There is a reason why PSP, that I have no doubts is already optimized for optimal battery length, only has betweed 2.5 and 10 hours of playtime. There is a reason why Sony is considering selling it at a price range of $299 or higher. Bad company decisions? Or is it the best they can actually do with roughly PS2 specs? Do you really believe that a PS2 portable would be cheaper to make than the PSP as it is now - Let alone a GC portable being even cheaper? Sony's decisions and facts on the already customized PSP are confirmation enough that your scenario isn't quite on the basis of reality.

Right because that 10 hours with screen off playing only music is fantastic battery life ?

The reason why sony is selling it at 300$ or more is because of an expensive battery . Expensive lcd screen , umd feature , mp3 feature , wireless lan and all that fun stuff that is not needed on a game machine .

I could care less if i can watch movies on a video game system. I want to play video games. If i wanted to watch a movie i would buy a dvd player .

Yes the lcd is a factor. Of course they don't need to put the same lcd as sony does .

Of course not. They can just stick in the GBA advance display. Or wait, better - instead of a display, the can just put in a VGA-out and sell the mini displays with their own battery packs seperately.

Why would they need such a large screen ? I find my gba screen just fine. Even my game gear screen was great for displaying tv on it .

Just because someone sells a 5 thousand dollar plasma tv doesn't mean thats the least someone can sell it for. By all means go to a store and see tons of diffrent prices for the same screens but by diffrent companys .

Honestly, no one is suggesting that they need to have the exact same LCD in there as PSP. However, what they would need for a portable GameCube is certainly more expensive than what they are putting in GBA's and DS. They would also need to get them from outside since they don't make their own LCDs so expect you can add in more costs as well.

right . How much more would they need over the ds screen ? Come to think about it the ds costs 200$ has many more chips than a gc portable would have , two screens and one of them is a touch pad from my understanding. hmm they could perhaps use that same screen thus reducing costs even mroe .

They don't need to have umd , they don't need to have mp3 playback.

Mp3 didn't cost PSP a cent more JVD - not relevant. MP3 is done purely through software - even PC-Engine argued with me that the GBA could play mp3s with the right add-ons. Did Mp3 capability add costs to the PSP? No. Is it relevant to the on-going discussion? No. Case dropped.

right and how do u get the mp3s from your pc to your psp ? Magic pixie dust ? No there is tech and programs which will let u do it.
which all cost money.

UMD is a Sony in-house development. I have no reason to believe it added to the costs of the PSP anymore than it would have implementing mini cd's.

right cause sony is special and reserch , development and manufacturing doesn't cost anything ?

The only thing i can see as a problem is the disc drive.
Of course they can just use a cartridge based or another based distrubution .

Deja vu. Didn't Nintendo find themselves in a very similar position when they launched N64 years back? No cd-drive but then decided to go with cartridges. Sure, one can argue that the later cartridges did reach 256 MB (or was it 64MB) - I don't really want to question how much it costed Nintendo or the developers to actually use such an expensive cartridge. Same applies in this case with a portable GC. From what I have read on these forums, the maximum to expect in the near future on high performance cartdidges are 512MB? Lets assume they do use these cartridges: how much more expensive would it be for a dev to actually use such a cartridge opposed to a PSP dev using a disc (UMD)? Either the dev would pay, or Nintendo would. Either way, it adds cost which must be considered if the company behind it wants to turn a profit someday.

right and even if they go with the mini dvds they use now for the cube i don't expect battery life to be less than what the psp has with movies.

They could do just what sony does. Upload the stages into ram so they don't need to access the format at all .

After all many of u are willing to rebuy ps2 games on umd for your psp.

We weren't talking about content - this started about you saying that a portable GameCube is feasable at around $250. Conent is an entirely different discussion, one I wish not to discuss since it's not relevant to this discussion. However, I do wish to point out that most games are unique and not "ports" - though I have no doubt that there will be quick ports. That's up to consumer to decide though and really is not relevant on your claims on a portable GameCube.

Don't see your point here. I was merely pointing out that ports of gamecube games would sell just as well as ports of ps2 games will.

RIght and nintendo has been working in portable gaming devices for what now 12 years and has had succesfull products in that field . Basicly holding a monoply over it . Has sony been succesfull in this field yet ?

I brought up Sony's "consumer electronics" experience for a distinct reason: Through that, they have ACTUAL experience and know-how to make low-cost and low-power gadgets - a field they have specialised in since the birth of the walkman. This is valuable experience and is surely considered when making a handheld system like PSP. This means they have actual KNOW-HOW and EXPERIENCE in-house. Just look at their MiniDisc portables that have a play-time of 70 hours (firt generation portables had 2 to 3 hours). This valuable know-how is surely used within PSP. A portable GameCube would have to have similar power-saving technology/techniques behind it to be able to compete on battery time with "GameCube hardware".

Right because the first walkman was like the one on the market today sleak and hours of playtime off 1 double a . Hell no. They were huge huge things that drained batterys like no tommorow. Cd portables ? same things. They would use up insane power , skip like no tommorow and eventualy they brought out anti skip hardware that drained batterys even more till finally you can get 10 hours or so on one double a.

mini disc ? You mean the format that sony has tried to unsucessfuly launch in the usa twice now ?

Don't forget the first units of those. Poor sound quality and low battery life .

So are we going to wait a few years after the launch for sony to get the psp right ?

I don't under stand your 12 years experiance.

Yeah, Nintendo does have 12 years experience - one in which they held back the industry on a technlogy side and milked it for what it was worth. Really not comparable to what Sony had to invest to make their walkmans comparable to actually compete with hundreds of other companies. I am not disputing that Nintendo does have valuable experience - I am just question how their experience is all that relevant when it comes to making a portable system with GameCube hardware for under $250. Especially if they want to actually turn a profit on hardware which is the reason why I fail to see a GC portable for that price feasable.

I haven't seen nintendo hold back anyone. IT was the consumers . Consumers could have bought the linyx , gamegear , nomad , and other systems through out the years but they kept on buying gameboys .

Do u really think if sony took over the moble market and wasn't challenege that they too wouldn't keep putting out rehashes of the psp hardware ? THey would keep doing it over and over again because its smart busniess .

Just like if there was only ps2 and no ms or nintendo we will still have only ps2 and we would not be talking about ps3 .

right but not only does sony need to pay for the fabs , the new tech in the psp , the tweaking and the people to tweak it . Where as nintendo would pay someone else to deal with all these problems .

Ever studied basic economics JVD? It is clear that those fabs had to be build - but they were build for a reason and that reason was certainly worth it, or else a company such as Sony wouldn't have built them in the first place. A fab adds to the intial cost of a product, but yields great advantages since you don't pay per chip (you make them yourself) and you can drive down costs as you upgrade. In addition, one fab can be used for various products at the same time, as like Sony intends to do with CELL which will not only be used in PlayStation 3 products but also in other consumer electronics. The advantage of driving down costs and not paying per chip is far greater and cheaper for a company such as Sony than a company like that doesn't / can't. This is the biggest advantage Sony has and the best one too: they can push technlogy as far as their fabbing technology allows them to and still turn a profit. Nintendo's best option is to make deals - and with every deal, there's someone more making bucks.

Well its interesting .

The fabs cost billions .

They will only be worth it if a ) yields are good b ) the products built in the fabs sell .

Where as with nintendo the fabs they go to depend on a ) yields and b )customers .

Now for sony a and b are vital . for the companys that nintendo goes to a is the most vitale as there are almost allways more customers willing to come if the yields are good no matter if thep roducts made there fail to become succesfull as longs as the fabs performed as promised .

Also look at the 3d card add ins . Nvidia has allway been fabless . 3dfx was fabless and bought sti and started making chips at thier fabs and went broke .

So while having your own fabs can save you money its not allways a sure thing and even in the end the savings will not be as huge as you'd like everyone to think

RIght ibm , ati and whoever owns the ram. Which nintendo already has good relationships with and the companys have experiance with both of these chips and lay outs which sony doesn't have the privliage of with the psp.

In business relationships "good" is relative. Its all about the money. True, Sony doesn't build everything themselves and needs to rely on "business releationships" as well. The point is though, Sony has most things in-house while Nintendo clearly doesn't. Sony can drive down costs as the technology gets cheaper and have at all times on their own in-house development the lowest cost. In Nintendo's case (or anyone that gets things done through other companies), someone else is there to make money too.

Right . And if sony has yields of 70% (this is made up) they are stuck with those yields . if nintendo is at tmsc and is stuck at 70% they can go pay for fabing at ibm and may get 80% or 90% . Then when 65nm comes out they can go back to tmsc if its a better price. Where as sony will have to upgrade the fabs and may be stuck with worse yields .

Therei s good and bad in everything . I know u like to only see the good in what sony does. But its just not like that .

Right the gamecube costs 100$ to sell to us. We don't know how much it costs them. But lets say a 100$ .

We do not know the size of the chips nor the process they are built on . The speeds of which they run at are now very low for this day. I'm sure on 90nm the yields will be high and they can run at very low voltage with out any powersaving tweaks done to them .

Right. I already covered this one. Despite your popular belief that it's possible, I look at Sony and wonder why they don't go with a portable PS2. Wasted resources? Maybe. But the advantages of a portable PS2 are sheer limitless as outlined above. For some reason however, Sony didn't. For some reason, PSP will be sold at $299. For some reason, the battery life will be somewhere between 2.5h and 10 hours. And PSP isn't as powerful as a GameCube, obviously. Plus you need to consider that Sony has 90nm too and will have 65nm in 2005. They are right up there with the most advanced processes available. Given this advantage, I am sheer amazed that you even expect a portable GameCube to be even less expensive than what the PSP is going for in addition to all the technology and changes they have made to the system - and still it is priced at atleast $299, it's battery life is not too impressive. How do you propose is Nintendo going to actually make a GameCube portable that is 1.) more powerful 2.) and cheaper - than PSP when they don't even have their own resources to actually have the lowest cost option (that Sony has)?

Its sony. There are many reasons why they might not have gone with the ps2 chips . Perhaps they took alot of the feedback from devs and fixed problems in the ps2 .

Perhaps the 90nm yields of the ps2 on a chip were bad ? Perhaps the psp will be more compatabile with the ps3 .

There are alot of reasons why sony may not have done it that aren't sony couldn't do it . Its funny that i have more faith that sony could have done it than you .

You loose the disc drive most likely but are stuck with the other format . That will prob negate each other.

negate? They will drive up costs for sure. Maybe not compared to a disc-drive out of NIntendo's view, but certainly in relation to what Sony is offering with PSP.

How so ? how much does it cost to add the umd to the psp ? How much would it cost to add another format to the gc ?

I can still see them using the gc discs though. I have the cube in my car and it never skips .

Any company can launch a product at any given price. The question begs: at how big of a loss must it be sold? We don't want to compare Microsoft scenario in which the company has BILLIONS of cash backing them in the bank. Given we are talking about Nintendo here, a portable GameCube would IMO not be possible since the costs would surely be higher than a PSP and would be too expensive for THEM in the long run if they were to compete. Making a portable GameCube at that price would be definately sold at a loss and if they have to use cartridges, they may even loose support over time because price would be more expensive. We saw this happen to an extend with PlayStation / Nintendo64 years back. I really don't see this situation all that different. Actually, far from it: portable devices have always required more effort and more technology backing. They are more expensive to make and there are more factors to consider (those factors you are more or less ignoring).

RIght nintendo has about 6 billion in the bank too.

But regardless .

I sitll say a cube portable could be made for 100$ and def sold for less than the psp . Hell i really think a dreamcast portable could be made for 50$ The mbx is only 15 million tranistors and is about the power of the dreamcast and can do some thigns it can't even do. Arm it with a powerfull arm chip adn there u go .

You talk about carts which is only a suggestion of mine. I can easily see them go with discs for it.

This has been discuessed here before . I feel very strongly that it can be done.

I believe it could be done today for this price. I may be off by a year or so but i firmly believe it can be done

I still haven't seen you give a good answer .And no "sony couldn' tmake the ps2 portable " does not work.

 

[marconelly!]

Do we know what kind of filtering and effects the PSP supports (along with performance cost of them?) And I thought the FSAA on the MBX wasn't quite "free".

Go to IGN, and watch the Rubber ducky and planet surface demos. There's some *really* nifty water, bumpmapping and some other, hard to describe stuff going on there There's also a demo that shows global illumination model (spherical harmonics) that can be changed interactively, and looks really nice.

In any case, the whole MBX argument is retarded. So what if it's quite cheap and maybe comparable to PSP? Sony doesn't want to use it, they think it's better to develop their own technology and improve their own talent. There's nothing wrong (and a lot of that is right) in being reliant on yourself, if you can match or beat other solutions on the market.

Well, I was only referring to polygon counts...and those do make a big difference, dc beats ps2 in pretty much every other area but the amount of polygons that ps2 can do is what puts it over dc in graphics.

Oh man... welcome to 2000... DC can't beat PS2 in almost anything, which has by now been clearly demonstrated in games.

 

[Fox5]

I can still see them using the gc discs though. I have the cube in my car and it never skips .

Yeah, but it's got a bit of an overheating problem. Try covering the vents for a little while and see what happens. A gamecube portable(or possibly even the psp) could become quite hot(at the very least warm to hold, whereas gba generated no discernable heat) and that a battery that can power something draining even 40 watts of power for 3 hours would be quite heavy. I believe gamecube only uses around 45 watts(whatever it is, it's less than ps2 and xbox, I think n64 was 25 watts but I'm not sure about that) and the not very portable battery for it gets very hot and drains in like an hour and a half.(of course, that's while powering a backlit lcd with rather powerful stereo speakers, but is psp going to be anything less?)

 

[Fox5]

Do we know what kind of filtering and effects the PSP supports (along with performance cost of them?) And I thought the FSAA on the MBX wasn't quite "free".

Go to IGN, and watch the Rubber ducky and planet surface demos. There's some *really* nifty water, bumpmapping and some other, hard to describe stuff going on there There's also a demo that shows global illumination model (spherical harmonics) that can be changed interactively, and looks really nice.

In any case, the whole MBX argument is retarded. So what if it's quite cheap and maybe comparable to PSP? Sony doesn't want to use it, they think it's better to develop their own technology and improve their own talent. There's nothing wrong (and a lot of that is right) in being reliant on yourself, if you can match or beat other solutions on the market.

Well, I was only referring to polygon counts...and those do make a big difference, dc beats ps2 in pretty much every other area but the amount of polygons that ps2 can do is what puts it over dc in graphics.

Oh man... welcome to 2000... DC can't beat PS2 in almost anything, which has by now been clearly demonstrated in games.

DC has better filtering than ps2.
Better textures.
And can do many effects better.
On the other hand, so does like every piece of 3d graphics hardware since 1997 or 1998.(at least for filtering and texture quality, 4MB vram without s3tc really hurts ps2's texture quality) However, ps2 has like 5-10x the polygon count of dc, as well as what, like 20x the fillrate?

 

[archie4oz]

I sitll say a cube portable could be made for 100$

Show me a 90nm 750 core integrated onto Flipper running under 1W and your claim *might* have an ounce of credibility...

I still haven't seen you give a good answer .And no "sony couldn' tmake the ps2 portable " does not work.

Unless you can show me a portable that plays PS2 titles as is, movies, PSOne titles, room for an HDD (since you're insisting on a "PS2 portable") it does work...

 

[marconelly!]

DC has better filtering than ps2.
Better textures.
And can do many effects better.

- DC does trilinear filtering (in few games). So does PS2.
- There are many games on PS2 that match or exceed best textured DC games (and usually run at higher framerate)
- What effects? If there is one thing where PS2 absolutely trumps DC, it's stuff like particles, animated textures and various lighting or framebuffer effects.

I think your mistake is that you are comparing some old PS2 games with the best on DC, or are simply comparing them from memory. I have seen the very best on both platforms, and there's no shame in stating the obvious.

I sitll say a cube portable could be made for 100$

What's the point in making portable cube when you can't make it portable (or comfortable) enough to accomodate all the buttons, sticks and controls (not to mention the disc which is not *that* small to begin with)? Remove even one button or a stick, and half of games become unplayable. That way you eliminate the only true advantage of such portable (the ability to play your back catalog of games.)

 

[archie4oz]

More like confusing "effects" for "hardware features"...

 

[Fox5]

More like confusing "effects" for "hardware features"...

Hey, you just wait until sega releases an all new dreamcast game with uber bump mapping that will crush the ps2! It will save the dreamcast!

 

[PC-Engine]

I disagree with that . It may not have as many ploygons but it will have much better filtering and effects going on. Not to mention fsaa for free

Do we know what kind of filtering and effects the PSP supports (along with performance cost of them?) And I thought the FSAA on the MBX wasn't quite "free".

FSAA is free on MBX and MBX-Pro.

 

[Ty]

right and how do u get the mp3s from your pc to your psp ? Magic pixie dust ? No there is tech and programs which will let u do it.
which all cost money.

Huh? Have you ever heard of memory sticks? Hell, my wife's printer has a port for it and I have a few ways of moving the data over myself (through my MiniDV camera, my USB2.0 reader, etc.) and I'm willing to bet the USB2.0 port on the PSP will do it as well.

I sitll say a cube portable could be made for 100$ and def sold for less than the psp . Hell i really think a dreamcast portable could be made for 50$ The mbx is only 15 million tranistors and is about the power of the dreamcast and can do some thigns it can't even do. Arm it with a powerfull arm chip adn there u go .

Wow, you make it sound so easy! MBX itself is $17 (per Lazy). Add an Arm plus a drive plus memory plus a screen plus ports plus a sound chip (MBX have one?) plus a battery plus a speaker plus a case plus marketing plus god-knows-what-else-because-I-don't-think-you-do. /sarcasm. YEA! I bet I could do it myself with my old microwave after watching a few episodes of MacGuyver!

This has been discuessed here before . I feel very strongly that it can be done.

I believe it could be done today for this price. I may be off by a year or so but i firmly believe it can be done

Then why is the DSP so much more expensive (admittedly it's only a guess at this point)? Why does the GBASP not cost $50 bucks? Don't forget the concept of diminishing returns.

 

[PC-Engine]

DC can do dot3, anisotropic, S3TC. It can do framebuffer-like effects. It has on-chip buffers that can be used for things like motion blur, screen distortions effects like heatwave etc.

PS2's strengths over DC is polygons, lights, and fillrate which is good for particle effects.

Right because that 10 hours with screen off playing only music is fantastic battery life ?

That figure released by SONY confuses me a bit, considering MD players last for 40+ hrs on two AA batteries. :?

Something is definitely wrong if PSP only last 10 hrs while playing music with screen off...

 

[marconelly!]

DC can do dot3, anisotropic, S3TC. It can do framebuffer-like effects. It has on-chip buffers that can be used for things like motion blur, screen distortions effects like heatwave etc.

Again, confusing hardware features with the actual accomplishments in software. I know DC can do all that, but DOT3 can be achieved on PS2 with multipass rendering as well. Also, framebuffer effects in PS2 games are simply better than in DC games, due to it's high fillrate.

 

[PC-Engine]

DC can do dot3, anisotropic, S3TC. It can do framebuffer-like effects. It has on-chip buffers that can be used for things like motion blur, screen distortions effects like heatwave etc.

Again, confusing hardware features with the actual accomplishments in software. I know DC can do all that, but DOT3 can be achieved on PS2 with multipass rendering as well. Also, framebuffer effects in PS2 games are simply better than in DC games, due to it's high fillrate.

You're grasping at straws to try and win an argument. The fact is, DC can do motion blur as seen in some games. Whether it looks better than PS2 is debatable and moot. PS2 can't do dot 3 sorry. It can do embossed bm with many passes too many to be used in-game actually.