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Questions about Sega Saturn
- Thread starter Liandry
- Start date
Interesting comparison table.
https://segaretro.org/Sega_Saturn/Hardware_comparison
https://segaretro.org/Sega_Saturn/Hardware_comparison
Johnny Awesome
Veteran
I'm debating selling my copy of Panzer Dragoon Saga. It fetches a pretty penny and I'll likely never revisit it, but nostalgia is a tough beast sometimes....
Been struggling with this also. It's soooooooo much money. I also have a CIB model 1 Sega CD that I think my kids are going to ruin the box any day now. I should let it go, but.... My precious. YoU CainTz Haz ItZzz.... We ShoUld Keeeeeeeep iT!I'm debating selling my copy of Panzer Dragoon Saga. It fetches a pretty penny and I'll likely never revisit it, but nostalgia is a tough beast sometimes....
I'm debating selling my copy of Panzer Dragoon Saga. It fetches a pretty penny and I'll likely never revisit it, but nostalgia is a tough beast sometimes....
I caved and sold mine, no real regrets tbh as I was never likely to play the original disc on original hardware again. That's not to say I won't play via other means and tbh I think I have 3 copies of the first disc that was a demo disk on Saturn magazines
Saturn had a DSP for some extra math, they are probably just adding the capabilities of the DSP plus the two SH2s, which isn't exactly how stuff like that really works.I have some questions about specs from link I shared above.
Geometry Transformations. Saturn is very close to N64. How? As I know Transformations is done on CPU, but N64 CPU is far more fast and advanced than two Saturn CPUs.
The 99% of the specs listed on Sega Retro are BS. Someone went around and cherry picked stuff from different sources to try to come up with the most impressive sounding stuff, without regard for whether or not it's right.I have some questions about specs from link I shared above.
Geometry Transformations. Saturn is very close to N64. How? As I know Transformations is done on CPU, but N64 CPU is far more fast and advanced than two Saturn CPUs.
Like with the Dreamcast, the wiki claims that it supports hardware multitexturing. It does not. The funny part is that the source listed for the DC's hardware multitexturing capability flat out states that the DC doesn't have multitexturing hardware. It also says that the Naomi's GPU is twice as powerful as the Dreamcast, then copies and paste's the DC's description with all the numbers doubled. It doesn't, it has the same GPU as the Dreamcast, just with double the RAM. You can verify this by just LOOKING at the games, that kind of difference would be incredibly obvious, And the whole point of the Naomi was that it was cheap, using the economies of scale that come from using mass produced home hardware. Having a custom GPU defeats the purpose.
PAL or US?I'm debating selling my copy of Panzer Dragoon Saga. It fetches a pretty penny and I'll likely never revisit it, but nostalgia is a tough beast sometimes....
PAL or US?
is it worth any money ? I have a US copy. One of my fav games on the saturn.
Yes its worth a lot. And I wish I had the cash to buy itis it worth any money ? I have a US copy. One of my fav games on the saturn.
Couple a bucksis it worth any money ? I have a US copy. One of my fav games on the saturn.
lol your pulling my leg
So you say what specs in that exactly list are not true? For Saturn or for all consoles?The 99% of the specs listed on Sega Retro are BS. Someone went around and cherry picked stuff from different sources to try to come up with the most impressive sounding stuff, without regard for whether or not it's right.
Interesting comparison table.
https://segaretro.org/Sega_Saturn/Hardware_comparison
i wouldn't read much into those..
Maybe 99% wrong is a bit of an exaggeration, but every system there has similar problems.So you say what specs in that exactly list are not true? For Saturn or for all consoles?
On the Dreamcast:
It takes stuff from the original PCX1, like listing the more limited volume effects supported by the PCX1 AND listing the improved, more powerful volume effects of the DC separately.
It also takes a bunch of stuff from the Neon 250, which is from the same family as the Dreamcast's GPU but has changes like a 2D accelerator for Windows, support for higher resolutions, and worse support for texture compression. It says that the DC has a 230 MHz RAMDAC, when it's actually either 25.125 or 27 MHz.
Made up bandwidth numbers. It says the SH4 has a 128-bit internal data bus. It's only 64-bit.
It makes up MFLOPS numbers for the PVR. What's the point in having MFLOPS for fixed function hardware, anyways?
The DC doesn't have DOT3 (cartesian) normal mapping, it uses spherical coordinates.
It says the PVR supports 2048x2048 textures, but the max size is 1024x1024. The min size is 8x8.
The PVR does not support edge antialiasing, only supersampling.
The display list sizes are all wrong.
The polygon counts are impossibly high compared to what you can actually get the hardware to do.
All the sprite stuff is made up and wrong.
DC doesn't have MPEG decoding hardware, games do it in software, so it shouldn't be listed on hardware spec list.
There's a lot of pointless filler in there, like saying that the SH4 has a interrupt controller. What a thrilling bit of trivia! It breaks things down so much that no one who doesn't already know the hardware would have any idea what it's talking about, like when it describes internal units of the DC's GPU. Not to mention adding stuff together that shouldn't be added together, like bandwidth numbers for shared buses or CPU performance.
There's no mention of the sound capabilities of the DC.
On the page for the Saturn, there's bizarrely high precision on somethings like bandwidth, clocks, or MIPS. It neglects to mention that the fast-page mode main RAM is slower than the SDRAM. The SH1 doesn't have cache, it's on chip RAM. The VDP1 does not support edge antialiasing, and the VDP2 does not support compression.
These errors are everywhere on Sega Retro's tech specs. It looks like one person went in and did all of it.
The 99% of the specs listed on Sega Retro are BS. Someone went around and cherry picked stuff from different sources to try to come up with the most impressive sounding stuff, without regard for whether or not it's right.
Like with the Dreamcast, the wiki claims that it supports hardware multitexturing. It does not. The funny part is that the source listed for the DC's hardware multitexturing capability flat out states that the DC doesn't have multitexturing hardware. It also says that the Naomi's GPU is twice as powerful as the Dreamcast, then copies and paste's the DC's description with all the numbers doubled. It doesn't, it has the same GPU as the Dreamcast, just with double the RAM. You can verify this by just LOOKING at the games, that kind of difference would be incredibly obvious, And the whole point of the Naomi was that it was cheap, using the economies of scale that come from using mass produced home hardware. Having a custom GPU defeats the purpose.
Speaking of the Naomi having twice the RAM... I've seen this in a couple of instances where the arcade variant of hardware has more memory than the home version (i.e. Namco System 11 has 2MB VRAM to the Playstation's 1MB). Is there a specific reason for beefing up the arcade memory, or does it just make development easier on the get-go. Are there examples of Naomi games that have better textures/assets over the Dreamcast conversion?
Beyond all of that, I think just having more RAM can help games start faster, assuming the right assets are cached already. In an arcade, people pay money and want to play now, so sitting through a 30 second loading screen isn't really viable. From an arcade operators perspective (a job I used to have), you basically want your games to offer 2-5 minutes of gameplay per credit to maximize income. If you are adding 30 seconds to each credit for loading, that's eating into your income.Speaking of the Naomi having twice the RAM... I've seen this in a couple of instances where the arcade variant of hardware has more memory than the home version (i.e. Namco System 11 has 2MB VRAM to the Playstation's 1MB). Is there a specific reason for beefing up the arcade memory, or does it just make development easier on the get-go. Are there examples of Naomi games that have better textures/assets over the Dreamcast conversion?
Beyond all of that, I think just having more RAM can help games start faster, assuming the right assets are cached already. In an arcade, people pay money and want to play now, so sitting through a 30 second loading screen isn't really viable. From an arcade operators perspective (a job I used to have), you basically want your games to offer 2-5 minutes of gameplay per credit to maximize income. If you are adding 30 seconds to each credit for loading, that's eating into your income.
Makes sense. As the Naomi was disc-based, it surely decreased wear on the drive. I wonder if using the extra memory as a cache was the main intent at the outset.
I did look at a comparison of Tekken 1 between the Playstation and the System-11 arcade variant, and the one major graphical difference I noticed was that the floor texture was of a higher resolution on the arcade board. Looks to me like 4x increase in detail based on the texel size. Probably where some of that extra VRAM went to use. I doesn't appear that Tekken 2 exhibits any obvious improvements. Perhaps Namco committed itself to arcade accurate home conversions and self-limited development to within the 1MB constraint.
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