RSX- Do you have some new facts?

[Cobra101]

Hopefully cause it's beyond a possible 7800ultra, and they don't want to scare potential sales from nvidia's pc business.

nVidia will most likely have a new part by the time PS3 ships anyways.

Thats the thing with consoles. Once the specs are locked down, they will be like that for like 5 years until its successor arrives.

On the upside, one will see games get better and better as developers learn the ins and outs of the hardware.

 

[dukmahsik]

ill stick with it being G70 derived and a bit faster and at 90 nm process.

 

[Nite_Hawk]

Hell, after seeing the image quality of the PS2 for the first time I immediately wished they would have just licensed their graphics subsystem from NV, ATI, PVR, 3DFX or just about anyone who had some prior experience in the field. By using Nvidia tech they saved themselves from a complete disaster...

I have mixed feelings on it. I don't think the PS2 ended up being a disaster (in terms of its graphical capabilities) despite the lack of some pretty basic fuctions. It certainly isn't the friendliest design around, but people made it work. The fact that people were able to do so much with it in software is pretty amazing and a testiment both to those engineers programming capabilities and the raw power that the system possesed. On the other hand, it would have saved a lot of time and a lot of processing power had those functions been done in hardware in the first place.

As far as the PS3 goes, having the RSX in there is probably a good move on a number of levels.

Nite_Hawk

 

[expletive]

Plus the ~20million redundant video transistors replaced by maybe a hardware based GS for BC?

Whats a GS or BC?

J

 

[SubD]

I have mixed feelings on it. I don't think the PS2 ended up being a disaster (in terms of its graphical capabilities) despite the lack of some pretty basic fuctions. It certainly isn't the friendliest design around, but people made it work. The fact that people were able to do so much with it in software is pretty amazing and a testiment both to those engineers programming capabilities and the raw power that the system possesed. On the other hand, it would have saved a lot of time and a lot of processing power had those functions been done in hardware in the first place.

Having worked on many PS2 titles, that included cross platform titles, I honestly don't know what you are talking about. I also know a large number of PS2 developers at various console development houses and nothing you write has any relation to their common sentiments about the PS2 hardware.

There is no 'making it work' It does exactly what it was designed to do, stream a compact representation of graphical data to be rasterized with hardware that is as cheap to manufacture as possible.

I know the development schedules and team sizes of a large number of projects and can say with certainty that PS2 team sizes and project lengths are no different than the other two consoles.

The fact that there are games being made on the PS2 that are on par with two consoles that came out a year to year and a half later in technological development and one of those console is being prematurely pulled from the market because it has racked up four to five billion in losses is an amazing achievement for Sony.

The only people I know how have anything bad to say about the PS2 hardware are people who don't like the fact that their directx code won't work on it.

 

[Alpha_Spartan]

My opinion is more cynical... but we should find out sooner or later.

Regardless... the RSX will be the main thing that will help the PS3 remain competitive to the XBox360 graphically speaking. The RSX is the best thing to happen to the PS3 and is far preferable to Sony's original plan for the PS3.

Time will tell...

I agree. Whoever made that decision for Sony should get a pay raise and a promotion. That took some real humility.

 

[SubD]

Regardless... the RSX will be the main thing that will help the PS3 remain competitive to the XBox360 graphically speaking.

I can't tell if you are joking? Are you?

 

[avaya]

Whats a GS or BC?

J

Some parts of the PS2's Graphics Synthesizer maybe needed for hassle free backwards compatibility

 

[overclocked]

Proven by what exactly?

Proven by me with ZERO proof ... Yep thats right.

 

[expletive]

I can't tell if you are joking? Are you?

Based on some of his other comments, i would say no.

But he can speak for himself, sorry to interrupt.

J

 

[pixelbox]

i really dont know why people say that ps2 is made with a bunch of flaws. ive read site after site about ps2's processors and none of them stated flaws that would render ps2 dramatically inferior compared to the other consoles. but there is one thing i dont understand. the vu0, how come no one uses it? is there a problem i dont see?

 

[_leech_]

but there is one thing i dont understand. the vu0, how come no one uses it? is there a problem i dont see?

I've wondered that myself. In fact, from some slides i remember reading, apperently both VU's are under-utilized.

 

[Gholbine]

I stick with the old proven G70+FlexIO+TurboCache @ 550MHz, thats the RSX

Yeah, I'm sure NVidia spent all those years and millions of dollars designing Sony an overclocked G70 with turbocache

 

[pixelbox]

I've wondered that myself. In fact, from some slides i remember reading, apperently both VU's are under-utilized.

ive read somewhere that vu0 could never be used fully. nor can vu1. i dont know how they came up with that but maybe you or someone else here knows about that. i never checked to see why it was said.

 

[Nite_Hawk]

Having worked on many PS2 titles, that included cross platform titles, I honestly don't know what you are talking about. I also know a large number of PS2 developers at various console development houses and nothing you write has any relation to their common sentiments about the PS2 hardware.

There is no 'making it work' It does exactly what it was designed to do, stream a compact representation of graphical data to be rasterized with hardware that is as cheap to manufacture as possible.

I know the development schedules and team sizes of a large number of projects and can say with certainty that PS2 team sizes and project lengths are no different than the other two consoles.

The fact that there are games being made on the PS2 that are on par with two consoles that came out a year to year and a half later in technological development and one of those console is being prematurely pulled from the market because it has racked up four to five billion in losses is an amazing achievement for Sony.

The only people I know how have anything bad to say about the PS2 hardware are people who don't like the fact that their directx code won't work on it.

I think you took the intent of my post entirely the opposite of the way it was intended. My point was the despite the graphics synthesizer lacking certain capabilities in hardware, it can still do those effects through using multipass due to the raw performance the system is capable of of and the inginuity of the developers working on it. Please keep in mind that this is what my reply was to:

Hell, after seeing the image quality of the PS2 for the first time I immediately wished they would have just licensed their graphics subsystem from NV, ATI, PVR, 3DFX or just about anyone who had some prior experience in the field. By using Nvidia tech they saved themselves from a complete disaster...

Having said that, let me give you some examples of things I was talking about:

The following url:
http://ps2dev.org/ps2/Tutorials/TUT...Mapping_Tutorial_by_Morten_'Sparky'_Mikkelsen

describes a method to do traditional normal mapping on PS2 hardware with a 4 pass implementation that does per pixel normalization and a 2-pass implementation without.

Another example is texture compression. A couple of years ago there was discussion about Blue Shift finding a way to a 9:1 compression ratio. Faf also talked about another tecnique he used that was 2op/texel.

http://www.beyond3d.com/forum/showpost.php?p=139355&postcount=106

Now given that you are a PS2 developer and "know a large number of PS2 developers at various console development houses", I'm sure you already know all of this. I wouldn't doubt that there are developers here that have used multitexturing and other tricks on the PS2 to get effects that are not present in PS2 hardware.

Nite_Hawk

 

[nAo]

Yeah, I'm sure NVidia spent all those years and millions of dollars designing Sony an overclocked G70 with turbocache

why do you think Nvidia spent a lot of money to design RSX?!

 

[London Geezer]

why do you think Nvidia spent a lot of money to design RSX?!

Did NVIDIA actually did spend any money on it? Didn't Sony pay the bill? That was my understanding.

 

[Black Dragon37]

why do you think Nvidia spent a lot of money to design RSX?!

Why don't you think nVidia spent a lot of money to design the RSX? You heard from David Kirk, the nVidia chief scientist - they and Sony have become extremely close.

 

[EasyRaider]

Isn't RSX mostly an off-the-shelf solution? NVidia proclaimed that the deal with Sony was high profit and minimal cost.

Either way, PC graphics solutions will definitely be more powerful, but used less efficiently.

 

[Carl B]

Isn't RSX mostly an off-the-shelf solution? NVidia proclaimed that the deal with Sony was high profit and minimal cost.

Either way, PC graphics solutions will definitely be more powerful, but used less efficiently.

The level of 'off-the-shelf' is indeterminate at this point in time. The high profit, minimal cost was refering to the licensing agreement in which they'll get a couple of dollars per RSX chip, with no burden of manufacturing.