SCEI & Toshiba unveil 65nm process with eDRAM

There are things the PS2 does better, some of which I've never argued(transformations as an example). There are also things that the PS2 comes up short on.

Ok.
Since both are 1999 tech and both have advantages and disadvantages, then i dont see what this argument is all about....???
If you are thinking whether PS2 will do better with a GF1 instead of a GS, i dont think that is valid either.
 
Since both are 1999 tech and both have advantages and disadvantages, then i dont see what this argument is all about....???

It's actually quite simple..... we're bored ;)

Going in to the holiday season, we're not seeing the type of sales numbers that we like yet and we are at the point where all the major titles have pretty much been reviewed and their relative strengths and merits have been discussed quite thoroughly. So, what else is there to talk about...? ;)
 
Enable trilinear, anisotropic and use say 20MBs worth of textures and see how much good the theoretical numbers do for the PS2.

Considering the mgs2doc.(not sure, havent seen in a while.) says some models are up to 10MB and clearly there are many other textured objects besides that one, The textures are no prob.... The anisotropic is also not a prob. since there are games with excellent IQ and thus it would be only trivial to enable it.

Again the deal is are the Gf1's 20,000 polys at 60fps with a few texture, and effects enough to offset the ps2 advantage in rendering speed, fillrate, T&L(both speed and flexibility), b/w... I don't think so heck if u limited the ps2 to just that few polys it could probably hack all those effects, and then some...

Do you have the game? It is very low poly, even by circa 1999 PC game standards.

Well if the upgrade was small, say to 1000 or 2000 polys per char. it'd still look blocky.... but with a dozen or more of those and the backgrounds... u'd be outdoing quake 3... EDIT: anyway doesn't the Unreal engine use the cpu alot or something like that... hmmm...

"The first basic requirement for a game to take advantage of Hardware T&L is that it must use either the DirectX 7 or OpenGL API. This means that unless a game uses DirectX 7's Hardware T&L engine or the implementation in OpenGL it will not receive any benefit from the GeForce 256's hardware T&L. ...the game must not use its own transforming or lighting engine. This immediately takes Unreal Tournament out the running because it uses its own T&L engine."




Now, if you are saying that you need 100FPS to be able to play Quake3 or any other game, the PS2 looses to the GF1 by default. You mention framerate fluctuation, if it doesn't drop below 30FPS at any point, how is it any different then any console title?

Cut the texture rez, and I guess it should go to 1000+fps with even 1920x something HDtv rez on ps2... not sure if it could output that but it could do it internally at least...

Anyways I just don't see the Gf1 so called advantage, either bottleneck or whatever..., the fact is the GF2pro doesn't appear to be going above 2M polys... that means a game like J&D is already running at 5X the geometry... and some of the games with even higher geometry could be running with an order of magnitude more geometry....

EDIT

We already had the fillrate 480M... now i went to another site and found the bandwith... "Basic math will tell us that this results in around 2.6GB/s of local memory bandwidth on a regularly clocked GeForce 256 card."

Slowly a picture is beginning to emerge...

the Geforces small bandwidth, low fillrate, low polycount, etc... pretty much are serious bottlenecks....

The GS needs 48GB/s to operate more than an ORDER of magnitude the Geforce's bandwidth...

HOW is this suppah b/w limited Gf1 supposed to handle the stuff the stuff the GS does.... nobody knows....
 
Considering the mgs2doc.(not sure, havent seen in a while.) says some models are up to 10MB and clearly there are many other textured objects besides that one, The textures are no prob....

You think the PS2 can handle 20MB of textures at once at a decent speed w/trilinear and anisotropic filtering..?

The anisotropic is also not a prob. since there are games with excellent IQ and thus it would be only trivial to enable it.

Well the GameCube has four controller ports, so the memory cards are too small :rolleyes: That makes about as much sense as what you just said.

Again the deal is are the Gf1's 20,000 polys at 60fps with a few texture, and effects enough to offset the ps2 advantage in rendering speed, fillrate, T&L(both speed and flexibility), b/w... I don't think so heck if u limited the ps2 to just that few polys it could probably hack all those effects, and then some...

You take a singular example? Look at the PS2 and how fast it runs UnrealTournament, half the speed of the GF1 so it must mean the PS2 can't handle more polys.... right? And do you know why it is that they used such incredibly poor textures in the PS2 build? Didn't even bother to add support for the high quality large textures the game runs with on the PC.

Well if the upgrade was small, say to 1000 or 2000 polys per char. it'd still look blocky.... but with a dozen or more of those and the backgrounds... u'd be outdoing quake 3...

1K to 2K poly increase per model.... not a chance. A doubling to trippling of poly counts in UT would be more then slightly noticeable.

Cut the texture rez, and I guess it should go to 1000+fps with even 1920x something HDtv rez on ps2... not sure if it could output that but it could do it internally at least...

Where do you get this from? If the PS2 ran every single one of its games at an absolute locked 60FPS you migh be able to make an assumption along those lines(though nowhere near as obscene of course), but it's not close to doing that.

Anyways I just don't see the Gf1 so called advantage, either bottleneck or whatever..., the fact is the GF2pro doesn't appear to be going above 2M polys..

And none of the PS2 games appear to use textures over 256x256 while the GF boards run games with 1024x1024. And where are the loads of game using tri and ani?

that means a game like J&D is already running at 5X the geometry... and some of the games with even higher geometry could be running with an order of magnitude more geometry....

And UT runs 4x the texture load on the GF. The difference, UT is on both the PS2 and PC.
 
You take a singular example? Look at the PS2 and how fast it runs UnrealTournament, half the speed of the GF1 so it must mean the PS2 can't handle more polys.... right? And do you know why it is that they used such incredibly poor textures in the PS2 build? Didn't even bother to add support for the high quality large textures the game runs with on the PC.

Well i added some stuff to my reply when i edited u might wanna take a look.
 
If you don't like the streaks, shut them off, problem solved

There's a good example of PS2-tech that couldn't translate effectively to the PC... ;) Guess 48gb/sec of eDRAM is good for something afterall!
 
Where do you get this from? If the PS2 ran every single one of its games at an absolute locked 60FPS you migh be able to make an assumption along those lines(though nowhere near as obscene of course), but it's not close to doing that.

Well considering dev.s have gotten textured 500000polys at 60fps... going to 10000 polys should aid a lot, just cut the texture rez.... and the free space that would cause would allow for HDTV since games like sledstorm 2(i think) are said to go HD, and feature far more than 10000polys per frame...

EDIT

Well the GameCube has four controller ports, so the memory cards are too small That makes about as much sense as what you just said.

Not the same, trilinear and anisotropic are used to improve IQ, I think, so if the IQ has no prob. there's no real need for those...
 
Zidane-

"Basic math will tell us that this results in around 2.6GB/s of local memory bandwidth on a regularly clocked GeForce 256 card."

150,000,000*2*128/8/1024/1024/1024= 4.47GB/second

You are looking at the SDR bandwith figures. Also, you are talking about 32MB or 64MB of 4.47GB dedicated to rasterizer functions, vs 4MB for the GS.

HOW is this suppah b/w limited Gf1 supposed to handle the stuff the stuff the GS does.... nobody knows....

Much like asking how can the miniscule amount of RAM available to the GS possibly compete with the GF.

Well considering dev.s have gotten textured 500000polys at 60fps... going to 10000 polys should aid a lot, just cut the texture rez.... and the free space that would cause would allow for HDTV since games like sledstorm 2(i think) are said to go HD, and feature far more than 10000polys per frame...

1920*1080*16/8/1024/1024= 3.99MBs for your front buffer, but you need a back buffer which means you have to double that, so 7.98MBs without any textures or any RAM allocated for ZBuffer. Remember that miniscule amount, 4MB, of RAM I mentioned? This is where the PS2 would get really throttled ;)

Not the same, trilinear and anisotropic are used to improve IQ, I think, so if the IQ has no prob. there's no real need for those...

Mip banding and texture aliasing are IQ problems, both of which the PS2 suffers from rather severely in most of its games(although, some don't use mip maps at all eliminating mip banding and creating horrendous texture aliasing).

Zurich-

There's a good example of PS2-tech that couldn't translate effectively to the PC...

It works just fine, it's just ugly as hell(at least IMO). I've never been a fan of blurring, motion or otherwise. Didn't notice any framerate fluctuation at all, although I didn't play for very long with streaking enabled(have to check it with FRAPS and see what the hit is).
 
BenSkywalker:

> Animation, poly complexity and lighting which when combined with
> quality texturing, proper filtering and the shader effects easily
> surpasses anything I've seen to date on the PS2.

I just don't see how you make such a general statement. Yeah, DOA3 may look better than any fighter on PS2 (and to what extent is certainly debatable) but comparing a fighter to other types of games doesn't make much sense. Fighters and racers in particular tend to be graphical show-offs and interestingly the PS2 still has the prettiest racer on any platform.

> What matches everything DOA3 offers on a visual basis on the PS2?

What matches everything GT3 offers on a visual basis on Xbox? We can all cherry-pick and come up with a game or two on a specific platform that is superior to similar types of game on the other platforms.

You say animation in DOA3 is unequaled? Better than VF4 or SH3 (facial animation)? Poly complexity? Maybe in the big panorama press pics but certainly not in-game where the field of vision is severely limited. Not to mention that there are visible poly edges everywhere. The lighting model is solid but certainly not better than what many PS2 games have to offer. The texturing is good, I'll give you that, but the horrible filtering takes care of that. Shader effects? A little bump-mapping on the water, a gloss map on some clothes... yes, how can the PS2 ever hope to compete with that.

> No mip banding.

Not every PS2 game is bilinear filtered and even if that was the case it still wouldn't make DOA3 any less of a shimmery mess.

> Haven't seen anything on the hair effects, have any links to real time
> vid feeds?

http://www.capcom.co.jp/ct3/dl/image/ct3_230.mpg

Don't have any links to SH3 vids. Maybe someone else can help out.

> Of course, every single game that is on both the PC and PS2 runs
> better on GF1 level hardware because of xxxx excuse

Please... it's a valid one. The old GTAs on the PS1 ran like crap and Body Harvest on the N64 was definitely not one of the prettiest games on the system either. And you're just about the only person I've ever heard say that GTA3 runs acceptably on sub-GF2 hardware.
 
And none of the PS2 games appear to use textures over 256x256.
No.

Oh while we're benchmarking software, you can also tackle the issue of several DC->PC ports runing (and sometimes looking) better on DC(and consequently on PS2, those that were ported there as well) then GF2&1ghz class hw.
 
150,000,000*2*128/8/1024/1024/1024= 4.47GB/second

You are looking at the SDR bandwith figures. Also, you are talking about 32MB or 64MB of 4.47GB dedicated to rasterizer functions, vs 4MB for the GS.

Well the Gf1 review(from a site that's been labeled nvwh@res basically by everybody...) says the initial Gf1s ram allowed for the 2.6GB bandwith... so I'm not talking about later revisions with faster clocks, or memories...

1920*1080*16/8/1024/1024= 3.99MBs for your front buffer, but you need a back buffer which means you have to double that, so 7.98MBs without any textures or any RAM allocated for ZBuffer. Remember that miniscule amount, 4MB, of RAM I mentioned? This is where the PS2 would get really throttled

IIRC sledstorm 2 is expected to run at 1080i HDTV... again i could be mistaken but i thought i read that...EDIT 2( It's possible with a decent poly title, it's possible with a 10k poly title)EDIT2 end

EDIT

here are some of the conclusions of said review...

"If you currently have a TNT2 or a TNT2 Ultra, then by all means stick with your card. The improvement the GeForce 256 offers over the TNT2 is not large enough to justify ditching a card you bought a few months ago for around $150 - $200 and spending an additional $220+. As a matter of fact, if you have any current generation graphics card (i.e. Voodoo3, G400, etc…) an upgrade to a GeForce now would not be worth the money for you. While the performance improvement is definitely noticeable at higher resolutions, you can still survive with your current setup and shouldn't be too concerned with upgrading just yet. "

Hmmm. I guess since the Gf1 can outdo the ps2 and it's not significantly ahead of the TnT2... according to u one could say the ps2 is on par with TnT2..... rrrrrrriiiiiigggghhhhttttt......
 
Cybermac-

What matches everything GT3 offers on a visual basis on Xbox?

Matches, that's a tough one. SegaGT2K2 maybe? It's the poorest looking racer I've played on the XBox, although it can't match the amount of edge aliasing or blurry b/g textures of GT3.

You say animation in DOA3 is unequaled?

When did I say that(hint- I didn't). I implied that VF4 had comparable animation actually.

Shader effects? A little bump-mapping on the water, a gloss map on some clothes... yes, how can the PS2 ever hope to compete with that.

Actually, I found the hair to be by far the most impressive shader effect. I'm still interested in hearing what PS2 title can stand up to DoA3 in all areas. I was saying earlier, perhaps not clearly enough, that there are games that can compete with DoA3 in individual aspects, I want to know which one competes in all aspects.

Don't have any links to SH3 vids. Maybe someone else can help out.

Have to dl the clip(it will take a couple of hours- #)$*#$& dial up :devilish: :cry: ).

Please... it's a valid one. The old GTAs on the PS1 ran like crap and Body Harvest on the N64 was definitely not one of the prettiest games on the system either.

It simply seems that every game has a reason why it runs faster on PCs.

And you're just about the only person I've ever heard say that GTA3 runs acceptably on sub-GF2 hardware.

The min specs are a 16MB(TNT level) w/450MHZ processor, reccomended are 32MB(TNT2) class vid card with 700MHZ processor. Hard T&L board doesn't even make it on to the reccomended level. There is a bug in the game that significantly impacts performance, why won't anyone who has mentioned all the performance issues they had with the game tell me what their aperture settings are at? I didn't come up with this btw, it was on the official website.
 
Have to dl the clip(it will take a couple of hours- #)$*#$& dial up ).

zidane-dah-broadband-user-strife's secret...
Hmmm.... U know I'm getting 30+KBs, and I only pay for dial-up.... I just asked the telephone company for dsl, they brought the dsl box connected it, etc... and just cause it's not configured I don't pay a cent.... Bwahahahahahah!!!!
U should Try it, it might help...
 
Faf-


Honest question, which games use larger textures?

Oh while we're benchmarking software, you can also tackle the issue of several DC->PC ports runing (and sometimes looking) better on DC(and consequently on PS2, those that were ported there as well) then GF2&1ghz class hw.

Could you name some? The only title that springs to mind that was on both DC and PC is Quake3, which was ported the other way. Which titles were they? If we are looking at ports of older titles, Half-Life actually looked better on the PS2 when it came out then it did on the PC(although it was years later), but they did offer the improved graphics pack for PC users also(and the game still runs in tripple digits).

Zidane-

Well the Gf1 review(from a site that's been labeled nvwh@res basically by everybody...) says the initial Gf1s ram allowed for the 2.6GB bandwith... so I'm not talking about later revisions with faster clocks, or memories...

There were two different GeForce1 boards, the SDR and DDR versions. The one you are talking about is the SDR version that ran over $200 while the DDR board, which was nearly twice as fast and is the same chip used in the SDR board offerings, could be had for under $300. The memory actually operated at a lower frequency on the DDR then on the SDR(DDR was @150 despite having 6ns rating v 166 for the SDR boards).

IIRC sledstorm 2 is expected to run at 1080i HDTV... again i could be mistaken but i thought i read that...

Even if you half the res and run 1080x540 you would still chew up all of the VRAM simply for your frame buffers. AFAIK the PS2 can't flip to system RAM for output(Faf?).

Hmmm. I guess since the Gf1 can outdo the ps2 and it's not significantly ahead of the TnT2... according to u one could say the ps2 is on par with TnT2..... rrrrrrriiiiiigggghhhhttttt......

The GeForce1 was and is significantly faster then the TNT2 Ultra. Your looking at reviews for a particular type of board that was built around the NV10 core.
 
The GeForce1 was and is significantly faster then the TNT2 Ultra. Your looking at reviews for a particular type of board that was built around the NV10 core.

Well the reviews are for the Geforce 256... is that not the Gf1?
 
Well the reviews are for the Geforce 256... is that not the Gf1?

The GeForce 256 was kind of a generic name for the GeForce1. Both the SDR and DDR versions had the exact same chip, the only difference between them was that one had DDR RAM nearly doubling the bandwith.

image004.gif


http://www.anandtech.com/video/showdoc.html?i=1107&p=6
 
Hey the review said the fillrate difference gave the Gf1 more perf. as the rez increased... but when not fillrate limited the tnt2 ultra was not that far behind the Gf1...
 
Honest question, which games use larger textures?
It'd be hard to be specific considering I'm not privy to inside data about every game out there. But I'd say probably every game that has a skybox :p
I do know that some games also don't shy from oldschool style "stuff everything on a huge map", BGDA comes to mind.

Telling the "texture resolution" by observation alone is also about as reliable as counting polygons from a screenshot. Though I guess that doesn't stop people from trying... ;)

IMO I don't think size of individiual maps is particularly relevant anymore though - high surface detail is mainly obtained through multiple texture passes nowadays(tends to be more memory efficient as well as better looking), and texture context switching is extremely fast as well (at least on some hardware).

Could you name some?
Sega games come to mind. VT framerate was downright sad, and HOTD visuals were extremely glitchy, to name two of bigger names.
Obviously the cause is the software itself, but that's the point people are trying to make about other games you keep bringing up.
 
Zidane-

Hey the review said the fillrate difference gave the Gf1 more perf. as the rez increased... but when not fillrate limited the tnt2 ultra was not that far behind the Gf1..

Because they were CPU limited. Throw a title like Giants at the TNT2 Ultra and it gets blown away by the GF(running the same res in both IQ and performance).

Faf-

It'd be hard to be specific considering I'm not privy to inside data about every game out there. But I'd say probably every game that has a skybox

Really? The amount of banding(not that is is excessive, Q3 uses 2 256x256 textures for the sky IIRC) lead me to believe that most of them were running 256x256 or lower.

I do know that some games also don't shy from oldschool style "stuff everything on a huge map", BGDA comes to mind.

Haven't seen enough of BGDA.

Telling the "texture resolution" by observation alone is also about as reliable as counting polygons from a screenshot. Though I guess that doesn't stop people from trying...

Until you start getting rather high, a lot of people can get fairly close numbers. That rules out sloppy useage of course, you can make a sphere with 500 and 1,000,000 polys and if using decent lighting they will be almost indistinguishable from each other.

IMO I don't think size of individiual maps is particularly relevant anymore though - high surface detail is mainly obtained through multiple texture passes nowadays(tends to be more memory efficient as well as better looking), and texture context switching is extremely fast as well (at least on some hardware).

If a game is using a basic base/lightmap texturing scheme I think its still relevant. I agree with you on where we are headed, but we are still getting a lot of games that are relying on base textures with a pre calculated lightmap for their visuals.

Sega games come to mind. VT framerate was downright sad, and HOTD visuals were extremely glitchy, to name two of bigger names.

What's VT? I've never seen HOTD for the PC(running).

Obviously the cause is the software itself, but that's the point people are trying to make about other games you keep bringing up.

I'm trying to bring up every game I can find that's on both platforms. I honestly see the GF1 having an edge in areas over the PS2, and pointing to PC exclusive games doesn't seem to work because people don't like the advantages that PCs have, so I try to use cross platform apps.

Cybermac-

The clip dled faster then I thought it would. Is the PS2 now handling radiosity in real time? ;) The pre rendered sections look sweet with the flowing hair, the in game it flops around in giant clumps from what I can see on this clip(although it is very low res, not the best showcase). You have any idea what all the Japanese text says in the trailer?
 
BenSkywalker:

> Actually, I found the hair to be by far the most impressive shader effect.

Just a bunch of polygons with alpha textures on them.

> I want to know which one competes in all aspects.

Fair enough... I want to know about an Xbox title that competes with SH3 in all aspects.

> the in game it flops around in giant clumps from what I can see on this
> clip

Not more so than in DOA3. There's a shot where the girl picks herself up off the floor and the hair moves quite a bit. Not really saying it's super impressive but I fail to see how DOA3 does it better.
 
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