Sega Saturn vs N64 hardware wise

[eastmen]

Sega was offered the N64 chipset but they didn't like it so SGI went over to Nintendo. That hardware was pretty lame in the Sega showing from what I gather, and Nintendo got an improved version of it.

It was just a time of crazy change and nobody knew what was best of course.

Voodoo1 Saturn would have been cool but Voodoo1 is really 1996 hardware and uses 3x 64-bit memory buses and two big ASICs. It probably requires 4MB RAM for itself. Not exactly cheap. It would completely outclass N64 though. It has something like 3x the effective z-buffered fillrate at 50 MHz vs N64's RCP's 62.5 MHz. I think Riva 128 was the first to catch up to that (but was fugly). Fun times!

One thing to think about is the volume of saturn. Even if history didn't change for the better whatever company got a graphics chip into the saturn would have sold almost 10m units of it. That could have changed the landscape for a lot of small players. Perhaps Saturn with voodoo 1 could have brought in a more stable revenue stream for 3dfx and lead to them being in the dreamcast. Maybe video logic would have had more resources if it was in the saturn and would have lead to more competitive pc hardware and dreamcast hardware. Heck some of the smaller players like matrox could have stayed players in the field longer if they had a 10m unit chip order.

But who knows what would have happened. The voodoo 1 might have been to late for 94 but a 95 launch would have been viable i'd imagine with one of these companies. Also while the voodoo 1 launched with 4 megs of ram they could have used less in the saturn. Remember the Saturn in the USA launched at $300 while the saturn launched at $400

Another option that could have been really good for Sega was the Power VR PCX1 with released in 1996 but also was made in a partnership with NEC. It had 4MB and the core clock was 60mhz with ram at 60mhz with a fillrate of 60MPixels/MTexels. It's interesting to note because it also hit in 1996 and was a single chip design while the voodoo 1 was multiple chips

Also don't knock the riva 128 , it was my first video card and I loved it coming from a 386 sx lol

 

[Nesh]

It is unfortunate that we will never know for sure if the Sega Saturn had the prowess to compete properly if, lets say, was a market leader that developers took fully advantage of.
Or at least if it could pull out more super interesting results than what we know now overall and to what extend.
But it is interesting to get an idea of the limitations and capabilities of each hardware by finding identical franchises and similar games between PS1, the N64 and the Sega Saturn.

Comparing the PS1 and the N64 games, one thing that the N64 had serious issues with are geometry and textures:

We can see something similar with Wipeout.

Wipeout shows the peculiarity of the Sega Saturn. It probably pushes more geometry, and textures than the N64, but the framerate, the strange color palette and transparency effects puts it in a position where you cant say it's better. Wipeout of course was probably not designed around the multiple processors and was running on just one. Which we can say maybe its partly the developer's fault, but then again this game was designed already using straigjt forward means. Taking that and braking it to VDP1, VDP2 and syncing properly the CPU's would have required disassembling and reassembling the game, not to mention remaking it from the ground up with the Saturn's limitations and peculiarities in mind. Which might have produced a vastly different looking game.

But taking Sega Rally as an example of Saturn's capabilities I would say it was one of the most impressive racers until the end of the console generation:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cs3d6KaU-bg

The texture detail and probably even the geometry I would say is better than what the N64 ever put out there.
This is the N64's most impressive racer in my book. Looks impressive, car models are great and so is the lighting.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sBUhDrnVvdg

The illusion breaks once you check it on an emulator with HD res. The environment geometry though and textures are terrible.::
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sfwq93Tc4iM

And this is how awesome Sega Rally looks on an emulator:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zcaeiqCbRYY

Then again Sega Rally lacks any kind of reflections, proper lighting effects and transparencies. We really cant have a like for like comparison.
Any game that had to be developed for the Saturn had to be designed around what the Saturn could do. If something the Saturn couldnt do, you had to find another compensation through some smart art direction and design that exploited Saturn's peculiarities.
I.e even in games like Resident Evil where the only polygon models were some objects and the characters, had cut backs
Here is Resi1 emulated on PS1 and Saturn:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RJMzZx1EymU https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xm0hYQm1Ejk
Character models on the Sega Saturn were blockier, textures had banding, and the lighting on the models was flatter.



And here is ofcourse Resi 2 emulated on PS1 and N64 to check the assets:


PS1 seems to punch a little bit more geometry and texture detail. If a Saturn version existed the assets would have probably had a bit more texture detail, but with worse shading and polygon numbers. It is extremely difficult to say how the Saturn competes to the N64 hardware because it works so differently.

 

[see colon]

I don't believe you could do any sort of multitexturing (in hardware at least) on Saturn, though. That's why games like Gran Turismo look so much better, they have a really basic technique that layers a texture over the cars to simulate specularity. WRC uses a simple texture to simulate reflection. I don't think any shipping Saturn game had either of those effects. The closest thing would be the chrome Sonic head and place numbers at the end of races in Sonic R, but that's a software hack that looks impressive but isn't performant enough to run during gameplay.

 

[Nesh]

I don't believe you could do any sort of multitexturing (in hardware at least) on Saturn, though. That's why games like Gran Turismo look so much better, they have a really basic technique that layers a texture over the cars to simulate specularity. WRC uses a simple texture to simulate reflection. I don't think any shipping Saturn game had either of those effects. The closest thing would be the chrome Sonic head and place numbers at the end of races in Sonic R, but that's a software hack that looks impressive but isn't performant enough to run during gameplay.

Interesting this game has some metal shine relfections on one of the robots.
8:20

Also someone managed to do reflections via hardware:

Nice

This game also had some reflections. Interestingly the car has also prober transparent windows

 

[see colon]

While impressive in their own right, I don't think any of those example use multitextuing. In fact, the homebrew technique uses pallets from the lighting engine to look up map textures on untextured polygons.

 

[jackal256]

Interesting this game has some metal shine relfections on one of the robots.
8:20

Also someone managed to do reflections via hardware:

Nice

This game also had some reflections. Interestingly the car has also prober transparent windows

That tech demo racer looks fantastic has no texture warp or shaky models, Look's like a very jaggy N64 game.

 

[Karamazov]

Sega saturn had one major advantage though.

Him !

 

[Nesh]

While impressive in their own right, I don't think any of those example use multitextuing. In fact, the homebrew technique uses pallets from the lighting engine to look up map textures on untextured polygons.

oh I dont know those technical subjects much. But its impressive that there is a workaround that works just as well

 

[jackal256]

oh I dont know those technical subjects much. But its impressive that there is a workaround that works just as well

Well the PS2 did the same tricks to do Pixel shading in later games despite this.

 

[swaaye]

A journey into the mysteries of N64 RCP - The masterpiece graphic microcode behind the Nintendo 64 version of Indiana Jones and the Infernal Machine and Star Wars Episode I: Battle for Naboo

https://olivieryuyu.blogspot.com/2020/01/introduction-factor-5-used-to-be-one-of.html

 

[milk]

In fact, the homebrew technique uses pallets from the lighting engine to look up map textures on untextured polygons.

Wait, can you elaborate on that?

 

[see colon]

Wait, can you elaborate on that?

Texture coordinates on the Saturn!

Sunday I was watching again John Burton's video (Coding secrets - Gamehut) on environmental mapping as seen in Sonic R. He mentionned in the video that it's impossible to do environment mapping using the Saturn hardware as it lacks textures coordinates. So the only known solution was to do some...

segaxtreme.net

and

XL2 Cracks “Impossible” Saturn Hardware Environment Mapping

XL2 continues to push the Saturn beyond what many have thought to be impossible… His latest exploit? Hardware-based UV Texture Environment Mapping! Saturn Hardware-Based UV Texture Environmen…

www.segasaturnshiro.com

 

[laymanpigeon]

A journey into the mysteries of N64 RCP - The masterpiece graphic microcode behind the Nintendo 64 version of Indiana Jones and the Infernal Machine and Star Wars Episode I: Battle for Naboo

https://olivieryuyu.blogspot.com/2020/01/introduction-factor-5-used-to-be-one-of.html

View attachment 6516

Shows potential and that Nintendo went too aggressively in reducing costs considering hardware of Nintendo 64 by going with cartridges and RDRAM for unified memory architecture.
Someone uninformed would have though graphics featured in this screenshot are from Dreamcast with all that detail in textures and lighting despite limitations of N64 hardware.

By 1994 there were 4x CD ROM drives on market and became relatively common in 1996 and long term cost could have been lower for consumers.
Nintendo was crazy to accept production of huge monolith chip, they should have split it into two and cost of production would be lower.
Better than have up to 75% failure rate to meet specifications, another that implementing more cache would have been viable.
Finally four chips of 2MB of SDRAM could have provided 300MBps or more of effective bandwidth for the system.

System would probably have had 399USD release/launch price, though both Saturn and PlayStation had same when they launched.

As for Saturn, it had both SH-1 and Motorola 68000. That is a waste of silicone and another SH-2 could have been in the system along one more VDP1.
VRAM for VDPs should have been ditched for SDRAM and all RAM in Saturn should have been SDRAM. Overall performance would have been greater.

 

[jackal256]

Shows potential and that Nintendo went too aggressively in reducing costs considering hardware of Nintendo 64 by going with cartridges and RDRAM for unified memory architecture.
Someone uninformed would have though graphics featured in this screenshot are from Dreamcast with all that detail in textures and lighting despite limitations of N64 hardware.

By 1994 there were 4x CD ROM drives on market and became relatively common in 1996 and long term cost could have been lower for consumers.
Nintendo was crazy to accept production of huge monolith chip, they should have split it into two and cost of production would be lower.
Better than have up to 75% failure rate to meet specifications, another that implementing more cache would have been viable.
Finally four chips of 2MB of SDRAM could have provided 300MBps or more of effective bandwidth for the system.

System would probably have had 399USD release/launch price, though both Saturn and PlayStation had same when they launched.

As for Saturn, it had both SH-1 and Motorola 68000. That is a waste of silicone and another SH-2 could have been in the system along one more VDP1.
VRAM for VDPs should have been ditched for SDRAM and all RAM in Saturn should have been SDRAM. Overall performance would have been greater.

The N64 could've just added 1 ~ 2MB video memory with 220MB/sec with more texture cache without much changes, Pretty much what the PS2 did. With the Saturn may aswell pushed for a ARM7TDMI at 45MHz instead of 3 SH-2's. Sega should've stayed 2 core just beefed up the VDP1 & VDP2 than adding another core, As few games treated both cores as 2 GPU's. Think Rayman 2 rendering the levels with 1st core then the 2nd doing characters only.

But even current Saturn & N64 would've made the PSone even bigger joke 3D wise if both were given much better Dev tools. As the N64 & Sat could've ran near-DC quality games at 512x240@30.

Look at much software tricks Crash 1 ~ 3 had to use to just look very close a N64 game. But It odd how the Saturn seem ran better than PSX when pushed despite being 2MB main RAM.

 

[laymanpigeon]

The N64 could've just added 1 ~ 2MB video memory with 220MB/sec with more texture cache without much changes, Pretty much what the PS2 did. With the Saturn may aswell pushed for a ARM7TDMI at 45MHz instead of 3 SH-2's. Sega should've stayed 2 core just beefed up the VDP1 & VDP2 than adding another core, As few games treated both cores as 2 GPU's. Think Rayman 2 rendering the levels with 1st core then the 2nd doing characters only.

More texture cache may have been added if huge single die was split from start.
Primary issue for Nintendo 64 is atrocious RDRAM and CPU accesing via GPU.
RAM should have been SDRAM with CPU and GPU should have had 4MB each.
Two chips at 2MB of 64bit SDRAM would gave such bandwidth to GPU of N64.
CPU of N64 should have had own RAM and data bus to access it by itself.
Also data bus connecting CPU and GPU with each other increased in width.
Thus CPU and GPU data bus connection same bandwidth as all of RAM.

As for Saturn just one more SH-2 was needed to have role of main CPU.
Directing both SH-2 co-processors that assist and control those GPUs.
Also all of memory being SDRAM for lower latency and or more bandwidth.

But even current Saturn & N64 would've made the PSone even bigger joke 3D wise if both were given much better Dev tools. As the N64 & Sat could've ran near-DC quality games at 512x240@30.

Dreamcast was designed as cost-effective console just as was with Nintendo 64.
Many compromises were made in order to achieve viability of selling at 200USD.
In different timeline there could have been Shenmue-like game on Nintendo 64.

PlayStation was designed as any cost effective machine with many compromises.
Though at launch stores had 25% margin on PlayStation that was priced 400USD.
If Sony was aware of 10% profit margins in video game indistry was standard.
Then they could have certainly invest in texture correction silicon for PS1 GPU.
Or in SDRAM as main system memory, lower latency and more bandwidth.

Look at much software tricks Crash 1 ~ 3 had to use to just look very close a N64 game.

Every hardware has programmers using "tricks" to improve fidelity & performance.

But It odd how the Saturn seem ran better than PSX when pushed despite being 2MB main RAM.

Because Saturn had overall more RAM and one more CPU and GPU core at that.
Another is that 1MB of RAM out of 2MB of main system memory was SDRAM.
Much lower latency than FPM DRAM that PlayStation had. Better for CPU.

 

[Nesh]

But even current Saturn & N64 would've made the PSone even bigger joke 3D wise if both were given much better Dev tools. As the N64 & Sat could've ran near-DC quality games at 512x240@30.

Look at much software tricks Crash 1 ~ 3 had to use to just look very close a N64 game. But It odd how the Saturn seem ran better than PSX when pushed despite being 2MB main RAM.

Er....what examples do you have where the Saturn could run near DC quality graphics? The high res games on Saturn in general had huge compromises in a lot of other areas.

Once the Saturn was trying to compete the PS1 heads on in lighting, effects and polygins the resolution took a nose dive. See Panzer Dragoon Saga and Burning Rangers

Regarding the N64, besides texture filtering what else was there?

The Crash series looked in general better and more detailed than any games on the N64, Saturn and even any other PS1 game due both to running off a CD and its crazy streaming tricks.

 

[Nesh]

Oh and btw the PS1 also had some impressive super high res games for it's time and those were more impressive than what the Saturn ever produced in high res.
Also 60 fps while maintaining various special effects and lighting:

Also Wipeout 3 supposedly had a high resolution mode although I am not sure of the native res:

Also the Crash Bandicoot series was running at 512×240, which was higher than your typical PS1 game, while retaining textures, slighting and some rather interesting effects.
What games on the Saturn were up there?

 

[laymanpigeon]

You have to consider that those games were made after 1995 when Sony introduced PlayStation revision that replaced VRAM with SGRAM for its GPU that was slightly modified thus improved performance.
Sega Saturn has 4MB RAM expansion cartridge though that stayed in Japan, not sure if SoA or SoJ wasn't interested in such outside of Japan to be available that would have allowed greater resolution.

 

[Nesh]

You have to consider that those games were made after 1995 when Sony introduced PlayStation revision that replaced VRAM with SGRAM for its GPU that was slightly modified thus improved performance.
Sega Saturn has 4MB RAM expansion cartridge though that stayed in Japan, not sure if SoA or SoJ wasn't interested in such outside of Japan to be available that would have allowed greater resolution.

All Playstations performed the same minus the color banding. Difference in performance were miniscule to non existent in games.
The 4MB expansion didnt make the Saturn perform in "DC-like" quality and it was barely used. It found most of it's use in 2D fighting games.
Plus it was an expansion. So by default Saturn was punching in most cases lower

edit: btw I own all these games on PS1 and my model is a SCPH-1002 which I think had the original VRAM. They play exactly as shown in the videos.

 

[function]

Sega Saturn has 4MB RAM expansion cartridge though that stayed in Japan, not sure if SoA or SoJ wasn't interested in such outside of Japan to be available that would have allowed greater resolution.

I don't think that the 4MB (or 1 MB) expansion cart would have altered resolutions on the Saturn. As far as I could tell from some developer docs that were online, the ram expansion cart was on the same bus as the CD-ROM drive and its 512KB of memory (that you could preload chunks of data into from the CD-ROM drive using the SH1 and all that). Maybe someone can correct me if I'm wrong.

AFAIK the Saturn could only draw sprites / quads into its two separate 256KB banks attached to VDP1, so this wouldn't change. Often the Saturn would leave some of this memory unused and it couldn't be used by anything else. VDP1 could only texture and use a display list in the 512KB attacked to VDP1. The ram cart and/or the CD-ROM 512KB could allow for the data to be quickly copied into main memory or VDP1/2 memory, so you could use it in subsequent frames (so great for fighting games where you could swap in frames of animation for moves).

The Saturn CD-ROM drive was actually really good, and Sega provided libraries with the SGL to allow for reading data ahead of time into the 512KB cache without affecting what you were doing in CPU memory or VDP memory. It appears to have been quite an expensive drive to manufacture though.

Saturn is fascinating, and without the PS1 it would have been remembered as being a legendary and powerful system. In the face of the PS1 it was just a little too limited with 3D, a little too fiddly, and too expensive for Sega to be competitive with. You can't just keep expanding systems with additional processors, additional individual banks of memory and additional interconnects - eventually it just become too fiddly and too expensive.

Edit: I loved the Saturn btw. One of the best systems I've ever had. Sony had a better approach to hardware at that time though. Sega of 91 - 95 were batshit crazy and internationally dysfunctional. Some amazing games though.