SEGA's NEW ARCADE HARDWARE...

[helvetica bold]

How does the specs stack up against 360 and PS3?
Sega's new hardware supports Shader Model 4.0, doesn't
the consoles support only 3.0?


FROM http://arcadeheroes.com/

Ringedge:

Intel Pentium E2160 CPU @ 1.8 GHz

1GB of DDR2 PC2-6400 RAM

An “nVidia GPU” w/ 384MB of GDDR3 RAM and supports Shader Model 4.0 and “two 1920×1200″ which probably means it has ports for two monitors and can support up to that resolution. Also as of a note, it says “nVidia GPU 2″ on the document up higher - not sure if that means

5.1 ch HD Audio

Onboard Gigabit LAN

A 32GB SSD drive for storage (finally, flash storage instead of a standard HDD which will likely fail soon)

Microsoft Windows Embedded Standard 2009

ALL.Net

Ringwide:

An Intel Celeron 440 @ 2 GHz

1GB of DDR2 PC5300 RAM

“AMD GPU” with 128MB of GDDR3 RAM, supports Shader Model 4.0 and also has two ports to handle 1920×1200 resolution video

5.1 ch HD Audio

Onboard gigabit LAN

An 8GB Compact Flash for storage

Microsoft Windows Embedded Standard 2009

ALL.Net

So there you have it! Ringwide is obviously not as powerful as Ringedge and thus should cost less. It also has been revealed that Border Break is among the first games to use Ring Edge, stay tuned for details on that in a moment.

 

[eastmen]

1 gig of ram really ? I just bought 4 gigs of ddr 2 1033 for $35 bucks.

 

[Shifty Geezer]

They're both shockingly low-spec'd. I guess the days of the arcade being the cutting edge of game technology are long past. I suppose there are major limits to what types of games are suitable for the arcades which put a natural cap on required performance. You don't need a monster CPU to run a beat-'em-up or arcade racer. All an arcade needs to do really is be fast and pretty. Although 1GB seems a bit sparse there too when you consider there's usually more buffering to RAM on the arcades to elliminate load times.

 

[grandmaster]

I would expect the AMD GPU to be the absolute lowest end part - I mean, how many actually ship with 128MB these days? The nVidia one is interesting though... a 9600 variant of some description? Few of their GPUs come with 384MB of RAM so it should be easier to narrow down.

 

[AlNom]

Few of their GPUs come with 384MB of RAM so it should be easier to narrow down.

It would almost certainly have to be the stripped down G80 series that were 384-bit. Perhaps they are leftover stock of lower binned (low clock speed) GPUs with just half the local memory (768MB) strapped to it. A full-speed G80 in that situation would seem overkill, but who knows...

 

[DeadlyNinja]

I would expect the AMD GPU to be the absolute lowest end part - I mean, how many actually ship with 128MB these days? The nVidia one is interesting though... a 9600 variant of some description? Few of their GPUs come with 384MB of RAM so it should be easier to narrow down.

8800GS is the only one. Well, that is the rebranded 9600GSO. I own one, and I'm very happy with it. Besides, it's a closed platform, I'm sure it'll be easier to optimize compared to the open ended specs of a PC game. Hell, I could easily run COD4 with my stock clocked 8800GS at 720p with 4xaa (low corpses) and everything else on high with my modest rig. The PS3/360 version doesn't even run at 720p, let alone 4xaa.

 

[RudeCurve]

It's a shame SEGA doesn't make a game that rivals CGI using a highend PC setup. Imagine a Virtua Fighters game using 8GB RAM + 3GHz C2Q + top of line GPU. I would love to see what they could do with that much power.

 

[Mobius1aic]

An Intel Pentium E2160 CPU @ 1.8 GHz? Sure that's better than a Pentium 4 3.0 GHz, but God that is low end by today's standards.

 

[Teasy]

But surely its not the point that this is low end compared to the best PC's, since it'll be treated more like a console running on PC parts.

 

[abcgamer]

What is the point in making it now They should start planing and may be release it later to compete against PS4, Xbox 720 and Wii2. Which I think is at least 5yrs from now

 

[eastmen]

But surely its not the point that this is low end compared to the best PC's, since it'll be treated more like a console running on PC parts.

Still though i'd expect to see slightly better parts in there. It seems like this arcade machine hardware will cost $300 bucks at best.

Actually you can build a 2ghz quad core phenom with a radeon 4850 1 gig and 4 gigs of system ram with a motherboard and 7.1 sound for $500 bucks. Thats why these arcade units seem so under powered.

I'm assuming these specs were to make porting to the 360 and ps3 easier. Of course at that point why not just run a 360 with extra system ram and a ssd ? Or a ps3 with 1 gig of ram with a ssd ?

 

[Mobius1aic]

Well what about the feasibility of taking off the shelf parts in the form of notebook components? Not only could you possibly get the same CPU and GPU throughput but with reduced power usage as well. You could take the motherboard of let's say, my notebook, get rid of the case of course, add some more cooling to handle the long durations of thermal loading (which I do to my lappy anyways with all my gaming ), add a different screen and controls. The system board at full load will top out at less than 125 watts easy.

Basically the parts are there, they could get surplus Asus notebook motherboards that would otherwise be used in a complete notebook, and as far as OS goes, Asus is pretty decent about Linux support, so the programmability is there. Add the monitor, speakers, and controls. It t'would be much better than any current PC based arcade hardware, and it's notebook hardware for God's sake!

 

[V3]

Still though i'd expect to see slightly better parts in there. It seems like this arcade machine hardware will cost $300 bucks at best.

Actually you can build a 2ghz quad core phenom with a radeon 4850 1 gig and 4 gigs of system ram with a motherboard and 7.1 sound for $500 bucks. Thats why these arcade units seem so under powered.

I'm assuming these specs were to make porting to the 360 and ps3 easier. Of course at that point why not just run a 360 with extra system ram and a ssd ? Or a ps3 with 1 gig of ram with a ssd ?

$300 bucks plus monitor and sticks, etc still add up and consider the setup need 16 of this. Also they want to keep power consumption at minimal too for arcade operator to be profitable. They also might not used the top end part because these hardware run at full speed for that much longer compare to PC and parts need to be replaced during their service. Replacing GTX285 every 3-6 months isn't good to their bottom line.

Arcade is not what it used to be even in Japan but with this spec it will still offer better graphics compare to 360 or PS3. Just not the top end PC. Why bother the monitors are only 720p or 1080p and arcade games isn't exactly GTA4 on resource usage.

 

[Silent_Buddha]

Added to all that, when designing a game for one of these boards...

Absolutely no consideration or compromises have to be made to support lower end hardware.

No considerations have to be made to support ANY hardware that isn't included in the cabinet.

Likewise there is no consideration for any resolutions other than the targetted resolution.

As such don't think of it in PC terms but think of it in console terms as someone mentioned above. It's a fixed configuration with fixed hardware that you can highly optimize for.

As such you can probably expect the edge model to have far surperior graphics compared to X360 or PS3 which aren't all that shabby.

You can probably expect it to have superior graphics to most PC games. The caveate is that PC games that truly try to push the envelope (Crysis for example) will probably still have an edge but probably won't run as smoothly.

Also, an Arcade machine even more than a PC or Console has to take into consideration power consumption as someoone else mentioned. As they are often on for greater than 12 hours everyday at full speed. They often cannot enter an idle state as they must be constantly displaying something to entice people to spend their money playing it.

Regards,
SB

 

[Megadrive1988]

All the Sega arcade boards from Lindbergh to Europa-R to these news ones, Ringwide & Ringedge are simply low-end to midrange PCs for their time. Nothing exciting. Remember when Model2 and Model3 were far beyond the ability of $2000 PCs? Those days are long gone.

Yeah, I'd like to see what Sega could do with quad-core Core i7 plus three GTX 280s or four RV770s and 12 GB RAM. A board with that much power could produce visuals that are an order of magnitude beyond X360/PS3.

 

[Mobius1aic]

All the Sega arcade boards from Lindbergh to Europa-R to these news ones, Ringwide & Ringedge are simply low-end to midrange PCs for their time. Nothing exciting. Remember when Model2 and Model3 were far beyond the ability of $2000 PCs? Those days are long gone.

Yeah, I'd like to see what Sega could do with quad-core Core i7 plus three GTX 280s or four RV770s and 12 GB RAM. A board with that much power could produce visuals that are an order of magnitude beyond X360/PS3.

Well the days of experimental 3D are long over, so such overspecialized hardware really doesn't cut it in today's world.

 

[eastmen]

All the Sega arcade boards from Lindbergh to Europa-R to these news ones, Ringwide & Ringedge are simply low-end to midrange PCs for their time. Nothing exciting. Remember when Model2 and Model3 were far beyond the ability of $2000 PCs? Those days are long gone.

Yeah, I'd like to see what Sega could do with quad-core Core i7 plus three GTX 280s or four RV770s and 12 GB RAM. A board with that much power could produce visuals that are an order of magnitude beyond X360/PS3.

Thats just the thing , I don't think they'd ever build that but as I said how about a low end quad with 4 gigs of ram and a 4850 series card with 1 gig of ram.

That wouldn't be very expensive imo.

300 bucks plus monitor and sticks, etc still add up and consider the setup need 16 of this. Also they want to keep power consumption at minimal too for arcade operator to be profitable. They also might not used the top end part because these hardware run at full speed for that much longer compare to PC and parts need to be replaced during their service. Replacing GTX285 every 3-6 months isn't good to their bottom line.

Arcade is not what it used to be even in Japan but with this spec it will still offer better graphics compare to 360 or PS3. Just not the top end PC. Why bother the monitors are only 720p or 1080p and arcade games isn't exactly GTA4 on resource usage.

And woudl a $500 set up break the bank ? Just seems odd to me with the way actual pricing for pc hardware is.

I would personaly put as much system ram as I could in to hide any loads in the arcades esp with pricing of ddr 2 being under $40 bucks for 4 gigs .

 

[Rangers]

All the Sega arcade boards from Lindbergh to Europa-R to these news ones, Ringwide & Ringedge are simply low-end to midrange PCs for their time. Nothing exciting. Remember when Model2 and Model3 were far beyond the ability of $2000 PCs? Those days are long gone.

Yeah, I'd like to see what Sega could do with quad-core Core i7 plus three GTX 280s or four RV770s and 12 GB RAM. A board with that much power could produce visuals that are an order of magnitude beyond X360/PS3.

I really like that idea...

Arent many Arcade machines supposed to cost like 30k or some ridiculous sum in the past? Point being with off the shelf PC hardware you could build the monster machine in your specs for much less than that, even if it was 5k.

I'm sure theres no market for it though, or somebody would do it..

Hell, I'm an advocate/wisher that there was a neo-geo style niche (home) console today..something that maybe cost 7-$800 with 80, 90, even $100 games, but that was worth it.

 

[V3]

Looking at Border Break, Sega couldn't even maximise what they have. I think they'll just make games they could given the time and budget and see what the minimal hardware that will run it.

Niche high end gaming machine is a high end PC. I'll be happy if Sega support PC with more of their arcade ports. They did VT, Sega Rally and Outrun which I think are excellent ports. I think the sales number on those titles are niche.

 

[grandmaster]

Yup, the sales numbers on console are where the revenue will come from so it makes sense to have arcade hardware that is ballpark in terms of performance. The days where the arcades were the hotbed of performance gaming are long since gone.

I also think that the hardware being chosen is aimed specifically at reliability as well. An i7 system with triple GPUs is going to be able to take far less punishment on site than the RingEdge.