The true story of Nintendo64.

[ERP]

Textures on the PS2 were limited by the graphics memory, and to a single Texture page in that memory (256x256 for all intents and purposes).

N64 had a 4KB texture cache that had to be explicitly loaded from main RAM in the command stream before it could be used. If Mipmapping was enabled it was effectively 2KB. To put it in perspective a 64x64 4bit/pixel texture is 2K and a 128x64 is 4K.

 

[PC-Engine]

I'm not really sure Nintendo ended up using MIPS R4300i in the production units.

It IS the R4300i design. MIPS doesn't make any CPUs themselves, they lease out designs to others. NEC fabbed the chips for the N64, so if they wanted to print VR43xx on the top surface, I guess they could. It's still R4300i-class chips though.

Just compare Nintendo's specs with the R4300i, they match exactly, right down to the TLB buffer size.

That's true, I think I got it confused with NEC's V8xx series which is their own design.