Was GC more or less powerful than PS2? *spawn

[Ika]

Hi (and greetings to the forum) I think the GC was a bit more powerful but the ps2 had much more programmers and titles, and they squeezed out more performance from the system at the end. The GC had some genius coders at the beginning (like the guys at Factor5) who were very talented and pushed the hardware really hard right from the beginning, while the ps2 needed a little more time to catch up (at least as far as I remember). I had both systems right from day1 and the graphics of the ps2 launch titles did not impress me as much as how Rogue Squadron II did for example. Both system had graphically awesome games like Resident Evil, Star Wars, Metroid or Zelda (etc) on the GC, or like Gran Turismo, Shadow of Colossus, Metal Gear Solid or God of War (etc) on the PS2. (I loved those games:]) Systems need time and gifted programmers to "unlock" and develop, but again, if you only look at the the capabilities of the hardware, the GC was a bit more powerful in my opinion. I remember that the visual of some games like the 60fps Metroid Prime were simply shocking at the time Anyway (imo) it's never about the system, but the games. A good game remains good even if you would exchange the graphics to a s***y one

 

[AlNom]

That doesn't make blip's comment in any way sane though. "RSX (7800) can barely do lighting."

Oh, I agree it's a pretty extreme, inaccurate, and misguided statement, but I'm just trying to point out where it could have stemmed from - his interpretation of the presentations. Grall did ask for a basis for making the statement, and those presentations are the only things close - my original post was just a suggestion. It's certainly not the right thing to take away as an absolute since it's clear their main goal is trying to balance performance with underutilized SPUs whilst pushing RSX; you do have to look at the other side of the coin though, and Xenos does seem very well capable - the unspoken comparison - so I can see how he came to that conclusion.

 

[Shifty Geezer]

Oh, I agree it's a pretty extreme, inaccurate, and misguided statement, but I'm just trying to point out where it could have stemmed from - his interpretation of the presentations. Grall did ask for a basis for making the statement, and those presentations are the only things close...

Fair enough.

 

[PSman]

Laughing only shows your technical ignorance, I'm afraid. the fact the trees look 3D up close is simply a matter of LOD. They are 2D billboarded sprites in the distance, swapped in to tree models at a suitable distance. It's the same sort of thing as the famous 65535 enemies on screen at once Ikugami:

If you are talking about LOD then I understand - in that the tree are 2D at the very far distance (ONLY) but are fully 3D when you are close enough. My points was that the tree are 3D are aren't completely made out of cardboard 2D pixel. It's a quiet technical marvel - all those vegetation, grass, and tree - something that I highly doubt the GC can produce.

My points still stand :smile:

 

[Shifty Geezer]

It's a quiet technical marvel - all those vegetation, grass, and tree - something that I highly doubt the GC can produce.

GC can do 3D trees and 2D LOD. The grass is just lots of transparency - GC can't do that, but then neither can PS3 it seems. PS2 is a sprite/overdraw monster. That's its strong point. That doesn't make it overall superior though, just because one game can leverage the platform's imbalanced strengths to good effect.

 

[fearsomepirate]

GC can do 3D trees and 2D LOD. The grass is just lots of transparency - GC can't do that, but then neither can PS3 it seems. PS2 is a sprite/overdraw monster. That's its strong point. That doesn't make it overall superior though, just because one game can leverage the platform's imbalanced strengths to good effect.

And that's the whole trouble with this argument. You're talking about an era when 3D hardware was changing so rapidly that the tradeoffs resulted in pretty huge differences. On the PS2, the huge fill rate allows for effects that the GC couldn't achieve. On the flip side, you can achieve more vibrant texturing with 1MB of 6:1 S3TC texture than you can with 2MB of 4-bit palletized textures. The PS2's two programmable vector units give options that the GC's T&L doesn't. The GC's hardwired EMBM and let developers do things you just didn't see on the PS2. And on and on and on. The PS2's 32-bit frame buffer often resulted in much smoother colors than the GC's 24-bit buffer. But the Gamecube's indirect texturing allowed for some pretty neat effects I never quite saw on the PS2. And on and on and on.

It's not like PS3 vs 360 where comparing the top-notch AAA exclusives to figure out which is capable of prettier graphics is just...I mean, how do you argue whether Uncharted 3 or GeoW3 look better?