What do we know about the RSX

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Betanumerical

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I have been looking basic info on the RSX but i keep getting conflicting reports, some say its on the level of a 7800, others say its greatly reduced from that and is on the level of a 7600, so what is the truth?.
 
there is no concrete full confirmed specification of RSX. But read through the existing threads to get what is known at the moment and what's the general opinion of RSX. You should have the motivation to read through those threads if you want to learn... Pure specs don't tell you everything even if they were published. It's not how big it is but how you use it and how the whole system works(or doesn't work) together. And that's the part which has good information available if one has the patience to read through existing threads.

These rsx threads seem to appear every week and it's pretty old and boring threads as they rarely bring out new information nowdays. The most interesting turns seem to be happening around ps3 linux development where some rudimentary access has been enabled to rsx. People there seem to reference known linux drivers/codes to nv40 series as basis of the attempts to use RSX(i.e. draw triangle)
 
manux said:
there is no concrete full confirmed specification of RSX. But read through the existing threads to get what is known at the moment and what's the general opinion of RSX. You should have the motivation to read through those threads if you want to learn... Pure specs don't tell you everything even if they were published. It's not how big it is but how you use it and how the whole system works(or doesn't work) together. And that's the part which has good information available if one has the patience to read through existing threads.

These rsx threads seem to appear every week and it's pretty old and boring threads as they rarely bring out new information nowdays. The most interesting turns seem to be happening around ps3 linux development where some rudimentary access has been enabled to rsx. People there seem to reference known linux drivers/codes to nv40 series as basis of the attempts to use RSX(i.e. draw triangle)
Click to expand...

Could you please link to these threads, RSX is to short to search for :) .
 
They are scattered all around. But I guess best bet would be to search posts by known developers and start there. That should give you the good, back and the uggly. And skip the posts of the known fanboys that are just spreading misinformation to one side or the another.

The main meat at least to me is in the posts of those who have commented what works and doesn't work for RSX. Like the whole vertex issue with multiplatform titles and all the different branches of discussion around vertex processing.
 
manux said:
They are scattered all around. But I guess best bet would be to search posts by known developers and start there. That should give you the good, back and the uggly. And skip the posts of the known fanboys that are just spreading misinformation to one side or the another.

The main meat at least to me is in the posts of those who have commented what works and doesn't work for RSX. Like the whole vertex issue with multiplatform titles and all the different branches of discussion around vertex processing.
Click to expand...

Thanks, all the information in the threads from 2006 GDC, etc are still valid i take it.
 
Specs are already discussed in the The Definitive Console Specs Thread.

GPU Transistor Count
PS3 - RSX transistor count: 300.2 million transistors
Xbox 360 - Xenos transistor count: 337 million (232 million parent die+105 million EDRAM daughter die)

GPU clock
Xbox 360 - Xenos clocked at 500 Mhz
PS3 - RSX clocked at 500 MHz

GPU video memory
Xbox 360 - Xenos: 512 MB of 700 Mhz GDDR3 VRAM on a 128-bit bus
Xbox 360 - Xenos: 10 MB daughter Embedded DRAM as framebuffer (32GB/s bus, multiplied by 8 thanks to multisampling unpacking for an effective bandwidth of 256 MB/s, the internal eDRAM bandwidth)
PS3 - RSX: 256 MB GDDR3 VRAM clocked at 700 Mhz on a 128-bit bus
PS3 - RSX: 256 MB of Rambus X D R DRAM via Cell (with latency penalty)

Triangle Setup
Xbox 360 - 500 Million Triangles/sec
PS3 - 250 Million Triangles/sec

Vertex Shader Processing
Xbox 360 - 6.0 Billion Vertices/sec (using all 48 Unified Pipelines)
Xbox 360 - 2.0 Billion Vertices/sec (using only 16 of the 48 Unified Pipelines)
Xbox 360 - 1.5 Billion Vertices/sec (using only 12 of the 48 Unified Pipelines)
Xbox 360 - 1.0 Billion Vertices/sec (using only 8 of the 48 Unified Pipelines)
PS3 - 1.1 Billion Vertices/sec (if all 8 Vertex Pipelines remain)
PS3 - 0.825 Billion Vertices/sec (if downgraded to 6 Vertex Pipelines)

Filtered Texture Fetch
Xbox 360 - 8.0 Billion Texels/sec
PS3 - 13.2 Billion Texels/sec (if all 24 Pixel Pipelines remain)
PS3 - 11.0 Billion Texels/sec (if downgraded to 20 Pixel Pipelines)

Vertex Texture Fetch
Xbox 360 - 8.0 Billion Texels/sec
PS3 - 4.4 Billion Texels/sec (if all 8 Vertex Pipelines remain)
PS3 - 3.3 Billion Texels/sec (if downgraded to 6 Vertex Pipelines)

Pixel Shader Processing with 16 Filtered Texels Per Cycle (Pixel ALU x Clock)
Xbox 360 - 24.0 Billion Pixels/sec (using all 48 Unified Pipelines)
Xbox 360 - 20.0 Billion Pixels/sec (using 40 of the 48 Unified Pipelines)
Xbox 360 - 18.0 Billion Pixels/sec (using 36 of the 48 Unified Pipelines)
Xbox 360 - 16.0 Billion Pixels/sec (using 32 of the 48 Unified Pipelines)
PS3 - 17.6 Billion Pixels/sec (if all 24 Pixel Pipelines remain)
PS3 - 13.2 Billion Pixels/sec (if downgraded to 20 Pixel Pipelines)

Pixel Shader Processing without Textures (Pixel ALU x Clock)
Xbox 360 - 24.0 Billion Pixels/sec (using all 48 Unified Pipelines)
Xbox 360 - 20.0 Billion Pixels/sec (using 40 of the 48 Unified Pipelines)
Xbox 360 - 18.0 Billion Pixels/sec (using 36 of the 48 Unified Pipelines)
Xbox 360 - 16.0 Billion Pixels/sec (using 32 of the 48 Unified Pipelines)
PS3 - 26.4 Billion Pixels/sec (if all 24 Pixel Pipelines remain)
PS3 - 22.0 Billion Pixels/sec (if downgraded to 20 Pixel Pipelines)

Multisampled Fill Rate
Xbox 360 - 16.0 Billion Samples/sec (8 ROPS x 4 Samples x 500MHz)
PS3 - 8.0 Billion Samples/sec (8 ROPS x 2 Samples x 500MHz)

Pixel Fill Rate with 4x Multisampled Anti-Aliasing
Xbox 360 - 4.0 Billion Pixels/sec (8 ROPS x 4 Samples x 500MHz / 4)
PS3 - 2.0 Billion Pixels/sec (8 ROPS x 2 Samples x 500MHz / 4)

Pixel Fill Rate without Anti-Aliasing
Xbox 360 - 4.0 Billion Pixels/sec (8 ROPS x 500MHz)
PS3 - 4.0 Billion Pixels/sec (8 ROPS x 500MHz)

Frame Buffer Bandwidth
Xbox 360 - 256.0 GB/sec (dedicated for frame buffer rendering)
PS3 - 22.4 GB/sec (shared with other graphics data: textures and vertices)
PS3 - 12.4 GB/sec (with 10.0 GB/sec subtracted for textures and vertices)
PS3 - 10.0 GB/sec (with 12.4 GB/sec subtracted for textures and vertices)

Texture/Vertex Memory Bandwidth
Xbox 360 - 22.4 GB/sec (shared with CPU)
Xbox 360 - 14.4 GB/sec (with 8.0 GB/sec subtracted for CPU)
Xbox 360 - 12.4 GB/sec (with 10.0 GB/sec subtracted for CPU)
PS3 - 22.4 GB/sec (shared with frame buffer)
PS3 - 12.4 GB/sec (with 10.0 GB/sec subtracted for frame buffer)
PS3 - 10.0 GB/sec (with 12.4 GB/sec subtracted for frame buffer)
PS3 - additional 20.0 GB/sec when reading from X D R memory (with latency penalty)

Shader Model
Xbox 360 - Shader Model 3.0+ / Unified Shader Architecture
PS3 - Shader Model 3.0 / Discrete Shader Architecture
 
Babcat tends to post in every thread that mentions RSX. Check out their profile, and see all posts they've made. Your list of RSX threads can be determined right there...

Dean
 
Betanumerical said:
I have been looking basic info on the RSX but i keep getting conflicting reports, some say its on the level of a 7800, others say its greatly reduced from that and is on the level of a 7600, so what is the truth?.
Click to expand...

It's a 500mhz 7800/7900 with some tweaks. 24 pixel shaders pipes, 8 vertex pipes, etc.

Tweaks include, 128 bit bus instead of 256, 8 rops deactivited, more cache (in order to use textures with increased latency from XDR ). Those are the main ones..
 
Rangers said:
It's a 500mhz 7800/7900 with some tweaks. 24 pixel shaders pipes, 8 vertex pipes, etc.

Tweaks include, 128 bit bus instead of 256, 8 rops deactivited, more cache (in order to use textures with increased latency from XDR ). Those are the main ones..
Click to expand...

So I take it the wiki article is pretty close on the money (cept for the 550mhz core) ?

550 MHz G70 based GPU on 90 nm process [1][2]

* 300+ million transistors (600 million with Cell CPU) [3]
* Multi-way programmable parallel floating-point shader pipelines[4]
o Independent pixel/vertex shader architecture
o 24 parallel pixel pipelines, aligned in 6-way MIMD array
+ 5 ALU operations per pipeline, per cycle (2 vector4 or 2 scalar/dual/co-issue and fog ALU)
+ 27 FLOPS per pipeline, per cycle
o 8 parallel vertex pipelines, aligned in 8-way MIMD array
+ 2 ALU operations per pipeline, per cycle (1 vector4 and 1 scalar, dual issue)
+ 10 FLOPS per pipeline, per cycle
o Maximum vertex count:a lot probably over 1.2 billion vertices per second
+ Minimum (worst case) polygon count: 400 million polygons per second (1.2 billion vertices per second / 3 vertices per triangle)
+ Maximum (optimistic case) 750 million and more depending on how many triangle strips are used in the game
o Maximum shader operations:100 billion shader operations per second ( 136 shader operations per clock cycle ). [5]
o Announced: 1.8 TFLOPS (trillion floating point operations per second) (2 TFLOPS overall performance)[6] [7]
* 24 texture filtering units (TF) and 8 vertex texture addressing units (TA)
o 24 filtered samples per clock
+ Maximum texel fillrate: 13.2 GigaTexels per second (24 textures * 550 MHz)
o 32 unfiltered texture samples per clock, ( 8 TA x 4 texture samples )
* 8 Render Output units
o Maximum pixel fillrate: 4.4 GigaPixel per second (8 ROPs * 550 MHz)
o Maximum Z sample rate: 8.8 GigaSamples per second (2 Z-samples * 8 ROPs * 550 MHz)
o Maximum anti-aliasing sample rate: 8.8 GigaSamples per second (2 subsamples * 8 ROPs * 550 MHz)
* Maximum Dot product operations: 51 billion per second [8]
* 128-bit pixel precision offers rendering of scenes with high dynamic range rendering (HDR)
* 256 MiB GDDR3 RAM at 700 MHz[9] [10]
o 128-bit memory bus width
o 22.4 GiB/s read and write bandwidth
* Cell FlexIO bus interface
o 20 GiB/s read to the Cell and XDR memory
o 15 GiB/s write to the Cell and XDR memory
* Support for OpenGL ES 2.0
* Support for S3TC texture compression [1]
Click to expand...
 
Supernatural said:
Specs are already discussed in the The Definitive Console Specs Thread.

GPU Transistor Count
PS3 - RSX transistor count: 300.2 million transistors
Xbox 360 - Xenos transistor count: 337 million (232 million parent die+105 million EDRAM daughter die)

GPU clock
Xbox 360 - Xenos clocked at 500 Mhz
PS3 - RSX clocked at 500 MHz

GPU video memory
Xbox 360 - Xenos: 512 MB of 700 Mhz GDDR3 VRAM on a 128-bit bus
Xbox 360 - Xenos: 10 MB daughter Embedded DRAM as framebuffer (32GB/s bus, multiplied by 8 thanks to multisampling unpacking for an effective bandwidth of 256 MB/s, the internal eDRAM bandwidth)
PS3 - RSX: 256 MB GDDR3 VRAM clocked at 700 Mhz on a 128-bit bus
PS3 - RSX: 256 MB of Rambus X D R DRAM via Cell (with latency penalty)

Triangle Setup
Xbox 360 - 500 Million Triangles/sec
PS3 - 250 Million Triangles/sec

Vertex Shader Processing
Xbox 360 - 6.0 Billion Vertices/sec (using all 48 Unified Pipelines)
Xbox 360 - 2.0 Billion Vertices/sec (using only 16 of the 48 Unified Pipelines)
Xbox 360 - 1.5 Billion Vertices/sec (using only 12 of the 48 Unified Pipelines)
Xbox 360 - 1.0 Billion Vertices/sec (using only 8 of the 48 Unified Pipelines)
PS3 - 1.1 Billion Vertices/sec (if all 8 Vertex Pipelines remain)
PS3 - 0.825 Billion Vertices/sec (if downgraded to 6 Vertex Pipelines)

Filtered Texture Fetch
Xbox 360 - 8.0 Billion Texels/sec
PS3 - 13.2 Billion Texels/sec (if all 24 Pixel Pipelines remain)
PS3 - 11.0 Billion Texels/sec (if downgraded to 20 Pixel Pipelines)

Vertex Texture Fetch
Xbox 360 - 8.0 Billion Texels/sec
PS3 - 4.4 Billion Texels/sec (if all 8 Vertex Pipelines remain)
PS3 - 3.3 Billion Texels/sec (if downgraded to 6 Vertex Pipelines)

Pixel Shader Processing with 16 Filtered Texels Per Cycle (Pixel ALU x Clock)
Xbox 360 - 24.0 Billion Pixels/sec (using all 48 Unified Pipelines)
Xbox 360 - 20.0 Billion Pixels/sec (using 40 of the 48 Unified Pipelines)
Xbox 360 - 18.0 Billion Pixels/sec (using 36 of the 48 Unified Pipelines)
Xbox 360 - 16.0 Billion Pixels/sec (using 32 of the 48 Unified Pipelines)
PS3 - 17.6 Billion Pixels/sec (if all 24 Pixel Pipelines remain)
PS3 - 13.2 Billion Pixels/sec (if downgraded to 20 Pixel Pipelines)

Pixel Shader Processing without Textures (Pixel ALU x Clock)
Xbox 360 - 24.0 Billion Pixels/sec (using all 48 Unified Pipelines)
Xbox 360 - 20.0 Billion Pixels/sec (using 40 of the 48 Unified Pipelines)
Xbox 360 - 18.0 Billion Pixels/sec (using 36 of the 48 Unified Pipelines)
Xbox 360 - 16.0 Billion Pixels/sec (using 32 of the 48 Unified Pipelines)
PS3 - 26.4 Billion Pixels/sec (if all 24 Pixel Pipelines remain)
PS3 - 22.0 Billion Pixels/sec (if downgraded to 20 Pixel Pipelines)

Multisampled Fill Rate
Xbox 360 - 16.0 Billion Samples/sec (8 ROPS x 4 Samples x 500MHz)
PS3 - 8.0 Billion Samples/sec (8 ROPS x 2 Samples x 500MHz)

Pixel Fill Rate with 4x Multisampled Anti-Aliasing
Xbox 360 - 4.0 Billion Pixels/sec (8 ROPS x 4 Samples x 500MHz / 4)
PS3 - 2.0 Billion Pixels/sec (8 ROPS x 2 Samples x 500MHz / 4)

Pixel Fill Rate without Anti-Aliasing
Xbox 360 - 4.0 Billion Pixels/sec (8 ROPS x 500MHz)
PS3 - 4.0 Billion Pixels/sec (8 ROPS x 500MHz)

Frame Buffer Bandwidth
Xbox 360 - 256.0 GB/sec (dedicated for frame buffer rendering)
PS3 - 22.4 GB/sec (shared with other graphics data: textures and vertices)
PS3 - 12.4 GB/sec (with 10.0 GB/sec subtracted for textures and vertices)
PS3 - 10.0 GB/sec (with 12.4 GB/sec subtracted for textures and vertices)

Texture/Vertex Memory Bandwidth
Xbox 360 - 22.4 GB/sec (shared with CPU)
Xbox 360 - 14.4 GB/sec (with 8.0 GB/sec subtracted for CPU)
Xbox 360 - 12.4 GB/sec (with 10.0 GB/sec subtracted for CPU)
PS3 - 22.4 GB/sec (shared with frame buffer)
PS3 - 12.4 GB/sec (with 10.0 GB/sec subtracted for frame buffer)
PS3 - 10.0 GB/sec (with 12.4 GB/sec subtracted for frame buffer)
PS3 - additional 20.0 GB/sec when reading from X D R memory (with latency penalty)

Shader Model
Xbox 360 - Shader Model 3.0+ / Unified Shader Architecture
PS3 - Shader Model 3.0 / Discrete Shader Architecture
Click to expand...

As Xbox 360 has unified Vertex and Pixel Shader all those specs are inrelevant i.e. if you use 16 pipeline for Vertex you can use only 32 remaining for pixel etc.
 
As the specs list was copied over to inform the OP on RSX's specs, discussion of Xenos's abilities are irrelevant!
 
Rangers said:
Tweaks include, 128 bit bus instead of 256, 8 rops deactivited, more cache (in order to use textures with increased latency from XDR ). Those are the main ones..
Click to expand...

Actually, 2x 128 (where the XDR/Cell bus is 2x64 afaik) bit busses to both memory pools/cell ;)
 
ArturNOW said:
As Xbox 360 has unified Vertex and Pixel Shader all those specs are inrelevant i.e. if you use 16 pipeline for Vertex you can use only 32 remaining for pixel etc.
Click to expand...

As far as I know the computational load shifts through the calculations of a single frame. That's one of the reasons to use unified shaders.
 
AnandTech has an article that should be read by all who are interested in the PS3's specs and how it relates to today.

http://anandtech.com/tradeshows/showdoc.aspx?i=2417&p=4

Some quotes

"The RSX GPU offers dual screen output, with each output offering a resolution of up to 1080p resolution (1920 x 1080). The GPU runs at 550MHz and is connected to 256MB of local GDDR3 memory running at 700MHz."

"The architecture itself is a bit different than what we've seen from previous NVIDIA GPUs:

The RSX can render pixels to any part of memory, giving it access to the full 512MB of memory of the PS3. We'd expect the technology used here to be similar to NVIDIA's TurboCache that we've seen on the desktop."








What I really want to know is where is that official word that says otherwise from a credible source?
 
DeanA said:
Babcat tends to post in every thread that mentions RSX. Check out their profile, and see all posts they've made. Your list of RSX threads can be determined right there...

Dean
Click to expand...

The man speaks the truth. This thread here has been done a hundred times now; the RSX information anyone seeks is just a search away.

I do sympathize though that the term 'RSX' itself is too short to search for.
 
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