Which is more powerful, iQue or Nintendo DS?

[Fox5]

The iQue is an n64 running at twice the speed.

The DS's graphics raw performance seems to be about 2/3s that of the playstation, but with more features and probably a smarter and more efficient design. And I believe the DS's cpu is 1.5x to 2x as powerful as the psx's.
The DS does 120,000 texture mapped polys versus 180,000 on the psx, and I think the arm 9 is about 100MIPS while the PSX's is 66MIPS.
The DS also has the GBA's arm7 at twice the speed.

The iQue has texture filtering, and the DS doesn't.

BTW, how come the iQue's hardware wasn't released as the DS? It doesn't seem to require a lot of power, and would allow for direct n64 ports with no changes(assuming ds doesn't).

 

[Megadrive1988]

good question. almost certainly iQue is more powerful and more feature-rich. (only thinking in terms of rendering power) ...the DS is N64+ whereas DS is lesser than N64 in most respects.

 

[see colon]

whereas DS is lesser than N64 in most respects.

umm....

 

[Fox5]

I wonder how bandwidth numbers compare for the ds versus n64 or psx. N64 has about 5x the memory bandwidth of psx.

Does DS have a dedicated sound chip, or a shared chip like the n64?

The n64's cpu is clocked at 125MIPS and 100MFLOPS, and can do 100,000 polys with all effects on. I don't think an ARM9 does any FLOPS and less than 100MIPS. According to specs I found online the n64 does 150,000 raw polys(30,000 more than ds), however mario 64 only does 15,000 polys per second, and the theoretical max of the hardware is 1 million or 500,000 polys.(perhaps depending on how bandwidth limited it is?)

 

[Megadrive1988]

well, with all due respect Fox5, I think those figures are way off.

from what I understood, N64's raw poly performance was around 600,000 or more. whereas the fully featured & texture mapped poly figure was around 160,000. most games are around 100,000 fully featured & textured polys or less. but more than 15,000. that's more like 3DO territory.

 

[Fox5]

well, with all due respect Fox5, I think those figures are way off.

from what I understood, N64's raw poly performance was around 600,000 or more. whereas the fully featured & texture mapped poly figure was around 160,000. most games are around 100,000 fully featured & textured polys or less. but more than 15,000. that's more like 3DO territory.

Well, all those figures about the n64 came from a site trying to sell the n64. Well, the 100,000 and 150,000 figures were close, and so was the 500,000 then? I've come across a nintendo press release a few times that had the 1 million poly figure, but it always said it was a figure that would be achieved in future games(this site used it the same way, along with the 500,000 figure) and not something that was achieved as of early 1997.

Is 15,000 polys really that off for mario 64? It wasn't a terribly detailed game, it used sprites for many things, didn't have complex geometry, and didn't even maintain a 30 fps framerate.
I wouldn't be surprised to find fzero x pretty low on the poly amount despite the 60 fps, though I guess in the few occasions where all 30 cars were on screen at once it could really raise its poly rate. I'd guess 100-200 polygons per car(and 10x that amount in the car preview mode)...actually that can't be right, or it'd put the poly rate for the cars alone between 180,000 to 360,000...ok maybe more like 25-50 polys per car would be more accurate, though I do recall the cars in the car preview mode being dreamcast quality. Too bad there's no gameshark code or cheatcode to enable those models to be used in game as they would really look nice on an emulator.

 

[Evil_Cloud]

With some luck, I'll have an Ique directly from China somewhere next year, so I'll be able to compare direcly with my DS from Europe.

 

[Fox5]

Oh yeah, the iQue also has the price advantage, $100 gets you it and 2 full games and a few demos, and I believe $120 gets you it and like 8 games, and all good ones. Just add in rare's n64 games and you'd have a perfect n64 gaming experience there, and maybe with double the framerate perfect dark could have playable speeds.

 

[Teasy]

good question. almost certainly iQue is more powerful and more feature-rich. (only thinking in terms of rendering power) ...the DS is N64+ whereas DS is lesser than N64 in most respects.

Appart from lack of texture filtering DS is more powerful then N64 AFAICS. Whether its more powerful then IQue is nother question. Is IQue a N64 with its main CPU clocked at twice the speed, or does IQue have more advantages over N64?

BTW incidentally I heard recently that DS has hardware T&L with 4 hardware lights. So 3D apears to be done all in hardware. Which means the ARM7 and ARM9 should be free just for AI and physics (or mostly anyway).

rom what I understood, N64's raw poly performance was around 600,000 or more

DS's raw poly performance is around 1.3 million/ps according to sources I've read.

 

[Fox5]

Is IQue a N64 with its main CPU clocked at twice the speed, or does IQue have more advantages over N64?

iQue has everything clocked twice the speed I believe.

And the only sources I can find for the ds's 3d power is 120,000 texture mapped polygons per second. I dunno, it's 3d power seems to be more along a n64's with the n64's limitations removed.

 

[Farid]

And the only sources I can find for the ds's 3d power is 120,000 texture mapped polygons per second. I dunno, it's 3d power seems to be more along a n64's with the n64's limitations removed.

ERP said, numerous times, that N64 could push up to 600K texture mapped polygons, PSone quality polygons (No linear filtering and maybe no perpective correction).
But, for undisclosed reasons, Nintendo never allowed this kind of rendering in a commercial game.

 

[Guden Oden]

This is the first time I've heard the Ique has faster-clocked chips compared to N64. Is this really confirmed??? If true, it might be only a half-bad piece of kit actually.

 

[Fox5]

This is the first time I've heard the Ique has faster-clocked chips compared to N64. Is this really confirmed??? If true, it might be only a half-bad piece of kit actually.

http://www.lik-sang.com/info.php?ca...=63b01cabd1405039232762ebabc2ee52#Description

Prices aren't bad either for what you get, but even still it's not a portable system. But considering it has the entire n64 chipset condensed down to a single chip you would think it could be battery powered...but the PSX has the same thing and is far from battery powered.

 

[Evil_Cloud]

This is the first time I've heard the Ique has faster-clocked chips compared to N64. Is this really confirmed??? If true, it might be only a half-bad piece of kit actually.

Not every game is available on iQue, certainly not the games that had severe framerate problems in multiplayer, like Perfect Dark.

 

[Fox5]

This is the first time I've heard the Ique has faster-clocked chips compared to N64. Is this really confirmed??? If true, it might be only a half-bad piece of kit actually.

Not every game is available on iQue, certainly not the games that had severe framerate problems in multiplayer, like Perfect Dark.

Wonder how hard it is to put roms on the ique...

BTW, the ique also has a 4 player multitap and online play.

 

[Teasy]

And the only sources I can find for the ds's 3d power is 120,000 texture mapped polygons per second. I dunno, it's 3d power seems to be more along a n64's with the n64's limitations removed.

From what I can gather 120,000 is the number of polys that DS can display on screen per second (possibly discluding overdraw). But the same sources say that its transform power is 1.3 million polys per second...

I don't think we can conclude that DS is only a little bit more powerful then N64 just by looking at launch titles. We should see quite a good improvement in graphics on DS in second generation games.

I'm just wondering who will be the first dev to do texture filtering on DS, or at least fake it

 

[Farid]

I'm just wondering who will be the first dev to do texture filtering on DS, or at least fake it

What do you call fake linear filtering? Do you mean preprocessed dithered textures like some Psone game used in order to fake some filtering, or do you mean something else?

Producing a software real linear filtering would cost too much for the DS hardware, and if the DS hardware could handle, moderately, some sort of hardwired linear filtering, some 2D games/ applications (Pictochat) would use it.

 

[Teasy]

What do you call fake linear filtering?

A random per pixel texcoord jitter.

 

[Megadrive1988]

ERP said, numerous times, that N64 could push up to 600K texture mapped polygons, PSone quality polygons (No linear filtering and maybe no perpective correction).
But, for undisclosed reasons, Nintendo never allowed this kind of rendering in a commercial game.

I find it difficult to believe that N64 could push 600k texture mapped polygons of PS1 quality. that would make N64 more powerful than the Sega Model 2 board designed by Martin Marietta, which could shove out 300k texture mapped polygons. ok maybe if N64 isnt doing z-buffering, texture filtering, mip mapping or anything except texture mapping and maybe g-shading. or maybe N64 could do 600k textured vertices

 

[Fox5]

ERP said, numerous times, that N64 could push up to 600K texture mapped polygons, PSone quality polygons (No linear filtering and maybe no perpective correction).
But, for undisclosed reasons, Nintendo never allowed this kind of rendering in a commercial game.

I find it difficult to believe that N64 could push 600k texture mapped polygons of PS1 quality. that would make N64 more powerful than the Sega Model 2 board designed by Martin Marietta, which could shove out 300k texture mapped polygons. ok maybe if N64 isnt doing z-buffering, texture filtering, mip mapping or anything except texture mapping and maybe g-shading. or maybe N64 could do 600k textured vertices

The 600k polygons would be only 1 area that the n64 was more powerful in, the model 2 could be an overall better designed hardware. I think its fillrate was much higher. Also, n64 very well could be more powerful, the model 2 was released in 1993 and the n64 in late 1996, almost 1997. Generally arcade hardware level hardware reaches the home market only a few years later with minimal downgrades, like less memory. If a brand new arcade machine was released now and you told me that xbox 2 wouldn't at least be equal in performance to it I'd be very doubtful.

BTW, was the model 2 basically the same hardware as the model 1 but with a faster cpu? That seems to be the only major change listed on www.system16.com, well that and texturing. And I'm guessing the 300,000 polys model 2 did were not psx quality polys but at least n64 quality polys, which put it at around twice the power of the n64.

Oh, and I noticed A, B, and C versions of the Model 2 hardware in addition to the original. The original has 1 graphics chip, A has 5, B has some new chips, and C has a more powerful graphics chip...or at least I assume that's what putting a x4 after TGP means.(Fujitsu TGPx4 MB86235 FPU 32bits 16M flops)

BTW, are these triforce images legitamently better than the gamecube versions, or do they just look good because of the small size? They appear to be some of the best looking arcade screenshots I've ever seen, mainly because they look so sharp.
http://www.system16.com/sega/hrdw_triforce.html