Weren't they bought before the game cube even released ?
Why did Sony use a G70 RSX instead of something better? *spawn
- Thread starter eastmen
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ArtX were formed from the Silicon Graphics team that provided the GPU for N64. Nintendo used them for their next console, GC, during which development period ArtX was acquired by AMD in 2000. Nintendo did not approach AMD for a GPU until Wii where they wanted more GC tech.
As I understand it, the Cell solution and the Toshiba GPU were both considerations at the same time. I don't recall ever hearing of a timeline of different techs. But it's never been clearly talked about anywhere, which is a bit curious. I guess we hear more about XB'x history as its from US companies who are more touchy-feely sharing, versus PS's history being honourable, noble, keep-quiet Japanese? No-one's going to spill the beans of Toshiba's GPU ideas that failed.
I would claim that people cared a lot about Blu-ray back in the day. Today, not so much.
Oh yeah I think Xenos was superior to some degree. But it didn't have quite enough EDRAM and that became a big limiter for it. There's also the question of how efficient that first gen unified architecture was. Of course RSX G71 architecture had its own shader performance issues.
I just think that for the most part PS3 and 360 games have the same visual feel and that is not only hardware but also the development techniques of the era. It's all a blur in the end with the exception of the unique exclusive sights on each side. I'm so glad PS4 and XBone got us past that era of FXAA and MLAA. RSX's 2X Quincunx AA was actually pretty nice in some of the earlier games compared to later games that went all post-process.
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Deleted member 11852
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A lot of games ran at lower resolutions on PS3, or with reduced effects. Not all - GTA had pretty damn good parity but look at Red Dead Redemption which ran at a lower resolution and has reduced foliage. Alpha effects took a hit on RSX, eDRAM on 360 offered a solution where the performance which was way less. I rate PS2's graphics architecture - in terms of well-thought out design - really high and Xenos is right up there with it.
360 was the first hardware with unified shader hardware and it had a chunk and DRAM and a controller that made common effects almost performance-hit free. Tiling effects into regions was what you did when 10mb eDRAM become a limit. Was that ideal? No. Was that better than not having the option? Hell, yeah!
Cell + Xenos would have made a mind-blowing console.
PS2's? Really? I remember the awful texture filtering. But I suppose you see it as a very flexible architecture.
There's no denying Xenos was smart hardware. The machine just seems like it was given to a team of ATI engineers and they knew exactly what to do to make a cheap console great at 720p. PS3 on the other hand had all sorts of agendas in play.
There's no denying Xenos was smart hardware. The machine just seems like it was given to a team of ATI engineers and they knew exactly what to do to make a cheap console great at 720p. PS3 on the other hand had all sorts of agendas in play.
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Deleted member 11852
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I said well-thought out, but sure it was flexible as well. The bus design was unparalleled and solved a ton of high-bandwidth problems at a super low-cost, where traditionally you'd need to crank RAM to very high speeds, whereas Sony went with a super-wide 2,560-bit wide bus that was literally wider than most supercomputers. That's not to say that is was not also a bit mental (unconventional) and devs took a while to get to exploit it properly - much like Cell.
For me, unusual designs like this are technically fascinating. Having written a lot of [server] code for it, I appreciated Cell as well.
davis.anthony
Veteran
I agree, no other piece of technology that was designed in the late 1990's lasted as long or remained as competitive as PS2 did.
You look at PC parts during that era, they were all useless after 12 months where as PS2 lasted 10 years.
That is because it was fixed hardware with a 150m units sold. I am sure if you threw a geforce 256 , 2 or 3 into a closed box that sold 150m units and had a huge amount of dev time would have spanked the floor with it.
I dont know when gforce 256 was released and what it could do, but the PS2 was producing visuals that during the first years there was nothing similar on PC, and punched pretty well until the end. I dont think it was just the fact that it was closed box. It's unconventional design allowed for pretty interesting achievements that wouldnt have been possible if they were just using 2000 PC parts. It would have reached a ceiling much sooner in terms of visuals.
Geforce 256 was 1999
Geforce 2 was 2000
Geforce 3 was 2001
I mean you can even do it with the radeons. Now sure pc hardware cost more but it blew away a playstation 2
That 256 card looks mediocre and was 1999. GF2 looks also ok'ish from that video and was 2000. PS2 was released in 2000.
I dont remember anything on PC that looked like DMC, MGS2, GT3, TTT, FFX, to name a few, when these games were released.
Surely GF3 could do things the PS2 couldnt. But still the PS2 was outputting games that were more impressive than what the PC was outputing on previous hardware and still was punching hard during GF3. I mean, GT4 was hard to beat and was released during a time the PCs had significantly more powerful hardware
I dont remember anything on PC that looked like DMC, MGS2, GT3, TTT, FFX, to name a few, when these games were released.
Surely GF3 could do things the PS2 couldnt. But still the PS2 was outputting games that were more impressive than what the PC was outputing on previous hardware and still was punching hard during GF3. I mean, GT4 was hard to beat and was released during a time the PCs had significantly more powerful hardware
The GeForce 1/2 cards have register combiners which is similar to what Gamecube has in Flipper's TEV. It's a bit less capable than GeForce 3. GeForce 1/2 are also much less efficient with memory bandwidth than GeForce 3. But GeForce 2 GTS was still capable of running Quake 3 at 1600x1200 60fps.
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My point is simple and that is other technology could have produced similar fantastic results if the amount of developer knowledge accumulated on the hardware and the budgets that were available to them were used with other techonologies of the day
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Well on PC we didnt see much of these results though. Especially on hardware that was released around the same time as the PS2 launch. And we do know that the PS2 had slme peculiarities that were upsent from PC hardware architecture which encouraged focus on other solutions and visual effects. The MGS2 wheather conditions alone didnt find a match anywhere for many many years to come. Not even Splinter Cell, which of course had strengths in other areas.
Listen I responded to this
My point here is that any part put into a console that sold 150m units would have lasted as long as the RSX or ps2 in general if it was given the same support. Development teams had no choice but to squeeze everything out of the hardware that they could and the hardware was unchanging for a decade.
If you took the RSX out of the ps2 and put a Geforce SDR or 2 or 3 into it and you would have gotten vastly better visuals. We can also see this because MS basicly took the geforce 3 and put it in the xbox.
Imagine for a second a ps2 with a geforce 2 inside of it selling a 150m units and having countless devs invest hundreds of millions if not billions during the life cycle of said system pushing it as far as it could go.
The ps2 didn't even remain competitive. The geforce 2 and 3 would have given all around better experiances in the pc sector the same year or the year after. The xbox just a year later was better in terms of visuals in every category
Never seen someone saying this, its been over two decades since the PS2's debut lol. 'PS2 graphics' is a known fact across the internet since the early 2000's i think.
PC parts during that era? OG Xbox practically consisted of those, P3 733, GF3 (ish), 64mb ddr and a hdd teamed to a nforce mb. Closest to a pc we ever got. Stomped all over the PS2. The GF3 first launched spring 2001 i recall. The PS2's WW launch was late 2000.
Absolutely. The PS2 had its strong points, but didnt really match up to hardware available at the time (or the xbox for that matter). The PS2 with GF2 GTS/fast x86 cpu would have stacked up better against the xbox, though the PS2 had some strong points like special effects (ZoE2 for example). Still i think games like that could be done on an Xbox and probably a PC of the same time-era (late 2000/early 2001).
Anyway, consoles where much more high-end back then as compared to what was available. That stopped around the 7th gen somewhere. The Cell is forgotten and deader then death, and for good reasons. It wasnt ment for gaming.
The XBOX was released a year later. Of course it could produce a lot better visuals.
So was GFORCE 3
It is meaningless to even bring these into the discussion.
Also the XBOX was more expensive to produce ane harder to reduce costs and size. It was eating up MS money like a bulimic.
Sony wouldnt just pick a part, stick it in and call it a business.
The PS2 started development during a time when the PC GPU market was immature and a mess.
Sony designed a small form factor, cost effective solution that had unique strengths which allowed it to compete better than if they were picking off the shelf parts. Indeed it's games that weren't PC ports demonstrared unique visual quality that PC games didnt have an answer for especially during it's initial years.
Surely if we are talking about lifespan, its huge userbase maintained that support.
But it's visual output for it's price and form factor, aged much better than it could ever do if they chose PC parts.
So I m sure if Sony went for PC parts, the PS2 wouldnt have lasted as much, and visually it would have reached it's saturation point too soon.
Newer PCs had games that looked mediocre when ported on PS2, and the PS2 would have been giving only mediocre results if it was like an old PC in general. But what we got was a console that stood well in its own terms. While PCs were getting their own visually impressive games with more powerful hardware, we were enjoying PS2 games of which many were like nothing you could find on PC.
