Why did Sony use a G70 RSX instead of something better? *spawn

[techuse]

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.

Would have been interesting to see what Sony’s 1st party could have gotten out of the 360.

 

[PSman1700]

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.

Xbox was released a year later, but that wasnt the point he was making. Most of Xbox's hw wasnt brand-new in the pc space, P3 733mhz predates the PS2 by over a year, 64mb total ram wasn't really exciting for gaming oriented pc's either. GF3 saw its light early 2001, world-wide release of PS2 was late 2000 (japan release spring 2000). Now Sony couldnt have stuffed in these pc parts, but eastman's point was a gaming pc of the time era the PS2 launched, as such a pc would be more than capable enough to atleast match but almost certainly outdo the PS2 in almost every way, quite much so actually.

Evidence is the Xbox, its GPU was more advanced (twin vertex shaders) then the GF3, though at the same time the GF3 in a pc wasnt as bw bottlenecked and generally had more of it. Such a pc would sport a much faster CPU and more ram.
Even if we take a GF2Ti 64mb (late 2000), teamed to a amd thunderbird 1.4ghz and 256 or 512mb ram, that would outdo the PS2 in just about everything.

Searching this forum, this discussion has been here before. The general view was that a early 2000 pc (GF2 GTS, p3 1ghz, 256mb, hdd) would outdo the PS2 in almost everything. Ps2 the advantage of special effects (like motion blur), though it was mentioned the GF2 could actually perform this too with its register combiners.
Another point is the GameCube, sure is what a late 99/early 2000 pc would be like. The GC is generally seen as the more performant console as opposed to the PS2. It was at the very least a match.

Wouldnt either call the early 2000's a mess for the PC and its GPU's. I'd say the PS2 was more of a mess, hard to develop for and still having typical 'PS2 gfx' as a result, almost every game had its share of problems, be it field rendering, shimmer, total lack of at the time evolving effects like bump mapping amonst many others. The GC and Xbox (and even the evil pc) where much more consistend. What kept the PS2 on its feet was the pure market share and popularity, and the dev effort for it.

Now obviously Sony couldnt have went with off-the shelf parts (time constraint to get a GF2 or 3 in there) and the console did extremely well despite its hardware, and due to dev support and unique/exotic hw, when put through its paces. 'Better' than pc hw at the time? No.

I dont either share the idea that the PS2 was putting out graphics that where ahead of the PC, Xbox or gamecube for that matter. Just different style of graphics mostly.

Intresting topic for John for another 2 hour 6th gen coverage? its a Playstation, its retro and the best era of gaming. Lets hope for a deep dive into this

 

[Nesh]

Evidence is the Xbox, its GPU was more advanced (twin vertex shaders) then the GF3, though at the same time the GF3 in a pc wasnt as bw bottlenecked and generally had more of it. Such a pc would sport a much faster CPU and more ram.
Even if we take a GF2Ti 64mb (late 2000), teamed to a amd thunderbird 1.4ghz and 256 or 512mb ram, that would outdo the PS2 in just about everything.

so the XBOX was more expensive to produce and 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
..........
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.

 

[eastmen]

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.

Again read what I responded too.

1) The RSX in PS2 wasn't some amazing chip. It simply due to being in the PS2 had the most development resources devoted to it .

2) The original post I responded to said late 90s. But the PS2 came out in 2000 that was a big time of change for pcs. The radeons and geforces were much more advanced than the riva 128 and tnt

3) If you took the emotion engine and paired it with a geforce , g eforce 2 or geforce 3 (all releasing in 1999-2001 ) The combo would have produced much better visuals than the rsx .

I have linked to some benchmark videos of such cards , they were all rendering at higher resolutions than the ps2 and at much higher resolutions and frame rates.

We may have even seen some features only available in hardware on those graphics chips be utilized in the ps2

4) PS2 also had games that looked mediocre due to pc games of the time. That is down to budgets and talent using the hardware

 

[PSman1700]

Its just to look at the original Xbox.... Or even the GC which had a GPU not that far from a GF2 GTS.

 

[Nesh]

Nobody denies XBOX has better visuals

Graphics arent just resolution. The Dreamcast itself run higher resolutions and Sonic Adventure 2 was running better than Sonic Heroes did on PS2 and textures on DC games were at higher resolution too which was typical for every PC game ever compared to PS2. So those comparisons are irrelevant without seeing the complete output. Basically almost all DC ports to PS2 run at higher redolution and higher res textures on the DC but nobody assumes DC was more powerful/producing better graphics overall. So talking about resolution alone isnt a relevant argument.

Hypothetical scenarios "if EE had a PC GPU" etc are irrelevant and pointless. We can make any assumptions we want. So lets check what we have instead.

What we got in actuality is a custom made console whose architecture allowed a performance, form factor, cost and price that punched higher than it would if Sony decided to go for PC GPU without compromising any of these ticked boxes. And we can see the results on its games tailored around its capabilities, unlike flat out PC and DC ports.

Its capabilities allowed it to stand out in its own terms rather than being another outdated PC that has nothing else to show besides what a PC of its time could push.
And for that very reason some PS2 exclusives were unmatched by PC games for years to come and some PS2 to XBOX or PC were missing effects (or looked different) that heavilly relied on fill rate while PS2 to PC games required significantly higher minimum specifications on PC by large to run at an acceptable performance. See for example Silent Hill 2 and MGS2.

Some games might have also been a pain to port or run like ZOE2 and Rachet and Clank even though in terms of resolution and texture detail they lacked hugely.

 

[PSman1700]

OG xbox had more then just a resolution advantage.

What eastman mentioned wasn't what Sony could possibly stuff in the PS2 instead of wonky hw. But what a pc of the time era around the PS2's launch could do if optimized as much for it as was done for the PS2. A late 2000/early 2001 pc wasn't that far off from an OG xbox in terms of capabilities. Xbox would've sported a somewhat more advanced GPU, but the pc a much more capable CPU, RAM (with dedicated pools to cpu and gpu) and a close enough GPU to still blow the ps2 out of the water in almost all regards.

Its capabilities allowed it to stand out in its own terms rather than being another outdated PC that has nothing else to show besides what a PC of its time could push.
And for that very reason some PS2 exclusives were unmatched by PC games for years to come and some PS2 to XBOX or PC were missing effects (or looked different) that heavilly relied on fill rate while PS2 to PC games required significantly higher minimum specifications on PC by large to run at an acceptable performance. See for example Silent Hill 2 and MGS2.

PS2 exclusives being unmatched by pc games 'for years to come' isnt what actually happened though. The PS2 was severly lacking in many areas that cant be over-looked. PC games stood above what the PS2 was capable off in the total image. PS2 was good at effects due to its architecture, and devs worked hard to get around its many limitations, but that didnt lift it above what early 2000's pc hardware did with games.
'PS2 graphics' to this day is still a term, over two decades later. Largely due to it being the most popular console backthen, but also due to the PS2 offering the weakest graphics during the 6th gen (vs Xbox, GC and even the evil pc).
Mipmaps where basically broken, AA didnt really exist, field rendering was a problem even half a decade into the gen, multiplat games both performed and looked worse despite it being the main target platform for most games, and whenever the system was truly pushed (SoTC, MGS3 etc) the framerate tanked (below 15fps for sotc) and environments turned into corridors (MGS3 30fps with a loading screen every small jungle section).
When you want to compare system performance (as you mention ps2 to xbox), you cant look at exclusives or its subsequent ports as they are optimized to one platforms strengths and then ported, like MGS2 to Xbox, which held up quite well, considering. Xbox to PS2 ports though? 'what am i looking at' (splinter cell, and this racing game). Xbox 'exclusives' like Doom 3, HL2, Far Cry, conker, quantum redshift, halo. The PS2 wouldnt really be up to it with these. While i can imagine the Xbox doing quite well, even if not as great, in games like ratched and Zoe2. Some even argued the vertex shaders could do some impressive particle effects work.

And thats where you see the differences.

PS2 was a great, but not directly because of its hardware and architecture. The machine would have done just as well if it had sported a different architecture (and have a stronger machine at it). With the PS2 it seems Sony looked at the PSX and designed from there.
All this you can find on these very forums, theres actual developer discussions who worked on all these platfroms (even gamecube). The PC was more capable, had means to show it but it cost you alot. An Xbox at the time was a very good alternative to the PC as it shared many games (abit like today). That console was a look into the future basically, build in HDD, network/xbox live and x86/'off the shelf hardware'.

 

[Nesh]

OG xbox had more then just a resolution advantage.

Nobody denies XBOX has better visuals

The PS2 was severly lacking in many areas that cant be over-looked.

Nobody claimed otherwise.

 

[swaaye]

I wonder if a GeForce console was even possible in 2000. Xbox/nForce took a couple of years to throw together and a console really required that high integration. A discrete GeForce + RAM would be much more expensive. XBox/nForce also include that awesome sound processor and all the usual PC IO. So I wonder if XBox was the soonest a console based on GeForce tech could be made available. The nForce 420D released in 9/2001 slightly before XBox (11/2001) and is based on GeForce 2 MX. That seems like a good display of what GF2 tech is like on a 64/128-bit DDR UMA. That the XBox only needs to run at 480p is certainly a good thing.

 

[eastmen]

Nobody denies XBOX has better visuals

Graphics arent just resolution. The Dreamcast itself run higher resolutions and Sonic Adventure 2 was running better than Sonic Heroes did on PS2 and textures on DC games were at higher resolution too which was typical for every PC game ever compared to PS2. So those comparisons are irrelevant without seeing the complete output. Basically almost all DC ports to PS2 run at higher redolution and higher res textures on the DC but nobody assumes DC was more powerful/producing better graphics overall. So talking about resolution alone isnt a relevant argument.

Hypothetical scenarios "if EE had a PC GPU" etc are irrelevant and pointless. We can make any assumptions we want. So lets check what we have instead.

What we got in actuality is a custom made console whose architecture allowed a performance, form factor, cost and price that punched higher than it would if Sony decided to go for PC GPU without compromising any of these ticked boxes. And we can see the results on its games tailored around its capabilities, unlike flat out PC and DC ports.

Its capabilities allowed it to stand out in its own terms rather than being another outdated PC that has nothing else to show besides what a PC of its time could push.
And for that very reason some PS2 exclusives were unmatched by PC games for years to come and some PS2 to XBOX or PC were missing effects (or looked different) that heavilly relied on fill rate while PS2 to PC games required significantly higher minimum specifications on PC by large to run at an acceptable performance. See for example Silent Hill 2 and MGS2.

Some games might have also been a pain to port or run like ZOE2 and Rachet and Clank even though in terms of resolution and texture detail they lacked hugely.

Again I am not sure why you are arguing so much.

The ps2 was a system frozen in time. What it had going for it was that developers were forced to work hard to get the most out of the hardware. The system released In 2000 and the successor didn't release until 2006. In that time frame developers didn't have a choice but to put in the effort to get the most out of the system. It wasn't because the EE and RSX were amazing chips , its because it had a huge install base. If you made a game early on in the PlayStation 2s life cycle you might have made another 3-4 before the system stop being sold. You didn't have that with graphics cards at that time. There were yearly updates to graphics cards that weren't just higher clock speeds. If you made a game that happened to come out in 2000 and people used a geforce or geforce 2 on it , when your next game hit 24 months later they would be on geforce 3 /4/5s Not only that but then throw in radeons and 3dfx parts and power vr and the likes and you had a huge amount of graphics chips alone to content with.

PS2 was the same thing in every box repeated a 150m times.

The xbox didn't come close the numbers but put out more impressive looking games at higher resolutions and it came out 1 year later.

Your point seems to be that Sony made a magical piece of hardware that allowed for all these great things. But what actually happened is the difference between consoles and pc . The nes was supported by a ton of devs and was able to out perform pcs for a long time , same with the super nes and genesis and same with the ps1 and n64. The only special thing from the playstation 2 was its install base. Slap a 150m unit install base on the saturn and you bet people would have gotten amazing looking games out of it. Do the same with a gamecube or xbox and the same thing

 

[Mobius1aic]

There was an aborted experimental R400 project that was replaced by a more straightforward continuation of R3x0 named R420. That initial R400 project seemed to have been the basis for Xenos.

Xbox 2 hardware overview leaked?

regarding fillrate, remember the original Xbox spec called for 4.8 gigapixels/sec ...although that may have been AA gigapixels... not sure. 4 GPixels was a PR stunt. Simple as that. If Xbox had AA on at all times, i'd be happy with that. Thing is, that's hardly the case. And no one's...

forum.beyond3d.com

No doubt R400 was involved in developing Xenos, but the Xbox 360 GPU is fully DX9.0c+ compliant, whereas the R400s were only up to DX9.0b. On the basis of DX compliance, Xenos and R500 were probably co-developed by partially intermeshed teams, at least at the shader processor level. Each of Xenos' 48 unified shaders and the vertex shaders on the R500 series both comprise a 4-Wide Vec4 ALU + 32-bit Scalar ALU. R500's pixel shader units were I guess what you could call "two-stage" with Vec3 + Scalar ALUs at each stage, and a branch predictor embedded within. I see them as broadly equivalent to two of Xenos' unified shaders without considering differences in execution width and unified shader advantages. Saying that the circa fall-2005 Radeon X1800XT, with 8 VS + 16 PS + 16 TMUs + ROPS, could be semi-analogous to a 40 shader Xenos (8 VS + 16 PS Stage 1 + 16 PS Stage 2) is I think an apt comparison. Unified shaders on Xenos do not have the branch predictor unit however. R500 also has an embedded ultra threaded dispatch engine. Xenos, with much more developer control, didn't need either to be effective.

Where ATi was prudently taking a conservative and understood approach on PC, they could go more experimental on the console and take advantage of bleeding edge technologies that were not so subject to developer whims and software-OS-driver stack issues. The 360 ecosystem took some time to fully realize the hardware, but what started out as looking like up-rezzed OG Xbox games looked quite amazing after a couple years.

I could really go on about ATi stuff and the whole R500 + Xenos evolution to R600.

 

[PSman1700]

No doubt R400 was involved in developing Xenos, but the Xbox 360 GPU is fully DX9.0c+ compliant, whereas the R400s were only up to DX9.0b. On the basis of DX compliance, Xenos and R500 were probably co-developed by partially intermeshed teams, at least at the shader processor level. Xenos' unified shader and vertex shaders on the R500 series both comprise a 4-Wide Vec4 ALU + 32-bit Scalar ALU. Where ATi was prudently taking a conservative and understood approach on PC, they could go more experimental on the console and take advantage of bleeding edge technologies that were not so subject to developer whims and software-OS-driver stack issues. I imagine a eDRAM-less Xenos on PC either would've been potentially amazing or a complete disaster but ATi wanted more shader unit granularity hence full superscalar R600........

Had a powercolor X1900XT 512mb gddr3 (still have it). Together with an FX60, dont remember amount of ram. Thing was a beast, did everything the 360 did and much, much more, probably still does. Then G80 an quad cores came around and yeah, things went from there but kept that pc around to a family member.

 

[Mobius1aic]

I'm gonna post everything else I kinda wanted to say but feared going off topic:

The X1800 was essentially close enough to the Xenos at both their launches to approximate 360 performance. The X1800XT does have a clock and main memory bandwidth advantage. But once devs started actually started designing software for Xenos' however, the R500 series saw a quick demise for anything below the X1900s which had a massive shader count to give them longevity. The X1800XT is good for games and performance similar to the 360 up through 2007 I'd say. After that, the HD 2600XT is broadly comparable to Xenos for the middle years of that console generation. Maybe the Radeon 4670 was enough to lead you out the rest of the generation for guaranteed-as-good-as-360 performance.

I did a video essay on the X1800XT some time ago.

The evolution of R400 to R500 + Xenos then to R600 is pretty interesting based on the hybridization and evolution of what became R600.

R600 ditched the older base shader architecture for full superscalar VLIW 5-wide shader units, retained Xenos' tessellation unit (not to mention unused on PC and 360), but like R500 contained an ultra threaded dispatch unit and branch predictors per each 5 wide shader unit. Maybe too much hubris on ATi's part to be 5 wide superscalar, but I'm sure it was related to Xenos' Vect4 + Scalar shader nature that ATi stayed 5 wide moving to R600. But famously, ATi had to admit that the 5-wide unit, under VLIW control and in the complicated software stack, generally went underutilized, experimenting with the 4-wide HD 6800 series GPUs (and Richland APUs) before fully changing over to GCN.

 

[swaaye]

6800/Barts was still VLIW5. 6900/Cayman was the only discrete VLIW4 GPU. I think this place decided WiiU was VLIW5 too.

It would be interesting to try to more firmly nail down what PC GPU was comparable to 360. One problem with this is 360 is often under 720p later on because of performance and memory limitations. I had 4670 running 1920x1200 with some games and never under 720p. 3850 was in a similar market segment and would be a bit faster especially in one of the zillion factory OC variations.

2600XT is probably more what I would compare Xenos to. It's a 1280x720 - 1600x900 card for most of those mid/late 2000s games. I played some Dishonored on one fairly recently.

This also indicates that a X1900 R580 card is probably a lot faster than Xenos because an X1900XT is much faster than 2600XT and actually probably similar to 4670.

 

[PSman1700]

This also indicates that a X1900 R580 card is probably a lot faster than Xenos because an X1900XT is much faster than 2600XT and actually probably similar to 4670.

Can confirm, had (still have) a 1900xt and at the time a 360 (elite). X1900xt performed always above in multiplat titles…. Quite much so and then some.

 

[Mobius1aic]

My mistake on the 6800s. Forgot AMD "switched" to making the x9xx numbered parts the top end.

I'm on the consensus of the 2600XT being a good PC match for Xenos only in the middle years at 720p. At the end of the day, Xenos however still had the benefits of the eDRAM die, and another 48 GFLOPS if you count both vect4 + scalar components. Chaulk it up to bad driver support perhaps but late gen titles don't really like the 2600XT.

The X1900XT was by far the biggest and baddest of pre-unified cards. Add up the 8 VS and 48 PS total output and it's like 500+ raw GLOPS for faster models. Freaking insane.

 

[eastmen]

Can confirm, had (still have) a 1900xt and at the time a 360 (elite). X1900xt performed always above in multiplat titles…. Quite much so and then some.

I believe the 1800 also out performed the xenos. I bought oblivion on xbox 360 and then upgrade to a 1800 and never looked back for anything but games my friends wnated to play

 

[PSman1700]

I believe the 1800 also out performed the xenos. I bought oblivion on xbox 360 and then upgrade to a 1800 and never looked back for anything but games my friends wnated to play

Wouldnt know, if you say so. My last ATI gpu before the x1900 was a 9700pro, which was a excellent GPU at the time aswell. Felt that the X1900 was twice as capable as the 360, the x1900 generally saw much higher render resolutions at it aswell. I believe the 360 gpu was more advanced feature wise, but in raw power it was way below the x1900 or even x1800.
I remember discussions around those gpus vs 360 (i think it was here actually), if i remember correctly acert (dev?) explaining it in detail. Yes i have another account here, which i registered 2005 or 2006 after PVC got shutdown, then the mail address to it was purged due to inactivity so couldnt reset the pw and neverminded about creating a new acc before three/four years ago

 

[eastmen]

Wouldnt know, if you say so. My last ATI gpu before the x1900 was a 9700pro, which was a excellent GPU at the time aswell. Felt that the X1900 was twice as capable as the 360, the x1900 generally saw much higher render resolutions at it aswell. I believe the 360 gpu was more advanced feature wise, but in raw power it was way below the x1900 or even x1800.
I remember discussions around those gpus vs 360 (i think it was here actually), if i remember correctly acert (dev?) explaining it in detail. Yes i have another account here, which i registered 2005 or 2006 after PVC got shutdown, then the mail address to it was purged due to inactivity so couldnt reset the pw and neverminded about creating a new acc before three/four years ago

ATI's Late Response to G70 - Radeon X1800, X1600 and X1300

www.anandtech.com

Doom 3 1600x1200 4x AA - 42fps
Day of Defeat 1600x1200 4x aa - 59.5fps
Far Cry 1600x1200 4x aa - 80.1fps
Splinter cell Chaos theory 1600x1200 4x aa 52fps


and a slew of oblivion tests

The Elder Scrolls IV: Oblivion GPU Performance

www.anandtech.com

I doubt the 360 even got close to what the x1800 ws doing

 

[swaaye]

Oblivion was also a CPU hog, it was the very early days of game multithreading, and Xenon is something like a trio of first-gen Atoms.

But it ran way better than Morrowind on the original XBox and looks pretty nice doing it.