Why does Sony create such wacky architectures?

[Phil]

How much more "backing up" does one need? If there's not enough evidence for you to extrapolate the costs then sorry. Like I said before do a little research. All of this talk and you still can't figure out why I think it's a better design? Please go back and read the previous posts as these redundant question are getting VERY old or are you just ignoring everything that's been posted?

How about some factual prove? Checked the last 4 pages and still didn't find any numbers about the production cost of the Sys246 board and the Naomi2 board. If you can't back it up, why not make a few assumptions? Since it's your arguement, I believe it's your duty to back it up, therefore, I think I'll let you do the research.

And no, I really can't figure out why you still think that, because everything you've said thus far has some flawed logic behind it... (in turn, you've been ignoring various counter-questions aswell... hmm, I wonder why?)

What about it? N2 was never released as a console and no major cost reductions were done so who knows. There's no reason why it couldn't be reduced. The chips are made by NEC/Hitachi. You speak as though SONY/Toshiba has a patent on cost reduction. Why should it be any different? Doesn't Xbox and GCN benefit in cost reduction over time? Doesn't most computer/electronic equipment?

I believe it makes a great difference. As Panajev2001a said, building a fab has a huge advantage when it comes to costs compared to buying off the shelve parts. Of course, building fabs cost money, but in terms, they can be used for future chips which will in turn save money again.

In case you still didn't get it, if both boards launched at the same time for the same costs, going with own customized chips may benefit from a higher decrease overtime. That certainly gives the PS2 board a design advantage for Sony. And we didn't even beginn with the performance issue in which the Naomi2 baord is probably worse in most parts... so, what again makes you believe Sony did not go with the best design available at the time?

 

[PC-Engine]

Regarding the PS2, when multitexturing the fillrate drops not to mention the geometry has to be resent.

PC-Engine, this also applies to DC/Naomi/Naomi2.

The fillrate doesn't drop to 1/4 on N2.

N2 doesn't have to resend geometry as it supports loopback.

 

[Panajev2001a]

building fabs is like R&D expenses in designing the chip, they pay themselves off over time... as you have much better control of the chip's production and can lower manufacturing costs per chip quicker...

 

[zidane1strife]

N2 can do most of those effects

But how well can it do them?

Xbox has pixel shaders, the ps2 has a huge vram bus, and huge amounts of fillrate...

I'd argue the per-pixel effects are as important as whatever lights capability the naomi2 has.I'd also argue that insane amounts of particles are also as important as lighting in some games... how does the naomi 2 fare in this areas?

CAn it out-do the PIII, the EE in the cpu dept.

Can it take the ps2 out in particles, and in-games like rez?
How about areas were only one or two static lights are needed, can it beat the other three still?

Can it make games look better than games like Rogue Squadron(GCN)?

Is it better in polycounts, when few lights are present?

What about reflections, hair, grass, etc... the fluffy stuff?!?

EDITED

 

[Panajev2001a]

Naomi 2 supports loopback ???

Sorry but Naomi 1 was based on the same PVRDC chipset the DC used and Naomi 2 uses two of those together with a T&L dedicated chip ( Elan )...

PVRDC does NOT support loop-back...

 

[Bowie]

The fillrate doesn't drop to 1/4 on N2.

N2 doesn't have to resend geometry as it supports loopback.

The fillrate doesn't drop to 1/4 on PS2.

Naomi2 uses the same video chip as Naomi and Dreamcast. PowerVR didn't add loopback until the Kyro.

 

[PC-Engine]

building fabs is like R&D expenses in designing the chip, they pay themselves off over time... as you have much better control of the chip's production and can lower manufacturing costs per chip quicker...

...and SONY/Toshiba pays for it. It's not cheap. SEGA doesn't pay for the building of fabs. Nintendo doesn't pay for the building of fabs to produce chips for the GCN either, but they seem to be constantly breaking even or making a profit on the hardware in some cases shortly after launch.

 

[PC-Engine]

The fillrate doesn't drop to 1/4 on N2.

N2 doesn't have to resend geometry as it supports loopback.

The fillrate doesn't drop to 1/4 on PS2.

Naomi2 uses the same video chip as Naomi and Dreamcast. PowerVR didn't add loopback until the Kyro.

I know it uses the same videochip. I just thought it supported loopback so I stand corrected.

Regarding PS2, if it's raw fillrated is 2.4 GPixels/s drawing speed when rendering untextured polygons, then what is the fillrate when single texturing? What about dual texturing?

How about some factual prove? Checked the last 4 pages and still didn't find any numbers about the production cost of the Sys246 board and the Naomi2 board. If you can't back it up, why not make a few assumptions? Since it's your arguement, I believe it's your duty to back it up, therefore, I think I'll let you do the research.

Factual prove? I'll say it again do some research. BTW when did the burden of proof suddenly become mine? Whether you are convinced or not doesn't make any difference to me

And no, I really can't figure out why you still think that, because everything you've said thus far has some flawed logic behind it... (in turn, you've been ignoring various counter-questions aswell... hmm, I wonder why?)

Umm...for one ease of software development? Hello? Anybody home?

Counter questions which one, obviously not yours. So far all of yours have been shot down, no wonder why you resorting to others for help

 

[marconelly!]

Actually it does support bumpmapping and perpixel lighting

Yeah, just like Dreamcast 'supports' them. Doesn't mean it can really be done in the game. There's just no chance N2 would be able to render full scene bump (normal) mapped multitextured game with per pixel lighting on *everything*. You are fooling yourself if you think the vertex lighting in Naomi 2 is in any way better than normal mapped per pixel lit stuff used in D3 or Halo 2, and you know it. Vertex lighting could be made to look very nice (like in SH3) but that doesn't mean the hardware feature is better than other, obviously superior hardware feature.

As for effects, you may think N2 could do them, but not a single game that I know of (N2 or N1/DC) doesn't have effects of that kind that come even close to what is being achieved on other consoles nowadays.

 

[Bowie]

Regarding PS2, if it's raw fillrated is 2.4 GPixels/s drawing speed when rendering untextured polygons, then what is the fillrate when single texturing? What about dual texturing?

Single texturing fillrate is 1.2 GPixels/s on PS2. Dual texturing is 600 MPixels/second.

Single texturing fillrate is 200 Mpixels/second on Naomi2 and dual texturing is 100 Mpixels/s. Dreamcast and Naomi have half the fillrate of Naomi2.

I guess if you compare untextured fillrate with dual texture fillrate, then yes, the PS2's fillrate would drop 1/4. But single texture fillrate compared to dual texture fillrate, the performance hit is the same between PS2 and Naomi2 at 1/2.

 

[PC-Engine]

Actually it does support bumpmapping and perpixel lighting

Yeah, just like Dreamcast 'supports' them. Doesn't mean it can really be done in the game. There's just no chance N2 would be able to render full scene bump (normal) mapped multitextured game with per pixel lighting on *everything*. You are fooling yourself if you think the vertex lighting in Naomi 2 is in any way better than normal mapped per pixel lit stuff used in D3 or Halo 2, and you know it. Vertex lighting could be made to look very nice (like in SH3) but that doesn't mean the hardware feature is better than other, obviously superior hardware feature.

Um lets just say N2 can do Halo 2 at 30 fps with or without bumpmapping.

 

[PC-Engine]

Regarding PS2, if it's raw fillrated is 2.4 GPixels/s drawing speed when rendering untextured polygons, then what is the fillrate when single texturing? What about dual texturing?

Single texturing fillrate is 1.2 GPixels/s on PS2. Dual texturing is 600 MPixels/second.

Single texturing fillrate is 200 Mpixels/second on Naomi2 and dual texturing is 100 Mpixels/s. Dreamcast and Naomi have half the fillrate of Naomi2.

I guess if you compare untextured fillrate with dual texture fillrate, then yes, the PS2's fillrate would drop 1/4. But single texture fillrate compared to dual texture fillrate, the performance hit is the same between PS2 and Naomi2 at 1/2.

Yes that's what I was referring to. Of course no current game has zero overdraw. Also for a resolution of 640x480, it's pretty good not to mention progressive output

 

[Bowie]

It would take over 6x opaque overdraw for Naomi2 to outperform the PS2. Most games are have about 2-4x opaque overdraw so PS2 would still have an advantage. Not to mention, as Panajev earlier pointed out, doing an untextured pass at 2.4 GPixels/s first could be used to reduce overdraw.

 

[PC-Engine]

It would take over 6x opaque overdraw for Naomi2 to outperform the PS2. Most games are have about 2-4x opaque overdraw so PS2 would still have an advantage. Not to mention, as Panajev earlier pointed out, doing an untextured pass at 2.4 GPixels/s first could be used to reduce overdraw.

Yes, PS2 would have a small advantage over N2 in fillrate, but when tv resolution is 640x480 it's not really significant especially when talking about texture quality.

 

[Sonic]

Simon, thanks again. I should stay out of this as I keep being corrected by you.

I don't see Naomi2 running Halo with bump mapping on at 30 frames per second. I haven't seen it in order to believe it so I'd say that it most likely cannot do it. All the bump mapping I've seen N2 do is limited to 2 - 3 objects on screen at most, even thoguh the framerate stays the same. I can't imagine all that time to be spent doing bump mapping could be done for the whole screen.

Hey Simon, how many passes or clock cycles does it take the CLX chip to bump map?

 

[PC-Engine]

Simon, thanks again. I should stay out of this as I keep being corrected by you.

I don't see Naomi2 running Halo with bump mapping on at 30 frames per second. I haven't seen it in order to believe it so I'd say that it most likely cannot do it. All the bump mapping I've seen N2 do is limited to 2 - 3 objects on screen at most, even thoguh the framerate stays the same. I can't imagine all that time to be spent doing bump mapping could be done for the whole screen.

Hey Simon, how many passes or clock cycles does it take the CLX chip to bump map?

Well of course everything doesn't have to be bumpmapped. For example use it for some objects and use polys for others. Halo 2 doesn't have to be programmed the same way as it is for Xbox. This is 30 fps we're talking about here. Just like anisotropic filtering doesn't have to be used on everything, but it can still be used ingame.

 

[marconelly!]

For example use it for some objects and use polys for others. Halo 2 doesn't have to be programmed the same way as it is for Xbox.

You don't think Halo 2 on Xbox uses polygons wherever possible? Besides, Xbox polygon output is by far bigger than anything N2 can do. I think you are VERY much fooling yourself if you think Halo 2 would at all be possible on Naomi 2 with any kind of acceptable framerate.

 

[PC-Engine]

For example use it for some objects and use polys for others. Halo 2 doesn't have to be programmed the same way as it is for Xbox.

You don't think Halo 2 on Xbox uses polygons wherever possible? Besides, Xbox polygon output is by far bigger than anything N2 can do. I think you are VERY much fooling yourself if you think Halo 2 would at all be possible on Naomi 2 with any kind of acceptable framerate.

Umm..and how do you know Halo 2 is not geometry limited which in turn can be due to the lighting model which N2 is very good at?

 

[Panajev2001a]

The fill-rate advantage would be more than minimal and developers with games like MGS2, Z.O.E. 2 and SH3 are showing how it can be used well... the snowy wind in Z.O.E. 2 is mind-blowing...

 

[PC-Engine]

The fill-rate advantage would be more than minimal and developers with games like MGS2, Z.O.E. 2 and SH3 are showing how it can be used well... the snowy wind in Z.O.E. 2 is mind-blowing...

Well GCN and Xbox has more fillrate than PS2 too but you don't see those games on them either well maybe except MGS2

ZOE2 has lots of particles but poor bland texturing.
SH3 has nice quality texturing but no particles.