will PS3's GPU be more modern than PS2's GS for its time?

Inane_Dork said:
I would guess that many Xbox games have x86 ASM for animation work. And almost all of the shaders written for the Xbox I would guess to be shader ASM.

There will always be a use for ASM. Compilers will, for the forseeable future, never support all the features everyone will want to use. Take the cache locking patent for the X2, for instance. Either a compiler will have to be specifically modified to handle that feature or developers will handle it through ASM (I hope I'm not presuming too much here). I guess it will be the latter.
You're perfectly correct, and i agree like i said HLL, in Xbox, is perfect for most of cases, not all the cases, of course.
I just forgot the word "usually" in the second phrase you quoted. :D
 
Akumajou said:
As the topic poster mentioned, the GS is 1998 technology, therefore comparable to graphic chips released in that year as far as capabilities and the fact that the GS cannot be compared to 1999 PC-GPUs because those chips introduced things like hardware transform & lighting (S3 and Nvidia), enviroment mapped bump mapping (Matrox G400), texture compression (S3), etc.

Yeah, only it's not comparable at all. As we have discussed ages ago a loooong time ago, those PC chips might have features that are absent on GS (since everything is absent from GS, pretty much), but the GS is so much faster than them it's not even funny.
So, no, they're not comparable. Not from a preformance point of view, not from an architectureal point of view (just the fact that one has 4MBeDRAM is a big hint), not from a targetted audience point of view, not from a functionality point of view, even the targetted resolution is completely different.

Duh, Sony started shifting to streaming games of the media as opposed to just loading a level into memory since the PSX days, the only reason that became a standard for the console industry is because Sony was the name brand sales/marketing leader, NOT technological leader.
Streaming levels never became a standard, and there is no "reason" behind it. It just happened because on consoles it's a more clever design, which sadly has its limitations anyway. I never praised Sony as being the first to do that (although they are, in the end). Seems you're a bit defensive when it comes to Sony.

So what are you, a believer in that PS2 is so powerfull because you claim that the video ram argument was closed 3 years ago? you are wrong and I am part of the few who will say it.

I'm not a "believer". You said something, it's wrong. Over.

Like I said, Sony's PS2 is NOT a technologically superior product compared to SEGA's Dreamcast, they are almost on similar power levels with the PS2 only being able to push more polygons.

Well then maybe you need to look at old threads on this forum with posts from people who you might believe more than you believe me. Although i see the Force is strong in you, not much will convince you of what at the end of the day is true.

All the 3d effects on PS2 are handled in software, if AM2 could take a 4MB cart and make a prototype Shenmue (however much you may hate that game) run on SEGA Saturn (1994 tech) using their own custom assembly level SDKs and their obvious experience then its pretty damn obvious that even the worst developer in the world, with plenty of experience using Sony's custom assembly level SDKs will be able to put out amazing 3d effects on either PSX or PS2.

I don't hate that game, why would you think that? Because i'm making some point in favour of Sony, now i hate everything Sega-related? Hell, 2 days ago i was the daily Nintendo Fanboi for defending them, the day after i was the daily Nintendo Hater for slating them, today i'm the Sega Hater....

Maybe you never knew that SEGA Genesis was not able to do the SNES "mode 7" effect, but a couple of years after the SNES was released there were Genesis games doing the same tricks like the infamous "mode 7" thanks to developer experience in using assembly level tools.

Again, your point being? I had a Genesis and i know what it could and what it could not do. Not sure what this has to do with the current discussion, or are you gonna take more rabbits out of your hat, and mention all the great things Sega ever did in their life, just so they look better in your eyes? I love Sega, the most fun i've had in my life was with my Genesis, i'm just sad they haven't been able to keep up with their standards lately. Does that make me a Sega hater, just for pointing it out? If anything, it makes me more of a Sega fan for demanding more of them, considering the quality of their old products.

Gee I wonder why the PS2 had to have heat sinks and a big huge fan suck all the hot air out of the console. (sarcasm)First of all it was 1998, second we can assume that although the die shrink provided all the heat dissipation and lower voltage requirements that Sony desired to make sure that the GPU would be as fast as it could complement the EE CPU, again its worth mentioning that the GS is not a GPU like the Nvidia Nv10 and ATI R100 were with their on core geometry processors and therefore such a graphics chip required a fast CPU just like the Matrox G200, G400, Nvidia Riva TNT and even 3DFX Voodoo 2/3 to reach a higher performance.That also explains how A.I. has not evolved much on PS2 because the EE is all tied up.

Again, your point? My point was that the die shrink helped Sony reduce the size and cost of the PS2, because the smaller chips now run cooler than the early ones which needed lots of (noisy) active cooling. So, what's the problem here?



It has to do with the "subject" because if you lived back in 1998 and 1999 prior to the 2000 release of the PS2 you would have been bombarded with all the hype Sony was spitting about how Square would be able to display games pushing 80 million polygons, you would have read interviews of EA and Sony dev teams dismissing the DC as a "failiure" months prior to the 9-9-99 DC launch, all creating a mindshare atmosphere controlled by Sony marketing evangelists.

Sounds to me like you're another one of the boys who bought into the hype, got burnt, and now are Sony haters. For your information, i began playing videogames on my Commodore64. Actually even before, with those stupid Tiger portable videogame things.
So, thank you, i was around very much at the time PS2 was released, i listened to all the hype and knew what was hype and what was reality. Seems like you didn't.


Basically, having those "evangelists" and the suckers that believed it allows companies like Sony to release 1998 technology in the year 2000 and not get critisized or punished for it.

PS2 was released in 1999. And now we need to punish Sony for having the design of a chip completed a few months before actually releasing it? Jesus, someone really has a chip on their shoulders then!
There are many reasons why Sony couldn't release PS2 sooner, one of the biggest was that they weren't getting good enough yields on their chips, especially the GS if i remember correctly.

And what the hell is wrong with that? rich boy Sony came, saw, stole and conquered the competition.
:LOL: :LOL: MOMMY MOMMY BIG BAD SONY CAME AND STOLE THE MARKET!!! Get the f**k over it, Sega were broke, they couldn't stand a chance against anyone. Sony only did what they had to do, they didn't steal anything from anybody, they worked hard to get where they are, and it's still paying off now against 2 newer consoles.


Or you could see Sony as Walmart taking market share away from mom & pop game shops like SEGA & Nintendo eventually leading them to a financial corner. I never saw Nintendo making tv sets, SEGA selling DVD players, radios, cassette players, cd-players, etc.

Well that's bad for them. Sony obviously has better advisers who saw a market for all-in-one boxes and they aggressively pursued their objective. If Sega and Nintendo are stuck with their ideals, that's too bad for them. Or now we have to punish Sony for pursuing their objective and kmake products that are bought by hundreds of milliosn of people around the world? If anything, let's punish the lazy ones who think they can give us the same formula of the last 20 years over and over again.

Or maybe you just cannot imagine a world without Sony's involvement in the videogame field.

Why would you say that? I was playing games before Sony came into the market and i will play games well after they go bust.


I guess a prototype Shenmue running on a Sega Saturn that was hyped by the competition as being 3d-deficient must be very offensive to you.

Offensive? Not at all, i just went "not again!!" cause not too long ago SegaR&Deadmeat opened a thread on the subject. And it got very nasty obviously.

Can you please go out and find, rent or borrow (or dl if you mod) VF4 and compare it to VF4Evo, then compare it to the VF4 and VF4Evo arcade machines, you just might notice how VF4-PS2 looks like garbage compared to the closer to the arcade VF4Evo.

I never doubted that. I used to own VF4 and V4EVO. I know what they look like.

I picked SEGA because they are NOT ass-kissing Konami or Sony first parties mainly because Sega dev teams had to start learning Sony SDKs much later than any other game developer so it makes sense that their first games as a third party would never look as good as a Konami effort, thats a big change from how Sega dev teams had SDKs months before any third party would or the same could be said for Sony first devs and second devs because its obvious Sony would want Square to have a FFXXX ready for console launch day if they could get away with it.

Good god!! Your spite for Sony really is deep, jesus!! You could have said "WEE WEE BIG BAD SONY GAVE THE SDKS TO OTHER PEOPLE FIRST WEE WEE KONAMI ASSLICKER SQUARE ASSLICKERS WEE WEE" and it would have made the same impact.
I still fail to see your point, you keep stating the obvious, then when i tell you u've stated the obvious, u go "Well DUH!"... :? :?
You're not PC-Engine by any chance are you? Just checking...



Now it seems like you are just disagreeing or re-cycling the same mesage I originally posted just for the sake of finding something to do.

Gee I wonder why a game that comes out 2-3 years is always able to push more 3d effects+performance out of a console, hey maybe thats what makes consoles so great over PCs.

As i said, you keep stating the obvious, then when i ask you why you're doing that, you just go "Gee i wonder why...!"


Maybe I could have said that the Sony driver has to learn how to drive a 6 speed manual transmision touring car and they figured that drawing the race track by hand in their backyard allow them to remember all the curves come race day even though the touring car was a tricked/pimped out Yugo racing against SEGA Supras and Nintendo RX-7s with drivers who had only heard of the track and assumed that with their experience they would win or complete the race.
Whatever.

Do you remember the price of DVD players in the US back in 1999 and months prior to PS2's 2000 launch?
In the US? No. In the UK, yes i do.

Basically the only new technologies being introduced in consoles was the DVD drive and enhanced backward (but flawed) compatability being built in and the sole reason alot of people rushed out to get PS2s, to watch movies and play old PSX games enhanced since the majority of first gen PS2 games were horribly below the then Dreamcast standard, something that should never have been.

YAWN. Oh it's the "PS2 was just a DVD player that could play PS1 games!! UNACCEPTABLE!!" argument...

So what?, the Topic poster asked for opinions on how the PS3 would compare to PS2 in its time of introduction, I gave my opinion, deal with it.

You're replying like this to a totally neutral statement i made. Meh...

Gee I seem to remember that Genesis & SNES story about "mode 7", how about I tell you how both PSX and Saturn dev kits were buggy but because the Saturn used dual CPUs, it was critisized more for being more complex to develop a SDK for.

Getting bored now... Your point? My point was, obviously early dev kits are buggy, the important thing is that there are always constant revisions. Why do you have to pick up the Saturn-PS1 issue? Who cares? We're talking about soemthing else! Keep you Sega-Sony love-hate thing out of this! Or are you gonna play the Saturn card and the Genesis card every time you feel like you have to prove a point? :rolleyes:

I have been very well informed on how SEGA, Sony, MS and N always in their historical times have always had to release updated SDKs, that is a standard that was beaten to death on SNK's Neo Geo 2d arcade hardware if you compare Fatal Fury to Mark of the Wolves when it comes to fluid 2d animation.

Your point? Of course it's a standard! Do you really expect those companies to have fully functional, 100% bug-free SDKs at launch, when they even know very little about their own new architecture?! What is your point?!!

And I am to be punished for even remotely liking SEGA??

No one's being punished, it's your attitude that's very irritating, and i've pointed it out already.

You missed the whole point of my post then if you just want to narrowly pre-judge me into a SEGA <bleep> box.

There was no point in your post, other than to tell us how Sega is a magnificent company and other aren't, that's why.

If you are familiar with emulators you would know that Dreamcast was capable of running an emulator that would not only raise the resolution of certain PSX hit games, but breathe new life into them.

There are PSX emulators that work on PCs and the minimum requirement is an Intel Pentium II or I with MMX extensions for visual parity with PSX image/sound quality. Basically the emulator uses that old Intel CPU running at 200Mhz and the MMX extensions to emulate a 1994 console that had a 33Mhz cpu.

PSX emulators took a long time to develop, the console was released in 94 in Japan and the first actual working emulators I remember were released in either 1999 or 2000 with Bleem being one of the first that tried to go commercial (and they got sued for it) If you can count, it took hobbyists (the people who make emus) over five years to properly make accurate emulation and later enhanced emulation with the help of powerfull graphics cards and APIs like Direct X and OpenGL.

Now it did not help that Sony offered to hire (as in give jobs) to those hobbyists so as to prevent their fears from becoming a reality in a hobbyist made PS2 emulator being made much sooner thanks to the hobbyist's experience in making previous emulators.

Taking into account that the PS2's EE runs at 300Mhz and the GS runs at 150Mhz, it makes sense to say and assume that a properly written PS2 emulator could be made with a PIII as a minimum requirement for accurate emulation and a Dx+OGL graphics card to provide texture filtering enhancements.

As to when that will happen, hey its now 2005 and people are still working on it but since they do not get paid it depends on how much time they dedicate to it.

If we were to get a company to do it, like the company that made Bleem, we would have had a PS2 game emulator running on XBox 2 years ago.

Thankfully that's already been clarified. The Xbox or the Xbox2 will never ever be able to emulate the PS2 at decent speeds. The software is far too different to make it workable at decent speeds on anything but a real monster architecture, and it has to be a monster not because PS2 is a monster, but becasue it will need a lot of overhead to translate Arab into Mongolian on-the-fly.
 
london-boy said:
I don't hate that game, why would you think that? Because i'm making some point in favour of Sony, now i hate everything Sega-related? Hell, 2 days ago i was the daily Nintendo Fanboi for defending them, the day after i was the daily Nintendo Hater for slating them, today i'm the Sega Hater....
Quiet, l-b. I believe he has proven quite handily that you are the Great Satan. FIE!

;)


And while I'm not touching the rest of this mess:
PS2 was released in 1999. And now we need to punish Sony for having the design of a chip completed a few months before actually releasing it?
March 6th, 2000. At least I'm pretty sure it was the 6th. First week of March, at any rate. When the various stages of chip design were locked down is still debated by folks on here even now, though.
 
^^ OK then 2000 it is. Not sure why i had 1999 in mind...
Anyway, i just don't see the huge deal, there were obviously reasons why Sony had to sit on the design for so long. It is questionable whether they should have updated the design in that long period of time, but really, in the end it all come sdown to cost and updating it would have probably pushed the cost a bit too far, already being quite huge.
 
london-boy said:
Streaming levels never became a standard, and there is no "reason" behind it. It just happened because on consoles it's a more clever design, which sadly has its limitations anyway. I never praised Sony as being the first to do that (although they are, in the end). Seems you're a bit defensive when it comes to Sony.

There were console games streaming data off the media long before Sony entered the market. There were M-CD and CD32 games that did this and no doubt other machines had them too (like the Commodore CDTV and the PC-Engine CD). The Saturn was paricularly capable in this regard, having a processor dedicated to CD access. If anything I think this supports your point ...

Akumajou said:
All the 3d effects on PS2 are handled in software, if AM2 could take a 4MB cart and make a prototype Shenmue (however much you may hate that game) run on SEGA Saturn (1994 tech) using their own custom assembly level SDKs and their obvious experience then its pretty damn obvious that even the worst developer in the world, with plenty of experience using Sony's custom assembly level SDKs will be able to put out amazing 3d effects on either PSX or PS2.

Shenmue didn't use the 4MB expansion cart. That rumour was created from assumptions made by internet types. Infact, the game was probably canned for the Saturn and switched over to DC before the 4MB expansion cart even got the go ahead.

Gee I wonder why the PS2 had to have heat sinks and a big huge fan suck all the hot air out of the console. (sarcasm)

Probably the same reason the DC needed a fan and complex cooling system (it produced a lot of heat).
 
function said:
There were console games streaming data off the media long before Sony entered the market. There were M-CD and CD32 games that did this and no doubt other machines had them too (like the Commodore CDTV and the PC-Engine CD). The Saturn was paricularly capable in this regard, having a processor dedicated to CD access. If anything I think this supports your point ...

There u go, even better. I never even mentioned this cause i wasn't too sure to begin with, and had nothing to do with the discussion, but just out of curiosity, what games on Saturn had no loading levels? That's quite neat.
 
Thanks for all the ASM info, but I really didn't think that there was too much ASM being used today. As a matter of fact, wasn't it John Carmack who stated that with today's modern development platforms, that there really is no need to use ASM? Maybe that doesn't apply to the PS2 since its architecture is much different than the XBox and GC. I do recall the wonders that Sega had done for Saturn using ASM, but that proved to be one of its downfalls as well since developing in that type of environment is much more difficult. With this next round of consoles, I can't imagine any of them using assembly.
 
london-boy said:
function said:
There were console games streaming data off the media long before Sony entered the market. There were M-CD and CD32 games that did this and no doubt other machines had them too (like the Commodore CDTV and the PC-Engine CD). The Saturn was paricularly capable in this regard, having a processor dedicated to CD access. If anything I think this supports your point ...

There u go, even better. I never even mentioned this cause i wasn't too sure to begin with, and had nothing to do with the discussion, but just out of curiosity, what games on Saturn had no loading levels? That's quite neat.

I can't think of any games that had no loading screens at all, but that's just a matter of implementation. Any time you're playing a level and the game dumps data it doesn't need any more and loads new stuff in (in a seamless fashion) it's the same process going on. You can do this based on position within a map, time passed, opponents defeated, whatever.

You could quite reasonably say that crappy fmv games like the MCDs Thunderhawk do this: the UI, cursor and overlayed effects are being manipulated real time, but the background image is being streamed in, decompressed and having "collision" detection calculated on it at the same time.

My favourite example on the Saturn was Panzer Dragoon Zwei. The (awesome) music was chip generated unlike in the first game, so you continued travelling through the levels without interruption as new data (such as for the rather impressive bosses) was loaded up.
 
I'm not even sure that geometry and AI would even impact each other that much. AI is mostly parsing through various types of data structures (binary trees, directed graphs) which require scalar integer operations, while geometry is mostly vector pointing point. Since floating point [VU] and integer [R5900] run in parallel on the EE I don't see why this would constitute a trade-off situation.

I think the reason for the poor integer performance on PS2 has more to do with a relatively archaic though fast (for 99-00) CPU with high latency memory and a tiny cache. That combination is pretty deadly...
 
akira888 said:
<snip>
Since floating point [VU] and integer [R5900] run in parallel on the EE I don't see why this would constitute a trade-off situation.

I think the reason for the poor integer performance on PS2 has more to do with a relatively archaic though fast (for 99-00) CPU with high latency memory and a tiny cache. That combination is pretty deadly...

I dispute the fast bit :)

1999 saw 7 and 800MHz Athlons and Pentium 3s, CPUs that are 4-6 times as fast on integer codes. The only advantage of the R5900 is that it's tiny.

The reason for putting such a mediocre cpu core in there must be because Sony were running on a very strict die budget. So instead of sacrificing one of the VUs and putting a more capable cpu core in there, we have what we have today, and thus a trade-off

Cheers
Gubbi
 
Gubbi said:
akira888 said:
<snip>
Since floating point [VU] and integer [R5900] run in parallel on the EE I don't see why this would constitute a trade-off situation.

I think the reason for the poor integer performance on PS2 has more to do with a relatively archaic though fast (for 99-00) CPU with high latency memory and a tiny cache. That combination is pretty deadly...

I dispute the fast bit :)

1999 saw 7 and 800MHz Athlons and Pentium 3s, CPUs that are 4-6 times as fast on integer codes. The only advantage of the R5900 is that it's tiny.

The reason for putting such a mediocre cpu core in there must be because Sony were running on a very strict die budget. So instead of sacrificing one of the VUs and putting a more capable cpu core in there, we have what we have today, and thus a trade-off

Cheers
Gubbi

erm, one of us has got his memory mixed up. i remember p3's in 1999 being 500mhz and hence nowhere near 4-5 times faster than the r5900 @ 300mhz.
 
Gubbi said:
The reason for putting such a mediocre cpu core in there must be because Sony were running on a very strict die budget.
Are you saying the EE had a small die size, or something else? Because I'm pretty sure it was gigantic.
 
gleemax said:
Gubbi said:
The reason for putting such a mediocre cpu core in there must be because Sony were running on a very strict die budget.
Are you saying the EE had a small die size, or something else? Because I'm pretty sure it was gigantic.

He meant the core. Without the VUs. :D
 
Panajev,

Call this a post-mortem-post ;)

All this is obvious to me but still not completely obvious to you and probably to others. If anyone has followed this, they deserve a medal! :p I'm obliged to show you why but this will be the last post on this matter from me. And hopefully It'll be clear...

When I say re-read my posts, I'm suggesting to you that you are missing something obvious like a word or something that can turn the whole discussion on his head. I'm glad that you looked up the definition for 'imply' below,

Panajev2001a said:
If we accept that as valid conclusion then my two statements are not contraddicting each other.

3 : to contain potentially
4 : to express indirectly <his silence implied consent>

This is from the Dictionary definition of "imply"... when I was presenting the more "exclusive" version of your argument I used it in the meaning presented as #4 while you meant it as #3.

You're now on the same page but not on the right line yet. You are mistakenly taking #4 as the definition which would suit your argument. But it is irrelevant as you'll be arguing with yourself. We are trying to validate MY argument. And it is clear to me that you still have not REALLY read the post that stated this below,

Jaws said:
Panajev2001a said:
....
With this said, I still say that IMHO the PlayStation 3 GPU is not CELL based, it does not have the SPUs/APUs.
....

It would seem to me a not bad idea to assign all the Vertex Shading work to the CELL based CPU:
....


To me the above two statements seem to contradict each other..

http://www.beyond3d.com/forum/viewtopic.php?p=437597#437597

This is the fulcrum of the debate and I CLEARLY meant 'IMPLY' in the context of defn. #3, i.e. 'to contain potentially' by stating 'ME' and clearly did not need your 'consent' as in #4. So you see, you can clearly construct all manner of arguments based on your definitions of 'IMPLY' as #4 but it is irrelevant because you'll be arguing with yourself. ;)

Also, if you haven't realised yet, the above is a PARADOX,

Defn.

1. A seemingly contradictory statement that may nonetheless be true: the paradox that standing is more tiring than walking.
2. One exhibiting inexplicable or contradictory aspects: “The silence of midnight, to speak truly, though apparently a paradox, rung in my earsâ€￾ (Mary Shelley).
3. An assertion that is essentially self-contradictory, though based on a valid deduction from acceptable premises.
4. A statement contrary to received opinion.

http://dictionary.reference.com/search?q=paradox

I've setup the paradox in the form "YOU'RE DAMNED IF YOU DO AND YOU'RE DAMNED IF YOU DON'T!" ;)

To put it simply, if you except my premise, then you're excepting my conclusion (and I have already proved this earlier.)

"This would IMPLY the GPU to be CELL based."

Which is SEEMINGLY contradictory to ME because of your statements. (Note. 'seem' and 'me' in red above.)

If you do not except my premise then you can dispute my premise and my conclusion. Which you have tried BUT I have already shown earlier that they are valid and you have accepted them.

So this is why I kept asking you to re-read my posts and why, in my eyes, you were confused and stubborn. You can create all the intricate arguments that you want but you CAN'T invalidate MY argument.

I've ALWAYS been aware of this and I hope it's clear now. The moral of the story?

If someone offers 'Lets agree to disagree (TM)', then perhaps you should be more inclined to accept next time, because they are usually doing it for a reason! ;)

...And I'll leave with my ultimate point, in case you've forgotten, is DO NOT discount a CELL based GPU too quickly, just because NVIDIA are involved... ;)

THE END
 
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