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

[Gubbi]

Anyway my point was to show that Sony clearly traded off integer (or general purpose) performance for floating point by selecting a CPU core in the bottom feeding segment and maintaning two VUs instead of sacrificing one VU and have a fast CPU core

Not to dispute the logic of the argument, but can you really call this a tradeoff when it's simply following the same design patterns pretty much every console in recent history used (inlcuding every console of this generation).

Well, I don't know if it's a trade off. But it certainly was a concious choice by Sony. Could be about bragging rights, afterall 6.4 theoretical GFLOPS must be twice as good as 3.2GFLOPS, right ?

I don't even know if it was a bad choice Sony did, all I'm saying is Sony gave priority to FP over general purpose (GP) performance.

Both the Gecko and XCPU has much higher GP performance and were only a year later.

Cheers
Gubbi

 

[Gubbi]

apropos, are the r5900 official int performance figures of ~1.5 ops/clock effectivly sustainable?

It should be capable of issuing two instructions per cycle. The main pitfall is that it will stall on every single cache miss, of which there'll be alot thanks to the small caches of the CPU, - unless special care is taken.

I find it amazing that the PS2 can run some of the games that are out there. Must be creative use of the VUs and Heroic Effort by the developers in general.

Cheers
Gubbi

 

[Fafalada]

Both the Gecko and XCPU has much higher GP performance and were only a year later.

18 months
And relative to your own argument - Gecko is ~4-5x behind the desktop PC curve (2gh P4s was out by then, as well as 1.5Ghz Athlons), XCPU a bit less, but still down at the entry level CPU at best, clearly the decision to give up general purpose CPU for other things was still present.

We can definately argue that the balance between GP processing power and the rest, is better in the latest two systems, but they still followed the basic trend nonetheless.

Must be creative use of the VUs and Heroic Effort by the developers in general.

Tell me about it. I remember cutting down over 30% of execution time from display list generation code(which resulted in over 10% of total frame time as well) with nothing but creative rearranging of data structures and classes for better cache coherency.
Bitfields are your best friend on EE and GCC :?

apropos, are the r5900 official int performance figures of ~1.5 ops/clock effectivly sustainable?

Depends on the code I guess. IIRC some game stats claimed common dual issue utilization is around 20%, but with compilers being what they were, it's probably a wonder we even got that much.

 

[Akumajou]

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.

I was refering to "capabilities" but what I meant was 3d features like bilinear, trilinear, translucency, lighting, shading, mip mapping, bump mapping, enviroment bump mapping, etc.

But never mind since although I compared the GS to PC vid cards of 1998 I also should have kept in mind that the GS is a custom chip, yeah its fast sure but it still does not have the ability to do pixel and vertex shaders with enviroment bump mapping and 8 different light sources, etc.

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.

It became a standard on PS2 as an overwhelming majority of games employ the use of streaming levels due to the limited 4BM vram so I am right.

Just like many pointed out, other previous gen consoles were streaming levels too like the SEGA CD/Mega Drive, Philips CDI, Turbo Duo/PC-Engine Super CD-Rom, NEC FX, 3DO, etc the only difference between those consoles and PS2 is that PS2 came up short to what the Dreamcast had in 8MB vram.

Now you will never agree, thats ok I don't want you to agree with me or anyone else since I care for both 2d and 3d engine based games and I was looking forward to the same or superior 2d games from SNK and CAPCOM on PS2 that the DC provided but got none of that instead a watered down 2d games and 3d games that have slight pop up when objects go into the horizon.

You will say it works differently but still even Ken Kutaragi if asked today would confess that he should have pushed for 8MB as a bare minimum and I would never have complained and I better not complain come PS3 since I have very high expectations on that console and I don't want to hear about how PS3 gets 128MB of vram while XBox 2 gets 512MB.

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

Its true that current PS2 games do feature some amazing levels of image quality and 3d effects however even current games get from time to time some really screwed up looking ugly textures on PS2 like the impressive Killzone, something that if there were an additional 4MB of vram and streaming is used would allow for a much smoother, better looking texture.

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.

Then how come even the first DC games did not have "jaggies" rearing their ugly heads like with the first PS2 games made by top devs like Namco's Ridge Racer V, The Bouncer, etc

Maybe I should just say that if PS2 would have had 8MB for vram its first gen games would have squashed the DC like a sitting duck.

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....

Then you or anyone should not get mad if the name Shenmue is brought up, now let me tell you if there would be a way that Square would slap its name all over Shenmue 1 and 2 while leaving the same content as is (just no mention that it is a SEGA game) and all of a sudden no one would get mad, instead it would be worse for you because it would have been proclaimed as THE greatest videogame of all times since Square invented FF and The Bouncer (a game Square heads constantly bring up even in 2005)

... 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.

Although I am a fan of SEGA, I also am a fan of Nintendo and Microsoft, with Sony's PSX and PS2 I can only be a fan of Bandai, Banpresto, Capcom and in some cases Konami as most Sony made games including GT series always seem like generic wannabes of a former game another dev made, hopefully that won't be the case come PS3.

As for SEGA not keeping up, I was always realistic. Sony is a conglomerate, Sega at the time (Saturn & DC) was an Enterprise, Sony as a company will route money to what ever dep it grows just like an Octopus routes suction to whatever tentacle it needs, Sega never had that luxury of being able to say "oh yeah we have SEGA branded cassette players, tv sets, radios, etc" Basically SEGA was a developing game/console maker while Sony was just trying to make a walkman or diskman out of a console.

Had Sony never entered the console wars it would have left the gates open for Matsushita/Panasonic but it was just inevitable that Sega would bow out not really because of Sony but because MS's XBox was going to make a party of 3 competing top consoles with Sega getting lumped at 4th.

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?

Well seems like you are talking about "current" PS2s that do run cooler, still you got lost because I was obviously refering to the initial batch of year 2000-2002 PS2s.

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.

Bought into the hype? ...WTF?? what are you smoking dude, so let me get this straight, you believe me to be a SEGA fanboy or something? ha ha, I had a Playstation on release day a year before I had a SEGA Saturn, the reason for my shift back then (and I still kept both consoles) was because I noticed how Saturn's games had much better gameplay and much better appealing arcade games and RPGs, note FF7 came in 1997 and I got that too, as a matter of fact I had PSX, Saturn and N64 when N64 was released since I got both latter consoles in the same month.

And for the record I got my start in videogames with the Atari 2600, the Apple IIe and later the NES and Master System.

As for listening to the hype machine, I went where the games had that special something ala AAA or AA, A or even B quality something SEGA and Nintendo had years of experience with making.

However I was merely pointing out that Sony's hype machine was much wider felt than anything SEGA or Nintendo had done, maybe it had something to do with Sony as a conglomerate being able to route money for advertising everywhere, as a matter of fact SEGA of Japan made a Dreamcast game about that, called Sega Ga Ga Ga or SGGG.

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.

I don't seem to remember neither the PS2 being released in 1999 or me ever wanting it to be released in 1999 or earlier so I guess you got lost in your crusade of disagreeing for the hell of it debates.

What I did remember stating many times was that PS2 should have had an additional 4MB of vram.

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.

Again I don't know why the hell you even bothered to try and disagree or even worse taunt when all you are saying is that I am right except for the stealing part, we could argue that Square was basically stolen and then used to stab Nintendo with, hurting them but not that much, I feel that the Gran Tourismo series stole alot of gameplay elements from past SEGA arcade games like Sega Touring Car Championship, Sega Rally and even Daytona USA then they took the Need for Speed idea minus the horrible graphics and cops chasing you for tickets to the opera.

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.

Correction: Sony saw/wanted a disc/walk man type of brand in the console market specially after they noticed that the Gameboy hand held did not have the Sony brand. We could argue even that Sony wanted revenge at not having thought of what Nintendo did in taking a Sony idea and applying it to a console.

Sony then took Trip Hawking's idea of a mythical "set top box" that would do all of the "multi-media" type of stuff.

Compared to SEGA or Nintendo who faced harsh media punishment over the years, Sony never really got that much media criticisim considering all of the overheating and broken down PSXs and PS2s but if a DC could not play a launch day game, oh boy angry letters and media backlash in the gaming media community would be on them.

Then again that leads me to a conclusion, either A all those media types were Sony bought or B they were all Sony fanboys proclaiming how Sony's Blasto was going to be the most impressive game evar.

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.[/quote]

Now that was not needed, SEGAR&D is an ok if a bit fanatical SEGA fan, but I think SEGAR&D is ok, much better than you, thats for sure.

You have a nasty habit of being kind of rude and not making friendly debates by insulting people.

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...

WTF is wrong with you?? Its like you want me to call you ignorant or something derogatory like you did with SEGAR&D.

First of all since you totally missed it, let me say it again:

I picked SEGA because it was obvious that they were not expecting a four way console war with Microsoft coming with such a powerfull console that would sell just on raw power alone (circa 2000-2001 prior to XBox launch day) and they had to become a 3rd party so as not to go bankrupt and IMO better for back then since XBox was coming and I was really hoping that SEGA would bring most of their games to the obviously supreme console of the time (2001)

Now this also meant that SEGA had to make games on PS2, their once rival and this would be great too since it would allow for SEGA to also make their games on the console with the bigger installed user base back then (2001)

What this means is that since SEGA was not expecting XBox, they had to do what they had to do and all of a sudden their internal dev teams, including Arcade dev teams would probably have to worry about making games for 3 different consoles that they did not (at the time 2000) have dev tools and if they did they would be limited to outsourcing port jobs to other teams or initially making arcade ports, eventually working their way up UNLIKE every other PS2 dev circa 2001.

Basically SEGA was at a total dissadvantage compared to Konami so any of their first games would have graphics that would suck or not live up to expectations but obviously their later games would improve.

As reality was revealed SEGA's first efforts as a 3rd party was mostly taking DC prototypes and porting them to other consoles or making a port of a game but not having plenty of time since it was better to rush for profit and improve later.

Hopefully you got it now.

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

Actually it is very acceptable for all of 2000 and January to October of 2001 since all of PS2's best games were aimed at stealing the XBox launch thunder.

There were the few fanboys (actually alot) who were raving about how great "The Bouncer", Ico, and whatever forgettable PS2 games of 2000 and most of 2001.

The rest (real majority) were discovering the joys of DVD movies and enhanced PSX games since alot of the "jaggie ridden" PS2 first gen games were being whipped by DC games of the same year in both image quality and gameplay quality that it was not even funny.

as for the rest of your re-cycled posts just for the sake of disagreeing, I am not going to bother with it.

Anyways another poster pointed out something I missed about emulating PS2 on the PC or XBox so I will close the book on what I said.

Ok, I have to admit that I was only thinking about features as in 3d features and the PS2's clock speeds and limited ram, etc even though all PS2 games cannot hold a candle to what the XBox, GameCube and PC is capable of doing, Doom 3, Half Life 2, Halo 2, Super Mario Sunshine.

Also I should have noticed that having the 2 vector units and the 64bit integers would definetly give a emulator writer a pain in the A to even remotely emulate because current PC X86 cpus do not have some of the features that the EE has, so yes I admit that it will eventually take a much more powerfull PC processor to properly emulate.

However, as someone pointed out earlier, I really hope that this does not pose a problem for PS3 since it BETTER be backward compatible with both PS2 and PSX games even though I don't plan on getting rid of my already modded PS2.

Same deal with XBox 2 and even Nintendo Next.

Finally someone mentioned that the prototype Shenmue aka Project Berkerley running on Saturn hardware did not require the 4MB expansion ram cart and that it was a rumor started by fanboys:

Let me just make sure that the person who said this is aware that there was an actual 3d game on Saturn that did require the 4MB cart made by none other than CapCom, one of the last retail Saturn games in Japan known as Final Fight Revenge, a port from the Arcade Titan hardware that is the same as Saturn and that although the game was not "apparently" stellar in the visuals compared to Fighters Megamix and Virtua Fighter 2, it did feature the use of additional animation sequences for the character's fighting moves that would not otherwise fit into the standard 1.5MB vram.

CAPCOM took a risk shipping that game but then again they already had arcade perfect ports of XMen vs Street Fighter, MSH vs SF and Street Fighter Zero 3 (Alpha). Also there were plenty of rumors of a port of VF3 using a special device to run on Saturn and a "Virtua Fighter RPG" that would also use a special device, later it was said to be the ram cart these rumors started to show up on gaming mags like EGM, Gamefan, and probably Gamepro by their people who read mostly what was leaked in Japan as rumors of the times circa 1996, 1997 and 1998.

I have back issues of Gamefan and a few EGMs of those years and I will try to get or find the articles in question and post them, probably in its own topic to confirm this.

Now on the other hand if the prototype did not require the 4MB, then it would be further proof of the Saturn's amazing 3d prowess in the hands of AM2, but to me I feel so much better if it was the 4MB cart as I did with Zelda MM on N64 pushing that console to its limits.

Not only that but if the PS2 somehow had a 4MB cart, I would have been so much happier ending my rants about the subject.

 

[one]

As for SEGA not keeping up, I was always realistic. Sony is a conglomerate, Sega at the time (Saturn & DC) was an Enterprise, Sony as a company will route money to what ever dep it grows just like an Octopus routes suction to whatever tentacle it needs, Sega never had that luxury of being able to say "oh yeah we have SEGA branded cassette players, tv sets, radios, etc" Basically SEGA was a developing game/console maker while Sony was just trying to make a walkman or diskman out of a console.

SEGA was, before acquired by Sammy, one of subsidiaries of CSK corporation, which may be smaller than Sony but still a conglomerate.

 

[hey69]

i admire the time you have put into posting that !

I feel that the Gran Tourismo series stole alot of gameplay elements from past SEGA arcade games like Sega Touring Car Championship, Sega Rally and even Daytona USA then they took the Need for Speed idea minus the horrible graphics and cops chasing you for tickets to the opera.

eeh isn't that bit over the top. so you can claim every racer stole ideas of another racer. maybe they stole ideas from Pole Position? they have a FINISH in the game after all..

for the most part i agree with you except :
1) too much Sega love going on
2) Super Mario Sunshine is acording to you a game, ps2 games can't put a candle on (ehem or something like that)
sorry my friend , but SMS is nothing special in my eyes, i played it and I saw much better looking games on ps2 OR even on the other consoles.

 

[Guden Oden]

I didn't REALLY want to reply to this post since it takes up half the height of this page of the thread, but I'm sado-masochistic I guess, so here I go grabbing the bull by its horns...

what I meant was 3d features like bilinear, trilinear, translucency, lighting, shading, mip mapping, bump mapping, enviroment bump mapping, etc.

GS can do almost all of that and fake some of the other stuff with a bit of effort, though nobody seems to be bothering to outside tech demos. However, checkbox features don't make a good game tho, or even a pretty one, so you better decide where you want to go with this line of reasoning.

yeah its fast sure but it still does not have the ability to do pixel and vertex shaders with enviroment bump mapping and 8 different light sources, etc.

You clearly don't understand the subject matter. It doesn't MATTER if the graphics chip can do vertex shaders and 8 different light sources. That you think it matters only shows you're stuck in a fanperson line of reasoning.

PS2 does all vertex calculations and lighting on the main CPU. That's what the vector processors are there for, and they're much more capable than the vertex shaders on the xbox GPU.

Also, if 8 lights is prohibitively expensive from a performance POV, what does it matter if the GPU can do it in hardware or not? It'd only be good for bragging rights, is that the level you want to keep your discussions on, sandbox bickering?

It became a standard on PS2 as an overwhelming majority of games employ the use of streaming levels due to the limited 4BM vram so I am right.

No, you're not right. You're thoroughly confused. PS2 is streaming stuff to its eDRAM constantly, it's designed to work that way. That doesn't mean it has to stream the entire level from disc tho, and that's not even realistic. The DVD drive is half an order of magnitude (if not more) slower than the interface to the GS just from a bandwidth point of view, not to mention access time (oye vey!). You can't stream stuff that way, lest it's compressed FMV movies.

Second, not all that many games stream their levels from disc on the PS2. In fact I'd say the overwhelming majority do NOT. It's not trivial to design a streaming level engine when working against as horribly slow a media as a 2x DVDROM, and one needs to design the game's levels with streaming in mind too.

You will say it works differently but still even Ken Kutaragi if asked today would confess that he should have pushed for 8MB as a bare minimum

How would you know what he would "confess"? You're just making shit up.

It is unfortunate you think like a fanperson. Hardware design is balancing a lot of trade-offs against one another, and saying 8MB of something is always inherently superior to 4MB is simply not possible. Wether it is depends on a host of different factors. PS2 and DC are such radically different concepts from a hardware standpoint they're different it's difficult to compare them solely on a feature-by-feature basis. For example, PS2 streams stuff into its 4MB eDRAM considerably faster (1.2GB/s) than the entire bandwidth budget of DC's 8MB video memory (800MB/s); total GS eDRAM bandwidth is 48GB/s (six times faster)! You need to weigh that into your calculations, but you don't. You just look at the numbers and go, '4MB < 8MB, hmpf!'. That's fanperson thinking.

and I don't want to hear about how PS3 gets 128MB of vram while XBox 2 gets 512MB.

You're joking, right?

Then how come even the first DC games did not have "jaggies" rearing their ugly heads like with the first PS2 games made by top devs like Namco's Ridge Racer V, The Bouncer, etc

That's not "jaggies", but rather interlace flicker. It stems from poor understanding of the hardware by developers early on in the console's lifetime (and probably, initially lacking development tools too).

Just saying doubling eDRAM size would have magically fixed everything isn't true, since even with 'only' 4MB it's quite possible to do non-flickering games with ease. Fanperson thinking without looking at the big picture.

 

[version]

" For example, PS2 streams stuff into its 4MB eDRAM considerably faster (1.2GB/s) than the entire bandwidth budget of DC's 8MB video memory (800MB/s); total GS eDRAM bandwidth is 48GB/s (six times faster)!"

sixty

 

[London Geezer]

I was refering to "capabilities" but what I meant was 3d features like bilinear, trilinear, translucency, lighting, shading, mip mapping, bump mapping, enviroment bump mapping, etc.

But never mind since although I compared the GS to PC vid cards of 1998 I also should have kept in mind that the GS is a custom chip, yeah its fast sure but it still does not have the ability to do pixel and vertex shaders with enviroment bump mapping and 8 different light sources, etc.

Can a TNT2? Or a Geforce in 98? At acceptable framerates in complex games that is. Answer is, NO.
Can the GS render Quake3 at 60fps? Yes. Obviously the limit here is the textures, but that has more to do with the RAM limitations in PS2 than anything else.
Can a TNT2 render Jak3, or GT4, or ZOE2 at the same framerates as PS2? No. Whatever features they have, they will never have games that look as good as these running at the same speed, because those "checklist" features were hardly usable in-game, not together at least.

It became a standard on PS2 as an overwhelming majority of games employ the use of streaming levels due to the limited 4BM vram so I am right.

Just like many pointed out, other previous gen consoles were streaming levels too like the SEGA CD/Mega Drive, Philips CDI, Turbo Duo/PC-Engine Super CD-Rom, NEC FX, 3DO, etc the only difference between those consoles and PS2 is that PS2 came up short to what the Dreamcast had in 8MB vram.

Now you will never agree, thats ok I don't want you to agree with me or anyone else since I care for both 2d and 3d engine based games and I was looking forward to the same or superior 2d games from SNK and CAPCOM on PS2 that the DC provided but got none of that instead a watered down 2d games and 3d games that have slight pop up when objects go into the horizon.

You will say it works differently but still even Ken Kutaragi if asked today would confess that he should have pushed for 8MB as a bare minimum and I would never have complained and I better not complain come PS3 since I have very high expectations on that console and I don't want to hear about how PS3 gets 128MB of vram while XBox 2 gets 512MB.

The thing is, like it has been pointed out, i never disagreed with you in the first place. Because i knew and everyone else knew that Sony weren't the first ones to have done that. And i never praised them for being "the first to do so". I only asked why the hell that was brought up.

Its true that current PS2 games do feature some amazing levels of image quality and 3d effects however even current games get from time to time some really screwed up looking ugly textures on PS2 like the impressive Killzone, something that if there were an additional 4MB of vram and streaming is used would allow for a much smoother, better looking texture.

So what was your point?

Then how come even the first DC games did not have "jaggies" rearing their ugly heads like with the first PS2 games made by top devs like Namco's Ridge Racer V, The Bouncer, etc

Maybe I should just say that if PS2 would have had 8MB for vram its first gen games would have squashed the DC like a sitting duck.

DC games, like GC games and Xbox games too, have jaggies. DC games had a lot of jaggies.
PS2 had a lot of jaggies because early games like the ones you mentioned used field rendering, it had nothing to do with PS2 being underqowered, or being "less powerful" than DC. AS you have said yourself, decent titles have IQ which is just good enough for 480i displays, with many games supporting 480p as well. And GT4 supporting 1080i.
That shows the issue wasn't in the hardware (being the same hardware as the launch PS2s), but in the software. You can blame Sony for that, because they never made it easy for developers to figure out the best way to do things, but don't blame the hardware.

Then you or anyone should not get mad if the name Shenmue is brought up, now let me tell you if there would be a way that Square would slap its name all over Shenmue 1 and 2 while leaving the same content as is (just no mention that it is a SEGA game) and all of a sudden no one would get mad, instead it would be worse for you because it would have been proclaimed as THE greatest videogame of all times since Square invented FF and The Bouncer (a game Square heads constantly bring up even in 2005)

Errr ok...?

Although I am a fan of SEGA, I also am a fan of Nintendo and Microsoft, with Sony's PSX and PS2 I can only be a fan of Bandai, Banpresto, Capcom and in some cases Konami as most Sony made games including GT series always seem like generic wannabes of a former game another dev made, hopefully that won't be the case come PS3.

Right. Not even gonna get into this one.

Had Sony never entered the console wars it would have left the gates open for Matsushita/Panasonic but it was just inevitable that Sega would bow out not really because of Sony but because MS's XBox was going to make a party of 3 competing top consoles with Sega getting lumped at 4th.

You're not in the position to comment on what would have happened if one of the current competitors never entered the market. I'm not, and you surely ain't either.

Well seems like you are talking about "current" PS2s that do run cooler, still you got lost because I was obviously refering to the initial batch of year 2000-2002 PS2s.

Erm, no you got lost. Current PS2s (the PStwo's, the smaller ones, seen them anywhere?) do run cooler than older "bigger" PS2. That's why Sony was able to cut the volume by 75% or something like that.
Initial batches obviously have trouble, look at what happen in the PC world, every new GPU and CPU has to go through a few iterations to be able to eventually run cooler.

Bought into the hype? ...WTF?? what are you smoking dude, so let me get this straight, you believe me to be a SEGA <bleep> or something? ha ha, I had a Playstation on release day a year before I had a SEGA Saturn, the reason for my shift back then (and I still kept both consoles) was because I noticed how Saturn's games had much better gameplay and much better appealing arcade games and RPGs, note FF7 came in 1997 and I got that too, as a matter of fact I had PSX, Saturn and N64 when N64 was released since I got both latter consoles in the same month.

And for the record I got my start in videogames with the Atari 2600, the Apple IIe and later the NES and Master System.

No need to prove anything to anyone. You still obviously have a chip on your shoulder when it comes to Sega. The fact that you owned many systems doesn't change that.

As for listening to the hype machine, I went where the games had that special something ala AAA or AA, A or even B quality something SEGA and Nintendo had years of experience with making.

However I was merely pointing out that Sony's hype machine was much wider felt than anything SEGA or Nintendo had done, maybe it had something to do with Sony as a conglomerate being able to route money for advertising everywhere, as a matter of fact SEGA of Japan made a Dreamcast game about that, called Sega Ga Ga Ga or SGGG.

Yes, without Sony, the console market would probably never have become what it is today. in one word: HUGE. They attracted casual gamers and made videogames "cool". They moved consoles from kids' bedrooms to livign rooms. Videogame development budget has increased exponentially as a consequence of the market growing the way it did.
If we were still with only Sega and Nintendo, things would still be in the dark ages, look at Nintendo! They're still doing things like they were in the N64 days!! Come on, open your eyes, Big Bad Sony made a favour to many people, not least MS, by entering the videogame market.
As i said, i was playing games long before the PS1 and it's obvious to see the benefits Sony, in all their badness and evilness, brought to the market.

I don't seem to remember neither the PS2 being released in 1999 or me ever wanting it to be released in 1999 or earlier so I guess you got lost in your crusade of disagreeing for the hell of it debates.

My crusade? Bless...

What I did remember stating many times was that PS2 should have had an additional 4MB of vram.

And what i'm saying is that if Sony could have afforded to put 8MB VRAM (which would have been nice, i'm not denying that), they would have. But remember, consoles have to be sold at a 300 quid price point, and there's not much room to move your feet, so to speak.
It's all down to compromises and "drawing the line". And obviously, from a price/performance point of view, the line was at 4MB eVRAM. It's not like good PS2 games look bad or anything, right?
Bad games look bad on every platform.

Again I don't know why the hell you even bothered to try and disagree or even worse taunt when all you are saying is that I am right except for the stealing part, we could argue that Square was basically stolen and then used to stab Nintendo with, hurting them but not that much, I feel that the Gran Tourismo series stole alot of gameplay elements from past SEGA arcade games like Sega Touring Car Championship, Sega Rally and even Daytona USA then they took the Need for Speed idea minus the horrible graphics and cops chasing you for tickets to the opera.

No i never agreed with the "stealing". Sony could never "steal" Square. Please, are you so naive? They obviously satisfied Square's needs more than Nintendo were, so they went with Sony!! How is that stealing??
What now, MS "stole" Bungie from the others, so they could have Halo all for themselves? No! There was an agreement, and Bungie was obviously very happy to be a MS exclusive!!!
Also, are you saying that a racing game "copied" the gameplay from other.. racing games? Wow...
Sega Rally was one of the best racing games of its time. And there have always been many racing games, so saying one "copied" the other is a bit much. They're racing games, there's not much room for innovation, apart trying to get as realistic as you can. Also, GT's hundreds of cars and tracks and the whole presentation might win them the "innovation" cup in the eyes of many people.

Correction: Sony saw/wanted a disc/walk man type of brand in the console market specially after they noticed that the Gameboy hand held did not have the Sony brand. We could argue even that Sony wanted revenge at not having thought of what Nintendo did in taking a Sony idea and applying it to a console.

Yes, that's called "look and learn".

Sony then took Trip Hawking's idea of a mythical "set top box" that would do all of the "multi-media" type of stuff.

If you say so. It seems, whatever Sony does, they copied it from someone else. Sony has no capacity to make original products. Ever. Meh...

Compared to SEGA or Nintendo who faced harsh media punishment over the years, Sony never really got that much media criticisim considering all of the overheating and broken down PSXs and PS2s but if a DC could not play a launch day game, oh boy angry letters and media backlash in the gaming media community would be on them.

Sony never got much criticism? My god where have you been in the last 10 years? And look at yourself! What are you doing now?

Then again that leads me to a conclusion, either A all those media types were Sony bought or B they were all Sony fanboys proclaiming how Sony's Blasto was going to be the most impressive game evar.

No comment. Better like that. I think if you had to prove something, you have proved it.

Now that was not needed, SEGAR&D is an ok if a bit fanatical SEGA fan, but I think SEGAR&D is ok, much better than you, thats for sure.

Well, that's your opinion. All i can say is that i've past the 9000 posts, after 3 years of having been here, without ever been banned. Deadmeat, or Deadmeat1, or Deadmeat2, or Deadmeat3 or Deadmeat4 have all been banned for a reason, and SegaR&D is the same person so....
I wonder, the mods must be my best friends or something!!!11"22!!1

You have a nasty habit of being kind of rude and not making friendly debates by insulting people.

Insulting?????
Please show me where have i ever insulted anyone. I might be a total bitch with a very strong side for sarcasm, but never have i even tried to insult anyone.
That's the difference between me and people who have been banned many times.

Oh and let's not forget the fact that unlike him, i have never lied about where i work. He lied for weeks, saying he works for Sega, just to initiate ignorance-ridden threads and give them a somewhat more "realistic" shade, just because "he works for Sega".

But then again, i'm not surprised you think SegaR&D is "better than me". Whatever that might mean... Errr...

WTF is wrong with you?? Its like you want me to call you ignorant or something derogatory like you did with SEGAR&D.

I never called people names.

First of all since you totally missed it, let me say it again:

I picked SEGA because it was obvious that they were not expecting a four way console war with Microsoft coming with such a powerfull console that would sell just on raw power alone (circa 2000-2001 prior to XBox launch day) and they had to become a 3rd party so as not to go bankrupt and IMO better for back then since XBox was coming and I was really hoping that SEGA would bring most of their games to the obviously supreme console of the time (2001)

Now this also meant that SEGA had to make games on PS2, their once rival and this would be great too since it would allow for SEGA to also make their games on the console with the bigger installed user base back then (2001)

What this means is that since SEGA was not expecting XBox, they had to do what they had to do and all of a sudden their internal dev teams, including Arcade dev teams would probably have to worry about making games for 3 different consoles that they did not (at the time 2000) have dev tools and if they did they would be limited to outsourcing port jobs to other teams or initially making arcade ports, eventually working their way up UNLIKE every other PS2 dev circa 2001.

Basically SEGA was at a total dissadvantage compared to Konami so any of their first games would have graphics that would suck or not live up to expectations but obviously their later games would improve.

As reality was revealed SEGA's first efforts as a 3rd party was mostly taking DC prototypes and porting them to other consoles or making a port of a game but not having plenty of time since it was better to rush for profit and improve later.

Hopefully you got it now.

Errmm... Right. I so got it now! Thanks!
It wasn't a matter of not-getting it, it was a matter of what-your-point-?
Again.

Actually it is very acceptable for all of 2000 and January to October of 2001 since all of PS2's best games were aimed at stealing the XBox launch thunder.

There were the few fanboys (actually alot) who were raving about how great "The Bouncer", Ico, and whatever forgettable PS2 games of 2000 and most of 2001.

The rest (real majority) were discovering the joys of DVD movies and enhanced PSX games since alot of the "jaggie ridden" PS2 first gen games were being whipped by DC games of the same year in both image quality and gameplay quality that it was not even funny.

Yes.

as for the rest of your re-cycled posts just for the sake of disagreeing, I am not going to bother with it.

Yes.

Anyways another poster pointed out something I missed about emulating PS2 on the PC or XBox so I will close the book on what I said.

Ok, I have to admit that I was only thinking about features as in 3d features and the PS2's clock speeds and limited ram, etc even though all PS2 games cannot hold a candle to what the XBox, GameCube and PC is capable of doing, Doom 3, Half Life 2, Halo 2, Super Mario Sunshine.

Also I should have noticed that having the 2 vector units and the 64bit integers would definetly give a emulator writer a pain in the A to even remotely emulate because current PC X86 cpus do not have some of the features that the EE has, so yes I admit that it will eventually take a much more powerfull PC processor to properly emulate.

However, as someone pointed out earlier, I really hope that this does not pose a problem for PS3 since it BETTER be backward compatible with both PS2 and PSX games even though I don't plan on getting rid of my already modded PS2.

I don't think PS3 needs to be backward compatible with PS1. It could, since by 2006, emulating a PS1 should be piece of cake, but really, how many people still play PS1 games? If it costs money to implement, Sony will ditch it. The percentage of people using it would be far to small to bother. Also, they have stated many times that they only intend to support 2 consoles at any time. So, PS3 comes in, bye bye PS1.

Same deal with XBox 2 and even Nintendo Next.

I wouldn't hold my breath for a Xbox2-backward-compatibility annoncement. At this point it looks very unlikely, if only because of the ATI-NVIDIA issue.

Not only that but if the PS2 somehow had a 4MB cart, I would have been so much happier ending my rants about the subject.

Sorry, u'll think i'm just disagreeing for the sake of disagreeing, but... A 4MB cart for PS2???
What would you do with that??

 

[London Geezer]

^^ Or i could have just waited for people to post, and saved the last 45 minutes. The guy is wrong anyway.

 

[Fafalada]

You will say it works differently but still even Ken Kutaragi if asked today would confess that he should have pushed for 8MB as a bare minimum

Nope. Memory subsystem working more like the one in PSP, would have been a much nicer improvement then thinking up new ways to make GS even larger then it already was.

and I don't want to hear about how PS3 gets 128MB of vram while XBox 2 gets 512MB.

Except that XBox2 gets 10MB of VRam

 

[cthellis42]

You will say it works differently but still even Ken Kutaragi if asked today would confess that he should have pushed for 8MB as a bare minimum

Nope. Memory subsystem working more like the one in PSP, would have been a much nicer improvement then thinking up new ways to make GS even larger then it already was.

Quiet, Faf. What do YOU know about the PS2?

I might be a total bitch with a very strong side for sarcasm,

What, you? Nah...

 

[Akumajou]

Can a TNT2? Or a Geforce in 98? At acceptable framerates in complex games that is. Answer is, NO.
Can the GS render Quake3 at 60fps? Yes. Obviously the limit here is the textures, but that has more to do with the RAM limitations in PS2 than anything else.
Can a TNT2 render Jak3, or GT4, or ZOE2 at the same framerates as PS2? No. Whatever features they have, they will never have games that look as good as these running at the same speed, because those "checklist" features were hardly usable in-game, not together at least.

No and TNT2 or GeForce never will render Jak3 or GT4 or ZOE2 at the same framerates because the GS is dependant on the EE to render 3d while a TNT2 of GF need a fast Intel or AMD cpu.

DC games, like GC games and Xbox games too, have jaggies. DC games had a lot of jaggies.
PS2 had a lot of jaggies because early games like the ones you mentioned used field rendering, it had nothing to do with PS2 being underqowered, or being "less powerful" than DC. AS you have said yourself, decent titles have IQ which is just good enough for 480i displays, with many games supporting 480p as well. And GT4 supporting 1080i.
That shows the issue wasn't in the hardware (being the same hardware as the launch PS2s), but in the software. You can blame Sony for that, because they never made it easy for developers to figure out the best way to do things, but don't blame the hardware.

I don't think I ever said that the PS2 was "inferior" to DC, what I believe I have been saying is that the specs should have completely doubled or matched (in the case of vram) reguardless of how it works much faster with theoretical fillrate numbers.

A few DC games may have had "jaggies" but those were some pretty damn good looking jaggies unlike the ugly jaggies in first gen PS2 games.

I know that Sony would improve their SDKs and I don't blame the hardware completely, I just (again) blame the vram for texture storage reguardless of how anyone here knows how fast the PS2 works because there have been port games from other consoles like Bandai's CAPCOM programed Arcade game Mobile Suit Gundam Federation vs Zeon DX, originally programed on SEGA Naomi Arcade hardware, then perfectly ported to Dreamcast and somehow the textures got all washed up when it got to PS2.

Of course if the game was ported in 2004 it probably would not have had washed up looking textures and matched or improved (maybe) the original textures.

Errr ok...?

The reason I bring that up has to do with almost all of Square games, even the ones that are boring and suck getting high praise as a good or great game by people who probably only own one console.

Right. Not even gonna get into this one.

Yes

You're not in the position to comment on what would have happened if one of the current competitors never entered the market. I'm not, and you surely ain't either.

Well then...

Yes, without Sony, the console market would probably never have become what it is today. in one word: HUGE. They attracted casual gamers and made videogames "cool". They moved consoles from kids' bedrooms to livign rooms. Videogame development budget has increased exponentially as a consequence of the market growing the way it did.
If we were still with only Sega and Nintendo, things would still be in the dark ages, look at Nintendo! They're still doing things like they were in the N64 days!! Come on, open your eyes, Big Bad Sony made a favour to many people, not least MS, by entering the videogame market.
As i said, i was playing games long before the PS1 and it's obvious to see the benefits Sony, in all their badness and evilness, brought to the market.

... maybe your last paragraph does not exist.

Again the Panasonic/Sanyo 3DO consoles prior to PSX and Saturn were pushing for the "Multi-media-all in one box" where at the time you could not only play games but also (with additional equipment) view VCD movies, photo slides, etc. When PSX and Saturn showed up in 1994 they also had the optional, additional equipment and as a matter of fact there was even a custom version of the Saturn by Hitachi that was built as a portable car appliance to view VCD movies, play games, and also had GPS feature to view maps while traveling in Japan.

http://www.playright.dk/raretitel.php?id=13403

more detailed info and pics:

http://nfg.2y.net/games/hisaturn/auction2/

However all of those "all in wonder" consoles suffered the price premium penalty, at least today a standard PS2, XBox or GC can be slapped in a car, even though they may lack some of those past console features.

And what i'm saying is that if Sony could have afforded to put 8MB VRAM (which would have been nice, i'm not denying that), they would have. But remember, consoles have to be sold at a 300 quid price point, and there's not much room to move your feet, so to speak.
It's all down to compromises and "drawing the line". And obviously, from a price/performance point of view, the line was at 4MB eVRAM. It's not like good PS2 games look bad or anything, right?
Bad games look bad on every platform.

Come on, you know that we could argue that if Sony did have it and the price was $350 US dollars or even $400, all of the informed gaming community aka non-casual gamers, including me who was not an early adopter of PS2 (but was with PSX) would have purchased the console in a heartbeat on day one, declared that the console would indeed be the 2 years more powerfull specs wise post DC console and never complained or even compared it to DC or any other pre-PS2 console, reguardless of how the PS2 works differently from a DC or an X86 cpu.

After all the original PSX sold in Japan for the near equivalent of $450 or $400 US dollars and many can argue that since SEGA made themselves a guinnea-pig test subject releasing Saturn at $400 in the US, that basically opened the door for Sony to say a drop to $300, even though ATARI was threatening to sue either one if the price was lowered to dump the already established competition (3DO, Jaguar back then).

No i never agreed with the "stealing". Sony could never "steal" Square. Please, are you so naive? They obviously satisfied Square's needs more than Nintendo were, so they went with Sony!! How is that stealing??
What now, MS "stole" Bungie from the others, so they could have Halo all for themselves? No! There was an agreement, and Bungie was obviously very happy to be a MS exclusive!!!
Also, are you saying that a racing game "copied" the gameplay from other.. racing games? Wow...
Sega Rally was one of the best racing games of its time. And there have always been many racing games, so saying one "copied" the other is a bit much. They're racing games, there's not much room for innovation, apart trying to get as realistic as you can. Also, GT's hundreds of cars and tracks and the whole presentation might win them the "innovation" cup in the eyes of many people.

Reguardless of how Square, (and later Enix) went for PSX, even after Square was hyping FF7 as a Ultra 64 game with tentative "work in progress" images as a business move, it definetly can be argued that it can sound alot like if one girl/man shows her/his fiance a gift she/he wants to give him/her, then another comes and lures away the girl/man with a fancy "something" or business propossition (since they want to be partners) then that business move could also be called a stolen fiance, not like I am saying that Square was married to Nintendo in any way since that is not possible but they did dedicate and became what they were with Nintendo consoles, a business partner like that could be called either a traitor or unfaithfull.

But then again, like you did say, Sony did satisfy Square's needs more than Nintendo could...

Sony then took Trip Hawking's idea of a mythical "set top box" that would do all of the "multi-media" type of stuff.

If you say so. It seems, whatever Sony does, they copied it from someone else. Sony has no capacity to make original products. Ever. Meh...

According to history, the portable cassette player concept was actually invented by a German engineer or company (I don't remember now) but Sony saw, Sony copied, Sony named and Walkman conquered to the point that the general population does not remember that lad, I wonder if he ever got paid or got a patent.

Sony never got much criticism? My god where have you been in the last 10 years? And look at yourself! What are you doing now?

I guess I don't remember seeing/reading "Should you buy a Dreamcast?" cover articles on most gaming magazine newstands (media taking sides prematurely), Analysts on a CNN or MSNBC news channel program debating that Sega's console was a year ahead of a more powerfull, popular console to be released a year after DC.

But what I do remember is that there were absolutely no "should you buy a PS2?" anything, instead it was all "go, do it, it won't suck" of course I know I ignored all of that hype but I know about a wider populous that did not.

No comment. Better like that. I think if you had to prove something, you have proved it.

Maybe what I wanted to prove is that as much as I enjoy the PS2 I own, I did not enjoy all of the false crap, lies and bashing that went disguised as hype prior to launch.

Well, that's your opinion. All i can say is that i've past the 9000 posts, after 3 years of having been here, without ever been banned. Deadmeat, or Deadmeat1, or Deadmeat2, or Deadmeat3 or Deadmeat4 have all been banned for a reason, and SegaR&D is the same person so....
I wonder, the mods must be my best friends or something!!!11"22!!1

Well I did not know that so I will give you the benefit of the doubt because I though you were calling names but since Deadmeat was his name, I take it back, still you could be a nicer, more open minded guy.

Errmm... Right. I so got it now! Thanks!
It wasn't a matter of not-getting it, it was a matter of what-your-point-?
Again.

That even a late comer-dev like Sega would have flaws in their first PS2 games and improve their later games because they would need plenty of time to learn the SDKs properly.

I don't think PS3 needs to be backward compatible with PS1. It could, since by 2006, emulating a PS1 should be piece of cake, but really, how many people still play PS1 games? If it costs money to implement, Sony will ditch it. The percentage of people using it would be far to small to bother. Also, they have stated many times that they only intend to support 2 consoles at any time. So, PS3 comes in, bye bye PS1.

although I won't hold my breath for it, they could offer something like what DC's Bleemcast offered, 640x480 with filtered graphics for those old PSX games and probably offer the same deal with PS2 games, but I am just fantasysing (if thats a word) because a GeForce 4Ti or Radeon 9800 card is able to do AntiAliasing+Aniso filtering (a feature that older games benefit most from) and I kind of wanted to imagine such a thing being done on the console level, but that is all just my humble opinion and therefore probably not even worth debating because things might turn out like you laid out.

I wouldn't hold my breath for a Xbox2-backward-compatibility annoncement. At this point it looks very unlikely, if only because of the ATI-NVIDIA issue.

Again its MHO, however I can already see the hype machine using that as a way to crucify XBox 2.

Sorry, u'll think i'm just disagreeing for the sake of disagreeing, but... A 4MB cart for PS2???
What would you do with that??

Hang it on a wall and proudly say, look at the device that allowed the PS2 to reach new hights in gaming excellence and definition, but it is too late for that now is it. For the record my argument about that is that IMHO they should have had it from day one and if a cart, 2 years later, now it is too late because PS3 is already in the wings.

XBox 2 having 10MB

Heh, that sounds a hell of a lot better than 4MB.

 

[Squeak]

I don't think I ever said that the PS2 was "inferior" to DC, what I believe I have been saying is that the specs should have completely doubled or matched (in the case of vram) reguardless of how it works much faster with theoretical fillrate numbers.

And why is that?
You don't seem to realise that the VRAM on the GS plays quite a different role than the VRAM in DC. It's meant to be used as a temporary buffer for textures and frames, not a temporary geometry and permanent texture storage like on DC.
DC can allocate, at best, around 5Mb for textures, while PS2 has around 20Mb of bandwidth @ 60fps to share between textures and geometry.

Look at GC, only 1Mb for textures! And worse still, NV2a, which is rumoured to only, have 128Kb of texture cache!!

The one thing PS2 lacks the most, according to developers on this and other boards (at least so I have understood), is some more cache for the main CPU. 8Kb extra level one D cache, or even better some kind of level 2 or 3 cache would probably make life a lot easier for developers and free up some bandwidth for other stuff.

 

[Akumajou]

GS can do almost all of that and fake some of the other stuff with a bit of effort, though nobody seems to be bothering to outside tech demos. However, checkbox features don't make a good game tho, or even a pretty one, so you better decide where you want to go with this line of reasoning.

Or you could agree that we all already know that Sony's constantly revised SDKs combined with skilled dev teams can make great playing/looking games that push the console to its technical limits in our eyes.

However checkbox features do help in making an already good game better and that lacking those features since most of the PS2 GS tech was finalized in 1998 helps to allow this topic to exist because the PS2 was not cutting edge like XBox was or how PS3 will (hopefully) be, unless the launch gets pushed to 2007 or 8.

PS2 does all vertex calculations and lighting on the main CPU. That's what the vector processors are there for, and they're much more capable than the vertex shaders on the xbox GPU.

Also, if 8 lights is prohibitively expensive from a performance POV, what does it matter if the GPU can do it in hardware or not? It'd only be good for bragging rights, is that the level you want to keep your discussions on, sandbox bickering?

Hey I did not start the sandbox bickering, blame Sony for that when they claimed in 1998 that Square would be able to render 80 million polygons with the console and how their hardware would have been so teh cutzxors edG3 in 2000 when it really was not.

No, you're not right. You're thoroughly confused. PS2 is streaming stuff to its eDRAM constantly, it's designed to work that way. That doesn't mean it has to stream the entire level from disc tho, and that's not even realistic. The DVD drive is half an order of magnitude (if not more) slower than the interface to the GS just from a bandwidth point of view, not to mention access time (oye vey!). You can't stream stuff that way, lest it's compressed FMV movies.

I don't think that when I said "streaming levels" I did not mean "entire levels in ram", you are being unrealistic because I never intended to say that I mean streaming because if you open the drive on "most games" yourself the music and the game will keep going for 15 seconds or so and then pause or freeze untill you close the drive with the game in it.

That is you may or may not be able to move at all with in the level or with in a small radius of movement depending on the game.

Second, not all that many games stream their levels from disc on the PS2. In fact I'd say the overwhelming majority do NOT. It's not trivial to design a streaming level engine when working against as horribly slow a media as a 2x DVDROM, and one needs to design the game's levels with streaming in mind too.

And I disagree.

How would you know what he would "confess"? You're just making shit up.

If I forgot to mention it, that would be my humble opinion and I should have said IMHO that he would confess given that he at the time of design was not aware of Microsoft becoming a player so soon.

Generally and traditionally all previous-to-XBox consoles had technology in the CPUs or GPUs that were always already 2 years plus old, in the case of DC, the PowerVR2 chip was finished in 1997 as prototype hardware and started production in 1998 (even when there were prototype boards shown in 97), with GC the GPU is almost comparable to GPU tech already available from ATI or Nvidia with built in Transform and Lighting geometry processor.

The first Saturn was made of off the shelf parts that were mostly over a year old or older, the PSX, although custom was based on chips that were already available or were not really that cutting edge in 1994

Like the topic poster asked about, the PS2 had tech that was already finished nearly 2 years prior to the console components being massively produced since Sony needed the chips to be fast and a lower nm process would allow that as well as low voltage/power requirements.

That, again was why this topic was made, because PS2 was not as cutting edge as PS3 will be considered to be if it launches in 2006 unless everything goes wrong "if" it turns out to be that PS3 is using 2 to 3 year old technology that is just overclocked to be fast because of a die shrink.

It is unfortunate you think like a fanperson. Hardware design is balancing a lot of trade-offs against one another, and saying 8MB of something is always inherently superior to 4MB is simply not possible. Wether it is depends on a host of different factors. PS2 and DC are such radically different concepts from a hardware standpoint they're different it's difficult to compare them solely on a feature-by-feature basis. For example, PS2 streams stuff into its 4MB eDRAM considerably faster (1.2GB/s) than the entire bandwidth budget of DC's 8MB video memory (800MB/s); total GS eDRAM bandwidth is 48GB/s (six times faster)! You need to weigh that into your calculations, but you don't. You just look at the numbers and go, '4MB < 8MB, hmpf!'. That's fanperson thinking.

I know about all of PS2 vs DC theoretical bandwidth numbers and I think that even on PS2 we can all sanely agree that such theoretical numbers will never be reached because they are just for show to impress fanpersons who bring them up in topic discussions but forget that those number are dependent on 100% use of the 16 pixel pipelines in GS and if you know about that then 8MB of embedded DRAM sure as hell can help the 16 pipes far better and faster than 4MB.

and I don't want to hear about how PS3 gets 128MB of vram while XBox 2 gets 512MB.

You're joking, right? .[/quote]

What I am trying to say is I don't want 4MB-like mistakes in PS3 but we will soon find out, anyways, how much does 512MB GDDR3 ram cost today?? and those consoles are aimed for 2006 so either way, RDRAM is still expensive but not as it used to be and we don't know how much XDR-DRAM will cost yet.

Now "if" PS2 would used DDR or SD-Ram instead, I guess Sony would have packed even 16MB embedded DRAM in GS, again IMHO although that is ridiculous.

Just saying doubling eDRAM size would have magically fixed everything isn't true, since even with 'only' 4MB it's quite possible to do non-flickering games with ease. Fanperson thinking without looking at the big picture.

Just saying that 4MB is enough to keep the 16 pipes satisfied is also not true since it requires devs to only work with what they got, not what they wanted and IMHO I bet they wanted to be able to store some really niceR looking textures instead of being limited, but hey since we are on the subject of doubling, how about if I am to say I also wanted the 32MB PC800 RDRAM to be 64MB instead, that should help the theoretical bandwidth numbers and kill any limits.

 

[Akumajou]

And why is that?
You don't seem to realise that the VRAM on the GS plays quite a different role than the VRAM in DC. It's meant to be used as a temporary buffer for textures and frames, not a temporary geometry and permanent texture storage like on DC.
DC can allocate, at best, around 5Mb for textures, while PS2 has around 20Mb of bandwidth @ 60fps to share between textures and geometry.

Look at GC, only 1Mb for textures! And worse still, NV2a, which is rumoured to only, have 128Kb of texture cache!!.

So basically you are saying that the GS is a much better idea technologically speaking than GC and NV2A?, even though those other GPUs work completely different from ideals established in PS2 EE+GS.

With all of that bandwidth sounding so good, keep in mind that this is generally why most PS2 games are limited to lower resolution textures compared to what we're used to seeing on GC, XBox, PCs and in some cases even DC. The embedded DRAM of the GS core definitely is a marvel, there is still much to be improved and maybe the next gen of embedded DRAM (if this is confirmed to be continued to be used) will make it a much better solution than the crappy implementation it got with PS2.

The one thing PS2 lacks the most, according to developers on this and other boards (at least so I have understood), is some more cache for the main CPU. 4Kb extra level one D cache, or even better some kind of level 2 or 3 cache would probably make life a lot easier for developers and free up some bandwidth for other stuff.

It also lacks enough memory bandwidth and hardly enough memory storage for game execution code as well as high resolution textures that could have been implemented if Sony would have been fully aware of squashing DC and any other console that could have shipped a year later in terms of technology.

 

[Almasy]

You know? After reading Akumajous´s diatribe, I realize people like him make me happy Sega went under (and has nothing but average games coming out).

Yeah, this will earn me a warning, but it´s worth it.

 

[one]

SSSSSSSS   EEEEEEEE   GGGGGGGG   AAAAAAAAA
S          E          G          A       A
S          E          G          A       A
SSSSSSSS   EEEEEEEE   G  GGGGG   AAAAAAAAA
       S   E          G      G   A       A
       S   E          G      G   A       A
SSSSSSSS   EEEEEEEE   GGGGGGGG   A       A

 

[gurgi]

More modern than PS2 for its time?.. or more modern than PS2 was supposed to be (this close to its launch) for its time?

 

[Akumajou]

You know? After reading Akumajous´s diatribe, I realize people like him make me happy Sega went under (and has nothing but average games coming out).

Yeah, this will earn me a warning, but it´s worth it.

Come on I was not focused on SEGA during my posts, just that Sony should have done better IMO, thats all, no need to get harsh like that.

Yeah I mentioned that I like SEGA, but I also like Nintendo, Bandai, sometimes Konami, CAPCOM, Take2, SNK, Valve, Bungie, RARE, and other devs equally that make great games too, I believe I mentioned that DC is not superior to PS2 but PS2 should have been better than what it turned out to be instead of fast 2 years old tech.