Xbox 2 hardware overview leaked?

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DeanoC said:
No it wouldn't if its MSAA, a 1280x720 4xMSAA (32bit colour and depth) would take 18Mb.

A 1280x720 2xMSAA would take 11Mb.

32bits back buffer? Wasn't everybody expecting 64bits in most cases?
 
Well, my impression was that the chip with the EDRAM also contained all logic for frame/z buffer compression as well as MSAA.

If this were the case, 32GB/s would be reasonable (bandwidth limited by the width of a bus between the GPU and EDRAM chip). This gives you room for more EDRAM, and means you can fit more ALUs on the GPU.

Anyway, I admit I'm not really qualified to say if this idea makes any sense. Just a thought.
 
jvd said:
Alstrong said:
is 720p < 480p w/AA? (eDram or image quality)

the higher the res the more it naturaly smooths the lines .

SO i would say 720p is better than 480p with 2x aa but they may be equal if 480p has 4x aa .

I think we are going to see the ati chip in this running with 32 megs of on board ram. Which shoudl be enough for 720p with 6x fsaa.

Also doesn't the r3x0 and r42x compress the framebuffer while using aa ?


Mmmmm... 720p will give you something that 480i/p (with any kind of AA you can slap on it) will never be able to give you: more detail.
Higher resolution will give show you more detailed textures, more detailed everything. 480i/p with AA will only make a less detailed image "smoother".
In the end, 480i/p with AA will make things look closer to reality, since we're used to DVD videos and such, while 720p without AA will make everything look "PC-ish". Some people will like the enahnced detail, some people will love the "realistic" image of 480i/p with AA. At 8xAA things already start looking migthy fine, although the detail is still that of a low-res image.

And in the end, whatever happens, there will still be people complaining because "the xbox2 can only do 720p without AA while my new ATi R800 can do 1600x1200 with 87xAA!!!"... Some people will never be happy...
 
I don't think nextbox will be either 480 WITH antialias, or 720 WITHOUT, the eDRAM isn't the framebuffer like with PS2, it's basically just cache/scratchpad RAM. It can be unloaded to main memory in segments to fit larger buffers. Indeed, since the chip works with 32 bits per component floating-point pixels, each frame buffer/render target would be very small if 10MB was the absolute limit of buffer size.
 
Guden Oden said:
I don't think nextbox will be either 480 WITH antialias, or 720 WITHOUT, the eDRAM isn't the framebuffer like with PS2, it's basically just cache/scratchpad RAM. It can be unloaded to main memory in segments to fit larger buffers. Indeed, since the chip works with 32 bits per component floating-point pixels, each frame buffer/render target would be very small if 10MB was the absolute limit of buffer size.

I guess some games will do 720p/1080i/p with AA, but i fear it will be like in this generation, where the titles that go for maximum available image quality (720p this gen) are far and few in between.
 
jvd said:
Guden Oden said:
At 60Hz, it would shimmer a bit...
u think so ? Using 75 hz on my pc it doesn't shimmer at all.

Not much, certainly not anywhere like an interlaced screen, but I would think it is definitely visible if one looks for it... Particulary on high-contrast edges. It might look a bit like flicker-filtered 480i output on today's consoles except where they tend to shimmer slightly on horizontal lines, maybe this would be more visible on diagonal...
 
london-boy said:
Mmmmm... 720p will give you something that 480i/p (with any kind of AA you can slap on it) will never be able to give you: more detail.
Higher resolution will give show you more detailed textures, more detailed everything. 480i/p with AA will only make a less detailed image "smoother".

With higher resolution, is it better have higher no. of poly with less passes (PS2 like) or lower no. of poly with more passes (most Xbox/PC devs liking)?? Anyone?

Personally both (high poly with more passes), but the former will have to do between the two (similar to higher resolution for better details vs AA).
 
Jov said:
london-boy said:
Mmmmm... 720p will give you something that 480i/p (with any kind of AA you can slap on it) will never be able to give you: more detail.
Higher resolution will give show you more detailed textures, more detailed everything. 480i/p with AA will only make a less detailed image "smoother".

With higher resolution, is it better have higher no. of poly with less passes (PS2 like) or lower no. of poly with more passes (most Xbox/PC devs liking)?? Anyone?

Personally both (high poly with more passes), but the former will have to do between the two (similar to higher resolution for better details vs AA).

Having high polygons counts means you can afford more things moving on screen at once. "More passes" is very 2002, nowadays it is prefered to talk about how many shaders a chip can process, and how long these shaders are.

But think about it this way, as an example, a game like Burnout2 needs high polygons counts because when you see a crash, you want to see the thousands of different little pieces flying around... "More passes" might make polygons look better, but you do need a high number of those polygons to make things look realistic, cause in reality, objects are not just flat surfaces with colours stuck on them. And as good as shaders can get, high detail geometry is what we need to get that "realistic look".

It is safe to say that after a certain limit (when we can't see the polygons anymore since they're too small and the meshes are too dense), polygon counts increase will only help in that adiing more objects and characters on screen at once will not affect performance.

Having a balance between the 2 is always preferable.
 
Vysez said:
32bits back buffer? Wasn't everybody expecting 64bits in most cases?

So what hardware does 64/128 bit buffers and MSAA?

There are always tradeoffs that us developers must decide, HDR or MSAA is just one of them. So assuming 64 bit will be the default would be a mistake, there are other ways that make HDR like rendering possible on 32 bit buffers (particular on next-gen consoles) that might allow AA as well so look visually better in the end.
 
DeanoC said:
So what hardware does 64/128 bit buffers and MSAA?

XVPU? Realizer? :p j/k

You're right Deano, MSAA is not HDR best friend on today's hardware (Actually there's a lot of "framebuffer effects" that hate MSAA...)

You're saying that next gen, we'll stick again with HDR-like effects (Better than this gen, of course).
I was Hoping/dreaming that thoses issues with MSAA would have been worked out for the next-gen. Sound like i was wrong.

Anyway if the HDR-like effect is almost perfect + AA, i won't be dissapointed. :D
 
wish there was a standard to enable AA for 480i/p, then again, that could limit the overall graphical quality of the game... I certainly don't expect a UE3.0 game with AA even at 640x480...maybe I'm just underestimating the power of the.... yeah, correct me if I'm underestimating too much :)

Just some worries of mine.. :p Does anyone think it's a certainty that because there is so much power/flexibility that devs will end up trying to push the graphics so far that AA isn't feasible? Like... would you prefer current gen graphics in games with max AA, details on next gen hardware as opposed to next gen graphics? I'm assuming that games are being rendered at low resolutions (640x480 or 720x480) and not the 720p standard that is being indicated in the leaked info...


hmm..... I should try hooking up my computer to my tv this weekend, play some games at 640x480 with all graphics turned "to the Max!" (guess what I'll be playing).
 
hm... nope... does have something to do with a certain... Max ;)

Guess you'd have to recall the first game... I semi-quoted it.
 
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