GeForce 3 vs XBOX NV2A

[AtomicGuY]

Ok people, I have to get this out of the way, I was been asked this one way to many times. nVidia compares the NV2A to the GeForce 2 GTS so I'll include it too.

Strait to the goods!
--------------------------------------
GeForce 2 GTS
Core:200MHz
Memory:333MHz
Raw Fillrate:800 Mpixels / 1.6 Gtexel

--------------------------------------
GeForce 3
Core:200MHz
Memory:460MHz
Raw Fillrate:800 Mpixels / 3.2 Gtexel

--------------------------------------
NV2A
Core:250MHz
Memory:266MHz (PC2100) 64MB Total
Raw Fillrate:4.0 Gpixels / 4.0 Gtexel (8 pipelines)


That means that the GeForce 4 would finally beat the performance of the XBOX. Untill then, computers will be behind, what can I say? If the computer industry wants to keep up, were going to need a 8 pipe GPU engine. 4 isnt enough for 1152x864x32 and higher resolution.

[Bobby Manus]

Dude, the xbox is a .... ugh... counsel. LOL, unless its grand turismo get it out of my face!

[SickBoy]

I second that, Bobby...

Console gaming has always been a step ahead IMHO. I was running Daytona 500 on my Saturn in 1996 at way better framerates than any computer at the time, I'm sure.....

(Daytona is still the best racing game ever, BTW)

SickBoy

[AtomicGuY]

Daytona rocks man,


anyway, the only thing I'm getting at is that its not fair that we PC gamers got to shell out $700 CAN for a new graphics card (GeForce3 cough cough!) and yet, it gets blown away 4 times over by a $450 console system, what da @#$%. Ya know, it seems as if nVidia and ATI are working together and the whole thing is a conspiracy lol, j/k


but yea, I'm glad Radeon2 is out becuase my friend works at nVidia and he say's there ****ed at ATI and there moddifiying the Ultra LOL

So expect at least 300MHz for the GF3 Ultra now!

[lonewolf1983]

this is comparing apples to oranges IMHO
consoles are usually one step ahead as they cant be upgraded in the future,and are futurproofed as such
we are also forgetting the fact that the xbox like all consoles runs on a tv,which has a much worse resolution than even 640x480

but like i said
apples and oranges
:)

[FerrariF50]

I love Grand Turismo

Originally posted by Bobby Manus
Dude, the xbox is a .... ugh... counsel. LOL, unless its grand turismo get it out of my face!

[FerrariF50]

Well they said the next video card from Nvidia the Geforce4 will make the Geforce3 look like childs play................ so will the card cost $1,000???? it's almost like Intel's Cpu prices.....not a good thing.

[maha_x]

are those mem specs right? Xbox mem coudlnt feed even two of those 8 pipelines... hmmm... I suppose the TV's low reso doesnt need that much mem bandwidth, and the pipelines are for rendering up to 8 textures per pixel (octatexturing :) )...

Well, anyways, average console lifespan is 5 years or some and they outperform PCs usually for the first 6 months of that lifespan. And just as PS2, the graphics were touted to crush everything but they didnt turn out that spectacular. I mean is GT3 anything that yer GF2 couldnt run? No? I think so. Mayby the mainstream average PC could have hard time with it but any descent CPU with GF could run it. They just dont make GTs for PC which is a shame.

[Liquidsky]

Of course a Geforce 2 can run GT3 technically but when you check out the way the PS2 is built you know that it won't be easy to have it on PC. The PS2 has direct access to every component i the machine at extremely high speeds so even if it isn as powerful or as powerful as a pc , a normal pc would not be able to run it as fast, well at least for now unitil maybe when the nforce comes out (just maybe). The Pc on the other hand has fast processors and awesome graphic cards but what's all that when you're other components slow you down. That's why you don't see an Athlon 1.4 50% faster than an Athlon 1.0. Besides PC CPUs are meant to be good all-rounders not like the console CPUs where they are pretty much dedicated to fast graphics. Console Cpus are chosen for they're excellent FPU performance, no one cares if it can run Word fast or correctly. That's the whole difference. Of course the games are created for one single machine so if it works well in one it works well in all. Pc games can't be made that way cause of all the different hardware configuratons that we all have.

[Mord-Sith]

What you guys are taking into account is that consoles are sold at an extreem loss of proffit (like cell phones) The manufactures make all the money from the games. Thats why you can buy an xbox for $450.

[AtomicGuY]

To maha_x:

yea, I think thats really the specs, can anyone confirm? I'm thinking that's the specs since its DDR and it's system memory too, and the CPU is running 133MHz BUS = eqivalent (266). But as for the bandwidth problems,

hmm, I think they are probally using a cross memory controller which doubles memory performance, like with the P4 using duel rimms to increase bandwidth. So maybe, the XBOX really has 2 32MB Chips memory crossed?

as for resolution, yea, its 800x600x32 for NTSC standard and a true 1920x1080x32 resolution when you hook it to a HDTV. thats what all that fill rate it for im guessing.

[GOD]

i think u have to consider the fact that the PS2 runs on a full 128bit bus. ware as the pc or xbox will be limmited to the cpu being 32bit.
and yeh sure the ps2 chip only does about 300MHz
but it runs with RDRAM on 128bit bus.
when comparing that to our tbird or p3 ,
then it is like 128bit = 4 x 32bit.
300MHZ x 4 = 1600MHz in 32bit.
and with full speed on all the components.
so xbox or pc have not much to compare PS2 is there.
PS2 is way ahead of xbox or pc.
but why do u ppl want to by xbox when most of the games which will be released for the xbox will be released for the pc.
but not so for the PS2 games.
and i would like to c a game which is the same standard as the GT3 on any platform at the moment.
i have a gf3 and so far no game even comes close to GT3 on my PS2,and all other games for PS2 to be released soon.
i whish it does but there just isn`t a game which could compare to the level of quality PS2 produces at the moment.

just my 2c.

GOD...

[FerrariF50]

yeah thats true about the X-box with the games and then they come out on the pc....I would pick the Playstation 2


Originally posted by GOD
i think u have to consider the fact that the PS2 runs on a full 128bit bus. ware as the pc or xbox will be limmited to the cpu being 32bit.
and yeh sure the ps2 chip only does about 300MHz
but it runs with RDRAM on 128bit bus.
when comparing that to our tbird or p3 ,
then it is like 128bit = 4 x 32bit.
300MHZ x 4 = 1600MHz in 32bit.
and with full speed on all the components.
so xbox or pc have not much to compare PS2 is there.
PS2 is way ahead of xbox or pc.
but why do u ppl want to by xbox when most of the games which will be released for the xbox will be released for the pc.
but not so for the PS2 games.
and i would like to c a game which is the same standard as the GT3 on any platform at the moment.
i have a gf3 and so far no game even comes close to GT3 on my PS2,and all other games for PS2 to be released soon.
i whish it does but there just isn`t a game which could compare to the level of quality PS2 produces at the moment.

just my 2c.

GOD...

[maha_x]

GOD, what are U talking about?

128bit bus? Which bus? PCs have 64bit bus for main RAM, and GPUs have 128bit bus for disp. mem.

PS2 CPU is 128bit. Yes, but its integer unit is 64bit. So what is 128bit? the FPU? The registers are indeed 128bit, but theyd have to be, when used combined with the IU and FPU. What does 64bit or 128bit units get? Not 4x speed. More accuracy, yes. Some ability to write special code to use the X-tra space in regs for some performance, mayby. Those 128bit "thingies" are X-actly that market hype that got U to buy PS2.

PS2 mem bus is the standard issue dual channel RDRAM @ 800Mhz givin out that 3,2Gb/s. It is 16bits twice. Nothing special.

PS2 is older hardware than Xbox or even GF3. It was released some time ago allready. PS2 does not work miracles. Have U seen any games on it that had something that could not be done with PCs? More polys? Dont think so. More textures? No way. More FX? No, we have the nFiniteFX, PS2 has ... that old shading stuff that GF2 has?

What comes to PS2 graphics processor, its just as hyped. With 4Mb embedded RAM, its gonna use it all for frame and z -buffer, and load textures from the main RDRAM. So the massive bandwidth is only for fillrate, which ironically doesnt much matter when TV has such a low res. And look at those poly troughput numbers, they go down as cows tail when U apply textures, lighting etc. It goes down to 25M/s when textures, alpha and Z-buffering is enabled. So it equals GF2.

GT3 does look great cos everybody has the same relatively good hardware, PC games aim for the mid-perf. hardware as thats where the most users are. The High-end could run GT3 with ease. Thats what I think.

As said, PS2's main mem is dual channel RDRAM @ 800Mhz, which is nothing special. LiquidSky is correct that the nForce dual DDR maches that 3.2Gb/s. But PC2100 is at 2.1Gb/s and the nForce goes actually up to 4.2Gb/s. Also, PC is less mem bandwidth dependent.

The PS2 CPU does not compete with our Athlons, but with our Athlons and GPUs combined.

The only advantage consoles can EVER have is that the games work equally on all machines. Games are less challenging to develop. Less piratism, more income for game makers. But consoles can not have any magical "super-hyper" hardware tech which is not available for other companies (Nvidia, AMD). All the companies have to make their stuff out of the same tech available. And Sony specially didnt seem to care for innovation, it just wanted a machine with large numbers to show.

As for the original post. Yeah, PC hardware seems very highly prized compared to consoles. I think Mord-sith could have a point with low-profit sales theory.

Specs grabbed from here (http://www.psx2central.com/misc/psx2info.htm).

[mrpcman]

consol systems have no overhead at all, so theyperform much better at games.

[wildbilly2k]

us overclockers dont need punny concoles plus you can overclock the geforce 2 and 3.

[GOD]

Originally posted by maha_x
GOD, what are U talking about?

128bit bus? Which bus? PCs have 64bit bus for main RAM, and GPUs have 128bit bus for disp. mem.

PS2 CPU is 128bit. Yes, but its integer unit is 64bit. So what is 128bit? the FPU? The registers are indeed 128bit, but theyd have to be, when used combined with the IU and FPU. What does 64bit or 128bit units get? Not 4x speed. More accuracy, yes. Some ability to write special code to use the X-tra space in regs for some performance, mayby. Those 128bit "thingies" are X-actly that market hype that got U to buy PS2.

PS2 mem bus is the standard issue dual channel RDRAM @ 800Mhz givin out that 3,2Gb/s. It is 16bits twice. Nothing special.

PS2 is older hardware than Xbox or even GF3. It was released some time ago allready. PS2 does not work miracles. Have U seen any games on it that had something that could not be done with PCs? More polys? Dont think so. More textures? No way. More FX? No, we have the nFiniteFX, PS2 has ... that old shading stuff that GF2 has?

What comes to PS2 graphics processor, its just as hyped. With 4Mb embedded RAM, its gonna use it all for frame and z -buffer, and load textures from the main RDRAM. So the massive bandwidth is only for fillrate, which ironically doesnt much matter when TV has such a low res. And look at those poly troughput numbers, they go down as cows tail when U apply textures, lighting etc. It goes down to 25M/s when textures, alpha and Z-buffering is enabled. So it equals GF2.

GT3 does look great cos everybody has the same relatively good hardware, PC games aim for the mid-perf. hardware as thats where the most users are. The High-end could run GT3 with ease. Thats what I think.

As said, PS2's main mem is dual channel RDRAM @ 800Mhz, which is nothing special. LiquidSky is correct that the nForce dual DDR maches that 3.2Gb/s. But PC2100 is at 2.1Gb/s and the nForce goes actually up to 4.2Gb/s. Also, PC is less mem bandwidth dependent.

The PS2 CPU does not compete with our Athlons, but with our Athlons and GPUs combined.

The only advantage consoles can EVER have is that the games work equally on all machines. Games are less challenging to develop. Less piratism, more income for game makers. But consoles can not have any magical "super-hyper" hardware tech which is not available for other companies (Nvidia, AMD). All the companies have to make their stuff out of the same tech available. And Sony specially didnt seem to care for innovation, it just wanted a machine with large numbers to show.

As for the original post. Yeah, PC hardware seems very highly prized compared to consoles. I think Mord-sith could have a point with low-profit sales theory.

Specs grabbed from here (http://www.psx2central.com/misc/psx2info.htm).
well some of the things i have said r all not correct but it wasen`t the hype which led me me to buy the PS2.
it was the performance of it that has let me to buy it...
and it has and will have the best games u will have on any system
now and in the near future.
if u look at my sig then u`ll c that i already have a sick system with GF3 and all..
and when i`m comparing the qualities of games which r avaliable on both platforms then i don`t feel that well since i`ve paid something like US$500 bucks for the GF3 and sofar non of the games r good as some of the games on PS2.....
and considering that the PS2 is only using about 30% of it`s full capacity in GT3 like it was with PS when it just came out.
imagine a six months to a year later when the software companies utilies the full capacity of the PS2 like with metal gear solid 1 and other games which came out later on....
but with PC`s we r still stuck with games which can`t even utilize the full potential of the GF2 ,pro and ultra.....
when will we c a game that would utilize the full spec of the Vcard`s in our system`s?????

GOD....

[OC-Master]

hehe,

Unreal Tournament for PS2 was funny,

20fps in most playing feild, what the heck was going on there?

Now THAT was a bad conversion :D

[Thirus44]

So to xbox and ps2 might look better...so what. You can still do sooo much more with a computer. What the hell do you think games for xbox and ps2 are made with....computers duh! Plus no friggen counsel can have games as defined as PC or internet play like a PC. Try making an Xbox or PS2 version of tribes 2 or even an old game like starcraft. It will never come close.

[wildbilly2k]

games are much better on computers because of the accesorries and concoles are for games only playin half life counterstrike would be no fun at all on the console because there are every any updates and maxpayne on my comp looks better than ps2. I havnt seen xbox games yet though. the only reason it looks better is because the games are high detail. and not all pc games can go that high as detail but they will end up out doing xbox and ps2

[J0hnnyBrav0]

Consoles are for kiddies and neanderthal's that cannot use PC's because they are too stupid. TV's refresh rate is a measly 60Hz. The reason it doesn't look like total crap at 60Hz is because of the very low resolution, artifact blending and color bleeding.

Can YOU run stereoscopic glasses off your TV and not get a headache? NO. Can I? Absolutely. My GF3 and other hardware allows me to run medium resolution 3D @70Hz with 2X antialiasing.

The reason Gran Turismo 3 looks so damn good on your low res, low refresh rate TV is because all the digital artifacts are easily blended into a fuzzy picture. My gf3 can, infact do a lot more than the xbox can at higher resolutions...for instance, my gf3 can, in real time, show accurate reflections off of curved surfaces that can move (mercury bubble, showing warped reflections of the room around it) at a resolution high enough that i could read a page of text in that virtual room OFF OF THE BUBBLES REFLECTION.

Lets see the PS2 or xbox do THAT :D

[wildbilly2k]

yeah that is what im sayin man good explanation for the console lozers and i think all people who use there consoles should not be at this fourum

[OC-Master]

XBOX is more advanced than the GeForce3 allowing for a much improved picture and also more vertex shaders!

And as for quality, HD 1920x1080 is a must if u get an XBOX. My HD tv will shine with the XBOX :D


XBOX supports 1920x1080x32 @ 200hz (HD Standard) redraw refreshrate.

[Thirus44]

hehe i rather have a nice comp for 2g's then blow 8g's on a hdtv so xbox looks good.:D

[maha_x]

Originally posted by GOD

but with PC`s we r still stuck with games which can`t even utilize the full potential of the GF2 ,pro and ultra.....
when will we c a game that would utilize the full spec of the Vcard`s in our system`s?????

GOD....

When we start to discuss games, it becomes a issue of personal reference. My point is, that PS2 has no advantage when it comes to hardware. And that PS2's hardware is outdated.

PS2's games might look somewhat better soon. When the developers can utilize the full power of PS2. But some developers will never. They create software that is portable to as many platforms as possible, and single platform isnt likely to see any special optimizations. But with PC, well never see the day when a game utilizes all the hardware. Simply because there is allways new hardware, while the platform remains downwards compatible.
When PS2 games use all the hardware, PC users will have plethora of new DX8 games supporting all the new hardware in GF3 and Radeon8500.

When U say that none of the games on PC are as good as some PS2 titles, that is yer oppinion. Even the difference of controllers support different gametypes (mouse for FPS and strategy, pad for platform jumping, arcade style driving/flyin etc) which comes down to personal likings.

But sure, consoles are nice. Simple and reliable gaming. No need to mess with drivers or hardware upgrades. Comfortable couch and so on.

Let's try to keep hardware as hardware and likings as likings.

[wildbilly2k]

well i personally like the computer better and maxpayne is supose to do a good job of utilizeing the hardware with awsome graphics. Allthough you dont have to mess with crivers and installing games on xbox it is just a waist cause look what all you can do with your computer.

[Valid]

You don't need to compare or convince anyone regarding the PS2. For all the tech-babble you need, you can head right on over to arstechnica. There, you can feast your eyes (and minds) on technical comparisons of the PS2 versus the PC and you can flood your mind with a technical look at the Emotion Engine. That's www.arstechnica.com

Just a side-note, I was under the impression that both of the PS2's vector units were 128-bit. Furthermore, I was also under the impression that it could lock together it's (it meaning the "Emotion Engine's") 2 64-bit integer pipes...

[two_dope2000]

All I have to say to you people is, can we all get along? j/k


i think that consoles are not for the hardcore gamer like myself and most of you, everyonce in a while i like to just sit down and play playstation or NES (mario). Because its fun, you dont have to worry about crashes or anything of the sort. And theyre great to play games against your friends. I'll admit consoles can NEVER add up to what a computer can do.

But as far as graphics go on consoles, i couldnt care less about the graphics! All i want in a game is for it to keep my interest for more than 5 minutes and to be fun! I can sit and play pong and have fun, and i mean the first pong with the little joysticks not the crappy 3D versions.All any video games needs is too just be fun! except computer games, i love pushing my system as far as it can go for bragging rights to my friends, thats just a plain ol' good feeling when you can finally break 115 fps in unreal and etc..



And my signature is not correct anymore i just dont have time too change it, 1.4ghz and an asus board

[maha_x]

Originally posted by Valid
You don't need to compare or convince anyone regarding the PS2. For all the tech-babble you need, you can head right on over to arstechnica. There, you can feast your eyes (and minds) on technical comparisons of the PS2 versus the PC and you can flood your mind with a technical look at the Emotion Engine. That's www.arstechnica.com

Just a side-note, I was under the impression that both of the PS2's vector units were 128-bit. Furthermore, I was also under the impression that it could lock together it's (it meaning the "Emotion Engine's") 2 64-bit integer pipes...

Hey, thanks for the articles. They were good. My mind is now boggled with what Nvidias Geforces have in them. Obviously the Emotion engine is designed to do what the GPU is doing in our PCs.

I do have to take back my words PS2 being outdated. The Emotion engine is truly a great, innovative design, but my statement still holds true with the graphics core of PS2. It was designed to do the rendering in "old school" fixed shading. Where Xbox and DX8 parts have the new "nFiniteFX".

Looking trough the article proved me that EE is more than a CPU. It is like a twisted mutation between a CPU and a GPU. It is RISC, highly parallel and differently balanced. I still believe that the modern PC's with 1Ghz CPUs and GF2/3 GPUs are more powerfull. I can explain how I got to this conclusion, IF someone is interested...

Well, I'll drop this coversation here.

[Valid]

Would love to hear. I reread my post, and it sounds that I came off a little sharp. I meant no disrespect to anyone. I was just trying to point out that because of the PS2's "different" design, it's really hard to compare them with a PC simply because if you try to think of a PS2 like a PC, you don't see the whole picture - In the same way if you try to think of a PC like a PS2. Whereas PCs have a lot of memory, PS2 just seems to have a lot of bandwidth, etc.

[maha_x]

Yeah, I went on and read the articles on the Intel/AMD SIMD stuff. I have lived to this day believing that the SSE(2)/3Dnow! are real proper SIMD implementations. The truth was shocking.

Thanks to Intel, our chips have SIMD support. Now proper implementation of SIMD consists a vector unit. A separate unit, besides the FPU, cable on operating with vectors. This is a 128bit unit (4x32bit). Four values get processed at same time.

Now Intel chose the wrong way, all they did was punch few new holes to the good ole FPU to get it process more. But this is not all, the FPU is a 80bit unit. So the vector processor it makes is only 64bits. And therefore it needs two cycles to do that 128bit processing. And instead of the 32 128bit registers, it has 7. 3Dnow! improves on that by not supporting the 128bit operations at all.

Now EE has two full SIMD units with some VLIW action. VLIW enables it to do some normal FPU stuff in parallel with the vector operations.

If the two FPUs of Tbird with their half-SIMD properties could be count as one full SIMD unit, we could presume that Tbird has half the vector power of the EE, clock cycle wise. So at 600Mhz the Tbird would equal 300Mhz EE. But the SIMD-hack in the Tbird is more likely to perform 1/4 - 1/8 of the EE's vector power, so Tbird at 1200 - 2400Mhz could equal a 300Mhz EE. This is pure speculation tought... And our chips loose the FPU when SIMD is used, EE has 3 FPUs standing by even when SIMD is done.

I'm going to look into the Nvidia's GPUs to see what they have... somesort of vector units could be expected.

Now I really hope that AMD or Intel would put a REAL vector unit into their future chips, so we (the PC people) wouldnt have to be so shamed :) No, I believe that the GPU's have some serious SIMD going on and that's where the vector power is most needed in PC's design.

[j0ker_san]

Serious gamers are gonna get into a console, either Xbox,PS2, or Gamecube.....Console gamers are always gonna have a cheaper, smoother ride when they play their games, they don't have to worry about upgrading or changing settings, or getting a bigger harddrive....they don't have to worry about getting patches for bugged games, (diablo2) every week. The games are made right (might have one or two bugs) and are made to be played as they should be on a console, they are stable and load really fast. Pc games are unstable, plus pcs are unstable, so your gonna have a messy time playing pc games. Youll also need patches and updates if you wanna get rid of some of the lame bugs most pc games have, plus your gonna have to upgrade your bad boy every 5 months to keep up with the technology, and sadly that technology is trying to keep up with a console that is miles ahead of the pc gaming industry.

Also to run games well on a pc you need video cards which are more expensive than a console.... to get close to ps2, or gamecube quality you'll end up spending tooooo much money.


This is all my opinion I don't expect you guys to agree (since most of you are pc gamers) but ehh who cares...i'm gonna dish out big bucks to build a new pc soon...heh

(sorry for any spelling mistakes/grammar its late and I'm stacked full of protein bars)

[Valid]

Now - now. I seem to remember an old beer commercial, Joker-San. Can't we just have......both? :Slams a (root) beer down on the top of his monitor (straightedge):

Anyway maha_x, interesting conclusion. I'd love to get ahold of a fairly straight-forward operating system for use on my PS2 once/if the hard drives become available in the US. It'd be interesting to check some floating-point benchmarking programs, although I'm not sure how easy it would be to correlate results (And I assume they had computer architecture in mind when they were designed). It'd be nice to get ahold of a non-biased FPU benchmarking utility that would run in a Linux based environment. (Which I'm guessing is the only standard operating system - if any - that will make it over to the PS2. I believe it's running on the PS and PSOne already, is it not?) That way, at least you'd have a more even comparison.

I also wish I could get ahold of those tech docs that they could get ahold of on ars to make that review, and the subsequent reviews of the EE (or emotion engine for those not following the thread that closely). Although I assume they would be over my head.

[maha_x]

I dont seem to be able to get to any page at Nvidia... Only the start page. I dont remember seein any tech-docs there either. And I dont remember seeing any tech docs elsewere. Ill check xbitlabs...

Joker; my earlier point was that consoles are not technologically ahead one inch, behind more likely. The issue and conclusion is that consoles are consoles. Designed to run massive streams of 3D, digital audio and video data. Not at all generalized as PC CPUs. As an example of this, the Tbird would seriously whoop EE's ars when it came to integer operations (3 ops @ upto 1400Mhz vs. 4 ops @ 300Mhz). It is a difference in design, not in technology.
About the bugs I agree. PC gamehouses should team up to create their own OS to run games. Its much easier to write an OS that only boots from CD, and offers unified drivers for graphics/sound/net etc. And runs the game. No GUI overhead or some buggy piece of software on the bachground that crashes yer session.
If U believe that consoles really are technically ahead, put some proof at it. Tell us how it is ahead.

[Valid]

I don't know if it's as open and shut as "ahead" or not. maha_x - you've probably checked into the Vector Units (VU0 and VU1) of the PS2 more than I have. The PS2, from what I can see, has simply more power to do floating point calculations than a modern computer. But if you look at the computer itself, as you said it can heavily outprocess a PS2 on integer calculations. It's also more readily upgradeable. So, because of the differences in architecture, I don't know how to compare those. Now comparing the X-Box versus a PC should be slightly easier as it is basically just a stripped-down PC. And again, anyone who's been to arstechnica can find out the PS2's THEORETICAL performance. Again, I have to stress that it is simply THEORETICAL. Maybe the folks over at Ars have a bias for the PS2. We can't accurately judge that until we see the technical papers for the PS2 itself. But taking all of that information with a grain of salt, and examining the current performance in games, maybe we can come to some conclusions.

All right, for performance, I believe that they first-gen PS2 games (TimeSplitters, Summoner, etc, etc) were only 10 million polys per second. We all know that the theoretical rate of the PS2 is much, MUCH higher.

Another example - Crazy Taxi on the PS2. I think there's not one of you on the whole forums that will hesitate to say that the PS2 has more raw processing power than the Dreamcast. We won't go into it - look into the technical specs and details. Crazy Taxi on the PS2 performed visibly WORSE on the PS2. (Pop-ups, more jagged edges -although that probably has to do more with the anti-aliasing issue)

So from that, we'd have to conclude that currently the PS2's performance lags behind that of a current PC. PS2 loyalists, such as myself, may not want to admit it, while PC loyalists will. However, we also know that coding for the PS2 is massively difficult, perhaps more difficult than programming for even the Saturn was. The Hype-Machine over at Sony can keep the PS2 going for a long, long time. Hopefully it'll be long enough for the programmers can get familiar with the hardware, and learn the ins and outs. Because they are fundamentally different than the limitations of a computer.

[j0ker_san]

First off all to undertsand that the PS2 is a technologically superior system then most PCs available today we have to look at a few things : We have to understand its graphical possibilities and its game format.

So for graphics, the PS2 is designed for one thing and one thing only, to run2D/ 3D video games at the best level of detail and performance. The PS2 can do this much better than any PC because it was designed for this.....it was designed for what gaming requires, huge bandwith capabilities... It has two dedicated 128-bit SIMD floating-point vector units.. VU0 and VU1. These suckers are able to process massive amounts of data per clock cycle. Also the PS2 can do 128-bit integer SIMD processing by combining both of its 64-bit pipes. This means the PS2 has multiple parallel SIMD units connected by high-bandwith pipes....exactly what dynamic media processing requires.:eek:

All this combined with a good chunk of RDRAM and two 300mhz cpus( it has two right?) the PS2 outpreforms any pc today (well almost any). PCs are made to run static apps but with modifications they try to run dynamic apps,but they aren't true gaming systems like the ps2. Comparing a PC's gaming capabilitiest to a PS2 is like comparing a home entertainment system(pc) to a theater(ps2)...your home entertainment system consists of a good dvd player with dobly digital 5.1 8 speaker set, but still your just trying to emulate the experience that you get at a theater:rolleyes: ....same thing applys for PC gaming, pcs arent meant for gaming but they still trie to compete with consoles even though pc gaming is unstable,bugged,choppy,slow, and tedious.....hey its still really fun, some of my favorite games are pc games ( UO, baldurs gate,UT,tribes2) but when you want performance and efficiency you gotta go with a console....cheap and simple..... :D



PS2 games are also on DVDs, PCs still use cd-rom format for games, DVDs have even higher bandwith capabilites than cds and can store alot more data, this makes ps2 games bigger and better than most pcs games.... ;)

Right now we haven't even seen what the PS2 can do, they are still in their first generation games, when we see their 3rd, and 4th generation games we will hopefully see what the PS2 can do.
-Remember playing Tekken 1 on psx? Graphics looked like **** but at that time most people thought they were good, after playing Tekken 3 or FF9 we saw a huge difference between 1st generation and 4th generation games, we will also see this in the PS2.

I don't have a PS2 and am not a big PS2 fan, so this is an unbiased point of view, I believe the PS2 right now and probably for the next 12-18months will be one of the most technologically advanced systems.....and it will still be ahead of the PC gaming industry. I say this because the pc games I have seen that are coming out in next 12 months don't look better than PS2 games. For instance, Horizons ( an online rpg) will only require 700mhz p3, with 128megs ram and 32meg video card, i've seen the graphics they look really really nice but the ps2 and other consoles will be able to handle those graphics and make them even better.....



NOte : Don't get the idea that graphics make games, they help add realism but the real style and graphics are created by the artists and programmers......

okay i'm done. what do you have to say about that maha_x ?

[Valid]

I'm pretty sure the EE itself works at a strange clock rating, around 405.xxxxxx ? Other than that, I'm not sure on many of the specs.

[j0ker_san]

WEll? what do you think?

[j0ker_san]

WEll? what do you think?

PS2 SIMD beats the G4 instructions, and the G4 beats K7....so PS2 is still superior...what do you think

[maha_x]

I think we should be going on with this in the debates...

Yer forgeting the GPU now. Overall system specs show 25Mpolys/sec for GF2 and 25Mpolys/sec for PS2. Neither one will never come too close to these figures, cos they are theoretical. Nvidia is keeping very hush hush about the GPU, what kind of FPU/VU its contains.

It is true that the VUs of EE are far superior to ours PC chips FPU/SIMD units. This is a design difference, not technically more advanced. We could have VUs, the chip makers just havent seen any market for such FP power on desktops, and Nvidia took that market as chip giants overlooked it.

We dont have any data on GF and thus cant put it against EE. The Graphics chip of PS2 is indeed outdated. It is "old school" fixed rendering pipeline where we have nFiniteFX on our new GF3s, and Radeon8500s. PS2's graphics chip contains no programmibility what so ever.

As I previously pointed out, the RDRAM of PS2 has nothing special to it. It is equal dualchannel PC800 setup as with Intel MBs. 3.2GB/sec, same as P4 has. And Tbird with DDR right behind with 2,1GB/s, and the nForce chipset will go up to 4.2GB/s. And its allready proved how little P4 can do with its bigger bandwidth. Sure EE is better equiped to use this bandwidth more efficiently, but my point is, its not that special. And with PC we need to remember the GF's dedicated RAM which is used for geometry and texture storing, unlike PS2's. PC's mem systems performance is a more complicated sum of bus'es.

As far as I know, PS2 has single CPU, which is internally split into three units, CPU, VU0, VU1.

U cant bring the speakers in to this, U can plug them into PC just as well.

PC's gaming culture began and grew as its own. It does not emulate consoles. Back then when I got my first PC, I played Dune2 and it was strategic and complex. Very unlike my Super Nintendo. 3D was such a big hit boom that both systems have them now. As far as I remember, 3D jumped to PC from arcade boxes. So consoles were not rolemodels there either. Only consoles are now trying to "emulate" our network gaming :)

The games are a whole different issue. With PC we have the "downwards compatibility" that makes the game houses to try and make their game run on the average system, for most users. If U want to see something that speaks for the hardware, U need to look at the tech demos, like 3Dmark2k1.

Ive seen plethora of GT3 pics, and they simply dont convince me. Mayby the next gen games? I dont see it having anything that PC couldnt handle. Ive also seen alot other PS2 games, they just dont convince me, and why should they? Afterall, Ive just pointed out why.

I do agree that PC games are often buggy. But its not totally their fault, we have to take hardware and drivers into acount. And the problems usually come with older systems or systems with rare hardware. Firingsquad (http://www.firingsquad.com) has an article on this.

Technical superriority is something that U.S Army might have. A technology not available to others. What PS2 has is design difference. And its design is very good for its purpose, but dont think superrior. If it was superb, it would be more easy to program. PC itself is a multipurpose system. It can do it all with some tradeoffs in all. But with specialized graphics and sound hardware, it can do games, VERY well.

[j0ker_san]

Ok, you've got a good arguement. I don't have the time at the moment to reply in full detail to your post.

I'm gonna do some extra research and post what I found, maybe you are right, the more I take a look at new pc games I notice some have really good graphics basically the same as PS2,
(only on top of the line pcs).


I need to check out more stuff about the PS2s EE also.