Playstation 4 using PowerVR-gpu?

[IlllI]

tile based rendering has been around since like 1996. its nothing new. back then they claimed it had better performance, but i'm pretty sure in the past 10+ years there have been massive improvements on non-tile based rendering methods.

btw anyone remember voxels? they were supposedly the next greatest thing. that never took off either

 

[T2k]

Ehhhh? We use voxels every day (high-end scientific visualization) but you need a truckload of memory and bandwidth - it's never meant to be for mainstream gaming...

 

[TurtleCrusher]

...except N64's then-amazing graphics core, of course, designed by the same group of people (Orton et al) at SGI's graphics division who soon founded ArtX and created Flipper for Nintendo.

You must be joking? The GPU in the N64 was its Achilles heel. It was the much faster IBM CPU (3x the power of the PS1) that drove innovation in its games. With an extremely small memory bus/capacity, textures were severely compressed and shading of any kind was non-existent. Developers simply added more simply polys in the mix to offset this.

Compare games in that generation. Shading and GPU work was awfully similar, but the N64 offered much larger and immersive environments by simply using its much faster processor.

Comparing games by the same developer, Smackdown for the PS1 vs No Mercy on the N64. Smackdown's character poly count in noticeably much lower and textures are grainy but detailed. No Mercy's poly count is obviously much more, but at the expense of bland textures and no shading whatsoever. Even the shadows were actually just rendered polygons, not true. No Mercy did offer a much larger game area, but the crowd after the first set of rows are just BLUE AND RED DOTS. No joke. The GPU just couldn't do it.

Or maybe San Francisco Rush. The N64 version had even more bland textues, but a larger draw distance.

The N64s GPU was utter crap. This is coming from a Nintendo-only console gamer up until a couple years ago.

 

[StrangerGuy]

Almost literally in any area a new PC wins hands down.

Hardware wise? Yes. Coding optimization? Hell no...

 

[Blurry]

You must be joking? The GPU in the N64 was its Achilles heel. It was the much faster IBM CPU (3x the power of the PS1) that drove innovation in its games. With an extremely small memory bus/capacity, textures were severely compressed and shading of any kind was non-existent. Developers simply added more simply polys in the mix to offset this.

Compare games in that generation. Shading and GPU work was awfully similar, but the N64 offered much larger and immersive environments by simply using its much faster processor.

The N64s GPU was utter crap. This is coming from a Nintendo-only console gamer up until a couple years ago.

...except towards the end of the N64's lifespan, developers figured ways to optimize textures for the 64's GPU. Though the 64 couldn't handle large textures, developers could trick the system by using multiple smaller textures and piece them together, giving the illusion of one large texture. It worked - and you have games like Resident Evil 2 which was visually far superior to its PS1 version (640x480 resolution, sharper textures, etc)

 

[BenSkywalker]

N64 vs PS1- N64 supported bilinear filtering, the PS1 didn't. That was the biggest difference in the graphics between them as far as what end users saw.

Almost literally in any area a new PC wins hands down.

CPU power and CPU<->GPU bandwidth and capability are big areas that benefit gaming that are still very much in favor of the consoles still today(GPU can compute partial code, have the CPU read from its memory and apply an additional effect and then write back to the same mem address as a generic example). Until quite recently the consoles had an edge for system bandwidth, and the ability to support multiple users at once on the same device is significantly more robust on the consoles. Really, the only area where the PC tends to distance itself quickly from the consoles is on the GPU front(well, RAM amount too but that is using comparably outdated tech until well into the consoles life cycle).

 

[T2k]

CPU power and CPU<->GPU bandwidth and capability are big areas that benefit gaming that are still very much in favor of the consoles still today(GPU can compute partial code, have the CPU read from its memory and apply an additional effect and then write back to the same mem address as a generic example). Until quite recently the consoles had an edge for system bandwidth, and the ability to support multiple users at once on the same device is significantly more robust on the consoles. Really, the only area where the PC tends to distance itself quickly from the consoles is on the GPU front(well, RAM amount too but that is using comparably outdated tech until well into the consoles life cycle).

Sheer CPU clock, power and core count, sheer amount of RAM, a far superior GPU block, insane amount of storage and insane high-resolution output - all these are in favor of PCs.

Consoles are crap when compred to high-end gaming PCs, there's nothing new about this. Aside of simplified dev cycle (there's only one hw target to code for) the bandwidth you mentioned is their only trick to deal with their crippled architecture's limitations - no wonder 1080p is still a big thing among console games... booohoo, I'm running games in 1920x1200 since, I don't know, probably when I got my Parhelia (only to torture myself as it did not have any occlusion culling... )

 

[evolucion8]

Other of the main problems with the N64 graphic processing is the lack of VRAM, that's why when you install some sort of module expansion for better graphics which came with some games, they suddenly looked better, N64 was simply better in terms of graphics than the PS1 and Sega Saturn, but wasn't because of the CPU because I doubt that the N64 CPU was strong enough to emulate rasterizing.

 

[BenSkywalker]

Sheer CPU clock, power and core count

Cell obliterates i7- far more powerful and it has more cores.

sheer amount of RAM, a far superior GPU block,

Both of which I stated.

insane amount of storage

Industry standard 2.5" SATA HD been in consoles for years, not a good point. BRD drive too.

insane high-resolution output

Which comes back to the GPU. So you came up with amount of RAM and GPU which is what I stated. You aren't going to come up with much else, and I haven't denied those areas. So we are on the same page then, PCs only quickly eclipse consoles in GPU power and amount of RAM- glad you see things exactly the same as I do.

 

[T2k]

Cell obliterates i7- far more powerful and it has more cores.

Errr, no, it does NOT. It's a much-touted BS from Sony and it's purely theoretical, never ever been proved in any real, en masse shipped environment.

BTW it doesn't even have more cores - have you heard of dual Opterons? 12 cores and I have several machines here running with two quad-core CPUs.

Cell is piece of crap and it's more than awkward to develop anything for it and you know this very well - it's not even an option for 99.5% of the market. PC CPUs destroy it anywhere - from the price of a Cell-based system I build several times more powerful, general-purpose PC which will run millions of apps immediately.

Industry standard 2.5" SATA HD been in consoles for years, not a good point. BRD drive too.

Except that they cannot hook up them freely. Yes, that's my point.

Which comes back to the GPU. So you came up with amount of RAM and GPU which is what I stated. You aren't going to come up with much else, and I haven't denied those areas. So we are on the same page then, PCs only quickly eclipse consoles in GPU power and amount of RAM- glad you see things exactly the same as I do.

Quite the contrary I put them into perspective instead of playing dumb and acting like there are far more things that could be there - I was claiming that any new PC wins hands down when it comes to HW.
SO yes: any machine will have a CPU, a GPU, memory and storage and display. Guess what? Out of these 5 things only 5 goes for the PC.

 

[evolucion8]

Errr, no, it does NOT. It's a much-touted BS from Sony and it's purely theoretical, never ever been proved in any real, en masse shipped environment.

BTW it doesn't even have more cores - have you heard of dual Opterons? 12 cores and I have several machines here running with two quad-core CPUs.

Cell is piece of crap and it's more than awkward to develop anything for it and you know this very well - it's not even an option for 99.5% of the market. PC CPUs destroy it anywhere - from the price of a Cell-based system I build several times more powerful, general-purpose PC which will run millions of apps immediately.

I agree with you, Cell is just a dumb CPU. Developers coding for PS3 Cell's must make sure to code each thread invididually to each core because Cell doesn't have thread coherency and the threads may stall. Cell is just a powerful engine for linear code, just like GPU's, but GPU's are smarter, so IBM did good to stop Cell development.

 

[Idontcare]

Nvidia is looking more and more like the little upstart went on to turn an industry upside down. Once again IBM is involved as the stand-in example of a company that just could not leverage their position into marketshare to save their life. Last time this happened was circa 1981 and the upstart was Intel. Zoom forward 20yrs, will we all be talking about Intel like we talk about DEC nowadays? The behemoth that inexplicably failed despite depth, girth, and momentum? And Nvidia will be the 800lb gorilla?

 

[tommo123]

if it came down to it, couldn't intel just outright buy nvidia? they probably have enough in cash. You'd also still have matrox (i think they're still running right?) and AMD for competitors in the GPU game

 

[aigomorla]

PowerVR SGX GPU's are used in Apple iPhones so it's not outlandish to think they could power next gen hand held gaming devices.

PowerVR being used in the PS4 seems a little risky but Sony is a company who over-engineered their gaming console to the point that a guaranteed winning product flopped. At least it's a flop when you consider the money they spent on it and the return on investment.

The switch to a Power7 CPU seems plausible since the console gaming industry as a whole seems to be moving towards using IBM CPU's. Especially in light of the cancellation of CELL (now there's a good investment by Sony).

can u guys smell its to keep the PC away from the consoles?

Think about it people, why cant we play PS3 games on pc? and instead need to wait for a Xbox360 version to come out b4 a PC version is released?

Sony is being DICKS. They dont want all there games to float on the PC market.
Xbox360 on the other hand, were seeing more and more x360 games being dual licensed for windows and 360.

I think its sony's last messure DRM. That way you dont have the hardware you cant play there exclusive games.

Also Intel > IBM Power PC.
Why do you think MAC said bye bye IBM and hello Intel, and never looked back.
You see MAC's still being made from IBM power PC?

Who you trust more in computing?

if it came down to it, couldn't intel just outright buy nvidia? they probably have enough in cash. You'd also still have matrox (i think they're still running right?) and AMD for competitors in the GPU game

Why would they want to do that?
You know what that would mean? More law suits from AMD/ATI.
More punking of courts saying monoply.

Intel does not want to be microsoft. Not yet that is.

 

[SonicIce]

dreamcast woulda been even more awesome if it used the planned 3dfx chip instead of the powervr

also i believe the low res textures on n64 were due to the lack of storage space on cartridges. the entire game had to fit in a size anywhere from 4 to 64mb. and with that limitation in mind, the gpu was only designed to work with textures of a limited size because why make it more complex if it wont be used that way. and i think the advantages of the cartridge was important in designing the system.

 

[evolucion8]

Also Intel > IBM Power PC.
Why do you think MAC said bye bye IBM and hello Intel, and never looked back.
You see MAC's still being made from IBM power PC?

Who you trust more in computing?

I doubt it that it was because of processing power, I think that costs are more prevalent in such shift. After all, most super computers uses IBM processors and then AMD processors.

if it came down to it, couldn't intel just outright buy nvidia? they probably have enough in cash. You'd also still have matrox (i think they're still running right?) and AMD for competitors in the GPU game

And Via which is manufacturing DX10.1 hardware which goes against the 9500GT and HD 3450 from ATi plus it has protected audio path in the HDMI port, so no more 16-bit/48Khz audio downsampling, full quality HD audio FTW!!

 

[Wreckage]

if it came down to it, couldn't intel just outright buy nvidia? they probably have enough in cash. You'd also still have matrox (i think they're still running right?) and AMD for competitors in the GPU game

Probably, but they don't need to. Nor I doubt do they want to.

Their crappy integrated GPUs still have most of the market and their CPU monopoly is just as fat now as it ever was. If they ever wanted anything that NVIDIA has, they would just sign a cross licensing agreement (like they have in the past).

Compared to Intel's chipset/CPU business. NVIDIA is just a niche player (video cards, Tesla, Tegra, etc.).

Now if AMD truly does fall into bankruptcy that's where things could get interesting. If nobody picks up AMD's x86 ball and runs with it, Intel will have a difficult time fighting off regulation or even a breakup of the company.

 

[BenSkywalker]

Errr, no, it does NOT. It's a much-touted BS from Sony and it's purely theoretical, never ever been proved in any real, en masse shipped environment.

Huh? Road Runner. i7 is great at handling OoO code and poorly written code to be certain, it is a much better general purpose CPU, it certainly isn't more powerful.

BTW it doesn't even have more cores - have you heard of dual Opterons?

When did we start comparing it to servers? I thought we were talking about PCs here?

Cell is piece of crap and it's more than awkward to develop anything for it and you know this very well - it's not even an option for 99.5&#37; of the market.

We are talking about the power of a CPU as a gaming platform. I haven't stated anything about flexibility or versatility, I'm am strictly talking about gaming uses here.

Except that they cannot hook up them freely. Yes, that's my point.

What do you mean? I can order any 2.5" HD, even a SSD, from NewEgg right now and drop it in my PS3 with no problem at all. What are you talking about can't hook them up freely?

I was claiming that any new PC wins hands down when it comes to HW.

So integrated Intel parts are faster then a 7900GT? No, most new PCs don't win hands down, the one area where PCs have a decisive edge is GPUs, they also have more RAM available to them. That's it.

Xbox360 on the other hand, were seeing more and more x360 games being dual licensed for windows and 360.

How did Halo 3 on the PC come out? Both MS and Sony are trying to make money, the difference is Sony has never pretended to be the leader of PC gaming, they have been very clear their gaming efforts are on the consoles.

if it came down to it, couldn't intel just outright buy nvidia?

No, the government wouldn't let them.

Cell is just a powerful engine for linear code, just like GPU's, but GPU's are smarter, so IBM did good to stop Cell development.

Cell is still more flexible then GPUs, although you are right that IBM wouldn't have been able to keep pace against the GPUs for HPC apps which is where Cell made sense for IBM.

 

[Fox5]

You must be joking? The GPU in the N64 was its Achilles heel. It was the much faster IBM CPU (3x the power of the PS1) that drove innovation in its games. With an extremely small memory bus/capacity, textures were severely compressed and shading of any kind was non-existent. Developers simply added more simply polys in the mix to offset this.

Compare games in that generation. Shading and GPU work was awfully similar, but the N64 offered much larger and immersive environments by simply using its much faster processor.

Comparing games by the same developer, Smackdown for the PS1 vs No Mercy on the N64. Smackdown's character poly count in noticeably much lower and textures are grainy but detailed. No Mercy's poly count is obviously much more, but at the expense of bland textures and no shading whatsoever. Even the shadows were actually just rendered polygons, not true. No Mercy did offer a much larger game area, but the crowd after the first set of rows are just BLUE AND RED DOTS. No joke. The GPU just couldn't do it.

Or maybe San Francisco Rush. The N64 version had even more bland textues, but a larger draw distance.

The N64s GPU was utter crap. This is coming from a Nintendo-only console gamer up until a couple years ago.

Was the n64 gpu really that crap? It had way more features. I think it did have a lower performance ceiling than the psx gpu, but had more features 'for free'. It had some rudimentary anti aliasing and bilinear filtering.
Texture sizes were limited to a primitive 64x64, but that's probably ok given how little memory the system had.
I think its graphics processor also functioned as a brute force sound processor.
Nintendo limited 3rd party programming to crappy microcode that didn't produce good results. Games like Nintendo's and Rare's always had the best graphics as a result and by design within nintendo.

I gotta say, Conker's Bad Fur Day is a pretty amazing game for the N64, and the Pokemon Stadium games show off some rather cool effects in limited quantities.

It worked - and you have games like Resident Evil 2 which was visually far superior to its PS1 version (640x480 resolution, sharper textures, etc)

With painful sound. Plus, the superior PC version was out by then, as were emulators capable of playing the PSX version perfectly at high res.

dreamcast woulda been even more awesome if it used the planned 3dfx chip instead of the powervr

Debatable, likely more pixel and texel pushing capability, but less features (that were barely utilized on the DC).
Unless they were going to go with Rampage, in which case you would have had a seriously delayed dreamcast.

 

[nemesismk2]

Now if AMD truly does fall into bankruptcy that's where things could get interesting.

If AMD goes bankrupt I will swallow my hat

 

[extra]

Cell obliterates i7- far more powerful and it has more cores.

Maybe that's true. But so what? What's the point? It's like hey guys, i'll make this processor system that's really really fast. Only lolololol you can't actually use that speed because we have bad compilers err i mean cuz your programmers suck errr.....

It's like....if it's impossible to use all the supposed power, then so what?

 

[BenSkywalker]

Maybe that's true. But so what? What's the point? It's like hey guys, i'll make this processor system that's really really fast. Only lolololol you can't actually use that speed because we have bad compilers err i mean cuz your programmers suck errr.....

Devs are making pretty good use of it now. As the libraries have matured, so has their ability to leverage its' advantages over the competition. Sometimes in odd ways, take Rage- the BRD in the PS3 is slower then DVD drives which would have been an issue utilizing the megatexturing tech id has in place. Carmack figured out they could use a more agressive compression method on the PS3 because Cell had so much idle power it could extract it on the fly with no penalty anywhere else. Using a more advanced sound occlusion system, more advanced physics, these are things devs are figuring out now. Yes, it took a while for them to get to this point, but Sony has stated repeatedly that they are shooting for a ten year life cycle for the PS3, and we are only in year three(if people want to think of the 10 year comment as hype, the PS2 has been out for ten years now and is still selling 250K units a month, not making the Wii sweat, but it is still getting at least some new releases and is still selling).

It's like....if it's impossible to use all the supposed power, then so what?

Difficult != impossible.

 

[Wreckage]

If AMD goes bankrupt I will swallow my hat

http://finance.yahoo.com/tech-ticke...ard-Bankruptcy?tickers=AMD,LVS,S,M,GT,MYL,HTZ

This I gotta see.

 

[Fox5]

Ehhhh? We use voxels every day (high-end scientific visualization) but you need a truckload of memory and bandwidth - it's never meant to be for mainstream gaming...

A voxel model is pretty quick to build/destroy/modify, so it's good for real-time visualization or data that is frequently modified. Building a polygon mesh (especially an efficient one) takes a lot of time, even if its quicker to redraw once built, and more efficient to store (to a point I'd imagine, wouldn't voxels eventually become more efficient for the same reason ray tracing would, once you have hundreds of polys per pixel).

 

[konakona]

Ben, what's your take on this ancient AT article:

http://groups.google.com/group/alt.games.video.sony-playstation2/msg/62ff83d96ea78ea9?hl=en

The point is Anand (and devs according to him) was disappointed in Cell's performance for gaming use. This was written before the real thing was out, but still.