Poor console CPU performance, claim game devs

[blckgrffn]

It's not console hate. We are just a lot of hardware junkies who thought this generation of consoles was going to be awesome and a milestone as far as performance is concerned, and now we hear that performance will be less than stellar.

We are bummed 🙁

 

[BenSkywalker]

Seriously, you don't seem to have much clue about hardware architecture or coding at all.

Really? Explain how it is then that a beta compiler for a high level language for an entirely new arcitecture running on non final hardware revision can indicate final performance.

What a console fanboy you are - completely bought into all the marketing hype.

Obviously you don't spend much time around here. I greatly enjoy all of my gaming platforms- and trust me I am more then happy to point out the weak elements in any of them. As far as marketing is concerned- it really has nothing at all to do with my thoughts on the platforms. According to KK Cell was going to be pushing 6.6TFLOPS of peak computing power which I was openly laughing at for years(and that was in the strict theoretical sense- never mind real world).

Do you think that they really care about you, the end user?

WTF would I? They do however care about money and expanding their market. In order to do that they need to provide a platform that gamers will be willing to spend their money on and make it a platform that can handle the games that will attract gamers to the platform. Sony at least dropped billions on the PS3's R&D and constructing a new fab to handle the chips.

since you obviously don't take into account anything we say to contrary and just blindly believe that these companies would make a decision that could possibly be anything but stellar.

I'm not taking anything into account that you say? How is it that these chips can take a single threaded x86 code base designed to run on a 733MHZ processor and emulate it if they are so slow? You explain how an IO core with a reduced PPC instruction set is capable of emulating an OoO core based on what Anand and the rest of the PC faithful are saying.

No offense but Halo sucked compared to the countless FPS series of titles released on the PC. Let's name a few. Quake series, Unreal series, Serious Sam, Battlefield Series, Call of Duty, Solder of Fortune, Doom Series, Duke Nukem, Wolfenstein/Enemy Territory, Jedi Knight.... Should I go on?

Just to you know- all of the titles I bolded are on the consoles already. Also- great variety there. Are you a FPS only "gamer"?

Besides, any real "hit" on the consoles will usually be released for the PC anyway including games like GTA or Halo.

GranTurisimo3/4, Forza, MetroidPrime, ResidentEvil4, MGS, FFX, Zelda and DragonWarrior VIII to name a few. The overwhelming majority of big console titles will never be released for the PC.

Especially when I can buy a single game for the PC and sometimes be happy playing it for more then a year. Name a console game where I can get that satisfaction.

You don't appear to have too much taste based on what you are saying in terms of listing games so it is hard to know.

A true gamer... haha. I worked for Midway Home Entertainment for 3 years and I must say after playing countless console games for hours and hours endlessly everyday I still couldn't wait to get off from work to go home and play games on my PC.

Name a game that they ever made that didn't suck.

Think of the thousands who have been playing the same MMO like Everquest for the last 7 years or the whole slew of hardcore gamers still playing Quake 1 released in '96 competitvely online.

You mean as opposed to something like SMB3 that sold millions fifteen years after its initial release? Name a title comparable on the PC.

I know a lot of people who have a gaming PC along with their XBox. Face it, if there were no such thing as PC graphics cards, you wouldn't have any innovative consoles.

nVidia started out on the consoles(NV1 was the Saturn's chipset) and has been in every 3D generation to date. The same is true about ATi's top design team ArtX. They started out working on the N64(in terms of consumer devices) and then went on the GC when ATi decided that their PC native guys sucked so badly they needed some console talent(and that is what gave us the R300 core). If it weren't for the consoles we would be looking at some pretty crappy PC graphics cards.

 

[UNCjigga]

Personally I am a little bit disappointed with what's been revealed about the next gen consoles' processing power. My initial impression was that Sony and MS *WERE* talking to developers and that whoever Anand spoke to had sour grapes because their awesome UNREAListically complicated game engine wasn't porting easily from PC to console.

But now I'm thinking that whatever the case, you can't ignore the bang-for-your-buck argument--you DO get what you pay for. I guess now I think that if it came down to a $100 difference in price for a more powerful CPU, I wish at least one of the two (MS or Sony) bit the bullet. Wouldn't they make up the difference in lower initial sales with a longer usable lifespan?

The other option would be to have 'upgradeable' consoles. Yes it sort of defeats the purpose and opens up a whole can of worms (developer support for the new chip? Consumer acceptance vs. outcry?) but I think a PPU add-on for certain games might work for next gen console gamers. Of course the minute I say that, 100 people will say "if you want upgradeability just get a PC!"

 

[blckgrffn]

We can know that it won't be awesome for some of the same reasons that the netburst architecture fizzled. Long pipelines with sh!tty branch predictors suck. A lot. No way around it. That has got to be the fundamental reasons that these processors will not fail to disapoint. Had you every taken a computer org class I think that you would better understand what I am talking about. Branchless computing will never happen. I am sure that the "beta" compilers that everyone has been using to develop games so far very easily took most OoO intsrtuctions (like loops) and simply made them linear. But these things will stall horribly on a mispredicted branch. Guess what, it sounds like that is going to happen a lot. So with narrow cores like these, nothing will come out the other end of the pipe for many cycles. This is going to be killer for a long time, given that right now all of the developers will be using one *main* execution process to handle the rest of the game. As multi threaded as games ever get, there will be this main process, and when it stalls, performance will drop like a rock.

Embrace the fact that the processors will not nearly live up to there hype and will be the main bottlekneck for the upcoming generation of games. Before it was texture memory, and now it will be CPU power. While there will always be the "slowest" component of the system, this is really a bummer because the CPU is *so* much slower than the GPU could really utilize.

Nat

*BTW, where are you getting this "emulation" from? This code has to be compiled VERY specifically for these processors, there is no emulation going on here. These are supposed to be general purpose processors, and as such they are given general things to do. Only for the Cell array will see extremely micromanaged code.*

Also, these are no where near so powerful as a G5 PPC, so how can you expect them to have more power? They are very specialized CPUs that are to be treated as general purpose. Therein lies the problem.

 

[mooncancook]

Originally posted by: blckgrffn
It's not console hate. We are just a lot of hardware junkies who thought this generation of consoles was going to be awesome and a milestone as far as performance is concerned, and now we hear that performance will be less than stellar.

We are bummed 🙁

It all stems from how Sony and MS exaggerated how powerful their CPUs are... those supercomputer-liked flops numbers, especially Sony's Cell processor hype that got PC gamers mad.

It's funny that whenever a new CPU or GPU is released, no one will talk about how that's going to put an end to console gaming, but whenver a new console is released you always hear about end of PC gaming talks.

 

[OneOfTheseDays]

Is it me or is the Nintendo Revolution looking more viable each and every day. Not only is it going to be considerably cheaper than the other two consoles, i'm sure it's performance won't be that far off from what XBOX and Sony have to offer. Add to it backwards compatibility, great games, etc....I think I know what I'll be buying this Christmas or whenever it comes out.

 

[OneOfTheseDays]

A quote from Shigeru Miyamoto of Nintendo:

"You know, in regard to the power of the Nintendo Revolution versus, say, the Xbox 360, we're looking at making a small, quiet, affordable console," he said. "If you look at trying to incorporate all that, of course we might not have the horsepower that some other companies have, but if you look at the numbers that they're throwing out, are those numbers going to be used in-game? I mean, those are just numbers that somebody just crunched up on a calculator. We could throw out a bunch of numbers, too, but what we're going to do is wait until our chips are done and we're going to find out how everything in the game is running, what its peak performance is, and those are the numbers that we're going to release because those are the numbers that really count."

 

[blckgrffn]

Unfortunately, it sounds like you will have to wait until next Christmas to get one... Thanksgiving if we are lucky 😉 Let's hope that nintendo incorporates an HD-DVD drive for like $200, then it will really rock!

Nat

lol, and I can't even begin to say how funny I think would be if Anand was anything like Kyle Bennet from HardOCP - he would come in here and skin you alive, young skywalker 😛

 

[Munky]

I predict we havent seen enough info to make a judgement. Look at the ps2 for example. Yeah, many said it was hard to develop games for it, but look at what Polyphony did with gt3 and gt4 - I still get impressed with the graphics everytime I play those games (and I play them often). The power of ps2 lies in it's parallelism, which is quite the opposite from pc architecture. What if the developers decided it was too hard to program the cpu and the 2 vector units in parallel, and decided to just use the cpu? You'd be using about 15-20% of the power available from the EE. Similarly, if a developer realizes that the only way to extract any juice from the 360 / ps3 is to write code with 6 threads and offload a big chunk of work on the SPEs, then they will figure out a way, even if it's difficult. They even figured out a way to deal with the 4mb framebuffer, so it would not be the first time developers had to find a way to work around a console's limitations and restrictions.

Present consoles like the xbox helped promote the use of shaders because it used dx8, and as a result more developers started using shaders on the PC. Similarly, next gen consoles may force the developers to write multi-threaded games, and this will also spill over to the PC market, just in time for dual core cpu's. Point is, sometimes it's good that consoles force the developers to think in new ways, and come up with new ideas, because ultimately PC gamers will benefit from this as well as the console gamers.

 

[blckgrffn]

You're right, it isn't. I followed a link the CPU forum that I though was the same one... foolish me 😉

 

[linkgoron]

Originally posted by: blckgrffn
Article is back up!

It's not back up.

 

[blckgrffn]

I just Read the Ars Technica review of Anands article, and it raised a lot of good points. Let's hope that games don't get a lot more expensive due to what looks like vastly increased dev time...

Also, compilers will help, but I am willing to bet that A LOT of the software tweaks will be done by hand and in multi threaded code, well, that could take about forever and a day. I stand by my previous statement that everyone (except IBM, MS, and Sony) would have been much better served had they used more conventional multicore techonology.

Nat

 

[BenSkywalker]

*BTW, where are you getting this "emulation" from?

This "emulation" comes from the fact that the XBox360 will be emulating the original XBox to play at least part of its game library. This is very, very far removed from some top secret development- if you had spent sixty seconds or so looking at even the most basic elements of the console you would know this.

I just Read the Ars Technica review of Anands article, and it raised a lot of good points.

They said nothing that hasn't been talked about in this thread- you just seem incapable of making your own analysis and instead need to rely on someone else to think it through for you. Everything they mentioned in their article is painfully obvious to anyone with the slightest bit of information and general computing knowledge.

 

[Drayvn]

Originally posted by: BenSkywalker

*BTW, where are you getting this "emulation" from?

This "emulation" comes from the fact that the XBox360 will be emulating the original XBox to play at least part of its game library. This is very, very far removed from some top secret development- if you had spent sixty seconds or so looking at even the most basic elements of the console you would know this.

I just Read the Ars Technica review of Anands article, and it raised a lot of good points.

They said nothing that hasn't been talked about in this thread- you just seem incapable of making your own analysis and instead need to rely on someone else to think it through for you. Everything they mentioned in their article is painfully obvious to anyone with the slightest bit of information and general computing knowledge.

I thought from what ive read in interviews is that ATi is trying to find out all the special coding that nVidia had in the first Xbox so that Xbox games can be run. I wouldnt have thought that was emulating?

 

[xtknight]

Originally posted by: munky
I predict we havent seen enough info to make a judgement. Look at the ps2 for example. Yeah, many said it was hard to develop games for it, but look at what Polyphony did with gt3 and gt4 - I still get impressed with the graphics everytime I play those games (and I play them often). The power of ps2 lies in it's parallelism, which is quite the opposite from pc architecture. What if the developers decided it was too hard to program the cpu and the 2 vector units in parallel, and decided to just use the cpu? You'd be using about 15-20% of the power available from the EE. Similarly, if a developer realizes that the only way to extract any juice from the 360 / ps3 is to write code with 6 threads and offload a big chunk of work on the SPEs, then they will figure out a way, even if it's difficult. They even figured out a way to deal with the 4mb framebuffer, so it would not be the first time developers had to find a way to work around a console's limitations and restrictions.

Present consoles like the xbox helped promote the use of shaders because it used dx8, and as a result more developers started using shaders on the PC. Similarly, next gen consoles may force the developers to write multi-threaded games, and this will also spill over to the PC market, just in time for dual core cpu's. Point is, sometimes it's good that consoles force the developers to think in new ways, and come up with new ideas, because ultimately PC gamers will benefit from this as well as the console gamers.

Good post. :thumbsup:

 

[BenSkywalker]

I thought from what ive read in interviews is that ATi is trying to find out all the special coding that nVidia had in the first Xbox so that Xbox games can be run. I wouldnt have thought that was emulating?

That is somewhat emulating as ATi is going to use an abstraction layer to mimic some of nVidia's hard coded features using their shader hardware- but that isn't what I was talking about. The general game code, that not handled by the GPU, has to be crunched by something. That something is going to be Xenos and there is no way that would be possible if what Anand wrote was close to accurate. You could not get a PPC based IO core with twice the power of an OoO x86 core to emulate the latter, it wouldn't be possible.

 

[BFG10K]

You can not honestly expect any rational person to accept any sort of conclusions from that- even trying to come up with a conclusion on those factors should bring credibility issues up.

Anand's article hasn't really made any difference to my position. If these processors were really so cheap and fast they would be used in desktops (don't you think it's unusual for Apple to jump ship to Intel if the XBox 360 processor is so great?). Right from the start we all new that in-order execution would be a disaster and a definite step backwards.

As for the cost, it looks like the consoles will be sold at a loss and sales from games will make up the profits.

 

[PerfeK]

Originally posted by: Sudheer Anne
Is it me or is the Nintendo Revolution looking more viable each and every day. Not only is it going to be considerably cheaper than the other two consoles, i'm sure it's performance won't be that far off from what XBOX and Sony have to offer. Add to it backwards compatibility, great games, etc....I think I know what I'll be buying this Christmas or whenever it comes out.

Agreed. The Revolution seems to be more about the games and less about the hype.

 

[PerfeK]

Originally posted by: HDTVMan
The Xbox 360 will look and play great. Despite what raw cpu power its contrasted to. Dont overanalyze it until its out. We would all love a X2 4800 cpu with SLI 7800 game machine but your not going to get it for $350.00

A singled core P4 beats the X360's CPUs. The 4800+ would run laps around the X360. If the X360's CPUs were really any good, they would be used in desktops. They are budget processors. It's simply impossible for Microsoft to put a $300 CPU in a $300 console. They have to cut corners. They have apparently convinced you otherwise though.

 

[blckgrffn]

Thanks Perfek, you have grasped the point truly 🙂

Um, Ars Technica didn't agree with you at all buddy. He merely said that IF these processors were to perform, we need to see a TON of work on the software side. Not once did he say that this work magically unlock gobs of performance, it was more a matter that this needed to be done to make it perform acceptably at all. Also, he indicated that these cores where to cheaply made and specialized for us to ever see them in actual PC's, the multi core systems of the foreseeable future that we will have will be much more general purpose in nature.

As for YOUR emulation, it is great that a 3 dual core 3.2 ghz processors can emulate a 733 P3. Yay for that, I sure hope that they could since they have been touted to be SO powerful 😉 It would be pretty sad if they could run a software emulation layer to realtime change x86 code into this PPC code. They do have basically six processors to do this on, so even if they have to dedicate two or three to do it, there will be still a whole dedicated one to take over. Not to mention that this software layer has a whole lot of cache in addition to the xbox's 128k to use. Also, an ATI R420 derivative better be able to do anything a GF3 could do. Maybe Halo2 will finally run at accetable levels on this next gen console for me to enjoy it 😛

Truth be known, I was very impressed with the Xbox when it came out. If it can bring that experience back again, I will be impressed, no matter how fast the CPU's can crunch numbers. I even have an HDTV to play on this time around, so high-def gaming could be pretty fun 🙂

LOL, and the best part of it is you accusing me of not being able to form my own opinion. What information are you basing yours off of? Marketing hype? The facts that have been layed out before us are pretty undeniable - cheap narrow issue cores with nasty deep pipelines won't perform well. I don't think that you addressed that matter. I was actually very optimistic about how well these things were going to shape up - a whole new era of computing. Well, it doesn't look like it is going to happen, which is still a bummer.

And I suppose you know just how much power it would take to emulate a x86 on these PPCs? Where did you get this mystic knowledge from, pray tell?

Cheers :beer: 🙂

*edited for some stupid usage errors! They are all gone now, I assure you 😉*

 

[PerfeK]

doublepost

 

[PerfeK]

subscribed

 

[bunnyfubbles]

Originally posted by: PerfeK

Originally posted by: Sudheer Anne
Is it me or is the Nintendo Revolution looking more viable each and every day. Not only is it going to be considerably cheaper than the other two consoles, i'm sure it's performance won't be that far off from what XBOX and Sony have to offer. Add to it backwards compatibility, great games, etc....I think I know what I'll be buying this Christmas or whenever it comes out.

Agreed. The Revolution seems to be more about the games and less about the hype.

I agree, they also never lied about performance with BS numbers during E3, just like in the past with their GameCube which they reported realworld numbers which were less than the year old PS2...yet the GameCube games still look better, interesting 😉

 

[PerfeK]

Originally posted by: bunnyfubbles

Originally posted by: PerfeK

Originally posted by: Sudheer Anne
Is it me or is the Nintendo Revolution looking more viable each and every day. Not only is it going to be considerably cheaper than the other two consoles, i'm sure it's performance won't be that far off from what XBOX and Sony have to offer. Add to it backwards compatibility, great games, etc....I think I know what I'll be buying this Christmas or whenever it comes out.

Agreed. The Revolution seems to be more about the games and less about the hype.

I agree, they also never lied about performance with BS numbers during E3, just like in the past with their GameCube which they reported realworld numbers which were less than the year old PS2...yet the GameCube games still look better, interesting 😉

While I hate to see Nintendo struggling like this, I respect them for trying to keep gaming as an artform alive. Hopefully they can deliver some unique titles during launch. At this point, I don't really care about the PS3 or the xbox 360. This is coming from a guy who owns both a PS2 and an xbox.

 

[HDTVMan]

G4TV had a few screen shots of the X-box 360 games they showed on TV. Not much to show but its details blew away anything I have seen on the PC so far. Pretty much Photorealistic.

Im Psyched.