WTF ROFL! "GBA is more powerful than SNES and equivalent to PSX"

[LOLyourFace]

I'm sure All of you have heard this bold hyped-up claim during the pre-GBA era.

Well my lil brother got Metroid Fusion for GBA and the graphics is no where near the quality of Super Metroid in SNES. (or any games for that matter) And WTF, equilvalent of PSX? Don't even get me started. (yea.. play FF7 on it lol)

I'd say the power of GBA is somewhere in between NES and SNES (more towards SNES) but it is clearly inferior than SNES let alone PSX(!)

I'm just venting because I remember running into some GBA fanboy who religiously believed in that statement..

 

[vi edit]

Are you sure the graphics aren't inhibited by the rather small and cheap screen?

 

[spaceman]

?
i think the poor quality and non backlit lcd are big factor in the gfx quality on gba.
try the same game on an emu,you may change your mind about the snes vs gba gfx.

 

[Jzero]

I have often commented to my gf that it's basically a miniature SNES.

 

[Evadman]

Powerful is much different than the look.

I remember seeing someone who used his GBA as a web server, so they are decently powerful.

 

[LOLyourFace]

Originally posted by: vi_edit
Are you sure the graphics aren't inhibited by the rather small and cheap screen?

No, I am very keen with that. It's not just the display. The actual animation and complexity is not even close to SNES. Even look at the quality of sprites. SNES has much more layers in numbers. And don't even get me started about PSX..

[edit]
Anyone with sharp eyes agree with me here? I mean, GBA IS impressive, don't get me wrong (I played Street Fighter Alpha on it) but even that specific game is comparably weaker than SNES Alpha. (more omitted animations, sprites)

 

[Rent]

Fusion looks just as good as Super Metroid did on SNES. In fact it looks better. More animation, color, ect...

Maybe you should go back and play Super Metroid to see how much graphics have changed since then.

I'm not saying the GBA is a all mightly powerful system, but it does damn well for what it has.

 

[scorp00]

title says powerful, while your post comments on how good the graphics look, two different things.

GBA might be more powerful from a pure hardware standpoint.

 

[IcePhoenix]

Originally posted by: Rent
Fusion looks just as good as Super Metroid did on SNES. In fact it looks better. More animation, color, ect...

Maybe you should go back and play Super Metroid to see how much graphics have changed since then.

I'm not saying the GBA is a all mightly powerful system, but it does damn well for what it has.

Exactly what I was going to say.

 

[LOLyourFace]

Originally posted by: Rent
Fusion looks just as good as Super Metroid did on SNES. In fact it looks better. More animation, color, ect...

Maybe you should go back and play Super Metroid to see how much graphics have changed since then.

I'm not saying the GBA is a all mightly powerful system, but it does damn well for what it has.

No Way. Go play Super Metroid and look at the ice beam animation. The glowing tri laser with the chill trails behind in SNES is not even comparable to the gfx in GBA Metroid.

And let's relook at the statement: GBA is not MORE powerful than SNES. you guys are saying it's equivalent to SNES. The statement referrs to PSX for that.

 

[Supermercado]

I'm pretty sure that the GBA is at least as powerful as the SNES is, if not more so. It's definitely more powerful than the NES was and definitely nowhere near as powerful as the PSX is.

 

[BD2003]

I agree. GBA seems better in some ways, but worse in other ways.

The fact that it could pull off Yoshi's Island without any extra hardware like the SNES cart had says something, but then again, it is running at 30fps on a lower resolution compared to the higher res of the SNES and 60fps.

 

[NutBucket]

Someone here has got to have the tv adapter for the GBA so we call do a side-by-side test. Of course, that's assuming the tv adapter doesn't cause any noticeable loss in image quality. I'm not quite sure how it works so I wouldn't know.

 

[Electrode]

They may have been going by the word size of the CPU and related processing hardware. It has nothing to do with the processing power of the hardware, but it's good for marketing.

SNES: 16-bit
GBA: 32-bit
PSX: 32-bit

 

[geno]

Doom looked like crap on SNES, yet it looks just like the PC version on GBA Also, check out Yoshi's Island - it looks identical to its SNES counterpart (with the exception of resolution)! And as for equal to PSX? That comment can eat it

 

[SuperTool]

The entire PSX engine fits on a tiny part of PS2 chip. So when you run PSX games on PS2, you are basically only using the IO controller, and not even using the PS2 processor.

 

[vegetation]

The GBA is a faster machine than SNES, spec wise, stock vs stock.

SNES used a 65816 processor (an off-shoot of the classic 6502 which is what the NES used) @ 3.58MHz which also was used in the Apple IIGS computer. Computational power is about 0.1 mips. This puts it around the same computational power of that of the original Gameboy which used a Z80 processor @ 4MHz (the color used 8MHz). 256 colors onscreen max, from 32k available colors. However, the SNES had the ability to use extra hardware features on the cartridge units, so some cartridges used specialized DSP's that would allow games to look way better than they ever could using the stock hardware. So it's a bit difficult to put a computing power cap on the SNES for practical purposes. Nonetheless, it's still probably slower than the GBA.

GBA uses a 16MHz ARM7 processing unit. Computational power is about 10 MIPS. Color can be up to 511 in text mode, and 32k in graphics mode, from a total of 32k colors.

 

[BennyD]

Originally posted by: geno
Doom looked like crap on SNES, yet it looks just like the PC version on GBA Also, check out Yoshi's Island - it looks identical to its SNES counterpart (with the exception of resolution)! And as for equal to PSX? That comment can eat it

this is the gba version (my own screeny) plays like gold

 

[notfred]

Originally posted by: BD2003
I agree. GBA seems better in some ways, but worse in other ways.

The fact that it could pull off Yoshi's Island without any extra hardware like the SNES cart had says something, but then again, it is running at 30fps on a lower resolution compared to the higher res of the SNES and 60fps.

Where the hell do you get 60fps on a standard TV from?

 

[BD2003]

You get 60fps by displaying a new frame for each field update. 60hz, 60 frames. Not progressive scan, but better than 30fps. Its been done for years, it is nothing new. It may not be technically 60 "frames" per second, but its 60 updates a second, and 60 is always better than 30. Works even better than newer consoles because the SNES only needs half the resolution, so there isnt any feathering at all, but major scanlines.

I swear, someone always has a fit whenever I mention 60fps and TV in the same sentence. Call it what you want, but youre a fool if you think a TV cant display more than 30fps. Many TV programs come through in 60 fps, most notably sports.

Watch sports on a TV sitting next to a PC with a TV tuner that stupidely de-interlaces everything by default. TV is way smoother. Its like....60 fps smooth! Wow!

 

[Demon-Xanth]

Judging by games OTHER THAN JUST METROID, the GBA is superior in many way to the SNES. Games like F-Zero and SF2-TR are PERFECT ports from the SNES to the GBA. There's no increase in the graphics, but that was the point. The GBA compared the the PSX is another issue. The PSX annihilates the GBA, especially considering that the GBA has minimal 3D capabilities.

 

[Dragnov]

I would never say the GBA is as powerful as the PSX, I don't see how anyone could say that... but I would say its between the SNES and PSX.

Haven't played Metroid Fusion yet but it may not take the full advantage of the GBA. Just as on any console system, different games look better than others because the developer spent more time on the graphics. I would check out games like Tactics Ogre: Knight of Lodis (better than SNES) and Mario Kart (at least the same, if not better).

 

[BD2003]

GBA is still half assed as far as I'm concerned. There's not enough buttons, the screen needs a backlight in the worst way, and they should have duplicated the SNES's resolution if all they want to do is make ports.

 

[Chadder007]

The reason the GBA doesn't look as good as say...PSX is because of the screen, the very small amount of data that the Cartridges hold compared to CD's still, and also power consumption is kept at a low on the processors.

 

[MercenaryForHire]

Originally posted by: notfred

Originally posted by: BD2003
I agree. GBA seems better in some ways, but worse in other ways.

The fact that it could pull off Yoshi's Island without any extra hardware like the SNES cart had says something, but then again, it is running at 30fps on a lower resolution compared to the higher res of the SNES and 60fps.

Where the hell do you get 60fps on a standard TV from?

The essential halving of vertical resolution, through the scanline method BD2003 mentioned.

"Frame 1" --- | --- "Frame 2"
XXXXXXXXXX| ......................
.......................| XXXXXXXXXX
XXXXXXXXXX| ......................
.......................| XXXXXXXXXX

(Hell, didn't MegaMan for the NES run at 60fps?)

- M4H