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GameCube Hardware In Depth on Anandtech
plootid submitted linkage to a fairly technical look at the GameCube running over at AnandTech. You can learn about the hardware that makes the new Smash Bros. possible. Something about seeing Samus doing battle with Pikachu makes me want to know more about the PowerPC chip that powers the system ;)
Get the whole thing on one page, much less annoying.
Now that we've covered stories about the effort to put linux on the Dreamcast and Playstation 2, how long will it be before the Mac OS runs on the GameCube - it's just an enhanced G3 that I'm running right now.
If anyone is forming a project, let me know by responding to this comment.
Kurdt
I'm not anti-social. Just pro-technology.
It seems to me like the Gamecube is an attempt by Nintendo to get at a new domain of customers that they traditionally don't aim at.
Nintendo has been a console of the children. I would say ballpark 6 to 15 years of age is Nintendo time. After that, Playstation and the now-defunct Sega take over for the most part. N64 was still a very much "little kiddy" console, compared with the Playstation and Dreamcast. X-Box I'm not even going to factor in at this point, as I don't expect them to meet with tremendous success this go-around. Likely Microsoft wouldn't mind having the whole console gaming market, but that's not the issue.
Essentially it seems to me like Gamecube not only aims at the kids who are now 6-15 years old, but at those who were 6-15 years old and played on NES or SNES. Nintendo seems to be broadening their market.
This will play out pretty interestingly. I'd like to see a nice comparison of the Gamecube and the PS2. Sony is no lightweight and will not let go of their market easily.
In fact, I just had a revelation, albeit an obvious one. This is capitalism at work. Three strong companies duking it out. And since for once the sides are relatively balanced this might actually be at the benefit of the consumer. Who'd of thunk it?
I'm not exactly sure what you're trying to say here, but you're right the RISC CPUs do kinda chunk the microcode overboard. If you want more details I suggest you check out the Black Papers on ArsTechnica. They have a great article on CISC vs. RISC.
JOhn
Campaign for Liberty
The Xbox looks like it can crunch any other console, but you know, so many of the developers they grabbed will be porting to the PC. I wonder if they havn't underestimated the overlap of PC gamers and potential Xbox owner demographics.
.. and no harddrive (thank god). It's a console. The Xbox is a PC, to the extent the MS is trying VERY hard to keep developers from wanting to port their MS-sponsered Xbox titles back to the PC (where many of them probably started, in terms of development). I have a PC. :)
I got my Gamecube 3 days ago, and holy crap, it's amazing. The Xbox might look good, but I'll take a the Cube anyday. Better controllers, best 1st party games (Halo might be coming out for PC, isn't that right?), seriously WIKED ASS form factor
I think the one arena Nintendo may have screwed up is with going with no onboard ethernet card. They are dirt cheap, why didn't they just throw one on?
"Old man yells at systemd"
Ehh... I disagree. The n64 seemed to kind of dominate my collage campus for a few years. Everyone bought a playstation at first, but then games like Golden Eye, 1080 SnowBoarding, and Zelda game out... so everyone ran out to buy a 64. he only thing I found my Ps 1 good for (after Resident Evil) was Tony Hawk (which later came out on the 64 and looked 10 times better).
For some reason Nintendo has been getting a bad wrap because of Miyamoto's games. People think they are kiddy games or something. However, Miyamoto makes the coolest stuff. Miyamoto's the reaons I bought a cube. Games like Mario Cart, Super Smash Bros, and even Pokemon on the game boy were actually very very good games.... I advise playing them.
"Things are more moderner than before- bigger, and yet smaller- it's computers-- San Dimas High School football RULES!"
I stopped reading the article on the second page. The Gecko CPU is based on the Book E standard and IBM's (not yet released) PPC 440 processor. The only thing common between the "Book E" standard PPC and regular PowerPC's like the 750 are the usermode instructions are the same. Supervisory mode such as memory management, page tables, etc are all changed.
--Mark
I remember when first reading about the gameboy advance, I saw something about being able to use it as a controller for the GameCube. The example of when this would be a 'good thing' was a football game. Gameplay goes on on the main screen, but you can make your play selection, privately, on your own little screen.
Although the cost is currently prohibitive (to me, at least), this seemed like an absurdly cool idea. I haven't heard anything about it since. What happened?
I've had this sig for three days.
Read here about what Xbox Only means. Or wait, I'll spoil it for you:
...
"Only on Xbox means not on any other console. It does not mean never coming to Mac or PC. Halo will be coming to Mac and PC." He continued, "We still plan to do a Mac and PC version of Halo, but there are a lot of questions that must be answered before we can make the Mac/PC versions happen."
Hehe. Yes, it's coming to the PC
"Old man yells at systemd"
I am curious to see how the later games will play out on both systems. They may be about equivalent graphically now (maybe xbox has a slight edge) but all gamers have seen how much good developers can improve a system. Look at the original PlayStation - with some of the later games, you couldn't even tell you were playing on the same system!
With simple to program hardware, the GameCube devs will be able to write low-level code to really eke performance out of the system. I wonder if xbox programmers will be able to do the same, or if they will be restricted by the (godawful IMHO) directx apis.
Is this rock and roll, or a form of state control?
size comparison
XBox motherboard
GameCube motherboard
You won't see many comparaisons of X-Box games because they are all crap. There is not an original game on the system yet. Halo, and Munch for all their touting as great, revolutionarity games, turned out to be just more of the same. Munch the classic 3-D platformer and Halo just another FPS.
In my opinion, the only companies that have delivered real innovation to the game industry in the last 5 years are Nintendo and Sega. A few PC developers may have thought of an idea first, but Nintendo has taken that idea and fully realized it. Just look at Zelda, it was not an original idea, the 3-d adventure game. However, the execution was flawless, taking the genre to a whole new level.
what good would a firewire card do? The cube is supposed to be a pure GAMING machine, not another attempt at PC/console convergence. A firewire card would have added to the bulk and cost of the machine, which is very much against Nintendo's wishes for this system.
And regardless of whether or not adding firewire would have been easy for nintendo, it would be an attempt at catering to the hacker set - which Nintendo is NOT about to do anytime soon. Nintendo enjoys the fact that its machines are practically unhackable and its games are very well protected against copying (PC emulation excluded). And i can't say that i blame them.
I think that the whole issue about which game system is the best comes down to a lesson my father taught me about of all things, cars.
Its about stability, reliability, and working out the kinks.
He said never, ever buy a car the year the new model comes out. The manufacturers have tested it, but not the way the consumers will. Usually, the best cars to drive are the ones where they are about to change the fundamental design (usually after three years or car generations) a few years after have worked out all of the major complaints brought in, and before they change the design again.
So what does this have to do with video consoles? Well, as I see it, Nintendo has gone through several generations of workign the bugs out in hardware and gameplay, and that in itself is its benefit and reason to buy.
There are at least 3 generations of Nintendo in major US release, even after they made coin ops.
Playstation is on generation 2.
Xbox is on its first generation.
Honestly, I can't even think of a in-house Nintendo game that I was ever dissatisfied with, other than the super-late shipping time.
It has worked so far very well with the cars.
It has done well with consoles.
I rented the XBox for five days from blockbuster and bought the hdtv adapter from Compusa using the takeback special(they deserve it for screwing me over so many times, like that time they held onto $200 of my money for two months without sending me the product I ordered and lied about receiving the money, but I digress). Anyway, one thing I can say is that composite output does not do the Xbox justice, you definitely need to use the high-definition component adapter to get an idea of the real power. None of the games currently support 1080i, however the startup screen does, and it is awesome. As far as the games that don't support hd, well, they still run at 480p (640x480x60hz for the hdtv illiterate). However, it's not widescreen 480p, widescreen at 480p is actually 720x480x60hz, if I remember correctly. I would say that the geforce 3 should easily support hd resolutions, unless the fillrate is being chewed up elsewhere, think about it, I run quake III at 1600x1200x32 at 90 + fps on my pc, so this card should be able to do 1920x1080ix16bits at the required framerate. I am in serious doubt of this artx chip that the gamecube is using however, there is a reason that nvidia is at the top of their game, and that is because their chips have an extreme amount of fillrate and performance. If you are looking for hdtv support, I would stick with the XBox, it has the kind of hardware that should be able to handle those kinds of resolutions.
P.S. If I were you I would rent the consoles before buying, for the XBox I would highly recommend checking out halo, and for pure graphics quality, Dead or Alive 3.
Halo isn't the only game. For example "Project Gotham Racing" lets you use some of that 10 gig hard drive to store music that you can substitute in the game. You simply bootup your xbox, pop in an audio cd, rip the tracks, and then load PGR, choose audio and select the tracks you ripped. Now your playing games with the music you like.
Halo, no matter if it comes out for the PC is a great game on the Xbox. The controller is superb for halo controls, i don't know why people despise the controller so much. It (the xbox controller) is MUCH more confortable with games requiring the dual analog sticks then "thumbing" the PS2 type controllers or monkeying with the Nintendo controllers.
DVD Support is great in the Xbox as well support all digital audio outputs other then the costly THX output.
The Xbox isn't meant for PC porting, i don't know whose ass your pulling that out of. I can play EA's games, Tony Hawk and all the other hottest sellers (Including Grand Theft auto) on my PC if you really want to be a wise ass and get precise.
Don't get me wrong, the Gamecube is a great system if your into the mario stuff.
Xbox is far from a PC.. And even if it is a "PC", wasn't that what another console maker was trying to do with LInux?
What makes the Xbox so powerfull and affordable is its pc "roots", hence keeping the cost of ownership for amount of processing power VERY low.
You will get alot more out of an XBox then you will even the Fastest pc right now for the simple fact there is one VERY high powered video card, one sound card, one network card and a single interface. There is no os overhead, no different drivers, no crashes because someone has a cheap video card, no overhead of background processes.
The Xbox is a green, lean and mean machine. Your just missing out on some of the action if you limit your consoles to one vendor.
No, Microsoft isn't lobying pc developers. If you see the latest releases and schedules, most games coming out on the Xbox that are out on PC are coming out for Gamecube and PS2 as well (Max Payne, Unreal Championship, Grand Theft Auto, EA Sports games...) Xbox has its own games though, just like any other console.
That is if Anandtech is correct on its chip assumptions. Until i see otherwise, the Xbox supports 1080i games.
Your so wrong. With your same argument the PS2 would only have what, 2 "original games".
Hell, even Metal Gear solid is coming to Xbox (MGS2) and PC.. All EA Games will be on all 3 consoles, PS2 got UT, Xbox gets Unreal Championship.
Hell, i can play Grand Theft Auto on my peecee was well.
Whoever told you the xbox was a pc was dead wrong, just because they use pc components doesn't make it one.
According to this anonymous coward if the Xbox was a PC the Gamecube would be a Macintosh!
I don't get everyone saying the Xbox is a PC and getting PC ports while the Gamecube is cool and a unique console.
The Xbox is just as much a "PC" as the Gamecube is a Mac/Apple/PowerPC, so with the anti microsoft politics aside, each console has its own advantages and leave it at that.
If you want to compare against PC's then that rules out Metal Gear Solid, Unreal Tournament, All EA Sports games, The Grand Theft Auto Series, bunch of Sega Games and tons more.. (I can even play tonyhawk on the pc).
Its just the simple fact microsoft chose proven, affordable and mass produceable hardware without changing the underlying infrastructure they have been developing on for the past two decades.
My point is, none of the consoles are a "PC". All these new consoles have there own advantages as well as problems.
SO just game on , read the review and decide for yourself what you want.
(The highest resolution a regular TV can support -- 240 lines of horizontal resolution.)
WTF?
NTSC has 525 scanlines (480 visible), and PAL has 625 (576 visible).
480i is exactly the same as NTSC but digital, 480p gives you a better picture due to non-interlacing (NTSC updates every other line each sweep).
autopr0n is like, down and stuff.
"Flipper always operates on 4 pixels at a time using its 4 pixel pipelines; each of those pipelines is capable of applying one texture per pipeline"
Nope, it can actually apply 8 textures using 16 combiner stages.
"The Flipper graphics core is a fairly simple fixed function GPU"
It can do z-texturing, dependant-texturing, 8-way multitexturing etc. There's no way you can describe it as simple or fixed function. I'd suggest that whoever wrote this article boot up Pikmin, walk out into the water on level four and take a look at what Flipper can do in a single pass over a flat polygon.
I remember having my SNES console and thinking that there would never be games that could be superior to some of the first games that came out (Super Mario World, FZERO, Zelda, etc..) but as the years went by the console continued to mature (FX Technology in Starfox, Amazing graphics in Super Mario World 2, Chrono Trigger, Super Metroid!) It took several years before games of that caliber were finally released. The hardware on the SNES never changed, so it is absurd to dwell on the hardware of a system to measure how great of a console it is.
Then what makes a console great? If hardware was what made the SNES better than its predecessors then why are millions of people (including myself) still playing and discovering games that actually surpass PS2,XBOX,GCUBE, et cetera on almost every level?
The answer is simple, it's the games. Which is what many posts ahead me have said. But what makes a game great? The CODING and DEVELOPMENT behind the game. I think we are forgetting about how much CODING and DEVELOPMENT has to do with a consoles success. (Which is why many top level game designers [recently: Hideo Kojima MGS, MGS2; Shigeru Miyamoto Mario, Zelda, Pikmin] People always attribute a consoles success to games, but the success of the games is caused by the great coding behind the games. And for coding to get to that level coders need time to work with the console and also the technology within that console. It took many years before the full potential of the SNES was realized. My biggest fear is that the Console Gaming Industry is rushing too fast to try and compete with the new developments in technology to appease all the uneducated consumers who just demand the fastest, most powerful machine; and in doing so is not letting their console systems reach their true potential.
I don't know about anyone else, but I will take Secret of Mana, Chrono Trigger, Final Fantasy 2, Final Fantasy 3, Super Metroid, et cetera over almost all of the current games for the next generation of consoles (granted PS2 is FINALLY starting to get some good material).
Bottom line: We shouldn't spend so much time analyzing and over-analyzing the hardware behind the systems (we've argued about bits [4bit, 8bit, 16bit, 32bit] and now it's X-CPU vs. GCube-CPU, and nVidia NV2A vs. ATI Flipper). We should focus more attention to those who spend YEARS developing some of the most imaginative and engrossing games in the world, and give payment where it's due: the people behind the games.
Well, for alot of people gaming is an experience. Being "expandable" is part of gaming. Being able to play network games, being able to link consoles, being able to use different devices, and have the ability expand has been console heritage, just taking full advantage of with the xbox for the first time.
Gaming is an experience, not just a few heavily marketed, licensed characters.
Like i said, Anandtech may know what they can read off a spec sheet, but these chips may be different.
either way, i'll be happy. i got the digital inputs for my lcd projector and it is wonderfull!