Slashdot Mirror
Probing the Guts Of the Consoles
Max Entropy writes "Finally, an in-depth article of the technologies within the GameCube, PS2, and Xbox. The article covers architectures, processor/memory silicon, I/O, expandability, and storage among a host of other topics." If you are wondering what makes each system distinctive (Besides
the fact that one has about a hundred times as many games, one overheats,
and another has Luigi) this might be worth a read.
The article claims that the PS2 cannot play DVDs without the remote control, which is not true. It can play them just fine without. The XBox, however, cannot. It's not that bad of an article, just not objective enough.
I would recommend those that want a deeper analysis of why the xbox is the graphics gaming console of the future (verses these other boxes) to have a good look at what DX8 brought us. Hint: vertex shading and pixel shading.
Hmm... Actually vertex shaders and pixel shaders are nothing new - it's just that we've finally slapped a standard name on them. Even the Nintendo64 had a "colour-combiner" which could apply two passes of linear equations to the various different colour sources - no, it wasn't a fully programmable pixel shader, but then neither is DX8's most of the time, given the various hardware limitations. I believe the GameCube has a much more sophisticated colour-combiner step - capable of doing pretty much anything the XBox can do with its pixel shader.
As for vertex shaders - gimme a break! The N64 had completely updateable microcode - you could use the RSP for whatever you wanted, and perform whatever calculations you liked at the vertex transform/shading level.
DX8 didn't bring us either of these technologies. You would do well to examine the actual meanings of these terms, and look at the capabilities of the competing hardware rather than blindly accepting the hype.