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Probing the Guts Of the Consoles

Posted by CmdrTaco on from the probe-me-more-baby dept.

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.

7 of 355 comments (clear)

  1. Some misinformation from the article by Gath · · Score: 5, Informative

    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.

  2. Comment removed by account_deleted · · Score: 5, Insightful

    Comment removed based on user account deletion

  3. overheats?? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 5, Insightful
    If i remember right, demo xboxes were supposedly overheating because they were in very enlosed cases with little room for air to circulate to cool it off.

    I have not heard a thing about production xboxes off the shelf that are overheating. In fact, I have not seen anything about overheating, BSODs occuring at all.

    Editors, if you have any evidence for your allegations, please provide them, otherwise you look just like bitter fools spreading FUD.

    1. Re:overheats?? by Osty · · Score: 5, Insightful

      If i remember right, demo xboxes were supposedly overheating because they were in very enlosed cases with little room for air to circulate to cool it off.

      More than that, the possibility that those units were overheating was nothing more than speculation. The only units that ever had problems were those running earlier demo discs, and it was announced that the demo discs were bad -- they were built for the XDK box which has twice the memory (for development purposes), rather than the production XBox, and so would often step past the potential memory space of the real XBox (see how the XBox isn't a PC? If it were, it'd use that nice hard drive as virtual memory, but it doesn't because it's not a PC. Oh, sure, a game could implement its own virtual memory handler, but that has to be done on a per-game basis, as with any console ...). Thus, software problem, not hardware problem. The possibility of overheating was just Slashdot jerking its collective knee.

  4. GSODs and BSODs by Glonk · · Score: 5, Insightful

    The BSODs and GSODs you hear of are actually not true. The "GSOD" you saw online is actually a disc error (inserting the wrong type of disc) into the XDK, not even the final Xbox (Next time you see it, check out the bottom).

    If the Xbox crashes or freezes, you don't get ANY type of message. It'd just lock up (read the documentation). Same as the other consoles.

    So somehow I actually doubt your "number of friends" got GSODs in games.

    I've had my Xbox since launch day: No crashes, no freezes, no problems, and certainly no overheating.

  5. I'm buying a Gamecube. by Sludge · · Score: 5, Insightful
    I've played all three systems (as well as many other consoles), and I think that the Gamecube is the best bet for the type of game I want to play.

    When I want single player FPS action, I'll play games on my PC, where I have a mouse, keyboard, cable modem and an excellent 21" Sony Trinitron monitor. So far, the dark and gritty games are still done best on the PC, and this seems to be the major targets of the XBox and PS2.

    Enter Gamecube, a system with games that are commonly colourful and very party oriented. If I'm going to be playing console games, I want to play them with my friends around a big TV. When I pick up my Gamecube, I'm definately grabbing Super Monkey Ball and Super Smash Bros. along with three additional controllers.

    As a PC Gamer, I see the XBox and PS2 for people who don't have near top of the line PC hardware. I see the Gamecube's function as being something a bit different, and it's very attractive. I can't get that over here.

    Besides, it looks like we're going to see some impressive first party titles. Is it possible not to be interested in a Zelda game on mass storage media for the first time?

  6. Re:1 paragraph on graphics? by strags · · Score: 5, Informative

    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.