Posted by
CmdrTaco
on from the stuff-to-poke-at dept.
Yousef writes "GameSpy has an interesting article about a presentation given by Sony's head of R&D for Entertainment. It appears that there are some very interesting things in store for the PS3, plus a complete Red Hat Linux installation for the PS2 and many other toys too. An interesting read."
The PS2 uses a CPU that runs at 300 MHz. Would you scoff at an ad in the paper that is selling a "very fast" x86 machine at 300 HMz these days? I would.
Yes, as well you should. However, this is a straw man argument and has absolutely no bearing on your following statement, since a 300MHz x86 is hardly the same as a 300MHz emotion engine.
Console CPUs at lower speeds than PCs used to have higher performance because they were customised for gaming.
Repeate after me: All MHz are not the same. I have a 200MHz StrongARM in my Gameboy Advance. The SNES had a 3MHz processor. The GBA is a bit more powerful than the SNES, but not by the same delta as a 4MHz 8086 and a 200MHz Pentium! All MHz are not the same! In fact, MHz are about as useful for gauging performance these days as BogoMIPS, which is to say not at all.
That's becoming less and less true as newer consoles come out that are closer relatives to PCs.
Gross overgeneralization. The XBOX is the only thing that's a repackaged PC. The PS2, which currently dominates the market by a huge margin, is quite far from a PC architecturally. The GameCube, while using something resembling a PPC, is otherwise architecturally quite remote from a PC. The XBOX may take all its RAM from the same pool (which as has been discussed isn't really a good thing), but that's not much different from what we do now (I've seen cheap SiS motherboards with onboard video that use system RAM for video RAM. Big deal, XBOX.)
Now the hardware to handle graphics runs quite a bit faster. And we can expect the PS3 CPU to be "very fast".
Again, "very fast" is completely relative. The XBOX may have a 700MHz Celery (which is kinda slow anyway, but an OK general-purpose CPU), but take away its graphics accelerator and you'll be lucky to rival a SNES or PSX. The PS2's core is rather tied together, but even though it's 300MHz, it can push a decent amount of polys. Lesson for today: All MHz are not the same!
Oh, and to be somewhat on topic, anything Sony says about the PS3 is likely complete hype at this point. I like Sony (well, no I don't, but I like the PS2;-)), but I know just as well as the next guy how the marketting deal works.
But is a 300 MHz PS2 processor really all that amazing as compared to a 200 MHz Dreamcast processor?
All MHz are not the same! All MHz are not the same! All MHz are not the same!
--
Don't think of it as a flame---it's more like an argument that does 3d6 fire damage
> I have a 200MHz StrongARM in my Gameboy > Advance. The SNES had a 3MHz processor. The GBA > is a bit more powerful than the SNES, but not > by the same delta as a 4MHz 8086 and a 200MHz > Pentium!
Whereas the sentiment of the note is correct, I suggest you follow through with some fact checking. The processor in the GameBoy Advance is an ARM7 TDMI, running at 16.78 mHz.
Even so, it should be noted that the Emotion Engine's IPC and so forth (as IPC and mHz aren't everything either, no matter what AMD's webpage told you) aren't as impressive as everyone here seems to think they are.
What's important about the PS2 with regards to speed are a few things: bandwidth (it's just sickening), two reconfigurable vector computation engines (VU0 and VU1 - seems like they might be great for a lot of beowulfish stuff, but then, I have no idea how those clusters really run, so take that with a grain of salt), and the following slap in the face: because all of the comparsions you read were using the DreamCast as the watermark at the time.
The machine, if used aggressively, can still tangle with the GameCube. How it fares against the XBox is the subject of debate; my personal belief is that with careful use it could surpass the XBox, but many people disagree (some feel the higher instruction processing rate is the deciding factor, which would give the issue to the XBox; others feel that the cache problems of an instruction-oriented architecture outweigh the benefits when considered against the bandwidth oriented architecture, which would give it to the PS2, at the cost of being very difficult to write to.)
Moreover, there are facets of the XBox like realtime Dolby 5.1 compression of generated audio which the PS2 has to dedicate a VU to hope to match (this is a significant chunk of the PS2's processing power, making this a Bad Thing).
> [The GameCube ] is otherwise architecturally > quite remote from a PC.
Not really. Certainly not as far as the PS2, and arguably not even as far as a PS1. Whereas the bus layout and memory maps are completely different, you'll find that things like a normal opcode list make a bigger difference in the long run anyway - I mean, really, nobody in the industry uses magic numbers; it's all a macro called VRAM anyway. On the other hand, you really do use assembly, and quite often.
> Again, "very fast" is completely relative.
Not really. The SNES was "really fast" when it came out, and now it's dog slow. It's relative to what the consumer expects. The judgement made solely on experience, while not being hindered by expectations regarding numbers, operating system concerns, et cetera, is a better measure (in my mind) of "really fast" than anything else.
I mean, we've had Crays which pound your box (whatever it is) into the ground for probably 20 years. Is your box still really fast? Yes: Quake gets three digit frame rates, and even IE doesn't lag.
Now quit doting so much on numbers for subjective judgements. "Fast" doesn't have a number attatched to it in the dictionary, does it?
> The XBOX may have a 700MHz Celery (which is > kinda slow anyway, but an OK general-purpose > CPU),
For someone talking about the relativity of speed, you're certainly not thinking about it much. Consider the previous generations of chip, and the current. A celery 700 is more than plenty fast.
> but take away its graphics accelerator and > you'll be lucky to rival a SNES or PSX.
I don't honestly believe you have any idea what you're talking about, no offense. My 486/33 was able to emulate the SNES in DOS mode, which means it was eating the CPU, graphics cards, sound cards, and so forth all on its lonesome.
If you can't tell the difference between a 486/33 and a Celery 700, you're not qualified to be talking about relative machine speeds. No offense. And, hey: go have alook at Bleem!'s requirements.
> The PS2's core is rather tied together, but > even though it's 300MHz, it can push a decent > amount of polys.
The Emotion Engine doesn't push any polys at all, ever. Did you do any research before claiming to know what was going on under the hood? Vertex pushing is almost always solely the province of the Graphics Synthesizer, and sometimes the VU units.
> Oh, and to be somewhat on topic, anything Sony > says about the PS3 is likely complete hype at > this point.
It's been in development for almost two years. I bet they have a general idea of how it's going to work.
> I know just as well as the next guy how the > market[t]ing deal works.
Slashdot Mirror
Yes, as well you should. However, this is a straw man argument and has absolutely no bearing on your following statement, since a 300MHz x86 is hardly the same as a 300MHz emotion engine.
Repeate after me: All MHz are not the same. I have a 200MHz StrongARM in my Gameboy Advance. The SNES had a 3MHz processor. The GBA is a bit more powerful than the SNES, but not by the same delta as a 4MHz 8086 and a 200MHz Pentium! All MHz are not the same! In fact, MHz are about as useful for gauging performance these days as BogoMIPS, which is to say not at all.
Gross overgeneralization. The XBOX is the only thing that's a repackaged PC. The PS2, which currently dominates the market by a huge margin, is quite far from a PC architecturally. The GameCube, while using something resembling a PPC, is otherwise architecturally quite remote from a PC. The XBOX may take all its RAM from the same pool (which as has been discussed isn't really a good thing), but that's not much different from what we do now (I've seen cheap SiS motherboards with onboard video that use system RAM for video RAM. Big deal, XBOX.)
Again, "very fast" is completely relative. The XBOX may have a 700MHz Celery (which is kinda slow anyway, but an OK general-purpose CPU), but take away its graphics accelerator and you'll be lucky to rival a SNES or PSX. The PS2's core is rather tied together, but even though it's 300MHz, it can push a decent amount of polys. Lesson for today: All MHz are not the same!
Oh, and to be somewhat on topic, anything Sony says about the PS3 is likely complete hype at this point. I like Sony (well, no I don't, but I like the PS2 ;-)), but I know just as well as the next guy how the marketting deal works.
All MHz are not the same! All MHz are not the same! All MHz are not the same!
Don't think of it as a flame---it's more like an argument that does 3d6 fire damage