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64-Bit Gaming Oversold to Consumers
Ryan Shrout writes "Recently AMD and Atari have both been promoting the game "Shadow Ops: Red Mercury" as the first 64-bit game to hit retail shelves. Even without an operating system ready for it, both companies want us to believe that the 64-bit version of the game adds a large amount of detail and visual quality that the 32-bit version just can't handle. PC Perspective decided to go buy the game and test those claims."
The Jaguar was a 16-bit system. It used the same CPU as the Genesis, Motorola 68000. It did have a 64-bit graphic processor, but 64-bit graphic processors have been around in PC's since the 486 days. The N64, while it technically had a 64-bit CPU, was a 32-bit system. The entire motherboard was 32-bit, the CPU was multiplexed. The GC and PS2 are 64-bit (the PS2 uses a CPU that's a close relative of the N64 CPU, just a higher clock speed). The PS2 does, in addition to the main CPU, have two "vector unit" coprocessors, but that doesn't make it a 128-bit system. The PS2 does not have a GPU like the GC does, it's purely a rendering accelerator. It lacks most of the features of modern GPU's, for all intents and purposes it's a really really fast Voodoo1 (it doesn't even support multitexturing, which has been a staple since the Voodoo2). There isn't anything in there that makes it a 128-bit system.
Why do I always feel compelled to respond to these trivial bits of misinformation on obsolete consoles?
The Jaguar did indeed contain a Motorola 68000, but it even though it was the only CISC chip in the system it was not the CPU. The system did not have a single CPU, rather any of five processors (two of which were in fact 64 bit devices) could take over the system bus and thus function as CPU. It was this flexible hierarchy that made the Jaguar so difficult to program, resulting in many developers relying on the familair 68000 as the system workhorse (even though it was actually intended originally for housekeeping and to handle controller input), which resulted in the common misconception that the Jag was a 16 bit machine.
The "bitness" of any given system is arguable anyway, and of less significance with each passing generation. NEC first blurred the lines by claiming the TurboGrafx-16 was a 16 bit console based on it's video chip, and the waters have become muddier with each generation. IMHO the Jaguar was the system to finally prove such labels had become worthless. There are three common definitions used to describe a systems "bitness": CPU register width, GPU register width, and system bus width. But more and more it is the overall system efficiency that produces impressive performance, something better measured by standardized benchmarks than the PR hype attached to just one of a system's specifications.
BTW, just for grins, the first console with a 16-bit CPU was the Intellivision. If only George Plimpton had known!
Must... think up... something... clever!