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NVIDIA Interview on the PS3
Hack Jandy writes "NVIDIA will be the graphics provider for the next generation Sony Playstation 3. Xbitlabs got an interview with the corporate marketing director at NVIDIA to grab a few more tidbits concerning the next generation console. Some particular highlights; the PS3 will have a graphics engine an echelon higher than the GeForce 6xxx cards today ("most powerful GPU that we've ever created actually") and took NVIDIA over 2 years to design."
Of -course- it's the most powerful one they've created to date.... it's the one they haven't yet released. How often do you hear a company trumpeting their latest non-groundbreaking technology?
Not mentioned in the article is that Sony and NVidia have entered into a strategic partnership with Hammacher Schlemmer
There are no trails. There are no trees out here.
I don't know what GPU is in the PS2, but I thought that GPU emulation is an order of magnitude harder than CPU emulation. The primatives are different, particularly around vector operations.
The more press releases I read, the more they sound like playground arguments:
..times two plus two! ..times infinity! ..times infinity plus one! ..etc, etc, etc.
NvidI0t: I've got the fastest hardware evar!
atiR0x0r: Nuh-uh, mine's two times faster!
NvidI0t: Mine's times two plus one!
atiR0x0r:
NvidI0t:
atiR0x0r:
They almost need two types of press releases - one for the other marketdroids, one for the technical folk. Unfortunately:
(1) They've not shipped yet.
(2) Consumer versions of new high-end hardware is *always* expensive. Nobody cares how fast your hardware is if nobody can afford it.
(3) Real-world application performance is *always* different from benchmarks - until some games are released that actually use the hardware, nobody can tell how it's going to perform.
(4) NVIDIA's track record is not good in terms of delivering new tech. in an oversized package (eg: dual slot) with excessive power consumption.
Yes, with all this news about processors more powerful than Deep Blue, GPU more powerful than he best on the market, and a peripheral that allows the PS3 to do my laundry, I don't know how this console is going to be affordable! I paid $150 for my Dreamcast, $135 for my Gamecube, and $119 for my PS2, $135 for each of my DS's. $150 is the most I would pay for any game console. So I guess if Sony wants my money, they'll have to figure out how to make it affordable. I guess I'm going to go with the Nintendo Revolution this time around. :)
This person can use so many words to say so little.
Summary:
NVIDIA is working on the Playstation 3 graphics chip
It will be based on the next generation NVIDIA GPU (the one after the 6800 series)
Sony and NVIDIA save money in the development since the next gen GPU was already in the pipeline and is already a year and a half into development
NVIDIA thinks it will see increased growth in non PC markets such as consoles and PDAs
The marketing director is really excited about all the hot new technologies and whee hoo!
Hooray!
Sometimes my arms bend back.
http://www.blachford.info/computer/Cells/Cell0.htm l
Very good read.
All your base are belong to Google.
Remember what Sony said about the PS2. They claimed that it could render Toy Story in real time.
I'll only believe Sony's claims when the product is on the shelf. They seem to hire pathological liars to do thier PR.
I'm pretty sure the NV50 was canned, at least so far as the PC was concerned.
Someone please mark this guy as a troll. No Sony rep ever said that. The quote came from some over eager game magazine that was writing a fluff piece on the system. I am sick and tired of people bashing Sony for this or for the demos they have shown. Let us finally face facts and realize that Sony's PS2 has proven itself. You remember those face demos they showed before the system launched? Silent Hill 4 easily passed them already. If anything the PS2 has proven itself better then Sony originally claimed.
I mean, compare the PS2's graphics to Half-Life 2. Half Life 2 blows it away. Now, compare the PS2's graphics to the PC games of the time when the PS2's graphical capabilities were first revealed. PS2 blew the PCs of the time (the time in question being early 1999) away.
Of course, console gamers tend to not care about such things. If they did then they'd be playing PC games instead.
Yeah, chances are when the PS3 is released, there will be PC cards that have equal or greater power. But how many PC games will be made with those high end cards in mind? Sure, when the XBox was released, there were PCs with vertex and pixel shaders--but were they actually used in games at the time?
Nintendo 64 was released in 1996 and I couldn't play a game like it on my $2000 PC.
While both are primarily concerned with vector processing, the Cell is suited more for general purpose computing than a GPU is, hence the GPU will be better at doing what GPU's do best: rendering media/graphics.
Below is copied directly from the part of the whole article that deals with "Cell vs GPU":
All your base are belong to Google.
Occam's razor is the blind faith in the natural selection of least resistance and in universal oversimplification. -- EF
Additionally, those APUs do the exact same work as a GPU. They both specialize in number crunching, matrix operation, sin, cos, etc. And they both do it in a pipelined highly scaleable way. So whats the difference.
Occam's razor is the blind faith in the natural selection of least resistance and in universal oversimplification. -- EF
You're taking everything out of context you stupid fuck.
They will provide the "only viable competition". I never said they were going to be completely better, just better suited to GPU specific stuff than GENERAL PURPOSE stuiff.
That does not mean that it will beat a Cell at all, it simply means it may be more effective at operations geared towards what GPUs do, though that does not mean it will win in a head to head competition of brute force, in fact it can't.
Have a nice day retard, go memorize your times tables.
All your base are belong to Google.
the SAME.
APUs are geared more toward GENERAL PURPOSE processing.
All your base are belong to Google.
If it doesn't beat it in a "head to head competition of brute force", then how exactly can they be better suited? They only put the GPU on there to begin with because the existing floating point units and interconnecting buses are far too inadequate to provide the necessary number crunching for modern 3d applications (well, also because video card manufacturers wanted to expand). So why would you still need them, if the Cell processor can do it better.
Additionally, I understand you're trying to say, "Its specialized hardware therefore its faster." Well, its not so specialized when you think about it. The main features of GPUs are basic math operations like dot products, muladds, matrix multiplies, in a very parrallel piped system. They might have other more complex instructions but inside the processor it gets broken down into these basic instructions and parrallelized anyways. So, theoretically the cells APUs do the exact same thing so what exactly is your point?
Occam's razor is the blind faith in the natural selection of least resistance and in universal oversimplification. -- EF
Apparently you're not interested in learning anything here, so go fucking kill yourself please.
All your base are belong to Google.
You're not listening, you're not interested in any other point of view but your own.
I keep trying to fucking tell you what the deal is with these things, but you keep fucking ignoring me and going off on your own.
So fine, keep your own fucking incorrect perspective you fucking retard.
All your base are belong to Google.
accurate. :)
All your base are belong to Google.
Thats like Hitler knowing he was a jew.
Occam's razor is the blind faith in the natural selection of least resistance and in universal oversimplification. -- EF
Thanks, this 12 hour shift is ticking by slow.
All your base are belong to Google.
Nintendo is claiming they're going to deliver something that will be capable of new forms of gameplay, people are guessing some kind of gyroscope based control system but nothing is known to the outside. Iwata was complaining about the same ting you do, that MS and Sony are only going to deliver better graphics and that people will get tired of the same old games soon. How much that will hold true, given that the majority of console owners will buy a game that has one or two new features and an updated roster every year there seems to be a LOT of tolerance towards repeated game ideas.
Justice is the sheep getting arrested while an impartial judge declares the vote void.
and that is the entire point of what I was saying to him, he was trying to say there was NONE.
Does not matter WHAT the difference is.
I see you like to argue just to make yourself feel more "right" too.
All your base are belong to Google.
The PS2 was 'shown' in April '99 (with no games shown) but didn't reach market till March 2000 (Japan) and Oct 2000 (EU/US)
By this time games like Quake3 and UT (both released 99) were already 'long in the tooth' on the PC and games like NFS: Motor City were out.
Indeed, in early 2000 Halo was being demod to the world on both PC and Mac hardware, its intended platform, before Micro$oft bought Bungee and sent Halo to X-Box almost 12 months late.
Of interest was that Halo *would* have been out for Windows, Mac (and rumoured Linux) in early 2000 if it hadn't been for everyones favourite Monopoly getting in the way
Ripping an new rectum in the fabric of spacetime.