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Revolution Horsepower Revealed
Revo writes "IGN.com unveiled leaked specs for Nintendo's upcoming Revolution console today. The system really is about twice as powerful as a GameCube and a far cry from the Xbox 360 and PS3. Of course, the focus is on the innovative controller and the affordable price."
Yeah, hiiiii, I'm afraid I'm going to have to go ahead and, uhhh, ask you to hand over your geek identification card.
It's Link dammit, not Zelda.
There's a reason that console controllers have evolved into their current form, and that's because they are ergonomic and comfortable.
I think what you meant was "and that's because Nintendo leads the way every time."
Control Stick? That was Nintendo. Rumble [pack]? That was Nintendo. Next to add to that list? Wireless controllers with motion sensors using a nunchuck design.
Reading the article, it seems like most of their "horsepower" statements were just backed up with the clock rate of each systems CPU and GPU. That, really, doesn't mean anything at all. Who cares if the Revolution's CPU is clocked twice as fast as the GameCube's? That doesn't really mean anything at all, unless they're both running exactly the same chip just clocked at different rates. The same thing is true of comparing the XBox 360's 3.2 GHz chip to the Revolution's 750-ish MHz CPU. Does that really tell us anything at all? Not really.
The article is mostly crap. It's just telling us that the clock speed of Nintendo's apples isn't as fast as Microsoft's oranges.
Narrative
Is it just me, or are they completely ignoring that the Gamecube had a PPC chip, and Xbox had an x86 chip?
On paper clock speed doesn't put the Revolution between the Gamecube and Xbox. It easily puts it above.
Also, if I recall correctly, the 360 and PS3's processors need to be passed data sequentially, and because of that it makes it much harder to avoid bottlenecks and lag in code, whereas the Revolution's does not.
It could just be me, but looking at stats on paper mean nothing when you're comapring different architectures and chipsets.
just look at the hands on response, http://forums.nintendo.com/nintendo/board/message? board.id=revolution&message.id=889594
I'm getting a negative aura from this reporting. I don't think a weird controller is going to awe enough people to their platform.
It worked for the DS. And unlike the Xbox 360 and PS3, you don't have to buy an expensive new TV to get a significant difference compared to the old system.
IIRC, the last I heard from the big cheese at Nintendo is that they are working with augmented reality for their next generation of consoles,
Don't know where you heard that. Probably some random rumor site before Nintendo said anything. The rumor sites predicated practically everything but what Nintendo actually ended up doing.
and now we are getting a speed bump and a hard to use, tiny controller?
Nintendo has been saying for the past few years that we don't need more powerful machines. The controller is small because it's one handed. Once you realize that, it seems to fit well in people's hands - at least in the pictures. As to hard to use, everyone who's tried it has said it was great. Do you know something no one else does?
Is Nintendo still doing the whole "this console is for kids" thing?
Still doing? They never did. Bright colors does not mean kids game. Try something like Mario Sunshine sometime. The difficulty level is way to high for most kids. Things like Smash Bros & Mario Kart are big college dorm games. Pokemon, and to a lesser extent Kirby, are the only major things Nintendo really aims at kids.
Gamecube actually didn't really have ATI graphics. ATI was just on the business end of things. The GPU was designed by Art-X which is an SGI spin-off. This gave Gamecube a lot of unique graphics capabilities. Anything related to SGI is a step up from ATI in my book.
The SNES had its unique "color math" capabilities and the famous Mode7 affine matrix transformation mode.
Didn't help team sports games, which relied on raw video memory bandwidth to upload sprite cels for 22 players into the GPU. Those tended to play more smoothly on Sega Genesis.
I believe the N64 let you re-write the microcode in the GPU for custom needs.
The Atari Jaguar had that first.
I'm sorry, but in my opinion, the specs given are still pretty much useless.
This isn't like the Intel/AMD argument, because each of the chipsets has a different ISA
It isn't necessarily true that every command executed in the 3.2GHz cores of an XBox 360 will
constitute one clock cycle. In fact, I'm sure that a method of achieving those awesome frequencies
is by removing as much functionality as possible from each command the 'core' of the CPU performs.
The ON-GPU memory is really significant. 3MBs of in chip memory is more valuable than 15MBs of off
chip memory. It immediatly means that the GPU is able to concurrently manipulate the 3MBs of memory
as close to 'free of charge' as possible.
Since it's a gaming machine and doesn't need an independant os for much more than thread management,
This also means that those 3MBs will probably be dedicated to what is currently on screen.
From a texture memory perspective, one texel (texture pixel) is 4 bytes, assuming 32 bit color with
no compression. This means theres room for a million pixels in that memory at one time, or just shy
of a 1024x1024 pic. That memory can be manipulated quickly too!
For clarification, that is a REALLY COOL THING!!! That is the amount of data that can be played
with for FREE internally.
I don't know about anyone else, but judging by the 'spec' comparisons in the past, Nintendo plays
their resources to the fullest, and compared to the price tags of the other machines, I'm still
thinking Nintendo's box is probably going to be pretty nuts.
On a side note, I'm still not sure I like the idea of the controller...
I'm a 'reality' gamer, so if my natural habit of diving around while playing is a bad thing to have
while using a SDoF controller, the system is going to really let me down...
We'll find out, this is up for grabs for me
I wouldn't consider the mad hatter mad. Just reality impaired. He sure can make a mean cup of tea.
Mortal Kombat: Shaolin Monks had another interesting CPU restriction pop up. It was designed to work on the PS2, and they used ragdoll for death/pop-up attacks. If you get more than 2 people in the air at a time, the game will slow to a crawl. Thus they made it nearly impossible. This is because the PS2 version of Havok could not handle more than 2 ragdoll simulations at a time. Pretty pathetic.
-]Phreak Out[-
Actually that's partially incorrect. Yes, it was developed by ArtX, a company that was bought out by ATI approximately a month after the Gamecube was originally released.
just some guy
MS and Sony realise that simple games are selling too. This is part of why MS setup Live Arcade, and why the games there are cheap. Sony has yet to reveil anything more than a "me too!" statement.
-]Phreak Out[-
480p is not HD. Besides, Nintendo already said they will support 480p but no higher.
All that's been released is the clockspeed of the processors.
And the fact that the architectures are identical to the Gamecube ones. That means the CPU is basically a 730MHz Gecko and the GPU is a 240 MHz Flipper. The per clock performance of the Gecko chip (which is basically a G3 with integrated cache and the ability to use its 64-bit FPU as a 2x32-bit SIMD engine) is probably quite a bit better than the Xenon, but enough to make up for the enormous clockspeed difference.
The G3 is a very ancient chip. It has almost no OOO capability. Per-clock, its probably going to be faster than Cell, but considering that the per-clock of the PIII-based core in the XBox is in line with the G4, it won't match up even to the older console in CPU performance. As for graphics chips --- clockspeed times the number of pipelines is an excellent predictor of GPU performance. Only in a relatively small number of cases (eg: the Geforce FX debacle for NVIDIA), has pure fill-rate proved to be a poor predictor of overall performance in the case of conventional GPUs. The integrated memory helps the Flipper chip quite a bit, but given that it h as about the same clock-rate and the same number of pipelines as the XBox GPU, I wouldn't expect much more than that level of performance out of it. Overall, expect the Revolution to perform somewhat like a slightly improved XBox. Between the 1T-SRAM and the familiarity of developers with the GC architecture, Revolution developers should be able to wring substantially more out of the Revolution than they did out of the XBox, but I'd be surprised if the improvement was more than 50%.
A deep unwavering belief is a sure sign you're missing something...
Some Rare game won't be making it, at least thats their current statement. The ones with Nintendo characters will most likely be available, but the other like Goldeneye won't be available.
Yes, but the Art-X team behind the gamecube's graphics chip went on to be heavily involved in modern ATI GPUs. There's definitely a relationship between the two.
This isn't a case where ATI bought a team just to slap a sticker on the cube; they bought a team and actually integrated it into their development process, and actually used their tech.
Matt from IGN posted something on the Nintendo forums...
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So we've posted an updated look at the Revolution specs and the message boards have collectively imploded. A quick browse through some threads shows that Nintendo fans are by and large in an uproar over the console's power. This is an unfortunate eventuality, and also one that stems mostly from a mentality that insists Nintendo is competing with Microsoft and Sony, which it isn't.
As could be predicted, a few stupidly devoted posters out there refuse to budge from their position that Nintendo can do no wrong, and have as a result launched a counter-attack against IGN or, even better, me. Some incredible (nintendo wont let me type the word had to edit it) on another forum even referred to me colorfully as "Assamassina," which I admit is a pretty cool handle; I have used it once or twice myself. This same person then called into question my credibility, saying that my track record speaks for itself. Indeed, it does. If you've read the Nintendo section of IGN for any amount of time, you know that we have our sources, we break stories, and far more often than not, our information is accurate. I don't need to defend myself beyond that.
These Revolution specs should come as no surprise to most people. Back in December we reported more or less the same thing without hard numbers. Let's move past that, though. Nintendo's own leaders have stated more times than can be counted that Revolution is not a console focused on horsepower. Its executives have flat-out dismissed the possibility of high-definition graphics on the system. When Revolution is the topic, three words keep coming up: small, quiet, affordable. Where does massive horsepower fit into this equation?
Even so, I want to be clear on the point that hardware specs rarely tell the full story. We listed Xbox's CPU and GPU speeds compared to Revolution's, but readers should not assume that they are really comparable. These are different architectures. Fact is, GameCube's PowerPC-based Gekko CPU and ATI-developed Flipper GPU held their own against Xbox despite the fact that Microsoft's console's speeds were -- on paper -- dramatically faster. Further, these specs do not account for bandwidth, RAM speed, and other important factors. I expect that when Revolution finally surfaces, it will be a console whose strengths are greater than the sum of the parts we've listed thus far. Please, please keep that in mind.
At the same time, if you're still holding out for the miracle, do me a favor and stop. It seems that every time we write anything hardware related, there are the skeptics with the retaliatory comment, "Why does IGN post hearsay as fact? Nobody has final development hardware!!11111" Yes, the "1s" are there to demonstrate that these people are freak-in' morons. I did not wake up today, roll into the office and write a piece of literary fiction for readers to enjoy in lieu of legitimate news. This is not "hearsay" or rumor. These specs we post, they are copy/pasted to us directly from Nintendo's latest (as in, in the last couple of weeks) Revolution documentation. Quoted to us verbatim. And these quotes do not come from creatures that exist inside my head. I am talking with numerous development sources with hardware; people who have been briefed by Nintendo about what to expect from the final machine. Some of these people are preparing games to show at E3 2006, which is one month away. in short, they know what to expect; they aren't working with old materials; they aren't relaying old specs; and we aren't posting out-of-date information.
Is everything set in stone? Nope. If history has taught me anything, it's that hardware specs can and do change. Xbox 360 had 256MBs of RAM during a major phase of the development cycle. That number only doubled later in the cycle, likely after Sony relayed specs for PlayStation 3 to studios. That being true, there's always the chance that some of Revolution's numbers may change before the system finally hits retail shelv
Actually, Revolution will be quite capable of 16:9, as is the current GameCube hardware:
Source
It will output 480p according to Nintendo.
But 480p isn't dual 1080p at 120Hz like the PS3 can do, so it must be complete shit!!!!1
I have an HDTV and seriously just having the big screen and the higher dot pitch makes
it worthwhile playing PS2 and Gamecube games compared to a standard TV. The better color
definition from the component output gives a new lease of life to Metroid Prime, and even We 3 Katamari.
People forget that most people are running the older consoles through Composite or S-Video to their TV and haven't seen crystal clarity, bright colors, with no wavy lines or crawling. Moving to a SD progressive scan TV is awesome. Moving to an HDTV even at that
"low resolution" is just as awesome.
I will say something though.. I am a little worried about Virtual Console on TVs that can actually support HD inputs, nice clear screens, especially TFTs - the golden era of NES, SNES and N64 games that were running at 320x240 look absolutely terrible 32" wide with pixels the size of a baseball. Playing games like Ocarina of Time on the Gamecube (came free with Wind Waker) is so muddy and gross. Walking around the market place to the cathedral, with the static backgrounds, rolling around on Epona and having a green swathe of poo scroll past.. it looked great on a 14" fishbowl portable TV set but I couldn't even get past the first few quests in progressive scan.
why is the Revolution limited to 83MB of memory? How much does 256M of DRAM really cost?
You have to remember, this is 1T-SRAM.
A.K.A. Static RAM.
Which is faster than DRAM.
When all's said and done about which hardware produces the finest graphics, if you sat and played say "burnout 5" on all three next gen consoles, you wouldn't notice any meaningful difference unless you put all three on simultaneously and scrutinised the screens.
So even if Revolution has lower rez graphics, you won't notice. Console graphics havent improved to any perceptible degree since the dreamcast. The higher poly race isnt worth running anymore. Not that i'm saying graphics wont get any better, just that it isnt crucial for the gameplay experience to stay on the bleeding edge.
I just thank god nintendo have done something interesting and new. I hope this new console is as alien and captivating as the N64 was when it came out. A large part of the mind-blowingly fun experience of Mario64 was having this wierd new controller to play with.
(1.21 gigawatts) / (88 miles per hour) = 30 757 874 newtons
Fron what I read, the Revolution SDK is very much like the GC SDK (since the console are quite close architecture-wise), and more than a few devs have stated that it's probably the best SDK of the current generation, a bazilion times better than anything Sony ever released.
And it's cheap to boot, which means that indie game devs will be able to afford it and still have enough food to eat until their release their game.
"The way we can tell it's C# instead of Haskell is because it's nine lines instead of two." -- wadler
I've worked on all three platforms. And while I haven't didn't do the coding myself, I have worked with the coders who did.
The rule of thumb was that if you could do it on the Xbox, you could do it on the GameCube and you would probably have to shave it down to get it to work on the PS2. The problem child you have to worry about in a cross-platform title is always PS2.
I don't know where Casamassina is getting his assertion that GC polygon peaks were less than the PS2. Does he mean untextured polys? Again the PS2 is generally the platform that you have to optimize for.
Using MHz numbers to compare the speed of different processors is like comparing the speed of cars by looking at how much gas they consume. There is a relationship there, but it isn't the primary one. And it isn't the one you care about.
There are all sorts of reasons for performance numbers, such as the PS2's surprisingly fast cache but low ram, etc. I hope someone will do a detailed technical breakdown, because I really should remember this stuff. And also financial pressures play a part: you add optimization time for the Xbox if you think you will sell in North America, and optimization time for the GameCube if you have the possibility of Japan sales. But in general, the Xbox and Game Cube are similar in power, and the PS2 runs to catch up.
I can't really talk about the Revolution, partially because I don't have one, but I've heard other developers use the "2x more powerful than the GC" figure. That puts it somewhere between the Xbox 1 and the Xbox 360.
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