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Playstation2 Low-Down
Boofo writes "The skinny on what will be in the
playstation 2
Firewire, USB, PCMCIA, a fill rate of 2.4 billion pixels a second and draw 20 million polygons a second....blows the doors off a pentium III with a Voodoo III."
Why the hell are they making this thing with all of these options? Just start making a computer and call it a playstation2 :) And you can even upgrade it. Upgrading a console is very unlikely. I have only seen a few upgrades for consoles and they were cd-roms...big deal. The playstation2 looks nice, but I rather keep my puter and run Linux!
Natas
http://www.mp3.com/pedophagia
If they can sell a kick-ass 3D gaming system like this for approx $400, why can't someone put that functionality on a 3D board for a PC?
Anyone?
Is the Playstation 2 specs really that much more powerful than a top of the line gaming PC? After all, the PS2 only has to push polygons at 320x240 resolution (or whatever tv rez is), while Voodoo3 can run at "acceptable" speeds at 1600x1200.
Too bad, with VGA out it could be turned into
something useful.
Sure, it might blow the doors off of a P3
with a Voodoo3, but let us remember a
couple of things. First of all, The P3 is
available now, and the Voodoo3 will be out
in under a month. Second, the PSX2 won't be
out for a year or more. both 3DFX and nVidia,
as well as a number of other companies, have
next generation 3D accelerators slated for
Winter '99. By the time PSX2 is released in the
USA, it may be equal to or falling behind the
then-current high end gaming PCs. For a console,
it will be fantastic, but I have no doubt that
consumer level graphics accelerators will keep
their hold on the lead.
From what I understand, every console manufacturer loses a LOT of money on every system they sell, but more than make up for it on the royalties they get for every single game published on their system. I remember hearing that N64 cost over $500 for Nintendo to produce at the start but the street price was (I'm not sure), maybe $249.
It can output to monitors and HDTV after all.
Well, dang. I gave my playstation away after about three hours of play (Resident Evil, FFVII, ho hum). Console-style games bore me... give me Half-Life or Total Annihilation any day. But this machine... I want one.
... what the hell are they using in this thing for a CPU, an Alpha? Anyone know?
definitely, ps2 has far less things to worry about as far as resolution goes, what the hell are they gonna use pcmcia for? and usb?? what am I gonna be able to use my zip drive on this thing, sounds unnecessary
I have a mirror of the video clips even nice little preview pics, if thats what your looking for... www.gamenfo.com
The console just has to worry about doing stuff like games and doesn't have to spend extra CPU cycles doing other stuff like the OS, other programs, etc. With a PC, you have a little more overhead.
Is this correct? If so then it will be faster then not only a lowly P-III w/ Vodoo III but an Alpha with a PowerEdge 3D card... I find that very hard to belive, also 24 billion pixels per second is superflous EVEN at HDTV resolutions...
If you watch the demos, you'll see some impressive animations and what have you... all of which can be done with current Celeron based PC with good 3D video card doing a mere 2 million polygons a second compared to the PS2's claimed 13Mpol/sec.
The price might be $400 in the US, but it's $840 in Japan, and you have to remeber, Sony can sell at a loss because they're probably makeing a percentage of every game sold... Imagine how much you could buy a PC for if M$ and id and Informix and Corel had to give $2/program sold!!!
Still, even as a game platform, unless they get a dataglove, it's pretty useless until they add a keyboard, a mouse, and an ethernet card [or ADSL/Cable modems start supporting Firewire] as part of the introduction. Flight Sims, good 1st Person Shooters etc. are right out. Most games don't even support the analog joystick for the PSX yet because they came out latter!
by the time the playstation is out (sometime next year) that "high end" PC will going for $600. suddenly, the playstation doesn't sound so hot.
Special purpose hardware chips, several of them.
Special purpose hardware is always gonna be faster than general purpose hardware which basically has to emulate the special purpose stuff in software. It's just that the GP stuff can emulate all kinds of SP stuff, but the SP stuff is stuck with one task.
A tradeoff, like everything else.
Now, if we could use one of these suckers as an output peripheral...
So here we have seemingly cool hardware. And it has lots of fillrate. And it displays to the worst possible display device. I am not even slightly interested. . .
From memory:
The PSX2 contains three processors, one a MIPS-based Toshiba CPU with SIMD instructions and two custom vector processors. I suspect the apparently high FLOP rating comes from the simultaneous use of all three using SIMD instructions.
Uhm...there are VERY strong rumours that linux is the primary development system supported by Sony, and even more importantly there are numerous rumours that the OS of the PSX2 will be a parred down realtime linux kernel. Of course a normal person won't have access to the PSX2 OS, just like you don't have access to the PSX's OS...
actually they weren't super optimized demos. they were old FMV data whipped out of the closet by a few close developers (namco etc) and made to render real time in a span of 2 weeks...
look at the chip numbers...obviously it can push phenomenal amounts of polys
Since Sony is using Linux to develop their games, wouldn't it be cool if they made the games for the ps2 playable under Linux. Don't worry about porting anything to windows. If windows users want to play the ps2 games, tell them to go buy the console. Sony could include a Linux executable on the cd. I've wanted a playstation for the past year or so but I would much rather spend the money on an upgrade for my computer than buy a console system that I would have to replace after 2-3 years. The only thing that I can see that might cause problems is hardware compatibility like different video cards and getting 3d accelerators working properly. With the support of the Linux community, I would bet that Sony could get the majority of the incompatibilities fixed in no time at all. If Sony could pull this off and get it reliable, I know that I'd buy quite a few ps2 games, and it would really let Linux strut its stuff as a gaming platform.
a MIPS R IV series derivative with 107 multimedia extended instructions as the central CPU
*chuckle* will never happen. Console games are written to take advantage of the hardware, and in particular on multiple cpu consoles this is even MORE needed. The graphics chip in the console is sepearate, as are the 2 separate VPUS, and the FPU can also be considered separate. IE. games will be tailored to run on THAT hardware and not quite extensively changed to support a plethora of far inferior 3d cards etc...all of the transforming would be done in software (ie. on the PC CPU) as opposed to hardware (the 2 VPU's in the PSX2)...
:>>>
basically it will never...ever...happen
nice thinking though
btw I speak this as a PSX developer and one who will be getting his grubby little hands on a dev station for the PSX2 in the not too distant future
If they're distributing a parred down Linux
kernel as the PSX2 OS, the GPL requires them
to make the source available.
Oh, indeed. Televisions, HDTVs, and (probably) computer monitors are the *worst* possible display devices.
I assume you've already got a direct neural jack implanted?
i think your confused about the definition of 'upgrading'. to be fair though, i think the original poster wasn't terribly clear :). anyway, it doesn't mean that we shouldn't buy a psx2 because we already have a pc, it means that if we already shelled out $200 for all our nice psx1 games, we still want some use from the from the psx2! before, the alternatives were (a) keep around two systems so you can play all the games; (b) throw out/sell your old games :( along with your old system. quite frankly i don't know why this hasn't been done too much before in the past with consoles.
Hmm not exactly :). The PSX2 will still have an operating system of sorts, and it's not like an OS eats up a lot of resources (besides RAM maybe). I'd have to agree with some poster before my up there ^^ somewhere, in that the reason we can't get cheap PCs like this is because PC makers are not affiliated with game companies. Sony loses money on the Playstation and makes money on the games. PC hardware people don't have this luxury.
In the past it has been PC games that are the big ground breakers (Doom, Quake, Tomb Raider) that eventually move to consoles. Look at Unreal.
It's easier to develop on an established, known platform and then move to closely guarded proprietary ones.
It looks like it will be more just a 3D accelerator in a box. The CPU is pretty good, yes, but for render farms you'd get more bang for the buck from an Alpha or something.
>Since Sony is using Linux to develop their games,
/. posts.
>wouldn't it be cool if they made the games for
>the ps2 playable under Linux.
Um, you ever hear about crosscompiling? The development environment can be Linux, Windoze, MacOS, Irix, or anything else for most modern consoles, but the games don't run on those OSs.
PSX, Saturn, N64, SNES, Genesis, DC development kits all use a host PC (usually running Windows), which has a I/O connection (SCSI, ISA, PCI, Parallel) to a development kit for that console-- which is usually that console with the appropriate I/O interface bolted on. The game never runs on the host PC, it's done purely on the devkit while the host PC is a 'remote debugger'.
Plus, there's the little detail about PSX2 having ungodly polygon counts and damn nice 3D support. Right now, just about only 3dfx provides some kind of *drivers* for their 3D cards. You really think Mesa can push 20 million polygons per second in software? Hah. The custom CPU with FPUs hanging off every register, you really think gcc will be able to code effectively for that? Hah-- people will be using boatloads of assembly, making things very unportable.
You want nice Linux games, then get off your soapbox and start WRITING them. Don't whine to others to port the work they've already done, don't make up lies about how Linux supports every consumer-level 3D card out there as well as D3D does. Sorry, but Linux's 3D support is way lacking. To paraphrase a recent movie, "SHOW ME THE DRIVERS!" Get the drivers available, then start writing *CODE*, not meaningless
When will we see a PSX or other console with a VGA port on the back? To be honest, after playing games on a PC, TV sets always seem blurry and the colors aren't as bright as they should be.
VGA monitors with seperate RGB signals and high resolutions/dot pitches will always outdo TV sets and composite video. The video game industry should join the 90's.
-=^o.o^=
Aside from the question of whether or not they'll let you play back regular DVD's, in all the spec information I've seen there hasn't been a clear indication of a standard interface to get Digital Audio out (ala TOS-link, Optical, S/P-DIF, etc.).
Unless they make a converter from the IEEE-1394 port to these standard home stereo connections, you're going to be limited to Dolby Surround output, which really sucks compared to Dolby Digital 5.1 or DTS (which REALLY show the benefits of the DVD movie format).
Playback of regular DVD movies on this platform would be a real killer way of getting mass acceptance of the DVD movie format though. DVD really rocks! Sony would only loose by not providing it.
The N64 and PSX are basically given away (like cell phones et al).
The units are priced just high enough to avoid "spurious" buyers.
The money is all made on the licencing of the games.
As another posted, mass production economies of scale also come into play.
Personally, I hope it rocks . . .
I think PSX was a better *system* than N64. I will trade the functionality of the cd-rom for the 'better' graphics any day
TO ROB:
the tag should be rendered in +2, italics, blinking, color="#FF0000"
For those that don't know, there is an up and coming Playstation emulator called bleem (http://www.bleem.com/) for windows. Bleem can do just what you are saying...developers can include an executable of bleem on a playstation disc, and run the game on both windows and your playstation.
Everyone is using NT to develop games so where are the NT games? Face it, linux (and NT) sucks for games.
More stupid hype..
*Yawn*
I'll take a PC, and that's final...
The question is, how will PSX2 compare to Intels latest when it actually ships! They are saying late in 2000 for PSX2 and I don't imagine Intel is going to be sitting with their thumbs up their asses any more than usual.
I have never seen this much hype for a console system ever... it kind of scares me that its more than a year away and people are already going crazy about it -> even sonys stock went up after they made the announcement... all over a piece of hardware that doesnt even really exist yet.
Um, what's dead end about the 400 mbps Firewire that came on my video camera that I just bought last month? And why should I care that Apple developed it? And what is superior about this as-yet vaporous 200 mbps USB 2? Really, I do want to know.
blows the doors off a pentium III with a Voodoo III.
Excuse me, but comparing a product shipping in 1999 with a product shipping at least a year later is pretty bogus! How will the playstation compare with the high end desktop that will be shipping at the same time it ships? That being said, it looks like consoles and PCs will probably remain fairly close in capabilities, although the consoles have an obvious price/performance advantage.
Besides which, I want a system that supports ethernet for team play (a la Quake clans) and HDTV output. What good is it to be able to render 20 million polygons per second if you can only output to a lousy old 525 line analog TV?
What makes you think THAT?
Modelling apps usually run under NT... but its pretty damned hard to write a DX game when you can't run DX, now, isn't it? Coders run under 98.
(Why does everyone on slashdot think they're an expert?)
Well, on the first video, it shows Crash Bandicoot at the end, running with a bunch of penguins... an all-welcoming sign of the new world that is linux?
Ever tried play Teken on your Beowulf cluster? Ever tried teaching kids how to use your Beowulf cluster in order to play Teken?
Ah, kids should probably not play Teken anyway.
I think you should also need to add in the price of the monitor to the computer system. At $1300 for system + monitor, you're getting a not-so-fast system or a low quality monitor. Either way, the image quality will suffer.
--
Jason Eric Pierce
Go to Gaming Age Online
Next Generation is a joke. They appear to enjoy plagerism too much. I believe this same info about the PS2 was on GAO earlier this week.
Voodoo 3 will be out more than a year before
the Playstation 2.
By the time PSX2 is out, the Voodoo 4 will probably already be shipping..
You can't compare something 1 1/2 years into
the future to something that will be available
in a month..
This is an EXTREME form of nVidias marketing,
which I hated. They said that the TNT would smash
Voodoo 2 SLI (which it didn't) but "forgot" to
mention that the TNT came out 1/2 year after the
Voodoo 2.
Bwahahaha...
You aren't very subtle, aren't you? Your skills as a troll are lacking: you full-on insulted Apple and Firewire, but got less than ten responses. =(
Boohoo...my tears are for you.
LOL!
I'm sorry, how do you spell IEEE? IEEE 1394a is anything but proprietary, and it's not vaporware like USB 2.0. "Unknown/unproven but clearly superior"? Whatever.
The only reason companies don't want to spend $1 per port to license FireWire from Apple is because they're jealous that Apple did the right thing.
As far as spec goes people really should be comparing something like:
Merced or K7/K8 with something like Voodoo4/5 or Nvidia TNT2/3. Comparing an existing platform with something almost 1-2 years away is just plain stupid. It's like saying the N64 is more capable than an old Pentium in graphics.
Uhhh. Actually it is fairly common for PC developers to have 2 machines. One running NT, which is their main development machine running VC/SS other cool software. And one machine running 9x, which you remotely run the game on. Great for fullscreen debugging. And great for stability on your dev enviroment. You trash the 9x box once a month, reboot it 10 times a day, it's nothing but a targetmachine anyway.
Actually, Tomb Raider came out for the PSX first... and the PC about a month later.
And as far as the Doom/Quake thing goes, I know PLENTY of people who could care less about that genre but consider the Final Fantasy's/Tekkens/etc to be the top form of gaming... Most people here probably like PC gaming because thats what they do... I bought a PSX about 2 years ago for one particular game (Soul Blade, if you must know) because fighting games have always been a weak genre on the PC... Since then I've been glad I've bought it for things like the Final Fantasies, Metal Gear, Parasite Eve, some other fighting games, Need for Speed III and Gran Turismo (I still don't have a wheel for my PC), etc etc (NFS III was out on the PSX for almost 6 months before the PC version...
I still play PC games, and really enjoyed Half-Life (first FPS shooter I've really liked since Doom) and just started playing Heroes of M&M III last night. I see advantages to both types of gaming but also see real differences. I play PSX games for a quick, mostly action based fix, or for story-based RPGs. I tend to play PC games for more cerebral experiences (SimCity 3000, Alpha Centauri, etc lately).
Hmm well sony have already been using gcc toolchain for their dev systems and I have never seen any gpl'd playstation linkers. Hmm..
Compare it to some better PC 3D card/chipset than Voodoo3, like Bitboys Glaze 3D, it blasts Voodoo3 away serval times. http://www.glaze3d.com
well at the time n64 was VERY competitive...
samedi@disinfo.zeldaroks.net
hmm..idle speculation on my part here... but...
i) Amiga/Gateway are working with QNX to produce some sort of pared-down RT OS for "cool stuff"
ii) They are also working with several unspecified "hardware vendors" one of which is a "consumer electronics" corp. provide a "Magic Mystery Monster Chip", or whatever
iii) More than that, they just won't say...
iv) linux/QNX are simlar in APIs, anyway - no reason why Amiga NG dev boxes couldn't be linux.
So... you can see whrere this is headed ( some sort of nutbat alternate universe, obviously...but...) Is the playstation 2 going to be an Amiga ?
I've been wondering what they plan on using
the FireWire port for. They could plan on using
to attach some sort of external media. Or they
could be planning to use it as interface to
Digital TVs/monitors. 400Mbps is enough for
high res 1024x768 x 16 bit color at 25-30fps.
Perhaps Sony has seen the light and that selling
Windows PCs doesn't really help them. Perhaps
they are planning on invading your home via TV.
On top of that add stuff like internet service, video editing and home automation etc.
The TNT does beat a single V2 and the TNT SLI should knock off a V3 (which won't be SLI'ed). TNT 2 SLI should smoke voodoodoo
I've seen several people compare the price of the ps2 directly to that of a pc for competition purposes. That comparison is only valid if the sole reason you are buying a pc is to play games. Since most people use a pc for many other things, and would probably own one in addition to a ps2, the proper way to compare price would be the additional cost of configuring your pc to play games, which for most people means the cost of a 3d card and maybe some additional hd space to store games.
a psx can't play the thousands of games you can get on a pc either
quake 3 will look like a cga game compared to psx2 if those screenshots are for real
yeah those linux games are awesome! Right?
Calm down people. This thing isn't even going to be out for a year and a half, and thats probably an optimistic projection. I'm sure it blows the doors of the PIII the same way the iMac outperformed the PII. (Remember when Apple claimed that?)
The idea that the psx2 is going to compete with a serious computer is the biggest joke. I'm sure it will be very good console, when it comes out its graphics will probably be comparable to an above average pc, and for those who enjoy paying Sony a tax for every overpriced game they purchase it's probably a good thing. But within a few months a bottom of the line pc will outperform it, and the psx2 will look as powerful compared to a pc as the psx1 does today.
Consoles games can certainly be fun, but they are never going to compete seriously with pcs for performance in any category.
I like your thinking-
Now if they also use private namespaces (ala plan9) and dont take the distributed computing features out of the new qnx/amigaos and last but not least GPL it and you have a truly superior candidate for world domination.
Ok, so it the system would have supreme floating point processing power, right? So, what if you're not doing floating point calculations? What if you're compiling, or something similar? How does this unit stand up in that case?
But remember, that's a crappy low-end SGI which is already out.
I wonder if the PSX-2 could be connected to a PC to provide the equivalent of a hugely fast graphics board?
:)
Would Firewire or any of the other interfaces be fast enough to handle realtime gaming graphics being streamed to the PSX 2 for display, rather than to a PCI or AGP card?
Since the PSX-2 supposedly outperforms an SGI InfiniteReality (specced at up to 13 Million poly/second with quad-R10000s) and has it's own geometry engine, the PSX-2 would likely make an inexpensive and hugely capable dedicated graphics engine for a PC.
The advantages of using 2 or more of these boxes in parallel also naturally spring to mind...
But, really, how much does one of these 50 million polys/sec chips actually cost *today*? I would be pretty interested, Sony are obviously betting on big advances being made in chip fab technology by early 2000.
Perhaps theyre betting that, after the P3 fails spectacularly and Intel are on the skids, they'll have a whole lot of excess capacity to make PSX 2 chips
umm, wasnt he referring to the g3's in general? not just the bloody iMac which is the bottom of the line?
Here's a thought:
The technology on the PS2 is clearly far ahead of anything on the market now, and there's a good chance it will still be ahead of anything on the market come October of 2000. (Compare the Emotion Engine's 6.2 GFLOPS to the Merced's 3 GFLOPS -- both vaporware now, of course, but both clearly being the future for Sony & Intel.) The USB, PCMCIA and IE1394 ports make it all too easy to add peripherals.
How easy will it be for either Sony or a third party to attach an inexpensive box to the PS2 that adds a hard drive, cable or DSL modem, keyboard and mouse/trackball to this unit, thus creating a full-fledged PC that can run everything in your living room?
Now, not only do we have the most powerful gaming console on the market, but we have a DVD movie player *and* a Linux box providing high-speed net access in everyone's living room, not to mention running all those other apps that Linux will no doubt support by 2001. All on HDTV, of course, with Dolby Digital 5.1 audio...
The PC may not be disappearing any time soon, but I have a feeling Sony is creating an opportunity for someone to redefine the PC for the home. I'm not sure if it'll happen, but it sure would be fun, wouldn't it?
Here's a thought:
You're a fucking moron.
Sony are obviously betting on big advances being made in chip fab technology by early 2000.
Or they know something about chip fab advances that everyone else doesn't. This *is* a behemoth corporation we're talking about here...
Apple claimed that the iMac was 40% faster than a Pentium II 400. G3's can actually outperform Pentium II's in real world situations, but the iMac claim was BS.
Linux is the development platform. Not what the
machine will run.
Jason: "Hurry up, Mom, me and Peter wanna play Final Fantasy XI."
Mom: "Hold your horses, kiddo. I'm buying Oprah's book of the month at Amazon.com."
Peter: "Hey, have they got the new Sheryl Crow MP3 over there?"
Paige: "Mooooom! You said I could go shopping at Gap.com tonight!"
Mom: "Did you talk to your father about that?"
Paige: "But I've got money on my smart card!"
Dad: "I brought home a DVD flick. Anyone wanna watch?"
Everyone else: "NOT NOW!"
Now ask yourself -- do we *really* want an all-purpose set-top box?
Why care...
This sytem is engineered from the ground up to run games. It is not meant to be used as anything else and it will probably not be good at anything else. If you are going to get this kind of game performance out of the system at $400, it is not very economical to make it good at something it is not going to be used for. Get a PlayStation2 for games and keep your computer for programming or what ever...
Totally Anonymous Coward...
TV style does either 320x200 max (through vhf) or it can push a decent 720x400 (rare, usually on video capture hardware) though s-video.
... I seriously doubt that lil game box will or can do vga quality.
Now I run my two vodoo2 (sli, speed/power equivalent to the vodoo3) on my matrox video at 1024x768
Yessir we have really fast crappy looking video!
What are they gonna use PCMCIA for? How about the ability to connect a PSX2 to a cablemodem?
Shrike
You can do RGB out you ass wipe!!!
GO investigate the PSX, man are all americans this dumb??? oh sorry, yes they are.
And btw how many people at home own $5000 TV sets with SCART plugs? duh... ask sony to join the real world and provide RGB plugs.
For gods sake , why are there so many dumb asses around? whoops sorry, yeeah, all the smart asses are making millions and know shit, while all the others just are consumers.... SUCKERS
All games run at 50 or 60 fps, ie FIELDS per second, or just change the display every field, so in effect it IS frames per second dude because its in NON INTERLACED mode
:P~~~
man even back in 1988 amigas did demos/games in full 50/60fps, non interlaced, fields/frames , its the same thing when its in NON INTERLACED
and it looks DARHM SMOOTH tooo
Im sick of correcting lamers, oh well.. those that dont know will never know and stuff you, coz I do.. and i can laff about all those lamers who know shit all,
come on now, how hard is to do 20 million polys per second? My amiga used to do that back in 1985 :)))
The article says that it has some expansion busses, in addition to the usb, firewire, and pcmcia. This sounds almost exactly like how the amiga started.
Are you smoking crack?
At the very least this system will be a 250MHz MIPS system with integer, floatingpoint, and possible graphics-specific SIMD extensions. It has 32MB of RAM and a FireWire port. What makes you think even for a second that you won't be able to use these features for general-purpose computing?
well, you have to add depth complexity to the picture too. Which is something like whenever the pixel is accessed by the video card..eg for multitextruing and all that jazz. So if you take 1920x1080(which is HDTV's highest resolution I think)
:P
1920 * 1080 * 60 = 124,416,000
which would allow a depth complexity up to:
2,400,000,000 / 124,416,000 = 19.290
which seems like a better answer...i hope
I think we already know that. But Linux has been ported to MIPS-based platforms, yes?
The PlayStation isn't as close to DEC's old MIPS workstations or SGI Indies as the SGI VW is to standard PCs. And it hasn't been exactly a walk in the park getting Linux up on the VWs.
Similarly, the Sega Gensis had a "power base convertor" which let you play MasterSystem games.
Only about 1985. Wait, it's 1999 already, that is pretty old.
Or MEMORY CARDS!
But because it's analog, it's hard to judge exactly what the horizontal resolution is. And because it's interlaced, the vertical resolution isn't actually that good.
No, the top of the line will just get better.
I'd be pleased if I could just get a good 21" monitor (probably a Sony (heh) or Nokia) for that price.
But... but... you mentioned the VW, not the Onyx2.
But... but... the other guy (not you, I realized) mentioned the VW, not the Onyx2!
And I just checked, the Onyx2 gets over 210M polys/sec. So I guess I do have some vague notion of what I speak, after all.
The psx2 has HDTV support and a PCMCIA slot which could be used for ethernet.
> The price might be $400 in the US, but it's $840 in Japan, and you have to remeber, Sony can sell at a
Are you sure it's $840 in Japan? I thought that was the price point of PCs there which they had to beat.
hell, i just got a psx in november cause i was offered one with a modchip (and ive got a cdr)... ive got 40+ games already and all copies... i don't wanna buy a new psx and not be able to play my old games in it damnit...
If you refreshed the screen every cycle (between a full dual scan for an interlaced screen, of which a TV is no matter WHAT hacks you try), your vertical resolution drops to 1/2 and looks like shit if you really want to say that it is updating like it isn't interlaced.
Game consoles are ALWAYS overhyped with completely bogus specs for the longest time (inspiring the rapid succession of "PCs versus console" arguments which the industry has gone through time after time after time...strange, but my Sonic the Hedgehog skills just aren't marketable anymore). Eventually the hardware will really come out, usually far more expensive than originally announced, and usually far later than originally announced, and people will open their mouths in amazement at how crappy it really is.
TV is a really crappy display medium. So of course people will buy monitors for this thing, bumping the price several hundred dollars. Oh, then get the...
Ummm....that sounds exactly like the kinds of problems we have now with our PCs - too many people trying to do too many different tasks on it at once. That's why you buy the PSX box and let the kids use it. PSX2 will be more of the same; with the extra frills for those who want it. Now, if it this PSX2 thing can be networked into a home LAN that would be cool....
Psx2 probably is hyped beyond measure bit still.
The benefits of custom tailored hw and sw solution will be so much better in every aspect except of course upgrading and personal adjustments.
Let's face it Linux is NOT the perfect OS.
It's the best currently available. But that doesn't necesssarily make it fit for the psx2.
What we need is a versatile sw solution that will make us use the psx2's abilities for more than just playing or wordprocessing.
I think most of you don't realize what can be achieved when the hw matches sw perfectly.
Take a look at sgi's pc's and the way they've tackled the graphic system, can you say 'customized'?
Today we still dont have consumer OS's that use vliw or similar features even though the technology is there and has been proved useful.
If that can be made we'll be facing a brighter future for pc's definitively.
And yes- I'd be supporting apple if they would wake up and give their hard and sw a complete overhaul. I think that hw efficient topsetboxes is the answer to most users need.
Including mine I'm getting sick of hw incompatabilities proprietary dll's bad memory management etc.
Ps. if you have seen what the psx can do today with it's frankly small cpu and limited memory you'd have to be somewhat stubborn not to acknowledge the possible perfomance of the next generation psx.
mester
Oh god I'm going to rip my feckhin' arms off, aye!t or -textures.. oh kids get a life.
.. ahem, I'm too hot.. to shout things irrelevant things like "poopXII + dudu9-Pistol Blood Gore Fest XYZ 4D With tennis extensions WILL crush yer feckin' PSX2 and nothing can be true about PSX2 until the ones I mentioned before come out. PC! MY WAY IS THE ONLY WAY!"
Voodoo3.. with 16bit rendering, 256x256 blurred-fog-where's_my_sharpening_filter_for_moni
You can speculate and all that stuff for ages and still go on after PSX2 is released.
There are different marketing for both game machines (yes, PC is a gamemachine.) Will PSX2 change it? With these specs it will be a move towards it, but yes we will still co-exist.
*SIGH*
Lets see how it performs WHEN it comes out or somebody tests it. Until then, I think most of you are quite
:) Sarcasm. Let and Let Live.
--
Jarno Kilpiä
legend@merikoski.fi
Legend/CNCD
FireWire gives ability to plug in a HD :-) Then it could be called Linux CE (Win CE is in the dreamcast) :-)
USB allow you to plug in a keyboard and a bouse
(and other things like network...)
PCMCIA allow ethernet controler for Cable modems
or more RAM
then with 32Megs of RAM and a VGA Monitor, that's sufficient to port Linux to this beast
That could be a fun challenge, just like the port of linux to Psion 5
That's only in single texturing, though, since the TNT can use its TMUs separately, while the Voodoo2 can only use them for multitexturing.
A top of the line gaming PC costs what, $2000.
A playstation 2 will probably run $200.
However, that top-of-the-line gaming PC will probably cost around $500-$800 by the time the PSX2 is actually released in the US. And from the rumors I've heard, the PSX will be closer to $350-$400 initially.
10 PRINT CHR$(205.5+RND(1)); : GOTO 10
Yes, but by the time the PSX2 actually comes out in the US, you should be able to get a pIII + vIII + 21" monitor for under $1000. Not to mention that you'll need to buy the monitor (or a $700+ HDTV) for the PSX as well, if you want decent image quality.
10 PRINT CHR$(205.5+RND(1)); : GOTO 10
Well, supposedly it'll support HDTV and SVGA monitors.
So, if we take a 1024x768 resolution, that's 786,432 pixels per frame. 30 frames/second gives you 23,592,960 (approx. 24 million) pixels per second. Odd, I wonder where the extra factor of 1000 comes in.
10 PRINT CHR$(205.5+RND(1)); : GOTO 10
Posted by psychokid:
I remember Gillette saying this one time..from some business mag.
"Give them the razors and sell them the razor blades"
Unfortunately, the same theory applies to Iomega's stratagey w/ selling removable media. That's why whey could've made much better drives, but don't because they know they make a killing on profits off of each blank media they sell.
Well, the other explanations are OK, but the main explanation is...
mass production
They'll be churning these things out in *outrageous* volumes. I mean look at their aims, a PS in *every* American home, plus Japan, Europe, the rest of Asia...
--
"The signal to noise ratio here on the Internet has never been higher."
:)
I guess that means everything you've heard about the Playstation 2 is true.
Viewable TV resolution is 640x480 [actually it's 720x480 if you wanna go there] at 60 fields or 30 frames per second [for NTSC] PAL and other encodings use a different colour space and different framerates.
Blocklevel: Practical Information Architecture
Isn't that the goal of every PC maker too? Sony won't be able to mass produce at that scale at first, because since they lose money on every console system, the costs would just be prohibitive. Mass production can only save you so much; but the systems are still more expensive to produce than they are sold for.
That's why companies fight so hard to force game makers to pay for licenses (through royalties). Remember the big Nintendo/Tengen dispute? Licensing is their primary source of revenue (just as movie theater's primary source of revenue isn't the movies but the food they sell).
--
Aaron Gaudio
"The fool finds ignorance all around him.
"Every man is a mob, a chain gang of idiots." - Jonathan Nolan, Memento Mori
For a non-interlaced picture (flicker-free games) you can use 320x240 or even 640x240(these are for NTSC, PAL is slightly higher in the resolution at the expense of picture update frequency). The current playstation also supports 640x480 images. the game Einhander has a graphics library composed of pictures at this resolution.
The specs for the Playstation 2 indicate that it will suport HDTV(wide screen gaming!!!) as well as computer monitors. However, it does not dictate what resolutions it will support.
Uhh.. Why?
Or one could just put about 30 Voodoo2s into an SLI-like configuration and have it today. I suppose you'd need a Beowolf for the vertex processing though (ducks for cover).
I can't get a response from the server.. are we SlashDotted allready??
I emailed the guy at Ensemble studios yesterday about whether there was any chance of an AOE port to Linux. (Yes, stupid, I know. I just love that game. If AOE and quicken came over to Linux, I could nuke my Win95 partition for good.)
... I'm getting away from myself. His reply was:
Anyway
"Linux... I doubt it.... Both Playstation and Mac ports of AOE are coming soon (Spring/Summer 99)"
AOE's multiplayer mode is the most fun part of the game. PCMCIA ethernet in the PSX could use that.
Of course, in my dream world, I would get a PSX emulator for my Linux box.
Now here's a question. Could all the capabilities of the PSX be brought over to a computer by putting that hardware on a PCI card? Maybe with a software interface to the computer?
OK, I'll stop now.
This is a repost from another thread, but it seemed applicable to this thread as well. Plus I'd like to get that Playstation Developer's point of view.
... I'm getting away from myself. His reply was:
I emailed the guy at Ensemble studios yesterday about whether there was any chance of an AOE port to Linux. (Yes, stupid, I know. I just love that game. If AOE and quicken came over to Linux, I could nuke my Win95 partition for good.)
Anyway
"Linux... I doubt it.... Both Playstation and Mac ports of AOE are coming soon (Spring/Summer 99)"
AOE's multiplayer mode is the most fun part of the game. PCMCIA ethernet in the PSX could use that.
Of course, in my dream world, I would get a PSX emulator for my Linux box.
Now here's a question. Could all the capabilities of the PSX be brought over to a computer by putting that hardware on a PCI card? Maybe with a software interface to the computer?
Why would that not be practical? Not being belligerent, just curious. If the console-on-a-card were ~the same price as the console itself, I would think very seriously about buying one. See above reference to AOE for the reason why. Plus I would love to have all the Playstation games available to me too.
Waddaya think HDTV is for?
.
Once again, you can make a kick as cheap beowolf cluster once linux is ported. Maybe a renderfarm instead...hmmm
USA-Democracy is 270 million YESes and NOes a day, not one every four years.
Is the Playstation 2 specs really that much more powerful than a top of the line gaming PC? After all, the PS2 only has to push polygons at 320x240 resolution (or whatever tv rez is), while Voodoo3 can run at "acceptable" speeds at 1600x1200
According to the Specs released, the PSX2 can do ~ 20 mill polys a second (with bezier curve calculation) and the V3 can do ~ 8 mill polys a second. both can do DVD playback (looking at the specs) both supposed support TV, SVGA, HDTV, LCD (supposedly). The V3 is cheaper (~$160), but needs a ~US$1300 computer system to bring anywhere near its expected performance, where as the PSX2 is a console, it takes care of what it needs to, so for ~$400 + a TV ($120-$800) it looks like it is acceptable. as for the resolution, the specs i've seem claim 60 frames a second (which is faster than you can display, you do 60 fields/30frames on NTSC) where the console takes the extra frames and calculates motionblur between them before outputing on the next update cycle.
pixels, not polys. a TV is what, ~640x480? so, htats like 307,200 pixels a 'frame', but TV's use fields, so its more like 153,600 a field, at 60 fields a second is 9,216,000 pixels a second for your average TV show. Remember, that 24 bill is most likely just doing pix's.
Since Sega made a deal with MS on their new platform and the Dreamcast games can easily be ported back and forth between their console and a PC, why wouldn't sony try to do something similar? kinda like 3com's Pilot Emu they released for people to develop apps.
with the release of this unit.
From the article: "...the ability to output video to High Definition Televisions and Computer Monitors (as well as to plain old NTSC TVs)." Looks like your answer is when this unit comes out...
"Time flies like an arrow; fruit flies like a banana." --Groucho Marx
Uh, I guess you missed the 5 or so mpgs they released? Doesn't look like vaporware to me.
Take a good look at the screen shots and MPEGs. They look nice, yes. They are worth buying a Playstation 2 for? Quite possibly. They need 50^H^H70^H^H20 million polygons per second to render? Not really. Believe marketing specs at your peril. The numbers that I've been hearing floating out of the developer community are quite a bit lower.
In principle, yes. This is in fact done for development boards IIRC. However, in practice, this won't be much more useful or cost-effective than just buying a separate console.
The problem is that a PC's I/O and memory subsystems are relatively lousy. A console (or a real workstation, for that matter) has a highly optimized, very fast, and very wide set of busses connection the various components of the system in a configuration designed to serve the needs of the purpose for which the system is being used (for a console, graphics processing). If you dropped a console's graphics processors on a PCI card and let the CPU handle all other tasks, the system would crawl, because the PC's bus doesn't have the bandwidth to control the hardware effectively. You could stick most of the console components on the card and give it an internal bus with appropriate specs, but then you just have a full console sitting in your PCI slot. There isn't much point.
This is useful for development boards, because it lets you transfer new builds of games to the console and run the console in debug mode, but IMO a gamer would be better off just with the production version of the console and a TV. I'm sure that somebody will figure out how to run home-brewed or pirated games on it in short order, especially with firewire and other ports available for data transfer (boot to a special CD and run the game off of a hard drive).
I strongly suspect that a fill rate that insane is for flat-shaded untextured polygons, or at best for single-textured polygons. Divide by four for a quad-textured multitextured polygon, or by somewhere between 2 and 8 for a single-textured polygon with trilinear filtering, depending on the conditions and how clever the hardware is.
There's also the question of overdraw. Triangles overlap each other; this is why z-buffering exists. In the worst case, where your polygons are drawn from back to front, you wind up drawing n times as many pixels as are actually displayed, where n is the number of overlapping triangles. Overdraw factor varies widely, as it depends on how much effort the game programmer put into culling algorithms. However, it can be anywhere from about 2 to about 10.
So, at 640x240x60 (or 640x480x30 interlaced), you need to draw about 9.2 million pixels per second. If your overdraw factor is about 3 on average, this means you need a fill rate of about 28 million pixels per second. If you're using dual-textured trilinearly filtered textures with a moderately efficient texturing algorithm, you need a fill rate equivalent to about 220 million non-filtered single-texture pixels per second.
What this says to me in practice is that the Playstation 2 isn't going to be fill-rate limited if it's running on a standard television set. For higher resolutions and less marketing-inflated spec numbers, fill rate may become significant.
I strongly suspect that it would be more expensive, as it would need extra logic to interface it with the PCI bus and the PC as a whole. It would also be harder for the console makers to make money by charging royalties for media, as piracy would be much easier. Also, you would need a moderately expensive PC to put it in, and would need to either use a video pass-through cable or tie up more bus bandwidth with video output data. You'd also either need a separate controller port on the card, making for additional cabling.
I agree that none of the above is earth-shattering, but I see no advantage to putting the console on a card and several minor disadvantages. You could get better output resolution just by putting a monitor output on a conventional console (though this means either buying another monitor or fiddling with cables when you want to play games).
The above assumes that you have a PC, also. I don't know exactly how large a chunk of the gaming market doesn't use a computer, but I suspect that it is pretty sizeable. Just about everyone has a TV.
The short answer to this is "no". Old-fashioned PCI-33 maxes out at 132 MBytes/sec. AGP increases this considerably, but it is still fairly easy to find cases where card performance is limited by the system bus. I have yet to hear of a network connector or external bus that is commonly available that does this (gigabit ethernet and the like are expensive). This means that any scheme that used a Playstation 2 as a rendering box would have serious limits imposed by whatever you're using to connect with it.
That having been said, you get free geometry processing in the Playstation 2, which means that it could very well outperform conventional cards that don't have geometry processing, even when used as a peripheral. OTOH, geometry processing will be on graphics cards Real Soon Now (tm), so the actual usefulness of this is open to question.
Since the PSX-2 supposedly outperforms an SGI InfiniteReality (specced at up to 13 Million poly/second with quad-R10000s)
The key word here is "supposedly". The real numbers, from rumours, are considerably lower than what their marketing department is claiming.
and has it's own geometry engine, the PSX-2 would likely make an inexpensive and hugely capable dedicated graphics engine for a PC.
Possibly. A system with multiple conventional graphics cards may be more efficient at this when the Playstation 2 actually comes out. We'll see.
The advantages of using 2 or more of these boxes in parallel also naturally spring to mind...
Communications with the boxes will be even more of a problem with this than with one box. You will rapidly reach diminishing returns with this, except in very specific cases.
But, really, how much does one of these 50 million polys/sec chips actually cost *today*?
From what I've heard, a 50 million poly/sec chip doesn't exist. Try about an order of magnitude lower than that. That's just the rumour mill, though; we'll see what the specs actually are when it ships.
Graphics cards based on a similar chip would be interesting, at the very least, agreed.
Good Point dude! I'm going to be running Quake at 1280x1024 when my VIII comes. That will Rule!
Think of the Beowulf cluster...
Sorry, (ducking and running)
Chris
Chris
So Buddha walks into a pizza parlor and says: "Hey, make me one with everything."
It still isn't going to be released until next year. and teh P3 sucks anyways.. =) and the next big voodoo card will be out by then to match it... though it is 128 bit architecture and we still have 32.. =/
--- -vex
Being a person of a highly suspicious and paranoid nature, I'll believe these(admittedly impressive) PSX2 numbers only after I see a real-world game running on production hardware, not a hand-coded, down-to-the-last-cycle-optimized tech demo running on tricked-up demo hardware.
--jwriney
John Riney III
jwriney@awod.com
I'm curious why you would need to believe these performance numbers to be interested in the system?
Why, I don't, it seems to be an interesting little box. I'm just generically leery of manufacturers that say things like "323542897 bozillion polys/sec", before the hardware hits the market. I believe it was NVidia that said their TNT chipset would run at 125 mhz, and cited some sweet benchmarks based on that. When it came to ship-time, the chips were too unstable at that clock speed, so they dogged them down to 90(in some cases 110 I think). The TNT is still an awesome board(I have a Spectra 2500 and love it), but the initial numbers they cited were a bit premature. You can't put too much stock in numbers until real hardware and software hits the street.
All IMHO of course.
--jwriney
John Riney III
jwriney@awod.com
Looks like they're feeling the slashdot effect right now. Any mirrors?
I was reading the specs and comments here, and I am very impressed (or am I just sucker for numbers). I am wondering if I can harness the flops performance and the graphical power for some sprite driven non-linear regression modelling. If I could use a PSX2 for developing and running software like that, it would be a hell of a lot more economical to by 6 of these than an SMP Intel box. I guess if development is under linux, it shouldbe possible. I guess someone has to say this, I wonder what a Beowulf cluster of thises would be like..NLmpJB39
"I just can't sit while people are saying nonsense in a meeting without saying it's nonsense" J Watson, Sci Am 288:(4)51
I'm glad that your dis-interest in the PSX2 is due to lack of games you prefer, flight sims and fps...
[SNIP]
I'll be looking forward to my 3d console RPGs, racing games, shooters, and such on the PSX2 myself, since I'm no good at flight sims and fps are sorta boring to me...
Well I have always prefered consoles over PC for gaming because I have felt the genre of games for consoles is more to my liking.
"I just can't sit while people are saying nonsense in a meeting without saying it's nonsense" J Watson, Sci Am 288:(4)51
You miss the point. Whether or not it is that much more powerful that a top of the line gaming PC isn't really the issue.
A top of the line gaming PC costs what, $2000.
A playstation 2 will probably run $200.
A top of the line gaming PC offers all sorts of opportunities for failure. A playstation2 offers few opportunities for failure. Little can be done to it, short of physical abuse, that can't be fixed by a fast reboot.
Why would you expect to?
I believe they use a free standing executable to post-process the object files into a playstation ready executable format.
What makes you think someone won't?
So this is a pre-emptive pro-active rant.
Some issues:
What's the big deal of comparing and drooling from DreamCast vs PSX2 vs PC? I would imagine the particular games being released would be of more importance than the particulars of the machine, though a well thought out and spec-ed out machine is definitely nice. Myself, I look forward to DVD movie playback on the PSX2, if Sony doesn't decide to limit it as well as being able to play my whole library of PSX games on it. I'm sure there will be impressive PSX2 games out for it, but since nothing has been announced, there's really nothing to talk about right now.
Another thing: Why do some people seem to think this, or at least consoles, are a waste of money? It's like arguing TVs or DVD players or toasters are a waste of money; I'll complete each analogy...
Why get a TV when you can get a PC with a TV tuner and a 21" monitor? The PC can do so much more than the a TV!
Why get a DVD player when you can get a PC with a DVD-ROM drive and decoder board? You don't even need a TV to watch it, but if you want to you can always get a video card with TV-out and hook up your PC to your TV/home entertainment center!
Why get a toaster when you have your oven? Just pop the bread in there for a few moments and you get your toast! And the oven can do so much more than a toaster anyways!
All of the above prompted by statements that the PSX2 and consoles in general are a waste of money and effort, when the PC has more potential, can do more, is more cost effective, is upgradeable, will do more things, etc...
Consoles are supposed to be specialized computing devices; plug and play, no upgrades, no fiddling. Neat thing about the PSX2 is the potential for modem, keyboard, mouse, and peripheral support, what with the USB, PCMCIA, and Firewire ports. So yeah, it's conceivable that a PC is more useful, but we're talking games and movies and maybe eventually simple word processing, web browsing, email, and chat on this console. Not to mention boatloads cheaper, per processing power. You'd need a Dec Alpha CPU at 500 MHz with a couple V3s SLIed to get comparable computing/graphics horsepower, so the price comparison falls apart.
Of course this is all moot if there aren't any games you want to play on either PSX or PSX2. That being the case, then it wouldn't matter one hoot that the PSX2 isn't upgradeable or useful as a PC, if you don't want to play the games on it.
Okay, I got that out of my system...
AS
AS
-AS
*Pikachu*
Who cares about upgrading it?
It's like arguing one shouldn't buy toasters if there are ovens because there is so much less functionality for a toaster than an oven, or that TVs are pointless, just buy a PC with a 21" monitor and TV tuner, since the PC is so much more useful and upgradeable than the TV!
For whatever reason, the PSX2 is supposed to be more powerful than a comparably priced PC. You would need a Dec Alpha and a couple V3s SLIed together and a DVD decoder board to approach the same level of performance, and don't tell me you can get that for 400$, which is near the top of the price range I've heard quoted for this system.
If you want your puter to run Linux, does it occur to you that there aren't as many games as there exists for the PSX/PSX2? Because if your preference is due to lack of interest in PSX/PSX2 games, then it really doesn't matter what the specs of the PSX2 is, or the upgradeability of the PC has, because you just don't want to play anything for the PSX2.
Sigh. Rant off.
AS
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*Pikachu*
You already can.
Go and grab one of those high end Quantum Obsidian Voodoo2 boards; four VooDoo2s on one board, or something like that.
The big deal would be that the console is still much cheaper than buying a PC with comparable floating point, DVD decoding, kick-ass graphics subsystem, and 21" monitor.
AS
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*Pikachu*
TV rez is closer to 512x480, and the PSX2 is rumored to support VESA and HDTV resolutions, which is 1024x768.
Would you really compare the price of a top of the line comparable PC to a PSX2?
Admittedly it is all speculation, but something even close to top of the line would need a P3 with is SSE or a Dec Alpha with its powerful FPU, and a couple of TNTs or V3s SLIed together, with a DVD drive and decoder board, and 3d sound card.
400$ vs something close to 1600$
AS
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*Pikachu*
Yeah, but will the consumer level graphics card be able to play my library of PSX games?
This might be possible if Connectix releases the VGS for the PC, but then the price of keeping competative with the PSX2 is sorta prohibative unless you already own said kick-butt system, 600MHz P3 with 133MHz bus and SLIed TNT2s with a DVD decoder and drive. I really doubt the price/performance points will be even close, with the console having a much better one, even if it can't do as many things as a PC.
AS
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*Pikachu*
I'm curious why you would need to believe these performance numbers to be interested in the system?
If it is even twice as powerful as the original PSX, or 2/3 as powerful as the current DreamCast, the PSX2 is going to be damn fine as a console system. Even if it doesn't get bragging rights for performance, it can rely on its bevy of wonderful games and talented designers to more than make up for any lack in horsepower. The PSX right now does fine despite being behind the N64 and DreamCast in performance. The PSX2 just denies the DreamCast the ability to dominate based on sheer computational ability.
Me, I'll be looking forward to whatever machine/console Square plans to support in the future, as well as Namco for their gun games, Capcom for their MegaMan games, etc. It is after all the point of a console, games, right?
AS
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*Pikachu*
I really doubt that.
I was mentioning parts that won't be out till later this year too, so in the interests of profit, will still be expensive.
P3 with SSE at 600MHz on a 133MHz bus won't be out till Q3, right before the PSX2 comes out in Japan. Don't be surprised if Intel sells the CPUs for a good premium, like 500$. And the comparable V4 or TNT3 will still be a good 200$, alongside the cost of the rest of the PC.
AS
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*Pikachu*
I'm glad that your dis-interest in the PSX2 is due to lack of games you prefer, flight sims and fps...
However, with USB and Firewire, I don't doubt they will have keyboard, mouse, and at least modem options available to them. With PCMCIA they can even have ethernet, whatever use that will be I cannot predict.
I really doubt a Celeron with a Matrox G200 can come close, but since this is still all speculation I'll let that be a doubt on my part. I'll be looking forward to my 3d console RPGs, racing games, shooters, and such on the PSX2 myself, since I'm no good at flight sims and fps are sorta boring to me...
AS
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*Pikachu*
At least until you hook it up to a VESA compatible display or a HDTV display =)
At least these have been mentioned. As with all things forthcoming, plans may change.
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*Pikachu*
I'll concede that Doom, Quake, Tomb Raider, Unreal, etc came out on PCs before consoles. Flight sims and RTS games are also PC exclusive, but I doubt it really has to do with technology curves...
One could argue where all the MegaMan X's, Castlevania's, and Final Fantasy's for PC are. Would the argument then be that the 'fun quotient' on a console is higher than on a PC, so it takes a while to port over? I would more likely believe the two be more related to interface issues, like the presence of mouse and keyboard and good joysticks facilitate RTS, FPS, and flight sims for PC, where good game pads and established and consistent libraries(Which don't care about cutting edge) allow for many more games and more established series of games on consoles over PCs.
I don't even know why it would be easier; cheaper, yes, to develop on a PC than a console, but then you have to worry about API support, compatibility across varied hardware, and across varied CPUs that does not exist in a console system. It's no different whether the API is open or closed, except you need to pay for a closed one.
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*Pikachu*
And what's with this TV output thing? They should drop it, considering how old and outdated it is. Since the PSX2 won't be out till next year anyhow, just add support for the new flat panel displays that have been popping up everywhere, and maybe even use HDTV as the default display! Sure there aren't very many HDTVs out yet, and LCD is still expensive, but the release of the PSX2 with HDTV and LCD support will force the consumer market to upgrade to one or the other.
On the other hand, 1394 seems a perfectly good thing. Much cheaper than SCSI, which if you recall Apple also had a hand in inventing/unleashing upon the world. Apple does some good stuff sometimes.
Sorry for the mix'n match sarcasm. Couldn't help myself, was too much fun.
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*Pikachu*
It's not relevant now either; PSX vs a PII...
Who wins?
There are over 50 million PSXs sold, and likewise a very large library of games right now. Same thing will hold for the PIII and the PSX2; different markets, different capabilities, different strategies.
We go crazy over the PSX2 because the PSX is literally hitting a wall sometime in the future, which should be nicely alleviated by the PSX2. Who cares what Intel does? I doubt they will enter competatively against the PSX2, unless they suddenly decide the gaming market means something to them.
Intel sells CPUs and computers, not games, so they only make profits if games can sell computers.
In the console market games do sell consoles, so Sony makes a profit regardless of whether its by the sale of a console or the sale of a game.
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*Pikachu*
Highly dependent upon the game, I suspect.
I enjoy the Id GL Quake type games under WinNT.
I also enjoy the host of LucasArts 2d action/adventure games, as well as my Civ2 and SMAC games...
If I wanted racing, flight sim, or others I would have to resort to a Win9x machine, I guess.
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*Pikachu*
You're absolutely correct...
But the PSX1 is a better gaming platform for me than the PC is; the games I want to play, for the most part, exist on the Playstation.
So even if I don't believe all the hype, the PSX2 is something to look forward to if you are already a fan of the PSX1.
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*Pikachu*
Good for you.
A real issue that Sony addresses is the fact that they will penetrate more households than PCs.
At least they do right now.
Statistics aside, for pure entertainment, it is undeniable that a decent PC will cost more than a decent console; take today, a PSX1, still a very viable device, is only 100$. What comparable PC exists that can give as much satisfaction?
Assuming the market doesn't change radically and unpredictable, something similar will hold true late next year. You can get a decent PC with kick-ass performance for 1000$(I just made that up. Who can tell what makes a kick-ass PC? Or how much it will cost? I'm assuming though that Intel will charge a price/performance premium on their CPUs and that the equivalent VooDoos of 2k will still be 200$) or a decent console for 400$, max, along with DVD, 3d sound, CD play, game play capability, and enough minor computing ability to function as a web browser, email terminal, and word processor.
The PSX2 will no more be a novelty than the PSX1 today, unless you count playing games a novelty, or watching movies a novelty. Entertainment is its own industry, in its own right, and is very much a part of our life and culture...
I believe you are right when you mention the PSX2 won't be a PC killer, but it will displace some people who don't need the full functionality of a PC when their PSX2 is enough. PCs can be replaced by PSX2 for playing games, watching movies, and browsing the web; but PSX2 cannot be replaced by PCs for the sheer price/performance ration of the above options, unless your utility demands more, like programming, ftp, video compositing, photoshop, multiplayer games, etc..
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*Pikachu*
I never said it was hard or impossible to emulate; I even explicitly mention the VGS, but I also point out for comparable performance you need to spend much more.
How much more than 100$ can you spend on a PC to get a PlayStation?
I would do it because I want a kick butt PC anyways, but for the millions(50 million or so) who think that is pointless, the console is cheaper and higher quality.
Your VooDoo2 costs about 100 dollars by itself right now. If you got it when the Playstation was first released, for about 250$, the video card of choice would be a VooDoo1 for 240$, and a Pentium 166 for 500$....
Don't tell me that said PC stacks up the the Playstation if gaming is the only utility function we analyze!
AS
AS
-AS
*Pikachu*
Hee hee... I just sent you back an email =)
Good for you. I happen to have FFVII for the console, and have played it once through, and never found the time to do it again.
But, like a good book, I can probably play through it at least twice more.
I also own Square's newest RPG, Xenogears, and have played it once through at 86 hours. I will play it at least once more, for probably a good 100 hours in order to see and hear and get everything. I don't play games everyday; it's not my style. But when I do play, I play for hours.
My PPro200 is feeling old and outdated, and needs to be upgraded to play the current batch of FPS like Quake3:Arena. The nice thing about consoles is never the lack of power; games that run on it are more or less designed with that limitation/ability in mind. I'm looking forward to playing FFVIII on the PSX1, and maybe FFVIII in real time on the PSX2(no more prerendered backgrounds and FMV! Well, maybe.)
I acknowledge your preference and choice. I'm just pissed at people who assume I want to play the same games they do and then blatently tell me my decision to get and support consoles is stupid because it doesn't do as much. I don't care that it doesn't do as much; do you begrudge me my toaster because it doesn't do cappacino? I just want my toast dammit! And I want my FFVIII, as well.
AS
AS
-AS
*Pikachu*
Besides, with Intel/Microsoft supporting USB 2, it's clearly the way of the future. That's right, I forgot how if MS supports it, that means it's bound to succeed. After all, let's not forget Bob! (P.S. Apple was supposedly going out of business last year, and every year before that back till about 1984. Your FUD, eet does not work here.)
The great advantage of consoles is that they get to start with a clean sheet design, with every new generation.
Your PC hardware has a lot of 1970's tech imbedded into its design.
Using the old Playstation cpu as an I/O processor and for compatibility was a nice touch!
(I guess the Amiga 68k/PowerUp! situation was similar)
Regards,
Richard
I've read about an adapter that would let the SNES play old NES games by emulating it in hardware...
Why would they include such a dead-end, niche technology like IEEE 1394 when they can adopt the unknown/unproven but clearly superior USB 2? When you consider the Playstation units won't move until next year anyway, they should go ahead and include USB 2 support, which can do everything that 1394 can do cheaper, and do away with that Apple-developed proprietary bus. Besides, with Intel/Microsoft supporting USB 2, it's clearly the way of the future. And Apple will be out of business soon so there won't be anybody advocating 1394.
A little too obvious, huh? You're quite right - my skills must be lacking; need more subtlety. I'll keep working on it. I'm heartened by the fact that at least a couple of people thought I was serious. ;^)
Werent they going to use a special "Media Processor", instead of the traditional CPU-design? But they might have changed their minds..
Hmmmm, I think you would need something more than that kind of graphics-power....It requires a maxed-out Onyx2 Reality Monster to achieve 80MPolys/s...The Voodoo2-boards lose some performance while running SLI. BTW, we are talking at least 32-bit colour depth and at least 1024*768 when it comes to realism, right?
All this sounds great at first but it's not as cool as it sounds. First remember this: all companies LOVE to hype their hardware, but it rarely meets up to what they say it can do (remember when nVidia had to recall their benchmarks saying their cards outpreformed 3dfx?) They say 20 million polygons per second I say I'll believe it when I see it myself. Also remember this, PSX2 is still running (for most users at least) on NTSC. Now let's face it, NTSC sucks. It's max res is something like 720x480 (I don't really know), it's fuzzy as hell and it's colours suck. What good does a 2.4billion pixel fill rate do them? Let's say that NTSC could do 800x600 (which it can't but we'll say so for our purposes). Now NTSC's refresh rate is 60Hz (interlaced) so say we have the PSX2 doing 800x600x60 that's only 28.8million pixels per second. What good is the rest of that fill rate doing? Remember, HDTV isn't likely to hit the mainstream anytime soon and when it does it's still going to cost a bundle. It sounds to me like Sony has gone and fixed a bunch of problems that people don't have. Like the PSX2 ram. I think I saw it quoted as having 800mhz of bandwidth? Why? Latency is what makes ram fast, not bandwidth. Even the most intense 3d apps these days rarely use more than areound 100mhz of ram bandwidth.
I, for one, am going to stick with my PC and probably just put a Voodoo3 in it (or mabey a different accelerator). All the other facts aside the PC has one HUGE advantage (in my eyes) that the PSX2 will probably not have. Multi-player games. On a regular basis I get together with a bunch of people and we go and frag each other in Quake 2. This is great fun since you are actually fighting against humans for once. I doubt that the PSX2 will offer the kind of networking availabe on the PC. Sure, there may be a modem and MABEY even a fast network card, but I doubt there will be anything as cool as the giant computer LANs.
Last thing: The PSX2 release date (according to NextGen) is going to be March of 2000. If you think that the Pc industry will just sit on it's ass from now until then you are fooling yourself. There is certian to be an accelerator much better than a Voodoo3 by then and Intel should have their 64-bit chip out by that time. I'm not saying that the PSX2 won't be cool, I certianly think the PSX was, but everyone just needs to realise that it is not going to be the huge PC killer that Sony would like you to think it will be. It is also going to have to fight the increased number of PCs that people own.
PCs used to be somewhat of a rarity in the home. Far more people owned a nintendo or some such thing than a PC (I know I did). This has taken a huge turn around. Lately it has become almost necessary to own a PC. Now these people have already invested between $800 and $3000 in a sweet peice of PC hardware that can play games (and lots of them) perfectly well they are going to be a bit reluctant to spend $200-$400 more for another game system. That is the true beuaty of PCs is their ability to do near anything. If I desired I could replace my PC with a bunch of different peices of dedicated hardware, but I like it better this way. I type my papers, record music, play games, program, surf the net, do graphics and much more all on my PC. If I got a PSX2 It would do one thing: play games. Face it, even if they ported linux for it 16-32mb of ram and no hard disk would be just too limiting to make it truly useful for anything but a novelty.
Well, see, there ain't no such thing as a 50million poly/sec chip today. To get that kind of performance you'd need to have something like 4 or 5 of Silicon Graphics' best systems chained together. Basically Sony is doing what big tech corprations do so well: lying. Face it, it's damn unlikely that Sony can make the quantum leap to have a 20m/sec polygon chip.
Not entierly true, it's got a MIPS chip and those are quite old.
Using PSEmu Pro (yes, a working emu for the PC) I get better than real Playstation performance on my 400 with a Voodoo2. The PSX isn't that hard to emulate.
Until a console can let me and 31 of my friends play Quake/quake 2/Tribes on a LAN, they are always inferior in my mind. Thoses games have more "fun quotient" than most any others. MY average intrest for a console game (FF excluded) is around a week or 2. I've had Quake for around a year and play it nearly daily. I'd say it wins.
Well that is NOT the only reason I own a PC, but I figure if I own one I might as well use it for that too since it does damn near everything else. And in my mind, it is superior. Why? Well the longest I've ever been interested in a PSX game (FF7, which I can and have got for my PC) was around 4 weeks. Most were 1 or 2. Now it seems silly to me to buy a new game that often. Quake (running the TeamFortress mod, on the other hand I've had for around a year now and STILL I play it almost every day. That's way more value for my money. Also, I feel the cost of the PC is well justified since I use it for writing papers, programming, audio recording/production, browsing the internet, HTML design, graphics design, and more IN ADDITION to playing games on. I can't justify to myslef the additional money spent ona console since my PC already does what it would do for me.
CRAPPY LOW END? Do you have any idea of what you speak? The Onyx 2 that gets 13.1m polys/sec is the best graphics station in the world. I believe it costs in excess of $1million. This is what they used to make a Bugs Life with. Don't knock it. Have a look
when the ps2 is claiming 2.4 Billion pixels fill rate and the SGI visual workstation peaks at 176 Million. There is no way a $400 gaming platform will out preform a SGI workstation, especially not by a factor of 13.
Yes, I mentioned the VW, which is the fastest 3d graphics PC available. Since the discussion seemed to be Wintel PC vs. Playstation2 I thought I would name the fastest intel based graphics workstation.
There's an intresting article about getting "Slashdotted" on packet storm today. Hehehe.
You are missing the point of console systems. Consoles are made specifically to play games, not to do finances and spreadsheets as well. Because they are built to do one thing, they can do that one thing better and more cheaply than a computer could ever hope to.
-folks listen up, obviousluy you haven't had your head into your hardare these days.
Matter of fact is that almost all the technology inside your brand new fast spec'ed pc is rather old news.
This is mostly due to hardware manufacturers trying to make the biggest profit possible instead of enhancing their products.
For every fanatic engineer there's a dozen marketing guys talking of economy and why there's no capital for investing in new production methods.
More likely nobody (of them marketing guys) wants to try and make a new standard cuz' thats 1. expensive 2.it might not work 3.the rest of the market will raise hell about it.
Now what I'd like was a company with some people who would like to make a difference.
Read the story about Amiga and why a 13Mhz (-I think) could perform better than a 90Mhz Pentium.
Frankly I don't like my machine I don't think I'd like any machine built on currrent tech.
Hopefully what Sony can, I'm not saying they will, provide from their console-niche is a way to change the way pc's are...
Btw. the lot of you seem so awfully hooked up on the benefits of sw, why not do it hw-vise?
my 2cents -probably very annoying to read.
*y2k -Azathoths minions had it coming*
There was an article in Scientific American a few years ago that came to the conclusion that for full photo-realism, you would need around 300MP/s and a resolution approching 3Kx2K pixels (I think it was in 1994). I read through the 3dfx faq and the only thing I can say is \/\/hatever.
Also note, the latest and greatest specs from SGI on their infinite reality monster systems is 210MP/s at 1920x1024