The N64 DOES use Rambus ram and utilizes a UMA architecture.
As far as the PS2 goes, its design almost requires high clock ram since its pitiful amount of vram necessitates swapping textures MANY times per frame.
Sega may or may not have done this last year, but Nintendo does this ALL THE TIME.
"Ooh we won't have enough of such and such product so hurry up and give us your money before it comes out".
Think about it guys, EB is telling people that the only way to guarantee your PS2 at launch is to pay in full. Um, what if more than 500,000 people pay in full? Sony is saying that there isn't going to be enough for everyone, yet EB is promising everyone a chance to guarantee one. Yeah that makes a lot of sense.
I'm in no rush to buy one at launch. The launch titles are weak. Grand Turismo 2000 is confirmed to not be finished by launch. Metal Gear Solid 2 isn't coming out until late 2001. Madden...? I have NFL2K1 already. You'd be surprised what that little machine can do - online. Set aside your GeForce 2-having, broadband-connecting elitist mentality and try the thing. Great graphics, great gameplay, and no lag.
Don't be fooled all, this is just a ploy to get everyone who wasn't 100% sure of buying one to plunk the cash down now. Wait and see how the games turn out first.
Actually, Quake 1's renderer did this. When a non-static polygonal object reached a certain distance from the camera, it would jump into a different renderer that just plotted the object's vertices. If a particular triangle in the model happened to be more than 3 pixels "large" at that distance (meaning there would be gaps), it would recursively subdivide the triangle, plotting the vertices along the way, until the subdivision yielded triangles 3 pixels in size. Crude, but fast.
To stay on topic, this accelerator IMHO represents a fairly significant advance in graphics hardware (not that it's new, but that it represents an intent to bring the hardware closer to the consumer market). As good as textured/lit/AA/bumpmapped/envmapped polys look, people need to remember that they're still just approximations. Take any polygonal/curved object, and keep increasing the resolution of detail. Eventually you're going to end up with just vertices. So while those approximations are the hip and in thing now, it's important to remember that eventually they will no longer be sufficient.
It should also be noted that when they say "voxels" they are talking about actual volume data, meaning a 3d array of samples. Delta Force/Commanche/Bladerunner/Tiberian Sun are all 2d simplifications.
Slashdot Mirror
They work in Marketing.
As far as the PS2 goes, its design almost requires high clock ram since its pitiful amount of vram necessitates swapping textures MANY times per frame.
Dreamcast: $150
Good DVD player: less than $200
How is the PS2 a bargain?
I'm sure there will be people who buy the PS2 because it has DVD playback, but you really should be buying the game system you like for it's games.
Together my DC and Toshiba 1200 cost me $350 (and this was a while ago!), and my DC has a way better game library.
I feel sorry for all the fools stuck with stupid ass Tekken Tag.
"Ooh we won't have enough of such and such product so hurry up and give us your money before it comes out".
Think about it guys, EB is telling people that the only way to guarantee your PS2 at launch is to pay in full. Um, what if more than 500,000 people pay in full? Sony is saying that there isn't going to be enough for everyone, yet EB is promising everyone a chance to guarantee one. Yeah that makes a lot of sense.
I'm in no rush to buy one at launch. The launch titles are weak. Grand Turismo 2000 is confirmed to not be finished by launch. Metal Gear Solid 2 isn't coming out until late 2001. Madden...? I have NFL2K1 already. You'd be surprised what that little machine can do - online. Set aside your GeForce 2-having, broadband-connecting elitist mentality and try the thing. Great graphics, great gameplay, and no lag.
Don't be fooled all, this is just a ploy to get everyone who wasn't 100% sure of buying one to plunk the cash down now. Wait and see how the games turn out first.
To stay on topic, this accelerator IMHO represents a fairly significant advance in graphics hardware (not that it's new, but that it represents an intent to bring the hardware closer to the consumer market). As good as textured/lit/AA/bumpmapped/envmapped polys look, people need to remember that they're still just approximations. Take any polygonal/curved object, and keep increasing the resolution of detail. Eventually you're going to end up with just vertices. So while those approximations are the hip and in thing now, it's important to remember that eventually they will no longer be sufficient.
It should also be noted that when they say "voxels" they are talking about actual volume data, meaning a 3d array of samples. Delta Force/Commanche/Bladerunner/Tiberian Sun are all 2d simplifications.