Is this Gen of Consoles just WEAK?

[curl-6]

fatslob-:O said:

curl-6 said:

That 16MB was still available to devs, just not for high access speed tasks. And the other 24MB was lightning fast compared to PS2's memory.

As for the difference being exaggerated, that may have held true for many multiplatform titles, but stuff like Rogue Squadron 2 and 3 was out of PS2's league.

Actually that 16MB was reserved for buffering audio and data from the mini DVD.

http://www.aceshardware.com/read.jsp?id=60000288">http://web.archive.org/web/20040508205541/http://www.aceshardware.com/read.jsp?id=60000288

It was certainly lightning fast in terms of access times yet it did have a somewhat lower bandwidth compared to the PS2. 

I'm not sure if graphics like Rogue Squadron 2 and 3's graphics are out of the PS2's league. I think it's met a match with MGS 3 ... 

Although you may encounter some more rough textures on the PS2, however being able to spit out more triangles certainly helps obscures the lower resolution textures ...

Anandtech reckons the 16MB wasn't just for buffering: http://www.anandtech.com/show/858/7

"Obviously, 16MB of memory is a lot of memory for audio processing so developers are able to use any part of that memory as regular storage of data that doesn't need that much memory bandwidth since there is only 81MB/s of bandwidth to this audio DRAM:"

MGS 3 looks fantastic for the hardware, don't get me wrong, but Rogue Squadron is loaded with bump maps, light scattering, self-shadowing, volumetric clouds... there really isn't a PS2 game that pushes as many effects and shaders to my knowledge.