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Forums - Gaming Discussion - Is this Gen of Consoles just WEAK?

curl-6 on 22 October 2014
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.



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Maraccuda on 22 October 2014

Consoles dont make gaming, the games do.

In years to come the general people will have fond memories of their favourite games, but will forget which console they played it on.



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d21lewis on 22 October 2014
Maraccuda said:
Consoles dont make gaming, the games do.

In years to come the general people will have fond memories of their favourite games, but will forget which console they played it on.

Alheimer's Disease is nothing to joke about. :(



Shackkobe on 22 October 2014

Would you buy a PS4 if it had an Nvidia GTX Titan and an Intel i7 cpu?

Thought so.



curl-6 on 22 October 2014
Shackkobe said:

Would you buy a PS4 if it had an Nvidia GTX Titan and an Intel i7 cpu?

No.



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Landguy on 22 October 2014
Shackkobe said:

Would you buy a PS4 if it had an Nvidia GTX Titan and an Intel i7 cpu?

Thought so.


For $400, I would buy 2!



It is near the end of the end....

darkneal on 22 October 2014

Its just not as big a leap as we'd hoped. Can't see how this gen will last anywhere near as long as last gen. A really smart competitor would do well to release a console thats as powerful as they should be...



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Landguy on 22 October 2014
darkneal said:
Its just not as big a leap as we'd hoped. Can't see how this gen will last anywhere near as long as last gen. A really smart competitor would do well to release a console thats as powerful as they should be...


I think that the XB1 will only last 4 years.  The XB2(?) will probably come out(Maybe in 2017/2018 and be 100% backwords compatible and allow them to keep producing games for both.  If that doesn't happen, it is because M$ is getting out of the business.



It is near the end of the end....

fatslob-:O on 22 October 2014
curl-6 said:

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.

I'm pretty sure games needed more than a measly 81MB/s bandwidth at that time when you consider the disparity compared to the main memory being able to pull off 2.7GB/s and most game assets do require a lot of memory bandwidth or low access times that the DRAM chip can't provide so it really can't do much more than store audio or preload disc data for the most part. Think of it as a "volatile" SSD ... ("Volatile" standing for content erasure in the storage medium when power is lost.) 

Rogue Sqaudron may have bump mapping but I don't think that translates into an advantage since the normal maps are in too low of a resolution to be able to give off any impression of extra geometry. It often came off being pixelated or flat. (pun intended) The top tier games that used bump mapping on Xbox made a much more profound impact on it. 

Self shadowing was doable on the PS2 with Ace Combat games featuring it and it also had volumetric clouds too although it differed in the fact that they used layered alpha textures instead of the dynamic backdrop found in Rogue Squadron. I'm curious about the implementation details on light scattering in Rogue Squadron ... 



SvennoJ on 22 October 2014
shikamaru317 said:

360 was basically equivalent to a high end PC when it first released. I'm pretty sure that back in 2005 a graphics card with the same number of gflops as the 360's GPU cost as much as the 360 itself, so just one component of a gaming PC costed as much as the 360 back in 2005. PS4 and Xbox One are both equivalent to mid range PC's, you can buy GPU's with equivalent gflops for $100-$150 now.

So I'd say that this genertion is comparatively weaker than last gen. That's why I think this gen will be shorter than last gen, 5 years tops.

On paper maybe. I bought a $200 gpu around that time and Oblivion on my pc ran laps around the 360 version. I went in the ini files to increase the detail beyond the max settings the game allowed and it ran fine. That GPU didn't keep up during the rest of the gen when games got better optimized yet another $200 gpu a few years later kept it comfortably ahead at upto 1080p.