Pica200 is a series of chips, not a single chip. The model, including the specific clock speed and specs have not been announced and will likely remain a mystery until it is fully released and dissected or whatever. The technology though is apparently better than Tegra when it comes to games. Nvidia did a Tegra demo which looked like it could push about mid-level PS2 graphics at the very best, the 3DS can push more then Wii graphics as hon in my signature of Spider Man Rdge of Time comparison, and has some shader support seen only on PS3 or 360 or greater. I'm glad they went with what they did, because it seems far better. To put it into perspective though, saying the 3DS uses a Pica200 chip is like saying my PC has a Radeon HD4000 GPU. Some of the 4000's are barely better than integrated, but others are some of the best GPU's out there. And it's not 7 years old, the tech demo floating around on youtube is from 2006, but the 3DS is clearly not going to be using that model, when there is a 2010 & 2008 model. Even the model shown from 2008 that was more than twice as powerful. 2006 version could push 15.3 million polygons per second at 200mhz (400mhz max clock). The one shown in 2008 could push 40.7 million polygons per second at half the rate, 100mhz. Clock speed is unimportant to say the least. Not that it matters though, because i'm not too impressed with Tegra anymore after seeing what the Pica200 can potentially do and DEFINITELY what the 3DS can do.
It should also be noted that these specs for the Pica are intended to be rendered at 4k cinema resolution. Polygon performance skyrockets the lower the resolution is. The 3DS is only using a small fraction of that intended resolution, even in 3D mode and counting both screens (the second of which is usually just rendering 2D assets such as the HUD or menu items). So suffice to say, the polygon power is inevitably going to be greater than those specs show due to the lower required resolution.
The 2008 model seems to be 600 MHz or so max clock frequency
While the 2010 model seems to be 1 GHz max clock
But what model do you think is used in the 3DS?
(models: 2006 & 2008 & 2010 & 2012)
And what do you think about everything else I've mention in the OP?
