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Forums - Nintendo Discussion - 3DS uses DMP's PICA(R)200 chip

Christian973 on 21 June 2010

Ok so it's pretty much confirmed. It's 2006 technology graphics but it has strong shader support, anti aliasing, and can produced enough polygons per second which can make it a very high quality graphics card. We still have yet to see how far developers can push this thing. Judging by the resident evil and MGS videos, it looks like it can produce some powerful effects for a handheld while keeping battery consuption very low.



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patjuan32 on 21 June 2010
Christian973 said:

Ok so it's pretty much confirmed. It's 2006 technology graphics but it has strong shader support, anti aliasing, and can produced enough polygons per second which can make it a very high quality graphics card. We still have yet to see how far developers can push this thing. Judging by the resident evil and MGS videos, it looks like it can produce some powerful effects for a handheld while keeping battery consuption very low.

 

Guys, you really are forgetting Moore's Law. The initial chip came out in 2006. But revision and improvements have been made. This is the same practice that happens with other chip manufacturers like AMD, Intel, ATI and Nvidia. They release a chip and later make improvements to said chips.



If Nintendo is successful at the moment, it’s because they are good, and I cannot blame them for that. What we should do is try to be just as good.----Laurent Benadiba

 

gamrone on 21 June 2010

That is a lot of power for a little chip, but while its "next gen" its not bleeding edge. Do you really want only 15min play time anyways?



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Galaki on 21 June 2010
RolStoppable said:

2006? In other words, last gen technology?

Not again, Nintendo.


That's 1 delicious bait and it seems to be working.



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Galaki on 21 June 2010
patjuan32 said:

They release a chip and later make improvements to said chips.


I disagree. Lays chips used to be better than what they are now to me.



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Monteblanco on 21 June 2010
kingofwale said:

PSP is probably still a bit more powerful than this. running at max of 33 million polygons per second, vs the 16 million on 3DS... also, PSP runs around 300mhz vs the 200mhz used by 3DS.

Sony needs to improve game selection, not to increase spec.

 

now the only question is, how much will Nintendo charge fo this

Never believe in the number of polygons as they can vary a lot depending on how they are applying textures. I recall that in the last generation Sony and Microsoft claimed the PS2 and XBox were able to render 10 times more polygons than what Nintendo claimed the Gamecube was. The difference is that Sony and Microsoft were talking of untextured polygons while Nintendo was talking about real game conditions.

The tech in the 3DS should easily overcome anything inside the PSP. The real limitation is not graphical power but energy consumption. Thus, I believe Nintendo will refrain to unleash the full power of the GPU to avoid battery issues.



Christian973 on 21 June 2010

To my speculation on the GPU site, the chip has been revised to use this version:

 

It seems the GPU has been revised to use 400Mhz of clock frequency. I think it's the best decision Nintendo has made regarding battery life. It will keep development cost low while being easy to develop for. This confirms the GPU was custom made for Nintendo in my opinion. I could be wrong though.



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Khuutra on 21 June 2010
Bodhesatva said:
kingofwale said:

PSP is probably still a bit more powerful than this. running at max of 33 million polygons per second, vs the 16 million on 3DS... also, PSP runs around 300mhz vs the 200mhz used by 3DS.

Sony needs to improve game selection, not to increase spec.

 

now the only question is, how much will Nintendo charge fo this


Uh, you do realize that's just the CPU core of the PSP, right? This is the 3DS' GPU exclusively. We still know nothing about its CPU. You're comparing a CPU to a GPU.

We do not know the specifics of Nintendo's customization of this chip: we know it's not running MSAA (nor is PSP), but is using jittered samples to produce an anti aliasing effect (although I'm not sure that could be compatable with 3D effects). Regardless, every single possible specification of this chip is above the PSP's dedicated GPU by substantial margins, and has significantly improved shader effects.

In other words, unless Nintendo went in and deliberately limited the fixed pipeline in this chip, it's impossible for this to be lower spec than the PSP's equivalent. It's either better, or much better: one of those two.


The base architecture of this chip was not designed until 2006, a year after the PSP released (and the PSP was using chips designed in 2003).

Tech knowledge! It burns us!



Attoyou on 21 June 2010

Very Impressed, will Be interesting to see what devs can do with it in the years to come.

also Excited to see what kind of GPU-CPU Sony has planed for the PSP2.



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megaman79 on 21 June 2010

Processing Power = expensive cost/shitty battery life

Yeah, Nintendo know handhelds. Whatever the CPU/GPU sharing is like, it will be cheaper and use less power,which (you need to remind yourself) is REMARKABLE for brand new technology, but it looks great and thats enough. Its a handheld, ITS ENOUGH.



“When we make some new announcement and if there is no positive initial reaction from the market, I try to think of it as a good sign because that can be interpreted as people reacting to something groundbreaking. ...if the employees were always minding themselves to do whatever the market is requiring at any moment, and if they were always focusing on something we can sell right now for the short term, it would be very limiting. We are trying to think outside the box.” - Satoru Iwata - This is why corporate multinationals will never truly understand, or risk doing, what Nintendo does.