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Forums - Nintendo Discussion - More 3ds specs leaked

LordTheNightKnight on 23 September 2010

"one of the reason I rarely post, trying to explain tech specs is frequently like talking to a brick wall."

Well I can assure you I like to learn more about specs and how systems work. It's like taking a toy apart, but in this case I need experts to tell me what the parts mean.



A flashy-first game is awesome when it comes out. A great-first game is awesome forever.

Plus, just for the hell of it: Kelly Brook at the 2008 BAFTAs

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zarx on 23 September 2010
masschamber said:
dahuman said:

Just finished reading the thread and you guys are making Viper work way too hard on the fingers lol. 3DS was never meant to push the best, newest, and fastest mobile hardware avaliable while still keeping the actual cutting edge part that is the 3D screen both at the reasonable price mark that they'd want it in and make good profits at the same time. I'm actually happy that they are not going to sell us another PSP or PSPGo(Price vs Hardware wise.) Few things, Pica200 is on a fixed pipeline, it doesn't have programmable pipelines, it has advanced features in the pipelines though, which is more than enough to make very good looking games that something like the Nv2 in the original Xbox would never be able to achieve at the sametime on screen no matter how hard it worked, overclocked, or burn into ashes while trying to. It will also be able to push effects that the Wii can't do efficiently of course since the Wii is also on a fixed pipeline design that's way older, the future is looking pretty good imo, the only real problem I have is that it doesn't have a second slider on the right side, but I guess we can use the touch screen for that.

one of the reason I rarely post, trying to explain tech specs is frequently like talking to a brick wall. Trying to explain at ign why halo 2600 was really impressive for the hardware despite its appearance was a testamony to the difficulty.  Anway Your right though about the pica, but devs seem to be using pretty effectively already. As far as how it compares with say the ipod or iphone's powerVR sgx depends on how robust maestro is, geometry seems similar if not better in some pica 200 models, but hardware effects will really be the deciding factor and comparing the gpu (though the dedicated vram will help the 3ds quite a bit), the iOS stuff probably have an advantage the cpu given they have a faster armv7, but it could be mitagated if the arm core is optimized for gaming,  comparison with the zune is more or less similar. plus as mentioned earlier it probably won't be running a fairly bulky OS in the background

anyway the design is clearly designed to be power concious, as I think nintendo put priority on making it look great on a small screen instead of sacrificing their always sucessful model to make the games look good on a giant screen

also as far as sony being able to easily top it with the psp2, maybe, maybe not, heat dissapation and power consumption will get pretty high pretty quickly if they try to blow out the 3ds in terms of power, plus they might have to abandon back compatibility if they wish to use arm architecture (the psp used MIPS archeticure, similar to but more advanced than the 64)

anyway if these are the true final components, (though earlier patents pertaining to the 3ds imply dual gpu's and dual v ram) we still don;t know all of the exact details about the models, as mentioned earlier the pica200 is a line of processor as s the  the arm11,  anyway the 3ds will deliver great games that look great on the go, and isn't that all we really want out of a handheld


amen brother, that battery life and great games.

great post overall.



@TheVoxelman on twitter

Check out my hype threads: Cyberpunk, and The Witcher 3!

zarx on 23 September 2010

god damn this site annoys the hell out of me sometimes, doubling up my posts and such... 



@TheVoxelman on twitter

Check out my hype threads: Cyberpunk, and The Witcher 3!

masschamber on 23 September 2010
LordTheNightKnight said:

"one of the reason I rarely post, trying to explain tech specs is frequently like talking to a brick wall."

Well I can assure you I like to learn more about specs and how systems work. It's like taking a toy apart, but in this case I need experts to tell me what the parts mean.



I didn't mean you, I posted the response to late last night, forgetting to exclude people that are actually receptive to the discussion, I meant no offense



I HAVE A DOUBLE DRAGON CAB IN MY KITCHEN!!!!!!

NOW A PUNISHER CAB!!!!!!!!!!!!!

dahuman on 23 September 2010
masschamber said:
dahuman said:

Just finished reading the thread and you guys are making Viper work way too hard on the fingers lol. 3DS was never meant to push the best, newest, and fastest mobile hardware avaliable while still keeping the actual cutting edge part that is the 3D screen both at the reasonable price mark that they'd want it in and make good profits at the same time. I'm actually happy that they are not going to sell us another PSP or PSPGo(Price vs Hardware wise.) Few things, Pica200 is on a fixed pipeline, it doesn't have programmable pipelines, it has advanced features in the pipelines though, which is more than enough to make very good looking games that something like the Nv2 in the original Xbox would never be able to achieve at the sametime on screen no matter how hard it worked, overclocked, or burn into ashes while trying to. It will also be able to push effects that the Wii can't do efficiently of course since the Wii is also on a fixed pipeline design that's way older, the future is looking pretty good imo, the only real problem I have is that it doesn't have a second slider on the right side, but I guess we can use the touch screen for that.

one of the reason I rarely post, trying to explain tech specs is frequently like talking to a brick wall. Trying to explain at ign why halo 2600 was really impressive for the hardware despite its appearance was a testamony to the difficulty.  Anway Your right though about the pica, but devs seem to be using pretty effectively already. As far as how it compares with say the ipod or iphone's powerVR sgx depends on how robust maestro is, geometry seems similar if not better in some pica 200 models, but hardware effects will really be the deciding factor and comparing the gpu (though the dedicated vram will help the 3ds quite a bit), the iOS stuff probably have an advantage the cpu given they have a faster armv7, but it could be mitagated if the arm core is optimized for gaming,  comparison with the zune is more or less similar. plus as mentioned earlier it probably won't be running a fairly bulky OS in the background

anyway the design is clearly designed to be power concious, as I think nintendo put priority on making it look great on a small screen instead of sacrificing their always sucessful model to make the games look good on a giant screen

also as far as sony being able to easily top it with the psp2, maybe, maybe not, heat dissapation and power consumption will get pretty high pretty quickly if they try to blow out the 3ds in terms of power, plus they might have to abandon back compatibility if they wish to use arm architecture (the psp used MIPS archeticure, similar to but more advanced than the 64)

anyway if these are the true final components, (though earlier patents pertaining to the 3ds imply dual gpu's and dual v ram) we still don;t know all of the exact details about the models, as mentioned earlier the pica200 is a line of processor as s the  the arm11,  anyway the 3ds will deliver great games that look great on the go, and isn't that all we really want out of a handheld


I think Nintendo is smart in going for the pica personally, already having those features in a fixed pipeline would generally mean ease of developement and making those effect run very efficiently which cuts time and resources in creating those effects through customized programming that might not even be efficient in performance or memory usage right away. Also if the battery time is just as good as even the DSi, I'd be a happy camper. I'm not expecting ES2 graphics down the line of course, but this design is super for the current handheld.



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Viper1 on 23 September 2010

It seems that some of that is programmable just not in the same sense as Direct3D shaders are.  I called them programmable shaders earlier as they were called that by a developer though I now believe he meant it in the context of the Pica 200's API allowing some programmability in there.

This means they can be both quickly implemented and flexible for those that want to push them further.



The rEVOLution is not being televised

LordTheNightKnight on 23 September 2010
masschamber said:
LordTheNightKnight said:

"one of the reason I rarely post, trying to explain tech specs is frequently like talking to a brick wall."

Well I can assure you I like to learn more about specs and how systems work. It's like taking a toy apart, but in this case I need experts to tell me what the parts mean.



I didn't mean you, I posted the response to late last night, forgetting to exclude people that are actually receptive to the discussion, I meant no offense


Actually, I didn't think you were including me, although I should have stated that. I was just noting that there are some people who actually want to hear how specs work in gaming, for the sake of knowledge, not as part of the specs measuring wars.

Hey, perhaps we could start a thread about actual spec discussion on the gaming page, and you and viper1 would be invited.



A flashy-first game is awesome when it comes out. A great-first game is awesome forever.

Plus, just for the hell of it: Kelly Brook at the 2008 BAFTAs

masschamber on 23 September 2010
LordTheNightKnight said:
masschamber said:
LordTheNightKnight said:

"one of the reason I rarely post, trying to explain tech specs is frequently like talking to a brick wall."

Well I can assure you I like to learn more about specs and how systems work. It's like taking a toy apart, but in this case I need experts to tell me what the parts mean.



I didn't mean you, I posted the response to late last night, forgetting to exclude people that are actually receptive to the discussion, I meant no offense


Actually, I didn't think you were including me, although I should have stated that. I was just noting that there are some people who actually want to hear how specs work in gaming, for the sake of knowledge, not as part of the specs measuring wars.

Hey, perhaps we could start a thread about actual spec discussion on the gaming page, and you and viper1 would be invited.


yeah,it is unfortunate that people get into the stronger/weaker argument when it is more fun just to know about the capabilities of ever console and there various features, strengths and weaknesses,some of them are interesting, especially the tricks that various developers created to get more out of consoles, some of the antics on the ps1, 64, and atari 2600 are pretty wild in this respect, as well as the implications of the hardware found in a consoles, ranging from strange design decision such as in the bally astrocade, snes, genesis/mega drive or atari jaguar to why comparing a pentium processor to a powerpc processor takes more than just looking at numbers

A dedicated technical discussion would be quite cool, but my programming skills all revolve around to preventing the 2600 from crashing, I should really get back into programming the 2600, I haven't even looked at the games I was writing in years



I HAVE A DOUBLE DRAGON CAB IN MY KITCHEN!!!!!!

NOW A PUNISHER CAB!!!!!!!!!!!!!

SnesTea on 23 September 2010

I want 1TB of RAM.



masschamber on 23 September 2010
Snesboy said:

I want 1TB of RAM.


Manly that up a bit, 512 EB of RAM how about a graphics card from the future that is jacked right into your brain stem and an 8 yottahertz processor, let's demand really stupid stuff that doesn't exist



I HAVE A DOUBLE DRAGON CAB IN MY KITCHEN!!!!!!

NOW A PUNISHER CAB!!!!!!!!!!!!!