Where have people gotten this idea that the 3D feature is this huge astronoical drain? Developing a game without it would double the polygon pushing power at most which would still leave it a good ways short of reaching GC numbers. Though honestly, it seems that the way they did the 3D isn't as taxing as people make it out to be.

I'd be surprised if the handheld got even a 1.5 increase in graphical bandwith. It would still be feature limited as the Vita uses Shader Modal 3.0 and the 3DS uses shader modal 1.1 besides Vita having 4 times as much RAM. The resolution will still have the same internal limit which is lower than Vita's. Then we are talking 2 core cpu versus 4 core.

The 3DS pushing games that perform even halfway close to Vita's average games is just never going to happen.

Because you have to consider the pixel difference between 2D mode and 3D mode.

2D Mode: 172,800 pixels.
3D Mode: 268,800 pixels.

You don't think a 55.55% increase in pixels is a major drain?

Not alone, because its not accounting for other things like what I mentioned

Just to be clear here.  You don't think that you take a performance hit with a 55.55% pixel increase?

I just stated what I think. You are stating the number 55.55% out of context in a manner that makes its effect look like a larger issue than it actually. That effects only one of dozen's of attritbutes and only that one.

Getting a 55.55% increase in pixels will do just that. Its not going to expand the shading capabilities, the avaiable RAM, the potential of the processor that isn't used to do 3D(I forget whether it is the 2 core CPU or GPU that processed the 3D effect in the 3DS), polygon count, framerate and all of the other factors.

55.55% increase in pixel count doesn't amount to even a 10% increase in overall performance. The graphical boost from developing a game without 3D is going to be marignal. The handheld was designed to where doing 3D wasn't that big of an issue to begin with.

There's nowhere near as much going on in Revelations as there is in Resident Evil 4. Add in the new techniques which have been learned since the last GC games were developed and the much MUCH lower resolution of the 3DS and to say the 3DS is more powerful and a Wii makes me chuckle.

3DS is possibly Dreamcast specced. I'd say a little ahead of PSP, but no where near as far ahead as I expected/hoped. The original PSP Ridge Racer doesn't look much worse than Ridge Racer 3D and runs at double the frame rate.

oni-link said: I think the 3DS, given the dual-core nature and better GPU capabilities of the PICA200 is about 50% more powerful than the GCN in terms of RAW polygon/pixel fill-rate etc and has slightly better texture and shaders than the Wii despite not being quite as strong. It definitely is 2x the power of the PSP, though not as good as the Vita.

You forget that the 3DS has to render these games in 3D which basically nuliffies that 2X power rate and becomes the PSPs equal.

No, it amounts to absolutely NO increase in performance.

The greater the polygon count, the worse the performance.

VGKing said: oni-link said: I think the 3DS, given the dual-core nature and better GPU capabilities of the PICA200 is about 50% more powerful than the GCN in terms of RAW polygon/pixel fill-rate etc and has slightly better texture and shaders than the Wii despite not being quite as strong. It definitely is 2x the power of the PSP, though not as good as the Vita. You forget that the 3DS has to render these games in 3D which basically nuliffies that 2X power rate and becomes the PSPs equal.

No, even with the 3D, it still outperofors the PSP by 2X more or less. MGS3D is a testament to this.

Peace Walker was one of the pinnalces of the PSP's power. MGS3D dwarfs it as well as the original PS2 version of MGS3, and we all know from Kojima's own tech demos that MGS3D wasn't doing all that the 3DS can do.

"Look" was the operative word. No, it won't compete with Vita specs-wise, but the shading capabilities will give its appearance a quality closer to the Vita than the shader-light PSP, even at a lower resolution, just like their are Gamecube/Wii games that look more similar to a PS3/360 game n SD than a PS2 game thanks to shaders.

Turning 3D on/off in current games already affects the framerate.