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Forums - Gaming - How does the 3DS compare to the PSP, power wise?

kopstudent89 on 22 April 2013

Is this even a debate? RE revelations looks stunning on the 3DS, no PSP game can rival that. 3D Land also stunning imo. I don't even think there should be a thread about this, it's obviously much stronger than the PSP.



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brendude13 on 22 April 2013
hinch said:

So we're looking at 15.3M polygons/sec for the PICA 200 GPU (@200MHz) in the 3DS vs 133M polygons/sec of the SGX543MP4+ (@200MHz) in the Vita.

For the CPU side.. we're also looking at dual core ARM11 CPU (@266MHz) vs quad core Cortex A9 CPU (@800-1000Mhz). The Cortex A9 architecture is leaps and bounds ahead of the the ARM11 ones and theres 4 of them!

There's no discussion about power between those 2 handhelds. Its more powerful than PSP, sure.. but nowhere NEAR the PS Vita.

Did a little more research and I don't think the 3DS's GPU runs at 400Mhz, so yes, 15.3M polygons/sec seems right. I also thought the 3DS's CPU ran at 1Ghz, so many bullshit stats being thrown around.

We should make a table to put all this in.



Conina on 22 April 2013
kopstudent89 said:
Is this even a debate? RE revelations looks stunning on the 3DS, no PSP game can rival that. 3D Land also stunning imo. I don't even think there should be a thread about this, it's obviously much stronger than the PSP.


The PSP couldn't handle Resident Evil Revelations... but Super Mario 3D Land? It's my favourite 3DS-game so far, but it's graphic isn't that impressive.

Daxter, LittleBigPlanet and Ratchet & Clank: Size Matters are on par with the Super Mario 3D Land graphic... God of War (Chains of Olympus & Ghost of Sparta), GTA Liberty/Vice City Stories and MGS Peace Walker also looked great on PSP.



DieAppleDie on 22 April 2013
brendude13 said:
hinch said:

So we're looking at 15.3M polygons/sec for the PICA 200 GPU (@200MHz) in the 3DS vs 133M polygons/sec of the SGX543MP4+ (@200MHz) in the Vita.

For the CPU side.. we're also looking at dual core ARM11 CPU (@266MHz) vs quad core Cortex A9 CPU (@800-1000Mhz). The Cortex A9 architecture is leaps and bounds ahead of the the ARM11 ones and theres 4 of them!

There's no discussion about power between those 2 handhelds. Its more powerful than PSP, sure.. but nowhere NEAR the PS Vita.

Did a little more research and I don't think the 3DS's GPU runs at 400Mhz, so yes, 15.3M polygons/sec seems right. I also thought the 3DS's CPU ran at 1Ghz, so many bullshit stats being thrown around.

We should make a table to put all this in.



What? Do you want me to call Kaizar? the human spec encycopledia?



RazorDragon on 22 April 2013
brendude13 said:
hinch said:

So we're looking at 15.3M polygons/sec for the PICA 200 GPU (@200MHz) in the 3DS vs 133M polygons/sec of the SGX543MP4+ (@200MHz) in the Vita.

For the CPU side.. we're also looking at dual core ARM11 CPU (@266MHz) vs quad core Cortex A9 CPU (@800-1000Mhz). The Cortex A9 architecture is leaps and bounds ahead of the the ARM11 ones and theres 4 of them!

There's no discussion about power between those 2 handhelds. Its more powerful than PSP, sure.. but nowhere NEAR the PS Vita.

Did a little more research and I don't think the 3DS's GPU runs at 400Mhz, so yes, 15.3M polygons/sec seems right. I also thought the 3DS's CPU ran at 1Ghz, so many bullshit stats being thrown around.

We should make a table to put all this in.


15.3M polygons/sec is for the 2006 version at 200MHz. Here are the specs for the 2008 ver.(65nm), which clocks in about 40M Tri/sec at 400MHz: http://people.csail.mit.edu/kapu/EG_08/Mobile3D_EG08.pdf

Also, no doubt it's running lower than 400MHz. The maximum allowed core frequency is almost never used in portable devices because of heat and battery issues. About the CPU, nobody knows. I find it quite hard to be two ARM11's at 266(and with one being used to wireless functions, so pretty much only 1 core for graphics), since the graphics shown on the 3DS absolutely wouldn't be possible with such an old chip clocked that low. ARM11's can go up to 1GHz, I don't even believe it's possible to underclock one as low as 266MHz.



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Kaizar on 22 April 2013
RazorDragon said:
brendude13 said:
hinch said:

So we're looking at 15.3M polygons/sec for the PICA 200 GPU (@200MHz) in the 3DS vs 133M polygons/sec of the SGX543MP4+ (@200MHz) in the Vita.

For the CPU side.. we're also looking at dual core ARM11 CPU (@266MHz) vs quad core Cortex A9 CPU (@800-1000Mhz). The Cortex A9 architecture is leaps and bounds ahead of the the ARM11 ones and theres 4 of them!

There's no discussion about power between those 2 handhelds. Its more powerful than PSP, sure.. but nowhere NEAR the PS Vita.

Did a little more research and I don't think the 3DS's GPU runs at 400Mhz, so yes, 15.3M polygons/sec seems right. I also thought the 3DS's CPU ran at 1Ghz, so many bullshit stats being thrown around.

We should make a table to put all this in.


15.3M polygons/sec is for the 2006 version at 200MHz. Here are the specs for the 2008 ver.(65nm), which clocks in about 40M Tri/sec at 400MHz: http://people.csail.mit.edu/kapu/EG_08/Mobile3D_EG08.pdf

Also, no doubt it's running lower than 400MHz. The maximum allowed core frequency is almost never used in portable devices because of heat and battery issues. About the CPU, nobody knows. I find it quite hard to be two ARM11's at 266(and with one being used to wireless functions, so pretty much only 1 core for graphics), since the graphics shown on the 3DS absolutely wouldn't be possible with such an old chip clocked that low. ARM11's can go up to 1GHz, I don't even believe it's possible to underclock one as low as 266MHz.


The ARM11 CPU was used in the E3 2010 prototype with NIVIDIA 200 MHz GPU and NO Motion Sensors.

The finish 3DS uses a Nintendo Unknown CPU (seems to be 800 MHz a core on firmware 1.0.0-0 as an underclock, which would explain short battery life, I suppose) with PICA200 GPU (2008 or possibly a 2010 Model) and HAS Motion Sensors.



curl-6 on 22 April 2013
kopstudent89 said:
Is this even a debate? RE revelations looks stunning on the 3DS, no PSP game can rival that. 3D Land also stunning imo. I don't even think there should be a thread about this, it's obviously much stronger than the PSP.

I didn't ask whether the 3DS was more powerful than the PSP, I asked how they compared.



walsufnir on 23 April 2013
Kaizar said:
RazorDragon said:
brendude13 said:
hinch said:

So we're looking at 15.3M polygons/sec for the PICA 200 GPU (@200MHz) in the 3DS vs 133M polygons/sec of the SGX543MP4+ (@200MHz) in the Vita.

For the CPU side.. we're also looking at dual core ARM11 CPU (@266MHz) vs quad core Cortex A9 CPU (@800-1000Mhz). The Cortex A9 architecture is leaps and bounds ahead of the the ARM11 ones and theres 4 of them!

There's no discussion about power between those 2 handhelds. Its more powerful than PSP, sure.. but nowhere NEAR the PS Vita.

Did a little more research and I don't think the 3DS's GPU runs at 400Mhz, so yes, 15.3M polygons/sec seems right. I also thought the 3DS's CPU ran at 1Ghz, so many bullshit stats being thrown around.

We should make a table to put all this in.


15.3M polygons/sec is for the 2006 version at 200MHz. Here are the specs for the 2008 ver.(65nm), which clocks in about 40M Tri/sec at 400MHz: http://people.csail.mit.edu/kapu/EG_08/Mobile3D_EG08.pdf

Also, no doubt it's running lower than 400MHz. The maximum allowed core frequency is almost never used in portable devices because of heat and battery issues. About the CPU, nobody knows. I find it quite hard to be two ARM11's at 266(and with one being used to wireless functions, so pretty much only 1 core for graphics), since the graphics shown on the 3DS absolutely wouldn't be possible with such an old chip clocked that low. ARM11's can go up to 1GHz, I don't even believe it's possible to underclock one as low as 266MHz.


The ARM11 CPU was used in the E3 2010 prototype with NIVIDIA 200 MHz GPU and NO Motion Sensors.

The finish 3DS uses a Nintendo Unknown CPU (seems to be 800 MHz a core on firmware 1.0.0-0 as an underclock, which would explain short battery life, I suppose) with PICA200 GPU (2008 or possibly a 2010 Model) and HAS Motion Sensors.
TypeNameDatasheetSource
SoC Nintendo 1048 0H (Custom): CPU, GPU, VRAM & DSP all on one chip. N/A N/A
Processor Core ARM11 MPCore 2x 268MHz & 2x VFP Co-Processor [1] [11]
GPU DMP PICA 268MHz N/A [11]
DSP 134Mhz. 24ch 32728Hz sampling rates. N/A [11]
VRAM 6 MB within SoC. Independent of system memory (FCRAM). N/A [11]
FCRAM 2x64MB Fujitsu MB82M8080-07L [2][3][4] [5]
Storage Toshiba THGBM2G3P1FBAI8 1GB NAND Flash N/A N/A
Power Management Texas Instruments PAIC3010B 0AA37DW N/A FCC filing
Gyroscope Invensense ITG-3270 MEMS Gyroscope [5] N/A
Accelerometer ST Micro 2048 33DH X1MAQ Accelerometer Model LIS331DH [6] N/A
Wifi 802.11b/g Atheros AR6014 [7] N/A
Infrared IC NXP infrared IC, "S750 0803 TSD031C" N/A [10]
Auxiliary Microcontroller Renesas Electronics UC CTR, custom Nintendo microcontroller N/A N/A

from 3dbrew.org ...



kopstudent89 on 23 April 2013
curl-6 said:
kopstudent89 said:
Is this even a debate? RE revelations looks stunning on the 3DS, no PSP game can rival that. 3D Land also stunning imo. I don't even think there should be a thread about this, it's obviously much stronger than the PSP.

I didn't ask whether the 3DS was more powerful than the PSP, I asked how they compared.

Fair enough! My bad :P



FrancisNobleman on 23 April 2013

Specs are not graphics. You people need to compare the best now on Vita vs the best on 3DS. Actual games.