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Forums - Gaming Discussion - Myth of Metal Gear Solid 4 being too much for xbox 360 to handle...

NJ5 on 16 June 2008

@MikeB: I'm seeing the paper again, but why did you ignore the part I quoted where the paper says performance is 1.8 GFlops/s per SPU? I don't like this kind of cherry picking, it makes it seem like you just want to prove something without regards to its truth.

From the paper - performance per core:

 



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MikeB on 16 June 2008

@ NJ5

I already stated in my former comments the Cell can outperform the other top CPUs it wasn't even designed for due to the number of available processors. Why should I have to repeat this?

The Cell in the PS3 will be mostly used for game and multi-media related functions, for double precision performance new versions of the Cell will become available.



Naughty Dog: "At Naughty Dog, we're pretty sure we should be able to see leaps between games on the PS3 that are even bigger than they were on the PS2."

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NJ5 on 16 June 2008

@MikeB: This all started when you said (or quoted) that the SPU beats the PPU at everything. I believe I have given enough evidence to back my claim that that's not true (without even going to very complicated examples like the branch prediction problem). Form your own conclusions.



My Mario Kart Wii friend code: 2707-1866-0957

Lone_Canis_Lupus on 16 June 2008
starcraft said:
MikeB said:
starcraft said:
windbane said:
 

It's been widely reported to be a near-filled 50GB disc, so I won't even talk further on that topic except to remind people that the Japanese voices were to be included but were not because of space issues. I would have enjoyed that.

Now, my main point...

It should be a bannable offense at this point for you to make these comments about read/seek times. I'm pretty sure I have corrected you in several threads before and so have other people. Let's get the truth out there once again...

single layer dvd on 360 (12x read speeds) is only faster than blu-ray at a certain part of the disc. Things that need to be loaded faster go there. The blu-ray drive on the PS3 is faster, uniformly, than DL-DVDs on 360.

Installs to hard drive are, of course, even faster. There is no need for redundancy, and it certainly wouldn't take tripling or quadrupling of the data. I understand that Bethesda said they did that, but that is not the only reason load times were twice as fast on the PS3 for Oblivion. Even if redundacy is used, isn't that a great reason to have all of that space? Blu-ray is already faster than the 360 DL discs, so having more space just adds to the advantage.

The Blu-Ray specification states 1x speed is equal to 36Mbps, which makes 2x Blu-ray 72Mbps. http://www.blu-ray.com/faq/#bluray_speed


The dvd specification states 1x speed approx 10.5Mbps, or126 Mbps for a 12x DVD drive.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dvd

Now as you pointed out previously, the Blu-Ray speed is constant wheras the DVD9 speed fluctuates. But you should understand that talented devs can and will place all high-priority data in the fastest parts of the disk. So commonly used textures that have to be doubled or tripled up on a Blu-Ray disk when 72Mbps is insufficient can be put on a DVD9 just once if they are placed on a part of the disk that reads at 7-12x, depending on what speed is needed.

As for seek times, 12x DVD drive seem to be in the 100ms-120ms range, while 2x Blu Ray is around 350ms. I'll try to find a link for that some time soon. But as you can see, the DVD is substantially faster. If faster Blu-Ray drives were available when the PS3 was designed, this would be a moot argument, but they weren't, so it isn't.

Whilst you are technically correct in pointing out the Blu-Ray drive is just barely faster "uniformly" (by which I assume you mean on average) than the DVD9, this is blatantly deceptive because no dev worth their salt will put important data that needs to be regularly retrieved on the slow part of a disk.

We have seen time and time again that most installs are not optional, they are necessary, because the Blu-Ray drive places a severe limitation on the Cell (and perhaps the RSX, though it isn't that powerful) without a compulsory install for regurly retreived data. To deal with the lower seek time, devs have to duplicate data on the Blu-Ray disk. In this regard, the Blu-Ray drive both creates and solves its own problem, but it does so whilst adding a substantial cost to the system.

 


The 360's drive slows to 3.3X speeds, your information with regard to read speeds and seektimes are misleading:

"For really old Blu-Ray drives (like 3 years ago). The PS3 uses a fairly compact triple wavelength OPU.

From my own personal experience testing a Sony BD-RE drive (actually uses a Panasonic drive mechanism) and a Hitachi-LG drive of similar specs, for similar sized data sets the BD drive typically has almost the same if not significantly faster random seek times. That's generally because data sets between 4-8GB span the entire disc for for DVD-ROM while only covering a third of a BD-ROM, so on average a BD-ROM is going to have seek times in the range 50-100ms with a worst case scenario of around 200-230ms. The DVD-ROM drive will average between 110-150ms with a worst case scenario of around 170-230ms.

Of course once you start getting into larger data sets that that Blu-Ray can handle the average and worst case scenarios (which is an entire disc sweep which takes around 350-400ms) will eclipse the worst case conditions on a DVD-ROM. That being said, even with 23+GB of data with a 100 randomly generate seek sectors I still get around 100ms on average. Besides, if you find the need to randomly jump around to random sectors greater than 4GB in span, then your title has bigger issues than the capabilities of the drive."

http://forum.beyond3d.com/showthread.php?t=42157&highlight=speed&page=2

"2x Blu-ray Drive (72Mbps(9MB/s))
Single Layer (2http://www.neogaf.com/forum/newreply.php?do=newreply&p=10460097
NeoGAF - Reply to Topicx CLV) - Constant Linear Velocity (Same speed across entire disk)
Double Layer - Couldn't find any data but no games have been released on a double layer yet.

Entire Blu-ray Disk is read at 9MB/s.

12x DVD-Rom Drive SL (9.25MB/S-15.85MB/s(AVG ~8x(10.57MB/s) DL (4.36MB/s-10.57MB/s(AVG ~6x(7.93MB/s)
SL(DVD-5) 12x Max (5-12x Full CAV) - Constant Angular Velocity (Speed Varies from edge to edge)
DL(DVD-9) 8x Max (3.3-8x Full CAV) - Constant Angular Velocity (Speed Varies from edge to edge)

SL DVD is 1.57MB/s > SL Blu-ray
DL DVD is 1.07MB/s < SL Blu-ray

Majority of 360 games are on DVD-9."

http://forum.beyond3d.com/showthread.php?t=42157

What this means that overall the PS3's Blu-Ray drive is technically faster, combined with a default harddrive there's no contest, as the part where the 360 can read a DVD slighly faster can easily fit on a harddrive.

Games optimised for either Blu-Ray disc or DVD can pose problems with regard to a potential porting process. If optimised for constant streaming speeds, you will have to work around this, for instance by streaming less high quality audio and graphics.

I wasn't aware the 360 drive only slows to 3.3 speeds at its most inefficient point, I thought it went right down to 12Mbps.  Which further proves my point.  You and windbane have eached made extensive use of the word "average" and various variations of that concept (such as "overall"). 

Thats all well and good for testing purposes, but holds little sway in real-world game development.  At the end of the day, no dev is going to fail to optomize for the use of the DVD9.  To be honest, as Blu-Ray speeds and the necessity of larger and larger installs become a bigger and bigger limitation for the PS3, I'm thinking Microsoft allowing compulsory use of the HDD could give the Xbox 360 a massive technical advantage over the PS3.  Imagine for example, if Microsoft allowed a 1GB per game install for the slowest data on a DVD and then devs could run the rest of a DVD at speeds of between 7-12x (which rang from just barely to massively faster than the Blu-Ray drive). 

 


 Did you not read this part?:

DL (4.36MB/s-10.57MB/s(AVG ~6x(7.93MB/s)

This means when a 12x DVD reader reads a DL-DVD, the maximum it can go is 10.57MB/s. A DVD drive does not go at a constant speed...so that maximum would be reached at the edge of the disc. SL Blu-ray goes at a constant speed of 9MB/s. So the speeds are very close.

People make 72mbps out to be slower than it actually is. You think the PS2 or Xbox started out with 12x? I doubt it...yet the loading times seemed just fine at the time. This whole "Blu-ray is SOOOOO much slower" thing is just a measuring contest to try to take away the more storage factor.



PSN: Lone_Canis_Lupus

thekitchensink on 16 June 2008
starcraft said:
The game was pushing the limits of a 25GB disk a few months before release, then they had a well timed publicity based stunt where they announced it would be on a dual-layer disk. The chances that this game is far above 25GB are minimal.

Another thing to consider when thinking about how big it would have to be on 360 is the fact that most Blu-Ray games (and I'm sure MGS4 is no exception) have the same data on a disk in multiple spaces to account for the Blu-Ray disks substantially slower maximum read/seek times.

On the 360, you would have no need for the doubling/tripling/quadrupling of the data.

 

Yes, you would, but for a different reason: you'd need to have the game engine on every disc.

 

Still, this could easily be done if they gave it the same attention they gave the PS3 game.  They won't, though. 



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MikeB on 16 June 2008
NJ5 said:
@MikeB: This all started when you said (or quoted) that the SPU beats the PPU at everything. I believe I have given enough evidence to back my claim that that's not true (without even going to very complicated examples like the branch prediction problem). Form your own conclusions.

IMO it has more to do with program design. With regard to the lack of branch prediction, you can manually implement branch hints or elimination.

http://www.cellperformance.com/articles/2006/07/tutorial_branch_elimination_pa.html 



Naughty Dog: "At Naughty Dog, we're pretty sure we should be able to see leaps between games on the PS3 that are even bigger than they were on the PS2."

PS3 vs 360 sales

NJ5 on 16 June 2008
MikeB said:
NJ5 said:
@MikeB: This all started when you said (or quoted) that the SPU beats the PPU at everything. I believe I have given enough evidence to back my claim that that's not true (without even going to very complicated examples like the branch prediction problem). Form your own conclusions.

IMO it has more to do with program design. With regard to the lack of branch prediction, you can manually implement branch hints or elimination.

http://www.cellperformance.com/articles/2006/07/tutorial_branch_elimination_pa.html


Unfortunately that makes it static branch prediction, not dynamic, which is very different. Stop gasping at straws, the SPUs are not the be-all-end-all in computing, although they are great processors for some applications.

 



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johnsobas on 16 June 2008
selnor said:
kingofwale said:
Great idea, 3 DVDs while you watch all cut-scenes in 480P.

Heck, why not also port it to Wii while we are at it?

 

LOL. This is the worst comment this generation has seen. What makes you say 480p. Most Blu Ray games have information doubled up so as to save loading times. Also Sony dont compress the games on BLU RAY. In the end I suspect MGS4 is no bigger than around 17 - 18GB. And M$ have amazing tech at condensing the data for 360 discs. If MGS4 was on 360 it would be 2 maybe 3 discs with all bells and whistles and 1080p. Anyone remember Resident Evil 2 on N64?. The cartridge was 512mb and it stored the entire game with FMV that came on 2 Playstation discs of 720mb each.

 no resident evil 2 was 512 megabits, divide that by 8.  The FMVs looked worse, i don't recall the sound quality but I imagine that was reduced also.  However it really mattered very little, and the loss of load times was a big plus.  The n64 got all kinds of games that the PS1 did and managed to fit it in fractions of the space that it originally was, the reason is because people had to actually optomize.  We saw on PS2 that games were actually taking up much more space than on the xbox even though they had enough space to fit anyway on the xbox discs.  Games took 2 or more times as much space even though developers didn't even try to optimize things.  

I think MGS could be done on 2 discs on the 360, and considering the game is completely linear i don't see any problem with that.  



currently playing: Skyward Sword, Mario Sunshine, Xenoblade Chronicles X

Rock_on_2008 on 16 June 2008

XBox 360 MGS 4 = 3 game discs. One disc for game play and two discs for cut scenes.
But it would never happen.



Barozi on 16 June 2008
MikeB said:
@ starcraft

Thats all well and good for testing purposes, but holds little sway in real-world game development. At the end of the day, no dev is going to fail to optomize for the use of the DVD9. To be honest, as Blu-Ray speeds and the necessity of larger and larger installs become a bigger and bigger limitation for the PS3,


Look at Uncharted and Ratchet & Clank: Tools of Destruction, two of the technically most impressive console games currently available.

Uncharted, no game install, no in-game loading times.
R&C: TOD, only a few hundred MBs of install.

And there's still a lot of room for optimisations. Technically fast constant reading speeds are a huge advantage from a games design perspective (more predictable). I think more and more developers are going to tap into this potential, only requiring installs where it makes absolute sense to enhance the overall experience. The 360 currently enjoys a little developer priority advantage as it's based on older widespread technology and its year or more headstart in terms of building up an install base.

Funny that nearly every PS3 Fanboy thinks, that Uncharted has the best graphics in this generation.

I played Ratchet & Clank last year at the Games Convention and I wasn't that impressed. It looked like a decent game to me. Not technically amazing or whatever.