haxxiy said: To me is still a mistery why RSX does not have any embedded memory.

You mean like EDRAM? Sony opted for a more expensive and technically better solution, seperate buses. RSX has its own GDDR3 memory to work with (like a PC) and can use XDR memory if needed (unlike a PC, it has extra texture lookup logic for this). The RSX differs mostly from other GPUs in that it was designed to take the best advantage of the Cell and has more than usual cache memory.

The RSX is more powerful than the Xenos where it really counts, like being able to perform more shader operations. It's relatively weak at some operations the Cell is more flexible and powerful for (thus the huge bandwidth between Cell and RSX).

MikeB said: @ Squilliam At lower resolutions having AA does not impact 360 fillrates that much. However there are plenty of high profile 360 games completely lacking anti-aliasing, including (original) exclusives like Halo 3 (best sold 360 game), Kameo (my favourite) and Bioshock (360's Game of the year 2007). That should tell you enough that Anti-aliasing isn't nearly as "free" as Microsoft wants you to believe (this due to tiling). Either way IMO having full screen anti-aliasing or not does not per se really break a high definition game, there are plenty of design considerations and workarounds to build the best looking console games on the market.

Halo 3 is a special case, it uses a lot of funny rendering technologies, Bioshock is UE2.5 and the Unreal engine isn't compatible with AA until direct3d 10 and Kameo is a launch title. But the difference is there, there are many many Xbox 360 games which have a small quantity of AA whereas the PS3 examples did not.

 

@ Squilliam

Correct, on the 360 3rd party devs use the EDRAM for this, the PS3 does not have EDRAM, so their game engine needs to be modified to implement AA in different ways (extra R&D).

But many more demanding PS3 games (exclusives) have full screen anti-aliasing. For example Killzone 2, no 3rd party game comes close to that one technically.

Tyrannical said: ssj12 said: DDR3 @ 2000MHz with three channels is plenty.     No, it's not. 22.4GBS memory bandwidth sounds like a lot, but it's not enough to do complex graphical operations like HDR, alpha-blending, and anti-aliasing at 30/60 fps. The 360 does most of that in the 10MB frame buffer, and it has a 256GBS of memory bandwidth between the frame buffer and GPU.

 

let me ask, are we talking dedicated integrated memory or system memory?

DDR3 is the highest we can have for system memory.

DDR5 is the highest for intergrated memory.

The RSX differs mostly from other GPUs in that it was designed to take the best advantage of the Cell and has more than usual cache memory.

The RSX is more powerful than the Xenos where it really counts, like being able to perform more shader operations. It's relatively weak at some operations the Cell is more flexible and powerful for (thus the huge bandwidth between Cell and RSX).

MikeB said:

haxxiy said: To me is still a mistery why RSX does not have any embedded memory.

The RSX was an off the shelf PC GPU bolted onto the CELL at the last minute because Sony realized the PS3 would be too weak without it. Kinda of like Sega with the Saturn, if you beleive in Karma.

The 360's unified shader Xenos can perform almost twice the in game shader ops then the PS3's RSX. I don't know where you'd get the impression the RSX was more powerful.

 

@ Tyrannical

Please let's try to keep misinformation to a minimum....

07/12/2004

"The companies have been jointly developing a custom graphics processing unit (GPU) incorporating next-generation GeForce technology - the graphics hardware behind NVIDIA's PC products - for the past two years, which will be used alongside SCEI's own system solutions for next-generation platforms featuring the Cell processor. "

NVIDIA partners with Sony on PlayStation 3 graphics hardware
http://www.gamesindustry.biz/articles/nvidia-partners-with-sony-on-playstation-3-graphics-hardware

Tyrannical said: MikeB said: haxxiy said: To me is still a mistery why RSX does not have any embedded memory. The RSX was an off the shelf PC GPU bolted onto the CELL at the last minute because Sony realized the PS3 would be too weak without it. Kinda of like Sega with the Saturn, if you beleive in Karma. The 360's unified shader Xenos can perform almost twice the in game shader ops then the PS3's RSX. I don't know where you'd get the impression the RSX was more powerful.

 

Another one trying to start it again. First of all, like MikeB already said, the Reality Synthesizer have been developed since the beginning of 2005 by Nvidia. Do you really think that knowing X360 specs because it released earlier Sony would release a weaker console one year after? Yet fans keep thinking they know how to do things better than the whole SCE developing team.

Secondly, the Xenos can do 48 billion shader ops per second while the RSX can do 136 billion per sec.

The RSX can do 24 filtered texture samples per clock and 32 unfiltered. The Xenos can only do 16 filtered and 16 unfiltered.

RSX's fillrate are 4.4 gigapixels/sec and 13.2 gigatexels/sec, while the Xenos fillrate is 4 gigapixels and 8 gigatexels.

However, the eDRAM includes additional logic for color, alpha compositing, Z/stencil buffering, and anti-aliasing called “Intelligent Memory” (eDRAM), giving developers 4-sample anti-aliasing at very little performance cost. That's why earlier multiplat games usually look better on the X360. You should know that since the very first games the consoles GPUs were maxed and graphical improvements are mostly built around the GPU: and guess what, the EDRAM easier to develop to than programming the SPEs to do polygon transformations, lighting, etc.

 

ssj12 said: Tyrannical said: ssj12 said: DDR3 @ 2000MHz with three channels is plenty.     No, it's not. 22.4GBS memory bandwidth sounds like a lot, but it's not enough to do complex graphical operations like HDR, alpha-blending, and anti-aliasing at 30/60 fps. The 360 does most of that in the 10MB frame buffer, and it has a 256GBS of memory bandwidth between the frame buffer and GPU.   let me ask, are we talking dedicated integrated memory or system memory? DDR3 is the highest we can have for system memory. DDR5 is the highest for intergrated memory.

You really dont know what your talking about.

LOL WUT?

You do realize that most modern games use some form of HDR rendering.

 

MikeB said: @ Squilliam But the difference is there, there are many many Xbox 360 games which have a small quantity of AA whereas the PS3 examples did not. Correct, on the 360 3rd party devs use the EDRAM for this, the PS3 does not have EDRAM, so their game engine needs to be modified to implement AA in different ways (extra R&D). But many more demanding PS3 games (exclusives) have full screen anti-aliasing. For example Killzone 2, no 3rd party game comes close to that one technically.

 

 I disagree. On a Technical note, RFG is the most impressive tech for me. Not best visual game but. But as a whole the game is a technical marvel.

Another one trying to start it again. First of all, like MikeB already said, the Reality Synthesizer have been developed since the beginning of 2005 by Nvidia.

Like I said, bolted on at the last minute. Let's look at the timeline from wikipedia  and you'll see why.

In 2000, Sony Computer Entertainment, Toshiba Corporation, and IBM formed an alliance ("STI") to design and manufacture the processor.

The STI Design Center opened in March 2001.^[12] The Cell was designed over a period of four years,

On May 17, 2005, Sony Computer Entertainment confirmed some specifications of the Cell processor that would be shipping in the forthcoming PlayStation 3 console

When exactly was the PS3 supposed to be shipping before it got delayed? Spring 2006 or was theer any water that it might meet the 360's launch of holiday 2005? What exactly were they supposed to provide developers in dev kits for a GPU when a deal wasn't even signed yet? At least when a deal is signed to you can come up with the basic architecture and use a PC equivalent until real samples of the GPU are ready. Sony starts CELL planning in 2000, and doesn't even sign a GPU deal until 2005? MS signed up ATI back in August 2003.