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Forums - Gaming - What can we expect of console graphic hardware performance in 2012?

Soleron on 06 January 2009
theword said:
@haxxiy
My original post is not meant to say which console GPU is better, rather it is just a projection of what we could be looking at in the future. But I will try to address your misunderstanding on the technical side of thing below.
Now, when I said 360 GPU was more powerful then PS3 GPU this would take at least a 20 pages essay to point out technical intricatecies of why it is so. The PS3 as a whole with the aid of the 7 CELL cores, can on paper do nearly twice the 360 in floating points calculation.
But we are talking just the GPU alone (CELL excluded).
The 360 GPU despite being released 1 year before were actually one generation ahead of the PS3 GPU. Why? Microsoft had asked ATI to spend two years designing a unique from the ground up GPU for the 360, with many novel features for its time. The result was the first unifided shaders GPU on the market. The benefit of unified shaders is that it is more effiecient than traditional shader (up to 30% more so by some experts). Another unique feature that greatly enhanced performance was the 10MB smart memory logic that does 4xAA, and other specials effects for nearly no loss in performance. The 256GB/s band width that is associated with this memory is worth mentioning. Because of this you will see some people claim that the 360 GPU has an effective bandwidth of 278GB/sec.
The importance of this extra bandwidth and the smart memory logic on 360 GPU can not be understated. It is this design decision that helped make nearly every multiplatform game looked smoother around the edges for the 360. While PS3 programmers have to implement all kinds of tricks including reducing resolution to get any kind of acceptable AA performance.
For whatever reasons, not until very late in the system design did Sony commisioned NVIDIA to design a GPU for them. And at that time Sony did not think the blu ray issue would delay the PS3 one year. So effectively NVIDIA had less than a year to design the PS3 GPU. Not enough time to do anything revolutionary so they just took a Geforce 7800GTX and molded it into something that would work with the CELL. The lack of time to design (ATI had nearly two years to do a from the ground up design) severely limited the potential of PS3 GPU, which felt like an afterthough rather than a perfect part of the whole.

This. AMD's Xbox 360 chip is a generation ahead (R600 vs. G70) and incorporates some major advances. It is very easy to take advantage of this unlike the Cell which is completely new and has no standard API. The PS3 has more theoretical FP performance... but in the real world the Xbox 360 will have better performance. The only part of the AMD GPU that sucks is the bit that Microsoft designed (unsurprisingly), the packaging. It couldn't handle the heat load so it causes RRoD.

 



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haxxiy on 06 January 2009
theword said:
@haxxiy

My original post is not meant to say which console GPU is better, rather it is just a projection of what we could be looking at in the future. But I will try to address your misunderstanding on the technical side of thing below.

Now, when I said 360 GPU was more powerful then PS3 GPU this would take at least a 20 pages essay to point out technical intricatecies of why it is so. The PS3 as a whole with the aid of the 7 CELL cores, can on paper do nearly twice the 360 in floating points calculation.

But we are talking just the GPU alone (CELL excluded).

The 360 GPU despite being released 1 year before were actually one generation ahead of the PS3 GPU. Why? Microsoft had asked ATI to spend two years designing a unique from the ground up GPU for the 360, with many novel features for its time. The result was the first unifided shaders GPU on the market. The benefit of unified shaders is that it is more effiecient than traditional shader (up to 30% more so by some experts). Another unique feature that greatly enhanced performance was the 10MB smart memory logic that does 4xAA, and other specials effects for nearly no loss in performance. The 256GB/s band width that is associated with this memory is worth mentioning. Because of this you will see some people claim that the 360 GPU has an effective bandwidth of 278GB/sec.

The importance of this extra bandwidth and the smart memory logic on 360 GPU can not be understated. It is this design decision that helped make nearly every multiplatform game looked smoother around the edges for the 360. While PS3 programmers have to implement all kinds of tricks including reducing resolution to get any kind of acceptable AA performance.

For whatever reasons, not until very late in the system design did Sony commisioned NVIDIA to design a GPU for them. And at that time Sony did not think the blu ray issue would delay the PS3 one year. So effectively NVIDIA had less than a year to design the PS3 GPU. Not enough time to do anything revolutionary so they just took a Geforce 7800GTX and molded it into something that would work with the CELL. The lack of time to design (ATI had nearly two years to do a from the ground up design) severely limited the potential of PS3 GPU, which felt like an afterthough rather than a perfect part of the whole.

 

Whoa man I was just posting theoretical fill rate figures to compare the differences between this gen and last gen, no intents on pointing 'lolz, look how PS3 is b3tter' or shit.

Yes, the EDRAM was really a smart move from Microsoft which enabled 4xAA at very little performance cost. To RSX do the same it would need the SPEs to pre-cull polygons etc. something far harder to do. The unified shader was a nice move which made the Xenos to be kinda a prototype of R600 cards while the RSX used still the geforce 7 architecute. Still, the RSX has bigger theoretical fill rate and more operations per cycle than the Xenos:

Xenos: 48 dynammicaly scheduled pipelines = vector4 MADD + scaler = 240 alus (shader ops) per clock cycle or 480 shader FLOPS
RSX: 8 vertex pipelines = vector + scalar | 24 parallel pixel-shader pipelines = 2 vector4 + 2 scalers + 1 texture = 264 + 16 = 280 alus (shader ops) per cycle or 520 shader FLOPS 



 

 

 

 

 

theword on 06 January 2009

@haxxiy

Ah, I misunderstood your writeup then.  Thanks for clarifying.



McStormy1 on 06 January 2009

Just because Nintendo is making money with crap graphics doesn't mean Sony and MS will follow suit. If everyone copied Nintendo then nobody will be making money but Nintendo themselves. MS and Sony will do very well catering to the hardcore market that is still an open niche.

We know that Nintendo cares about money more than anything else, but Sony and MS are more interested in pursuing the artistic endeavors with their consoles, creating machines and software that propel the industry forward to artistic maturity.



haxxiy on 06 January 2009

@ theword

No prob man.



 

 

 

 

 

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ksv on 06 January 2009
McStormy1 said:
We know that Nintendo cares about money more than anything else, but Sony and MS are more interested in pursuing the artistic endeavors with their consoles, creating machines and software that propel the industry forward to artistic maturity.

Haha, artistic maturity. Zealotous fanboyism can be fun to watch some times. Yeah, Microsoft or Sony are more interested in being artists than making money. They're like Picasso and Leonardo da Vinci!



McStormy1 on 06 January 2009
ksv said:
McStormy1 said:
We know that Nintendo cares about money more than anything else, but Sony and MS are more interested in pursuing the artistic endeavors with their consoles, creating machines and software that propel the industry forward to artistic maturity.

Haha, artistic maturity. Zealotous fanboyism can be fun to watch some times. Yeah, Microsoft or Sony are more interested in being artists than making money. They're like Picasso and Leonardo da Vinci!

 

That is true for Sony primarily. They sell their systems since the PS1 era at large losses and support first party devs such as Team ICO or the Flower game that sell negligable amounts to further the maturity of this industry. The fact that Sony sells at a huge losses, supports some barely profitable games and studio's should be enough to show that they do care more about the integrity of their work than making money. As long as they break even with their other studio's and make a small profit they're happy to lose a little money on their PS brands to further the artistic march of our beloved industry.



theword on 06 January 2009
McStormy1 said:
ksv said:
McStormy1 said:
We know that Nintendo cares about money more than anything else, but Sony and MS are more interested in pursuing the artistic endeavors with their consoles, creating machines and software that propel the industry forward to artistic maturity.

Haha, artistic maturity. Zealotous fanboyism can be fun to watch some times. Yeah, Microsoft or Sony are more interested in being artists than making money. They're like Picasso and Leonardo da Vinci!

 

That is true for Sony primarily. They sell their systems since the PS1 era at large losses and support first party devs such as Team ICO or the Flower game that sell negligable amounts to further the maturity of this industry. The fact that Sony sells at a huge losses, supports some barely profitable games and studio's should be enough to show that they do care more about the integrity of their work than making money. As long as they break even with their other studio's and make a small profit they're happy to lose a little money on their PS brands to further the artistic march of our beloved industry.

 

 interesting comments but very difficult to prove right or wrong either way.  I personally think all three companies are in it for the money.  MS needs to gain a piece of the living room entertainment pie for defensive and offensive posture.  Sony is already in this space but need more ways to make money.  Nintendo is just trying to protect its rice bowl and doing a very good job at it. 



ksv on 06 January 2009

So Nintendo games don't have artistic integrity because they sell well? Never mind they are the developer with the highest number of critically acclaimed games in the industry. I guess the Zelda series, Super Metroid, Super Mario Bros series, Mario Galaxy, Metroid Prime etc are just crappy mass market products with the lowest amount of effort for the biggest amount of sales.

ICO on the other hand, now that is made by true artists.

 



McStormy1 on 06 January 2009
ksv said:

So Nintendo games don't have artistic integrity because they sell well? Never mind they are the developer with the highest number of critically acclaimed games in the industry. I guess the Zelda series, Super Metroid, Super Mario Bros series, Mario Galaxy, Metroid Prime etc are just crappy mass market products with the lowest amount of effort for the biggest amount of sales.

ICO on the other hand, now that is made by true artists.

 

 

What insights can you find or idea's can you interpret from playing Mario, Zelda and Metroid? Nothing. They are simply games with fun and polished gameplay mechanics. They won't challange your perceptions nor will they provide anything more meaningful than an afternoon of fun. There is nothing wrong with that, however IMO Sonys console and even MS' offer a deeper more well rounded experience with games that are simply mainstream fun and a niche of games that are more progressive in their idea's for gamers looking for a deeper experience. Nintendo's games are creative, I would not say they constitute art or even strive to however.