PS3 - X-Box 360 - Nintendo Revolution

[Louis Dias]

http://www.gamesindustry.biz/content_page.php?aid=12670

Interesting how game sharing will work just like the DS.  I'm assuming multiple Revolutions in the same Wi-Fi zone, not over the internet...

[adolescent]

lou_dias wrote:
About market size in Japan.  No one has bought an Xbox as the 360 is around the corner...but noone has ever really bought an XBOX in Japan.  Ever.  Didn't they break 100k units sold only this year?  And that's in 4 years of sales.

More "bullpoo" from you.  The Xbox has broken 100k units in Japan every year except 2004.  If you include the rest of Asia then the number is higher.    

In regards to the market, it is small.  Even Nintendo sells twice as many consoles and 2-3 times as many games in the US alone.  Europe has even become a larger market than Japan in the past few years.

[MskoDestny]

lou_dias wrote:
I think you 2 are getting multi-threaded and multi-core confused.  They are not the same and does require special programming.

I think it is you that doesn't understand. They aren't the same. One is a software technique and the other is a class of hardware. However, they are related. Multi-core CPUs work essentially the same as standard multi-CPU systems. You need multi-threaded programs to take advantage of both cores.

Having branch predicters reside outside of the cores allows the branch predicter to send a code segment to one core for execution automatically where as on the 360, this will not happen and is up to the developers in there own code to decide on the compiler level.  This goes back to In-Order-Executing vs. Out-Of-Order...

You really don't understand how branch prediction works. It's part of the front end of the processor core, not external to it. Nintendo can't magically add better branch prediction to the PPE core. Also Out of order execution and branch prediction are two separate features of the front-end.

Also note that the PPEs in all 3 consoles have branch prediction, just not very sophisticated branch prediction. However, branch prediction is designed to keep the pipeline full not to feed to separate processor cores.

So on revolution, code will always take advantage of multiple cores...having a larger cache (and branch predicters) is also what makes this possible and why I (in another thread...possibly earlier in this one) said a 2.5Ghz G5-based Revolution cpu will initially outperform first the 3.2GHz 360 and PS3 cpus.

Except it won't be a G5. It will be PPE based which means it will have the same fundamental limitations as the 360 just with more cache to help mitigate the poor branch prediction. If Broadway runs at 3.2GHz then it would clearly do better on single-threaded code, but seeing as there should be multi-threaded games (like PGR3) out on the 360 well before the Revolution even hits the market I don't see this being a huge advantage.

AMD has had multi-core processors for years, no one had to worry about it because their branch-prediction took care of all that stuff.

They did not have multi-core processors until the X2s and dual core opterons. You're confusing having multiple execution units and multiple cores. Very different.

This is why I call the Revolution cpu "traditional".  It's just like a desktop cpu.

Except it's not just like a desktop CPU. It's PPE based like the Xenon.

[Louis Dias]

adolescent wrote:

lou_dias wrote:
About market size in Japan.  No one has bought an Xbox as the 360 is around the corner...but noone has ever really bought an XBOX in Japan.  Ever.  Didn't they break 100k units sold only this year?  And that's in 4 years of sales.

More "bullpoo" from you.  The Xbox has broken 100k units in Japan every year except 2004.  If you include the rest of Asia then the number is higher.    

In regards to the market, it is small.  Even Nintendo sells twice as many consoles and 2-3 times as many games in the US alone.  Europe has even become a larger market than Japan in the past few years.

I guess you can include 2005 in that <100k statement as well.

Yes, the US market is bigger than Japan...but it's still a strong #2.

Europe is 10 small markets that get their sales lumped into 1 total.  If a title sells 100,000 copies in the UK, same with Germany, it's considered a big hit.  And all the rest are much smaller.

[Louis Dias]

http://entertainment.howstuffworks.com/nintendo-revolution.htm

ah-toldyouso-chu

http://www.joystiq.com/entry/1234000320065895/

[adolescent]

Since you're now posting random links, I'll play too.

http://electronics.howstuffworks.com/playstation-three.htm

http://electronics.howstuffworks.com/xbox-three-sixty.htm

[Louis Dias]

wow for once you posted something meaningful instead of spitting out "prove it" blurge at me...

[Waccoon]

Lou:  typical stuff you buy with any PC purchase. Your point?

Don't Amigas use keyboards and mice?  Doesn't every Amigan want ethernet?  Computers don't boot from air, so you need to spend more money on a boot device...

...plus other costs you don't include in your REEL CHEEP machine price projections.

Lou:  but I have spare PS/2 keyboard laying around from small "upgrades". If you want to pay $70 for a brand new wireless keyboard, that's you issue, not mine.

Can you use your PS/2 keyboard on a Gamecube?

Lou:  By the way, when was the last time anyone bought "new" Amiga hardware? Doesn't most of it around here come from ebay? And isn't it 12-20 years old too boot?

I suppose if you're still living in the 90's and are used to running AGA games all day, Gamecube begins to look like a miracle.

As for your Mac-mini, should I go quote the thread where you complain about how slow it is?

MacOS X is slow.  Are you going to go into another discussion blaming the Mac hardware for it's lack of performance when the software is actually at fault, as you do when you complain that XBox 360 games look "choppy?"

I never said the GC is the perfect OS4 platform, just a potential one to help grow the market.

Funny, when I brought up other "potential" solutions in that other thread of yours, you immediately shot all of them down saying they were off topic.  Ineffective, I can understand.  But, off topic?

koafter:  Damn, why post about the immaturity of multiproc programming?

Indeed.  Lou, don't you have a rebuttal for this, or your rediculous performance projections for XBox 360 and PS3 games?  Are you still telling everyone all the next gen non-Nintendo systems will have only twice the performance of the original XBox?

MskoDestny:  I do think fewer buttons can be better. My point was that current FPS games have too many functions to stuff on the Revolution controller well and I don't think that will change soon since most FPS games start out on the PC (which of course has plenty of buttons).

Well, most of the FPS I've seen can be driven almost entirely with the mouse, scrollwheel, and space bar.  It's the wargame FPS that need millions of buttons, like the flight simulators.  But, those kinds of really complex games aren't Nintendo's typical fare, and as far as I know, aren't all that mainstream.

Lou:  So on revolution, code will always take advantage of multiple cores...having a larger cache (and branch predicters) is also what makes this possible and why I (in another thread...possibly earlier in this one) said a 2.5Ghz G5-based Revolution cpu will initially outperform first the 3.2GHz 360 and PS3 cpus.

OK, so once again you're suggesting that Revolution will outperform the competition becuase Sony and MS developers are crap?

Don't you think the dev tools and compilers they have account for this?  Do you think all these guys still write their software in assembly?

Lou:  It's like comparing my 2.2GHz Athlon 3400+ to a Pentium 3.4GHz.

Yeah, but the performance of these processors isn't going to fluctuate, Lou.  Your beef is with the dev tools and the intelligence of the programmers, not the hardware.

Suggesting that Revolution will initially outperform PS3 and XBox 360, before Revolution's specs are final, is rediculous.  This kind of fanboy banter happens every time new consoles are released.

AMD has had multi-core processors for years, no one had to worry about it because their branch-prediction took care of all that stuff.

Nobody had to worry because the OS takes care of all that stuff.  Don't these new consoles have operating systems and gobs of dev tools these days?  Oh, but you already know that Nintendo's tools are way better than PS3 and XBox 360 tools, right?

Also, branch prediction is a technique to guess what a particular thread is going to do next, so it applies to each core individually.  Games generally don't have as many branches as application software, either.

Lou:  ah-toldyouso-chu

{Link)

Told us what?  Here's an excerpt from that article:

"So Nintendo took a different and far riskier path. First, it chose the codename "Revolution" for its new game console. Then the company set a big goal -- to dramatically improve the interface for video games. With this strategy, Nintendo built an amazing amount of hype around its innovative controller for the Revolution."

So, they're saying Nintendo can't compete at the hardware level and are making up for it by trying new interface directions.  How does this help your argument about the power and performance of the CPUs?

Lou:  (Link:  http://www.joystiq.com/entry/1234000320065895/)

One of the comments below the article said this:

"But he actually didn't say that. He said that gamers will see not a big difference in terms od graffics in neather the trhee consoles."

This I can understand, as it is typically vague marketting talk.  Smart salesmen don't say things like, "there is no difference."

Come one, IBM is making both CPUs for XBox 360 and Revolution.  ATI is making both GPUs for XBox 360 and Revolution.  Surely these companies aren't charging Nintendo less money and making faster, cooler chips just "because."

[MskoDestny]

http://entertainment.howstuffworks.com/nintendo-revolution.htm

I can't say I have a lot of respect for that article when it claims the 360 has 6 processor cores when it only has 3.

ah-toldyouso-chu

http://www.joystiq.com/entry/1234000320065895/

So Nintendo has gone from saying "2-3 times more powerful than the Gamecube" to saying nothing to saying "there will be no difference" I'll believe them when they release some specs or some videos/screenshots that can compete with PGR3. At the moment his statement can be taken so many ways, it's not particularly useful. I wouldn't mind reading a decent English translation of the interview. Babelfish just wasn't cutting it for me.

Waccoon wrote:
Well, most of the FPS I've seen can be driven almost entirely with the mouse, scrollwheel, and space bar. It's the wargame FPS that need millions of buttons, like the flight simulators. But, those kinds of really complex games aren't Nintendo's typical fare, and as far as I know, aren't all that mainstream.

HL2: Fire, secondary fire, use, crouch, jump and weapon selection and I consider that to be the bare minimum. At that point you're stuck jamming use onto the D-pad as well as weapon selection. Less than ideal and this is assuming that you used an auto-reload mechanism (also less than ideal). A lot of games are also adding in dedicated grenade buttons (which are quite useful).

Now I'm sure any Nintendo FPS made for the console would be well suited to the controller, but Nintendo doesn't make many FPS games. If there are a substantial number of FPS games on the Revolution they will be coming from 3rd party developers and likely have problems mapping their buttons well to the controller.

[Louis Dias]

blah blah blah...

The brains of the console are rumored to be a single dual-threaded IBM "custom" PowerPC 2.5 GHz CPU, with 256 KB L1 cache and 1 MB of L2 cache (L3 cache is rumored). The system will also sport a Physical Processing Chip (PPU) with 32MB of dedicated RAM, while the CPU itself will saddled up next to 512MB of system RAM. The custom ATI GPU solution is rumored to consist of a RN520 600MHz core, backed with 256MB of RAM and "32 parallel floating-point dynamically scheduled shader pipelines." While the output will theoretically be capable of putting out 1080p resolution (higher even, at 2048x1268), Solo says that HD support has not yet been decided (which fits with Nintendo's own comments).

I'm not particularly inclined to deeply assess how such a configuration would stack up to the Xbox 360 or the PS3, but Solo wrote that he thinks it "would be on par with Xbox360, though PS3 could have an edge in the CPU area. In the GPU area the Revolution beats PS3, and technically would match Xbox 360."

Nintendo may have the right idea. As publishers demand more and more games go cross-platform, a single-core system that's easy on developers may be the best way to ensure plenty of cross-platform support, without burning too much money on console architecture that may only be used for exclusive games. While we expect to see exclusive titles for both the Xbox 360 and the PS3, most titles will be cross-platform, and will not necessarily take advantage of the multi-core optimizations for the Xbox 360, or Sony's Cell architecture. Keep in mind that Gabe Newell recently said that the Xbox's CPU performs like a 1.7GHz P3 on unoptimized code.

In the end you will believe what you want and twist what I say as well as pick and choose bits from articles to suit your agenda and ignore the overall point.  The facts are adding up in Revolution's favor.

Revolution will require less optimization on the final coding level in order to perform at peak efficiency.

According to these specs, Revolution will have 512MB for its cpu, 256MB for its gpu and 32MB for it's PPU.

People tout the PS3's SPU's for physics (and sound as there is no dedicated sound chip).  It's process is in charge of managing those SPU's in addition to running PPC code.

With separate processors with their own dedicated RAM and larger cpu cache to keep the cpu fed with instructions instead of playing the waiting game that will happen on the 360...

Revolution looks like it will more than keep up - dare I say "outperform both in real world conditions".

Why are these spec believable?  Because this late in the game, hardware specs are getting finalized and developers have to know what they have to play with.

So on the surface, you can look at your 3.2 GHz triple core cpu and your 3.2Ghz single core + 7 spu cores cpu and say it outperforms a 2.5GHz single core cpu.  And you would be correct.  So go out and buy a 360 or PS3 and be happy.  It's a free planet.

@Waccoon
You are going off topic.  If you want to talk about a Gamecube as an OS4 platform, go to my thread or the Hyperion news post.  But the quick answer is Amigans with money to burn have already bought an A1...and there numbers are few...the rest of them running REAL Amiga hardware that is 12-20 years old would be quite content with a GC powered system.  Otherwise they already own a PC (or MAC) and only come here in spirit.  I've already outlined the costs in that thread as under $200 complete.  Yes I can use a PS/2 keyboard on a gamecube with an $8 adapter.  Again this has been discussed already in my thread and was included in the costs.  Go back underneath the bridge.

Now I'm sure any Nintendo FPS made for the console would be well suited to the controller, but Nintendo doesn't make many FPS games. If there are a substantial number of FPS games on the Revolution they will be coming from 3rd party developers and likely have problems mapping their buttons well to the controller.

So Metroid Prime 1, 2 and 3(coming on Revolution) aren't FPS games, nor is Geist.  Interesting...even more interesting is how the controller with "nun chuck" addon was demoed on a Metroid Prime 2 level running on the Gamecube rewritten to take advantage of interface...

[MskoDestny]

lou_dias wrote:

Now I'm sure any Nintendo FPS made for the console would be well suited to the controller, but Nintendo doesn't make many FPS games. If there are a substantial number of FPS games on the Revolution they will be coming from 3rd party developers and likely have problems mapping their buttons well to the controller.

So Metroid Prime 1, 2 and 3(coming on Revolution) aren't FPS games, nor is Geist.  Interesting...even more interesting is how the controller with "nun chuck" addon was demoed on a Metroid Prime 2 level running on the Gamecube rewritten to take advantage of interface...

Notice how I said Nintendo doesn't make MANY FPS games not that they don't make FPS games at all. 3 FPS does not constitute many in my book. Now any given 3rd party developer may not have developed more than that, but Nintendo is but one company and there are a whole slew of 3rd party developers writing FPS games, most of which could benefit from having more than 4-buttons.

As for your supposed specs, they're just rumors. Until Nintendo comes out with specs officially I won't give them any more weight than rumors about the other consoles before their specs were announced. 512MB of main RAM doesn't make a lot of sense unless they're using a unified RAM architecture (like in the 360) in which case the GPU wouldn't have another 256MB of it's own.

If you're specs are true, it would mean the Revolution is going to be sputtering along with a 2.5GHz single-core PPE based CPU. An extra 1MB of cache isn't going to make up for having 1/3 of the processing hardware running 700MHz slower. The PPU would help out on physics intensive games, but I have a hard time believing there are many games with a massive enough physics engine to make up the difference between the two.

[Louis Dias]

Well, that's why in real world tests we will see what performs best.

These specs come from developers...and I've seen similar specs in a printed magazine.

Like I said before.  The hardware is finalized and now it's time to show developers.

They are building a low cost machine as they've always said.

MoSys memory is both cheap and fast so I don't doubt the memory.  It's one of the things that people say "wft is T1-MoSys memory" and it made the GC so fast AND cheap.

I still say the cpu is a G5 with typical Nintendo enhancement requirements.  You can call it what you want, to me a PPC core is a PPC core.  Again, going with an existing design with minor tweaks keeps the costs down.

I don't see them coming out with a slower GPU than the Xbox because it's coming out almost 9 moths later.

PS3 has SPU's for physics, 360 has more PPC cores for that, Why can't Nintendo just throw in a basic physics chip and some dedicated ram (32MB)?

To me, it all seems possible.

[MskoDestny]

These specs come from developers...and I've seen similar specs in a printed magazine.

Well purported developers anyway. The fact that they've been printed in a magazine doesn't necessarily make them true.

Like I said before.  The hardware is finalized and now it's time to show developers.

Is it? That Spanish interview made it sound like they still hadn't quite finalized the hardware, but maybe they were referring to the fact that the developers don't have the final hardware yet. It was a pretty bad translation, so it's hard to tell.

MoSys memory is both cheap and fast so I don't doubt the memory.  It's one of the things that people say "wft is T1-MoSys memory" and it made the GC so fast AND cheap.

Well I don't have pricing info on MoSys 1T-SRAM so I can't comment on whether it's truly inexpensive. My 512MB comment was more to the effect that it didn't make sense for their to be 512MB of main program RAM if there was an additional 256MB of VRAM. Consoles don't typically need a huge amount of main RAM since a huge portion of the data is graphics data. To me it seems they would have been better off with 256MB (or using a unified 512MB) and taking the money they saved to improve some other aspect of the system.

I still say the cpu is a G5 with typical Nintendo enhancement requirements.  You can call it what you want, to me a PPC core is a PPC core.  Again, going with an existing design with minor tweaks keeps the costs down.

Well a PPC core is a PPC core in the sense of what instructions it will run (with the exception of extensions like VMX that aren't present on all PPC chips), but it doesn't say much about performance. A PPC 601 at 2.5GHz (if such a thing existed) would still run like a dog compared to a G5 or PPE. The G5 and PPE will have rather different performance characteristics and the task will largely determine which is faster; however, comparing a PPE to a PPE is relatively straightforward.

I don't see them coming out with a slower GPU than the Xbox because it's coming out almost 9 moths later.

Having an equally fast GPU won't do it much good if the CPU can't keep it fed. Just looking at the early XBox 360 offerings, the difference in graphical quality between older single-threaded games (thus running on a single PPE) and games designed with the 360 in mind (like PGR3) is quite clear. Short of having the GPU do more work than it typically does, having a better GPU won't do much coupled to a weak CPU.

PS3 has SPU's for physics, 360 has more PPC cores for that, Why can't Nintendo just throw in a basic physics chip and some dedicated ram (32MB)?

Well I have no idea how much these things cost so again it's hard for me to comment.

You should notice that I've stopped saying I didn't believe the specs because of cost. A single-core 2.5GHz PPE based CPU with somewhere in the neighborhood of 2MB of cache coupled with the rest of the specs above doesn't sound too unreasonable. I don't think the 512MB of RAM is terribly realistic, but that's mostly for reasons of system balance (something Nintendo did very well with the Gamecube) rather than cost. Other than that, I don't put much faith in them because I don't put much faith in console rumors in general.

[Louis Dias]

Having an equally fast GPU won't do it much good if the CPU can't keep it fed. Just looking at the early XBox 360 offerings, the difference in graphical quality between older single-threaded games (thus running on a single PPE) and games designed with the 360 in mind (like PGR3) is quite clear. Short of having the GPU do more work than it typically does, having a better GPU won't do much coupled to a weak CPU

Actually, I imagine the memory controller will be built into the gpu just like it is on the Flipper.  So it's the gpu's job to keep the cpu fed.  Having the extra cache also makes that easier.  So the bottleneck is not cpu.

[MskoDestny]

The CPU never copies raw data to VRAM in a modern system. It's either done using DMA or in the case of the 360 there's no copying to be done since it has a unified memory architecture.

Keeping the GPU fed is about telling it what to do (what transforms, which triangle lists to draw and where, etc.). On the 360 it seems that one core is not enough to handle game logic and keeping the GPU fed. If the Revolution uses a single core PPE based processor at 2.5GHz it would seem that the CPU would not be fast enough to take advantage of the GPU if the GPU is as fast or faster than the one in the 360.

[Louis Dias]

Well the Gekko in the GC was single core and single threaded.  The ATI Flipper has a memory controller built into it's packaging.  So was a DSP.  As we can see, it was a very efficient system.

http://news.zdnet.com/2100-9595_22-503797.html

I expect ATI's Revolution gpu to offer equivalent features.

...

Projected hardware manufacturing costs for 360 & PS3:
http://www.next-gen.biz/index.php?option=com_content&task=view&id=1497&Itemid=2