Comparison of 5th generation ("32/64-bit") game console hardware

There is a full bore nothing but triangles Dreamcast spec out there from Sega? I think Hitachi or NEC might have leaked such a spec of around 6 million polygons per second but I haven't seen anybody take that seriously. Nobody here even thinks Le Mans hits 5 million polygons at 30FPS with all effects on. That is precisely the difference I am annoyed with as well. If a Playstation fan cares about specs at all they are reliably convinced that their favorite system is some kind of "polygon monster" compared to anything else that generation. That is all marketing, and very successful at that, but it just isn't so.

As for the quad fillrate, that is very interesting. How are you calculating the fillrate based on the pixels with no framerate, are you multiplying them by the core clock? Downloading the PS1 SDK on theisozone now, hopefully I can make heads or tales of this part of the discussion. I also can't seem to get 3Dmax 9 to play with DXRipper 3dr files for some reason.

Deunan put a triangle counter in Makaron at one point and the title screen for Dead or Alive 2 was doing ~51000 triangles at 60fps (so in excess of 3 million polys). Note that DOA2 was a launch game.

edit: speaking of which:
http://dknute.livejournal.com/27148....286988#t286988

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I've done some homebrew for the DC. I can get the DC to max out at about 4.1 million polygons per frame with ~30% CPU idle time left over. At that point, the PVR can't go any faster.

My test was drawing lit, transformed, textured, anisotropicly filtered tori at 60 FPS. Lighting was a dot, clamp to >0.0, and ambient add. There were 144 tori, each was a single triangle strip containing 480 vertices, or 478 polygons. All of these tori were rotating around in front of the camera. You could probably get a higher polygons-sent-to-TA number if you were sending polygons that are off screen or something, and can be culled by the PVR.

Le Mans definitely does not do 5 million polygons per second. My 4.1 million at 60 FPS uses up almost all of the DC's VRAM for vertex buffers and frame buffers. Le Mans runs at 30 FPS. Doing 4.1 at 30 FPS would require twice as large vertex buffers, since you send twice as many polygons per frame, but that's not possible because there's no VRAM left for larger vertex buffers. 5 million is even less likely to have been done. I know of a few complicated tricks to reduce how large of a vertex buffer is required, but I doubt they've ever been used.

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Traditional fillrate has nothing to do with framerate. Fillrate is calculated from main clock and all potentially eaten cycles in one second. Then you can partition the one second figure into frames. When fill rate is 66Mpix/sec and you have a 60FPS output you can only have 66/60 pixels/frame rendering capacity.

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Originally Posted by zyrobs

Hey, if you want theoretical numbers, the Saturn VDP1 can do 983030 (+/- 10) flat shaded quads per second. It just can't plot them fast enough in the framebuffer. (but, you have enough space in the VRAM to store that many write commands...)

In fact you can DMA in new commands on the fly too, but that halts the VDP1 and it can't draw while you are writing to the VRAM.

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Can the saturn actually process 16384 draw commands in a frame at 60fps ( ignoring fillrate but taking setup into consideration )? - If not all you have is a raw number of max 16384 polys drawn at once :)

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Originally Posted by sheath

There is a full bore nothing but triangles Dreamcast spec out there from Sega? I think Hitachi or NEC might have leaked such a spec of around 6 million polygons per second but I haven't seen anybody take that seriously. Nobody here even thinks Le Mans hits 5 million polygons at 30FPS with all effects on. That is precisely the difference I am annoyed with as well. If a Playstation fan cares about specs at all they are reliably convinced that their favorite system is some kind of "polygon monster" compared to anything else that generation. That is all marketing, and very successful at that, but it just isn't so.

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The Sega Hagiwara IEEE article is difficult to find online ( I think I've got it somewhere, but I couldn't find it - time for some digital archeology :) ) - The Hitachi hotchips paper shows a transform spec for the SH4 that is the same as the 1.5M vertex Sony number for the GTE, ie 100% running a transform loop.
Polygon counts in games are rarely the maximum numbers - fillrate is a much bigger bottleneck ( especially if you add full screen effects ). Also engines often clip polys before sending to the gpu - so the engine polygon rate could be 2x the actual number drawn on screen.
In other cases the polygon rate is way lower in game than the paper numbers because of gameplay/ai/animation taking much more time than the simple transformation and drawing of polygons.

I dont know why you are getting annoyed though - you just need to understand the numbers, and realise that they are peak values for one part of the system.
Where did the 500k / 200k number Saturn number come from - I guess it's something similar , maybe 500k vertices transformed with perspective on both SH2's with SCU? , and 200k tiny flat polygons where draw time is less than setup time )

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Originally Posted by sheath

As for the quad fillrate, that is very interesting. How are you calculating the fillrate based on the pixels with no framerate, are you multiplying them by the core clock? Downloading the PS1 SDK on theisozone now, hopefully I can make heads or tales of this part of the discussion. I also can't seem to get 3Dmax 9 to play with DXRipper 3dr files for some reason.

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I just took that spec as 60fps , and multiplied 60x400x8x8 to get the pixel rate. ( 8x8 rotated sprites are actually going to be quite inefficient as they are drawn as 2 triangles ) - in a real 2D style game you wouldn't draw empty tiles at all on PS1, so you'd actually win a bit more performance.

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Originally Posted by Crazyace

Can the saturn actually process 16384 draw commands in a frame at 60fps ( ignoring fillrate but taking setup into consideration )? - If not all you have is a raw number of max 16384 polys drawn at once :)

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A few people did tests on it and it actually can process more than what the SH2s can move, special effects notwithstanding. It probably can't do 16384 because then you wouldn't have any start/end commands, nor anything to setup the frame dimensions.

You could probably do something like plot ~16380 random pixels at 60fps, hehe.

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Originally Posted by Crazyace

Where did the 500k / 200k number Saturn number come from - I guess it's something similar , maybe 500k vertices transformed with perspective on both SH2's with SCU? , and 200k tiny flat polygons where draw time is less than setup time )

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It's in the manuals and on the box.

So the question still remains for years, what is a realistic claim of how many triangles the Playstation 2 can render per second?

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Originally Posted by Crazyace

The Sega Hagiwara IEEE article is difficult to find online ( I think I've got it somewhere, but I couldn't find it - time for some digital archeology :) ) - The Hitachi hotchips paper shows a transform spec for the SH4 that is the same as the 1.5M vertex Sony number for the GTE, ie 100% running a transform loop.
Polygon counts in games are rarely the maximum numbers - fillrate is a much bigger bottleneck ( especially if you add full screen effects ). Also engines often clip polys before sending to the gpu - so the engine polygon rate could be 2x the actual number drawn on screen.
In other cases the polygon rate is way lower in game than the paper numbers because of gameplay/ai/animation taking much more time than the simple transformation and drawing of polygons.

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Yeah, I haven't seen that spec. I have seen NEC claim that the tile based rendering and 100Mhz of the PVR2-DC means an actual fillrate of 200Mpix/sec but because everything is rendered in 32x32 tiles of front facing visible detail with zero overdraw that effective fillrate is many times that. In some spec discussions the idea that the fillrate could effectively be infinite came up often enough. ;)

As far as marketing though, Sega simply stated 3-3.5 million polygons per second and called it a day focusing on what could be displayed by actual games not just unrealistic tech demos. This can be reflected on every major website today and you will frequently see the Dreamcast's 3 million figure put up against the EE's lunar gravity figure of 75 million as a 1:1 comparison.

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Originally Posted by Crazyace

I dont know why you are getting annoyed though - you just need to understand the numbers, and realise that they are peak values for one part of the system.
Where did the 500k / 200k number Saturn number come from - I guess it's something similar , maybe 500k vertices transformed with perspective on both SH2's with SCU? , and 200k tiny flat polygons where draw time is less than setup time )

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It's just me, I get annoyed at marketing ploys actually working especially when the mess with product comparisons or historical placing of products. If we let consumer reports or cnet tell the history of Video games the PS1 will look as powerful as the Dreamcast give or take a few minor looking effects. The 500k figure is stated as non-textured non lit polygons and the 200k number is stated as textured non-lit polygons. We can also assume no transparency for either figure and the target being in game performance. I'm pretty sure the figure is arrived at simply enough by combining both of the 28.6Mhz SH2 MIPS performance to make 50 MIPS. I never have found an equation for calculating triangles or quads based solely on MIPS performance though.

I would like to see more discussion on the VDP1's supposed peak fillrate as well. Buried in this site with its useless search feature is relative technical proof that the VDP1's peak fillrate was 28Mpix/second as opposed to the 10Mpix figure that was being discussed.

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Originally Posted by Crazyace

I just took that spec as 60fps , and multiplied 60x400x8x8 to get the pixel rate. ( 8x8 rotated sprites are actually going to be quite inefficient as they are drawn as 2 triangles ) - in a real 2D style game you wouldn't draw empty tiles at all on PS1, so you'd actually win a bit more performance.

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I've seen it claimed that the PS1's splitting of quads into two triangles was completely "free" and gave no effective hit to performance. I think that was in the quads versus triangles thread. The Saturn can pinch quads into triangles but that is regarded as horribly inefficient while the PS1 renders all quads as triangles but that is incredibly efficient. That's the general end of that discussion as I have seen it.

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Originally Posted by azonicrider

So the question still remains for years, what is a realistic claim of how many triangles the Playstation 2 can render per second?

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There is a good amount of discussion on this over in the 6th Gen comparison thread. The PS2's 4MB VRAM/Cache limits the frame buffer and texture mapping and the Emotion Engine limits the Geometry Engine's peak performance to less than 6 million polygons per second, 4 million practical in games. By 2003-4 Sony was pressing developers to overcome an average of around 1 million polygons per second and encouraging them to rely heavily 16-color on palettized textured polys instead of 4-bit textured polygons. That had something to do with eliminating bus contention with Main RAM and freeing up the VU0 and VU1 to spit out polygons faster.

There is also spec listed for a high polycount model that, when rendered once and the milliseconds counted theoretically implies a peak performance for the PS2 at about 18 million polys per second. That is to say that the demo didn't force the hardware to actually render the figure to the screen X many times per second, it just rendered it once and the number of milliseconds that took implied the real end results. Xbox, Gamecube and PC figures for the same model were all higher with the Xbox being even higher than PCs of the time.

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Originally Posted by sheath

As far as marketing though, Sega simply stated 3-3.5 million polygons per second and called it a day focusing on what could be displayed by actual games not just unrealistic tech demos. This can be reflected on every major website today and you will frequently see the Dreamcast's 3 million figure put up against the EE's lunar gravity figure of 75 million as a 1:1 comparison.

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Might as well discuss that in the other topic, and stick to Saturn/PS1/3DO/Jaguar/N64 in this one.

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Originally Posted by sheath

It's just me, I get annoyed at marketing ploys actually working especially when the mess with product comparisons or historical placing of products. If we let consumer reports or cnet tell the history of Video games the PS1 will look as powerful as the Dreamcast give or take a few minor looking effects. The 500k figure is stated as non-textured non lit polygons and the 200k number is stated as textured non-lit polygons. We can also assume no transparency for either figure and the target being in game performance. I'm pretty sure the figure is arrived at simply enough by combining both of the 28.6Mhz SH2 MIPS performance to make 50 MIPS. I never have found an equation for calculating triangles or quads based solely on MIPS performance though.

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Really? I didn't see any DC vs PS1 comparisions like that..
Regarding the 500k/200k figure that's interesting - maybe it is the cpu calculation for both ( with the extra memory copying accounting for the reduction )
How are you assuming no transparency and game performance though?
For calculating triangles/quads I'd just rely on one having 3 verts and the other 4 :)

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Originally Posted by sheath

I would like to see more discussion on the VDP1's supposed peak fillrate as well. Buried in this site with its useless search feature is relative technical proof that the VDP1's peak fillrate was 28Mpix/second as opposed to the 10Mpix figure that was being discussed.

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Wasn't there a post with someone testing non textured drawing getting >20MPixels. - still way less than 66 though.

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Originally Posted by sheath

I've seen it claimed that the PS1's splitting of quads into two triangles was completely "free" and gave no effective hit to performance. I think that was in the quads versus triangles thread. The Saturn can pinch quads into triangles but that is regarded as horribly inefficient while the PS1 renders all quads as triangles but that is incredibly efficient. That's the general end of that discussion as I have seen it.

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I'd have to test again on real h/w - it's so long ago :)
The Saturn's pinching is really inefficient as it's overdrawing many times at the 'pinched' end of the quad.

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Originally Posted by Crazyace

Might as well discuss that in the other topic, and stick to Saturn/PS1/3DO/Jaguar/N64 in this one.

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I'm all for continuing both topics. If I can manage to actually open files from 3DRipper to 3DMax 9 I hope there will be at least something to discuss there. Other forum members in various groups are claiming to have done just that and definitively solved any polygon debate, while providing no evidence...

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Originally Posted by Crazyace

Really? I didn't see any DC vs PS1 comparisions like that..
Regarding the 500k/200k figure that's interesting - maybe it is the cpu calculation for both ( with the extra memory copying accounting for the reduction )
How are you assuming no transparency and game performance though?
For calculating triangles/quads I'd just rely on one having 3 verts and the other 4 :)

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I have run into the PS1 to DC comparison repeatedly at retail, part of it is the Dreamcast's release date and the CD Jewel cases for the games. Most people compare the N64 and Dreamcast as same generation, as though the PS1 never bested the N64 soundly in any area like say framerate. ;)

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Originally Posted by Crazyace

Wasn't there a post with someone testing non textured drawing getting >20MPixels. - still way less than 66 though.

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I hope so and if I saw it I'll apologize in advance!

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Originally Posted by Crazyace

I'd have to test again on real h/w - it's so long ago :)
The Saturn's pinching is really inefficient as it's overdrawing many times at the 'pinched' end of the quad.

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I would be interested in working these tests myself as well. I learn better hands on.

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Originally Posted by azonicrider

Okay, I'm moderately trolling from a Nintendo perspective.

Cartridges may have been fine if the system was released in 1992. But for a late 1996 release, it wasn't wise. Probably the single move that made their continuous domination come to an end.

Still a great system from other perspectives though. Had it since 1998.

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There were other issues too, namely the unnecessarily costly development systems (though 3rd parties addressed that issue with things like the Doctor V64), and more significantly the limited hardware documentation and restricted API making the chipset underperform for many applications.

On the media issue though, not going optical really was a mess . . . and not just dropping it at launch (which made at least some sense, especially for the 1995 planned release), but then planning an add-on on the horribly ill-suited ZIP drive type magnetic disk technology (both more costly and less useful than CD-ROM). I can also understand Nintendo wanting to maintain their security/control over manufacturing/licensing/piracy with a proprietary format, but why the hell not invest in developing a proprietary CD-ROM derived optical format??? (after all, that's what they later did for the CG/Wii -DVD based- and what Sega did with GD-ROM, and in that latter case actually improving the media while still using cheap/standard CD-ROM drive hardware AND bringing it to market a year ahead of Nintendo's DD on top of that :p -also note that the GD-ROM format is pretty much as secure a proprietary format as Nintendo could want . . . avoiding specific exploits seen in the DC itself are a separate matter though --and that's both the exploits used to rip GD-ROM data to a PC and the ability to boot games from CD-ROMs rather than only GD-ROMs)

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Originally Posted by Crazyace

PS1 hardware was designed around lists of triangles - PS2 strips, and more modern graphics card indexed lists. Taking vertex counts from games is often deceptive, as you're often fill rate limited on the poly's being drawn. ( However the GTE was part of the cpu on the PS1, so you could code up any form of input data - the output to the GPU had to be separate triangles or quads though )


One of the PS1 samples draws 2080 semitransparent 16x16 sprites onto a 640x480 screen at 60fps. Even though it's a interlaced trick ( 16x8 sprites really as only even or odd lines drawn ) it's still over 24M pixels/second with transparency. Non transparent fill is way higher.


It's just an example of a daytona style game ( shameless homae ) - not a real model 2 conversion

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Originally Posted by Chilly Willy

What effects are you referring to? Transparency? The PS1 does that with no extra effort as seen in many games. Rotation and scaling? The PS1 does that with no extra effort as seen in nearly EVERY game. The ONLY thing the Saturn has over the PS1 is that the two VDPs work in parallel at the same time, while the single PS1 GPU does things in order, so if you use VDP2, it may be slightly FASTER due to the parallel execution. That's it.

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Originally Posted by Chilly Willy

Ah, right - memory: that's the other advantage the Saturn has. That .5 MB of VDP2 ram is especially important since the VDP2 uses tiles, which is a form of compression, making the memory seem that much larger. So the two advantages the Saturn has are parallel execution for speed, and extra vram.

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Yes, so with all this, we've got a significant net graphics bandwidth advantage on the Saturn (theoretical peak of 286 MB/s -that's 28.6 MHz x16+16+16+32 bits), but with it all split up into dedicated chunks which may be (and quite often are) heavily underutilized, and even when pushed to the practical max, you still have a good chunk of idle bus time on the active framebuffer (basically unused during hblank/vblank). So the Saturn is set up to maximize VDP performance at the expense of wasted memory bandwidth, while the PSX is more heavily optimzied around making the most out of unified graphics memory on a single bus.

Of course, you only get to see any of the performance advantages of the Saturn when games make balanced use of both VDPs and stick to working around the available effects. Short of that, you end up at a general disadvantage in usable graphics RAM and bandwidth compared to the PSX.

That elaborate arrangement of memory and dual VDPs on the Saturn is one of the areas that made the hardware relatively expensive . . . but one interesting argument would be, rather than cut back on cost in general (a more common suggestion) that they keep that high-end performance angle, but direct it in a more centered manner. Namely had they put the emphasis entirely on a VDP1 style GPU with all the RAM and bandwidth (and logic) directed towards that single GPU instead. Sticking with Sega's overall (apparent) internal goals at the time, having the same warped quad or "sprite" rendering system would have been typical, but with high-end 2D in mind (alongside 3D), better support for translucent blending and some other effects probably would have made sense (namely things VDP2 could do that VDP1 couldn't -tilemap specific stuff aside). Hell, beyond alpha blending, if they still didn't include multiplicative lighting, allowing specific control over additive/subtractive colored lighting/blending effects would be nice. (the existing VDP1 already has the physical mechanisms to do most of that -given it needs them to do translucent sprites and flat/gouraud shaded lighting, but without specific control over it -lighting seems to be a simple additive/subtractive scale working on all 3 RGB channels together, hence why things desaturate towards black and white when lighting goes significantly beyond the base texture/polygon color)

A full 1MB 32-bits wide for textures and the same 2x256k framebuffers but 32-bits wide (or a unified 512k bank to save costs, but with added buffering to minimize contention for framebuffer scanning -the multi-bank interleaved SDRAM Sega used would also help there).
So, overall more like the 3DO GPU, but more than 2x as fast and without CPU contention.

Then you'd have a system that, while still having some oddities rendering wise, would comprehensively outperform the PSX in 2D and 3D fillrate when specifically optimized for, and with fillrate being a bigger limiting factor than vertex performance in many cases, the GTE advantage would be often overshadowed there.

I don't know, but it just seems like something along those lines might have been in line with what Sega was working with in general (arcade and home), and better fitting to the market as a whole. (much closer to the overall Saturn design methodology than suggestions like generally "lean" or "streamlined" and cost-conservative approaches . . . let alone catering to the 3D standards in general use for software rendering and workstation -ie SGI- usage, and/or the equally different approach of designing a system directly around MD/CD compatibility)

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Reflections are NOT an effect by either VDP in the Saturn. They are done using normal effects and software and can be duplicated by the PS1 with proper GPU commands and software. Probably the main reason for lack of effects in the PS1 version is a lack of vram. As mentioned above, the Saturn has more memory, so it can hold more textures for things like animated lava. If you are missing things like reflections, that's probably more laziness on the port than lack of capability. That's especially true where you see things like you mention - if the menu isn't as good, it's a poor/lazy port.

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One other thing that's come up is raster/line based effects (namely linescroll and setting lien by line perspective on a rotated 2D plane -mode 7 or Sega CD style). Can the PSX GPU support drawing commands with raster interrupts included (or something functionally equivalent to that)? Otherwise it would seem like you'd need to break each line into its own drawing command (polygon/quad) to recreate those effects. (which would be horribly inefficient . . . so you'd probably end up approximating such effects with alternate methods)

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This lack of vram was seen the most in 2D fighters were the Saturn had more space for animation. The PS1 version often cut frames to fit the data in limited space.

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How many games (not using RAM expansion) really show this problem dramatically?

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Originally Posted by Crazyace

Wasn't there a post with someone testing non textured drawing getting >20MPixels. - still way less than 66 though.

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It was a homebrew demo/test/benchmark resulting in 22 Mpix/s for flat shaded quads iirc. With the way the Saturn's buses are set-up for VDP1, sprite fillrate would probably be close to that too (warped quads less so due to the less linear RAM access -many more page breaks).
Theoretically, it should be 28.6 Mpix/s max though (1 pixel per VDP/SDRAM clock) or 26.8 MHz depending on resolution/dot clock mode.

I think it's fair to say that VDP1 performance would typically range from about 1/2 to 1/3 the fillrate of the PSX GPU depending on what's being drawn . . . probably more favorable for the Saturn in the case of high res stuff, since that eats into PSX render time more. (shared framebuffer access)

Was the GD-ROM really necessary? I don't think I saw any Dreamcast games go past 600 megabytes

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Originally Posted by azonicrider

Was the GD-ROM really necessary? I don't think I saw any Dreamcast games go past 600 megabytes

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Then why were there multi-disc games and why did pirates have to remove chunks of content to get bootlegs to fit onto a cdr?

Yep nevermind that, I forgot that RARs compress like 20% of the file.

I'm not as bright as I could be, while running off of 6 hours of sleep.

It seems alot of consoles get screwed over because of media choices. In 1998, Bernie claimed the Dreamcast would cost $350 if it had DVD technology. They should've just went for it, instead of remaining paranoid while developing the Dreamcast.

IMO what they should've done was a "Dreamcast 2" which was the same as the regular Dreamcast but with a DVD drive, higher clocks & memory, and perhaps the Naomi 2 style dual PVR + T&L setup, provided that all of that can be done cheap enough.

The Dreamcast compared well with the PS2 and DVD didn't aid gameplay at all during that generation. This is especially true for the first half of the 6th generation circa 1998-2003. What the Dreamcast would have needed first around 2002 was a RAM expansion to allow for ports of sandbox style games to be single load. Second a hard drive expansion would have helped with the rest. Much like the DVD to Bluray comparison as a game medium today, GD-ROM and Dreamcast in general loaded faster than DVDs. So splitting up levels into two loads instead of one would be the worst thing some sandbox games did, if they didn't just stream data from the disk in select areas. That isn't even considering the fact that the generation would have technically been up for Dreamcast going into 2004, so Dreamcast 2 could have logically been on the market as the first HD console or just a hybrid 6th-7th gen Sega console by then. Naomi 2 at that point would have been more like going the Gamecube->Wii route.

Including a DVD-ROM drive in 1998 would have been NEO GEO // 3DO grade suicide, and Microsoft and Nintendo found it unnecessary movie playback wise even in 2001.

But history proved that the reason the console didn't hold momentum, was because of the idiots that couldn't look past the lack of DVD playback.

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Originally Posted by kool kitty89

There were other issues too, namely the unnecessarily costly development systems (though 3rd parties addressed that issue with things like the Doctor V64), and more significantly the limited hardware documentation and restricted API making the chipset underperform for many applications.

On the media issue though, not going optical really was a mess . . . and not just dropping it at launch (which made at least some sense, especially for the 1995 planned release), but then planning an add-on on the horribly ill-suited ZIP drive type magnetic disk technology (both more costly and less useful than CD-ROM). I can also understand Nintendo wanting to maintain their security/control over manufacturing/licensing/piracy with a proprietary format, but why the hell not invest in developing a proprietary CD-ROM derived optical format??? (after all, that's what they later did for the CG/Wii -DVD based- and what Sega did with GD-ROM, and in that latter case actually improving the media while still using cheap/standard CD-ROM drive hardware AND bringing it to market a year ahead of Nintendo's DD on top of that :p -also note that the GD-ROM format is pretty much as secure a proprietary format as Nintendo could want . . . avoiding specific exploits seen in the DC itself are a separate matter though --and that's both the exploits used to rip GD-ROM data to a PC and the ability to boot games from CD-ROMs rather than only GD-ROMs)

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The N64 looks like it was designed around using some kind of drive - even though it uses a cart, you aren't allowed to use it like a cart, instead you have to ask a DMA channel to copy data from the cart into ram. If the source of the DMA were an optical drive unit instead of a cart, it would make no difference to the N64 other than slightly more latency on fetching data. I would guess Nintendo WANTED to go with a drive of some kind, but went with a cart at the last moment when they realized how much they'd have to pay someone else for license fees. They went "short term" to carts, and started working on a media they wouldn't need to pay license fees on, but it wasn't ready until they were ready to retire the N64 anyway.

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One other thing that's come up is raster/line based effects (namely linescroll and setting lien by line perspective on a rotated 2D plane -mode 7 or Sega CD style). Can the PSX GPU support drawing commands with raster interrupts included (or something functionally equivalent to that)? Otherwise it would seem like you'd need to break each line into its own drawing command (polygon/quad) to recreate those effects. (which would be horribly inefficient . . . so you'd probably end up approximating such effects with alternate methods)

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You could break it into lines if you had enough CPU time left after game logic, or you could approximate it using a technique like the water warping in Quake. That would work on a poly basis instead of a line basis for less work all around.

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How many games (not using RAM expansion) really show this problem dramatically?

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Dramatically? Only a couple, which is why I tend to forget about that advantage. :D

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Originally Posted by azonicrider

But history proved that the reason the console didn't hold momentum, was because of the idiots that couldn't look past the lack of DVD playback.

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I'm not sure when history proved that, actually a proper historical analysis on the game industry or even any one company has yet to be written. What we have is a bunch of journalistic impressionist articles and a ton of enthusiasts regurgitating them. The Wii being the top selling console of the current generation while still not having DVD playback means more than all of these impressions and forum regurgitation combined.

A LOT of people chose the PS2 only because it also did DVD playback. And it had full PS1 compatibility too. Those were major deciding factors; the existing PS1 userbase had a straight upgrade path without any drawbacks.

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Originally Posted by sheath

I'm not sure when history proved that, actually a proper historical analysis on the game industry or even any one company has yet to be written. What we have is a bunch of journalistic impressionist articles and a ton of enthusiasts regurgitating them. The Wii being the top selling console of the current generation while still not having DVD playback means more than all of these impressions and forum regurgitation combined.

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But by the time the Wii arrived, DVD players had become way more mainstream.

Back in the day, the PS2 was the cheapest DVD player around. Video stores were actually using PS2s to showcase videos, instead of getting standalone DVD player.

People were mindblown by the fact of being able to play DVDs and video games combined.

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Originally Posted by azonicrider

Back in the day, the PS2 was the cheapest DVD player around. Video stores were actually using PS2s to showcase videos, instead of getting standalone DVD player.

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That was almost the only saving grace for the PS3 as well - for a LONG time, it was the cheapest BluRay player on the market.

Yes, but with the PS3 people actually bought the console and not games, with the PS2 it was the top selling for software even after the Xbox and Gamecube were selling. I also bought a PS2 because I wanted a DVD player and a PS1 again, I figured that made the PS2 portion of the package "only" about $100 of the total price in late 2001.

I'm not contesting that the undefined "a lot" of people chose the PS2 for DVD playback. I am contesting that it is an historical fact DVD Playback made or broke game consoles from circa 1998-2001 or onward. It is an historical fact that DVD playback is a component in the most successful consoles, not the cause or a major cause of that success.

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Originally Posted by sheath

I am contesting that it is an historical fact DVD Playback made or broke game consoles from circa 1998-2001 or onward. It is an historical fact that DVD playback is a component in the most successful consoles, not the cause or a major cause of that success.

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I do agree with that. I don't think the DC failed because it lacked a DVD drive, and I don't think the PS2 succeeded solely due to its DVD. There's a LOT more to both stories than just the DVD (or lack thereof). Most people tend to blame piracy for the death of the DC, although that's not it either. Piracy has never been higher for any console than it is on the PC, yet the PC continues blithly along. In the end, I think the main factor in the death of the DC is how Sega acting in the years up to its death. Lack of consumer confidence in the company is what killed the DC. Surging consumer confidence is what pushed the PS2 to the top.

I see that I exaggerated the software sales comparison, that was unintentional. Obviously if PS3 games weren't selling at_all it wouldn't be regarded as a turn around success today. I do recall AAA sales being half or so what the same or comparable titles on the 360 sold from 2007-2010 though.

Similarly, Dreamcast piracy may well have been inferior as a percentage of consoles sold compared to what was happening on the PS1 at the time. The question is whether Sega could have stuck with the Dreamcast with only $200 million or so to its name in 2000 at all, much less with chip free piracy becoming popularly known. I've sifted through the potential loss in revenue Sega suffered due to Dreamcast piracy in 2000 before and I still see it the same way.

Even if piracy didn't kill the Dreamcast it was certainly a major component. The first and greatest component in the decision to get out of the hardware business, I think, was the Dreamcast's relatively poor software sales and flat lined hardware sales for Christmas 2000. Pirates always love to claim to have increased hardware sales, but that Fall was a year on year loss for Sega in total sales and it should have been the other way around.

I also agree with Chilly that the most important thing was "consumer confidence" or, as I would call it, brand recognition. Sony had that in spades back then and Sega did not. I would even take it so far as to say that Sega looked like a generic Sony at that point, and all of this argumentation about their previous consoles were non-existent in the consumer mindset.

The Dreamcast didn't have to die, they could've supported it until 2005, it could've sold maybe 19 million units.

And from that, Sega would have regained consumer confidence by giving a console a healthy lifespan.

But what can you do when you have $50 left in your bank account.

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Originally Posted by azonicrider

But what can you do when you have $50 left in your bank account.

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Do what every other company and individual does - keep spending until you're so far in debt that they come and drag you away. :D

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Originally Posted by azonicrider

But by the time the Wii arrived, DVD players had become way more mainstream.

Back in the day, the PS2 was the cheapest DVD player around. Video stores were actually using PS2s to showcase videos, instead of getting standalone DVD player.

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No it wasn't imo. In Japan yes, but in the USA no it was not the cheapest and where DVD was already getting established long before the PS2 launched . And its wasn't DVD that sold the PS2 to the masses - It was the promise of its power 70 million plus polygons, A Bug's Life level of graphics in game, game with real emotion Ect and more that that it was the showcase that was MGS 2 E3 demo in 2000 that blew everyone away and made people want the console .

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The Dreamcast didn't have to die, they could've supported it until 2005

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When you're selling Hardware at a loss, when you're not selling enough software to make ends meet, when in 2 key markets you're just barley making up the numbers and when you're posting losses of over £200 million pounds a year , something got to give . No way could SEGA go on with the DC sadly.

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Even if piracy didn't kill the Dreamcast it was certainly a major component.

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The DC was in trouble the day it launched in Japan . Piracy only planned a tiny part in it , because piracy made the PS into a sales monster and that system has got to be the more modded consoles or all time. The fact is the DC lacked 3rd party support, lacked killer games and was seen by too many as a stop gap machine before the PS2 launched.

The fact is , you must people/masses want to think they need this machine and this game and the DC just didn't do that, the PS2 did .

The DC lacked third party support because Sega ruined its own name with the endless expansions and dropping systems every other year. And because Sony gave publishers a way better deal.

DVDs were only around for a few years before the PS2 and were considered high-end home movie theatre equipment. PS2 was cheaper or at least equal to the price of other DVD players, and on top of that it could play your existing PS1 library (the de facto video game standard of the world at the time), and it could also play the upcoming Emotion Engine powered 75 million polygon PS2 games. The hype was insane enough to hold back the Dreamcast on word of mouth alone, and millions of households had the PS2 as their first DVD player.

I was saying that in a fantasy world way, where Sega actually had money. Imagine if they had Microsoft money, they were selling the original Xbox at an insane lost, yet supported it until 2006. All for their reputation.

Yea I really doubt you could find DVD players in 2000 for $300, unless they had tinfoil for hardware casing.

I'm not done with Dreamcast, but I wanna bring up the N64 again.


http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XBFJYHK4bLg

Skip to 4:10. With audio on. Is that completely BS, or BS with a tiny bit of truth?

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Originally Posted by sheath

Yes, but with the PS3 people actually bought the console and not games, with the PS2 it was the top selling for software even after the Xbox and Gamecube were selling. I also bought a PS2 because I wanted a DVD player and a PS1 again, I figured that made the PS2 portion of the package "only" about $100 of the total price in late 2001.

I'm not contesting that the undefined "a lot" of people chose the PS2 for DVD playback. I am contesting that it is an historical fact DVD Playback made or broke game consoles from circa 1998-2001 or onward. It is an historical fact that DVD playback is a component in the most successful consoles, not the cause or a major cause of that success.

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Although everyone I saw buying or talking about buying a PS2 early on were doing so because of the dvd player, the biggest impact if had early on was that if the dvd factor didn't convince someone to buy a PS2 on its own, it at least convinced people to pick it over the Dreamcast if they were already going to buy a new console. So if the DC could play dvds, it would have at least neutralized that decision maker for many people. Just like if the 360 played blurays, a large number of people wouldn't have picked the PS3 early on.

In the end, the problem isn't that the DC didn't run dvds, it's that Sony took that risk with the PS2. Sega including a dvd drive might have done more harm than good, but either way it's not a question of what Sega did or did not do, it's what Sony actually did do on their own. There may very well have been nothing Sega could have done to do much better and Sony deserves the credit for successful business strategy, even if not for great game experience providing.

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Originally Posted by azonicrider

I'm not done with Dreamcast, but I wanna bring up the N64 again.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XBFJYHK4bLg[/video]

Skip to 4:10. With audio on. Is that completely BS, or BS with a tiny bit of truth?

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The PS2 samples after 5:00 are complete CGI marketing garbage. The Dreamcast demos prior to that were real time with limited non-game settings. The floating head is probably just 3 million polygons per second all put into a face, it could even be 1 million or less with some bump mapping applied. I think the Shark swimming is probably real time also, the textures look repetitive enough to me. Didn't the N64 have at least one game that pulled that off?

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Originally Posted by Black_Tiger

Although everyone I saw buying or talking about buying a PS2 early on were doing so because of the dvd player, the biggest impact if had early on was that if the dvd factor didn't convince someone to buy a PS2 on its own, it at least convinced people to pick it over the Dreamcast if they were already going to buy a new console. So if the DC could play dvds, it would have at least neutralized that decision maker for many people. Just like if the 360 played blurays, a large number of people wouldn't have picked the PS3 early on.

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If the 360 had Bluray at the start it would have been even more expensive than the PS3. How would "a large amount of people," those who didn't already buy a 360 because it was the cheapest HD console with the most third party games, have justified getting the more expensive Bluray Player + Console? That one change to the equation makes absolutely everything about the PS360 impossible to predict I'd say.

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Originally Posted by Black_Tiger

In the end, the problem isn't that the DC didn't run dvds, it's that Sony took that risk with the PS2. Sega including a dvd drive might have done more harm than good, but either way it's not a question of what Sega did or did not do, it's what Sony actually did do on their own. There may very well have been nothing Sega could have done to do much better and Sony deserves the credit for successful business strategy, even if not for great game experience providing.

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Well, the $300 PS2 played PS1 and DVDs. The Dreamcast wasn't going to play PS1 games, Sony made sure of that, so Sega was only going to come up with a "generic alternative" to PS2 games plus DVD playback. For the steep price increase I doubt it would have worked in Sega's failure, and every Dreamcast sold still would have benefited Sony financially.

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Originally Posted by sheath

The PS2 samples after 5:00 are complete CGI marketing garbage. The Dreamcast demos prior to that were real time with limited non-game settings. The floating head is probably just 3 million polygons per second all put into a face, it could even be 1 million or less with some bump mapping applied. I think the Shark swimming is probably real time also, the textures look repetitive enough to me. Didn't the N64 have at least one game that pulled that off?

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I'm a Sony/Sega fanboy, but I'll admit the N64 was more powerful than both PS1 and Saturn. That shark being real-time, is completely believable.

What I'm hinting at, is at 4:10. I quote, "please note that this 360 degree rotation is only possible with cartridges, CDs don't have the speed required to make this happen". Yep, thats undisputed truth.

That one PS2 demo is Gran Turismo 3. I have that game, looks no where near that good as that demo.

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Originally Posted by azonicrider

I'm a Sony/Sega fanboy, but I'll admit the N64 was more powerful than both PS1 and Saturn. That shark being real-time, is completely believable.

What I'm hinting at, is at 4:10. I quote, "please note that this 360 degree rotation is only possible with cartridges, CDs don't have the speed required to make this happen". Yep, thats undisputed truth.

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Actually, that part is complete nonsense. Moving the camera 360 degrees around a scene can be done in real-time by ANY 3D engine. The only qualifier is the quality... pop-up was an issue on many games, including the N64. Once a scene is loaded, you can view it any way you want. Another thing I'd like to remind folks - Nintendo's cart bus was SLLOOOOOOOOOOOOWWWWWW. It was to keep cart costs down given the size games would consume, so the slow roms used were not excessively faster than multispeed CDs. Where they shined was seeking latency - you could move to any point in a cart almost instantly where a CD can take a full second or more.

You even have 360 degrees motion in some Megadrive games for that matter... Ranger X cutscenes come to mind.

Well I guess its confusing when I have sarcasm off and then on. Yes that part was complete BS, and that narrator was probably successful in brainwashing a couple people.

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Originally Posted by azonicrider

Well I guess its confusing when I have sarcasm off and then on. Yes that part was complete BS, and that narrator was probably successful in brainwashing a couple people.

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Ah, okay, sorry. Didn't catch it... I'm usually pretty good at catching sarcasm as I use it a lot myself. :)

Well that second paragraph was supposed to be intended for steath. I think he thought I was calling out that shark for being CGI, when I was really calling out the narrator.

Anyways, I think its awesome that they used Shenmue for the Saturn tech demo. But that wasn't a tech demo I don't think.

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Originally Posted by azonicrider

Well that second paragraph was supposed to be intended for steath. I think he thought I was calling out that shark for being CGI, when I was really calling out the narrator.

Anyways, I think its awesome that they used Shenmue for the Saturn tech demo. But that wasn't a tech demo I don't think.

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Yeah, I thought a number of the choices in that video were odd. The PS2, Gamecube and Xbox stuff was all CGI mock up garbage, the Genesis and 32X were a mix of actual game content and promotional tech demos supposedly running on real hardware. The SNES demo was the intro for Star Fox, which should have been a Super FX demo but it is absolutely real time on real hardware. But yeah, the N64 shark thing was probably legitimate for the graphics but the commentary about cart speed being the only thing to allow the scene was promotional bull the same as Sony's CGI trailers.

PS2 stuff wasn't CGI :)