Comparison of 6th generation game console hardware

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Originally Posted by kool kitty89

The point I got was that was the marketing Sony was using, not that those specs had anything to do with the PS2 actually putting out games with graphics head and shoulders above the DC. :p

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Well Kool Kitty I didn't see your post before I posted mine. I'll come back to this when I haven't been awake for 20 hours. My brain is only running at like 6 Mhz right now.


But sheath, I've grown aware that you're behind Game Pilgrimage. http://www.gamepilgrimage.com/SATPScompare.htm

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Nobody could have predicted that rudimentary 3D games, with graphics that warp, textures that block up when they approach the screen, and color count per texture comparable to the 8-bit NES's color palette, would have completely replaced 2D games with higher color counts, greater animation, and all around better aesthetic value. It wasn't until the Dreamcast and PS2 that 3D games contained a comparable image quality to this generation's 2D games, and 2D games had been the entire video game market since its conception.

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So I take it I'm not the only one that thinks the 32-bit era wasn't ready for 3D?

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Originally Posted by azonicrider

But sheath, I've grown aware that you're behind Game Pilgrimage. http://www.gamepilgrimage.com/SATPScompare.htm

So I take it I'm not the only one that thinks the 32-bit era wasn't ready for 3D?

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gamepilgrimage is actually a concerted effort of gamers from about 1999 until today, I have done most of the writing while checking first with Usenet and then with forums with knowledgeable members while comparing and contrasting this with marketing and journalistic narratives. Very little of it is actually "just me," if that were the case I would have my personal library and favorites up in a My Space style page and spend all my time telling everybody about what I like(d) to play the most. More recently Barone has been helping me flesh out a lot of technical game information that is not documented anywhere online.

Basically the only reason I visit game related forums at all is to make sure that gamepilgrimage has as accurate and up to date facts as is possible. Forums have been disappointing me though, as nobody cites sources other than themselves. Hubris reigns.

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Originally Posted by azonicrider

Well Kool Kitty I didn't see your post before I posted mine. I'll come back to this when I haven't been awake for 20 hours. My brain is only running at like 6 Mhz right now.


But sheath, I've grown aware that you're behind Game Pilgrimage. http://www.gamepilgrimage.com/SATPScompare.htm



So I take it I'm not the only one that thinks the 32-bit era wasn't ready for 3D?

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A lot of people seem to think that, but IMO it was just the right timing for 3D to hit mainstream. The whole market was already pushing for it, and the PSX's style of hardware rendered 3D was basically the simplest texture mapped rasterized 3D you could do (aside from variables in term of alpha blending and lighting features -which you could argue the PSX actually went above the minimum in some areas). It's the same style of 3D that had just started to become mainstream on PCs (with CPU performance and programming techniques finally getting to the point to afford relatively complex software renderers) and in a similar vein to what was being pushed in the arcade. (granted, arcade stuff went straight to perspective correct texture rendering, albeit without any filtering and without smooth shading in Sega's case -Namco's System 22 could gouraud shade, but the model 2 can't)


Sure, there were graphical limitations, but it allowed for some amazing games that otherwise simply wouldn't have been possible.


It was also just about the right time for multimedia to get pushed heavily in the mainstream, particularly building on the strengths of early good examples of that.


On a separate note though, there's an argument for 2D games of that period and how there probably could have been a much broader market for that then there ended up being had the major console makers remained as open to that as 3D. (ie not coercing developers in any direct way)

Yeah I would not say that the 32-bit consoles were too early for 3D. The comment I think azo noticed was about how "poor" 3D graphics were in comparison to what was possible in Arcades and PCs, or what would be possible in the following generation. My main point was that narrative histories were painting either the N64 or PS1 as the premiere 3D console of that generation while ignoring all of the graphical flaws and emphasizing each platforms' strengths. All of these "story time" histories paint the lowest seller as though they were peddling bad technology and consumers, infinitely smart and well researched as always, refused to buy from said "loser" for that reason. The narrative always emphasizes the technology of the "winner" and a few of the most mainstream games on said platform as THE REASON for its success.

I just think its stupid how they were trying to accomplish full 3D games on these consoles that can only render 2000 polygons per frame.

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Originally Posted by sheath

Yeah I would not say that the 32-bit consoles were too early for 3D. The comment I think azo noticed was about how "poor" 3D graphics were in comparison to what was possible in Arcades and PCs, or what would be possible in the following generation. My main point was that narrative histories were painting either the N64 or PS1 as the premiere 3D console of that generation while ignoring all of the graphical flaws and emphasizing each platforms' strengths. All of these "story time" histories paint the lowest seller as though they were peddling bad technology and consumers, infinitely smart and well researched as always, refused to buy from said "loser" for that reason. The narrative always emphasizes the technology of the "winner" and a few of the most mainstream games on said platform as THE REASON for its success.

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When it launched, the PSX had better 2D and 3D capabilities than high-end PC games running on high end consumer PCs. It wasn't really until late 1996 that that changed, either with hardware acceleration or software rendering in some respects. (256 color rendering was still the main/only method used, but there's a good argument for higher res and better perspective correction in games like Quake and Tomb Raider . . . FMV was still a good bit worse than what the PSX could handle though -aside from a few cases using things like Truemotion rather than Cinepak or similar stuff -or Origin's custom RLE based compression format used in Wing Commander III and IV) And really, in 1996 (with a pretty high-end Pentium 166), you still weren't going to have really smooth framerates running Tomb Raider at 640x480 in high detail or Quake at 640x480. (playable, perhaps, but choppier than console counterparts)

You also weren't sing higher polygon rates in PC games at that point either . . . 1997 saw a pretty big shift on the PC end though, and 1998 even more so. (with hardware acceleration being a big part of that, though the CPU race to 1000 MHz certainly had a major impact too . . . the most dramatic speed/performance increase over a short period ever -the introduction of the Pentium 4 marked an even more rapid leap in clock speeds, but in terms of actual performance, you'd have to scale that back to what the Athlon was doing -and what modified P6 based Intel chip might have done too :p )



On the issue of selling "poor" technology to consumers . . . in some respects there's legitimate complaints, and others not so much. (and a lot of context to things)

In terms of the 5th gen consoles, it is kind of a shame that none of the competitors (particularly the strong/mainstream ones) came out with a clean, streamlined, low-cost optimized general purpose 2D/3D machine that sacrificed some performance (and perhaps some ease of programming) for practical economy reasons.
The PSX itself has quite a few "not cheap" areas in its architecture, and even with Sony's vertical integration and subsidized pricing, a strong competitor with a well organized, "cheap but good" alrernative would have been really interesting.

That was one of the strong points of the Genesis too . . . aside from it being older and earlier, the lower cost and relatively efficient design helped a lot with marketing and software development. Granted, the SNES being mind of a mess internally certainly helped there too. :p (and developers may have been willing to put in the effort to optimize for the SNES, but the advantages of the MD meant it still got better average performance than it could have otherwise -ie if it was just as . . . problematic as the SNES)

Actually, the 3DO design could have fit into this role too, particularly if a Sega partnership would have put a bigger emphasis on a low cost envelope (on top of advantages in actual pricing, market model, and unified manufacturing). You can come up with a more ideal hypothetical low-cost/early 5th gen console design than that, but that still wouldn't have been too bad at all. (you'd cover the earlier release too, since the target date for completion of the design was 1992, given the 3-year contract offer to Mike Katz in 1990 -which they likely met with 3DO given the 1993 consumer release)

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Originally Posted by azonicrider

I just think its stupid how they were trying to accomplish full 3D games on these consoles that can only render 2000 polygons per frame.

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PSX, Saturn, and N64 should have practical polygon budgets well above that in most cases . . . unless you're talking about games that run at a solid 60 FPS, which is basically none. :p And remember games from the next gen were (in the vast majority of cases) limited to 30 FPS max anyway. (480i displays)

And "full" 3D games had been pushed on a lot less than that anyway, it was just a matter of getting to the point where performance allowed 3D to be accepted in the mainstream.

I still think those systems just didn't have the grunt for the jump to 3D.

http://www.emuparadise.me/roms/psx/G...ismo%202/1.jpg

Look at the beautiful textures on the track, octagon wheels. This screen-shot is so sharp, it could cut through glass, PS1 != Anti-aliasing.


Now lets look at the Dreamcast, a more suitable console for 3D:

http://img.gamefaqs.net/screens/2/5/0/gfs_43421_2_9.jpg

Just over 600x more appealing to the eye.

The 2D games from that generation have aged flawlessly:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=d2JsYKbWubY

I am fairly certain by fall of 1995 a superior to PS1 PC could be purchased. Even if all games were limited to ~320x240 (they weren't) and low color they could at least run faster. I was thinking mostly of Model 2 games though, the "bad at 3D" Saturn did a better job of translating them in 1995 than the PS1 did for years. Then there is the matter of 1996 being the first full year for Saturn and PS1 in the West, and it was mid-late 1996 that I bought my first PC with a Cyrix 686 133Mhz and Matrox Mystique 220 with 4MB of VRAM. ;)

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Originally Posted by sheath

I was thinking mostly of Model 2 games though, the "bad at 3D" Saturn did a better job of translating them in 1995 than the PS1 did for years.

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Hmm its not like the PS1 had a huge number of Model 2 conversions so I would say that statement can't really be substantiated, can it? In fact the only one that I can think of off the top of my head would be Dead or Alive. Are there any other Model 2-to-PS1 conversions out there?
Apparently the PS1 version of DoA came out later than the Saturn version and featured a different graphics engine to the Saturn (it sounds like the Saturn version featured an engine similar to VF2, using a combination of VDP2 backgrounds and mixed in with the polygon graphics from the VDP1 - a known strength of the Saturn), Sega probably also provided Tecmo with assistance on the Saturn version, likely with the VF2 engine to assist development.
I personally would of liked to have seen how a Daytona USA or a Sega Rally conversion would of looked on PS1, just as a comparison.

I'm pretty sure Dead or Alive is the only Model 2 game that made it to the PS1. And even then the version that made it to the PS1 was Dead or Alive++ which was an entirely new game built from the ground up for what I believe was PS1 based Arcade Hardware.

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Originally Posted by stu

Hmm its not like the PS1 had a huge number of Model 2 conversions so I would say that statement can't really be substantiated, can it? In fact the only one that I can think of off the top of my head would be Dead or Alive. Are there any other Model 2-to-PS1 conversions out there?
Apparently the PS1 version of DoA came out later than the Saturn version and featured a different graphics engine to the Saturn (it sounds like the Saturn version featured an engine similar to VF2, using a combination of VDP2 backgrounds and mixed in with the polygon graphics from the VDP1 - a known strength of the Saturn), Sega probably also provided Tecmo with assistance on the Saturn version, likely with the VF2 engine to assist development.
I personally would of liked to have seen how a Daytona USA or a Sega Rally conversion would of looked on PS1, just as a comparison.

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I'm not sure how my statement came across to you, but I was only comparing Model 2 and subsequent same-year PC tech to the PS1. My remark about the Saturn's late 1995 library showing a stronger resemblance to Model 2 than anything on the PS1 that year was just a remark. Bloody Roar 2 and a host of other 60FPS mid resolution fighters with 3D backgrounds are easy to bring up in favor of the PS1 over the Saturn, but they still aren't Model 2 quality especially with the texture warping and seaming issues.

As for a Model 2 like racer on PS1, it has already come up in the 5th generation thread causing me to buy it.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=r3XNFjcGFzc

Hydro Thunder on PS1, let alone these games Barone pointed out, do a number on the Saturn's racing library as well.

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Originally Posted by sheath

I am fairly certain by fall of 1995 a superior to PS1 PC could be purchased. Even if all games were limited to ~320x240 (they weren't) and low color they could at least run faster. I was thinking mostly of Model 2 games though, the "bad at 3D" Saturn did a better job of translating them in 1995 than the PS1 did for years. Then there is the matter of 1996 being the first full year for Saturn and PS1 in the West, and it was mid-late 1996 that I bought my first PC with a Cyrix 686 133Mhz and Matrox Mystique 220 with 4MB of VRAM. ;)

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In late 1995 you could get a brand new (and very expensive) Pentium 133 based PC . . . and have no games with pentium optimization anyway, or graphics that would be taxing on the PSX.

Ray Casting based games would fare better, since that's rather software-rendering optimized (albeit the most advanced examples there were still just Doom based -Duke 3D wasn't until '96), but things like Wing Commander III, Terminal Velocity, Descent, or System Shock shouldn't really fare better on a Pentium 133 than on PSX. (RAM and HDD space have other advantages, of course) And really, those '94/95 3D games could run fine on a good bit worse than a Pentium 133 (most ran well on a 486 100, and Doom would be ~60 fps on an AMD or Cyrix 5x86), albeit high res options would be more into Pentium territory for games like Terminal Velocity, System Shock, or Descent with an SVGA card. (that would even apply to the likes of Tie Fighter for the 640x480 mode at max detail)

1996 saw the first wave of FPU-intensive Pentium optimized games . . . which are the sort of applications that made AMD and Cyrix CPUs look bad (Quake in particular was guilty of this, being intensively optimized at low-level around the Pentium's strengths and quirks), especially relative to PR ratings (not as bad by raw clock speed), and sometimes also made them a worse value than Pentiums in that context. (depending on actual pricing, though -if you could find a slightly faster clocked 6x86 for less than a Pentium I, that'd be good though -especially for more typical cases, unlike Quake)
Albeit, Cyrix and AMD chips were better at many older games and the few later games without Pentium-specific stuff like Duke 3D and maybe Wing Commander IV. (so also great for maxing out older games with higher detail options)

CPU binding became more of a problem than actual rendering speed on PSX vs PC, but most of these early 3D games shouldn't have that issue, or are intensive enough software rendering wise that the CPU is bogged down by that. (the unreleased Quake port to PSX apparently had the GPU performance to run at 60 FPS, but was CPU limited to 30 FPS -which is still slightly faster than what a Pentium 133 could do at 320x200 . . . and all that extra GPU bandwidth on the PSX should have given a fair bit of room for decent perspective correction)

Though, by late 1996, the really high-end option for cost-no-object desktops would be the Pentium 200 or (really crazy) Pentium Pro . . . except the latter actually wasn't all that good for much on the consumer end compared to a Pentium I at the same clock speed. (and not remotely worth the price)
Actually: the Pentium Pro was available in 1995 all the way up to the 200 MHz model (actually the 512k cache model was there too), but it's so expensive that it's really not worth mentioning anyway, not to mention totally overkill for games actually available in 1995. :p


Oh, and was that Cyrix 6x86 133 of yours a 133 MHz or PR-133? (the PR-133 was the odd 110 MHz on 55 MHz FSB -which not many motherboards supported . . . the 133 MHz 66 MHz FSB part was the PR-166 and much more popular/common)


And if you're interested, there's a very detailed 5th/6th generation CPU performance analysis on Vogons here: http://www.vogons.org/viewtopic.php?f=46&t=34666

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Originally Posted by kool kitty89

In late 1995 you could get a brand new (and very expensive) Pentium 133 based PC . . . and have no games with pentium optimization anyway, or graphics that would be taxing on the PSX.

Ray Casting based games would fare better, since that's rather software-rendering optimized (albeit the most advanced examples there were still just Doom based -Duke 3D wasn't until '96), but things like Wing Commander III, Terminal Velocity, Descent, or System Shock shouldn't really fare better on a Pentium 133 than on PSX. (RAM and HDD space have other advantages, of course) And really, those '94/95 3D games could run fine on a good bit worse than a Pentium 133 (most ran well on a 486 100, and Doom would be ~60 fps on an AMD or Cyrix 5x86), albeit high res options would be more into Pentium territory for games like Terminal Velocity, System Shock, or Descent with an SVGA card.

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Yes, anything better was going to be much more expensive, which is why Sega didn't just reduce the Model 2 to a console form of some type. I was not contesting that. I was contesting that the narratives and fans all elevate PS1 graphics as though they were cutting edge when they were very far from that.

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Originally Posted by kool kitty89

Oh, and was that Cyrix 6x86 133 of yours a 133 MHz or PR-133? (the PR-133 was the odd 110 MHz on 55 MHz FSB -which not many motherboards supported . . . the 133 MHz 66 MHz FSB part was the PR-166 and much more popular/common)

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That system is long gone and I never ran any benchmarks on it or didn't save them. I am inclined to think that it was the straight 133 because I later upgraded to a 166 before selling it. The clock speed was always reported as 133Mhz and I did try overclocking it before upgrading to my Celery 300A.

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Originally Posted by kool kitty89

And if you're interested, there's a very detailed 5th/6th generation CPU performance analysis on Vogons here: http://www.vogons.org/viewtopic.php?f=46&t=34666

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Thanks! Bookmarked.

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Originally Posted by sheath

I'm not sure how my statement came across to you, but I was only comparing Model 2 and subsequent same-year PC tech to the PS1. My remark about the Saturn's late 1995 library showing a stronger resemblance to Model 2 than anything on the PS1 that year was just a remark. Bloody Roar 2 and a host of other 60FPS mid resolution fighters with 3D backgrounds are easy to bring up in favor of the PS1 over the Saturn, but they still aren't Model 2 quality especially with the texture warping and seaming issues.
As for a Model 2 like racer on PS1, it has already come up in the 5th generation thread causing me to buy it.

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I see, well I took the remark for what it was, I saw it as a slightly bizarre attempt at claiming that the Saturn was better at handling Model 2 conversions than the PS1, even though there is really no evidence that this is true. It has to be said that the conversions on the Saturn aren't exactly "Model 2 quality" either, witness the original Daytona USA conversion for example- not full screen, tons of pop in, Yes I know that the game's development was rushed etc etc). Also as good as the VF2 conversion on the Saturn is, it still isn't up to the standards of Model 2, then again it really isn't possible for a $300.00 home system to match a state of the art arcade system costing thousands of dollars. In fact if I was so taken to I could probably go ahead and claim that the PS1 is better at realising Namco System 22 games than the Saturn, but I wouldn't because games like PS1 Ridge Racer aren't as good as the arcade original, BUT for the price of the home game system (either PS1 or Saturn) they are pretty good, just as the Saturn conversions of the Model 2 games are equally as good.

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Originally Posted by sheath

Yes, anything better was going to be much more expensive, which is why Sega didn't just reduce the Model 2 to a console form of some type. I was not contesting that. I was contesting that the narratives and fans all elevate PS1 graphics as though they were cutting edge when they were very far from that.

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Sorry I have to disagree here too, The PS1 (and the Saturn) WERE cutting edge in 1995 considering the price that these systems sold at ($300.00 - $400.00), where else are you going to get that kind of performance in a gamebox at that price? Yes both PCs and arcade systems outperform the PS1 (and the Saturn since this system is comparable to/better than the PS1 dependant on your POV) but PCs and and arcade machines cost FAR more and in the case of PCs were usually out of reach for most people. I have to say that I'm slightly puzzled at this creative attempt at reimagining history, I realize that you dislike the Playstation systems and thats fine (I might be even inclined to agree with you on some aspects regarding PS2 vs Dreamcast - the DC did deserve to beat the PS2) but trying to play down how much of an improvement the PS1 (and Saturn) brought in 1995 seems in my opinion to be wrong.

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Originally Posted by sheath

Yes, anything better was going to be much more expensive, which is why Sega didn't just reduce the Model 2 to a console form of some type. I was not contesting that. I was contesting that the narratives and fans all elevate PS1 graphics as though they were cutting edge when they were very far from that.

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But again note my overall point: said expensive system still wasn't going to beat the PS1's graphics. (and there wasn't even that much on PC in 1995 that directly compares with what the PSX had)
Mid/late 1996 with accelerated games, certainly, and even with a significantly slower CPU than P133. (albeit that was also the time when games started getting pentium optimized too, meaning you gained a good bit more on the Pentium, but also lost more -at least in some areas- on AMD and Cyrix's offering . . . granted, cases like Quake's software renderer are among the more extreme examples there, particularly as it seems to favor more than jsut the Pentium's FPU, but general quirks of the P5 architecture in general)

Anf in terms of software renderers, it was still another story too, partially due to CPU limitations, and partially due to a decreasing emphasis on software rendering in general. In any case, even for cases with technically better graphics than PSX in many areas, there were still exceptions (partciularly 256 color rendering limitations -actually kind of odd that later games didn't use dithered shading like Tie Fighter did -would have helped a lot with the color banding) and even with software highcolor/truecolor renderers there were some problems, like in Unreal. (checkerboard mesh for many translucent objects, rendering errors with actual alpha blended objects, etc -though the dithered pseudo bilinear filtering was kind of nice, though actually something that can be implimented in 256 colors -there's a modified quake II engine that supports that)

Of course you've got a few rare cases of really stand-out software renderers pretty late, like Outcast, but those are things that needed 300~400 MHz CPUs to run at full speed (or more like 500 MHz at max resolution), and in 1999. (we're also talking dreamcast level graphics though . . . also with the nice voxel terrain in the case of Outcast ;))

Heh, and even going to hardware acceleration, you've got some problems with some GPUs . . . buggy drivers aside (which was a real problem), there's cases like the Matrox Mystique's lack of alpha blending of any sort (even simple per-vertex/polygon half transparency) and worse still was drivers trying to fake more than 1/2 transparency using ordered dithering. :p
(OTOH, you've got the original ViRGE 325 technically beating the PS1 in every practical way for PC games . . . when the D3D drivers worked -or for the furst S3D titles- and run games faster and with perspective correction and 32-bit color -ie smooth shading/blending without dithering artifacts- at 320x240, sometimes even PSX quality speed at somewhat higher res and/or texture filtering; and the Rage II would do a bit better than that -and less often ran into driver issues, both on the mass market in 1996 and cheaper than the likes of Voodoo or Rendition V1000 -not sure on exact pricing though)
The S3D port of Croc is probably one of the better/more consistent examples. (not least so given the relatively varied detail options and resolutons supported, that and its directly comparable nature to the PSX game ;))

Heh, now if a console had used something like the ViRGE 325, we'd probably see things from another perspective too, with the fixed architecture leading to specific optimization (and obscure feature usage) along with avoiding driver issues and bugs. (and also feature limitations that led to some broken effects in DirectX6)

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Thanks! Bookmarked.

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If you're not familiar with this alread, I'd check it out too:
http://vintage3d.org/

And:
http://www.tomshardware.com/reviews/...w-step,51.html
(lots and lots of reviews there, though some of those results changed a bit with some later drivers it seems -the vintage3D site shows better quality filtering with the Riva 128 than Tom's Turok screenshot)
Also interesting how well the K6-233 and 6x86MX-200 (166 MHz) fared. (then again, neither Turok nor GL Quake were tested in the 686 benchmark comparison on Vogons, and all tests were done with a Matrox G200 -which wasn't in that Tom's article)