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Technology

Playstation2 Low-Down 180

Posted by CmdrTaco from the get-ready-to-tekken dept.
Boofo writes "The skinny on what will be in the playstation 2 Firewire, USB, PCMCIA, a fill rate of 2.4 billion pixels a second and draw 20 million polygons a second....blows the doors off a pentium III with a Voodoo III."
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Playstation2 Low-Down More

Playstation2 Low-Down

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  • A top of the line gaming PC costs what, $2000.
    A playstation 2 will probably run $200.


    However, that top-of-the-line gaming PC will probably cost around $500-$800 by the time the PSX2 is actually released in the US. And from the rumors I've heard, the PSX will be closer to $350-$400 initially.
  • Yes, but by the time the PSX2 actually comes out in the US, you should be able to get a pIII + vIII + 21" monitor for under $1000. Not to mention that you'll need to buy the monitor (or a $700+ HDTV) for the PSX as well, if you want decent image quality.
  • Well, supposedly it'll support HDTV and SVGA monitors.

    So, if we take a 1024x768 resolution, that's 786,432 pixels per frame. 30 frames/second gives you 23,592,960 (approx. 24 million) pixels per second. Odd, I wonder where the extra factor of 1000 comes in.
  • Posted by psychokid:

    I remember Gillette saying this one time..from some business mag.


    "Give them the razors and sell them the razor blades"

    Unfortunately, the same theory applies to Iomega's stratagey w/ selling removable media. That's why whey could've made much better drives, but don't because they know they make a killing on profits off of each blank media they sell.
  • Some of us just have better access to new technology than others... '-)

  • ... so that we can get the specs release and a linux port underway.
  • Well, the other explanations are OK, but the main explanation is...

    mass production

    They'll be churning these things out in *outrageous* volumes. I mean look at their aims, a PS in *every* American home, plus Japan, Europe, the rest of Asia...
    --
  • "The signal to noise ratio here on the Internet has never been higher."

    I guess that means everything you've heard about the Playstation 2 is true. :)
  • Viewable TV resolution is 640x480 [actually it's 720x480 if you wanna go there] at 60 fields or 30 frames per second [for NTSC] PAL and other encodings use a different colour space and different framerates.

  • Isn't that the goal of every PC maker too? Sony won't be able to mass produce at that scale at first, because since they lose money on every console system, the costs would just be prohibitive. Mass production can only save you so much; but the systems are still more expensive to produce than they are sold for.

    That's why companies fight so hard to force game makers to pay for licenses (through royalties). Remember the big Nintendo/Tengen dispute? Licensing is their primary source of revenue (just as movie theater's primary source of revenue isn't the movies but the food they sell).
    --
    Aaron Gaudio
    "The fool finds ignorance all around him.

  • For a non-interlaced picture (flicker-free games) you can use 320x240 or even 640x240(these are for NTSC, PAL is slightly higher in the resolution at the expense of picture update frequency). The current playstation also supports 640x480 images. the game Einhander has a graphics library composed of pictures at this resolution.

    The specs for the Playstation 2 indicate that it will suport HDTV(wide screen gaming!!!) as well as computer monitors. However, it does not dictate what resolutions it will support.

  • Realism (Score:1)

    by rpete ( 6612 )
    The 3dfx Voodoo2 FAQ states that current estimates consider 80 million polygons per second to be the point at which fully realistic 3D worlds are possible. Then with the Playstation2 spec of 20 million polygons per second, in combination with Moore's law, I suppose this goal would be reached in 3 years.

    Or one could just put about 30 Voodoo2s into an SLI-like configuration and have it today. I suppose you'd need a Beowolf for the vertex processing though (ducks for cover).

  • I can't get a response from the server.. are we SlashDotted allready??
  • I emailed the guy at Ensemble studios yesterday about whether there was any chance of an AOE port to Linux. (Yes, stupid, I know. I just love that game. If AOE and quicken came over to Linux, I could nuke my Win95 partition for good.)

    Anyway ... I'm getting away from myself. His reply was:
    "Linux... I doubt it.... Both Playstation and Mac ports of AOE are coming soon (Spring/Summer 99)"

    AOE's multiplayer mode is the most fun part of the game. PCMCIA ethernet in the PSX could use that.

    Of course, in my dream world, I would get a PSX emulator for my Linux box.

    Now here's a question. Could all the capabilities of the PSX be brought over to a computer by putting that hardware on a PCI card? Maybe with a software interface to the computer?

    OK, I'll stop now.

  • This is a repost from another thread, but it seemed applicable to this thread as well. Plus I'd like to get that Playstation Developer's point of view.

    I emailed the guy at Ensemble studios yesterday about whether there was any chance of an AOE port to Linux. (Yes, stupid, I know. I just love that game. If AOE and quicken came over to Linux, I could nuke my Win95 partition for good.)

    Anyway ... I'm getting away from myself. His reply was:
    "Linux... I doubt it.... Both Playstation and Mac ports of AOE are coming soon (Spring/Summer 99)"

    AOE's multiplayer mode is the most fun part of the game. PCMCIA ethernet in the PSX could use that.

    Of course, in my dream world, I would get a PSX emulator for my Linux box.

    Now here's a question. Could all the capabilities of the PSX be brought over to a computer by putting that hardware on a PCI card? Maybe with a software interface to the computer?
  • Why would that not be practical? Not being belligerent, just curious. If the console-on-a-card were ~the same price as the console itself, I would think very seriously about buying one. See above reference to AOE for the reason why. Plus I would love to have all the Playstation games available to me too.
  • Waddaya think HDTV is for?
    .
  • Once again, you can make a kick as cheap beowolf cluster once linux is ported. Maybe a renderfarm instead...hmmm
  • Is the Playstation 2 specs really that much more powerful than a top of the line gaming PC? After all, the PS2 only has to push polygons at 320x240 resolution (or whatever tv rez is), while Voodoo3 can run at "acceptable" speeds at 1600x1200
    According to the Specs released, the PSX2 can do ~ 20 mill polys a second (with bezier curve calculation) and the V3 can do ~ 8 mill polys a second. both can do DVD playback (looking at the specs) both supposed support TV, SVGA, HDTV, LCD (supposedly). The V3 is cheaper (~$160), but needs a ~US$1300 computer system to bring anywhere near its expected performance, where as the PSX2 is a console, it takes care of what it needs to, so for ~$400 + a TV ($120-$800) it looks like it is acceptable. as for the resolution, the specs i've seem claim 60 frames a second (which is faster than you can display, you do 60 fields/30frames on NTSC) where the console takes the extra frames and calculates motionblur between them before outputing on the next update cycle.
  • pixels, not polys. a TV is what, ~640x480? so, htats like 307,200 pixels a 'frame', but TV's use fields, so its more like 153,600 a field, at 60 fields a second is 9,216,000 pixels a second for your average TV show. Remember, that 24 bill is most likely just doing pix's.
  • Since Sega made a deal with MS on their new platform and the Dreamcast games can easily be ported back and forth between their console and a PC, why wouldn't sony try to do something similar? kinda like 3com's Pilot Emu they released for people to develop apps.
  • with the release of this unit.
  • From the article: "...the ability to output video to High Definition Televisions and Computer Monitors (as well as to plain old NTSC TVs)." Looks like your answer is when this unit comes out...
  • Vaporware is always cheaper and always kicks ass of commercially available hardware."


    Uh, I guess you missed the 5 or so mpgs they released? Doesn't look like vaporware to me.


    Take a good look at the screen shots and MPEGs. They look nice, yes. They are worth buying a Playstation 2 for? Quite possibly. They need 50^H^H70^H^H20 million polygons per second to render? Not really. Believe marketing specs at your peril. The numbers that I've been hearing floating out of the developer community are quite a bit lower.

  • Now here's a question. Could all the capabilities of the PSX be brought over to a computer by putting that hardware on a PCI card? Maybe with a software interface to the computer?


    In principle, yes. This is in fact done for development boards IIRC. However, in practice, this won't be much more useful or cost-effective than just buying a separate console.


    The problem is that a PC's I/O and memory subsystems are relatively lousy. A console (or a real workstation, for that matter) has a highly optimized, very fast, and very wide set of busses connection the various components of the system in a configuration designed to serve the needs of the purpose for which the system is being used (for a console, graphics processing). If you dropped a console's graphics processors on a PCI card and let the CPU handle all other tasks, the system would crawl, because the PC's bus doesn't have the bandwidth to control the hardware effectively. You could stick most of the console components on the card and give it an internal bus with appropriate specs, but then you just have a full console sitting in your PCI slot. There isn't much point.


    This is useful for development boards, because it lets you transfer new builds of games to the console and run the console in debug mode, but IMO a gamer would be better off just with the production version of the console and a TV. I'm sure that somebody will figure out how to run home-brewed or pirated games on it in short order, especially with firewire and other ports available for data transfer (boot to a special CD and run the game off of a hard drive).

  • pixels, not polys. a TV is what, ~640x480? so, htats like 307,200 pixels a 'frame', but TV's use fields, so its more like 153,600 a field, at 60 fields a second is 9,216,000 pixels a second for your average TV show. Remember, that 24 bill is most likely just doing pix's.


    I strongly suspect that a fill rate that insane is for flat-shaded untextured polygons, or at best for single-textured polygons. Divide by four for a quad-textured multitextured polygon, or by somewhere between 2 and 8 for a single-textured polygon with trilinear filtering, depending on the conditions and how clever the hardware is.


    There's also the question of overdraw. Triangles overlap each other; this is why z-buffering exists. In the worst case, where your polygons are drawn from back to front, you wind up drawing n times as many pixels as are actually displayed, where n is the number of overlapping triangles. Overdraw factor varies widely, as it depends on how much effort the game programmer put into culling algorithms. However, it can be anywhere from about 2 to about 10.


    So, at 640x240x60 (or 640x480x30 interlaced), you need to draw about 9.2 million pixels per second. If your overdraw factor is about 3 on average, this means you need a fill rate of about 28 million pixels per second. If you're using dual-textured trilinearly filtered textures with a moderately efficient texturing algorithm, you need a fill rate equivalent to about 220 million non-filtered single-texture pixels per second.


    What this says to me in practice is that the Playstation 2 isn't going to be fill-rate limited if it's running on a standard television set. For higher resolutions and less marketing-inflated spec numbers, fill rate may become significant.

  • Why would that not be practical? Not being belligerent, just curious.


    I strongly suspect that it would be more expensive, as it would need extra logic to interface it with the PCI bus and the PC as a whole. It would also be harder for the console makers to make money by charging royalties for media, as piracy would be much easier. Also, you would need a moderately expensive PC to put it in, and would need to either use a video pass-through cable or tie up more bus bandwidth with video output data. You'd also either need a separate controller port on the card, making for additional cabling.


    I agree that none of the above is earth-shattering, but I see no advantage to putting the console on a card and several minor disadvantages. You could get better output resolution just by putting a monitor output on a conventional console (though this means either buying another monitor or fiddling with cables when you want to play games).


    The above assumes that you have a PC, also. I don't know exactly how large a chunk of the gaming market doesn't use a computer, but I suspect that it is pretty sizeable. Just about everyone has a TV.

  • Would Firewire or any of the other interfaces be fast enough to handle realtime gaming graphics being streamed to the PSX 2 for display, rather than to a PCI or AGP card?


    The short answer to this is "no". Old-fashioned PCI-33 maxes out at 132 MBytes/sec. AGP increases this considerably, but it is still fairly easy to find cases where card performance is limited by the system bus. I have yet to hear of a network connector or external bus that is commonly available that does this (gigabit ethernet and the like are expensive). This means that any scheme that used a Playstation 2 as a rendering box would have serious limits imposed by whatever you're using to connect with it.


    That having been said, you get free geometry processing in the Playstation 2, which means that it could very well outperform conventional cards that don't have geometry processing, even when used as a peripheral. OTOH, geometry processing will be on graphics cards Real Soon Now (tm), so the actual usefulness of this is open to question.


    Since the PSX-2 supposedly outperforms an SGI InfiniteReality (specced at up to 13 Million poly/second with quad-R10000s)


    The key word here is "supposedly". The real numbers, from rumours, are considerably lower than what their marketing department is claiming.


    and has it's own geometry engine, the PSX-2 would likely make an inexpensive and hugely capable dedicated graphics engine for a PC.


    Possibly. A system with multiple conventional graphics cards may be more efficient at this when the Playstation 2 actually comes out. We'll see.


    The advantages of using 2 or more of these boxes in parallel also naturally spring to mind...


    Communications with the boxes will be even more of a problem with this than with one box. You will rapidly reach diminishing returns with this, except in very specific cases.


    But, really, how much does one of these 50 million polys/sec chips actually cost *today*?


    From what I've heard, a 50 million poly/sec chip doesn't exist. Try about an order of magnitude lower than that. That's just the rumour mill, though; we'll see what the specs actually are when it ships.


    Graphics cards based on a similar chip would be interesting, at the very least, agreed.

  • Good Point dude! I'm going to be running Quake at 1280x1024 when my VIII comes. That will Rule!
  • Think of the Beowulf cluster...

    Sorry, (ducking and running)

    Chris
  • It still isn't going to be released until next year. and teh P3 sucks anyways.. =) and the next big voodoo card will be out by then to match it... though it is 128 bit architecture and we still have 32.. =/
  • Being a person of a highly suspicious and paranoid nature, I'll believe these(admittedly impressive) PSX2 numbers only after I see a real-world game running on production hardware, not a hand-coded, down-to-the-last-cycle-optimized tech demo running on tricked-up demo hardware.

    --jwriney
    John Riney III
    jwriney@awod.com
  • By definition, it's vapor until you can go to the local EB/Babbages/Fry's/Best Buy/etc, plunk down the cash and buy one.

    Remember the N64 disk drive?

    --jwriney
    John Riney III
    jwriney@awod.com

  • I'm curious why you would need to believe these performance numbers to be interested in the system?


    Why, I don't, it seems to be an interesting little box. I'm just generically leery of manufacturers that say things like "323542897 bozillion polys/sec", before the hardware hits the market. I believe it was NVidia that said their TNT chipset would run at 125 mhz, and cited some sweet benchmarks based on that. When it came to ship-time, the chips were too unstable at that clock speed, so they dogged them down to 90(in some cases 110 I think). The TNT is still an awesome board(I have a Spectra 2500 and love it), but the initial numbers they cited were a bit premature. You can't put too much stock in numbers until real hardware and software hits the street.

    All IMHO of course.

    --jwriney
    John Riney III
    jwriney@awod.com
  • Looks like they're feeling the slashdot effect right now. Any mirrors?
  • I was reading the specs and comments here, and I am very impressed (or am I just sucker for numbers). I am wondering if I can harness the flops performance and the graphical power for some sprite driven non-linear regression modelling. If I could use a PSX2 for developing and running software like that, it would be a hell of a lot more economical to by 6 of these than an SMP Intel box. I guess if development is under linux, it shouldbe possible. I guess someone has to say this, I wonder what a Beowulf cluster of thises would be like..NLmpJB39
  • I'm glad that your dis-interest in the PSX2 is due to lack of games you prefer, flight sims and fps...

    [SNIP]

    I'll be looking forward to my 3d console RPGs, racing games, shooters, and such on the PSX2 myself, since I'm no good at flight sims and fps are sorta boring to me...


    Well I have always prefered consoles over PC for gaming because I have felt the genre of games for consoles is more to my liking.
  • You miss the point. Whether or not it is that much more powerful that a top of the line gaming PC isn't really the issue.

    A top of the line gaming PC costs what, $2000.

    A playstation 2 will probably run $200.

    A top of the line gaming PC offers all sorts of opportunities for failure. A playstation2 offers few opportunities for failure. Little can be done to it, short of physical abuse, that can't be fixed by a fast reboot.
  • Why would you expect to?

    I believe they use a free standing executable to post-process the object files into a playstation ready executable format.
  • What makes you think someone won't?
  • So this is a pre-emptive pro-active rant.

    Some issues:
    What's the big deal of comparing and drooling from DreamCast vs PSX2 vs PC? I would imagine the particular games being released would be of more importance than the particulars of the machine, though a well thought out and spec-ed out machine is definitely nice. Myself, I look forward to DVD movie playback on the PSX2, if Sony doesn't decide to limit it as well as being able to play my whole library of PSX games on it. I'm sure there will be impressive PSX2 games out for it, but since nothing has been announced, there's really nothing to talk about right now.

    Another thing: Why do some people seem to think this, or at least consoles, are a waste of money? It's like arguing TVs or DVD players or toasters are a waste of money; I'll complete each analogy...
    Why get a TV when you can get a PC with a TV tuner and a 21" monitor? The PC can do so much more than the a TV!
    Why get a DVD player when you can get a PC with a DVD-ROM drive and decoder board? You don't even need a TV to watch it, but if you want to you can always get a video card with TV-out and hook up your PC to your TV/home entertainment center!
    Why get a toaster when you have your oven? Just pop the bread in there for a few moments and you get your toast! And the oven can do so much more than a toaster anyways!

    All of the above prompted by statements that the PSX2 and consoles in general are a waste of money and effort, when the PC has more potential, can do more, is more cost effective, is upgradeable, will do more things, etc...

    Consoles are supposed to be specialized computing devices; plug and play, no upgrades, no fiddling. Neat thing about the PSX2 is the potential for modem, keyboard, mouse, and peripheral support, what with the USB, PCMCIA, and Firewire ports. So yeah, it's conceivable that a PC is more useful, but we're talking games and movies and maybe eventually simple word processing, web browsing, email, and chat on this console. Not to mention boatloads cheaper, per processing power. You'd need a Dec Alpha CPU at 500 MHz with a couple V3s SLIed to get comparable computing/graphics horsepower, so the price comparison falls apart.

    Of course this is all moot if there aren't any games you want to play on either PSX or PSX2. That being the case, then it wouldn't matter one hoot that the PSX2 isn't upgradeable or useful as a PC, if you don't want to play the games on it.

    Okay, I got that out of my system...

    AS
    AS
  • Who cares about upgrading it?
    It's like arguing one shouldn't buy toasters if there are ovens because there is so much less functionality for a toaster than an oven, or that TVs are pointless, just buy a PC with a 21" monitor and TV tuner, since the PC is so much more useful and upgradeable than the TV!

    For whatever reason, the PSX2 is supposed to be more powerful than a comparably priced PC. You would need a Dec Alpha and a couple V3s SLIed together and a DVD decoder board to approach the same level of performance, and don't tell me you can get that for 400$, which is near the top of the price range I've heard quoted for this system.

    If you want your puter to run Linux, does it occur to you that there aren't as many games as there exists for the PSX/PSX2? Because if your preference is due to lack of interest in PSX/PSX2 games, then it really doesn't matter what the specs of the PSX2 is, or the upgradeability of the PC has, because you just don't want to play anything for the PSX2.

    Sigh. Rant off.

    AS
    AS
  • You already can.

    Go and grab one of those high end Quantum Obsidian Voodoo2 boards; four VooDoo2s on one board, or something like that.

    The big deal would be that the console is still much cheaper than buying a PC with comparable floating point, DVD decoding, kick-ass graphics subsystem, and 21" monitor.

    AS
    AS
  • TV rez is closer to 512x480, and the PSX2 is rumored to support VESA and HDTV resolutions, which is 1024x768.

    Would you really compare the price of a top of the line comparable PC to a PSX2?

    Admittedly it is all speculation, but something even close to top of the line would need a P3 with is SSE or a Dec Alpha with its powerful FPU, and a couple of TNTs or V3s SLIed together, with a DVD drive and decoder board, and 3d sound card.
    400$ vs something close to 1600$

    AS
    AS
  • Yeah, but will the consumer level graphics card be able to play my library of PSX games?

    This might be possible if Connectix releases the VGS for the PC, but then the price of keeping competative with the PSX2 is sorta prohibative unless you already own said kick-butt system, 600MHz P3 with 133MHz bus and SLIed TNT2s with a DVD decoder and drive. I really doubt the price/performance points will be even close, with the console having a much better one, even if it can't do as many things as a PC.

    AS
    AS
  • I'm curious why you would need to believe these performance numbers to be interested in the system?

    If it is even twice as powerful as the original PSX, or 2/3 as powerful as the current DreamCast, the PSX2 is going to be damn fine as a console system. Even if it doesn't get bragging rights for performance, it can rely on its bevy of wonderful games and talented designers to more than make up for any lack in horsepower. The PSX right now does fine despite being behind the N64 and DreamCast in performance. The PSX2 just denies the DreamCast the ability to dominate based on sheer computational ability.

    Me, I'll be looking forward to whatever machine/console Square plans to support in the future, as well as Namco for their gun games, Capcom for their MegaMan games, etc. It is after all the point of a console, games, right?

    AS
    AS
  • I really doubt that.
    I was mentioning parts that won't be out till later this year too, so in the interests of profit, will still be expensive.
    P3 with SSE at 600MHz on a 133MHz bus won't be out till Q3, right before the PSX2 comes out in Japan. Don't be surprised if Intel sells the CPUs for a good premium, like 500$. And the comparable V4 or TNT3 will still be a good 200$, alongside the cost of the rest of the PC.

    AS
    AS
  • I'm glad that your dis-interest in the PSX2 is due to lack of games you prefer, flight sims and fps...

    However, with USB and Firewire, I don't doubt they will have keyboard, mouse, and at least modem options available to them. With PCMCIA they can even have ethernet, whatever use that will be I cannot predict.

    I really doubt a Celeron with a Matrox G200 can come close, but since this is still all speculation I'll let that be a doubt on my part. I'll be looking forward to my 3d console RPGs, racing games, shooters, and such on the PSX2 myself, since I'm no good at flight sims and fps are sorta boring to me...

    AS
    AS
  • At least until you hook it up to a VESA compatible display or a HDTV display =)
    At least these have been mentioned. As with all things forthcoming, plans may change.

    AS
    AS
  • I'll concede that Doom, Quake, Tomb Raider, Unreal, etc came out on PCs before consoles. Flight sims and RTS games are also PC exclusive, but I doubt it really has to do with technology curves...

    One could argue where all the MegaMan X's, Castlevania's, and Final Fantasy's for PC are. Would the argument then be that the 'fun quotient' on a console is higher than on a PC, so it takes a while to port over? I would more likely believe the two be more related to interface issues, like the presence of mouse and keyboard and good joysticks facilitate RTS, FPS, and flight sims for PC, where good game pads and established and consistent libraries(Which don't care about cutting edge) allow for many more games and more established series of games on consoles over PCs.

    I don't even know why it would be easier; cheaper, yes, to develop on a PC than a console, but then you have to worry about API support, compatibility across varied hardware, and across varied CPUs that does not exist in a console system. It's no different whether the API is open or closed, except you need to pay for a closed one.

    AS
    AS
  • And what's with this TV output thing? They should drop it, considering how old and outdated it is. Since the PSX2 won't be out till next year anyhow, just add support for the new flat panel displays that have been popping up everywhere, and maybe even use HDTV as the default display! Sure there aren't very many HDTVs out yet, and LCD is still expensive, but the release of the PSX2 with HDTV and LCD support will force the consumer market to upgrade to one or the other.

    On the other hand, 1394 seems a perfectly good thing. Much cheaper than SCSI, which if you recall Apple also had a hand in inventing/unleashing upon the world. Apple does some good stuff sometimes.

    Sorry for the mix'n match sarcasm. Couldn't help myself, was too much fun.

    AS
    AS
  • It's not relevant now either; PSX vs a PII...

    Who wins?
    There are over 50 million PSXs sold, and likewise a very large library of games right now. Same thing will hold for the PIII and the PSX2; different markets, different capabilities, different strategies.

    We go crazy over the PSX2 because the PSX is literally hitting a wall sometime in the future, which should be nicely alleviated by the PSX2. Who cares what Intel does? I doubt they will enter competatively against the PSX2, unless they suddenly decide the gaming market means something to them.

    Intel sells CPUs and computers, not games, so they only make profits if games can sell computers.

    In the console market games do sell consoles, so Sony makes a profit regardless of whether its by the sale of a console or the sale of a game.

    AS
    AS
  • Highly dependent upon the game, I suspect.

    I enjoy the Id GL Quake type games under WinNT.
    I also enjoy the host of LucasArts 2d action/adventure games, as well as my Civ2 and SMAC games...

    If I wanted racing, flight sim, or others I would have to resort to a Win9x machine, I guess.

    AS
    AS
  • You're absolutely correct...

    But the PSX1 is a better gaming platform for me than the PC is; the games I want to play, for the most part, exist on the Playstation.

    So even if I don't believe all the hype, the PSX2 is something to look forward to if you are already a fan of the PSX1.

    AS
    AS
  • Good for you.
    A real issue that Sony addresses is the fact that they will penetrate more households than PCs.

    At least they do right now.

    Statistics aside, for pure entertainment, it is undeniable that a decent PC will cost more than a decent console; take today, a PSX1, still a very viable device, is only 100$. What comparable PC exists that can give as much satisfaction?

    Assuming the market doesn't change radically and unpredictable, something similar will hold true late next year. You can get a decent PC with kick-ass performance for 1000$(I just made that up. Who can tell what makes a kick-ass PC? Or how much it will cost? I'm assuming though that Intel will charge a price/performance premium on their CPUs and that the equivalent VooDoos of 2k will still be 200$) or a decent console for 400$, max, along with DVD, 3d sound, CD play, game play capability, and enough minor computing ability to function as a web browser, email terminal, and word processor.

    The PSX2 will no more be a novelty than the PSX1 today, unless you count playing games a novelty, or watching movies a novelty. Entertainment is its own industry, in its own right, and is very much a part of our life and culture...

    I believe you are right when you mention the PSX2 won't be a PC killer, but it will displace some people who don't need the full functionality of a PC when their PSX2 is enough. PCs can be replaced by PSX2 for playing games, watching movies, and browsing the web; but PSX2 cannot be replaced by PCs for the sheer price/performance ration of the above options, unless your utility demands more, like programming, ftp, video compositing, photoshop, multiplayer games, etc..

    AS
    AS
  • I never said it was hard or impossible to emulate; I even explicitly mention the VGS, but I also point out for comparable performance you need to spend much more.

    How much more than 100$ can you spend on a PC to get a PlayStation?

    I would do it because I want a kick butt PC anyways, but for the millions(50 million or so) who think that is pointless, the console is cheaper and higher quality.

    Your VooDoo2 costs about 100 dollars by itself right now. If you got it when the Playstation was first released, for about 250$, the video card of choice would be a VooDoo1 for 240$, and a Pentium 166 for 500$....

    Don't tell me that said PC stacks up the the Playstation if gaming is the only utility function we analyze!

    AS
    AS
  • Hee hee... I just sent you back an email =)

    Good for you. I happen to have FFVII for the console, and have played it once through, and never found the time to do it again.

    But, like a good book, I can probably play through it at least twice more.

    I also own Square's newest RPG, Xenogears, and have played it once through at 86 hours. I will play it at least once more, for probably a good 100 hours in order to see and hear and get everything. I don't play games everyday; it's not my style. But when I do play, I play for hours.

    My PPro200 is feeling old and outdated, and needs to be upgraded to play the current batch of FPS like Quake3:Arena. The nice thing about consoles is never the lack of power; games that run on it are more or less designed with that limitation/ability in mind. I'm looking forward to playing FFVIII on the PSX1, and maybe FFVIII in real time on the PSX2(no more prerendered backgrounds and FMV! Well, maybe.)

    I acknowledge your preference and choice. I'm just pissed at people who assume I want to play the same games they do and then blatently tell me my decision to get and support consoles is stupid because it doesn't do as much. I don't care that it doesn't do as much; do you begrudge me my toaster because it doesn't do cappacino? I just want my toast dammit! And I want my FFVIII, as well.

    AS
    AS
  • Besides, with Intel/Microsoft supporting USB 2, it's clearly the way of the future. That's right, I forgot how if MS supports it, that means it's bound to succeed. After all, let's not forget Bob! (P.S. Apple was supposedly going out of business last year, and every year before that back till about 1984. Your FUD, eet does not work here.)
  • The great advantage of consoles is that they get to start with a clean sheet design, with every new generation.

    Your PC hardware has a lot of 1970's tech imbedded into its design.

    Using the old Playstation cpu as an I/O processor and for compatibility was a nice touch!


    (I guess the Amiga 68k/PowerUp! situation was similar)


    Regards,

    Richard





  • I've read about an adapter that would let the SNES play old NES games by emulating it in hardware...
  • Why would they include such a dead-end, niche technology like IEEE 1394 when they can adopt the unknown/unproven but clearly superior USB 2? When you consider the Playstation units won't move until next year anyway, they should go ahead and include USB 2 support, which can do everything that 1394 can do cheaper, and do away with that Apple-developed proprietary bus. Besides, with Intel/Microsoft supporting USB 2, it's clearly the way of the future. And Apple will be out of business soon so there won't be anybody advocating 1394.
  • A little too obvious, huh? You're quite right - my skills must be lacking; need more subtlety. I'll keep working on it. I'm heartened by the fact that at least a couple of people thought I was serious. ;^)
  • Werent they going to use a special "Media Processor", instead of the traditional CPU-design? But they might have changed their minds..
  • Hmmmm, I think you would need something more than that kind of graphics-power....It requires a maxed-out Onyx2 Reality Monster to achieve 80MPolys/s...The Voodoo2-boards lose some performance while running SLI. BTW, we are talking at least 32-bit colour depth and at least 1024*768 when it comes to realism, right?
  • All this sounds great at first but it's not as cool as it sounds. First remember this: all companies LOVE to hype their hardware, but it rarely meets up to what they say it can do (remember when nVidia had to recall their benchmarks saying their cards outpreformed 3dfx?) They say 20 million polygons per second I say I'll believe it when I see it myself. Also remember this, PSX2 is still running (for most users at least) on NTSC. Now let's face it, NTSC sucks. It's max res is something like 720x480 (I don't really know), it's fuzzy as hell and it's colours suck. What good does a 2.4billion pixel fill rate do them? Let's say that NTSC could do 800x600 (which it can't but we'll say so for our purposes). Now NTSC's refresh rate is 60Hz (interlaced) so say we have the PSX2 doing 800x600x60 that's only 28.8million pixels per second. What good is the rest of that fill rate doing? Remember, HDTV isn't likely to hit the mainstream anytime soon and when it does it's still going to cost a bundle. It sounds to me like Sony has gone and fixed a bunch of problems that people don't have. Like the PSX2 ram. I think I saw it quoted as having 800mhz of bandwidth? Why? Latency is what makes ram fast, not bandwidth. Even the most intense 3d apps these days rarely use more than areound 100mhz of ram bandwidth.
    I, for one, am going to stick with my PC and probably just put a Voodoo3 in it (or mabey a different accelerator). All the other facts aside the PC has one HUGE advantage (in my eyes) that the PSX2 will probably not have. Multi-player games. On a regular basis I get together with a bunch of people and we go and frag each other in Quake 2. This is great fun since you are actually fighting against humans for once. I doubt that the PSX2 will offer the kind of networking availabe on the PC. Sure, there may be a modem and MABEY even a fast network card, but I doubt there will be anything as cool as the giant computer LANs.
    Last thing: The PSX2 release date (according to NextGen) is going to be March of 2000. If you think that the Pc industry will just sit on it's ass from now until then you are fooling yourself. There is certian to be an accelerator much better than a Voodoo3 by then and Intel should have their 64-bit chip out by that time. I'm not saying that the PSX2 won't be cool, I certianly think the PSX was, but everyone just needs to realise that it is not going to be the huge PC killer that Sony would like you to think it will be. It is also going to have to fight the increased number of PCs that people own.
    PCs used to be somewhat of a rarity in the home. Far more people owned a nintendo or some such thing than a PC (I know I did). This has taken a huge turn around. Lately it has become almost necessary to own a PC. Now these people have already invested between $800 and $3000 in a sweet peice of PC hardware that can play games (and lots of them) perfectly well they are going to be a bit reluctant to spend $200-$400 more for another game system. That is the true beuaty of PCs is their ability to do near anything. If I desired I could replace my PC with a bunch of different peices of dedicated hardware, but I like it better this way. I type my papers, record music, play games, program, surf the net, do graphics and much more all on my PC. If I got a PSX2 It would do one thing: play games. Face it, even if they ported linux for it 16-32mb of ram and no hard disk would be just too limiting to make it truly useful for anything but a novelty.
  • Well, see, there ain't no such thing as a 50million poly/sec chip today. To get that kind of performance you'd need to have something like 4 or 5 of Silicon Graphics' best systems chained together. Basically Sony is doing what big tech corprations do so well: lying. Face it, it's damn unlikely that Sony can make the quantum leap to have a 20m/sec polygon chip.
  • Not entierly true, it's got a MIPS chip and those are quite old.
  • Using PSEmu Pro (yes, a working emu for the PC) I get better than real Playstation performance on my 400 with a Voodoo2. The PSX isn't that hard to emulate.
  • Until a console can let me and 31 of my friends play Quake/quake 2/Tribes on a LAN, they are always inferior in my mind. Thoses games have more "fun quotient" than most any others. MY average intrest for a console game (FF excluded) is around a week or 2. I've had Quake for around a year and play it nearly daily. I'd say it wins.
  • Well that is NOT the only reason I own a PC, but I figure if I own one I might as well use it for that too since it does damn near everything else. And in my mind, it is superior. Why? Well the longest I've ever been interested in a PSX game (FF7, which I can and have got for my PC) was around 4 weeks. Most were 1 or 2. Now it seems silly to me to buy a new game that often. Quake (running the TeamFortress mod, on the other hand I've had for around a year now and STILL I play it almost every day. That's way more value for my money. Also, I feel the cost of the PC is well justified since I use it for writing papers, programming, audio recording/production, browsing the internet, HTML design, graphics design, and more IN ADDITION to playing games on. I can't justify to myslef the additional money spent ona console since my PC already does what it would do for me.
  • CRAPPY LOW END? Do you have any idea of what you speak? The Onyx 2 that gets 13.1m polys/sec is the best graphics station in the world. I believe it costs in excess of $1million. This is what they used to make a Bugs Life with. Don't knock it. Have a look [sgi.com]
  • when the ps2 is claiming 2.4 Billion pixels fill rate and the SGI visual workstation peaks at 176 Million. There is no way a $400 gaming platform will out preform a SGI workstation, especially not by a factor of 13.
  • Yes, I mentioned the VW, which is the fastest 3d graphics PC available. Since the discussion seemed to be Wintel PC vs. Playstation2 I thought I would name the fastest intel based graphics workstation.
  • There's an intresting article about getting "Slashdotted" on packet storm today. Hehehe.
  • You are missing the point of console systems. Consoles are made specifically to play games, not to do finances and spreadsheets as well. Because they are built to do one thing, they can do that one thing better and more cheaply than a computer could ever hope to.
  • -folks listen up, obviousluy you haven't had your head into your hardare these days.
    Matter of fact is that almost all the technology inside your brand new fast spec'ed pc is rather old news.
    This is mostly due to hardware manufacturers trying to make the biggest profit possible instead of enhancing their products.
    For every fanatic engineer there's a dozen marketing guys talking of economy and why there's no capital for investing in new production methods.
    More likely nobody (of them marketing guys) wants to try and make a new standard cuz' thats 1. expensive 2.it might not work 3.the rest of the market will raise hell about it.
    Now what I'd like was a company with some people who would like to make a difference.
    Read the story about Amiga and why a 13Mhz (-I think) could perform better than a 90Mhz Pentium.
    Frankly I don't like my machine I don't think I'd like any machine built on currrent tech.
    Hopefully what Sony can, I'm not saying they will, provide from their console-niche is a way to change the way pc's are...
    Btw. the lot of you seem so awfully hooked up on the benefits of sw, why not do it hw-vise?

    my 2cents -probably very annoying to read.
  • There was an article in Scientific American a few years ago that came to the conclusion that for full photo-realism, you would need around 300MP/s and a resolution approching 3Kx2K pixels (I think it was in 1994). I read through the 3dfx faq and the only thing I can say is \/\/hatever.

    Also note, the latest and greatest specs from SGI on their infinite reality monster systems is 210MP/s at 1920x1024

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