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DF - Doom Eternal Switch Tech Review: The Most Ambitious Port Yet... But Is It The Best?

nkarafo

Member
What's interesting is that the Geometry detail seems intact. That means number of polygons isn't an issue anymore for, basically, any device. Which is probably why nobody ever mentions how many millions of polygons/sec their device can handle anymore. I remember this being a cool metric of defining how powerful a console is in the late 90's. But it seems that's not a thing anymore.
 
What's interesting is that the Geometry detail seems intact. That means number of polygons isn't an issue anymore for, basically, any device. Which is probably why nobody ever mentions how many millions of polygons/sec their device can handle anymore. I remember this being a cool metric of defining how powerful a console is in the late 90's. But it seems that's not a thing anymore.
Look at demons souls ps5 and then back at doom, that's a massive difference. Plenty of edges in doom look like they were pulled from metroid prime ; no disrespect to prime of course!
 

Stuart360

Member
What's interesting is that the Geometry detail seems intact. That means number of polygons isn't an issue anymore for, basically, any device. Which is probably why nobody ever mentions how many millions of polygons/sec their device can handle anymore. I remember this being a cool metric of defining how powerful a console is in the late 90's. But it seems that's not a thing anymore.
Polygon pushing still matters, hense why the Switch version is 30fps and much lower resolution than the other consoles. Plus it has worse pop up.
You're right though to an extent. High end gpu's can push tens of millions of polygons a second these days, i'm prtty sure i remember reading somewhere that the 2080ti could push over 100mil poly's a second at 60fps, something like that.
 

nkarafo

Member
i'm prtty sure i remember reading somewhere that the 2080ti could push over 100mil poly's a second at 60fps, something like that.
Yeah that's one issue with polygon counts. You are never sure what they mean. Even something something ancient like the PS2 is said that it can handle "66 million polygons/sec". So that 100 mil on the 2080ti doesn't sound that impressive, it can't even handle twice as many as the PS2? I would expect billions of polys nowadays, not millions. Then again, it's never defined if they mean raw polys, textured polys, with effects on/off, etc.
 

Stuart360

Member
Yeah that's one issue with polygon counts. You are never sure what they mean. Even something something ancient like the PS2 is said that it can handle "66 million polygons/sec". So that 100 mil on the 2080ti doesn't sound that impressive, it can't even handle twice as many as the PS2? I would expect billions of polys nowadays, not millions. Then again, it's never defined if they mean raw polys, textured polys, with effects on/off, etc.
Well i could be wrong with the 100mil, maybe at was 100mil at 4k, which wouldnt surprise me i know it was a lot anyway. As for the PS2 lol, its just Sony with the bullshit. Sega's Model 3 arcade board pushed 1mil poly's a sec, and PS2 would of struggled to do an arcade perfect port of a Model 3 game. Dreamcast also couldnt do it. (Sega Rally 2 port was bad, Virtua Fighter 3 port was close but had lower resolution textures, worse backgrounds, and slightly lower poly counts on the characters).
 
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Kataploom

Gold Member
This bullshit has to end some day, Nintendo keeps choosing to make underpowered shit at nearly the same price as its competitors. It always gets this bullshit apologist bullshit.

Fuck Nintendo this is 2020 this thing looks like shit PERIOD.

Judge these ports at LEAST against LAST GEN(PS4/Xbox One BASE units).

They‘re still asking FULL RETAIL price for this game it needs to be at parity, stop looking dumb and bending over backwards because Nintendo CHOSE weak trash hardware for their gimmick.

This has been going on since god damn Gamecube.

Stop with the “good for Nintendo“ modifier shit.
Find a more powerful haldheld SoC by the time Nintendo could have chosen de Switch architecture (2015-2016)... Even when it released it would have been hard, so Switch was bleading edge tech by the time it released.

You mention last gen, but last gen was so outdated at release that many people rocked their 760ti and old intel CPUs for years all good.

Switch was good for what it was, if it's not today, it's because tech keeps evolving. Also, most people don't give a shit about Switch specs, see how many even keep Wii to these days (Just Dance still sells there).
 
Yeah that's one issue with polygon counts. You are never sure what they mean. Even something something ancient like the PS2 is said that it can handle "66 million polygons/sec". So that 100 mil on the 2080ti doesn't sound that impressive, it can't even handle twice as many as the PS2? I would expect billions of polys nowadays, not millions. Then again, it's never defined if they mean raw polys, textured polys, with effects on/off, etc.
The Ps2 figure is correct - as a theoretical peak - but it's only true because for each texture layer the ps2 has to render polygons again. As a gross simplification a model may appear to use 4000 triangles, but it has 4 layers so effectively the ps2 is rendering 16000. Visually speaking it looks like 4000 due to the multiple passes. Ps2 was a unique beast.

Where its architecture shined was particles, because it only had to render 1 pass and devs could go nuts.
 

Spukc

always chasing the next thrill
You didn’t read my comment correctly... DUMBASS. It needs parity with at LEAST last gen.
Nintendo made a bed it needs to sleep in it but it’s fans are the absolute WORST apologists.

Nintendo chose the shitty specs they have. Stop doing logic loops pretending it’s ok.
go play on your gaming laptop that last about 40 min until it's dead and won't even run at 60% of it's capacity because it's unplugged.
nintendo switch is the most impressive gaming device right now.

and i returned my "gaming laptop" got an apple m1 and use the switch to game on
I'm getting so tired of the constant 'what an amazing achievement' with these Switch ports, DF do it themselves too. Yeah its a nice achievement getting these games working on Switch, but they are still shit versions, much worse versions than elsewhere, and versions most of these 'fantastic achievement' people wouldnt even play over other versions.
or wait for a big fat sale like me..
Eternal is on gamepass.
Went on sale for a tenner near xmas for every damn console.
Is getting a free next gen upgrade.

and costs 60 euro’s on switch atm.
With no physical version.

i would def get the game. But no more then 15 🤣👋🤣
 

Enzo88

Member
No Nintendo keeps choosing to do this, knowingly, apologizing for this shit.

Find a more powerful haldheld SoC by the time Nintendo could have chosen de Switch architecture (2015-2016)... Even when it released it would have been hard, so Switch was bleading edge tech by the time it released.

You mention last gen, but last gen was so outdated at release that many people rocked their 760ti and old intel CPUs for years all good.

Switch was good for what it was, if it's not today, it's because tech keeps evolving. Also, most people don't give a shit about Switch specs, see how many even keep Wii to these days (Just Dance still sells there).
The guy thinks he is an hardware engineer/ product and marketing manager, while he doesn't even understand why the switch is still priced like that. He thinks It's because nintendo is bad, they should take less money and price cut it (btw the specs/pricing were pretty good at launch for a console that can be played portably) even if sales keep going up. Not sure what type of discussion do you expect here.
 
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Kataploom

Gold Member
Well i could be wrong with the 100mil, maybe at was 100mil at 4k, which wouldnt surprise me i know it was a lot anyway. As for the PS2 lol, its just Sony with the bullshit. Sega's Model 3 arcade board pushed 1mil poly's a sec, and PS2 would of struggled to do an arcade perfect port of a Model 3 game. Dreamcast also couldnt do it. (Sega Rally 2 port was bad, Virtua Fighter 3 port was close but had lower resolution textures, worse backgrounds, and slightly lower poly counts on the characters).
Let alone the number not counting anything else but polygons on screen, afaik that's how those numbers were always shown... At lease Epic with its UE5 demo said the scene had those polygons (which had lighting, textures, etc.)
 

UnNamed

Banned
Crysis was done by Saber Interactive, not Panic Button. Who also made the port for The Witcher 3 and Alien Isolation.

Panic Button always do a decent-good job, but they port 60 fps games, usually.
Warframe, Doom 2016, Wolfenstein, all at 60 fps. It facilitates the port job.

Saber Interactive ported The Witcher 3 and Crysis, ffs. Two games that were resource hogs during their prime, and runsa t 30 fps even on current gen.
Same with Alien Isolation, offering a better AA solution than the original game, making IQ even better than current gen versions.

So yeah, tho Panic Button is ok at doing ports, Saber is the real deal imo.
Yep.
I'm currently playing The Witcher 3, it's really unbelievable, maybe better than Doom Eternal.
 

nkarafo

Member
I'm getting so tired of the constant 'what an amazing achievement' with these Switch ports, DF do it themselves too. Yeah its a nice achievement getting these games working on Switch, but they are still shit versions, much worse versions than elsewhere, and versions most of these 'fantastic achievement' people wouldnt even play over other versions.

I kinda agree with this. All these "impossible ports" are great for messing around a bit to see how they look/run and maybe for research. But play them? No thanks, i rather play a better version. Even if i have no other choice, i still wouldn't want to play the worst version of a game. I rather wait until i can play a decent version. Not necessarily the best but a decent one nonetheless. My standards are reasonable.

This is a very similar situation like the DOOM port on the SNES. It's an amazing achievement, sure. The fact that it runs the actual DOOM engine and not some shitty wolf3D one with DOOM sprites is a miracle. But it's still the worst version by far (along with the 3DO one). Why would anyone want to play the worst version of DOOM, other than curiosity or laugh at how bad it is? I get that you might not have a better alternative now but isn't it better to wait until you have? Isn't it a waste of time to struggle through something like this? Is it ever fun?

These things are more interesting as tech demos than actual games.

Edit: I actually did play DOOM on the SNES back in the day. I didn't buy it because i would never want to buy the worst version but i wanted to see it (plus, any other option was going to be very expensive). So i rented it. At first i was like "wow, this isn't going to work". But in the end i struggled through. It helped that i already played the game on a friend's PC and was familiar with it so i was mostly curious about how every map looks/compares. So this goes along with my research argument.
 
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Razvedka

Banned
As much as I disagree with the tone, I kinda agree with his point.

This "hardware limitations" is just a very poor excuse to throw anything you can, not matter the cost. Because at the end of the day, any game ported to Switch will be a "achievement", no matter how it looks or runs. Thats the reason why things like ARK exists. And we ain't talking about fun aspects, otherwise whatever the player feels like its fun its "a good port"(not the point of comparisons video I believe).
And its not like there are relativelly impressive ports on Switch. DQ11 still amazes me.



I totally agree. I'm not sure what went wrong, if this stupid thing of connecting to Bethesda didn't help. But I felt like it was more of praising than a comparison video.
Concur. I own and like my Switch, but even with this device Nintendo went cheap and has continued to make baffling decisions.

I think the Switch was a great idea, solid execution and a good partnership with Nvidia. I just wish they'd gone the extra mile to really refine it. Better screen, beefier specs, more attention to joycon QC, and more software features.
 

Azurro

Banned
go play on your gaming laptop that last about 40 min until it's dead and won't even run at 60% of it's capacity because it's unplugged.
nintendo switch is the most impressive gaming device right now.

Wait, what? A Tegra X1 from 2015 is the most impressive gaming device right now? The switch is cool due to its library, but the hardware is incredibly underwhelming.

That extends to the low quality screen, cheap plastic stand, low quality default controllers. This is why I've always wanted Nintendo to go third party, their games are incredible, while their hw is just the worst. Of course, with all that Switch money that will never happen, so, no need to @ me with that response. :)
 
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Spukc

always chasing the next thrill
Wait, what? A Tegra X1 from 2015 is the most impressive gaming device right now? The switch is cool due to its library, but the hardware is incredibly underwhelming.

That extends to the low quality screen, cheap plastic stand, low quality default controllers. This is why I've always wanted Nintendo to go third party, their games are incredible, while their hw is just the worst. Of course, with all that Switch money that will never happen, so, no need to @ me with that response. :)
you miss the point.. battery life is king for handhelds.
More power = worse battery life
Besides the absolute stellar library of games.
what other handheld console can even compete
an 800 dollar ipad pro? :pie_roffles:
that shitty GPD win?

all toucharcade (ios gaming website) is complain how lacking gaming is on IOS. and how switch is getting all the good games.
so they just gave up and started to review switch games.
 
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Azurro

Banned
you miss the point.. battery life is king for handhelds.
More power = worse battery life
Besides the absolute stellar library of games.
what other handheld console can even compete

This isn't the 90s, as long as a handheld reaches the end of the day to be plugged in, no one cares about battery life all that much. The cellphone market demonstrates this. There is nothing remarkable about the Switch hardware, its serviceable at best, an underwhelming and underperforming mobile SoC that show its age at worst, it's all about the library of games.

In my ideal world, Nintendo would have stepped out of the console hw space and make games for other platforms because their games are excellent, but their hw is weird, underperforming and a ripoff for consumers. But, like I said before, my complaint means nothing since they are swimming in cash.
 

drotahorror

Member
The bummer with handheld is playing with the Joy-Cons which would be my least favorite controller option.

Use this - https://www.amazon.com/dp/B08FJ7XY3B/?tag=neogaf0e-20

They even have tons of colors now, they only had the Daemon X Machina edition when I bought it and it was $50. On sale for $40 now (translucent Black) . It's a great controller and feels so much better than the Joycons.
You will have to get a case for it though if you want to travel with it. https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B0899NBQVV/?tag=neogaf0e-20

XORA9ik.jpeg
 
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Corgi1985

Banned
Yes a system will the most expensive and worst performing versions of 3rd party games and endless wiiu ports is the most impressive gaming device right now. I love playing $60 games in 360p.

The 3ds is the better system and it's dead.

Nearly forgot to mention that the shitcons are some of the worst controllers ever made and an absolute ripoff for what they cost.
 
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Romulus

Member
I kinda agree with this. All these "impossible ports" are great for messing around a bit to see how they look/run and maybe for research. But play them? No thanks, i rather play a better version. Even if i have no other choice, i still wouldn't want to play the worst version of a game. I rather wait until i can play a decent version. Not necessarily the best but a decent one nonetheless. My standards are reasonable.

This is a very similar situation like the DOOM port on the SNES. It's an amazing achievement, sure. The fact that it runs the actual DOOM engine and not some shitty wolf3D one with DOOM sprites is a miracle. But it's still the worst version by far (along with the 3DO one). Why would anyone want to play the worst version of DOOM, other than curiosity or laugh at how bad it is? I get that you might not have a better alternative now but isn't it better to wait until you have? Isn't it a waste of time to struggle through something like this? Is it ever fun?

These things are more interesting as tech demos than actual games.

Edit: I actually did play DOOM on the SNES back in the day. I didn't buy it because i would never want to buy the worst version but i wanted to see it (plus, any other option was going to be very expensive). So i rented it. At first i was like "wow, this isn't going to work". But in the end i struggled through. It helped that i already played the game on a friend's PC and was familiar with it so i was mostly curious about how every map looks/compares. So this goes along with my research argument.

I think the biggest difference is how much faster paced Doom is now. Back in the day, 20-30fps was pretty acceptable, and the fact that Doom was much slower paced. It's not like that anymore and you got people out here defending sub 30fps at 360p lol
 

Redneckerz

Those long posts don't cover that red neck boy
Its a bummer the post processing was cut out - It really helped a lot of Panic Button's previous work.

That said, its a stunning achievement given the hardware. It looks like Doom Eternal which is far better than a lot of downscaled PS4/XBO ports to PS360 were (Black Ops 3, for instance). The fact it runs a lot more stable is impressive too.

The only thing that geniunely sucks is the digital only availability. Come on now.

Now where is the Serious Sam Collection for Switch reviewed by John? :p
This bullshit has to end some day, Nintendo keeps choosing to make underpowered shit at nearly the same price as its competitors. It always gets this bullshit apologist bullshit.
Underpowered shit that sells 60 million and gets developer support unlike the Wii U. The reason? marketing + its technical feature set is the same as PS4/XBO (So DX11 equivalents and in terms of graphical feature sets).
The hardware is still shit, especially when you can get a ps4 for damn near the same price (a system that also has the benefit of controllers that aren't dogshit). The switch is a terrible value in 2021.
Its 2015 mobile hardware put together in a handheld form with low level console optimization. If the hardware is still shit, then what were you expecting at launch in 2017? There was not much better in the mobile headspace.
It's even worthy to release third party games on Swtich?
Clearly it is given the fact this is released. More so a lot of indie devs find a good home at Switch (Hypercharge: Unboxed) and a lot of other devs treat it as a portable X360/PS3 with more modern feature set (Bioshock Remastered/Serious Sam Collection).

And i can see the appeal there. If you can play those hits but portable without having to pay the bank for a handheld in the same format, then that's enticing.
Wait, what? A Tegra X1 from 2015 is the most impressive gaming device right now? The switch is cool due to its library, but the hardware is incredibly underwhelming.

That extends to the low quality screen, cheap plastic stand, low quality default controllers. This is why I've always wanted Nintendo to go third party, their games are incredible, while their hw is just the worst. Of course, with all that Switch money that will never happen, so, no need to @ me with that response. :)
This reeks more of being aversed against Nintendo in general more than anything else.

I agree. Buying 3rd party on switch is basically choosing the resident evil port on the tiger game.com
There's hyperbole and then there's this. Did your Switch broke down over the weekend to be so venomous?
 

Corgi1985

Banned
Its a bummer the post processing was cut out - It really helped a lot of Panic Button's previous work.

That said, its a stunning achievement given the hardware. It looks like Doom Eternal which is far better than a lot of downscaled PS4/XBO ports to PS360 were (Black Ops 3, for instance). The fact it runs a lot more stable is impressive too.

The only thing that geniunely sucks is the digital only availability. Come on now.

Now where is the Serious Sam Collection for Switch reviewed by John? :p

Underpowered shit that sells 60 million and gets developer support unlike the Wii U. The reason? marketing + its technical feature set is the same as PS4/XBO (So DX11 equivalents and in terms of graphical feature sets).

Its 2015 mobile hardware put together in a handheld form with low level console optimization. If the hardware is still shit, then what were you expecting at launch in 2017? There was not much better in the mobile headspace.

Clearly it is given the fact this is released. More so a lot of indie devs find a good home at Switch (Hypercharge: Unboxed) and a lot of other devs treat it as a portable X360/PS3 with more modern feature set (Bioshock Remastered/Serious Sam Collection).

And i can see the appeal there. If you can play those hits but portable without having to pay the bank for a handheld in the same format, then that's enticing.

This reeks more of being aversed against Nintendo in general more than anything else.


There's hyperbole and then there's this. Did your Switch broke down over the weekend to be so venomous?
I think the billion dollar company will be fine
 

CamHostage

Member
This isn't the 90s, as long as a handheld reaches the end of the day to be plugged in, no one cares about battery life all that much.

I believe you can also plug in a cellphone battery brick into your Switch and keep going. Those things are so prevalent and cheap, they give them away at ballgames. A handheld game system should still have a liveable battery life, but it's not the catastrophe that things used to be if the high-end games burn through the battery in 3-4 hours.

The Ps2 figure is correct - as a theoretical peak - but it's only true because for each texture layer the ps2 has to render polygons again... Where its architecture shined was particles, because it only had to render 1 pass and devs could go nuts.

Particles, I dig. I wish there were some more PS2 tech demos (and especially homebrew demos) to check out, I'd be very curious to see somebody run that system with the governor broke off, just for fun. Jon Burton showed some of the Traveler's Tales PS2 particle system technology in a GameHut video, but I think in real games, the PS2 particle processes gets shown best in ZOE2 or the ridiculous Demon Chaos.

Volume-of-stuff-happening always amazes me in a game. I mentioned elsewhere, it's why I'm looking forward to what Saber Interactive (the other impossible Switch port studio,) is doing with the Switch version of their game World War Z.

World-War-Z-PS4-beta-sign-up.gif


(How are they going to pull this off on Switch?)
 
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Panajev2001a

GAF's Pleasant Genius
The Ps2 figure is correct - as a theoretical peak - but it's only true because for each texture layer the ps2 has to render polygons again. As a gross simplification a model may appear to use 4000 triangles, but it has 4 layers so effectively the ps2 is rendering 16000. Visually speaking it looks like 4000 due to the multiple passes. Ps2 was a unique beast.

Where its architecture shined was particles, because it only had to render 1 pass and devs could go nuts.
What I liked most was how it would allow you to compose super long triangle strips and hide
triangles connecting separate strips together kill bit on the W coord) or how render state changes would not make it even sweat: flushing buffers and changing textures or primitive type many times per frame, the GS would take it and ask for more :). VU’s were also quite far ahead of their time IMHO.

For the time screen wide post processing blending later upon later was also quite cheap and devs abused it quite a bit.
 
What I liked most was how it would allow you to compose super long triangle strips and hide
triangles connecting separate strips together kill bit on the W coord) or how render state changes would not make it even sweat: flushing buffers and changing textures or primitive type many times per frame, the GS would take it and ask for more :). VU’s were also quite far ahead of their time IMHO.

For the time screen wide post processing blending later upon later was also quite cheap and devs abused it quite a bit.
I would have liked to see that generation last a bit longer as I feel all consoles were not quite tapped yet. Ps2 being the hardest to get its fullest potential. With crts, we really didn't need a new generation yet imo.

While unpractical I also wonder what would an evolution of ps2 would look like for the ps3 instead of cell+rsx but developers would have gotten even more pissed than they were at ps3 lol.
 

Panajev2001a

GAF's Pleasant Genius
I would have liked to see that generation last a bit longer as I feel all consoles were not quite tapped yet. Ps2 being the hardest to get its fullest potential. With crts, we really didn't need a new generation yet imo.

While unpractical I also wonder what would an evolution of ps2 would look like for the ps3 instead of cell+rsx but developers would have gotten even more pissed than they were at ps3 lol.

Despite PPE having some gotchas the Emotion Engine MIPS core did not have, the FlexIO bus having a bit higher bandwidth and allowing more symmetrical read and write speeds (CELL and RSX could not both read each other’s memory at similar speed, CELL had quite awful GDDR read and write speeds), and RSX was the fallback design (good and possibly still saved the day, but it was a bit buggy... ask the Toshiba’s RS, the GPU that was originally meant for PS3, being a super mega fast rasteriser and pixel shader focused machine with lots of fast eDRAM)... well that aside the console was an extension of the PS2 philosophy taken to the next level.

Look at SPU’s vs VU’s for example: what were some powerful but still hairy to work with bits you would have wanted to change?
  • Scratchpad RAM (Instruction and Data loc memory) was small and you had to work with the VIF units manually (decompressing incoming data, setting up local memory for dual or quad buffering, etc): only 16 KB + 16 KB on VU1 (VU0 had a lot less, 4 KB + 4 KB) —> on PS3 each SPU: 256 KB of fast unified Local Storage and a somewhat simpler access (and some synchronisation systems to help organise work amongst SPU’s)
  • 32x128 bits registers —> 128x128 bits registers
  • VU’s could not self feed, CPU controlled DMA chains —> SPU’s could schedule their own DMA transfers
  • DMA transfers required contiguous physics memory addresses (or to jump from DMA chain to DMA chain, but still physical addresses only) —> SPU’s DMAC had a TLB and could work with virtual memory addresses
  • Uneven processing of integers and floats: VU’s had integer maths capabilities, but not unified (only float vector instructions and scalar int ones IIRC) —> SPU’s could process int and float SIMD instructions

Considering how much VU and SPU centric each system was, I do see PS3 designed to fix the problems the previous generation HW designers felt held back by and some new capability that was perhaps a bit hard to master to say the least, so I think they gave you a successor of sorts (RS vs RSX and some bugs and litigations aside).
 
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UnNamed

Banned
Even something something ancient like the PS2 is said that it can handle "66 million polygons/sec".
Peak numbers were really creative back in the day, we'll never know how did they measure those numbers.

For example PS1 moved theorical 360k polygons flat and 180k shaded, but in reality there is no game who exceed 4000 polygons per frame(25), so max 100k polygons per second.
 
Wait, what? A Tegra X1 from 2015 is the most impressive gaming device right now? The switch is cool due to its library, but the hardware is incredibly underwhelming.

That extends to the low quality screen, cheap plastic stand, low quality default controllers. This is why I've always wanted Nintendo to go third party, their games are incredible, while their hw is just the worst. Of course, with all that Switch money that will never happen, so, no need to @ me with that response. :)
Show me a better handheld at a comparable price.
 
PPE having some gotchas the Emption Engine MIPS core did not have, the FlexIO bus having a bit higher bandwidth and allowing more symmetrical read and write speeds (CELL and RSX could not both read each other’s memory at similar speed, CELL had quite awful GDDR read and write speeds), and RSX was the fallback design (good and possibly still saved the day, but it was a bit buggy... ask the Toshiba’s RS, the GPU that was originally meant for PS3, being a super mega fast rasteriser and pixel shader focused machine with lots of fast eDRAM)... well that aside the console was an extension of the PS2 philosophy taken to the next level.

Look at SPU’s vs VU’s for example: what were some powerful but still hairy to work with bits you would have wanted to change?
  • Scratchpad RAM (Instruction and Data loc memory) was small and you had to work with the VIF units manually (decompressing incoming data, setting up local memory for dual or quad buffering, etc): only 16 KB + 16 KB on VU1 (VU0 had a lot less, 4 KB + 4 KB) —> on PS3 each SPU: 256 KB of fast unified Local Storage and a somewhat simpler access (and some synchronisation systems to help organise work amongst SPU’s)
  • 32x128 bits registers —> 128x128 bits registers
  • VU’s could not self feed, CPU controlled DMA chains —> SPU’s could schedule their own DMA transfers
  • DMA transfers required contiguous physics memory addresses (or to jump from DMA chain to DMA chain, but still physical addresses only) —> SPU’s DMAC had a TLB and could work with virtual memory addresses
  • Uneven processing of integers and floats: VU’s had integer maths capabilities, but not unified (only float vector instructions and scalar int ones IIRC) —> SPU’s could process int and float SIMD instructions

Considering how much VU and SPU centric each system was, I do see PS3 designed to fix the problems the previous generation HW designers felt held back by and some new capability that was perhaps a bit hard to master to say the least, so I think they gave you a successor of sorts (RS vs RSX and some bugs and litigations aside).
Well, I guess when you lay it out like that for me Cell seems more or less a successor to the EE. I guess i'm just disappointed they used the RSX, when it seems like Toshiba's chip would've offered higher performance with eDRAM and greater flexibility. Imagine HD particles on the level of the ps2, higher quality shadows etc. with a similar level of geometry detail but with greater flexibility from the toshiba chip. Perhaps i'm missing something, but I imagine the possibilities would have been huge.

I mean they had the cell, which was crazy exotic and powerful, then no eDRAM and a less than stellar gpu. I remember hearing Sony's first party guys complaining to Sony that they need a real gpu instead of the Toshiba chip, but might that just have been for ease of use? Plus if not Toshiba, they could've put a Xenos clone in ps3 with edram and I think we could've seen some amazing things there as well.

In terms of developers not wanting to use the Toshiba chip... well sure it would have been a huge pain compared to 360, but considering Nintendo had Wii they had 1 less company to compete with on a technical level compared to 6th generation. Maybe they just realized more developers would have jumped ship to 360 if they didn't have a modern gpu.
 
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