ps3 100 times faster then a p4.

BlackAura · Post by **BlackAura** » Sun Mar 09, 2003 8:36 pm

perry2175 wrote:BlackAura took my post...but better

Sony and Microsoft always mislead people. It's how they get sales, and how they get developers. Well, they actually get developers by purchasing the developers or publishers.

BornStupid · Post by **BornStupid** » Sun Mar 09, 2003 10:31 pm

you people hate too much.. hoping a system will fail? Thats so fukkin gay.. get a life loser. It's hardware.. can be bought easily if u work for it a little, so why wish for it to fail? If people watched you saying this do u know how ghey ud look? It's a console buddy, get over it... Sony knows what they're doing, they're not as dumb as you think, you don't just THROW a console out there and have it the best selling in the world for reasons that don't count. No, it requires GREAT marketing, KNOWING how to get developers, and so on. Sony knows their stuff, the ps2 may not be a DREAM to code for, but it is fairly powerful and besides, this is a coders JOB, not something they do in their spare time. They get PAID and are forced to learn how to do this. Now it's OBVIOUS it's been hyped up.. but every console is, it's how to get sales, just ignore it and see what happens will ya? This isn't too far from fanboyism, if not fanboyism in itself.

404NotFound · Post by **404NotFound** » Sun Mar 09, 2003 10:40 pm

Hey, your name reflects you quite nicely.

Marketing and making outragous claims that can NEVER be fulfilled, and if they are will be a real bitch to code for, are two different things.

We WANT it to fail because it is inevitable that these silly claims won't be brought to the light of day, and then everybody will be all sad, and we will laugh. Laugh at the little sheeple that thought the unprobable was probable. We laugh at you.

Hype and stupidity are two different things... it's like saying it's a bajillion maligahertz.

BornStupid · Post by **BornStupid** » Sun Mar 09, 2003 10:44 pm

2 things, almost every person I disagreed with use dmy nickname as an insult like that because it was so easy... if u had half a brain ud know how lame that was.
Secondly I never said they'd fulfill their promise, I said it's hype, but get over it, and stop all the Sony bashing and wishing for consoles to fail as that's very loserish.

Veggita2099 · Post by **Veggita2099** » Sun Mar 09, 2003 11:19 pm

I have said it before, but I do wish Sony would leave the Gameing industry. Im sick of all the good 3rd party games on it costing just as much as the games on other systems BUT being lower quality due to Sony's hardware being inferior to the competition. So many games being released on the PS2 could look a lot better if they was on Gamecube and Xbox. Also the Gamecube and Xbox are cheaper consoles. But Im stuck with a PS2 if I want to play my RPG's. I've yet to play a game made by Sony that was any good.

AmadeusZull · Post by **AmadeusZull** » Sun Mar 09, 2003 11:21 pm

i praise sony for what they did for the MD player handhelds and their suave walkmans. yes sony's hardware are inferior.

zero · Post by **zero** » Mon Mar 10, 2003 7:22 am

and thats why i love nintendo and sega, they didn't give a lot of bullsh*t that they knew a bunch of foolz would believe, some dumb fools still say to me that the ps2 is more powerfull then the gamecube, cos it can push more Polygon

.

Firthy2002 · Post by **Firthy2002** » Mon Mar 10, 2003 7:45 am

Isn't the PS2 the least powerful of the current gen consoles?

BlackAura · Post by **BlackAura** » Mon Mar 10, 2003 8:55 am

Pretty much, yes. It's got the slowest CPU, the weakest rendering hardware, the least VRAM, the least RAM, slowest disc drive. It's also the most difficult to program (hence all the middleware packages).

The only thing the hardware has going for it is the programmable vector units. The Gamecube doesn't need them, because it's CPU is fast enough to do 3D maths by itself. The Xbox uses Hardware T&L (because it's CPU is too slow at floating point math to do it by itself), which is part of the nVidia graphics system, so it doesn't need Vector Units either.

zero · Post by **zero** » Mon Mar 10, 2003 2:59 pm

it's cos of sonys hype that the people who said it to me thinks it's true, even when i show them an xbox or gc game they are still like, what i've seen better looking games on the ps2

, and i'm like, you must not know anything about gfx then.
that or your really blind and just say ya can see

.

Post by **|darc|** » Mon Mar 10, 2003 4:06 pm

BornStupid wrote:you people hate too much.. hoping a system will fail? Thats so fukkin happy.. get a life loser. It's hardware.. can be bought easily if u work for it a little, so why wish for it to fail? If people watched you saying this do u know how ghey ud look? It's a console buddy, get over it... Sony knows what they're doing, they're not as dumb as you think, you don't just THROW a console out there and have it the best selling in the world for reasons that don't count. No, it requires GREAT marketing, KNOWING how to get developers, and so on. Sony knows their stuff, the ps2 may not be a DREAM to code for, but it is fairly powerful and besides, this is a coders JOB, not something they do in their spare time. They get PAID and are forced to learn how to do this. Now it's OBVIOUS it's been hyped up.. but every console is, it's how to get sales, just ignore it and see what happens will ya? This isn't too far from fanboyism, if not fanboyism in itself.

1. Sony makes outrageous claims, people flock to them, and they buy the Sony console when it comes out, despite better hardware in the market. Developers go to the most popular console, and all the real gamers who can see the superiority of other consoles are still forced to own the underpowered console because thats where everyone is. If they didn't make these claims we'd be able to have major technological advances.

2. Making your system hard to code for will make developers make games worse, not make the coders work harder. For example, they might make it take advantage of one processor instead of both in a multiprocessor console. This makes games, once again, worse on the console.

So not only is the console UNDERPOWERED, it's software is UNOPTIMIZED. And it's still what people buy and what developers develop for, because of this outrageous claim. If Sony would fail instead, developers and casual gamers will be forced to flock to a more superior console, and better games come out. THAT is why people want Sony's consoles to fail.

Nyarlathotep · Post by **Nyarlathotep** » Mon Mar 10, 2003 4:09 pm

zero wrote:it's cos of sonys hype that the people who said it to me thinks it's true, even when i show them an xbox or gc game they are still like, what i've seen better looking games on the ps2 , and i'm like, you must not know anything about gfx then.
that or your really blind and just say ya can see .

Take them to your local TV specialists, ask if you can test out their home cinema systems with yuor console as you might want to get one, then hook up an Xbox and JSRF or Splinter Cell and a GC with Rogue Leader or Metroid Prime and watch them change their minds

BornStupid · Post by **BornStupid** » Mon Mar 10, 2003 4:36 pm

the ps2 came otu a year before gc/xbox. I understand the ps2 was not as advanced as those 2, but it came out a year first, and despite what u believe the PS2 beat the Dreamcast, so u could have used the same argument there... U all want developers to keep coding for Dreamcast, make it sound liek it's rediculous that theyd on't, but then u get mad when they code on a STRONGER console because it's NOT STRONG ENOUGH? U wanted them to code for XBOX/GC/PS2/GC, but now that they dont code on the most inferior (and oldest of the 4.. I know that) they shouldn't bother with PS2 (the second oldest of the 4)? Put all the fanboy /smartas s crap down, we all know ps2 is stronger then DC, the CPU is a lot more advanced (despite what u believe, the emotion engine IS quite powerful, but obviously not what sony promised), it doesnt have hardware anti aliasing sure, but hey it's possible ot be done via software. It may be hard to code for, but these are companies, they're not people like u and me. Sure developers may code easier on one console, but none the less they can still code on the ps2 with professional quality, why? Cause its they fucckin job, if they dont they get fired. U people mostly consist of nothing but fanboys... I like dreamcast mroe then ps2 but I'm not so desperate as to make stupid claims. If there's a shred of coolness in any of u (im phrasing that in half joke/seriousness) u know this argument is just gay, and all these arguments are supid and nothing more.

Firthy2002 · Post by **Firthy2002** » Mon Mar 10, 2003 4:48 pm

*sigh*

BornStupid, have you read the specs of the PS2 and the DC. If you had, you would notice that the DC is slightly more powerful than the PS2, no matter which way you read it. And the DC isn't the most inferior of them either.

And the software method of doing things vs. the hardware method is always worse.

And you say that companies can code on the PS2 with professional quality, despite everyone saying how hard it is to program for it. But I bet it took them longer to develop than it would for an equivalent or superior version on say the XBox.

If you read the facts like I do, you'd see that these claims aren't stupid at all.

BornStupid · Post by **BornStupid** » Mon Mar 10, 2003 5:02 pm

BornStupid, have you read the specs of the PS2 and the DC. If you had, you would notice that the DC is slightly more powerful than the PS2, no matter which way you read it. And the DC isn't the most inferior of them either.

Listen fanboy, YOU read the fukkin specs, PS2 has the stronger CPU, more ram, etc. IT has less vidoe ram but the cpu handles that (Im not syaing this is the best way to go on to this). But dont u ever fukkin "sigh" my as s u if ur the one who doesnt knwo what theyre talking about. Go get detailed specs of hardware perdormance, not simplistic biased fanboy crap as we see on the front of this page.

az_bont · Post by **az_bont** » Mon Mar 10, 2003 5:08 pm

BornStupid wrote:
BornStupid, have you read the specs of the PS2 and the DC. If you had, you would notice that the DC is slightly more powerful than the PS2, no matter which way you read it. And the DC isn't the most inferior of them either.
Listen fanboy, YOU read the fukkin specs, PS2 has the stronger CPU, more ram, etc. IT has less vidoe ram but the cpu handles that (Im not syaing this is the best way to go on to this). But dont u ever fukkin "sigh" my as s u if ur the one who doesnt knwo what theyre talking about. Go get detailed specs of hardware perdormance, not simplistic biased fanboy crap as we see on the front of this page.

Now, this is fairly (I mean hideously) biased, but what the hell...

Some guy, maybe 007 wrote:I remember when the PS2 was first announced and the technical specifications that were bandied about at that time: 75 million polygons/second, unlimited streaming texture potential, 48GB/s of memory bandwidth, and so on. It wasn't long after this that technology analysts began to question Sony's numbers.
Polygon Performance
The 75 million number was reduced to 66 million. Afterwards, it was admitted that these PS2 numbers were a peak performance figure for flat -shaded, identically shaped polygons. Unfortunately, the image of the PS2 as some sort of polygon monster had already become firmly entrenched in the minds of the mainstream media.
Sega chose a more conservative approach, which is in keeping with their new business philosophy - to regain the trust and confidence of gamers. Since its introduction two years ago, Sega has never mislead gamers about the Dreamcast's power. 3+ million polygons is all that Sega ever claims, even though new games like Test Drive: LeMans push closer to five million in 3D scenes loaded with effects.
The truth is that the PS2 has never displayed more than 2-3 million polys in a game. The main problem is a memory one. With only a 4MB VRAM cache on its GS graphics processor, the PS2 is severely limited in what it can achieve on screen. While it's true that 32MB of main memory and the fairly powerful Emotion Engine processor are capable of producing in the neighborhood of 10-12 million textured and lit polygons/second, the poor design of the GS and its small pipeline to main memory restrict the final number to roughly half of that.
What? You mean, regardless of the power of the EE processor and the large amount of available memory, the PS2 is still only capable of displaying 5-6 million on-screen polygons? The answer, unfortunately, is yes. By contrast, the Dreamcast has only 16 MB of main memory and a processor that is only capable of one-half the number of polygons/second - ie. 5- 6 million - but the whole point of the exercise is to get these onto your television. An intelligent memory saving technique known as differed rendering, coupled with the PowerVR2DC graphics chip's hardware texture compression abilities, allow the Dreamcast to display all of its generated polygons.
To better understand the PS2's limitations and the Dreamcast's strengths, you need only look at the available video memory for your answer. While the DC has 8MB of VRAM, the PS2 has only 4MB of VRAM. The main problem arises because a polygon takes up roughly 40 bytes of RAM. When you have 5 million of them in a given second, this amounts to 5 million/60fps = 83,333 polygons in a give frame of animation. If each of these polygons uses 40 bytes of VRAM, you will use 3.33 MB displaying these 5 million PPS. This doesn't leave the PS2 much room for it's framebuffer which uses around 1.2MB just to display the end data, not to mention that you still need to leave room for textures to put on those polygons.
Now, there are a few tricks which will allow the PS2 to display 5-6 million PPS, even though it only has a 4MB VRAM cache. One of them is to update the cache more frequently than once a second. But, there are other bandwidth limitations that prevent this from happening more than two or three times per second and the net result is that the PS2 is still limited to 5- 6 million PPS.
Here is a table which summarizes the polygon performance of both next- generation machines:
System Processor Stage Graphics Stage Best Example**
PS2 EE + 32MB
12 million PPS* GS + 4MB
6 million PPS* Madden NFL 2001
2 million PPS*
DC SH4 + 16MB
6 million PPS* PVR2DC + 8MB
5 million PPS* Ferrari F355 Challenge
3 million PPS*

* All polygons are textured and lit and represent peak performance
** Only games available right now were considered
Unfortunately, this isn't the PS2's only shortcoming. The reason I emphasize polygon performance at all is because these number have become the defacto standard for judging a console's power, when in fact they tell less than half the story. The main disadvantage of this expensive architecture is it's poor texturing ability.
Texturing Performance
The way texturing works is simple. Polygons and texture data arrive into video memory, textures are applied to the polygons and the result is displayed on screen. Most PC users are used to games with 16MB or more of texture data. A diehard Quake III player might have a setup capable of delivering 32MB of textures during the game. 32MB? But the PS2 and DC only have 4MB and 8MB of VRAM respectively. How can they hope to compete? The answer is that consoles do not hold all of a scene's texture data in memory at once. Usually, the data is streamed over the bus from main memory in a continuous manner.
The Dreamcast is a wonderful texturing beast, due in large part to the efficiency of the PVR2DC's graphics methodology. Two things help the PVR2DC - hardware texture decompression and infinite planes deferred rendering. Unlike the PS2's GS graphics processor, the PVR2DC is capable of decompressing textures on the fly. Thus, DC programmers usually take 20-25MB of texture data and compress it at a 5:1 (sometimes 8:1) ratio to reduce the amount of texture data to only 4 or 5MB. Then, the texture data is sent over the bus to the PVR2DC which simply decompresses the data at the moment of rendering into it's original huge size.
By contrast, the PS2's GS processor has no ability to decompress textures on the fly. This means that all texture data must flow over the relatively small pipeline between main memory and the GS 4MB VRAM cache, at it's original large size. Currently, this fact has limited PS2 games to only around 10 MB of texture data/frame, and this is why the buildings look so similar in Ridge Racer 5. Lack of variety in texturing has made most PS2 games look extremely plain when compared to Dreamcast games like Sonic Adventure, Shenmue, and even Draconus: Cult of the Wyrm.
Moreover, the PVR2DC belongs to the only processor family on the market that uses deferred rendering to texture only those polygons which are facing the gamer in any given frame. Other graphics chips must texture the backs of polygons as well as the front facing polygons. The net effect is to reduce the amount of texturing that the DC has to perform in a given scene by a factor of two or three depending on the complexity of the scene. The greater the scene complexity, the more you see the benefits of deferred rendering. This is why you never see any really large free-roaming 3D games on the PS2. Crazy Taxi, Ecco the Dolphin, and Shenmue are simply not possible on the PS2, because it doesn't have deferred rendering.
Test Drive LeMans on the Dreamcast.
GT3 on the PS2.
Here is another table which summarizes texturing performance for bother machines:
Texture Data Streaming Capacity System Capacity Decompressed Texturing Ability Best Example*
PS2 10MB/frame (Main Memory -> GS Memory) 10MB/frame on screen Dead or Alive 2: Hardcore*
DC 5MB/frame (Main Memory -> VRAM 25MB/frame on screen Shenmue, Ecco the Dolphin*

* Only games available right now were considered
These two performance measure give you a pretty good idea of why the PS2 is, technically-speaking, a poor hardware design. The biggest problem of all with this architecture, however, is the difficulty that development houses are having extracting reasonable performance out of the machine. All the power in the world under the hood, doesn't do anyone much good if the games don't look good.
Development Environment
The PS2 shipped to developers with incomplete kits last year. By contrast, Sega has been giving excellent support to developers both large and small. Most DC developers are using 5th generation development kits, known as Set 5 Dev Kits. Sony mistakenly made the assumption that third-party PS2 developers would want bare bones development kits so they could program the hardware directly like they have during the last days of the PSX. Unfortunately, key features that are very hard to implement, like anti-aliasing to remove jagged edges from on-screen polygons have not yet surfaced.
Developers have responded to these PS2 programming challenges in a number of ways. Some developers like THQ (Summoner) have used a form of CRT (Cathode Ray Tube) blending to fake the effects that true anti- aliasing would offer. This is something which the DC has had for over two years, but unlike the DC CRT method, the PS2 method results in washed out, blurry textures. Tekken Tag Tournament is the perfect US launch title example. While they have eliminated the jagged edges which plague the Japanese version, the end result is that all of the textures in the game seem blurry or washed out. Hardly what I would call revolutionary for a next-generation console.
Another developmental problem, which is the reason for the jaggies in the first place, is serious lack of kit functions that will intelligently enable developers to overcome some of the limitations of the small size of the GS VRAM cache. While all Dreamcast games run at 640x480 resolution, many PS2 games only utilitize a 640x240 field- rendered display which fakes a 640x480 display. Bad jaggies are the result, and these need to be hidden through some form of anti-aliasing (AA, not yet available), or by using the CRT method described above, with all its unintended consequences.
Moreover, the EE processor is actually three separate CPUs in one core. Most developers, for lack of proper tools, are using only one third of the EE's processing ability, because both vector units (VP1 & VP2) are too hard to program. Certainly future games will take advantage of these units, thereby freeing the main CPU to implement some fairly nice AI routines, but the cost of developing these techniques has become enormous - something which I will outline in the next article.
The sad fact is that only a few development houses like EA have been able to extract reasonable next-generation performance out of the PS2 architecture. Even Namco and Konami, the kings of PSX development during the 32 bit era, are having a hard time getting more than 2-3 million PPS out of what is supposed to be the end-all of gaming machines. The fact of the matter is that Namco's 18 month old Soul Calibur on Dreamcast looks worlds better than the newly released Tekken Tag Tournament on PS2. Not very impressive compared to the promises that have been made by Sony and it's cabal of industry sycophants.
Overall
The Dreamcast is the best machine on the market. Tomorrow nothing will have changed. Technically speaking, nothing on the PS2 comes close to the beauty of Shenmue or Ecco, the speed and power of F355 Challenge or Test Drive: LeMans 24, and the sheer elegance and gaming grace of games like Metropolis Street Racer and Jet Grind Radio. If one full motion video demo of Metal Gear Solid 2 has convinced you that the PS2 is the better machine, then you haven't opened your eyes to the reality before you. The best next-generation machine from a technical standpoint is the Sega Dreamcast. Let other less informed individuals buy a machine capable of less, on the promise of one game thirteen months from now. In the meantime, you and I will be enjoying the technically best games for months to come.

BornStupid · Post by **BornStupid** » Mon Mar 10, 2003 5:16 pm

Now, this is fairly (I mean hideously) biased, but what the hell...

Some guy, maybe 007 wrote:
I remember when the PS2 was first announced and the technical specifications that were bandied about at that time: 75 million polygons/second, unlimited streaming texture potential, 48GB/s of memory bandwidth, and so on. It wasn't long after this that technology analysts began to question Sony's numbers.
Polygon Performance
The 75 million number was reduced to 66 million. Afterwards, it was admitted that these PS2 numbers were a peak performance figure for flat -shaded, identically shaped polygons. Unfortunately, the image of the PS2 as some sort of polygon monster had already become firmly entrenched in the minds of the mainstream media.
Sega chose a more conservative approach, which is in keeping with their new business philosophy - to regain the trust and confidence of gamers. Since its introduction two years ago, Sega has never mislead gamers about the Dreamcast's power. 3+ million polygons is all that Sega ever claims, even though new games like Test Drive: LeMans push closer to five million in 3D scenes loaded with effects.
The truth is that the PS2 has never displayed more than 2-3 million polys in a game. The main problem is a memory one. With only a 4MB VRAM cache on its GS graphics processor, the PS2 is severely limited in what it can achieve on screen. While it's true that 32MB of main memory and the fairly powerful Emotion Engine processor are capable of producing in the neighborhood of 10-12 million textured and lit polygons/second, the poor design of the GS and its small pipeline to main memory restrict the final number to roughly half of that.
What? You mean, regardless of the power of the EE processor and the large amount of available memory, the PS2 is still only capable of displaying 5-6 million on-screen polygons? The answer, unfortunately, is yes. By contrast, the Dreamcast has only 16 MB of main memory and a processor that is only capable of one-half the number of polygons/second - ie. 5- 6 million - but the whole point of the exercise is to get these onto your television. An intelligent memory saving technique known as differed rendering, coupled with the PowerVR2DC graphics chip's hardware texture compression abilities, allow the Dreamcast to display all of its generated polygons.
To better understand the PS2's limitations and the Dreamcast's strengths, you need only look at the available video memory for your answer. While the DC has 8MB of VRAM, the PS2 has only 4MB of VRAM. The main problem arises because a polygon takes up roughly 40 bytes of RAM. When you have 5 million of them in a given second, this amounts to 5 million/60fps = 83,333 polygons in a give frame of animation. If each of these polygons uses 40 bytes of VRAM, you will use 3.33 MB displaying these 5 million PPS. This doesn't leave the PS2 much room for it's framebuffer which uses around 1.2MB just to display the end data, not to mention that you still need to leave room for textures to put on those polygons.
Now, there are a few tricks which will allow the PS2 to display 5-6 million PPS, even though it only has a 4MB VRAM cache. One of them is to update the cache more frequently than once a second. But, there are other bandwidth limitations that prevent this from happening more than two or three times per second and the net result is that the PS2 is still limited to 5- 6 million PPS.
Here is a table which summarizes the polygon performance of both next- generation machines:
System Processor Stage Graphics Stage Best Example**
PS2 EE + 32MB
12 million PPS* GS + 4MB
6 million PPS* Madden NFL 2001
2 million PPS*
DC SH4 + 16MB
6 million PPS* PVR2DC + 8MB
5 million PPS* Ferrari F355 Challenge
3 million PPS*

* All polygons are textured and lit and represent peak performance
** Only games available right now were considered
Unfortunately, this isn't the PS2's only shortcoming. The reason I emphasize polygon performance at all is because these number have become the defacto standard for judging a console's power, when in fact they tell less than half the story. The main disadvantage of this expensive architecture is it's poor texturing ability.
Texturing Performance
The way texturing works is simple. Polygons and texture data arrive into video memory, textures are applied to the polygons and the result is displayed on screen. Most PC users are used to games with 16MB or more of texture data. A diehard Quake III player might have a setup capable of delivering 32MB of textures during the game. 32MB? But the PS2 and DC only have 4MB and 8MB of VRAM respectively. How can they hope to compete? The answer is that consoles do not hold all of a scene's texture data in memory at once. Usually, the data is streamed over the bus from main memory in a continuous manner.
The Dreamcast is a wonderful texturing beast, due in large part to the efficiency of the PVR2DC's graphics methodology. Two things help the PVR2DC - hardware texture decompression and infinite planes deferred rendering. Unlike the PS2's GS graphics processor, the PVR2DC is capable of decompressing textures on the fly. Thus, DC programmers usually take 20-25MB of texture data and compress it at a 5:1 (sometimes 8:1) ratio to reduce the amount of texture data to only 4 or 5MB. Then, the texture data is sent over the bus to the PVR2DC which simply decompresses the data at the moment of rendering into it's original huge size.
By contrast, the PS2's GS processor has no ability to decompress textures on the fly. This means that all texture data must flow over the relatively small pipeline between main memory and the GS 4MB VRAM cache, at it's original large size. Currently, this fact has limited PS2 games to only around 10 MB of texture data/frame, and this is why the buildings look so similar in Ridge Racer 5. Lack of variety in texturing has made most PS2 games look extremely plain when compared to Dreamcast games like Sonic Adventure, Shenmue, and even Draconus: Cult of the Wyrm.
Moreover, the PVR2DC belongs to the only processor family on the market that uses deferred rendering to texture only those polygons which are facing the gamer in any given frame. Other graphics chips must texture the backs of polygons as well as the front facing polygons. The net effect is to reduce the amount of texturing that the DC has to perform in a given scene by a factor of two or three depending on the complexity of the scene. The greater the scene complexity, the more you see the benefits of deferred rendering. This is why you never see any really large free-roaming 3D games on the PS2. Crazy Taxi, Ecco the Dolphin, and Shenmue are simply not possible on the PS2, because it doesn't have deferred rendering.
Test Drive LeMans on the Dreamcast.
GT3 on the PS2.
Here is another table which summarizes texturing performance for bother machines:
Texture Data Streaming Capacity System Capacity Decompressed Texturing Ability Best Example*
PS2 10MB/frame (Main Memory -> GS Memory) 10MB/frame on screen Dead or Alive 2: Hardcore*
DC 5MB/frame (Main Memory -> VRAM 25MB/frame on screen Shenmue, Ecco the Dolphin*

* Only games available right now were considered
These two performance measure give you a pretty good idea of why the PS2 is, technically-speaking, a poor hardware design. The biggest problem of all with this architecture, however, is the difficulty that development houses are having extracting reasonable performance out of the machine. All the power in the world under the hood, doesn't do anyone much good if the games don't look good.
Development Environment
The PS2 shipped to developers with incomplete kits last year. By contrast, Sega has been giving excellent support to developers both large and small. Most DC developers are using 5th generation development kits, known as Set 5 Dev Kits. Sony mistakenly made the assumption that third-party PS2 developers would want bare bones development kits so they could program the hardware directly like they have during the last days of the PSX. Unfortunately, key features that are very hard to implement, like anti-aliasing to remove jagged edges from on-screen polygons have not yet surfaced.
Developers have responded to these PS2 programming challenges in a number of ways. Some developers like THQ (Summoner) have used a form of CRT (Cathode Ray Tube) blending to fake the effects that true anti- aliasing would offer. This is something which the DC has had for over two years, but unlike the DC CRT method, the PS2 method results in washed out, blurry textures. Tekken Tag Tournament is the perfect US launch title example. While they have eliminated the jagged edges which plague the Japanese version, the end result is that all of the textures in the game seem blurry or washed out. Hardly what I would call revolutionary for a next-generation console.
Another developmental problem, which is the reason for the jaggies in the first place, is serious lack of kit functions that will intelligently enable developers to overcome some of the limitations of the small size of the GS VRAM cache. While all Dreamcast games run at 640x480 resolution, many PS2 games only utilitize a 640x240 field- rendered display which fakes a 640x480 display. Bad jaggies are the result, and these need to be hidden through some form of anti-aliasing (AA, not yet available), or by using the CRT method described above, with all its unintended consequences.
Moreover, the EE processor is actually three separate CPUs in one core. Most developers, for lack of proper tools, are using only one third of the EE's processing ability, because both vector units (VP1 & VP2) are too hard to program. Certainly future games will take advantage of these units, thereby freeing the main CPU to implement some fairly nice AI routines, but the cost of developing these techniques has become enormous - something which I will outline in the next article.
The sad fact is that only a few development houses like EA have been able to extract reasonable next-generation performance out of the PS2 architecture. Even Namco and Konami, the kings of PSX development during the 32 bit era, are having a hard time getting more than 2-3 million PPS out of what is supposed to be the end-all of gaming machines. The fact of the matter is that Namco's 18 month old Soul Calibur on Dreamcast looks worlds better than the newly released Tekken Tag Tournament on PS2. Not very impressive compared to the promises that have been made by Sony and it's cabal of industry sycophants.
Overall
The Dreamcast is the best machine on the market. Tomorrow nothing will have changed. Technically speaking, nothing on the PS2 comes close to the beauty of Shenmue or Ecco, the speed and power of F355 Challenge or Test Drive: LeMans 24, and the sheer elegance and gaming grace of games like Metropolis Street Racer and Jet Grind Radio. If one full motion video demo of Metal Gear Solid 2 has convinced you that the PS2 is the better machine, then you haven't opened your eyes to the reality before you. The best next-generation machine from a technical standpoint is the Sega Dreamcast. Let other less informed individuals buy a machine capable of less, on the promise of one game thirteen months from now. In the meantime, you and I will be enjoying the technically best games for months to come.

yup thats what im talking about, a person with a slight understanding of technical hardware specs+a huge bias=the worst comparison document ever written.

az_bont · Post by **az_bont** » Mon Mar 10, 2003 5:19 pm

But the points about power-on-paper meaning very little are very true - look at the Gamecube. By all intents and purposes it should be producing graphics that don't even compare to the Xbox's, and yet it's the best-looking one of the lot.

Firthy2002 · Post by **Firthy2002** » Mon Mar 10, 2003 5:21 pm

PS2 fanboys' specs are worse.

Case in point: this

BornStupid · Post by **BornStupid** » Mon Mar 10, 2003 5:26 pm

Well we're not talking about ps2 fanboys.. you and me were talking about which system was stronger, I think you realize now you lost this one and are tyring to change the topic. Unless you are absolutely certain you know what you're talking about, do NOT reply with a sense of being more knowledgeable. Do that and we'll be just fine.