Topic: GameCube Price Drop and New Specs for Japan

[KDR_11k]

If a game is running at 60 FPS (i.e. 60 images per second) that does not mean the TV displays two fields per game-frame. Displaying 120 fields per second would toast your TV. Keep in mind that FPS here means "images output by the game", not "full screens drawn by the TV". The framerate of the game can slow down under high load, the framerate of the TV is constant.

[evilnate]

Quote
Originally posted by: KDR_11k
If a game is running at 60 FPS (i.e. 60 images per second) that does not mean the TV displays two fields per game-frame. Displaying 120 fields per second would toast your TV. Keep in mind that FPS here means "images output by the game", not "full screens drawn by the TV". The framerate of the game can slow down under high load, the framerate of the TV is constant.

You're correct, but my point is that if a game is running at 60fps, the console has to render then entire frame, which contains all the information for two fields.

60fps = a refresh rate of 120hz (120 fields/60 frames per second)
30fps = a refresh rate of 60hz (60 fields/30 frames per second)

If the console was only rendering half of the image every 1/60th of a second, then it's actually running at 30fps, not 60, and you wouldn't get the added smoothness that a game running at 60fps provides.

[KDR_11k]

Quote
Originally posted by: evilnate
You're correct, but my point is that if a game is running at 60fps, the console has to render then entire frame, which contains all the information for two fields.

60fps = a refresh rate of 120hz (120 fields/60 frames per second)
30fps = a refresh rate of 60hz (60 fields/30 frames per second)

If the console was only rendering half of the image every 1/60th of a second, then it's actually running at 30fps, not 60, and you wouldn't get the added smoothness that a game running at 60fps provides.

No. Just plain No. There are games that run at 60FPS for the Cube, but thoe don't overclock your TV to 120Hz (which is dangerous). Those games deliver one frame per field. 60 half-images/sec appears smoother than 30 full images/sec because each frame of a movement is visible for less time.

[evilnate]

Quote
Originally posted by: KDR_11k

Quote
Originally posted by: evilnate
You're correct, but my point is that if a game is running at 60fps, the console has to render then entire frame, which contains all the information for two fields.

60fps = a refresh rate of 120hz (120 fields/60 frames per second)
30fps = a refresh rate of 60hz (60 fields/30 frames per second)

If the console was only rendering half of the image every 1/60th of a second, then it's actually running at 30fps, not 60, and you wouldn't get the added smoothness that a game running at 60fps provides.

No. Just plain No. There are games that run at 60FPS for the Cube, but thoe don't overclock your TV to 120Hz (which is dangerous). Those games deliver one frame per field. 60 half-images/sec appears smoother than 30 full images/sec because each frame of a movement is visible for less time.

I never said that the Cube would "overclock" your television.  I was refering to the refresh rate internally in the Gamecube.  You're right that an NTSC television can only display 30 frames per second (actually it's 29.97, but who's counting?  )  Anyway, my point is that rendering fields is not what the Gamecube or any other piece of computer hardware does.  It only renders whole frames (in the Cube's case, at a resolution of 640X480), which are then interlaced.  But there were still 60 original full information frames.  In the case of a game running at 60fps, yes, that does get downconverted to 30fps for an NTSC display, but that wasn't my original point.  My original point was that it takes exactly the same amount of graphics horsepower to render a game at 60 fps progressivly as it does interlaced, and therefore there is no performance hit if your running 480i or 480p.

Think about it - the internal frame rate, i.e. the rate that each frame of the game is rendered at has to be independant of the actual display frame rate.  Otherwise, how could there have been games that ran faster than 30fps back in the N64 days or slower than 60fps on a progressive scan television?  How could we ever see a game have slowdown?  Next gen we could see games that actually run faster than 60fps internally but the displays will still be locked to 30fps for NTSC and 60fps for progressive scan.  The benifit is that even though we won't actually see every frame as it's being rendered internally, we'll see the benefits in the improved motion.

 

[KDR_11k]

1. Games are locked at the screen refresh rate. It's called VSync and is meant to avoid showing the top half of one frame and the bottom half of another.
2. If you don't have to render all 480 lines you wouldn't do it. Unless there's a deficiency in the hardware of the Gamecube itself preventing this the other half won't be rendered. One of the first things done to improve a game's performance is removing unnecessary work (like rendering the other half of the frame). Why would they want to render the other half, anyway?