What the hell... The Xbox has a totsl of 64 MB(Note big B) of RAM that is used by everything, Graphics, CPU, audio. You give more RAM to textures, you have to take it from somewhere else whether it is from game code or sound, it has to come from some where.. That is what UMA is.
Great we are back to RAW specs AGAIN! Ok the PS has XXX number of fillrate etc. Big numbers, very nice. But it has what is considered some of the slowest modern RAM ever in terms of Latency. The CPU goes and asks for something and it then waits for a reply. Then it waits some more, and more. Many cycles later the answer arrives. What does the CPU do while it is waiting? Nothing. That's right, nothing. Sitting there playing with it's digital thumbs.
Then there is the fill rate. Wow big fill rate. Problem. EE does not have any native graphical effects like multi texturing, lighting, AA or FSAA, nothing but it's vertex shaders. Solution. Everything is done in software. No native acceleration. No multitexturing/alpha without cutting your fill rate in half for every layer. Additional bonus with being a B1tc# to program for. Another thing, it has only 4MB of VRAM. You want more? there is none. Solution? keep swapping out textures until done. But that takes time. Everytime you swap out, you lose half the time to render a frame. See where this is going to?
Xbox. Powerful CPU, GPU. Weakness? RAM. Standard RAM. Same thing happens to the Xbox as it happens to the PS2. It waits for a reply. Not as long, but cycles are wasted never the less. But has plenty of native graphical effects.
NGC. Decent CPU, GPU. Plenty of native graphical effects like the Xbox. But has some of the fastest RAM ever used in a console. The 24 MB of T1-SRAM becomes one huge L2 style cache for the GPU and CPU meaning that the RAM can responed in real time to the demands of the GPU and the CPU. They ask, it comes in the next cycle, not the cycle after next Tuesday. Link that with Realtime texture decompression, that figure multiples by 3 if you were to devote everything to graphics, but you would have no game. Just a pretty picture. so you have say about 58MB for texture in a compressed form. The remaining 6MB is for the CPU to use for AI, Geometry, basicly the game. then there is another 16MB of RAM which is super slow. Coming in at 81MB a second, it is not much good for graphics, but plenty for some and non-speed crital storage of objects etc in a game. Also good for a loading cache.
The Xbox has texture compression too, but it is not in real-time, so it loses out on some power as has to load it on to the chip, then decompress, then load the uncompressed texture back on to the chip wasting atleast and entire cycle. So you trade speed for more textures.
All the consoles are like the currency exchange market, all about trading. You have XXX amount of money to spend on Graphics, sound etc. But they are all in different currencies. Some are higher, some are lower. Then there are the brokerage fees. The PS2 you have billion in the Italian(Sorry) Lira, but it already takes you a million for a can of coke. So those billions don't look that great. then there is the XBox. It's more like the YEN right now, plenty to spend and depending what you spend it on it can go either way. Not too bad. Then there is the NGC, you have a modest amount of credits. The market doesn't really exist as there are not really that many currencies you ahve to trade with to get what you want. It is like the world has a single currency. So your money goes a long way because no/less brokerage fees and market fuctuations (Cause by you buying and selling) are small, so your money is not badly wasted.
But like with any system, there are rules. Some rules can be broken, others bent. This is the point where I bring in the developers. These guys are like your insider traders. Some know everything, some know zip about the market. Some are lazy. But only so many rules can be bent or broken. The PS2 has the most rules, close to martial law. The Xbox is like L.A.
. While the NGC is like New Zealand. It is up to the deves as to how many laws they ca break to achive thier goal without getting caught. Fewer laws makes it easier to get away.
Anyway, who said you needed sub-pixel shading anyway? The next best thing would work well enough for this generation. I mean you said Halo2 is not using it, so why not use the next step down? I am sure that with out a magifying glass you won't be able to tell much of a difference under most conditions.
Back to MGS. The shots look early. The models look nice and lighting is good. Texture need improvement and don't seem to have any effects on them. It looks slightly above average for a GC game. What they do have is fairly nailed down. Has plenty of space for improvements.
edit: some spelling
Topic: OFFICIAL Metal Gear Discussion (Read 255660 times)
