Revolution info got most of you upset

[BigTac]

Alright I know some of you have been waiting to see what I have to say about this so here it is.

First of all, as you all know I previously said about 3 weeks ago the Revolution will launch worldwide in 3Q 06. Way back in May was when I got the first word that Revolution will launch in 3rdQ 06, then shortly after Ubisoft came out and stated a 4Q release. But throughout Sept/Oct I heard from Nintendo source that they want a 3Q release. But now as far as release date IGN's info sounds correct. A Nov/early Dec release now expected worldwide. PS3 launch date I am expecting to be anounced next month or at least a time frame.

 

Now for the specs. I don't have any info about the RAM or anything but one developer told me after seeing IGN's article that while somethings are correct but some of is either stated wrong or false. The "Broadway" is a very efficient proccessor for it's speed. I asked about if it's dual or single but the question was dodged. "Souped up Xbox" What you will see is better than that. On topic of what Nintendo is doing the right way he had mixed feeling. " As far as them trying to innovate the console market, yes, making development cheaper, yes." He told me that his team is actually more excited about the Revolution than PS3/360. But also thinks Nintendo could/should have added a more horsepower to the machine. But what I found interesting is that one member of the team said that he thinks Nintendo will be 2nd in the comsole race.

 

Remember as I said before Nintendo will begin releasing new Revolution info in January and thoughout the first few months leading up to E3.

[glucoseaddict]

only been posting on this forum for a short while (hence reason for possible stupid question) but who are you bigtac?

 

you a developer or something?

[Kurtle Squad]

Yeah...I have to say, the souped up XBox does sound unrealistic.

 

Big-tac is a guy, who, tells us stuff, cos he's in the media or something

[Stocka]

So graphics worse than 360? Dammit. I'm still hoping for steroscopic 3D

[david.dakota]

Every so often you'll find these "insiders" on various forums. As a general rule of thumb, take everything with a pinch of salt.

 

Most people here have learned from a little thing called "megaton"....

[phez_boy]

although it has been mentioned several times i fell the need to re-iterate this again... do none of you remember how the xbox's specs made the GC / PS3's specs look like crap? but yet for some crazy reason after they were all released the graphics were rarely, if even ever compared.

And another thing you guys gotta remember is at the end of the day, nintendo is a company like any other and basically wants to turn over as much profit as possible. We all know the fact that nintendo profited the most of all the sytems in this console race because it was cheaper to make. and even when it comes to the PSP, as soon as they drop there prices anything significant they will start losing money. Same goes for the Xbox 360 and PS3, and as soon as nintendo release its console thats probably half the price of these two, they will be forced to drop their prices, and start losing money again.

 

So lets just wait and see shall we?

[pedrocasilva]

Yeah...I have to say, the souped up XBox does sound unrealistic.

Sound unrealistical, specially knowing that, Gamecube already has a CPU with more horsepower than Xbox's Pentium 733MHz... so what? is it a souped up Xbox too?

 

this whole processor thing is quite twisted considering Xbox and GameCube are two TOTALLY DIFFERENT architecures (32/64-bit hybrid, PowerPC native compared to 32-bit Wintel). GameCube, having this architecture, has a significantly shorter data pipeline than Xbox's PIII setup (4-7 stages versus up to 14), meaning it can process information more than twice as fast per clock cycle. In fact, this GCN CPU (a PowerPC 750e IBM chip) is often compared to be as fast as a 700mhz machine at 400mhz. So GCN could be 849mhz compared to Xbox's 733mhz machine performancewise.

Source: http://forums.g4tv.com/messageview.cfm?catid=8&threadid=54975&FTVAR_MSGDBTABLE=arc&STARTPAGE=1

 

Infact... gamecube could be 933 MHz if it was x86, he's refering to PPC 750e found in Apple G3 and some router devices, not the optimized one for Nintendo GC, (it's stated later in that link, but I'm lazy to look for it).

 

As for Xbox 360... wow... it's not that powerfull, The CPU is a simplified PowerPC as the name implies (same goes for PS3 CELL) it's not on-par with a Opteron in code execussion, making it worthless running computer tasks. Also... look at the first quote 4-7 stages... PIV Prescott has the biggest pipeline in processors equaling to 31 stages... and you know how that compares to a 17 to 20 stages AMD64.X360 CPU and CELL are the next candidates for it, join in a simplified architecture, and, in X360 case... a 5% cache miss

 

Prescott is used on the recent Pentium and Celeron chips and has a 31 stage pipeline, coupled to a separate 8 stage fetch/decode front end. (Earlier Northwood and Willamette cores use a 20 stage pipeline with the 8 stage front end.) Together the total pipeline length comes in at 39 stages - over twice the length of the current AMD K8 pipeline. In fact, the next longest pipelines outside of Intel aren't even out yet: Cell and Xenon are both around 21 stages long. The benefits of a long pipeline are in raw clock speeds. It's no surprise that NetBurst is the only chip currently shipping in speeds greater than 3 GHz, and Cell and Xenon are slated to join that "elite" group of processors in the future.

While a lengthy pipeline allows for high clock speeds, it also introduces inefficiencies in cases where a branch prediction misses. When that occurs, everything following the branch instruction has to be cleared from the CPU pipeline and execution begins again - a penalty of as much as 30 cycles in the case of Prescott. (Of course, it could be even longer if there's a cache miss and main memory needs to be accessed, but that delay would occur with or without the branch miss so we'll ignore it.) In order to avoid the full penalty of a branch misprediction (39 cycles), Intel decoupled the fetch/decode unit from the main pipeline and turned the L1 cache into a "trace cache" where instructions are stored in decoded form. The trace cache is actually a very interesting concept and certainly helped improve performance. It basically allows many instructions to skip 1/4 to 1/3 of the standard pipeline. While Intel no longer holds the performance crown, it wasn't until the launch of the K8 that Intel really lost the lead.

Source: http://www.anandtech.com/printarticle.aspx?i=2492

 

also... I'll leave "another" lead...

If any of you read Anandtech’s short-lived article that made the points of “the real-world performance of the Xenon CPU is about twice that of the 733MHz processor in the first Xbox†and that “floating point multiplies are apparently 1/3 as fast on Xenon as on a Pentium 4â€, the problem here is that it’s not making the distinction between the profiles of single operations and the total throughput of the CPU. There’s no question that single threaded performance of next-gen CPUs will almost invariably be much slower than that of current PC CPUs.

A 1 MB L2 cache like in Xbox360 may only have a miss rate of around 5%, but that 5% can translate to an average CPI cost of some 26 cycles. In layman’s terms... that’s extremely bad. It means that if you’re not careful, single-threaded performance on PS3 or Xenon could be outpaced by that of a Dreamcast.

Source: http://psinext.e-mpire.com/index.php?categoryid=4&m_articles_articleid=153

 

Xenon can be compared to a 1,7 GHz Celeron (netburst-based) in horsepower, knowing that, because of the number of stages netburst featured above a Pentium 3 at 1GHz, the latter one would outperform a Pentium 4 at 1,4 GHz... so... it's really double the performance of original Xbox in physics, AI, Game Logic and others... based on your comments Xbox 360 is really the "Souped up Xbox" you reffered, revolution could easily outperform that with a optimized PowerPC G4 @ 1,4 GHz optimized, not simplified CPU. let alone what a PowerPC 970 could do, single or dual core, single-thread or multi-threaded

 

Seems doubtful to me that your info is accurate, a few moths ago in E3 not even retro studios had the kits so they made a metroid prime 3 demo running on gamecube, and later they complained about the beta kit specs who were always being changed back and forth.

 

Sony didn't even made a tapeout of PS3, neither they did for E3 2005, the GPU was not ready back in october, and they didn't release any info till now, even microsoft said they were running 30% of the console power back in E3 in beta dev packs, I simply believe nintendo has a 100% kit by now where others don't.

 

It's better/easier to up the graphics from a beta DevKit bettering the graphics with fill rate effects, AA and AF than cut them, both in polygons, texturework and lightning, nintendo knows that.

 

Damn this technical posts beat the living hell out of me, I'm exausted after searching for things to proove or ressemble what I already knew :/

[King_Mushroom]

Not upset in the least. I am excited as ever for the rev.

[Tiz]

pedrocasilva is right. And also if the dev's dont have info on the gfx chip, it should be impossible to know what the real power of the console will be.

[MikeMania]

IGN has just released another article with developers further describing the Rev's hardware. It seems the Broadway and Hollywood GPU's have very similar infrastructures to those of the GCN, but obviously more powerful, but sadly not much.

 

Discs for the system will be 4.7 GB, so I'm believing its a DVD to its bare bones, don't know how Panasonic is "developing" it.

[pedrocasilva]

IGN has just released another article with developers further describing the Rev's hardware. It seems the Broadway and Hollywood GPU's have very similar infrastructures to those of the GCN, but obviously more powerful, but sadly not much.

 

Discs for the system will be 4.7 GB, so I'm believing its a DVD to its bare bones, don't know how Panasonic is "developing" it.

there are lots of "wierd" things in that article, every DVD player reads 8,5 GB dual layered DVD's, nintendo may be going for cost effective, but they're not stupid, it would cost the same to them anyway in this case, and it would mean almost double the space.

 

4,7 GB is unconcievable, I don't really believe it, but... most PC games still come in 4,7 GB DVD's, most console games this generation come in them and also wind waker was 1,3 GB... still... we clearly need more space.

 

EDIT: I went to IGN to read that article and it states dual layered 8,5 GB discs, I'm fine with those, sure 12 GB would be better, but still

 

also for the "it doubles the gamecube cpu" fistly the gekko limits where at 500 MHz I doubt IBM redesigned the G3 core just for nintendo, and that in single thread already beats Xbox 360 as stated it equals to a 1,7 GHz celeron, multiply 933 MHzx2 and you're done

 

still I was expecting more, no word about a PPU? that would put Rev in another leage and leave more of the cpu resources available turning it into a more efficient machine. and the memory they talk about is too low (104 MB?).

 

Maybe Nintendo was counting with it being leaked sooner or later like they stated previously in E3 (saying it would probably be leaked before the end of the year), so they didn't reveal much/misleaded the developers in some things.

 

Doesn't seem like they are kidding, already prepping up for E3 more than 4 months earlier.

 

for example it could be a dual-core cpu, but right now developers are only working with one, that would already be 4 times the original GCN CPU.most x360 games are only using 1 thread of 3 so far.

[Pit-Jr]

Every developer was in agreement that Revolution should launch with a price tag of $149 or lower. Some speculated that based on the tech, a $99 price point would not be out of the question

 

99 bucks? Yes please!

[pedrocasilva]

99 bucks? Yes please!

For $99 it would be awesome, hope they do a value version and a "deluxe" one, like they did with PSP and Xbox 360, the deluxe one could bring a special colectors edition game (zelda tp?) and the special accessory to enable people to play DVD's aswell as the sound card enhancement thing (seems like the expansion does both).

 

still... I dont think we'll know for sure before E3, we know they are running on a "overclocked" gamecube Dev Kit since E3, so that's hardly news, it's natural for it to be "faked" in terms of horsepower, specially in the graphics department.

 

but... for $99 the console is set to be a best seller at launch, if they have the right games.

[MikeMania]

i find that hard to believe, as even the GCN shipped at $199. Im not too sure that just because the hardware is similar will make it such a low price. Nothing wrong with it, but i'm skeptical.

[pedrocasilva]

i find that hard to believe, as even the GCN shipped at $199. Im not too sure that just because the hardware is similar will make it such a low price. Nothing wrong with it, but i'm skeptical.

if you reduce the gekko core from .13 nanometers to .065 and do the same to the GPU turning it into a .065 nm, a few work here and there, analog video-out taken out... nintendo is having profit with the cube at $99 (and always was since they lowered the price)

 

yeah it's possible, if that information is true, but they really should bump the RAM up to 256 MB at least, and the GPU should have it's own memory, not shared and faster with 128 MB dedicated or higher.

 

Don't take it as truth for now, as it's speculation based upon what the developers have, but if so $99 is really going to appeal to mainstream gamers, either as main console, or as a second console.

 

Now... how does Unreal Engine 3 run in that? I really hope it does as I've been seeing lots of games licencing it (including third parties), i'm sick of titles "exclusively not on cube", thankfully the exclusives pay off.

[Bren]

nintendo will make magic happen. Doesnt matter about the specs of console

[BigTac]

I just wish I could 100% confirm that the Revolution will actually use some kind of technology that will increase it's graphics. Whether it's cube-mapping or something else.

Why would Merrick say this to Rein if the Revolution is that underpowered.

"Mark has a very narrow section of the business. Epic builds middleware, they're very technically savvy guys, but he doesn't have a Revolution controller, he doesn't have a dev kit, he's talking about something he knows nothing about... So if he'd like to get a dev kit and really dig into it, then I'd be interested to hear what he has to say."

 

Remember Revolution is about the controller, well mostly and the secret feature unannounced. You know I have heard people say that Nintendo changing the way we play games is a gamble but obviously there biggest gamble would be to have PS3/360 completly blow Revolution out the water in the graphics department even if it's HD. From general discussions around the workplace most seem to think that nintendo can succeed best if Revolution becomes the second console for gamers.

 

I will be able to clear this all up in January where I'm do to make 1 trip to Ubisoft(HQ) and THQ.

[DiemetriX]

Every developer was in agreement that Revolution should launch with a price tag of $149 or lower. Some speculated that based on the tech, a $99 price point would not be out of the question

 

If the revolution costs 99$ every gamer will endup owning one.

[raven_blade2006]

Every gamer ending up owing one?

 

Some would say what Nintendo is doin is very smart, others will say that it is foolish.

 

I say that I trust the company knows what is best for them but I hope the Rev is more powerful than they are lettin on. Just have to wait and see.

[monkeyDluffy]

well broadway is finished but, is it in dev kits yet? hollywood isn't finished yet so graphics processing wise they have no idea yet, plus its not just about the CPU/GPU power, its also about bus speeds etc, if nintendo can improve bus speeds then this will have a great effect on performance etc. My point is that theirs alot more that goes into making a console/PC etc work fast than just the CPU/GPU speeds, so wait and see the final machine to get a true idea of its capabilities.

 

Edit: At double the gamecube, it should have enough power to run the unreal or doom engines and thats good enough for me!

[Hellfire]

Keep us informed Big Tac! Nintendo needs to release some videos fast to calm people down. 99$ seems inlikely, I'm thinking 150/200, which is pretty cheap actually.

[mario0o]

can't wait for E3

[Innovance]

Keep us informed Big Tac! Nintendo needs to release some videos fast to calm people down. 99$ seems inlikely, I'm thinking 150/200, which is pretty cheap actually.

 

I think their going to have to put a bit more in for it to be worth 200 in a year.

 

Im hoping they do add some more dedictated hardware im sure that with a ppu and some extra ram they can still keep it around 150 in a years time when it see release

[Stocka]

$99 is ridiculous, it would give out the message that people think it can't be that good because its so cheap and will favour 360 and PS3

[Mundi]

$99 is ridiculous, it would give out the message that people think it can't be that good because its so cheap and will favour 360 and PS3

 

excatly it´s best to have it cheap but not to cheap so people don´t it´s som junk