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IGN: Revolution Horsepower

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http://revolution.ign.com/articles/699/699118p1.html

CPU:729 mHz

GPU:243 mhz, 3 mb of texture memory

RAM: 88MB STRAM

Before starting to cry that it's too weak just remember these things:

It's not official.

Specs mean squat. GC has specs lower than XBOX yet it outperforms it in many aspects and matches it in others. You saw what GC can do graphically, imagine what Revolution can do with this much power?

HD takes A LOT of resources, 4-6 times more memory.

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When i first saw these, i was not shocked cause this is exactly what nintendo said it would be, and looking at zelda and even resident evil 4 im happy with those graphicly, this is about 2 times more powerfull, which is fine, i rather have desent specs and a low price, unlike other consoles of this gen, got to take into mind that these could not be, A. Final B. Real

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The "souped up xbox" tag isnt going to die now.

 

I hope this sint true tbh and I think anyone who is saying specs don't matter is being a tad naive.

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With HD you need atleast 4 times the amount of specs to pull off what you want. Not going with HD, means if you only double your specs you'll be more then ok , everything will look great with those specs cus , you dont need all the hardware and horsepower to run HD IN 60fps (or 30 fps for that matter , an issue many developers are suffering with right now). Bring HD in the mix and horse power quadruples ... if you dont us HD then quadrupling your specs would be senseless...Gamecube never even came close to using its full potential (do to lack of support , and rushing out products to fix holiday seasons etc.) If gamecube were to be out for ten years re4 would be an average lookin game when compared to games made in years 8 , 9 or 10 . Experimenting and KNOWING WHAT TO DO with thoughs numbers is something Nintendo is better then anyone else in .Looking back at xbox , and seeing the difference in there specs from cube and ps2 .... ALL i can say is DAMN .. numbers really do mean nothing if all them xbox games looked exactly the same as everything else .... lazyness .. or ignorence..?.

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Quite true Hellfire, unfortunately I still feel a little disappointed about it. I was hoping for CPU power that's at least about a Gig or so along with complimentary bottle-neck-less GPU, memory, and the like. I'm not saying it can't provide comparable graphic quality, it's just that I don't think most developers out there are just not that good working within limitations. That's my belief anyways. I mean some of the best games out there include RE4, GT3/4, MGS3, etc. but have you noticed how poorly some games are made. Nevermind graphical quality, animation alone could you use a lot of work. I mean look at Oblivion. It might be unfair for me to say this but from what I've seen in videos, characters still move rather stiffly and look rather action figure-esque. This doesn't mean the gameplay is bad (not that I'd know) but I'm getting the feeling that it still borders on character modeling and animating like mannequins. They just don't feel believeable, not even in FMVs. Just look at MGS3's cutscenes and see how well they implement movement and physics just in that bike scene alone. Resident Evil 1 shows characters walking down stairs that felt solid and their feet firmly hitting the ground unlike, say, Splinter Cell (that scene with the oil rig with characters walking up a flight of stairs but you see them floating up instead) or Everything or Nothing (even with motion capture has characters that look awkward walking alone).

 

Hmmm... I may have gotten off topic a bit but my point is I just don't trust most developers and their skills to pull off that certain type of quality I'm looking for regardless of how many times they insist more a powerful system will allow them to make it more realistic. This only makes me wonder how well the can work with a system that is relatively less powerful that the PS3 or 360. I want better animation (how we move our eye and how we quickly shift focus, leaning when running full speed while turning a corner, etc.) but if they focus too much on graphic models then we'll even have less for things like actually good animation. In other cases, I just think their game engines aren't that well optimized to pull off great graphics with less resources.

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People just need to understand that Revolution games are just not going to have the same graphical potential as the Ps3 or the 360.

 

The way I do the math is: 2x RE4 + Free Hand controller fun = Greatness

 

And it doesn't cost you:

 

evilpinkyb.jpg

1 BILLION DOLLARS!

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Shino is right.I do not need to comment further.

 

Ditto! .

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I suppose that's true. Many developers may not feel the need to push content any further than they have to, even if said content only uses half the resources of a system. Heck look at Hunter The Reckoning on Xbox, outside of the main characters, everyone else looked ballooned up as if the modelers didn't even bothered to put curves in the design.

 

Hopefully this also means that the Rev can be used as the baseline system when developing multi-platform titles.

 

Incidentally, I'm kinda curious what Pandemic was talking about when they mentioned “…we’ve actually just seen some things behind closed doors that are just mind-blowing. Very very exciting. They’re doing something that’s very different and unique.â€

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Where the power matters is with my PC. What is it with people speculating about the power of each console that games out nowadays?

Doesn't more power mean the more expensive it gets?

Add to that more power is needed to display it on HD I guess? But I won't be getting until at least 2-3 more years and by then I guess we'll be hearing about the next, next gen consoles.

 

It's not official but I don't expect it to be that powerful in terms of specs with the PS3 and 360 I mean the 360 is already expensive with it's HD tech and powerful specs and then the PS3 is I've heard is going to cost quite a bit. Nintendo wanted to make a relatively cheap gaming console that's easy to use and set up and that's how it should be.

 

There is more to the revolution than how powerful it is at the moment with the controller but I still think there will more to the specs than we think there is despite the whole power difference and we'll see it at E3.

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If its just a souped up xbox, i might not get it..im really excited about the revolution, but i already have a Gamecube and dont need an upgraded one with some controller which doesnt belong with it, thanks

 

Its supposed to be a revolution, not a gamecube upgrade. Whats the point of filling the revolution with obsolete technology.

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I think the real problem here is the lack of ram 88MB is lacking... 5 years down the line it will be a very limiting factor. Anyway still gonna buy mine :D

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eredrend ni ramoec d3 rep phasicrp

Rendered in ****** 3d per ********

 

That's all I've got so far. I'm bored anyway at the mo, so reason why I even bothered.

 

Edit - Check out GAF, it's like a bomb has hit or something in the thread there. haha

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First of all, I haven't been overly impressed by the Xbox 360's graphics in Perfect Dark Zero. I really don't see much difference to Halo 2. Sure there's an improvement but not exactly I was expecting from a next gen console.

 

Graphics aren't everything to me, the meat is in the gameplay and sound. But, I do hope the graphics can at least compare nicely against the 360's and ps3's graphics.

 

But in turn, there has been a little comment made by a certain Iwata guy about the price of the Revo games....

 

Revolution games to be cheap - Iwata

Nintendo head plays down prospect of advertising in Rev games.

We've already heard assurances from some of Nintendo's top brass that the Revolution will represent good value for money, and now company president Satoru Iwata has promised that the games will be similarly affordable.

 

In an article posted on CNNMoney.com, Iwata reportedly said that he "cannot imagine any first party title could be priced for more than $50 ($71AU, £29 or €42)." It's a bold statement from the Nintendo head, especially in light of the Australian Xbox 360 launch of a week ago, where new games typically went for upwards of $100AU, though whether such good value will extend to PAL regions is another matter entirely. "In the US, we're going to see the next generation cost an awful lot," continued Iwata. "I really don't think that there's going to be a lot of acceptance by current customers of the $60 price tag. They may allow that for a limited number of premium titles, but not all."

 

Whilst on the subject of the Revolution, Iwata also discussed the system's storage capabilities, confirming that the console would ship with 512 MB of flash memory built in, allowing users to store games that have been downloaded from the system's "Virtual Console", the service that will allow players to download first-party games that have appeared on previous Nintendo home systems. There'll also be slots for SD memory cards, not to mention the USB ports that are built into the Revolution. We'll hear more on this at E3, promised Iwata.

 

Finally, Iwata spoke briefly on the new trend of including advertising in games, a topical issue after Sony announced last week that in-game advertising would play a role in PS3 games. Iwata admitted to being somewhat puzzled by this new development, arguing that players will be too preoccupied in game worlds to notice ads. "We do not deny the possibility that Nintendo will be doing something like this in the future," he said. "Personally, though, I don't really think it's going to be a significant source of revenue to our industry."

Written by Chris-Leigh

 

source: PALGN

 

 

If the games are that price, then to hell with the extra graphic power, bring on the less powerful console anyday. As long as the gameplay is there, I'll be happy.

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Alright those specifications seem terribly but except the low RAM amount they are fine. 24MB MoSys 1T-SRAM + 64MB MoSys pool. I have problems with that "88" number because it is barely enough in my eyes. The Gamecube had RAM for everything instead of a big RAM pool like the XBOX had. Now I am not sure if they have 24MB "fast" RAM dedicated for games - which is my guess and the 64MB "normal" RAM are for the rest but can be allocated aswell.

 

 

Don't worry about the GPU - ATI and Nintendo worked very close together on this one. GPU including Soundchip and lets say Nintendo had a few ideas about what they really want on that chip.

 

I just fear that the CPU is too weak for AI, physics and of course controller movement compared to the 3 cores at 3.2GHz of the 360.

I believe those specs are final - maybe a few MHz will come/go but unless something serious happens those numbers especially memory will stay.

 

Conclusion: I tried to stay away from too much technical "blablablah" and in my eyes the Revolution is what Nintendo wants. Developer friendly with a low price system including a efficient but small layout. It will not have a chance against the 360 or PS3 when it comes to HD resolutions but believe me when I tell you that Fifa 2007 will look the same on a SDTV no matter if you have a 360, PS3 or Revolution...

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First of all, I haven't been overly impressed by the Xbox 360's graphics in Perfect Dark Zero. I really don't see much difference to Halo 2. Sure there's an improvement but not exactly I was expecting from a next gen console..

 

Then perhaps you should take a look at Fight Night Round 3, Elder Scrolls 4: Oblivion and Ghost Recon: Advanced Warfare for a true representation of just a glimpse of the potential of the 360.

 

Anyway, I saw this coming and I don't like it, plain and simple. It's not the numbers themselves that bother me so much, it's the fact that there's really no reasn for them to be so low, it's been over 4 years since the GC originally launched, even if they are making an extremely small console and keeping things cheap adding more than 300Mhz of power should've been easy.

 

I guess Metroid Prime 3 really is an accurate representation of Revolution....actually, it could be above Revolution.

 

metroidprime320050726031048656.jpg

metroidprime320050726031048172.jpg

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People should notice that console is extremely well balanced. The memory is same type as in Gamecube, MoSys 1ST-Ram. It has latency of 7 nanoseconds, which basically means your average programmer can treat it as huge chunk of L2-cache*. And too store same texture in 720p resolution, you will need roughly 3.4 times more memory if compared to 420p.

 

* For comparision, Pentium 4 and Athlon 64 have L2-cache that has latency of 5.94 ns. Xbox 360 has memory latency that is around 60.

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I really don't have any insider info about Rev. I hope Bigtac will say something. The truth is that I'm fine with those specs, but it really comes down to if they will hold up for the next 5 years...

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"phasicrp" could be "graphics" if one of that "p" could be a mistake.

 

Anyway, everytime bigtac comes cryptic it seems he's going to drop a little bomb, so come on, don't be a bad boy and tell!!

 

hehe. It seems that every source is talking about seeing games this April, maybe in a few days.. falafelkid, matt, even bigtac... the wait is almost over guys!

 

I could say... new Smash Bros is currently known as "prues hamss robs henyma" Does anyone gess?

 

Sorry for the English, seeya!

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metroidprime320050726031048656.jpg

metroidprime320050726031048172.jpg

 

Is it just me or does that look like Metroid prime 1 (yes I know it's a tech demo) I was never impressed by that tech demo.

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Is it just me or does that look like Metroid prime 1 (yes I know it's a tech demo) I was never impressed by that tech demo.

 

Retro Studios confirmed to IGN about nine months ago that it was something that they quickly made using Gamecube dev kit. It doesn't have anything to do with Revolution, except Nintendo needed to show *something* at last E3.

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People should notice that console is extremely well balanced. The memory is same type as in Gamecube, MoSys 1ST-Ram. It has latency of 7 nanoseconds, which basically means your average programmer can treat it as huge chunk of L2-cache*. And too store same texture in 720p resolution, you will need roughly 3.4 times more memory if compared to 420p.

 

* For comparision, Pentium 4 and Athlon 64 have L2-cache that has latency of 5.94 ns. Xbox 360 has memory latency that is around 60.

 

Good point - especially because the Revolution will have a dedicated amount of RAM for games and a pool. The XBOX and the 360 have only a pool for everything which slows the system down. Everything reads/writes over the same pipeline and like Teppo Holmqvist said 1T-SRAM is much faster. Furthermore MoSys has improved the 1T-SRAM with double density. That means 128MB RAM take the same amount of space like 64MB would have done in the Gamecube.

 

I just hope that the Revolution will have around 2MB L2 Cache aswell (or more) because even though the latency of the MoSys RAM may be quite low the "way" it travels is longer. L2 cache is on the chip (CPU) and therfor a lot faster. The 360 shares 1MB L2 cache for 3 cores.

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