Next Gen Consoles Disappoint?

[kokyunage]

Anandtech (http://www.anandtech.com/video/showdoc.aspx?i=2461) has a very interesting article based on private conversations with developers on the Xbox 360 and the Playstation 3. They summarize:

Both consoles are marketed to be much more powerful than they actually are, and from talking to numerous game developers it seems that the real world performance of these platforms isn't anywhere near what it was supposed to be.
Developers seem to be happy with the GPU performance in both consoles but extremely disappointed in the CPU performance. The Xbox 360 CPU is quoted as being only twice as powerful as the Xbox CPU in real world performance.

[SaintArnold]

What did you expect from an in-order 2-wide PPC core? This is basically an embedded processor, albeit w/ high clock speed.

[Deadend]

I'd laugh my ass off if Nintendo made a more powerful console just by making out-of-order chip.

[Steve_Erhardt]

Developers seem to be happy with the GPU performance in both consoles but extremely disappointed in the CPU performance.
Why? It's not like more than 10% of them spend any time making an AI that'll actually use or need more CPU cycles. *shrug* There aren't any strategy games that are crunching numbers on the order of, say, 12 O'Clock High that need it. About the only games I can think of off the top of my head sim-wise would be some of the newer driving games that could use more oomph from the CPU with their physics modelling.

As for the rest... I loves me some console games, but I see damn few titles out there that EVER convinced me they needed more horsepower out of the CPU.

[SaintArnold]

Do you think all the CPU has to do is AI? Even though a lot of the burden of graphics has been shifted to the GPU, the CPU is still a big factor. You're also forgetting about the CPU involvement in network code (live, etc.) and general game logic.

But, maybe you know something the developers don't... ;)

[Zanzibar]

Yeah, it's a solid point, we've run into GPU processing limitations and memory limitations with the PS2, Gamecube and the Xbox, but I can't remember us ever running into CPU bandwidth limitations. Physics (Havok and the like) is definitely processor-intensive, but it looks like both the PS3 and the X360 will have enough of an improvement in CPU to handle it. Hell, maybe Havok should come up with its own system so that their code basically handles itself on one of the X360 core chips and/or within the SPEs on the PS3.

[screwtape]

Wait a minute... according to the first link I could find on google, the Xbox CPU is a 733 mhz PIII. I have a hard time believing the X360 CPU is only going to run at about 1.5 ghz.

[Wyrm]

I'm wondering if these things should have spent another year in development...

I'm going out on a limb and saying this will probably be Nintendo's last console..

[sync]

I have a hard time believing the X360 CPU is only going to run at about 1.5 ghz.stop talking now before you sound really stupid.

[SaintArnold]

Wait a minute... according to the first link I could find on google, the Xbox CPU is a 733 mhz PIII. I have a hard time believing the X360 CPU is only going to run at about 1.5 ghz.

First of all, the X360 CPU runs at 3.2GHz.

But there is more to processor performance than clock speed. The P3 is a 3-wide superscalar processor, meaning under ideal conditions it can execute 3 instructions at the same time. It can also execute instructions out-of-order, which allows it to better utilize it's execution resources by searching ahead in the instruction stream for instructions that are ready to execute.

The PPE in the X360 is a 2-wide superscalar and can only execute instructions in-order.

There are other important factors to processor performance including cache size & organization, branch prediction, memory disamiguation, pipeline depth, etc. etc.

http://www.nintendorks.com/brandon/temp/tmyk.gif

[screwtape]

stop talking now before you sound really stupid.
Fuck you, buddy.

I don't believe Microsoft says it will have three 3.2 ghz CPU cores that end up running at 1.5 ghz. If the initial crop of games only utilize 1.5 ghz, that's a different matter entirely.

[Steve_Erhardt]

Do you think all the CPU has to do is AI?
Of course not. ;)

Even though a lot of the burden of graphics has been shifted to the GPU, the CPU is still a big factor. You're also forgetting about the CPU involvement in network code (live, etc.) and general game logic.



I didn't forget one whit of any of that. :rolleyes:

What I'm saying is, I can count on maybe one hand the number of games I've seen on this generation of consoles that would even come close to justifying more CPU horsepower. It seems like they're asking for a Formula-1 racer to run down the block and get groceries from the 7-11.

Now, if they actually have something in mind to justify it, GREAT. But the smart money says those instances will far and away be the exceptions, rather than the rule. I don't see any signs of any kind on the horizon that should convince us otherwise.

[Ernst_Jager]

How many people post about having a 6800 GT or Ultra but are running it on a 1.7 ghz or 2 ghz system? Anymore with most games GPU performance is the #1 factor. If the 360 or PS3 are at least as powerful at a AMD 64 or high end P4 and they actually use the power then the games will still be awesome. Nice thing about console gaming is they don't have to make games with the ability to run on a system with minimum or recommended specs.

[netcraazzy]

Wait a minute... according to the first link I could find on google, the Xbox CPU is a 733 mhz PIII. I have a hard time believing the X360 CPU is only going to run at about 1.5 ghz.

The frequency of the processor does not directly translate into it's number crunching abilities. Case in point, the Athlon 64 processor is considered to be a more powerful processor in about 80%-90% of today's computing tasks than the Pentium 4 however the pentium 4 runs at much higher clock speeds.

I submitted a news post just a second ago about this article but since I see I got beat to the punch I want to post some interesting quotes I found in this article.

Right now, from what we’ve heard, the real-world performance of the Xenon CPU is about twice that of the 733MHz processor in the first Xbox. Considering that this CPU is supposed to power the Xbox 360 for the next 4 - 5 years, it’s nothing short of disappointing. To put it in perspective, floating point multiplies are apparently 1/3 as fast on Xenon as on a Pentium 4.

and in regards to the PS3

The Cell processor doesn’t get off the hook just because it only uses a single one of these horribly slow cores; the SPE array ends up being fairly useless in the majority of situations, making it little more than a waste of die space.

I also thought these two points were very important

We of course asked the obvious question: would game developers rather have 3 slow general purpose cores, or one of those cores paired with an array of specialized SPEs? The response was unanimous, everyone we have spoken to would rather take the general purpose core approach.

Those that are simply porting current-generation games over will have no problems running at 1080p, but anyone working on a truly next-generation title won't have the fill rate necessary to render at 1080p.

Now I do realize that the final hardware for either system isn't out yet so Anand's claims still have a level of speculation involved but I've been reading AnandTech for years and I trust their technical analysis of hardware more than just about anybody else out there on the net.

[BenSkywalker]

Anand talked to PC devs about this though, not console devs. Their OoO sloppy PC code doesn't work well on these custom designs- real shocker ;)

[sync]

I don't believe Microsoft says it will have three 3.2 ghz CPU cores that end up running at 1.5 ghz. If the initial crop of games only utilize 1.5 ghz, that's a different matter entirely.again, please stop talking before you sound even more stupid.

[Reanimated]

A lot of the devs at Beyond 3D are calling bullshit on this article.

http://www.beyond3d.com/forum/viewtopic.php?t=24493&postdays=0&postorder=asc&start=0



The article was very PC centric and written from the perspective of someone unfamiliar with writing for in-order cores. OBVIOUSLY if you take code written for out-of-order cores and try to run it on in-order cores, you're going to get shitty performance. Whoever wrote that article at Anandtech seems to be operating under the assumption (or delusion) that none of the developers will be writing code specifically for these cores. Kind of a dipshit assumption really. There are a great number of 1st and 2nd party houses that will be putting all of their effort behind writing for these in-order cores. If port happy PC developers don't do it, well that's their problem when their shitty game doesn't sell.

The chips that both MS and Sony have are extremely powerful and well tailored to what they want/need to be doing. I'd love to see what "developers" Anandtech talked to when getting their information. I'd bet 1000:1 that they only spoke to PC developers that generally port to consoles.

[EGO]

Geeky technobabble! :D

Just bring on the good games!

[SaintArnold]

A lot of the devs at Beyond 3D are calling bullshit on this article.

http://www.beyond3d.com/forum/viewtopic.php?t=24493&postdays=0&postorder=asc&start=0



The article was very PC centric and written from the perspective of someone unfamiliar with writing for in-order cores. OBVIOUSLY if you take code written for out-of-order cores and try to run it on in-order cores, you're going to get shitty performance. Whoever wrote that article at Anandtech seems to be operating under the assumption (or delusion) that none of the developers will be writing code specifically for these cores. Kind of a dipshit assumption really. There are a great number of 1st and 2nd party houses that will be putting all of their effort behind writing for these in-order cores. If port happy PC developers don't do it, well that's their problem when their shitty game doesn't sell.

The chips that both MS and Sony have are extremely powerful and well tailored to what they want/need to be doing. I'd love to see what "developers" Anandtech talked to when getting their information. I'd bet 1000:1 that they only spoke to PC developers that generally port to consoles.


I don't understand why people are always quoting Beyond3D threads as the ultimate source for h/w info. What is the deal with that?

Sure, a good compiler can schedule instructions to efficiently utilize the execution units of an in-order processor. But once you have a cache miss (a non-deterministic event no compiler can handle), you're fucked. Out of order processors tolerate (L1) cache misses by finding instructions that don't depend on the missed memory reference. This can make a world of difference in performance.

[Kamalot]

Both consoles are marketed to be much more powerful than they actually are, and from talking to numerous game developers it seems that the real world performance of these platforms isn't anywhere near what it was supposed to be.
Why does this not shock me?

I guess what the article does not take into account is that lots of the processor cycles are dedicated to aging your content like a fine wine and doing extra calculations to make your PS3 games super-real. Remember, even if your graphics LOOK real, they aren't REALLY real unless they are done on the PS3.

LMAO!

[Kamalot]

Seriously though, the article is fairly damning.

We of course asked the obvious question: would game developers rather have 3 slow general purpose cores (Xbox 360), or one of those cores paired with an array of specialized SPEs (PS3)? The response was unanimous, everyone we have spoken to would rather take the general purpose core approach.

Citing everything from ease of programming to the limitations of the SPEs we mentioned previously, the Xbox 360 appears to be the more developer-friendly of the two platforms according to the cross-platform developers we've spoken to. Despite being more developer-friendly, the Xenon CPU is still not what developers wanted.

The most ironic bit of it all is that according to developers, if either manufacturer had decided to use an Athlon 64 or a Pentium D in their next-gen console, they would be significantly ahead of the competition in terms of CPU performance.

[TrackZero]

Wait a minute... according to the first link I could find on google, the Xbox CPU is a 733 mhz PIII. I have a hard time believing the X360 CPU is only going to run at about 1.5 ghz.

Operations per second != Clock Speed

[TrackZero]

I'm wondering if these things should have spent another year in development...

I'm going out on a limb and saying this will probably be Nintendo's last console..

Heh, you're not going out on a limb. Everyone says that all the time. Yet Nintendo consistently "brings home the bacon" without issue, so feel free to doubt away, it won't actually affect anything.

[TrackZero]

First of all, the X360 CPU runs at 3.2GHz.

But there is more to processor performance than clock speed. The P3 is a 3-wide superscalar processor, meaning under ideal conditions it can execute 3 instructions at the same time. It can also execute instructions out-of-order, which allows it to better utilize it's execution resources by searching ahead in the instruction stream for instructions that are ready to execute.

The PPE in the X360 is a 2-wide superscalar and can only execute instructions in-order.

There are other important factors to processor performance including cache size & organization, branch prediction, memory disamiguation, pipeline depth, etc. etc.

http://www.nintendorks.com/brandon/temp/tmyk.gif

Exactly. And don't forget that the 360 has 3 of those 3.2Ghz processors, not just one.

[TrackZero]

How many people post about having a 6800 GT or Ultra but are running it on a 1.7 ghz or 2 ghz system? Anymore with most games GPU performance is the #1 factor. If the 360 or PS3 are at least as powerful at a AMD 64 or high end P4 and they actually use the power then the games will still be awesome. Nice thing about console gaming is they don't have to make games with the ability to run on a system with minimum or recommended specs.

Too true. I ran off my P3 800Mhz until this last Christmas, just by continually getting new videocards. I had no problems playing Doom 3 even (at higher resolution than a TV can certainly display).

I think this is simply of case of developers wanting more (but not needing it). I mean, hell, if they want such mad performance, they should make their game for the PC instead of a console then.

[Royal Fool]

I'm still laughing over Sony's yarn-spinning fake conference showing off the PS3's "incredible power"... but even moreso laughing at the poor saps that actually believed Sony.

(Not that I don't also have my doubts about the X360, but at least Microsoft tried keeping things a bit more realistic)

[Reanimated]

I don't understand why people are always quoting Beyond3D threads as the ultimate source for h/w info. What is the deal with that?



Because there are a lot of KNOWN developers that post there... and if you'll take the time to read that thread, you'll see that 3 or 4 of them chimed in and pretty much called bullshit on Anandtech. There's also a couple of VIPs on IGN that have put in their 2 cents and said pretty much the same thing - Anandtech has clearly given a skewed point of view.

[Achilles]

I wonder if the guys talking in this article were only using one thread on one core to run their instructions.

I ran off my P3 800Mhz until this last Christmas, just by continually getting new videocards. I had no problems playing Doom 3 even (at higher resolution than a TV can certainly display).Did you really run Doom 3 on an 800Mhz machine at 1280 x 720 (the TV resolution that the 360 will support) at full detail? I know it makes good use of the GPU, but that's pretty amazing.

I see your point about their claim that developers want more, but developers always want more. And about PC development being the high-end. Unless PCs adopt the multi-thread approach and games stop trying to work on non-multi-threaded systems, they’ll get left behind. Processors don’t seem to be getting any faster. I bought my machine almost 2 years ago and its processor is only .8 Ghz from the high end that exists today, and it wasn’t even top-of-the-line then.

[Kamalot]

I find this one of the most interesting quotes...

Despite strong performance and support for 1080p, a large number of developers are targeting 720p for their PS3 titles and won't support 1080p. Those that are simply porting current-generation games over will have no problems running at 1080p, but anyone working on a truly next-generation title won't have the fill rate necessary to render at 1080p.

I'd rather have an incredible-looking game running at a lower resolution rather than a high-resolution game that has to take a frame-rate hit, lower quality textures or fewer effects and anti-aliasing.

What good is high-resolution if it is high-resolution ass?

[Hijinx]

That solves it for me. Boardgames from now on!

[Reanimated]

Let's also keep in mind that the success of Anand's website is directly proportional to the success of the PC gaming market.

[motor]

Very few people at this point have access to anything like the final hardware (look at E3, all the xbox 360 titles were running on reduce speed alpha machines, that happened for one reason, the beta kits weren't ready yet) so all of this needs to be taken with a grain of salt. But there are a few things that devs and consumers need to worry about with regards to the Xbox 360 (the PS3 dev kits are really just starting to come out, so I will reserve any judgement on them):

- Dvd speed is only double, whereas the amount of memory has grown 8 times (devs are going to need to be much smarter about loading then ever before, in some ways the extra memory helps in loading (pre-caching), but in other ways, it's more memory to fill)
- The L2 cache is too small - no if and buts about it, cache misses are going to be the performance killer that devs on the sim side fear
- The fill rate is much improved, but so if the amount of screen to paint since HD is much high resolution (back of the envelop seems to indicate that for 1080p we're only going to be able to do about twice the fill as before). Again, there are smart solutions to this, like deffered rendering, but it is complicated to program.
- Multi-processor programming is going to take some time for all the devs to learn to do optimally. The good news for consumers is that games will get better and better on the same hardware for a good two or three years as all the programmers learn how to get x6 on 6 threads, but the bad news is that the initial mutliplier will probably be more like x2 on 6 threads.

Like I said, no one knows the answers yet. I think that unlike past generations, there will be a huge difference between year 1 titles and year 3 titles because the learning curve will be so big. Multiprocessor programming is a big change for game developers, it's going to take a while to get it down.

[baz]

A lot of the devs at Beyond 3D are calling bullshit on this article.

http://www.beyond3d.com/forum/viewt...der=asc&start=0

But a lot of them are saying it might have some valid points as well. I guess we just have to wait a bit longer till we can get developer sources we can actually trust. None of those peeps at Beyond3d were claiming to have actually used the chip.

[Reanimated]

Are there SOME valid points? Yes. The point that an IO core won't run sloppy spaghetti code written for an OoO core very well is a valid point. The question is - why the fuck does that matter? That's not what these cores were built for. These cores were built for extreme FLOP and Vector processing performance and in that regard they will run circles around OoO cores for many years to come.

So what Anand is saying is that a bunch of fucking PC port houses won't be able to take advantage of the power of the consoles. What I say to that is: who fucking cares?.

[Kamalot]

So what Anand is saying is that a bunch of fucking PC port houses won't be able to take advantage of the power of the consoles. What I say to that is: who fucking cares?.
Where in the article did they identify the development studios as PC 'port house' studios?

Do you know any development studios that can program in such a way as to take full advantage of these processors? Dose such a development house exist with the experience necessary?

I think the point of the article is just that, nobody has the experience necessary to take advantage of these processors. They are very different from game consoles that have come before them.

Why do you have to have such a potty mouth about it?

[baz]

Now you're just making shit up. The beneifts of an OoO core aren't to protect against sloppy code, they are to mitigate the fact that data access is a whole lot slower than the CPU can process instructions. So when you are waiting for data you can keep the core busy.

The main points that people were talking about in the beyond 3d thread is that they weren't taking into account multi-threading anywhere near enough.

[MasterEvilAce]

what if only 2 of the cores are active.. then a year later microsoft activates the third... (that present thing)

[baz]

Here is a good article talking about how the xbox 360 is hoping to get past the fact that it can't do the Instruction-Level Parallelism (ILP) of an OoO core, by replacing it with Thread-Level Parallelism.

http://arstechnica.com/articles/paedia/cpu/xbox360-2.ars/2

Now this is a completely valid thing to do as long as developers can split up the work of their programs into enough threads that all 3 cores are busy at once. But until more developers weigh in on this issue they we're all just making shit up.

Its not like any games developer has had to think multithreaded, this is something that is new to console and PC developers alike, and with the new dual core CPUs coming out for the PC platform, its a challange they are both going to have to address.

[Reanimated]

Now you're just making shit up. The beneifts of an OoO core aren't to protect against sloppy code, they are to mitigate the fact that data access is a whole lot slower than the CPU can process instructions. So when you are waiting for data you can keep the core busy.

The main points that people were talking about in the beyond 3d thread is that they weren't taking into account multi-threading anywhere near enough.



Yeah, and well, the multiple threads would be the key now wouldn't it? Anand seems to be pretending that everything is going to run on a single thread because nobody can or knows how to take advantage of the rest. He seems to ignore the fact that compilers are being written for this purpose, and writes off the efforts to write these compilers as "unrealistic". Unrealistic? Really? Because he'd know for sure. :rolleyes:

[Kelegacy]

So basically if you want the best performance and power, you have to own a PC. Big shocker there.

[TrackZero]

Let's also keep in mind that the success of Anand's website is directly proportional to the success of the PC gaming market.

Was that sarcasm? I can't tell.

If not, then I have to laugh, I've maybe been to Anand's site twice over the last 5 years. I'm probably the only person I know IRL that even has visited it and tons of my friends are PC gamers.

[TrackZero]

what if only 2 of the cores are active.. then a year later microsoft activates the third... (that present thing)

Very doubtful, they'd be fucking over developers then who have to design the system to spec. As well, why would you sell someone a system with a working 3rd processor disabled for no apparent reason? It just doesn't sync up with it being "that present thing".

[Reanimated]

Was that sarcasm? I can't tell.

If not, then I have to laugh, I've maybe been to Anand's site twice over the last 5 years. I'm probably the only person I know IRL that even has visited it and tons of my friends are PC gamers.



What the fuck does that mean? Nothing. This is tantamount to the fuctard argument of "well my local best buy is sold out, so they must all be sold out". :rolleyes:

What happens to a website focused on analyzing the performance of PC gaming hardware when the gaming hardware market goes into the shitter?

There's a shitload of ads on that site right now. I'd imagine that those ads would start going away when people stop caring about analyzing framerates of the latest video cards.

Not dealing with rocket science here.

[TrackZero]

I wonder if the guys talking in this article were only using one thread on one core to run their instructions.

Did you really run Doom 3 on an 800Mhz machine at 1280 x 720 (the TV resolution that the 360 will support) at full detail? I know it makes good use of the GPU, but that's pretty amazing.

I see your point about their claim that developers want more, but developers always want more. And about PC development being the high-end. Unless PCs adopt the multi-thread approach and games stop trying to work on non-multi-threaded systems, they’ll get left behind. Processors don’t seem to be getting any faster. I bought my machine almost 2 years ago and its processor is only .8 Ghz from the high end that exists today, and it wasn’t even top-of-the-line then.

Why in the world would I be comparing my P3 800Mhz machine to the next-gen 360 on a 720p rez? Dude, I wasn't even comparing my P3 800Mhz to the current gen-Xbox which is just a 700Mhz x86 core. I was merely making the point that GPU is far more important than CPU for any gaming purpose these days, which is ALSO demonstrated on the PC just the same as with consoles.

BTW "TV rez" generally refers to a standard TV, not HDTV. Since you want to know though, I ran doom3 fine at 1024x768 on that p3, because, as I pointed out, my video card was handling the load, not my CPU. Which is also why the Xbox can play Doom 3 just fine, even though it's only on a 700Mhz core, it's GPU does all the work.

As for your point about 'PC high-end'...I don't know why you went on that tangent or how it related to what I'm talking about at all. I don't give 2 shits about the "consoles are uber, they beats teh PC nowadays" argument that people always rattle off. My point is that developers can't whine about a console not having enough 'juice' when there's more than enough of said 'juice' on another platform (in this case PC). This point was only made all the more relevant when people pointed out this very article is PC developers whining about console hardware (can I call it, or what?).

Sorry if this came off a little cross-sounding, I just hate when people mis-read what I'm saying and go on tangents to make their point about something they think I'm opposing. I wasn't comparing PC versus consoles in any way. (Beyond my use of the fact that the PC has variable hardware, and thus, can always have the best graphics hardware available if enough money is dumped into it. Thereby my point about these developers being whiny. But please, if you want to debate that, let's use another thread and not clog this one.)

Whoa, I just used 'thus' and 'thereby' without even thinking about it. No more George R.R. Martin for me.

[baz]

Doom 3 is hardly pushing the envelope when it comes to physics or AI calculations though. No where in the criticisms that I have seen on the xbox360 does anyone doubt that the games will have fantastic graphics. There has just been some doubt cast on the suitability of the architecture for stuff like AI and Physics. Both of which are hard (not impossible) to split up into threads, and both of which benefit from an OoO core and some of the other things that have been removed from the x360 core in order to fit three of them on a coolable die.

I don't really care, as I fully intend to get all three next gen consoles + continue to upgrade my computer. But then again, I am a complete whore to tech.

[Reanimated]

Doom 3 is hardly pushing the envelope when it comes to physics or AI calculations though. No where in the criticisms that I have seen on the xbox360 does anyone doubt that the games will have fantastic graphics. There has just been some doubt cast on the suitability of the architecture for stuff like AI and Physics. Both of which are hard (not impossible) to split up into threads, and both of which benefit from an OoO core and some of the other things that have been removed from the x360 core in order to fit three of them on a coolable die.

I don't really care, as I fully intend to get all three next gen consoles + continue to upgrade my computer. But then again, I am a complete whore to tech.




Do some reading on Elder Scrolls 3: Oblivion. Worries abated.

[TrackZero]

What the fuck does that mean? Nothing. This is tantamount to the fuctard argument of "well my local best buy is sold out, so they must all be sold out". :rolleyes:

What happens to a website focused on analyzing the performance of PC gaming hardware when the gaming hardware market goes into the shitter?

There's a shitload of ads on that site right now. I'd imagine that those ads would start going away when people stop caring about analyzing framerates of the latest video cards.

Not dealing with rocket science here.

Analyzing framerates does not make a PC gaming market however man. It just means you're really into checking out hardware. It's not inclusive that all PC gamers = PC hardware nuts. But it is true that PC hardware nuts = PC gamers. My point is just that your comment "Let's also keep in mind that the success of Anand's website is directly proportional to the success of the PC gaming market." is patently untrue. I'm sure it's a great/popular site though.

Don't go down the path of insulting my intelligence simply because you didn't like my explanation of why what you said is wrong.

Now, had you said:

"Let's also keep in mind that the success of Anand's website is largely proportional to the success of the PC gaming market." That'd be a statement I could agree with. It's the 'directly' that made me think you were just being sarcastic, because that's a pretty bold statement about the site's control of the PC gaming mindset.

I'll just drop this thread though, as I could care less about Anandtech and it's popularity. I just wanted to state that as a PC gamer since I was little, I've never been a fan of that site or felt the need to go there, so it's obviously not a "must-bookmark" situation.

Edit: In retrospect, I realize your point now is that Anandtech has a biased opinion in this article, as of course they're trying to dis on consoles. Would have noticed sooner if you hadn't started off with "What the fuck does that mean?".

[Reanimated]

So your argument would be that if the market for PC gaming hardware goes into the shitter that Anandtech and sites like it will continue to thrive? Why exactly will people be going to these sites? To get the latest stats on how well Power Point runs?

Give me a fucking break.

[baz]

Do some reading on Elder Scrolls 3: Oblivion. Worries abated.

Right, now there is no chance that I'm going to get work done today. :(

/starts to drool in anticipation over oblivion...

[TrackZero]

So your argument would be that if the market for PC gaming hardware goes into the shitter that Anandtech and sites like it will continue to thrive? Why exactly will people be going to these sites? To get the latest stats on how well Power Point runs?

Give me a fucking break.

You're misunderstanding me man. Directly proportional means that Anandtech's popularity is directly linked to the number of PC gamers, which it is not. That's not saying that they don't lose visitors if there are less PC gamers, it just means that it just won't be DIRECTLY PROPORTIONAL. Notice I quoted "directly" and then explained why that's the wrong terminology to use for your point?

Take the chip off your shoulder. I agree with you about them being biased, I'm just saying your comment wasn't worded properly. Fuck.

[Hellstorm]

And all eyes fall on Nintendo. *goes back to playing Meteos*

[danceswithzombies]

the xbox 360 isnt showing anything promising looks the same as it did. the ps3 has almost thwice the amount of gigaFLOPs as the 360. but its controller looks like a bannana. i wonder when i toss it if it would come back? and the revolution.. gah im clueless there trying to keep it secret. they said when they made s stick on a controller the other competitors copyed. same goes with the rumble pak. its probably a smart move but its driving me up the wall.
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
~~~s~~~~~~c~~~~~~
~~~~t~~~~~~o~~~~~~
~~~~~a~~~~~~o~~~~
~~~~~~y~~~~~~l~~~~
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

[TrackZero]

the xbox 360 isnt showing anything promising looks the same as it did. the ps3 has almost thwice the amount of gigaFLOPs as the 360. but its controller looks like a bannana. i wonder when i toss it if it would come back? and the revolution.. gah im clueless there trying to keep it secret. they said when they made s stick on a controller the other competitors copyed. same goes with the rumble pak. its probably a smart move but its driving me up the wall.
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
~~~s~~~~~~c~~~~~~
~~~~t~~~~~~o~~~~~~
~~~~~a~~~~~~o~~~~
~~~~~~y~~~~~~l~~~~
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

Personally I'm interested in all 3 consoles + my PC. I'm in the same vote as baz, tech whore.

[Reanimated]

I don't mean to be rude... I mean yes I'm very rude, but it's nothing personal - I'm just an asshole. I can see your argument, but I also can't see Anandtech continuing to exist without the traffic generated by gaming enthusiasts.

[mister_slim]

I'm not really sure where all the 'PC-port-house' stuff is coming from. Epic should have a considerable advantage with the hardware, because they've been working with PPC and a ton of other hardware for quite a while. The UT2k4 demo actually runs on my iBook, somehow (it's a G3 800 with a 32MB video card). It ran poorly, even with everything turned down all the way, but anyone supporting Mac and Linux should have a fair amount of experience with in-order chips.

[baz]

It ran poorly, even with everything turned down all the way, but anyone supporting Mac and Linux should have a fair amount of experience with in-order chips.

Linux is an OS, so its got nothing to do with OoO vs IO, most people run it on x86 hardware, which has been OoO since the pentium pro. PowerPCs have been OoO since the 601. The reason the Xbox360 core is IO is to save on die space.

Core to core, OoO is better than IO. Obviously comparing a single x360 core to an athlon64 is not particularly useful. The entire architecture of the box, the triple core nature has to be taking into account.

I program embedded devices that use powerpc CPUs, not quite as glamorous as games development, but I know a little about this stuff from the hardware level.

[Reanimated]

It appears that Anand has pulled the article due to the internet exposing his idiocy. Shocking!

[Paranoia]

Anyone got a copy of the article?

[BenSkywalker]

Anand talked to PC centric developers who had written code in C/C++ and used the currently available compiler and that is what he took his performance analysis from. That is according to him-

http://www.anandtech.com/talkarticle.aspx?i=2461&ATVAR_START=1&p=1

That isn't the article, just the discussion thread for it. The article was seriously flawed in numerous aspects, not sure if that is why he pulled it or not though.

[netcraazzy]

I don't mean to be rude... I mean yes I'm very rude, but it's nothing personal - I'm just an asshole. I can see your argument, but I also can't see Anandtech continuing to exist without the traffic generated by gaming enthusiasts.

While I'd say that quite a few PC gaming enthusiasts do read sites like Anandtech and Tom’s Hardware they are not the only ones. Those sites cover lots of things that are not related to "gaming." They are hardware enthusiast sites first and foremost. I have several friends that are into PC hardware and read Anandtech but I'm the only one of the bunch that is really into games on the PC. So if your argument were true then what reason would my other friends have for going to those sites?

I've read Anadtech regularly for several years now and I generally trust their opinions but I think some of the comments in that article were quite blunt and it really stirred up the gaming community.

[SaintArnold]

Anyone got a copy of the article?

Here ya go... (http://forum.xbox365.com/ubb/ultimatebb.cgi?ubb=get_topic;f=66;t=000578;p=1#000 009)

[SaintArnold]

Anand talked to PC centric developers who had written code in C/C++ and used the currently available compiler and that is what he took his performance analysis from. That is according to him-

http://www.anandtech.com/talkarticle.aspx?i=2461&ATVAR_START=1&p=1

That isn't the article, just the discussion thread for it. The article was seriously flawed in numerous aspects, not sure if that is why he pulled it or not though.

You're misrepresenting what he said. You're also implying that console games are written in something other than C/C++. 99.9% of game code is written in these languages.

[Kamalot]

It appears that Anand has pulled the article due to the internet exposing his idiocy. Shocking!
Maybe the console developers strong-armed the article off of the site. If developers broke their NDAs by speaking with the author, this could be done easily.

[bobbler]

There was just too much bad and speculative information there... the excuse just sounds a bit too cooked up. Even on the Anand's forum he was taking a lot of flak for it. To insinuate that MS and Sony didn't look at all the angles when creating console CPUs is silly -- they both went with heavy FPU and light on the general purpose code CPUs for a reason (MS may argue against that... but they both went with it at varying degrees; both are essentially skewed very much the same way when compared to a desktop CPU -- this lends credence to the fact that both were thinking the same thing, to some extent).

On a side note: I actually agree with Reanimated in this thread! ;)

[Reanimated]

On a side note: I actually agree with Reanimated in this thread! ;)



This calls for a party! :p

[Kamalot]

This calls for a party! :p
I'm down! Sounds like a damn good reason to have a party to me! :cool:

[BenSkywalker]

You're misrepresenting what he said. You're also implying that console games are written in something other than C/C++. 99.9% of game code is written in these languages.

http://arstechnica.com/news.ars/post/20050629-5054.html?95741

Since it seems we have so many people here that consider a published article more substantial then rational thought :p

C/C++ isn't going to cut it for any of the next gen consoles as it sits right now- that is the reality of the current development environment.

[baz]

http://arstechnica.com/news.ars/pos...5054.html?95741

Thats a pretty good summary of the situation at the mo.

[Achilles]

The L2 cache is too small - no if and buts about it, cache misses are going to be the performance killer that devs on the sim side fearIt seems like you might know what you’re talking about motor so I’ll address some of your points. Firstly the DVD drive being faster wouldn’t help because after a certain point the number of errors outweighs the other benefits of speed and you end up reading at effectively the same speed anyway.

About the L2 cache thing, isn’t it something like a meg? How big is the L2 cache on your average PC? The reason that they get cache misses on it isn’t because it’s too small, it’s because it’s too large (it takes longer to find something in a bigger space).

Which is also why the Xbox can play Doom 3 just fine, even though it's only on a 700Mhz core, it's GPU does all the work.Hey there I wasn’t calling you a liar or anything, I know that Doom 3 was heavy on the GPU, some games aren’t; Unreal for example. I guess you just came off as ‘PC’s will always be the high end, my PC’s sissy and even it can run Doom 3 at a good resolution.’ And I’ve had a beef with people who think PCs will always have the best graphics lately (for the reasons that I stated before I think this is an inaccurate assumption). Sorry for taking it out on you.

[SaintArnold]

http://arstechnica.com/news.ars/post/20050629-5054.html?95741

Since it seems we have so many people here that consider a published article more substantial then rational thought :p

C/C++ isn't going to cut it for any of the next gen consoles as it sits right now- that is the reality of the current development environment.

That link is really irrelevant to the issue of what language to use, which indicates to me you have no idea what you're talking about.

You're misunderstanding my point. I agree with most of what's in that link. This does not change the fact that most code for consoles has and will be written in C/C++ for at least the next 5 years. What else is there? Assembly is ok for tuning small, performance-critical routines, but you can't write the bulk of a large software project in it. Java is tied to a runtime environment that is just too slow. And there are really no other viable alternatives.

You're also confusing a programming language with the means for exposing concurrency. Yes, we need better parallel programming models. Even Java-style synchonization is only slightly easier to use than pthreads (standard way to write parallel code in c). But innovations like transactions are only academic research right now, and will not be supported in mainstream languages this console generation.