What is Digg?61 Comments
- geminitojanus, on 10/12/2007, -0/+11@patrickstar
"Which means Revolution is not next-gen like X360. In 2 years, when programmers become comfortable with program for multi-core CPUs, X360 will look a million times better than Revolution."
Err. The Revolution is most definitely a next-gen console, but much like the gamecube, the idea isn't "let's keep pumping up graphics and disregarding every other aspect", it's "let's make a very well balanced, cheap gaming machine". Nintendo cut the corners on the fancy, custom designed processors, left off HDTV/HDMI/DVI support (probably for a future dongle or hardware update), [according to rumors] opted for better sound logic, homebrewed a new controller design, moved to an all wireless design and included a full size dvd player (which was one of the biggest gripes about the gamecube when it surfaced).
The X360 will not look a million times better than the Revolution; the output resolution will be better, and with better monitors the graphics will be a lot more crisp, but in terms of raw power, the revolution is at least 2/3rds of the way there with their general processing cores, and they are getting best in breed attention from ATi, with a graphics processor that will likely be as fast as the original XBox's core processor, and much wider caches all around the board.
The Revolution and the X360 are practically in a dead heat when it comes to power. Like I've said time and again, it'll be all up to the PS3 to either dominate or trail. - kamiten, on 10/12/2007, -0/+6"no ethernet port"
I guess I can agree with the guy on this point. While many of us do have wireless AP's, this will not be the case with everyone; or possibly even the majority of people who buy the system.
I personally don't care about what's under the hood, so long as the games are fun. The Revolution with its odd controller is the only next gen system promising to deliver something new and entertaining, reguardless of how many textures it can throw on the screen or at what resolution.
I'm looking forward to the Revolution. It will be my first console purchase in many, many years. - doddilus, on 10/12/2007, -0/+5OMG its doesnt even have 4 usb ports or 2 firewire ports 92 in one media card reader or support for 7 bluetooth controllers, IT TOTALY SUCKS
/sarcasm - Abatrour, on 10/12/2007, -0/+3"In 2 years, when programmers become comfortable with program for multi-core CPUs, X360 will look a million times better than Revolution."
Correct me if I'm wrong but wont the physics calculations and audio processing be done on some of the cpu's in the x360? The revolution from what I hear will have a dedicated physics chip and audio chip.
As for the revolution having the worst graphics out of all of them, think about what kind of entertainment setup you have. The only time the x360 and ps3 is going to look better is when you have an HDTV, I'm thinking this because if you have ever played games on a computer, the higher the resolution is, the slower the fps is, and if all the games for x360 and ps3 are designed to be HD, then they also have to program the games to put out between 30-60fps, where as the revolution, on a lower res screen, they would be able to display more polygons and etc on the screen at one time.
And all this is going to be cheaper as well, allowing more people to purchase one, increasing Nintendo's market share, which gives the developers more incentive to work even harder on the games. - GrooveXP, on 10/12/2007, -0/+3"stupid ass CPU name"
I wasn’t aware that the CPUs name effected how well it operates. I think the CPU, GPU names Hollywood and Broadway are good names considering Hollywood and Broadway are entertainment capitals and the Revolution is meant for entertainment. - inactive, on 10/12/2007, -0/+3"so it really i less powerful than the xbox 360's triple core G5"
And less expensive. And it won't overheat and require a wind tunnel to avoid fires. - snyy, on 10/12/2007, -0/+3"no ethernet port"
Built-in 802.11b & 802.11g support. - geminitojanus, on 10/12/2007, -0/+3gol706 said "Anybody else find it weird that all three game manufacturers moved to
PowerPC at the same time that Apple is leaving it? All of the sudden
IBM is really flexing it's creativity with chip design, or at least
testing how many cores you can stuff into a chip before it bursts into
flames."
Didn't Apple just get 4 cores in that monstrosity with 16 GB of ram?
Yes they did, but they're leaving the PPC world due to lack of support from IBM. To put it simply, Microsoft and Sony were paying them *Billions* (yes, billions) to work on the next generation CPUs whereas Apple's G5 business simply can't keep up that level of customers (if they ship a million units between iMacs and PowerMac G5s, IBM's revenue's only roughly a billion dollars, which is TINY in comparison to gaming machines and set top boxes [which is where the CELL is heading next].)
Simply put, IBM was starving them of higher end components, and the heat production of the G5 was starting to get greatly out of hand. That's why Apple is going with all Next-Generation, energy effecient chips from Intel. This will let them make computers smaller, faster, lighter in weight, longer in battery life, quieter, more sleek, and cheaper. Intel also has *zero* chip capacity issues since they own the whole chip production process from sand to chip, and where Apple still owns IP for the Altivec processor (IBM's VMX, and I believe Motorola/Freescale also shares ownership in this IP, though I'm not sure what they call it if they market it at all), it could mean a new wave of instructions for the Intel lineup.
Apple's move was perfect. The Gaming Industry (in its entirity) moving to IBM was perfect. Everyone got what they wanted. - tratch, on 10/12/2007, -0/+3"I guess I can agree with the guy on this point. While many of us do have wireless AP's, this will not be the case with everyone; or possibly even the majority of people who buy the system."
My guess is that the Nintendo WiFi Dongle will work for the Revolution and DS both.
http://us.gizmodo.com/gadgets/portable-media/nintendobranded-wifi-dongle-129465.php - aetherane, on 10/12/2007, -0/+3Why don't you guys realize that the number of cores does not directly relate to machine performance. A two core processor can be far faster than a three core processor. There is no way of knowing which is faster without more information. In fact, less cores with more performance per core will generally provide more performance. Plus, Xbox 360's processor only does in-order execution... this slows down effective speed in a huge way.
- zediker, on 10/12/2007, -0/+2The reason nintendo went wireless was so there wasnt a cord leading from your TV all the way to wherever your closest ethernet jack.
Since most homes have computers, and most of them have internet access of some sort, nintendo's Wi-fi connection service offers a special peripheral which you use in a USB slot on your computer that acts as a special nintendo Wi-Fi hub. So even if you dont have wi-fi you can still use the internet with the revolution, accepting that you have a computer and net access (preferably broadband, im not sure how it would perform over a modem) - inactive, on 10/12/2007, -0/+2Also, read this: http://arstechnica.com/articles/paedia/hardware/revolution.ars
shows why not having so many seperate cores in this generation might be a great move by nintendo. - geminitojanus, on 10/12/2007, -1/+3"Alright guys, here's the plan. We take the exact processor we designed for Microsoft and the pack, and we cut a core off. That saves us a billion dollars in designing the bastard, it saves Nintendo per unit, and it saves the purchaser's a few bucks at the bottom line."
How many bets that this is practically exactly what happened at IBM? It'll mean the Revolution performs at 2/3rds the speed of the 360, but it'll also mean that a *****-ton of the core-game code will be directly portable between the 360 and the Revolution. Of course, the black sheep of the next generation will be the PS3, with a much faster core, but a hell of a lot more work is nessicary to program it, and that probably means a divergence in cross-platform between the 360/Revolution and the PS3. - jeedee, on 10/12/2007, -0/+2I don't see what power has to do with it. Some peoples still play NES games thru emulators just because they find them fun. I don't need the most amazing graphics in the world to enjoy a game, just give me some new stuff or innovation ... that's the direction Nintendo is taking. Then if kickass graphics is your thing and you are not tired of conventional controllers, get an 360 and don't bash other consoles just because it's not your main choice, it's just useless and waste my bandwidth.
- bnolsen, on 10/12/2007, -0/+1Even if it is 2 cores, that doesn't mean that it's just 2 cores of the xbox360. That's just like saying that the Athlon64 is 1/2 to 2/3 the speed of an Pentium 4 because it runs slower and they're both x86 so they have to be the same.
MS owns most of the IP associated with the "xenon" core. You don't see IBM stamped on the xbox360 core, but MS. IBM would get in big trouble selling the joint IP stuff to Nintendo. If "broadway" has out of order execution units in it, that would make it a totally different animal from either the xbox360 or cell entirely. And I'm sure "broadway" will have just that. - Elranzer, on 10/12/2007, -0/+1I also enjoy when Xbox fanboys say Nintendo is "behind the times" without triple-core, yet don't admit that Xbox 360 is behind the times by favoring wired ethernet over built-in WiFi.
- ConEEE, on 10/12/2007, -0/+1This article has absolutely no legitimacy. There have already been rumors that the Broadway is dual core and there's still no proof. This article doesn't change that. Lame...
- bnolsen, on 10/12/2007, -0/+1If revolution does have a rudimentary physics chip that would definitely give it an advantage over the xbox360.
Too bad they didn't go for implementing a real time hardware ray tracing engine instead of going for a traditional 3d solution, which would have required a tiny fraction of the hardware in today's traditional 3D acceleration.
This is impressive:
http://graphics.cs.uni-sb.de/~woop/rpu/rpu.html
Nice features including adaptive scene antialiasing! - adml_shake, on 10/12/2007, -2/+3"only has DVD drive, stupid ass CPU name, no ethernet port, cheap ass gfx card, Nintendo = Dead"
What do you think the 360 shipped with? Yeah bash on something that hasn't even had it's offical product specs released yet. That make you feel all manly and geeky? Tool. - inactive, on 10/12/2007, -0/+1i'm actually a member at this website its got great content and a really entertaining podcast
- mxpxpx, on 10/12/2007, -2/+3i just bought a wind tunnel, thanks alot nintendo
- icematrix, on 10/12/2007, -0/+1It's been rumored that I enjoyed this article, but nothing will be solid until the release.
- hexix, on 10/12/2007, -0/+1"How many bets that this is practically exactly what happened at IBM? It'll mean the Revolution performs at 2/3rds the speed of the 360..."
Nah. If you've ever used even a dual-processor machine you'd know it doesn't come close to doubling the speed. Although it does allow the processors to both compute different things at the same time, it's very hard work to coordinate that from a programmer's view. If the revolution comes out with a graphics chip on par with the xbox 360's, I'd be surprised if you'd even notice a difference in graphics. Of course, I think I heard it rumored or maybe even stated that the revolution won't have HDTV support. - matthewsr2000, on 10/12/2007, -0/+1if you guys will notice, in your PC graphics are alot more dependent on your GRAPHICS card then on your processor. sure proc speed can slow things down, but more often then not if you stuff a great graphics card it your system it will alleviate alot of the stress on the CPU.
I'm absolutely certain that Nintendo knows what its doing here, if they can deliver me a console with GREAT games, and a ticket price short of 200 clams, I'm on their boat, screw HDTV, i don't even own one anyways.
anyways, until the Hollywood graphics chip specs are out, we don't know jack about the revolution. - geminitojanus, on 10/12/2007, -0/+1Whoa kids.. let's calm down over this ethernet debate.
There are currently plenty (and I do mean plenty) of USB-to-Ethernet adapters available for somewhere around $20 bucks, check out your local *TECH_STORE* for them. The Revolution's going to have two USB ports, so if you don't have a WAP, just buy one of these tidbits (if it doesn't ship in the box, which is always a possibility), and you'll be off and running. The other possibility is cracking open your PC and adding a wireless card, for around $60 bucks, and it'll save you a wire running around your room.
$20 bucks or even $60 bucks isn't too much to ask when the cost of a next gen game will be right in the middle of that ($40-50 bucks). - Sirocco, on 10/12/2007, -0/+0Rock on. I'm sure programmers will have an easier time than having to manage dozens of carefully coordinated threads in order to get the console running above 50% efficiency.
- Applemacmad, on 10/12/2007, -0/+0The Wii has to be the most unique console ever, and I would love it regardless of specs - although it could come out well with what looks like a better GPU than the 360 and independant PPU and sound
- clownguyx, on 10/12/2007, -0/+0All I know is that I am excited about the controller. Who cares about the specs on the processor, if I can play a game like Mario Tennis and actually feel like I am swinging the racket myself... Well, that's far superior to any quadruple core 25.8Ghz processor from Nasa that Microsoft wants to put in its machine.
- inactive, on 10/12/2007, -0/+0The Nintendo/Xbox fanboy saga continues, Which game console is the best?, Who really gives a crap?, They are all good IMO.
- Elranzer, on 10/12/2007, -0/+0In the past, the fanboys argued over the number of "bits" (32-boit Saturn is obviously better than 16-bit SNES, right...)
Now, fanboys argue over cores. (six-core PS3 is better than 3-core Xbox360 which is better than dual-core Revolution, right...)
In the end, the fanboys started to claim that 64-bit and even "128-bit" systems existed even though the Xbox 360 is the first true 64-bit console with the PowerPC 970FX (and 128-bit doesn't even exist).
In the end, none of these fanboys knew anything about bits and they certainly do not understand anything about cores. - gol706, on 10/12/2007, -0/+0Anybody else find it weird that all three game manufacturers moved to PowerPC at the same time that Apple is leaving it? All of the sudden IBM is really flexing it's creativity with chip design, or at least testing how many cores you can stuff into a chip before it bursts into flames.
- adml_shake, on 10/12/2007, -0/+0^^ well said.
- stealthboy, on 10/12/2007, -0/+0"so it really i less powerful than the xbox 360's triple core G5"
Oh here we go... - Psykus, on 10/12/2007, -0/+0"The only kicker is that gamecube games probably won't be downloadable, and you could only have a few of the larger n64 games."
You can just put the Gamecube games in the Revolution disc drive, and play them that way.
Plus, the 512 memory will be expandable by SD cards, so you can put as much storage as you want. - snugsoho, on 10/12/2007, -0/+0@ geminitojanus
Finally someone talks some sense...
Excellent comments... - geminitojanus, on 10/12/2007, -0/+0@hexix; (I'm on a dual core mac as we speak). I speak in general archetectural peak performance, and (as a computer programmer) I can tell you making good use of hardware threads isn't as hard as it used to be. To be truthful, most games on the Xbox 360 probably run as 3 or 4 thread games; by spreading out and only using one thread per core, you take care of some of the latency that would otherwise be present in the CPU switching between each thread (even though this process latency is small, it adds up). Thus, when you move this same code the the Revolution, it'll probably pick up some lag, but generally will perform about the same.
Come two years from now, X360 games will be using all 6 hardware threads and moving this code to the Revolution will be a pain in the ass (if it's even bothered with at this point; Nintendo had better break out an upgrade with HDTV by then). (and yeah, the Revolution will be much cheaper due to the lack of HDTV encoders, scalers, etc).
I assure you, the two systems will be a good match for each other, but the real wildcard will be Sony's PS3. - Psykus, on 10/12/2007, -0/+0There's going to be an Ethernet adapter for the Revolution, probably USB.
It kind of makes sense if you think about it. Wireless is pretty much the standard now, so have that built in, but offer an adapter to use a wired connection if you really need it.
Will sure as hell make LAN games 100% easier, you could just do an ad-hoc network between Revolution systems, no router required. Just plug your Revolution systems in wherever there's a TV, and get your Mario Kart LAN on :P.
Xbox 360 owners, have fun buying $100 wireless adapters for each of your systems. - EvilBaby, on 10/12/2007, -0/+0No Ethernet port seems a little silly to me. I mean there are still millions of people with dial-up in North America. Worse than that how many people do you know who don't own a hub/router, they just have the cable modem plugged directly into the PC? Considering the price of the Revolution is supposed to be much less than the 360 or PS3, the extra $20 for the Nintendo hub isn't too much but I'm not sure how many average Joe's would know what to do, or wouldn't be scared by this? Is this Nintendo hub a hub or a router, I know with my provider I can't connect to different devices up to the net with a hub, I have to use my router for that.
Oh well I'm just waiting for the 360 to come down in price but best of luck to Revolution, hopefully they will make a game that will actually appeal to me and get me to buy the system and actually use it :) - MrData, on 10/12/2007, -0/+0Having an ethernet port seems rather silly to me, considering that everyone with internet access is going to have at least one computer hooked into it. When you also factor in that WiFi, by definition, DOESN'T add any extra wires to your setup, it just makes the whole set-up that much cleaner. $20 is not a lot for a device that keeps your set-up clean and easy (plug it in to the comp and *poof* connected!).
I'd much rather have an all-wifi box. - MrData, on 10/12/2007, -0/+0^^ Forgot to mention. You also probably wont have to worry about getting the right networking setup (cross-over cable, or just find a certified router?) when your friends bring over their system for multi-TV head-to-head like you do with a wired system.
And I won't even go into how nice it'd be to not have to trip over any more wires than necessary. - Odweaver, on 10/12/2007, -0/+0If you don't have wireless, then just get that $20 nintendo wireless thing, for the DS, the revolution should work with it, so its a non-issue
- sergio, on 10/12/2007, -0/+0The notion that the Revolution CPU is just a handicapped version of the 360 CPU is ridiculous. All three next generation's CPUs are made by different IBM teams without contact with one another. However, since IBM has a lot of IP in chip development, such as SOI, you can expect to see many similarities among the three chips, since they are all based on the PPC architecture.
Microsoft paid a little extra money to retain ownership of their chip design, so that they can take the plans to another fabricator to reduce the cost of production in the future if they choose. The Cell chip was a collaborative effort with two other companies, so Sony doesn't retain all the rights to it, so we will be seeing it used in other products. I'm not aware of Nintendo's negotiations with IBM. - inactive, on 10/12/2007, -1/+1http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nintendo_Revolution
- atf487, on 10/12/2007, -0/+0Nintendo consistantly proves that it is about gaming, and gaming only. This is why I love them.
Although the 360/ps3 might have better graphics and HD power and media functions, what else are they offering? Nintendo ups the ante with a BRILLIANT scheme of their virtual console setup, and then creates a new controller that will change the way you play games. THAT is next-gen.
Also, I like the idea of 512 megs of flash memory. The only kicker is that gamecube games probably won't be downloadable, and you could only have a few of the larger n64 games. - NeoTechni, on 10/12/2007, -0/+0No digg, false information. Nintendo has already said it WONT be dual core. Its simply a faster cube processor to reduce development complexity
- superhighgain, on 10/12/2007, -0/+0My take...
Eventually games will take full advantage of all possible cores and threads. There's plenty enough parallel computation going on in games for this to happen. You can make of this what you will.
HD support? I don't need it at the moment. Removing it from the system and selling it as a separate component would be genius. Much rather would've seen 360 with a similar setup. Optional HD device but hard drive comes with ALL models.
I like Nintendo's simple and elegant approach to console design. The kitchen sink approach doesn't work for me. They'll be able to get this thing out there at a great price point, and the new controller design totally excites me. Remember the first time you played "Ocarina of Time?" When they talk about revolution, the company ain't just whistlin' dixie. - zediker, on 10/12/2007, -0/+0^^also, I'm not sure how many independent signals it can accommodate.
- zediker, on 10/12/2007, -0/+0EvilBaby:
As far as I know, its more of a bridge than a hub/router, because it doesnt route or direct traffic, it just takes the signal and bridges it to and from the computer's net connection. - adml_shake, on 10/12/2007, -1/+0""no ethernet port"
Built-in 802.11b & 802.11g support."
As he said, NO ethernet port. dumbass."
I'm betting that the majority of gamers already have wifi in their house. Hence the reason for the wireless card. And where does it say there is no ethernet port? - inactive, on 10/12/2007, -1/+0"yet don't admit that Xbox 360 is behind the times by favoring wired ethernet over built-in WiFi."
You are obviously a moron. Wifi connections are simply crappy compare to wired connections. Most japnese gamers don't like to re-route their console's traffic through another computer. -
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