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360 has five time the rendering bandwidth of PS3?

cyberheater

cyberheater

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Is this true. Has the 360 got five time the rendering bandwidth then PS3?

ATI: XBOX 360 HAS "FIVE TIMES THE POWER OF OTHER NEXT-GENS"

In the render bandwidth dept. Is that a good thing? Read on to find out...

12:18 Hindsight is a wonderful thing. Not only does it allow you to live with deep and bitter regrets about what might have been, occasionally it allows you to look back and unearth hidden gems you didn't even know you possessed.
So it was today as we pored over our notes and recordings from Monday's ELSPA International Games Summit. You may remember we quite fancied the look of ATi's Assassin demo which we thought was probably our first true indication of the Xbox 360's graphical prowess.

We're still working hard to bring you that in all its full graphical glory (hopefully by end of play today) but in the meantime, we've been poring over some details on the 360's Graphical Processor which ATi's Richard Huddy provided during the presentation. Huddy claimed that the 360's GPU will have: "256 Gigabytes per second of render bandwidth," which he said was roughly, "fifty times the power of the original Xbox" and around "five times more than any other next generation console."

It sounds awfully impressive, but to be honest we're not the biggest tech bods on the planet so we're going to leave it to the more graphically gifted amongst you to decipher the significance in the forums below. However from what we can gather from our resident experts and Huddy's claims, render bandwidth is the graphical pipeline which consoles use to splurge all those saucy looking graphics onto your screen.
No matter how fast your console's CPU and GPU are, if you ain't got the bandwidth to make use of them, you might as well be on current gen. It also echoes certain of Microsoft's claims about the PS3's Cell processor at E3 in that it might be fast but the console wouldn't have the bandwidth to make use of that power.

Of course ATi being the supplier of the 360's GPU you can't say they are exactly unbiased but claim and counter-claim all adds to the great next-gen debate.
Click to expand...
 
Less wrong than 5x the system bandwidth, but still wrong if you're considering all rendering :lol There's 256GB/s between the eDram's logic and eDram, but much much less between the rest of the GPU and eDram, and less again to main memory.
 
gofreak said:
Less wrong than 5x the system bandwidth, but still wrong if you're considering all rendering :lol There's 256GB/s between the eDram's logic and eDram, but much much less between the rest of the GPU and eDram, and less again to main memory.
Click to expand...

Does that mean under optimal theoretical conditions. The 360 can render 5 x the detail of PS3?
 
cyberheater said:
Does that mean under optimal theoretical conditions. The 360 can render 5 x the detail of PS3?
Click to expand...

No. The eDram logic can't "add detail" and "detail" isn't really a function of bandwidth any more than it is a function of computational capacity (probably quite less in fact, given the move toward longer shaders etc.).
 
gofreak said:
No. The eDram logic can't "add detail" and "detail" isn't really a function of bandwidth any more than it is a function of computational capacity (probably quite less in fact, given the move toward longer shaders etc.).
Click to expand...

So what does it mean? Rendering bandwith must be important for something.
 
cyberheater said:
So what does it mean? Rendering bandwith must be important for something.
Click to expand...

Any stat that shows the XBox 360 is better at anything than the PS3 is irrelevant. That's what I've learned in all these threads. ;p
 
cyberheater said:
So what does it mean? Rendering bandwith must be important for something.
Click to expand...

In the specific case of X360 it's important for all the things the eDram logic will be doing - AA and so forth. This doesn't mean 256GB/s of bandwidth is required for such ops, but it makes life easier, the eDram logic won't need to use z or colour compression etc. It's basically a guaranteed reserved chunk of bandwidth to accomodate the eDram logic's processing.
 
So that's why the 360 can get 4 x antialiasing for virtually free as an example.
 
Wow, sometimes for smart people you guys can be um, not so smart.

Basically, the article is saying that Xbox360 games = 5~6 X E3 Killzone Footage!

If you believe that, well....

:lol :lol :lol :lol :lol :lol :lol :lol
 
MidgarBlowedUp said:
Wow, sometimes for smart people you guys can be um, not so smart.

Basically, the article is saying that Xbox360 games = 5~6 X E3 Killzone Footage!

If you believe that, well....

:lol :lol :lol :lol :lol :lol :lol :lol
Click to expand...

Ahh... So you saying the 360 can display a pre-rendered movie 5 x better then PS3 can.

Oh. I see...
 
gofreak said:
Yes, indeed.
Click to expand...


But the edram block isn't just simple memory is it. I've heard it can do much more then that. Z sorting, polygon tesselation etc...

Surely the extra bandwidth will help enormously with those types of activities.
 
what kinda ops goes through that bandwidth?

is it just FSAA, Z occlusion and color compression?

Why do those operations require so much bandwidth?

It seems to me like overkill for some functions, while the primary elements aren't necessarily super impressive.
 
cyberheater said:
Ahh... So you saying the 360 can display a pre-rendered movie 5 x better then PS3 can.

Oh. I see...
Click to expand...


HAHAHAHAHA! This 5x marketing line is (at least) used more accurately than what we've heard in the past. Before they were saying 256/GB GPU --> Edram which was incorrect.
 
cyberheater said:
Z sorting, polygon tesselation etc...

Surely the extra bandwidth will help enormously with those types of activities.
Click to expand...

It doesn't do polygon tesselation.

In simple terms, the eDram logic is mostly focussed on getting shader output and painting it on the screen. Breaking it down, and looking at other capabilities, there are things like computing z-depth, occlusion culling, stencilling etc. However the main bandwidth-customer will be AA, I think.

Zaptruder said:
what kinda ops goes through that bandwidth?

is it just FSAA, Z occlusion and color compression?
Click to expand...

I'd have to look it up for a comprehensive list, but colour compression isn't an op as such, it's just not using any compression.

Zaptruder said:
Why do those operations require so much bandwidth?

It seems to me like overkill for some functions, while the primary elements aren't necessarily super impressive.
Click to expand...

It's not they require it so much as it helps make things very predictable in their speed. And when you consider that no compression is required, it begins to make a little more sense (compression makes your bandwidth requirement go DOWN).
 
"So what does it mean? Rendering bandwith must be important for something.'

yes it's also extremely important for Z-buffering which is a bandwidth eater.

Z-buffering is one of those things, which is basically a check in cases where one polygon is drawn in front of another. If this is the case, then the system doesn't have to draw the part of the polygon that is covered up by the other. Thus saving it a lot of irrelevant work. And to do this you need Z-buffering and obviously this is something that is constantly performed in games.

Basically with traditional GPUs you have some information that gets transfered back and forth from RAM to the GPU almost all the time, which uses up a lot of the main bandwidth between these two chips. This re-usable information can now be stored on the eDRAM at that extremely high bandwidth. It's also capable of doing some other things but I am too sleep deprived to explain it. However, no it's most certainly NOT irrelevant. This is VERY important and is going to keep the 360 bandwidth free for carrying important information, such as textures.

So, it doesn't necesarily create more geometry but rather it allows for more geometry and textures to be created because more of that stuff can now flow through main bandwidth since a lot of "irrelevant" data is no longer clogging it up and is now stored on the eDRAM through this extremely high bandwidth connection.

However stating the Xbox 360 has 5 times the bandwidth is misleading because it only talks about this eDRAM and specific features, not MAIN bandwidth.

"However the main bandwidth-customer will be AA, I think."

Also guys there's another big thing it stores....games nowadays have leaves, grass and other particle effects that are used over and over. Small objects such as this don't have to be carried over main bandwidth anymore. These two can also be stored on the eDRAM. So it's also going to allow developers to implement a lot more individual grass strands, leaves and particle effects without worrying about main bandwidth as much. Otherwise these would be going back and forth. So when you combine this, with Z-buffering and FSAA it's offers some concrete advantages.
 
Lil' Dice said:
THER'S NO WAY THE 360 IS MORE POWERFUL THAN THE PS3 BECAUSE IT COMES OUT SOONER!

:lol :lol :lol
Click to expand...

I think it shoulds say, there should be no way the 360 is more powerful.

No one knows diddly about the PS3 yet really.
 
Great information guys.

So are these stencil buffers going to useful for self shadowing etc...
 
cyberheater said:
Great information guys.

So are these stencil buffers going to useful for self shadowing etc...
Click to expand...

More that they are useful than are going to be. Stencil Buffers have been around for a long time. Used for shadowing, reflections, a number of different things.

C- Warrior said:
Oh, so the Xbox 360 is stronger than the PS3...
Click to expand...

Not sure how you reached that conclusion from this thread.. ;)
 
jimbo said:
Also guys there's another big thing it stores....games nowadays have leaves, grass and other particle effects that are used over and over. Small objects such as this don't have to be carried over main bandwidth anymore. These two can also be stored on the eDRAM. So it's also going to allow developers to implement a lot more individual grass strands, leaves and particle effects without worrying about main bandwidth as much. Otherwise these would be going back and forth. So when you combine this, with Z-buffering and FSAA it's offers some concrete advantages.
Click to expand...


Has anyone actually said the eDRAM can be directly addressed and used as temp store? I thought it was semi-automatic and used for AA etc.

If they can store textures/geometry in it, that could be a huge benefit, but I haven't heard anything like that.
 
mrklaw said:
Has anyone actually said the eDRAM can be directly addressed and used as temp store? I thought it was semi-automatic and used for AA etc.

If they can store textures/geometry in it, that could be a huge benefit, but I haven't heard anything like that.
Click to expand...

You can do this IIRC, but you're then talking about the 32GB/s bw between parent die and eDram, not the 256GB/s, which will be shared with the framebuffer being tiled in and out, and results of shader ops. If you use the eDram for one thing, you'll see a hit elsewhere.

Storing some data in the eDram may make sense, but I'm not sure if the bandwidth saving would be worth it. The examples given above with grass etc. - it's not like in those situations, for every instance of that geometry in the scene a read from memory is taken. If you were VERY bandwidth limited and/or if data in eDram had a smaller latency penalty for the parent GPU it might be useful.
 
The 256 GB/s is the bandwidth from the xenos ROPS to framebuffer. It's very real and useful. It's placed exactly where a conventional GPU ends and its framebuffer memory begins.

The 32 GB/s is the bandwidth from the xenos shaders to the ROPS. It's designed such that it will never be the bottleneck, regardless of what bit depth or mode you choose, what blending effects you turn on, or what antialiasing mode you enable. This is the same as an internal bus on a conventional GPU, except in this case it goes between two subdies on the xenos GPU, because it is a multi-chip module.
 
cyberheater wrote:
360 has five time the rendering bandwidth of PS3?

Is this true. Has the 360 got five time the rendering bandwidth then PS3?
Click to expand...

only when you facter in the HUGE bandwidth from the eDRAM to the logic/processors on the eDRAM module. that is the only area where Xbox 360 has a massive bandwidth advantage over PS3. and it is very significant in how Xbox 360 operates.


but the bandwidths from Xbox 360's main GPU core to eDRAM module, and GPU to main system memory, is much closer to (but not exactly the same as) Playstation3's memory bandwidths.



so even though Xbox 360 has a large advantage in bandwidth over PS3 in one specific area, does NOT mean Xbox 360 can render 5 times (or whatever amount) more detail than PS3.

look at PS2 vs Dreamcast. the PS2 has approx 50 times (!) the rendering bandwidth that Dreamcast has 48 GB per second vs less than 1 GB per second.
that is, PS2's eDRAM bandwidth of 48 GB/sec compared to DC's video memory bandwidth of 0.8 GB/sec. - but can PS2 render 50 times as much detail as DC? no way. only maybe 3 to 5 times more at best - and not so much because of the bandwidth (although that helps) but more because of the PS2's increased polygon and pixel processing performance.

Xbox 360 and PS3 polygon, pixel fillrate and pixel shader performances will be much closer to each other than you would think, than if you *only* looked at the 256 GB/sec that Xbox 360 has between eDRAM and logic on the eDRAM unit, compared to PS3 bandwidth.
 
midnightguy said:
but the bandwidths from Xbox 360's main GPU core to eDRAM module, and GPU to main system memory, is much closer to (but not exactly the same as) Playstation3's memory bandwidths
Click to expand...

The parent die to daughter die bandwidth isn't really countable if comparing to system memory bandwidth on PS3, IMO.
 
gofreak said:
The parent die to daughter die bandwidth isn't really countable if comparing to system memory bandwidth on PS3, IMO.
Click to expand...

well that is true, but since PS3 does not have a precisely comparable setup, I did the best that I could in wording my reply :)
 
This is not a PS3 bashing thread. Can we just keep it technical.
 
Wafflecopter said:
Is that why when someone points out that when the thread is wrong, you keep challenging it with more insipid info
Click to expand...


I do not see anything in this thread that would instigate an xbox360 vs ps3 flame war.


Absolutely nothing
 
sp0rsk said:
I do not see anything in this thread that would instigate an xbox360 vs ps3 flame war.


Absolutely nothing
Click to expand...
Yeah, but the content of the thread has been pretty civil so far. Gofreak answered most of the questions already, so if any flaming happens, it's by choice. PEACE.
 
aaaaa0 said:
The 256 GB/s is the bandwidth from the xenos ROPS to framebuffer. It's very real and useful. It's placed exactly where a conventional GPU ends and its framebuffer memory begins.

The 32 GB/s is the bandwidth from the xenos shaders to the ROPS. It's designed such that it will never be the bottleneck, regardless of what bit depth or mode you choose, what blending effects you turn on, or what antialiasing mode you enable. This is the same as an internal bus on a conventional GPU, except in this case it goes between two subdies on the xenos GPU, because it is a multi-chip module.
Click to expand...
aaaaa, That's the best explanation of the situation that I've seen yet. You should send it to the ATI/MS guys.
 
Some more information...

There's even a little magic that happens at that phase. The EDRAM has built in logic to perform Z compare, alpha blending, and resolving anti-aliasing samples into pixels. Normally those operations happen on the GPU, and require not only valuable silicon real estate and on-chip caches, but eat into memory bandwidth as data has to go back and forth to the GPU from the main graphics RAM. ATI's solution of building that logic into the EDRAM where the back, Z, and stencil buffers live eliminates a lot of data transfer and save time and silicon space on the GPU die itself. Because of the bandwidth savings and absolutely massive bandwidth to EDRAM, the Xbox 360 should be able to perform frame buffer effects like motion blur, depth of field, or lens flare with incredible speed.
Click to expand...


I like the "motion blur, depth of field, or lens flare" bit. Useful.
 
are any of you guys getting paid by Sony or Microsoft?

if not please stop riding their jocks...
 
Blackace said:
are any of you guys getting paid by Sony or Microsoft?

if not please stop riding their jocks...
Click to expand...

You saying I can't be down with black people or defend their merits vehemently because I'm not black? :(
 
Zaptruder said:
You saying I can't be down with black people or defend their merits vehemently because I'm not black? :(
Click to expand...
Ugh
Comparing ethnicity to corporate favoritism?
That's like comparing piracy to rape

IT's BEEN DONE BEFORE...don't be singlehandedly responsible for bringing it back, Zap :(
 
Zaptruder said:
You saying I can't be down with black people or defend their merits vehemently because I'm not black? :(
Click to expand...

I am saying that this is sad to see people picking sides of companies that just want your money... but if you want to bring bad analogies into to here then be my guest...
 
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