Stephen Colbert said:
I was actually really disappointed when I first found out the 3DS has a dual core ARM11 for the CPU that is basically two generations behind rather than a newer cortex A8 or A9.
Looking at the graphics on Super Street Fighter though, now I am thinking maybe the CPU is pretty much irrelevent to gaming graphics and it's all about the GPU. I'm wondering roughly how does the GPU compare to something like the SGX543 found in the NGP. Are the two generations apart in terms of performance?
It's a hard comparison to make since it takes a completely different approach to its visuals than the SGX does. It's not going to be as powerful obviously but since it has hardware fixed function shaders and shadow maestro (I'm sure that's built into the hardware), it can do a lot of the effects that the 360 & PS3 do for free.
Also, those ARM 11s are supposedly clocked at 266mhz. That's lower than any ARM 11 processor sold on the market, meaning that they are underclocked. It's possible that some games could choose to increase their clockspeed as needed.
It's not going to be able to compare to the NGP on a technical level, but in terms of what you actually see I reckon that it holds its own quite well thanks to the shaders and support for other modern graphical effects.
In short, don't worry about the specs and just enjoy the games! If the games look good, they why worry about the specs?
EatChildren said:
That is assuming IGN's specs are correct, isn't it? As far as I'm aware Nintendo hasn't released official specs on the 3DS outside of the GPU.
The PSP2 is leagues ahead of the 3DS in pretty much every which way, GPU included. They wont be able to compete on any front. What the 3DS has over, say, the DS, GameCube, and even Wii is that the GPU is more flexible at getting shaders up and running. So when we look at stuff like Street Fighter and Resident Evil we can see all the bump mapping and what-not, stuff that modern games use, while the Wii struggles due to the difficulty of programming them.
Until we get official specs I remain adamant that the 3DS cant push poly counts and texture resolution on par with the best of the GCN and Wii, but the added benefit of a shader capable GPU helps make games look tons better than they otherwise would.
My biggest disappointment is how fucking ugly so many games look so far. Stuff like SSFIV and Resident Evil look gorgeous, as well as some Nintendo stuff, but the rest looks like dogshit. Ridge Racer looking worse than the PSP launch version is a woeful way to sell the graphics capabilities of the system (not that it's trying to).
Why wouldn't it be capable of the same texture resolution? What makes you think that it can't match the GCN? It has more RAM than the GCN and Street Fighter has far better textures than anything on the GCN does.
As for polygon count, it's at least double the PS2 (Tales of Abyss and PES 2011 use PS2 assets in 3D - hence the doubling of the PS2).
RE Mercenaries seems to at least match RE4 GCN as well and that was probably the GCN's best looking game! (and also probably the one that pushed the most polys outside of Rebel Strike)
