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[lunlunqq]

so on some other board i got into an argument with an xbot about the ps2 hardware. he claimed that ps2 was poorly designed and actually very behind its time because it lacks of the following features:

- texture compression
- texture filtering
- Hardware AA
- multi-texture fill/render? (he said it in Chinese, I don't know the English term for this one)
- motion compensation
- true 32-bit color support

since my knowledge on gfx is very limited, i wonder if someone here who has experience with the ps2 hardware could kindly tell me if what he said is valid or not?? i can look up the terms to see what they mean, but i cannot tell if the ps2 support them or not. thank you in advance.

 

[Parallax Scroll]

If you're not very knowledgeable about graphics, why are you arguing with someone about graphics hardware?

 

[OpinionatedCyborg]

If you're not very knowledgeable about graphics, why are you arguing with someone about graphics hardware?

Because arguing about stuff you know nothing about is one of the main pillars the internet was invented on.

 

[kenta]

Internet ettiquette says: Dodge the questions and start using racial slurs and homophobic insults.

 

[OpinionatedCyborg]

Internet ettiquette says: Dodge the questions and just start using racial slurs and homophobic insults.

You're on the mark except you forgot the bit about inserting shitty Nazi analogies whenever possibile.

 

[Xdrive05]

You lost the argument, he's right about most of that stuff. But you can always tell him the PS2's processor is a lot faster than the xbox's.

Look on the bright side of all this. It doesn't matter, at all, whatsoever, anyway.

 

[lunlunqq]

well, thanks Xdrive05.

i was not arguing with him about the gfx per se... we were just talking about whether or not ps2 has delivered its pre-launch-tech-demo-leve gfx and some old shit. then all of a sudden, he started to throw those tech terms at me. though i don't think what he said is relevant to what we were talking about, i still want to know if what he said is correct.

 

[Raistlin]

so on some other board i got into an argument with an xbot about the ps2 hardware. he claimed that ps2 was poorly designed and actually very behind its time because it lacks of the following features:

- texture compression
- texture filtering
- Hardware AA
- multi-texture fill/render? (he said it in Chinese, I don't know the English term for this one)
- motion compensation
- true 32-bit color support

since my knowledge on gfx is very limited, i wonder if someone here who has experience with the ps2 hardware could kindly tell me if what he said is valid or not?? i can look up the terms to see what they mean, but i cannot tell if the ps2 support them or not. thank you in advance.

The PS2 was hardly behind the times at it's launch. T&L support was pretty weak at the time ... and certainly wasn't well supported in anything that could come close to it's vertex abilities.

- texture compression

Well, it could do CLUT - but yeah, better texture compression would have helped given the GPU design (small amount of fast EDRAM as opposed to a large reservoir of ‘slow’ memory) ... especially in the early years before devs got a handle on multiple passes.

- texture filtering

To my knowledge, it could certainly do interpolation.

- Hardware AA

Well, the N64 technically had this built in, but was it used often? The X-box could do this as well, but it also wasn’t supported extensively due to the trade-offs iirc.

- multi-texture fill/render? (he said it in Chinese, I don't know the English term for this one)

I’m not sure what this means? If it is multi-pass rendering, then wtf – that is how the PS2 was designed to work. It didn’t have a lot of T&L effects built in, so it would do multiple passes on the polys with SW algorithms to add the effects. That’s why they went with EDRAM – so they’d have the speed and B/W to do the multiple passes.

- motion compensation

Not sure about this … is this built in to other HW? What is it used for? Most effects the PS2 just did through multiple passes (by design).

- true 32-bit color support

Again, not sure if I can answer this. As far as I know, it can do it – but due to memory constraints (one can argue the lack a HW texture compression), not many games support it due to the trade-offs.



Again, T&L effects that are lacking are due to the launch date (what, a year and a half or more before X-box?), not because it was somehow underpowered. That is a long time in GPU ‘generations’.

Most people would argue quite the opposite; the PS2 was pretty amazing for its time. Why else can it still at least ‘run’ with the competition?

 

[Xdrive05]

As a general rule of thumb, Sony did a pretty shoddy job with the PS2's graphics architecture. There ended up being a lot of stuff the GPU should have done that the (rather powerful) CPU ended up having to compensate for. That's one of the reasons why the overal hardware was so unballanced.

For those specific things you listed above, I'm not totally sure about. I know AA, colors, and other IQ stuff was a real challenge for the devs because the PS2 didn't have a real graphics processor. On top of that, the thing only allotted 4mb to video ram. A fast bus to the 32mb system ram allowed for caching to be done to compensate.

The hardware of the xbox took care of most all of those issues that had to be forced with the PS2's CPU. That said, now that all the tricks have been figured out, developers have done some pretty incredible stuff with the PS2 hardware.

 

[Mefisutoferesu]

Umm... I'm with onix, here... I might be missing something, but motion compensation is a video compression term. Dunno what that has to do with Xbox superiority. Google the term and I'm sure you'll stumble across a doom9 or wiki entry.

 

[lunlunqq]

wow! thx a lot, onix!

edit: thx to you all.

 

[Norse]

I would say sony failed to deliver the prelaunch hype/promises they made with ps2. I do think they did a pretty good job with the machine overall, but lied through their teeth saying it could do way more than they knew it could. Outside of games, it did nothing that they said it would.

 

[Xdrive05]

I kinda like that the hardware is jacked. It makes those really good looking PS2 games all that more impressive. Those Naughty Dawg games were so darn pretty in motion... can't wait to see what that team can do with a real GPU in PS3.

 

[Andy787]

i was not arguing with him about the gfx per se... we were just talking about whether or not ps2 has delivered its pre-launch-tech-demo-leve gfx and some old shit. then all of a sudden, he started to throw those tech terms at me.

You don't need any long, hard to understand technical terms. I have your secret weapon, my friend:

Go forth, and do battle.

 

[Xdrive05]

Of all the console fanboy weapons, that old man ranks pretty fucking high.

I think he shows up at least six times a week here on GAF alone.

 

[lunlunqq]

You don't need any long, hard to understand technical terms. I have your secret weapon, my friend:

Go forth, and do battle.

hahaha... i know, i know... :lol :lol :lol

j/k aside, i think ps2 games easily surpassed what they showed in the RR girl (Reiko) demo and the shabby GT2000 demo... for the Square old man demo (10k ploys for a face) and the FFVIII demo, i'm not sure...

 

[Raistlin]

wow! thx a lot, onix!

edit: thx to you all.

I'm admittedly, not an expert - so you should probably take what I said with a bit of salt. I'm sure some of the experts will come in to clarify my points.



As someone else stated previously though, one could definitely consider the PS2 to be a bit unbalanced. IIRC, the EE could actually set up more vertices than the PS2's GPU could render.

True, it certainly would have been nice if more T&L effects were built in. That being said, I'm not sure if, at the time, others could have really done a much better job. Due to cost considerations, Sony wanted to fab everything themselves. While Nvidia or ATI may have done better in regards to T&L, I doubt they could couple improved T&L with even the PS2 GPU's admittedly insufficient vertex rendering - at least not at a reasonable cost. I would think a realistic GPU by Nvidia or ATI at the time would have had far less poly-pushing power. Basically Sony wanted a lot of polys, and this was the best way to get it at the time.

I believe because Sony knew they could make a monster CPU (notice the trend ... ie. CELL), they built an architecture that would use said CPU in conjunction with the GPU to produce the graphics they wanted.

An unbalanced architecture yes, but one that has certainly handled the test of time quite well.

 

[inpHilltr8r]

Nothing wrong with the vertex processing on the PS2. VU1 is still more fully featured than pretty much any PC card. It's pixel processing where the system lags. Tons of fill rate, but not much smarts, and missing an important op. CPU is weird too. Tons of float power, but a tiny cache. Takes a lot of effort to avoid thrashing it.