Specs comparision
graphic comparison
XBOX:
polygon counts with no effects: 125 mil poly per sec
polygon counts per frame at 60fps: a little over 2 million poly per frame with no effects
polygon counts with texture and alpha blending: 100 mil pps
per frame at 60fps: 1.6 million per frame
pixel fill rate: 6.4 billion pixel per sec no effects
pixel fill rate per frame at 60fps: 107 million pixel per frame fill on 3d polygonal characters, enviroment, etc.
pixel fill rate with texture and alpha blend: 4 billion pixel per sec
pixel fill rate with texture and alpha blend per frame at 60fps: 67 million pixels
PS2
polygon counts with no effects: 75 million poly per sec
poly count per frame at 60fps: 1.25 million per frame (no effects)
polygon counts with bezier and alpha blending and texture: 16 million polygon per sec.
per frame at 60fps: 267 thousands
pixel fill rate: 4.8 billion per second (no effects)
per frame at 60fps: 80 million pixels per frame
pixel fill rate with alpha blending and texture: 2.4 billion per second
per frame at 60fps: 40 million
pixel fill rate with every effects turn on: 1.2 billion per sec
per frame at 60hz: 20 million
gamecube
polygon counts with effects: 6 - 12 million per second
polygon counts with no effects: (they didn\'t say so it might be less than ps2)
per frame at 60hz: 1 hundred thousands to 2 hundred thousands
pixel fill rate: Nintendo don\'t mention how many pixel can it fill per second but my guess is around ps2.
Final Conclusion:
Notice that PS2 can do bezier effect, that\'s why it push ps2 from 75 million down to 16 million and alpha blending.
If XBOX can do bezier do, then it will push down from 125 million to 30 million pps, but xbox artitecture is different than ps2. It have different effects than ps2 have and can do multi texture which ps2 lack.
Same with gamecube, which can\'t do bezier, if nintendo wanted to include bezier in the hardware, then it will push it down further, like to 3 million poly per sec...but like xbox, nintendo can do multi texture and 6:1 texture compression which ps2 lack.
If ps2 have texture compression, then 4mb of vram is more than enough. Either that or add more VRAM, then the result will be pure uncompress texture which obviously is better than gamecube which only have 3 mb ov vram.
Uncompress looks much better than compress, but if done professionally, people can\'t tell much of any difference. same with dvd mpeg2, it is 40:1 compression and still maintain high quality.