How does the Emotion Engine compare to a PC chip?

[GmanJoe]

I know the architecture of the two chips are not the same. But how advanced IS the EE compared to, say, X-box\'s 733mhz processor?

We have a few high end PCs here at work, even with just standard software(ie Windows Office 2000), the PC still crashes.

I know that in a console, the PC chip will have less drivers and hardware to worry about so I guess it\'s not a fair comparison against traditional based PCs.

Can a 733mhz chip handle a game like Dynasty Warriors 2? One square kilometer game environment, 30 characters on the screen and still process the fights among the other 1000 or more characters in the battle field?

I heard about Oddworld being an exclusive title for the X-box because of it graphical prowess. Is this something for Sony to worry about?

The emotion engine basically kicks the snot out of any pentium class chip in terms of processing mathematical calculations. It is designed for 3-d so no pentium chip at this time even comes close, but at least the pentium is better for opening up spreadsheets :-)

yeah, thank god I don\'t have to wait but 1 second on my p1.5 ghz then 1.2 compared to my 1ghz
lol

how does any mips processor compare to the pentium chips. The EE is just a mips 3 type processor so it can run in the PS2 just as easy as it can run in a computer designed to use it. Their was some site that allowed you to compare your PC to the EE, with a benchmarking program. There was also another one that did the same with some graphics program. Maybe someone will rember those sites.

[nO-One]

Think of it this way.
At 1.Ghz an P3 manages about 1,3gigaflops in floating point calculations.
Whereas the EE at 300Mhz manages about 6,4gigaflops.That is alot of processing power that little black box has.

Yep. MHZ isn\'t power anymore. The Xbox may be faster in PC standards, but EE is probably the most powefull chip known to man.

Yes but in defence of Xbox and Gamecube who both use PC and Mac based processors, there Graphics chips do alot of what the PS2\'s EE has to do.

Still I was on the Planetside BBS asking for info about a PS2 version (no confirmation yet) and some PC gamer used the MHz logic, They ssaid that there PC was already running at 700Mhz which is over 2x\'s as fast as the PS2, I was laughing pretty hard when I read that.


So in all honesty the PS2\'s Graphic Synthesiser is proving to be the PS2\'s weak link when compared to Xbox and GC. I\'m sure Sony will be adding more bells and whistles to future GS\'s, actually I expect them too.

[nO-One]

I\'m pretty confused about Nintendo\'s gecko proc.
At first when I read some of their specs it said it had a PowerPC proc which made me think it was a stripped down G4.But it\'s supplied by IBM so it can\'t be a G4 because Motorola owns all the rights to the AltiVec engine which is a part of the G4.
So I came to the conclusion that either it was a modified G3 proc or a new proc designed by IBM for Nintendo based on the PowerPC arcitecture.
It might be a modded G3 but they are starting to show their age and Nintendo was bragging about their proc being the best.And I find it unlikely that IBM spent the amount of resorces needed to design a brand new proc just for the big N.
There has to be someone here who knows more than I do about the GameCube.

The PS2 GS is fast at what it does which is taking lines of info called display list which makes life easy for the GS. All the gs does is read the command and place the block circle or whatever where it is suppossed to be. It also recieves the commands for which texture goes were. Hell it has 16 pixel engines in parellel and if the developer writes thier game properly and allows their program code to multitask more graphics info then the PS can really punch out the graphics. Remember the PS2 is a very open system. All its power is only shown if the program is wrote to use it. That means the developer will have to break away from the old way of thinking and really dig into the code to get everything out of the system. Sony knew what they were doing when they put this system together and everyone else will pickup the idea and run with it. I can\'t what for 3rd and 4th gen games. Those are the ones that will really beat on our senses.
here\'s a good site for allot of indepth info on the EE, and other parts of the PS2.
http://arstechnica.com/reviews/1q00/playstation2/ee-1.html

[§ôµÏG®ïñD]

Originally posted by animal_mother1
Yep. MHZ isn\'t power anymore. The Xbox may be faster in PC standards, but EE is probably the most powefull chip known to man.

Well no. The deck Alpha is.. Its worth around $10.000 dollers.

EE is awesome and they said that the EE in the PS3 will be 16x greater than that of the PS2.  Imagine that the power of 16 PS2\'s put together...  we\'ll see what happens in 2005...

Originally posted by reddragon72
The PS2 GS is fast at what it does which is taking lines of info called display list which makes life easy for the GS. All the gs does is read the command and place the block circle or whatever where it is suppossed to be. It also recieves the commands for which texture goes were. Hell it has 16 pixel engines in parellel and if the developer writes thier game properly and allows their program code to multitask more graphics info then the PS can really punch out the graphics. Remember the PS2 is a very open system. All its power is only shown if the program is wrote to use it. That means the developer will have to break away from the old way of thinking and really dig into the code to get everything out of the system. Sony knew what they were doing when they put this system together and everyone else will pickup the idea and run with it. I can\'t what for 3rd and 4th gen games. Those are the ones that will really beat on our senses.
here\'s a good site for allot of indepth info on the EE, and other parts of the PS2.
http://arstechnica.com/reviews/1q00/playstation2/ee-1.html

 

Well I am very aware of the article but the bottom line is the GS doesn\'t do FSAA without a performance hit, it doesn\'t do multilayer texturing nor does it do texture decompression. It relys on the EE for lighting, texture decompression and more.

And thats what developers are bitching about. They say it\'s to hard to do. But it REALLY looks like Silent Hill 2 uses both vector units and FSAA. What do you think Ddaryl?

Originally posted by animal_mother1
And thats what developers are bitching about. They say it\'s to hard to do. But it REALLY looks like Silent Hill 2 uses both vector units and FSAA. What do you think Ddaryl?

Its hard to say but I\'m sure most games are using both, they\'re just not using both in the most efficient manner.

Sony recently had a developers conference which I\'m sure they showed off techniques that are being used and perfected form Konami, Square, EA, and Sony themselves.

Still I\'m not sure how or why FSAA is being implemented,


and yes BOB  I am looking forward to Naughty Dogs efforts as well as Insomniac\'s. i just hope they give us something a little less kiddish.


[Edited by ddaryl on 12-09-2000 at 01:35 AM]

I know its very immature, but i cant help but laugh in SSX whenever the commentator says "Front Flip with a Stiffy" I just think it must make the rick all that more difficult

1st of all what\'s a rick

2nd of all Could you imagine comig up just short when pulling off a Front Flip with a Stiffy and landing on the stiffy.


I think it would actually break. Do they put those things in casts ?????


Also to one up you Bob I think I giggle anytime he\'s says stiffy, especially with my wife in the room.