How does the Emotion Engine compare to a PC chip?

Originally posted by Heretic
Now is this just a bunch of happy horse pucky or what? If anyone here can clear this one up it should be ReverendXbox. As far as I know the GPU has to get the numbers to crunch from the CPU and send the sipherin\' results back for the CPU to stream.

That is not correct. On the PC, the CPU has to stream  vertices and textures because (despite AGP) the GPUs on the graphics cards do not have direct access to main memory and because most of the T&L operations were carried out by the Pentium processor (this is changing with the new generation of graphics cards).

Within the XBox, ALL T&L calculations are handled by nVidia\'s GPU and not the Pentium. In addition, the unified memory structure gives the GPU direct access to memory, meaning the CPU only needs to tell the GPU where the data is and the GPU will access the data  directly.

Therefore yes, the CPU-to-GPU bottleneck has been removed.

[GmanJoe]

Keep talking!!!

I\'ll just assume that telling the GPU where to find the info, as opposed to sending the info, causes very little or no lag. Now, is there left no relative hang up for sending the GPU\'s processed and T/L info to the CPU to be coordinated/streamed or is it fairly negligable in terms of a bottleneck? Doesn\'t the CPU have to do all the draw-in and not just AI, as some X-men have claimed? Isn\'t the draw-in rate kind of a big deal? Please forgive me if my questions are poorly worded or unclear. I\'m completely out of my element asking about this stuff and am just trying to get a grasp of what\'s going on, as is maybe fairly obvious.

With other words the "weapon" has its kind of "manual"

Originally posted by Heretic
I\'ll just assume that telling the GPU where to find the info, as opposed to sending the info, causes very little or no lag.

That\'s right (in terms of CPU-to-GPU data). Hence it\'s nolonger a bottleneck.

 Now, is there left no relative hang up for sending the GPU\'s processed and T/L info to the CPU to be coordinated/streamed or is it fairly negligable in terms of a bottleneck? Doesn\'t the CPU have to do all the draw-in and not just AI, as some X-men have claimed?[/B]

Very little (if any) data has to be fed back to the CPU. The GPU handles all the rendering (drawing) as well! Therefore, once it has been instructed on which polygons and textures are needed, it will then render the scene itself. The CPU only needs to run the gamecode, AI and physics.

Basically, think of the GPUs in both the XBox and GC as being like PS2\'s GS processor plus the vector units of it\'s EE combined into one chip. The result is a processor which handles both T&L and rendering.

[GmanJoe]

Anyway...now that we\'ve had our games(albeit only a few good ones....so far), it seems the games are looking better and better(and gameplay too).

Has the power of the EE been tapped to its fullest potential? Not yet. It\'s still new technology. Xbox developers will have the advantage of familiar software from the PC world to work with. DirectX was it? Nothing new but it\'s a tried and true program.

I understand that the programming language for the PS2 will continue on with the PS3, 4, 5 (of course, it will incorperate improvements of the new hardware). I guess Sony is going for long term planning. Also, I think it was their plan to make ports difficult from PS2 to another console. But what about ports TO the PS2?

Maybe in the future, there will be newer kits to make the PS2\'s complex programming easier. I can\'t recall which article but I do remember reading an interview with a developer about GameCube\'s software - that it\'s just as difficult as the PS2s.

I have to agree with the REV here. Saturn was an awesome machine for its time and I really think Sony after destroying it took some of Segas tech and that went into the PS2. I never realized how powerful the EE really was. A real beast. Those articules were very interesting. Good research on that one the subject gets an A plus. Now with all that power large bandwiths but small caching its seems like its going to be awhile before developers learn to use the full power of the PS2. Does this mean games will cost more to develop and take longer to get the desired results? Who cares as long as we get the best product from this 3D monster. NV2a GPU will be a force to deal with. Unified memory directed at that GPU wow. It seems someone has been holding back on us poor PC gamers. Deep stuff here.
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The Cliff Condo Pattaya

This is now in Console Debating. Have fun.

Originally posted by Bobs_Hardware
wel, if you wanna talk Mhz, EE is about the equivelent of a 2700Mhz Pentium as far as speed goes, it would also have the advantage over that pareticular pentium anyway because of is high bandwidth etc.

2700Mhz?  WOW! How did you get that number?[/b]  

Since the Xbox has unified ram, doesnt that also offer a handicap in the fact that it doesnt access as fast as on-board RAM?
How big of a handicap is this, if it is true?

I WILL SETTLE THIS ONCE AND FOR ALL.

The XBox\'s Processor is better. Because, underneath that wickedly overpriced GPU and 64MB RAM, you have genuine ELVES. See, the Pentium III is far more adaptable to elves, be they forest elves, mountain elves, or even Keebler elves. Polygons are being pushed, but it\'s the ELVES that do the pushing. Meanwhile, The EE, while it may have a substantial advantage in the AI department, is quite limited in Elf usage. In fact, most developers, being unable to properly harness the elves, must resort to using lawn gnomes and tree dwarves, thus resulting in what Sony calls "middleware". Microsoft\'s elves are far more efficient, and are less likely to sneak into your underpants. GameCube will be using a proprietary Oompah Loompah processor, but as to how they will be able to constantly feed cacao beans into the system has not yet been perfected. Not to mention, Oompah Loompahs tend to be smartasses.  And that\'s the way it is.

yeah, microsoft probably told them elves that they would have to make a new windows, if they wouldn\'t do their very best in xbox j/k

Originally posted by Weltall
I WILL SETTLE THIS ONCE AND FOR ALL.

The XBox\'s Processor is better. Because, underneath that wickedly overpriced GPU and 64MB RAM, you have genuine ELVES. See, the Pentium III is far more adaptable to elves, be they forest elves, mountain elves, or even Keebler elves. Polygons are being pushed, but it\'s the ELVES that do the pushing. Meanwhile, The EE, while it may have a substantial advantage in the AI department, is quite limited in Elf usage. In fact, most developers, being unable to properly harness the elves, must resort to using lawn gnomes and tree dwarves, thus resulting in what Sony calls "middleware". Microsoft\'s elves are far more efficient, and are less likely to sneak into your underpants. GameCube will be using a proprietary Oompah Loompah processor, but as to how they will be able to constantly feed cacao beans into the system has not yet been perfected. Not to mention, Oompah Loompahs tend to be smartasses.  And that\'s the way it is.

Ah but the Elvis has the total disadvantage that it never performs at 100% unless it is in Las Vagus. Which means the X box will spend most of it\'s time at burger king tryingto make it\'s self feal better

The Elf has also the problem that at 100 nano meters it\'s smaller that the Elvis and as a result it feals left out. and seeing that it\'s a emosion engine it start to cry

Finally the ooompa Lummpa has the un-nerving ability to dance about with it\'s face painted orange !.

All of corse is total academic and if you realy understand what we are talking bout then you realy are a :nerd:.

Stop getting all hard on about CPU\'s and GPU\'s and start  PLAYING THEM GAMES !

Originally posted by ooseven



Stop getting all hard on about CPU\'s and GPU\'s and start  PLAYING THEM GAMES !

                                                                                                      Now this makes more sense than anything I have read so far.
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Live sex

Although the e.e is a great processor and it kicks the snot out of the p3, but too sad the p3 is not the main processor in the xbox and only handles minor operations and the nivdia2A is what powers the xbox and it is the most power for chip out right now:p