[salpa]

Come on guys! Just do some maths.

Our best guess is that the 3DS has a PICA200 running at 268MHz. This comes from the homebrew scene, so take it as you will.

It has two ARM11 CPUs each running at the same speed - 268MHz.

6MB of VRAM. 128MB of FCRAM.

Taken from the PICA200 wikipedia page:

pixel performance: 800 Mpixel/s 400 Mpixel/s @100 MHz 1600 Mpixel/s @400 MHz vertex performance: 15.3 Mpolygon/s 40Mtriangle/s @100 MHz 160Mtriangle/s @400 MHz

100MHz is the bottom here. 268MHz / 100MHz = 2.68. That is our multiplier.

400 Mpixels/s * 2.68 = 1072 Mpixels/s.
40M Triangles/s * 2.68 = 107.2M Triangles/s.

Gamecube performance (from the Wikipedia. If you have a better source, share it):

648 Mpixels/s.
20M Triangles/s.

According to this data, the fillrate of the 3DS GPU is almost double, and the geometry capability is 5 times greater. This is all based on Wikipedia data though, so take it as you will.

GCN had 43MB of RAM.

24MB of it was system RAM.
3MB of it was VRAM.
16MB was used for the optical drive and other functions.

3DS has about 5x more system RAM, and twice as much VRAM.

Can't find much about ARM11 CPUs, so I'll end here.

[Cow Mengde]

More like: GB < NES < GBC < GBA < SNES < NDS < N64 < 3DS < GC <(?) Wii.

Besides what other have already said, the GBA also has more colors than the SNES.

[BurntPork]

If I'm correct, you're looking at the wrong RAM. You need to look at the VRAM, not the regular RAM.

I thought 3DS had only one RAM pool.

stuff

Thanks for clearing that up, though the 3DS numbers you gave are theoretical while the GameCube numbers are close to real-world performance.

[EuropeOG]

If I'm correct, you're looking at the wrong RAM. You need to look at the VRAM, not the regular RAM.

It's also to do with resolution I believe.

3DS has 16MB VRAM, which on it's small resolution is quite a lot.

[jaypah]

Off topic but I just realized that the gamecube logo makes a "G" and a "C". I can't believe I never noticed that!

[Cow Mengde]

.

You sure about that? I seriously doubt the polygonal performance is as high as it says. Even with it cut in half, it would be on par with the GC.

Hell, do we even know the Wii's polygonal performance?

[salpa]

You sure about that? I seriously doubt the polygonal performance is as high as it says. Even with it cut in half, it would be on par with the GC. Hell, do we even know the Wii's polygonal performance?

I am not sure about it, no. All of that came from the Internet. I'll gladly list my sources:

http://3dbrew.org/wiki/Hardware

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/PICA200

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nintend...specifications

Take a look. Maybe you'll find something that stands out.

These are both theoretical performances. Notice that in the GCN data it says "Peak". That means the number was derived from a calculation (they are nice enough to show the fillrate calculation). The 3DS might have higher theoretical performances, but depending on the hardware hierarchy it might not be possible to reach or even come close to that number.

[Lonely1]

You also have to take into account that 3DS vertex performance is pretty much halved in order to achieve the 3D effect.

[oatmeal]

Off topic but I just realized that the gamecube logo makes a "G" and a "C". I can't believe I never noticed that!

It and the N64 logo were the best logos gaming has ever seen.

[Jaded Alyx]

Off topic but I just realized that the gamecube logo makes a "G" and a "C". I can't believe I never noticed that!

And a cube! Two in fact!

[MrCunningham]

I consider the GBA to definitely be more powerful than SNES. Sure, the SNES has slightly better graphics (not including rotating sprites), but the GBA's processor is 17 MHz instead of a measly 3.5.

Well, the SNES really had no hardware scaling and rotation at all besides Mode 7, which was just a single flat 3D playing field layer. SNES mostly relied on secondary co-processors (like the Super FX chip) in the cartridges to work around this limitation.

The ARM processor in the GBA totally outpaced the SNES, and i think it had vector floating point capabilities that allowed to to do 3D polygon graphics and sprite scaling and rotation, if developers pushed it to do so. I think the GBA could also display twice as many colours in standard game modes.

But on the down side, the GBA lacked a dedicated sound chip like the SNES had, so midi like music sounded terrible in most cases.

Even back then, the SNES's processor didn't compare to the Genesis's or Turbografx's. It was roughly the same level as the Master System. You'll notice it in games like Super R-Type, where a simple charge shot will slow the whole game down. lol

The SNES was mostly a GPU heavy system, I dunno if the Master System comparison is correct (16bit vs 8bit) though, but it was definitely slower than the Genesis's 68000. Not sure how much faster/ slower it was to the PC Engine (Turbografx 16). The PC Engine actually had an 8bit processor, but was capable of running at 1.78 MHz, 3.58 MHz and 7.16Mhz modes.

I wouldn't say the GB or even the GBC was really quite up to the NES, but I suppose the rest are fair.

The GB was closer to the NES than the GBC was, I think. The GBC had more work ram and a faster processor than the nes. It also had 15bit colour (Just like the SNES), but could only display about 56 colours on screen. 32 background colours, plus 4 colours per sprite. Though there were tricks to get it to display beyond this on screen.

[Glass Joe]

I'm no techie, but based on what I've played, the 3DS is at least Gamecube-esque... Might be stronger in some areas (shaders), weaker in others (resolution), but even with 3D on, it gets the job done.

Mario Kart 7 seems on par with Double Dash
Resident Evil Revelations seems on par with RE4
Mario 3D Land is pretty Godly
Zelda OOT isn't great but that's based off an N64 game
SF IV looked alright but the static backgrounds hurt (no direct GC comparison though)

[RobotHaus]

I'm no techie, but based on what I've played, the 3DS is at least Gamecube-esque... Might be stronger in some areas (shaders), weaker in others (resolution), but even with 3D on, it gets the job done. Mario Kart 7 seems on par with Double Dash Resident Evil Revelations seems on par with RE4 Mario 3D Land is pretty Godly Zelda OOT isn't great but that's based off an N64 game SF IV looked alright but the static backgrounds hurt (no direct GC comparison though)

SM3DL looked really good, but remember the environments in it. There was never any huge vistas or large areas to render, save for some of the boss stages. I'm not trying to discount the quality of the game, I'm just saying it's a harder comparison.

[UncleSporky]

Gameboy < Nes

I wouldn't say the GB or even the GBC was really quite up to the NES, but I suppose the rest are fair.

The GB is actually equal to or better than the NES in many areas, it's just not obvious because of the low res, low quality screen and monochrome graphics.

GB games seem to run slow because devs had to slow their games down due to LCD ghosting, not because the system was slow.

This isn't going to mean much to most people, but some info:

The NES has a 1.8 MHz processor and a 5 Mhz PPU. The GB has a 4.1 MHz processor with an integrated PPU. NES assembly instructions take 2 to 6 cycles to execute, while GB instructions take 4-24 cycles - on average, the GB is about twice as slow at executing commands, but is clocked twice as fast to make up for it.

The NES has only 2 kilobytes of RAM for program variables and such, while the GB has a whopping 8 kilobytes. It can potentially think about a lot more things at once, which made games like Pokemon possible. NES and GB have the same amount of VRAM for the screen, 2 kB, but GB has the benefit of 6 kB of RAM for storing graphics. All NES graphics were stored on the cart and up to the developer on how to do it, but most options were worse than the way the GB handled it. It's much roomier.

The NES can index 512 8x8 tiles of graphic data at once, while GB can only index 384...but its screen is one third the size (256x240 vs. 160x144) so it doesn't need as many tiles.

The GB has a built in scanline counter for better timing of code alongside graphics, making some graphical tricks far easier than on the NES. NES had to have special carts produced to achieve the same thing.

These old systems had limitations on the number of sprites that could be displayed on the same horizontal line, hence sprite flickering. The NES could handle 8 sprites on the same horizontal line before flickering, while GB could handle 10. This combined with its shorter screen width meant much, much less flickering on GB. GB can only handle 40 sprites to NES's 64, but again, it doesn't need as many with the small screen.

Most of these benefits were used to improve things behind the scenes and made the programmers' lives easier. Many of them helped eliminate goofy graphical glitches you'd see on NES. But ultimately you wouldn't notice because of the terrible ghosting screen, which every game had to be designed around. GB's sound was also worse, it couldn't play samples (voices etc.) like NES could.

Now knowing that GB was on par/better than NES internally, imagine how much better the GBC was. It had an 8.4 MHz CPU, 16 kB of program RAM, 16 kB of VRAM, 32768 colors (vs. freaking 64 on NES) and a vastly improved screen! It was partway between NES and SNES. See Toki Tori, which is practically a GBA game.

[jaypah]

And a cube! Two in fact!

I knew about the cubes, smartass! :P

[elsk]

^Very interesting stuff. Thanks for sharing, UncleSporky.

[Man God]

GBC smokes the NES. It's closest console comparison is probably the Master System, which it narrowly inches out.

[UncleSporky]

GBC smokes the NES. It's closest console comparison is probably the Master System, which it narrowly inches out.

Yeah, I regret missing out on it when I was younger, because looking back it was a really rad system. Many of its games would never have been possible on the NES.

[Man God]

Yeah, I regret missing out on it when I was younger, because looking back it was a really rad system. Many of its games would never have been possible on the NES.

Two years and not using parts from the very late 70's will do that. Well, it's even more then that when you compare the Famicom to the SMS, but the point still stands.

Hell when the SNES is tapped out it blows away the Genesis with that two year advantage. Look what the Cube and OXBOX can do over the PS2 with that 1 year tech advantage.

[Fantastical]

I would have preferred a handheld Gamecube to the 3DS.

Oh God what an abomination.

[Eric C]

GBC smokes the NES. It's closest console comparison is probably the Master System, which it narrowly inches out.

yep, the SMS and GBC both use the Zilog Z80 CPU, although I think the one in the GBC runs faster.

[Medalion]

Oh God what an abomination.

My eyes... they burnnnnnn

[Man God]

There's no reason why the 3DS couldn't handle GCN ports and even some Wii downports and if the team put some effort into them make them look better.

Revelations looks better than almost everything on the Wii and that's basically a first gen game and one done before the supposed third eye of the 3DS was unlocked.

[Costcosaurus]

I honestly think that the 3DS is only close to being as graphically powerful as the Gamecube, but not quite there.

[nincompoop]

The quality of the Monster Hunter 3 port proves that the 3DS can hold its own against the GC and even the Wii, but for some reason literally nobody other than Capcom seems capable of pushing decent visuals on the thing.

[Loofy]

Im not convinced that the 3DS is on the level of the GCN or even PS2 until we get a game on the same scale as GTA San andreas. 3DS environments just seem tiny.

[MrCunningham]

GBC smokes the NES. It's closest console comparison is probably the Master System, which it narrowly inches out.

Well, the Game Gear was essentially just a Master System with the ability to preform 12bit RGB colour instead of the Master Systems 6Bit RGB colour, so it would be even closer to the Game Gear in comparison.

But Yeah the GBC barely inches out the GG/SMS in many respects, but not so much in others.

The Game Gear could display 16 colours per sprite layer (shared, I think?) and 16 colours per background layer from a selection of 4096 colours. It had a richer global colour palette than the genesis's 9bit 512 colour palette, but couldn't quite display as many colours on screen.

[Man God]

Im not convinced that the 3DS is on the level of the GCN or even PS2 until we get a game on the same scale as GTA San andreas. 3DS environments just seem tiny.

But it has other late gen PS2 ports that while lazy look just as good and in some places better on the 3DS...

[Man God]

Well, the Game Gear was essentially just a Master System with the ability to preform 12bit RGB colour instead of the Master Systems 6Bit RGB colour, so it would be even closer to the Game Gear in comparison. But Yeah the GBC barely inches out the GG/SMS in many respects, but not so much in others. The Game Gear could display 16 colours per sprite layer (shared, I think?) and 16 colours per background layer from a selection of 4096 colours. It had a richer global colour palette than the genesis's 9bit 512 colour palette, but couldn't quite display as many colours on screen.

The biggest improvements it has over the GG would be five times the battery life on a third of the batteries and a screen that you could easily see, but yes, it is really close to it in performance.

[UncleSporky]

But it has other late gen PS2 ports that while lazy look just as good and in some places better on the 3DS...

I almost wish Konami hadn't put that extra layer of shine on MGS3's graphics if it would've meant a smoother frame rate.

3DS could probably handle GTA:SA with a little more pop-in (as if there wasn't enough already).

[MrCunningham]

The biggest improvements it has over the GG would be five times the battery life on a third of the batteries and a screen that you could easily see, but yes, it is really close to it in performance.

That's the evolution of LCD screen technology for you, and the lack of back lights on Nintendo's part. :P

God I had a love/ hate relation with the Game Gear. It had a nice library of games, but you couldn't play it for more than an hour without an AC adapter.

[Man God]

I know I am going to sound like a Nintendo apologist on this one but I think they held off on backlights for just the right amount of time until the DS and GBA SP MK 2 came out.

I know it was probably just them being cheap but I like the compromise the first round of GBA SP had with the frontlit and I love how you could actually use the GBA original at the beach or anywhere else outdoors.

My college dorm bed and my bed at home both had the light right over where I played anyways so I never had that hunch up to a desklight problem that most people had with it.

[Alextended]

In theory it could probably reasonably port or recreate or remake any PS2, GC and even Wii games, potentially add much more modern shader effects where applicable, to make them look better overall, with the small screen making it easier to hide any downgrades in geometry, detail, or whatever... But in order to make it easy to lazily port any of those games, the system would need to be a lot more powerful, not just similar. With this power level developers would have to actually care and be funded and given time to do a really good job with it, especially regarding ports of games that used those consoles to their fullest with very system specific features etc, like MGS3 did, hence the dodgy result. Anyway, I'm sure exclusives with decent budgets can surpass any last gen games, as Revelations clearly shows is possible even if it's lacking a bit in polish and design compared to RE4.

[Cow Mengde]

GB's sound was also worse, it couldn't play samples (voices etc.) like NES could.

That's definitely not true. TMNT 2 Return to the Sewers had voice samples. I'm not saying the GB's sound isn't worse, just that it can play voice samples. Not sure what kind of trick it uses though.

BTW, thanks for the great explanation on the rest of the stuff. Even as a kid, I always had a sneaky suspicion the GB was actually more powerful than the NES.

[Man God]

It's obvious that it can handle lazy PS2 ports fairly easily and probably can do PSP ports just fine as well.

I don't think we've seen anywhere near what this thing could do totally tapped out.

If the next generation of games really has access to another processor we could see some improvements there as well, plus they could always lower the RAM profile of the OS a bit by disabling instant internet browser access on certain games.

[Cow Mengde]

BTW, can anyone explain this weird phenomenon to me? I know the GBC was more powerful than the GG and had more colors, but a lot of times, the colors don't looks as "good" as the GG. I don't know how to explain it, it is very colorful, but the GG's colors looks like a console's colors while the GBC did not. Heck, it didn't look quite like the NES either. The NES also had "console-like" colors. Well, that and it is a console. I get a same feeling with the Neo Geo Pocket Color. I really don't know how to explain it.

[Alextended]

Probably down to the screen quality? GG was like a mini TV with its battery destroying backlight that could light up the room...

GBC wasn't backlit, was it?

[MrCunningham]

I know I am going to sound like a Nintendo apologist on this one but I think they held off on backlights for just the right amount of time until the DS and GBA SP MK 2 came out. I know it was probably just them being cheap but I like the compromise the first round of GBA SP had with the frontlit and I love how you could actually use the GBA original at the beach or anywhere else outdoors. My college dorm bed and my bed at home both had the light right over where I played anyways so I never had that hunch up to a desklight problem that most people had with it.

Well, I'm not going to debate this, because I actually believe that Nintendo made a good call with leaving out a backlight too for so long. Battery life did play a big role in the popularity of the GB line.

The idea of a back light on the GG sounded great, until you realize that you had to continually replaced 6 AA batteries every 1-2 hours if you wanted to keep playing the thing.

[Man God]

BTW, can anyone explain this weird phenomenon to me? I know the GBC was more powerful than the GG and had more colors, but a lot of times, the colors don't looks as "good" as the GG. I don't know how to explain it, it is very colorful, but the GG's colors looks like a console's colors while the GBC did not. Heck, it didn't look quite like the NES either. The NES also had "console-like" colors. Well, that and it is a console. I get a same feeling with the Neo Geo Pocket Color. I really don't know how to explain it.

Most GBC games weren't really designed for it, that's why.

I'm not just talking about the majority of dual boot games, even a lot of the clear case games were just gb games with a splash of color.

[Medalion]

It's been a long long time but GBC applied default preset colors over games that didn't have colors programmed originally

[invaderzim69]

This is very good and interesting info, but hasn't the cart sizes changed as well? As we look forward to the future as size increases, Nintendo will still stick with carts no?

[Why would you do that?]

I have to say, I'm really enjoying this thread. :p

But on the down side, the GBA lacked a dedicated sound chip like the SNES had, so midi like music sounded terrible in most cases.

Yes, the GBA only had two regular sound channels, one for each ear. So if you wanted to play more than two sounds at once, you'd have to use CPU power to mix the sounds together. I remember reading that the sound generally takes up a large chunk of the GBA's CPU.

Most games used Nintendo's pre-built sound mixer that hackers call "Sappy." However, some games used custom sound mixers for much better music. "Payback" uses MOD music, and Shin'en games use a custom engine called GAX that they licensed out to various developers (Audio is actually Shin'en's main business).

Using custom sound engines, it's possible to make the music sound closer to SNES quality. But then again, that SPC700 was a beast...

GB's sound was also worse, it couldn't play samples (voices etc.) like NES could.

Honestly, I could argue for either. The NES had 4 sound channels + DCPM, but the Game Boy had 3 sound channels + a custom waveform channel. It was very versatile, so you could make it another square wave, a triangle, or something else entirely.

It could also do low quality samples. Look at Perfect Dark, which was more digitized voices and SFX than music.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8LP3iBHXMgU#t=2m39s
(Oh, that brought back horrible memories...)

It was partway between NES and SNES. See Toki Tori, which is practically a GBA game.

See, using Toki Tori is not fair. :p It uses all sorts of amazing techniques to achieve parallax scrolling and transparency (behind waterfalls), both of which the GBC isn't supposed to do. But it's true that a well crafted GBC game looks very close to a normal SNES game.

[Man God]

This is very good and interesting info, but hasn't the cart sizes changed as well? As we look forward to the future as size increases, Nintendo will still stick with carts no?

Biggest cart right now is a little smaller then a single layer DVD.

Also assets are smaller because of the reduced resolution. I honestly doubt anyone will make a game and go, hey, I needed more room but we physically couldn't get any more.

There will be a few who will go, yeah, the audio is compressed or the speech is taken out because we were too cheap to pay for the bigger rom though. That happened a lot on the DS.

[Medalion]

This is very good and interesting info, but hasn't the cart sizes changed as well? As we look forward to the future as size increases, Nintendo will still stick with carts no?

Most likely... even when PSP went disc, they went back to carts cuz they figured out, carts are just more affordable and have better load times

[MrCunningham]

BTW, can anyone explain this weird phenomenon to me? I know the GBC was more powerful than the GG and had more colors, but a lot of times, the colors don't looks as "good" as the GG. I don't know how to explain it, it is very colorful, but the GG's colors looks like a console's colors while the GBC did not. Heck, it didn't look quite like the NES either. The NES also had "console-like" colors. Well, that and it is a console. I get a same feeling with the Neo Geo Pocket Color. I really don't know how to explain it.

well, it's simple, both the GB and NGP were both black and white machines that originally only supported 4 shades of gray per sprite layer and 4 shades of gray per BG layer. This carried over to both their successors, the GBC and NGPC, unfortunately.

Even though the Game Boy Color had a 32,768 colour palette, each sprite was still limited to 4 colours total per object on screen (3 when you add the transparent colour). Backgrounds could display up to 32 colour I think, but had to be broken up into 4 colour tiles each. The NGPC was the same. Some games constructed characters out of multiple sprites to give them more colours. Shantae did this. Her character was comprised out of three sprites (torso, head and hair) to give her a total of 6 unique colours.

The Game Gear could display 16 colours globally for the sprite layer, and 16 colours globally for the BG layer. Giving a total of 32 on screen colours. That means each sprite could be made up of 15 colours total I think? (One colour is reserved for transparency). But all sprites would have to share the same 16 colour pallete. But this allowed each sprite to look richer in colour. The GG had a total palette of 4096 colours.

the BG layer also didn't have to be split up into 4 colour tiles either, as far as I know and could have a total of 16 colours max.

Hopefully that makes sense...

[invaderzim69]

I love this thread! Thanks for the info guys!! :)

[OmegaZero]

I've learned more about the Game Boy Color and the NES here then I have about the 3DS and Gamecube.

[Medalion]

I've learned more about the Game Boy Color and the NES here then I have about the 3DS and Gamecube.

Yep, wait 10 more years and you'll know as much about 3DS and Wii and Gamecube

[MrCunningham]

I've learned more about the Game Boy Color and the NES here then I have about the 3DS and Gamecube.

Haha, Sorry. :P

Old hardware is so much more fun to talk about than newer hardware in retrospect. Maybe because of the technical limitations.

[Andrex]

The quality of the Monster Hunter 3 port proves that the 3DS can hold its own against the GC and even the Wii, but for some reason literally nobody other than Capcom seems capable of pushing decent visuals on the thing.

* Capcom and Nintendo

Dunno if it counts but I'd say Next Level has done a pretty good job with what they've showed of Luigi's Mansion 2 so far. Looks great.