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How powerful is the PlayStation vita?

B

BLACK AMERICAN PSYCHO

Junior Member
Specs:
-CPU: 4-core ARM Cortex-A9 MPCore(a friend of mines told me it's capable of 1.2 ghz but it's underclocked at 600-800 mhz. I'm not sure if I believe him or not. I doubt Sony would underclock the cpu lol. )

-GPU: 4-core SGX543MP4+(don't know much about the gpu. I think it's normally clocked at 200 mhz(6.4 GFLOPS) per core. It's also capable of direct x 9 and open gl 2.1.

RAM: 512 MB of system RAM(256 MB Mobile DDR2-S4 SDRAM Memory die) and 128 MB of VRAM( Mobile SDR SDRAM)
Screen: 960 × 544 qHD @ 220 ppi
Click to expand...


There was a really cool thread similar to this one that was about the 3ds a while back. I made this thread because I was sick of games not being naive resolution and some ios/android games looking better(despite vita having superior hardware and being a dedicated video game device). Why do non-native resolution games even exist on vita? IPhone 4 can run infinity blade(unreal engine 3) at 960x540 resolution and looking pretty damn good. Mortal kombat(unreal engine 3) on vita looks worse than the old ps2 ones and runs at 480x320 I think ? I know mortal kombat vita runs at 60 fps but it still shouldn't look like a dreamcast game.

PlayStation All-Stars battle Royale is native resolution I think. All-Stars looks infinitely superior to mortal kombat while running at 60 locked(with way more stuff happening on screen than mortal kombat). It wasn't a quick and dirty port because they were working on the vita version before the console version came out. I also want to know why uncharted,Ac3 liberation, resistance and black ops don't run at native resolution when modem combat 4 runs at almost 720p on iPhone 5 and looking better than most of the game previously listed. Are you telling me that gameloft puts in more effort than Ubisoft or nihilistic does? As far as I'm concerned, soul sacrifice is the looking game in vita because it looks good and it's naive resolution. It looks much better than Uncharted or assassin's creed and it's naive rez. Just how powerful is vita?
 
K

KojiKnight

Member
Wall of text... Umm... where to begin?

CPU being "underclocked" could mean two things... it could simply be a lower clocked chip to save power, or it could be like the PSP where Sony dictated a slower speed (222mhz for most games versus the top 333) until later hardware revisions which had much better battery life.

As for iphone games looking better than native Vita games... some may approach it, but also remember that the top of the line iphones and ipads cost 2-3x as much as the Vita.
 
N

nhlducks35

Member
powervr_gpu_comparison_a6x.jpg


Well, here is it compared to the new iPhone and iPad

(Keep in mind the iPhone 5 is running at 1136x640 and the iPad is running at 2048x1536)
 
G

Grief.exe

Member
There actually could very well be a good reason for underclocking a processor.

Heat concerns and power concerns being on the top of the list.
 
N

Napalm_Frank

Member
Well to be fair it was Bluepoint who made the Vita version of PSASBR. They could probably port Crysis 3 just to show off lol.

I really don't care about much else but I really hope companys would do native res. Its not like the machine can't still push great visuals.
 
XOMTOR

XOMTOR

Member
Apparently the SGX543MP4+ is supposed to be able to do Anti-aliasing basically for free but you'd never know it based off Vita's games. It's be nice to figure out why devs aren't making us of it.
 
T

test_account

XP-39C²
Underclocked CPU is a possibility. The PSP CPU was clocked at 222MHz to begin with, but was later unlocked to 333MHz. It took about 2.5 years before Sony unlocked it to 333MHz.

EDIT: Already mentioned above here.
 
D

delta25

Banned
On paper the Vita is a beast as far as the tech is concerned but the actual software for the system up to this point has painted the Vita as being huge underachiever in the visual department(outside a few exclusives), or at least not anywhere near what most people were expecting, myself included.

The 3DS on the other hand (I think based on Resident Evil: Revelations alone) has in a lot of ways exceeded what most people thought was possible for the system, it may be no match for the Vita, but the 3DS is no slouch when it comes to providing great looking games based on lower end tech.
 
K

kuroshiki

Member
It has built in 128MB video RAM.

No other mobile device has this, and I doubt anything will anytime soon. So there.

delta25 said:
On paper the Vita is a beast as far as the tech is concerned but the actual software for the system up to this point has painted the Vita as being huge underachiever in the visual department(outside a few exclusives), or at least not anywhere near what most people were expecting, myself included.

The 3DS on the other hand (I think based on Resident Evil: Revelations alone) has in a lot of ways exceeded what most people thought was possible for the system, it may be no match for the Vita, but the 3DS is no slouch when it comes to providing great looking games based on lower end tech.
Click to expand...

...... I played NFSMW and blown away that this could be done in mobile gaming.
 
LiquidMetal14

LiquidMetal14

hide your water-based mammals
delta25 said:
On paper the Vita is a beast as far as the tech is concerned but the actual software for the system up to this point has painted the Vita as being huge underachiever in the visual department(outside a few exclusives), or at least not anywhere near what most people were expecting, myself included.

The 3DS on the other hand (I think based on Resident Evil: Revelations alone) has in a lot of ways exceeded what most people thought was possible for the system, it may be no match for the Vita, but the 3DS is no slouch when it comes to providing great looking games based on lower end tech.
Click to expand...

It really depends on the game but RE Rev has rather limited environments (not every single one of them but you get the idea) while there are more than a few bigger and more open games on Vita that look nice and play well. Gravity Rush is really impressive while playing it on a Vita.

As it goes for both, the screenshots can't hardly do any justice to viewing on the actual screens.

As was pointed in the prior post, NFSMW is rather impressive when you sit with it. It may have visual compromises but it's quite an impressive feat for a hand held game.
 
P

Pie and Beans

Look for me on the local news, I'll be the guy arrested for trying to burn down a Nintendo exec's house.
When games show it, I mean they really show it. LBP Vita is almost undistinguishable from the PS3 version, and I dont think it even runs native, just some very good AA and IQ.

But then when stuff runs native like Virtua Tennis you get some serious wow. Does NFS :Most Wanted run native? It looks like Sonic Racing Transformed does, and some shots of that are purrrdddy.

Looks like Killzone is going to be the real showoff though, whenever thats slated for. Wish more devs were taking the Vita seriously, its fantastic hardware.
 
P

ponpo

( ≖‿≖)
What's the most visually impressive game so far? Technika Tune looks amazing but it's just because of the videos and UI, nothing really utilizing the system I guess.
 
G

grimshawish

Banned
LiquidMetal14 said:
It really depends on the game but RE Rev has rather limited environments (not every single one of them but you get the idea) while there are more than a few bigger and more open games on Vita that look nice and play well. Gravity Rush is really impressive while playing it on a Vita.
Click to expand...

Some of the levels in 3D Land are pretty large and busy.
Kid Icarus has some large on foot areas too; but isn't the most attractive game in the world.

I'd say if theres a single statement to be made on both - one is optimised for its resolution.
 
LiquidMetal14

LiquidMetal14

hide your water-based mammals
Pie and Beans said:
When games show it, I mean they really show it. LBP Vita is almost undistinguishable from the PS3 version, and I dont think it even runs native, just some very good AA and IQ.

But then when stuff runs native like Virtua Tennis you get some serious wow. Does NFS :Most Wanted run native? It looks like Sonic Racing Transformed does, and some shots of that are purrrdddy.

Looks like Killzone is going to be the real showoff though, whenever thats slated for. Wish more devs were taking the Vita seriously, its fantastic hardware.
Click to expand...

NFS does not but still looks rather good. I guess because it's a more real world type game than Gravity Rush, you seem to notice it less but it's still not native res. I think Gravity Rush is more impressive even if it's not native res. Beautiful game on the Vita OLED itself.

grimshawish said:
Some of the levels in 3D Land are pretty large and busy.
Kid Icarus has some large on foot areas too; but isn't the most attractive game in the world.

I'd say if theres a single statement to be made on both - one is optimised for its resolution.
Click to expand...

When KI has it going, it's pretty nice by 3DS standards. Definitely agree there.
 
R

rjc571

Banned
whitehawk said:
Sub-native resolutions are a plague on the Vita.
Click to expand...

TBH I played through the entirety of Gravity Rush without even realizing that it was sub-native res. But for lots of other games it's really obvious.

My biggest disappointment with the Vita from a technical perspective is a lack of 60 fps games, but that comes down to the developers.
 
N

Nemo

Will Eat Your Children
Sony definitely hit the right spot with Vita, it's up to par to do pretty much what we're used to from this console gen... As of now it's of course only the question if we'll get a good stream of games build with the right effort
 
S

Skyzard

Banned
-CPU: 4-core ARM Cortex-A9 MPCore(a friend of mines told me it's capable of 1.2 ghz but it's underclocked at 600-800 mhz. I'm not sure if I believe him or not. I doubt Sony would underclock the cpu lol. )
Click to expand...

The Vita processor rates at 800mhz to 2ghz.

Probably not running at 2ghz at the moment :p


Expect games to look and perform better over time as well.
 
O

orioto

Good Art™
A sure thing is that, even if it's not often put to the table but that's one of the reasons the Vita struggle. It was meant to be a huge expensive machine for a reason, and that was its crazy unreal power. That idea has probably faded slowly in every mind after months of average performance.

The funny thing is i'm pretty certain it's suffering from the exact same problem as WiiU. It doesn't have the most usual architecture and the dev usual tools are not efficient for it yet, but that's pretty fatal in those days and ages.

And the problem of the Vita is that it's not worthy of what it wants to be. From the begenning, the fact that Uncharted wasn't native rez was a really bad sign and symbol for the console. If the game that is meant to show your console is a monster.. cannot run on it (cause not being native rez means it cannot run on the vita as it was designed initially...).. You've got a problem on your hands..
 
I

Izayoi

Banned
Y2Kev said:
P4g is sub native.
Click to expand...
They did a good job of hiding it. Looks fantastic, must be because of the AA? Is there AA? I don't know, but it's got the best IQ I've seen for a 3D game on the system thus far (granted I've only played a handful of games).
 
M

Mr Swine

Banned
Well Vita is a beast when it displays games in the "low" resolution of 960x540. Both iPhone and iPad have way higher resolution than vita
 
LiquidMetal14

LiquidMetal14

hide your water-based mammals
orioto said:
A sure thing is that, even if it's not often put to the table but that's one of the reasons the Vita struggle. It was meant to be a huge expensive machine for a reason, and that was its crazy unreal power. That idea has probably faded slowly in every mind after months of average performance.

The funny thing is i'm pretty certain it's suffering from the exact same problem as WiiU. It doesn't have the most usual architecture and the dev usual tools are not efficient for it yet, but that's pretty fatal in those days and ages.

And the problem of the Vita is that it's not worthy of what it wants to be. From the begenning, the fact that Uncharted wasn't native rez was a really bad sign and symbol for the console. If the game that is meant to show your console is a monster.. cannot run on it (cause not being native rez means it cannot run on the vita as it was designed initially...).. You've got a problem on your hands..
Click to expand...

While you're not entirely wrong, your bold part means little in the grand scheme and won't stop anyone from buying it if the game is good. Luckily there are plenty of good-great games on Vita and some are shockingly not native resolution :p

You also have to remember that it's the enthusiast forums or people like your or me that will talk about this stuff in a more serious manner. I guess it goes the same for every platform in that regard. An ugly and horribly low res game will still be scrutinized and ugly though :)

One simply cannot place a piece of Orioto art on a Game Gear and expect Picasso reincarnated!

Izayoi said:
They did a good job of hiding it. Looks fantastic, must be because of the AA?
Click to expand...

No AA, just a nice looking game though that really pops on Vita.
 
T

Toki767

Member
This is just the first generation of games. I'm sure as people get more accustomed to the system's inner workings, games will start looking better. PSP games at the start looked like crap compared to the later offerings. Same with PS2 and PS3 games.
 
W

whitehawk

Banned
Pie and Beans said:
When games show it, I mean they really show it. LBP Vita is almost undistinguishable from the PS3 version, and I dont think it even runs native, just some very good AA and IQ.

But then when stuff runs native like Virtua Tennis you get some serious wow. Does NFS :Most Wanted run native? It looks like Sonic Racing Transformed does, and some shots of that are purrrdddy.

Looks like Killzone is going to be the real showoff though, whenever thats slated for. Wish more devs were taking the Vita seriously, its fantastic hardware.
Click to expand...
No it's sub-native. And the framerate is also unstable. (drops a lot when you're in a race). It's completely killed my enjoyment of the game.
Toki767 said:
This is just the first generation of games. I'm sure as people get more accustomed to the system's inner workings, games will start looking better. PSP games at the start looked like crap compared to the later offerings. Same with PS2 and PS3 games.
Click to expand...
Actually I'd argue that Ridge Racer (2004/2005 launch title) is one of the best looking games on the PSP. And it runs at 60fps to boot.
 
X

xxbrothawizxx63

Member
grimshawish said:
Some of the levels in 3D Land are pretty large and busy.
Kid Icarus has some large on foot areas too; but isn't the most attractive game in the world.

I'd say if theres a single statement to be made on both - one is optimised for its resolution.
Click to expand...

Kid Icarus is probably one of the most disappointing games on the 3DS for me graphically. Don't get me wrong, the game is stunning at some points with the number of particle effects, etc., but overall the game is low poly and plagued with some notably low-res textures (the game's biggest graphical offense in my opinion). There's some very nice lighting at the very least...

I always see people saying that Revelations fails to open up into expansive areas, but I can't really understand how anyone who has played the game, specifically some of the later levels in Raid Mode, can say that the game doesn't push a relatively amazing amount of geometry in good sized areas. Some of the levels have large areas with 10+ enemies on screen and 2 high poly main character models all while keeping an amazingly consistent frame-rate. Revelations is the reason I want them to revisit Mercenaries 3D on the 3DS, Revelations makes it clear that Mercenaries could have looked dramatically better than it did...

On the other hand, few Vita game have left me with a want of too much more graphically other than MK, Resistance, or CoD. For the most part, the games look great. Even some of the games that really aren't anything to right home about are given something special with the OLED screen.
 
Y

Yopis

Member
Sub native hurts . Games like wipeout show that the system has power under the hood.

Price is a steal with those specs.
 
LiquidMetal14

LiquidMetal14

hide your water-based mammals
Vyse The Legend said:
It is very powerful. Hopefully, it lives long enough for devs to show off what it can really do.
Click to expand...

I think that the 2nd and 3rd gen games will really start to show some stuff. But I think devs will make compromises to get the game looking amazing even if it means it being a little below native res. I don't care either way but would rather have native res any day.
 
M

muu

Member
Yopis said:
Sub native hurts . Games like wipeout show that the system has power under the hood.

Price is a steal with those specs.
Click to expand...

Aren't boxy futuristic cars easier to draw than detailed characters and environments? I agree that Wipeout's always looked good, but much of it IMO is due to the effects and the sense of speed that race games can convey.
 
F

Father_Brain

Banned
I know it's much more powerful than 3DS, but I really don't get why there are so few graphically impressive games that run in native resolution, given that the iPhone 4S is both less powerful and has a slightly higher native res.
 
F

freddy

Banned
I think people underestimate the impact of b and c teams working on new hardware. I'm no tech expert but I have seen many, many hardware releases and games machines are always a letdown in the first year or so.
 
O

orioto

Good Art™
LiquidMetal14 said:
While you're not entirely wrong, your bold part means little in the grand scheme and won't stop anyone from buying it if the game is good. Luckily there are plenty of good-great games on Vita and some are shockingly not native resolution :p

You also have to remember that it's the enthusiast forums or people like your or me that will talk about this stuff in a more serious manner. I guess it goes the same for every platform in that regard. An ugly and horribly low res game will still be scrutinized and ugly though :)

One simply cannot place a piece of Orioto art on a Game Gear and expect Picasso reincarnated!
Click to expand...

Well, to place the problem in your perspective, in term of audience reaction. Sure they won't be discussing the count of polygons and pixels, but, let's be simple and clear here. Many 3d games runs really impressively on ios or android platforms, and people won't be impressed by a vita game. It's a matter of doing what you can and good, rather than half doing something that you cannot afford. I'll tell you something simple. I had my vita for some weeks, and i suddenly saw a Galaxy S2 with some random soccer game, and that 60 fps + native rez, maybe even some AA looked like i was looking at some unreal magic, honestly.
 
G

grimshawish

Banned
xxbrothawizxx63 said:
Kid Icarus is probably one of the most disappointing games on the 3DS for me graphically. Don't get me wrong, the game is stunning at some points with the number of particle effects, etc., but overall the game is low poly and plagued with some notably low-res textures (the game's biggest graphical offense in my opinion). There's some very nice lighting at the very least...
Click to expand...

The quality of the script is what makes it shine. The only problem I have with Icarus is the low pixel count of the hardware, its probably the game most affected. Its survivable though.

The sheer amount going on on screen at any one time is pretty incredible.
I think if anything this is what shines with the 3DS for me - I didn't expect this much to be going on; just some decent 3D visuals (its surprised there too) and reasonably light gameplay.

Instead its come out punching. Revelations is a good example and yeah I agree that the game opens into wider areas. Its still constrained but the tight space fits the scenario's and lends to the game.

Strife91 said:
How many Game Cubes?
Click to expand...

3? 3
 
S

Skyzard

Banned
beaten by a few posts

Father_Brain said:
I know it's much more powerful than 3DS, but I really don't get why there are so few graphically impressive games that run in native resolution, given that the iPhone 4S is both less powerful and has a slightly higher native res.
Click to expand...

Probably because the games go for console experiences to meet expectations, whereas iphone games tend to be much more limited - eg NFS:MW
 
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