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[bgassassin]

I didn't know this either, but R700 seems to have a unique tessellator - not DX11 compliant, but very different from previous AMD tessellators.

I think ATi used the same tess unit in the 2000/3000/4000 GPUs.

That, and their likely insistence on drawing a heavy profit on each hardware sold.

It's no less "greedy" than DLC or anything else companies get ripped for.

That's reaching since they don't have other potential revenue streams like MS and Sony.

 

[2MF]

That, and their likely insistence on drawing a heavy profit on each hardware sold.

It's no less "greedy" than DLC or anything else companies get ripped for.

Wanting to make a profit on hardware is greedy? Why?

What do you think about PS3/360 games usually costing $60 at launch, is that also greedy by Sony/MS? Actual greed is Microsoft charging you for XBL gold and hitting you with ads at the same time...

 

[beril]

I don't really understand people calling them cheap for having a small power effecient box

They could have overclocked it to hell and back and just let the fan spin like crazy and it would hardly have any effect on cost. And I'm sure they could have designed a cheaper system with the same brute power if they didn't give a damn about size, noise levels or durability

 

[2MF]

I don't really understand people calling them cheap for having a small power effecient box

They could have overclocked it to hell and back and just let the fan spin like crazy and it would hardly have any effect on cost. And I'm sure they could have designed a cheaper system with the same brute power if they didn't give a damn about size, noise levels or durability

Overclocking only gets you a small performance boost before power consumption and cooling needs go crazy high.

 

[wsippel]

That's what I meant by DX11-compliant. Not that they actually use DirectX for ports.

The HD4000s tessellator is a fixed function unit with a max tessellation value of 15, so it doesn't fit the DX11 spec, which is probably gonna be the standard for PS4/720 GPUs.

DX11 is programmable + max. tessellation value of 64 + the control shaders.

You sure about that? I know AMD GPUs up to and including R600 had those limitations, but R700 was the first (and only) GPU to use AMD's second generation tessellation engine. I can't find any real details about the engine anywhere, though.

 

[AlStrong]

I think ATi used the same tess unit in the 2000/3000/4000 GPUs.

The information is fuzzy, but ATi claimed that they added some level of interaction with the geometry shader for rv7xx - that's still far from the additional hull/domain shaders that make tessellation more flexible & usable. You could emulate those (to an extent) via multiple passes, but it's extremely slow. A single triangle setup/rasterizer + low clock certainly wouldn't help matters.

 

[Metal B]

That, and their likely insistence on drawing a heavy profit on each hardware sold.

It's no less "greedy" than DLC or anything else companies get ripped for.

A company actual wants to make money with there product, instead of forcefully take over a market by selling there overpowered product with a lost? What bastards! The only reason Sony and Microsoft "gift" you the money the consoles actual should cost, is to get it back another way and trough the competition from the market.

 

[Thunder Monkey]

I disagree. I think its exactly as conservative as the Wii was - look at the tiny little fan. Just that tech has moved on and you just get more for your money

They did get more.

They got a GPU moderately more powerful than the one in the 360, needing a fan and cooling space a fraction of a fraction of the size.

Different kind of impressive.

 

[wsippel]

The information is fuzzy, but ATi claimed that they added some level of interaction with the geometry shader for rv7xx - that's still far from the additional hull/domain shaders that make tessellation more flexible & usable. You could emulate those (to an extent) via multiple passes, but it's extremely slow. A single triangle setup/rasterizer + low clock certainly wouldn't help matters.

I see I'm not the only one scratching his head. There seems to be no documentation or detailed information about this so called "second generation" tessellator. It's not mentioned anywhere in the R700 reference guide or in the AMD Intermediate Language specifications either. Was it ever even used for anything other than the March of the Froblins techdemo? Do we actually know what it can do, what limitations it has or how it performs? AMD touted it a main feature of the R700 line before it came out, so the lack of solid info is extremely weird. This is pretty much the only thing I could find, and it doesn't really tell us much about the hardware either:

Using GPU tessellation on characters and terrain allows superior detail and high-quality animation. The GPU tessellation is used to subdivide and displace the characters so that they never look “low-poly” or triangulated and flat. Displacement mapping captures the fine scale details of the character. The difference in the amount of high fidelity details such as the bumps on the skin is instantly noticeable. The tessellation level is dynamically calculated per-frame as a function of the number of tessellated characters in the view for a stable frame rate in dense crowd situations. At the highest level of tessellation, a single froblin character can be rendered with as many as 1.6 million triangles! Froblins that are far off in the distance are drawn using a simplified, non-tessellated, mesh. Animated character rendering performance is improved with a multi-pass approach augmented with vertex compression and decompression on the fly to reduce memory footprint and bandwidth utilization.

http://developer.amd.com/Resources/documentation/samples/demos/pages/froblins.aspx

 

[Popstar]

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[neo2046]

Iwata asks: Wii U: Wii U GamePad
http://iwataasks.nintendo.com/interviews/#/wiiu/gamepad/0/0

 

[Drago]

Iwata asks: Wii U: Wii U GamePad
http://iwataasks.nintendo.com/interviews/#/wiiu/gamepad/0/0

This is probably new thread worthy, no?

 

[brochiller]

This is probably new thread worthy, no?

Yes.

 

[POWERSPHERE]

I don't really understand people calling them cheap for having a small power effecient box

They could have overclocked it to hell and back and just let the fan spin like crazy and it would hardly have any effect on cost. And I'm sure they could have designed a cheaper system with the same brute power if they didn't give a damn about size, noise levels or durability

Because people aren't developers, they're just snarky spoilt brats. It'll run rock solid for years and years.