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Nintendo DS vs Nintendo 64...so what's more powerful?

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I don't want to weigh in on the question of exactly which system is "stronger," here, but I'm a little confused that people have criticized the DS for not having "decent texture filtering." I question the assertion that the N64 had "decent" texture filtering either -- most games had smeary, overly-blurred textures that could hurt whatever detail the artists had put into things.

I prefer the DS' altogether lack of filtering to the N64's smeary textures, personally, but I don't think either one compares to a system with actually decent filtering.
 
A Black Falcon said:
True, but MK64 was out six months after launch in Japan. It was even earlier.



Really, you think that? How, exactly, is DS 2d 'far better' than what Yoshi's Story does?

As I said, with 2d here, it's really just about demand, not capability. Had people wanted 2d N64 games, we'd have gotten them, and they'd have looked great. As it was there were so few (aside from puzzle games) that it's hard to judge... there are a few here and there, but not many. The ones that there are prove that the N64 could do some quite good 2d when developers wanted to, though, certainly. It's not the system's fault that the market was entirely against 2d console games at the time.



DKR doesn't match the system's late-cycle games in graphics, certainly, but it does look pretty nice... though ingame, actual screenshots would be better than enhanced emulation stuff, for the best comparisons.



Indeed, particularly those numbers which somehow say that the DS has better specs, while it definitely doesn't... it's the other way around. I thought we'd established that... oh well.
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And Mario Kart DS came out 12 months or so after launch. They're both really early games.


Compare and contrast the detail and animation found in 2D DS games to Yoshi's Island. You also have to acknowledge (now I'm just assuming this) that the DS was probably built with 2D more in mind then the N64. Yes I am aware the N64 had few 2D games but looking at some of them Yoshi's Island DS, Ogre Battle, Clayfighter 63 1/3, Mortal Kombat Trilogy, and Mischeif Makers there really isn't a comparison. Yes I know it is somewhat unfair to compare such few but still.

I do agree that we need real DKR shots to make a fair comparison. Though I am sure that the DS version and the 64 version were similar, though I have only seen a but of the DS version with my own eyes.
 
i thought the 64 could do 2d really well its just that their seemed to be very little interest with everyone wanting 3d games... and that capcom thought it possible that streetfighter 3 could have been done on the 64, albeit not worth it by the time their relationship with nintendo started to defrost... i thought rakuga kids was technically nice with 2d (and artistically)

http://au.youtube.com/watch?v=agMt0vKn6-8&feature=related

its a shame that bad 3d fighters and mario, zelda, mario kart/party games affected future game releases so much... the 64 could have done alot more if it was pushed i believe but you just have to look at some of the rare games to see it could do some good stuff without ram support

edit: im replaying perfect dark with the 64 right now and..... with ram support it leagues ahead of a ds game (great game lol i need a newer controller)
 
Flying_Phoenix said:
And Mario Kart DS came out 12 months or so after launch. They're both really early games.

.
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Mario Kart 64 was an early 3D game. You give that same team the N65 hardware today and they can probably produce something much better looking than MK64 was.
 
charlequin said:
I don't want to weigh in on the question of exactly which system is "stronger," here, but I'm a little confused that people have criticized the DS for not having "decent texture filtering." I question the assertion that the N64 had "decent" texture filtering either -- most games had smeary, overly-blurred textures that could hurt whatever detail the artists had put into things.

I prefer the DS' altogether lack of filtering to the N64's smeary textures, personally, but I don't think either one compares to a system with actually decent filtering.
Click to expand...

Thank you. Exactly my feeling about it. I should add that I always liked PS1 graphics better because the N64's blurry texture-filtering made it difficult for me to make out things on the screen.

Same goes for DS vs. N64. The fact that the DS has a small screen helps too, as pixels are easier on the eyes.
 
charlequin said:
I don't want to weigh in on the question of exactly which system is "stronger," here, but I'm a little confused that people have criticized the DS for not having "decent texture filtering." I question the assertion that the N64 had "decent" texture filtering either -- most games had smeary, overly-blurred textures that could hurt whatever detail the artists had put into things.

I prefer the DS' altogether lack of filtering to the N64's smeary textures, personally, but I don't think either one compares to a system with actually decent filtering.
Click to expand...

Not really sure what people mean by texture filtering anyways. I thought the fact that DS games don't have twitchy textures means it had filtering of some sort.

But i'm not a techie and it seems like none of the people here are either. The screenshot comparisons are particularly bad.
 
A Black Falcon said:
Indeed... what in the world do you mean? Yoshi's Story is an incredibly beautiful game. I know a lot of people dislike the gameplay, but the graphics are amazing. It does a great job of showing what the N64 can do in 2d.
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I disagree. The levels were bland, and the graphics were very blurry. It was a huge letdown graphically after YI.
 
m3k said:
i thought the 64 could do 2d really well its just that their seemed to be very little interest with everyone wanting 3d games... and that capcom thought it possible that streetfighter 3 could have been done on the 64, albeit not worth it by the time their relationship with nintendo started to defrost... i thought rakuga kids was technically nice with 2d (and artistically)

http://au.youtube.com/watch?v=agMt0vKn6-8&feature=related

its a shame that bad 3d fighters and mario, zelda, mario kart/party games affected future game releases so much... the 64 could have done alot more if it was pushed i believe but you just have to look at some of the rare games to see it could do some good stuff without ram support

edit: im replaying perfect dark with the 64 right now and..... with ram support it leagues ahead of a ds game (great game lol i need a newer controller)
Click to expand...

While I do admit it looks better then I expected it still doesn't look as good as many 2D DS games and makes Hotaku No Ken look to be the Third Strike of animation.
 
Clock speeds mean nothing in the world of modern computing. The DS is indeed more powerful than the N64, the architecture can transform more verticies per second than the N64. However, the DS bears the curse of the mobile device: in order to keep itself running cool and not eat up too much battery power, it will underclock itself in intense situations.

In summary, DS has more power but, in practice, the N64 displays more polygons.
 
The texture blurring on the N64 hides a lot of imperfections. It makes the games on the N64 look a lot better then the DS in my book.
 
Owing both and having played both a bit recently, I probably lean towards N64 being a touch more powerful than the DS.


HOWEVER, the end result is another story. We're playing the DS on a tiny ass screen that's both VERY sharp, and matches the native resolution.

With the N64, we were playing with composite cables (s-video at best) on a 21"-32" TV. We're talking about a resolution that's barely higher than the DS, and being displayed 6-8 times the size!

So, in practice, the DS usually looks a lot better than most N64 games. Just a lot more pleasing to the eye. Though if N64 games were run on a small LCD that matched the exact output resolution, we may be singing another song entirely.




And the asswads posting pics to compare; please stop using bullshit emulator pics for the N64. It's terribly dissengenious. Plus, you look stupid.
 
tak said:
The texture blurring on the N64 hides a lot of imperfections. It makes the games on the N64 look a lot better then the DS in my book.
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I'm surprised so many other people seem to just toss features like this aside. Texture filtering is NOT a cheap effect. It would have radically altered the DS hardware had Nintendo tried to include it, I believe.
 
dark10x said:
I'm surprised so many other people seem to just toss features like this aside. Texture filtering is NOT a cheap effect. It would have radically altered the DS hardware had Nintendo tried to include it, I believe.
Click to expand...

Texture-filtering can change a lot of things, I agree. I think people's main gripe (including me) is that N64's texture-filtering make things look really blurry. I don't have any problem with post-32-bit era texture-filtering (Dreamcast, for instance), but the N64 filtering was horrible.

However, I also think that it would have suited the tiny screens of the DS better.
 
Kilrogg said:
Texture-filtering can change a lot of things, I agree. I think people's main gripe (including me) is that N64's texture-filtering make things look really blurry. I don't have any problem with post-32-bit era texture-filtering (Dreamcast, for instance), but the N64 filtering was horrible.
Click to expand...

The thing is with the N64 is that in games that can disable texture filtering via cheats the image looks just as blurry, Shadows of the Empire has a debug code that allows you to disable Anti Aliasing and other effects yet the image output does not improve. The only time it does is when running in higher resolutions.
 
The only advantage the N64 has over the DS is floating point support, image quality (due to the FP support and slightly higher overall resolution) and a slightly more flexible GPU. The faster CPU is nullfied because the N64 has to do all transformation, lighting and sound processing via software while the DS has dedicated hardware for that.

The DS is far more optimized and streamlined. You can argue theoretical polygon throughput all day, but the DS can reach the maximum throughput with all effects on at 60fps, while N64 games like F-Zero X had to make extreme sacrifices to reach such framerate.

Calling DS graphics "PS1 level" solely because the textures aren't filtered is ignorance. Games like Tales of Innocence and Nanostray 2 are borderline Dreamcast in models and texturing.
 
The reason N64 textures were blurry was not because of the texture filtering
It was due to mip-mapping of VERY VERY VERY low res textures, since the N64 had very limited memory to load textures into.

For instance, 95% of textures in StarFox 64 were 16x16 pixels in size... your avatar is higher res than this.
 
Deku said:
Not really sure what people mean by texture filtering anyways.
Click to expand...

The N64 and later 3D systems apply filters to the textures on their models so that, instead of seeing the square borders of all the pixels in those textures, they're smoothed in some way -- blurred or rounded or otherwise made to appear less blocky.

The DS and the PSX both apply no texture filtering, so whenever a textured polygon is close to the camera you can see big, sharp square lines where the pixels are.
 
charlequin said:
The N64 and later 3D systems apply filters to the textures on their models so that, instead of seeing the square borders of all the pixels in those textures, they're smoothed in some way -- blurred or rounded or otherwise made to appear less blocky.

The DS and the PSX both apply no texture filtering, so whenever a textured polygon is close to the camera you can see big, sharp square lines where the pixels are.
Click to expand...

Unlike DS, PSX had no perspective correction, which I think is what he was thinking of. So the texture details would always be evenly spaced across the polygon, causing nasty warping on surfaces angled away from the camera.
Some PSX games even used LOD tesselation on flat surfaces to make it look more bearable, but there's no need on the DS.
 
We wouldn't be having this conversation had Nintendo included mip-mapping and texture filtering to the DS. In fact we'd have DS Vs. PSP threads instead.
Why they didn't is beyond me.
 
Thanks to threads like this, I am a more educated gamer.
I will like to know how hard is to port a N64 game to DS, i.e. Resident Evil 2 or Ogre Battle
 
The N64 can do a better job at pretty much everything in theory but It was such a bottlenecked clusterfuck of an hardware design that MANY top end DS games appears to look better in the DS screens.
 
Graphics Horse said:
Unlike DS, PSX had no perspective correction, which I think is what he was thinking of. So the texture details would always be evenly spaced across the polygon, causing nasty warping on surfaces angled away from the camera.
Some PSX games even used LOD tesselation on flat surfaces to make it look more bearable, but there's no need on the DS.
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Ah that's what it is, perspective correction. Thanks.


OK so, PSP class hardware + DS class software =???
 
Xelinis said:
Clock speeds mean nothing in the world of modern computing. The DS is indeed more powerful than the N64, the architecture can transform more verticies per second than the N64.
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Yes, however, N64 can render/display more polygons per second than DS can:

N64: 160K vs DS: 120K

I'm not sure how many vertices N64 can transform but it's probably well less than 1 million, while DS can transform 4 million.


In summary, DS has more power but, in practice, the N64 displays more polygons.
Click to expand...


It's true clockspeeds don't mean very much, the architecture is more important.

N64 has a better CPU, not just because its clocked higher. I'm pretty sure if the MIPS R4xxx in N64 and ARM9 in DS were clocked the same, the N64 would still be more powerful.
Perhaps not by much though.


slightly off-topic, regarding architectures:
An example would be Dreamcast's SH4 CPU is far more than twice as powerful as N64's CPU. If they were clocked the same, the SH4 would still blow N64 CPU out of the water.

Also Dreamcast's PowerVR2DC graphics chip is, conservatively, 18 times more powerful than N64's RCP. 160K polys vs 3M polys
There's not a huge difference in their clockspeeds. RCP: 67 MHz - PowerVR2DC: 100 MHz If they were clocked the same, the PowerVR2DC would still blow RCP away, by an order of magnitude.
 
i don't know why people bother trying to compare screenshots. the N64/PSX generation was the first real time many devs moved into 3d. there was a huge learning curve with this switch, and i'm sure if you took many of the same devs and threw them this hardware now they could do a hell of a lot better.

i haven't looked at the specs in detail, but i'd suspect the N64 had a slight edge over the DS. there were all sorts of problems with the N64 as well such as Nintendo and the whole microcode issue for their DSP-like secondary processor.
 
Graphics Horse said:
Unlike DS, PSX had no perspective correction, which I think is what he was thinking of.
Click to expand...

Silly me, thinking that when someone comes into a conversation about texture filtering and says "I don't know what texture filtering is" that they might want someone to tell them. :P
 
Peronthious said:
Was the N64 similar to the SNES, in that a portion of the hardware was on the cartridge itself?
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I don't believe so. SNES games had shit like the FX chip. N64 had the expanded memory pack.
 
dark10x said:
I'm surprised so many other people seem to just toss features like this aside. Texture filtering is NOT a cheap effect. It would have radically altered the DS hardware had Nintendo tried to include it, I believe.
Click to expand...
Filtering would have required floating point support, indeed that would require a different design. We're even talking about changes on the battery, because power consumption would be higher.

But once filtering is properly supported by hardware, it's actually free.

The DS 3D chip is entirely built around fixed precision math, similar to some mobile GPU designs. You could do filtering on that, but it would look horrible and full of artifacts, since there wouldn't be enough precision to calculate smooth transitions between texture's pixels.
 
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