CurseoftheGods
Banned
I just read that the PlayStation 3 and the Xbox 360 can process 275 million and 500 million polygons per second respectively. Is that true? Is that why most multiplatform titles end up looking better on the 360?
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polygons per second?
- Thread starter CurseoftheGods
- Start date
we.are.the.armada
Member
Hmmm, for multiplats I'm guessing that the difficulties in making anything on the PS3 are staggering enough to the point where the devs would have to try much harder to make things run or look adequate compared to the 360. I'm not sure though, there could be cases where multiplats are running better on the PS3.
Those are raw numbers. Realistically you're looking at something closer to 30-120m, depending on the game.
Keyser Soze
Member
None of these numbers matter at all, as it all depends on what people create for the product. People could create a game with one sole polygon that runs like crap on any platform because it was badly designed at its core. It does not run slow because of the platform it is on - instead it fails because the person/people that made it was not up to task.
Also, people should shut up about "six times faster" stuff for new "next gen" products, as it make no sense in the long runs for this exact same reason.
Also, people should shut up about "six times faster" stuff for new "next gen" products, as it make no sense in the long runs for this exact same reason.
ss_lemonade
Member
Polygon performance seemed to be an important number back in the day being tossed around, together with your number of bits, optical drive speed etc. Now, there's more to it than that so I doubt that's the reason why some multiplats look better on one platform.
Also like mentioned, I think those are purely raw numbers and don't mean much in real world games. Heck I remember the old xbox having numbers like 300mil polys per second
Also like mentioned, I think those are purely raw numbers and don't mean much in real world games. Heck I remember the old xbox having numbers like 300mil polys per second
No. Normally Xbox 360 versions of multi platform games don't push more polygons.
Takamura-San
Member
The good old polygon wars.
Brings me back to the 90s.
Brings me back to the 90s.
Early on geometry was reduced in some multi-platform titles. The PS3 version of FNR3? had flat spectators for example. I don't think it was an issue for too long though.
If I remember correctly, a common approach when spouting the pps figures for systems was to talk about the count in terms of infinitely small untextured unlit polygons. Legend has it (I dunno if it was ever corroborated, but given what we saw the system do, it has a ring of truth) that this hurt Nintendo in the Gamecube era; If I remember right, the Xbox was touting 75M polygons per second, the PS2... 66M, was it? And the Gamecube only advertised 18M or so. The thing was, though, the Gamecube numbers were in terms of polygons rendered in an actual plausible game setting, while the other figures were the infinitely-small unlit untextured ones mentioned earlier
It's possibly an apocryphal story, but it does have a ring of truth to it when you compare the best-looking Gamecube games against those from the other systems.
I wouldn't be surprised if it's just talking about GPU performance. Sony realized that the RSX's geometry handling was hopeless and released tools (iirc, they're called the Edge tools) to help devs use the Cell's SPUs to handle geometry. Not only is it faster than the RSX, but using more than one SPU supposedly gives a major performance boost. Another benefit is that with cost of a frame of lag, the GPU doesn't have to wait for geometry at all, so it gives the RSX more time to get what it needs done. It took a year or so for the tools to come out and for devs to use them, which is a big reason why PS3 titles didn't look too hot for a while.
Such number is meaningless nowadays since there is a vast number of variables which can affect the throughput. The cost for processing each vertex depends on how complex the vertex shaders are and how much data each vertex contains, for starters. Also, the 360 uses unified shaders so the number of shader processors available for vertex processing depends on how the fragment processing load. Geometry also does take space in RAM, specially in the amounts used by PS360 games.
dragonelite
Member
Aren't they just using the cell to cull away the polygons that shouldn't be drawn.
Because they aren't visible. View Frustum culling and backface culling to name a few techniques.
Ether_Snake
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No it is not true, in the sense that you have to do other things than render polygons.
An Xbox 360 or PS3 game running at 30FPS might have 1.2m to AT MOST 2m triangles on screen at once. Half of that are often from the dynamic shadow pass.
The numbers might actually be true, but as you can see the numbers really do not matter much. As has already been pointed out, the numbers are probably even highly theoretical. Even if most/some (depending on who you ask) multiplatform games look better on the 360, they certainly do not look 1.{81} times better in comparison to the PS3 version.
The biggest reason why most/some multiplatform games end up looking better on the 360 is because the PS3 processor is hard to program for, especially if your code tree derives from 360 code and splits into PS3 code.
mclaren777
Member
Apparently my GTX 460 only pushes 2.4 million polygons in Crysis.
I can't be certain, but given how that data's presented I'd imagine that that's the polygons in the *scene*. Since you're running at 33fps, you'd need to multiply that by 33 to get the polys/sec.
No and those numbers are totally useless in a real world scenario.
That's still only ~80 million polygons per seconds, only slightly more than the original Xbox.
...which shows how much bullshit these numbers are, even in last gen consoles.
Ether_Snake
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No, his number is right. He is rendering 2.4m triangles, which are the triangles not culled (so the ones in the camera frustrum + shadows). That's how you count triangles per second. Fits with the numbers I mentioned.
mclaren777
Member
Thanks for the clarification, mclem & Luigiv.
You mean PS2. Xbox's raw number was 120m, PS2's was about 70m. Which further illustrates how useless the raw numbers are.
When I said 'scene', I was including culling. My point was more that I thought it looked like the stats in the corner were talking about what was being rendered in a single frame, and so you'd need to take into account the fps to get the quantity in a given second.
That's incorrect. Per second != per scene. You have to remember that for every frame the GPU has to redraw all those polygons again from scratch. Therefore if you have 2.4 million in scene, those 2.4 million get redrawn every single frame.
2.4 million per second would be appalling by modern standards. That's Dreamcast level.
Those are just raw numbers which are mostly meaningless in real world scenarios, much like the ps2 never really pushed 60+ million polys in it's games.
Cell is to set up the polys, the RSX still needs to render them so the limitations are still bound by the GPU IIRC. Though as it's seen in this thread, high poly counts beyond 1-2 million polys is rather rare.
Cell is to set up the polys, the RSX still needs to render them so the limitations are still bound by the GPU IIRC. Though as it's seen in this thread, high poly counts beyond 1-2 million polys is rather rare.
Sudden corollary realisation: therefore the Dreamcast can, in principle, render Far Cry at 1FPS?
(Yes, I know there's massive differences in memory availability and effects, but in terms of sheer polygonal oomph...)
Ether_Snake
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Oh right, I was talking per frame yes.
But whatever the case, when looking at performance, frames are analyzed, not seconds. If you want to know how much needs to be optimized, you capture a frame and analyze that, not a second.
So the information of x triangles per second isn't really meaningful. 2m triangles is what a console can render at around 30FPS at best, in general. And that's the terms used in development, not triangles per second.
Skel1ingt0n
I can't *believe* these lazy developers keep making file sizes so damn large. Btw, how does technology work?
64 BITS!!!!!!!!
Shogmaster
Ask me about my package
Most PS360 games top out at about 100M/s, so you won't see real code approaching those GPU max polygon draw rates. I think most multiplat games still favored 360 for geometry up until about 2 years ago. Now there's hardly any difference.
Theonik
Member
Polycounts haven't really been that relevant this gen with the wide usage of normal mapping and advanced shading techniques. Plus everyone should now that these numbers are absolute rubbish and have no real relation to real world performance. It all depends on how the hardware is used and these numbers are typically done under ideal conditions to mislead people.
Edit: This Crysis picture kinda shows why, with 2.4M polygons/frame you have more polygons than you have pixels in a 1080p resolution (without accounting for shadows of course)
Edit: This Crysis picture kinda shows why, with 2.4M polygons/frame you have more polygons than you have pixels in a 1080p resolution (without accounting for shadows of course)
AbsoluteZero
Banned
How many polygons could the SuperFX Chip push?
Apparently my GTX 460 only pushes 2.4 million polygons in Crysis.
Depends on the scene, I got a scene up to 10 million in a specific place once.
DeFiBkIlLeR
Banned
How can you even quantify polygon pushing figures when there is no set standard baseline figure for the type of polygons being rendered.?
Without set parameters for size,lighting,texture,clipping its meaningless to try and compare one with the other.
Without set parameters for size,lighting,texture,clipping its meaningless to try and compare one with the other.
NinjaBoiX
Member
Portal 2
LA Noire
DiRT 1 - released almost a year later, with most of Ego's improvements from DiRT 2
Saint's Row 3
Battlefield 3
To name a few. But yeah, usually the 360 version is better, particularly with older titles. More recent titles tend to display platform parity, or thereabouts.
Say the companies that can push the least polygons!
Warm Machine
Member
The Bigs was doing around 4 million polys per frame @ 30fps in 720p
AbsoluteZero
Banned
Don't forget Duke Nukem Forever!
NinjaBoiX
Member
Black_Stride
do not tempt fate do not contrain Wonder Woman's thighs do not do not
Where are these guys getting their numbers from and how does it actually matter in real world terms?
No one out there uses their PS360 just to push out polygons so its not really relevenet to say X platform can push so many polygons per second, cuz thats just a hypothetical maximum, with the machine doing nothing else.
Again where are these numbers coming from?
100 million polygons per second in most PS360 games?.......Am i missing something?
No one out there uses their PS360 just to push out polygons so its not really relevenet to say X platform can push so many polygons per second, cuz thats just a hypothetical maximum, with the machine doing nothing else.
Again where are these numbers coming from?
100 million polygons per second in most PS360 games?.......Am i missing something?
lunchwithyuzo
Banned
The Saturn renders 200,000 textured mapped quads, not polygons. 500,000 flat shaded.
Around 15,000 flat shaded for SFX2 iirc.
gaming_noob
Member
The PS2 could do 90 Million raw polys per second right? PS3 is only 3 times more powerful than PS2
Throwaway123456789
Member
It really hurt Nintendo with the "hardcore" people. The forums online went apeshit at the time, laughing Nintendo all the way into the gutter.
And then we got some of the most poly rich games on GameCube. Oh, the irony.
Head back to the 80s and let's talk sprites!