What is the technical Power Gap between the 3DO and the Atari Jaguar?

[JaguarVision]

I always have seen since their release till the current day comparisons of these two consoles like they were both on the same level or similar graphically. On Atari focused websites, such as this one, there are even people saying the Jaguar is more capable of the 3DO. Yes I know the Jaguar had a few bottlenecks to say the least. As i saw comparisons and gifs of the 3Do and Jaguar, i put some of them side by side and noticed that comparing to the jaguar to the 3DO graphically doesn't make much sense unless I'm missing some technical feats I'm not seeing. The images below give an example of what I see as a massive power gap between the jaguar and 3DO.

 

So I hope some of the tech heads so to say can explain just how wide is the gap between the two, in practice, because looking at the gifs below:

 

 

 

3DO:

Jaguar:

---------

With these gifs above, I see a power gap that's quite significant. I see next to zero similarities at all, and AVP is one of Jaguars best looking titles. The racing games especially seem completely in favor of the 3DO by a ridiculous margin and even the FPS games are quite a mile apart.

It seems to me that despite releasing at nearly the same time, the 3Do is vastly more powerful than the Jaguar and isn't even the same teir. Which would explain why the first some years of the PSX/SAT had games that were comparable (and in few cases worse) than the 3DO version. but this never occurred with the Jaguar, although I heard some argue Rayman but that's not 3D.

From what I see just off the gifs above:

1. World Tour Racing is not only the best 3D racing game on the Jaguar but likely among the top 3 best 3D games on the system period and look at how it can't even touch Autobahn with it jittering around let alone NFS which is way out of its league.

2. Checkered Flag is basically MS pain shaped into cars.

3. Alien Vs. Predator seems pretty static and low depth compared to the vibrancy of Killing Time let alone SH.

4. I war looks worse than checkred flag and looks more like MSpaint polygons and the way the enemies shatter when exploding is like a test program in autocad.

These two systems are nothing a like at all to me. I am baffled so many people compare the two even though they aren't even the same tier, and some say that the jaguar is more capable on some sites. It's strange. I think the Jaguar is closer to the cd32 from Amiga(commodore) than the 3DO. While the 3DO is a match for many early PSX/SAT games so it makes more sense to compare those to the 3DO than comparing anythign weaker than the 3DO to the 3DO.

(I will give credit to the Jaguars World Tour Racing though(top left jaguar pic), that's likely pushing the jaguar near its limits)

[Flojomojo]

...

[+remowilliams]

Not again...

[tschak909]

can we kill this thread with fire, before it starts?

 

-Thom

[mbd30]

To be fair, the Jaguar hardware wasn't pushed that much. It's my understanding that the Jag is notoriously complex to program compared to the 3DO.

[pacman000]

Power + Programming = Performance

 

The Traimels, being hardware people, focused on creating a powerful system, but ignored developer requests. This made the Jaguar harder to program, and few highly-skilled developers actually made games for it.

 

Trip Hawkins, being a software developer himself, focused on creating a powerful system and the tools needed to exploit that power. So, yeah, 3DO games look better than Jaguar games.

 

Which is more powerful? I dunno... From what I've read it's impossible to make a 1 to 1 comparison between game systems. Architectural differences can ensure the systems are equally powerful, but in different ways. One system may be able to move more sprites and background layers at a higher resolution than another, but the other system may be faster at 3D rendering.

 

While I do find such debates interesting, they're of little use. Unless someone develops a game for both systems and decides to share their experiences, there's not much to say besides fan-boyish speculation.

 

On that note... Atari is Awesome and the Jag 2 would've totally buried the N64 if JTS hadn't sold everything off !!!!!11!!! YAY!

Edited November 11, 2017 by pacman000

[+5-11under]

...

 

Do the Math...

[JaguarVision]

Power + Programming = Performance

 

The Traimels, being hardware people, focused on creating a powerful system, but ignored developer requests. This made the Jaguar harder to program, and few highly-skilled developers actually made games for it.

 

Trip Hawkins, being a software developer himself, focused on creating a powerful system and the tools needed to exploit that power. So, yeah, 3DO games look better than Jaguar games.

 

Which is more powerful? I dunno... From what I've read it's impossible to make a 1 to 1 comparison between game systems. Architectural differences can ensure the systems are equally powerful, but in different ways. One system may be able to move more sprites and background layers at a higher resolution than another, but the other system may be faster at 3D rendering.

 

While I do find such debates interesting, they're of little use. Unless someone develops a game for both systems and decides to share their experiences, there's not much to say besides fan-boyish speculation.

 

On that note... Atari is Awesome and the Jag 2 would've totally buried the N64 if JTS hadn't sold everything off !!!!!11!!! YAY!

Jag 2?

[+frankodragon]

Please, I beg of you, lock this thread. ...

[Dr.Electric]

The Jaguar is limited by Bus and Memory so significantly that detailed graphic attempts can only go to a certain cap. Something Like Iron Soldier or that one Atari game with all the boxy polygons shooting on the screen are basically all that the jaguar can do without hitting the cap. Even if the two RISC processors were fully optimized for 100% use we would still have the same flat boxy games because the machine has a cap due to its design.

 

The 3DO is a lot more open and you can freely use the system specifications and build on that over time. The Jaguar got its better looking games during its life span early while 3DO or Playstation got their later, though the 3Do was still cut short to say it was the best it could do.

 

It's like trying to download more apps on your Phone when you have no storage and when the full capacity of the Phone is 2Gbs and one app takes up 1.5 you can't really do much else but download maybe two videos. You can try to download another app or a 2 hour movie but the phone can't actually do it because there isn't enough memory.

 

A overly simplified example but one that explains the jaguar situation best.

Edited November 11, 2017 by Dr.Electric

[CatPix]

From what I remember reading, the Jaguar have more limited 3D capacilities anyway. It was described as more being a super Mode 7 with several plans possible, but this still result in blocky 3D because of that, and choppy blocky mode because the console need to redraw it when you move.

Of course it migt be oversimplified, or plain wrong.

The Jaguar was also poorly documented, as explained.

Plus, the team responsible for it designed the system to work mainly with Tom&Jerry (the two custom chips) as the main powerhouse, and the 68K processor as a simple input-output.

But lack of documentation (and force of habit) pushed developpers to use the 68K and Blitter as their main working tools, which explain why so many games looks "16 bits" and straight from an Atari ST or Amiga 500.

Edited November 11, 2017 by CatPix

[keepdreamin]

3DO vs game.com next pwease.

[JaguarVision]

From what I remember reading, the Jaguar have more limited 3D capacilities anyway. It was described as more being a super Mode 7 with several plans possible, but this still result in blocky 3D because of that, and choppy blocky mode because the console need to redraw it when you move.

Of course it migt be oversimplified, or plain wrong.

The Jaguar was also poorly documented, as explained.

Plus, the team responsible for it designed the system to work mainly with Tom&Jerry (the two custom chips) as the main powerhouse, and the 68K processor as a simple input-output.

But lack of documentation (and force of habit) forced developped to use the 68K and Blitter as their main working tools, which explain why so many games looks "16 bits" and straight from an Atari ST or Amiga 500.

 

What do you mean block movement redraw?

[Flojomojo]

3DO vs game.com next pwease.

With all comparisons to be made among random GIFs, of course.

[+5-11under]

Please, I beg of you, lock this thread. ...

 

You've been caught. ...

[VladR]

Actually, I vote that we keep it here, as it's not spamming the main Jaguar AA section. As long as we keep it civil, there's no reason to close it, especially considering that I've been recently gaining more and more new experience with Jaguar coding, so my understanding of how to extract most power from it is getting better (even if it's a slow process, as it's happening in free time, and usually in isolated coding-spree phases, often separated by months/years).

[VladR]

The Jaguar is limited by Bus and Memory so significantly ...

This is THE BS No 1 being spread over and over and over throughout last 3 decades.

If that was true, I wouldn't be remotely able to double, triple, quadruple, or quintuple the resolution without a significant (read : quadratic) fall in the framerate.

 

Instead, even though I'm clearing and drawing from 2x to 6x more pixels, the framerate impact is minimal, which is the reason why I'm running all engine experiments in 768x200, which is 3x more pixels than standard 256x200.

 

The following bandwidth test runs 30 fps at 1536x200* (that's 6x more pixels than 256x200):

- I have perspective-correct textured road (not some cheap affine texturing that warps like crazy)

- Half of screen is covered with transparent bitmaps, where OP has to, per every single pixel, process transparency (jump back&forth across 64K boundaries, resulting in multiple lost cycles), at 1536x200, which is just insane number of pixels compared to default resolution

- The road texturing is not even using the 64-bit data transfer. It's still using the default slowest 8-bit data transfer (e.g. 8x slower). Yet, somehow, despite "jag being bandwidth-limited", in highest possible noninterlaced resolution, I'm getting 30 fps. Upgrading the routine to 64-bit data transfer will obviously easily cross over to 60 fps with plenty performance buffer for other effects/cars/objects

- * Jaguar's video chip can display only 1409 max horizontally (but OP-supported closest choice is 1536), my current video register set-up is not finished, so I can visually see max 720 pixels, but can verify the GPU/Blitter are filling the pixels that are visually offscreen on the video, by offseting the video register for initial screen column (e.g. the GPU/Blitter are pushing the pixels, you just can't see them, till I fix it)

 

 

 

 

Something Like Iron Soldier or that one Atari game with all the boxy polygons shooting on the screen are basically all that the jaguar can do without hitting the cap.

Absolutely incorrect. It all depends on how well the engine is optimized. In last week, I managed to literally double the framerate of my 3D engine. And it was using only one chip : GPU. I wasn't using Blitter, and not DSP either.

And there's still other algorithms to try and experiment.

 

You have absolutely zero idea how well the engine is optimized, unless you wrote it. Especially if you just look at the game as a gamer.

 

if you do can see it, could you please answer me the following questions about Iron Soldier's 3D engine:

- What's the Blitter wait ratio for top 85% percentile of polygons

- Are the outer engine loops being executed from Gpu in Main ? if so, which ones ?

- Is the engine transforming triangles and rendering them without temporary storage or is it batch-processing all pipeline stages ?

- what is the Frustum culling algorithm used ?

- Is it using Blitter's Z-Buffering or employing its own system ?

- is the GPU code being swapped back&forth multiple times, or is the case where whatever didn't fit into 4KB, it was left to run off 68k ?

 

Thank you !

 

 

Even if the two RISC processors were fully optimized for 100% use we would still have the same flat boxy games because the machine has a cap due to its design.

Absolutely nonsensical. Given my current benchmarks, a multithreaded engine, where DSP is also rendering triangles, in parallel with GPU, should raise the triangle count by about 80%.

 

There is not one game, or a demo , on a Jaguar that remotely does this. In next few weeks, over the weekends, I'm going to port my GPU engine onto DSP and we'll see for sure.

 

 

 

 

because the machine has a cap due to its design.

The only "cap" is in coder's mind. If you approach it with incorrect assumptions, the results will be appropriate.

 

Ever looked into how troubled the initial dev team schedules were ? There was no way to spend any time at all on optimizing during those hectic times.

 

The "cap" you talk about, was never really, even remotely, reached...

 

It was literally impossible, for 95% of jag games, to push the system more due to brutal commercial realities of those times. Only exceptions being Tempest and Wolfenstein - both could have been optimized much better, but there was no competition push for this, so you can't blame the devs really...

[Tanooki]

I guess if you want more gas on the fire, let's do an entire series to set people off.

 

NES vs SMS

GB vs GG

Nomad vs TE

 

Rage out over the 8 and 16bit wars both console and on the go.

[+frankodragon]

 

You've been caught. ...

[digdugnate]

how about... Atari 2600 Jr. vs Atari Jaguar?

 

Discuss amongst yourselves, I'm a little verklempt.

[Osgeld]

it doesnt matter, both machines came out, both machines had their chance, both machines failed in a glorious ball of shit

 

btw AvP does look better, but it runs at like 0.2 FPS as soon as there's more than an empty hallway ... in fact that's pretty much sums up all those gifs, the jag is choking and slowing WAY down as soon as it has to think (and personally I wouldn't subject myself to either machine)

 

now knock it off

Edited November 12, 2017 by Osgeld

[CPUWIZ]

[Osgeld]

but if we don't, you would have nothing else to do tonight ... right?

[CPUWIZ]

but if we don't, you would have nothing else to do tonight ... right?

 

I am always working on code, I turn left periodically and check my other screens for activity in the forums. I'll have to see if I can turn AA off for a couple of hours.

[godslabrat]

Does that mean JV is officially a troll?