COULD Jag have competed with the Playstation Graphically?

[Atari_Owl]

Re: GPU running from Main RAM

 

If they would have fixed the bug in the hardware that made it difficult to program it would have been able to compete alot better.. we can blaim the Tramiels for all of it.

 

Not sure if it's a "bug" or "bugs" but Gorf has figured out that one "BUG" is nonexistant, that the ATari developers and those who wrot the development manual, didn't know how to use the chips properly. This "bug" that I'm refering too, and Gorf may have other's he's taken care of, is the JUMP in main memory option, that was supposed to be viable, but Atari didn't know how to use it properly and concluded it was impossible and a "bug", but Gorf has figured this out, so in fact it's a non-existant bug and this feature will have DRASTIC effects for developer's and making better use of the RISC's.

 

At the risk of coming across a bit like Midge Ure to Gorf's Geldof...i'm not sure i'd agree.

 

I DO consider it a bug.. in that the console does not work as intended. The fact that there is a work around for it doesn't mean that its not a bug.

Can the Jag SRCSHADE & Z Buffer at the same time? No.

Is there a workaround? Yes.

Is this still a bug? Yes, i would consider it so.

 

 

Gorf is obviously and justifiably proud and pleased about the development, i tend to be more cautious and do not see it as quite the panacea he does.

In my own coding i've found the speed of GPU running from main to be highly dependent on load on the main BUS (eg. from the blitter) with speeds typically in the range of 20-90% of the speed of the same code running from GPU local ram. (By which i mean 5 times slower to almost the same speed).

It would therefore be foolish for example to put a tight, commonly called routine in main ram, its far better called in local.

 

 

Now lets take a look at the 20% speed. Thats a pretty large cut in speed.. faster than the 68k? For sure, but a lot slower than local.

Is it worth taking the 68k off the bus and running in GPU from main instead with the 68k STOPped? Without a doubt!

[lets look at it from a maths point of view.. i believe the speed of the ST 68k at 8MHz was reported as being very roughly about 1MIP... Therefore at 13.3MHz this should be about 1.65MIPS... in theory the GPU can reach 26.6MIPS, in practice this tends to be more like 17MIPS in other words 10x the speed of the 68k, even if we run at 20% its still twice as fast as the 68k and thats not even taking into account the effects on BUS]

 

Is it worth running from main instead of paging code to/from the GPU local? Ummmmmmm.... Sometimes yes, sometimes no. Its a hard question to answer and depends on a great many factors including the BUS load and the code in question.

Edited June 20, 2007 by Atari_Owl

[TailChao]

I feel the Saturn is a better system then PS1 but it takes a lot to get it to do what it can, not unlike the

Jaguar.

 

Now then, Sega had lots more resources on their hands than Atari to prove it, which they also failed. The Saturn is a blown up, costly , inefficient hardware architecture. It deserved to fail. Unlike the Dreamcast, which should have won over the blown up PS2 architecture. But then, it was too late...

 

I can attest to this from a firsthand experience, the Saturn is a complete mess. Sega as a whole made several poor decisions during the Saturn's development, several of which were primarily fueled by the large amount of jealousy and lack of proper communication between the US and JP sections of the company, including turning down a certain Silicon Graphics architecture since the JP branch refused to pick it up.

The Saturn was released with a poor development environment and one of the worst segmented memory designs that I've ever seen. Perhaps if Sega had been more concerned with managing the Launch properly and keeping the console from overlapping with the 32X's release (which had much more demand than anticipated anyway), they could have possibly had a smooth transition with minimal losses instead arbitrarily of dropping support for all 16-Bit hardware. As bad as the Saturn's problems were at the time, Sega's problems as a company were a whole order of magnitude better.

 

I feel the Saturn is a better system then PS1 but it takes a lot to get it to do what it can, not unlike the Jaguar.

100% agree

 

 

2 SH2's should be able to to give one MIPS R3000 a run for its money.

 

A MIPS R3000 and one Geometrical Transfer Engine (which could be referred today as a vertex shader, since it also performs vector and matrix operations without CPU intervention) should give 2 lower clocked SH2's a run for its money. Oversimplifications might work for the most people here.

 

The Saturn had a DSP in the bus controller designed for geometric transformations, although this was rarely used since most of the SDK's sample code ignored it. Really though, the Saturn was almost a bad joke from the Sega Hardware division, throwing extra CPUs at tasks is never a good solution, especially if you give your programmers no support to use them easily. The beauty of the PlayStation's design is that it had a large multiprocessor structure like the Saturn, but everything outside the CPU operated almost transparently due to the superior development kit provided by Sony and the overall simplified hardware structure over the Saturn.

Compared to the Jaguar though, the Saturn and Playstation have another advantage, portability. Although each console needs some code specialization (not to mention the usage of quads in the Saturn) converting existing code to either platform from another (such as the PC) wasn't heavily difficult. With the Jaguar getting most (if not all) of its power from Tom and Jerry, and really requiring all code to run on them to get the best performance, companies would have to start new engines from scratch focusing on this design, a costly investment for a small console at the time. Since, realistically, game companies are out there for a profit, you would expect them to use the 68K for all it's worth, since it's cheaper for them. Personally, I feel this is the biggest flaw of the Jaguar, exceptionally different hardware that requires a lot of investment to get decent performance out of.

[Vigo]

Not really. They had been eying the market for years and researching it, trying to form partnerships, etc. We look back now and see that Sony had very few stumbles. They knew what they were doing and had the cash to be successful.

 

Philips also had lots of cash, but they failed miserably with their CD-I system. And, although Sony had successes before, they also had lots of failures in the past (and in the present - UMD, Memory Stick, Playstation 3?) in establishing new formats. The Playstation could very well have been another one of those failures like Betamax, in which they most probably also spent a lot of money in research and development.

 

You don't find the Jaguar to be amazing hardware considering the differences in cash resources between Atari and Sony?

 

Sure, but that was not the point of the discussion. The Jaguar is very impressive considering that Atari was more dead than alive in 1993. But it could never have competed against the PSX technically. The PSX was clearly developed to start the next era of gaming: 3D and CD-ROM. The Jaguar is sort of inbetween.

 

 

Gee, it's pretty easy to peg me as an Atari fanboy. I wouldn't have created The Atari Times if I wasn't.

 

Well, then a discussion would be pretty much pointless with you, wouldn't it?

 

However, even fanboyism must give way to facts. Yes, the PSX undeniably had better 3D hardware as I said in my previous post. (But then, *ANY* newer technology will be better than older tech!)

 

Then, how do you explain Wii vs. PS3?

 

Sony had the money and time to develop something better than the Jaguar.

 

They clearly hadn't (time), as Gorf already pointed out. The PSX was very quickly developed. It came as such a big surprise to cause Sega to panic, and quickly redesign their Saturn to support more 3D as it was originally intended.

 

And certainly the differences seemed larger back then, but today... They don't seem all that different. Gorf's games/demos, BattleSphere, Skyhammer, Rayman, etc. are good examples.

 

If you would consider what has been achieved until today, you have to compare Gorf's demos to the top notch PSX titles, which clearly show what the hardware is capable of.

 

Namco did an interesting experiment. They developed Ridge Racer twice! The first version is the original version from 1994, running in 320x240 in 30fps. The second version, they released in 1999 as a pack-in to Ridge Racer IV. The same game, except now this time, it is now running at 512x480 in 60fps!!!

 

Rayman? Beautiful 2D game. I love hand drawn graphics. But nothing which shows the PSX hardware capabilities.

 

Unfortunately, this debate will never end. So, until Gorf or someone else does Tomb Raider on the Jaguar we fanboys will keep pushing the Jaguar while the haters keep attacking it.

 

Lol, I don't hate the Jaguar (what is it with you fanboys, having the tendency to divide everyone in LOVERS and HATERS?). In fact, I think it is a nice machine which beats the crap out of all systems released in 1993. What I hate is when fanboys have their attempt at tech talk... Sinclair Spectrum users will always claim the C64 had inferior graphics, because the colours are muddy (LOL) and the sound isn't sharp (LOL). Atari 7800 fans will always say how super technically advanced the 7800 is (not really knowing themselves what the system is capable of), and that it beats out the crap of the NES, but evil Nintendo is the cause of the misery (LOL). And, of course it is natural for every Jagur user that the system is vastly superior to the PSX, if only Atari had put in at least 8MB Ram, a faster CPU, this and that, it was because Sony was so evil and everyone else so good that the PSX won... And of course, the Saturn would have ruled the world if the people would have unleashed its real power!!! (Sorry, but Sega designed the Saturn, Sega had lots of experience with 3D graphics before almost everyone else (Virtua Racing, Virtua Fighter, Daytona), yet, they seriously f ucked the Saturn up, and the first Saturn games can not really compare with the first PSX games).

 

SONY was a NOBODY in console busines when they started. They could have ended like everyone else, who attempted to break into the Nintendo and Sega ruled video game world. That is what people forget today, looking at the success of the PSX and PS2. And the same people are surprised now that the PS3 is in danger of becoming Sony's biggest failure since Betamax.

 

I'm no fanboy of any system, or company. In fact, I love how Sony is being double kicked its ass right now, and that Nintendo had a very unexpected comeback with the DS and the Wii, despite the fact I think the PSX is a wonderful hardware. I am also one of those who think Sega did everything right with the Dreamcast (Soul Calibur rules!), and that it should have won against the PS2, despite the fact that I think the Saturn did deserve to lose.

[Gorf]

The very first PSX games coming out in late 1994 already crushed the Jaguar in graphics. This was the

 

Talk about Sony fanboyism.....ThePSX graphicas DO NOT crush the Jaguar at all.

The PSX can put up plenty of polygons, but they are very ugly polygons.

The Jaguar has qaulity, not quantity.

[Vigo]

The very first PSX games coming out in late 1994 already crushed the Jaguar in graphics. This was the

 

Talk about Sony fanboyism.....ThePSX graphicas DO NOT crush the Jaguar at all.

The PSX can put up plenty of polygons, but they are very ugly polygons.

The Jaguar has qaulity, not quantity.

 

Do you think it is wise to ignore the technical statements I made about the PSX technical flaws and nevertheless desperately trying to brandmark me as a fanboy? One might get the impression that in reality, you only know half as much as you are talking about.

 

So then, explain to us: what are "ugly polygons" what are "beautiful polygons". Technically.

 

Why has the Jaguar more "quality" ? Again, a 24bit framebuffer with a 8 Mhz 68000 processor attached to it can render better quality graphics than the PSX GPU is capable of. Do you understand what I am hinting at?

[Gorf]

Why do you always refer to the Playstation being released 3 years later? The Jaguar was released in 1993, the Playstation in 1994, so there isn't really much time between those 2 machines.

 

Gouraud shading is nice, the style fits perfectly to Tron, and those demos easily surpass anything 3D seen on the Jaguar, but quite frankly, I really much doubt you can achieve the same 3D Performance of the Playstation on the Jaguar. I'm talking about 3D in 512x480 in smooth 60fps (Tekken 3), with texture mapping AND gouraud shading.

 

2D performance, I don't know. Did gamers care for this anymore in 1995?

 

The way the machine was coded is why you see the results you do. You wont get the amount of polies

the playstation will at the same frame rate but you will out do them in quality.

 

It's not hard to outdo the PSX graphics quality. The machine doesn't even have perspective correct texture mapping. But, you can easily have smooth, fully textured 3D enviroments with a high framerate. What good is a game if it runs on a low framerate? I don't care if textures look slightly better when the gameplay is seriously affected.

 

Go check out HoverStrike

CD if you have a means and pull up real close to some of the mountains..or better yet the planet areas

where the land 'breaths'....see the mip mapping going on? you cant do that with PS1 with out slowing it

down considerably.

 

There are games on the PS1 which also use mip-mapping (Kula World, which ironically runs at 50fps (PAL)). There are even some attempts at motion blur in some games, like Metal Gear. You also have lots of Alpha Blending in most PS1 games, which is even a rarity on the Saturn.

 

The Jag was using the 68k for its game loop. Hoverstrike is a shadow of what could

be done on the Jaguar. And there were still places 2D was popular back then. id, Scat-O-Logic, Eclipse

and we at 3DSSS agree that the Jags power has not yet been exhausted by a long shot. It's never had

the tools necesary to do so. We are working on and trying to correct that now.

 

No the Jaguar will never throw up as many polies as the PS1 or the Saturn at the same frame

rate but it will out class it in quality.

 

I take your word for it because, although the Tron demo is very impressive, it hardly is an argument of rendering quality against the PS1. Also, to me, quality is also how smooth the game flows, and frankly, if you have a gorgeous looking game, but it is hardly playable due to low frame rates, all development efforts have been wasted. You always have to make a compromise between speed and features, and I think the PS1 was the architecture which nailed it best. When you look at the PS1, you can clearly see the designers asking themselves: what do the gamers want, how can we achieve it most efficiently?

 

I feel the Saturn is a better system then PS1 but it takes a lot to get it to do what it can, not unlike the

Jaguar.

 

Now then, Sega had lots more resources on their hands than Atari to prove it, which they also failed. The Saturn is a blown up, costly , inefficient hardware architecture. It deserved to fail. Unlike the Dreamcast, which should have won over the blown up PS2 architecture. But then, it was too late...

 

Frame rate is only an issue if it takes away from the game...that is not always the case.

 

Would I have like a few of the games with a faster FPS on the jag? Of course, but that

never stops them from being excellent games. Doom was only 20FPS. That by any means

did not suck. AvP was only 15...That game hardly sucks. Hoverstrike is between 10 - 20 and

the game is a fantastic display of physics coding and I never have anything but fun playing it.

 

If they left the 68k alone after level set up the game would run at 30+. I have seen the source

to HS and except for drawing code..everything else is done on the 68k. Hoverstrike could

blow away a good deal of playstation games at a nice smooth 30+fps and all the nice bliter

effects not possible without performance hits on the PSX. Im am telling you vigo my friend,

The Jaguar is much more capable. After a few private conversations with Doug and Scott of

Scatologic, they too agree that the cat has much more in the way of horse power. You cant

achive it with the 68k in the way...Again...go see Area 51...Tom and Jerry without a host that

chokes its bus. Also coded unfortunately like a 020 with a graphics chip and sound chip

(DSP and GPU)....so sad...

 

Sega screwed up trying to sucker to many people with the 32X. The DC was probably

the best designed system of all of them... even by todays standards. I have always

like how sega approached hardware with the exception of the 32X and the Saturn.

I loved the Sega Gremlin Vectors....Have a converta game my self...yes..I have all the

game cages too....

 

Zektor

Space Fury

TacScan

Eliminator(death bagel)

I think there is one more...forget...anyway

 

My whole point is pund for pound The Jaguar with the right tools would do MUCH

better than it has so far and even imperss the Saturn/PSX crowd.

 

The Tronish demo is just for droolfactor to all the Jag whores around here...

It is still relying way to much on the 68k...that was done before I discovered the bug.

 

It was not intended as a demo of the Jaguar ultimate power....we are making tools

that will make THAT ultimate demo possible and to write the title formerly known

as Gorf 3D.

[Gorf]

Do you think it is wise to ignore the technical statements I made about the PSX technical flaws and nevertheless desperately trying to brandmark me as a fanboy? One might get the impression that in reality, you only know half as much as you are talking about.

 

 

Coming from a know it all like you? HAHAHAHAHAH!!!!!

 

Im not desperate to brandmark you as anything. Be paranoid all you like Vigo.

 

You did say Crush... you know that was a stupid, ignorant remark coming from

someone who comes across as not sounding like he know very much at all.

 

I'll back up all i've said....you shoot your mouth off like some expert who I doubt

is even related to the industry other than by fandom.

 

Why has the Jaguar more "quality" ? Again, a 24bit framebuffer with a 8 Mhz 68000

 

Yeah for stills. Dont even try to compare the Blitter/OPL and the GPU with a 68k attached

to a 24 bit frame buffer....utter nonsense.

 

processor attached to it can render better quality graphics than the PSX GPU is capable

of. Do you understand what I am hinting at?

 

 

No not really...one minute you act like Mr fanboy, then post a few negative remarks

to sound like you are not, then piss on me for pointing it out....not all of us are easily swayed...

[Gorf]

I feel the Saturn is a better system then PS1 but it takes a lot to get it to do what it can, not unlike the

Jaguar.

 

Now then, Sega had lots more resources on their hands than Atari to prove it, which they also failed. The Saturn is a blown up, costly , inefficient hardware architecture. It deserved to fail. Unlike the Dreamcast, which should have won over the blown up PS2 architecture. But then, it was too late...

 

I can attest to this from a firsthand experience, the Saturn is a complete mess. Sega as a whole made several poor decisions during the Saturn's development, several of which were primarily fueled by the large amount of jealousy and lack of proper communication between the US and JP sections of the company, including turning down a certain Silicon Graphics architecture since the JP branch refused to pick it up.

The Saturn was released with a poor development environment and one of the worst segmented memory designs that I've ever seen. Perhaps if Sega had been more concerned with managing the Launch properly and keeping the console from overlapping with the 32X's release (which had much more demand than anticipated anyway), they could have possibly had a smooth transition with minimal losses instead arbitrarily of dropping support for all 16-Bit hardware. As bad as the Saturn's problems were at the time, Sega's problems as a company were a whole order of magnitude better.

 

I feel the Saturn is a better system then PS1 but it takes a lot to get it to do what it can, not unlike the Jaguar.

100% agree

 

 

2 SH2's should be able to to give one MIPS R3000 a run for its money.

 

A MIPS R3000 and one Geometrical Transfer Engine (which could be referred today as a vertex shader, since it also performs vector and matrix operations without CPU intervention) should give 2 lower clocked SH2's a run for its money. Oversimplifications might work for the most people here.

 

The Saturn had a DSP in the bus controller designed for geometric transformations, although this was rarely used since most of the SDK's sample code ignored it. Really though, the Saturn was almost a bad joke from the Sega Hardware division, throwing extra CPUs at tasks is never a good solution, especially if you give your programmers no support to use them easily. The beauty of the PlayStation's design is that it had a large multiprocessor structure like the Saturn, but everything outside the CPU operated almost transparently due to the superior development kit provided by Sony and the overall simplified hardware structure over the Saturn.

Compared to the Jaguar though, the Saturn and Playstation have another advantage, portability. Although each console needs some code specialization (not to mention the usage of quads in the Saturn) converting existing code to either platform from another (such as the PC) wasn't heavily difficult. With the Jaguar getting most (if not all) of its power from Tom and Jerry, and really requiring all code to run on them to get the best performance, companies would have to start new engines from scratch focusing on this design, a costly investment for a small console at the time. Since, realistically, game companies are out there for a profit, you would expect them to use the 68K for all it's worth, since it's cheaper for them. Personally, I feel this is the biggest flaw of the Jaguar, exceptionally different hardware that requires a lot of investment to get decent performance out of.

 

 

Well stated! I think you understand what most refuse to. The jaguar has never seen a GPU/DSP only

app yet...you will not see any thing like it should be able to do until that happens...we are working on those tools now...well when we have spare time from our other contract work.

[Vigo]

Frame rate is only an issue if it takes away from the game...that is not always the case.

 

Perhaps in adventure games, but in action or racing games, the higher the framerate, the smoother the gameplay. I am not talking about 60fps constantly here, but at very least, 15fps is a must.

 

Would I have like a few of the games with a faster FPS on the jag? Of course, but that

never stops them from being excellent games. Doom was only 20FPS. That by any means

did not suck.

 

To play Doom in 20fps, one would otherwise have to get a very expensive 486 PC back in 1994. But then again, technically, Doom is not really a 3D game, with lots of limitations, although, the levels are cleverly designed to hide it.

 

AvP was only 15...That game hardly sucks. Hoverstrike is between 10 - 20 and

the game is a fantastic display of physics coding and I never have anything but fun playing it.

 

Avp looked very nice, even better than Doom. I don't know, but it probably also used BSP rendering, or a similar method for pseudo 3D.

I never played Hoverstrike, but the screenshots do not look very impressive.

 

If they left the 68k alone after level set up the game would run at 30+. I have seen the source

to HS and except for drawing code..everything else is done on the 68k. Hoverstrike could

blow away a good deal of playstation games at a nice smooth 30+fps and all the nice bliter

effects not possible without performance hits on the PSX.

 

What effects are you talking about?

 

Im am telling you vigo my friend,The Jaguar is much more capable.

 

Now I have the choice to believe you, or not believe you. I believe you that the Jaguar is more capable than what you can see in commercial games. But I seriously don't think its 3D graphic capabilities can hold up to the Playstation or the Saturn.

 

After a few private conversations with Doug and Scott of

Scatologic, they too agree that the cat has much more in the way of horse power. You cant

achive it with the 68k in the way...Again...go see Area 51...Tom and Jerry without a host that

chokes its bus. Also coded unfortunately like a 020 with a graphics chip and sound chip

(DSP and GPU)....so sad...

 

I also agree with you that putting in a 68000 was a bad mistake.

 

My whole point is pund for pound The Jaguar with the right tools would do MUCH

better than it has so far and even imperss the Saturn/PSX crowd.

 

The Tronish demo is just for droolfactor to all the Jag whores around here...

It is still relying way to much on the 68k...that was done before I discovered the bug.

 

It was not intended as a demo of the Jaguar ultimate power....we are making tools

that will make THAT ultimate demo possible and to write the title formerly known

as Gorf 3D.

 

I guess all we can do now is to believe your statements and wait to see if you can make it possible.

[Gorf]

Here is the whole issue with the Jaguar. It was a system that was

designed during the 2D era to do 3D. It was caught ina time period

were 2D was fading and 3D was shining. The tools were horid.

A 68k compiler and MAD MAC with littte assembler support for the

riscs is what really crushed the Jaguar. not what is' abilities at the time

were. The slow, slow rate of software coming out and a good deal of that

softare sucking ass. The Jaguar was doomed based on its time line and

the inability to code it to take advantage of the power within it. Again,

HoverStrike with no 68k code would have been a very different game

frame rate wise. That and just about very game for the jaguar.

[Gorf]

Frame rate is only an issue if it takes away from the game...that is not always the case.

 

Perhaps in adventure games, but in action or racing games, the higher the framerate, the smoother the gameplay. I am not talking about 60fps constantly here, but at very least, 15fps is a must.

 

Would I have like a few of the games with a faster FPS on the jag? Of course, but that

never stops them from being excellent games. Doom was only 20FPS. That by any means

did not suck.

 

To play Doom in 20fps, one would otherwise have to get a very expensive 486 PC back in 1994. But then again, technically, Doom is not really a 3D game, with lots of limitations, although, the levels are cleverly designed to hide it.

 

AvP was only 15...That game hardly sucks. Hoverstrike is between 10 - 20 and

the game is a fantastic display of physics coding and I never have anything but fun playing it.

 

Avp looked very nice, even better than Doom. I don't know, but it probably also used BSP rendering, or a similar method for pseudo 3D.

I never played Hoverstrike, but the screenshots do not look very impressive.

 

If they left the 68k alone after level set up the game would run at 30+. I have seen the source

to HS and except for drawing code..everything else is done on the 68k. Hoverstrike could

blow away a good deal of playstation games at a nice smooth 30+fps and all the nice bliter

effects not possible without performance hits on the PSX.

 

What effects are you talking about?

 

Im am telling you vigo my friend,The Jaguar is much more capable.

 

Now I have the choice to believe you, or not believe you. I believe you that the Jaguar is more capable than what you can see in commercial games. But I seriously don't think its 3D graphic capabilities can hold up to the Playstation or the Saturn.

 

After a few private conversations with Doug and Scott of

Scatologic, they too agree that the cat has much more in the way of horse power. You cant

achive it with the 68k in the way...Again...go see Area 51...Tom and Jerry without a host that

chokes its bus. Also coded unfortunately like a 020 with a graphics chip and sound chip

(DSP and GPU)....so sad...

 

I also agree with you that putting in a 68000 was a bad mistake.

 

My whole point is pund for pound The Jaguar with the right tools would do MUCH

better than it has so far and even imperss the Saturn/PSX crowd.

 

The Tronish demo is just for droolfactor to all the Jag whores around here...

It is still relying way to much on the 68k...that was done before I discovered the bug.

 

It was not intended as a demo of the Jaguar ultimate power....we are making tools

that will make THAT ultimate demo possible and to write the title formerly known

as Gorf 3D.

 

I guess all we can do now is to believe your statements and wait to see if you can make it possible.

 

Yes..wait and see...im curious my self to be perfectly honest and is why I am even bothering.

 

I know a lot of mistakes that have been made coding the jagur by studying sources from

the games. Knowing what they knew back then, I probably would have made the same mistakes.

 

And the jump bug in the JAguar is workable and makes a huge difference in performance

without the 68k on the bus. Just so you understand. That same tron app was all 68k at one

time. it ran at 10 fps and maybe 15 fps at certains times. Just by moving some of the code

over to the riscs made it jump to 20-30 fps. I have posted a Galixian like demo movie

somewhere that is always 30-60 FPS. All the demos are with a very inefficient GPU renderer

that was a sample code from the Atari dev kit. The file explains that it is a simple example of poly drawing and not in anyway shape or form intended as an engine you would want for a game.

 

Most developers paided no mind and used it anyway...hence that and the love affair with the 68k

and you render the Jaguar performance to a few cylinders short. Scott walters, the tech coder is

working on a renderer now that will at least quad the current performance of even most well

written Jag engines. Keep in mind...everytime the 68k hit the bus, it cuts the speed of the system

to half and the bus width to one quarter...how can you not expect to lose a shitload of performance?

 

Will I ever get as many polies on screen as a Sega or Sony? NO! But I will write games that

will surpass by leaps and bound most if not all of the current crop.

[mos6507]

The very first PSX games coming out in late 1994 already crushed the Jaguar in graphics. This was the

 

Talk about Sony fanboyism.....ThePSX graphicas DO NOT crush the Jaguar at all.

The PSX can put up plenty of polygons, but they are very ugly polygons.

The Jaguar has qaulity, not quantity.

 

By that estimate then a Battlezone coinop would beat the PSX since it has prettier polygons (infinite resolution).

[Vigo]

Do you think it is wise to ignore the technical statements I made about the PSX technical flaws and nevertheless desperately trying to brandmark me as a fanboy? One might get the impression that in reality, you only know half as much as you are talking about.

 

 

Coming from a know it all like you? HAHAHAHAHAH!!!!!

 

Funny that no one gets the impression of you, talking about "beautiful" and "ugly" polygons, always emphasizing how powerful the Jaguar is, that it has more "quality", yet, never giving a f cuking technical explanation. And now you are starting to use capital letters with exclamation marks, did I really overestimated you that much?

 

Im not desperate to brandmark you as anything. Be paranoid all you like Vigo.

 

I am not paranoid, I had the impression you could really tell us why the Jaguar can compete with the PSX. However, what I get now is the impression that you start behaving childish, because I am not the person who blindly believes very vague remarks. I am making you nervous, which disappoints me, because I thought you really had something in your following answer to back up your statements. Apparently, this doesn't seem to be, so, be free to insult and denounce me as you like, I know now how to think about this. Well done.

 

You did say Crush... you know that was a stupid, ignorant remark coming from

someone who comes across as not sounding like he know very much at all.

 

Insults won't help you, in fact, you are not doing yourself a favour at all now, if you want to appear as knowledgeable and professional as you pretend to be.

 

I'll back up all i've said....you shoot your mouth off like some expert who I doubt

is even related to the industry other than by fandom.

 

I have coded on a lot of architectures, currently doing hardware design as a part job besides my university courses. So I have to agree with you that I never worked in the gaming industry (nor do I have aspirations to work there). Now explain to me, how this validates your vague claims, and invalidates my claims.

 

Why has the Jaguar more "quality" ? Again, a 24bit framebuffer with a 8 Mhz 68000

 

Yeah for stills. Dont even try to compare the Blitter/OPL and the GPU with a 68k attached

to a 24 bit frame buffer....utter nonsense.

 

Obviously, you missed the point. The point was, you always ride on the vague "quality graphics" term, yet, quality graphics can mean lots of things, including lots of consequences. That's why I was constantly trying to nail you down, to teach me what exactly you mean, what can the Jaguar actually do better in terms of 3D? Your reaction so far is not very impressive.

 

No not really...one minute you act like Mr fanboy, then post a few negative remarks

to sound like you are not, then piss on me for pointing it out....not all of us are easily swayed...

 

Ok, being critical and not blindly swallowing what you are talking here are "negative remarks" ? Even though I say the PSX has lots of flaws and the Jaguar was impressive?

 

Sorry, but this ends it for me, because now, I know with whom I am dealing with. You like being the hero here, and I am sad that a few critical remarks are enough to bring out "the best" in you. Impress anyone you want with your laymen terms of "good polygons", "bad polygons", "quality, not quantity", I know for sure I won't get the answer from you.

 

Disappointing to say the least, now leaving the discussion.

Edited June 20, 2007 by Vigo

[mos6507]

Would I have like a few of the games with a faster FPS on the jag? Of course, but that

never stops them from being excellent games. Doom was only 20FPS. That by any means

did not suck. AvP was only 15...

 

AvP 15fps???? More like 3 (like when rotating) and it DOES hurt the game. It's like playing in quicksand. It's not responsive. The reason people enjoyed it back then was that compared to the offerings at the time, it was a fair compromise. Not by today's standards. When talking about old games standing the test of time, I would much rather have more primitive 3D at a higher framerate that plays smoothly (Like Battlesphere, which uses no texturing) than 3D that is prettier but still weofully outdated and running at a slow framerate. Most 3D games during the Jaguar's transitional era tried to push the envelope too much and were all too willing to sacrifice framerate for the sake of more polys or textures. That is just an unacceptable compromise. Anyone who is into gaming for the gameplay should agree. The second I saw Toshinden in a game store I knew the future had arrived, largely because of the smooth 30fps framerate.

[Vigo]

Right now, I am studying the Jag developer manual, since that seems to be the only method to get the answers I am looking for. Very nice general purpose architecture, which blows everything away in 1993. I really wonder why they had to put in a 68K CPU when everything could have been handled by the GPU. I think they did it because they needed a known general purpose CPU as a master, using the GPU as some kind of vertex/pixel shader running out of the cache ram. Some observations:

 

Gouraud shading makes use of CRY mode, and modifies the intensity only, not the colour value. This works very well for lighting, but is much less flexible than the RGB gouraud shading model of the PSX, which interpolates between each of the 3 RGB vertices colour of each polygon. Nevertheless, very advanced stuff from Atari in 1993, and I understand why they did it: to save logic. A full RGB approach would either have 1/3 of speed with the existing logic, or they would have needed 3 times the logic for the gouraud unit. Since the manual emphasizes that the gouraud shader takes most of the blitters' silicon size, I guess they made the best decision with the resources they had.

 

A big plus of the Jaguar is that is has a Z-Buffer which should heavily minimize clipping errors, something which almost every early Playstation game is plagued with.

 

The hardware seems to be somehow unfinished, since it has an unusual amount of bugs.

 

I like the fact the RISC CPU's support MAC and matrix operations, again, very advanced for 1993. Jerry should have no problems in playing MP3's.

 

It seems everything shares the same bus on the JAG, while the Playstation has 3 different Ram buses which work in parallel (VRAM, MAIN RAM and SOUND RAM), so the Playstation GPU can render Polygons without slowing down the CPU, because these are VRAM->VRAM operations. Furthermore, the Jaguar uses normal fast page DRAM for all operations, while the Playstation uses 1MB VRAM (a special type of Ram which can be read out and written to simultaneously) for graphics operations. The Jaguar DRAM however is 64bit, while the PSX VRAM is 32bit. The Problem is, what good are 64bit when the bus is shared by everything?

 

Although most graphics on the PSX are rendered in 15 bit mode, all internal 3D colour calculations in the GPU are 24bit, dithering the output. This doesn't seem to be the case in the Jaguar architecture.

Edited June 20, 2007 by Vigo

[+davidcalgary29]

Any thoughts on where the Jag II would have fallen within this argument?

[Gunstar]

Re: GPU running from Main RAM

 

If they would have fixed the bug in the hardware that made it difficult to program it would have been able to compete alot better.. we can blaim the Tramiels for all of it.

 

Not sure if it's a "bug" or "bugs" but Gorf has figured out that one "BUG" is nonexistant, that the ATari developers and those who wrot the development manual, didn't know how to use the chips properly. This "bug" that I'm refering too, and Gorf may have other's he's taken care of, is the JUMP in main memory option, that was supposed to be viable, but Atari didn't know how to use it properly and concluded it was impossible and a "bug", but Gorf has figured this out, so in fact it's a non-existant bug and this feature will have DRASTIC effects for developer's and making better use of the RISC's.

 

At the risk of coming across a bit like Midge Ure to Gorf's Geldof...i'm not sure i'd agree.

 

I DO consider it a bug.. in that the console does not work as intended. The fact that there is a work around for it doesn't mean that its not a bug.

Can the Jag SRCSHADE & Z Buffer at the same time? No.

Is there a workaround? Yes.

Is this still a bug? Yes, i would consider it so.

 

 

Gorf is obviously and justifiably proud and pleased about the development, i tend to be more cautious and do not see it as quite the panacea he does.

In my own coding i've found the speed of GPU running from main to be highly dependent on load on the main BUS (eg. from the blitter) with speeds typically in the range of 20-90% of the speed of the same code running from GPU local ram. (By which i mean 5 times slower to almost the same speed).

It would therefore be foolish for example to put a tight, commonly called routine in main ram, its far better called in local.

 

 

Now lets take a look at the 20% speed. Thats a pretty large cut in speed.. faster than the 68k? For sure, but a lot slower than local.

Is it worth taking the 68k off the bus and running in GPU from main instead with the 68k STOPped? Without a doubt!

[lets look at it from a maths point of view.. i believe the speed of the ST 68k at 8MHz was reported as being very roughly about 1MIP... Therefore at 13.3MHz this should be about 1.65MIPS... in theory the GPU can reach 26.6MIPS, in practice this tends to be more like 17MIPS in other words 10x the speed of the 68k, even if we run at 20% its still twice as fast as the 68k and thats not even taking into account the effects on BUS]

 

Is it worth running from main instead of paging code to/from the GPU local? Ummmmmmm.... Sometimes yes, sometimes no. Its a hard question to answer and depends on a great many factors including the BUS load and the code in question.

 

I wasn't suggesting that it wasn't a true "bug." I merely meant that I think the Jaguar has MORE than one "bug" hence I meant I wasn't sure if it was JUST one "bug" or PLURAL "bugs." I was however, under the impressions that the memory JUMP option wasn't a bug after all, but just used differently (as inteneded by the designers) than those at Atari understood/knew, so what THEY thought was a bug, becuase they didn't understand HOW to use it, wasn't a bug. ..but maybe the word "nonexistant" I used was exaggerative.

 

I have and do agree with what your are saying for the most part (technically 100%), but I'm not sure I agree that things are far less rosy than Gorf suggests. I think it could be true that he's a bit zealous in his development/programming discoveries, but I think it's more important and drastic a change in Jaguar performance than you think by the same token. It's somewhere in-between most likely.

 

Regardless of this/these "bugs" I've ALWAYS felt the Jaguar's most serious weakness is lack of memory, main, local, cache, whatever and all of the above. I even stated that earlier in this thread. Regardless of how much Gorf's findings advance the performance of the Jaguar, it will still never be able to reach the full potential of the RISC chips if the RISC chips don't have access to all the ram they were designed to handle. I think developers should support the possibility of more than 2MB of main ram even if it's just an option of lower or higher graphical detail, like PC's and other computers have been doing for years with their software to take the most advantage of what specifications that particular computer had. Then, main ram upgrades could be designed, and extra memory put to better use in games as more users get upgrades, but still allowing for 2MB systems. Sort of like HoverStrike Cartridge vs. HoverStrike CD, but based on a main ram level, not on the media memory level. If just the difference of changing from a 4MB cartridge to a 790MB CD, is as great as is the difference between the HoverStrikes, think the difference if choosing between running a game in 2MB or more main ram! It worked out pretty well with computers and some software having more features on larger memory systems, or even software requiring more memory, like 1MB games that won't run on a 512K Amiga, ST or PC...

Edited June 20, 2007 by Gunstar

[Atari_Owl]

I have and do agree with what your are saying for the most part (technically 100%), but I'm not sure I agree that things are far less rosy as Gorf suggests. I think it could be true that he a bit zealous in his development/programming discoveries, but I think it's more important and drastic a change in Jaguar performance as you think. It's somewhere in-between most likely.

 

I'm not saying its not useful, or important.. i've been using my own method for quite some time now and it certainly has proved useful though it has not yieded huge improvements in performance they have been noticeable..., and certainly our different methods have meshed well.

 

I'm just saying that it is not a cure all, and that there are different occassions when both running from main and paging have their place.

[walter_J64bit]

NINTENDO it's a cereal now!

[Gregory DG]

Gee, it's pretty easy to peg me as an Atari fanboy. I wouldn't have created The Atari Times if I wasn't.

Well, then a discussion would be pretty much pointless with you, wouldn't it?

That swings both ways, doesn't it, Slick? I think we know what you're a fanboi of.

Edited June 20, 2007 by Gregory DG

[Vigo]

Gee, it's pretty easy to peg me as an Atari fanboy. I wouldn't have created The Atari Times if I wasn't.

Well, then a discussion would be pretty much pointless with you, wouldn't it?

That swings both ways, doesn't it, Slick? I think we know what you're a fanboi of.

 

Yes? Then tell me Greg, what am I a fanboi of? Sony? Not really. They became too powerful, too self confident, and as I already stated (well, you fanboys like to overhear this, don't you?), the PS2 did not deserve to win against the Dreamcast, and I like the fact that Sony is falling on their bare face now with the PS3. Now what, Greg? What is your next lame attempt at painting me as a fanboi?

 

Nope, in this case, the door only swings in one way, slamming right in your face. I can admit what benefits the Jaguar hardware has over the Playstation, on the paper. However, I also know the strengths and the faults of the Playstation. If i would get my hands on a Jaguar dev system, I would definately try out exploring the machine a little bit, since I am interested hardware architectures, and the Jaguar is certainly a unique one, no doubt.

 

Not blindly swallowing what someone says about the Jaguar and the PSX does neither make me a Jaguar hater, nor a Sony fanboi. It's you Greg, who has to swallow what other people say. You can't read the Atari technical manuals and judge: "well, this is certainly better than the PSX! But here, the PSX is better...". All you have is a fixed mind set, and a mission to defend it. A fanboy.

[Gorf]

Right now, I am studying the Jag developer manual, since that seems to be the only method to get the answers I am looking for. Very nice general purpose architecture, which blows everything away in 1993. I really wonder why they had to put in a 68K CPU when everything could have been handled by the GPU. I think they did it because they needed a known general purpose CPU as a master, using the GPU as some kind of vertex/pixel shader running out of the cache ram. Some observations:

 

Gouraud shading makes use of CRY mode, and modifies the intensity only, not the colour value. This works very well for lighting, but is much less flexible than the RGB gouraud shading model of the PSX, which interpolates between each of the 3 RGB vertices colour of each polygon. Nevertheless, very advanced stuff from Atari in 1993, and I understand why they did it: to save logic. A full RGB approach would either have 1/3 of speed with the existing logic, or they would have needed 3 times the logic for the gouraud unit. Since the manual emphasizes that the gouraud shader takes most of the blitters' silicon size, I guess they made the best decision with the resources they had.

 

A big plus of the Jaguar is that is has a Z-Buffer which should heavily minimize clipping errors, something which almost every early Playstation game is plagued with.

 

The hardware seems to be somehow unfinished, since it has an unusual amount of bugs.

 

I like the fact the RISC CPU's support MAC and matrix operations, again, very advanced for 1993. Jerry should have no problems in playing MP3's.

 

It seems everything shares the same bus on the JAG, while the Playstation has 3 different Ram buses which work in parallel (VRAM, MAIN RAM and SOUND RAM), so the Playstation GPU can render Polygons without slowing down the CPU, because these are VRAM->VRAM operations. Furthermore, the Jaguar uses normal fast page DRAM for all operations, while the Playstation uses 1MB VRAM (a special type of Ram which can be read out and written to simultaneously) for graphics operations. The Jaguar DRAM however is 64bit, while the PSX VRAM is 32bit. The Problem is, what good are 64bit when the bus is shared by everything?

 

Although most graphics on the PSX are rendered in 15 bit mode, all internal 3D colour calculations in the GPU are 24bit, dithering the output. This doesn't seem to be the case in the Jaguar architecture.

 

.the manual helps but not all those bugs are bugs. Not everything in that doc is 100% true as we

have also found out. The main jump is not a bug if you consider the pipeline. It has a lot to do with

why normal coding of a jump instruction to and from local ram and main ram does not work. The

GPU...its 32 bits internally...that means so is the local ram...oh which btw is a parallel bus as it can

run internallly while the DSP can do the same leaving the host to use the bus freely. This was also

a feature not very well taken advantage of. The GPU externally however is 64 bits.....the pipeline

sees it that way to...that is all I will say.

 

But the Jag, like the play station can run in three seperate buses. The main

bus, the DSP 8k local bus and the GPU 4k local bus...they are all parallel.

 

What good is the 64 bit bus? The Blitter and the OPL MUST have it.

these two procesors access the main bus at 64 bit ALWAYS. They also

have the ability to read smaller word sizes but the still do it 64 bits at a time.

with the 68k off the bus and the DSP only hitting the bus for a few sample

data words to play samples( 8 channels of sound can be buffered in half the DSP local and

grab a few more words as the buffer empties, a very minimal hit.), the GPU spitting comands

can rock serious throughput if using the Blitter and OPL to do the graphical dirty work.

Scott has a demo of the GPU ONLY and the OPL putting up 100's of 24 bit color scaling

large sprites moving ridiculously fast. It would not be able to do it on a 32 bit bus

as you would be only grabbing half the pixels you could be with twice the width.

 

The 64 bit bus can be owned by any processor. That means all other processor can be excluded

from using it during that time. Using the internal ram of the riscs for code and some data, you

can really rock some serious rendering.

 

Oberon.....TOM's next gen....is VERY impressive for 1994 and would have put a hurtin on

anything of its time. I have work in progress on the Oberon as I have the v 1.0 nets.

 

The new blitter is the same chip except can be fed a polygon in one command and buffer the next

command in shadow registers. The Jag blitter has to be triggered for each line of the poly. This of

course takes away time from another processor(the GPUor it should be)which though slower is where

the flexibility comes in. The new blitter can still do everything as the old blitter does. It also has an 8k

texture ROM and 8k internal texture cache...it also now texture maps in phrases instead of a pixel at a

time.

 

The new GPU no longer has local to main /main to local jump issues anymore. Larger caches

as well.

 

The new DSP, though that never made it to production was to have a FULL 64 bit access to the bus.

this would have made grabing sound sample data ridiculous fast. that would be 4, 16 bit samples per

read! You could read 8 channels of samples in two reads!!! Unfortunately the DSP in the Jag is connected

externally 16 bits.

 

 

The oberon also has bi and trilinear filtering, mip mapping and a whole host of other features

including alpha channel.

 

 

And yes that Z buffer works at no extra cost BTW....providing you use CRY...it dont work in any

other mode. Jag can indeed do 24 bit RGB in hardware....but it obviuosly will be 33 % slower.

Edited June 20, 2007 by Gorf

[Gorf]

Any thoughts on where the Jag II would have fallen within this argument?

 

JAg II was a monster and would have easily out done any system of the time.

[Gorf]

Disappointing to say the least, now leaving the discussion.

 

 

What your blatant hypocracy? You insulted me first tell me i dont appear to be as knowledgeable

first and you go ahead with a tie raid on me now?

 

here...more unintellegent caps for you...

 

HAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAH!

Clearly you are an argumenative dual standard loving wise ass to think I would be stupid enough to

not notice you utterly blatant and ridiculous hypocracy?

 

Please do leave the discussion til you can take what you dish out.

 

 

ah...free entertainment.

[Gorf]

Yes? Then tell me Greg, what am I a fanboi of? Sony? Not really.

PS3. Now what, Greg? What is your next lame attempt at painting me as a fanboi?

 

What idiot would deny that the PS3 was designed with all of Sony's engineers heads up

there asses? It hardly exonerates you. I bitch and moan about the desicions of atari all the

time. It dont make me any less of a fan boy...post all the specs you want....till you code both,

you really dont know what you think you know.

 

 

 

I...yes me the jag fan but boy....even I know the mistakes of Atari...never doubted them.

The Jaguar failed for a ton of really retarded decisions....in spite of this...the machine for its

time was a masterpiece. You can not say that about the PS1 or Saturn...impressive yes...

masterpiece...no.

Edited June 21, 2007 by Gorf