The New Cell Processor

[TuxDave]

Originally posted by: Velk

Originally posted by: TuxDave

Originally posted by: Velk

Originally posted by: CTho9305

Consoles using the Cell will have the advantage of only having to render for TV resolutions - at most 1080 lines, while PCs will be rendering at up to 1600x1200

1920x1080 (1080i) > 1600 x 1200

That doesn't stop the original article being silly though - reading a patent and then giving real world performance predictions for a product built off it is more or less akin to reading performance specs in tea leaves.

Just to be a little more accurate.

1920x1080 > 1600x1200 > 1080i

That 'i' is a kicker.

Not at all - to be able to display alternating interlaced frames you still need to be able to work in the full resolution in the first place. You'd have a point if it was, say, television broadcasting, but for a games console you still need to do all the work to calculate a 1920x1080 resolution image to be able to render the interlaced half frames for 1080i.

Of course, if you are going solely on the basis of how many pixels are displayed in a given image, then yes, 1080i is a lower resolution than 1600x1200, but we were talking about the work required to produce the image in the first place. 1080p would probably have been a better example, given it works on both levels.

Well, the point I was trying to make is that getting 60fps on 1080p should be more difficult than 1080i. This is how I broke it down. Let's say there's X pixels per frame and you go SLI w/ 2 GPUs (or even dual core since that's the 'in' thing nowadays). For 1080p, you need each GPU to render X/2 pixels in 1/60. On the other hand, if you wanted to output at 1080i, you should only need each GPU to render X/2 pixels in 2/60 time. So in the second case, you can afford to have a processor with half the performance. You can correct me if I'm wrong. I'm not familiar with the details of graphics processing, but that's logically how I think about it.

 

[imported_mitch2891]

TuxDave is right even if you are rendering the whole frame and then displaying over two frames it only amounts to half the work of 1080p as it has an effective frame rate of half the TV's refresh rate (60 / 2 = 30) where as at 1080p assuming you are not repeating frames or anything you are running 60 frames a second so the GPU has that extra 1/60th of a second while it just broadcasts the other half of the frame to work on the next one in 1080i.

It is not yet knowen how the PS3 renders but the PS2 did not render the whole frame then split it for output it only rendered the alternating lines and then did the opposite lines on the next frame, this in part explains the PS2's tiny frame bufferas it only had to store half and screen at a time.

 

[Velk]

Originally posted by: TuxDave

Originally posted by: Velk

Originally posted by: TuxDave

Originally posted by: Velk

Originally posted by: CTho9305

Consoles using the Cell will have the advantage of only having to render for TV resolutions - at most 1080 lines, while PCs will be rendering at up to 1600x1200

1920x1080 (1080i) > 1600 x 1200

That doesn't stop the original article being silly though - reading a patent and then giving real world performance predictions for a product built off it is more or less akin to reading performance specs in tea leaves.

Just to be a little more accurate.

1920x1080 > 1600x1200 > 1080i

That 'i' is a kicker.

Not at all - to be able to display alternating interlaced frames you still need to be able to work in the full resolution in the first place. You'd have a point if it was, say, television broadcasting, but for a games console you still need to do all the work to calculate a 1920x1080 resolution image to be able to render the interlaced half frames for 1080i.

Of course, if you are going solely on the basis of how many pixels are displayed in a given image, then yes, 1080i is a lower resolution than 1600x1200, but we were talking about the work required to produce the image in the first place. 1080p would probably have been a better example, given it works on both levels.

Well, the point I was trying to make is that getting 60fps on 1080p should be more difficult than 1080i. This is how I broke it down. Let's say there's X pixels per frame and you go SLI w/ 2 GPUs (or even dual core since that's the 'in' thing nowadays). For 1080p, you need each GPU to render X/2 pixels in 1/60. On the other hand, if you wanted to output at 1080i, you should only need each GPU to render X/2 pixels in 2/60 time. So in the second case, you can afford to have a processor with half the performance. You can correct me if I'm wrong. I'm not familiar with the details of graphics processing, but that's logically how I think about it.

60 frames per second is just as hard to create on either of them but as video broadcast in 1080i is only done at 30 frames a second that's a good point. The second one not so much - of course the processor only needs half the performance, you are using two of them 8)

There isn't a strict relationship between console framerate and the video rate though, any more than there is between the FPS of a game and the refresh rate of a CRT monitor.

Still as there isn't any reason to display a higher FPS than the video rate, then yeah I can see your point of view - I was coming from the point of view that X fps is equally difficult for either of them, but hadn't considered that the maximum fps displayable between the two was different.