Does anyone know how this processor would compare to the Sony PSP? Can it do better graphics and render things faster than a PSP now. I'm tired of reading about how the PSP can do much better graphics than a second generation iPod Touch, so maybe the 3rd generation iPod Touch will be even faster than the iPhone 3G S and blow the PSP away.
I tried to confirm these numbers with as many sources as I could find on Google. Granted, polygon rendering performance isn't the only measure of a GPU, but it is one of primary importance.
PowerVR MBX in iPhone 3G = ~2 million polygons/sec
PowerVR SGX530 in Palm Pre = ~14 million polygons/sec
MIPS-based "Media Engine" in PSP = ~33 million polygons/sec
If the iPhone has the SGX530, and the performance is so much better... how are they going to manage 3D gaming?? Are there new APIs that allow 3D games to identify which model iPhone is in use and adjust the graphics quality accordingly? How will developers deal with this? Surely they aren't just going to make all new games to the lowest common denominator, right?
There's some stuff on game dev reaction here, the general idea seems to be that the new hardware is very capable, but since it will require additional resources to write to we may not see much that takes full advantage for a while, since developers will want to wait and see what kind of numbers they'll be writing to.
A guy in the comments seems convinced that this was some kind of blunder on Apple's part, since it bifurcates their market unnecessarily when they could have gotten reasonable performance upgrades out of whatever the evolutionary step would have been, instead of jumping to "next gen" (his term) architecture. He talks about the console biz, and how those platforms tend to stay pretty stable for four years or so before the next big processor and graphics jump. Somebody else notes that the iPhone is already a somewhat fractured market, in that there are games on the app store now that don't do that well on the original model.
Others are more sanguine and point out that desktop game developers have long used scalable graphics engines and multiple render paths to write to diverse hardware, although I'm not sure how that would work on such a constrained device as a phone. Of course, there's always the option of having two versions, but it's pointed out that that kind of resource allocation probably wouldn't allow a 99¢ price point.
It's a very game-centric conversation, and it doesn't seem to occur to these guys that people might use their phones for something other than games and that more powerful graphics might benefit the iPhone across the board.
Thanks for the info.. I wonder if Apple is covering that stuff at WWDC workshops... You think they'll have an easier solution for devs other than just having the API recognize the deviceID and switch the graphics accordingly?
At least that is the way I take it, as everything he says is qualified. So he is not sure but apparently has sources he at least trusts enough to write the article.
Considering some of the stuff Apple has already said about performance I have to wonder if they have even attempted to optimize the 3GS yet. Certainly they have openGL, in both flavours, running on the unit but the question is to what extent has it been optimized. With Apples highering of late it looks like they are bringing on more talent to address performance. IPhone OS 3.1 could be very interesting.
Even if the article is spot on it only covers a small portion of what is of interest here. No info on RAM isn't good. If RAM remains at 128 that is a more serious issue than the processor with respect to the competition. Apple still needs to be more forth coming.
I tried to confirm these numbers with as many sources as I could find on Google. Granted, polygon rendering performance isn't the only measure of a GPU, but it is one of primary importance.
PowerVR MBX in iPhone 3G = ~2 million polygons/sec
PowerVR SGX530 in Palm Pre = ~14 million polygons/sec
MIPS-based "Media Engine" in PSP = ~33 million polygons/sec
If the iPhone has the SGX530, and the performance is so much better... how are they going to manage 3D gaming?? Are there new APIs that allow 3D games to identify which model iPhone is in use and adjust the graphics quality accordingly? How will developers deal with this? Surely they aren't just going to make all new games to the lowest common denominator, right?
For whatever the reason, game that appear on both the PSP and the 3G look better on the 3G.
This has been shown more than once, and quite a few writers writing about games have said that the 3G looks better than the PSP, and much better than the DS.
Why this is so I don't understand, but it seems to be true. Monkeyball for one, looks, and plays much better on the 3G.
There's some stuff on game dev reaction here, the general idea seems to be that the new hardware is very capable, but since it will require additional resources to write to we may not see much that takes full advantage for a while, since developers will want to wait and see what kind of numbers they'll be writing to.
A guy in the comments seems convinced that this was some kind of blunder on Apple's part, since it bifurcates their market unnecessarily when they could have gotten reasonable performance upgrades out of whatever the evolutionary step would have been, instead of jumping to "next gen" (his term) architecture. He talks about the console biz, and how those platforms tend to stay pretty stable for four years or so before the next big processor and graphics jump. Somebody else notes that the iPhone is already a somewhat fractured market, in that there are games on the app store now that don't do that well on the original model.
Others are more sanguine and point out that desktop game developers have long used scalable graphics engines and multiple render paths to write to diverse hardware, although I'm not sure how that would work on such a constrained device as a phone. Of course, there's always the option of having two versions, but it's pointed out that that kind of resource allocation probably wouldn't allow a 99¢ price point.
It's a very game-centric conversation, and it doesn't seem to occur to these guys that people might use their phones for something other than games and that more powerful graphics might benefit the iPhone across the board.
We also have to realize that these things are just 480 x 320. That's not much of a challenge. Past a certain point, higher numbers won't make a difference.
We're talking about how many millions of polygoms it can render, but with only 153,600 pixels in the screen, it hardly matters.
We also have to realize that these things are just 480 x 320. That's not much of a challenge. Past a certain point, higher numbers won't make a difference.
We're talking about how many millions of polygoms it can render, but with only 153,600 pixels in the screen, it hardly matters.
Its all to do with the efficient nature of PowerVR graphics. Think back to the glory days of Dreamcast v Playstation2 and even though on paper the PS2 was more powerful (and eventually won the battle), the Dreamcast always had the better looking games due to the inherent nature of the Tile-Based_rendering employed by the PowerVR gfx chip at the time.
Regarding PSP, latest rumour is they've gone with PowerVR graphics for a PSP2 due late 2010/11 anyways. By then Apple will have most likely migrated to the higher performance PowerVR SGX-XT muli-GPU designs running OpenCL...all exciting stuff DYOR....
Its all to do with the efficient nature of PowerVR graphics. Think back to the glory days of Dreamcast v Playstation2 and even though on paper the PS2 was more powerful (and eventually won the battle), the Dreamcast always had the better looking games due to the inherent nature of the Tile-Based_rendering employed by the PowerVR gfx chip at the time.
Regarding PSP, latest rumour is they've gone with PowerVR graphics for a PSP2 due late 2010/11 anyways. By then Apple will have most likely migrated to the higher performance PowerVR SGX-XT muli-GPU designs running OpenCL...all exciting stuff DYOR....
The PowerVR tiled architecture saves on back-end pixel rendering - by only rendering the pixels that are actually visible
- so there's almost no over-draw required
However, it doesn't save on the polygon requirement since all the poly's need to be transformed before the tile happens
- i.e. it transforms all the poly's, allocates the transformed polys to tiles, renders each tile, then outputs the results.
There's some stuff on game dev reaction here, the general idea seems to be that the new hardware is very capable, but since it will require additional resources to write to we may not see much that takes full advantage for a while, since developers will want to wait and see what kind of numbers they'll be writing to.
The negative folks assume that the target price is $0.99 which is a bogus assumption. For OpenGL ES 2.0 games that are AAA titles I expect to be $9.99 and up.
SpiffyOne is an idiot. If Apple went Cortex A8 + SGX as suspected then the 3GS is a stable platform for both the iPhone and Touch for several years with the more high end game devs targeting OpenGL ES 2.0 vs 1.1. Even if they stuck with ARM11 the target is STILL OpenGL ES 2.0.
OpenGL is key and if you avoid any Cortex A8 specific code you can target both platforms with the same binary.
The majority of iPhone owners will transition within a year (even the 3G owners will get a subsidized price by then) with Touch users lagging a bit beyond that but with still with gamers leading the pack.
Do folks really expect that many AAA OpenGL ES 2.0 titles between now and then? No, not really. There will be a few hand-crafted showcase titles that run great on the 3GS and crappy on the 3G but most 2.0 games wont show for a year.
Oh, on the Tegra thing...I meant for gaming, not 720p HD. Unless Apple turns the aTV into a HD dock for the iPhone/iPod Touch I don't see them pushing it as a key feature like on the Zune.
We also have to realize that these things are just 480 x 320. That's not much of a challenge. Past a certain point, higher numbers won't make a difference.
We're talking about how many millions of polygoms it can render, but with only 153,600 pixels in the screen, it hardly matters.
Quote:
Originally Posted by ivan.rnn01
Oh. Great point!
Personally, I'm not at all sure that the graphic acceleration they've achieved is worth investment.
Better shaders, texture sizes and stencil buffers mean those 153,600 pixles will look better. Also, frame rates will improve. We're likely going to move close to HL2 quality (without HDR) according to some folks.
Geez, which part of allows "games with more realistic images" do folks NOT get? Do your movies or TV shows look like bad CGI for some reason when played on your iPhone?
The new iPhone 3G S achieves its OpenGL ES 2.0 support using the PowerVR SGX graphics processor core, according to sources familiar with the new iPhone's graphics processor design, as AppleInsider first anticipated in a report last April that broke news of a secret deal struck between Imagination Technologies, Samsung, and Apple.
Better shaders, texture sizes and stencil buffers mean those 153,600 pixles will look better. Also, frame rates will improve. We're likely going to move close to HL2 quality (without HDR) according to some folks.
Yes, I think you'll gradually see better looking games coming out for the 3GS (& next gen Touch), which will encourage people to move over to the new platform
From Apple's point of view, they need to keep their platform uptodate & competitive (e.g. Zune HD & Pre)
I think a significant upgrade every two years, and a minor one in-between is a sensible approach.
Better shaders, texture sizes and stencil buffers mean those 153,600 pixles will look better. Also, frame rates will improve. We're likely going to move close to HL2 quality (without HDR) according to some folks.
Geez, which part of allows "games with more realistic images" do folks NOT get? Do your movies or TV shows look like bad CGI for some reason when played on your iPhone?
They will, they will, nobody's arguing.
Me personally not understanding "more realistic". How exactly do you measure realism of the screen of 480 by 320 pixels? By experimenting with specially created 3D samples?
Never mind, you're not the first who fails to answer this correct, short and realistic.
Me personally not understanding "more realistic". How exactly do you measure realism of the screen of 480 by 320 pixels? By experimenting with specially created 3D samples?
Never mind, you're not the first who fails to answer this correct, short and realistic.
Simple. If it looks like obvious CGI it's less "realistic". When it looks like high end FX from a movie it looks "more realistic" because the intent is to put actors into virtual backgrounds indistinguishable from live sets. Likewise certain games strive for realism for greater immersion in gameplay. First person shooters, sims (racing, or other), RPGs, etc are examples of game genres that often use higher quality graphics for increased immersion.
Not being able to understand the difference requires willful ignorance.
Simple. If it looks like obvious CGI it's less "realistic". When it looks like high end FX from a movie it looks "more realistic" because the intent is to put actors into virtual backgrounds indistinguishable from live sets. Likewise certain games strive for realism for greater immersion in gameplay. First person shooters, sims (racing, or other), RPGs, etc are examples of game genres that often use higher quality graphics for increased immersion.
Not being able to understand the difference requires willful ignorance.
Not. Nobody knows, which CGI is obviously CG, and how close in quality CGI should be to theatric image to qualify for "looking like".
you need one of 2 things to have hd video, either an hd display (not on iphone 3gs) or capability to render hd and pass it to a display with an hd cable (iphone does not have a port for an hd cable) so they did not flat out mention hd, but indirectly it looks like no hd.
Actually, the iPhone dock connector can have a component video output attached, which is capable of HD. It's not HDMI or DisplayPort, but component can be HD.
However, if it was HD they'd have to have "shown off" with that, wouldn't they? So I agree with you it looks like no HD.
(Likewise, I wonder why they didn't do a demo of Leopard vs Snow Leopard with the customary "2.1x faster!"... unless the speeds they are getting aren't worth showing off).
Comments
Does anyone know how this processor would compare to the Sony PSP? Can it do better graphics and render things faster than a PSP now. I'm tired of reading about how the PSP can do much better graphics than a second generation iPod Touch, so maybe the 3rd generation iPod Touch will be even faster than the iPhone 3G S and blow the PSP away.
I tried to confirm these numbers with as many sources as I could find on Google. Granted, polygon rendering performance isn't the only measure of a GPU, but it is one of primary importance.
PowerVR MBX in iPhone 3G = ~2 million polygons/sec
PowerVR SGX530 in Palm Pre = ~14 million polygons/sec
MIPS-based "Media Engine" in PSP = ~33 million polygons/sec
If the iPhone has the SGX530, and the performance is so much better... how are they going to manage 3D gaming?? Are there new APIs that allow 3D games to identify which model iPhone is in use and adjust the graphics quality accordingly? How will developers deal with this? Surely they aren't just going to make all new games to the lowest common denominator, right?
A guy in the comments seems convinced that this was some kind of blunder on Apple's part, since it bifurcates their market unnecessarily when they could have gotten reasonable performance upgrades out of whatever the evolutionary step would have been, instead of jumping to "next gen" (his term) architecture. He talks about the console biz, and how those platforms tend to stay pretty stable for four years or so before the next big processor and graphics jump. Somebody else notes that the iPhone is already a somewhat fractured market, in that there are games on the app store now that don't do that well on the original model.
Others are more sanguine and point out that desktop game developers have long used scalable graphics engines and multiple render paths to write to diverse hardware, although I'm not sure how that would work on such a constrained device as a phone. Of course, there's always the option of having two versions, but it's pointed out that that kind of resource allocation probably wouldn't allow a 99¢ price point.
It's a very game-centric conversation, and it doesn't seem to occur to these guys that people might use their phones for something other than games and that more powerful graphics might benefit the iPhone across the board.
There's some stuff on game dev reaction...
Thanks for the info.. I wonder if Apple is covering that stuff at WWDC workshops... You think they'll have an easier solution for devs other than just having the API recognize the deviceID and switch the graphics accordingly?
http://it.anandtech.com/gadgets/showdoc.aspx?i=3579
** This just in: Anandtech.com posts in-depth article about iPhone 3GS CPU/GPU hardware **
http://it.anandtech.com/gadgets/showdoc.aspx?i=3579
At least that is the way I take it, as everything he says is qualified. So he is not sure but apparently has sources he at least trusts enough to write the article.
Considering some of the stuff Apple has already said about performance I have to wonder if they have even attempted to optimize the 3GS yet. Certainly they have openGL, in both flavours, running on the unit but the question is to what extent has it been optimized. With Apples highering of late it looks like they are bringing on more talent to address performance. IPhone OS 3.1 could be very interesting.
Even if the article is spot on it only covers a small portion of what is of interest here. No info on RAM isn't good. If RAM remains at 128 that is a more serious issue than the processor with respect to the competition. Apple still needs to be more forth coming.
Dave
I tried to confirm these numbers with as many sources as I could find on Google. Granted, polygon rendering performance isn't the only measure of a GPU, but it is one of primary importance.
PowerVR MBX in iPhone 3G = ~2 million polygons/sec
PowerVR SGX530 in Palm Pre = ~14 million polygons/sec
MIPS-based "Media Engine" in PSP = ~33 million polygons/sec
If the iPhone has the SGX530, and the performance is so much better... how are they going to manage 3D gaming?? Are there new APIs that allow 3D games to identify which model iPhone is in use and adjust the graphics quality accordingly? How will developers deal with this? Surely they aren't just going to make all new games to the lowest common denominator, right?
For whatever the reason, game that appear on both the PSP and the 3G look better on the 3G.
This has been shown more than once, and quite a few writers writing about games have said that the 3G looks better than the PSP, and much better than the DS.
Why this is so I don't understand, but it seems to be true. Monkeyball for one, looks, and plays much better on the 3G.
There's some stuff on game dev reaction here, the general idea seems to be that the new hardware is very capable, but since it will require additional resources to write to we may not see much that takes full advantage for a while, since developers will want to wait and see what kind of numbers they'll be writing to.
A guy in the comments seems convinced that this was some kind of blunder on Apple's part, since it bifurcates their market unnecessarily when they could have gotten reasonable performance upgrades out of whatever the evolutionary step would have been, instead of jumping to "next gen" (his term) architecture. He talks about the console biz, and how those platforms tend to stay pretty stable for four years or so before the next big processor and graphics jump. Somebody else notes that the iPhone is already a somewhat fractured market, in that there are games on the app store now that don't do that well on the original model.
Others are more sanguine and point out that desktop game developers have long used scalable graphics engines and multiple render paths to write to diverse hardware, although I'm not sure how that would work on such a constrained device as a phone. Of course, there's always the option of having two versions, but it's pointed out that that kind of resource allocation probably wouldn't allow a 99¢ price point.
It's a very game-centric conversation, and it doesn't seem to occur to these guys that people might use their phones for something other than games and that more powerful graphics might benefit the iPhone across the board.
We also have to realize that these things are just 480 x 320. That's not much of a challenge. Past a certain point, higher numbers won't make a difference.
We're talking about how many millions of polygoms it can render, but with only 153,600 pixels in the screen, it hardly matters.
We also have to realize that these things are just 480 x 320. That's not much of a challenge. Past a certain point, higher numbers won't make a difference.
We're talking about how many millions of polygoms it can render, but with only 153,600 pixels in the screen, it hardly matters.
Its all to do with the efficient nature of PowerVR graphics. Think back to the glory days of Dreamcast v Playstation2 and even though on paper the PS2 was more powerful (and eventually won the battle), the Dreamcast always had the better looking games due to the inherent nature of the Tile-Based_rendering employed by the PowerVR gfx chip at the time.
Regarding PSP, latest rumour is they've gone with PowerVR graphics for a PSP2 due late 2010/11 anyways. By then Apple will have most likely migrated to the higher performance PowerVR SGX-XT muli-GPU designs running OpenCL...all exciting stuff DYOR....
We're talking about how many millions of polygoms it can render, but with only 153,600 pixels in the screen, it hardly matters.
Oh. Great point!
Personally, I'm not at all sure that the graphic acceleration they've achieved is worth investment.
Its all to do with the efficient nature of PowerVR graphics. Think back to the glory days of Dreamcast v Playstation2 and even though on paper the PS2 was more powerful (and eventually won the battle), the Dreamcast always had the better looking games due to the inherent nature of the Tile-Based_rendering employed by the PowerVR gfx chip at the time.
Regarding PSP, latest rumour is they've gone with PowerVR graphics for a PSP2 due late 2010/11 anyways. By then Apple will have most likely migrated to the higher performance PowerVR SGX-XT muli-GPU designs running OpenCL...all exciting stuff DYOR....
The PowerVR tiled architecture saves on back-end pixel rendering - by only rendering the pixels that are actually visible
- so there's almost no over-draw required
However, it doesn't save on the polygon requirement since all the poly's need to be transformed before the tile happens
- i.e. it transforms all the poly's, allocates the transformed polys to tiles, renders each tile, then outputs the results.
There's some stuff on game dev reaction here, the general idea seems to be that the new hardware is very capable, but since it will require additional resources to write to we may not see much that takes full advantage for a while, since developers will want to wait and see what kind of numbers they'll be writing to.
The negative folks assume that the target price is $0.99 which is a bogus assumption. For OpenGL ES 2.0 games that are AAA titles I expect to be $9.99 and up.
SpiffyOne is an idiot. If Apple went Cortex A8 + SGX as suspected then the 3GS is a stable platform for both the iPhone and Touch for several years with the more high end game devs targeting OpenGL ES 2.0 vs 1.1. Even if they stuck with ARM11 the target is STILL OpenGL ES 2.0.
OpenGL is key and if you avoid any Cortex A8 specific code you can target both platforms with the same binary.
The majority of iPhone owners will transition within a year (even the 3G owners will get a subsidized price by then) with Touch users lagging a bit beyond that but with still with gamers leading the pack.
Do folks really expect that many AAA OpenGL ES 2.0 titles between now and then? No, not really. There will be a few hand-crafted showcase titles that run great on the 3GS and crappy on the 3G but most 2.0 games wont show for a year.
Oh, on the Tegra thing...I meant for gaming, not 720p HD. Unless Apple turns the aTV into a HD dock for the iPhone/iPod Touch I don't see them pushing it as a key feature like on the Zune.
s'all great but is AT&T up to snuff? Time will telll.
AT&T doesn't matter for this. Unless you think they are going to do a WoW port to the iPhone and you're going to play a MMO over 3g.
But for you the glass is always half empty. You're pathetic.
We also have to realize that these things are just 480 x 320. That's not much of a challenge. Past a certain point, higher numbers won't make a difference.
We're talking about how many millions of polygoms it can render, but with only 153,600 pixels in the screen, it hardly matters.
Oh. Great point!
Personally, I'm not at all sure that the graphic acceleration they've achieved is worth investment.
Better shaders, texture sizes and stencil buffers mean those 153,600 pixles will look better. Also, frame rates will improve. We're likely going to move close to HL2 quality (without HDR) according to some folks.
Geez, which part of allows "games with more realistic images" do folks NOT get? Do your movies or TV shows look like bad CGI for some reason when played on your iPhone?
The new iPhone 3G S achieves its OpenGL ES 2.0 support using the PowerVR SGX graphics processor core, according to sources familiar with the new iPhone's graphics processor design, as AppleInsider first anticipated in a report last April that broke news of a secret deal struck between Imagination Technologies, Samsung, and Apple.
Holy run-on sentence, Batman!
Better shaders, texture sizes and stencil buffers mean those 153,600 pixles will look better. Also, frame rates will improve. We're likely going to move close to HL2 quality (without HDR) according to some folks.
Yes, I think you'll gradually see better looking games coming out for the 3GS (& next gen Touch), which will encourage people to move over to the new platform
From Apple's point of view, they need to keep their platform uptodate & competitive (e.g. Zune HD & Pre)
I think a significant upgrade every two years, and a minor one in-between is a sensible approach.
Any news on how much SDRAM is in the new iPhone
- are the rumours of 2x RAM true?
- this would certainly help with Textures
Only with all the iPhone devs, the App Store and OSX vs Linux.
http://openpandora.org/
Better shaders, texture sizes and stencil buffers mean those 153,600 pixles will look better. Also, frame rates will improve. We're likely going to move close to HL2 quality (without HDR) according to some folks.
Geez, which part of allows "games with more realistic images" do folks NOT get? Do your movies or TV shows look like bad CGI for some reason when played on your iPhone?
They will, they will, nobody's arguing.
Me personally not understanding "more realistic". How exactly do you measure realism of the screen of 480 by 320 pixels? By experimenting with specially created 3D samples?
Never mind, you're not the first who fails to answer this correct, short and realistic.
They will, they will, nobody's arguing.
Me personally not understanding "more realistic". How exactly do you measure realism of the screen of 480 by 320 pixels? By experimenting with specially created 3D samples?
Never mind, you're not the first who fails to answer this correct, short and realistic.
Simple. If it looks like obvious CGI it's less "realistic". When it looks like high end FX from a movie it looks "more realistic" because the intent is to put actors into virtual backgrounds indistinguishable from live sets. Likewise certain games strive for realism for greater immersion in gameplay. First person shooters, sims (racing, or other), RPGs, etc are examples of game genres that often use higher quality graphics for increased immersion.
Not being able to understand the difference requires willful ignorance.
Simple. If it looks like obvious CGI it's less "realistic". When it looks like high end FX from a movie it looks "more realistic" because the intent is to put actors into virtual backgrounds indistinguishable from live sets. Likewise certain games strive for realism for greater immersion in gameplay. First person shooters, sims (racing, or other), RPGs, etc are examples of game genres that often use higher quality graphics for increased immersion.
Not being able to understand the difference requires willful ignorance.
Not. Nobody knows, which CGI is obviously CG, and how close in quality CGI should be to theatric image to qualify for "looking like".
Ever seen theater screen of 480x320?
you need one of 2 things to have hd video, either an hd display (not on iphone 3gs) or capability to render hd and pass it to a display with an hd cable (iphone does not have a port for an hd cable) so they did not flat out mention hd, but indirectly it looks like no hd.
Actually, the iPhone dock connector can have a component video output attached, which is capable of HD. It's not HDMI or DisplayPort, but component can be HD.
However, if it was HD they'd have to have "shown off" with that, wouldn't they? So I agree with you it looks like no HD.
(Likewise, I wonder why they didn't do a demo of Leopard vs Snow Leopard with the customary "2.1x faster!"... unless the speeds they are getting aren't worth showing off).