Nintendo 3DS GPU Revealed 133
An anonymous reader writes "The GPU for the Nintendo 3DS has just been revealed, and it's not made by Nvidia, ATI, or even Imagination Technologies. Instead, Nintendo has signed up Japanese startup Digital Media Professionals (DMP) in a deal that sees the company's PICA200 chip churning out the 3-D visuals. For the first time in Nintendo's history, the 3DS will feature a GPU with programmable shaders, rather than a fixed-function pipeline, meaning the 3DS is more graphically versatile than the Wii. Among the PICA200's features are 2x anti-aliasing, per-pixel lighting, subdivision primitives, and soft shadows. As well as featuring DMP's own 'Maestro' extensions, the PICA200 also fully supports OpenGL ES 1.1. The architecture supports four programmable vertex units and up to four pixel pipelines."
Cheap or low power? (Score:3, Insightful)
TFA doesn't mention why they went with this over a more established and modern GPU like Imagination's PowerVR or Nvidia's Tegra. OpenGL ES 1.1 isn't really anything to brag about, so I assume it either uses a lot less power, or (more likely) is much cheaper to make.
I figured they'd take this opportunity to make a single-purpose gaming device that was more powerful than the phones they're now having to compete with, so this seems like a weird choice.
Re:Cheap or low power? (Score:3, Insightful)
It's not nationalism.
Do you know anything about Japan?
Re:Cheap or low power? (Score:5, Insightful)
If you read some of the other articles that compare capabilities you'd see that though this chip is a little dated, it blows away both iPhone 4 and PSP in pixel fill rate. It may be that this factor is important for good 3D performance. It really stands out in pixel fill rate, like double the competition.
Everything else though yeah... it's old. But also, this is Nintendo, they have to sell cheap and they won't sell for a loss like their competition, which isn't profiting, so I can't really knock their strategy.
Re:Same old Nintendo strategy (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:Cheap or low power? (Score:3, Insightful)
Their "shadesr" are perhaps quite non-standard?
Re:Cheap or low power? (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:I hate to sound paranoid... (Score:3, Insightful)
Tegra2 would also need significant modifications (including two additional CPUs, an ARM7 and an ARM9) for backwards compatibility with the older systems, and would be significantly more expensive (as in, SIGNIFICANTLY below cost would have to be required,) and use significantly more power. So, if you want a 3DS that has 3 hours of battery life and costs $600, yes, Tegra2 would be great.
Re:Cheap or low power? (Score:3, Insightful)
It has fixed-function pixel/vertex shader extensions, I believe. That's the "Maestro" extensions that they refer to.
The idea being that you get most of the benefit of an OpenGL ES 2.0 chip, with almost none of the additional power consumption, as I understand.
Re:Interesting but non-conclusive (Score:1, Insightful)
The main advantage of the 3DS will be that it's a gaming system. Fine, there are some games that can be adapted to a touch/motion interface but there are many many more that just don't work without button input. I tried a lot of games on my iPhone 3g before I replaced it and none of them were comparable to playing on a dedicated console.
Re:Interesting but non-conclusive (Score:3, Insightful)
You're switching an 800x240 image for 2*400x240 images. That to me doesn't imply any overhead because there's no loss of resolution, you're seeing the same number of pixels.
Where there will be overhead is in calculating two different camera angles (although I imagine there are all sorts of optimisations that can be done for this).
Re:Old news is Old. Also, specs. (Score:3, Insightful)
What does a advertising leaflet have to do with specs? The “specs” on that thing are beyond vague.
Re:Same old Nintendo strategy (Score:4, Insightful)
You forgot the part where they make some of the greatest video games in the world. But don't let that fact get in the way of your argument.
Re:Same old Nintendo strategy (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:Same old Nintendo strategy (Score:5, Insightful)
Just look at all the nearly empty boxes at supermarket, that are way too large for their content, or look larger in volume than they are. Same strategy.
Bullshit. Where is Nintendo lying about the capabilities of their hardware? Where are they selling something that doesn't do what it says on the box?
It always takes two. The fault lies just as much on the idots who buy it, as it lies on the fraudulent (in my eyes) companies.
How is the fact that Nintendo isn't putting the emphasis on graphics performance to the exclusion of other factors somehow dishonest? And how is basing the decision to buy a videogame system on something other than graphics performance stupid? And finally, what is the great crime here for which "fault" needs to be assigned? Marketing a product that you don't want to buy? What a grievous sin that is.
Re:Doom3 in 3D (Score:3, Insightful)
I just love it how technoclowns brow-beat the Wii for being low power hardware. Out of the XBox 360, the PS3 and the Wii, which one has the most lowly hardware. Right. Now tell me, which one was the most profitable for its manufacturer?
Yea, that's what I thought.
Re:Same old Nintendo strategy (Score:4, Insightful)
How is it a bad thing to focus on the mass-market instead of focusing on graphics abilities alone? The Wii and DS have been astounding successes, showing that the market doesn't really need superb graphics.
When you call Wii "uncompetitive", how do you combine that with the fact that it sells more than the "competitive" consoles combined?