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TIL the PS2 has more memory bandwidth than Switch

mieumieu

mieumieu

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Oct 25, 2017
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The Farplane
I see people in many places not only here comparing different hardware platforms and I'm baffled at that most people only think about raw computing power like TFLOPS. It's simply not a good comparison. You also should take stats like ROP, TMU, etc. But today I want to talk about memory bandwidth.

You have the Xbox one which has roughly 70% of computing power of the PS4 but it would perform way worse if devs don't utilize high bandwidth ESRAM well (since it's so small, only 32MB, it takes a effort to plan and utilize it), because it has only DDR3 at 2133MHz.

The issue is even more serious on mobile devices which have even slower RAM in general.
Switch has 1600MHz LPDDR4 for example.

It makes deferred rendering difficult. All the games which utilize that has lower (and dynamic) resolution on switch for example. Also mobile devices can't afford bandwidth heavy effects like multi layer VFX, TAA or even SMAA.

This thread is me ranting but yeah I'm really frustrated at the discourse sometimes.
 
OP
OP
mieumieu

mieumieu

Member
Oct 25, 2017
900
The Farplane
Please delete this post mods (temp ban me if you must). I haven't prepared before accidentally hitting send due to mis operation on my phone.
 
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Sub Boss

Sub Boss

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Nov 14, 2017
13,441
Yep thats probably its biggest bottleneck

Will probably be resolved with the propethised Switch Pro
 
Datajoy

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Angola / Zaire border region.
Also the PS2 has more memory card slots than the switch iirc

So that along with the bandwidth you mentioned makes it seem like the general memory situation was all around somewhat better on PS2
 
ElFly

ElFly

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Oct 27, 2017
2,735
I think this may just be from the graphic synthetizer to its own internal EDRAM. it was just the internal framebuffer of the graphic chip or something, and only had 4MB total

you are comparing apples to oranges
 
New Donker

New Donker

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Oct 26, 2017
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I just showed my Switch this thread.

It's response?

you_got_me_breaking_bad.gif
 

Deleted member 8468

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I had no idea the RAM was that slow. Its also good to note Nintendo is generally the only console manufacturer that doesn't tend to sell at a loss.
 

FormatCompatible

One Winged Slayer
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Oct 25, 2017
12,071
The Switch has no emotions, the PS2 has a whole engine full of it. If you compare how many more emotional games the PS2 has you can see how much it benefits from it.

Your comparison seems a bit strange but memory bandwith is indeed a problem on the switch from what I understand.
 
Squarealex

Squarealex

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Nov 11, 2017
1,466
No surprising, PS2 have UFO hardware.

Can't imagine the power if it has 8 MB Video Memory like Dreamcast.
 
Opa-Opa

Opa-Opa

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And that's exactly why Saddam chose the PS2 over the Switch.
 
Jbone115

Jbone115

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Oct 25, 2017
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OP, I'm afraid your efforts are in vain. Video game forum posters only care about """power""" (but not actual power, just computing efficiency), not the actual technology inside the devices they use.
 
ShinobiBk

ShinobiBk

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Dec 28, 2017
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PS2 also has more native backwards compatible capabilities than PS4 or Switch iirc
 
Crayon

Crayon

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It has like a 4,000 bit bus cuz it has to pass over a frame multiple times to get basic stuff done.
 
PogiJones

PogiJones

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Oct 27, 2017
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I think the reason it doesn't come up is because most of us care only about the end result. Before a console launches, we care about specs because it gives us an idea of how it will perform. But now we have it and know how it performs, so even if an individual spec is technically worse than a PS2 we don't care, because we see and experience the end results, which are far, far beyond the PS2.
 
--R

--R

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Oct 25, 2017
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Why stop there? NES had bigger sized cartridges compared to the Switch. That must mean Switch is weaker than the NES for sure.
 
ThereAreFourNaan

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Nov 8, 2017
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It's a bottleneck no doubt, although Maxwell at least has very good colour compression technology which iirc helped reduce the bandwidth requirements on Maxwell/Pascal desktop chips.
 
IronicSonic

IronicSonic

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FormatCompatible said:
The Switch has no emotions, the PS2 has a whole engine full of it. If you compare how many more emotional games the PS2 has you can see how much it benefits from it.

Your comparison seems a bit strange but memory bandwith is indeed a problem on the switch from what I understand.
Click to expand...
Click to shrink...
I love this reply so much
 

Deleted member 18161

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Baconmonk said:
I had no idea the RAM was that slow. Its also good to note Nintendo is generally the only console manufacturer that doesn't tend to sell at a loss.
Click to expand...
Click to shrink...

Memory bandwidth is Switch's 'achilles heel'. It's the reason a lot of games don't hit 720p in handheld mode and 1080p in docked mode. Doubling it's memory bandwidth for the eventual Pro will be much more important than the doubling of GPU flops for native resolutions imo.
 
Flon

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Oct 27, 2017
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The Switch doesn't have block towers during its start up too. I'll never know my progress.
 
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