ARM Claims PS3-Like Graphics On Upcoming Mobile GPU 217
l_bratch writes, quoting from the BBC, "'British computer chip designer ARM has unveiled its latest graphics processing unit (GPU) for mobile devices. The Mali-T658 offers up to ten times the performance of its predecessor." ARM claims that its latest GPU, which will be ready in around two years, will have graphics performance akin to the PlayStation 3. If this has acceptable power consumption for a mobile device, could we be seeing ultra-low power hardware in high-end PCs and consoles soon?"
More information here... (Score:5, Informative)
No (Score:4, Informative)
Re:Resolution! (Score:3, Informative)
Sure, PS3-like graphics... except the PS3 is doing it at 1280x720 or 1920x1080. This will be pushing probably 20-40%% of the pixels.. and doing so in 2 years, while the PS3 hardware is 5 years old (to the day).
So, no, I don't think that a chipset that will, in 2013, do 20% of the job that 2006 hardware does will be making its way into high-end PCs and consoles soon.
Except most phones released today have 1080p output via hdmi. So now what?
Re:Yea right (Score:5, Informative)
Because we are getting to the point in technology that us humans won't be able to perceive the difference in graphics.
Hollywood is getting close, but they have huge render farms, terabytes of source data and can spend hours rendering a single frame. GPUs are still a long way from producing photo-realistic output.
Re:Resolution! (Score:5, Informative)
And do you know of any phones that allow you to play games at 1080 using the HDMI output? No?
Neither do i.
The iPhone 4S and its bigger brother, the iPad 2 tablet.
Re:No (Score:5, Informative)
Some? Make that most. You can count on two hands 1080p, 60 fps games on both 360 and PS3, with most being 2D games that don't need any sort of graphical power to run.
Re:Hollywood has bigger screens to fill (Score:5, Informative)
4K is only four times the pixels as standard 1080p video. There is still no way for realtime rendering of Pixar-like stuff in the near future, be it on mobiles or desktops.
3DS is backwards compatible with the DS (Score:4, Informative)
Both Sony and Nintendo considered using it for their new consoles but the heat and power usage apparently made them turn away from it.
And Nintendo ended up using something just as hot and power-hungry for the 3DS. As I understand it, the reason Nintendo ditched Tegra for the 3DS had everything to do with the fact that Tegra wouldn't work with an ARM9 core (ARMv5), and Nintendo needed something cycle-accurate to the ARM946E in order to play DS and DSi games without glitches.
Re:In two years (Score:3, Informative)
Although in Minecraft, you can get some high res textures that make the game look a little more modern, and there are also modded shaders which can do some neat stuff as well. Even stuff like bump mapping.
I was playing with the default 16x16 for a long time, but I've finally got a little sick of it and made the switch up to 32x32.
Compatibility demands have increased (Score:4, Informative)
FCEU runs well on a 200mhz Pentium. Shouldn't a 500mhz ARM do better?
Not necessarily. Compatibility demands have increased since the Nesticle days and even since the FCE Ultra 0.98 days, and users are less willing to put up with known emulation glitches in specific games than they used to be. The "new PPU" engine in FCEUX is slower, but its behavior is more accurate to that of the NES than the old PPU, and some games demand this accuracy. For example, the Final Fantasy orb effect, text boxes in Marble Madness, and certain things in Sid Meier's Pirates are all done with cycle-timed mid-scanline writes to the PPU's I/O ports. The English version of Castlevania 3 and later Koei games use an IC called "MMC5" that's almost as complex as the coprocessors used in some Super NES games.