PS3 at E3 used "alternate" GPU for demos

[CannonFodder-jm]

The actual GPU, RSX is still in development, meaning they used some other GPU for all those shiny demos...seems like cheating to me.

http://www.bit-tech.net/news/2005/05/25/rsx_still_in_development/

Makes me wonder, will the real product be better or worse?

[Jakub]

There were NO live PS3 demos.

It was all CGI. Every last single bit of it.

[olaf]

There were NO live PS3 demos.

It was all CGI. Every last single bit of it.
I wasnt there but according to the G4 coverage the Unreal Tournament footage was live? Something like that anyway they said the guy was panning the camera or something with the controller.

olaf

[Jason Cross]

There were NO live PS3 demos.

It was all CGI. Every last single bit of it.

Not true. There were live "tech demos." Two of which resembled game content in some way...one was a non-interactive movie in the Unreal Engine 3, the other a noninteractive movie of Fight Night 2006 made with RenderWare. The camera could be freely moved, time stopped, etc. during these demos. But nothing in them was under any sort of player control or AI or anything resembling a game. There were also interactive real-time demos that basically showed off Cell capabilities.

I find the revelation that the RSX is still under development to be very dubious. I didn't record the Sony conference, but they pretty clearly stated that some of the tech demos were running on the RSX chip. In fact I think the Unreal thing in particular was said very explicitly to be running on the RSX.

Turns out it was all on the G70. Personally, I don't expect the RSX to be much different from the G70, despite Sony's claims that it's "a totally different architecture."

[Tom McNamara]

Unless I'm mistaken, all graphics are "Computer Graphics Imagery." :wink:

[CannonFodder-jm]

Ah, sorry, clarification:

The pre-E3 press conference that was held by Sony had a large number of technology demos

[Brad Grenz]

The actual GPU, RSX is still in development, meaning they used some other GPU for all those shiny demos...seems like cheating to me.

http://www.bit-tech.net/news/2005/05/25/rsx_still_in_development/

Makes me wonder, will the real product be better or worse?

Hell, the Xbox 360 games were running on Macs. There was like one underclocked Xbox 360 using actual prototype hardware at E3 in the ATI booth running a tech demo. Devs won't be getting beta chips for another month or two. Kinda cutting it close for a fall launch.

Sony is almost a year out, but they at least have the Cell CPU available. It was never a secret that most of the PS3 stuff was running on early devkits with Cell + 6800 SLI. And I think the nVidia techdemos for the RSX at Sony's press conference were actually using an early G70 which is nVidia'a next big PC part. Most think the RSX is largely adapted from the G70, shrunk to 90nm, speed bumped and modified for FlexIO communication with Cell.

[CannonFodder-jm]

You know how sometimes you read/hear/etc about things in your field of expertise, then 3 weeks later see an abbreviated version on a mainstream news site designed for the masses and you think, "That author didn't really understand what he was writing about," or "What he is focusing on is not even the significant bits!" or even just "The way he wrote that is going to mislead a lot of ignorant people"?

Well, I think I was the ignorant person this time :oops:

[Linoleum]

Sony is almost a year out, but they at least have the Cell CPU available. It was never a secret that most of the PS3 stuff was running on early devkits with Cell + 6800 SLI. And I think the nVidia techdemos for the RSX at Sony's press conference were actually using an early G70 which is nVidia'a next big PC part. Most think the RSX is largely adapted from the G70, shrunk to 90nm, speed bumped and modified for FlexIO communication with Cell.

I don't think you'll find anything 'PS3' that isn't a high-end Intel PC with 6800 SLI. If anyone has gotten an actual piece of Cell silicon, it's news to me...

[mouselock]

The actual GPU, RSX is still in development, meaning they used some other GPU for all those shiny demos...seems like cheating to me.

http://www.bit-tech.net/news/2005/05/25/rsx_still_in_development/

Makes me wonder, will the real product be better or worse?

Hell, the Xbox 360 games were running on Macs. There was like one underclocked Xbox 360 using actual prototype hardware at E3 in the ATI booth running a tech demo. Devs won't be getting beta chips for another month or two. Kinda cutting it close for a fall launch.

Sony is almost a year out, but they at least have the Cell CPU available. It was never a secret that most of the PS3 stuff was running on early devkits with Cell + 6800 SLI. And I think the nVidia techdemos for the RSX at Sony's press conference were actually using an early G70 which is nVidia'a next big PC part. Most think the RSX is largely adapted from the G70, shrunk to 90nm, speed bumped and modified for FlexIO communication with Cell.

Yeah, but there's a lot more similarity to a dual proc PPC Mac with an ATI XT 850 driving the graphics than there is to a big honking intel box with DLI 6800s driving it. (Of course, one would expect this given the difference in time frames.)

At the very least, the xbox demos could be portable code; I don't see any way the PS3 game demos could have much of anything in common other than perhaps graphics architecture similarities. (Of course, this doesn't matter if the machines are actually accessible with good power from a high level language this time around.)

[Kevin Grey]

I don't think you'll find anything 'PS3' that isn't a high-end Intel PC with 6800 SLI. If anyone has gotten an actual piece of Cell silicon, it's news to me...

Over at Gaming-Age, a dev working on Warhawk for the PS3 had this to say about dev kits having the cell chip in them:

Amazingly, the alpha dev kits have no less than 8 separate fans inside them. Keeping the system cool during daily use is apparently a major issue. Makes one wonder exactly what will be used to keep the final consumer hardware from overheating. The convex shape makes sense to avoid stacking.

Sounds to me like they at least have a cell dev kit.

[Linoleum]

Amazingly, the alpha dev kits have no less than 8 separate fans inside them. Keeping the system cool during daily use is apparently a major issue. Makes one wonder exactly what will be used to keep the final consumer hardware from overheating. The convex shape makes sense to avoid stacking.

Sounds to me like they at least have a cell dev kit.

I should point out the anecdotal quality of his phrasing of "apparently". And remind myself to keep my mouth shut and not risk the wrath of Sony. Suffice to say, it's going to be a hell of a scramble to get launch titles ready. Which it always is, but the PS3 does not (and will not) have a big jump on this relative to the 360 in that regard. Basically, everybody will just port from their 360 projects to the PS3 (unless they are doing an exclusive in which case they will merely wish they had the luxury of prototyping on the 360).

[Brad Grenz]

Cell silicon has existed since last fall. Jonathon Blow mentioned that they've been working on Cell code for a year where he works. The Unreal 3 demo was confirmed to be running on Cell plus 6800 SLI. The ducky, Getaway, explosion, leaf, terrain, Fight Night and Alfred Molina demos are all running on actual Cell processors. The only thing that I think may be x86 is the very first RSX demo of the chick and the hand monsters, but that's just a suspition.

[Kool Moe Dee]

Umm...dude...you know that PS2 stuff was only running on emulation for a long time, right? And that the same was true for the PSP, where the earliest demos were simply rendered movies of the games running under emulation.

Any notion that the PS3 exists and is out there right now, I think, is generous to say the least.

[Brad Grenz]

I'm not saying that. But there's never been any indication that the PS3 demos were running on anything but Cell. Discounting rendered concepts, of course. Where has there been any suggestion that the PS3 demos were running on PCs? And this thread doesn't count.