[Miniryu]

I read in a Toys R Us ad that while the Xbox runs off a Pentium III, the Game Cube uses a Power PC. Is this true? If it is, does that equate the Game Cube to a Mac and the Xbox to a Wintel (if it does I'm plan to buy the latter)? Will high sales for the Game Cube fare better or worse for the Mac? I am thinking either a high profit for Motorola and thus more $$ to spend on PPC R&D, or on the other hand it could just result in a shortage of chip during the crucial holiday season and post Mac-World 2002 when new models will be available.

[SOLIDAge]

The GC runs on an Intel Gecko processor running at 455 (if i remember correctly) Some have stated that the architecture of the Gecko is basically that of a duel processor, making the cube really 910 Mhz...narrowly beating out the Xbox

it is not a Power PC by any means

The GameCube actually uses an IBM PowerPC specially designed for Nintendo called the gecko, it's not made by Intel or Motorola. It is a supposed to be a modified g3 or g4.

[mr. burns]

solidage = wrong
macuser = correct

[Miniryu]

I meant IBM, not Motorola.

[juanvaldes]

Originally posted by mr. burns:
<STRONG>solidage = wrong
macuser = correct</STRONG>

excellent..

mr. burns is indeed correct!

[SOLIDAge]

your right, i ment to write IBM, sorry for the accidental slip, don't know why i thought INTEL

[Nebrie]

The ppc chip in the gamecube is unmistakably different, for one, it's drastically smaller than your thumb nail.

[The Dude]

Originally posted by &lt;MacUser&gt;:
<STRONG>The GameCube actually uses an IBM PowerPC specially designed for Nintendo called the gecko, it's not made by Intel or Motorola. It is a supposed to be a modified g3 or g4.</STRONG>

G3.

[Chimpmaster]

No mac lover would buy an xbox, surely (being an evil microsoft invention).

Just kidding.

Gamecube looks pretty hot. Sales have been disappointing in Japan though, and it has so much competition to fend off from sony and microsoft.

Still, they will get in with their niche market (kids and cutesy game lovers).

I myself, am a ps2 owner. Ps2 kicks ass, and Im sure gamecube will as well.

[austeros]

im not yet sold on any of them. i am 95% sure i will get a gamecube.... but i would like to see nintendo win back one major developer before i do. then again having sega in the camp might just be good enough for me.

the way i head it gekko was a variant g3 with something like altivec (nintendo was impressed with that) running at 403mhz. either way, a 400mhz g3 should be more then sufficient with out all the os bull to slow things down (speaking in general terms, i love osx)

if ms didnt have bungie in their camp, i wouldnt look twice at it, but still the xbox is cheaper then building a pc for games... and you dont have to tolerate a full version of windows

[mr. burns]

it's 485 MHz with a 162 Mhz bus. the video chip is made by ati and it's a variant of the radeon. it runs at the same speed as the bus. all of this translates to 10.5GFLOPS and 6-12 million polys/sec.

chimpmaster: if you had read about the upcoming games for the cube you would know that it's not all cutsie. capcom is exclusively releasing resident evil 4, and then there's soul calibur 2 and tony hawk 3. zelda, metroid, rogue leader.... check out http://cube.ign.com

the game cube is SICK.[/LIST]
[ 11-22-2001: Message edited by: mr. burns ]

[hmr]

So, if the Game Cube is 10.5 gigaflops, how many gigaflopts is Microsoft's XBox then?

[ShortcutToMoncton]

17 hundred million.

It's very fast.

greg

[Rob van dam]

no 100 milloin cacaflops

[JoNoiD]

if gamecube is based on powerpc architecture does that mean that emulating it will yield much higher performance than a standard emulator (like classic on mac os x)?

[yukon]

more performance? possibly in some areas which are the same in both processors. they are a little more different than the "PPC" lable lets on though. it's specs are pretty high, so emulation'd be a pain.

i'm more excited about the possibility of better emulation sooner, especially since sixtyforce crapped out.

[MindFad]

"The GameCube is sick."

:auses Rogue Leader again::

It sure is.

::Continues playing once more::

[ 11-27-2001: Message edited by: MindFad ]

[Graymalkin]

Wow what an uninformed group. First off the Gekko processor is manufactured by IBM and runs the PPC ISA (ISA meaning instruction set architecture). The processor core runs at ~405MHz and uses a 180nm (.18 micron) copper wire process. The graphics chip was NOT designed by ATi, it was designed by a company called ArtX. ATi picked up ArtX after the chip's design had been chosen for the GC and many people are pretty sure it was just so ATi could get their name on a game console like nVidia was with the XBox. This graphics processor is called Flipper and runs at 202.5MHz build using a 180nm die by NEC using an embedded DRAM process. Flipper has 2MB of 5ns frame buffer cache and 1MB of texture cache. It has a bunch of hardware mapping capabilities and has 8 hardware lights. It also supports realtime texture compression, S3TC, which makes the 8MB of texture memory plenty for most tasks. The system has 43MB of RAM total, the 3MB embedded in Flipper, 24MB of 10ns SRAM (8 of which is texture memory and 16 is framebuffer), then 16MB of DRAM for the main processor. Main memory is clocked at 101MHz. The processor itself does 925 DMIPS (that's Drystone 2.1 MIPS) which is about the same as the G4 scores. Overall (processor, geometry engine, HW lighting) the system cranks out a max of 13 GFLOPS which is impressive. Nintendo is conservative with their poly counts which is from 6 to 12 million polys per second. This is an impressive number because thats fully textured and lit polys. The PS2's claims of a high polycount are unlit and untextured polys. FUlly lit and textured it can do about the same number as the GC. The XBox's claim on megapolys might be accurate because the nVidia chip is designed to be a polycruncher ant it runs at a higher core clock than either the Gekko in the GC or the GS chip in the PS2. Anyways, digest those numbers and stop throwing about all of your wild assumptions.

[Adam Betts]

Graymalkiny, take it easy. Those information that people here found is based on information from public such as magazine, internet, etc. You can't expect everyone to be 100% accurate.

[Eug]

Originally posted by Adam Betts:
<STRONG>Graymalkiny, take it easy. Those information that people here found is based on information from public such as magazine, internet, etc. You can't expect everyone to be 100% accurate.</STRONG>

Graymalkin's info is widely avail. on the net.

Yep 405 MHz PPC with 202 MHz ArtX/ATI chip.

[yukon]

&lt;sigh&gt; i've been out of gaming since zelda64. emulation, and having every good game ever released is where its at.

the prices for thes "entertainment" systems are too high now. they've got themselves into a specs war. I wonder how much tougher emulation will become on such machines and in the future...

[Graymalkin]

I liked the GC much more than the XBox. Polygons don't impress me much as actual games do. The GC is going to have Star Wars and Pokemon not to mention the other Nintendo favourites. I also don't like to see spouting misinformation because people read it, accept it as fact and then spout it off themselves. That eventually leads to someone claiming the GC contains no electronics and is run entirely by magical stones contained within the plastic. But then again what do you expect from people that quote the Register and MOSR?

Kids and cutesy games my ass. Nintendo just secured SOLE rights over the Resident Evil series. The first game will be completely retooled graphics wise and will have some new scenes as well. The other three will be direct ports from the PS and the long awaited #4 will be exclusive to the Cube. Couple that with games like Perfect Dark Zero, Phantasy Star Online Ver.2, Batman:Vengeance, Metroid Prime, Rogue Leader and the fact that some of the X-Box "exclusives" third party games are actually on the downlow to be developed for the Cube makes it far more than a Kids console...but even if it is, what the hell is the problem with that? That's what the game industry was built on, lest we forget. And let me state that games like Mario, Zelda and Donkey Kong are still fun as hell. Of course it may not be stuff like Grand Theft Auto 3 or MGS2, but they're still good games none the less. Something I can enjoy playing with my little cousins is always something I'll be open to. I myself like variety...even PS & X-Box realized that this last year when they've made games like Jak and Dexter, Okage, and Cel Damage.

***This Promo is Over***

[MindFad]

It's actually 485MHz. It was upped before launch. There was a reason why I read somewhere, but it escapes me now. Something to do with equaling out processor time with the graphics chip.