Console display resolutions

[ic1male]

We already know that the Xbox 360 renders its games at 1280x720 on the GPU and then scales up/down to match the resolution you select in the dashboard.

Does anyone know what the PS3 will do? Will it do the same thing or render at a whopping 1920x1080?

 

[NokkonWud]

I am sure I read in an article that it too renders at 720p and upscales accordingly.

 

[dirtydog]

I hope for the PS3's sake that it does render internally at 720, and not 1080 or it will be severely handicapped compared to the 360.

 

[Elrein]

I hope it renders 720p, 1080i and 1080p proper as all this "upscaling" is total BS

 

[ic1male]

I stumbled across a discussion somewhere on t'Internet which was quite above my head this morning but the consensus there seems to be that none of these "next-gen" consoles can render above 720p. The architecture to calculate 2 million-odd pixels is insufficient.

Link if anyone's interested - http://www.beyond3d.com/forum/showthread.php?t=30197

 

[dirtydog]

Interesting link - I haven't read all of it though as it is rather big

This interested me, from the opening post...

While the Xbox 360 has a 3.5 times broader bandwidth than the original Xbox, 720p pixels require a 3 times broader memory bandwidth. It leaves only 0.5 times headroom which is insufficient for multiple texture lookups by complex shaders.

I think this is why the 360 and possibly PS3 will struggle to produce games that are much of a leap over the old Xbox. Most of the extra horsepower is going on producing the higher resolutions.

 

[Buzza]

Im not sure you need to worry to much about all this, you only have to look at some of the games coming out now and in the future and you can see theres a significant leap in graphics from the Xbox let alone PS2.

The Texture and screen resolutions are higher(1280x720 is great imo), you have real time shadows on the environments as well as from the characters, HDR and then you have bump/displacement/normal maps which make the texturing look 3d. You just wont see AA at these resolutions(which isnt a big problem considering the pixels are smaller anyway).

Take a look at Prey, Gears of war and Oblivion they pee on XBox 1 and give even top-end PC's a run for there money.

 

[Elrein]

Interesting link - I haven't read all of it though as it is rather big

This interested me, from the opening post...



I think this is why the 360 and possibly PS3 will struggle to produce games that are much of a leap over the old Xbox. Most of the extra horsepower is going on producing the higher resolutions.

According to all sources the xbox360 is a lot more powerfull than my current PC (2.8GHz P4 2GB ram and x800pro 16pipes) why can't it render 720p/1080i easily when my PC will run the majority of the latest games @ 1920x1200 quite happily?

Edit: Its all about avialable memory ? is it ?

 

[DaveyD]

Trouble is, they're going to be trying their hardest to get their games running near enough to a constant 30 or 60fps at these resolutions. You say you can run your games at 1920x1200, but are they always a constant framerate and smooth 99% of the time?

 

[Goatboy]

Isn't the PS3 meant to be capable of dual 1080p

 

[DaveyD]

Isn't the PS3 meant to be capable of dual 1080p

if you re-arrange "Dual 1080p" you get "Hype BS"