PS3 upconversion vs psx emulation

[runawayprisoner]

Originally Posted by cottonvibes

that link dosn't show anything interesting :O

just a HD decoder with cell processors.

Here's what it actually is:

A PCI-E card (or board) with a processor based on the Cell BE, operating at 1.5GHz, with 4 SPEs, and 128MB of XDRAM.

The most practical usage for this thing is for decoding and encoding HD movies. But hey, since we have the RAM and the processor... we might as well... do other things. Ever heard of GPGPU?

Edit: by the way, Linux on the PS3 was running... almost on one of these at twice the clock speed. Reason? The SPEs... are pretty much useless for anything other than number crunching. But... that's their strong point. This card would make a PERFECT replacement for PhysX or something similar... assuming we have applications that take advantage of that. And if we have two of these... on a bus with higher speed (I'm thinking PCI-Express 16x) and they are overclockable to 3.2GHz or above, I'd... assume PS3 emulation is pretty much a big "G" with a big "O."

[cottonvibes]

Originally Posted by runawayprisoner

Here's what it actually is:

A PCI-E card (or board) with a processor based on the Cell BE, operating at 1.5GHz, with 4 SPEs, and 128MB of XDRAM.

The most practical usage for this thing is for decoding and encoding HD movies. But hey, since we have the RAM and the processor... we might as well... do other things. Ever heard of GPGPU?

Edit: by the way, Linux on the PS3 was running... almost on one of these at twice the clock speed. Reason? The SPEs... are pretty much useless for anything other than number crunching. But... that's their strong point. This card would make a PERFECT replacement for PhysX or something similar... assuming we have applications that take advantage of that. And if we have two of these... on a bus with higher speed (I'm thinking PCI-Express 16x) and they are overclockable to 3.2GHz or above, I'd... assume PS3 emulation is pretty much a big "G" with a big "O."

well, i'd like to see these be integrated inside GPUs or PC CPUs.
when that happens, i would admit that a PC pwns a PS3.

i don't like the idea of physics cards.
a good CPU should be able to do physics and game logic.
no need for me to spend another 100-200 bucks on another card, when my CPU can do the same thing.

[Phil]

thats why agea got swallowed up by nVidia

[cottonvibes]

is that what happened to them?

[Phil]

Yeah.

Go here

[runawayprisoner]

Originally Posted by cottonvibes

well, i'd like to see these be integrated inside GPUs or PC CPUs.
when that happens, i would admit that a PC pwns a PS3.

i don't like the idea of physics cards.
a good CPU should be able to do physics and game logic.
no need for me to spend another 100-200 bucks on another card, when my CPU can do the same thing.

You don't really see what this means, do you? The card is not dedicated to anything. It's just a processor and some high-speed RAM on a board... that is connected to your PC, and that's it. It's like a separate CPU or GPU on its own. The only thing that can hold this thing back... I imagine... is the narrowness of the PCI-E x1 interface. Then again, I guess that's better than USB or PCI (normal kind). This is not just an add-on card. It's an additional computer for your computer... literally. If used correctly, this can speed up your computer drastically in all applications.

This makes up for what both the Cell BE and current computer CPUs lack. It's a happy combination of a little bit of both. I can imagine this thing going for $200-300 per unit, and it'll still sell like hotcakes. Practical uses? Hmm... imagine yourself being able to encode up to 4 movies while listening to music, browsing the web for materials to put into that Photoshop piece you are currently working on... and then being able to get back into Crysis or some other game like Quake 4 (Crysis and Quake 4 still running) when you are bored of doing all of the above, without having to close anything. And that should be possible even with a single-core CPU, since you can let this card take care of everything else. :woot:

P.S.: And by the way, current computers are still more powerful than a PS3 regardless of whether they have this card or not. Cell BE WAS really powerful a year or two before... but it was only about three times as fast as a Core 2 Quad @ 2.4GHz (Q6600). We have Core 2 Quad @ 5GHz/6GHz and Core 2 Quad @ 4.2-4.5GHz 24/7 daily uses now. That's not to mention... G80 was faster than Cell BE, and we have G92 now. I admit I was wow'ed by the Cell BE about a year ago... but now, I just think... "ehh... it's okay" when I try to do something on the Cell BE. It's fast alright, but it's like in between a GPU and CPU... and the way it works is more complicated than both!

[TheCloudOfSmoke]

Originally Posted by PCXL-Fan

Awesome saucem! TCoS breaks out the techno-nerd!

What form of 2D image enlargment would be give the best IQ yet be reasonable enough that it would be possible on computers now or say within the next few years to upscale 2d backgrounds on the psx?
Fractal image enlargment? Since your usually not dealing with very large images. Could it be during the disk loading (say in FFVII when the next scene or area is loading)?

Techno-nerd? Lol.

Fractal method is nice for upscaling natural images like photos of scenery, the outdoors, etc. but it's not good for images that are meant to be crisp looking or is supposed to have sharp details since the fractal method produces natural crystal-looking artifacts from what I've seen. It would be good for the pre-backgrounds of scenery like in RE though.

As for the using that method for upscaling images in a game, I would think that in the next few years it would be good. Last time I upscaled a regular image using the fractal method, it wasn't instant, even with a decent sized image but that was a long time ago on my older laptop. I wouldn't try to do that 60 times per second at this point and time though. But it think it would be feasable in a few years.

[james.miller]

Originally Posted by cottonvibes

nah, i had Samsung's top-end model last year.
the LN-T4066f

i think its better than a sony XBR, but a couple hundred bucks cheaper.

contrast ratios on the XBR were rated at 8,000:1, and on my tv they're 15,000:1

my brother tells me though, that samsung's latest models pwn my TV now.
he might get one, but they cost over $3000.

neither the sony or your samsung have a contrast ratio that high. 'dynamic contrast' is a load of rubbish and the real ratio will be many times lower. about 8 and 15 times lower respectively

Edit: by the way, Linux on the PS3 was running... almost on one of these at twice the clock speed. Reason? The SPEs... are pretty much useless for anything other than number crunching. But... that's their strong point. This card would make a PERFECT replacement for PhysX or something similar... assuming we have applications that take advantage of that. And if we have two of these... on a bus with higher speed (I'm thinking PCI-Express 16x) and they are overclockable to 3.2GHz or above, I'd... assume PS3 emulation is pretty much a big "G" with a big "O."

:confused: linux on the ps3 was slow because they only have access to half the ram and no hardware acceleration....that and its a completely new platform. the cell might be best at home when number crunching but dont be fooled, its still capable of running linux lol

[runawayprisoner]

Originally Posted by james.miller

:confused: linux on the ps3 was slow because they only have access to half the ram and no hardware acceleration....that and its a completely new platform. the cell might be best at home when number crunching but dont be fooled, its still capable of running linux lol

Mmm... 256MB of RAM is quite enough for Linux, actually (this ain't Windows! ). Hardware acceleration is only needed for movies and emulators and... anything that needs fast video processing. I just meant that Cell BE is as capable a processor as any other. EVERYTHING with a logical processor can run Linux actually... provided you can code the kernel for it. But here's the point: that means Cell BE is a logical processor, or at least the chip has a logical processor, and that means... the chip on the card, which is based on the Cell BE, might actually have a logical processor as well. Consider... a logical processor, with RAM, with access to your HDD and other components, and there's power supplied to it. What does that sound like?

[PCXL-Fan]

Originally Posted by TheCloudOfSmoke

Techno-nerd? Lol.

Fractal method is nice for upscaling natural images like photos of scenery, the outdoors, etc. but it's not good for images that are meant to be crisp looking or is supposed to have sharp details since the fractal method produces natural crystal-looking artifacts from what I've seen. It would be good for the pre-backgrounds of scenery like in RE though.

As for the using that method for upscaling images in a game, I would think that in the next few years it would be good. Last time I upscaled a regular image using the fractal method, it wasn't instant, even with a decent sized image but that was a long time ago on my older laptop. I wouldn't try to do that 60 times per second at this point and time though. But it think it would be feasable in a few years.

It doesn't need to be done 60 times per second. Since the background is a static image it needs only be enlargened once during the scene loading sequence and stored in memory. Then instead of rerendering using the fractal method every 60 seconds it just calls up image from the video memory, like it does normally with the regular res background after its been loaded into the psX's memory, or in this case since we are talking about emulation it would be the system or more likely the lightning fast videoram.

[cottonvibes]

Originally Posted by runawayprisoner

You don't really see what this means, do you? The card is not dedicated to anything. It's just a processor and some high-speed RAM on a board... that is connected to your PC, and that's it. It's like a separate CPU or GPU on its own. The only thing that can hold this thing back... I imagine... is the narrowness of the PCI-E x1 interface. Then again, I guess that's better than USB or PCI (normal kind). This is not just an add-on card. It's an additional computer for your computer... literally. If used correctly, this can speed up your computer drastically in all applications.

This makes up for what both the Cell BE and current computer CPUs lack. It's a happy combination of a little bit of both. I can imagine this thing going for $200-300 per unit, and it'll still sell like hotcakes. Practical uses? Hmm... imagine yourself being able to encode up to 4 movies while listening to music, browsing the web for materials to put into that Photoshop piece you are currently working on... and then being able to get back into Crysis or some other game like Quake 4 (Crysis and Quake 4 still running) when you are bored of doing all of the above, without having to close anything. And that should be possible even with a single-core CPU, since you can let this card take care of everything else. :woot:

the article says the card is made for HD encoding.
i see that card as a waste of 300 bucks.
i rather just get a quad-core or an octo-cored processor and eliminate the need for that.

nobody that gets that card is going to be running a single cored cpu, since you can get a dual core and new mobo for the price of that card.

and encoding videos while gaming? who the hell does that...

the card is useless, just like physics cards.

[runawayprisoner]

Originally Posted by cottonvibes

the article says the card is made for HD encoding.
i see that card as a waste of 300 bucks.
i rather just get a quad-core or an octo-cored processor and eliminate the need for that.

nobody that gets that card is going to be running a single cored cpu, since you can get a dual core and new mobo for the price of that card.

and encoding videos while gaming? who the hell does that...

the card is useless, just like physics cards.

Just wait and see. But mind you, quad-core processor setups that match that card's performance would cost more than $300, and then you still... don't have the RAM sticks calculated.

That... and it might not be so useless after all. Two of those cards overclocked to 3.2GHz may just... be able to do something related to PS3 emulation. Here's hoping the processors on those cards are just Cell BEs with less SPEs...

[cottonvibes]

Originally Posted by runawayprisoner

Just wait and see. But mind you, quad-core processor setups that match that card's performance would cost more than $300, and then you still... don't have the RAM sticks calculated.

That... and it might not be so useless after all. Two of those cards overclocked to 3.2GHz may just... be able to do something related to PS3 emulation. Here's hoping the processors on those cards are just Cell BEs with less SPEs...

nah, i doubt they can do PS3 emulation.

for emulation its estimated you need a system 13 times more powerful than the original, do to the extra work in translating the code from one architecture to the other.

unless we start getting like octo-cored processors @ 10Ghz, i think we can forget about ps3 emulation.

[Phil]

ps3 emulation will come sonner then you think. and heck, one earth simulsater has the power to emulate 20 ps3's...and its only 179,000

[cottonvibes]

Originally Posted by Phil

ps3 emulation will come sonner then you think. and heck, one earth simulsater has the power to emulate 20 ps3's...and its only 179,000

i think PS3 emulation will start in 5 years, but games won't be playable till about 7 years.

[Phil]

mayb sooner, who knows. moores law : computer power doubles every 18 months

[cottonvibes]

Originally Posted by Phil

mayb sooner, who knows. moores law : computer power doubles every 18 months

nah, i really think it won't be sooner because we need time b4 the hackers can successfully hack the PS3 to run homebrew stuff.
if they can't hack it, the emu coders can't get the info to make the emulators.

also even if computer power doubles every 18 months, it still won't be enough.
that would just mean that computers in 5 years would be about 6~7 times more powerful than they are now. and i believe thats still too weak to emulate the ps3.

if you remember, i said i read an article that said that a new type of technology will allow 1000 times smaller and faster chips to be made.
if thats true, then we'll start seeing some PS3 emulation.
but the article said that we won't see that technology till 5 years...
so 5 years is still my prediction. :O