Print 86 comment(s) - last by Gzus666.. on Nov 26 at 9:41 AM

Performance difference is credited to faster CPU in 2G touch

The iPod touch and iPhone are typically considered to be twins with the obvious exception that the touch lacks the phone hardware. Games and applications for the iPhone are usually able to play on the iPod touch as well.

Thomas Fessler, CEO of Handheld Games Corp., says that the 3D performance between the platforms is far from the same, according to Touch Arcade. TouchSport Tennis from the company is one of the most demanding game titles for the platform and according to Fessler; the performance of the game is very different between the iPod touch and iPhone.

Significant performance differences are seen between the generations of the touch device and iPhone as well. Fessler says that his company had to modify its game to run well across all platforms and that the 2G iPod touch is by far the highest performing platform for mobile gaming from Apple.

For play on the iPod touch 2G, Handheld Games used two players with 1,500 polygons each and 32 bones and were still able to get fluid gameplay. The original iPod touch wasn't able to run the game with the same settings, and in some instances, the iPhone wasn't able to get the game to play either. The company had to reduce the polygons to 800 per player to get fluid gameplay on some platforms.

The reason the performance difference is so noticeable on games that push the hardware is that the 2G iPod touch has a processor running at 523MHz, up from 412MHz. The iPhone and the iPhone 3G along with the first generation touch all run the slower 412MHz processor speed.

Fessler says that the GPU in the new touch may have been tweaked as well, but there is no evidence making that change concrete at this time. Those with a first generation iPod touch may not be able to run some of the more hardware intensive games coming to the market.

Comments     Threshold


A joke of a portable gaming device
By TerranMagistrate on 11/24/2008 12:44:07 PM , Rating: 3
No matter how hard Apple tries to push the ipod touch/iphone as a legitimate competitor to the DS and PSP, they're destined to fail. It's like comparing a flash-based internet game to a console game.

RE: A joke of a portable gaming device
By Brandon Hill (blog) on 11/24/2008 12:58:14 PM , Rating: 1
I really don't care what they aim it at, but as a gaming platform -- I love it.

I have a 32GB iPod touch 2G and I used it to play quite a few games (mostly puzzle games) but it's a good time waster:

Solebon Solitaire

I, however, can't wait until Sim City comes out next month for it. I probably play Uno and Cubes the most, but the real beauty in the iPod touch is that it's a do-everything, take everywhere device. I pop it in my pocket where it doesn't even make a dent in my pants, hop in my car and hook it up to my aux-in and jam to some tunes. Then whenever I get where I'm going, I can play some games, surf the net, check my email, or do any of hundreds of other things with apps from the App Store.

I don't think that many other devices come close to offer a "total package" with such storage capacity and game/application options in such a small form-factor.

RE: A joke of a portable gaming device
By quiksilvr on 11/24/2008 1:16:38 PM , Rating: 1
The price is still too ridiculous for my taste. I'd rather just get the Archos 5. Much more functionality and a more realistic price.

RE: A joke of a portable gaming device
By Chaser on 11/24/2008 2:36:18 PM , Rating: 2
The Archos is big for a pocket, its pricing for functionality misleading and it's not a phone.

By quiksilvr on 11/24/2008 7:15:04 PM , Rating: 3
...we're weren't talking about a phone, we were talking about the iTouch.

RE: A joke of a portable gaming device
By michael2k on 11/24/2008 2:41:47 PM , Rating: 1
Where can you even buy an Archos 5? The Archos store lists only the Archos 7, and for over $400! How is that cheaper than an iPod touch? 32GB is less storage, yes, but the iPod touch is also more portable!

Amazon lists the 120GB Archos 5 for $389, and much larger too. The Archos 5 won't fit in your pocket.

So it's the old "Creative Nomad with 3.5" HDD vs iPod with 1.8" HDD" all over again.

RE: A joke of a portable gaming device
By Gzus666 on 11/24/2008 5:05:00 PM , Rating: 2

It would be quite the feat to fit a 3.5" HDD in anything but a normal tower computer. Last I checked even much larger laptops use 2.5" hard drives, how would it be possible this music player uses a hard drive that is larger than the device itself?

RE: A joke of a portable gaming device
By michael2k on 11/24/08, Rating: 0
RE: A joke of a portable gaming device
By Gzus666 on 11/24/2008 7:28:32 PM , Rating: 3
Or maybe you have no idea what you are talking about?,review-12-11.html,review-12-13.html

Looks like a 2.5" to me. Also says it is and it is is 6GB. Also it had USB 1.1.

Do you enjoy being wrong all the time or do you just not know better? The fact that you thought it was a 3.5" drive is amazing, they are like an inch and a half thick on their own. This just makes it even more clear you know all of nothing about anything electronic.

RE: A joke of a portable gaming device
By michael2k on 11/24/2008 7:50:54 PM , Rating: 2
You're right! Now I'll have to correct all my future posts on the Creative Nomad Jukebox.

And just so you think I'm right sometimes, I measured a 3.5" HDD on my coworker's desk. It's only 1" high, or 25mm if you're metric, not over an inch and a half. Point for me, yay.

By Gzus666 on 11/24/2008 7:58:06 PM , Rating: 2
You should refer to my use of "like" an inch and a half. This is called an estimate, cause while I have a 3.5 sitting here, I don't have a tape measure near. An estimate serves perfectly fine, as it is not really the issue. Surely an inch thick is not the point that makes it usable in the device, so the estimate is moot.

By Darth Farter on 11/24/2008 1:18:00 PM , Rating: 2
I fully agree. I'm by no means an apple user or fanboy... a while back I actually preferred a Zen xtra as mp3 player.

However 3rd party support and especially the mobility of the touch (bought last year) and the 3G that I have now (while my GF is getting addicted to poker, puzzles and "pets" on the touch in her free time) gave me lots of respect to the platform.

you basically take it anywhere, and when you have to wait in line, are bored at work, if there's a power outage, or just for productivity (messenger, scheduling, to-do lists, stocks, mailing, etc) I found this device extremely handy when jailbreaked.

anyway, I've never even used a mac, cause I love being able to run everything on my pc's.. but this is also the very same reason the Touch and especially the iPhone as they are extremely handy when jailbreaked (and since firmware 2 with the app store too)

Beejiveim, fring (skype-ish), things, mail, weather, stocks, safari, winterboard, dynolicious, converter, spore, cycorder, mxtube(youtube downloader), tunewiki, Holdem poker, maxefinger, igotchi, asphalt4, facebook, taptapRevenge, bejeweled, Icanhazcheezburger, gpsphone(good gameboy emulator!!), linerider and iphysics can entertain me for days without the need to actually use my pc.

note: I didn't pay anything for these as there's lots of places to get appz for free instead of paying for them ... though if I would be able to from my location I'd prolly pay for some of those for respect.

RE: A joke of a portable gaming device
By kmmatney on 11/24/2008 4:47:51 PM , Rating: 2
I have a DS, with an 8 GB memory card, which is a great system for games and music. Maybe not the best music player, but the games are great (I have SIM city...), and as a music player it works well enough, and the memory is easily expandable. A nice gaming/music system for less than $150.

RE: A joke of a portable gaming device
By michael2k on 11/24/2008 4:59:14 PM , Rating: 1
Yes, but your DS doesn't have a phone, so you will still need to carry a phone AND a DS around.

The logic here is that I have an 8GB iPhone that only cost me $199 up front, has a great music player, is good for games, has plenty of memory, and has lots of other functionality on top of that.

Your DS with 8GB... isn't that hacked? Or does the new DSes have the ability to integrate with MicroSD?

RE: A joke of a portable gaming device
By StevoLincolnite on 11/24/2008 8:38:39 PM , Rating: 2
Not everyone needs or wants a phone, Might sound crazy but I hate phones, I always leave mine at home, I just can't bear the thought of going out to lunch with someone only to spend the whole time on the phone sending text messages or talking to someone. - Then again I live in the country, which I find is less reliant on such devices.

By michael2k on 11/25/2008 6:47:29 PM , Rating: 2
More people need phones than gaming devices, however :)

RE: A joke of a portable gaming device
By michael2k on 11/24/08, Rating: 0
RE: A joke of a portable gaming device
By omnicronx on 11/24/2008 1:25:18 PM , Rating: 4
The iPhone/iPod have 412MHz GPUs and CPUs and OpenGL support. Essentially it's a DreamCast in your pocket.

How many times do I have to tell you these numbers are not comparable? The OS on a console is basically a bootloader that barely takes up any resources coupled with the fact that the processors(cpu and gpu) are optimized to be used specifically for gaming use.

The playstion was only 33MHZ, yet to emulate a playstion game on a PC, a 450MHZ-500MHZ processor with a good 3D accelerator is required.

You are not comparing Apples to Apples, and who cares about OpenGL support when comparing to a DS, it obviously has its own API designed specially for the platform, (which is always more efficient than a crossplatform API such as OpenGL)

I'm not knocking the iPhone as a gaming device, it think it has potential, but a 333Mhz PSP will outshine the iPhone pretty much any day in terms of performance.

RE: A joke of a portable gaming device
By michael2k on 11/24/08, Rating: 0
RE: A joke of a portable gaming device
By Gzus666 on 11/24/2008 2:42:15 PM , Rating: 2
How would you possibly know if it was "powerful enough"? You don't even understand architecture differences in processors and OS overhead. You tried to have this silly argument before and everyone destroyed your silly clock speed vs clock speed argument, now just stop.

RE: A joke of a portable gaming device
By michael2k on 11/24/08, Rating: 0
RE: A joke of a portable gaming device
By Gzus666 on 11/24/2008 4:27:29 PM , Rating: 2
Just say it, you don't know what you are talking about. You have shown it time and time again. Remember last iPhone article about it becoming a gaming device? You pretty much stopped arguing with the people that pointed out anything to do with your mindless comments you spout over and over, much like now.

Did you copy and paste this from your previous fiasco? This long winded post is pretty much just the culmination of the crap you spouted last time that was shot down then and will be again. Would you really want me to go back through your garbage and quote all the cute posts where you clearly don't understand that ARM has different architectures? You don't understand it, just admit it.

Powerful enough? You have no facts, just a feeling.

RE: A joke of a portable gaming device
By michael2k on 11/24/2008 4:32:31 PM , Rating: 1
Yes, powerful enough.

What facts do you want? Like all statistics, give me the requirements and I can give you the right metrics :P

The point being that developers are already writing games for the iPhone and already making money and as long as that is the case, more games will continue to be written. That is my basis for "powerful enough".

I also stopped responding to you the last time around because I didn't want to talk to you, something about you being insulting and such, and I didn't want to resort to being insulting as well.

RE: A joke of a portable gaming device
By Gzus666 on 11/24/2008 4:56:39 PM , Rating: 2

Like that one? Or do you think maybe because you were completely wrong?

Seems like you didn't respond to this guy either...wonder why?

Another fun one.

Little more of people destroying your silly processor clock speed argument.

I will leave it here for now, but I'm sure I could spend days finding gems like those.

RE: A joke of a portable gaming device
By michael2k on 11/24/2008 5:17:37 PM , Rating: 1
You really want a reply?
Link 1) An example where a sufficiently powerful PC can compare to a much less powerful PS1, where the PC was an order of magnitude more powerful for comparable graphics in emulation. This is a comparison to the relationship between the DS and iPhone where the iPhone has an order of magnitude more powerful hardware, which means it should be fully capable of running DS quality graphics in emulation. This example also provides proof that a system with a full OS, such as Windows 95, is perfectly capable of running a game like Final Fantasy 7, so is another example that a platform like the iPhone, with OS, can also run a game like Final Fantasy 7 (though at a lower resolution)

Link 2) An example that comparing a DS to iPhone is apples to apples in terms of CPU performance, even taking OS overhead into consideration. iPhone at 412MHz is over 10x more powerful than DS at 33MHz, and the iPhone has a much more powerful GPU than the DS, since the PowerVR on the iPhone is roughly 4x more powerful than the PowerVR on the DreamCast. Meaning DS style graphics should be more than possible (and already seen in many games currently available). The second example was also apples to apples, comparing a Pentium Pro to a Core processor.

Link 3) Hey! I replied to Link 3!

Regardless, I was comparing the iPhone to the Wii in that it targets a different gamer market that is currently untapped by the DS or PSP... one who always has a cell phone where they won't carry a DS or PSP, who has 5 or 10 minutes to kill and will launch Game.App while waiting for coffee or a movie to start, or whatever. That too is already evident in the game sales of the iPhone, and that market will get bigger as more iPhones are sold.

Link 4) I also replied to Link 4! Again, if you keep referring to my clock speed argument, you are totally missing the point. My clock speed argument boils down to saying the iPhone is powerful ENOUGH, and so far you haven't given any proof otherwise.

Your only proof to say the iPhone isn't powerful enough is that I haven't convinced you, and that isn't proof, that just means you are ignorant.

RE: A joke of a portable gaming device
By Gzus666 on 11/24/2008 5:40:56 PM , Rating: 2
You presented the claim that the iPhone is "powerful enough". You presented a claim, it is your job to support it. So far your harebrained scheme has been to compare clock speeds of devices, which has absolutely no bearing on performance when comparing across these devices.

You keep using a PC as an example, yet you don't understand that normal PCs share a completely different architecture and OS design than hand held devices, which means comparison is silly at best. I know I have pointed this out to you at least twice now.

You seriously still think that clock speed makes something 10 times more powerful? You have been torn into about this at least 4 different times, yet you keep bringing it up. They are not comparable, they are different architectures and even though they are both ARM they are different.

Your clock speed argument boils down to you having little to no understanding of how electronics and general computing processors work and how they differ. There are also so many more things to consider when comparing speed of two devices.

Do you compare a Corvette to a Suburban? They share the same base engine, so they should be the same, right? This is how stupid your argument is. There are tons of things to take into consideration, but you chose to use some ignorant metric like pure clock speed. That ONLY works if everything is the same other than the clock speed. An example would be a stock clock and an overclocked PC. Another good one is the iPhone to the iPod Touch, because they are pretty much the same beyond the clock speed and the fact that the iPod doesn't have to run any of the phone aspects that the iPhone does.

RE: A joke of a portable gaming device
By michael2k on 11/24/2008 6:13:11 PM , Rating: 1
My claim that the iPhone is powerful enough is backed up by existing games: Monkey Ball, Force Unleashed, and Cro Mag Ralley all display the graphical and CPU capabilities of the iPhone. My examples were only to convince you using other parallels that the iPhone was more than capable, by giving you examples of less powerful hardware that was more than capable of gaming.

And that has 100% bearing when comparing to the iPhone. 486s with VooDoos were powerful enough to play Quake; DreamCast with PowerVR was powerful enough for Virtual On; Pentium 3 with VooDoo was powerful enough for Final Fantasy 7, as was a lowly PSX. The iPhone, by all measures, has more powerful hardware than most of these systems, and is comparable to the rest.

The PC architecture and OS is relevant because it shows that OS overhead isn't enough to stop a PC from gaming, unless you are going to argue that PCs can't play games when every day there is proof otherwise from Blizzard, Id, EA, Activision, and Eidos. That you keep rejecting that comparison means you don't understand the premise. It isn't about how different the PC is from the iPhone, it's the fact that give a PC sufficiently powerful hardware and it can game as well as keep up with consoles.

An iPhone has a PowerVR at 412MHz, a DreamCast has a PowerVR at 100MHz. An iPhone has literally the same GPU, but 4x the clock. That is more than powerful enough to allow DreamCast visuals on an iPhone. My PC comparison is to show that PCs routinely compete against consoles because PCs have significantly faster processors and GPUs, which is valid in this case because the iPhone has significantly faster CPU and GPU than a DreamCast or a DS, and is comparable to a PSP or PS2.

Clockspeed makes something 10x more powerful when it is the same architecture, and that is the point of the DS comparison. A DS uses an ARM CPU at 33MHz and the iPhone uses an ARM CPU at 412MHz. CPU compute intensive operations WILL be 10x faster on an iPhone, there is no way around that. The iPhone may have more interruptions due to background processes, but in terms of raw performance it is, indeed, 10x faster (actually over 12x). ARM architectures are comparable, especially when you have 12x the clock.

As another example I'm sure you'll misunderstand, even a CPU like the original 486-66 can be compared to to a Pentium 3 at 800MHz; both have the same instruction set and there is no question that a Pentium 3 is more powerful. The same extension can be made to the DS and iPhone: 33MHz ARM9 vs 412MHz ARM11, so we have a two generation advancement in architecture (486->Pentium->Pentium 3) and over 10x clock improvement (66->800MHz). I don't know why you can't see it, the parallels are the same. ARM9->ARM11, 33MHz->412MHz. Both examples use the same architectures/instruction sets, so they are like to like analogies.

And if you FAIL to see how to compare a Corvette to Suburban, you fail logic in general. I've never said a DS and iPhone are the same, I only said they were comparable.

A Corvette and Suburban both consume fuel; thus you can compare them in terms of annual fuel costs. They both require maintenance, and you can compare them on maintenance costs. They carry people, so you can compare their ability to move people. They travel at certain velocities, so you can compare their speeds against each other. They happen to both cost money, so you can compare their monthly payments.

You can't say they are equal, but you can say that if you need to go to the supermarket, both will work. One is better if you have 5 people and the other is better if you want to go fast.

In that same sense, the iPhone is better if you need to make a phone call, but the DS is better if you want more battery life. Where they overlap, you can say the DS is cheaper, you can say the iPhone has more CPU and GPU resources, the games on the iPhone are cheaper, but there are more games on the DS. Pure clock speed in this case is like comparing horsepower to horsepower, where one is better at going fast (Corvette, iPhone) and the other is better at pulling weight (Suburban, DS).

Get it? No, I didn't think so.

RE: A joke of a portable gaming device
By Gzus666 on 11/24/2008 7:39:53 PM , Rating: 2

They are not the same architecture, why are you so thick headed?

READ!!! The architecture is different even in the arm family. Not only that, but instruction sets can change, which I'm sure you know nothing about, or factor into your silly comparison.


Your comparison is to compare speed, not these other things. You are babbling again. Corvette clearly outclasses the Suburban in speed by leaps and bounds, even though they comparable horsepower and similar engine. My point is that the CPU (engine) can't be compared by itself just cause they are made by the same people and are similar. There are many more factors.

By ZmaxDP on 11/25/2008 12:11:06 PM , Rating: 2
Would you both just STOP?


Gzus66: Your posts in this topic are rude, and just as full of assumptions and generalizations as michael2K's are. You're smarter than this, and this little tiff just makes you look like a contrarian. At some point if you keep arguing you do take on some of the burden to disprove an argument, and that happens the moment you cease asking for proof and start providing counterpoitns. Besides, the clock speed comparison isn't the point anyway, so just drop it. We all know its a bad comparison, and at this point you've beaten the dead horse so bad we all think a bomb must have gone off...

michael2K: You're probably right in your theory, but your mistake was in comparing clock speeds as if there was some equivalency across architectures. There is not, as Gzus66 has clearly pointed out numerous times. I do get that this isn't your argument, merely one of several points you're trying to make to prove your argument. The other points you're making are good enough to support your argument, so let the clock speed thing go.

The difference in the CPU architecture, the other pieces of hardware, and the software implementation on the varying hardware should serve to prove one thing. No matter what the hardware, the right software can create a successful gaming platform. Period. So, is the iPhone a good gaming platform? Depends on the software...

RE: A joke of a portable gaming device
By Lugaidster on 11/26/2008 2:05:47 AM , Rating: 2
Please quit spreading lies. First of all, the DS has 2 CPU's and ARM7 at 33 MHz and an ARM9 at 66 MHz making it 3 times more powerful than what you state. And, I'm pretty sure that the 2d capabilities of the ds are at least on par with those on the iphone.

Second, both the DS and the PSP have custom made graphic logic for their hand consoles. Something that the iphone completely lacks.

But most importantly is the fact that even though the Dreamcast and the iphone share the same name(PowerVR) in their GPU, that doesn't mean anything. Ati makes many different radeons, as does Nvidia with their geforce range and the performance difference is big to say the least, so the brand is no guarantee. Plus, the iphone just doesn't compare to the dreamcast. Super Monkey Ball/Force Unleashed/Cro Mag Ralley all look like crap when compared to Shenmue graphic-wise.

Also, you state that you need a _relatively_ powerful pc to play a psx game, that doesn't help your argument at all. It just proves that a system designed for gaming is better than a general-purpose system.

You are right on one thing though, the iphone could still make it, though I highly doubt it since controls play a large role in gameplay and the iphone doesn't have a comfortable interface for anything other than puzzle games. Besides, nokia already tried and failed (ngage anyone?). The iphone may be a great casual gamers out there but (most) hardcore gamers will stay away from it (for gaming at least). That is until we see a big name with a big title in the iphone, or they make a new phone with buttons or both.

By Gzus666 on 11/26/2008 9:32:28 AM , Rating: 2
Lugaidster, You hit the nail on the head my friend. But don't think he won't still try to argue the same thing in a week when the next iPhone game article comes out.

By omnicronx on 11/24/2008 3:13:26 PM , Rating: 2
The iPhone hardware is good enough; I will drop the comparisons, I only bring it up to highlight the fact that the iPhone is powerful enough, not that it is necessarily more powerful.
The iPhone will be great for those that want to play games for 5-10, perhaps 30 minutes while they are waiting, but its not going to replace the current market for portable gaming. Brandon Hill points out that he finds himself using it all the time, but was he a portable gaming user beforehand? If not then he is part of a new demographic, not the existing portable game market which you are trying to say that the iPhone will replace.

The main reason why i disagree with the statements that the iPhone will take over the portable gaming world is as soon as smartphones come out with a working version of flash, the chances are you are going to see a dramatic drop on not only iPhone users downloading games, but a lack people buying the iPhone with gaming features in mind.

Nobody is saying the iPhone is not a great device, but I have yet to come across any iPhone user that can regularly sit down and play a game for a significant period of time. Once the WoW factor of the motion sensors sets in, I think peoples view on the subject will change.

RE: A joke of a portable gaming device
By PointlesS on 11/24/2008 1:33:20 PM , Rating: 2
The problem isn't the technology, it's the controls. Yes it's great for puzzle and slower paced games, but without buttons you don't get tactile response which results in a lot of "did that register?" moments. Rotating your iwhatever to steer a vehicle isn't fun when you're constantly overturning, and while you sort of get used to it. It'll never be as accurate as an analog stick or even a d-pad.

It's a good device for certain games like strategy and puzzles, but almost all phones are good for those games. The only thing that separates it from other phones is the horsepower. It'll have significant growth in the cell phone industry, but it will never come close to competing with the PSP or DS.

RE: A joke of a portable gaming device
By michael2k on 11/24/2008 4:05:57 PM , Rating: 1
Re: Steering, isn't that how the Wii Mario Kart plays? People seem to do fine (though I agree the analog stick is more precise, turning is also more fun)
Re: Feedback, isn't that already a problem on PC games where latency and lag due to CPU limitations? So long as the game is properly programmed to provide timely visual feedback, you always know when something registers

I can certainly see games like JRPGs, tactics type games, and touch games. The only games that suffer would be platform games (like Mario or Metroid), shooter games (like Gradius), Fighting games (like Street Fighter), etc.

Just about anything else is possible, with creative UI design:
SIM style games, Diablo style games, Doom style games, etc. I can even imagine rail games (House of the Dead, StarFox), as long as you use a point to shoot UI.

RE: A joke of a portable gaming device
By Gzus666 on 11/24/2008 4:46:40 PM , Rating: 2

What the hell are you talking about? When did latency become a problem caused by CPU limitations? My god, read a book or something. Also, he is saying sometimes touch screens don't give you forceful feedback like a keyboard or mouse give or anything that is physical. You rarely wonder if you pushed a physical button. Have you played a game lately, or are you just talking out of your ass? Seriously do you have Apple stock or something? Otherwise you are mildly retarded at best.



Of course you can, cause you lap up Steve Jobs' man juice. Diablo style games? Are you crazy? Doom? That would be painful at best. Starfox would suck on the phone. House of the Dead I will give you, but that is only cause there was no real movement beyond just shooting a target.

RE: A joke of a portable gaming device
By michael2k on 11/24/2008 5:35:38 PM , Rating: 2
Latency has always been a problem caused by CPU limitations. There are two big causes; when the CPU can't physically respond to an input fast enough, there is latency because the game doesn't react quickly, and when the CPU can't display updates fast enough. Maybe you don't know the definition of latency? Most people think it is only a problem with networking because the speed of transport causes interruptions in smooth continuous gameplay, but any kind of interruption that can stifle input processing (such as an overtaxed CPU) or display update (such as an overtaxed CPU) can cause latency.

Even the spinning up of a hard drive can cause latency if it means the game can't respond because it is still retrieving game data from the drive.

You can sometimes tell this when the game displays visual slowdown, when too many polygons or enemies are on screen. Dropped frames are another indication, though if the game is smart enough it will drop frames in order to prevent latency. You get a choppy video display but all the inputs from the player is still being processed in real time.

As for feedback, a button only tells you that it exists, without vibration or some other "closed loop" mechanism there is still no feedback. You can press a key as much as you want and if the game display (as I say, visual feedback) doesn't tell you what happens you still get no feedback. A very real example of this is pressing a button on an elevator. If there is no light in the button you get no visual feedback indicating that you actually did anything.

RE: A joke of a portable gaming device
By Gzus666 on 11/24/2008 5:49:25 PM , Rating: 2
I have yet to see a modern PC be limited by the CPU for anything. GPU, Bus and HDD speeds are the limits I have seen. HDD has nothing to do with latency of gaming you jackass, it would only affect loading.

Do you seriously think the hard drive is loading up the game without buffering into RAM? The buffering negates any problems with HDD affecting anything beyond loading, please just stop talking.

Most people don't "think" it is a problem caused by networking, it is the reason in games. Do you ever hear of anyone complaining of latency in a PC that functionally plays the game at 60+fps without being online? Hell no, cause it doesn't exist. On top of that, the latency is never caused by the CPU, it would be caused by either a bus or GPU not processing quick enough.

Visual slowdowns are caused by other things, not hard drives, you really live in a fantasy land. Dropped frames are pretty much always a GPU issue, especially on modern PCs with modern games.

Touching something and it having physical give and return is a feedback champ. There is a reason you are rated down non-stop whenever you post this fanboy garbage. You might notice Omnicronx enjoys his Apple product, but he doesn't blindly make claims of it's greatness.

RE: A joke of a portable gaming device
By michael2k on 11/24/2008 6:23:35 PM , Rating: 2
Ah, maybe that's why you don't understand what I'm talking about. You aren't old enough to remember when games were regularly CPU limited or when HDD load speeds affected framerate. Maybe you don't even remember CD latency? This would have been more evident six years ago, but I guess today systems are so powerful that you only care about latency like this in low power systems like a Nintendo DS or a Gameboy Advance.

Of course maybe you don't play modern games either? Viva Pinata was an XBox 360 game that saw visual slowdown when the screen was too crowded... that is an example of a console with CPU/GPU limitations.

RE: A joke of a portable gaming device
By omnicronx on 11/24/2008 7:45:22 PM , Rating: 2
HD load speeds have not dramatically effected performance since the inception of the 3d accelerator, and even then games were made to take advantage of the current hardware, 'HD-Speeds' were barely a factor. The difference between a 5400RPM drive and a 4200RPM drive in terms of framerate would be barely noticeable, especially considering most games were sprite based.

There is also no such thing as CD latency. A CD reads at the speed specified by the drive. 1x CDROM is 1.22Mbps, 2x is 2.44 and so on.

RE: A joke of a portable gaming device
By michael2k on 11/24/2008 8:02:47 PM , Rating: 2
No, CD latency isn't the "latency" of reading the CD, it's latency caused by the CD.

Like when a game becomes unresponsive because it's reading from the CD? I know there are PS2 games that stutter if you have a scratched or dirty disc, though this was most visible when loading videos that required constant access speeds. In terms of games this would happen when you're loading textures from CD into ram and the transfer happened to be slightly slower than expected, causing the game to stutter until the access completed.

But I haven't seen that in a game for 10 years now.

RE: A joke of a portable gaming device
By noirsoft on 11/24/2008 8:57:08 PM , Rating: 2
While I agree with some of the points you made above (ooh, and I have multiple degrees in computer science) you are wrong about the definition of latency.

Latency is when the system can process all the data, but it is delayed by a certain amount of time. When you adjust Rock Band so that the audio and video timings are in sync with each other, that is compensating for latency of your A/V system.

You would see latency as something like a game keeping a consistent frame-rate and responding to your controls, but doing so consistently 1 second behind when you issue them. This is not due to a CPU being overloaded at any given time.

Gamers care about latency because, in a FPS, if you line up a shot, you want to know that the point in time where you see the enemy and click to shoot is the same point in time for the server, so the latency doesn't cause your target to have already moved on, but you just don't see it yet. Is that at all clear (not rhetorical, I don't think I worded it well)

Latency is independent of FPS*, and you can't just throw more hardware at it to solve the issue. A friend of mine is getting his PhD by finding ways to use prediction and rendering tricks to emulate zero latency in VR simulations, since there is inherent system latency that cannot be gotten rid of.

*They are tied in one way. If your are running at 60 FPS, then the minimum system latency is 1/60 of a second, since that it the minimum possible amount of time from when you see something on the screen, issue a command to respond to it, and see the result. So, if your system is locked to your frame-rate, faster processing and rendering can improve latency. However, in practice, latency is independent of FPS, and has more to do with lengths of cable, OS protocols, buffering, etc.

RE: A joke of a portable gaming device
By ZmaxDP on 11/25/2008 12:54:31 PM , Rating: 2
Actually, that is just one definition of Latency...

Latency to an engineer is simply the time lag between something being initiated and the result becoming evident:

In the Audio world, it specifically refers to the lag that occurs in the conversion between analog and digital signals:

Heck, in Psychology it refers to a stage of sexual development:

Typically, in a discussion, I prefer to use the definition assigned to a word by the original poster for the extend of that argument. Switching definitions mid-stream makes it a semantic argument instead of one about technology...

By ZmaxDP on 11/25/2008 1:14:59 PM , Rating: 2
extent, not extend...

My mistake.

By Gzus666 on 11/24/2008 7:46:24 PM , Rating: 2
I'm 26 and I have been using computers since MSDOS and my old 286. My father also has been doing it since punch cards and reel to reels and he is the one I learned from to begin with. The reason for slowdown was because old games of that era were directly speed controlled by clock speed of the processor. This was related to programming, not hardware issues.

HDDs are not directly connected to the CPU, there is a bridge and bus in between (depending on the setup, this can vary, but this is common), if they did not buffer this, it would make everything unusable. Do you think RAM just hangs out for no reason? It has a purpose.

Once again, if Viva Pinata was slowing down, it was related to the GPU, as this is the hardware that is rendering, not the CPU. On top of that, if it was the CPU, you can't use that as comparison since the console CPUs are in order CPUs, which work quite a bit differently than your normal processor. You honestly don't understand how hardware works at all.

RE: A joke of a portable gaming device
By ZmaxDP on 11/25/2008 1:13:03 PM , Rating: 2
"I have yet so see a modern PC be limited by the CPU for anything."

That has got to be the most unintentionally ridiculous statement I've read on this forum since, well, I can't think of when...

Have you ever heard of Folding @ Home, audio encoding and processing, video encoding and decoding, or Rendering? All these are extremely CPU limited (or were until the latest generation of graphics card offloaded certain encoding and decoding processes from the CPU). Most of the graphics cards currently in computers in this world aren't the newest generation. I know that my two year old HTPC can't effectively decode H264 content on the fly as it stands (fortunately my TV is a POS so I don't need to either). How do I know it isn't caused by storage latency or some other system component? Well, once I decode the stream into a more processing forgiving format it plays just fine (Formats which, by the way, are less forgiving on other latency in the system). I also (just for fun) installed a RAMdisk and streamed video from it to see if it would make any difference - nope.

There are also a ton of server level and scientific applications that are CPU limited, but I'll let that slide since you did say "PC" as in personal computer.

Personally, I experience processing lag from the CPU on my PC on a daily basis. When I have all four cores fully maxed out on a rendering and then open word, or firefox, or just about anything else I can count seconds between typing a letter and it actually appears on the screen. The same thing can and does occur in games. Most games spawn multiple processes. These processes can and do compete for their pieces of the processor's pie. In games that are GPU limited (or multithreaded games as well) you don't have and CPU-related lag because it isn't maxed out. If you either have an older CPU or an incredibly bad-ass graphics card then you very well may be CPU limited. In single threaded games these means the processor is maxed out and some of those processes aren't getting as much as they want/need. In properly coded games frames are dropped and other less critical processes than the UI are the ones that suffer. In less cleverly coded games the UI processes (those translating keystrokes and mouse movements into commands in the game app) can and do experience lag as a result of the processor being over taxed. Call this poor coding, software latency, or anything else you want; but plug in a higher power CPU and the problem goes away.

While it's equally dumb to say that latency is always caused by the CPU (which I don't think was the intent, though it read that way the first time), to say CPU doesn't limit modern PCs shows that you either have no concept of people actually use PCs for, or that you're making outrageously dumb claims out of sheer dislike of someone else's opinions. Either way, chill...

By ZmaxDP on 11/25/2008 1:20:16 PM , Rating: 2
Geeze! I really need to read what I write...

...don't have ANY* CPU-related lag...

...single threaded games THIS* means... concept of WHAT* people actually use PCs for...

I'd claim I was rendering and that any typos were a result of UI lag, but it would be a lie...

RE: A joke of a portable gaming device
By Gzus666 on 11/25/2008 3:09:59 PM , Rating: 2
I didn't make it clear enough obviously that this was in reference to the topic at hand, color me poorly worded. Also, if you want to get technical, Nvidia has shown all these tasks are better performed by GPUs anyway. The general point was that CPU intensive tasks(like the ones you mentioned) are CPU intensive and GPU intensive tasks(games) are GPU intensive (not trying to be patronizing here, just clearing the confusion).

GPU limitations are among the #1 reason games have any visual lag in non-networked games. Behind that would of course start being bus speeds, and video memory on the graphics card. CPU would be pretty damn low on the chart in a modern multi-core CPU, especially when optimized for it.

If it was misconstrued, then I hope this clears it up.

RE: A joke of a portable gaming device
By ZmaxDP on 11/25/2008 4:02:27 PM , Rating: 2
I know you know what you're talking about, but I do appreciate the re-wording. You're absolutely correct that most of these tasks are GPU limited, and that in optimal systems with optimal programming the CPU is VERY unlikely (in games) to be the cause of a lag.

Most people don't have that great of a system. There are plenty of game tests to suggest that games with complex AI interactions or non-GPU accelerated physics can actually be CPU limited on even recent hardware. Once again, all this can be resolved by GPU assisted processing, but not everyone has that kind of GPU horsepower either. Also, now we're splitting hairs. A GPU that is processing non graphics data is no longer a GPU. I think, for the context, instead of claiming games are "CPU" limited we should use a different term that refers to non-graphics related processing.

Ultimately, I don't care what piece of hardware is crunching the data, it needs to be crunched by something and if I've only got one mid level graphics card I'm unlikely to sacrifice resolution for better physics thus forcing the CPU to either process the physics or turn it off. If I have to turn it off because a non-graphics process would reduce the performance of my system to unacceptable levels then I'm going to consider it general processing limited (not GPU limited). This whole GPGPU thing makes this conversation so much more complex...

In consoles and other devices where the performance of the individual components is designed with an intentional performance balance, you're actually more likely to see these kind of problems in poorly produced games. However, it isn't the hardware that is to blame in these cases, but the software. If the software doesn't accurately asses the capabilities of such a stable platform, then the developer did a bad job. Period. Because of this, cross-platform developers are probably the best people to tell us which hardware/OS combination is faster because they'll know exactly what compromises they had to make for each hardware platform and OS.

(PS> I'm glad I proofread this time, I wrote "horepower" instead of "horsepower" the first time around...)

RE: A joke of a portable gaming device
By Gzus666 on 11/25/2008 5:57:43 PM , Rating: 2
I tend to generalize things, otherwise you get into so many wacky scenarios, it just gets painfully long winded to try to account for them all. This seems to be a problem for many people, not just you, but I do it for a reason, I promise, ha. Really all I wanted to get across is that the GPU not the CPU is the usual suspect for game lag when networks aren't a factor.

I will completely agree that the cause of lag in games on consoles is usually poor programming for the hardware in front of them, but where rendering is concerned it is usually (generalization again, ha) the GPU that is slacking. Doesn't mean there aren't other things that can cause this, but it is usually the first suspect in a line up.

What it all comes down to is michael2k drives me nuts with his "Apple is perfect and anything they make will rule the world" mentality. He will jump through hoops to make sure it is the best thing ever made no matter what. Leave out Flash? He never liked it anyway. No copy and paste? They are better without it, the list goes on with this guy and I have caught him in a lie with the Flash stuff before. Now, this doesn't mean I don't think the MS fanboys aren't just as bad, cause they are and I get rated down often enough
pointing it out.

Honestly, I know games on the iPhone will be there and sell, but to say something as crazy as they will dethrone the DS and PSP is just pure insanity. We are talking 100s of millions of these things out there meant purely for gaming. I mean, could you honestly see playing Doom, Diablo or any RTS with a touch screen and tilt? Cause I know I sure as hell couldn't.

But, to wrap this up, you argue with facts and well thought out arguments which I appreciate fully. Michael2k argues for Apple no matter what and that gets obnoxious very quickly, know what I mean?

RE: A joke of a portable gaming device
By michael2k on 11/25/2008 6:43:32 PM , Rating: 2
Um, when did I ever say the iPhone was going to dethrone the DS or PSP?

I don't think I did. As much as you like being right, here I think you're wrong. I only said that the iPhone is a capable gaming system, that it was more powerful than a DS, and comparable to a PS2 and maybe even a PSP. I never said it was going to dethrone them, any more than the iPod dethroned PDAs (they didn't).

By Gzus666 on 11/25/2008 7:30:48 PM , Rating: 2
You didn't, Apple is trying to say it though, of course Jobba won't come right out and say it, but that is what he is thinking. It's OK though, I can see now that you just strive to be right once.

RE: A joke of a portable gaming device
By MamiyaOtaru on 11/26/2008 3:27:18 AM , Rating: 2

Sure it does. You must not be a gamer. Vsync is a common cause. So is having too large a max pre-rendered frames setting. Gamers are stupidly finicky sometimes. There's a reason some of them go to the effort to use a USB polling rate of 1000hz.

By Gzus666 on 11/26/2008 9:41:51 AM , Rating: 2
If you are getting 60+ fps with V-sync on, it isn't an issue. I have a Razer Lachesis and I use the 1000hz polling, I have no issues. If they are complaining of this crap, their likely upgrade would be a video card. You are basically reaffirming what I said about it being a GPU not a CPU issue.

RE: A joke of a portable gaming device
By CColtManM on 11/24/2008 1:23:07 PM , Rating: 2
But the better you make flash based games, to use your analogy, the better the games are.

It's easy to understand that there are a lot of games that are addicting, and to add you can put hundreds if not thousands on one iPhone.

How many can you put on a PSP?

By omnicronx on 11/24/2008 1:27:34 PM , Rating: 2
How many can you put on a PSP?
Depends ;) I have pretty much any NES/SNES game your can think of on my PSP ;) You just need to unlock it.

RE: A joke of a portable gaming device
By Chaser on 11/24/2008 2:42:28 PM , Rating: 2
I dont think its makes any difference what Apple is "touting the iPhone to be". It sells and developers are making a lot of money which perpetuates the cycle. Many of the apps are games. iPhone owners like the games. So whatever you'd like to call it application development for the iPhone is hot and doing exceptionally well.

RE: A joke of a portable gaming device
By Gzus666 on 11/24/2008 2:46:19 PM , Rating: 2
Large profit margins for minimal effort, who wouldn't like that? They retool a bunch of games for the platform and sell them for way too much. This is not a viable gaming platform alternative.

RE: A joke of a portable gaming device
By michael2k on 11/24/2008 5:42:20 PM , Rating: 2
Um, why not? Isn't that exactly what Nintendo does every generation (Mario Kart, Smash Brothers, Zelda, etc)?

I mean, it doesn't exactly suit the hardcore gamers, but that is irrelevant to this platform since the iPhone isn't going to target the hardcore gamers.

Games like SimCity, Civilization, BeJeweled, Tetris, Scrabble, etc, would be perfect for the iPhone, and are probably going to set the standard. After that you can have the small avant garde studios, the big franchise studios, etc.

RE: A joke of a portable gaming device
By Gzus666 on 11/24/2008 5:58:12 PM , Rating: 2
Any Nintendo software for the Wii sells like crap. The DS on the other hand has original software galore and sells like hotcakes. Seems like there is a link, huh?

Do you really think that once Flash gets to phones, people will still buy all these rehash games? Also if Apple doesn't jump on the wagon, do you think that everyone will still keep buying the thing?

Winmo, Symbian and Android are all getting new Flash 10, do you really think that many people short of Mactards will put up with a reduced surfing experience? Then when they get it, when you want to play a 5-10 minute game, most of the time a flash game seems like a much better choice.

Free vs. Pay, which do you chose? They would then have to put out much better games and with a touch only interface with some wiggle crap, not much to chose from. What sucks further is trying to do Flash games on the iPhone would suck, gimping it further.

RE: A joke of a portable gaming device
By michael2k on 11/24/2008 6:47:45 PM , Rating: 1
I guess it depends on how you define "sells like crap" for the Wii. Given that there are more Wii out there, the total number of copies of games like Sports, Fit, and Play are high, but the number of games sold per system is low, reflecting the different nature of gamers on the Wii than the XBox 360, for example. However when you take the tie ratio and multiply by the number of consoles, you get:
XBox 360, 6.6*22m = 145m games
Wii, 5.5*34.5m = 189m games (essentialy more copies of Wii Sports exist than XBoxes and nearly more copies of Wii Play than PS3s)
PS3, 5.3*16.8m = 89.4m games

So, on a pure numbers front, the Wii is selling more games than the other two platforms.

So that debunks your point of Wii games sell like crap. The best selling games for the Wii outnumber the bestselling games for the two other consoles.

Finally, Flash: Yes, people will buy iPhones because they are better phones, regardless of Flash. People still bought iPods despite a lack of AM/FM capability, voice recording capability, and higher price, why do you think Flash, of all things, will stop people from buying an iPhone?

We've had this argument before. You think Flash is awesome, I think it isn't. No one wins.

But we can talk about Free vs Pay; people will ultimately choose what is better, and developers will choose what will pay the bills. So I doubt anyone will ever code a free Flash game that can compete with Final Fantasy Tactics, though I know we already have Flash versions of Tetris and BeJeweled. My guess is both will flourish, Flash games are simpler and easier to create, pay games for the content rich type of games.

RE: A joke of a portable gaming device
By Gzus666 on 11/24/2008 7:52:18 PM , Rating: 2
The point is that Wii hardware sales are high, software sales are not. This indicates that a lot of people fell for hype, then got bored of it very quickly and found very few of the games interesting. This is why by proportion, there are terrible sales. On top of that, check out the average scores of Wii games, they are horrid. Compare this to the averages of PC, 360, DS, PSP or 360, it is no contest.

I never said Flash was awesome, I merely have said it is something people want. People complain about not having it on the G1 and the iPhone, they also hate having the crappy one on the other phones. But clearly if we wanted to ask someone's opinion on anything electronic or software based, you would be the last person anyone would ask.

Who the hell is playing Final Fantasy Tactics on a phone for 10 minutes at a time?

RE: A joke of a portable gaming device
By michael2k on 11/24/2008 8:11:12 PM , Rating: 1
Um, did you read my attach rates? There were still more games sold for the Wii than the XBox 360. People are still buying games, even if it's less games per console. The shortfall is made up by the larger user base.

More people bought Wii Sports than bought XBox 360s; which also translates to more people buying Wii Sports than Halo 3 or Gears of War or Resistance.

Game scores for the Wii games may be lower, but that only shows that the game score system is broken; games with lower scores are outselling games with higher scores. How does that figure? Evidently there is no score for "Fun" or "Interesting", which is what is happening with the Wii.

Finally... the people playing 10 minute pickup games of Final Fantasy Tactics? Just about everyone who bought the DS and Gameboy version, as that is how the game plays. You can quicksave at any point and each mission is roughly 10 minutes long.

By Gzus666 on 11/24/2008 10:12:29 PM , Rating: 2
Right, so having tons of consoles without selling software is a good tactic? Makes sense.

Yes, the review system is broken, they need to fix it to work around badly designed games based off a gimmick. That makes perfect sense, cause then they can review iPhone games higher as well!

I have yet to see anyone pick up a DS, Gameboy or PSP for 10 minutes. Very few people buy a phone to play games, I would venture to guess 100% of people who bought DS, Gameboy or PSP bought it to play games. Good estimate, don't you think?

RE: A joke of a portable gaming device
By omnicronx on 11/25/2008 9:30:27 AM , Rating: 2
The 360 has an attach rate of 7.5-8.1 (not 6.5) according to the most recent data, while the wii has an attach rate of 5.3-5.5 (the variations depend on where you look)

Keep in mind that the above figure is for the Xbox 360 after September 2007 and for the PlayStation 3 and Nintendo Wii after September 2008.

Also I would like to point out two things, #1 if you look closely at sites like gamasutra (where almost every site on the subject links too) you will see this at the bottom which makes me wonder what the hell they were counting, or if they just did not have the data pre sept 2007.

This being said, the 8.1 mark seems far more reasonable, as they are missing some pretty obvious 360 sales(including halo 3 which just does not make sense). An attach rate of 8.1+ is definitely feasible if you count all 360 game sales, which I cannot find a reason why they would not, unless they are trying to manipulate the numbers. Who cares about sales after 23 months, Microsoft releasing the 360 early was all part of their business plan and thus the full 35 months should be counted. (a closer look at the site led me to find this statement tucked down at the bottom of the article "It is worth noting that Microsoft's current tie ratio after 35 months on the market is 8.1.")

#2 I've added up the number many times and I cannot reach 5.5 games attach rate unless I include wii sports, its just not possible without it. (same goes for the 2.4 attach rate for first party games, its just not possible without wii sports) Obviously a sale is a sale, but it kind of skews the results a bit doesn't it?

All in all, total game sales for both consoles is almost exactly the same, although the wii has been on the market less time (which is the only stat where we should take into account the time in which the product was on the market, attach rate should have no such limitation).

This being said, MS still leads by far in attach rate, especially when you consider that there are almost twice as many wiis on the market, and that wii sports really should not be counted in the attach rate stat (or sales for that matter as it is already counted in hardware sales).

The Wii is definitely catching up, but MS is still leaps and bounds ahead in terms of attach rate.

By michael2k on 11/25/2008 12:12:58 PM , Rating: 2
The attach rate only describes how many games each consumer will buy, but still needs to factor in total game sales. If you use 8.1 for the XBox and about 22m XBoxes, you get 178.2 total games sold. If you use 5.5 for the Wii and 34.55m Wii, you get 190m sold. The Wii number includes Wii Sports, which I consider valid as many people buy it initially for Wii Sports (I did, my brother did, just about all my friends did).

So using more recent numbers, the Wii still outsell the XBox in terms of consoles and games, though the attach rate is lower. More people buy less games, but the volume is high enough that the Wii's market is larger. Pity that third party developers put all their weight behind the XBox 360 and PS3, because it means the resources they have dedicated to the Wii won't actually come to fruition until sometime next year or the year after.

Maybe you can explain why the attach rate is so crucial, because from my perspective it only tells you information about the target demographic: They buy a lot of games. More important to a developer is the number of consoles out (the target market size), the most popular games (the market leaders), and the missing games (market opportunities). The Wii is seriously deficit in many categories, which means if Nintendo doesn't get to them first, a third party might strike gold.

My own Wii, I have Rabbids, Mario Kart, Smash Bros, Endless Ocean, Animal Crossing, Super Mario Galaxy, and Super Paper Mario, as well as the pack-in Sports. I skew the attach rate up, I'm sure there are plenty of people who skew it down, too. I don't even own Zelda, Metroid, and Excite Truck, and Wii Play, all also very popular games.

By ZmaxDP on 11/25/2008 2:02:52 PM , Rating: 2
Attach rate has been shown to scale directly with time on market. So, the Xbox should have a higher attach rate than the Wii. Wii is coming up on two years on the market, the 360 is coming up on three. Logic says the Wii attach rate should be 2/3(ish) of the Xbox's. Hmm, 8.1\3*2=5.4 Sounds about right.

That being said, I think it is bogus to include games like Wii Sports because the attache rate is meant to capture the post-hardware game purchases. But, then you'd have to ask the question on game bundles - how may would they actually have bought in the bundle? So, I suppose we have to live with the total game count. Also, most 360s came with a game you may or may not have wanted, as did PS3s. So, whatever.

I do think it is impressive that the Xbox 2 years out had a 6.5 attach rate as opposed to the numbers two years out for the Wii and PS3. That advantage may be because they had a one year lead in the console generation and there were no other 7th gen consoles and games to choose from, or it just may equate to some advantage in the platform, games, or demographic. Either way, it is clearly a nice advantage to have.

Last, one man's gimmick is another man's passion. (a little poetic adjustment there.) Personally, I love the way most of the Wii games I own digress from the more classic game-pad interface. I've never liked game pads, I merely find them adequate. Some of the games I have really do a good job, others are less successful. There are some shortcomings with the motion sensing in the Wii (actually being able to tell where you are pointing on the screen exactly, etc...) and the whole means by which they implement "mistakes" in the various games drives me up the wall. (There seems to be little consistency in when you hit the net or hit the ball out in Tennis, or why balls bounce over you in ping pong, etc...) They seem to capture one dimension very well in the games, but the other two are always fudged somehow. This needs improvement, but overall the gimmick works pretty well. Personally, I think force feedback is a total gimmick - I hate it, wish I could turn it off, don't get anything from it at all. But, I don't profess to impose my opinion on others, and it is pretty clear by the rapid adoption of this technology that others aren't interested in enforcing my opinion on themselves either. To each their own.

By silversound on 11/24/2008 1:35:35 PM , Rating: 1
List of CPUs:

Sony PSP
Processor: MIPS CPU @ 222 or 333MHz (selectable)
Nintendo DS
Processor: two ARM CPUs (67MHz and 33MHz)
Processor: ARM CPU @ 412MHz (532MHz in 2G iPod touch)

I think ipod touch's cpu is the fastest in all the above devices

By nhepker on 11/24/2008 2:00:40 PM , Rating: 3
And I suppose you also believe a Pentium D @ 3.6 ghz will outclass a Core 2 Duo @ 1.8 ghz?

By bkslopper on 11/24/2008 6:11:03 PM , Rating: 2
No, but it'd be close since the Core 2 Duo was about 2x as efficient clock-for-clock. Both have 2 cores.

By hadifa on 11/24/2008 6:38:20 PM , Rating: 2
If John Carmack says the iPhone is "more powerful than a Nintendo DS and Sony PSP combined," then probably it is.

That said, I'm not sure if the quote about iPhone's prowess is talking about the device without the OS's overhead or not.

I think the main issue with the iPhone as a all compassing gaming platform is lack of buttons. The DS has both buttons and touch so the developers have more input options and it shows when you see the variety of games available for DS.

Does anyone know of how many hours you can play with an iPhone without a battery recharge?

The PSP 2000 provides about 4-5 hours and the DS I heard to have over 15.

By Gzus666 on 11/24/2008 10:16:50 PM , Rating: 2

Yes, I always talk to programmers when I want to know about hardware to hardware comparisons. What did you expect him to say about a platform his company is making a game for? "It is a pile of crap, but we are going to shovel some junk on it for some easy cash"?

By michael2k on 11/25/2008 12:51:52 PM , Rating: 2
If you don't believe programmers and you don't believe PR, who do you believe? It sounds like you only believe yourself, which is awfully narcissistic. I mean, who would have to say, "The iPhone is a good gaming platform," before you would believe it? Not Sega, EA, Carmack, Will Wright, LucasArts, or Square-Enix moves you, yet on any other platform those are genre defining and unit-moving names. You dismiss them because they make money. Well, duh, if they wouldn't make money, then the platform is unviable!

By Gzus666 on 11/25/2008 1:01:07 PM , Rating: 2
Once again, you fail to see the reasoning, surprise, surprise. A Programmer is not a hardware engineer, they are not the end all know all of this. They understand software, that is why they are programmers. Would you ask the baker on his opinion of plumbing problems? Jesus you are thick.

By ZmaxDP on 11/25/2008 2:34:48 PM , Rating: 2
A better analogy is: Would you ask a Baker on his opinion of Ovens. The resounding answer is YES. Bakers rely on ovens to do their work, thus they are typically a BETTER judge than those who design and engineer ovens on which is the best oven. They actually USE them daily. This is why they have these things called customer surveys. You ask the people who use your products what they think because they are the ultimate judge and jury of your products.

Would you ask a heterosexual woman which woman was the hottest? No, you'd ask a heterosexual male. Why, because they're the ones that are interested.

Would you ask a car engineer which car was the best? No. They're likely biased towards their specific product, their primary evaluation basis is technical, and neither of those things sell cars to the consumer. Instead, you'd ask common drivers of cars which was the best. (Ever heard of consumer reports?)

Would you ask a computer hardware engineer what CPU architecture was the best? NO NO NO. Why? Because the architecture is your primary evaluation basis. You think this architecture is better than that architecture. It may well be, but the OS and Applications running on that hardware are what determine the user experience, and THAT is what sells both software AND hardware. So, you ask common non-technical customers whether they feel like the iPhone as a gaming device is better/faster/slicker/insert value judgement here/etc...

Point being, your technical knowledge of makes you a horrible judge of consumer opinion; and your clear distaste for dissenting opinions is a little disturbing. People like us (some technical knowledge, or in your case perhaps a great deal of technical knowledge) are historically bad predictors of public opinion. The mere fact that this guy clearly knows less about computer hardware than you do makes him a BETTER predictor of whether the iPhone will be a successful gaming platform. It is the curse of the expert to be forever dismayed by the actions of the less informed.

By Gzus666 on 11/25/2008 2:57:30 PM , Rating: 2
You fail to see the analogy to begin with. Programmers don't know hardware well enough to make comparisons like "processor A is faster than Processor B because..." as they have no engineering or hardware background. Now, if the question was "does this software run better on Processor A or Processor B" then yes, they would be fantastic to ask for this.

The point is that programmers will not have the knowledge for hardware comparisons. On top of that they all have vested interest in saying it is a good platform when they talk about it, otherwise they bite the hand that feeds them, which is quite rare in any business. Basically if someone is saying something good about a platform that they are working on and get paid from, I rarely trust their opinion. Apparently this whizzed past people and could be due to my wording, but it should be evident now what I was talking about.

By ZmaxDP on 11/25/2008 4:33:17 PM , Rating: 2
I think most people got the implication that there is a financial relationship between developers and platform producers. However, most of the major developers also develop for more than one platform. So, if they say one is better than the other, and develop for both, then you can probably take their comment relatively faithfully.

While I do understand that programmers typically lack the technical knowledge a hardware engineer does, hardware cannot be evaluated sans software. The purpose of the hardware is to run software, so from an end user perspective the performance of the software on the hardware is all that really matters.

As such, you can't make performance based value judgments about hardware. All you can really do is make structural comparisons. How many and how wide are the FPUs on Architecture A vs. Architecture B. You can say that because A has twice the FPUs that B has, that A must be better. But, processors are never that simple. Comparing current AMD and Intel processors at this level does not yield the same clear cut performance analysis that running Cinebench on both architectures does. AMD had some significant "advantages" over the core 2 architecture when it was released, and the Intel architecture had it's own significant advantages. Yet, Core2 absolutely trounced AMD's processors in most desktop software tests. Why? Because the optimizations Intel made had a larger effect on the software performance than those that AMD had made in that particular iteration. (This isn't an Intel is better than AMD topic, so don't anyone even start. It's just one example)

Ultimately, independent review sites are much better at answering the question "does this software run faster/better on hardware A than on hardware B." Far more so than the developers because they have no financial relationship.

The question we're asking here is deeper than that though. It isn't just "is Zelda faster on the iPhone than on the DS?" because that comparison is meaningless because of the hardware and software differences. Like it or not, the middleman in this case is the Developer. They have the metrics best able to answer this question (we had to reduce the polygon count on the iPhone because it couldn't handle it.). What we need is a cross platform developer to say: We made this game for all three platforms. Here are the scene statistics limitations for each hardware/OS combination.

That still won't answer which hardware configuration is generally faster, I know. But, that was never the question. The question was is it fast enough to run games that would be compelling enough to gain market share from the portable gaming market. (DS, PSP, etc...) If you can get similar frame rates at similar quality out of all three platforms, then the answer is going to be Yes to the fast enough question. That still leaves the UI question up for debate, along with the price argument, the time spent gaming argument, etc....

We'll still have plenty to disagree about. And then, in about 24 months we'll probably have enough consumer data to actually call whether the iPhone/Touch was a successful gaming platform and likely discover that all our arguments were moot, and we were all probably wrong anyway. It will probably be right in the middle of a complete failure and a stand out success. But fortunately, by then they'll release the iTalk/Feel model and proclaim it will gain 50% market share in the portable gaming market and we can start all over again...

By Gzus666 on 11/25/2008 5:39:09 PM , Rating: 2
I agree with most of this except hardware can be evaluated by hardware engineers side to side based on throughput, etc. The problem in the real world becomes software and instruction sets and whatever other hardware people put into things. Intel rewrote their processor instruction sets for the Core 2 line and it clearly shows they did it right. Even with AMDs advantages, they couldn't touch the Core 2.

As for the futility of the argument, isn't that half the fun?

By helios220 on 11/24/2008 2:05:41 PM , Rating: 2
It's been a little while, but I believe the iPhone(s) and iPod touch revisions all actually use the same CPU, a 620MHz ARM processor. The processor is underclocked in all devices, I'd imagine primarily to increase battery life as underclocking the processor reduces power draw.

I'd guess the difference in the extent of the underclocking between devices is all about the overall battery life of the system, on the iPhones you have to power all of those extra radios, cellular/edge, 3G, bluetooth, and wifi, while on the iTouch you just have wifi which frees you up to draw more current on the processor and still have a respectable battery life.

By StraightPipe on 11/24/2008 3:57:03 PM , Rating: 2
If you want to compare ipod vs iphone (hehe, Apples to Apples) then it's fair to measure MHz, because they have very similar operating systems, and thus similar overhead.

but the PSP will slaughter the gaming performance of an iphone with only half the MHz, because the OS is much more effecient.

As mentioned above you cant really compare MHz when you are looking at different architectures, and operating systems.

It's a bit like comparing 2 cars and saying car B must be faster since it has more Horse Power than car A. You're overlooking the fact that Car A may be lighter, and thus has less overhead.

By Enigmatic on 11/24/2008 7:55:43 PM , Rating: 2
Makes sense that the 2G touch would be faster. Crash Bandicoot Racing lags on my buddy's iPhone 3G by quite a bit but runs pretty smooth on my 2G touch.

By SlyNine on 11/25/2008 6:05:46 AM , Rating: 2
Its more like saying car A. is faster because it's RPM's go up to 7k where car B. Only goes up to 6k.

If Intel has proved anything, its that Mhz don't mean anything. The fact that people can still buy in to this just astounds me.

Its like who ever arguing about the PowerVR. But forgets that just because it says powerVR doesn't mean it has 4 times faster buss to connect to the VRam or 4x the Vram or even all the functions of the video card are enabled or are even close to that 11 year old architecture.

By his standard if I overclock a Geforce 256 to 3ghz it's going to be a lot faster then the Geforce 260 , Hell the 260 is only 4 points faster ...

By Indianapolis on 11/24/2008 12:43:57 PM , Rating: 5
[crickets chirping]

RE: Stunning
By SlyNine on 11/25/2008 6:08:07 AM , Rating: 2
then it appears a frog got involved and all hell broke loose.

Google Earth
By CZroe on 11/25/2008 3:54:46 PM , Rating: 2
I just installed Google Earth on my iPhone last night and I have one thing to say: SLOW. I'd like to see it on an iPod Touch 2.0


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