IGN claims to know 3DS hardware specs

[wolfmanz51]

You guys really think, or even hope that Nintendo, when going all out to improve security, isn't even gonna pop a DS flashcart in to make sure they've blocked it? It's gonna be blocked, period. The question is, will it be unblocked? Personally, i doubt it.

Nintendo more than likely can prevent piracy for 3DS games, but if they cant come up with something better than what they do on the DSi than no, another flashcart will just fool the 3DS into thinking its loading a DS game. then bam DS flashcart running on 3DS

 

[DiscostewSM]

You guys really think, or even hope that Nintendo, when going all out to improve security, isn't even gonna pop a DS flashcart in to make sure they've blocked it? It's gonna be blocked, period. The question is, will it be unblocked? Personally, i doubt it.

Nintendo more than likely can prevent piracy for 3DS games, but if they cant come up with something better than what they do on the DSi than no, another flashcart will just fool the 3DS into thinking its loading a DS game. then bam DS flashcart running on 3DS

IMO, it all depends on how Nintendo deals with the ARM7 situation. If the flashcard uses nothing else but the "official" ARM7 binary (to trick the device into thinking it's a real DS game), then emulation or an ARM11 binary replacement wouldn't make a difference. But, the moment it has to replace it to do "other" stuff, that's when only emulation could possibly keep it running, since an ARM11 replacement binary would have been tailor-made by Nintendo to handle only operations the "official" ARM7 binary did. This would definitely end homebrew because of the use of a custom ARM7 binary, as well as any flashcards that do the same thing.

 

[heartgold]

Why complain, I don't get it, lower MHz doesn't mean it won't perform well, you seen how it does. It depends on the architecture and Two cpu's are better than one at the same MHZ, not to mention it has a powerful GPU. Anyways since its IGN, I don't trust them.

 

[gacktgacktgackt]

Sure sounds like IGN are trying to drum up a load of needless controversy with MORE exclusive news (see : bullshit) in the run up to the announcement next week. Its just guesswork guys, calm down.

 

[Rydian]

EDIT: ok i decided to add this as many people seem disappointed at the specs but i think they are misunderstood.Actually a way more readable (and correct >>) way to explain it is something like this...

Older Processors.
The "Intel Pentium 4" 2.26ghz processor scores 288.

Newer Processors.
The "Intel Core 2 Duo P7350" 2.00ghz processor scores 1,318.

So it's 100% possible for a processor with LESS ghz to be better. More ghz does not mean the processor is better in every case. Only when comparing two of the SAME processor.

Ghz is like RPM in cars. It describes how fast it's cycling. How much it does per cycle, however, varies between processor models, like it depends on what gear you're in in a car.

Let's say you have two cars, both in second gear, doing 4000 RPM. One of the cars accelerates up to 6000 RPM, in the same gear. It is now going faster than it was previously.
If the second car kept accelerating to the point that it changed gears and dropped down to 3000 RPM, it would appear to be going slower (if you only compare RPM values), but it's going faster than the first car.

The reason people think that a higher ghz rating means a processor is faster is because of this. If you raise the ghz, the processor will be going aster than it was previously. However, when comparing two different processors, you cannot compare them by just ghz.

That's how processors are. If a processor can do more per cycle, then it can cycle less, while still doing the same amount or, or more work. The advantage of a processor cycling less is that less heat is generated, and less power is used.

Wasnt there gonna be a PICA?They didn't name the chips, the PICA would be the graphics.

Wasn't one of the features the ability to copy games to the hardware, so you don't need to take cartridges everywhere with you? If there's only 1.5GB of internal memory, and games are up to 2GB, that means Nintendo are screwing us into buying SD Cards >.

 

[Rydian]

I hope they're lying again. Just more regular ARMs, a bit faster? Not enough, IMO.
I can't see regular ARMs and a 166Mhz GPU doing all those fancy things we've seen in the demos.
Nor Kojima saying "the 3DS is powerfulz and haz almost PS3-level models" with an hardware like that.When you cut the resolution in half, the amount of power needed to render the same scene is cut by 3/4ths. It'll take much less power to render the same sort of graphics since it's simply not rendering nearly as many pixels per frame. Less power is needed to push out a sustainable, playable framerate.

1080p (PS3) is 2 million pixels per frame that need to be rendered.
480p (3DS) is 0.4 million pixels per frame that need to be rendered.

It'll need less than a quarter of the power to achieve the same graphical quality if you go by raw numbers.

QUOTE(TM2-Megatron @ Sep 21 2010, 10:18 PM)

I'm still calling BS on this, though. Wasn't IGN the one that (not long before the 3DS reveal) claimed it had specs somewhere between the 360 and PS3? They tend to be full of it, and put out info without really knowing if its accurate.

I've heard that, but nobody was ever able to show me the article. The only thing I got shown was relating to it's graphical power, which... as I just explained above, is not directly related to specs when you're on a totally different platform.

 

[OrGoN3]

Who would be disappointed with the specs? The original DS (and Lite) had no dedicated GPU. The video was done via the 67MHz ARM9 processor and audio via the 33MHz ARM7 processor. The DSi upped that with a 133MHz ARM9 processor.

It doesn't take much. The PSP is 333MHz, and my SCDSTwo is a 400MHz.

The 3DS processor has twice the speed of the DSi, and two of those processors. On top of that, they aren't even using the ARM for graphics anymore, so there'll be real 3D graphics. So a GPU combined with 2x ARM11's (or more likely a dualcore ARM11)?? A million times better than the DSi.

@Rydian
Yes, 2 million pixels per frame for 1080p for the PS3. But there's only a few games that actually render at 1080p. Most others are 640p-720p and upscale to 1080p. Same with X360.

 

[BlueStar]

I'd really hoped we'd moved on from console numberwang once people finally wised up and they stopped going on about consoles being "8-bit, 16-bit, 32-bit, 64-bit, 128-bit" etc.

Here's an idea, how about rather than looking at numbers you don't understand and extrapolating them into how good the 3DS will be by comparing them to something irrelevant like the processor you have in your PC we just look at what the actual games are like?

 

[Bladexdsl]

I'd really hoped we'd moved on from console numberwang once people finally wised up and they stopped going on about consoles being "8-bit, 16-bit, 32-bit, 64-bit, 128-bit" etc.?

so what's the 3ds bit

 

[abel009]

wtf? 1.5 of memory? the pspgo has 16 this better aint true

 

[heartgold]

Thanks Rydian for that, Few people seem to think higher GHZ means better processor

 

[Zeroneo]

wtf? 1.5 of memory? the pspgo has 16 this better aint true

That's really the only part I'm disappointed with...

 

[MADKATZ99]

I'd really hoped we'd moved on from console numberwang once people finally wised up and they stopped going on about consoles being "8-bit, 16-bit, 32-bit, 64-bit, 128-bit" etc.

Here's an idea, how about rather than looking at numbers you don't understand and extrapolating them into how good the 3DS will be by comparing them to something irrelevant like the processor you have in your PC we just look at what the actual games are like?

My windows is only 32bit, so technically my nintendo 64 is twice as good?

 

[OrGoN3]

I'd really hoped we'd moved on from console numberwang once people finally wised up and they stopped going on about consoles being "8-bit, 16-bit, 32-bit, 64-bit, 128-bit" etc.

Here's an idea, how about rather than looking at numbers you don't understand and extrapolating them into how good the 3DS will be by comparing them to something irrelevant like the processor you have in your PC we just look at what the actual games are like?

My windows is only 32bit, so technically my nintendo 64 is twice as good?

Nah. Although N64 was 64bit (with a 32bit bus) there were rarely any games that actually used 64bit instructions. Nearly all were 32bit. And no, it wasn't a funny joke.

 

[MMX]

Wasn't one of the features the ability to copy games to the hardware, so you don't need to take cartridges everywhere with you? If there's only 1.5GB of internal memory, and games are up to 2GB, that means Nintendo are screwing us into buying SD Cards >.

 

[BlueStar]

I'd really hoped we'd moved on from console numberwang once people finally wised up and they stopped going on about consoles being "8-bit, 16-bit, 32-bit, 64-bit, 128-bit" etc.

Here's an idea, how about rather than looking at numbers you don't understand and extrapolating them into how good the 3DS will be by comparing them to something irrelevant like the processor you have in your PC we just look at what the actual games are like?

My windows is only 32bit, so technically my nintendo 64 is twice as good?

Yep, so is the Atari Jaguar.

 

[indask8]

Not so impressive finally for the cpu/ram part (looks similar to the psp specs (2x 333mhz mips cpu, one of them is the media engine)).

Only the gpu will make the difference.

 

[thedicemaster]

boudincaca: little thing to keep in mind:
the CPU used in the PSP is as far as i can tell based on the mips R4000, which is from 1991.
ARM11 is from around 2002.

other things to keep in mind: indeed the CPU's together hardly keep up with what's currently in high-end phones.
however those phones are built to multi-task and run a heavy OS, the 3DS however will run a very light OS which is likely to "shut down" mostly when a game is running, so the game has 95-100% of the resources available.(funny note: despite having 1/8th of the RAM most new android phones have, 3DS games will have 4 times as much RAM available as android games)

EDIT: completely forgot to mention something:
i heard from some PSP homebrew devs that despite the PSP having 2 333mhz CPU's it might as well be considered as 1, and most devs(both homebrew and licensed devs) avoid using the 2nd cpu because it's missing debugging features.

 

[Searinox]

I must say though... I understand many aspects of single vs dualcore processing power but one fact has always escaped me. How does dual core 266 inside one processor compare to TWO 266 PROCESSORS on the same board?

 

[Rydian]

I must say though... I understand many aspects of single vs dualcore processing power but one fact has always escaped me. How does dual core 266 inside one processor compare to TWO 266 PROCESSORS on the same board?

Computationally worse, because a processor is more than it's core.
It's like a two-headed guy versus two guys. There's some shit you can do with two bodies that you can't do with two heads on one body.