360 Q4 - CPU limited?

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leathered

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"Any time the action gets heated in a large or complex-looking area, the game starts to spin down to a surprisingly low frame rate, regardless of whether you're playing in HD resolution or on a regular TV."

http://www.gamespot.com/xbox360/action/quake4/review.html?sid=6140243

The fact it slows down regardless of resolution suggests to me that the CPU can't handle it. It is possible that it's a poor conversion and rushed to get it out of the door, in other words, a typical launch title.
 
Supposedly its due to the fact its all OpenGL and its a shoddy port.
 
I am curious to see how the mainstream game media (g4) takes quake 4 on the 360.
 
Must be the game. A tri-core 3.2GHz CPU should be able to handle it, less it wasn't using all of them.
 
Xeon22 said:
Must be the game. A tri-core 3.2GHz CPU should be able to handle it, less it wasn't using all of them.
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You're forgetting that unoptimized code on this thing makes it feel like a "1.6ghz P4" according to... was it Gabe Newell? The 3 cores inside the CPU are terrible at things like out-of-order execution, branch prediction, and other things which make it really tough to have good AI and physics, without some serious setbacks. They are not full PPC cores, so they will not perform like full PPC cores. This may well be a shoddy port, but I wouldn't expect them to have an easy time porting a game from full-featured x86 chips, to stripped-down PPC chips. I'm not knocking the X360 nor am I slanting against PPC cores (they are far better for gaming, when they are fabricated with the full set of instructions), but I think MS made a poor choice by going for marketing hype monikers "3 3.2 ghz chips with 6 threads" instead of chosing a CPU that would be much more useful for games.

And FYI, the same thing worries me about the 1 core + 7 SPEs of the PS3... the SPE's are absolutely terrible for the same reasons, and it will take some real work to get code optimized for these things to play games properly. That said, with time, I'm sure they can figure out how to program for them better... but I bet programmers aren't too pleased that they've been set back 15 years for making games easily. We all have experience with crappy launch titles for this reason.
 
doesnt matter if its in 480i or 1080i its still rendering in 720p and being scaled so resolution wont effect preformence
 
Ballz2TheWallz said:
doesnt matter if its in 480i or 1080i its still rendering in 720p and being scaled so resolution wont effect preformence
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If true, that would explain a lot.

Given the reports of choppy DVD playback and other perfomance issues I'm still not convinced that the 360 has anywhere near the horsepower of even a mid-range PC. 3*3.2GHz cores sounds impressive but you have to remember these are PPC cores that have been majorly stripped to the bone.

And as for Cell? I think that it's more hype than substance as well.
 
wow.

i think its more than a cpu issue if the 360 has trouble playing dvd's. if the ps2 can play them with it's cpu and no problems, im sure the triple core'd xbox can.
 
good read. has any two people tried the same movie with different or the same results in the same scene?

as for quake 4? in my opinion i think it just might be a bad port, or the maybe that it is orginally a openGL game and the gpu inside the 360 is an ati card. other games with arguably better graphics seem to be running fine.
 
OK, I know the CPUs are pretty crippled PPCs... but the developer really must've had a high learning curve... this is just ridiculous... hopefully by the second gen, programmers learn how to use the thing better. It doesn't have to be archaic architecture if they learn how to properly compile things to suit its strengths.

A quick look up at the sky or at most of the game's wall and ground textures shows that the Xbox 360 version has significantly muddier textures. In addition, the frame rate is sort of a mess. Any time the action gets heated in a large or complex-looking area, the game starts to spin down to a surprisingly low frame rate, regardless of whether you're playing in HD resolution or on a regular TV. At some points, it gets so bad that the whole game starts to slow down, as well. You'll know when that's happening because the rate of fire on your weapons slows way, way down. Even when there's no action onscreen, just viewing the environments is enough to make the game run at a noticeably choppy rate. While there are still some cool-looking areas, the frame rate troubles drag down the entire experience.
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yeah thats what im thinking. unoptimized code for that specific game. this problem will most likely dissapear down the road like you said.
 
It's not going to be easy, though. As I said, MS couldn't have chosen a worse set of 3 cores to put in a gaming machine. OK, well maybe they could've chosen worse lol (Celeron in the XBox?!) but they could've done better. Stick a dual core in there with a full or near-full instruction set, and the box would be so much faster and probably cooler.

Even worse will be the launch titles for the PS3, though, so look forward to that. SPE's will be nearly useless, just as the "emotion engine" was, for a long while after launch, bringing the whole thing down to a single-core stripped PPC CPU.... again. Man, I don't know if the cost savings for producing these things outweight the benefits they lose doing so.

A crude analogy for those wondering what I mean...
Why pull a large trailer with 3 Honda Civics, if you could pull it with 2 huge Dodge trucks? Alternatively, why pull that same trailer with 1 Toyota Corolla and a bunch of Minis, when you could pull it much better by using a couple large Chevys? Sure if you put a lot of work into those small-engine vehicles, you can get them to pull better, but why not just buy the trucks in the first place? You save the movers some time and money by doing so, and your job is done much faster and more efficiently. Isn't that what the customer wants, despite a higher initial investment that pays off in the long run?
 
Interesting analogy. It will be interesting on how devs take use to the cell processor. Im more interested in how 1st party PS3 titles turn out. From looking at the past hardware (ps1/ps2/psp) sony seems to be the best at taking use of their own hardware to make the best looking games. I have a hunch that ps3 development is easier than everyone makes it out to be ;) but based on the topic, i think this a completely different discussion. :p
 
Its a launch title, which means Raven had to work with incomplete hardware at first I'm sure. As for graphics, they couldn't use the same redering system, it's not avalible any more, they had to move to an API similar to DirectX. I wouldn't doubt they got rushed so they may not have been able to optimize completely. Also I don't think the D3 engine or Quake 4 ever got any multi-threading support added in, so I wouldn't doubt the other two cores just sitting their idle.
 
Xipher said:
Its a launch title, which means Raven had to work with incomplete hardware at first I'm sure. As for graphics, they couldn't use the same redering system, it's not avalible any more, they had to move to an API similar to DirectX. I wouldn't doubt they got rushed so they may not have been able to optimize completely. Also I don't think the D3 engine or Quake 4 ever got any multi-threading support added in, so I wouldn't doubt the other two cores just sitting their idle.
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interesting post, makes me wonder how the title Prey will do on the xbox360 compared to the PC version.
 
Bad_Boy said:
interesting post, makes me wonder how the title Prey will do on the xbox360 compared to the PC version.
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The PC version will always look better on capable hardware, but the X360 will look as close as you can get on a console... for now. Whether they learn how to use the stipped PPCs properly to make due with them is yet to be seen. I like my analogy :D
 
Q4 for the pc had many moments where it ran like total crap as well. I don't beleive it's the 360 as much as it is the game itself. Hell FEAR ran 2X better than Q4.
 
It was rushed no doubt about it. I'm glad Epic is taking their time with Gears of War. After that comes out nobody will even remember Quake 4.
 
steviep said:
It's not going to be easy, though. As I said, MS couldn't have chosen a worse set of 3 cores to put in a gaming machine. OK, well maybe they could've chosen worse lol (Celeron in the XBox?!) but they could've done better. Stick a dual core in there with a full or near-full instruction set, and the box would be so much faster and probably cooler.

Even worse will be the launch titles for the PS3, though, so look forward to that. SPE's will be nearly useless, just as the "emotion engine" was, for a long while after launch, bringing the whole thing down to a single-core stripped PPC CPU.... again. Man, I don't know if the cost savings for producing these things outweight the benefits they lose doing so.

A crude analogy for those wondering what I mean...
Why pull a large trailer with 3 Honda Civics, if you could pull it with 2 huge Dodge trucks? Alternatively, why pull that same trailer with 1 Toyota Corolla and a bunch of Minis, when you could pull it much better by using a couple large Chevys? Sure if you put a lot of work into those small-engine vehicles, you can get them to pull better, but why not just buy the trucks in the first place? You save the movers some time and money by doing so, and your job is done much faster and more efficiently. Isn't that what the customer wants, despite a higher initial investment that pays off in the long run?
Click to expand...

because multi threading is like have 3 small trailers that add up to be just as big as a large one being pulled more efficiently money wise

and if you look back in console history, to my knowlegde xbox was the first console to use a full fledged pc core instructions and all.......and was probably the most expensive to produce costing MS $600 to make and getting back $300 selling it, so they took $300 hits, thats insane sony would be shut down with that kinda losses i would assume
 
Umm, Sony is alot bigger the Microsoft, they could take some serious hits without a care. They basicly are every where in the entertainment industry, as well as electronics.
 
Yes, but Microsoft has more money in their coffers, and is in less financial trouble. Believe me, if the PS3 tanks, it is likely that Sony will be in serious doo-doo.

Ballz2TheWallz said:
because multi threading is like have 3 small trailers that add up to be just as big as a large one being pulled more efficiently money wise

and if you look back in console history, to my knowlegde xbox was the first console to use a full fledged pc core instructions and all.......and was probably the most expensive to produce costing MS $600 to make and getting back $300 selling it, so they took $300 hits, thats insane sony would be shut down with that kinda losses i would assume
Click to expand...

Multithreading means shit, though. Especially now. Programmers haven't even learned how to use 2 real cores properly. I stick by my analogy :)

Even if you have 3 civics that have VTEC (hyperthreading) they're still not going to pull nearly as good as the 2 big trucks.
 
Yes I meant game programmers, not application programmers. It's much easier to make a game on a single core than it is to make it on 2, let alone 3. I don't see this changing anytime soon, as it is absolutely correct that it is a royal pain in the ass beyond belief.
 
Umm, their are a good number of programs that are multithreaded out there, its just not many games. From what I have heard from people in the industry (people like Ryan Gordan who works on the Linux port for Unreal Engine based games) that breaking things out is a royal pain, since its often easier to put every thing in one main loop, which also helps keep it in sync without having to deal with Mutex Locks and such. They are still doing it though, but it takes some work to get there.
 
revs said:
Supposedly its due to the fact its all OpenGL and its a shoddy port.
Click to expand...

why do some people think ati is crap at open gl, they are bloody good, just not as good as nvidia, x800 ati cards still get bloody good consistent framerates at high resolutions in quake 4, i dont think opengl is an excuse
 
Its also a non-issue in this case because the API is proprietary for the console, although I believe its designed similar to Direct3D, which means they likely needed to do a complete rendering system rewrite.
 
<a rewrite, sorry>

I'll be the first one to admit I'm wrong about this....in other words, this is purely and mostly speculation.

Aren't Ati cards built around a 24-bit architecture and nVidia cards are built around 32-bit?

Quake 4 uses 32 bit color, 24-bit rgb and 8 bits for the storage of texture information.

16-bit = 5 red, 6 green, 5 blue (called HiColor) 65,536 different colors
24-bit = 8 red, 8 green, 8 blue. (True Color) 16,777,216 different colors
32-bit = 8 red, 8 green, 8 blue. 8 as an extra channel (often used to store information for calculations on the rgb channels) 16,777,216 + 256 different colors

Thinking back to the problems the FX had running HL2. The FX took a heavier hit because Valve built Source around an optimized 24-bit architecture. Using a 16-bit rgb and 2nd 8-bit map for effects, eg. high quality water, shadowmaps, etc..., where as nVidia cards which cannot use 24-bit, had to up the 2nd channel to a 16-bit material to perform the same kinds of effects (and taking a 1/3 and sometimes more performance hit). On top of that, FX wasn't a strong card to begin with.

Ati's new 5.10 and up drivers on their 1xxx generation seem to be using features of PS 3.0 architecture for secular, possibly bump and possibly draw/assist in drawing stencil shadows on the Doom 3 engine. Doing the full 24-bit colos and 2nd channel calculations with little to none loss of performance.

Assuming that the above is true or mostly true, the only conclusion is to blame either the game engine or the video card. In places where there's a lot of visible geometry (including effects), there is texture calculations and shadows, it's simply too much for the card.

Perhaps the xbox's video card is not using the same PS 3.0 engine that the 1xxx is using or drivers are out of date?

Please correct me if I'm wrong, I'm not proud...
 
I don't understand the denial some of these people must be in claiming that the xbox 360 doesn't even have the power of a "barely mid-range PC".....umm....heh? :rolleyes: As of current moment, the 360 can whoop a good 90+ percent of any PC's ass. I am not here to get into "PC vs. console" as I believe to each his own, and they are different things/experiences, but seriously, how can anyone (read: ANYONE) claim what I reitterated above? The DVD playback thing is a decoding problem, a software thing, not a lack of powerful hardware. It's most likely something that can simply be fixed via a Live download. As for Quake....are you kidding me? There are already games out for 360 that are more resource-demanding than Quake, and they perform just fine. It's called a crappy port.
 
lesman said:
I don't understand the denial some of these people must be in claiming that the xbox 360 doesn't even have the power of a "barely mid-range PC".....umm....heh? :rolleyes: As of current moment, the 360 can whoop a good 90+ percent of any PC's ass. I am not here to get into "PC vs. console" as I believe to each his own, and they are different things/experiences, but seriously, how can anyone (read: ANYONE) claim what I reitterated above? The DVD playback thing is a decoding problem, a software thing, not a lack of powerful hardware. It's most likely something that can simply be fixed via a Live download. As for Quake....are you kidding me? There are already games out for 360 that are more resource-demanding than Quake, and they perform just fine. It's called a crappy port.
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I don't have a 360 yet, the particular *choppiness* sounds like typical north-bridge behaviour when a dvd player is getting up to speed, Without seeing it, I'd guess the the dvd player doesn't always run at it's highest speed, spinning up only when it needs to?
 
then again this could lead back to defects with dvds, ms stated awhile ago it shuts down 2 cores and reduces fan speed on dvd playback, of course that could be fixed with a software update
 
Ballz2TheWallz said:
then again this could lead back to defects with dvds, ms stated awhile ago it shuts down 2 cores and reduces fan speed on dvd playback, of course that could be fixed with a software update
Click to expand...

It still shouldn't be stuttering video when there is 1 core operating, if that 1 3.2ghz core is operating properly, that is, even if it is a stripped down core. My PII-300 in the basement can play software-decoded DVDs without stuttering, so there's some kind of terrible issue going on there that they need to fix.
 
Alternatively, you could argue, why deliver 1000 packages to 1000 different locations with a couple large chevy's if you could do it much faster with a toyota corolla and 7 mini's?

Analogies are good, but only if they apply. Parallel processing is good for stuff like physics/multiple enemy ai/etc. In the end it will probably depend entirely on the amount of effort programmers go to in order to make use of all the processors. If they ignore the SPE's, then yeah... your analogy is right, and that will suck:p Otherwise, it could do alright. One might say that most developers will take the easy way out and make their games in the cheapest, easiest way possible. That's fine, they make crappy games no matter what the system:p

steviep said:
It's not going to be easy, though. As I said, MS couldn't have chosen a worse set of 3 cores to put in a gaming machine. OK, well maybe they could've chosen worse lol (Celeron in the XBox?!) but they could've done better. Stick a dual core in there with a full or near-full instruction set, and the box would be so much faster and probably cooler.

Even worse will be the launch titles for the PS3, though, so look forward to that. SPE's will be nearly useless, just as the "emotion engine" was, for a long while after launch, bringing the whole thing down to a single-core stripped PPC CPU.... again. Man, I don't know if the cost savings for producing these things outweight the benefits they lose doing so.

A crude analogy for those wondering what I mean...
Why pull a large trailer with 3 Honda Civics, if you could pull it with 2 huge Dodge trucks? Alternatively, why pull that same trailer with 1 Toyota Corolla and a bunch of Minis, when you could pull it much better by using a couple large Chevys? Sure if you put a lot of work into those small-engine vehicles, you can get them to pull better, but why not just buy the trucks in the first place? You save the movers some time and money by doing so, and your job is done much faster and more efficiently. Isn't that what the customer wants, despite a higher initial investment that pays off in the long run?
Click to expand...
 
Charles said:
Alternatively, you could argue, why deliver 1000 packages to 1000 different locations with a couple large chevy's if you could do it much faster with a toyota corolla and 7 mini's?

Analogies are good, but only if they apply. Parallel processing is good for stuff like physics/multiple enemy ai/etc. In the end it will probably depend entirely on the amount of effort programmers go to in order to make use of all the processors. If they ignore the SPE's, then yeah... your analogy is right, and that will suck:p Otherwise, it could do alright. One might say that most developers will take the easy way out and make their games in the cheapest, easiest way possible. That's fine, they make crappy games no matter what the system:p
Click to expand...

You make a wonderful point. But you also "fixed" your point to be correct... it's game developers we're talking about here ;)

My analogy was only meant to illustrate the ineffeciencies of the "delivered package" (being the game), and I agree it was crude. But it's an easy way of thinking about how misguided I believe the hardware decisions have been this round by both MS and Sony. I appreciate PPC cores for what they can do, but not when they're as crippled as these are.
 
The real problem is the in-order execution. An in-order CPU doesn't get as much data as an out-of-order chip. That's why each core can take in two threads. Just like how hyper threading works. Even though in practice hyper threading doesn't always increase performance.
 
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