Rumor: Nintendo 3DS to Pack Two ARM CPUs

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[citation][nom]lauxenburg[/nom]I'm sorry to be promoting Apple here, but really iPod Touch has so much more potential. True I might not be able to play Mario, but I can play NOVA or Assasains Creed on a 960x 640 display. A4 isn't that special but the one in the iPod is estimated to be around 900MHz which is far superior to the DS and the PowerVR SGX is also quite good. Not too mention 256MB of memory and 8-64GB of Flash memory. I bet the 3DS will be around $200 at launch. $230 gets you 10X more power.Okay, you don't get 3D but...um does anyone REALLY want 3D? No its marketing. Theyve forced it upon us whether we like it or not.[/citation]

I start a sentence with "Sorry to be promoting Apple here..." and I get owned? Wow guys get a life. Maybe if you read the entire post you'd get the point....OH WELL
 
its nintendo m8ts whot did you haw in ming ???? mot like the ds needed so much power. i say rather sheaper then 500dollars btw its market for 7-15 years and if you get it for birth day thay cant be to expensive.
 
Why all the naysaysers on the specs? The DS/Lite/i already dominate handheld gaming in such a big way I'm suprised sony hasn't completely canned psp. I'm sure it will have enough horsepower to play games that get released for it. So what if it's not a 6ghz i7 with quad sli 480's. It's a handheld with like two 2 inch screens, not a jumbotron.
 
[citation][nom]godnodog[/nom]Is it me or this is a week machine even for today´s available technology?[/citation]

It's a DS.
It's made by nintendo.
It's going to be underpowered, but it's going to sell millions.
 
[citation][nom]lauxenburg[/nom]Okay, you don't get 3D but...um does anyone REALLY want 3D? No its marketing. Theyve forced it upon us whether we like it or not.[/citation]

I think Nintendo's approach to 3D gaming is incredibly clever. I think it'll be a lot more successful than Sony's. Not everyone wants to buy a brand new TV to play 3D games. (oh; and the no glasses thing is a massive plus)

I think this will open up the world of 3D to a lot of people, make it a lot more accessible.

Nintendo are somehow freaking clever, and as you can clearly tell from the Wii, they haven't really been focusing on power... and it hasn't hurt them at all in terms of sales.

Anyhow, I'm really excited to see what Sony's going to do in regards to the 3DS...
 
So it has two ARMs, if they give it legs, & ahead it's alive! If the put in an accelerometer you can shake it like the Wii, but can it play crysis?
 
Everyone who is comparing this to a smartphone like a iPhone or Galaxy S or something else that has a Cortex A9, Snapdragon, etc:

You are forgetting that these are phones with full OSes running in the background. Like all game consoles, the hardware is able to be tapped much deeper thanks to there being much less overhead.

The PSX had a 33 Mhz CPU but to run ported games in Windows took much more robust hardware. The same went for the Xbox/PS2/GC generation where those consoles had fairly meager CPUs (Xbox was on top with a 733mhz PIII), with most PC ports requiring hardware with three times the power.

The point is that game systems don't work like phones or computers with their OSs running in the background. You can do a LOT more with a lot less.
 
[citation][nom]godnodog[/nom]Is it me or this is a week machine even for today´s available technology?[/citation]
Nintendo isn't about raw power. Take a look at the old DS it had two arm cpus, one clocked at 67MHZ and the other at 33MHZ. Yet its sales has beaten any other console on sale now.
 
[citation][nom]magicandy[/nom]Everyone who is comparing this to a smartphone like a iPhone or Galaxy S or something else that has a Cortex A9, Snapdragon, etc:You are forgetting that these are phones with full OSes running in the background. Like all game consoles, the hardware is able to be tapped much deeper thanks to there being much less overhead. The PSX had a 33 Mhz CPU but to run ported games in Windows took much more robust hardware. The same went for the Xbox/PS2/GC generation where those consoles had fairly meager CPUs (Xbox was on top with a 733mhz PIII), with most PC ports requiring hardware with three times the power.The point is that game systems don't work like phones or computers with their OSs running in the background. You can do a LOT more with a lot less.[/citation]
It's impossible to compare a virtual machine (emulator) with a dedicated machine. Unless the host computer is significantly faster the virtual machine will always be significantly slower. Then it also depends a lot on the efficiency of the code in the virtual machine.
 
The standard DS's already has 2 ARM CPU's in them so this doesn't surpise me at all.
One of the CPU's is faster than the other if I remember correctly though.
 
[citation][nom]lassik[/nom]The standard DS's already has 2 ARM CPU's in them so this doesn't surpise me at all.One of the CPU's is faster than the other if I remember correctly though.[/citation]
To elaborate on my previous post, one CPU (ARM9) at 67Mhz and one CPU (ARM7) at 33Mhz.
Obvoiusly neither of these are powerful, but if the 3DS has 2 better ARM CPUs at 266Mhz each then the graphics could be quite good!
 
I think a lot of the people who are comparing console to pc gaming are forgetting that PC's also render games at far higher resolutions and framerates as well as at higher quality (Anti-aliasing Anisotropic filtering etc), even in the days of the psx as someone stated with it keeping up with a pc is just a sure joke.

yes they do have more overhead for the o/s etc while a console can use dedicated hardware more efficiently, but better hardware still allows greater capabilities end of story.
 
[citation][nom]dalta centauri[/nom]So it beats the psp at launch. That's normally Nintendo's tactics, make a gaming system that competes with a previous competitors.[/citation]
Well it's a tactic that works. Take a look at the two most sold consoles in the world. They both belong to Nintento, in first we have the DS and in second the Wii. So I don't believe anyone should criticize their business tactics.

Also the GameCube was on par if not better than the PS2, the Nintendo 64 was better than the PS1 and the Super Nintendo was also better than the Mega Drive.
 
[citation][nom]darkchazz[/nom]The aging PSP still has better specs than those except for the VRAM which is only 2mb on psp.But since when did Nintendo care about graphics anyway.[/citation]

PSP has only one MIPS chip at 333Mhz, 3DS has 2 ARM11 233 MHZ (More than likely one for each screen) plug a dedictated GPU. The PSP does not have better specs, that's just simple math.

[citation][nom]lauxenburg[/nom]I start a sentence with "Sorry to be promoting Apple here..." and I get owned? Wow guys get a life. Maybe if you read the entire post you'd get the point....OH WELL[/citation]

No one downthumbed you because you were promoting Apple, they were downthumbing you due to blatant ignorance about the differences between the two products, like I don't know, one has an OS and the other doesn't, that MHz means nothing, it's about how the processor handles data, and that your specs for the Touch are just slightly off.

[citation][nom]Vladislaus[/nom]It's impossible to compare a virtual machine (emulator) with a dedicated machine. Unless the host computer is significantly faster the virtual machine will always be significantly slower. Then it also depends a lot on the efficiency of the code in the virtual machine.[/citation]

He wasn't talking about an emulator. He was talking about an actual port to the Windows OS. Here's a comparison, Metal Gear Solid, ran fine on a 33Mhz PSX processor, but try running it on a 33Mhz PC processor. Not gonna work because you have to run the OS not just the game.

Anyway, having actually experienced the hands on experience myself, I can say the 3D effect is really good, albeit with a rather restrictive viewing angle (gets all askewed if you view from the sides) but who the hell looks at a handheld that way anyway? And who looks over people's shoulders for handhelds? Other than that, the MGS3D demo was really impressive, looks even better in some respects than the PS2 version, the Resident Evil demo gave me not half, but full chub.

Not a fan of cameras in every device, but I guess the majority loves their cameras, and I'm interested in seeing how the tilt function pans out besides just in-game camera control.

Now let's just wait for Sony's response, and see what they come out with.
 
I know it's a minor feature, but I can't understand why the hell it still has VGA cameras. It would certainly be nice if it took 3d video as well, which it most likely won't. (maybe it's an upgrade path for the 3DSi, now with 1.2mp cameras!)

Meh, we'll see a lot more on the 29th.
 
Looks at screenshots of the games, they look great. Remember, this DS also runs at a lower resolution. And like others have pointed out, price is a factor here.

Either way, its a rumor, nothing set in stone. So no need to get all worked up about it.
 
[citation][nom]pozaks[/nom]I know it's a minor feature, but I can't understand why the hell it still has VGA cameras. It would certainly be nice if it took 3d video as well, which it most likely won't. (maybe it's an upgrade path for the 3DSi, now with 1.2mp cameras!)Meh, we'll see a lot more on the 29th.[/citation]

reduce costs and increase battery life probably? also from what i remember it can take 3D pictures and play movies back in 3D.
 
I hate to steal a tagline from Sony, but the DS line as well as the PSP have something Apple's "i" products severely lack that make more of a difference than hardware power - buttons.
 
Did you know that Japanese gamers prefer the same-old-story, ridden-on-rails gameplay over fancy graphics and open ended story? I just found that out recently. That hate western style games (like GTA and such). This being said ...it doesn't matter how underpowered the 3DS specs might be, and it doesn't matter that a yet-another-new incarnation of old characters (like Mario) will show up on the 3DS -- it's what the Japanese want. Perhaps Nintendo thinks of thier home country first when it comes to marketing?
 
[citation][nom]Vladislaus[/nom]Well it's a tactic that works. Take a look at the two most sold consoles in the world. They both belong to Nintento, in first we have the DS and in second the Wii. So I don't believe anyone should criticize their business tactics.Also the GameCube was on par if not better than the PS2, the Nintendo 64 was better than the PS1 and the Super Nintendo was also better than the Mega Drive.[/citation]
Obviously I was complaining?
Nintendo tries and targets past consoles, and last gen tech and selling their product cheap at launch. Where everyone else sells at 300-400$ they can sell their product at 250$ during the initial launch.
I hope their next console is better than an xbox 360 or ps3, as hardware has become extremely cheaper while remaining better.
 
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