Is Model 3 hardware 64-bit or 128-bit Graphics!

[SupremeTextures]

Discuss

[GambitRogue777]

N64 (which is 64-bit) is low-powered compared to Model 3. Or at least that's what it seems.

[Bart]

Bitness is pretty irrelevant. It's impossible to define how many "bits" a complex digital system "has". May have had an internal 64-bit bus. In other ways, it's a 32-bit device like everything else: the native addressable word size is 32-bit.

[Nick1984]

Considering the specs are slightly lower than Dreamcast but the games look as good I'd say Model 3 was 128 bit, Model 2 was 64 bit and Model 1/STV was 32 bit.

[gm_matthew]

It's no good guessing the number of bits of a system from its speed. As an example, the N64 famously has a 64-bit CPU, the NEC VR4300 (derived from the MIPS R4300i). Meanwhile, the original Xbox, which came 5 years later, has a modified 733MHz Pentium III, which is only 32-bit. The Xbox's CPU is considerably faster than the N64's CPU, despite having fewer bits.

For what it's worth, I've searched the internet and my best guess is that the Model 3's graphics hardware is 32-bit.

[Arbee]

As Bart said, "bitness" is meaningless. The N64 had a 64-bit CPU, and so do the Xbox360 and PS3. But I don't think anyone's going to claim Modern Warfare 2 is "the same graphics" as Goldeneye.

And of course Supermodel itself is 32-bit in stock form

[SuperSZ]

It's no good guessing the number of bits of a system from its speed. As an example, the N64 famously has a 64-bit CPU, the NEC VR4300 (derived from the MIPS R4300i). Meanwhile, the original Xbox, which came 5 years later, has a modified 733MHz Pentium III, which is only 32-bit. The Xbox's CPU is considerably faster than the N64's CPU, despite having fewer bits.

For what it's worth, I've searched the internet and my best guess is that the Model 3's graphics hardware is 32-bit.

Exactly. Just look at the Jaguar, which was 64 bits ... but compared to the N64 it was like comparing Atari 2600 vs SEGA Genesis graphics

[karadaniano]

It's no good guessing the number of bits of a system from its speed. As an example, the N64 famously has a 64-bit CPU, the NEC VR4300 (derived from the MIPS R4300i). Meanwhile, the original Xbox, which came 5 years later, has a modified 733MHz Pentium III, which is only 32-bit. The Xbox's CPU is considerably faster than the N64's CPU, despite having fewer bits.

For what it's worth, I've searched the internet and my best guess is that the Model 3's graphics hardware is 32-bit.

but the n64 used a cartrigde system that didnt let it give the best of the system. also for 10 mb games they look great

[Bart]

Exactly. Just look at the Jaguar, which was 64 bits ... but compared to the N64 it was like comparing Atari 2600 vs SEGA Genesis graphics

Was the Jaguar 64-bit? Hard to say. The CPU certainly wasn't. "Bits" in this sense was a marketing invention, like "Blast Processing". It has a precise meaning in specific contexts, such as when describing the native word size of a processor architecture, but even then, internal and external data buses may be quite different and "bitness" isn't very useful for inferring relative performance. The venerable Motorola 68000, for example, was a true 32-bit architecture but often used a 16-bit bus (not sure about internal data paths), so it was often said to be a "16-bit processor". The 8086 through 80286, on the other hand, were truly 16-bit inside and out.

When applied to an entire system, the term loses all meaning. How would you define "bitness" for a system controlled by a CPU with a 32-bit architecture but a 16-bit external bus, supported by two special purpose DSPs with 64-bit ALUs on a 32-bit bus? That, IIRC, was the Jaguar.

FWIW, from the programmer's perspective, the Model 3 is basically a 32-bit machine. I'm sure that internally and externally, the graphics processors had wider buses, but even their native word size (as visible to the programmer) was 32-bit. They operate on 32-bit single precision floating point numbers, and integer vertex data and various control words are all 32 bits wide.

[orimarc]

When applied to an entire system, the term loses all meaning. How would you define "bitness" for a system controlled by a CPU with a 32-bit architecture but a 16-bit external bus, supported by two special purpose DSPs with 64-bit ALUs on a 32-bit bus? That, IIRC, was the Jaguar.

The English language has a word for that: clusterfuck. The Jaguar had a clusterfuck of bitness.