ALL Console System Power-

In regards to consoles that can output a considerable amount of polygons for 3D and 2.5D graphics:

Overall system power is determined only when considering ALL of the following:

-Max Polygon output

-Best Video Resolution

-Amount/Speed loading textures

-Development curve depending on how hard to develop for

-other minor effects, color palette, framerate etc.

Starting from weakest going to strongest:

• 3DO: One of the first consoles to push considerable 3D
• Atari Jaguar: Decent DooM port etc. S-Video output.
• Playstation: Less processing power than Saturn but easier to develop. S-Video output.
• Sega Saturn: Difficult to develop for which hinders its hardware advantages.
• Nintendo DS: Basically 64-bit but hurt in texture dept. Moon, other 3D games look decent
• PSP: Higher texture count and lighting but worse poly. count than N64.
• Nintendo 64: Perfect Dark Conker's Bad Fur day etc. look great. Decent poly. count, first real lighting effects. Textures hurt by Cart format.
• Sega Dreamcast: More polygons and better lighting effects. Soul Calibur. Start of 6th gen.
• Playstation 2: Small jump from Dreamcast in poly/lighting.
• 3DS: Middle step between PS2 and Gcube in polygon count but superior to both in lighting effects with more modern GPU. Resolution also brings it down in overall fidelity. Lighting most comparable to 7th gen.
• Gamecube: Middle step between PS2 an Xbox original in both polygon as well as lighting.
• Xbox original: Decent jump in lighting effects smaller jump in polygon count. More textures overall considerable jump. Peak of 6th gen. Riddick, Halo 2 etc.
• Wii: Pretty close in specs to Xbox original. Better lighting with more modern GPU but about equal polygon count and textures. Peak of 6th gen. Metroid Prime 3
• Vita: Considerable jump from 6th gen in both Polygon Count and Lighting effects. Start of HD era and 7th gen graphics.
• Xbox 360/PS3: Hard to determine with my lack of owning a PS3. Both pretty close as far as I know. 360 jumps from Vita with better resolution(1080p capabilities) as well as higher poly count/textures. Lighting could be in favor of Vita though. Halo 3, Banjo Kazooie
• Wii U: More modern GPU allowing more textures and better lighting, but suffers from a weaker CPU therefore framerate dept. suffers. Regardless, can output better overall fidelity. Lighting effects and textures akin to that of 8th gen. Deus Ex: Human Revolution DC, SSB, BO2
• PS4/XboxOne: Lack of owning PS4...but XBOX one jumps Wii U in framerate dept. and poly. count and lighting. Textures is the smallest jump. Wolfenstein: TNO

This is my list not 100% fact just my gathered knowledge. Create your own list and feel free to chime in on my but don't be too critical for I am just another gamer.

Have at it

The PSP was almost as powerful as the PS2, but not quite.

Compare God of War Chains of Olympus, Resistance Liberation and God of War Ghost of Sparta to even the best looking n64 games.

edit: uhm, I mean Resistance Retribution, I got it confused with that Killzone spin-off :P

why do you consider ps3 stronger than 360, @scottpsfan14 ?

There's a difference between almost as powerful and almost the same results (which it didn't do either, though you can at least compare them), but don't forget psp had a small screen to hide flaws better while ps2 usually had to output 640x480, psp was 240p. I don't know how much more powerful ps2 is but it's quite a lot. Same for Dreamcast even, to a lesser extent.

Did the 2 god of war games on psp run at 30fps or 60fps? The ps2 games I know went for 60fps.

It's the other way around.

I was thinking the same thing. Must be related to power of cell processor.

still waiting for the power of the cell to be untapped /s

Yeah, that's the same for Vita, which can output some amazing graphics, also because it has a lower res screen.

You are right PS2 did have a higher res but PSPs 480x272 was 16:9 and PS2s 640x480 was 4:3.

Dunno if the GOW games on PSP were 60 fps. But graphically they came really close to the GOW games on PS2 and the GTA games on PSP also came really close to what GTA III and VC looked like on PS2. Close, but of course the PS2 games still looked better and they were outputting at a higher resolution.

DS over Saturn? really?

That was a nice listing attempt, but appears to be biased in favor of Nintendo systems (and against Sony systems.)

I disagree. The more one explores the Saturn the more it is apparent that it being underpowered was a myth. If it is so weak in comparison to the psx, n64, and ds, why does it have some of the best looking games of that era? Why does it output the highest resolution of that era? Why does it contain the most intense 2d shooters with no slowdown? Why do the 2D fighters have the most animation?

@scottpsfan14:

Seems about right, except PS1 > Saturn in 3D graphics, and 360 = PS3.

@scottpsfan14: How is snes more powerful than a 32 bit? Snes is only 16 bit gba is 32 bit

Also ps3 is not stronger than Xbox 360

@scottpsfan14

Ds was a 64 bit handheld Saturn only 32 bit and easily beat by Ds try running super Mario 64 on a Saturn or goldeneye rogue agent. Golden eye 2010 it just won't work well

Biased against PS system how so its obvious to anyone that Nintendo 64 was more powerful than ps1 and Game cube more powerful than ps2

I would rank the home consoles as follows, from weakest to strongest:

Gen 1

• Magnavox Oddysey
• Home Pong
• Coleco Telstar
• Epoch Electrotennis
• Nintendo Color TV Game

Gen 2

• Fairchild Channel F
• Atari 2600
• Intellivision
• Atari 5200
• ColecoVision

Gen 3

• Sega SG-1000
• Atari XEGS
• Atari 7800
• NES
• Sega Master System

Gen 4

• NEC PC Engine
• Sega Mega Drive
• SNES
• PC Engine (Arcade CD-ROM)
• Mega Drive (Sega CD)
• SNK Neo Geo
• SNES (Super FX)
• Mega Drive (Sega Virtua Processor)
• Mega Drive (Sega 32X)

Gen 5

• Commodore Amiga CD32
• Fujitsu FM Towns Marty
• Capcom CPS Changer
• NEC PC-FX
• Atari Jaguar
• 3DO
• Sony PlayStation
• Sega Saturn
• Nintendo 64

Gen 6

• Dreamcast
• PS2
• GameCube
• Xbox

Gen 7

• Wii
• Xbox 360
• PS3

Gen 8

• Wii U
• Xbox One
• PS4

I gotta agree here though the N64 and DS are superior the Saturn has some crisp looking 2D games that do look good. But the PS1 may win in 3D

The Saturn didn't use any Motorola 68040, nor was it clocked at 25 MHz. It used two Hitachi SH-2 processors clocked at 28.6 MHz. The only Motorola processor it used is the 68000 for the sound, along with the Yamaha SCSP. Also, its dual VDP graphics processors had the most powerful 2D sprite capabilities of its time, and even when it came to 3D polygon capabilities, the only major advantage the PS1 had was hardware lighting, which the Saturn had to do in software.

As for polygon pushing power, the Saturn was more powerful in that regard. When it came to raw flat-shaded polygons, the Saturn pushed up to 500,000 compared to the PS1's 360,000. When it came to textured polygons, the Saturn pushed 200,000 compared to the PS1's 180,000. But when it came to textured polygons with lighting and Gouraud shading, both were more or less even, around 100,000.

And finally, here's a demonstration of the Saturn's 3D graphical superiority over the PS1:

Shenmue - Saturn Version

This clearly looks superior to anything on the PS1, and even better than most N64 games. The problem with the Saturn was that it was difficult to program 3D games for it, and only a few developers like Sega AM2 were able to make great use of its 3D potential.

@Jag85:

I don't believe those polygon numbers are accurate. Playstation did 375000 flat(might have been with Gouraud shading).

It was the N64 that logged the lowest--I believe the 180000 was for n64.

...Tech demos don't count, either. I'd have to see that running on a monitor off of an actual saturn unit. It is very possible it got shifted to Dreamcast because it could in fact not run on the system. That era is notorious for dev kit demos.

PS3 is more powerful than the 360. The 360's best looking games "Gears of war 1-3" are not as good looking as Uncharted 2/3, God Of War 3/4, Heavy Rain, Beyond two souls and several others.

The highest figure I've seen for the PlayStation is 360,000 polygons/sec with flat shading (not Gouraud shading). With texture mapping, that figure halves to about 180,000.

The N64 could push the most polygons that generation. When it came to raw flat-shaded polygons, it could do around 500,000 to 600,000 polys/sec, in "Turbo3D" mode. The 150,000-180,000 figure for the N64 is with texture mapping, lighting, and Gouraud shading. With those same effects, both the PS1 and Saturn could only do around 100,000.

Shenmue was originally going to be a Saturn game and this is how it looked on the Saturn.

@RyviusARC:

Yes, I've seen that. Like I said it was common back then for games to be shown running on dev kits, which were much stronger than the consoles themselves.

I don't think that was running on a dev kit.

@RyviusARC:

While I think the best 3d games of that era were n64, I've been in defense of the Saturn.

But to what it was running on? Back then it was almost always on a dev kit unless it was being demoed by a magazine staff.

The GPU in PS4 is 50% more powerful than the Xbox One.

Because it was.

It is.

The system power is determine by over all power not from power of just 1 component,the GPU on 360 was superior,but the CPU was a total flop.

The CPU on the PS3 was basically an early day APU a hybrid,so it could run GPU task offloading task from the GPu which wasn't that great but that when help it was good enough to beat the 360 one.

What happen with the 360 was simple most games on 360 were superior,but power wasn't the reason ease of use was,not hell most games on PS3 for the first years or 2 didn't even use SPE it was mostly the PPE which hurt PS3 games allot,worse the OS of the system was bloated and took 125MB of memory the 360 one just 32MB,so it was also using less memory to accomplish the same in the early days.

Also it didn't help sony that developer took the xbox 360 as a lead platform,porting jobs were so screw up that Activision even forgot to remove a message from one of the mods of call of duty were party chat was block,and on the actual PS3 version you could see the no xbox live party chat.

But power wise talking the PS3 was more powerful,it was a case of 2 vs 1 the PS3 CPU and GPU could work together on a level the 360 CPU and GPU could not.

Yes it is...

From my experience with only platforms i owned or played (from the weakest to the most powerful):

- ZX Spectrum 128k

- Nes

- Master System

- Turbografx 16

- Megadrive

- Mega CD

- Snes

- Amiga 500

- Neo Geo

- 32X

- CD32

- 3DO

- Atari Jaguar

- Sega Saturn

- Playstation

- Nintendo 64

- Dreamcast

- Playstation 2

- Gamecube

- Xbox

- Wii

- Playstation 3

- Xbox 360

- WiiU

- Xbox One

- Playstation 4

- PC

He said that the list is based on actual on-screen quality, where the best PS3 exclusives (The Last of Us, Uncharted 3, God of War 3, Killzone 3) do look a bit better than the best looking 360 games.

@PAL360:

Neo Geo too low!

Neo Geo was a tech marvel for 16bit standards, but not at the same level as any 32bit platform (3DO, CD32, Saturn and Playstation). These consoles could show 16 million colors on screen, alot more and bigger 2D sprites, 3D graphics, etc...

While the 3DO, Saturn and PlayStation were indeed more powerful than the Neo Geo, the Amiga CD32 certainly wasn't, because it was just a console version of the Amiga 1200 computer, which was more comparable to the SNES rather than the Neo Geo. CD32's gaming mode could only show 256 colours on screen, whereas Neo Geo could show 4096 colours on screen. And the only 32-bit console with better 2D sprite capabilities than the Neo Geo was the Sega Saturn.