>Make successful Model 2
>Make unsuccessful Saturn
>Try to turn Saturn into arcade hardware
Sega wut.
>>3056315
You have to remember things like the Model 2/Model 3 systems are expensive. Sometimes you don't need all that power, hence the ST-V.
>>3056315
Why the hell not? It was overly elaborate for a console, and there were all those pure ports that way.
>>3056315
A Saturn board cost $300, a Model 2 board cost $30000.
>>3056332
I don't think Titan was a flop.
>>3056315
>>3056331
>>3056341
It used an intel RISC CPU, and for graphics, 10 coprocessors and a video card by Lockheed Martin.
Intel didn't do so well with the real3d starfighter or whatever video card either.
>>3056363
The Intel Real3D Starfighter aka Intel i740 found a new home as integrated graphics on i810 and i815 motherboard chipsets in 1999 and 2000 respectively.
It was pretty weak (speed was somewhat faster than Voodoo 1 only) but had good image quality. Suprisingly it had some decent software support since it became ao ubiquitous. Warcraft 3 supported it as the minimum specification GPU.
>>3056315
It doesn't stop there. The dreamcast based arcade system Naomi has a decent amount of games.
>>3056391
Didnt Naomi come out first?
>>3056408
yeah it came out around 98. it still had games until 2009 showing how popular it was though after the DC died, games were either ported to the PS2 then the 360. Also there was the sammy atomiswave which is also a Dreamcast used mostly by SNK during the mid 00s but the Naomi proved to be much more successful in the long run.
>>3056385
Real3D is so real!
>>3056385
Didn't they gimp the consumer i740 version? It relies entirely on AGP texturing, textures are stored in system memory instead of local memory, slowing it down.
Man, imagine a gen 5 console based after the Model 2 board.
>>3056486
>>3056541
It would be Gen V Neo Geo.
>>3056618
The Dreamcast was kinda the Gen VI Neo Geo in that it was dead as a home console but successful as the Naomi arcade platform.
>>3056503
>AGP texturing
It works in theory, it's just the technology wasn't ready yet. Nvidia revived the concept with "Turbocache" a few years back.
You could buy PCI versions of the cards that didn't do the AGP texturing, and they were consumer versions. They ran a bit faster but not much.
>>3056603
LETS MAKE MODEL 3 GAMES
>>3056541
With the right microcode, the N64 wouldn't be far behind the Model 2.
>>3056315
Why wouldn't you?
It makes porting between arcade and console easier. It didn't work out to well for the Saturn due to unconventional hardware, but it sure as hell worked out for for them very well with the Dreamcast
Sega turned the arcade hardware into a home console like they did with the Mega Drive which used very common hardware (M68k, z80, yamaha sound) for that time. Makes sense, because they already had the dev tools and a software library to port. Sega had no crystal ball and saw what Sony was cooking, so the Saturn was done when the Playstation came out.
>>3056860
Oh no, boy. Oh no.
>>3056990
I guarantee it could handle Model 2 games at 240p if it were specifically coded for the task.
>>3057016
>It could handle model 2 games if you reduced their graphics so they don't look like model 2 games anymore
right.
>>3057035
No, I think it could handle Model 2 games without a loss of detail, except the resolution. But that only goes for the original version of the Model 2, not the enhanced revisions.
If you look at the specifications, you will see that when it comes to CPU and geometry processing, the N64 is very comparable. It will lose on fill rate though, which is why resolution would need to be dropped.
>>3056315
Well, the Saturn wasn't exactly a failure in Japan. It was also a great platform to use for developers wanting an easy arcade>Saturn porting process. Most of the ported games are arcade perfect, excluding some like Final Fight Revenge.
>>3057076
>the N64 is very comparable
Uh, no, not even near.
It has a better feature set but it has WAY less bandwidth, less geometry processing power, no dedicated sound, memory lag, the 4k texture limit, etc.
I mean if you would dedicate EVERYTHING in the machine, then it could run a model 2 game with similar graphics complexity at 240p at 30fps, with godawful smudged textures and no sound.
At which point you might as well play the Saturn ports.
>>3057151
>it has WAY less bandwidth
True, but bandwidth is most strongly beneficial for fill rate. I already said it would have less fill rate, and bandwidth was one of those reasons. On paper Model 2 has just under double the memory bandwidth of the N64's, but this is somewhat mitigated as Model 2 has nothing comparable to N64's 1GB/s internal data bus between RSP and RDP.
>less geometry processing power
Not true at all. Original version of Model 2 only has ~192 MIPS dedicated to geometry processing. That is extremely comparable to N64's RSP chip, even if you factor in that RSP also has to process sound.
>memory lag
That's really only a disadvantage for the N64's CPU. Luckily, it's twice as fast as the one in the Mode 2 to compensate.
>4k texture limit
It's not really a 'limit', just means that RAM has to be accessed more often.
>then it could run a model 2 game with similar graphics complexity at 240p at 30fps, with godawful smudged textures and no sound.
Nah, I think it could accurately do Daytona USA and Virtua Fighter 2 at 240p @ 60fps. The only compromises I could think of would be that anti-aliasing would have to be off and no use of mip-maps / trilinear filtering. By doing this the N64 could maintain 62.5 MPixels/s and 62.5 MTexels/s against the Model 2's 82 each (the lower resolution would hopefully absorb the difference).
So you're right, it would be blurrier (a given since the resolution would be lower anyway). But the geometry and perhaps even the full texture resolution could be maintained.
To store the 24bit color output the N64 would need the Expansion Pak however.
>>3057182
Just to add to this, if all else fails (probably if the memory access becomes over-saturated on N64), the z-buffer could just be dumped outright and replaced with per-polygon sort. That would be another image quality compromise but it would massively improve fill rate.
>>3056315
Thinly veiledit's OK when Nintendo does it.
There's been lots of flow between arcade, console and computer over the years, why should this particular example surprise you?
SG1K, SMS and most prominently MegaDrive tech all made arcade appearances despite having more advanced dedicated hardware also available.
>bu-but teh west hated teh satrun
So what? Unsurprisingly, Titan games seem to all be Japanese in origin, unless someone knows otherwise.
>>3057265
Did Nintendo ever make a cabinetized N64?
Compared to Sega it seems they completely neglected arcades after the Famicom was released.
>>3056721
Well, I meant rather in terms of expensiveness.
>>3057182
>True, but bandwidth is most strongly beneficial for fill rate
Fillrate and resolution is the only thing where the N64 can just scale back and stay equal. It loses in everything else.
>Original version of Model 2 only has ~192 MIPS dedicated to geometry processing.
All of that was DEDICATED, on top of the main cpu running code, collission detection, AI, game logic, the 4 or so gpus doing the final rendering, and the dedicated audio. N64 has two chips handling all of that, each of them having slightly more than half the power of the Model 2s geometry processors alone.
It won't help that the RSP/RDP can talk to each other at 1gb, nor will it help if you reduce the resolution to save framerate: the N64 just plain lacks the insane number crunching ability of the Model 2.
>It's not really a 'limit', just means that RAM has to be accessed more often.
It's a hard cap on the texture size per triangle. You can get around by smart tessellation microcode, but that eats up power that could be used for pushing more polygons.
>I think it could accurately do Daytona USA
Daytona has a huge race field with far reaching view distance and 20+ cars on the screen at the same time, not even counting their AI and collissions. Keeping up all of that at 60fps with the original models would be impossible for the N64.
At most it could run something like the Saturn version of CCE at 60fps with better texturing/perspective correction/filtered textures/transparencies. But even that would be pushing the N64 to the limits, and it is a far cry from the model 2 originals.
Maybe if you'd push everything to graphics and ignore all game logic and sound effects, you could do something close enough to early model 2 titles on the n64 - at 240p. It would be like the Zyrinx demotape, in effect.
>>3057389
>All of that was DEDICATED
No more dedicated than the RSP on the N64 was. RSP only has two tasks, T&L and audio.
>N64 has two chips handling all of that
Those two chips are much, much faster than any individual chips on the Model 2 due to being fabbed at the cutting edge (for 95/96) 350nm process. Model 2 had to achieve its power through distributed processing of its 1993 era chips.
>each of them having slightly more than half the power of the Model 2s geometry processors alone.
Hah, you must be joking. Model 2 uses a 6x array of ~32 MIPS vector units for about a ~192 MIPS total.
RSP is doing at least 250 MIPS, although as mentioned before, some of that has to go towards sound as well.
Also you do realize that the Model 2's CPU is a mere 25 MHz Intel i960-KB? The only thing it has going for it is being superscalar. That's the only place where game logic, collision, AI, etc can take place. But it's up against the N64's MIPS R4300i with almost quadruple the clock speed (and IPC better than half as good).
Model 2 is an absolute fill-rate powerhouse (that's where all the money went), but outside of that it's just competent.
>It's a hard cap on the texture size per triangle
It's no such thing, since texture mapping is not bound to individual triangles anyway. It's a limit on a how many unique texels can be streamed in a single texture mapping call before refreshing the cache with new texels.
>Daytona has a huge race field with far reaching view distance
Don't make me laugh. The draw distance on the Saturn version might not have been that great, but it was never perfect on the arcade version with its copious pop-in.
>20+ cars on the screen at the same time
They aren't high poly cars by any means.
>At most it could run something like the Saturn version of CCE at 60fps with better texturing/perspective correction/filtered textures/transparencies
The N64 is much more powerful than the Saturn at 3D even with all those features turned on.
>>3057389
N64 version would probably look somewhat like the PC port then.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fLghNiCoFng
