No HD: a good descision for Nintendo?
GameFAQS poster Officer Cooper thinks so. Here is what he had to say on the matter:
I've been seeing some uneducated folks on the board recently who insist "No HD for the Revolution is a bad choice, period."
It baffles me that people think aspects of graphics are static, like framerate and resolution. Let me explain, loosely, how graphical processing works, in a simplified way as possible.
The GPU gets a load of vertex and pixel processing to perform. It does this for the entire scene as fast as it can. However fast it can do this whole scene, that is the frame rate. If it can do it 30 times per second, it is 30 FPS. It is not only different for every game, but the frame rate changes multiple times every second during gameplay. Triple the resolution (720p is triple 480p, FYI) means it takes three times as long for the GPU to complete this scene, which in VERY rough terms amounts to one third the frame rate. Although that is a horrible estimation in real-world numbers (in reality it comes out to about half), the concept that you need much more powerful hardware to get the same frames at higher resolutions is a "NO DUH" that any PC gamer deals with on a daily basis.
Let's take a look at FEAR, a modern PC game.
http://www.anandtech.com/video/showdoc.aspx?i=2575&p=4
To run FEAR at reasonably consistent 60 FPS at a low 480p resolution, you can get by with a $120 6600GT. No problem.
But to get the same FPS at 720p? Based on the graph, since 720p has a few more pixels than 1024x768, we can see that a 7800GT would provide an equal performance to what the 6600GT did at low resolutions.
$120 6600GT for 480p
$330 7800GT for 720p
How can ANYONE deny that high resolutions do not require more expensive hardware? Those 600,000+ extra pixels aren't going to draw themselves...
Now, this is for PC parts. Since Nintendo, Microsoft, and Sony, manufacture the parts directly to the motherboard and in bulk, the price difference would be closer to $100 than over $200 like shown above. BUT THAT IS STILL A $100 DIFFERENCE! Facts are facts, no HD means a cheaper console, only a fool would try to disagree.
But what other advantages are there? Let's see...
1. We have a much smaller and weaker GPU, but we're getting the same graphics...
2. The framebuffer is smaller... We can save video memory for textures, and save bandwidth for AA.
3. Weaker GPU? We can get by with a slightly weaker CPU...
4. With a weaker CPU and much smaller and weaker GPU, it would produce VERY LITTLE HEAT.
5. Very little heat? It won't need monster heatsinks inside like the 360 has...
6. No big heatsinks taking up space? Then we also don't need fans or much airflow space!
7. That means a small console case! Hey, that means it's EVEN CHEAPER!
8. Cheaper? That means more people will buy it, possibly as a second console!
9. Bigger userbase? More third-party support
!10. More games!
No HD allows for so many design goals to be met. Do we want to sacrifice all this and have a console that is $100 more just to support high resolutions? No thanks, I have a PC for that. I play my PC games at 1920x1200, but you don't see me complaining about the resolution on consoles or especially the DS, do you?
