Sega Saturn/Hardware comparison

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Vs. PlayStation

The Saturn is more powerful than the rival PlayStation,[1][2] but more difficult to get to grips with.[2] The Saturn has more raw computational power and faster pixel drawing; the PS1 can only draw pixels through its polygon engine, whereas the Saturn can draw pixels directly with its processors, giving it more programming flexibility.[3]

When both SH-2 and the SCU DSP are used in parallel, the Saturn is capable of 160 MIPS and 85 million fixed-point operations/sec, faster than the PS1's GTE (66 MIPS); when programmed effectively, the Saturn's parallel geometry engine can calculate more 3D geometry than the PS1. The's VDP1 has a fillrate of 28.6364 MPixels/s per framebuffer, compared to the PS1's GPU which has a fillrate of 30 MPixels/s (15-bit RGB) or 15 MPixels/s (24-bit RGB). The fillrate for 8×8 textures is 18 MTexels/s for the VDP1 and 15.28 MTexels/s for the PS1's GPU (4000 8×8 sprites).[4][5][6]

The VDP2 has a significantly higher effective tile fillrate of 500 MPixels/s; if the VDP2 is used for drawing textured infinite planes, this frees up the VDP1's polygons for other 3D assets, whereas the PS1 needs to draw many polygons to construct 3D textured planes (with very limited draw distance compared to the VDP2). The VDP1's quad polygons are drawn with edge anti‑aliasing (for smoother edges) and forward texture mapping (with limited perspective correction), while the VDP2's infinite planes are drawn with true perspective correction, whereas the PS1's triangle polygons have aliased edges and are drawn with affine texture mapping which lacks perspective correction (resulting in perspective distortion and texture warping). The PS1 has more effective polygon transparency than the VDP1, while the VDP2 has more effective transparency than the PS1. The VDP1 is more effective at Gouraud shading than the PS1's GPU, while the VDP2 is more effective at visual effects such as misting and reflective water effects.

The PS1's straightforward hardware architecture, triangle polygons, and more effective development tools and C language support, made it easier for developers to program 3D graphics. When it came to 2D graphics, on the other hand, the Saturn's combination of a VDP1 sprite framebuffer and VDP2 parallax scrolling backgrounds made it both more powerful and straightforward to program 2D graphics, compared to the PS1 which draws all 2D graphics to a single framebuffer.

Vs. Nintendo 64

Vs. PC

The Saturn's VDP1 was the basis for Nvidia's first graphics processor, the NV1, which was one of the first 3D graphics accelerators on PC, released in 1995. Like the Saturn, it uses quad polygons and supports forward texture mapping with limited perspective correction, and several Saturn ports are available for it. However, the NV1 has a fillrate of 12.5 MPixels/s and a rendering performance of 50,000 polygons/sec, less than the VDP1's 28 MPixels/s per framebuffer and more than 500,000 polygons/sec rendering throughput. In comparison, the most powerful PC graphics card of 1995, Yamaha's Tasmania 3D, which was based on triangle polygons, had a 25 MPixels/s fillrate and 300,000 polygons/sec rendering throughput, more than the NV1, but less than the Saturn and PlayStation.

Comparison table

System Sega Saturn PlayStation 1995 PC
Geometry processor(s) 2x Hitachi SH-2 DSP (28.63636 MHz),
SCU DSP (14.31818 MHz) 		GTE (33.8688 MHz) Pentium (133 MHz)
Additions / Subtractions 71.5909 MOPS[7] 48.771072 MOPS[8] 44.333333 MOPS[9]
Multiplications 71.5909 MOPS[7] 48.771072 MOPS[10] 12.090909 MOPS[11]
Divisions 14.31818 MOPS[12] 13.253008 MOPS[13] 2.891304 MOPS[14]

References

  1. ↑ File:Edge UK 030.pdf, page 99
  2. ↑ 2.0 2.1 File:SSM UK 24.pdf, page 25
  3. ↑ Scavenger Interview, Edge
  4. ↑ PlayStation documentation
  5. ↑ PlayStation GPU documentation
  6. ↑ File:NextGeneration US 01.pdf, page 48
  7. ↑ 7.0 7.1 [57.27272 MOPS (million operations per second) for SH-2 DSP, 14.31818 MOPS for SCU DSP 57.27272 MOPS (million operations per second) for SH-2 DSP, 14.31818 MOPS for SCU DSP]
  8. ↑ [25 cycles (23 cycles instruction, 2 cycles delay) for 36 adds 25 cycles (23 cycles instruction, 2 cycles delay) for 36 adds]
  9. ↑ 3 cycles per add
  10. ↑ [25 cycles for 36 multiplies 25 cycles for 36 multiplies]
  11. ↑ 11 cycles per multiply
  12. ↑ File:Hitachi SuperH Programming Manual.pdf, page 153
  13. ↑ [25 cycles for 9 divides 25 cycles for 9 divides]
  14. ↑ 46 cycles per divide
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