Carmack says iPhone is "more powerful than a Nintendo DS and PSP combined"

[wraggster]

We already knew that Id Software co-founder John Carmack was on board with the iPhone to some extent, but at the now-happening QuakeCon 2008 in Dallas he's revealed just how impressed with the device he really is. According to Apple Insider, while Carmack admits that graphics memory could be a limiting factor, he describes the phone's hardware as equivalent to a Dreamcast and almost on par with a PlayStation 2 and the original Xbox. He also sees it as far superior, at least in terms of raw specs, than the two big dedicated handheld consoles out there, saying that is "more powerful than a Nintendo DS and PSP combined." Unfortuantely, he didn't have any actual games to show off, but he did at least confirm that Id has two "tentative titles" in the works, including a "conventional mobile game," and one that pushes the iPhone's graphics capabilities.

http://www.engadget.com/2008/08/01/carmack-says-iphone-is-more-powerful-than-a-nintendo-ds-and-psp/

[jamotto]

That's great I suppose, even though the iPhone is really lacking as gaming device.

[mike_jmg]

meh, there are no buttons to play with that thing so keep dreaming Carmack

[Buddy4point0]

Iphone sucks compaired the the PSP.
It's not powerful at all, Carmack is retarted.

[JKKDARK]

Well, we will see if they do a good job giving us good software titles, that's really important.

[ICE]

Make an add-on that gives it buttons I will care.

[argor]

Make an add-on that gives it buttons I will care.

http://www.icontrolpad.com/ :rolleyes:

[JLF65]

Certainly, the CPU in the iPhone is more powerful, but in every other way, the PSP kicks the iPhone's butt. This attitude of "power" resting solely in the CPU is typical thinking of people who write programs strictly for the PC. You have to remember that Carmack has made his millions riding the "brute-force programming" wave the PCs went through in the late 90's and early 00's.

[noname1]

Iphone sucks compaired the the PSP.
It's not powerful at all, Carmack is retarted.
He sure is retarded the psp is really much more powerful than a iphone.
And he said that it is even more powerful than a psp and ds combined.
Ds power.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nintendo_DS#Hardware
And psp power.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/PlayStation_Portable#Hardware
Combine it together and you will see that a psp+ds is much faster than a iphone.
Iphone power:confused:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/IPhone#Hardware
(no about the hardware from the iphone isn't too much info because it's a mediaplayer and not a device created for games)

P.S I still have one question.
How wil you combine the power of a psp and a ds?

[ICE]

http://www.icontrolpad.com/ :rolleyes:

I actually meant something that was made by Apple and that commercial games will actually use. Unless all games will come with customizable controls that can be compatible with that thing then I dont really care.

[Shadowblind]

You all do know that SEGA itself said the iPhone was more powerful then the Dreamcast, right?

[JLF65]

You all do know that SEGA itself said the iPhone was more powerful then the Dreamcast, right?

Sure, but that doesn't mean anything. The Dreamcast isn't nearly as powerful as the PSP. A 200 MHz SH4 CPU isn't nearly as powerful as a single 333 MHz MIPS, much less TWO of them, and the PowerVR chip the Dreamcast used for video isn't as fast as the VDP in the PSP. I'm not saying the PSP is so much faster you could emulate the Dreamcast on it, but the PSP is clearly more powerful.

[darkdex52]

and the PowerVR chip the Dreamcast used for video isn't as fast as the VDP in the PSP.

Strangely enought, iPhone uses PowerVR chip too :D .

Anyways, people who judge CPU's/GPU's speed by raw hercz, are stupid. I mean, really stupid.

Ok, I looked more into it, and it looks, that iphones REAL gaming capability (since for games, it is more GPU than CPU) is equal to gaming capabilities of Nokia N95, Sony Ericsson M600 and M608c, Sony Ericsson P1i and P1c, Sony Ericsson P990 and P990c, Sony Ericsson W950i and W958c, Sony Ericsson W960i and W960c, and Motorola RIZR Z8, since they all use PowerVR MBX, a low-power chip

[JLF65]

Anyways, people who judge CPU's/GPU's speed by raw hercz, are stupid. I mean, really stupid.


Now you're getting into dangerous territory. Do you know anything about CPU architecture? Whether the CPU clock can be compared between different CPU depends on the architecture. AMD had a better internal architecture, so their CPUs ran better at a lower clock rate. Intel acknowledged that when they dropped NetBurst in favor of the PM architecture.

In this case, the SH family is much more limited than either the MIPS or ARM family. The ARM is more limited than the MIPS, but not as limited as the SH. In such a case, a slower SH CPU CAN be judged as less powerful than a faster ARM or MIPS CPU simply on the clock. If the clock speeds were all the same, the SH would STILL be slower, so with a slower clock as well, it's clearly less powerful.

The ARM processor in the iPhone is fast enough to make it more powerful than the MIPS processor in the PSP, but not by much. Also, the PSP has TWO processors where the only difference is that one has a vector processor and the other doesn't. So I'd say the PSP probably has more power if you can take full advantage of the two processors. Many times you can't, so the iPhone's CPU will be more powerful in those cases.

[Aryn]

As any gamer would know by now, the amount of raw power any system carries does not necessarily make it better. There are several game systems available right now that contain a fraction of the power of other systems yet still are major contenders.

In short, it is not the size or speed of the hardware that matters but how you use it.

[megaxzeo]

Again, it seems to me like someone tried to do this before. Ngage? :rofl:

[animekid4]

You are crapping on a toilet......the PSP and the DS are those huge poops that come out.......the iphone is like that lil turd.

[Zack]

Let's lay off John Carmack a bit please.

Irregardless of this statement he made, he did create Wolfenstein 3D.

I think he deserves respect for what he has done in the gaming industry.

[wolfpack]

All im going to say is this

iPhone is not a gaming handheld
Its not meant to be one, the controls would be screwy...just...no

[DPyro]

Carmack is irrelevant.

[WhizzBang]

Certainly, the CPU in the You have to remember that Carmack has made his millions riding the "brute-force programming" wave the PCs went through in the late 90's and early 00's.

Very true. This is partly why I am a retro gamer, even though Carmacks best stuff is now retro itself. When I play a game like Head Over Heals which uses less than 48k I amazed that they put so much complexity and solid gameplay into it when your average email is larger than 48k these days.

[AshTR]

Honestly, you'd have to check the bogomips. Not sure if the iPhone has some sort of way to shove Linux on there enough to check the bogomips but the PSP gets 109.82 BogoMIPS with uCLinux on PSP. http://jacksonm80.googlepages.com/screenshot0004.gif

Heck, I have a Pentium 1 processor laptop that gets better bogomips than that.

[JLF65]

Honestly, you'd have to check the bogomips. Not sure if the iPhone has some sort of way to shove Linux on there enough to check the bogomips but the PSP gets 109.82 BogoMIPS with uCLinux on PSP. http://jacksonm80.googlepages.com/screenshot0004.gif

Heck, I have a Pentium 1 processor laptop that gets better bogomips than that.

That's not a good way to check the power of a CPU. For example, uclinux on the PSP is hardly in a state to run anything - was your little test on a version that has full cache control or not? It makes a BIG difference. It's like running your test on an alpha of DOS and complaining that it doesn't match the value in the latest 64 bit linux.

You'd be better off trying to convert bogomips to native PSP than running it in uclinux at this point.

EDIT: Actually, that was pretty close. I made the stand-alone version of bogomips into a native PSP app and get 109.77 (at 222 MHz). Still, like the bogomips FAQ says,


Why to pay attention to BogoMips

To see whether your system is faster than mine. Of course this is completely wrong, unreliable, ill-founded, and utterly useless, but all benchmarks suffer from this same problem. So why not use it? This inherent stupidity has never before stopped people from using benchmarks, has it? :-)

;)

So take bogomips with a grain of salt, and point and laugh at people who suggest using it as a benchmark. :rofl: