News for hackers. Stuff that matters.
Re:Sega Saturn Architecture – A practical analysis by VelesDude on Wednesday March 27, 2024 @12:32AM (#39835731)
Recently Sauraen on Youtube demonstrated their performance profiling on their F3DEX3 optimizations. One thing they could finally do was profile the memory latency and it is BAD! On a frame render time of 50ms, about 30ms of that is the processors just waiting on the RAM. Essentially, at least in Ocarina of time, the GPU is idle 60% of the time!

Whole video is fascinating but skip to the 29 minutes mark to see the discussion of this part.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SHXf8DoitGc

Re:Sega Saturn Architecture – A practical analysis by rasz on Wednesday March 27, 2024 @08:06PM (#39846195)
Ram latency is bad, GPU is spending half the time doing nothing, but in return using RDRAM allowed for 2 layer PCB making whole thing insanely cheap to manufacture.

https://gmanmodz.com/2020/01/30/2020-the-year-of-n64-again/

https://gmanmodz.com/2020/10/05/n64-3x3/