Video analysis of the Jaguar hardware

[alucardX]

This video is a criticism of the Jaguar hardware. I feel like the emphasis on the idea of the Jaguar's 64-bit claim trying to make it seem like it was on the same footing as the N64/Saturn/PSX is a real basis for the how harsh he was. I also feel like he's missing that the Jaguar was not meant to compete in 3D with a system like the Playstation. Aside from that I think he has some good points.

 

What are some thoughts from some others in the community?

 

https://inv.tux.pizza/watch?v=e1jQFy3zWnM

 

Overall I thought it was interesting to watch.

[+CyranoJ]

It started with "I read some forum posts and this is what I discovered" so I stopped watching.

[agradeneu]

Well, it did not fail like the Apple Pippin.

 

At least it was released on mass consumer level, got some third party software support (incl. big titles like NBA Jam) and several of Ataris best releases of all time (Tempest 2000, AvP). 

The glass is half full. 

 

On a technological level, Atari challenged the market leaders of Nintendo and Sega, the Jag def. pushed the idea of 3D tech in a home console and video games aiming for a more matured audience.

All things Sony then pulled off properly with the Playstation. 

Edited February 23 by agradeneu

[Clint Thompson]

Valid points aside, once he got to his change asks, it was a done deal. In no reality would a Hitachi SH-2 make the consideration list. 

 

 

Pet peeve: the use of a non-Jaguar game video running in the background of a Jaguar video. 
 

The GPU/DSP should operate at a much higher MHz but there must have been underlying reasons outside of cutting a $2 heatsink part to allow it to run at those speeds reliably. Surely Atari wouldn’t sacrifice so much performance loss just to save a few bucks… 

 

3 realistic things that could have made all the world of difference but would have made no difference in the end:

 

1. 68020 (fight me, I don’t care 😅)

 

2. 64-bit cartridge bus 

 

3. Fix the hardware bugs (some resulting as a byproduct of dumbing down the design in the first place most likely, due to cutting costs)

 

dev software/support side doesn’t fall in line with the fundamental hardware argument of the Jaguar flaws as it’s a separate issue altogether

 

[agradeneu]

58 minutes ago, Clint Thompson said:

Valid points aside, once he got to his change asks, it was a done deal. In no reality would a Hitachi SH-2 make the consideration list. 

 

 

 

The GPU/DSP should operate at a much higher MHz but there must have been underlying reasons outside of cutting a $2 heatsink part to allow it to run at those speeds reliably. Surely Atari wouldn’t sacrifice so much performance loss just to save a few bucks… 

 

 

 

 

Given the speed of the bus, a higher clockrate of the DSP/GPU would not result in much better performance, or?

BTW 26 MHZ speed was mighty fast for the time, of course they could have made the system even faster, theoretically, but for a higher production cost/price. And for what reason exactly? Making TOM harder to produce and more expensive would have killed the Jaguar instantly. 

 

Later hardware will be always faster, prices for better tech will fall, but you cannot bypass that, except with a time machine.

 

Realistically, a tiny cache on the blitter would have made texure mapping much better, for a minor higher cost. So says John Carmack.

However Iam not a coder or a hadware engineer, so just guessing. 

 

IMO, if the Jag was in Segas or Nintendos hands, we would not talk about hardware limitations.  

As brilliant as the Lynx was, it did fail as well. 

 

Edited February 23 by agradeneu

[Zerosquare]

8 hours ago, Clint Thompson said:

Certainly, sir. Would you like fries with that?

[+Stephen]

9 hours ago, Clint Thompson said:

Replace 68000 with MIPS R3000A

Replace blitter with a Geometry Transformation Engine

Replaces DSP with a Motion Decoder (MDEC)

Include a dedicated 1MB of VRAM

Include 2kB Texture RAM

Make the system CD based from the beginning

 

While at it, just replace the entire PCB with

 

A system with those specs would surely succeed!

[+Biff Burgertime]

I've been reading the Jaguar subforum since 2017, plus countless threads from prior to that - whatever looked semi-interesting. In that time I've learned who knows their stuff, who's full of shit, the truths and the myths... yet I'd never make a video like this. Why? Because if I was going to speak as an authority on a certain machine with an interest in being accurate, I'd feel like that would require tinkering with the hardware, writing code for it, or otherwise getting more intimately-acquainted with it (giggity). There are some things you'll only get to learn that way.

 

Despite all the Jag content I've consumed, the last time I spoke of a technical detail I wound up parroting something incorrect I must've read somewhere. Thankfully (yet embarrassingly) I was immediately set straight, breaking the chain of misinformation. Unfortunately, that's not the case most of the time.

 

That list of proposed changes is funny though. Basically "fix all the shit that sucks?"

[42bs]

This video is so badly made and so full of Jaguar-bashing. I scrolled through it in 10s. 10s of lost lifetime.

[agradeneu]

More expensive (and less affordable) hardware would not have fixed the design and artwork issues of most Jaguar games. 

 

Or the lack of 3rd party support, or the lack of financial backing, or....

 

Its always funny to think about the perfect hardware configuration, but a console is not a PC, so lets not get carried away with that idee fixe ;.)

[+Biff Burgertime]

Unrelated to the video but my first reaction to this was "wtf is pizza.tux?" so I immediately clicked the About tab.

 

I gotta say, that hard left turn at the end totally caught me off-guard haha.

Quote

Years ago I started my privacy journey after discovering how invasive companies are and how much spyware we use in our everyday lives. I made it my goal to become as private as possible, and that has led me to learning things like Linux, Monero, security, and self-hosting.

 

I believe in freedom. Freedom of speech, freedom of ideas, freedom of communication, and freedom of transacting. Those things fundamentally require privacy.

I decided to self host some privacy respecting services for anyone to use, because I believe everyone deserves privacy.

 

But most of all, I believe in true freedom, the only freedom that can really set you free. That is freedom through Jesus Christ.

[+madman]

9 hours ago, Biff Burgertime said:

I've been reading the Jaguar subforum since 2017, plus countless threads from prior to that - whatever looked semi-interesting. In that time I've learned who knows their stuff, who's full of shit, the truths and the myths... yet I'd never make a video like this. Why? Because if I was going to speak as an authority on a certain machine with an interest in being accurate, I'd feel like that would require tinkering with the hardware, writing code for it, or otherwise getting more intimately-acquainted with it (giggity). There are some things you'll only get to learn that way.

The thing is you're looking at this with a level head, YouTubers look at "how can I get the most clicks and make the most money off any given video" so they don't give a crap about accuracy or even knowing what they're talking about.

[sirlynxalot]

On 2/23/2024 at 9:32 AM, agradeneu said:

Well, it did not fail like the Apple Pippin.

 

At least it was released on mass consumer level, got some third party software support (incl. big titles like NBA Jam) and several of Ataris best releases of all time (Tempest 2000, AvP). 

The glass is half full. 

 

On a technological level, Atari challenged the market leaders of Nintendo and Sega, the Jag def. pushed the idea of 3D tech in a home console and video games aiming for a more matured audience.

All things Sony then pulled off properly with the Playstation. 

I'd also add that it scared Sega into creating the 32x, so clearly Sega didn't think of it as a joke when it was brand new.

[+Biff Burgertime]

5 hours ago, madman said:

The thing is you're looking at this with a level head, YouTubers look at "how can I get the most clicks and make the most money off any given video" so they don't give a crap about accuracy or even knowing what they're talking about.

He does a poor job of that, too. Maybe I could help him out a bit...

[+CyranoJ]

36 minutes ago, Biff Burgertime said:

He does a poor job of that, too. Maybe I could help him out a bit...

 

Yeah, it should have been coloured yellow.

[alucardX]

12 hours ago, madman said:

The thing is you're looking at this with a level head, YouTubers look at "how can I get the most clicks and make the most money off any given video" so they don't give a crap about accuracy or even knowing what they're talking about.

Since I linked to invidio.us (youtube frontend) we didn't help him out on that one!

[+Sauron]

On 2/23/2024 at 7:48 AM, Clint Thompson said:

Valid points aside, once he got to his change asks, it was a done deal. In no reality would a Hitachi SH-2 make the consideration list. 

 

In other words he wanted the Jag to be a Saturn/PSX hybrid...and in 1993, to boot, which would have resulted in the system costing at least $400 (probably more than that, to be honest), which would have been laughable for a cart-based system. Let's ask 3DO how well overpricing their console worked for them? At least that one shipped as a CD-based system. It's always easy to look back at things in hindsight and say "we should have done X, Y, and Z instead of A and B", which obviously doesn't take into account things such as the development budget, realistic cost of parts for that time, and manufacturing costs. And expecting all of that from a company that was on its last legs and with extremely limited funds in comparison to its competitors just would never have been feasible. 

[+CyranoJ]

As I said:  "Read some forum posts, stopped watching"
As madman said: "The thing is you're looking at this with a level head, YouTubers look at "how can I get the most clicks and make the most money off any given video" so they don't give a crap about accuracy or even knowing what they're talking about."

Best to not give this video or other clueless ones like it oxygen. They don't bring anything positive to the scene, just more of the same old nonsense.

[Tenorman]

Ugh.  Now there is a follow up video that is even more pointless.  I won't even bother linking to it.  I need to stay off YouTube.

[Tenorman]

I hate to feed into this more...  but I got curious about the SH2.  This chip didn't come out until Oct 1993.  Much too late for a Nov 1993 console release.

 

I couldn't find volume pricing information for the 68000 in 1993, but I see by 1984 it was $15, so I think we can assume "dirt cheap".

 

Maybe some more realistic alternatives would have been the NEC v810 (used in the Virtual Boy and PC-FX) or the ARM 610?  Both have volume prices of $20 in 1993, and a 32-bit data bus.

 

[alucardX]

The followup video is shit too. I can see I spoke a little to optimistically of his first video having some okay view points. On a second more critical view, it's bad.

 

In his first video he did suggest the Jag release in 1994 so the 1993 release of the SH2 would have worked in that case. But like someone said here, in hindsight you can do whatever you want and pick and choose. Also the time of design to release of the Jag vs the hardware leaps in another two years are unavoidable. I feel like comparing the Jag to the PSX/N64/Saturn directly makes as much sense as expecting the N64 to perform as well as the Dreamcast.

 

His follow up video is a slam dunk for his poor research. I do absolutely hate that every asshole who doesn't collect or appreciate retro game consoles and retro games thinks that the Jag is fodder for boosting their *tube views. If you absolutely must view his second video I suggest you use an invidio.us proxy to access it. Don't give the analytics any more data than you have to for his crap.

[phoenixdownita]

1 hour ago, alucardX said:

The followup video is shit too. I can see I spoke a little to optimistically of his first video having some okay view points. On a second more critical view, it's bad.

 

In his first video he did suggest the Jag release in 1994 so the 1993 release of the SH2 would have worked in that case. But like someone said here, in hindsight you can do whatever you want and pick and choose. Also the time of design to release of the Jag vs the hardware leaps in another two years are unavoidable. I feel like comparing the Jag to the PSX/N64/Saturn directly makes as much sense as expecting the N64 to perform as well as the Dreamcast.

 

His follow up video is a slam dunk for his poor research. I do absolutely hate that every asshole who doesn't collect or appreciate retro game consoles and retro games thinks that the Jag is fodder for boosting their *tube views. If you absolutely must view his second video I suggest you use an invidio.us proxy to access it. Don't give the analytics any more data than you have to for his crap.

I think the second is worth watching to fully appreciate how bad of a job he did on the first AND on the second too. It’s supposed to be an apology on the mistakes of the first but I think it makes it so obvious he literally didn’t research much at all but he never admits that.

 

Example 1: “I said 128bits but I got confused it’s 64, … (bunch of excuses)… but then bits don’t matter.” … then why did you bring that up?

 

Example 2: “I don’t know anything of the other Atari consoles (video shows in letters the 2600, 5200, 7800 and the lynx) … plus the 7800 is like beaten by the SNES” … you don’t say … 7800 came out 5y before. So given you didn’t know the Jag either you didn’t know anything about any Atari console … great, but you had to make a crappy video about the Jag.

 

Example 3: wrong console game footage .. “I don’t have a Jaguar or even an emulator and didn’t try and I didn’t want to steal gameplay footage …” … let’s  just steal bad info on a console you’ve never tried from a company you know nothing about and make a video out of it … because that’s what you do.

 

———

 

Jag or no Jag this guy is clueless and thinks that he doesn’t need to do any actual research and maybe try something himself about the subject of his video … but of course he feels entitled to make a video about it full of misinformation and once called out he makes an apology video in which instead of simply stating he’s sorry for the shallow shitjob he did he instead makes up excuses and proves even more how crappy a job he did without ever admitting to it.

 

———

 

And I don’t even particularly enjoy my Jag games so I don’t even care if he think it’s trash or not.

[Tenorman]

How much you wanna bet he doesn't have a Sega Saturn either much less a copy of Panzer Dragoon Saga?

I enjoy Saturn as much as the next guy but that is just the most random thing to have on in the background.

 

[+cubanismo]

On 2/23/2024 at 6:48 AM, Clint Thompson said:

2. 64-bit cartridge bus 

Imagine the physical size implications of that if they kept the same pin pitch and whatnot. Giant Shark Vs. Mega-Cartridge!

[+cubanismo]

I also really don't understand what they mean by a dedicated sound chip. The DSP/Jerry is an awesome sound chip, and you can squeeze some extra calculation out of any extra cycles you have on it. Best of both worlds IMHO. What sound properties do they think would be improved by adding a dedicated sound chip?