Hardware Nintendo 3DS RAM revealed

[granville]

We're waiting on CPU details.

By waiting on, do you mean you're just hoping someone finds out soon, or do you mean you already know people who are researching it as we speak and we can expect it to be revealed soon?

 

[Toad King]

We're waiting on CPU details.

By waiting on, do you mean you're just hoping someone finds out soon, or do you mean you already know people who are researching it as we speak and we can expect it to be revealed soon?

Looks like the iFixit people are working with Chipworks to get the specs for it, since it would seem silly to only get the specs for one unknown chip on a board with several unknown chips. And only the RAM chip out of all of them.

I'm not sure if we'll ever get a sure clock speed for the GPU though, since as far as I know, the 3DS is the first commercial product that uses the PICA200 chip, so there isn't anything to cross-reference it with, unless the company gives out a spec sheet.

 

[Chhotu uttam]

the ram looks too good

 

[Schlupi]

That's impressive. I wonder what the future holds for 3DS homebrew...

 

[loserkidsblink18]

NGP EMULATOR ON THE 3DS?!

 

[Schlupi]

NGP EMULATOR ON THE 3DS?!

Only once they get the PS5 emu working.

(he's a real asshole, he never wants to work. stupid bird)

 

[pachura]

And yeah, i would hope people wouldn't go to IGN and believe their crap. They always claim to have some sort of "insider source" game developer that gives them specs. You know that before a console is released, there are different revisions of development units ? So maybe they were referring to one of these, when the final specs for the retail 3DS were not closed yet. Don't bash them, at least they are trying.

Remember when they were spreading around the rumors about Tegra?Tegra was at some point being considered by Nintendo, but in the end they went with this small unknown Japanese company and their proprietary chip. Which is a pity, because Tegra has lots of advantages.

QUOTE(granville @ Mar 30 2011, 12:02 AM)

Or that the 3DS was more powerful than a PS3?

These were spread by 3DS game developers.

 

[MMX]

how much of these 128 are part of the 3DS Dashboard? I'm no specialist so what's your guess?

 

[Spongeroberto]

Great!

Who knows... with a bit of luck on the other specs we could get a PS1 emu... PSP would be interesting because not reading from those stupid minidiscs PSPs use would cut loading times drastically.

 

[Midna]

Remember when they were spreading around the rumors about Tegra?

Tegra was at some point being considered by Nintendo, but in the end they went with this small unknown Japanese company and their proprietary chip. Which is a pity, because Tegra has lots of advantages.

Yes, like inferior heat generation and power consumption and price. It just wasn't a good option. With its minimalist power, heat and price, as well as all the shaders it supports, the 3DS' own chip should do just fine.

...I think granville knows this. He's been around a while. Pity though, you have too. You seem to be deliberately putting a bad spin on the Pica200 in your wording, possibly for its lack of raw power.

 

[Crass]

SWEET. So it could definitely handle a GBA emulator (After the hackage), right?

There was never any doubt about that in the first place.

The DS just couldn't do it because it was terribly underpowered.

I thought it was because it only had 4 MB of RAM which wasn't enough to load a ROM into.

That was just part of it. It's just terrible all-around for GBA emulation.

Why would you want to emulate the GBA on the DS when it has native GBA hardware built in?

 

[Spongeroberto]

SWEET. So it could definitely handle a GBA emulator (After the hackage), right?

There was never any doubt about that in the first place.

The DS just couldn't do it because it was terribly underpowered.

I thought it was because it only had 4 MB of RAM which wasn't enough to load a ROM into.

That was just part of it. It's just terrible all-around for GBA emulation.

Why would you want to emulate the GBA on the DS when it has native GBA hardware built in?

So that you can run GBA roms from your slot1 flashcart instead of having to (slowly) transfer it to your slot2

 

[altorn]

my Samsung Vibrant was reported to have 512MB, and it's also in the specs sheet, but only 334MB is available for apps.

lets say 128MB is in the 3DS, probably not all of it will be utilized for apps.
(unless flashcarts can create a more memory efficient firmware to lots more homebrew/emulation shit)

 

[Rydian]

We're waiting on CPU details.By waiting on, do you mean you're just hoping someone finds out soon, or do you mean you already know people who are researching it as we speak and we can expect it to be revealed soon?

Haha, I meant the first one.

PSP would be interesting because not reading from those stupid minidiscs PSPs use would cut loading times drastically.

Buy a PSP and hack it. You can rip your own UMDs easily by setting the USB drive to the UMD drive (instead of memory stick) in the recovery/VSH menus, or perhaps with the PSP Filer homebrew. Then run ISO tool to decrypt, and play the ISO off your memory stick.

QUOTE(Crass @ Mar 30 2011, 03:06 AM)

Why would you want to emulate the GBA on the DS when it has native GBA hardware built in?

I don't, I'm answering the people that do.

 

[Shabutie78]

the 64 mb was only for the 3000/3004 models
b4 it used 32mb
not sure about the clockspeed nor what type of memory it is
but the 3ds has 4x more, ddr2, faster
definately worth to mention
there are 64MB of RAM in every psp except PSP 1000/1001s. this includes psp slims, brites, and pspgos.
128MB of RAM in nintendo's next-gen handheld really isn't that much. in fact, i think it will be as underpowered in 4-5 years as the DS/i is today, and we'll be using our NPGs for emulation/homebrew since it will be far more powerful than the 3DS. (this is as just as irrelevant, but i gotta say it): NGP is to 3DS as PSP is to DS. nintendo definitely dropped the ball on producing the best handheld videogame systems. but whatever, people buy their shit anyway - i know i will.

PSP games only used 32 MB Ram, the added 32MB of RAM in the 2000/3000 units was used for umd caching.
homebrew could utilize the extra RAM. i know this can't be counted as an "official feature" of the product, but it's still a plus.

QUOTE(Zoroark1989 @ Mar 29 2011, 02:18 PM)

So this means the 3DS now has much more RAM than PS2, GC, Xbox, and PSP right? Now all we need is how high is the GPU is clocked at.

those three consoles are each about 10 years old. and psp is a last-generation system. just sayin'.

 

[chris888222]

The 3DS has 3.2G of speed? (sorry i don't know the units

)

If it has a higher speed it means lesser lags or what?

 

[pachura]

Tegra was at some point being considered by Nintendo, but in the end they went with this small unknown Japanese company and their proprietary chip. Which is a pity, because Tegra has lots of advantages.
You seem to be deliberately putting a bad spin on the Pica200 in your wording, possibly for its lack of raw power.


Where have I put a bad spin ?
Isn't DMP a small unknown Japanese company ?
Isn't Pica200 a proprietary chip ? It's not used in any mainstream product.
Doesn't Tegra have lots of advantages ? OpenGL/ES 2.0, fully programmable shaders, easy to program for, Unreal 3.0, hardware accelerated Flash & H.264 decoding. I didn't say it was ultimately superior...

QUOTE(chris888222 @ Mar 30 2011, 10:49 AM)

The 3DS has 3.2G of speed? (sorry i don't know the units

)

If it has a higher speed it means lesser lags or what?

:facepalm:

As a side note, it's always good to have fast memory. You can do various clever tricks, like process video frame multiple times.
As for the amount available for games, I guess it would be 96 MB, just as the screenshot from a development unit was showing.

 

[koji2009]

We do know that at least PART of that ram isn't available to developers (it's used by the System Menu) 32MB seems pretty high just for that, unless Nintendo has plans for additional system menu features in the future.

As for emulatable systems... PS1 should easily be able to emulated, likely N64 as well. Everything from that generation and earlier should be doable. PS2/GCN/x-box1 will obviously be a no-go, PSP is also very very unlikely but until we know the exact CPU/Vid specs we can't be sure.

 

[Mantis41]

We're waiting on CPU details.

This is one of the images from the 3DS that was stolen pre-release.

It was reported at the time that from the markings on the CPU it looked to be a Cortex-A9 Processor - ARM
If this is true the processor could be clocked from 800 mhz to 2000 mhz.

 

[Coto]

Maybe considering the 3DS lasts up to 5 hours, perhaps that´s why they have chosen the PICA GPU for their final product. I think it´s quite the challenge to develop a dual GPU which renders at 3D using 2 layers on the same screen. Considering chips being fed from battery power.