> > It looks like one of the ports to Dreamcast from the PS1. When the developers
> > built from the ground up on Dreamcast, they usually had very good results.
> > Remember, Dreamcast still has higher res textures than PS2. Oh, and hardware
> > anti-aliasing.
>
> It doesn't have hardware anti-aliasing. This is a common misconception because
> the PS2 was very flickery in the beginning, and people thought this was because
> of jaggies. Actually it had more to do with the way the framebuffer was drawn
> onto the screen, as the PS2 actually renders two alternate images to make the
> full 640x480 picture and flips each to the screen in stages. It leaves a lot to
> be desired in terms of quality but it saves on memory.
>
> Idiot articles like this one say the opposite.
>
> You can clearly see that in Ridge Racer you're only seeing half the scanlines,
> so of course it looks like shit. But that's the way the game drew the graphics
> onto the screen.
>
> Also, the crawly ass graphics are caused by a lack of mip mapping (presumably to
> save memory) and also because of the inaccuracy of rendering half the picture at
> a time.
>
> Nobody knew how to use the PS2 efficiently back then. Konami showed everyone
> with MGS2. Everyone smartened up since then.
>
> Dreamcast has texture compression, but PS2 can do it on the fly with VU0/1. But
> it's more suited to drawing more polygons and doing special effects on the
> screen rather than concentrating on textures, you have to play on its strengths.
>
> MGS2 didn't have the greatest textures but it had special effects up the
> yin-yan, and even the X-Box had trouble keeping up in the storm scenes. It
> might have been able to do it as efficiently as the PS2, but you can see that
> the PS2 is certainly powerful enough to measure up to the X-Box in certain ways.
>


# CPU: Hitachi SH-4

* 200MHz clock rate
* 360 MIPS (millions of instructions per second)
* 3D calculations (Can transform 5million polygons/second)
* 800+ MBytes/second bus bandwidth
* 1.4 billion floating-point operations per second
* In comparison, the SH4 can calculate nearly 3 times more floating point OPs per second then a 450MHz Intel Pentiom II Processor. Or about 1.4 times more than next years' 500MHz Intel Katmai or 500MHz AMD K7.

# Graphics: NEC PowerVR2 DC

* 3 million polygons/second peak rendering rate
* Perspective-Correct Texture Mapping
* Point, Bilinear, Trilinear and Anisotropic Mip-map filtering
* Gouraud shading
* z-buffer
* Colored light sourcing
* Full scene anti-aliasing <---
* Hardware-based Fog
* Bump mapping
* 16.77 million colors
* Hardware-based texture compression
* Shadow and Light volumes
* Super sampling

# Memory:

* 16 MB main RAM (SDRAM)
* 8 MB video RAM
* 2 MB sound RAM

# Sound:

* 45MHz Yamaha 32-bit RISC CPU @ 40MIPS (more powerful than total power of PSX)
o Based on ARM7TMDI Processor Core DSP.
* Real-time effects (Reverb, delay, etc)
* 64 sound channels
* Surround Sound support.
* Full realtime 3D sound support matching abilities of modern home theater systems.
* Hardware-based audio compression

# Storage:

* Proprietary 1 GD-Rom disc: Capacity 1.0GB (1024MB)
* 12x Yamaha (1.8MB/s)

# Data Save: VMS Card

* Energy-saving 8-bit CPU
* 128K byte memory
* 48x32 dot monochrome LCD display
* 37x26mm display size
* Button battery x 2, auto off function
* PWM 1 channel sound source
* Size: 47mm(W) x 80mm(H) x 16mm(D)/1.9" x 3.15" x 0.63"
* Weight: 45g/1.59oz

# Input:

* Four controller ports.
* Digital and analog directional controls
* Visual Memory System data save unit
* Analog Steering wheel, joystick, keyboard, mouse, and more available.

# Communication:

* 33.6Kbytes/second modem (Original Asia/Japan)
* 56Kbytes/second modem (USA, Europe, Asia/Japan after Sept. 1999)
* Software: The Dream Passport CD
o Access' NetFront and Secure Socket Layer (SSL).
o NetFront includes support of HTML 3.2, main features of HTML 4.0, and SSL.
o Dream Passport lets users access the web, e-mail, and chat.

# Operating System:

* Customized Microsoft Windows CE or Custom Sega OS (loaded at boot)

# Video Output:

* 640x224 NTSC via composite video or RF (Composite cables included with console)
* Available: RGB/VGA, S-Video.

# Size: 190mm(W) x 195mm(H) x 78mm(D)/7.48" x 7.68" x 3.07"
# Weight: 2.0kg/4.41lb