How powerful was the 3DS really?

[Deleted member 8752]

Objectively weaker than gen 6, but with more modern GPU features that allow for comparable graphics. The 240p resolution makes direct comparisons a bit difficult IMO. All up I would say the 3DS was just straight up better at some things but worse at others.

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3DS / N3DS GPU was a strange beast: basically fixed function with no programmable shaders, so you had to use all the tricks from the early 2000, but with support for some modern effects out of the box, so you could display some fancy effects cheaply.

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These both make a lot of sense to me. Apples to apples comparisons are not really possible.

I would be interested to know how taxing was the 3D effect on the hardware. Like, was it really like rendering a game twice? Or were there built in efficiencies that made it less taxing?

 

[Dogui]

Would the PS2 run RER or Street Fighter IV? Maybe, in any case i think that's the question we should make.

I think people should atleast compare the most demanding 3DS games that run ok instead of the x or y bad ports.

 

[ascagnel]

Every time I think about the capabilities of the 3DS I am reminded of the fact that Nintendo never released an exclusive 3D Zelda for the platform.

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A Link Between Worlds was rendered in 3D (and was one of the best uses of the 3D feature), but it was the old-school top-down Zelda style like Link to the Past.

 

[Sonicfan1373]

Like a lot of handhelds it seems to be a bit split.

I would say horse power wise it was more similar to a 6th gen system (whether early 6th gen like Dreamcast or later 6th gen like GameCube is hard to tell because those systems didn't do 3D which has a cost on performance; the question is if the 3DS could have targeted 480P if Nintendo opted against 3D in favour of resolution).

In terms of architecture feature-set it was between a 6th generation and 7th generation system (but somewhat closer to 6th gen).

I look at the Vita in a similar way. Horse power was between 6th and 7th gen but feature-set was close to but more modern than 7th gen.

With Switch, the horse power is close to but above 7th gen but feature-set is close to but more modern than 8th gen.

 

[Hilarious_Bearious]

welllllllll, technically, the 3ds is a 800p screen.

It doesn't refresh from top to bottom, it refreshes from left to right (or right to left, I don't remember which). So the screen has 800 lines of 240 pixels. With the 3d on, 400 lines go into one eye and 400 lines go into the other.

Also keep in mind that these pixels are not squares. They're actually tall rectangles. When you have the 3d effect turned off, the internal resolution of commercial games drops to 240x400 and two of the rectangle pixels are 'merged' to create the illusion of one square pixel.

Homebrew has, interestingly enough, shown you can use the full 800 pixel resolution in 2d mode for a crisper image.

(None of this applies to the OG 2ds screen which is a standard square pixel panel.)

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Nerrrrrrrrrd! Get out of here with all your numbers and facts :D

Thank you for the clarification. It is very impressive tech for its time. Sadly, when it comes time to try to compare to another platform, you're stuck with that 400x240 image. Which is why I say it's hard to just do a static image comparison.

 

[RM8]

Would the PS2 run RER or Street Fighter IV? Maybe, in any case i think that's the question we should make.

I think people should atleast compare the most demanding 3DS games that run ok instead of the x or y bad ports.

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This. IIRC Wii didn't get SFIV because it lacked power, yet it was a launch 3DS game. It's obviously not an easy comparison, but 3DS was not that bad in some aspects, while pretty bad in others (mostly resolution).

 

[logash]

A Link Between Worlds was rendered in 3D (and was one of the best uses of the 3D feature), but it was the old-school top-down Zelda style like Link to the Past.

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Yeah I am a huge Zelda fan so I most definitely played A Link Between Worlds. By 3D I meant the gameplay style, not the graphics. I honestly wasn't a huge fan of the 3D of the 3DS and I pretty much stopped using it after Super Mario 3D Land.

 

[werezompire]

Right but I'm not sure Persona 4 was a title that was putting PS2 to its knees. And the visual enhancements were still a bit limited. I'm not sure as you claim that it was "way more powerful than PS2". I wouldn't be surprised if on some aspects, Vita was slower.

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I don't know all the details on all the various aspects of the hardware, but let's look at the RAM.

RAM/VRAM
PS2 - 32MB/4MB
vs
Vita - 512MB/128MB

That's a clear generation leap.

Gravity Rush is easily as good looking as the cream of the crop on the PS2. Uncharted Vita isn't a great game, but I have a hard time imagining those visuals on a PS2. And those are launch window titles. If the Vita had been a huge success and Sony had kept supporting it with big budget 1st party games, I imagine games at the end of the Vita's life would have been much more impressive.

 

[Chille]

Wasn't there issues with the GPU? I thought Nvidia pulled out last minute so they had to switch hence reason final product ended up worse then planned

 

[yrcmlived]

I don't know all the details on all the various aspects of the hardware, but let's look at the RAM.

RAM/VRAM
PS2 - 32MB/4MB
vs
Vita - 512MB/128MB

That's a clear generation leap.

Gravity Rush is easily as good looking as the cream of the crop on the PS2. Uncharted Vita isn't a great game, but I have a hard time imagining those visuals on a PS2. And those are launch window titles. If the Vita had been a huge success and Sony had kept supporting it with big budget 1st party games, I imagine games at the end of the Vita's life would have been much more impressive.

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PSVITA is a gen forward compared to 3ds, It can handle more effects, it's like a ps3/xbox 360 low resolution level

 

[Dekuman]

Wasn't there issues with the GPU? I thought Nvidia pulled out last minute so they had to switch hence reason final product ended up worse then planned

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Tegra 3 was rumored. I think power consumption was an issue and I do wonder if the decision to go to 3D (which iirc happened late in development) forced them into picking the PICA2000 chip, which was a low power integrated GPU solution that was fairly old even at the time 3DS launched.

 

[brain_stew]

Raw pixel/poly pushing power, it was definitely a significant step back from PS2/GameCube but it had some "hard wired" pixel shaders that were more commonly seen on an Xbox.

So, maybe Dreamcast level with some cheap Xbox level effects work (but without the flexibility of fully programmable shaders). A lot of people remember the Dreamcast as comparable to the PS2 but it really wasn't, MGS2 was light years ahead of anything on Dreamcast and that came just a year after launch. The alpha effects and level of geometric complexity of high end PS2 games was really impressive at the time and something the 3DS can't match.

MGS3 is a good example of how far behind the PS2 it was in terms of poly/pixel pushing power. Despite a dramatic cut back in geometry and alpha and a tiny 400x240 rendering resolution, it ran around 15fps. I don't think the budget argument holds up on this one either as it was a marquee retail release with added features, so a decent budget for a port, the hardware just wasn't suited to the same workload as a PS2.

Resident Evil: Revelations is the complete opposite. Really low poly budget but it made full use of the built in effects to make it look a lot more impressive. It was tailored around the hardware.

The CPU was dog slow, complete trash.

 

[Krypt]

This is pretty much it.
PS2 had a 6.2GFLOPs GPU, and was designed around gen 6 graphical effects, so shaders were not programmable and graphical effects were limited.

Gamecube had a 8GFLOPs GPU, and was designed around gen 6 graphical effects, so shaders were not programmable and graphical effects were limited. A note about the Gamecube is that it had a total of 3MB VRAM and the TEV units that made up the GPU were capable of some pretty impressive texture tricks at the time, ultimately RE4 which was on both Gamecube and PS2 ran much better on the Gamecube and the character model used twice the polygons.

3DS had a 4.8GFLOPs GPU, was designed around gen 7 graphical effects, so programmable shaders were capable of anything gen 7 consoles were able to do, just far less performant, but also dealt with far fewer pixels. It's raw power is closer to Gen 6 consoles, but it's flexibility was more in line with Gen 7 consoles, so like a Gamecube successor as a handheld.

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this is the best guess. this man knows what he is talk about.

 

[-shadow-]

They're obviously not directly comparable but I think PS2/Gamecube era is the closest and best comparison you're likely to get.

Considering how it ran things like Snake Eater and Monster Hunter and they were basically (with various compromises obviously) PS2 era games technologically.

Like, it's clearly capable of more than a PS1 and an N64. So PS2/Gamecube is a decent comparison even if it's a messy comparison.

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What the hell happened to that teaser anyway? It was running in real time in 3D with a stable frame-rate. But the final product ran bloody terrible.

 

[brain_stew]

Tegra 3 was rumored. I think power consumption was an issue and I do wonder if the decision to go to 3D (which iirc happened late in development) forced them into picking the PICA2000 chip, which was a low power integrated GPU solution that was fairly old even at the time 3DS launched.

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I remember there being leaks about Tegra 2 development kits.

The first video I ever uploaded to YouTube was a 3DMark demo of the Pica200 back before it has been revealed as the 3DS GPU because a few of us at the old place had figured it out before the announcement.

 

[Marmoka]

I'd say it was between Gamecube and Wii.

 

[Jahranimo]

I had the luck to work on the 3DS back then and we released the Futuridium porting on New 3DS that was personally coded by me.
I think it was one of the very few Unity games released on the platform.

The original 3DS was... very slow, both lacking in CPU speed and memory. The New 3DS was a lot better, but still not exactly fast: a console like the Vita was a lot faster. And I mean -a lot-, they were not in the same league basically CPU and GPU wise.
3DS / N3DS GPU was a strange beast: basically fixed function with no programmable shaders, so you had to use all the tricks from the early 2000, but with support for some modern effects out of the box, so you could display some fancy effects cheaply.

In the end I really loved working on it: it was super limited and required a lot of old school techniques, but the dual screen and 3d implementation was top notch and super easy to implement and support. I liked it.

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That's interesting, thanks for the input.

 

[Deleted member 23158]

I don't know if ports are fair game. Snake Eater 3D surely never had the budget or team Snake Eater on PS2 had. If you were to based performances on ports, you could say Vita is barely at PS2 levels considering how some PS2 ports ran (badly).

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According to Kojima it was a full remake though.

 

[Celine]

Enough to render Resident Evil Revelations in stereoscopic 3D.

 

[Wander_]

The Vita outclassed the 3DS significantly for the same price. Nintendo isn't really going for high end chipsets
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*wasn't.

 

[Link_enfant]

It was powerful enough to have nice looking 480p games, unfortunately the screen was limited to 240p which is almost as annoying as the Wii being limited to 480p. Very frustrating choices imo, when I look back at it.

 

[gravitationsfeld]

It had programmable shaders, first handheld to do so, and there was a cool IwataAsks on the GPU.

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It did not. The effects are all hard wired in the 3DS GPU.

 

[balohna]

I recall reading somewhere that it was actually quite good at things like real time lighting and higher poly counts (compared to PS2/GC/DC... I don't want to say this is absolutely the case, though), but not great at detailed textures. It's why some great looking games like Dark Moon have extremely simple textures and make up for it with dynamic lighting, smooth animation and appealing models.

 

[Deleted member 52065]

They're obviously not directly comparable but I think PS2/Gamecube era is the closest and best comparison you're likely to get.

Considering how it ran things like Snake Eater and Monster Hunter and they were basically (with various compromises obviously) PS2 era games technologically.

Like, it's clearly capable of more than a PS1 and an N64. So PS2/Gamecube is a decent comparison even if it's a messy comparison.

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How playable is Metal Gear Solid 3 on new 3DS with the cpu unlocked? Is 30fps locked possible? 60fps?

 

[Era of not Yakuza]

Psvita was Vegeta and 3Ds was Guldo

 

[xyla]

It was sometimes really impressive what they got out of it visually - but at the same time, the resolution was not impressive at all.
It's insane that some of PS2/GCN games run as well as they did on there and that it even got some downports from the PS360 gen.

It could pull off handheld 3D well enough.

 

[Paradax]

How playable is Metal Gear Solid 3 on new 3DS with the cpu unlocked? Is 30fps locked possible? 60fps?

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Same as before. The engine has a 20fps hard cap, and it drops as many frames as before.

Having said that, it's the Peace Walker engine, which was not made to run a game on an ARM architecture or with the scale and scope of MGS3.

 

[Deleted member 52065]

Same as before. The engine has a 20fps hard cap, and it drops as many frames as before.

Having said that, it's the Peace Walker engine, which was not made to run a game on an ARM architecture or with the scale and scope of MGS3.

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I may be mistaken but I thought you could remove the 20fps cap with a jailbroken new 3DS.

 

[AuroraMusisAmica]

All I know was that the leap from 3DS to Switch is mind boggling. Sometimes I just have to pick up the main Switch unit to remind myself it's a handheld device with console functionality.

As far as generational leaps go, it's gotta be considered one of the largest...

 

[DeuceGamer]

I still wonder how late in the day Nintendo had to drop Nvidia when it was clear their gpu was not fit for purpose. When did they have to pivot to DMP?

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I hope we get the real, inside story on this at some point. I guess it doesn't really matter, but I find it extremely interesting, especially when considering Nintendo went with NVidia on Switch.

I also wonder what the n3DS was truly capable of if it wasn't hamstrung but the OG 3DS.

 

[Eoin]

Surprised nobody has mentioned the machine that seems to me like the most obvious comparison point.

The base 3DS is comparable to the PSP. It's not a perfect comparison or anything, but it seems closer to that than the PS2.

 

[ss_lemonade]

I may be mistaken but I thought you could remove the 20fps cap with a jailbroken new 3DS.

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I believe you just end up with a more stable 20 fps

 

[MysticGon]

It was basically PSP geometry with Wii level shaders.

 

[Skyrise]

These both make a lot of sense to me. Apples to apples comparisons are not really possible.

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Absolutely: it makes no sense to compare the 3DS hardware to previous home console.

The console was incredibly underpowered, but at the same time it supported the unique features that Nintendo wanted very well.
This is something that Nintendo always does very well: if they have a feature in a console, it works very well both from an hardware and an SDK perspective.
As a developer working with Nintendo hardware have always been super easy (like supporting dual screen on Wii U, 3D on 3DS and so on...).

 

[MysticGon]

2 tech demos I watched and rewatched back in the day. I love seeing studios eek out every ounce of potential from lesser silicon.

 

[Hieroph]

It can run Street Fighter 4 which is a PS360 game, so obviously it's at PS360 level.

Seriously tho, the power envelope is perfect for me. I don't want every device running similar looking games, 3DS power level gives the games an unique aesthetic that hits the sweet spot between PSP and Vita for me.

 

[Jegriva]

Luigi's Mansion is a veeery late 3DS game and a launch GC game. It offers an interesting comparison.

 

[Dekuman]

LM wasn't a late 3DS game it was around the middle. Came out before n3DS

 

[DeuceGamer]

I really wonder what we could have expected from a n3DS title built around the New 3DS hardware. How much better would it have looked compared to the OG 3DS? I think the n3DS had a bigger improvement than a lot of people realized and it was just never taken advantage of by an exclusice designed ground up for the hardware.

 

[Pangorogoro]

LM wasn't a late 3DS game it was around the middle. Came out before n3DS

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Dark moon was around middle, the port of the original came out the end of 2018

 

[mael]

It's kind of a weird question to compare handhelds to their console counterparts.
The original Gameboy was in some ways more capable than the NES and less so in others.
GBA seems somehow more capable than a goddamn n64 for 2D and was never ever made to handle 3D games.
NDS started with a better version of Mario 64 so it anchored the perception of the system at around n64 level for some reasons.
And 3DS started with some fairly high budget games that distort the perception of its power compared to previous systems.

Vita is weird because I'm pretty sure Sony never actually bothered showing the full extent of what the system is truly capable off like Capcom would with the 3DS.
Like seriously if you look up Capcom on 3DS and Wii, you would think the 3DS is running circles around the Wii!

And really this kind of comparison ALWAYS compare the handhelds on the console's terms so stuffs that are clearly pointless for a handheld system are overvalued while other elements that are the whole point of handhelds are ignored.

I really wonder what we could have expected from a n3DS title built around the New 3DS hardware. How much better would it have looked compared to the OG 3DS? I think the n3DS had a bigger improvement than a lot of people realized and it was just never taken advantage of by an exclusice designed ground up for the hardware.

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It's kinda like the Gameboy color in some ways, GBC is really way more powerfull than the original Gameboy but hardly any games truly makes that clear. If you look at the Zelda games for GBC for example, there's nothing there outside the color that make you think it would absolutely never run on an original Gameboy.



For example I'm pretty none of these games would run on an OGB even if you disregard the colors.
But that's like 5 games out of how many? And pokemon ain't one of them too so even back then people didn't really care all that much.

e: my bad, forgot the obligatory plug of Toki Tori

 

[Dekuman]

Dark moon was around middle, the port of the original came out the end of 2018

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oh right, I forgot about that port 😬

 

[Pangorogoro]

oh right, I forgot about that port 😬

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It wasn't a bad port, it was by Grezzo so it had a lot of attention to detail, it just didn't feel... necessary. Only major addition IIRC was gooigi

 

[Daddy JeanPi]

The Vita outclassed the 3DS significantly for the same price. Nintendo isn't really going for high end chipsets
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How does this answer the question or what does this have to do with anything?

 

[JustAnotherOne]

I honestly don't know if it was stronger than the PSP,I guess the N3DS probably was.

 

[hyouko]

The n3DS was a massive boost to CPU power (4 cores from 2, 800mhz instead of I think 200mhz). But I am not sure if anything but homebrew made much use of it. There was a bit there where n3DS emulators were in better shape than Vita due to the CPU, or so I have heard.

It's a bit sad to see what Capcom could get the system to do with even very early games (RE: Mercenaries and SF IV) that really never seemed to get matched later on.

 

[DongBeetle]

Slightly below all the 6th consoles but with fixed function shaders capable of more modern effects. The best 3DS exclusives like Kid Icarus look insanely polygon starved but are pushing some great lighting effects you wouldn't have seen in the 6th gen

 

[Hieroph]

It's kinda like the Gameboy color in some ways, GBC is really way more powerfull than the original Gameboy but hardly any games truly makes that clear. If you look at the Zelda games for GBC for example, there's nothing there outside the color that make you think it would absolutely never run on an original Gameboy.



For example I'm pretty none of these games would run on an OGB even if you disregard the colors.
But that's like 5 games out of how many? And pokemon ain't one of them too so even back then people didn't really care all that much.

e: my bad, forgot the obligatory plug of Toki Tori

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You're right, it's really surprising to see games like that on GBC. Wacky Races and Toki Tori in particular look like they could be GBA games.

 

[Nessus]

It's like a PS2 that can do shaders.

 

[julian]

It was capable of some Wii and Wii U ports, like Kirby's Epic Yarn, Donkey Kong Country Returns, Yoshi's Woolly World and Captain Toad. Granted, the Wii U ports were made when they knew they might want to port assets to the 3DS, but it's still impressive.

Like most Nintendo systems, it "punched above its weight".