For technical details on the Sega Saturn, see Sega Saturn/Technical specifications.



This article presents a hardware comparison between the Sega Saturn and other rival systems in its time. It compares the technical specifications and hardware advantages/disadvantages between the systems.

Vs. PlayStation

In certain aspects, the Sega Saturn generally has more raw power than the rival PlayStation,[1][2][3][4] but its complex hardware was more difficult to get to grips with.[2][3][5][3][6] The Saturn has more computational power and faster pixel drawing; the PS1 can only draw pixels through its polygon engine, whereas the Saturn can draw pixels directly with its processors, giving it more programming flexibility.[7]

When both SH-2 and the SCU DSP are used in parallel, the Saturn is capable of computing fixed-point operations faster than the PS1's GTE. The GTE is faster at calculating 3D geometry than each SH-2 and SCU DSP individually, but when these processors are used as a parallel geometry engine, the Saturn can calculate 3D geometry faster than the PS1.[3][6] In addition, the VDP2 has its own internal geometry processing unit for its 3D planes, allowing both SH-2 and the SCU DSP to calculate geometry for the VDP1 polygons.

In terms of polygon rendering fillrate, the PS1's GPU and the Saturn's VDP1 have similar performance. The GPU has a performance advantage for large polygons and flat shading, while the VDP1 has a performance advantage for small polygons and Gouraud shading. The GPU uses multiplicative Gouraud shading,[8] which halves its fillrate,[9] whereas the VDP1 uses additive Gouraud shading,[8] which has less of an impact on fillrate.[10] The advantage of multiplicative shading is more intense white light, whereas the advantage of additive shading is more intense colored lighting.

The Saturn's VDP2 has a higher rendering fillrate than the PS1's GPU. If the VDP2 is used for drawing textured 3D infinite planes, this significantly reduces the fillrate requirements of the VDP1, maximizing its fillrate for other 3D assets. In comparison, the PS1's GPU needs to use much of its fillrate to render textured planes, with very limited draw distance compared to the VDP2, limiting the PS1's fillrate for other 3D assets.[11] When the VDP1 and VDP2 are used in parallel, the Saturn is capable of a significantly higher fillrate than the PS1. However, the VDP2's significant fillrate advantage is only evident for large environments with mostly flat surfaces (though it is possible to have curves and bumps on the VDP2 planes), whereas traditional polygons would be more of an advantage for environments that are smaller or with uneven surfaces.

The VDP1's quad polygons are rendered with forward texture mapping (a form of perspective correction), bilinear approximation (reduces texture warping), and medium polygon accuracy (resulting in seamless polygons), while the VDP2's textured infinite planes are rendered with true perspective correction, whereas the PS1's triangle polygons are rendered with affine texture mapping (which lacks perspective correction, resulting in perspective distortion), linear approximation (resulting in texture warping and polygon jitter), and low polygon accuracy (resulting in seams between polygons).[8][12] In terms of transparency, the PS1's GPU is more effective than the VDP1, whereas the VDP2 is more effective than the PS1's GPU. In terms of visual effects, the VDP2 is more effective at visual effects such as misting and reflective water effects.[2]

The PS1's straightforward hardware architecture, triangle polygons, and more effective development tools and C language support, made it easier for developers to program 3D graphics. While the Saturn is just as powerful in terms of 3D graphics, the Saturn's architecture was complex and difficult to program 3D games for.

When it comes to 2D graphics, on the other hand, the Saturn's combination of a VDP1 sprite framebuffer and VDP2 parallax scrolling backgrounds makes it both more powerful and straightforward to program 2D graphics. In comparison, the PS1 draws all 2D graphics to a single framebuffer, making it less effective for 2D graphics.

In terms of audio, the Saturn has a more capable sound chip than the PS1. The Saturn sound chip, Yamaha's Saturn Custom Sound Processor (SCSP), is capable of 32 channels, more than the PS1's Sony SPC sound chip which is capable of 24 channels. The Saturn sound chip also supports both PCM sampling and FM synthesis, whereas the PS1 sound chip only supports PCM sampling.

Original PlayStation

The Saturn's VDP1 had smoother and more intense Gouraud shading than the PS1's GPU.[2] The VDP1's additive Gouraud shading displayed significantly more shades, resulting in smoother shading, and had more intense colored lighting,[8] whereas the GPU's multiplicative Gouraud shading displayed much fewer shades, resulting in color banding, but had more intense white light. This often resulted in PS1 games having brighter Gouraud lighting with fewer shades and Saturn games having more dim Gouraud lighting with smoother shading.

In terms of memory, the Saturn has more RAM and VRAM than the PS1. The Saturn's VRAM (SDRAM) is also generally faster, with a higher overall bandwidth and lower latency, than the PS1's VRAM. On the other hand, the PS1's GPU has a small, on-chip texture cache. However, the Saturn's VRAM is equivalent to the PS1's texture cache, as the Saturn's VRAM has low latency, with an access time comaprable to the PS1's texture cache. In comparison, the PS1's VRAM has a latency almost twice as high as, with almost half the access speed of, the Saturn's VRAM. The Saturn's VDP1 and VDP2 are capable of single-cycle VRAM access,[13][14] whereas the PS1's GPU requires multiple cycles for each VRAM access,[15][16] making the texture cache necessary to help reduce the effect of the PS1's VRAM latency. Due to the Saturn VRAM's low latency, it functions like a very large texture cache. In addition, the VDP2 is capable of tiled texture compression, further increasing the amount of texture data the VDP2's VRAM can hold, though this only applies to the VDP2.

Revised PlayStation

The comparison above is for the original PS1 hardware, used in the SCPH-1000 to SCPH-3500 models, released from 1994 to 1995. A new PS1 hardware was introduced with the SCPH-5000 model, released for Japan in late 1995. This new hardware was eventually introduced to North America in late 1996 and then the rest of the world in 1997. This was the basis for the hardware used in subsequent PlayStation models.

The new PS1 hardware replaced the VRAM with a new SGRAM chip from NEC,[17][18] which was capable of lower latency, allowing faster memory access. The SGRAM's lower latency was only used for faster transparency blending and improved Gouraud shading. The original PS1 hardware's 5-bit Gouraud shading led to color banding, which was eliminated by the new PS1 hardware, which improved it to 8-bit Gouraud shading. This still results in fewer shades than the Saturn's VDP1, which produces 15-bit Gouraud shading. However, the PS1's multiplicative Gouraud shading could produce more intense white light, whereas the Saturn's additive Gouraud shading could produce more varied colored lighting. The PS1's GPU is also capable of full-screen dithering, which could give the illusion of smoother shading on the newer PS1 hardware.

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Vs. PC

The Saturn's VDP1 was the basis for NVIDIA's first graphics processor, the NV1, which was one of the first 3D graphics accelerators on PC, released in 1995. Like the Saturn, it uses quad polygons and supports forward texture mapping with limited perspective correction, and several Saturn ports are available for it. However, the NV1 has a lower fillrate and rendering performance

The most powerful PC graphics card of 1995 was Yamaha's Tasmania 3D, which was based on triangle polygons. It had a higher fillrate and rendering throughput than the NV1, but less than the Saturn and PlayStation.

Graphics comparison table

See Sega Saturn technical specifications for more technical details on Saturn hardware

Notes

References



