Post subject: Someone please explain "bits" to me.
Joined: 5/31/2004
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Me and my friend were talking about what exactly it means to be an 8-bit system and ect. We both had little understanding. Can anyone here clear up what a bit is? How many bits are the consoles today (xbox, gc, ps2) or do they not use bits anymore?
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The "bit-rating" is how much information the processor can handle at once. This is how it breaks down, size and speed-wise. The 'bit-rating' is the size of your mouth. The clockspeed is how fast you chew. Cache is food on your plate. RAM is food in the fridge. ..and the disk is food at the market. (for cartridges, this is the corner store - small but close by - and for CDs or DVDs, this is the mega-mart downtown - great selection and great prices, but it takes a while to get there and get what you want). Modern consoles, as far as I know, are 128-bit, as are high-end computers. But after 32 or so, the bit rating ceased to matter. We're at the point in game technology that we can do anything with what we have and no-one will notice improvements unles we improve something else - the TV, the cables connecting the console to TV, or some other input/output aside from TV and speakers with a controller.
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Thats quite a strange analogy(yet a good one) Thats basically it though.
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That very informative, thank you. Are bits in anyway related to bytes? Do 1000 bits equal a mega-bit?
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1 byte = 8 bits 1 kilobyte = 1024 bytes 1 megabyte = 1024 kilobytes 1 gigabyte = 1024 megabytes (execpt for harddrives where sometimes 1 gigabyte=1000 megabytes)
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high-end computers are 128 bit? regular pcs are still 32 aren't they? i heard there's a big fuss about releasing a 64bit Operational System for new pc processors.
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current pc's have 32bit cpu's, with 16bit support (the unavoidable backwards compatibility). the intell titanium is one of the first (available to the public) 64bit cpu's for the pc, and there is a windows version that's made especially for this cpu, to take advantage of the 64bit capabilities. consoles started out with 8bit (nes, sega), then came the 16bit (snes, megadrive), 32bit was kinda skipped (well not really, nintendo had a VR thing, which kinda failed to sell, and i believe there was a 32bit sega, but if so i dont know the name), and next came the 64bit consoles (N64, sega...dreamcast?). at this point we're at 128bit consoles (cube, xbox, ps2). correct me if i'm wrong :)
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32bit sega=saturn dreamcast is/was 128 the next gens are 256 i think.
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Let's not forget the Megadrive add-on-type-thing, '32X'. Named that for a reason. ^.~ Also, 32 bit was definitely not skipped.. Playstations were 32 bit, I recall.
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xbox is hardly a 128-bit console because it uses a Pentium-III as its processor, which is a 32-bit processor. The same is probably true for many of the other consoles (even though some of them may use 64-bit processors). Don't confuse the memory bus width with the internal register width of the processor. The memory bus can be 128 bits wide even though the processor is a 32-bit processor (meaning that its registers are 32 bits big). As for the original question, the bit "size" of a processor usually refers to the size (in bits) of its internal registers. Internal registers are used for integer arithmetics (additions, substractions, etc) and thus the bit "size" describes the maximum limits of integer operations of the processor. For example, the intel 80286 was a 16-bit processor: Its registers were 16 bits wide and it could perform only 16-bit integer arithmetic (with a single machine opcode, that is; naturally you can perform arithmetic with larger numbers by making operations on several registers with several machine opcodes). That is, you can for example calculate 200+200 (=400) in one single machine instruction in a 80286, but not 40000+40000 (=80000) (you would need to use two registers and two machine opcodes to calculate the correct result of that addition). The 80386 is a 32-bit processor (which can be run in 16-bit mode for compatibility). When in 32-bit mode its registers are 32 bits wide and you can perform 32-bit arithmetic (for instance you can calculate 40000+40000 in one single opcode). (Actually you can use the 32-bit registers in 16-bit mode as well, but with a speed penalty.) "8-bit" computers had, thus, 8 bits wide registers and you could only perform integer arithmetic with that limit (ie. values from -128 to 128, or from 0 to 255). However, I think the definition is fuzzier with these computers than with current computers. For instance, the Spectrum is considered a 8-bit computer even though it had 16-bit registers and you can perform 16-bit arithmetic with them.
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some videogames i know of: - 8-bits: atari? (i don't think there was a 4 bits generation) nes gamegear master system gameboy (and color) pc engine (turbo grafix 16) -16 bits: super nes mega drive (genesis) neo geo (it had 2 16 bits processors i guess) neo geo pocket - 32 bits: playstation sega saturn 3do game boy advance - 64 bits: n64 jaguar ?(or was it 32?) - 128 bits: dreamcast playstation 2 gamecube i wonder where x-box fits, i never thought about it...
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I think the best way to determine the bittage for consoles is to actually pull up their technical specifications, yes? Unfortunately, I can't tell what people are using to determine the bittages. This page here: http://www.cyberiapc.com/vgg/nintendo_gamecube.htm refers to the processor as being a 128 bit processor while Nintendo's official specs page: http://www.nintendo.com/techspecgcn Doesn't say anything specifically about bittage. In fact, the only reference to 128 is the average access time. The PS2 does seem to be confirmably 128 bit: http://entertainment.howstuffworks.com/video-game5.htm Hmmm...
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official pages might be incorrect, i.e.: the neo geo was said to be 32 bits, when it was in fact 2x16 bits processors... i think there was a videogame claiming to be 64 bits but that was just it's sound processor or another processor wich was not the main unit. can't remember wich one was.
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That'd be the Jaguar. All of its advertising claimed things like '64 BIT POWER', when it clearly wasn't.
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Wow so... Riddle me this: If a console came out that claimed to be a 256bit console, what would I expect to be better in that console then a 128bit console?
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a lot of units on the screen and movie quality gameplay. many details on the graphics.
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12Motion wrote:
Wow so... Riddle me this: If a console came out that claimed to be a 256bit console, what would I expect to be better in that console then a 128bit console?
Absolutely nothing. Bit rating ceased to matter after about 32. The performance bottleneck is elsewhere.
someone is out there who will like you. take off your mask so they can find you faster. I support the new Nekketsu Kouha Kunio-kun.
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Ok thanks alot, that clears it up.
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well, a console with more bits needs less cpu speed to match a 32 bit processor with high cpu speed. so if it has 256 bits and a decent cpu speed it will be hard to match it's speed in processing... just guessing actually lol
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A lot of the claims made in this thread about CPU architecture are faulty at best, and completely wrong at worst. But this isn't a CPU class, so I won't get into memory addressing and other things where the "bit" value actually has significant meaning. A CPU could be 256-bit, but still only run at 1mhz.. the result? a very slow 256-bit CPU. Likewise, a CPU could be 8-bit but run at 3ghz. the result? a very fast 8-bit CPU. The "bit rating" of the CPU does not determine how fast the CPU will process data. It does, however, determine how much data it can "see", and how much data it can manipulate per cycle. TYPICALLY as people developed more modern CPUs, they also made them more capable of handling larger amounts of data as well as being able to handle them faster. for our purposes here, we usually talk about bits in terms of color depth; 4-bits is a selection of 16 possible colors. 8-bits is 256 colors, 16-bit is 65k colors.. 24-bit and 32-bit are millions of colors, and if you go much above 32-bit you would have more color depth than the human eye can differentiate. However, even though the NES is an 8-bit system, the CPU architecture determines how many colors the CPU can use when selecting an on-screen palette. The NES CPU architecture allows for only 4 colors per sprite, and only 16 simultaneous colors per screen.. But it can select 16 colors from a palette of 256, however. For the SNES, it could have 256 colors on screen simultaneously, and each sprite could have 16 colors, selectable from 64k different combinations. That's usually the most visible aspect of the "bits" a CPU has. "Under the hood", so to speak, it affects how much data the CPU can see (whether it could see 256kb of ram, or 1024kb of ram, or 8mb or 64mb or whatever).... that limitation determines the complexity of the graphics (you can't have photorealistic models stored in 256kb of memory!), the quality of the sound (which would be based on the SPU, not the CPU), the size of the game, etc. Carts were nice, because if you needed additional performance in a game, you could just add a chip to handle specific functions, like voices, 3d positioning/rendering, or other tasks. You can't just 'add a chip' for a cd-rom, though.. I guess it would be possible to make a FPGA CPU and 'configure' it every time you put in a game.. but it would never be as efficient as a real CPU (RISC or otherwise). Anyway... it's not what the original poster was actually asking about... but if he/she wants to know what bits REALLY do, with regards to the CPU, he/she needs to go to a university where they teach Computer Engineering, and take a course or two in CPU design. PS: I'm not a computer engineering student. Someone who knows assembly (blip_) could do a much better job of explaining than I.
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FODA wrote:
well, a console with more bits needs less cpu speed to match a 32 bit processor with high cpu speed.
And this is based on what? How being able to handle bigger integers makes the processor faster?
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Warp wrote:
How being able to handle bigger integers makes the processor faster?
If he really believes that, I've got a few new computer parts to sell him...
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because logic says if u have bigger mouth u can eat faster... :P i don't know how cpus work, i said i'm just guessing geez..
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FODA wrote:
some videogames i know of: - 8-bits: gameboy (and color)
the first gameboy was 4-bit :)
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3 year bump? These are getting ridiculous.
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