Report: iPhone 3GS Graphics Boost Recalls Early Days of PC Gaming

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Apple's recently announced iPhone 3GS will sport a new video camera and a digital compass, but it's the increased processing horsepower that is stirring up the mobile gaming space.

According to AnandTech, the iPhone 3GS' graphics chip can produce 7 million triangles and render 250 million pixels per second running in its lowest configuration, representing "7x the geometry throughput of the iPhone 3G and 2.5x the fill rate."

"Even if the SGX ran at half that speed, we'd still be at 3.5x the geometry performance of the iPhone 3G and a 25% increase in fill rate," wrote AnandTech's Anand Lal Shimpi.

Concludes Shimpi: "The iPhone 3GS may be a mild upgrade from a consumer perspective, but what it's going to enable is far from it; watch out Nintendo. Remember the performance gains we saw in the early days of 3D graphics on the PC? We're about to go through all of that once more in the mobile space."

While no applications that require an iPhone 3GS have been announced, one iPhone developer already has plans to design 3GS-optimized games with enhanced graphics.

"We're scaling the imagery based on the performance of the device, so if you've got a 3GS, the game's going to look better and run at a great framerate," said ngmoco's Neil Young to MTV. "And if you're on an iPhone 3G, the game will look a little bit different, but the framerate will be the same"

When asked whether ngcomo would consider developing games exclusively for the 3GS, Young replied: "I don’t think so. I think we'll continue to build games for the 3 classes of devices that are out there: The classic iPhone and the iPhone 3G in one category (from a performance standpoint), the iPod Touch in another category, and the 3GS in another category."

The iPhone 3GS launches on June 19 in the US.

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From The Chatty
  • reply
    June 10, 2009 11:56 AM


    really though, it's a freaking phone. who's gonna sit there and obsses over graphics on such a tiny screen?

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      June 10, 2009 11:58 AM

      Actually its a handheld gaming device!

    • reply
      June 10, 2009 12:33 PM

      [deleted]

    • reply
      June 10, 2009 12:58 PM

      John Carmack is releasing Doom and plans to release a "larger" game, citing the success of Myst.

    • reply
      June 10, 2009 1:03 PM

      [deleted]

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      June 10, 2009 3:20 PM

      yeah I mean Sony didn´t obsses about it with the PSP

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      June 10, 2009 9:10 PM

      No it's a compass. You know one of the easiest devices ever made but now you can carry one around that relies on a battery.

      • reply
        June 11, 2009 7:25 AM

        More like a swiss army knife without a knife but thousands of other useful tools and games are available as you want them.

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