How Video Game Specs Work: Difference between revisions

Take the old bit size (8-bit, 16-bit, 32-bit, 64-bit, etc.). Most of us know that bit size isn't a real measurement of a system's power, but few of us even know why. It's actually ''word'' size; the measurement of how large a chunk of information can be handled by the processor at once.<ref>It can also refer to the width of the CPU's "data bus", the wires that transfer data between the CPU and main memory. A 64-bit data bus, for example, means that there are 64 data wires running from the CPU to the main memory board, each of which can carry one bit at a time, so the CPU can "read" or "write" that much data in a single system-clock tick.</ref> In theory, larger word size should mean faster processing, but it's not that simple--especially since computer manufacturers have figured out that people are using "word size" as a quick-and-dirty proxy for "fastness", and started playing arcane tricks designed to boost word size at the possible expense of actual improvements in the rest of the architecture (this marketing scheme began very early on, in fact; the [[Neo Geo]] was advertised as a "24-bit" system, and the [[Nintendo 64]], while indeed capable of 64-bit calculations, ran with a 32-bit capacity most of the time for a lot of good reasons). Some people have gone so far as to call the [[Sega Dreamcast|Dreamcast]], [[Play Station 2|PlayStation 2]], and [[Game Cube]] generation "128-bit" thanks to this misinformation to this very day (out of these, only the [[Play StationPlayStation 2]] was capable of 128-bit ''anything'' natively, and even then, it's not for general-purpose processing).

** [[FlynnsFlynn's Taxonomy]]

*** [[Blu -Ray]]

** [[DOS BoxDOSBox]]

* [[Bitmaps, Sprites and Textures]]

** [[MP 3MP3]]