How Terrible is the OUYA performance.

[Nathaniel Bennett]

Today I was educated on a benchmark/statistic called GFLOPS.

GFLOPS stands for "Gigaflops per second" and is a general performance indicator for processor performance and efficiency.

This was great as I could then compare the OUYA with other hardware.

The OUYA runs on a Quad core 1.7GHz T33 SoC - It's the top end tegra chip, nvidia fabricates.
Data gets fed to the processor from ~1.6GHz of DDR3, which is pretty average speed for modern desktop systems, however the minimum configuration is usually 4GB, not 1GB.
But this is where the specs drop - the GPU is integrated into the SoC die (Thus it being called an SoC - not a CPU - SoC stands for "System on a chip" and contains the CPU, GPU, and chipsets for the computer. This allows us to create physically tiny machines.)
The GPU has 12 "cores" each running at 520MHz. This may sound like quite alot - for a phone - but this is a game console, not a phone.
The Tegra ULP GPU has a GFLOPS rating of 12 GFLOPS.

Now the caparison.

The Xbox 360 is a fairly old piece of tech now - compared low spec desktop " game consoles" - well it doesn't compare - not in GFLOPS anyway.
The Xbox 360 Xenos GPU has a GFLOPS rating of ~250 GFLOPS - the GPU die itself contains 48 "cores" which run at 500MHz.

This means the OUYA has a graphical floating point computation potential of 1/20 of the Xbox 360's power.

On the bright side, the Wii's "Hollywood" GPU has the same performance rating of 12 GFLOPS, however the Wii was designed for a maximum resolution output of 480p - not like the OUYA, over double running at 1080p. The Xbox 360 and PS3 rarely runs at 1080p - yet the ouya always does?

A £20 AMD 5450 has a GFLOP rating of over 100 GFLOPS.
And a Medicore £80 AMD 7770 GHz edition has a rating of 1280 GFLOPS - 5x the computation power of the Xbox 360's GPU.

Looking into the power of the Next Generation consoles - the PS4 has a graphical GFLOPS rating of ~1,800 GFLOPS (1.8 TFLOPS).



I would love to do some benchmarks tests on the OUYA, but the more I look, the more I cringe.
Take this info with a pinch of salt - it's the internet - father Christmas still exists, and the sky is green on the internet - doesn't mean it is! (I have no clue, as I haven't seen daylight for the past 4 years )

If these stats are true, then, yes Tegra 3 is fantastic for Mobile phones and tables and tablets, but absolutely useless for desktop game consoles - and games consoles is the type of thing you sit down for - it's an occasion - you prep a bowl of chips, and a jug of pepsi, and you sit and play till your into tomorrow! Then people complain "thats not what the OUYA is about!" then what is the ouya about?


So here's a question to any of you developers out there. How bad is the OUYA performance? is Shadow Gun the "End" - will it get better?

Thanks for your time.

Nathan.


PS. OUYA Team - have a look at this: http://www.amd.com/us/products/embed.../embedded.aspx - similar technology to what the PS4 and XBONE runs on - well it's an AMD APU/ SoC anyways

[Jakenut86]

um... the point of the OUYA is for indie games and fun. Not the graphics are everything games of today that are no fun so I'd say the OUYA performs perfectly

[Hydrus]

The Xbox 360 and PS3 rarely runs at 1080p - yet the ouya always does?

This is where I'm guessing my over-scan issues are coming from. My HDTV's max. resolution is 720p, making some games cut out over the edges, sometimes a lot. ePSXe for example, is unplayable side-loaded. I can't play anything at all since the options to re-map the controller and such are on the side.

Just an assumption, but this is probably why I experience lag in some games like in Sonic 4 Ep.2 while other people don't. I don't like this, they should keep 720p the max. resolution for games.

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Edit:

Take this info with a pinch of salt - it's the internet - father Christmas still exists, and the sky is green on the internet - doesn't mean it is! (I have no clue, as I haven't seen daylight for the past 4 years )

Wut?

[madmax2069]

performance is solely up to how well one can code and optimise, yes you will eventually hit a brick wall, but even with these specs you can pump out quite good looking games that run smooth. this is however based on moble hardware no mater how you try to look at it, its moble hardware thats in console form.

the tegra 3 T33 isnt the top of the line since the release of the tegra 4 chip (which blows away the tegra 3 like its not even there).

[InvaderGames]

You can't compare a Tegra 3 with the chips inside a console like the Xbox or PS, that is simply stupid.

OUYA is a phone in a box, nothing more.. and with an underpowered chip for 1080p btw.

Its value is not the speed of the chip, but its usefulness; having Android on my TV saved me from watching movies tons of times, streaming content, and playing with my friends while they were at my house.. soo.. ignore the (damn) tegra 3..

[T2KFreeker]

Is Shadowgun the end? Have you seen Neon Shadow? In it's own right, I think it outperforms Shadowgun. In the end though, deciding if you like a console because of this kind of test is useless. Why? People will either like the games on it or they won't. That's the basics anyway. The Ouya has been a cool little system, and funny you should bring up the Wii, because I have that as well as nthe PS3 and 360. Wii and Ouya get more play then any of the other two consoles, brother.

[Chris Garcia]

Tegra 4/5 and Snapdragon 800 are closer to proving "desktop" quality apps. OUYA is an Android based console.. so at this point it wouldn't matter if it had an Intel i7, the development for Android in general would be for the greatest number of devices with phones and tablets.. (while some will focus on just OUYA, GameStick etc)... The next generation of Android microconsoles will likely have much better processing power.. but as others stated.. thats not what its about.. and the reason its $99..

[Jake53]

Doesn't sound like Ouya is for you, which isn't an insult or anything... It's just not for everybody. It's an indie game console that doubles as a media box and triples as an emulator box.

You're are not going to find CoD or BF quality titles anytime soon.

[RiotingSpectre]

The Xbox 360 and PS3 rarely runs at 1080p - yet the ouya always does?

I believe that OUYA runs at a native 720p and runs at 1080p once other factors are in place such as televisions, the settings(both console & television), and the games themselves.

How bad is the OUYA performance? is Shadow Gun the "End" - will it get better?

I'm no developer, but OUYA's performance has yet to be completely utilized as said above. Also said above was the mention of Neon Shadow which is interactive art to say the least. What matters most in the video game industry is how fun the game is and not how good it looks. Having your game look good is just a bonus and what makes the game is having it play like a game as its first priority.

This is where I'm guessing my over-scan issues are coming from. My HDTV's max. resolution is 720p, making some games cut out over the edges, sometimes a lot. ePSXe for example, is unplayable side-loaded. I can't play anything at all since the options to re-map the controller and such are on the side.

Just an assumption, but this is probably why I experience lag in some games like in Sonic 4 Ep.2 while other people don't. I don't like this, they should keep 720p the max. resolution for games

Did you check this out?

[seiseki]

Well, looking at it from a developers perspective..
How much do we have to remove from and limit our games to get them to run on the OUYA?

It's not necessarily about awesome graphics, but stuff like how many enemies and effects can you have on screen.
I can live with having to limit the graphics, but being forced to limit the gameplay kinda sucks.
Sure you can optimize the hell out of a game engine, but this is a small indie console, who has the time and money for that? (I guess mobile devs?)

Compared to, if you make 2D games for the PC then you never really have to worry about performance.

I'm no developer, but OUYA's performance has yet to be completely utilized as said above.

Well, when looking at other consoles, companies spend tons of money to optimize their games because graphics sells and the larger consoles are around for a long time.
But I don't think anyone has the time or money to really make a game that takes the ouya to it's limit.
Especially since that's not really what the console is about.

The games that really push it are ports that first appeared as mobile games and it makes sense, since the hardware is so similar.
But even those games probably don't push it to the max, since new phones comes out all the time and next year their game will run much better. So it doesn't make sense to put too much effort into optimization.