Could the SS RAM cart have made the system more powerful 3D?

[Vant3c]

So this is a pretty easy question and very hypothetical at the same time but something that's been on my mind. We all know the wonders that the RAM cart did for 2D games like X-men vs Street fighter and so on but what could the RAM cart done for 3D games. To my knowledge there was no 3D games that supported the RAM cart.

Do you think that the RAM cart could have benefited 3D SS games the same way the N64 RAM expansion did or not?

Me I am on the side that if it was utilized the same way like the N64 was; I believe that the system could have not only better ports from the PS1 but better looking SS exclusive games developed for it. That would have looked not only better than the PS1 but even the N64. I remember a long time ago that Sega was looking to bring VF3 to the SS with a RAM cart/GPU accelerator. That would have been very interesting to see if it actually happened.

Well what do you all think and please have fun with the ideas of what could have been maybe.

[bryan_65]

I like this idea and it probably could have worked. At least I don't see why it couldn't have. Maybe Sega finally had enough with the add on stuff and they were scared to try it again in the US.

[RyaNtheSlayA]

It probably would help to some extent but no amount of ram would fix that crazy dual processor, quad pumpin architecture that no 3D developer liked.

[Vant3c]

It probably would help to some extent but no amount of ram would fix that crazy dual processor, quad pumpin architecture that no 3D developer liked.

That is a fair assessment. The SS had crazy design set up but titles produced for it looked amazing and even better than the PS1 in some respects. Titles like VF2, Last Bronx, Exhumed and other titles looked really good at the time. I would say that at least developed on the system exclusively with the RAM cart would have produced even better looking games.

What gets me when I think about this is why did Sega not utilize this feature for 3D based games. Titles that were ported from the arcade to the SS like HOTD, Last bronx and other titles could have looked exactly or more closely than with out it.

[Flake]

The Saturn was built to be a 2D graphics beast - and then specs on the PSX hit the market and Sega crammed in a 3d processor at the last possible moment during the design phase.

It's not a memory limitation that prevented the Saturn from matching the PSX 3d graphics - it's just not designed to render the graphics as effectively. Conversely, the PSX couldn't handle sprite heavy games the way the Saturn could. Sprite heavy games on PSX either had fewer sprites on screen or had to be rendered by slapping texture maps that matched the sprite's image on a 2d polygon.

[Vant3c]

The Saturn was built to be a 2D graphics beast - and then specs on the PSX hit the market and Sega crammed in a 3d processor at the last possible moment during the design phase.

It's not a memory limitation that prevented the Saturn from matching the PSX 3d graphics - it's just not designed to render the graphics as effectively. Conversely, the PSX couldn't handle sprite heavy games the way the Saturn could. Sprite heavy games on PSX either had fewer sprites on screen or had to be rendered by slapping texture maps that matched the sprite's image on a 2d polygon.

I remember reading all that you have said and it shows how Sega got the market trend wrong at the time and rushed to have 3D in the system. With that being said do you think it would have helped? Do you think that the games I mentioned would have seen a benefit from a graphical or performance increase or not?

[Flake]

I don't think so. The Saturn (or any game console) is just a computer like any other. Additional RAM is always better than not enough RAM but you still can only make the processor do so much. It it very possible to have more memory than the processor could actually utilize.

Instead of utilizing the RAM cart slot for additional 3d performance, a superior graphics processor would have been a bonus on top of the architecture to support it.

[Vant3c]

Well that kind of goes with when I said Sega was wanting to port VF3 to the SS with a specialized RAM cart almost like a GPU accelerator. Its almost like how the SNES games had special boards like Star Fox and so on to add enhanced capabilities the system that could not be performed other wise.

That's why (based on pure speculation) that in some way could have helped the the 3D performance of the system. I say this because the N64 RAM cart allowed for better 3D texture objects, HI-Rez output (640x480i) on some games, greater draw distance and so on.

I guess this is why I think it would have made a difference considering how the RAM pack helped the N64 with the games that supported it at the time.

[Anapan]

Interesting topic. I always assumed it was just to get more sprite frames available faster than the system is capable of reading them off a CD. Then it feeds the medium sized uncompressed graphics to the 2D processor.
I don't know enough about the system to say anything definitively, but from what I've seen I think the system would need an expansion card that actually had a (very expensive at the time) better 3D processor, one that could do transparencies and handle more polygons at a faster FPS. The RAM cart has no logic processors so I think it would not even be able to alleviate the problem...
Does the expansion port have the bus bandwidth to push full graphic frames through to the rest of the processors? If it did, and had a lot of ram, it might be able to feed some pre-rendered untextured compressed polygon data to the 2D processor (Polygon streaming? - kinda like the old amiga and atari demos did) and give the 3D processor a break on some background animation, tho that would get either very complex to do or very repetitious.

[Cronozilla]

I think the thing that would have helped the Saturn the most would have been continued cycle life in North America.

RAM cart is more memory, so hypothetically it could have helped with textures or maybe even model detail. But, there's still a throughput on the render pipeline for polygons, and there's likely a threshold there for texture mapping as well.