Why did the console bit wars end? During the 32 bit era, PS1 and Saturn were 32 bit systems, and Nintendo was boasting about having a 64 bit system. The last time console makers boasted about bits in their system was the sixth generation, with the Dreamcast, GameCube, and PS2 being 128 bits.

Question

Why didn’t the bit war continue into the seventh generation? Why didn’t the amount of bits double to 256 bits like they did in past generations? Any insight into this would be appreciated.

In: 609

Answer 1

Each bit doubles the quantity of possible numbers you can process. 1 bit is two numbers, 0 or 1, 2 bits is four, 3 is 8, etc. An 8 bit machine can only do math on numbers up to 255 in any given clock cycle, so any math that requires larger numbers requires shifting the data around and additional cycles. That takes time and introduces lag.

64 bits is 18.5e18, which is astronomically large. But that allows single clock cycle math on almost every possible number a game system could use in its processors. Doubling THAT to 128 is pointless.

I will point out that sometimes optimizing HOW the registers are used is more efficient than the raw number of registers. Look at the very first game produced on the PS3 and compare it to the very last game released 10+ years later. The last game could run on the first gen hardware, meaning the new games were optimizing the processing capabilities of the same old hardware and getting more performance out of them.