SEGA Mega Drive for me too.

With the PC Engine in second place and then way behind those two would be the likes of the AES and SNES contending for third place.

Regarding the marketing (false maths) of consoles in USA, recal reading in C+VG, Sega were promoting the Saturn as having a 64-Bit graphics Chip, by adding the 2X 32-Bit RISC chips.Not sure how true this was though.

C+VG's news sections, bit hit 'n' miss.

Regarding the marketing (false maths) of consoles in USA, recal reading in C+VG, Sega were promoting the Saturn as having a 64-Bit graphics Chip, by adding the 2X 32-Bit RISC chips.Not sure how true this was though.

C+VG's news sections, bit hit 'n' miss.

I don't remember Sega doing that and I used to buy the American mags, they did try to say the Dreamcast was 128-bit though.

Yeah what was 'The Crack' with the DC 'Bittage' even 1 DC mag (think it was DC UK) questioned just how 128 Bit it really was, instead saying it was a dual 64 Bit machine.

When I was at Video Game Carnival last weekend I got into the usual is the Jaguar 64-bit question with somebody and totally owned him with this:

The Jaguar has a 64-bit data bus yet you say it isn't 64-bit, while the SNES has an 8-bit data bus and you wouldn't even question calling it 16-bit.

Bits don't really mean that much when it comes the CPU, its all about the custom chips and how they help.

Yes it's getting stupid as hardware companies used different slang and hardware methods to call their machines higher 'bits'....CPU, GPU, data bus etc etc

Btw regarding the Dreamcast, the floating point bus is indeed 128-bit on the sh-4 chip, so joining the above method it could indeed be called a 128-bit machine, though most companies stopped after the N64, and as the Laird will probably agree these auguments will always go on and on so best agree to disagree on this subject!

Though you could push the boat out by the saying the ST, Amiga and Megadrive were 32-bit as the m68k CPU is indeed 32-bit but with 16-bit data bus, but it's all psychological, the public wouldn't know any better!

Indeed. What is undeniable though is that the Amstrad CPC and the NES were both two bit 8-bit systems. Hang on, does that make them 10-bit then?!

More like 2 bob 

Seemed to me that by DC era, it was no longer just about how many bits you had under the hood, but how many polys per sec, it could render (on paper at least).Sega claimed 3 Million, so of course Sony had to utterly destroy that with 75 Million, nether really relating to in game performance.

Nintendo said initally more than our friends at Sony and then gave closer to real term figure (though number escapes me), leaving MS to go back to on paper stuff with Xbox.

By this current gen,it was all unified this, giga and tera flops that, i dread to think what next gen claims will be based on.

Sega's masterstroke with the Dreamcast's hardware was in supplying it with a ton of video RAM (a late decision, it was originally going to have half of what it did) which meant games often looked better than on PS2 (Sony's devil child only had half of DC's video RAM) where the textures were, especially in earlier games, commonly bland, washed out and brown, brown, brown... with jaggies too!

From memory Ninty gave a figure of approximately 12m polygons per second for GameCube where all shading, texturing, etc, were applied. In real terms performance the GameCube crapped all over PS2 from a great height, as best I recall it. I clearly remember the first time I payed Star Wars Rogue Squadron II: Rogue Leader on my GameCube that I purchased on launch day and heartily laughing to myself at the thought of PS2 even trying to cope with outputting the Death Star trench level at anything remotely comparable to the same high standard. Just a shame Ninty made the decision to hamper their system with such a relatively low capacity storage medium.

Xbox was considerably more powerful still but, iirc, was hampered by the Celeron-class CPU thanks to Microsoft wanting to keep the price down. The limitations of said CPU were shown in a (PAL) launch game too by way of the inconsistent frame rate issues present in Panzer Dragoon Orta.

Sony's BS hyping of PS2 was what first turned me against them and they of course got even worse in the lead up and launch of PS3. Aaaayyway, enough Sony hate from me for now!

The Xbox CPU was indeed celeron based with less cache though its still faster than the CPU in the Wii, emulators on both are testament to this, still surprised at what devs are pulling out of the Xbox!

Well, it was only ever a PC masquerading as a console after all! I'm no coder but surely it can't be that challenging for those with the necessary know-how to optimise current emulators available for Linux-based platforms to work on Xbox.

LOL'd at the Wii comment, btw!

Yeah true, but I'd rather an Xbox that masquerades as a PC than a PS3 that performs and installs like one 

Looks like the Mega Drive has destroyed the opposition with its blast processing! 

Sega Rocks!