GCN Competition

The following is a chart showing the differences between all of the video game consoles within the past 8 years. There is still some information that needs to be added, but the beef of the info is there. As you can see, the GameCube is nearly twice as good as the PS2 in a lot of departments. Though the Xbox clearly has twice the technical prowess of both the GCN and the PS2, it should be noted that its games are more blocky and that the system is often defective and requires maintenance.

GameCube PlayStation 2 Xbox Dreamcast Nintendo 64 PlayStation
Polygon Power 6-12 million per second 66 million per second 150 million per second 3 million per second 150,000 per second 360,000 per second
Graphics Processor 202.5 MHz "Flipper" 147.456 MHz 250 MHz (nVidia) N/A N/A N/A
Main Clock Speed 485 MHz 300 MHz 733 MHz 200 MHz 93.75 MHz 33.86 MHz
Memory 24MB of 1T-SRAM 32MB Direct Rambus RAM 64 MB of RAM 16 MB 4MB Rambus D-RAM 2MB
Memory Bus Bandwidth 3.2 GB/s 3.2 GB/s 6.4 GB/s 800 MB/s 500 MB/s 132 MB/s
Simultaneous Textures 8 1 4 N/A N/A N/A
Pixel Fill Rate - No Texture N/A 2.4 GB/s 4.0 GB/s N/A N/A N/A
Compressed Textures Yes (6:1) No Yes (6:1) N/A N/A N/A
Audio Channels 64 48 256 N/A N/A N/A
Broadband Enabled Optional Future Upgrade Yes Optional No No
DVD Movie Playback No Yes Remote ctrl. req. No No No
HDTV Game Support Yes No Yes N/A N/A N/A
Maximum Resolution N/A 1280 X 1024 1920 X 1080 N/A 256 X 224 N/A
Software Format Prop. GCN (Optical Disc) Prop. DVD Prop. DVD Prop. CD Cartridge CD
1.5 GB capacity 4.7 GB capacity 4.7 GB capacity 1 GB capacity 64 MB capacity 650 MB capacity
Launch Price $199.95 $299.99 $299.99 $199.99 $199.99 $299.99
Launch Date 11/18/2001 10/21/2000 11/8/2001 9/9/1999 9/26/1996 N/A