Touch Arcade unveiled details of the iPhone’s hardware capabilities but the graphic chipset specs draw my attention,

[...] Imagination Technologies’ PowerVR MBX Lite 3D accelerator, likely running at the iPhone’s bus speed of 103MHz. This fourth-generation PowerVR chipset is basically an evolution of the second-generation graphics hardware used in the Sega Dreamcast (an amazing console, to those unaware) and which, like its console predecessor, utilizes a unique tile-based rendering system.

I know the Dreamcast pretty well, I worked on a game project for it in 1998: 4 Wheel Thunder. At the time, the console could deliver 5000 polygons per frame, about 3M polygons per second.

The Dreamcast CPU ran at 200Mhz whereas the iPhone runs at 412MHz — twice the power of the console. The Dreamcast was a game changer at the time, bringing the next generation of 3D games, such as the amazing Soul Calibur II from Namco.

Now, you really know what the iPhone is capable of.

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