I wonder if this is relevant (the comparison which is really low quality only shows close up results and doesn't move ahead even a little to see if it also affects how things would pop into view from the darkness, at least in this game's scenario, which is one game the Saturn actually shows better draw distance in as demonstrated earlier anyway) and if comparisons as we see them today, from official or unofficial emulation or even as best case/later model scenarios make the console look even better than it would have been for most early consumers back then. Appparently pretty much all early models up to at least 1996 when the console wars were decided had this banding issue, weird...
I'm reading it's due to a different gpu version that also causes more slowdown in cases for early models. Would be cool if we could see such enhancements for Saturn as well like what I discuss in the quote above but I'm guessing if no emulator has done it so far it's not doable without problems. Or perhaps nobody has thought to do it and increase color depth or accuracy or whatever the actual problem is, like other emulators add z buffering or whatever stops the commonly hated PlayStation polygons from warping all over the place (nope, I know I'm not that smart to be first, or do it).
Sony revised the Ps1 Gpu a few times throughout the lifecycleIt was because a bug in some batch of GPU (IIRC memory?) causing a 5bit goraud shading instead of 8bit. This issue was present in some 1001 and 1002 models in Japan.
Rev A GPUs are only used on Japan and in early Namco System 11 games (Tekken), these had a few rendering bugs and were quickly ditched in favor of Rev B
Rev B fixed a few issues and was used in the US/Europe launch systems and in Japan. These GPUs use VRAM like RevA and were also used in later System 11 revisions.
Rev C was introduced around 1996 and changed to SGRAM instead of VRAM due to cost issues. This did change the capabilities of the console to some extent as seen in the Tomb Raider video since the console could now do full 8bit colour like the Saturn.
Since compatibility could be a concern, Sony provided two types of debug units, one that came with the VRAM gpu, and the other with SGRAM, indicated by the case colour (blue/green).
Sega also went thought a similar change with the Saturn, going from VRAM to SGRAM but the changes didn't affect much in the end, the performance was consistent across all models.
Having the graphics RAM split into different pools didn't help either, even if it had more than the PlayStation.
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