can someone tell me which one is better in hardware terms. PSX or Saturn???
"Better" is an ambiguous term. However, I think it's fair to say that Saturn is more powerful overall if programmed properly, and if you're not going to talk about the system being programmed properly, what's the point?. I've not extensively programmed either system, so what I'm about to say should probably be taken with a grain of salt, as I almost certainly am not familiar with all the strengths and weaknesses of the systems.
- Without splitting hairs about architectural efficiency and multithreading, the two 28MHz SH-2s almost certainly provide more
potential computational power than PSX's 33MHz R3000A. Whether or not it can be effectively applied depends on the game and the programmer. The SH-2s probably make more efficient use of memory due to the shorter instruction size, though it's not clear how much of a benefit this really is.
- Saturn has a programmable general-purpose DSP, while PSX's Geometry Transformation Engine is dedicated to 3D-related vector/matrix transforms. I'm not sure which does these faster, but Saturn's can be reprogrammed for other operations.
- Looking at some of the more advanced games on each system, I don't get the sense that
Saturn's VDP1 is struggling to keep up with PSX's GPU, but the official numbers suggest that PSX can push somewhere around two to three times as many polygons as Saturn.
- Saturn's sound subsystem has its own 68000 CPU. PSX's sound processor must be managed directly by the main CPU. Beyond that, their capabilities seem pretty similar (there's only so much really useful stuff that can be done to sound, after all).
- Saturn's CD-ROM subsystem seems to beat the crap out of PSX's. Saturn has a dedicated 512KB cache for the CD controller, and the CD controller has a dedicated processor that manages the CD reading process. PSX also has one, but it's apparently not as flexible or powerful. PSX's CD-ROM read cache is 32KB.
- Saturn's VDP2 manages backgrounds and has scaling, rotation, and rowscrolling functions. It's also capable of using a direct bitmapped mode for additional flexibility. PSX has nothing of the sort; backgrounds have to be done with the GPU.
- PSX has a dedicated FMV decoding chip capable of producing high-quality output. Saturn relies on software to do this (unless you have a MPEG/VCD card, which not many games take advantage of AFAIK). This is more flexible, but in general the quality tends to be a bit worse.