[GD-Consoles] render cost

[R & D \(GameBrains\) <res...@ga...>]

Howdy,
I was wondering if anybody could help me estimate the various tradeoffs =
in rendering on PS2, GCN and Xbox.  For example, state changes are =
considered "bad", but how bad are they?  At some point a skin becomes so =
large that memory page breaks combined with dma transfer time yield =
multiple smaller textures a more appropriate solution, and how does =
number of polys factor into this?  Does anybody have any rules of thumbs =
for the various consoles regarding this type of performance =
benchmarking?  Finally, is there a "language" for this type of =
benchmarking?  Is it common to use Big-O notation?  For anybody who is =
not sure of the cost as a ratio or algorithm, just hard numbers would be =
helpful too (e.g. our last game had 32 4,000 poly characters on screen @ =
60hz each with a different 512x512 8 bit skin, etc.)
Cheers,
Brett Bibby
GameBrains