The other big problem with the N64 was that the RAM had such high latency that it completely undid any benefit from the supposedly higher bandwidth that RDRAM had and the console was constantly memory starved.
The RDP could rasterize hundreds of thousands of triangles a second but as soon as you put any texture or shading on them, the memory accesses slowed you right down. UMA plus high latency memory was the wrong move.
In fact, in many situations you can "de-optimize" the rendering to draw and redraw more, as long as it uses less memory bandwidth, and end up with a higher FPS in your game.
The RDP could rasterize hundreds of thousands of triangles a second but as soon as you put any texture or shading on them, the memory accesses slowed you right down. UMA plus high latency memory was the wrong move.
In fact, in many situations you can "de-optimize" the rendering to draw and redraw more, as long as it uses less memory bandwidth, and end up with a higher FPS in your game.