Okay here is the exact version that I found:
Gamecube renders up to eight effects layers to a polygon in a single pass, whereas the PS2 features a multi-pass rendering system. So, for example, Gamecube developers can effectively start with the base geometry (1), add a bump-map to it (3), add a dirt map (4), add a gloss map (5), add a reflection map (6), add a radiosity light map (7) and an effects layer of their choice (8) -- all in a single pass. By contrast, PS2 developers would have to re-render the polygon itself for every pass meaning eight times the work to get the same effect. So essentially PS2 has to render 1,000 polygons eight times over whereas Gamecube only has to render 1,000 polygons once for the same effect.
Hope that means something I think it means that with the ps2 each polygon has to be rerendered to get the desired effects whereas the gamecube only does it once- am i right?