Official PS3 vs. Xbox 360 vs. N. Revolution

Sorry I made a mistake the xbox ram badwitdth is 22+ ghz/ per sec not megs. Ias I steated on previous post(wrote it to fast)

 

Flip Im not trying to be mean i just said give and prove your information i still haven't seen proof. it went from G4 now to the newspapper that's bull to me. im not that type of person to try to put you down im just sayin please don't just write stuff and give wack info. be real about it let me see


O yea if he needs a apology ill give it to him if its going to make him flame on me.

 

2Kwic let's all keep it cool. Whats your take about the ps3 vs 360 overall performance in game?

 

O im cool now. i just came to the point that i really don't care about the systems all i care about are the games.Im not going to be playing the hardware just off it so im going with the PS3 if you look at any of my post from last week it's all been for PS3.In my OPINION i think the PS is going to have the best performance and gameplay overall. And when they both are out and im wrong then ill come back and apologies to every Xbox fan here.

But really i don't think so

 

You have asnwered right. Usually my biggest problems with new system releases are that almost all games seem rushed one way or the other. Every now and then one or two of the games are good but then they take forever to release any new ones that are worth buying until months fter the machines been released. The fact the developers got the development kits recently shakes me a little because of the questionable quality as the final deadline creeps in and apparent bugs are still there to be fix.

 

look @ the two pics up there read the details for them youl see that 380's better

 

what 2 pics?!

 

380? What tha. man im not even a xbox fan and i know it's called the 360 unless you was just telling a joke and what pics are you talking about.

 

Just thought I would pop in and give my 2 cents. Given I have been following PS2 games since PSX I can only assume sequels to those games will be on PS3 not only that but the PS3 looks technologically more advanced. I have not decided whether I like the controller or not but ill have to hold it to find out. Obviously I am buying a PS3 first. I love Nintendo too though. I just wish they could get it together a little better. Ill probably end up buying one of those too though and hooking it up with my CAR-PC for on the go gamin, cause it will be hella portable. My other good factor is that microsoft is the devil. Thats kinda biased but can be universally used. They just buy muscle that's all they do. They are really fighting a two ton gorilla here too, messing with Sony. It seems as though the teeth are out and both are goin for the throat. I imagine PS3 will come out on top again, but the margine will be closer. Those are objective opinions too, despite the fact that MS is the devil. Sure MS got a large jump on Sony releasing first, but Sony is hoping to become the "cool" system again by out hardwaring them. The fact is it will come down to games and most likely Sony still has the ball in their court.

Ludikhris

 

2kwic, it was also in the paper, i like to read a lot, maybe you should do the same, and please stop trying to bring me down with your negativity. But, The 360 will have the most games to come out with it. about 40 games will be on the 360 this year and 160 titles are in devlopment. and 2 million users will be on xbox live, like the ps3, they have video, and you can make stickers, and shirts.
and it comes with cable.

 

The ps3 won't have enough power, that's why it may come out summer 2006. But fine, don't listen to me. It's alright. jus tried to let you all know something. but we'll see. kinda like the psp, tried to tell people about that, now look who was right.\

sony is running out of money, they only have 15 million left. do you know how much each cell processor cost? i don't think sony will be able to aford it. especially when they didn't make enough money of the psp. you know why don't you? because they sold for so much. and now they will do it again with ps3, under sell and go bankrupt...

bye sony, it was nice knowing you

 

Now that the Xbox 360 and PlayStation 3 specifications have been announced, it is possible to do a real world performance comparison of the two systems.

There are three critical performance aspects of a console:
· Central Processing Unit (CPU) performance.
o The Xbox 360 CPU architecture has three times the general purpose processing power of the Cell.
· Graphics Processing Unit (GPU) performance
o The Xbox 360 GPU design is more flexible and it has more processing power than the PS3 GPU.
· Memory System Bandwidth
o The memory system bandwidth in Xbox 360 exceeds the PS3’s by five times.
The Xbox 360’s CPU has more general purpose processing power because it has three general purpose cores, and Cell has just one. Cell’s claimed advantage is on streaming floating point work which is done on its seven DSP processors.
The Xbox 360 GPU has more processing power than the PS3’s. In addition, its innovated features contribute to overall rendering performance. Xbox 360 has 278.4 GB/s of memory system bandwidth. The PS3 has less than one-fifth of Xbox 360’s (48 GB/s) of total memory system bandwidth.


DETAILED ANALYSIS OF PERFORMANCE SPECIFICATIONS

CPU
The Xbox 360 processor was designed to give game developers the power that they actually need, in an easy to use form. The Cell processor has impressive streaming floating-point power that is of limited use for games.

The majority of game code is a mixture of integer, floating-point, and vector math, with lots of branches and random memory accesses. This code is best handled by a general purpose CPU with a cache, branch predictor, and vector unit.

The Cell’s seven DSPs (what Sony calls SPEs) have no cache, no direct access to memory, no branch predictor, and a different instruction set from the PS3’s main CPU. They are not designed for or efficient at general purpose computing. DSPs are not appropriate for game programming.

Xbox 360 has three general purpose CPU cores. The Cell processor has only one.

Xbox 360’s CPUs has vector processing power on each CPU core. Each Xbox 360 core has 128 vector registers per hardware thread, with a dot product instruction, and a shared 1-MB L2 cache. The Cell processor’s vector processing power is mostly on the seven DSPs.

Dot products are critical to games because they are used in 3D math to calculate vector lengths, projections, transformations, and more. The Xbox 360 CPU has a dot product instruction, where other CPUs such as Cell must emulate dot product using multiple instructions.

Cell’s streaming floating-point work is done on its seven DSP processors. Since geometry processing is moved to the GPU, the need for streaming floating-point work and other DSP style programming in games has dropped dramatically.

Just like with the PS2’s Emotion Engine, with its missing L2 cache, the Cell is designed for a type of game programming that accounts for a minor percentage of processing time.

Sony’s CPU is ideal for an environment where 12.5% of the work is general-purpose computing and 87.5% of the work is DSP calculations. That sort of mix makes sense for video playback or networked waveform analysis, but not for games. In fact, when analyzing real games one finds almost the opposite distribution of general purpose computing and DSP calculation requirements. A relatively small percentage of instructions are actually floating point. Of those instructions which are floating-point, very few involve processing continuous streams of numbers. Instead they are used in tasks like AI and path-finding, which require random access to memory and frequent branches, which the DSPs are ill-suited to.

Based on measurements of running next generation games, only ~10-30% of the instructions executed are floating point. The remainders of the instructions are load, store, integer, branch, etc. Even fewer of the instructions executed are streaming floating point—probably ~5-10%. Cell is optimized for streaming floating-point, with 87.5% of its cores good for streaming floating-point and nothing else.





Game programmers do not want to spread their code over eight processors, especially when seven of the processors are poorly suited for general purpose programming. Evenly distributing game code across eight processors is extremely difficult.



GPU
Even ignoring the bandwidth limitations the PS3’s GPU is not as powerful as the Xbox 360’s GPU.

Below are the specs from Sony’s press release regarding the PS3’s GPU.

RSX GPU
· 550 MHz
· Independent vertex/pixel shaders
· 51 billion dot products per second (total system performance)
· 300M transistors
· 136 “shader operations” per clock

The interesting ALU performance numbers are 51 billion dot products per second (total system performance), 300M transistors, and more than twice as powerful as the 6800 Ultra.

The 51 billions dot products per cycle were listed on a summary slide of total graphics system performance and are assumed to include the Cell processor. Sony’s calculations seem to assume that the Cell can do a dot product per cycle per DSP, despite not having a dot product instruction.

However, using Sony’s claim, 7 dot products per cycle * 3.2 GHz = 22.4 billion dot products per second for the CPU. That leaves 51 – 22.4 = 28.6 billion dot products per second that are left over for the GPU. That leaves 28.6 billion dot products per second / 550 MHz = 52 GPU ALU ops per clock.

It is important to note that if the RSX ALUs are similar to the GeForce 6800 ALUs then they work on vector4s, while the Xbox 360 GPU ALUs work on vector5s. The total programmable GPU floating point performance for the PS3 would be 52 ALU ops * 4 floats per op *2 (madd) * 550 MHz = 228.8 GFLOPS which is less than the Xbox 360’s 48 ALU ops * 5 floats per op * 2 (madd) * 500 MHz= 240 GFLOPS.

With the number of transistors being slightly larger on the Xbox 360 GPU (330M) it’s not surprising that the total programmable GFLOPs number is very close.



The PS3 does have the additional 7 DSPs on the Cell to add more floating point ops for graphics rendering, but the Xbox 360’s three general purpose cores with custom D3D and dot product instructions are more customized for true graphics related calculations.

The 6800 Ultra has 16 pixel pipes, 6 vertex pipes, and runs at 400 MHz. Given the RSX’s 2x better than a 6800 Ultra number and the higher frequency of the RSX, one can roughly estimate that it will have 24 pixel shading pipes and 4 vertex shading pipes (fewer vertex shading pipes since the Cell DSPs will do some vertex shading). If the PS3 GPU keeps the 6800 pixel shader pipe co-issue architecture which is hinted at in Sony’s press release, this again gives it 24 pixel pipes* 2 issued per pipe + 4 vertex pipes = 52 dot products per clock in the GPU.

If the RSX follows the 6800 Ultra route, it will have 24 texture samplers, but when in use they take up an ALU slot, making the PS3 GPU in practice even less impressive. Even if it does manage to decouple texture fetching from ALU co-issue, it won’t have enough bandwidth to fetch the textures anyways.

For shader operations per clock, Sony is most likely counting each pixel pipe as four ALU operations (co-issued vector+scalar) and a texture operation per pixel pipe and 4 scalar operations for each vector pipe, for a total of 24 * (4 + 1) + (4*4) = 136 operations per cycle or 136 * 550 = 74.8 GOps per second.

Given the Xbox 360 GPU’s multithreading and balanced design, you really can’t compare the two systems in terms of shading operations per clock. However, the Xbox 360’s GPU can do 48 ALU operations (each can do a vector4 and scalar op per clock), 16 texture fetches, 32 control flow operations, and 16 programmable vertex fetch operations with tessellation per clock for a total of 48*2 + 16 + 32 + 16 = 160 operations per cycle or 160 * 500 = 80 GOps per second.



Overall, the automatic shader load balancing, memory export features, programmable vertex fetching, programmable triangle tesselator, full rate texture fetching in the vertex shader, and other “well beyond shader model 3.0” features of the Xbox 360 GPU should also contribute to overall rendering performance.


Bandwidth
The PS3 has 22.4 GB/s of GDDR3 bandwidth and 25.6 GB/s of RDRAM bandwidth for a total system bandwidth of 48 GB/s.

The Xbox 360 has 22.4 GB/s of GDDR3 bandwidth and a 256 GB/s of EDRAM bandwidth for a total of 278.4 GB/s total system bandwidth.



Why does the Xbox 360 have such an extreme amount of bandwidth? Even the simplest calculations show that a large amount of bandwidth is consumed by the frame buffer. For example, with simple color rendering and Z testing at 550 MHz the frame buffer alone requires 52.8 GB/s at 8 pixels per clock. The PS3’s memory bandwidth is insufficient to maintain its GPU’s peak rendering speed, even without texture and vertex fetches.

The PS3 uses Z and color compression to try to compensate for the lack of memory bandwidth. The problem with Z and color compression is that the compression breaks down quickly when rendering complex next-generation 3D scenes.

HDR, alpha-blending, and anti-aliasing require even more memory bandwidth. This is why Xbox 360 has 256 GB/s bandwidth reserved just for the frame buffer. This allows the Xbox 360 GPU to do Z testing, HDR, and alpha blended color rendering with 4X MSAA at full rate and still have the entire main bus bandwidth of 22.4 GB/s left over for textures and vertices.


CONCLUSION

When you break down the numbers, Xbox 360 has provably more performance than PS3. Keep in mind that Sony has a track record of over promising and under delivering on technical performance. The truth is that both systems pack a lot of power for high definition games and entertainment.

However, hardware performance, while important, is only a third of the puzzle. Xbox 360 is a fusion of hardware, software and services. Without the software and services to power it, even the most powerful hardware becomes inconsequential. Xbox 360 games—by leveraging cutting-edge hardware, software, and services—will outperform the PlayStation 3.

 

Gravity: Just as a recommendation, make sure that you have a link to information you are stating before you make statements. That being said, I believe that he was referring to the now famous Major Nelson articl, in which case, his point of view of 30% is accurate. http://xbox360.ign.com/articles/617/617951p1.html

However, that article (while factual) is incredably biased and only proves that anyone can manipulate numbers to have them say whatever they want. Please note... Sony's claims are also biased and manipulated just as much (Can anyone tell me how they arrived at the 2 teraflop #? Or how they think that the GPU can produce 1.8 TF of that #?)

velascoj2: First off, I would say that you should hunt down an article on the ATI chipset to understand exactly what they are going to do with that Frame Buffer. I'll see if I can find a good article, but it is capable of far more than you would think for 10MB of RAM.
Second, if I remember correctly, the XDR RAM doesn't actually run at 3.2. It runs multiple chips that feed data together for an effective 3.2 rating (simular to the P4 800mhz FSB). We don't know if MS has instituted multi channel paths to the RAM but it could just as easily come close the the XDR figures (Picture it as follows, GDDR@700-x2 for the DDR=1400Mhz, if they go Dual Channel, your up to 2.8Ghz, if they had three channels (Hey, they can do it with processors) then your at 4.2ghz effective speed). Not saying that this is fact, but you have to be wary of numbers.
Third, while the GDDR3 is rated for 700, the RSX is running @ 550Mhz and due to timing issues, the Ram would probably be set to that speed as well.

As a side note, let's not forget that Sony could very well take a major beating in the next few months. Immersion won their suit against Sony (to the tune or $91 million plus the order to stop sales of PS2's in North America). Now, they can sell them until their appeal, but loosing that (and they probably will) means that Sony may not have a console to sell here from the end of the summer on... Pretty hard to be competative when you don't have a product.

 

Hey all,

Not into console games anymore...but thought this might be interesting for you all avid fans in case it hasn't been mentioned.

It is either Time or Newsweek that is out right now that has a in depth article pertaining to the new Xbox. The pic of the new Xbox with Bill Gates is actually on the front cover.

Not sure how old/new this info is, but if anyone is that interested, ya might want to check it out.

Have a good one folks!

;P

 

it's time magazine. Anyone wants a read of the article, pm me and I'll scan it and send it to ya.

 

how am i going to have a link to a newspaper? and no one else uses links, why are y'all buging me about them, but if that's what you want.

the xbox confirmed the so-called "ring of light" theory, which had said the device would sport an oversized power button surrounded by a ring of LEDs, as well as that it would sport two slots for 64MB memory cards and one for a 40GB hard drive on the console's side.

Besides the Xbox 360 itself, the leaked snapshot showed three peripherals, including its controller. The controller pictured was clearly the same as that shown in pictures "leaked" by the Microsoft-associated teaser site Ourcolony.net. That site also recently released another picture of the controller, which shows the controller in more detail, including what appears to be the new Xbox logo...the same globular insignia featured in a shot leaked months previous. It also shows what appears to be a charging port on the bottom of the console.

Besides the controller, the other Xbox 360 peripherals pictured in the leaked photo were an apparently wireless headset and an EyeToy-like camera. The latter recalls the add-on mentioned by Microsoft corporate vice president and chief XNA architect J Allard at last year's E3, one which, as evidenced by Allard's demonstrative chitchat with Jenny McCarthy, would let Xbox Live subscribers videoconference one another.

Another photo leaked from the event shows a DVD remote for the Xbox 360, which, besides reconfirming the globular Xbox logo, appears to have some sort of Windows functionality. Beneath the traditional X/Y/A/B button configuration is a button with the distinctive Windows logo. Given recent comments by Microsoft chairman Bill Gates, it's likely the insignia means that at least one version of the Xbox 360 will have Windows Media Center functionality.

Last but not least, a new image leaked on Ourcolony.net indicates the Xbox 360 will have customizable skins. The image shows five examples of the increasingly iconic power button--which is also featured as one of the rotating images on Ourcolony.net's home page--surrounded by multicolored patterns reminiscent of many currently available console skins. Such a feature would be in line with J Allard's keynote at this year's Game Developers Conference, during which he talked about the customization demanded by today's youth, which he deemed "Generation Remix."

While convincing, it must be emphasized that none of the images have been confirmed by Microsoft. As of press time, spokespersons for the company had still not officially commented on the pictures.

http://www.gamespot.com/news/2005/05/09/news_6123886.html

 

All though i believe the xbox 360 is better than the ps3, I still think that if sony does bring the ps3's power up, you will be content, with either system you get. i thought the ps3 was going to be better, until i did some research on both systems. g4 is nothing but a fanbase of sony fans. they said that sony had the best press conference. in my opion, i think that microsoft had the best press conference because they showed a lot of the things the 360 could do instead of just showing graphics and the engine like sony. And nintendo was still talking about the ds.

watch the press conference and tell me which one you think was better.


Sony: http://media.ps3.ign.com/articles/615/615091/vids_1.html

Microsoft: http://media.xbox360.ign.com/articles/614/614983/vids_1.html

Of course nintendo still has mario ( whichly no one cares about anymore ), Zelda, Donkey Kong, Nes, Pokemon (LOL), and some resident evil titles. Sony has Tekken, GTA, and had Final fantasy, Microsoft has Halo, fable, and final fatasy. so titled games, i have to go with sony. I'm sorry ms and nintendo fans, but the best fighting game and the infamous car stealing game are just to addictive to give up. That's why i'm getting both.


Nintendo: http://media.cube.ign.com/articles/615/615274/vids_1.html

 

Whatever man i just don't care for the xbox i don't care there going to have a million games out that doesn't mean there just going to destroy PS in the game department. And about PS money situation come on man how would you know how much money there going to have or losing really not from reading some news paper or from the net i don't think PS would just let anybody know about there money situation. If you have that please show me i would love to see

 

2kwic, i wish i could go to my friend and get it but school is out, sorry. and the 360 probably won't detroy the ps3. who knows. i don't. i'm just saying that if sony does manage to get the power of the ps3 up, they may infact have the better system. the only thing the 360 will have over them then is online play. and for people who don't like online play, don't need the 360. but then again, the 360 has more memory, so the ps3 maight barely have more memory than the ps2. on the original xbox, you would have to play and save every single xbox game to use up 1 block. the xbox comes with 50000+ blocks. so this means that the xbox has infinit memory. and I don't see sony out doing that. i'm not trying to dis the ps3, i'm just saying keep in mind that the 360 will have more memory, better online play, more games, will be cheaper and out sooner than the ps3.

 

XBOX 360 RULES BITCHIS AND Toiletman RULES BECAUSE HE LIKE XBOX 360 MAN!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!