Official PS3 vs. Xbox 360 vs. N. Revolution

Well it certainly seems here that someone is lying, but who?

I agree with the statement that "we haven't decided yet" means "we won't but we're not going to tell you yet", and I can see hard disks carrying premiums for both consoles.

I am dubious over the claimed stupendous power of cell processors because if the speeds previously stated were possible, brand new PC processors such as the Athlon64 X2 would be a waste of time and money, and large corporations such as AMD aren't that stupid... (In fact i wouldn't have a word said against them, but that's beside the point)

 

For "cmmsense", I belive that the xbox has 9 billion dot products on cpu only and with the gpu toghether create an amount of 33.6 billion dot products (warning this info came about from an article on Gamespot). As far vengence goes the link of Ign posted stating the comparison of the ps3 vs xbox are somewhat deluted. Remember that its said of the spe's not having any cache while in reality they do and that giving the cell an advantage over the 360 overall 1 meg cache. The Xbox bandwith of 278.4 its indeed a great number, however under what circumtances is going to be distributed? System memory bandwith is almost the same (for both systems), but the main will be the utlra fast 10meg embedded ram ox xbox 360. ( however I have been out of town and perhaps missed some new spec info)
I personally think that trying to compare the performance of the two systems are futil at this point. Obviouly the cell processor is quite enigmatic since it is unproven technology. I can Understand Microsoft been slightly paranoid about the power of the cell (that leading them to make blatant comments against it). However The xbox gpu seems to be giving the rsx a good challenge. There is no doubt that the 48 unified graphic pipeline system will be raising many questions. It not clear yet if they will work better than separete ones. The enigmatic 1.8 teraflops number on ps3. Perhaps we will have more clues when the nvidia g70 (I think that is the name) full info is revealed on the 21st of the month.

two cents

 

Sorry I meant that the main memory difference between both system will be the 10meg embedde ram having a 256gb/sec bandwidth on nxbox 360.

 

sammorris: It's not that either side is lying, but more that they can spin numbers to say what they want. For example, the 218 GFLOPS that the cell is capable of it a true number, does this mean that it's 200 times better than a desktop PC? No. The 218 is for SPFLOP's which is a less accurate way of doing floating point ops. A typical PC processor does DPFLOP's which is far more accurate (and a requirement in general computing) and actually brings the cells performance down to 26GLOPS in this mode (Note that this # is supplied by IBM for a 4Ghz model). The companies present theoretical numbers to you in recognizable form but don't put them into context so you make an inaccurate opinion.

Another great example, IF the RSX can actually do 1.8 TFLOPS (theoretical) then does that mean it DOES 1.8TFLOPS? Nope. Typical GPU's actual have a utilization of about 50%-60% when they are pushed (typically because they can only push so much through the pipes...). An easy example is to say that it has 24 Pixel and 8 Vertex pipes for example. If you have 36 Pixel and 36 Vertex operations to perform, the Pixel would be done in 1.5 (2) Cycles and the Vertex would take 4 cycles. This means that your GPU is being utilized at 56% (72 cycles required/128 total cycles). Now your 1800GFLOPS is REALISTICALLY 1008 (56%). Let's add in an additional lose for MSAA and the like (I'm going to use 23% here until I run some actual #'s from a video card, which will probably lose more) and your 1008 becomes 776GFLOPS.

Now all the numbers I gave you above are based in fact and show you that the RSX (in these curcimstances) will produce 43% of what Sony tells you it can.

Vel: I will talk about Cell's soon enough. I'm going to cut it short at a small novel for the moment...

Everyone: Appologies for the long posts. It's hard to talk actual numbers without it getting big. I had tried to start another thread for this but was shut down immediately.

 

Your absolutly right and I understand your point that they won't actually perform like that, but it's still a use of comparison between the two as long as you use the same unit of measurement for both. They're goign to be close, but it's obvious Sony was and is dedicated to being the better hardware, this they have achieved. I don't even remember if you said the 360 if the better hardware, or not, but soem people are trying to say that. It's obvious it's not better, but not significantly worse either.

Watch that press conference, it's displays of the system and the specs in comparison to other machines is practical and gets the point across.

 

It really isn't feasible to compare PCs to consoles at this stage i don't think, they just work too differently.

For under a quarter of the cost of a top of the range PC even when they come out, there is obviously one part of the new generation's technology that will mean they are slower, otherwise the gaming PC market would (temporarily at least) collapse!

 

Your bandwidth statement is so faulty it isn't funny. That sick band width speed is off a whopping 10MB of EDRAM. Sure, 10MB of EDRAM is why the xbox 360 is goign to be so much faster and more powerful, right, perfect sense.

 

I am purposefully breaking up posts...

As far as Wvengence's use of my spec sheet statement. Just because it isn't listed, doesn't mean it isn't going to be there. BUT, if IT ISN'T LISTED, you CAN'T CLAIM IT WILL BE THERE. Damn, how hard a concept is that. Your grasping at the air for 360 support at this point.

 

exactly my point!

 

"cmmnsense" chill we hear you, don't need to get upset. I agree with alot of what you have stated.Vengence also has good points but ofcourse as you can understand he's somewhat scheptical of Sony delivering what had showned based on Ps2 release. I had mentioned in here in the past that that ps3 released will be different from the previous generation. However I personally more incline to wait to see how the systems are put togheter and how all the compounds comunicate to the other. And ofcourse how diffult to create graphic engine libraries. We shall see

cheers

 

Cmmn: Why, exactly, am I grasping at air? Everything I have stated is using the information that is available on the net somewhere or another. Any points I make that require (educated) guess work, I preface as such.

Now, I will repeat (again) my stance on the specs. My point is that both companies can get the stats to say what they want. Yes, 256GB of bandwidth comes from the EDRAM. Never denied that. IT IS FACT HOWEVER that the 360 has 278GB of system bandwidth. Where it has it is irrelevant to the number. I'll ask again, how does the RSX get 1.8TFLOPS? Until I see the calculation, I have to assume that they used the same sort of logic adding up numbers otherwise I can't concieve of how it's done. So please, let me know EXACTLY how Sony came up with the 1.8TFLOP #. Until you do, don't bother taking apart MS's numbers, that's hypocritical.

Let's be clear. If you throw numbers around without showing HOW those numbers are attainted, then your just paroting what Sony says. When you do that, I will parot MS right back to you since those numbers are JUST as valid. I could care less how they got the numbers, just the end result because that is all your throwing out.

As for sticking to the SPEC sheets, I believe that I'm the one that has had to remind you of that fact, so why don't you tell me how difficult it is. Point is that you dismissed the lack of HDD and when I pulled out the numbers to prove that it has a drastic impact on performance, you reply with things like
"You don't know for sure about the spec that the cell will include only one PPE" despite that the specs say just that.
"We still don't know for sure if an HDD is or is not standard on the PS3" Last I check, I didn't see 160GB 2.5" HDD
"yes, actually, yes they can do this standard with all their games, because they are smart enough to understand most will have a drive, and would want to match the 360 in this dept" Didn't see that in the specs either...

 

Sammorris: You can actually use PC comparisons for alot of the tech. Alot of it is just PC tech that is either modified to some degree(but still works the same way) or is something the console can do custom stuff that won't appear on a PC (Like the EDRAM of the 360).
For the PS3, the Cell, XDR Ram, GDDR3 Ram, Memory Card Slots, Network ports, Wireless, Bluetooth & BR-DVD are all PC technology (pretty much unchanged from the PC version) and the RSX is a modified G70 GPU...

 

Good Points "Vengence"

 

Now what are those facts about the "Cell" you were going to state earlier?

 

I am aware that most of the technologies going into the PS3 and Xbox360 are merely modified from exisiting PC concepts, it would be foolish not to expect that at this stage, but you can't really predict how the hardware will work with new processor technologies, and I expect in the case of the PS3, new operating systems...
This does seem a little bit like a long "we will see" thread to me...

 

Sammorris: Your right. In the end it's all about wait and see.

Velascoj2: Here are a few links to avoid making a huge post...

http://arstechnica.com/articles/paedia/cpu/cell-1.ars
This talks about the Cell design and some technical information.

Here is another very good article, but I warn you that it is pretty technical.
http://www.realworldtech.com/page.cfm?ArticleID=RWT021005084318

The basic effect is as follows though. The cell is one PPE core with 512k (which, actually is almost a carbon copy of the 360's cores, but uses XDR memory controller) as well as the 8 SPE's with the 256K ram. I note that this RAM isn't really like the L2 cache of a processor because it doesn't do any caching, have tag lines for caching, do prefetching or anything else that cache does. What is does do allow each SPE to DMA information from main memory that it can then store and work on without intervention from the PPE. It acts almost exactly like system ram in that regard instead of cache.

Otherwise, I'll say read the articles so I don't rehash information and we can chat more.

Also, here is a link for the 360 processor. It talks about the difficulties that the PPE's will face with next gen games and also gives you a good insight into the Cell's PPE.
http://arstechnica.com/articles/paedia/cpu/xbox360-2.ars

 

Cool Man, I'll check'em out!

 

Im done on this thread guys... been watchin it for awhile and dropped some good news here. I still maintain that PS3 will be stronger than XBOX360, common sense. I find this arguement a lot like politics. You have Sony fans and MS fans, like Republicans and Democrats. Were all about to have a great big election and someone will be stronger. When reading this thread and a lot of others one would think that Microsoft (democrats) was going to win because of how much you see them everywhere, parading around, screaming their opinions. Its not so much that there are more of them, they just whine louder. Over the hundreds of forums out there you see far more people arbitrarily screaming "360 WILL DOMINATE" however when the election comes the Sony fans will subtly cast there vote with their $300 and XBOX fans will have to sit back down in #2 for total unit sales and total hardware power. Then they will find some other angle at which to say Sony cheated or came up with their numbers wrong or whatever you want to whine about. You know, second isnt bad, they still stand to make a lot of money. I just think too many people get personal about this and want to get a 360 cause its the best just like XBOX when it wont be so this time. Im sorry thats just not the cards that MS is trying to play. If it were they wouldnt be trying to push it out faster than the other consoles. When making your console choice ask yourself a few easy questions....

"Who makes the games I want to play?"
"Whats more important, that I have it this year, or that I wait till next year and get more power?"

These are the two basic questions concerning hardware decisions. Given current data and such we really should assume PS3 stronger. It just makes no sense to think Xbox 360 will be a faster system overall. I still imagine that the difference will be nominal.

btw Im neither conservitive or liberal... im very moderate and just really observant.

 

Ditto, and amen to that.

The PS3 will be the console for me, with more power, likely more games that i would want to play, etc. etc.

I think the poll on www.gamefaqs.com about it kind of speaks for itself:

PS3: 34133 (42.56%)
NR (which hasn't been discussed at all in the past few pages): 21324 (26.59%)
Xbox360: 13443 (16.76%)
All three: 11299 (14.09%)

For every vote the XBox360 got, the ps3 got 2.539, thats impressive!

 

XBOX 360 WILL BE MORE POWERFUL!!!!!
At least this [bold]EXPERT[/bold] thinks so.

http://www.gamespot.com/news/2005/06/10/news_6127350.html

Finally, something I can rub in the PS3 fans' faces...

(IDK if someone's already posted this link b/c i haven't checked)