Official PS3 vs. Xbox 360 vs. N. Revolution

that article is a little bit biased, have a look who wrote it that [bold]EXPERT[/bold] works for ATI!

isnt ATI making the graphics for the X-Box 360? So its bound to be the best machine in the world according to the guys helping to build it!

im sure nvidia would say the same about the ps3

 

Not that it's indicative, but this EXPERT is a newbie!

"This time around, [Nvidia doesn’t] have the architecture and we do, so they have to knock it and say it isn’t worthwhile. But in the future, they’ll market themselves out of this corner, claiming that they’ve cracked how to do it best. But RSX isn’t unified, and this is why I think PS3 will almost certainly be slower and less powerful."

I'm sure Sony could say something completely opposite to that. As I have said previously, Power is nothing without proper utilisation, and power did the first-gen xbox no good, and despite being much a dedicated fan of ATi, I really do believe the PS3's architecture will be more powerful, and not only that, but unlike the xbox designs, more successful.

Bitch at me if you will, but I am pretty sure Microsoft still have some work to do before they can knock Sony off their perch.

 

HEY bored34,
maybe that expert is right. but my main concern is. a game with [bold]GREAT[/bold] graphics will need alot of space on the disc. thats why the PS3 discs will hold up to 50 gigs(blu-ray) and the 360 will have 9 gigs(DVD). i think that will play one of the largest roles. DAta sizes are the most crucial. what will sony do with 50 gigs. once there done making an enourmous game, they will probably have a 10-20 gigs remaining. and to fill the disc up, theyll boost those graphics so high youll think "fusk the 360, i have 400 hours worth of gameplay and the best beautiful graphics, stronger processeors. and [bold]MAYBE A SO CALLED BETTER VIDEO CARD SAYS SOME GUY ON A WEBSITE THAT IS SPONSORED BY MS[/bold] OF COURsE ATI will say its stronger, why would they say its weaker????

 

OH MY GOD solargame, where do u live?
I live in Pilgrims hatch, only a couple of miles from the hypocrit bunker...

 

what are you talking about dude??

 

So can you explain to me why half life 2 is less than 2 gigs? This is one of the most beautiful (in a creepy way i guess) and most deatiled games that people use commenly to determin how a desktop pc performs? You really don't need more than 7 gigs for anything. Unless of course your intentions are to make sure the people playing your racing game will never have to listin to the same song twice when they are playing your game of course (PGR 3 for example). Then i think i'd want a 50 gig dvd. This way i'd be able to copy all that data (thank you microsoft for giving me hundreads of songs to listin to).

 

Microsoft is just a big control freak trying to control all of the worlds tech needs,, and when something they cant control speeds away from them,, they flip, and try as hard as they can to dominate that thing.. Think of America, to the rest of the world... so in conclusion Microsoft=America .. haha sorry i just felt like getting that off my chest

 

He was trying to insult you.

 

Dude, Ludikris? Republicans and Democrats? What the hell is that? This isnt politics man. Lmao, sony ppl will quetly cast thier votes? jees you think to much of yourselves. we dont ''Scream out opinions'' as u put it. just some of us have fierce loyalty to mcrosoft and XBOX. and i challenge you to find a better shooter than the halo series (and in awhile a whicked trilogy) for ps2. simple, you cant, there is none. im with u bored34. the xbox probably will be atleast a bit more powerful than the PS3. and it will definitly have better games. have you even seen some of the previews for xbox360 games on gamespot? freaking awsome. just look at Perfect Dark:zero, Tony Hawk: American Wasteland, Madden 2006, and Gears Of War. They are UNBELEIVABLE!!! So dont classify ppl u dont even know, let alone understand. that makes you one thing: a fool. Thats it, thats all I have to say.

 

Toiletman, absolutely not, you've got it all wrong, it's ust the irony of having a "secret nuclear bunker" being signposted from all directions. I saw the picture on solargame's signiature, and merely wondered if he lived in the area, since I do. It's not my interest to insult anyone here.

 

Sony=cheap when i think og Sony i think of cheap. cheap tvs, cheap walkmen, cheap console. Cheap stuff made my kids. a company that cant make good things. a company that is about to fall, a company that thinks that it will beat the xbox360 with only hardware, not with service not with software. and look the final fantasy serice is coming to the xbox360 and the maker of that said sony is company that dont care about the game makers(not in these words) they want a level, gaming cant go. sony lost $300 million in 2004.

 

I'm with Ludikhris on this, it's just become a flamefest again, somewhat anyway. Not necessarily Wvengence myself and a few, but now we've got straight up fanboys like halo360 chiming in and just repeating a toddler "my dad is better than yours" statement. Notice the "newbie" underneath halo360's and a few other 360 fanboys names(not you Wvengence),I think it fits very well. After looking at the cell link you posted vengence, it doesn't mention anywhere that the SPEs are dependent two at a time on the PPE, rather that the PPE is a two-way 64-bit processor. From realworldtech.com-

"In the CELL processor, each SPE is capable of sustaining 4 FMADD operations per cycle. At an operating frequency of 4 GHz, the CELL processor is thus capable of achieving a peak throughput rate of 256 GFlops from the 8 SPE's. Moreover, the PPE can contribute some amount of additional compute power with its own FP and VMX units."

I lost my dictionary, what does "contribute some amount of additional compute power" mean? I see where the 256 GFLOPS comes from now, and don't see evidence of SPEs operating only two at a time. Yes, I know it's single precision, what does gaming, or a real time application, work well with?

The cell processor is beautiful for real time apps like video games. And is going to work well with 64-bit apps and DP(25-30 GFLOPS) outside of the Sony PS3.

 

I just read that "expert" article on the GPUs from gamespot. If this guy from ATI thinks that xbox 360 will outperform the PS3 because of it's CHOICE to use and nVidia's CHOICE not to use unified pipelines, that's good for him. It isn't some secret tech.

Wvengence, each SPE is a full blown vector computer, and the PPE is a full powerpc core that only certain requests/computations have to go through. All seven SPEs will perform vector graphic computations at once, not only this the PPE will perform two instructions at once, where the SPEs cannot.

 

Now i am not goint to repeat your argument in sony's favour halo360, because that is just as bad, but I don't seem to recall Sony TVs, walkmans etc. being the cheapest. Quite the opposite in fact, they're more up the top of the price spectrum, and with good reason. Although admittedly the playstation console series is not renowned for quality, the rest of their range is, and Sony have made some of the best products around in their field. If they can achieve a majority sales figure three times over (likely to happen, but of course not certain) then they must be doing something better than their competition.

Can I ask how many Sony products you have bought, halo360, and if very few, why?

I think your response to this may decide the credibility of your previous post... ;-)

But seriously, despite my favour of ATi graphics components, at the momnent the numbers seem to be in favour of the PS3 overall, and "more powerful than two 6800 Ultras in SLi" is quite something for ATi to live up to, and since the R520 i believe hasnt been released yet, they have yet to do, though I'm sure crossfire will achieve it. Of course, there is only 10MB of RAM dedicated, high speed or not a small figure.

Can someone answer me though, will the Cell effectively operate at 7x 3.2ghz and the xbox360 at 3x3.2ghz or will there be some limitations on that? I've heard so many conflicting theories I'm not sure what/who to believe!

 

Solar: Great Graphics don't need alot of space anymore...
http://arstechnica.com/articles/paedia/cpu/xbox360-1.ars
procedural synthesis... A great example of this in action. To have a 100 different tree's in a forest right now, you need to create 100 different models and texture them. With PS, you can create one texture and a 100 text files of descriptions. The basic effect is that it is estimated that using these techniques, they can get an effective 80% 'compression' of data. Considering that games aren't really more than 4GB (not including demo's and the like) 9GB is more than enough (and would be without these new techniques).

Everyone: Out of curiosity, why is it that Sony can say "We are creating Skynet, we will now own the world with all out power" and that's fine. Now when someone at ATI says "Hey, we'll beat the RSX because we have a better product" then it's all biased and untrue.

Don't get me wrong, if everyone was on the 360 wagon, I would fight for the PS3 but seriously, that is hypocrytical. If you are going to accept what Sony says as true, then you also have to accept what MS/ATI say as also true.

As a side note, the G70 score just under 7800 on the 3Dmark05 benchmark while the R520 scored over 10000. This is just with the unified architecture, not using the EDRAM and only used 24 pipes instead of 48 (Note, that the R520 has 32, but they are only running 24 on the prototype). While we don't have #'s from the consoles, the cards these are based on show that ATI kicked the crap out of NVidia by almost 30%.
http://www.theinquirer.net/?article=23752
Now, while I agree that the RSX will be more powerful than the G70, I don't think it will have the same boost as the ATI GPU, so I think that the ATI fellows comment is fairly true.

Cmmnsense: From the Arstechnica article "The SPE's very front end can take in two instructions at a time, check to see if they can operate in parallel, and then issue them either in parallel or in program order. These two instructions then travel down one of two pipes, "even" or "odd," to be executed" Otherwise, I will try to find a source that clarifies it better for you. As for the contribute some comment, they mean that if the PPE has cycles left over, it can do FLOPS as well (but they don't add this because it will typically be busy with control & branch threads)

Sammorris: As noted above, the R520 running at 75% power has officially beaten 2x6800 SLI (and realistically, it doesn't approach half the power of the 360 GPU). Not only did ATI live up to it, they flew past it.

As for the Cell, I'll quote my post from earlier...
" I agree that the Cell can process 7 threads at once, however, the SPE's are controlled by the ONE PPE, which can only handle 2 threads at a time. This means that while it can work on 7 threads at once, it can only move 2 threads to the rest of the system through the PPE per cycle. Meanwhile the 360 can work on and move 6 threads per cycle. So the Cell can Process more (117%) than the 360, the 360 can deliver more processes to the system (300%). "
I will look for an article that clearly states this, but from what I remember of the IBM conference, that is how it runs. The main difference is when your running threads that take longer means that the Cell has to move less threads in/out and can then use all SPE's more efficiently, giving it an edge.

The PS3 will have better processing, the 360 better GPU. They will balance out in the end and have simular games. Now Sony NEEDS to do something about online play because if they don't, MS will dominate the market. Otherwise, I predict that Sony will come out the slightly ahead in this generation BUT MS will match them in sales. MS will win in America, Sony in Japan and they will split Europe. However, MS will also get a foothold in Japan this generation and by the next generation, they could very well take the market.

 

kind of glad to see the ATi graphics system being the better, and comes as no surprise really.

Since I prefer PC gaming to console generally (since higher picture quality can be achieved with slightly less cost, contrary to how it seems), I will be hoping that these systems make their way to PCs, and at the low price!

The online gaming matter is indeed a serious concern for Sony, and if they mess it up this time round, their sales really will suffer.

 

We have yet to see if MS will outsell or if Sony will do better, let's jsut let time tell on that one.

How did Sony mess up with online for the PS2?

The SPEs recieve instructions w/out the PPE. From the way realworldtech described it, the SPEs are independent, communicate with each other, and the PPE is separate and handles 64-bit instruction and instructions SPEs cannot perform because of their limitations to vector math. I see nowhere in your links or your quotes that the instruction is recieved, two only, from the PPE and then to SPE, It even appears in the actual pictures of the cell that the PPE is bipassed and not at the helm of incoming data, two paragraphs from now I confirm what is seen in the picture, not diagram, but picture and (both picture and statement) sourced from realworldtech.

"The SPE's very front end can take in two instructions at a time, check to see if they can operate in parallel, and then issue them either in parallel or in program order. These two instructions then travel down one of two pipes, "even" or "odd," to be executed"

That's your quote above you used to support that the PPE issues commands through only two threads to the SPEs. That quote, however, displays that the SPE can take in two instructions, and does not specify anything about the PPE... what was your point, the SPEs are even more powerful than I assumed? The instruction is executed in the SPE, I don't know where your going with that, the quote doesn't relate to the PPE. I don't know if your getting consued with the abbreviations PPE and SPE, or if your trying to confuse me. The quote is about one of the eight SPEs, not about the PPE.

The SPEs are connected through EIB to the PPE, but the SPEs are also connected to system memory through MIC. The SPEs recive instruction from either source and both the PPE and SPEs recive and execute their own instruction independently from MIC. The SPEs recive and execute instruction simultaneously without the PPE. The PPE rather is another, more capable, core. In all reality the cell processor has 9 independent cores, 1 power processing core, and 8 SPEs which are actually full vector CPUs due to their own 256KB LS (cache).
Each core is independent and can communicate with System memory, each other, and the PPE.

Bottom line: SPEs do not recieve, but can coloborate, their instrution from the PPE, rather the system memory jsut like the PPE does. The 256GFLOPs compared to the 6 threaded xbox 360 CPU, which is what, ~115GFLOPS, I forgot the exact number, is solid. The computing capabilities general purpose or not, are superior in the cell processor. Damn, the 256GLOPS is only the rating for 8 SPEs too, PPE not included (two threaded!).

 

Online play wasn't a failure for the PS2, but I'm sure many more people would have used it had the network adapter come with the PS2... For one I didn't bother to buy one, but then I'm lazy...
But of course you have to consider so are a lot of us. It just seemed that the xbox was better planned in the online department.

I must reiterate though I think we are giving Nintendo a great injustice in this discussion, as their revolution consople is also likely to sell quite well, and because it doesn't have reams of technical specification, it doesn't get discussed.

I don't seem to recall people worrying about the clock rate of the original Playstation, or much about the PS2 for that matter, except of course for xbox fans to brag about, 733mhz vs 300 or whatever.

With this generation it seems all about power. A shame really, when you consider consoles always used to be about the fun factor, and still should be. I'm sure I'd have a great time playing on an xbox but I get the most benefit from a PS2, and hence have one, and bought it a while after the xbox and Gamecube came out. I had previously always been a fan of Nintendo (and er... mario!) but for the 2001/2 generation my heart switched to the PS2. So be it. Everyone is free to make choices, whether or not the console has XDR or GDDR memory. A large majority of users simply won't know or care. They'll go with what they prefer.

I think this discussion has gone a bit far with technical specs, but on the other hand, there's nothing wrong with discussing them, and i do sometimes wonder what we'd be discussing otherwise.
BUT - Have you noticed how many "we'll have to wait and see"s there have been? Almost every other post ends in words to that effect. Maybe we should stop being inquisitive little children and wait for the joy of using these beasts.

Until then, I don't think I have much to discuss.

 

Xbox better have been better, and come online ready considering it came out a year later and costs more. As far as I'm concerned Nintendo is out of the running for everyone except classic fans and kids. They've backed down in the fight and decided to make a cheaper and smaller "quiet" (wow that's a cool feature) system. Don't try and bring the Nintendo Revolution into this, this leans toward a serious discussion. Not a mario party, srry.

 

I would buy the 360 if it was wifi standardly installed. i hate going out to buy a hardware upgrade for something.still a ps3 fan.