Official PS3 vs. Xbox 360 vs. N. Revolution

This is were I get to be a pain...

Except that I don't remember anything that states you will be able to connect your PS3 to your PC.

Now one can assume that you will get the HDD and might be able to do it with Linux, but...

 

I never understood why people bash and hate new things. Don't be a hater, playa.

For example, Half Life 2? 90% loved it, 10% hated it. What was so bad about it? Nothing, apart from the team AI. What was so revolutionary about it? Everything, apart from the team AI. Let's take Halo 2, which is the subject you're talking about.

1. Halo 2 improved on nearly everything Halo had. That's IMPROVEMENT.

2. You said Halo was a PRETTY good game. How can improvements make it into a "omg that sucked lololool".

3. You are a small small SMALL minority. But it's always those small minorities that bash new games.

Movies too, but some of them are justified. Matrix, for example, everyone loved the first one, everyone had a "omg reloaded with suxxx lol" attitude regarding the second one. And IMO they were right. But the third one? Please, playa. At least the Mech fighting was thrilling if nothing else. I loved the first and third.

Anyway, back on topic. I have nothing else to say.

 

I agree (I just cant help it when people start talking about halo). Halo was a great game and even though Halo 2 isnt as good as we all thought it would be there were major improvements on everything from the first so its hard to beleive my ears when someone says it sucked. But I do admit that it couldve been better.

*begins to scratch his head focusing on the topic*

So any way since Im an xbox type of guy I would prefer the xbox 360 but Ive seen alot of good games for the Ps3 that left me with my mouth open.

Peace out!

*picks his jaw off the floor*

 

Lol, "an xbox type of guy". so is there an "all three type of guy", i wonder?

This thread has kind of got me worried cos now i don't know what to believe in at all. damn forums, why do i even come here?

 

If Kutaragi has all these huge plans for the PS3 to be the center of entertainment. And to run OS, and be a computer. It's pretty obvious that it will connect to your LAN wireless and hardwired. Sony would've just looked dumb to put that as a spec. Sony would especially look dumb if they didn't include it, it's just a feature.

Some things are obvious. Why run any OS a publisher will make on it (linux is the only so far, mac and windows a good probability once the big part of the war is over), if it isn't going to have all the functions of a computer, like LAN to other computers. Damn, that would be the stupidest thing to not include on both next gen systems.

Where there is no proof. Saying it would be like saying that there is air outside. Come on, do you really think like that, or do you just need everything to be told or written to you?

 

But is there air outside? or is air nothing, and vacuums negative matter?

Lol basically, don't assume anything. If you're not sure, ask. That's often why people come to AD isn't it?

 

Reasons: I will remind you that it was you who said stick to the specs and/or facts. There are no specs/facts that include LAN connectivity to other computers so be careful with that assumption.

Also, I don't know how much you know about Linux (and I am by no means skilled in it, but I do have to use it now and then) but working with Red Hat here, there is not integral way to share information between Win PC's & Lindows. You can use FTP [bold]IF[/bold] you happen to have a server set up on the Linux or your desktop or you can use Samba as a middleware program that allows you connect to windows shares. Nothing within most version of Linux, however...

I think your dreaming about Tiger or Windows. Steve Jobs has already stated vehemently that OSX will never be on anything other than a MAC and I doubt MS will make a version of Windows XP to run on the PS3. You 'might' see a version of 2K3 Server for the Cell, but good luck shoehorning that into the PS3.

No, I don't need everything to be told to me. I just seem to have a better understanding of the implications behind what is being said and comprehending what that means. You would [bold]think[/bold] that a computer would connect to other computers and share files but Linux and Windows don't work together quite that way. If you would like, I can provide some links to things like File Systems and how they are different. Might help you understand why your assumptions aren't as good as you think.

Here is a previous quote from you...
"You don't know for sure about the spec that the cell will include only one PPE. That would be very dumb, and is highly unlikely, and almost impossible" Sounds very simular to "Sony would especially look dumb if they didn't include it, it's just a feature"

The ONLY thing that I have heard the PS3 connecting to is the PSP. No computers, no Digital Camera or MP3 player, no streaming.

As a recommendation... Perhaps instead of making assumptions about how 'great' things are going to be and just assuming that things will work the way you believe they should, perhaps you should ask other people why they don't think it will. For example, instead of saying things like "Of course it will connect to other computers. It's just dumb to think it won't" why not say something like "Well, I would think that as two computers they should be able to connect without a problem. Why is it that you don't think they will?" Less insulting to other people, will make people respect your opinions more and if you happen to be wrong, you won't be sticking your foot in your mouth.

 

I've read a great deal of this thread and in amongst the rubbish there is some interesting stuff especially the conversation between WVengeance and Commonsense (till he got scrubbed).

I find myself siding with WVengeance. the PS3 will be a powerful piece of hardware, but sony seems to be a little shortsighted in its implementation. For one, the SPEs in the CELL will be great for traditional floating point work such as 3d and physics, but from my limited programming experience there are lots of efficiency gains to using integer ops where possible. With only one PPE (and it seems pretty clear there is only one from all the tech reports available) it seems like there'll be a lot more than one redundant SPE in many gaming situations . The other area that is a sure miss for the PS3 is the lack of a harddrive as standard. As WVengeance has stated, if its not there by default, programmers won't optimise their games to it. As far as I'm concerned, the harddrive is an essential item in the console (especially when trying to go multimedia) and if its not there by default it won't be properly supported. streaming from BluRay/DVD will be a real bottleneck on performance for memory hungry games. The harddrive was actually what bought me across to console gaming from the pc in the first place

Also correct me if i'm wrong, but the real next gen demos (e.g. UT2007, Fightnight, Gears of War) from MS and Sony would all probably run on a single 3.2Ghz PowerPc Processor with a top notch graphics card (isn't that basically what the 360s alpha kits are?). The biggest problem with implementing a killzone2 is the man power required to code an engine with truly flexible unscripted AI and physics that integrates with animation. I can't believe the same guys who produced killzone are capable of this unless their team has suddenly ballooned 10 fold. EPIC or the halflife guys are probably the leaders in this area and i don't even think they are ready to produce killzone2 quality. So either killzone 2 will rely on a lot of scripted scenarios or it just won't live up to the hype

Finally, going back to the SPEs in the CELL, does anyone with tech knowledge actually know what the potential bottlenecks for these things are. e.g. can they access memory (not cache) directly or do they rely on the PPE to pass data in?

 

but if they do insert an OS and media capabilities, that will almost make the possibility of have a standard HD positive, i really and truly dont want a HD, imagine the price, im all wiped out by buying my PSP.

 

Kurtagi seems to have said it won't have a HDD standard.
"Kutaragi was asked if he has any plans to add a DVD recorder or home server capability to the PS3. "In that case, you'll need at least one terabyte of disc space" he said. "Even that much space won't be enough if it's going to be HDTV-compliant. To put that much HDD space into this machine is impossible. Rather than to equip some mediocre amount of HDD space, it's better to make it detachable. There's also the possibility of a home server equipped with the Cell chip. [bold]But when we first release it as a game machine, we won't need an HDD.[/bold]"

Personally, I would hope they do include a HDD standard (an issue we have flogged to death already) because it would be worth the extra cost for what it will allow.

 

i found the quote below here: http://www.gamedreamz.com/index.cgi?m=stories&s=read&id=3896 . probably not the most reputable, but interesting. anyone got any thoughts on this?

 

dlm, each SPE can access system memory w/out the PPE or L2 cache.
"the harddrive is an essential item in the console"- one multi-bilion dollar corporation doesn't think so. Have you seen the inside of these consoles or something, how they are going to work?

"Nothing within most version of Linux..."- Ahhh, I didn't know that you knew what version, if currently existent, is going to come on it. Your doing the same thing you criticize me for.

Wvengence, my assumptions are based on a windows coming out for PS3. Where do you find that the only poss. is for winserv2k3? Where and how long ago did Jobs say MAC OS will only, money can change the mind? Jobs did, I know that. But your doing the same thing I did, assuming about OS release. How can you say winxp will never come out, and how can you say another OS is a poss. and be doing the same thing I am doing, just pessimistic?

I agree mac os will probally never make it on PS3, assumed, because nobody buys mac enough for their computer anyway, much less for their PS3. IF, microsoft is into making money, it's completely in their hands to make a mint off winxp on the PS3.

Once the huge feud of the two systems (6 months? maybe, then it will just be like PS2 and xbox are now, nothing really). It is in MS's best interest to release an OS for PS3 and the 360, they'd be making their money on both. Why not, once the dust settles, making an OS for PS3 isn't going to effect their sales, if they have something similar for their own system.

Wvengence, you must of skipped ECON 100 and BUS 160. Oh wait, you probally went to a tech college, that didn't require a Liberal Studies program outside of your major...

I am doing the same, assuming. But you act like your not, and you are, blatently.

 

for a lot of games the drive probably isn't necessary. but, what's pretty clear is the PS3 will have 256mb ram for data (and another 256 for the gfx card??). we already see pc games with 1gb ram min spec + gfx card requirement (Admittedly some of the ram is for OS overhead) and i can't see that dropping in the future. so given the ram constraint of the console and if you have all this extra data to stream in it doesn't take a hardware expert or intimate knowledge of the console architecture to figure it'll be faster to stream from the harddrive than the bluray drive.

 

dml, you posted right before did, so i didn't see your post with the huge quote until now.

"Futher - the spe's rely upon a LOCAL area of memory (256Kb) to store both the data they use during"

This other forum poster, has no idea what he/she is talking about. Each SPE has IT'S OWN LS (load store) that is 256KB. It's not local, and the PPE nor other SPEs can access it. Damn, you belive what this guy is saying?

DMA, in no reading of any official IBM etc. article on the cell is any DMA mentioned. Obviously this guy read some propanganda crap and if he had actually read real papers on the cell, he would know that the connection between the SPEs and the PPE (all though not required to move data in and out i.e. SPEs are not dependent on the PPE but can recieve instruction from it) is referred to as EIB. The SPEs communicate to the XDR main system memory through MIC.

Again, you believed what this guy was saying? He does have a good point on brach prediction, but the cell just leaves that as a responsibility of the programmer. Yes programming for the cell will take longer, but there is always a sacrifice for great performance. That is more than a worst case scenario for the cell, the programmer would be responsible for that not happening, and I hope they don't have programmers like that making these high end games.

 

Wow, dml, you are on at the same time and posting right while I type a response to your last one.

Yes it's faster from the HDD, how much of a difference is that difference going to make in all reality though?

Buy a HDD, dev. should assume this, and utilize drive caching. We've already been through this, me and Wvengence, a few pages ago. Developers can assume you have a HDD and make the game use it. If you don't have one (most people will) then the game runs a little slower, mostly just load times etc. No actual gameplay should get moddled or glitchy, that's ignorant to think that. A few extra seconds load time isn't that ungodly horrible.

 

are you sure about this? I've read other claims including the quote i posted above that the SPEs are restricted to a local area of memory and rely on an external part of the cell architecture (or the PPE?) to feed them main memory. i don't have a personal stake either way as it's a bit of an oranges and apples comparison for the 3xPPE 360 versus 1xPPE, 7xSPE PS3. it's pretty obvious that you can rig the benchmarks to favor either one over the other given that the SPEs are good on some things weak on others.

personally, the biggest factor for me is the harddrive - cheap persistent storage fully supported by the console offers a lot of benefits in addition to just caching game data, and if none of the consoles have it i'd probably just go back to pc gaming. i guess there is a chance PS3 may support some sort of internal persistent flash memory that might be a viable alternative for storage.

 

not if you are trying to stream in real time in which case the programmers have to concede to the lowest common denominator. For example, the next gen tony hawk game (perhaps the next current gen too) is supposed to have a single load of a big persistent city that's too big to fit into ram in its entirety, so it streams off the disc in real time as you move to different parts. the risk is the the amount that needs to be streamed gets too large relative to the speed of the disk... more ambitious games may hit this limit, thus compromising what can be achieved in the game or necessitating loads within levels.

anyway, i like the banter but i've gotta run. i'll catch up with this thread later.

 

Go back a few pages and you'll find all sorts of links to the cell and xenon processors, I don't want to keep reposting everything.

If a entire level, say tony hawk city, can't be held in 256MB, that's really damn big. GDDR3 and XDR make up 512MB and the xbox 360 has 512 GDDR3. Think about it this way. The game requests a new portion of a level is coming up. While the current part of the level remains on RAM, the upcoming, predicted sectors can be loaded to a different part of RAM replacing an area of the level; you are far from. This is being done as you travel. Certainly not as fast, but if done right, can prevent having to load. Blu-ray should be able to keep up, but the read and transfer rates haven't been released yet, officially. Games will most likely be drive cache enabled for those who do buy a HDD. It's not a very time consuming process to add it in when the cost and time of these games is as much as a movie budget. Blu0ray disc also can hold both the game, and the information required to drive cache, which is alot, but so is 50GB more than enough.

 

"Ahhh, I didn't know that you knew what version, if currently existent, is going to come on it. " No I don't. But then neither do you. I am unaware of any FREE version of Linux that comes with windows share support. Now I am making an assumption here, but Sony used GNU Linux on the PS2 and it stands to reason that they will on the PS3. GNU linux uses Samba for windows share support.

"my assumptions are based on a windows coming out for PS3." So your saying that you will be able to network your PS3 and PC based on a vague comment by Ken that windows 'could' work on the PS3 and with ABSOLUTELY no confirmation from MS on it... I atleast make educated guesses.

"Where and how long ago did Jobs say MAC OS will only" Actually about 2 weeks ago when Dell jumped up and said they would like OS X to sell on their Dell systems...

Otherwise, your counter to an argument is that "Well, your assuming too..." My assumptions are based upon knowledge and experience in my field not just wishful thinking...

 

"So your saying that you will be able to network your PS3 and PC based on a vague comment by Ken that windows 'could' work on the PS3 and with ABSOLUTELY no confirmation from MS on it"

- That's why I clarified, and said I assumed it, on my last post before that. Very good point, that it's only a possibility. I just would think they would, for the $. I'd buy windows XP for PS3 for $100-$200, depending on what MS would want in the event they did so, use the same XP, just make it for the cell. A fair project, but they'd make millions.

As far as linux goes, someone should have better share support by the time PS3 comes out, that is, if Sony doesn't do it. Remember, because they did something with PS2 doesn't mean they will or will not do it five years later. The PS3 would be a great platform for a new linux, one that can work with windows as if it were another windows desktop. I can only hope, true. But my guess still remains in windows for it, money should inspire MS to do it. This isn't really wishful thinking, the politics of these companies would make one say no, they would never do that, but I think it'll happen. You just don't, because how they've interacted thus far. I base my assumtion on corporate greed for $$$.