DarkBlade said:
This is irrelavent people.. the XBOX 360 or whatever is powerful and has the games to back it, while the Sony Playstation3 is the most powerful of the bunch, but the most of the current Sony platform games pale in comparison to many XBOX titles. If we are talking raw power, the Playstation3 slaughters the XBOX 360. If we are talking games looking at current standards and statistics, XBOX 360 is going to be king. As far as online goes, XBOX Live is very good, but Microsoft is making it sound awfully coorperate and gimicky... Sony is really unknown at this point, but I hope it is better then their current offering.
Syntax, to go back to your statement above:
The Playstation3 uses the RSX chip developed by nVidia. This is the most powerful graphics chip ever concieved. It uses a 700MHz GDDR3 dual RAMDAC and an unknown core operating speed. It is going to be comprised on a 70nm scale and be about 1.8X more powerful then even the mighty 7800GTX, although the two are sister cores and designs. The RSX graphics chip uses an R6 silicon base, a very unstable base. The sythetics of this silicon wafer are yet to be synthesized, but Sony and nVidia will need to work together to perform this operation. I did some analysis of R6 from the Purdue database a few minutes ago. Apparently, it takes a massive particle stream of beta particles to help stabilize R6 silicon wafers (beta particles being high intensity electrons also known as LOW YIELD RADIATION) This comes as as interesting fact to myself. The core design uses a hypercell (similar to a supercell on modern processors, but with an intensified singularity resistor built in... i know, techno mumbo jumbo you don't care about).
As of right now, the PS3 is much more ahead of the new XBOX 360 in technology, there is no doubt there.
One sad disappointment is that fact that the XBOX's mighty 512MB of GDDR3 700MHz RAM is shared by the ENTIRE SYSTEM, in a similar fashion to INTEGRATED GRAPHICS on many low end desktops and laptops of today. This means that the coprocessors and graphics cards will need to pull from this RAM, thus not allowing a singular area for the primary tri core PowerPC to pull from. This will 100% guaranteed, create slowed frame rates and decreased texture and bump mapping, as well as lower physical sprite counts when the graphics card attempts to pull physical memory from the tricore PowerPCs system BUS controller. IRQ conflicts may randomly occur, as well as BUS bottlenecking, particularly in the SOuthbridge where the exchange between the coprocessors and audio and graphics will be located. I do NOT think this was wise on Microsoft's account.
The PS3 uses two distinct RAM sequences:
GDDR3 (256MBs @ 700MHz)
XDR (Xtreme Data Rate) XRIMM developed by RAMBUS Inc, a division of Intel, yet still a singular entity. This RAM is revolutionary in the fact that it runs at the EXACT same frequency as the processor, in this case, the CELL, running at 3.2GHz. That means ZERO bottlenecks, something never before realized on ANY modern day computer. The RAM and processor will be synchronous and run together almost as one unit, the RAM acting as almost an L4 cache for the processor to store commands.
The Cell processor also presents a highly innovative approach to things. Rather then pack many many full physical CPU cores onto one PCB, the CELL takes a different approach to things. It uses a primary PowerPC processor running at 3.2GHz that is DIRECTLY linked through a carbon tunnel (EOI=elemental on Interface) technology to 8 vector processors. Vector processors eliminate the need for a logics controller like current dual core processors and the XBOX 360s tricore PowerPC use because they are not fully logical cores. They ONLY run binary and simple sring execution commands. Vector means just that, a string of binary. This means that that the PowerPC can do the primary execution sets (also known as instruction sets: i.e. SSE, SSE2, SSE3, 3DNOW!, MMX, etc) while the vector processors do the primary binary strings (the physical data that requires the most time). This makes the PS3 vastly superior to ANY computer system ever created, because the CELL can actually RUN binary in REALTIME, something all other modern day processors available to the general public have not been able to achieve.
MY FINAL WORDS:
Playstation3 is VASTLY SUPERIOR to the XBOX 360s technology, but judging by current gaming titles available on Microsoft's XBOX and Sony's PS2, XBOX 360's titles look and sound promising. If Sony creates what XBOX started as far as titles go and online experience, there is no question, Playstation3 will be SUPERIOR in ALL catagories.
The RSX isn't as effiecent as the Xenos chip. Nor as flexible. The RSX is like a swimmer using brute force to swim instead of using technique. The Xenos chip uses a very interesting Unified Shader Architecture, which means that all 48 pipelines can be either pixel or vertex shaders, which means that it will be using all 48 pipelines instead of having some hang there empty like the RSX (which uses traditional independent pixel and vertex pipelines). So even though the RSX is fast, it's not as flexible for developers and isn't very efficient compared to the Xenos. Oh btw, the RSX is supposed to run at 550mhz, only 50mhz faster than the Xenos (500mhz).
You're right about the Xbox 360 sharing the 512mb of GDDR RAM though...the memory bandwidth isn't so great (22.4GB/sec for the GPU). However, ATI did something pretty interesting and unique. They decided to have 10mb of embedded DRAM (memory bandwidth connects at a insane rate of 256GB/sec) along with the GPU to act as a buffer for graphically intense situations, which reduces the need for faster RAM.
As for the Cell, it owns the 360 at floating-point work, but when it comes to general-computing it's single PowerPC core loses to the 360's 3 processor cores. Keep in mind that gaming code and programming usually utilizes 80% general-computing and 20% floating-point. The Cell as a whole is awesome, but it's a bit weak when it comes to just general-computing and processing.
I agree with you about the Xbox 360's games and software though...
Although the PS3 is more powerful, software and features play a big role also. If you have the speed but lack the software it = useless. The XNA Development Team decided to make the Xbox 360 balanced in terms of hardware, software and features. I think they've done a very good job. The Xbox 360's hardware may not be as powerful, but it allows the developers of easily make games while having enough power to make the game look like eye-candy. The PS3 has so much power and the design of the hardware may make it hard for developers to esaily develop a game. The Xbox 360's hardware was designed with the developers in mind too...not just raw speed and power.
The PS3's games are nothing compared to the Xbox 360's (Killzone 1 or 2 isn't even worth mentioning along with the Halo series and Ghost Recon: Advanced Warfighter is just a pure pixel orgasm
). An asset the 360 has is it's networking capability. It can connect to any computer to rip music, movies, transfer files, transfer pictures etc. An advantage the Xbox 360 has is it' customization features. Removable faceplates may sound lame, but it really takes customizing to a whole new level. Another asset is the 360's peripherals. The XNA Team followed the saying "If it ain't broke, don't fix it". The new 360 controller is similar to the Controller S of the original Xbox, but somethings have been modified (Analog sticks, D-Pad, A, B, X, Y and both Trigger buttons are the same). The White and Black buttons are now shoulder buttons above the Triggers, Start and Back are now flanking the Xbox 360 guide button represented by the Xbox 360 logo. The handles are flared out a bit for more ergonomic comfort, and it's WIRELESS!
Instead of using 3rd party technology like Bluetooth (like the PS3's boomerang/ banana controllers), Microsoft developed a built-from-scratch technology that suits the gaming needs of the 360 (with battery usage, response times, latency times etc.). Even a superb technology like Bluetooth has it's drawbacks, so Microsoft wanted something even better. And what's better than a do-it-yourself job? Perhaps the most innovative feature is the controller's Xbox 360 Guide Button. It's what allows you to access your interactive launchpad. You can see how many friends are on, choose your music (Yes, all Xbox 360 games will have Custom Soundtracks), access the Xbox Live Marketplace and buy new parts for your race car etc. All that during a game or movie. Another creative feature is that the Guide Button can turn your console on and off!
No need to get off the couch, just press the button and WALLA!