Now that the PS3 and Xbox 360 are out, there has been much debate on which platform has more power under the hood. So far the Xbox 360 has outperformed the PS3 but many say it’s because the game developers need more time and experience with the PS3 hardware. Let’s brake it down right here, right now, because I’m sick of this, “PS3 is more powerful” nonsense!
CPU
The Cell CPU starts off with a standard PowerPC core that’s not unlike one of the cores in the Xbox 360. The next step is adding 8 additional SPEs, 6 of which are accessible to the programmer. These SPEs have a limited feature set and essentially are only useful for accelerating mathematical computations.
In a way, Sony’s vision for the Cell was different. Whereas Microsoft had come to the drawing board with a vision for the best gaming CPU, Sony had come to IBM and Toshiba to try to create something different, the fastest and most powerful processor for streaming data. From an engineering standpoint, the Cell processor is impressive, but the Cell is not purpose built for games. Dollar for dollar, the Xenon CPU is going to offer better overall performance.
In short, Sony continues to be bold with its hardware design choice but Microsoft plays the superior political game. Microsoft asked the developers what they wanted, and gave them more. Sony offers more than Microsoft, but demands that developers join their religion of massive parallel programming.
Who’s right? There are strengths to both approaches. Hands down, the Microsoft approach is right for the industry. It ensures that gamers will get the great games early on in the lifecycle of a product, ensures that the developer can maximize their programming time and monetary investment. You get better games, developers take on fewer risks, and Microsoft makes money. A win-win for everyone.
With Sony, the PS3’s architecture is sure to alienate many developers. Indeed, former PS3 exclusives continue to make their way to the Xbox 360 as developers revolt. Sony is just capitalizing on their brand name and Blu-Ray to make the PS3 work early on. What will keep the PS3 alive is the Holy Trinity of PlayStation: Square-Enix, Konami, and Polyphony Digital.
GPU
Now the 360’s GPU is one impressive piece of work and I’ll say from the get go it’s much more advanced than the PS3’s GPU so I’m not sure where to begin, but I’ll start with what Microsoft said about it. Microsoft said Xenos was clocked at 500MHZ and that it had 48-way parallel floating-point dynamically-scheduled shader pipelines (48 unified shader units or pipelines) along with a polygon performance of 500 Million triangles a second.
Before going any further I’ll clarify this 500 Million Triangles a second claim. Can the 360’s GPU actually achieve this? Yes it can, BUT there would be no pixels or color at all. It’s the triangle setup rate for the GPU and it isn’t surprising it has such a higher triangle setup rate due to it having 48 shaders units capable of performing vertex operations whereas all other released GPUs can only dedicate 8 shader units to vertex operations. The PS3 GPU’s triangle setup rate at 550MHZ is 275 million a second and if its 500MHZ will have 250 million a second. This is just the setup rate do NOT expect to see games with such an excessive number of polygons because it wont happen.
Microsoft also says it can also achieve a pixel-fillrate of 16Gigasamples per second. This GPU here inside the Xbox 360 is literally an early ATI R600, which when released by ATI for the pc will be a Directx 10 GPU. Xenos in a lot of areas manages to meet many of the requirements that would qualify it as a Directx 10 GPU, but falls short of the requirements in others. What I found interesting was Microsoft said the 360’s GPU could perform 48 billion shader operations per second back in 2005. However Bob Feldstein, VP of engineering for ATI, made it very clear that the 360’s GPU can perform 2 of those shaders per cycle so the 360’s GPU is actually capable of 96 billion shader operations per second.
To quote ATI on the 360’s GPU they say.
“On chip, the shaders are organized in three SIMD engines with 16 processors per unit, for a total of 48 shaders. Each of these shaders is comprised of four ALUs that can execute a single operation per cycle, so that each shader unit can execute four floating-point ops per cycle."
48 shader units * 4 ops per cycle = 192 shader ops per clock
Xenos is clocked at 500MHZ *192 shader ops per clock = 96 billion shader ops per second.
(Did anyone notice that each shader unit on the 360’s GPU doesn’t perform as many ops per pipe as the rsx? The 360 GPU makes up for it by having superior architecture, having many more pipes which operate more efficiently and along with more bandwidth.)
Did Microsoft just make a mistake or did they purposely misrepresent their GPU to lead Sony on? The 360’s GPU is revolutionary in the sense that it’s the first GPU to use a Unified Shader architecture. According to developers this is as big a change as when the vertex shader was first introduced and even then the inclusion of the vertex shader was merely an add-on not a major change like this. The 360’s GPU also has a daughter die right there on the chip containing 10MB of EDRAM. This EDRAM has a framebuffer bandwidth of 256GB/s which is more than 5 times what the RSX or any GPU for the pc has for its framebuffer (even higher than G80’s framebuffer).
Thanks to the efficiency of the 360 GPU’s unified shader architecture and this 10MB of EDRAM the GPU is able to achieve 4XFSAA at no performance cost. ATI and Microsoft’s goal was to eliminate memory bandwidth as a bottleneck and they seem to have succeeded. If there are any pc gamers out there they notice that when they turn on things such as AA or HDR the performance goes down that’s because those features eat bandwidth hence the efficiency of the GPU’s operation decreases as they are turned on. With the 360 HDR+4XAA simultaneously are like nothing to the GPU with proper use of the EDRAM. The EDRAM contains a 3D logic unit which has 192 Floating Point Unit processors inside. The logic unit will be able to exchange data with the 10MB of RAM at 2 Terabits a second. Things such as antialiasing, computing z depths or occlusion culling can happen on the EDRAM without impacting the GPU’s workload.
Xenos writes to this EDRAM for its framebuffer and it’s connected to it via a 32GB/sec connection (this number is extremely close to the theoretical because the EDRAM is right there on the 360 GPU’s daughter die.) Don’t forget the EDRAM has a bandwidth of 256GB/s and its only by dividing this 256GB/s by the initial 32GB/s that we get from the connection of Xenos to the EDRAM we find out that Xenos is capable of multiplying its effective bandwidth to the frame buffer by a factor of 8 when processing pixels that make use of the EDRAM, which includes HDR or AA and other things. This leads to a maximum of 32*8=256GB/s which, to say the least, is a very effective way of dealing with bandwidth intensive tasks.
In order for this to be possible developers would need to setup their rendering engine to take advantage of both the EDRAM and the available onboard 3D logic. If anyone is confused why the 32GB/s is being multiplied by 8 its because once data travels over the 32GB/s bus it is able to be processed 8 times by the EDRAM logic to the EDRAM memory at a rate of 256GB/s so for every 32GB/s you send over 256GB/s gets processed. This results in RSX being at a bandwidth disadvantage in comparison to Xenos. Needless to say the 360 not only has an overabundance of video memory bandwidth, but it also has amazing memory saving features. For example to get 720P with 4XFSAA on traditional architecture would require 28MB worth of memory. On the 360 only 16MB is required. There are also features in the 360’s Direct3D API where developers are able to fit 2 128x128 textures into the same space required for one, for example. So even with all the memory and all the memory bandwidth, they are still very mindful of how it’s used.
Console War Conclusions
Virtually every article I’ve read has called the PS3 the loser, or copped out with the “we’ll have to wait and see.” I think the future of this generation’s consoles is much easier to predict. All you need to do is to take a developer-centric perspective.
Gameplay is always number one, but this has little effect on console wars. That’s because everyone wants a game that’s fun to play, even the most corporate, mega-managed game developer. Tools like the Wii controller help developers expand their creativity in one way, however developers interested in applying novel methods of realistic videos or sophisticated visual effects to improve the game play (think Splinter Cell) will find the Wii somewhat restrictive. Developers will always be looking to make the most entertaining game within the development budget they have been given. In that regard, the development environment is critical. The more time they need to spend troubleshooting something, the less time they can ask themselves is “feature X” actually making the game more entertaining. Along the same lines though, the bigger the console user base, the bigger the budget they’ll get...
Sony will lose market share due to increases in popularity from Microsoft and Nintendo. As a gamer, the Xbox 360 is the clear choice. It’s easily available, relatively cheap, and offers a true next-generation experience. The balanced development environment will ensure a steady stream of releases, and Microsoft’s aggressive Japanese investments (Tecmo, Mistwalker, Capcom) will likely help establish the brand in Asia. Microsoft will always have the price advantage over the PS3, and I would expect some aggressive promotions by E3 2007.
The Wii will do better than the Gamecube but will not be able to compete as effectively as the Xbox 360 and PS3 in the enthusiast market. Yes, the Wii is great, and yes, it’s affordable, and yes, it’s completely sold out. The problem and strength with the Wii is that it’s designed to introduce “non-traditional gamers” to consoles. That’s great and all, but once you’ve gotten them excited about the Wii, these non-traditional gamers are unlikely to be as passionate about games as PS3/Xbox 360 owners will be. In the same way the DDR Revolution and Katamari Damacy eventually fizzled out, so will the Wii. It’s not that the Wii isn’t awesome... it’s that the Xbox 360 and PS3 will still be dominant.
The real wild card in this final third of the decade will be the PC. The PC has quickly reestablished its dominance in hardware superior – faster than any other console product launch cycle. As advanced as the Xenon and Cell processors are, it’s always the GPU that improves the most quickly. As fast as the GeForce 8800 GTX is today, we know that a year from now, AMD and NVIDIA will have even faster flagship products, and cards like the 7950GT will be even cheaper and more mainstream. Likewise, Microsoft will continue to push DX10 gaming in their efforts to maintain a desktop entertainment platform that’s ahead of the MacOS competition.
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Last edited 27 Dec 2006 01:28 pm by Xtrm Liability
Carl- please do not delete the real console wars thread. It’s not just a thread that has a lot of posts but a special place to go talk for many people. If that topic dies then so do a lot of people on this forum. Just leave it alone.
Zucas wrote:
Carl- please do not delete the real console wars thread. It’s not just a thread that has a lot of posts but a special place to go talk for many people. If that topic dies then so do a lot of people on this forum. Just leave it alone.
its more likely going to be locked then deleated. once it hits 100,000, the lag will be amazing. we can post here, and for records and stuff add this threads posts to the other one’s. thing of it as an expantion. were not getting rid of the old one, we are making it so people can actualy get on it with ease. anyways, that would be very cool, ending at 100,000. a great number for a great thread. it will live on in mvc history.
the21gamer wrote:
The PS3 is a bit more powerful. It’s a little hard to notice.
The blu-ray is 'better' but dual-layer hd-dvds can easily outperform it.
Did you read any of my post at all? I gave sufficient explanations from info gathered sinse the launch of both and comparison wise. The Xbox 360 simply dominates PS3.
Here is some more insight from somebody else from a different forum who owns both PS3 and Xbox 360. (I suggest taking a look at those pic he’s provided so you can get a feel for this guys gaming infatuation. You might want to listen to what he has to say!)
TopGamer wrote:
You make me laugh silly boy. You know I’m the Real Deal when it comes to the things I say. I have gone to the extent to take pictures to prove what I have been saying for months and you still doubt. No problem my digital camera can’t fix for you. ha ha ha ha ha ha ha...
Take note to my extensive HD Dvd collection on the top two rows to the right.....
DJ....What now? DO you want me to go upstares and show my 2 other 360’s? Do you want me to walk around my whole house and show ALL my DVD’s and Games? Do you want me to take pitures of my computers as well? ha ha ha ha ha ha...You should already know that everything I say is the Real Deal. You should know that I’m honest and speak from my personal experience and knowledge of gaming. I spend over 20k a year on my hobby of Gaming. I think I have earned to right to express myself in regards to my experience on the best gaming site on the PLANET. News4Gamers.com. Now, do you have a ps3? Do you have an xbox 360? I personally doubt that many of the rabbid sony fanboys even have a Ps3. I’m more qualified to talk about the Ps3 than many of you. Thats Real. And I don’t bash the Ps3. I am just completely honest about it. If the Ps3 was impressive....I would be the first person to tell the world about it. I love Games that much. I have gaming sessions at my place every weekend. And the gaming experience you get on the 360 right now is unriveled. I have hopes for my Ps3. But, I also know I had hopes for my Ps2 as well. And I was let down with that system. So we will see. In the meanwhile...I’m totally satisfied with my xbox 360 purchases....it has given my family and friends hours upon hours of Pure Gaming Bliss. Now....to all you sony fanboys who bash me personally....I’m more of a Sony fan than you are. I buy more sony products....I mean even the digital camera I took the picures with is Sony. I have every Ps3 launch game. Even though I already had most of them for the xbox 360....Now who’s a True Gamer? Hmmmmmmmm...Think about it.
P.S. From my extensivve play with my 360’s and my Ps3....The xbox 360 is clearly better in terms of Graphics. I don’t honestly see the ps3 having an advantage in any area of gaming. I thought the Cell was suppose to have A lot going on in games, but yet I haven’t seen that at all. Resistance doesn’t compare in any way to any of the 360 FPS that are out now. I have done a head to head with Resistance and Call of Duty 2 from last year and COD2 clearly looks much better. The ps3 games are lacking detailed textures. If Resistance was on the 360 I can guarentee it would look much better. But as is Resistance would recieve a 7.0 on the xbox 360. Its Decent but nothing special. I had high hopes for Resistance and It utterly shocked me how Sony’s flagship game isn’t the AAA title they hyped it up to be. With that said...its still the best launch title on the Ps3....But Call of Duty 3 on the ps3 is severly lacking the lighting, shadowing, and texture detail of the xbox 360 counterpart. The 360 version is hands down much much nicer looking and 60 fps compared to a struggling 30 fps on the ps3. And to be honest....every single 3rd party game looks much nicer on the 360. Fight Night RND 3 was the shocker for me. I just knew it would look better on the ps3. But NOPE. There are some nice little added stuff on the ps3. But once again. the lighting, shadowing, and texture detail is far superior on the xbox 360. And it runs smoother on the 360. This is why I have came to the conclusion that what developers have said for months is true. The Ps3 can’t use all 512 of its split ram for graphics...and the cell isn’t optimal for gaming but best for video streaming. I good example of that is Motorstorm. The actual game when Playing it looks “NICE”. Nothing spectacular. But the Video in the game...looks fabulous. The HD cut scenes look far better than the actual game when you are playing it. Some things in Motorstorm look GREAT...and others look borderline BAD. As far as gameplay. Once again...if Motorstorm was on the 360...I can guarentee it would look and play much better.
I believe that Sony has flopped this next gen. I think that the 10 million console lead that MS will have at the beggining of 2007 will keep them ahead of Sony the whole next gen. I don’t see Sony recovering. They don’t even have the games to compete with the xbox 360. And it is all about the games right?
Games....MS
Online....MS
Graphics...MS
Framerates....MS
Price....MS
10 million consumer lead...MS
Winner this next gen? Is it not obvious. I mean if Sony had a better price and better games...they would have a chance. But they have neither as of right now...and Motorstorm is just too short with only 8 tracks. Its fun for a quick second...then its over.
Reports from everywhere are showering in concluding the Xbox 360 is superior over PS3. If anybody should be taken seriously and listened to in the gaming industry, it’s this Top Gamer guy who has devoted his whole life to gaming. He’s not being biased, he’s telling it like it is.
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Last edited 27 Dec 2006 03:37 pm by Xtrm Liability
the21gamer wrote:
The PS3 is a bit more powerful. It’s a little hard to notice.
The blu-ray is 'better' but dual-layer hd-dvds can easily outperform it.
Did you read any of my post at all? I gave sufficient explanations from info gathered sinse the launch of both and comparison wise. The Xbox 360 simply dominates PS3.
I wasn’t talking to you but the PS3 is more powerful with normal hd-dvds vs. normal blu-ray. I read that comparisons and blu-ray had the advantage except that if hd-dvd was dual-layered or something like that it easily passes up blu-ray.
Here is some more insight from somebody else from a different forum who owns both PS3 and Xbox 360. (I suggest taking a look at those pic he’s provided so you can get a feel for this guys gaming infatuation. You might want to listen to what he has to say!)
TopGamer wrote:
You make me laugh silly boy. You know I’m the Real Deal when it comes to the things I say. I have gone to the extent to take pictures to prove what I have been saying for months and you still doubt. No problem my digital camera can’t fix for you. ha ha ha ha ha ha ha...
Take note to my extensive HD Dvd collection on the top two rows to the right.....
DJ....What now? DO you want me to go upstares and show my 2 other 360’s? Do you want me to walk around my whole house and show ALL my DVD’s and Games? Do you want me to take pitures of my computers as well? ha ha ha ha ha ha...You should already know that everything I say is the Real Deal. You should know that I’m honest and speak from my personal experience and knowledge of gaming. I spend over 20k a year on my hobby of Gaming. I think I have earned to right to express myself in regards to my experience on the best gaming site on the PLANET. News4Gamers.com. Now, do you have a ps3? Do you have an xbox 360? I personally doubt that many of the rabbid sony fanboys even have a Ps3. I’m more qualified to talk about the Ps3 than many of you. Thats Real. And I don’t bash the Ps3. I am just completely honest about it. If the Ps3 was impressive....I would be the first person to tell the world about it. I love Games that much. I have gaming sessions at my place every weekend. And the gaming experience you get on the 360 right now is unriveled. I have hopes for my Ps3. But, I also know I had hopes for my Ps2 as well. And I was let down with that system. So we will see. In the meanwhile...I’m totally satisfied with my xbox 360 purchases....it has given my family and friends hours upon hours of Pure Gaming Bliss. Now....to all you sony fanboys who bash me personally....I’m more of a Sony fan than you are. I buy more sony products....I mean even the digital camera I took the picures with is Sony. I have every Ps3 launch game. Even though I already had most of them for the xbox 360....Now who’s a True Gamer? Hmmmmmmmm...Think about it.
P.S. From my extensivve play with my 360’s and my Ps3....The xbox 360 is clearly better in terms of Graphics. I don’t honestly see the ps3 having an advantage in any area of gaming. I thought the Cell was suppose to have A lot going on in games, but yet I haven’t seen that at all. Resistance doesn’t compare in any way to any of the 360 FPS that are out now. I have done a head to head with Resistance and Call of Duty 2 from last year and COD2 clearly looks much better. The ps3 games are lacking detailed textures. If Resistance was on the 360 I can guarentee it would look much better. But as is Resistance would recieve a 7.0 on the xbox 360. Its Decent but nothing special. I had high hopes for Resistance and It utterly shocked me how Sony’s flagship game isn’t the AAA title they hyped it up to be. With that said...its still the best launch title on the Ps3....But Call of Duty 3 on the ps3 is severly lacking the lighting, shadowing, and texture detail of the xbox 360 counterpart. The 360 version is hands down much much nicer looking and 60 fps compared to a struggling 30 fps on the ps3. And to be honest....every single 3rd party game looks much nicer on the 360. Fight Night RND 3 was the shocker for me. I just knew it would look better on the ps3. But NOPE. There are some nice little added stuff on the ps3. But once again. the lighting, shadowing, and texture detail is far superior on the xbox 360. And it runs smoother on the 360. This is why I have came to the conclusion that what developers have said for months is true. The Ps3 can’t use all 512 of its split ram for graphics...and the cell isn’t optimal for gaming but best for video streaming. I good example of that is Motorstorm. The actual game when Playing it looks “NICE”. Nothing spectacular. But the Video in the game...looks fabulous. The HD cut scenes look far better than the actual game when you are playing it. Some things in Motorstorm look GREAT...and others look borderline BAD. As far as gameplay. Once again...if Motorstorm was on the 360...I can guarentee it would look and play much better.
I believe that Sony has flopped this next gen. I think that the 10 million console lead that MS will have at the beggining of 2007 will keep them ahead of Sony the whole next gen. I don’t see Sony recovering. They don’t even have the games to compete with the xbox 360. And it is all about the games right?
Games....MS
Online....MS
Graphics...MS
Framerates....MS
Price....MS
10 million consumer lead...MS
Winner this next gen? Is it not obvious. I mean if Sony had a better price and better games...they would have a chance. But they have neither as of right now...and Motorstorm is just too short with only 8 tracks. Its fun for a quick second...then its over.
Reports from everywhere are showering in concluding the Xbox 360 is superior over PS3. If anybody should be taken seriously and listened to in the gaming industry, it’s this Top Gamer guy who has devoted his whole life to gaming. He’s not being biased, he’s telling it like it is.
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