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[Andvary]

Did you not watch the MS conference? I could count at least 3 times where they called X360 the most powerful console

Of this year? Sure, or do you actually believe it's going to be more powerful than the PS3?

 

[Ghost of Bill Gates]

Of this year? Sure, or do you actually believe it's going to be more powerful than the PS3?

The information we're getting now seems to lead to this..Yes.

 

[Diablos]

Yadda yadda yadda.

Bottom line: If 360 and/or PS3 are over $300 and I decide to buy one of them, it had better make my breakfast, pay the bills and give me a blowjob.

 

[Endymion]

MS PR campaign last gen sure was effective, but devasting on some people's minds...

 

[Raistlin]

The information we're getting now seems to lead to this..Yes.

I was under the impression there isn't enough info, especially about RSX, to make an accurate determination?

 

[CrimsonSkies]

That GPU sounds awesome. Obviously the Xbox 360 Alpha Kits are majorly gimped with only one ati card in their instead of this beast. Can't wait to see what developers can produce with it.

 

[Razoric]

The information we're getting now seems to lead to this..Yes.

:lol wow you really aren't that bright are you? (or you get a phat paycheck from MS) :lol :lol

 

[3rdman]

I think i figured it out above. It can do 48 vector ops and 48 scalar ops simultaneously (96 shader ops per cycle). A vector op is 4 floating point ops. So 48*4 = 192flops per cycle. This is a different metric than shader ops, which is still 48bn per second (96 * 500mhz).

I don't get it...You're saying in one sentence that it can do 96bn shader ops per cycle (500MHz x 48 x 4 = 96 billion shader ops) and in the next sentence you say that its 48...is this a case of markieting numbers?

'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 [my bold] ALUs that can execute a single operation per cycle, so that each shader unit can execute four floating-point ops per cycle.'

http://techreport.com/etc/2005q2/xbox360-gpu/index.x?pg=1

Sorry to be dense, but I want to understand the discrepency. Why is that considered a "different metric"?

 

[Ghost of Bill Gates]

:lol wow you really aren't that bright are you? (or you get a phat paycheck from MS) :lol :lol

How "phat" is your check from Sony?

 

[sonycowboy]

The information we're getting now seems to lead to this..Yes.

My god. You're like the #1 Xbot aren't you. You simply aren't going to let it go that the PS3 is the more powerful system are you? Even after being owned over and over and over again?

Honestly, at this point, we don't truly know enough about either system to say, other than by specs, the PS3 is 2x Xbox360 and for months, various print and media outlets have been saying the PS3 is more powerful based on anonymous comments from developers (EGM several times actually).

The PS3 is coming out AFTER the Xbox360. By standard rules of Moore's law, the PS3 is going the be the more powerful system, but clearly you will grasp at any and all straws desperately trying to convince yourself that it simply isn't so. Even when Microsoft themselves defer the power advantage to the PS3.

I'll admit, I don't know crap about hardware internals beyond what we see posted here, even though I, in fact, have been following it pretty closely. And if, by some chance, when the dust settles, the Xbox360 ends up being more powerful, either because Sony makes a miscalculation in what they were aiming for or Microsoft hits a serious home run, I'll be the first to congratulate them.

But, you, in spite of overwhelming evidence (yes, it's all paper numbers and anonymous quotes at this point), you simply cannot allow for the possibility that the Xbox360 will be a weaker system.

I bow to your indomitable spirit. Never surrender.

 

[PhatSaqs]

My god. You're like the #1 Xbot aren't you.

:lol :lol :lol :lol

 

[GhaleonEB]

My god. You're like the #1 Xbot aren't you. You simply aren't going to let it go that the PS3 is the more powerful system are you? Even after being owned over and over and over again?

Honestly, at this point, we don't truly know enough about either system to say, other than by specs, the PS3 is 2x Xbox360 and for months, various print and media outlets have been saying the PS3 is more powerful based on anonymous comments from developers (EGM several times actually).

The PS3 is coming out AFTER the Xbox360. By standard rules of Moore's law, the PS3 is going the be the more powerful system, but clearly you will grasp at any and all straws desperately trying to convince yourself that it simply isn't so. Even when Microsoft themselves defer the power advantage to the PS3.

I'll admit, I don't know crap about hardware internals beyond what we see posted here, even though I, in fact, have been following it pretty closely. And if, by some chance, when the dust settles, the Xbox360 ends up being more powerful, either because Sony makes a miscalculation in what they were aiming for or Microsoft hits a serious home run, I'll be the first to congratulate them.

But, you, in spite of overwhelming evidence (yes, it's all paper numbers and anonymous quotes at this point), you simply cannot allow for the possibility that the Xbox360 will be a weaker system.

I bow to your indomitable spirit. Never surrender.

He is pretty amazing.

I'm fully expecting that the PS3 is way more powerfull.....but I am suprised at the tough time Sony is having proving it. Yes, they announced some performance numbers and vauge specs, but the simple fact that they are keeping so much under wraps just screams that they are either fudging their numbers or trying like mad to hit them and they haven't yet.

Im shocked at how well designed the 360 is given Sony/Toshiba's experience.

 

[Ghost of Bill Gates]

My god. You're like the #1 Xbot aren't you. You simply aren't going to let it go that the PS3 is the more powerful system are you? Even after being owned over and over and over again?

Never that.

What you've seen me posting is what i've gathered reading post articles on these two GPUs..If you or anyone else "own" me then you must know more about these systems than Tech websites.

 

[Andvary]

My god. You're like the #1 Xbot aren't you. You simply aren't going to let it go that the PS3 is the more powerful system are you? Even after being owned over and over and over again?

Honestly, at this point, we don't truly know enough about either system to say, other than by specs, the PS3 is 2x Xbox360 and for months, various print and media outlets have been saying the PS3 is more powerful based on anonymous comments from developers (EGM several times actually).

The PS3 is coming out AFTER the Xbox360. By standard rules of Moore's law, the PS3 is going the be the more powerful system, but clearly you will grasp at any and all straws desperately trying to convince yourself that it simply isn't so. Even when Microsoft themselves defer the power advantage to the PS3.

I'll admit, I don't know crap about hardware internals beyond what we see posted here, even though I, in fact, have been following it pretty closely. And if, by some chance, when the dust settles, the Xbox360 ends up being more powerful, either because Sony makes a miscalculation in what they were aiming for or Microsoft hits a serious home run, I'll be the first to congratulate them.

But, you, in spite of overwhelming evidence (yes, it's all paper numbers and anonymous quotes at this point), you simply cannot allow for the possibility that the Xbox360 will be a weaker system.

I bow to your indomitable spirit. Never surrender.

I couldn't have said this better.

 

[Razoric]

He is pretty amazing.

I'm fully expecting that the PS3 is way more powerfull.....but I am suprised at the tough time Sony is having proving it. Yes, they announced some performance numbers and vauge specs, but the simple fact that they are keeping so much under wraps just screams that they are either fudging their numbers or trying like mad to hit them and they haven't yet.

Im shocked at how well designed the 360 is given Sony/Toshiba's experience.

They also could be holding back information... maybe they just wanted to introduce PS3 to the world and not show all of its cards.

 

[MightyHedgehog]

Never surrender.

GoBG, you should wait to see what the competition's like first, man. I think they're going to be close and in several cases, the differences will play out with strengths and weaknesses on both sides of the fence. However, I think Sony will have the power edge, even if it only means it'll be effectively 10-15% in games...who knows.

*now I gotta go and get that single to relive my pre-teen years for the moment*

 

[Ghost of Bill Gates]

I'm fully expecting that the PS3 is way more powerfull.....but I am suprised at the tough time Sony is having proving it. Yes, they announced some performance numbers and vauge specs,

I know you may not want to hear it, but sometimes things arent going to go the way you want it.

 

[Diablos]

I have a headache.

 

[shpankey]

the PS3 is and will be more powerful. but the question that none of us know is by how much and if the end result of what comes out on your screen is a big enough difference for anyone to worry about.

i have no doubt it will be much like this gen though. multiplatform games look better on the #1 powered system. and that the top tier developed games on each system will look just as good as any other system's top tiered games. the good dev teams will always find ways to make the hardware difference minimal to the eye.

 

[Guy LeDouche]

I know you may not want to hear it, but sometimes things arent going to go the way you want it.

right back at you, bud. :lol :lol :lol

 

[sonycowboy]

I'm fully expecting that the PS3 is way more powerfull.....but I am suprised at the tough time Sony is having proving it.

I'm pretty sure somebody at Sony is aware of these little tet-a-tet's that are being made about system power (especially about Real-Time vs Renders), but I would hardly say that Sony has failed to "prove" their point. We're 72 hours after the press conference and they're not really posting on message boards to win spec wars with pissants like us, as I think they're probably pretty busy @ E3.

So, when random posters on various internet sites challenge a Sony metric, is it Sony fans job to prove it incorrect, or else it's assumed to be true? That certainly seems to be the modus operandi so far this E3. It's like Deadmeat has disciples all over the place and once a bogus calculation is dreamt up, it's taken as gospel, even though the best of hardware analysis web sites screw up calculations or assume some aspect of a chips architecture incorrectly.

It's just gets crazy sometimes. Oh well, that's what makes the internet wonderful, I guess. Unsupportable comments that are taken as fact and spread like wildfire. THURSDAYTON!!

 

[Andvary]

I know you may not want to hear it, but sometimes things arent going to go the way you want it.

:lol oh man.

 

[Ghost of Bill Gates]

the PS3 is and will be more powerful.

If it helps you sleep at night..

 

[pestul]

the PS3 is and will be more powerful. but the question that none of us know is by how much and if the end result of what comes out on your screen is a big enough difference for anyone to worry about.

i have no doubt it will be much like this gen though. multiplatform games look better on the #1 powered system. and that the top tier developed games on each system will look just as good as any other system's top tiered games. the good dev teams will always find ways to make the hardware difference minimal to the eye.

So you think the moneyhats will cease in the nextgen.. and devs won't purposely make games look worse even if they have the resources to make them look better. A lot is at stake for both sides, so I could see this going back and forth.

 

[MightyHedgehog]

Isn't Fridayton supposed to happen any minute now?

 

[Ghost of Bill Gates]

:lol oh man.

I'm trying to soften the blow.. :lol

 

[dem]

oh shut the fuck up already

you sony whores are just as pathetic

Get a fucking life

 

[maximum360]

the PS3 is and will be more powerful. but the question that none of us know is by how much and if the end result of what comes out on your screen is a big enough difference for anyone to worry about.

i have no doubt it will be much like this gen though. multiplatform games look better on the #1 powered system. and that the top tier developed games on each system will look just as good as any other system's top tiered games. the good dev teams will always find ways to make the hardware difference minimal to the eye.

BOT Powrrrrr!!! :lol

 

[Pedigree Chum]

Im shocked at how well designed the 360 is given Sony/Toshiba's experience.

Same here, man MS hit one out of the park power wise with the X360. Good for them, they're really serious about this, unlike SOME console makers *cough*Ninty*cough*.

 

[Agisthos]

I think this whole issue shows one thing, that the graphical difference between the PS3 and X360 will be minute and to a casual observer - there will be really no difference between them.

Where to PS3 will really steam ahead is in cpu power, animation, larger game environments, huge geometry, better AI with more people onscreen e.t.c

Incidently all the things that made that Killzone2 conceptual movie look so good.

The cpu advantage will only be aparent when playing the actual games. Of course the whole Cell 2x power thing could be a theoretical number and real world performance may not be 2x the X360 cpu.

Interesting times ahead

 

[Nerevar]

My god. You're like the #1 Xbot aren't you.

 

[MightyHedgehog]

Depends on the game, IMO. What they're doing with the PS3 CPU will determine whether or not you'll be using that extra horsepower to compensate for things you don't do on the GPU in on the X360. Or if it's not a problem, it could lead to some really, really impressive stuff. I don't think multiplatform stuff will see visually perceptible differences. I do think that some of the better internal and exclusive development teams on all sides will show what their systems can really do, as always...but overall, the difference on-screen should be slight between the PS3 and X360, IMO. Of course, it'll help to know what the complete specs of the RSX and Xenos are before commiting to that line of thinking...it just seems somewhat reasonable to assume that might be the case.

 

[golem]

:lol

 

[Pedigree Chum]

I do think that some of the better internal and exclusive development teams on all sides will show what their systems can really do

100% fact.

I'm waiting for Bungie to show off Halo 3 and Konami to show off MGS4 before I make any judgements on hardware. Numbers are numbers, I want to see what the best dev houses in the world can pull on these systems. I'll base my conclusions on that.

 

[Sqrt_minus_one]

oh shut the fuck up already

you company whores are just as pathetic

Get a fucking life

FIXED

 

[Pimpwerx]

Well, I don't know how big Ninja Theory is, but when I saw Heavenly Sword on G4 tonight, it blew my socks off. That's confirmed realtime, baby! Definitely lots of good stuff to come from this gen on both sides. The winner is us, period. But these next-gen power wars are also part of the fun and games of a generational transition. I'm personally waiting for Pana to post a comprehensive writeup on both systems b/c he's fairly thorough and tries to check his facts. And it'll be a good place to start off going forward, b/c we'll find out a lot come GDC. Plenty of stuff to be revealed on both machines. PEACE.

 

[MetalAlien]

I think this whole issue shows one thing, that the graphical difference between the PS3 and X360 will be minute and to a casual observer - there will be really no difference between them.

I would expect as much...both consoles are being launched within a few months of each other.. Yea the PS3 won't get to the states until X-mas 2006...but it will be in Japan side by side with the XB360... They're essentially being launched at the same time.

 

[Bebpo]

I would expect as much...both consoles are being launched within a few months of each other.. Yea the PS3 won't get to the states until X-mas 2006...but it will be in Japan side by side with the XB360... They're essentially being launched at the same time.

Isn't Xbox360 launching in 2005 in Japan? And PS3 may be as late as June 2006 in Japan?

All bickering aside I expect the gap from the 1st available X360 to 1st available PS3 to be about 9 months, maybe even 12+.

 

[MetalAlien]

I didn't think it would be that late..I thought it was early 2006 for japan..

 

[slidewinder]

Honestly, at this point, we don't truly know enough about either system to say, other than by specs, the PS3 is 2x Xbox360

You're saying the PS3 is going to be twice as powerful as the 360? By some worthwhile definition of "powerful"?

For instance, suppose two imaginary systems, identical except that one runs at twice the clockspeed of the other, has twice the memory bandwidth owing to twice the bus speeds, etc. Is that how the PS3 vs. 360 situation looks to you?

 

[Nerevar]

You're saying the PS3 is going to be twice as powerful as the 360? By some worthwhile definition of "powerful"?

For instance, suppose two imaginary systems, identical except that one runs at twice the clockspeed of the other, has twice the memory bandwidth owing to twice the bus speeds, etc. Is that how the PS3 vs. 360 situation looks to you?

no, what he means is that Sony had a slide that said they could do 2 TFLOPS, and Xbox only could do 1. Therefore PS3 is 2x as powerful. Nevermind that any metric like that abstracted out is meaningless. He should have just stuck with "we don't know enough info yet to say which system will be more powerful", because that's the only truthful statement we can make.

 

[Nostromo]

I think i figured it out above. It can do 48 vector ops and 48 scalar ops simultaneously (96 shader ops per cycle). A vector op is 4 floating point ops. So 48*4 = 192flops per cycle. This is a different metric than shader ops, which is still 48bn per second (96 * 500mhz).

No, it's wrong, just re-read my post
A vector op is eight floating point ops, and a scalar op is two floating point ops.
ALUs can do vector and/or scalar FMADD in one cycle.
I restate di obvious, shader ops are a meaningless metric.

 

[Mrbob]

Man there is some hot shit within the 10MB of RAM on the graphics chip.

 

[Ghost of Bill Gates]

Man there is some hot shit within the 10MB of RAM on the graphics chip.

yeah!

literally 192 Floating Point Unit processors inside 10MB of RAM!

 

[garrickk]

We'll be able to gauge the power of these two systems with an array of Unreal Engine 3 based games.

The PS3 might appear to be more "powerful", but perhaps it won't efficiently perform AA; games (at least the first generation) might look a lot cleaner on 360.

Also, maybe one of the two consoles will have a poorly managed cache controller and bottle necks might be a huge problem. There is a lot of "1st generation" hardware in each. Who knows what will happen.

Everything should be close enough right now for no one to be crowned champ.

 

[Ghost of Bill Gates]

The RSX should be more powerful...it's coming out later, duh. That doesn't mean that eDRAM on Xenos isn't cool as shit though. I'd like to know how HDR affects performance on Xenos compared to RSX. From that Sony presser, it would seem that RSX was built from the ground up to do HDR. It was a major focus of the presentation afterall. But little is known about how RSX will handle the bandwidth requirements, and even less is known of how Xenos will handle it.

Its been confirmed that the RSX is really the G70

As we mentioned before, NVIDIA's RSX is the more PC-like of the two GPU solutions. Unlike ATI's offering, the RSX is based on a NVIDIA GPU, the upcoming G70 (the successor to the GeForce 6).

http://www.anandtech.com/tradeshows/showdoc.aspx?i=2423&p=3

 

[Mrbob]

The GPU won't be using system memory itself quite as much as one might expect, because it packs 10MB of embedded DRAM right on the package. In fact, the Xbox 360 GPU is really a two-die design, with two chips in a single package on a single substrate. The parent die contains the GPU and memory controller, while the daughter die consists of the 10MB of eDRAM and some additional logic. There's a high-speed 2GHz link between the parent and daughter dies, and Feldstein noted that future revisions of the GPU might incorporate both dies on a single piece of silicon for cost savings.

The really fascinating thing here is the design of that daughter die. Feldstein called it a continuation of the traditional graphics pipeline into memory. Basically, there's a 10MB pool of embedded DRAM, designed by NEC, in the center of the die. Around the outside is a ring of logic designed by ATI. This logic is made up of 192 component processors capable of doing the basic math necessary for multisampled antialiasing. If I have it right, the component processors should be able to process 32 pixels at once by operating on six components per pixel: red, green, blue, alpha, stencil, and depth. This logic can do the resolve pass for multisample antialiasing right there on the eDRAM die, giving the Xbox 360 the ability to do 4X antialiasing on a high-definition (1280x768) image essentially for "free"—i.e., with no appreciable performance penalty. The eDRAM holds the contents of all of the back buffers, does the resolve, and hands off the resulting image into main system memory for scan-out to the display.

Hot.

 

[Pochacco]

-The PS3 is more powerful. Stop being computer/electrical-engineer wannabes, pretending you know what you're talking about when you spout off all these technical terms.
-Games on both machines will look amazing.
-The 360 has a head start. First gen PS3 games will be competing with 1.5 gen 360 games. This closes the gap more than anything else.

 

[Mrbob]

-The PS3 is more powerful. Stop being computer/electrical-engineer wannabes, pretending you know what you're talking about when you spout off all these technical terms.
-Games on both machines will look amazing.
-The 360 has a head start. First gen PS3 games will be competing with 1.5 gen 360 games. This closes the gap more than anything else.

It'll be 2009 before we see a huge difference in PS3/Xbox 360 games! I doubt it will be as big of a gap as we see between XBox and PS2 right now.....

 

[Hitokage]

The 10mb smart framebuffer idea is pretty nifty, but I don't get the whole OMG UNIFIED SHADERS TEH FUTURE thing unless you're easily suckered by buzzwords. BTW, a lot of you think you are comparing consoles when you're really only comparing GPUs. Don't forget the rest of either system, and that includes Cell and Blu-ray storage on the PS3 side. That being said, I agree a lot more with the people saying "We don't know"(we really don't know everything yet) than "oh there'll be no difference"(you don't know that either).

Its been confirmed that the RSX is really the G70



http://www.anandtech.com/tradeshows/showdoc.aspx?i=2423&p=3

Based on != is.