needlesmcgirk
Member
^ Agreed. Only takes a couple of bad apples to ruin the whole batch, ey?
Seriously, you expected anything less?:lolpr0cs said:sigh...
as usual a semi-interesting thread discussing software development and how different devs leverage the hardware has gone down the fucking toilet due to system wars.
where is the banhammer when you need him.
Read what he posted... carefully.sakuragi said:It nice to know that you have a sense of humor and all, but from your laughterI sense that you disagree with me that the PS3 is indeed more powerful than the Xbox 360. So I would like to read what opinion do you have in this matter. Thanks in advance.( or fake laughter with bitter tears)
sakuragi said:Its funny because I could have sworn the discussion was about Hardware rather than software. We already have hundreds of thread about great games already.
This seems to be key. It seems like the more work they stuff on the SPEs, the better, and they can leave the RSX to take care of vertex and pixel calculations and drawing. Alot of the devs seem to be using it for animations and determining what can be seen by the player... in other words: the non-concrete calculations regarding visuals.
Psychotext said:Read what he posted... carefully.
On the actual subject, I feel that the PS3 may indeed be slightly more powerful than the 360... but the amount of processor power / memory locked off for the operating system coupled with the weaker GPU and difficulty getting this power out of the SPEs means that it's going to be extremely rare that we're able to see this advantage. We've been through all of this before, multiple times. Even going so far as to work out exact peak performance figures taking into account the things mentioned above as well as industry standard efficiency expectations for code running across this many cores.
Hardware differences or not, it's time the games started talking for themselves.
sakuragi said:The cell is the beast and that is pretty obvious, especially since Sony spent billions on it. To say its comparable to the Xbox 360's CPU is laughable by any stretch of imagination, and that is what Microsoft's PR wants you to think, that the PS3 and Xbox 360 are comparable in power. And then they might sight a few third party games and say they look pretty much the same but with the graphical edge given to the Xbox 360 like all the comparison video we see now and then from games video and gametrailers. Yet the funny thing is, most third party games dont even take advantage of the cell and the PS3's architecture. 3rd party games aren't the barometer to measure the capabilities of the 2 systems :lol . Oh dear, when will they get the memo.
MikeB said:Elfmania for the A500 (a lowend Amiga system released in 1987 based on the Amiga 1000 from 1985):
http://youtube.com/watch?v=zCqLqj3QOEQ
2.5 times? where does that number come from?
Merovingian said:Doesn't sound plausible.
The question still stands, how are they getting soo much performance from a lesser PPU in comparison to what they are getting out of the 3 of them, faster ones, on the 360?
Doesn't make any kind of sense.
soco said:yeah you probably don't wanna throw that number out much anymore. if you wanna do it, you should at least consider that each of the 360 cores can handle two simultaneous threads (there are restrictions on how that works, but in essence, it's possible) and adjust the math accordingly, but still, it's a useless calculation in a technical discussion there's also a bit more to that, such as both having special opcodes which can accelerate certain calculations on both platforms.
Sho_Nuff82 said:Jesus christ at this thread. It's like the Emotion Engine all over again.
We're not talking about using the SPEs (which you have to do to match the 360's power anyway), when I say rare we're talking about getting above 75% efficiency out of them - which may sound easy but in the real world is a pretty major challenge.Crayon Shinchan said:By extremely rare, I suppose you're right if you discount all Sony first party games.
Your link is interesting... because it claims there that the CELL can do 230 gigaflops and the 360 processor does 77. Except we know (IBM documents) that the CELL is theoretically capable of 25.6 gflops * 8 (1 PPE, 7 SPE) = 204.8 for single precision instructions at 3.2ghz (The PS3 CELL has one of its SPEs disabled for yield).MikeB said:I know you didn't ask me, but IBM claims this to be the case. The Cell inside the PS3 is between 2.5-3 times more powerful than the Xenon in general (at some specific tasks it may be much more!).
We also know from IBM documents that the xenon is capable of 115.2 gflops.
(Note, that obviously the above numbers don't take into account anything like amount of processor time etc reserved for the operating system and are pure theoretical peak numbers)
Friggen Xbots will try to discredit anything.Crayon Shinchan said:@MikeB
I hope Xbots don't try to discredit IBM on that point... the guys that made both chips.
MikeB said:@ Psychotext
According to IBM its peak perfomance is really around 70 gflops range. Also if programmed well the Cell should allow for a much higher level of efficiency.
Psychotext said:We're not talking about using the SPEs (which you have to do to match the 360's power anyway), when I say rare we're talking about getting above 75% efficiency out of them - which may sound easy but in the real world is a pretty major challenge.
Got any links for that other than the article above? Because it's the first time I've seen anything but 115.2. Also, there's no way you're going to get better efficiency over 8 cores compared to three... it's just not going to happen.MikeB said:According to IBM its peak perfomance is really around 70 gflops range. Also if programmed well the Cell should allow for a much higher level of efficiency.
It's a simplification. We know what the 360 can output from three cores and we know what the PS3 can do with just the PPE. Without the SPEs the PS3 is no-where near as powerful as the 360.Crayon Shinchan said:But I don't know where you're getting your numbers and your comparisons from; "which you have to do to match the 360's power anyway"? Saying it like there's an on/off switch, and turning it on will only just match the X360.
Psychotext said:Got any links for that other than the article above? Because it's the first time I've seen anything but 115.2. Also, there's no way you're going to get better efficiency over 8 cores compared to three... it's just not going to happen.
Even the document I posted above states 74% as ideal real world max efficiency for the SPEs.
Psychotext said:Also, there's no way you're going to get better efficiency over 8 cores compared to three... it's just not going to happen.
Psychotext said:Got any links for that other than the article above? Because it's the first time I've seen anything but 115.2.
Psychotext said:Also, there's no way you're going to get better efficiency over 8 cores compared to three... it's just not going to happen.
Even the document I posted above states 74% as ideal real world max efficiency for the SPEs.
I'm interested in your opinion, as all the analysis I've seen says otherwise.Onix said:That isn't necessarily true. Actually, its probably the opposite based on the design.
Psychotext said:I'm interested in your opinion, as all the analysis I've seen says otherwise.
On the subject in general. It's probably not worth discussing much further here because as I've already said it's been done to death (at places like arstechnica and beyond3d) and in much greater detail than we're likely to get here.
Plus I'm likely to get labelled as a fanboy despite not owning a PS3 or 360. :lol
Ahh, I see what you're saying. This is of course great for hardcore number crunching for usage in HPC server clusters.gofreak said:IBM does claim, however, that it is more possible to get closer to Cell's theoretical performance than on many other architectures because of its memory architecture, which is designed to keep the computational units fueled. This is also the reason Cell has been demonstrated to exceed the performance of other chips in various tasks in multiples well beyond that which its floating point figures would suggest.
Psychotext said:Ahh, I see what you're saying. This is of course great for hardcore number crunching for usage in HPC server clusters.
Psychotext said:We also know from IBM documents that the xenon is capable of 115.2 gflops.
Got any links for that other than the article above? Because it's the first time I've seen anything but 115.2. Also, there's no way you're going to get better efficiency over 8 cores compared to three... it's just not going to happen.
But in most instances outside of HPC you'd have trouble splitting up the processing units in such a way that you'd be keeping these pipelines full. Hence why I said earlier that all this talk of theoretical maximums is largely academic, and the games should speak for themselves.gofreak said:It's great for any application that can leverage Cell's memory heirarchy. Which is more than just HPC applications.
MikeB said:@ soco
I know you didn't ask me, but IBM claims this to be the case. The Cell inside the PS3 is between 2.5-3 times more powerful than the Xenon in general (at some specific tasks it may be much more!).
...
That reminds me what I need to discuss over lunch tomorrow.Psychotext said:Ahh, I see what you're saying. This is of course great for hardcore number crunching for usage in HPC server clusters.
Psychotext said:But in most instances outside of HPC you'd have trouble splitting up the processing units in such a way that you'd be keeping these pipelines full.
Onix said:To be honest, its kind of rude to put CELL in the same category as the EE.
RSTEIN said:All I have to say is: PS3forums -------------> that way.
I'm sorry but I can't believe I'm reading this. Both consoles have a ton of potential. I'm so excited about what's around the corner, for both platforms.
A year ago, sure it was fun. Xbox this, PS3 that. Hyperbole here, FUD there. But the consoles are here now. We can work with them, see reality rather than promise. We know PS3 kicks ass in certain areas, and the 360 excels at others. Both have their limitations. Can't we just accept that they're great in different ways?
methane47 said:That figure is the Theoretical performance of the Xenon. And that is different from the actual peak performance..
But it has been shown for the Celll that it can run very close to Theoretical performance for sustained amounts of time because of its architecture.. I'll find the link when I get home..
Kleegamefan said:It is common knowledge CELL architecture was designed to run close to its theoretical max performance.....its one of the reasons Sony payed IBM so much money for it
gofreak also touched on this a little as well...
artredis1980 said:run close to theoritical max performance in terms of gamecode of IBM image and data test environments which are 2 things on opposite sides of technology
Don´t forget about the Wii, it also excels in certain areas and has a lot of potential. Let´s say all platforms are equally powerful and we are all happy campers high on cocaine.RSTEIN said:Both consoles have a ton of potential. I'm so excited about what's around the corner, for both platforms.
A year ago, sure it was fun. Xbox this, PS3 that. Hyperbole here, FUD there. But the consoles are here now. We can work with them, see reality rather than promise. We know PS3 kicks ass in certain areas, and the 360 excels at others. Both have their limitations. Can't we just accept that they're great in different ways?
Core407 said:Yeah, they have tons of potential but you're going to reach the end on the 360 a lot sooner than the PS3 for the fact that the PS3 allows you to do many things in many different ways and only experience will teach developers how something should be done in the most proper fashion. It's why you see games like God of War 2 come out on the PS2 and wonder how they manage to pull off visuals on that level.