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[garrickk]

This is crazy. Neither company is going to be able to make a profit next generation.

They need to have "arms talks" for the following generation. Some sort of peace accord where each company guarantees not to go over a certain number of transistors.

 

[jimbo]

"I dont care about specs as Sony can still adjust them to their liking after xbox 360 is released"

If they're going to be adjusting specs after November, don't expect a spring launch. However it takes a lot more than just going....oh we're going to bump up the specs....for a company to actually do that. Their entire profit plan that they have worked up goes out the window when you change something like that. They'd have to readjust everything, stock profits expectations, have Nvidia go back to the drawing board and re-work their GPU, etc....anyway it's not that simple.

 

[Drek]

However it takes a lot more than just going....oh we're going to bump up the specs....for a company to actually do that. Their entire profit plan that they have worked up goes out the window when you change something like that. They'd have to readjust everything, stock profits expectations, have Nvidia go back to the drawing board and re-work their GPU, etc....anyway it's not that simple.

Um, no, it really is just that easy with how the PS3 is currently designed. Sony could either increase the amount of ram in the system or move to 4ghz Cell chips and would basically have just "plugged in" upgrades that don't need much, if any, additional work on the hardware. It'd mess with the current economic projections, but those aren't really anything set in stone to date anyways, since the actual cost to produce the system come launch will fluctuate quite a bit.

Will they do it? Maybe, if they think X360 is closer to their hardware than they really want and they can afford it in the financial plan. Wouldn't surprise me, but I wouldn't bet on it. Sony has delivered quality hardware as it is, they have no real need to worry about not stacking up well against the 360.

As for the Xenos stuff, well, I'm at the point now where I don't give a damn about Xenos or RSX until the full specs for both are concrete and revealed, until then both ATi and nVidia are playing games with each other, trying to spin the best numbers out there and top the other's projections.

 

[quetz67]

I think Microsoft was shuffling clock frequencies and stuff not long befor xbox was released. And you can never know what some of the parts actually cost at a certain point in time. Remember when that memory factory burned down some years ago and memory prices went through the roof?

It wont be major design changes, mostly clock changes, which wont make a difference in development.

 

[seismologist]

The ATI GPU needs to have alot more transistors to match the RSX since Cell handles alot of the graphics calculations by itself.

Like some of those demos Sony was showing. They said that the lighting was done by Cell freeing up the GPU to do it's thing.

 

[quetz67]

IF the CPU really had some power left you sure could use that well. Let the CPU render geometry into a displacement map and let the GPU display that. Could be great for destructible environemt or other stuff.

 

[McFly]

Could be great for destructible environemt or other stuff.

Physics based rendering will be the field where the PS3 will shine. (Realistic damage in GT5 anyone?)

Fredi

 

[gofreak]

The ATI GPU needs to have alot more transistors to match the RSX since Cell handles alot of the graphics calculations by itself.

Like some of those demos Sony was showing. They said that the lighting was done by Cell freeing up the GPU to do it's thing.

Using the CPU for graphics stuff is completely optional. The GPU has everything you need for graphics if you just want to use it. The CPU can be used to boost things even further.

 

[MightyHedgehog]

What if video display logic/scaler and perhaps a EE+GS on the GPU accounts for the RSX very large size? It could be that nVidia is putting all of those on the GPU part while Sony fabs it. Of course, it could be tons of rendering power added, but I would think that Sony has its limits on how powerful they need be on the GPU side.