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[danwarb]

The E-DRAM die is almost purely a cost saving measure to save on the bus to real external VRAM. It has very few advantages of its own. Some "cost saving measure" :lol The overheating EDRAM was one of the main reasons for the RRoD scandal and it even makes the chip more expensive for the entire lifespan of the console.

I'd be much easier to do your best on PS3 and then translate that to the shovelcode stuff with the direct-x API, than the other way around.

eDRAM does have advantages on 360. It’s there to remove the backbuffer bandwidth from main memory so the UMA works and there’s much easier memory management. There's enough bandwidth for 4 gpixels fillrate plus 4xmsaa, and msaa costs more still on PS3 since only the resolved backbuffer is copied to main memory on 360. Tons and tons of alpha particles etc…

Actually the X360 does not have a dedicated scaler. The hanna chip or whatever is video output only. Xenos handles scaling. RSX handles scaling too but it's rumored to be broken. Although it can perform factors in either the horizontal or vertical dimension, can't remember.
Scaling is a low cost operation, 2-3% of total RSX resources.

Actually, the 360 does have a dedicated hardware scaler and it's on the GPU. PS3 also has hardware scaling but only horizontal, and quality isn’t as good.

There's some infomation on PS3/360 scaling here: http://forum.beyond3d.com/showthread.php?t=46241

 

[Stink]

Tony Hawk's Project 8 is the only 360 title that the Digital Foundry blog found to have a smaller than 720p framebuffer in all their tests so far (vs PS3). Of course the free upscaling on the 360 would actually be less of an issue because of its AA advantage, but that's a problem they don't really have.

Obviously there are other well known titles which upscale, Halo 3 and CoD4, but the former obviously wasn't used for comparison and the latter is the same res on both systems.

 

[FirewalkR]

Actually, the 360 does have a dedicated hardware scaler and it's on the GPU. PS3 also has hardware scaling but only horizontal, and quality isn’t as good.

That's basically what he said, the dedicated scaler is integrated in the Xenos GPU. From what I read at B3D, it's basically a part of the Xenos display pipeline*, the dev just activates scaling, selects target resolution and algorithm (seems the most common is Lanczos) and off it goes.

*In fact I think every single frame is always processed by that scaling hardware, and obviously if it receives an image of the same resolution as the target it does nothing, but I'm not sure about this. Regardless, it works beautifully and to me it's just something more that shows Xenos was quite a well thought and developed piece of hardware.

I will never understand how the RSX came out with some flaw in the scaling process and how horizontal hardware scaling wasn't allowed until a certain firmware came out. I think in some years when NDA's expire or devs loose their fear of breaking them because they're not important anymore, we'll hear some very interesting stories about this gen.

 

[Tormentoso]

That isn't a particularly effective argument, given the number of PS3 games that run sub-720p ... especially considering some run at a lower res the the 360 version in order to achieve similar frame throughput.

Easy to see when games in question are game that don't even push non of the hardware on both sides,Guitar Hero having lower res to keep frame rate is more of a lasy developer or a problem of the developer it self than anything more.


More where games like COD4 run practically identical,there have been games on lower resolution on 360 that are not even 3rd party since launch PGR3 is one of them,i thiink Halo 3 is another.

I think is a problem of the developer,not enough time to have both versions par,no having the same work force on both,or any other thing.

 

[Tormentoso]

Actually the X360 does not have a dedicated scaler. The hanna chip or whatever is video output only. Xenos handles scaling. RSX handles scaling too but it's rumored to be broken. Although it can perform factors in either the horizontal or vertical dimension, can't remember.
Scaling is a low cost operation, 2-3% of total RSX resources.

Actually from what i have been reading since launch the xbox 360 does have a scaler where ever dedicated or not i am not sure,but it sure look like thats the case,in fact one of the xbox 360 RROD problems is scaler related,in fact you see it on use every time you put your 360 at 1080p,1080p native games on 360 are what 3 or 4.?


The scaler has been use since launch,PGR3 is not 720p,is upscale not by the Xenos but by the sacler.

 

[Stink]

he said it's not dedicated, which has been reiterated again since, it's part of the GPU.

 

[Tormentoso]

he said it's not dedicated, which has been reiterated again since, it's part of the GPU.

I am not very clear on this one dude but ok,i just don't see why put a scaler ship to upscale just video,i mean can't the Xenos do that.?That can be done by the GPU quite well,hell even lower end card by now like the 6800 can upscale video,so i don't really see the need to put on in the Xenos,when the Xenos alone can do that,it just doesn't sound right.

 

[Stink]

yes, that's what we're saying. What's the confusion?

ATi guy reiterates

 

[-ImaginaryInsider]

There is no separate dedicated scaling chip, but there is some kind of dedicate scaling hardware built-in, that's the difference.

 

[Raistlin]

CELL was designed for one thing and thats high def video playback.

How did I miss this gem?

:lol

 

[Raistlin]

I will never understand how the RSX came out with some flaw in the scaling process and how horizontal hardware scaling wasn't allowed until a certain firmware came out. I think in some years when NDA's expire or devs loose their fear of breaking them because they're not important anymore, we'll hear some very interesting stories about this gen.

Yes, we don't know the details at this point, but it's possible there is no flaw, as much as the fact it works like a conventional GPU. ie. to do vertical and horizontal, you need extra memory.

Xenos doesn't appear to need extra memory iirc.


As for not being in the SDK originally ... who knows, it's Sony. Similar things happened last gen.

 

[Raistlin]

Easy to see when games in question are game that don't even push non of the hardware on both sides,Guitar Hero having lower res to keep frame rate is more of a lasy developer or a problem of the developer it self than anything more.


More where games like COD4 run practically identical,there have been games on lower resolution on 360 that are not even 3rd party since launch PGR3 is one of them,i thiink Halo 3 is another.

I think is a problem of the developer,not enough time to have both versions par,no having the same work force on both,or any other thing.

No matter how you slice it, in real world usage ... it is KNOWN that RSX trails Xenos for vertex transforms.


Look, I like the PS3 as much as the next guy, but I'm not going to convince myself of falsehoods just to be part of the system wars.

 

[Raistlin]

he said it's not dedicated, which has been reiterated again since, it's part of the GPU.

It matters how you define dedicated. If you mean a separate piece of HW, then no.

What ATI AVIVO is, is dedicated logic in the GPU pipeline, specifically designed for scaling. In otherwords, those transistors have no other use ... you can't use them for shading ... so it isn't like you are using processing power that could be instead used for general rendering.

 

[FirewalkR]

You've been busy, Onix. :lol

 

[Raistlin]

Onix
Post Count: 9999

 

[AndyD]

It matters how you define dedicated. If you mean a separate piece of HW, then no.

What ATI AVIVO is, is dedicated logic in the GPU pipeline, specifically dedicated to scaling. In otherwords, those transistors have no other use ... you could use them for shading ... so it isn't like you are using processing power that could be instead used for general rendering.

Sounds dedicated to me... even though its in the same chip.

 

[Raistlin]

Sounds dedicated to me... even though its in the same chip.

Agreed ... it is.


Some people seem have to this notion that dedicated must involve separate HW. It doesn't; all dedicated means is functionally dedicated. Where it resides shouldn't matter.

 

[FirewalkR]

I was gonna quote your tag too.

About AVIVO, seems it's not just scaling, it does other kinds of postprocessing. In this link http://forum.beyond3d.com/showpost.php?p=1022643&postcount=77 that Stink posted earlier the ATI dude points to an image where it shows the pipeline and it has gamma correction and color correction and conversion besides the scaling.

Regarding dedicated or not.. I guess it's just semanthics.

 

[Raistlin]

Yes, AVIVO can do more, though it's unclear exactly what functionality is available in Xenos' implementation (or is used).

Xenos actually has the first implementation of AVIVO, plus it may be a bit different since it was specifically made for a fixed platform.



I'd have to dig up the link, but I made a thread a few years back regarding the news that ANA/HANA was a fake w/regards to scaling, and that Xenos actually does the scaling via AVIVO. In it, there were some pretty good links regarding the tech.

 

[DeadGzuz]

Obvious framerate drops (or simply a lower framerate), obvious tearing, and/or lowered poly detail?

Madden at 30fps, etc? That sort of thing. There's a reason people complained about titles that didn't use the SPU's at all. They typically had noticeable issues on PS3.

That would be performance for sure, but not polygon performance, since you cannot know what the issue is unless you a re a dev with a profiler.

 

[Raistlin]

Agreed ... but devs have publically stated it, and there has been profiling info (at least high-level).

I can't believe this is even an argument.

 

[MikeB]

Scaling isn't much of an issue on the PS3, I believe all modern HDTVs have a reasonable scaler chip. The only potential issue is some old HDTV sets which only do 1080i (if it also does 720p it's not an issue). They may default to 480p, but for the latest PS3 games this isn't an issue as they have been adapted to scale for 1080i sets.

Microsoft tried to hype their scaler, but scaler chips are cheap and the journalists they visited didn't notice a difference for the games they picked (namely Resistance and Gears of War, I don't think they will pick Killzone 2 in the future ;-)), you have very simple ones for old devices and more complex ones which do more things in addition.

The 360 seems to do some weird color filtering, which for example make white look more like pink for DVDs (or picture viewer and such), this isn't much of an issue for games as developers will take this into account. But comparing to the quality of DVDs which are scaled by a PS3 or any other good scaling DVD player makes a big difference. The 360 is considered to be one of the worst tested upscaling DVD players, the PS3 amongst the best.

IMO this is being dragged out of context and hyped too much. Many 360 fans think if a game can upscale to 1080p, they will get more details, that's however not the case and if that would be true a cheap scaler chip would be found in all modern PCs as that would save a lot of performance resources instead of rendering in higher resolutions.

 

[FirewalkR]

Scaling isn't much of an issue on the PS3, I believe all modern HDTVs have a reasonable scaler chip. The only potential issue is some old HDTV sets which only do 1080i (if it also does 720p it's not an issue). They may default to 480p, but for the latest PS3 games this isn't an issue as they have been adapted to scale for 1080i sets.

Microsoft tried to hype their scaler, but scaler chips are cheap and the journalists they visited didn't notice a difference for the games they picked, you have very simple ones for old devices and more complex ones which do more things in addition.

The 360 seems to do some weird color filtering, which for example make white look more like pink for DVDs (or picture viewer and such), this isn't much of an issue for games as developers will take this into account. But comparing to the quality DVDs are scaled by a PS3 or any other good scaling DVD player makes a big difference. The 360 is considered to be one of the worst tested upscaling DVD players, the PS3 amongst the best.

IMO this is being dragged out of context and hyped too much. Many 360 fans think if a game can upscale to 1080p, they will get more details, that's however not the case and if that would be true a cheap scaler chip would be found in all modern PCs as that would save a lot of performance resources instead of rendering in higher resolutions.

Well, at least we know that the horizontal scaling works well and is fast, considering the way Wipeout HD uses it. Btw, I take it you saw this article about it already.

 

[Raistlin]

Here is the original thread regarding HANA/ANA not being used for scaling - http://www.neogaf.com/forum/showpost.php?p=6891190

Post 14 is where the AVIVO discussion starts.

Here's a white paper on AVIVO - http://ati.amd.com/technology/Avivo/pdf/Avivo_Whitepaper.pdf

 

[DeadGzuz]

Agreed ... but devs have publically stated it, and there has been profiling info (at least high-level).

I can't believe this is even an argument.

It's not an argument, but you said:

Look at the polygon performance of multiplatform titles

And you simply cannot do this. It sounds like you are associating all frame rate drops to polygon performance and in reality it could be a dozen reasons.

 

[Raistlin]

Scaling isn't much of an issue on the PS3, I believe all modern HDTVs have a reasonable scaler chip. The only potential issue is some old HDTV sets which only do 1080i (if it also does 720p it's not an issue). They may default to 480p, but for the latest PS3 games this isn't an issue as they have been adapted to scale for 1080i sets.

I would disagree regarding scaling quality. Many lower-tier models (especially LCD) have fairly poor performing ones. Another issue is lag. Generally, that is modest when scaling 720p->1080p (it's more of an issue for SD games ... and especially if deinterlacing is involved).

Microsoft tried to hype their scaler, but scaler chips are cheap and the journalists they visited didn't notice a difference for the games they picked (namely Resistance and Gears of War, I don't think they will pick Killzone 2 in the future ;-)), you have very simple ones for old devices and more complex ones which do more things in addition.

Good scaling chips aren't necesarily cheap.

The 360 seems to do some weird color filtering, which for example make white look more like pink for DVDs (or picture viewer and such), this isn't much of an issue for games as developers will take this into account. But comparing to the quality of DVDs which are scaled by a PS3 or any other good scaling DVD player makes a big difference. The 360 is considered to be one of the worst tested upscaling DVD players, the PS3 amongst the best.

Apples to oranges. First, the majority of those tests for DVD's are regarding de-interlacing, which has nothing to do with games. Second, stating PS3 is amongst the best is pushing things, though it is certainly decent. Third and most importantly, the mechanism for scaling DVD's and games are totally different. I don't know the details for 360, but the PS3 is using custom scaling in software, that has nothing to do with the game scaling that uses RSX HW acceleration. Doing that sort of SW scaling in a game would be quite resource intensive.

IMO this is being dragged out of context and hyped too much. Many 360 fans think if a game can upscale to 1080p, they will get more details, that's however not the case and if that would be true a cheap scaler chip would be found in all modern PCs as that would save a lot of performance resources instead of rendering in higher resolutions.

I agree many people are taking it out of context. However, in reality, the 360's game scaling typically performs better, is easier to implement (it's basically automatic), and is available for all games.

For people with a TV or external scaler of sufficient quality, the point is moot. However, not everyone falls into that category. As the gen progresses (and people get more modern TV's), the number of people effected will drop.

 

[Raistlin]

And you simply cannot do this. It sounds like you are associating all frame rate drops to polygon performance and in reality it could be a dozen reasons.

I admittedly was making a layman's argument. Yes, it cannot be assumed for all titles.

 

[MikeB]

Well, at least we know that the horizontal scaling works well and is fast, considering the way Wipeout HD uses it. Btw, I take it you saw this article about it already.

It's interesting how WipeOut HD renders graphics with different resolutions. Just doing 1280×1080 could also make a lot of sense as it provide full detail for the 720p standard, but adds considerable additional detail for 1080p TV with minimal framerate costs. For the switching between render outputs you certainly have to take stills and be a pixel counter (actually you don't count pixels, you look for scaling patterns) to spot a difference in details considering how fast the game moves and runs at 60 FPS.

The vertical resolution is what matters most to the human eye with regard to perception. I do find their usage of the term TrueHD strange though, as they seem to be referring to FullHD, TrueHD is a term used by Dolby with regard to their audio codec, Dolby TrueHD is supported by the PS3.

 

[MikeB]

I would disagree regarding scaling quality. Many lower-tier models (especially LCD) have fairly poor performing ones. Another issue is lag.

A HD-Ready TV will scale the 720p or 1080p accepted source anyhow, they do so by default. You may have noticed nearly all have a slightly higher number of lines. So it needs to scale to produce a full screen image.

Good scaling chips aren't necesarily cheap.

What's the most expensive and advanced one? I guess Toshiba's Cell derived one.

Second, stating PS3 is amongst the best is pushing things, though it is certainly decent.

It's amongst the best.

 

[H.Cornerstone]

A HD-Ready TV will scale the 720p or 1080p accepted source anyhow, they do so by default. You may have noticed nearly all have a slightly higher number of lines. So it needs to scale to produce a full screen image.



What's the most expensive and advanced one? I guess Toshiba's Cell derived one.



It's amongst the best.

The best scaling chip is called REON. I don't know who makes it, but all the best HDTV have it and they are fantastic at it. It's what videophiles on AVSforum look for in their HDTV's.

And yes, the Xbox 360 is a horrible dvd player, but it's hard to compare to the PS3 because the PS3 does it's upscaling through the cell, which the cell is very good at.

And it's been widely reported that the PS3 is one of the best upscalers out there. The only ones that are better are ones made by Oppo, which I think are as expensive as a PS3!

 

[Raistlin]

A HD-Ready TV will scale the 720p or 1080p accepted source anyhow, they do so by default. You may have noticed nearly all have a slightly higher number of lines. So it needs to scale to produce a full screen image.

I'm not sure what that has to do with my point.

What's the most expensive and advanced one? I guess Toshiba's Cell derived one.

Toshiba hasn't even put that into production yet iirc. Regardless, it's only as good as its SW, and who knows how that will be. It isn't a dedicated scaling solution. It's using a general purpose processor for scaling.

As for expensive, advanced ones, stuff from Gennum and Lumagen is generally near the top, followed by offerings from DVDO/AnchorBay, Silicon Optix (Realita, and the lower tier Reon), etc. Granted, there are pluses and minuses to their offerings, and ordering depends on what models we're looking at. Genesis/Faroudja generally comes after all of them at this point (they haven't transitioned to HD as well as hoped). After that, you are generally jumping off a cliff as far as OEM stuff. I've heard some of the new stuff from NSC is quite good, buy don't have much of a background with it.

It's amongst the best.

Not really. For DVD performance, deinterlacing is one of the key functions. There are lots of models of DVD/BD players out there that outperform it in de-interlacing tests. Scaling is decent from what I've seen, though I haven't read many in-depth tests regarding it. I am planning to do some testing though, now that they've updated their chroma-upsampling.

 

[Raistlin]

The best scaling chip is called REON. I don't know who makes it, but all the best HDTV have it and they are fantastic at it. It's what videophiles on AVSforum look for in their HDTV's.

It is not the best scaling chip :\ It's not even the best one made by Silicon Optix in the HQV line (that would be Realta).


Granted, the HQV line is amongst the best you'll find in and actual TV (unless we're talking super high-end, or front-projectors).

And yes, the Xbox 360 is a horrible dvd player, but it's hard to compare to the PS3 because the PS3 does it's upscaling through the cell, which the cell is very good at.

And it's been widely reported that the PS3 is one of the best upscalers out there. The only ones that are better are ones made by Oppo, which I think are as expensive as a PS3!

Oh boy.

 

[Raistlin]

This is getting a bit of tagent though, as scaling is a pretty broad category. There are other performance characteristics in there ... and the needs of the end product vary quite a bit.

Does a gaming console's scaler (for games) need everything that a high quality upscaling DVD player needs? Most likely not. Does it need what a dedicated video processor needs? Certainly not?

etc.

 

[UntoldDreams]

This whole scaling issue is getting a little too academic.

Obviously software scaling done through Cell could theoretically be the greatest thing ever since they can update the software anytime and honestly Cell is way overkill for the simple task of scaling imagery.

 

[UntoldDreams]

I don't know if anyone is interested but this book has come out recently.
I've been reading it in Rough Cut format for the past few months.

Its pretty good for anyone interested in Cell programming.


Programming the Cell Processor: For Games, Graphics, and Computation (Hardcover)
by Matthew Scarpino (Author)

 

[Death Dealer]

Actually, the 360 does have a dedicated hardware scaler and it's on the GPU.

It doesn't have a dedicated, separate scaler, as Tormentoso said.
That's what I was pointing out. The scaling is a function of the GPU. Same as PS3, but better implemented.

 

[Raistlin]

It's a semantics issue. You are expressly stating dedicated, separate scaler. Dedicated, in-and-of-itself, does not require separation. It simply means some part of a piece of HW or system is functionally dedicated to a given process.

 

[Tormentoso]

No matter how you slice it, in real world usage ... it is KNOWN that RSX trails Xenos for vertex transforms.


Look, I like the PS3 as much as the next guy, but I'm not going to convince myself of falsehoods just to be part of the system wars.

Jut like the Xenos trails the RSX in other parts since non of the 2 have every single thing in advantage one over the other,but unlike on the xbox 360 Cell can handle jobs that pretty much had to be done on the Xenos,and which are not free by any means,this means that while the RSX could do 2 things at full speed,the Xenos could be doing those same 2 at half speed of a little more,because it has less free power,because is not getting help from the Xenon in the same way the RSX is from Cell and in the end this can be the biggest reason why nothing like Killzone 2 has even been hint on a screen on 360.

You call it falsehood but look at Killzone 2 and look at Guitar Hero and tell me the PS3 is inferior to the 360 because it has lower resolution in that game,while at the same time completely ignoring that nothing on 360 comes close to Killzone2,in almost every single aspect including texture something in which many had say the xbox 360 is superior.

 

[Rolf NB]

No matter how you slice it, in real world usage ... it is KNOWN that RSX trails Xenos for vertex transforms.

There's a poster on the Beyond3d forums who's supposedly an engine programmer on EA sports titles (joker454 or some other number), and the context for his complaints about slow RSX vertex transforms as I recall it was that the game rendered 2.5 million polygons per frame on average. Now if you do the math, that's nearly 3 polygons for every pixel in a 720p. Again, on average. Madden '07 doesn't even have AA. It follows that at the very least half of the polygons the game draws do not even make it into the framebuffer, and I'm not even talking about overdraw, but genuine zero-area polys that just get culled in setup.
Time constraints yadda yadda, but it should be obvious that there needs to be a massive efficiency problem within the renderer for a situation like this to even exist.
It's easy enough to blame RSX when it fails to cope with such absurd workloads as well as a unified design. That however doesn't mean that RSX is inherently imbalanced or has "too low" vertex capacity.

 

[Orlics]

Jut like the Xenos trails the RSX in other parts since non of the 2 have every single thing in advantage one over the other,but unlike on the xbox 360 Cell can handle jobs that pretty much had to be done on the Xenos,and which are not free by any means,this means that while the RSX could do 2 things at full speed,the Xenos could be doing those same 2 at half speed of a little more,because it has less free power,because is not getting help from the Xenon in the same way the RSX is from Cell and in the end this can be the biggest reason why nothing like Killzone 2 has even been hint on a screen on 360.

You call it falsehood but look at Killzone 2 and look at Guitar Hero and tell me the PS3 is inferior to the 360 because it has lower resolution in that game,while at the same time completely ignoring that nothing on 360 comes close to Killzone2,in almost every single aspect including texture something in which many had say the xbox 360 is superior.

Are you seriously suggesting that Onix thinks the 360 is superior? :lol

The guy knows what he's talking about. He has a preference for one console, but he's informed, while some people in this thread only possess the former quality.

 

[Raistlin]

Jut like the Xenos trails the RSX in other parts since non of the 2 have every single thing in advantage one over the other,but unlike on the xbox 360 Cell can handle jobs that pretty much had to be done on the Xenos,and which are not free by any means,this means that while the RSX could do 2 things at full speed,the Xenos could be doing those same 2 at half speed of a little more,because it has less free power,because is not getting help from the Xenon in the same way the RSX is from Cell and in the end this can be the biggest reason why nothing like Killzone 2 has even been hint on a screen on 360.

You call it falsehood but look at Killzone 2 and look at Guitar Hero and tell me the PS3 is inferior to the 360 because it has lower resolution in that game,while at the same time completely ignoring that nothing on 360 comes close to Killzone2,in almost every single aspect including texture something in which many had say the xbox 360 is superior.

You may want to read all my posts relevant to this discussion.

 

[Tormentoso]

Are you seriously suggesting that Onix thinks the 360 is superior? :lol

The guy knows what he's talking about. He has a preference for one console, but he's informed, while some people in this thread only possess the former quality.

Dude i just reply to his point,i don't know where he stand for,i just told him something addressing what he told me,nothing more nothing less.

He may be informed as you say but many of us are,one way or the other.

 

[Barso]

So Onix which console is more superior?
What is your honest opinion?
If you where left to pick 360 or PS3, which one would you keep and hold on to?
Thanks

 

[Raistlin]

So Onix which console is more superior?
What is your honest opinion?
If you where left to pick 360 or PS3, which one would you keep and hold on to?
Thanks

Well, that's an interesting question In terms of real power, I would have to go with the PS3.

But (yes, there's always a but), things aren't quite that simple. To really take advantage of the system, a dev has to do the following, or some combo. (and note, I'm not a gaming dev, but this is based on what I've seen and read):

1) Design the graphics engine around using the CELL for lots of tasks. When doing so, you can do things that just aren't feasible on 360.

2) Design the game around using the computational power of CELL. This offers you levels of physics, realtime calculations, etc. that can't be done on 360.


That sounds great, unfortunately, it just isn't viable for mutliplatform titles due to budgeting. For #1, you'd be designing a graphics engine that is so different than the 360/PC counterpart, it would effectively be two different games. They simply can't afford that. For #2, you'd be creating a game that from a gameplay, world interaction, etc. standpoint, isn't viable on 360.

So in other words, the only real titles that are likely to take advantage of the PS3 are exclusives. For multiplatform titles, you can hope that they are pretty much equivalent. Some of the earlier ports were rough, but we're now getting to a point that they are relatively the same. Devs are getting much better at designing engines that aren't too differentiated, but at least use some CELL support to help with some of the disadvantages of going a conventional 360/PCish engine ... not to mention learning how to structure data, etc. so that the PS3 isn't bottlenecked (how to best represent data, etc. at a high level is a bit different for PS3 compared to what you can get away with on 360. Luckily, what runs well on PS3, typically runs well on 360 at this level - even if the opposite is not true). Moving forward, I'd suspect that the majority of multiplatform titles will run fairly similarly between the two consoles ... though typically, the 360 has an advantage. Hopefully the delta will continue to shrink.


With all that in mind, I say ... who cares about graphics? Go by the games that you like, and any ancillary considerations. I expect most multiplatform titles to be similar (with 360 having a bit of an edge, possibly for the entire gen) ... but with PS3 exclusives starting to distance themselves. But if you don't like the PS3 exclusives, who cares?


For me, the decision was quite easy. I wanted a BD player, I use the DNLA aspects of the PS3 all the time, and I really like several of the Sony gaming IP's. For you however, you have to weigh all of the strengths and weaknesses.

I should also note that I really like were Sony is going with its PSN games. While the quantity isn't as high, they have FAR less development restrictions (if any) when compared to Live titles. Size, budget, complexity, etc. are substantially greater for the bigger titles.

 

[MikeB]

@ Onix

Overall a quite balanced perspective I don't disagree with in general, however for the long run I do think typically the PS3 will get most likely a slight advantage with regard to multi-platform games as well. This because the currently used gaming engines can only improve and we are still very early into this generation (it's a long lasting console, so it makes sense to optimise). Sony has been and will continue to assist devs with taking better advantage of the Cell. Although I agree for as long as the 360 continues to be on the market, mutli-platform games will not become radically better on the PS3 unless they were developed as being exclusives first.

Being superior can be looked at from many different perspectives, for example the 360 bundled with some games sell here for already 119 Euro (including 19% taxes) I don't know if the PS3 will ever be able to reach such entry pricing even with a slimline unit, there's a considerable amount of cool tech in the device. Default Wi-Fi could be dropped to result into minor cost savings on entry pricing unless Sony has something special planned for that in the long run, a default harddrive will however have to stay.

Then you have the Microsoft published exclusives, although it makes normally no sense for an Unreal engine based game to stay off the PS3, also such games will probably never reach the console.

From a technical perspective, we agree the core PS3 architecture is much more powerful than that of the 360, but a Blu-Ray drive and a default harddrive provide important technical resources, it allows the PS3 to stream data considerably faster and there's much more space for data resulting into fewer sacrifices regarding big ambitious games.

In addition there are many aspects you can't put a dollar tag on but are important as well, like with the PS3 generating far less noise, no potential issues of discs scratching, fewer hardware failures, lag-less free online gaming, PS Home, better and more universal hardware expansions, etc.

 

[Byakuya769]

@mikeb... no offense, but what? Be careful not to turn this into a discussion of which system is better, this should be all about the spes and their potential.

 

[MikeB]

A comment from a games developer with a Master's degree from a banned forum, so I won't link to the source:

I still can hardly imagine this email came straight from Microsoft, it's so incredibly misinformative it's mind boggling...


"Bottom line: SPUs are like most CPUs"

"Rule 1: The SPU is not a co-processor!"

"The ultimate goal: Get everything on the SPUs."

"Complex systems can go on the SPUs- Not just streaming systems -
Used for any kind of task"

http://www.insomniacgames.com/tech/articles/0208/files/insomniac_spu_programming_gdc08.ppt

If it wasn't obvious from my post, I agree with MikeB on pretty much all counts.

That "email" is downright outrageous.. to the point of being laughable. I am shocked that another engineer might not think so. I will dissect it, if you guys *really* believe it it has some truth to it, but I really feel as though I shouldn't have to -- step back and think about the letter's approach a bit, and see if the picture becomes clearer.

Its a great example of exactly how this kind of misinformation causes those who know "just enough" to get really confused, and then to propagate their confused concepts with the same confusing propaganda. MikeB does know what he's talking about.

The discussion was about an alleged email Microsoft would have sent some gaming websites including IGN. The amount of misinformation, nonsense and incompleteness from a one view angle in this alleged email was pretty extreme. If true Microsoft went to extremes to misinform the gaming community....

 

[Zyzyxxz]

why do you guys care how many SPE's games use for the PS3?

I don't see any satisfaction coming from this.

 

[spwolf]

why do you guys care how many SPE's games use for the PS3?

I don't see any satisfaction coming from this.

why not? it gives us better graphics in all games, including multiplatform ones.

When larabee comes out at the end of next year, it should have 32 processors, which are similar to spe's, just lower power (but more of them). In the future, new designs from ATI/Nvidia will do similar thing.

Meaning that developers in 2010 will develop for pc similary to what they do for cell.

Larabee will be huge also because it should give boost to non-graphics applications that decide to use it, something that current GPU's can not do for 98% of applications (including CUDA/GPGPUs).

I think game companies will end up being grateful for cell, because it prepared them better for future where they will have to have programmers who understand multithreading and 3rd party engines that use multreading much better than current ones.

For instance, my company works on data compression field, and we are just optimizing our engines to support multithreading better for multiple cores, and we will be able to achive copy speeds on quad core cpu's for normal zip operations (almost 4x faster than current engines)... for compression methods stronger than that though, current cpus are still not fast enough, so it would be huge if we could get larabee to help, and it seems we might be able to. However GPGPUs are useless for most non graphical tasks.

So big advantage for larabee will be that it will be used not only for graphics, but it will also help cpus for other tasks than graphics, even in games that will be big for other things, just like what cell is doing.

Problem is that it will require experience in mutlithreading, just like what cell does, so without cell it would take several years to take advantage of larabee, and you see carmack screaming how it sucks and how he wants 10ghz cpu/gpu .

With cell being what it is, and most companies taking advantage of it now, they are better prepared for the future where cpus/gpus melt into something similar to what cell does right now.

 

[i hate bees]

why not? it gives us better graphics in all games, including multiplatform ones.

When larabee comes out at the end of next year, it should have 32 processors, which are similar to spe's, just lower power (but more of them). In the future, new designs from ATI/Nvidia will do similar thing.

Meaning that developers in 2010 will develop for pc similary to what they do for cell.

Larabee will be huge also because it should give boost to non-graphics applications that decide to use it, something that current GPU's can not do for 98% of applications (including CUDA/GPGPUs).

I think game companies will end up being grateful for cell, because it prepared them better for future where they will have to have programmers who understand multithreading and 3rd party engines that use multreading much better than current ones.

For instance, my company works on data compression field, and we are just optimizing our engines to support multithreading better for multiple cores, and we will be able to achive copy speeds on quad core cpu's for normal zip operations (almost 4x faster than current engines)... for compression methods stronger than that though, current cpus are still not fast enough, so it would be huge if we could get larabee to help, and it seems we might be able to. However GPGPUs are useless for most non graphical tasks.

So big advantage for larabee will be that it will be used not only for graphics, but it will also help cpus for other tasks than graphics, even in games that will be big for other things, just like what cell is doing.

Problem is that it will require experience in mutlithreading, just like what cell does, so without cell it would take several years to take advantage of larabee, and you see carmack screaming how it sucks and how he wants 10ghz cpu/gpu .

With cell being what it is, and most companies taking advantage of it now, they are better prepared for the future where cpus/gpus melt into exactly what cell does right now.

Errr, I don't know what you think you know about Cell and Larrabee, but they're very, very different beasts.