C.H.U.D.
Originally Posted by Partial
The PS3 uses a processor similar to the nVidia 7800 GTX series of video cards which was already outdated when the PS3 came out.
The 360 uses an ATI processor called Xenos that at the time used ATI's next generation video card architecture that wasnt even available in PC's yet and is more advanced than the one from nVidia in the PS3.
So you could say they are at the very least they are the same generation, but in reality the 360 has much higher bandwidth capabilities and handles 4x anit-aliasing very well.
Also the 360 has 512MB of memory where as the PS3 only has 256.
Those things combined with the fact the PS3 will never be able to utilize it highly touted Cell processor because of the difficulty in programming for it make the 360 better when the PS3 came out, its better now and it will be better in the future. And by that I mean it will look better and play better and cost less. Yes it will likely still have hardware issues. I have had mine since launch and have had it replaced once under warranty. I was treated really well. I called them up and they sent me out anouther without question and I had it in 3 working days! I sent them my broken one back in the coffin they sent along with the new unit. I dont think they are giving the same treatment now though. At launch they went the extra mile to try and keep the uprising down.
I like it so much I would by one again if it failed.
If i wanted to get a Blue Ray player today I would likely by a PS3 since it cost the same as any stand alone Blue Ray player
360 is easier to program for an thus will have better graphics early. Cell is far more capable. Main system memory is not super important when the only task is the game, which with the bandwidth rates they have content is constantly being loaded in and out.
The Xenos chip is essentially a Radeon 520, aka a x1800. Ps3 puts out more gigaflops/second. It definitely has more potential.
Personallly, I'd get an xbox for the game.
Sony is huge on hype and small on delivery.Originally Posted by Partial
http://xbox360.ign.com/articles/617/617951p2.html
http://xbox360.ign.com/articles/617/617951p3.html
Keep in mind that Sony has a track record of over promising and under delivering on technical performance
The Xbox 360 GPU has more processing power than the PS3's. In addition, its innovated features contribute to overall rendering performance.
360 has 278.4 GB/s of memory system bandwidth. The PS3 has less than one-fifth of Xbox 360's (48 GB/s) of total memory system bandwidth
GPU
Even ignoring the bandwidth limitations the PS3's GPU is not as powerful as the Xbox 360's GPU.
Below are the specs from Sony's press release regarding the PS3's GPU.
RSX GPU
550 MHz
Independent vertex/pixel shaders
51 billion dot products per second (total system performance)
300M transistors
136 "shader operations" per clock
The interesting ALU performance numbers are 51 billion dot products per second (total system performance), 300M transistors, and more than twice as powerful as the 6800 Ultra.
The 51 billions dot products per cycle were listed on a summary slide of total graphics system performance and are assumed to include the Cell processor. Sony's calculations seem to assume that the Cell can do a dot product per cycle per DSP, despite not having a dot product instruction.
However, using Sony's claim, 7 dot products per cycle * 3.2 GHz = 22.4 billion dot products per second for the CPU. That leaves 51 - 22.4 = 28.6 billion dot products per second that are left over for the GPU. That leaves 28.6 billion dot products per second / 550 MHz = 52 GPU ALU ops per clock.
It is important to note that if the RSX ALUs are similar to the GeForce 6800 ALUs then they work on vector4s, while the Xbox 360 GPU ALUs work on vector5s. The total programmable GPU floating point performance for the PS3 would be 52 ALU ops * 4 floats per op *2 (madd) * 550 MHz = 228.8 GFLOPS which is less than the Xbox 360's 48 ALU ops * 5 floats per op * 2 (madd) * 500 MHz= 240 GFLOPS.
With the number of transistors being slightly larger on the Xbox 360 GPU (330M) it's not surprising that the total programmable GFLOPs number is very close.