HardWare Throwdown:IGN puts the 360 up against PS3

[QUOTE="ronvalencia"][QUOTE="coltgames"]ps3 superiority confirmed now just step up the onlineleadernator

Read the friggn article :|

I have read the article and have debunked the memory and RSX's peakperformance claims.

[QUOTE="delta3074"][QUOTE="Floppy_Jim"]A handful of Xbox games is supposedly better BC than the entire library of PS1 games. My flabber has been gasted.Darth_DuMas

Really? how comes, I just got a PS2 slim.:P

[QUOTE="delta3074"][QUOTE="Floppy_Jim"]A handful of Xbox games is supposedly better BC than the entire library of PS1 games. My flabber has been gasted.Floppy_Jim

[QUOTE="Floppy_Jim"][QUOTE="delta3074"]cmon floopy, you know when we talk about backwards comatibility it's mainly about games from the previous gen, although i would rather play Ps1 games than Ps2 games myself,loldelta3074

And that is the reason why the PS3 as hardware is factually better than 360, with the inclusion of much more features out of the box than the 360...Man how the times have changed :P. It seems pretty much the exact opposite of what had happened to the PS3, but has been happening to the 360 for a while...

[QUOTE="Floppy_Jim"][QUOTE="delta3074"]not really, the xbox wasn't around then, so it wouldn't really be fair to compare them on that basis would it.delta3074

Good point. Boo-Urns has it covered :lol:

http://uk.gamespot.com/pages/forums/show_msgs.php?topic_id=27431346&tag=topics%3Btitle

[QUOTE="delta3074"][QUOTE="Floppy_Jim"] *Shrugs* Well it was IGN who chose to compare them in the first place. They think PS3 has better RAM too so the whole thing's a bit of a fail.Floppy_Jim

Good point. Boo-Urns has it covered :lol:

http://uk.gamespot.com/pages/forums/show_msgs.php?topic_id=27431346&tag=topics%3Btitle

[QUOTE="Darth_DuMas"]

[QUOTE="delta3074"]cmon floopy, you know when we talk about backwards comatibility it's mainly about games from the previous gen, although i would rather play Ps1 games than Ps2 games myself,loldelta3074

Really? how comes, I just got a PS2 slim.:P

Well I just got one primarily for the old Ace Combat games. I even got the PS1 games just to complete the collection. But i'm surprised considering how much gamers went on about it, I expected this vast library of games i'd want, but that isn't the case yet. I'm thinking of getting Tekken 4 and 5 (I think), and maybe some SF games. But we'll see, I'll find some gems i'm sure. I think I have to try out some of it's games.

[QUOTE="Darth_DuMas"]

[QUOTE="Floppy_Jim"]A handful of Xbox games is supposedly better BC than the entire library of PS1 games. My flabber has been gasted.Floppy_Jim

i'd agree with this though. I can still play older 2D gaming systems fine, I love old snes and gameboy games they don't age to me really. But the PS1 being such basic 3D hasn't aged well. While the Xbox has many games that are still highly playable today.

There's only a handful of PS1 games i'd play today, so I guess it's down to opinion.

The Crash Bandicoot games have aged quite well :P Still, PS1 games are more bearable to play on the PSP if you have one.

Good point, hey you can't ignore your classics :P. What happens to the games that require the extra buttons or the second analog stick?

[QUOTE="Floppy_Jim"]

[QUOTE="Darth_DuMas"]

i'd agree with this though. I can still play older 2D gaming systems fine, I love old snes and gameboy games they don't age to me really. But the PS1 being such basic 3D hasn't aged well. While the Xbox has many games that are still highly playable today.

There's only a handful of PS1 games i'd play today, so I guess it's down to opinion.

Darth_DuMas

The Crash Bandicoot games have aged quite well :P Still, PS1 games are more bearable to play on the PSP if you have one.

Good point, hey you can't ignore your classics :P. What happens to the games that require the extra buttons or the second analog stick?

LOL anyone disagreeing?Of course.This was probably wrote by someone who does not even know what gpu is...So much wrong in this...I mean they gave win to ps3 on RAM side??? :lol:

Bus-A-Bus

Is funny because they claim the same thig i do that the 256MB or XDR on PS3 are much faster than the 700MHZ GDDR 3 on the 360,maybe they are as stupid as i am.

[QUOTE="Bus-A-Bus"]

LOL anyone disagreeing?Of course.This was probably wrote by someone who does not even know what gpu is...So much wrong in this...I mean they gave win to ps3 on RAM side??? :lol:

Eltormo

Is funny because they claim the same thig i do that the 256MB or XDR on PS3 are much faster than the 700MHZ GDDR 3 on the 360,maybe they are as stupid as i am.

On theXbox 360, frame-buffer related bandwidth cost is transferred to the eDRAM. You then have factor in Xbox 360's 3DC+ texture compression format.

On the memory issue, Xbox 360 has memory/bandwidth saving 3DC+ texture compression hardware feature.

Read Page 6 from http://developer.amd.com/gpu_assets/GDC06-ATI_Session-Tatarchuk-ToyShop.pdf

3Dc+ texture compression was crucial
• We went from 478 MB texture memory total to 156MB

We used dec3n vertex data format to reduce memory
• Gives 3:1 memory savings

Also, NVIDIA Geforce 6000/7000 series and RSX do not support UDEC3/DEC3N. 8000 series is the first nvidia card family with DEC3N/UDEC3 support. http://forum.beyond3d.com/showthread.php?t=45737

[QUOTE="Darth_DuMas"]

[QUOTE="Floppy_Jim"]

The Crash Bandicoot games have aged quite well :P Still, PS1 games are more bearable to play on the PSP if you have one.

Floppy_Jim

Good point, hey you can't ignore your classics :P. What happens to the games that require the extra buttons or the second analog stick?

kinda made me lol :P

video out, the Ps3 may have more native 1080p, but the 360 does have them, darkstar 1, and he failed to point out that ALL games can be upscaled to 1080p on the 360, not so with the Ps3, and the hardware upscaler in the 360 is marginally better than the software upscaling the Ps3 uses,also, you cannot blame the hardware for MS only requiring the games to run in720p, apart from that i am inclined to agreedelta3074

Dude in video upscaling the PS3 just walk all over the xbox 360,the difference is very easy to see,i was seeing Married with children on my 360 the other day,and i can't believe how much worst than the PS3 it looked.

Also the PS3 using a software upcaling on PS3 for games tell you even more how much powerful the PS3 is over the 360,since the 360 has a hardware scaler to do what the PS3 does by pure muscle and software,imaging if the xbox 360 did not had a hardware scaler games would take a hit because the upscale would rest on the GPU.and even so several games on 360 don't run native at 720p,they are sub HD including Halo 3,and probably reach as well,in order to get more out of the xbox 360,the same is done on PS3 but by some multiplatform developer not by Sony.

[QUOTE="delta3074"]video out, the Ps3 may have more native 1080p, but the 360 does have them, darkstar 1, and he failed to point out that ALL games can be upscaled to 1080p on the 360, not so with the Ps3, and the hardware upscaler in the 360 is marginally better than the software upscaling the Ps3 uses,also, you cannot blame the hardware for MS only requiring the games to run in720p, apart from that i am inclined to agreeEltormo

Dude in video upscaling the PS3 just walk all over the xbox 360,the difference is very easy to see,i was seeing Married with children on my 360 the other day,and i can't believe how much worst than the PS3 it looked.

That's because the 360 uses horrible software decoding for movies like computers. The PS3 uses hardware decoding for movies.

[QUOTE="delta3074"]video out, the Ps3 may have more native 1080p, but the 360 does have them, darkstar 1, and he failed to point out that ALL games can be upscaled to 1080p on the 360, not so with the Ps3, and the hardware upscaler in the 360 is marginally better than the software upscaling the Ps3 uses,also, you cannot blame the hardware for MS only requiring the games to run in720p, apart from that i am inclined to agreeEltormo

Dude in video upscaling the PS3 just walk all over the xbox 360,the difference is very easy to see,i was seeing Married with children on my 360 the other day,and i can't believe how much worst than the PS3 it looked.

Also the PS3 using a software upcaling on PS3 for games tell you even more how much powerful the PS3 is over the 360,since the 360 has a hardware scaler to do what the PS3 does by pure muscle and software,imaging if the xbox 360 did not had a hardware scaler games would take a hit because the upscale would rest on the GPU.and even so several games on 360 don't run native at 720p,they are sub HD including Halo 3,and probably reach as well,in order to get more out of the xbox 360,the same is done on PS3 but by some multiplatform developer not by Sony.

Oh god, those specs are embarrassingly bad. It makes you wonder how either system manages to run the games they do.

Oh god, those specs are embarrassingly bad. It makes you wonder how either system manages to run the games they do.

JonSnow777

They have little leprechauns inside that get out and push when we're not looking. :P

[QUOTE="delta3074"]video out, the Ps3 may have more native 1080p, but the 360 does have them, darkstar 1, and he failed to point out that ALL games can be upscaled to 1080p on the 360, not so with the Ps3, and the hardware upscaler in the 360 is marginally better than the software upscaling the Ps3 uses,also, you cannot blame the hardware for MS only requiring the games to run in720p, apart from that i am inclined to agreeEltormo

Dude in video upscaling the PS3 just walk all over the xbox 360,the difference is very easy to see,i was seeing Married with children on my 360 the other day,and i can't believe how much worst than the PS3 it looked.

Also the PS3 using a software upcaling on PS3 for games tell you even more how much powerful the PS3 is over the 360,since the 360 has a hardware scaler to do what the PS3 does by pure muscle and software,imaging if the xbox 360 did not had a hardware scaler games would take a hit because the upscale would rest on the GPU.and even so several games on 360 don't run native at 720p,they are sub HD including Halo 3,and probably reach as well,in order to get more out of the xbox 360,the same is done on PS3 but by some multiplatform developer not by Sony.

[QUOTE="WilliamRLBaker"][QUOTE="Eltormo"]

Dude in video upscaling the PS3 just walk all over the xbox 360,the difference is very easy to see,i was seeing Married with children on my 360 the other day,and i can't believe how much worst than the PS3 it looked.

Also the PS3 using a software upcaling on PS3 for games tell you even more how much powerful the PS3 is over the 360,since the 360 has a hardware scaler to do what the PS3 does by pure muscle and software,imaging if the xbox 360 did not had a hardware scaler games would take a hit because the upscale would rest on the GPU.and even so several games on 360 don't run native at 720p,they are sub HD including Halo 3,and probably reach as well,in order to get more out of the xbox 360,the same is done on PS3 but by some multiplatform developer not by Sony.

sts106mat

[QUOTE="Zero_epyon"][QUOTE="delta3074"] video out, the Ps3 may have more native 1080p, but the 360 does have them, darkstar 1, and he failed to point out that ALL games can be upscaled to 1080p on the 360, not so with the Ps3, and the hardware upscaler in the 360 is marginally better than the software upscaling the Ps3 uses,also, you cannot blame the hardware for MS only requiring the games to run in720p, apart from that i am inclined to agreeBus-A-Bus

Not only does 360 gpu feature completely new architecture which by itself can dedicate vertex or pixel workload as games need but it also features extremely rich feature list,designed specifically for consoles,plus it has eDRAM.Xenos is different ball game than RSX.Cell losses ~30% on just vertex culling so RSX has easier time with polygons(something at which it is limited),it also does post processing while on Xenos all 48 pipelines do it at time they are idle.Here is quote from programmer that developed on both of this consoles...

I could go on for pages listing the types of things the spu's are used for to make up for the machines aging gpu, which may be 7 series NVidia but that's basically a tweaked 6 series NVidia for the most part. But I'll just type a few off the top of my head:


1) Two ppu/vmx units
There are three ppu/vmx units on the 360, and just one on the PS3. So any load on the 360's remaining two ppu/vmx units must be moved to spu.

2) Vertex culling
You can look back a few years at my first post talking about this, but it's common knowledge now that you need to move as much vertex load as possible to spu otherwise it won't keep pace with the 360.

3) Vertex texture sampling
You can texture sample in vertex shaders on 360 just fine, but it's unusably slow on PS3. Most multi platform games simply won't use this feature on 360 to make keeping parity easier, but if a dev does make use of it then you will have no choice but to move all such functionality to spu.

4) Shader patching
Changing variables in shader programs is cake on the 360. Not so on the PS3 because they are embedded into the shader programs. So you have to use spu's to patch your shader programs.

5) Branching
You never want a lot of branching in general, but when you do really need it the 360 handles it fine, PS3 does not. If you are stuck needing branching in shaders then you will want to move all such functionality to spu.

6)Shader inputs
You can pass plenty of inputs to shaders on 360, but do it on PS3 and your game will grind to a halt. You will want to move all such functionality to spu to minimize the amount of inputs needed on the shader programs.

7) Msaa alternatives
Msaa runs full speed on 360 gpu needing just cpu tiling calculations. Msaa on PS3 gpu is very slow. You will want to move msaa to spu as soon as you can.

8) Post processing
360 is unified architecture meaning post process steps can often be slotted into gpu idle time. This is not as easily doable on PS3, so you will want to move as much post process to spu as possible.

9) Load balancing
360 gpu load balances itself just fine since it's unified. If the load on a given frame shifts to heavy vertex or heavy pixel load then you don't care. Not so on PS3 where such load shifts will cause frame drops. You will want to shift as much load as possible to spu to minimize your peak load on the gpu.

10) Half floats
You can use full floats just fine on the 360 gpu. On the PS3 gpu they cause performance slowdowns. If you really need/have to use shaders with many full floats then you will want to move such functionality over to the spu's.

11) Shader array indexing
You can index into arrays in shaders on the 360 gpu no problem. You can't do that on PS3. If you absolutely need this functionality then you will have to either rework your shaders or move it all to spu.

Etc, etc, etc...

http://forum.beyond3d.com/showthread.php?t=57736&page=5

You know what that post really tell.?

That Cell is a monster it can handle pretty much anything,man look at all the thing the SPU can do,that other wise had to be done by GPU

1-Two ppu/vmx units

2-Vertex culling

3-Vertex texture sampling

4-Shader patching

5-Branching

6-Shader inputs

7-Msaa alternatives

8-Post processing

9-Load balancing

10-Half floats

11-Shader array indexing

Cell is a confirmed monster,but something he is not saying here is that nothing of the thing he talks about there are not free on the 360 GPU,while the 360 can handle them well,all tax the GPU,while handling many of those task by Cell let the RSX works less stressed.

This is what i have been saying for a long time,the xbox 360 has a better GPU,but since it has to do it all and Cell help the RSX to many taks,the xbox 360 GPU advantage is pretty much null.

[QUOTE="Eltormo"]

[QUOTE="delta3074"]video out, the Ps3 may have more native 1080p, but the 360 does have them, darkstar 1, and he failed to point out that ALL games can be upscaled to 1080p on the 360, not so with the Ps3, and the hardware upscaler in the 360 is marginally better than the software upscaling the Ps3 uses,also, you cannot blame the hardware for MS only requiring the games to run in720p, apart from that i am inclined to agreeDarth_DuMas

Dude in video upscaling the PS3 just walk all over the xbox 360,the difference is very easy to see,i was seeing Married with children on my 360 the other day,and i can't believe how much worst than the PS3 it looked.

That's because the 360 uses horrible software decoding for movies like computers. The PS3 uses hardware decoding for movies.

like computers????

For video decoding, my ATI Radeon HD 5730/5770s are equiped with following tech ...From http://www.amd.com/US/PRODUCTS/NOTEBOOK/GRAPHICS/ATI-MOBILITY-HD-5700/Pages/hd-5730-specs.aspx

UVD 2 dedicated video playback accelerator
Advanced post-processing and scaling
Dynamic contrast enhancement and color correction
Brighter whites processing (blue stretch)
Independent video gamma control
Dynamic video range control
Support for H.264, VC-1, MPEG-2, and Adobe Flash9
Dual-stream 1080p playback support
DXVA 1.0 & 2.0 support
Integrated dual-link DVI output with HDCP: Max resolution: 2560x1600
Integrated DisplayPort output: Max resolution: 2560x1600
Integrated HDMI 1.3 output with Deep Color, xvYCC wide gamut support, and high bit-rate audio : Max resolution: 1920x1200
Integrated VGA output :Max resolution: 2048x1536
3D stereoscopic display/glasses support
Integrated HD audio controller
Output protected high bit rate 7.1 channel surround sound over HDMI with no additional cables required
Supports AC-3, AAC, Dolby TrueHD and DTS Master Audio formats

yeah...no. sorry the 360 destroys the ps3 for the simple fact it has the hardware scaler, its upscaling of games is far better. WilliamRLBaker

I was talking about video which they are not pretty much the same,every one knows that for DVD playing the PS3 is superior to the 360,also the xbox 360 has a hardware scaler to help the GPU,something missing on PS3 which does it all by brute force,is funny the xbox 360 has a better GPU than the PS3 yet the xbox 360 need the help of a hardware scaler to upscale games,while the PS3 with its weaker RSX does it by pure muscle.

You know what that post really tell.?

That Cell is a monster it can handle pretty much anything,man look at all the thing the SPU can do,that other wise had to be done by GPU

1-Two ppu/vmx units

2-Vertex culling

3-Vertex texture sampling

4-Shader patching

5-Branching

6-Shader inputs

7-Msaa alternatives

8-Post processing

9-Load balancing

10-Half floats

11-Shader array indexing

Cell is a confirmed monster,but something he is not saying here is that nothing of the thing he talks about there are free on the 360 GPU,while the 360 can handle them well,all tax the GPU,while handling many of those task by Cell let the RSX works less stressed.

This is what i have been saying for a long time,the xbox 360 has a better GPU,but since it has to do it all and Cell help the RSX to many taks,the xbox 360 GPU advantage is pretty much null.

Eltormo

I'll post this again.

http://www.gamasutra.com/view/feature/3904/processing_the_truth_an_interview_.php?page=1

Shippy was the chief architect of the power processing unit for the Cell, and overall technical leader and architect for the team that created the Power Architecture-related microprocessors that ended up in both the Xbox 360 and the PlayStation 3

http://www.gamasutra.com/view/feature/3904/processing_the_truth_an_interview_.php?page=3

"I'm going to have to answer with an 'it depends,'" laughs Shippy, after a pause. "Again, they're completely different models. So in the PS3, you've got this Cell chip which has massive parallel processing power, the PowerPC core, multiple SPU cores… it's got a GPU that is, in the model here, processing more in the Cell chip and less in the GPU. So that's one processing paradigm -- a heterogeneous paradigm."

"With the Xbox 360, you've got more of a traditional multi-core system, and you've got three PowerPC cores, each of them having dual threads -- so you've got six threads running there, at least in the CPU. Six threads in Xbox 360, and eight or nine threads in the PS3 -- but then you've got to factor in the GPU," Shippy explains. "The GPU is highly sophisticated in the Xbox 360."

He concludes: "At the end of the day, when you put them all together, depending on the software, I think they're pretty equal, even though they're completely different processing models."

All known multi-platform games does not use Xbox 360's ATI tessellation unit.

Sony(SCEA)'sstudypaper on "Deferred Pixel Shading on the Playstation 3" and comparative performance to Geforce 7800 GTX. Can be found from http://research.scea.com/ps3_deferred_shading.pdf

Quote

D. Comparison to GeForce 7800 GTX GPU

We implemented the same algorithm on a high end state of
the art GPU, the NVIDIA GeForce 7800 GTX running in a
Linux workstation. This GPU has 24 fragment shader
pipelines running at 430 Mhz and processes 24 fragments
in parallel. By comparison the 5 SPEs that we used process
20 pixels in parallel in quad-SIMD form.

The GeForce required 11.1 ms to complete the shading
operation. In comparison the Cell/B.E. required 11.65 ms
including the DMA waiting time

From Sony's own words, 5 SPEs(with DMA) is roughly equal to Geforce 7800 GTX.

CELL is not a monster GPU. Remember, you have about 4 SPEs to patch the RSX.

do you have anything positive to add to any discussion about the 360.....ever???

sts106mat

Can you stop single me out there is allot of people here posting pro PS3 and i am the only one you go to quote for that.

[QUOTE="Darth_DuMas"]

[QUOTE="Eltormo"]

Dude in video upscaling the PS3 just walk all over the xbox 360,the difference is very easy to see,i was seeing Married with children on my 360 the other day,and i can't believe how much worst than the PS3 it looked.

ronvalencia

That's because the 360 uses horrible software decoding for movies like computers. The PS3 uses hardware decoding for movies.

like computers????

For video decoding, my ATI Radeon HD 5730/5770s are equiped with following tech ...From http://www.amd.com/US/PRODUCTS/NOTEBOOK/GRAPHICS/ATI-MOBILITY-HD-5700/Pages/hd-5730-specs.aspx

UVD 2 dedicated video playback accelerator
Advanced post-processing and scaling
Dynamic contrast enhancement and color correction
Brighter whites processing (blue stretch)
Independent video gamma control
Dynamic video range control
Support for H.264, VC-1, MPEG-2, and Adobe Flash9
Dual-stream 1080p playback support
DXVA 1.0 & 2.0 support
Integrated dual-link DVI output with HDCP: Max resolution: 2560x1600
Integrated DisplayPort output: Max resolution: 2560x1600
Integrated HDMI 1.3 output with Deep Color, xvYCC wide gamut support, and high bit-rate audio : Max resolution: 1920x1200
Integrated VGA output :Max resolution: 2048x1536
3D stereoscopic display/glasses support
Integrated HD audio controller
Output protected high bit rate 7.1 channel surround sound over HDMI with no additional cables required
Supports AC-3, AAC, Dolby TrueHD and DTS Master Audio formats

:P I should have been more specific, I mean those DVD player softwares like the Win DVD and Roxio Power DVD. They didn't handle DVD playback as well as dedicated players.

I think the 360 must have some based on the older softwares, because I don't think it is using hardware decoding. Relax, your GPU is very nice.

I meant to compare the 360 equivelent, which is probably PowerDVD 6 or something.

[QUOTE="WilliamRLBaker"] yeah...no. sorry the 360 destroys the ps3 for the simple fact it has the hardware scaler, its upscaling of games is far better. Eltormo

I was talking about video which they are not pretty much the same,every one knows that for DVD playing the PS3 is superior to the 360,also the xbox 360 has a hardware scaler to help the GPU,something missing on PS3 which does it all by brute force,is funny the xbox 360 has a better GPU than the PS3 yet the xbox 360 need the help of a hardware scaler to upscale games,while the PS3 with its weaker RSX does it by pure muscle.

[QUOTE="Eltormo"]

[QUOTE="sts106mat"]

do you have anything positive to add to any discussion about the 360.....ever???

sts106mat

Can you stop single me out there is allot of people here posting pro PS3 and i am the only one you go to quote for that.

[QUOTE="Bus-A-Bus"]

[QUOTE="Zero_epyon"] Good point. Other parts are a bit iffy. Like the GPU section. I thought the 360's GPU had a clear advantage over the PS3's. I guess according to this article it's really the ram that gives it the edge not the actual GPU. Any GPU architects here wanna clear this up?Eltormo

Not only does 360 gpu feature completely new architecture which by itself can dedicate vertex or pixel workload as games need but it also features extremely rich feature list,designed specifically for consoles,plus it has eDRAM.Xenos is different ball game than RSX.Cell losses ~30% on just vertex culling so RSX has easier time with polygons(something at which it is limited),it also does post processing while on Xenos all 48 pipelines do it at time they are idle.Here is quote from programmer that developed on both of this consoles...

I could go on for pages listing the types of things the spu's are used for to make up for the machines aging gpu, which may be 7 series NVidia but that's basically a tweaked 6 series NVidia for the most part. But I'll just type a few off the top of my head:


1) Two ppu/vmx units
There are three ppu/vmx units on the 360, and just one on the PS3. So any load on the 360's remaining two ppu/vmx units must be moved to spu.

2) Vertex culling
You can look back a few years at my first post talking about this, but it's common knowledge now that you need to move as much vertex load as possible to spu otherwise it won't keep pace with the 360.

3) Vertex texture sampling
You can texture sample in vertex shaders on 360 just fine, but it's unusably slow on PS3. Most multi platform games simply won't use this feature on 360 to make keeping parity easier, but if a dev does make use of it then you will have no choice but to move all such functionality to spu.

4) Shader patching
Changing variables in shader programs is cake on the 360. Not so on the PS3 because they are embedded into the shader programs. So you have to use spu's to patch your shader programs.

5) Branching
You never want a lot of branching in general, but when you do really need it the 360 handles it fine, PS3 does not. If you are stuck needing branching in shaders then you will want to move all such functionality to spu.

6)Shader inputs
You can pass plenty of inputs to shaders on 360, but do it on PS3 and your game will grind to a halt. You will want to move all such functionality to spu to minimize the amount of inputs needed on the shader programs.

7) Msaa alternatives
Msaa runs full speed on 360 gpu needing just cpu tiling calculations. Msaa on PS3 gpu is very slow. You will want to move msaa to spu as soon as you can.

8) Post processing
360 is unified architecture meaning post process steps can often be slotted into gpu idle time. This is not as easily doable on PS3, so you will want to move as much post process to spu as possible.

9) Load balancing
360 gpu load balances itself just fine since it's unified. If the load on a given frame shifts to heavy vertex or heavy pixel load then you don't care. Not so on PS3 where such load shifts will cause frame drops. You will want to shift as much load as possible to spu to minimize your peak load on the gpu.

10) Half floats
You can use full floats just fine on the 360 gpu. On the PS3 gpu they cause performance slowdowns. If you really need/have to use shaders with many full floats then you will want to move such functionality over to the spu's.

11) Shader array indexing
You can index into arrays in shaders on the 360 gpu no problem. You can't do that on PS3. If you absolutely need this functionality then you will have to either rework your shaders or move it all to spu.

Etc, etc, etc...

http://forum.beyond3d.com/showthread.php?t=57736&page=5

You know what that post really tell.?

That Cell is a monster it can handle pretty much anything,man look at all the thing the SPU can do,that other wise had to be done by GPU

1-Two ppu/vmx units

2-Vertex culling

3-Vertex texture sampling

4-Shader patching

5-Branching

6-Shader inputs

7-Msaa alternatives

8-Post processing

9-Load balancing

10-Half floats

11-Shader array indexing

Cell is a confirmed monster,but something he is not saying here is that nothing of the thing he talks about there are free on the 360 GPU,while the 360 can handle them well,all tax the GPU,while handling many of those task by Cell let the RSX works less stressed.

This is what i have been saying for a long time,the xbox 360 has a better GPU,but since it has to do it all and Cell help the RSX to many taks,the xbox 360 GPU advantage is pretty much null.

I'll post this again.

http://www.gamasutra.com/view/feature/3904/processing_the_truth_an_interview_.php?page=1

Shippy was the chief architect of the power processing unit for the Cell, and overall technical leader and architect for the team that created the Power Architecture-related microprocessors that ended up in both the Xbox 360 and the PlayStation 3

http://www.gamasutra.com/view/feature/3904/processing_the_truth_an_interview_.php?page=3

"I'm going to have to answer with an 'it depends,'" laughs Shippy, after a pause. "Again, they're completely different models. So in the PS3, you've got this Cell chip which has massive parallel processing power, the PowerPC core, multiple SPU cores… it's got a GPU that is, in the model here, processing more in the Cell chip and less in the GPU. So that's one processing paradigm -- a heterogeneous paradigm."

"With the Xbox 360, you've got more of a traditional multi-core system, and you've got three PowerPC cores, each of them having dual threads -- so you've got six threads running there, at least in the CPU. Six threads in Xbox 360, and eight or nine threads in the PS3 -- but then you've got to factor in the GPU," Shippy explains. "The GPU is highly sophisticated in the Xbox 360."

He concludes: "At the end of the day, when you put them all together, depending on the software, I think they're pretty equal, even though they're completely different processing models."

All known multi-platform games does not use Xbox 360's ATI tessellation unit.

Sony(SCEA)'sstudypaper on "Deferred Pixel Shading on the Playstation 3" and comparative performance to Geforce 7800 GTX. Can be found from http://research.scea.com/ps3_deferred_shading.pdf

Quote

D. Comparison to GeForce 7800 GTX GPU

We implemented the same algorithm on a high end state of
the art GPU, the NVIDIA GeForce 7800 GTX running in a
Linux workstation. This GPU has 24 fragment shader
pipelines running at 430 Mhz and processes 24 fragments
in parallel. By comparison the 5 SPEs that we used process
20 pixels in parallel in quad-SIMD form.

The GeForce required 11.1 ms to complete the shading
operation. In comparison the Cell/B.E. required 11.65 ms
including the DMA waiting time

From Sony's own words, 5 SPEs(with DMA) is roughly equal to Geforce 7800 GTX.

CELL is not a monster GPU. Remember, you have about 4 SPEs to patch the RSX.

ronvalencia

Cell is not a GPU is a CPU,that is why i say Cell is a monster doing all those thing the GPU had to do tradisionaly dude,how is not a monster.? Can the Xenon even do half of the stuff on that list.?

[QUOTE="ronvalencia"]

[QUOTE="Darth_DuMas"]

That's because the 360 uses horrible software decoding for movies like computers. The PS3 uses hardware decoding for movies.

Darth_DuMas

like computers????

For video decoding, my ATI Radeon HD 5730/5770s are equiped with following tech ...From http://www.amd.com/US/PRODUCTS/NOTEBOOK/GRAPHICS/ATI-MOBILITY-HD-5700/Pages/hd-5730-specs.aspx

UVD 2 dedicated video playback accelerator
Advanced post-processing and scaling
Dynamic contrast enhancement and color correction
Brighter whites processing (blue stretch)
Independent video gamma control
Dynamic video range control
Support for H.264, VC-1, MPEG-2, and Adobe Flash9
Dual-stream 1080p playback support
DXVA 1.0 & 2.0 support
Integrated dual-link DVI output with HDCP: Max resolution: 2560x1600
Integrated DisplayPort output: Max resolution: 2560x1600
Integrated HDMI 1.3 output with Deep Color, xvYCC wide gamut support, and high bit-rate audio : Max resolution: 1920x1200
Integrated VGA output :Max resolution: 2048x1536
3D stereoscopic display/glasses support
Integrated HD audio controller
Output protected high bit rate 7.1 channel surround sound over HDMI with no additional cables required
Supports AC-3, AAC, Dolby TrueHD and DTS Master Audio formats

:P I should have been more specific, I mean those DVD player softwares like the Win DVD and Roxio Power DVD. They didn't handle DVD playback as well as dedicated players.

I think the 360 must have some based on the older softwares, because I don't think it is using hardware decoding. Relax, your GPU is very nice.

I meant to compare the 360 equivelent, which is probably PowerDVD 6 or something.

[QUOTE="sts106mat"]

[QUOTE="Eltormo"]

Can you stop single me out there is allot of people here posting pro PS3 and i am the only one you go to quote for that.

WilliamRLBaker

Makes sense since what was considered the HW with the must Powah finished last the previous gen right ?

:P

Makes sense since what was considered the HW with the must Powah finished last the previous gen right ?

:P

SecretPolice

[QUOTE="ronvalencia"]

I'll post this again.

http://www.gamasutra.com/view/feature/3904/processing_the_truth_an_interview_.php?page=1

Shippy was the chief architect of the power processing unit for the Cell, and overall technical leader and architect for the team that created the Power Architecture-related microprocessors that ended up in both the Xbox 360 and the PlayStation 3

http://www.gamasutra.com/view/feature/3904/processing_the_truth_an_interview_.php?page=3

"I'm going to have to answer with an 'it depends,'" laughs Shippy, after a pause. "Again, they're completely different models. So in the PS3, you've got this Cell chip which has massive parallel processing power, the PowerPC core, multiple SPU cores… it's got a GPU that is, in the model here, processing more in the Cell chip and less in the GPU. So that's one processing paradigm -- a heterogeneous paradigm."

"With the Xbox 360, you've got more of a traditional multi-core system, and you've got three PowerPC cores, each of them having dual threads -- so you've got six threads running there, at least in the CPU. Six threads in Xbox 360, and eight or nine threads in the PS3 -- but then you've got to factor in the GPU," Shippy explains. "The GPU is highly sophisticated in the Xbox 360."

He concludes: "At the end of the day, when you put them all together, depending on the software, I think they're pretty equal, even though they're completely different processing models."

All known multi-platform games does not use Xbox 360's ATI tessellation unit.

Sony(SCEA)'sstudypaper on "Deferred Pixel Shading on the Playstation 3" and comparative performance to Geforce 7800 GTX. Can be found from http://research.scea.com/ps3_deferred_shading.pdf

Quote

D. Comparison to GeForce 7800 GTX GPU

We implemented the same algorithm on a high end state of
the art GPU, the NVIDIA GeForce 7800 GTX running in a
Linux workstation. This GPU has 24 fragment shader
pipelines running at 430 Mhz and processes 24 fragments
in parallel. By comparison the 5 SPEs that we used process
20 pixels in parallel in quad-SIMD form.

The GeForce required 11.1 ms to complete the shading
operation. In comparison the Cell/B.E. required 11.65 ms
including the DMA waiting time

From Sony's own words, 5 SPEs(with DMA) is roughly equal to Geforce 7800 GTX.

CELL is not a monster GPU. Remember, you have about 4 SPEs to patch the RSX.

Eltormo

Cell is not a GPU is a CPU,that is why i say Cell is a monster doing all those thing the GPU had to do tradisionaly dude,how is not a monster.? Can the Xenon even do half of the stuff on that list.?

[QUOTE="ronvalencia"]

I'll post this again.

http://www.gamasutra.com/view/feature/3904/processing_the_truth_an_interview_.php?page=1

Shippy was the chief architect of the power processing unit for the Cell, and overall technical leader and architect for the team that created the Power Architecture-related microprocessors that ended up in both the Xbox 360 and the PlayStation 3

http://www.gamasutra.com/view/feature/3904/processing_the_truth_an_interview_.php?page=3

"I'm going to have to answer with an 'it depends,'" laughs Shippy, after a pause. "Again, they're completely different models. So in the PS3, you've got this Cell chip which has massive parallel processing power, the PowerPC core, multiple SPU cores… it's got a GPU that is, in the model here, processing more in the Cell chip and less in the GPU. So that's one processing paradigm -- a heterogeneous paradigm."

"With the Xbox 360, you've got more of a traditional multi-core system, and you've got three PowerPC cores, each of them having dual threads -- so you've got six threads running there, at least in the CPU. Six threads in Xbox 360, and eight or nine threads in the PS3 -- but then you've got to factor in the GPU," Shippy explains. "The GPU is highly sophisticated in the Xbox 360."

He concludes: "At the end of the day, when you put them all together, depending on the software, I think they're pretty equal, even though they're completely different processing models."

All known multi-platform games does not use Xbox 360's ATI tessellation unit.

Sony(SCEA)'sstudypaper on "Deferred Pixel Shading on the Playstation 3" and comparative performance to Geforce 7800 GTX. Can be found from http://research.scea.com/ps3_deferred_shading.pdf

Quote

D. Comparison to GeForce 7800 GTX GPU

We implemented the same algorithm on a high end state of
the art GPU, the NVIDIA GeForce 7800 GTX running in a
Linux workstation. This GPU has 24 fragment shader
pipelines running at 430 Mhz and processes 24 fragments
in parallel. By comparison the 5 SPEs that we used process
20 pixels in parallel in quad-SIMD form.

The GeForce required 11.1 ms to complete the shading
operation. In comparison the Cell/B.E. required 11.65 ms
including the DMA waiting time

From Sony's own words, 5 SPEs(with DMA) is roughly equal to Geforce 7800 GTX.

CELL is not a monster GPU. Remember, you have about 4 SPEs to patch the RSX.

Eltormo

Cell is not a GPU is a CPU,that is why i say Cell is a monster doing all those thing the GPU had to do tradisionaly dude,how is not a monster.? Can the Xenon even do half of the stuff on that list.?

Why CPU vs GPU divide when we are dealing with similar workload targets?

According to Fold @Home, SPEs falls between CPU and GPU (Radeon X1900).

[QUOTE="SecretPolice"]

Makes sense since what was considered the HW with the must Powah finished last the previous gen right ?

:P

mystervj

[QUOTE="ronvalencia"]

I'll post this again.

http://www.gamasutra.com/view/feature/3904/processing_the_truth_an_interview_.php?page=1

Shippy was the chief architect of the power processing unit for the Cell, and overall technical leader and architect for the team that created the Power Architecture-related microprocessors that ended up in both the Xbox 360 and the PlayStation 3

http://www.gamasutra.com/view/feature/3904/processing_the_truth_an_interview_.php?page=3

"I'm going to have to answer with an 'it depends,'" laughs Shippy, after a pause. "Again, they're completely different models. So in the PS3, you've got this Cell chip which has massive parallel processing power, the PowerPC core, multiple SPU cores… it's got a GPU that is, in the model here, processing more in the Cell chip and less in the GPU. So that's one processing paradigm -- a heterogeneous paradigm."

"With the Xbox 360, you've got more of a traditional multi-core system, and you've got three PowerPC cores, each of them having dual threads -- so you've got six threads running there, at least in the CPU. Six threads in Xbox 360, and eight or nine threads in the PS3 -- but then you've got to factor in the GPU," Shippy explains. "The GPU is highly sophisticated in the Xbox 360."

He concludes: "At the end of the day, when you put them all together, depending on the software, I think they're pretty equal, even though they're completely different processing models."

All known multi-platform games does not use Xbox 360's ATI tessellation unit.

Sony(SCEA)'sstudypaper on "Deferred Pixel Shading on the Playstation 3" and comparative performance to Geforce 7800 GTX. Can be found from http://research.scea.com/ps3_deferred_shading.pdf

Quote

D. Comparison to GeForce 7800 GTX GPU

We implemented the same algorithm on a high end state of
the art GPU, the NVIDIA GeForce 7800 GTX running in a
Linux workstation. This GPU has 24 fragment shader
pipelines running at 430 Mhz and processes 24 fragments
in parallel. By comparison the 5 SPEs that we used process
20 pixels in parallel in quad-SIMD form.

The GeForce required 11.1 ms to complete the shading
operation. In comparison the Cell/B.E. required 11.65 ms
including the DMA waiting time

From Sony's own words, 5 SPEs(with DMA) is roughly equal to Geforce 7800 GTX.

CELL is not a monster GPU. Remember, you have about 4 SPEs to patch the RSX.

Cell is not a GPU is a CPU,that is why i say Cell is a monster doing all those thing the GPU had to do tradisionaly dude,how is not a monster.? Can the Xenon even do half of the stuff on that list.?

Wow PS3 dominated.

Now compare vs PC too :P