So I'll start this off with a quick note that I am not sure if these are accurate figures. It's been so long, I don't remember all the info from the beginning of the generation, and finding articles from back then is a bit difficult.

But anyways, here is what I found for the overall hardware performance of each machine:

PS3 - 2TF
Xbox 360 - 1.0TF
----------------------------------------
Difference - 1TF (100%)

Now for current generation, we have the following (Someone please give me updates if you have figures for overall system performance or at least a CPU GFlop performance since that should be almost equal in both so I can update this).

PS4 - 1.83TF (GPU) + "Placeholder 250GF" = 2.08TF
Xbox One - 1.31TF (GPU) + "Placeholder 275GF" = 1.585TF
----------------------------------------
Difference - 0.495TF (31%)

Assuming these values are correct, is anyone else suprised at how the theoretical peak power of these systems is only a tad higher than last gen? (just 10-50%). What I do not personally want to do with this thread, is try to make assumptions or give my educated opinion of what this may mean. Rather I would like to spur conversation with some of VGChartz more technological members. What do you all think about this? What will it represent next gen? How might things differ from this gen? Why is the peak performance barely higher than last gen? Don't limit yourself to just those few suggestions of topics to discuss, be creative.

I want to keep this thread positive. It's ok to say that "X is stronger than Y" or "X looks better than Y in my opinion", but don't start saying things like "X is way better. Fact." or "Y is so awful looking compared to X." I will keep it updated as more information is revealed throughout the generation. If you have any hardware specs to contribute to the totals above, please do so!

PS3 and 360 are not that many flops. The 2 TF figure was a bs one made by Sony before launch. Last I remember the RSX was like 200 GF and the 360 GPU was 250. Totally going off memory though, but these are much closer to reality.

I was thinking those figures were off as well, but the brief search I did kept turning up those values from 2007-2008 timeframe.

I will look more tomorrow. If anyone else finds or knows more accurate numbers for last gen or this gen let me know!

I think the pse has had exclusives with superior graphics but lack later compared to360 in terms of multi tasking
Next gen graphics so far seen to be a decent improvement on what we've seen for launch so I'd expect it to only grow like the current gen with more similarities than ever before

Oh boy...

RSX is 176GFLOPS GPU, Xenos is 240GFLOPS GPU. PS3 can squeeze some more from Cell (180GFLOPS in total...1PPE+6SPE (7th for OS, 8th inactive)*25.6GFLOPS) for graphics, but it's nowhere near those silly numbers.

My memory was pretty close. Nice.

Wait, why do I see 200 GFLOPs for the PS3 GPU all the time (ethimaz and others)?

Is the exact number 176 GFLOPs?

Yeah. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/RSX_%27Reality_Synthesizer%27

That page used to state some ridiculous 400+ number, although lot of other sources where at 176 for quite some time now...glad they finally fixed that, though it's not as straightforward comparison with 360, G70 is quite different from ATI's R600.

Guess that's where some of Cell performance kicks in those 1st party titles, though not sure how much of those 180GFLOPS can be used efficiently for GFX (my guess is <= 100GFLOPS).

So does anyone have an accurate total performance of PS3? I'd like to be able to make comparisons to last gen. I definitely did not think that the PS3 had a 100% performance advantage over the 360.

It will be interesting to see if the on paper performance gap this gen is actually less than previous gens, or if it will be about the same. Also interesting to see if that reflects on real world performance or not. Since the PS4 and Xbox One have more standard PC architecture, that will mean less time getting familiarized with the technology, and less of a learning curve in the case of the PS3/Cell.

So a smaller gap in theoretical performance may equal the same real world gap as last gen. Or it may be a bit more or a bit less.

Well, flops aren't a good indication of real performance for real time graphics. Or the TOP500 supercomputers would be able to run games with real time raytracing that would be 100% photorealistic.