Why did Sony use the Cell processor in the PS3?

[NJ5]

MikeB said:
@ rocketpig

Um... No. The 360 has a better video card, more flexible RAM usage, and the tri-core CPU is vastly more powerful than the PS3's CPU minus the SPEs. What on Earth gave you that idea?

The RSX objectively provides more raw perfomance, so it's a matter of perspective. AFAIK the full RSX specs haven't even been published, so it's mostly just guesswork. I do however agree developers had more time to get to know the Xenos and the XBox 360 in general, which is an advantage. However on the other hand the combination Cell + RSX is extremely powerful, how it's all able to work together is greater than merely a summ of individual parts.

No, it doesn't. Actually the 360's GPU is more next-gen than the PS3's, due to the unified pipeline design. In case you haven't noticed, ATI did a first there, and now Nvidia is following them. The peak performance in non-unified pipelines is basically irrelevant, so comparing peak performance numbers is not enough.

I had a post explaining this is more detail, I'll dig it up and edit this post later with a link to it.

EDIT - here is the thread, look at my posts in pages 2 and 3 if you're interested in comparing the GPUs:

http://vgchartz.com/forum/thread.php?id=2105