Ubisoft Dev: PS3 Can't Handle AI as well as the 360

[Final-Fan]

omgwtfbbq said:

Final-Fan said:

Well omgwtfbbq I have to say that you've easily convinced me (with the earlier post) that the PS3 is a lot better at physics and graphics than it is at AI. However, I am not convinced that the weakness is as great as you claim -- that (1) the PPE will be bogged down quite a bit by having to juggle the SPEs and (2) the disadvantage of the Cell's single PPE will outweigh the advantage of its ability to dump graphics/physics processing onto the many SPEs, as compared to the Xenon in the 360.

Point 2 especially is one that I think remains to be definitively demonstrated one way or the other. Obviously a game focusing on extremely sophisticated AI but with minimal graphics would be much better off on the 360, but I don't think that's a likely portrait of future 360/PS3 games.

Now I should say that I am not a person with technical knowledge of processors at this level of detail, and if I have overlooked a fact which is blindingly obvious to you then I apologize, but please don't discount me entirely due to that.

I would welcome being proven wrong, in detail, with brutal honesty -- because then I would know more than I do now.

Erm, you do realise that the graphics is handled by the GPU right? The GPU in the Xbox is much more capable than the Cell for handling graphics.

As for a game that requires top physics, top graphics, AND great AI, you have to remember that the Xbox360 is still a 3 core system. While the GPU can handle the graphics, there are still three cores to split between physics and AI, as opposed to the PS3 where the PPE has to handle the AI as well as other things.

I'm sure if you tried hard enough you could find a situation where the PS3's SPUs will give it enough of an advantage to overcome not having an entire core dedicated to AI, but in almost every case you'll find the Xbox360 will be better.

 

Turns out I forgot that little detail -- which would have happened no matter how much of an expert I was or wasn't. Oh well. But still, there has to be some advantage "1 core and 7 SPEs [edit: AND a GPU]" has over "3 cores and 1 GPU". It just can't be a one way street.

[edit2: And it may not be intentional, but you now seem to be saying that the PPE has to do AI and physics, instead of being able to move physics work to the SPEs.

[Also, one of the SPEs helps to run the OS as well as "security", so that does in fact take load off of the PPE that remains on the Xenon in the 360. (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/PlayStation_3_Hardware )]