Read the various Eurogamer faceoffs.
http://www.eurogamer.net/article.php?article_id=246129
The PS3 versions usualy have some combination of lower frame rate, no anti-aliasing, smaller draw distance, inferior lighting/shadows, lower resolutions. How ever not all of these obvious, which is why Eurogamer closely examines them.
SC:IV
For one thing, the game is running internally with a whopping great 40 per cent resolution increase on the Microsoft console, with a native framebuffer of 1365x960 versus the standard 1280x720 on the PlayStation 3. The Xbox 360 version also has an extra layer of lighting effects completely absent on the PS3 game
Top Spin 3
The key fundamentals are there - the player models are good, the animations are just as sweet, the gameplay identical (both versions run at 720p at 60fps with a small degree of screen-tear... no native 1080p support). However, developer PAM (PS3 version) has achieved this parity by pulling back on the texture detail, especially noticeable in the case of the surrounding environments.
The ground is lacking an extra layer of texture mapping and is thus less detailed on the PlayStation 3 game, the impact of which varies from court to court. The most dramatic difference is clearly in the areas that feature reflective surfaces. Overhead and player details are reflected on the ground in the Xbox 360 version of the game, while PS3 owners get absolutely none of that, making some of the more subtle environments look somewhat bereft of detail in comparison
Dark Sector
Dark Sector PS3 at a reduced, anamorphic 1152x640 resolution, which is then scaled up to native 720p - exactly like Halo 3. The Xbox 360 version on the other hand is confirmed as native HD. So, remember when Bungie said you wouldn't be able to tell the difference between 'proper' HD and 640p? Now we have a real-life example comparing the two resolutions, and the difference is indeed negligible, especially so during gameplay. -Yup, sometimes visualy the difference is negligiable, but we are talking about power.
Viking: Battle for Asgard
The first thing you'll notice is that the beautifully crisp levels of detail inherent in the Xbox 360 game are somewhat more blurred on PlayStation 3; yet another example of the infamous PS3 'Vaseline Effect'. There's definitely something rather odd about the rendering method - as far as we can tell, the two buffers used to create the anti-aliasing effect are being merged then blurred, the kicker being that each of those buffers appears to be based on a 960x720 resolution. While not a massively big deal during gameplay, a key aspect of the game's appeal is the wonderful level of detail on display - and PS3 owners are missing out on some of that. More than that, there's clear evidence that draw distance on the PS3 game is more limited than it is on Xbox 360.
GTA:IV
Xbox 360 runs at full 720p (1280x720), whereas the PlayStation 3 code takes a 20 per cent hit, being natively rendered at 1152x640 before being software-upscaled.
Yet, today, America's leaders are reenacting every folly that brought these great powers [Russia, Germany, and Japan] to ruin -- from arrogance and hubris, to assertions of global hegemony, to imperial overstretch, to trumpeting new 'crusades,' to handing out war guarantees to regions and countries where Americans have never fought before. We are piling up the kind of commitments that produced the greatest disasters of the twentieth century.
— Pat Buchanan – A Republic, Not an Empire
