Halo 3 runs at 640p native XD

[LordTheNightKnight]

MikeB said:

@ LordTheNightKnight

I didn't catch the single disc comment.

Your opinion of the 360's resolution capabilities doesn't seem to take the actual facts into account. The facts are that aside from a weaker CPU, the RAM and GPU are greater than the PS3's.

Not really, the PS3's GPU is more powerful and there are the flexible SPUs to take workload off the GPU. The much weaker CPU found in the XBox 360 is sharing its bandwidth with the GPU. It's a much more bottlenecked design.

With regard to RAM, the XDR RAM is faster and there's the default harddrive inside the PS3. With proper streaming of data there's plenty of RAM to deal with.

The PS3 will have the best graphics with proper programming, but the 360 will be close.

IMO there's quite a gap with regard to potential.

 Yes really. The RSX is powerful, but so is the Xenos. In terms of graphics generation, they are about equal. Yet the RSX has 24 standard pixel pipelines, while the Xenos has 48 pipelines with a unified structure, which every objective test (as in not trying to make Sony, Microsoft, or even Nintendo look better than the other) rates as higher capability.

 Think this doesn't help resolution? The PS2 has the greatest resolution of the last gen, even if the actual graphics are lesser. This is due to the greater pixel/texel fill rate, and having 16 pixel pipelines compared to 4 that the Xbox and GC had (yes, that is in their specs).

 That doesn't mean the PS3 will have bad resolution. It just means that the 360 can do much better than you claim.

 As for the RAM, the XDR has a faster clock speed, but clock speed is not the only meacure of RAM speed. Unlike a processor, RAM has to pause in between cycles. This is latency.* XDR is part of the Rambus DRAM class, which has a slower latency than standard RAM. This is because FMVs require clock speed over latency, hence why the blu-ray playback is soo good. Yet graphics need latency over clock speed. Hence the GDDR3 VRAM on the PS3 is more suited for graphics, while the XDR is used as emergency VRAM.**

 The 360 used all GDDR3 for its RAM. This doesn't mean the PS3 can't fit as much graphics in its RAM, and with proper use of the SPEs, can fit more in there. Yet it does mean that your claim of a gap is false, not matter how much you type "IMO". This is not up to opinion. The facts are there. Look them up.

 *And in case anyone brings up the connection between the XDR and the EIB on the Cell, the EIB only prevents further latency between the parts connected to it (since otherwise all those parts working at once in the cell would clog each other). It can't reduce the latency the parts already have.

 **Yet system RAM will work fine on either type of RAM, so things like physics and AI work fine on the XDR.