The Cell Processor....

[joeorc]

slowmo said:
@joeorc - The 360 GPU is faster, better or any other metric you choose to measure performance in, that is a proven fact stated by many developers and indeed is proved by what you see onscreen very often by the fact the 360 does AA at so little cost.

I have no doubt when using a properly optimised engine the Cell is a faster solution than the 360 solution but is the cost of optimising the game engine worth it to get that extra performance, most developers are starting to do some extra work thankfully but a few games still are done on the cheap.

There is no doubt we will move over to ever increasing parrallel processing in both CPU and GPU terms but I've always doubted the Cell would win through ultimately. Currently we have Intel working on there Larrabee project which if it works could change the face of GPU's, especially given the change over to ray tracing it could trigger. AMD and Intel are both now heavily pursuing the multi core route and in all honesty they have the marketing and R&D budgets that IBM will not spend to break into the domestic markets. The Cell was a revolution but ultimately like many IBM products over the years I fear it will be a catalyst for other companies successful projects as it will not be pushed enough. Ths is just my thoughts on the situation, I'm not an analyst or expert so think of it what you will.

that's thinking of just the GPU's by itself..which you cannot do without putting out quite a few misconceptions about each systems graphic capabilities as a whole.

the 360's GPU vs's the PS3's GPU just the GPU's by itself .

yes

the xbox360's GPU is faster but its not because of the Mhz.

that's not the reason why it is faster than the RSX

 its faster mainly by its function of unified shader's. and that's only if the code for the game is aligned that it can be ,but that also does not take into account your limited on the ammount of resources that your system has on hand that are free to do so. 

yes GPU to GPU the xbox360's GPU is better than the ps3's GPU

on the same token though the entire graphic's system for each system the PS3 has the better graphics system as a whole over the xbox360

 Which if you take the complete graphic's each system is capable of the PS3 is faster and can reach its upper limits of its shader ops/sec

over the xbox360 due to they way the graphics systems are designed in each system. its easier to get better results in a shorter ammount of time than it is to right now than on the ps3. An that is due to the level of experience and the tool's not as mature for the Cell processor and in its development. IT will not be this way forever though.

the reason why the PS3's entire graphics system is more robust is because of the Cell processor that takes off strain on the RSX for graphics tasks. and thus let the RSX do what it does best and that is draw what you see on the screen.

with the Cell processor helping the GPU in the PS3 the PS3's near upper limit that the RSX can be reached much more than the xbox360 GPU though with the current software APi's not as developed as they are for standard GPU's there is more time needed to attain better results than development on the xbox360 can because the software tool's for the xbox360's GPU are much more mature than the Cell processor's GPU functions that are not as well tweaked yet. there has not been enough time yet.

example:

Hofstee told us that PlayStation 3 plans to use a high-end graphics processor to complement the Cell CPU. "So that concept was there from the very beginning," he said, "that we would complement the more general-purpose processor. Quite clearly, even though Cell can be pretty darned good at pushing polygons, that is not its reason for being in the game console."