| Procrastinato said: I wasn't aware that the i7's were performing so well, although you do have to take into account that the *vast* majority of PS3 F@H users don't know that you can free up ~10% more horsepower by checking some optimization options (like disabling the music, and disabling the graphics, which frees the PPU for work), AND that PS3s only have 6 usable SPUs (one is reserved by the OS at all times, and one is disabled at the factory). Let's recalculate what the approximate PPD performance of an actual 8 SPU Cell processor would be: 900 base +33% (2 more SPUs) of 900 base == +300 +10% (PPU freed up) of 900 base == +90 ----------------- 900 + 300 + 90 = ~1290 PPD for a processor from 2006. So its not as fast as all the i7s, its true. Ah well. I guess Sony's claims of it being years ahead meant only 2 years, not 3. ;) |
I think you're slightly over guesstimating. 
Wouldn't the figure be closer to 20-25% overall considering the extra PPU overhead from the two extra SPUs and the fact that no multicore processor scales linearly?
Im not doubting your point, im just 'adjusting' it.
Although it seems that the PP$ metric is currently being won by the PC architectures, well with Nvidia GPUs anyway and thats with prebuilt systems with Windows Vista. Which is pretty amazing considering that at every level there are extra margins paid to the manufacturers of the different components and retailers. One could argue that the GPUs are the Cells biggest competitors rather than the Intel X86 CPUs in terms of comparable workloads.
Tease.
