Graphics Capabilities: Xbox 360 vs. PS3 - A tale of the tape

[LordTheNightKnight]

staticneuron said:

LordTheNightKnight said:

Fail, for thinking processing is somehowdifferent on PCs game consoles. Sorry, but the rules of processing are the same on any system. It's just the components and firmware that are the difference.

As for the Cell, you all bought a bill of goods from Sony, in that the Cell's power supposedly trumps everything else in the system. Real time graphics don't work that way. In things like CGI and folding@home, the Cell is great, but those don't have constant, and usually rapid, input from the user, that happens with real time. In real time the CPU is just one like in a chain. So the hype for the Cell is pretending that the strongest link in this chain is the most important.

So since a chain is only as strong as the weakest link, or this case the fastest bus, then every part has to be considered. So since every other part is comparable to the 360, then the system's power is comparable to the 360, no matter what the Cell can do on its own. It still depends on the rest of the system to process and store the Cell's calculations.

Now there are some things in real time that can bedone primarily by the processor, such as physics, shading, and lighting (even though the latter two can be done though the RSX's firmware, as a developer fallback). Yet those are just three parts of the big picture. Beyond those, the Cell is dependent on the power of the rest of the system, and that simply isn't far enough ahead of the 360 to make the PS3 the most powerful system, no matter how much it is hyped to be so.

I guess you dont understand ho important vertex processing is in the world of consoles. Not only can the cell be great at physics, shading and lighting, if they so see fit, it can allso be used for post processing , to help out with the frame buffer. (If I am not mistaken most off the Post processing that people said could not be done effectively on the PS3 is cranked out in warhak thanks to the functions of the SPE's)

Without going overboard you can see here

http://arstechnica.com/articles/paedia/cpu/playstation3.ars

an explanation in simple tearms how the cell greatly helps rendering and iff you heard anything about streaming geometry and textures you can thank the cells muscle for that as well. Chances are the majority of assets will hit cell then memory as a rendered result .

 

 So those may be another couple of things, but at that article you linked stated: "As one of the designers noted in a previous article on the Cell, the kind of bandwidth they'll need to make this work probably can't be provided by any bus technology currently in existence."

 That's because real-time graphics don't just go through the CPU. It needs all the other parts. The Cell is f*cking fast from what I've seen, but the rest of the PS3 is of a design that can't take full advantage of that. It could be another ten years (hopefully less) before bus speeds are fast enough to do what the Cell can do in real time, in a system the mass market can afford.