Viper1 said:
The number of cores isn't a valid metric determining comparable system capabilities. This 4 core chip from Marvell would get ripped to shreds by a high end 4 core chip from Intel. Another example are that both the Wii and PS3 are technically single core processors. The PS3's 7 SPE's are not "cores" as they are not independant. I even doubt the next consoles from Sony and MS use more than 4 cores. For closed environment, specialist hardware, rampinging up the cores has a drastic rate of diminishing returns. |
I just wanted to add that real world performance is determined more by how well suited a processor is to a problem than by theoritical processing power. To explain what I mean, consider HD video play-back ... Many mobile processors today are far better at playing back HD video than desktop processors that are a couple of years old (and an order of magnitude more powerful) because they have instruction sets that make them "better suited" to decoding HD video.
While videogames are more complicated than video playback they are a class of applications where a very small portion of the code base takes up the vast majority of the run-time; and (regardless of the game) this small portion of code is very similar for all games. What this means is that games respond very well to increasing the instruction set on a processor to get increased real world performance.
Now, I'm not anticipating anyone doing this but it is theoritically possible for a console manufacturer to licence several major game engines, port them to their (potential) hardware, profile their performance, and to add instructions to their CPU/GPU until they got the performance they desired.
