Real world research on what? If you make a trivial aplication, and code it to suit Cell, make sure all your data fits in the tiny local store and just iterates, yeah it can look great. It can crunch a lot of flops. That's meaningless in the real world. Ask Carmack what he thinks of flops.
You dont even have the slightest idea of programming and dont know where the Cell is weak-branching code and things like that. You are the gullible person Sony marketing aims at, taking meaningless flops at face value.
Cell hasn't made any difference where a CPU is supposed to, animation, physics, AI..you cannot tell any difference between a 360 game and a PS3 game in those areas. The best physics I have seen are in Star Wars Force Unleashed or maybe Orange Box..they are both multi-platform so they're on 360 too.
Cell is a very big, hot chip comparatively by the way. It's die size (you probably dont even know what that is) is quite a bit larger than Xcpu which means it's more expensive to produce and it uses more power. Blu Ray is the biggest reason PS3 is so expensive, but Cell is a reason as well. The die size of Cell is 234 mm^2 and Xcpu is 160 mm^2. Chips cost according to die size so that means Sony is paying more for Cell than MS is for Xcpu, not too mention Sony spent hundreds of millions on Cell R&D. That's fine but the question is "is it worth it?". IMO the answer is clearly no. They would have been better off using a cheaper CPU (but just as effective, like Xcpu) and adding somewhere else with the money saved, such as a better GPU or more RAM in PS3.
It's exactly like I said already. Cell doesn't help with AI, physics, or animation like it is supposed to. What it is seeming to be actually being effective as in the real world is assisting the GPU. That's ok, but Sony would have been far more cost effective at spending more money on the GPU than asking the CPU to do stuff it isn't designed for and is slow at.
BTW, yeah, a 8800GTX would fit fine and be reliable in a console. Something far bigger and more powerful than a 8800GTX will be in Xbox 720/PS4 anyway, so how do you think 8800GTX wont work?? And yeah, there are 8800's in laptops..power, it probably draws less than RSX. RSX is just a 7800GTX.
