Kyuu said:
I would've preferred an improved Cell 2.0 over this energy friendly wimp called Jaguar. But I guess third party developers would bitch and whine about its complexity.. :( |
Jaguar is not only faster, but it's far more flexible too.
The Cell was incredible at some tasks, not all. I.E. It sucked at double precision floating point and integer.
Jaguar on the other hand is essentially great at everything in comparison. (It's still a crappy, slowest-of-the-slowest CPU in the x86 space however.)
Problem is, game engines use differing types of math for different tasks and problems, thus when you run a game engine on the Cell, the Cell CPU is never being fully utilised in a constant manner.
To put it in lamens term think of Jaguar as a car that does 100 kilometers per hour, constantly, regardless of the road conditions.
Think of the Cell as a Car that does 50 kilometers per hour constantly, however when the road is straight and there are no bumps in the road it can accellerate to 150 kilometers an hour.
Thus, over time because the Cell has such a varying top speed, Jaguar manages to get to the finish line first.
Still comparatively, both CPU's are crap compared to any decent Intel Dual-Core, which because of the lack of core counts is easier for developers to take advantage of.
However, the reason for both Microsoft and Sony choosing Jaguar is simple, it's cheap, it's energy efficient allowing for more TDP and die area to be spent on the GPU.
Microsoft, Sony and Nintendo have *never* taken CPU performance seriously, it's not what draws the pictures that sells games. - In general, the Cell would use CPU time for framebuffer and post-processing effects, but any CPU can also do that.
--::{PC Gaming Master Race}::--
