The PS3 not performing as bad as some claim?

[stewacide]

MikeB said: @ stewacide Can you provide some benchmark references (at some functions the PPE and/or SPEs are weaker or stronger, than others) ? And what Linux distro did you use on the PS3? IMO Yellow Dog Linux from Terra Soft currently performs best.

Benchmarks were widely reported shortly after the PS3 launch. I'm a bit lazy to look them up unless you really care, but what the benchmarking tools showed - as you'd expect if you understand the PS3 architecture - is that it really excells in a few (highly-parallel) tasks, but really lags in all the rest. So what developers have to do is exploit those few instructions that run well, and try to minimize the rest that don't: theoretically it can be done, but practically developers are lazy and if the PS3 doesn't sell gangbusters they won't bother to re-write everything for the Cell. Just in general, the Xbox and PS3 CPUs have all the logic stripped out: i.e. they're in-order processors. And also have next to no on-chip cache. Which means they stall out *constantly* without *extremely* clever programming and performance tuning. The Wii, in comparison, is a G4 - i.e. real desktop out-of-order-processor - with added SDMI instructions (i.e. over and above regular Altivec). The 360 CPU also has very beefed-up SDMI capabilities (probably lifted by IBM from the GC/Wii) which get overlooked, but which which largely balance-out the Cell's vector units (that and the fact is has 3 vs. 1 normal in-order core). Memory speed (and disc speed as mentioned) is also a big problem for the 360 and PS3: speeds haven't scaled with what they're being asked to move around, which is why loading times are so pronounced. The Wii has *very* fast memory (and also very clever cache-locking techniques) which, combined with the scaled-down memory requirements because of SD graphics, explain why there are almost no loading times, and why it can get along well with a fraction the total memory (the memory can be more dynamic) p.s. Load-times are something that isn't often addressed but I think are very important to the casual gamer: a lot of 360 and PS3 games have really unbearable load times, and things will only get much worse. Most Wii games have effectively no load times, which is something that's much appreciated for pick-up-and-play gameplay.