Mirrors Edge : PS3 Cell lets DICE push texture res "much higher"

[Andir]

Deneidez said:

the problem is bandwidth.

IIRC, The Cell uses some pretty fast memory with quite a bit of bandwidth.  25.6GB/s CPU ... 22.4GB/s GPU compared to PC2-6400 800MHz memory in my Core2duo system pushing a whopping(!) 12.8GB/s ;)  Granted, you'd only be able to process smaller textures in memory, but considering the screens for their artistic style, it doesn't look like the game uses a lot of large complex textures to me.  It looks to me like they might use a lot of small textures with some effects grafted on.

While they said it allowed larger texture resolution (as in pixels, or in texture generation/creation/resolution?) they don't specifically state why so I'm assuming they do post processing on the textures.  With the SPEs, they can do more, which makes me curious to his meaning of resolution.  If they mean pixel count, I'd agree with MikeB in that the BD-ROM would be the greatest benefit to this.  If they mean they can resolve a texture's appearance for post processing, then I can see why the Cell means so much.