| Fei-Hung said: everyone keeps saying the 360 gpu is faster and better due to its flexibility but the truth is, it has it downsides too and no one has talked about them. At the end of the day the ps3 and 360 both have 512ram but the ps3 has divided it equally between the cpu and gpu whilst the 360 has given it flexible memory allocation. This means if the gpu requires more then it will shift towards the gpu and vice versa. However, this itself requires calculations. Something somewhere has to figure out what should be made priority and then re calculate it once the job is done. Although the ps3 hasnt got the advantage of making use of its unused ram by sharing between cpu and gpu, it hasn't got to make extra calculations and it has spe's to help it process things far more quicker then the 360 (simply because it has more of them and they haven't been restricted like the ones on the 360 have). |
The 360 GPU and CPU share the same bus to the main Ram, this means only the GPU or CPU can access the Ram at any time.
If needed the RSX can use the Cell's XDR Ram, this would involve latency, but isn't a big issue for GPUs and the RSX had more than an usual amount of cache, with this approach you would gain significant bandwidth for the GPU, being fed data from XDR and GDDR simultaneously. Such an approach requires more effort though, but can be done if so desired.
The Ram situation is technically far better on the PS3, especially considering the availability of a default harddrive to rely on and constant predictable streaming speed of Blu-Ray disc. Developers can and IMO will use this to design wonderfully streaming gaming engines, a la Uncharted: Drake's Fortune (Naughty Dog) and Ratchet & Clank: Tools of Destruction (Insomniac) already made their first efforts at.
