(Little off topic - but is about graphics).
What gets me about the Xbox and the 360 was the texture loading. Halo 2 was terrible for it on the xbox even in cut scences. On the 360 with Mass Effect it is noticable too. This makes me wonder if it's just poor software design or hardware.
It is really off putting as it makes the games feel 'unpolished'.

beh, both produce really good graphics and what not, frankly I couldn't care less about the difference in power between the 2, they can explain the difference to me until the cows come home but at the end of the day you put Gears of War and Uncharted next to each other and ask me which looks better you want to know what my response will be? They both look incredible, though I'd probably say that about any competently made 3d game since sonic adventure

This is a really great non-technical discussion as the author requested. :)

Gotta love it when the fan-boys start copy-pasting numbers to try and convince others they should just acknowledge their infinite wisdom and secure only those products they have randomly elected to use themselves.

Back to the original thread - the article referenced, starts out with the core info that the numbers will be used in the context they are convenient for. Trying to idenitfy which platform will be more fun and enjoyable for an individual based on technical aspects is as silly as initiating a thread on a fan-boy site to end an argument. Same goes for me replying to such a thread. :)

I like the platforms I have bought and openly admit that has biased me, thus my ID.

Any takers on who on this thread is sour about their purchase and mad that most others aren't following?

How's this for a good comparison between the ps3 and 360:

Final 360 development kits arrived in September of 2005 (source - TeamXbox).

Final PS3 development kits arrived in August of 2006 (source - GameInformer).

In just a little over year after receiving final 360 devkits, Epic Games managed to release Gears of War. It was graphically stunning, a true next-generation showcase.

In comparison, just a little over a year after receiving final ps3 devkits, Epic managed to create Unreal Tournament 3, a game that is superior to Gears of War in every way. The character models are more detailed, the environments are larger, and there are more characters on screen at any given time.

Developers are doing more with the ps3 in less time than it took them on the 360. Uncharted is graphically superior to any other console game to date, and Killzone 2 is looking to set the bar even higher.

makingmusic476 said: How's this for a good comparison between the ps3 and 360: Final 360 development kits arrived in September of 2005 (source - TeamXbox). Final PS3 development kits arrived in August of 2006 (source - GameInformer). In just a little over year after receiving final 360 devkits, Epic Games managed to release Gears of War. It was graphically stunning, a true next-generation showcase. In comparison, just a little over a year after receiving final ps3 devkits, Epic managed to create Unreal Tournament 3, a game that is superior to Gears of War in every way. The character models are more detailed, the environments are larger, and there are more characters on screen at any given time. Developers are doing more with the ps3 in less time than it took them on the 360. Uncharted is graphically superior to any other console game to date, and Killzone 2 is looking to set the bar even higher.

This doesn't make a lot of sense.  UT3 is being released on PC/PS3/XBOX 360, and it builds on prior work.  I don't think you can logically say that a cross-platform engine that has been ported to the PS3 proves that the PS3 dev kit is easier to use or more effective than other dev kits.  It likely means that the PS3 team was able to port the machine-specific code and get reasonable performance in a reasonable period of time.  This bodes well for future EPIC titles on the PS3, but I doubt it means that EPIC is finding the dev work on PS3 so much easier/better that they will abandon the platforms (PC/XBOX 360) where they sell the most copies... unless they're idiots... which I doubt.

Uncharted is definitely impressive, but unless it sells more than Halo 3 or Wii Sports, what's the point?

 

crumas2 said: makingmusic476 said: How's this for a good comparison between the ps3 and 360: Final 360 development kits arrived in September of 2005 (source - TeamXbox). Final PS3 development kits arrived in August of 2006 (source - GameInformer). In just a little over year after receiving final 360 devkits, Epic Games managed to release Gears of War. It was graphically stunning, a true next-generation showcase. In comparison, just a little over a year after receiving final ps3 devkits, Epic managed to create Unreal Tournament 3, a game that is superior to Gears of War in every way. The character models are more detailed, the environments are larger, and there are more characters on screen at any given time. Developers are doing more with the ps3 in less time than it took them on the 360. Uncharted is graphically superior to any other console game to date, and Killzone 2 is looking to set the bar even higher. This doesn't make a lot of sense. UT3 is being released on PC/PS3/XBOX 360, and it builds on prior work. I don't think you can logically say that a cross-platform engine that has been ported to the PS3 proves that the PS3 dev kit is easier to use or more effective than other dev kits. It likely means that the PS3 team was able to port the machine-specific code and get reasonable performance in a reasonable period of time. This bodes well for future EPIC titles on the PS3, but I doubt it means that EPIC is finding the dev work on PS3 so much easier/better that they will abandon the platforms (PC/XBOX 360) where they sell the most copies... unless they're idiots... which I doubt. Uncharted is definitely impressive, but unless it sells more than Halo 3 or Wii Sports, what's the point?

Who said anything about abandoning other platforms? 

All I was doing was pointing out that a neutral third party managed to achieve greater success on the ps3 than they did on the 360 given the same amount of time with each. 

makingmusic476 said: crumas2 said: makingmusic476 said: How's this for a good comparison between the ps3 and 360: Final 360 development kits arrived in September of 2005 (source - TeamXbox). Final PS3 development kits arrived in August of 2006 (source - GameInformer). In just a little over year after receiving final 360 devkits, Epic Games managed to release Gears of War. It was graphically stunning, a true next-generation showcase. In comparison, just a little over a year after receiving final ps3 devkits, Epic managed to create Unreal Tournament 3, a game that is superior to Gears of War in every way. The character models are more detailed, the environments are larger, and there are more characters on screen at any given time. Developers are doing more with the ps3 in less time than it took them on the 360. Uncharted is graphically superior to any other console game to date, and Killzone 2 is looking to set the bar even higher. This doesn't make a lot of sense. UT3 is being released on PC/PS3/XBOX 360, and it builds on prior work. I don't think you can logically say that a cross-platform engine that has been ported to the PS3 proves that the PS3 dev kit is easier to use or more effective than other dev kits. It likely means that the PS3 team was able to port the machine-specific code and get reasonable performance in a reasonable period of time. This bodes well for future EPIC titles on the PS3, but I doubt it means that EPIC is finding the dev work on PS3 so much easier/better that they will abandon the platforms (PC/XBOX 360) where they sell the most copies... unless they're idiots... which I doubt. Uncharted is definitely impressive, but unless it sells more than Halo 3 or Wii Sports, what's the point?   Who said anything about abandoning other platforms?  All I was doing was pointing out that a neutral third party managed to achieve greater success on the ps3 than they did on the 360 given the same amount of time with each.

Again, this doesn't demonstrate that a third party achieved greater success on the PS3.  The base engine wasn't originally built on PS3, so you can't really make a realistic determination of how much time was devoted to PS3-specific development.  It's almost impossible to make this sort of comparison... if you pick multi-platform titles, then you have to magically know how much time was devoted to each port and how much time was devoted to the baseline engine.  If you pick an exclusive title, then you know the total development time for that platform, but you have nothing to compare against on another platform.  You would almost need to have a developer build the same game from scratch on both platforms.  But they're not likely to do this... they'll leverage as much of the original programming as they can and do a port instead.

I've heard how Uncharted is a leap over other games out there, graphically, but I still don't understand why this matters, if indeed it is true (I've seen it, and it looks incredible, but so does Ace Combat 6 on the 360).  These aren't special effects in a movie... they're elements of a video game, where the most important selling feature is playability.  I've seen games that kick some serious butt, graphically, but fail in the market because they're just not fun to play.  This is why we also own a Wii and a PS2 at our house... some of the games are amazingly fun, even if they're not groundbreaking technically.

 

@ gorgepir

Not really, the Xenos GPU only can do:

Xenos can do 48*2*500*10^6 = 48 bilions shading ops per second in total.

For these shader ops the devs can choose if they will be used for either pixel shading or vertex shading.

RSX can do 48 billion shading ops fully dedicated to just pixel shading, in addition it has 8 vertex units. 74.8 billion shader ops per second in total (excluding the Cell).

The RSX is more powerful than the Xenos and as you can see its unified shader approach is overhyped (if compared to the RSX) as you will not dedicate all shaders to do just pixel shading and so will not be able to match the RSX' max potential.

Having said that, the Xenos is an excellent GPU by ATi considering it was in mass production at a cheap price in 2005. 

If it was really "free", high profile first party XBox 360 exclusives like Forza 2 and Halo 3 wouldn't have had no AA at all.

Working higher resolutions it's easier to do AA on the PS3 in combination with other enhancements.

Heavenly Sword does FP16 HDR, 4x MSAA at 720p, to quote a Heavenly Sword dev:

"As a result I think the most common implementation of HDR on XBOX 360 will be the lower FP10 (as Xenos does not support blending in FP16)."

"Ironincally for the X360 fanboys its even more relevant on X360... X360 sucks at FP16 HDR, particular because of the tiling (64 bit framebuffers use twice as many tiles)."

Your information is outdated my friend.
RSX is not clocked at 550 (which it was advertised) but at 500 so it only has 68billion
Xenos has 48 shaders and 4 ops per cycle so 48 shader units * 4 ops per cycle = 192 shader ops per clock (compared to RSX 136.8)
Xenos is clocked at 500MHZ *192 shader ops per clock = 96 billion shader ops per second.
I think you missed something there.

"On chip, the shaders are organized in three SIMD engines with 16 processors per unit, for a total of 48 shaders. Each of these shaders is comprised of four ALUs that can execute a single operation per cycle, so that each shader unit can execute four floating-point ops per cycle."

That was from ATI. I am not sure, but I don't think you can support you case by quoting from Heavnly sword devs, unless they are backed with numbers. I don't think I can accept a sentence starting with "Ironincally for Xbox360 fanboys" as an academic conclusion than just a mere publicity stunt.

 

@ Quartz

The Halo games and Mass Effect are high profile exclusives, each with enormous development budgets, Halo 2, Mass Effect and Halo 3 are not some early XBox 360 games, the design is easier to get good results early on as it has more in common with traditional solutions especially with the PC, they had very long development times, the XBox 360 has been on the market for two years when Halo 3 and Mass Effect were released.

Unless you want think the game engine devs are incompetent to get the most out of the XBox 360, I think you can come to a conclusion yourself.