Not true at all.

The PS3 had disadvantages because:
1. Cell was difficult to program to
2. Split memory caused shitty ports like Sky-rim
3. 360 Xenos gpu was actually a bit better than PS3s RSX.


The PS4 will have advantages because:
1. The PS4 gpu is 1.84TFLOPs vs 720s 1.2TFLOPs
2. PS4 has 8GB GDDR5 vs 720s 8GB DDR3
3. Both will have an octa core cpu

What does that mean for PS4? No more shoddy ports and easy to develop, more indie and Steam games and great looking exclusives.

Yes, we're waiting for you to be right for once. Hasn't happened yet!

OT; GDDR5 is NOT the Cell and has nothing to do with it.

I wouldn't worry about the one or two negative people, there are bound to be some after the MS presentation... unfortunately its the world we live in where if something goes ok, they get upset because their loyalty elsewhere makes them upset that things didn't go bad.

I think moving to 8GB GDDR5 is great, but i do worry about the cost of doing it. Sony probably knows that the PS4/Xbox will be very close in most respects, so they need to have something big and bold to distinguish itself, especially to the hardcore people;

DDR5 and GDDR5 are too entirely different things, so don't drop the G please

In that do you mean 'The Cell' was a much over hyped and under delivering 'innovation' that was part of the PS3 hardware. And in the same vein, while 8GB of memory is wonderful, the fact that it is GDDR5 and not standard DDR3 memory (from which is was modified) will not really help it. As I am told the way the GDDR5 memory works it will cause other problems in the way it addresses memory and actually not work as well as the hype involved.

I understand the concerns, and that may be a 'feature' that causes unwanted problems. I see programers arguing about it, and I don't know enough to know who is correct yet.

But I did see some early specs that the X720 will be able to process 2 or 4 threads per CPU Core, while the PS4 does one. That may be a significant difference, and will create a new flush of who is more powerful than whom.

(I am been refining my skills and am now really good a making Kettle styled popcorn - let me know if anyone wants some and we can kick back and watch the fanboys battle out. I have a feeling it will be like watching Boom Boom Rocket if we set it to music.)

I'm sure Sony has engineered a way to reduce the latency issues of GDDR5 in this system. Them and developers know about this already, and I don't think they would be exited unless the issue had been delt with in some way.  As for the load times from the BD-ROM, things are not quite as bad as you are painting them out to be. First the tentitive spec calls out for a 6x drive which has a read speed of 27MB/s, so that would mean 5min to fill 8192MB. That is not a real world case though. First they will never use the full 8GB, they may use 6, but I think that is even a little high. That takes the loads down to about 3.8min. Again that won't be the case. Every system has an HDD, and they have a secondary chip now so the can install data to the HDD out of sight out of mind. So the first time you boot up a game you may rely on the BD-ROM, but after you play and the game installs to the HDD you will have somewhere around 100 - 120MB/s read speeds. That would drive all future load times down to under a minute. 

That is a worst case scenario though based on what we know so far. Sony could always add in a small on board SSD and nearly completly eliminate load times. They could use a 10 or 12x BD-ROM as the price difference is only a couple of dollars. This is one thing I saw on the released spec sheet, and kind of cringed over, but it is not quite as bad as you are paining it out to be. I just hope they will have one last trick to pull out of the bag at E3.

As far as GDDR5, it could be like Cell in that devs that optimize for it, will be able to get more and more out of it for a very long time. Look at what Guerrilla, Santa Monica, and Naughty Dog were able to do buy shoving tasks off to the SPE's. For the most part though, I think this is a much better crazy move than Cell, because this was something the development community was begging for opposed to burning down buildings over.

GDDR is optimized for graphics performance, so the only engineering consideration is if that is more important in the tradeoff than latency. The Xbox360 used a similar GDDR3 unified RAM architecture which apparently did have some latency issues for the CPU, but wasn't really a handicap in context compared to the PS3, as the Rambus RAM the PS3 used for the CPU also had its own latency issue compared to regular DDR, although less pronounced.

System design is one of balance and compromise. Leaning towards graphics performance over CPU bottlenecks is a valid design decision as really, we're talking games consoles and not servers here. Nonetheless, it's not a done deal that GDDR5 is a silver-bullet for performance in the PS4.

I believe the dev community was begging for 8gb of memory than any thing else. The fact that its GDDR5 is is just a nice addition. The key will be if 8gb of GDDR5 is not overkill for the price/ performance. MS get around the price/performance with the fast SRAM. For a game not all ram need to be fast or even have as much bandwidth. It could be that MS can achieve close to the same performance asPS4 for cheaper.

Ps4 won't cost nearly as half as much to produce as the ps3 did. Some Sony exec have already stated that Sony did not have to invest in creating new technology like the cell and bluray. So no factories and not massive r&c budget was required to bring the ps4 to be.
The ps4 was created using tech that all ready existed and was affordable.
And devs are going bonkers over the 8 gb of gddr5 ram, and I expect them to eat it up with glee.

well i'll tell you what, when ms announces their console with a few games and a few features i'll be there to ensure you have no excitement about it just like your (apparently) not suppose to.  god forbid someone gets excited about their interests..