Isn't that kind of a given, since PS4's CPU is x86 and the Cell isn't?

What exactly makes the x86 isa superior to the cell isa? And how can a different isa outperform another cpu, especially in this case?

The Jaguar outperforms Cell in most things, except for brute force floating point performance. Aside from that Cell in its PS3 version has tons of issues.

As for the Wii U CPU, even if it's unchanged except for the Cache, the PPC core itself still isn't actually bad. But with three cores and just 1.2GHz it's to slow.
Would've preferred a 1.6GHz quadcore. A modern x86 still would have been better than the old 750, but Wii U would have much less issues even with a faster PPC.

That said, if you go and cdompare different systems, Wii U and PS4 have an audio processor. PS3 had to do all audio stuff on the CPU.
Wii U and PS4 are intended to do more on the GPU. Stuff that was intended to be done by the CPU on PS3.

Will go into that in depth later when i get home,  but for now ill say,  my point is that cell isnt x86, thendifference between the two is massive and so comparing their performance isn't clear cut. 

The op brings it up but there's no point in doing so,  because the difference in powerpc processors across the gc,  wii,  and wiiu is much less (still quite different,  but nowhere near as different as cell to x86.

To sumarize the other part though,  the queuing releif from moving gpu bound functions to a different processor frees up a lot of time in the cpu,  cell was prone to starving itself in one or the other and resulting in the performance dropping for both,  because of how it cascaded workload,  its why porting from other platforms was such a pain in the ass and why most games generally ran a lot better on 360.

People like to point out final fantasy runniny better on ps3 but the fact is simply,  had they not rushed the port it would have been better on 360.

Tlou is a result of a balancing act between bound functions,  with the practice they had doing yhe uncharted series. 

Excuse spelling,  train is bumpy as hell today

As a programmer I can say you, that the CPU-architecture these days is of nearly no concern for the programmer. Games are programmed mostly in C/C++ and the compiler completely handles the code-generation - it doesn't matter if it is ARM, x86 or PowerPC. Memory management (like unified memory) or stuff like that impacts a programmer much more.

But the same is true for every x86 processor, they are in a way all overclocked and reconfigured 8086.

No problem :)

Both processors/architectures are just totally different in what they try to accomplish. By design Cell itself is more comparable to a GPU workload scenario than "general purpose" computing.

The PPC itself used in Nintendo's last 3 consoles is of course modified but the clock speed can't be brought higher due to architectural reasons. And IIRC it still has the same short pipeline (7 stages, iirc) and thus it is still a 970 ppc while adjusted for more performance. It's a slow car with racing stripes ;)

To Final Fantasy: Yes, of course that's what is used in forum discussions but the port was rushed and the result was still ok for this, in my opinion. Could've been better, for sure.

To TlOu:

The game is definitely a looker but we should keep a few things in mind:

- it's far from running 30 fps locked. 

- Naughty Dog is able to use a lot of resources for one game, meaning: they are first party, they get a lot of money to develop with and for, they have more time to optimize and finetune a game. And of course the game still had technical downsides, still it was amazing what they accomplished. But we also have to say no 3rd party game comes close to what ND did and this is not only because they are "Naughty Gods" but a bunch of talented people (which other companies have, too) where the whole environment gives them the opportunity to reach a level not many can get to.

The same applies to Halo 4 on 360, in my opinion. The game is on a level many aren't able to achieve as they have to switch teams, have brutal deadlines, work on code for several systems... But now I am getting way off-topic :)

No, not really. Modern x86 is compatible but works completely different (µ-ops, different pipelines, branch-prediction, totally different instructions,...).

That's why Wolfpack said the Cell outperformed the PS4's CPU. He spoke in terms of emulation, that is made extremely difficult becuase of that. That the PS4 overall has a better performance as the PS3 is no question.

Yes, that is true. But you can say similar for Nintendos CPU. We know it is no vanilla PowerPC, at least in Gamecube and then again in Wii they added additional instructions. Probably the same is true for WiiUs CPU. We don't know much besides that, but it is more than possible that they overworked pipelines and branch-prediction too.