My interest started over an argument over whether RE4 on the PS2 was due to Capcom not making an effort, or the PS2 being weak. I thought it was the latter, but it turned out we were both wrong. It was a combination of technical differences and Capcom cutting corners.

One of the differences is that the PS2 can't do texture compression, unlike the GC, but that seemed to be an incompatibility that was not discovered before the system was finalized. Thus PS2 games can have detailed textures, but the color depth can never be more than 8-bit (256 colors) per texture.

Now the PSP and PS3 have texture compression built in. For the former, it's essential to getting texture detail without too much processing, and therefore power consumption. For the latter, it's vital to fitting all those HD textures in the RAM. 

Thanks for standing up for me and suggesting MikeB should read my post before responding to it, but the problem is that he's uninterested in understanding the architecture but rather in explaining that the Cell is so amazingly powerful that it has no limits.  Or nearly none.  Suggesting that the Cell is "8 processors vs 3" when comparing the PS3 to the 360 is completely misleading, because it suggests that the PS3 is outright several times more powerful than the 360 without limitation.

That simply isn't true. Which is why I took the time to explain in a simple sense how that is misleading.  Now if you want to find evidence that the Cell rules or the Cell sucks, you'll find plenty of developers who will say both.  Tim Sweeney was interviewed by Anandtech saying that you could rewrite many parts of a standard FPS to run primarily on the SPEs, but there were some things it was not suited towards.  He cited AI.  I don't know, maybe MikeB optimized more 3D engines for the Cell then Sweeney.  His approach was very pragmatic, and very informative. 

I myself have designed a pipelined processor as well as a 3D engine (both on the way to my computer science degree) and have a fairly decent understanding of the tradeoffs taken with SPEs and what Tim Sweeney was talking about.  Hearing soe dev like Gabe Newell say "the cell is useless" and hearing some other dev say, "the cell is limitless" really mean nothing because there is no substance there.  And those devs likely don't even program.

Personally, I just don't care as much as he does. It may be very important to him to compare an inexpensive computer system from 2006 to an inexpensive computer system in 2005, and ensuring that everyone knows that he heard from someone that the Cell is more powerful.

Regardless of what each system can do I'm still quite suprised at the difference between the two systems in the pictures that have been shown. I seriously thought the PS3 would be identical to the 360, but it appears that the 360 picutres do really look a lot poorer. So are we actually starting to see some effort going into indvidual systems rather than 'ports'?... It certinaly seems that way.

 The screens were from beyond3d forums when they were talking about how dithering problems on the 360 version... being that it's the same place that reported the 630p (which become 640p) in the first place, i don't see how it was a fixed attack toward the 360 version...

On topic: Some may think the PS3 version looks better because of the post processing techniques Rockstar used exclusively on the PS3 along with a different color pallete. Whereas the 360 version has 2xAA and 80 more pixels than the PS3 version.

(Notice how i said **some**, because "which version looks better?" is an OPINIONATED question since both version are so damn close) 

No, I am not talking to myself, I am talking to you :)

I think that if the image was native 720p, and then they applied whatever post processing techniques they are currently using to soften the image, it would look better then upscaling it and applying the exact same techniques.

I don't think upscaling (regardless of how good you do it), can alone produce a better image then starting there in the first place.

So if your saying that after it's upscaled, they use some blur process, and that's making it look better, then great, it's the blur process. I am just saying the upscale has nothing to do with it. 

Just 80???

1280×720= 921,600

1138×640= 728,320

Real diff: 193,280 pixels

Don't be a cheeky bastard, you knew what i meant.

Thats the problem, the 360 doesn't use blur to soft the image, they use AA and probably they wouldn't be able to aplly any blur @ 720p (they have troubles emulating with the HDR), is part of the upscaling of the PS3 because they needed, is part of the postpro (upscale+blur)...

I can't believe you are all still arguing about it. I feel sorry for the thread maker :)

They've been arguing since that stupid "Xbox 1.5" comment from (I believe) Kaz Harai.