MikeB said: Profcrab said: MikeB said: HappySqurriel said: MikeB said: What? Within a couple of years PS3 games will run circles around what most currently sold PCs are able to achieve by that time. Cell and Blu-Ray are going to make a long term difference. The Cell processor will have similar performance to processors that were released using a similar process and have a similar number of transistors Plenty of research documents show you are plainly wrong. In terms of raw processing power the Cell can perform multiple times faster than commonly sold x86 desktop CPUs today at all optimised software tasks. The x86 CPUs carry around lots of legacy garbage and non-crucial (note I am not saying useless to everyone) features. I look at the Cell as a processor adopting the philosophy of achieving elegance trough simplicity. The cell processor was designed to be a next generation workstation/server chip by IBM. Gaming applications are altogether different. Games are not designed the same way as most office and commercial apps. The true statement is that most of the power of the Cell is untapped. The ugly underside of that true statement is that games don't need most of what the Cell has to offer. Sony further handicapped it by giving a small amount of memory dedicated to it. Games on the PS3 will improve as developers use it more efficiently but what must be understood is that it is not a gaming processor. The games will not improve as dramatically as you believe. This vast untapped potential it has is better used in a server farm. This is why people have looked at the PS3 for those applications. There are two kinds of Cell naysayers I see dominant on forums. Those who claim the Cell is optimised for multi-media applications and thus is useless for serious stuff and other like you who seem to claim the opposite. The Cell chip is a multi-media powerhouse, excellently suited for gaming purposes as well as for building a new unrivalled supercomputer. There are however various considerations, that's why I stated back in 2005 it's going to take a long time before developers will get the most out of this CPU relating to redesigning legacy game engines.

Cell is not the Swill Army Knife of processors.  Take your nose out of Sony's and IBM's marketing announcements for the moment and look at the actual results.  Sony's own devs are having a difficult time making games that look better than 360 games.  Even when they do, it's not a dominating improvement.  Meanwhile, IBM is selling the Cell for what it is designed, server applications.  Have you seen IBM's product offerings for the Cell?  Cell Blades, Cell Servers?  In what way are server applications and gaming applications similar?  IBM developed the tech for the Cell and it does exactly what IBM needed it to.  Does it work as a gaming chip?  Sort of, but IBM is the big winner in that deal.  They got the server chip they wanted and Sony and Toshiba got to help pay for it's development.  Go go American bullshitting!  U-S-A! U-S-A!

@ TheBigFatJ

Yes, developers know what to expect with regard to the most basic PS3 hardware configuration. A hardrrive and a predictably constant speed Blu-Ray drive for streaming purposes or doing a mimimal install for the most read speed critical data, a Cell processor, a RSX (a modified G71 for working hand in hand with the Cell), known minimal system bandwidth, etc.

Maybe long time PC developers can explain some things I was referring to better than me:

Perhaps you can explain to me why CoD 4 looks amazing on the PC, and like shit on the PS3/Xbox 360.

Oh, look, everyone can take a single example out of the air and say, "this is how it is." That doesn't make it true, does it? Nor do quotes from few developers make a point true, when you'll find few developers saying the opposite thing about any platform.

Sweeney, who you quoted above talking about the state of directX back in early 2005, had a more recent interview where he talked about the PS3's SPEs.  Also on Anand.  Go read it -- he basically says that they're good at some things, can do a  passable job at making up for the lack of PPE at other things, and suck at others.  He had a far more positive outlook on the Cell than most developers, but he recognized its limitations as limitations.  Unlike a certain developer of a spy espionage game coming out soon that overestimated the power of the Cell and complained.

There's always an excuse for "why does your game suck", and saying, "well, we didn't put many resources into that part" isn't acceptable. But for some reason saying, "this platform sucks" seems to be more well accepted, especially if it isn't a platform where the users have developed an inferiority complex. The PC is one such scapegoat.

The PC has superior computing power to the PS3, superior rendering power, vastly superior memory capacity, superior storage capacity, and vastly superior default input mechanisms than the PS3.

Profcrab said: MikeB said: Profcrab said: MikeB said: HappySqurriel said: MikeB said: What? Within a couple of years PS3 games will run circles around what most currently sold PCs are able to achieve by that time. Cell and Blu-Ray are going to make a long term difference. The Cell processor will have similar performance to processors that were released using a similar process and have a similar number of transistors Plenty of research documents show you are plainly wrong. In terms of raw processing power the Cell can perform multiple times faster than commonly sold x86 desktop CPUs today at all optimised software tasks. The x86 CPUs carry around lots of legacy garbage and non-crucial (note I am not saying useless to everyone) features. I look at the Cell as a processor adopting the philosophy of achieving elegance trough simplicity. The cell processor was designed to be a next generation workstation/server chip by IBM. Gaming applications are altogether different. Games are not designed the same way as most office and commercial apps. The true statement is that most of the power of the Cell is untapped. The ugly underside of that true statement is that games don't need most of what the Cell has to offer. Sony further handicapped it by giving a small amount of memory dedicated to it. Games on the PS3 will improve as developers use it more efficiently but what must be understood is that it is not a gaming processor. The games will not improve as dramatically as you believe. This vast untapped potential it has is better used in a server farm. This is why people have looked at the PS3 for those applications. There are two kinds of Cell naysayers I see dominant on forums. Those who claim the Cell is optimised for multi-media applications and thus is useless for serious stuff and other like you who seem to claim the opposite. The Cell chip is a multi-media powerhouse, excellently suited for gaming purposes as well as for building a new unrivalled supercomputer. There are however various considerations, that's why I stated back in 2005 it's going to take a long time before developers will get the most out of this CPU relating to redesigning legacy game engines. Cell is not the Swill Army Knife of processors.  Take your nose out of Sony's and IBM's marketing announcements for the moment and look at the actual results.  Sony's own devs are having a difficult time making games that look better than 360 games.  Even when they do, it's not a dominating improvement.  Meanwhile, IBM is selling the Cell for what it is designed, server applications.  Have you seen IBM's product offerings for the Cell?  Cell Blades, Cell Servers?  In what way are server applications and gaming applications similar?  IBM developed the tech for the Cell and it does exactly what IBM needed it to.  Does it work as a gaming chip?  Sort of, but IBM is the big winner in that deal.  They got the server chip they wanted and Sony and Toshiba got to help pay for it's development.  Go go American bullshitting!  U-S-A! U-S-A!

 Actually the CELL is a mult-purpose processor. It's ability to crunch numbers are insanely high, and it's ability to stream media at a constant speed is very beneficial to gaming. With the ability to crunch numbers it can allow for more physics related actions to happen on screen at once. The ability to stream media allows detailed graphics to be constantly refreshed at really good speeds. Given the the SPEs are similar to RISC processors but run at a more demanding way, they allow up to three threads of processing per SPE which means that each SPE can be dedicated to a single purpose or even multiple purpose. 

Studing the CELL's architexture, it is easy to conclude it can handle all purposes and has been used for all purposes from medical imaging to servers and in the future in the consumer PC through an add-on card.

Elegance throug simplicity: 

ssj12 said: Profcrab said: MikeB said: Profcrab said: MikeB said: HappySqurriel said: MikeB said: What? Within a couple of years PS3 games will run circles around what most currently sold PCs are able to achieve by that time. Cell and Blu-Ray are going to make a long term difference. The Cell processor will have similar performance to processors that were released using a similar process and have a similar number of transistors Plenty of research documents show you are plainly wrong. In terms of raw processing power the Cell can perform multiple times faster than commonly sold x86 desktop CPUs today at all optimised software tasks. The x86 CPUs carry around lots of legacy garbage and non-crucial (note I am not saying useless to everyone) features. I look at the Cell as a processor adopting the philosophy of achieving elegance trough simplicity. The cell processor was designed to be a next generation workstation/server chip by IBM. Gaming applications are altogether different. Games are not designed the same way as most office and commercial apps. The true statement is that most of the power of the Cell is untapped. The ugly underside of that true statement is that games don't need most of what the Cell has to offer. Sony further handicapped it by giving a small amount of memory dedicated to it. Games on the PS3 will improve as developers use it more efficiently but what must be understood is that it is not a gaming processor. The games will not improve as dramatically as you believe. This vast untapped potential it has is better used in a server farm. This is why people have looked at the PS3 for those applications. There are two kinds of Cell naysayers I see dominant on forums. Those who claim the Cell is optimised for multi-media applications and thus is useless for serious stuff and other like you who seem to claim the opposite. The Cell chip is a multi-media powerhouse, excellently suited for gaming purposes as well as for building a new unrivalled supercomputer. There are however various considerations, that's why I stated back in 2005 it's going to take a long time before developers will get the most out of this CPU relating to redesigning legacy game engines. Cell is not the Swill Army Knife of processors. Take your nose out of Sony's and IBM's marketing announcements for the moment and look at the actual results. Sony's own devs are having a difficult time making games that look better than 360 games. Even when they do, it's not a dominating improvement. Meanwhile, IBM is selling the Cell for what it is designed, server applications. Have you seen IBM's product offerings for the Cell? Cell Blades, Cell Servers? In what way are server applications and gaming applications similar? IBM developed the tech for the Cell and it does exactly what IBM needed it to. Does it work as a gaming chip? Sort of, but IBM is the big winner in that deal. They got the server chip they wanted and Sony and Toshiba got to help pay for it's development. Go go American bullshitting! U-S-A! U-S-A! Actually the CELL is a mult-purpose processor. It's ability to crunch numbers are insanely high, and it's ability to stream media at a constant speed is very beneficial to gaming. With the ability to crunch numbers it can allow for more physics related actions to happen on screen at once. The ability to stream media allows detailed graphics to be constantly refreshed at really good speeds. Given the the SPEs are similar to RISC processors but run at a more demanding way, they allow up to three threads of processing per SPE which means that each SPE can be dedicated to a single purpose or even multiple purpose. Studing the CELL's architexture, it is easy to conclude it can handle all purposes and has been used for all purposes from medical imaging to servers and in the future in the consumer PC through an add-on card.

The proof is in the puddin my friend. You go ahead and let me know when these super improvements to the PS3's games get here and I'll think about believing you. Until then, you are just parroting press releases and marketing which might, JUST MIGHT, have a bit of a slant to it. I prefer to see the performance where the rubber meets the road. Right now I see a crap load of Cell servers by one company and one game system from another that is about the level as the 360 (maybe slightly higher) and spent alot more money to get there. If you shut out the marketing, what does the evidence really say?

@ TheBigFatJ

I don't know if that's really the case or not as I own neither version, overall it's probably pretty much the same game on all three platforms. It's a game which is assets wise mostly built around the 360's hardware capabilities, the PC and PS3 could certainly be pushed much further.

Like I said it will take a while before legacy game engines are fully adapted, this goes for Sony developers as well as 3rd party developers (but probably 1st and 2nd parties spend more resources to make this transition happen more quickly).

To quote a COD4 developer: "We certainly have a significant amount of untapped SPU power."



Sweeney is no expert with regard to the Cell processor, some Sony devs had to help them. However he's an expert with regard to creating PC games. DirectX overall hasn't become more efficient, sadly just like Windows in general. In the past you saw desktop operating systems becoming more and more efficient while also adding many new features. Sadly those times are long gone, it's easier to demand consumers to invest in more memory and higher clocked CPUs.

MikeB said: @ TheBigFatJ Perhaps you can explain to me why CoD 4 looks amazing on the PC, and like shit on the PS3/Xbox 360. I don't know if that's really the case or not as I own neither version, overall it's probably pretty much the same game on all three platforms. It's a game which is assets wise mostly built around the 360's hardware capabilities, the PC and PS3 could certainly be pushed much further. Like I said it will take a while before legacy game engines are fully adapted, this goes for Sony developers as well as 3rd party developers (but probably 1st and 2nd parties spend more resources to make this transition happen more quickly). To quote a COD4 developer: "We certainly have a significant amount of untapped SPU power." Sweeney Sweeney is no expert with regard to the Cell processor, some Sony devs had to help them. However he's an expert with regard to creating PC games. DirectX overall hasn't become more efficient, sadly just like Windows in general. In the past you saw desktop operating systems becoming more and more efficient while also adding many new features. Sadly those times are long gone, it's easier to demand consumers to invest in more memory and higher clocked CPUs.

Well, the 360 is quite a bit more powerful than the PS3, in terms of fillrate this is inarguable. In terms of processing power, this is arguable -- because you are measuring different types of processing power. In terms of memory, well, neither has very much.

The PC version of COD4 crushes both, visually. It's not close.

What gives you your cell expertise? What do you know about designing microprocessors? Did you do it as well? What about your qualifications that make it reasonable for you to speculate that Sweeney doesn't understand the architecture well enough to comment on it, but you are?

Sweeney is low level engine programmer, and he optimizes engines for various processors. He has to understand them at a low level, or his engines wouldn't be competitive. Newsflash, his engines are among the best and most widely used.

This is another flat-out-wrong statement.  There is an overhead with any high level API like DirectX, and DirectX has had many major versions that have provided a significant reduction in overhead.  When directX 9 was released, the overhead was cut very significiantly.  This is why very old comments about the API are less relevant than new ones.

rocketpig said: MikeB said: @ rocketpig I think that's a solid enough case to state that neither of the consoles are fully capable of running a proper 1080p game right now. Stating "proper 1080p game" is pretty subjective. Is GT5:P's 60 FPS proper or would a soild 30 FPS also be considered to be proper? The end results are which matter the most. There will always be texture quality related sacrifices and trade-offs for top games nomatter the used resolution on the current gen consoles and PCs. If it's not the issue of feeding the required data fast enough, it can be storage space related for large games which are aiming for much graphics diversity. In a racing game, 60fps is mandatory. The cars travel too much distance down the straightaways for 30fps to work well. The extreme twitch nature of the genre also mandates a higher framerate. Besides, we've been over it a million times now. GT5:P is not full 1080p... I refuse to accept something being called 1080p when it's being upscaled on a 1080p monitor. Trade-offs will always be made and right now, some developers are having a hard time hitting 720p in some high-profile games, much less 1080p. I don't think that will change much as the generation matures. We'll probably see pretty much everybody focus in on 720p with the occasional developer shooting for the moon with a full 1080p game.

 Oh gosh it's the GT 5:p 1080p arguement again featuring rocketpig, everyone run!

1080p wont be a standard until PS5 since average households do not have it and even at best estimates in five years only 53% of TVs sold would be would have any HDTV, besides the costs for developers shys away from such an incorporation.