NJ5 said: MikeB said: @ NJ5 For the sake of people who didn't read the last page, let it be said that those percentages are almost meaningless since this is a console game we're talking about. No they are not and yes you can perform manual optimisations like I stated in my first post within this thread. But I was talking about game engine design and that's about optimal at this point for the 360 with top games. The hardware is being used as intended. When for Motorstorm wit as said to use about 15% of available SPU resources, this could be brought down further as well with through extensive optimisation. What I am saying game engines on the PS3 still don't tap its potential like it's intended. Resistance 2 would be, as they moved almost everything onto the SPUs, it will be interesting to know how much of the Cell potential they will be tapping this time.   My claim is very simple. You are saying "this game uses X% of 360's CPU". I'm saying that's meaningless in terms of estimating a platform's capacity. Imagine a hypothetical game which uses 75% of 360's CPU. This means it's doable with 75% or less of that CPU. However, if its code was optimized, the same game would be doable with 50% of the CPU, but you can't tell that from the first sentence... When you say "this existing game uses X% of the CPU", that doesn't say anything about that CPU's maximum capability. It does say something its minimum capability though.

 

You also forgot that the majority of percentage of system resource usage statistics are not based on anything ...

Most of the others are based off of a code profile which doesn't tell you whether it is possible to take advantage of additional resources, or assumptions based on how much overhead there is in how they created their game which they may not be willing to eliminate; an example of it being impossible to take further advantage of additional resources is there are several linear algorithms which can not be parallelized because of race-conditions, and and example of overhead that wouldn't be removed is a large portion of game engines use scripting languages to control game logic (including AI) and there is a massive overhead to this but it will not be removed because they don't want their scripters to be forced to recompile the engine every time they want to test something.

HappySqurriel said:   You also forgot that the majority of percentage of system resource usage statistics are not based on anything ... Most of the others are based off of a code profile which doesn't tell you whether it is possible to take advantage of additional resources, or assumptions based on how much overhead there is in how they created their game which they may not be willing to eliminate; an example of it being impossible to take further advantage of additional resources is there are several linear algorithms which can not be parallelized because of race-conditions, and and example of overhead that wouldn't be removed is a large portion of game engines use scripting languages to control game logic (including AI) and there is a massive overhead to this but it will not be removed because they don't want their scripters to be forced to recompile the engine every time they want to test something.

I just wanted to disprove MikeB's claim, so I did it in the most straightforward manner I could think of ;) That's also true though... A system is much more than the CPU, and even the CPU alone may not be fully usable in many cases (depends on the design of the game as you said).

 

MikeB said: @ HappySquirrel ts been over 3 years since people began developing games for the PS3 Even PS3 exclusives like Genjii 2 or Fl0w did not use the SPUs at all. Like it takes a while for PPE to move over the SPUs, it took a while for mature dev kit to arrive. Look at the PS3's OS at launch, IMO Sony released the PS3 as soon as the hardware was solid, but the Cell approach was too different to have mature software around launch. This takes time, the Amiga was radically different, it took many years for devs to really tap into its custom chip potential, this due to being so different and cutting edge for its time. Luckily Sony provides a lot better developer support than Commodore ever did.

 

So what about performance of games based on the Unreal 3 engine? Epic was one of the first developers who had access to the PS3's hardware, and is a company full of some of the most experienced and talented 3D game engine programmers in the world, if they can't get decent performance out of the PS3 after 3 years (at least 2 years with decent development kits and tools) it isn't going to happen ... We aren't in the Playstation generation where the concept of 3D rasterization is a new concept, and many of these developers have been working with threaded applications for years, these people know what they're doing and are getting about as good of performance as you can get out of the hardware.

Your expectations of the Cell processor being meaningful haven't happened yet (after over a year of arguing with you) and are probably never going to happen. Will there be an improvement over time? Yes, but it will be similar in scale to improvements that happen for the XBox 360 ...

@ happySquirrel

I have criticized them many times, they haven't dedicated enough of their resources for PS3 optimisations and design enhancements. They even had to deal with a lawsuit.

They mainly focussed on Gears of War early on, completely neglecting the PS3 side of things. With UT3 they had help from 1st party developers to let the SPUs do some heavy lifting. But devs have shown to be lazy (based on comments), hinting their efforts won't go beyond just such heavy lifting.

The best way to compare the PS3 and 360 abilities is by comparing exclusives. There are some fundamental design considerations to be made when developing a PS3 game, these approaches are simply the best approaches from a technical perspective for all platforms, but the difference is that PS3 expects well designed game engines, while for the 360 it's less important.

Compare a bike with a car, the car is faster but only when there's enough room to fit a car on the road. Without fuel the bike goes faster. (more conditions)

@MikeB:

This is getting offtopic, but Epic even got help from Sony with optimizing UE3 for the PS3. Maybe we should start a new thread about this?

kingofwale said: GeoW 2 is still graphically impressive, it's just not as impressive as the first time I saw GeoW1 trailer back in the day... I say it's about 90% tapped.

I got as far as this post, then realized that nothing I found in this thread would be in any way justifiable, quantified or intrinsically relevant.

 

NJ5 said: @MikeB: This is getting offtopic, but Epic even got help from Sony with optimizing UE3 for the PS3. Maybe we should start a new thread about this?

 

That's what I said, 1st party devs made changes to their engine. But it's Epic's game engine, they can't expect Sony to keep doing their work for them. There's a long road to go, even Insomniac is only getting there with Resistance 2 (3rd gen style engine). The Unreal engine still lacks behind as an engine stuck between 1st or 2nd gen style PS3 engines.

starcraft said: kingofwale said: GeoW 2 is still graphically impressive, it's just not as impressive as the first time I saw GeoW1 trailer back in the day... I say it's about 90% tapped. I got as far as this post, then realized that nothing I found in this thread would be in any way justifiable, quantified or intrinsically relevant.

 

QFT

Did you guys even read all the new stuff being done with gears of war 2? It might not look that much better as it already looked great but now it will have tons of baddies on the screen at once with more things going on the screen etc. Similar resistance of man 2 might not look that much better but I am sure insomniac is adding tons of new shit to make it graphical more impressive. I am sorry but graphics have looked really good for me for a long time and I just want the little things like more bad guys on screen better AI, physics, etc. There are many things besides looking pretty that a developer can do to enhance the experience.

I was wondering: what could do, particularly during hot summers, games that push CPU and GPU to the limit to the millions XBox 360 vulnerable to RRoD but still intact? Anyway, better for their owners that they break within the warranty terms, but possibly after a totally 65nm version is released.

Seems like it should be obvious that the 360 uses a much more traditional architecture than the PS3. It doesn't mean the 360 is "tapped", I'm still able to be impressed by what people have done recently with a Commodore 64. However, it does mean that we'll likely see a lot more improvement from the current games on the PS3 in 2 years than we will on the 360 in two years, based on where each system is now. I might even say the 360 is actually better at this point, but who knows where they'll be in a couple years. If the PS3 architecture plays out it might make the 360 look like a joke, but there's no proof that optimization will play out the way PS3 fans think it will.

However, the fact that the PS3 has even been able to keep on par with the 360 at this point does indicate that even if the PS3 never ends up making the huge leaps people expect the Cell to provide, it's pretty unlikely that the 360 will ever conclusively surpass the PS3.