@ Deneidez

Certainly you can use over 90% of its potential, research documents already demonstrated unparalleled efficiency with the architecture.

The problem is the Cell provides a radically different approach compared to current PCs, although the PC is moving in a similar direction. It's also very different compared to the PS2 in terms of what the system can do. So PS2 and PC gaming engines are going through major overhauls. Many modern gaming engines took many years to build and to rebuild those and expand them with new functionality takes time.

Killzone 2 for example last we heard was still only using 4 SPUs and the PPU at this time, they have plenty of CPU cycles to spare when they will try to make a Killzone 3 technically even more impressive.

Moving legacy code over from the PPU to the SPUs is usually not a trivial process, expecting to do a simple recompile will result into failure. As the IBM documentation shows the SPUs are easy to program for, but they have some profound differences.



There's tons of random Killzone 2 footage available, ordinary people playing, etc.



It takes more time and effort, but on the PS3 you would not use assembly exclusively. It makes sense to hand optimize the most performance and time critical parts of the game engine / middleware. (using x86 assembly is much harder than using assembler on the Cell, this is also a reason why PC developers moved to higher level languages, the legacy bagage x86 architecture is not very modern at all and originates from the 70s)

For embedded situations, many console games, time/performance/results critical settings (nuclear facilities) the art of talking to the hardware more directly through assembly is still in wide use.

The reason why many new programmers have moved away from assembler is that it takes more knowledge and competence, Windows is already horribly inefficient itself, people are constantly expected to upgrade towards new processors and buy more RAM, etc.

This situation is different from the embedded and console market, where a console is expected to last 5-10 years. It makes more sense to go all the way to optimize your engine as tens of millions maybe even well over 100 million people will eventually own a console with a fully known core hardware configuration.

> Windows is already horribly inefficient itself

Actually in the early 80s it was almost unthinkable how computing has advanced. On a c64 with less than a 1 Mhz CPU it would respond immediately to keyboard input. Using a 7 Mhz entry model Amiga the preemptive multitasking GUI based OS would always respond immediately with feedback if a GUI button was pressed by the user.

It was almost unthinkable that today we would have multi-core CPUs clocking at over 3000 Mhz and one still has to wait for the OS to respond in various situations with any user feedback. IMO something went horribly wrong with regard to operating systems and of course Microsoft has a large finger in the pie of what went wrong. Much better OS designs from an efficiency perspective is QNX or was the sadly discontinued BeOS.

MikeB said: > Windows is already horribly inefficient itself Actually in the early 80s it was almost unthinkable how computing has advanced. On a c64 with less than a 1 Mhz CPU it would respond immediately to keyboard input. Using a 7 Mhz entry model Amiga the preemptive multitasking GUI based OS would always respond immediately with feedback if a GUI button was pressed by the user. It was almost unthinkable that today we would have multi-core CPUs clocking at over 3000 Mhz and one still has to wait for the OS to respond in various situations with any user feedback. IMO something went horribly wrong with regard to operating systems and of course Microsoft has a large finger in the pie of what went wrong. Much better OS designs from an efficiency perspective is QNX or was the sadly discontinued BeOS.

At least Vista is less of a resource hog than the PS3 OS when it released. ^^ 64 mb of system memory, considering the limited feature set that was terrible.

Microsoft managed to make a far more efficient OS. Software company FTW eh?

 

KZ2 said: Some interesting comparisons and wow the Ps3 exclusive game is better in all comparisons.

 

Actually, going by these "scans" SO4 pwnd WKC.(is it "chronicles" or "story")

Anyway, the comparisons are bull. You should realize that. You can't compare Forza 2 to GT5.

Comparing these games is like comparing apples and oranges. To get a real idea of graphical comparison, you need to compare multiplatform games.

Plus these screens are kinda one sided, imo. For instance, in motion, Gears 2 actually looks better than Uncharted imo, but in those screenshots, it looks like the best Uncharted water picture I could ever find, and a purposefully overly 2 dimensional screen from Gears.

 

The screens shown here are biased, and you can't fairly compare the consoles graphical capabilities based on them.

I can cherrypick really bland screenshots of Uncharted:

Then some beautiful ones of Gears:

 

You see what I did there? There is no way to compare these games. There is only cherrypicking screenshots to compare apples and oranges.

@ Squilliam

Some of that was probably reserved memory for future features. If you give developers too much of available resources (they may use it), this leaves very little headroom to advance further with functionality.

The same with regard to the SPE used by the OS, the amount of performance reserved may seem like overkill at launch, but some very cool media features have been and will be implemented.

The PS3 has 256 MB of flash memory for firmware updates vs only 16 MB on the 360, looking at this and at the PSP Sony's PS3 designers have probably looked far ahead into the future to decide their long term needs and requirements.

@

The graphics do get more bland when you're hit.



That's not in the 360 game, I completed it.



Comparing multi-platform games from a hardware technical perspective can also be like comparing apples and oranges. You're then comparing the current state of game engines and possible sacrifices not relatively to the host platform, but rather cross platform considerations.

At least for exclusives there are no reasons to hold back, a company like Bungee has no reason not to try to get the most out of Halo 3 and optimize the hell out of it, the same goes for Guerrilla.

The most important thing to take out of this thread is:

The inferiority complex some of the PS3 fanboys have that they needed to make a point about graphics by making a thread about it, often comparing unreleased or brand new games with games released 6+ months ago.

I would say the only fair comparison is Resistance VS Gears, but even then R1 was a launch title rushed vs Gears a year 1 title.

The only proper comparison is multiplatform titles, why? (note this includes MS bias to annoy the sony fanboys):
- When a game is 360 lead, the PS3 version alot of the time suffers (Madden and NHL prior to this years edition, Orange Box, FEAR, Enchanted Arms etc)
- When a game is PS3 lead, the difference is minimal at best (DMC4, Burnout Paradise, Assassin's Creed, VF5 gets online in the 360 version)

That's all the evidence you need.

(In reality: My view is that there is very little difference between the two consoles, heck even MGS4 didn't stun me, maybe I got used to the HD level when Gears first dropped, but I was more wowed by how polished the game was more then how graphically realistic it was. Also, so long as there's no slowdown, I doubt many of you really care about how the game looks when you're playing.)

"The game has a unique look with it's drained color look."

Waffles were rofl'd..

@ CAL4M1TY

Nice trolling, but I remember the bulk of comparison threads started by 360 fanboys.

As time goes on we will see more and more games distinguish themselves from the bulk and it will be more interesting to do comparisons, as both systems had software being under development for them long enough.

The early Atari ST vs Amiga game comparisons were mostly useless as a few years down the road the differences were far too apparent for anyone to deny and focusing solely on the early games would have been misleading and to the advantage to the much weaker specced ST.



To come to what conclusion?

You know what if you didnt know gaming, every single screenshot looked like it was from the same platform. Nothing in those shots shone above the rest. Just shows when posted like this there is no difference between the consoles.