Agreed, but the Cell can do wonders with regard to taking workload off the GPU as well (pre- and/or post processing), so the graphics system becomes far more efficient like with Killzone 2 (which IMO is only the beginning, Killzone 3 will probably show off big gains as well).

Although it makes perfectly sense to treat the PS3's XDR memory as being dedicated to the Cell that does not have to be the case, the GPU can relly on this RAM if it's needed (increasing bandwidth as well) through game engine redesign.

I've given up arguing with people making statements of the form A is "more powerful" than B on this forum, and so im going to ignore the thread owner. I will pick on you however :P.

If IBM's linux on cell division was having trouble gettting it's hands on workstations for cell developement when I talked to it's manager about a year and a half ago now, then I don't think it's unreasonable to suspect that other developers might have had some difficulties. Most of the people for the majority of those 4 years you are talking about were doing most of their dev work on simulators. With a buggy compiler.

@ZenfoldorVGI -- I fear the ignorance seen in so many PC gamers recently of current major architecture problems yet to be definitively overcome -- such as, the problems that occur as you increase the number of cores and insist on maintaining cache-coherence, potential bus congestion issues, etc -- has likely played a decisive part in this tragi-comic spectacle whereby so many people waste money on these quad-core chips which are more likely to cause performance decreases for most games compared to many less expensive chips. I think a better understanding of the problems the CBE was intended to address (even if you don't believe it was successful) would have at least saved you.

Anyhow, it seems that the CELL power is just a legend ...

for all sony fans .. even when the ps3 is the lead platform for some games its still work better on the 360 .. why we still didnt see the power of the cell ur talking about until now ?? is it myth ?

he meant to say no hater instead of no fanboys.

"I am not comparing 360 and Wii with the PC because we all know which console has the best hardware,please no fanboys"

Google translation:

"Im a sony fanboy, and only want sony fanboys to comment, go away ps3 haters and wii60 lovers"

It has 256 megs of what is considered "conventional" RAM. General purpose, Random Access Memory.

When we're talking about PCs and people state how much RAM they're using, they don't include video RAM. They're two separate entities used for very different purposes. Combining them is disingenuous.

The SPE's that the Cell uses are not directly comparable to a PC's standard core.

Also the 4/5 years you believe for a PC to reach the PS3 theoretical power is way off.

In all likely hood the PC will have surpassed the PS3 in less than a year in terms of raw processing.

that

Yes, it's obviously a marketing gimmick. Sony wants its fans to spout the "cell is awesome" propoganda, because it's a selling point, and it reduces cognitive dissonance. The cell is like any other CPU, it's just needlessly complex and inefficient, which was done in order to give it "edge."

That's my opinion, anyway.

Sony, Toshiba, and IBM spent billions of dollars developing the Cell processor and as a result it is being used to do such things as medical imaging, aerospace and defense, and seismic processing. The PS3 has clearly proved its computational power through Folding@Home in which the PS3 excells. Calling the Cell inefficient is just plain ludicrous, the SPE's are arranged in an extremely efficient manner which is why the Cell is such an advanced CPU. I fault the PS3 for its GPU, RAM, and low Blu-ray read speed, but to fault the Cell which is proven technology is just silly. Levy criticism where it is due, the Cell is not worthy of such criticism.