Sorry man , but for me as a gamer, in to 2-3 years the next XBOX or PS if you want, will have the true power.

PS3 with a 256 mb GPU is going to be a memorable architecture of the past...

PS3 GPU can draw 480 MB max.

But of course PS3 would be much better if Sony invested more in GPU than actually doing a uber-CPU just to say it is nearly two times stronger than the Xenon.

My point was to explain  how a pc CPU and GPU where different than the cell's SPU but i was trying to keep it simple for bugrimar. CPU and GPU are opposites, spus are in the middle (i have only read these part). I design hardware to test medical equipment, from my experience in that area FLOPS are more important because you need precision in my applications, but still i use more analog devices than digital devices. So that's why i said that in terms of number crushing which is what i use most i think FLOPS are the more important measure.  There are more flexible applications like games that need other things that you guys have brought up but from my point of view i haven’t see that much relevance to them.

Well, as they say, the proof of the pudding is in the eating.

Standard liquid cooling.

The supplier who helped me source parts for my last build had a QX series CPU OCed at 5.0ghz on liquid, running Prime95 for 24hrs stable. DDR3 1600 memory, HD4870x2 CF quad GPU graphics.

Impressive. Really impressive. So, how much do you spent on it?

@Greenmedic: Look, Sony isn't making loss with the Cell itself, but the application it's using the processor. If Sony would start selling PS3 at a profit, it would be profiting from the Cell. But every Cell sold "outside" is making money for Sony (and Toshiba and IBM). Sony was hoping for a fullhouse, but it looks like they'll only be able to get a pair.

Man. This topic (not this particular thread) should be a sticky one.

Let me try to paint a simple picture of the Cell, relative to its competition, and with regards to its duty as a part of the PS3:

Typical console game, single frame:

(A) CPU runs game logic
(B) CPU runs physics
(C) CPU does animation
(D) CPU sends completed animation data to GPU
(E) GPU does skinning of animated character skeletons
(F,) GPU processes vertexes into renderable triangles
(G) GPU renders textured triangles to screen
(repeat)

Typically, performance on these sections goes like:
(A) game logic (PS3 okay, X360 pretty good, PC awesome)
(B) physics (PS3 okay to awesome, depending on programming investment, X360 pretty good, PC pretty good)
(C) animation (PS3 awesome, X360 pretty good, PC pretty good)
(D) not really a big performance hit or difference, I just threw this step in there for clarity
(E) skinning (PS3 awesome with programming investment, X360 pretty good, PC awesome with modern GPU)
(F) vertex processing (PS3 pretty good, X360 pretty good, PC awesome with modern GPU)
(G) texel/pixel processing (PS3 okay to pretty good, X360 pretty good, PC awesome with a modern GPU).


The issue that makes PCs faster than the PS3 or X360 generally boils down to the fact that games are unilaterally toned down to run decently on the CPU for the lowest common denominator, and then are limited on the back end -- often mostly by step (G). Fill rate is one of the few things that the Cell cannot assist with -- its pretty much entirely GPU dependant. Since many, many games tend to be "fill bound" (that "G" step is the bottleneck), generally the fastest filling GPU "wins"... and that boils down to the PC in every case.

When it comes to raw number crunching, the Cell beats the socks off any PC CPU you can compare it against. The trouble is that number crunching really only comes into play during steps (B) and (C) above, and many games aren't even bottlenecked there to begin with (most games don't throw 100 bad guys at you at once, so you just don't need to animate that many). With enough programming effort, the Cell's SPUs can help the RSX (the PS3's GPU) out enough to best the performance of... certain competing GPUs, by simplifying the GPU processing pipeline at steps (E) and (F), but if the app is bottlenecked at (G), that still may not matter much. The performance of the GPU "hides" the CPU performance, in a sense, because usually the bottleneck at (G) is pretty serious.

The real benefit of the Cell, now that the yield is improved from the first half year or so, is that it has this extra power (admittedly minor in this first incarnation) without generating crazy amounts of heat, and in time, it should be slightly cheaper to make (it may be already) than its competition, because it uses less transistors than a typical design of the same performance would.

The next versions of the Cell family will have the same "tougher to write code for" issues that the current Cell does (maybe slightly less, as tools evolve), but, on a per-cost basis, they will be far more powerful than their peers.  That still won't solve the bottlenecks at step (G) -- the Cell could (and future versions very well might) kick every other gaming platform on the planet's behind at steps (A)-(F), and if there's still a bottleneck at (G), the end result will be the same.  You always have to have a good GPU to go with the CPU.   Because PCs are modular, and consoles are not, the PC will always "win" in this department... always.  Remember, a high-end PC GPU costs more than a PS3 does -- JUST the GPU.

The PS4 is set up to succeed, both financially and from a performance perspective, already. Assuming they stick with the Cell (and there's no reason for them not to, really), Sony fundamentally designed the future PS4 when they designed the PS3, and reduced their future HW costs to boot.  If Sony doesn't skimp on the GPU, the PS4 will be a great machine.  The Cell was a great choice, and it has very little to do with the PS3's issues in the marketplace at this time.

Not mine! That was the build that belonged to the guy who worked at the shop in Toronto who sourced all my parts. He was a serious OC hardware enthusiast and really knew what he was doing.

I wouldn't spend that much on a rig; I just don't play PC games enough.

The rig I built was a Q9400 OCed to 3.2ghz, Scythe Ninja Copper HSF, 1x2GB DDR3 1600, HD4870x2, Asus P5Q3 wifi Deluxe, Antec 1000w PSU, in an Antec 900 case which went over the $1500 (CA$) budget.

My personal rig is a scaled down model based on a Q6600 OCed to 3.3ghz (2.88v, 30C idle, 60C 100% load, 24hr Prime 95 stable) with a $27 ACF7P HSF, AS5 TIM, 2x2GB DDR2 1000, Asus P5Q-EM mobo, HD4870, OCZ 600w PSU in a 15x7x16 mini tower enclosure. I could probably build another one like it for about $1000 with current prices.

Currently, they're buying the CPUs from Toshiba or IBM, or whoever is manufacturing them since they sold their CBE manufacturing facility back to Toshiba about a year ago. Before that, they were essentially selling the chips to themselves.

The CBE itself (65nm process) currently only costs about $60 per CPU. The 90nm was about $89 per unit.

But the loss in hardware still comes from the overall production cost per PS3 unit, regardless of how cheap the CBE is being bought for.

So unless Sony receives royalties as a part of the consortium responsible for the R&D of the CBE, the only money they'd be making from processor sales, would be those they sold themselves (which they can't do since they don't produce them anymore).

Sony should be able to sell the PS3 at a small profit with the next hardware revision based upon the 45nm CBE/RSX, even with an MSRP price cut. The die shrinks alone would cut off maybe $50 per unit, without even counting the cost reduction in other components. But again, that has no bearing on whether Sony is directly making money from CBE sales since they don't sell the chips as vendors.