I'm on my lunch break so this post will be fairly short. If anyone wants me to explain this in more detail, just tell me.

Some of you know that the SPE's are, in many ways, similar to the shaders of a modern GPU.

Essentially, Sony was going to build a PS3 that had no video card and 4 cell processors. These 4 cells would be chained together and act as both CPU and GPU. Furthermore, each cell would have its own dedicated bank of RAM.

Cost and performance issues prevented this, so Sony was SOL. Nvidia was the only company that could offer a solution to the lack of GPU as ATI was swamped at the time. And so the modern PS3 was born, a much less interesting machine that what was originally intended.

BTW; Anyone who thinks the SPE's are some magical advancement that makes the Cell the most advanced CPU in the world needs to get a fucking clue. Same for RSX v Xenos.

No if you think thats the full potential of the spu's your loosin it, uncharted (according to developer) only uses 30% of the power the ps3 can bring up and thats amazing.

Sigh ... It really doesn't matter which system is more powerful

We have hit a point of diminishing returns in the impact of increased processing power has on the appearance of a game, and we have hit a point where it is probably a bad idea (from a business perspective) to push either console to its limits due to development cost vs. potential sales. I'm not saying that no games will push the hardware, but companies like THQ and Activision will probably produce most of their games with little consideration for the theoritical processing power of either of these systems.

The best looking PS3 games will look roughly equal to the best looking XBox 360 games ...

@ NJ5

No doubt the XBox 360 GPU is very powerful, especially in 2005. Kudos to ATi for that, but that doesn't mean the XBox 360
is more powerful with regard to gaming than the PS3. 

It's not similar... it's the same :P

Actually, I never said the PS3 was on disadvantage to the Xbox 360. Even when the G7... RSX has more raw horsepower (just like the GS on PS2 that has LOTS of raw horsepower), in a technical point of view, the Xenos is capable of more things more efficiently... but the Cell makes up for this, because the Cell is capable of things the ... Xenon?... can't do. But overall, their games look roughly the same.

I would say that, in terms of overall graphics power... if PS3 is 100%, then the Xbox 360 is 70%... I mean, not that far.

PS: I wouldn't say that Ratchet and Clank Future's graphics looks like a Pixar movie... yeah, it looks very cool, but not to THAT level of perfection.

PS2: WTF, suddenly my system started showing japanese language... even when some time ago I tried and tried to install it but never got it to work :D

Certainly. The current belief is that they're about as powerful as each other, and have distinct advantages in some cases.

It's arguable that the RSX provides more raw performance. Most articles I've read call it a wash or give a slight edge to the Xenos based on its unified shader architecture. Either way, they're very close.

But you're right, the Cell+RSX combo is very powerful but difficult to harness. No one can really argue that with the plethora of information we've seen over the past year or more.

I was only arguing that the Cell CPU (a single core that clocks in around 3.2ghz) is as powerful as the Xenos (a tri-core that clocks in around 3.2ghz also) with its SPEs removed from the equation. Since the base CPUs are very similar (both designed by IBM on PPC architecture using the Power6 platform), it's kinda silly to think that the single core of the PS3 is up to speed with the tri-core 360. Of course, this is with all SPEs removed from the argument (before I get flamed by some idiot who didn't bother to read the entire post).

No no no. Those are games coming to this year or next. Im talking about ND next game or game releasing in like 2009 or 2010. The devs will have deep deep knowledge of the hardware and how to ultilize it.

 Im not saying that no good games or well optimized games are coming out before then, but giving a reason to the future-proof that Sony is going for in their system.

I find it funny when someone talks about a game using only 30% of the "theoretical power" of the ps3 like if 100% is achievable. I guess I am not going to waste my time trying to explain parallel processing speedup and algorithms to a target audience that will just ignore everything I am saying basically because they don't want to hear it. Whoever understands this knows that it is not possible. Specially with the way that each core processes information, which makes the gap between its theoretical performance to usable performance larger.

Anyway, my first point in this is that the Cell processor is less than ideal for gaming. If I could guess, the 360 might even be more powerful than the ps3 on the long run. But this is just a guess and should not be taken so seriously. I am not investing my time to discover their true potential and it doesn't even matter. They both have a lot of power.

If I could guess why the cell was used for the ps3, I would say 2 reasons. The main one is for bragging rights. They wanted to show theoretical power specs to get hype. The second one is because they weren't just interested in gaming. They were interested in the media integration. The cell has enough power and versatility to solve any problem that could show up.

I am not saying that the cell is underpowered. But for gaming, I believe that it was a bad choice for a processor. Not that it is bad. But because it could be so much better and cheaper.

Everyone knows why the blueray was chosen. The format war with hd-dvd. So not much needs to be said.

I also believe that Sony's statement about the 5 million people buying the ps3 even without games was an insult to its user base. I see no other reason for this than stating that its users are drones and a failed attempt to hype the system. This does not mean that ps3 users are drones. But it was what sony said in that statement. Is there any sony fan here that can tell me that they are proud sony made that statement?

There is an easy way to simplify it for the masses... A 1.6ghz Core Duo does not process information twice as fast as its 1.6ghz Core Solo brother (excluding RAM, HDD, etc... Don't bring it up, this is pure processing power)...

Ask yourself "why not?" and do a little research. You'll soon realize that there are other limiting factors within a processor (bridges, transfer speed, etc) and that no program can achieve 100% power out of a multi-cored processor. The best I've seen (and I read quite a few tech articles) is plus 85% performance over the single core. Not only are you facing hardware limitations to stop you from achieving 100% power output but you also have to program your software PERFECTLY to even get to that +85% mark. This problem only compounds as more processor cores are added to the die. It's hard to get +85% out of a dual core, extremely difficult to get +160% out of a tri-core, etc. etc. etc...

And this isn't even factoring in the various RAM, HDD speed, transfer speeds, etc. you face with any processor.

In short, theorital 100% power of a multi-cored processor is just that, theoritical. It will never happen. And the more processors you have per CPU, the farther away you get from that theoritical 100% mark.