it is probably very fortunate that ps3 uses a seven series, and not 8, as it is becoming clear that nvidia has been hiding serious defects in the series until series 9 came out. the failure rate of most series 8 boards is almost higher then rrod, this has lead to quite a few class action suits....

honestly MS was put in a bind when choosing gpu, as ATI plays better with directx, where the ppc cpu at its core would have played better with an Nvidia chip. where opengl has worked better for ppc chips historically

I do think you are understating the value of unified architecture going forward though. that is a major saving in terms of power and efficientcy, and a play form the powerpc book where more can be done with a lower clock speed, so raw data through is very missleading. much like comparing a ppc chip to an x86

also i have wondered for awhile now why IBM did not design full chipsets to control both boards, as IBM (or motorola/freescale) are the people with the most experience in unifying ppc and gpu before this gen. as nvida, and ati did not design the chipsets in the macs for ppc to gpu communication, only members of the AIM (apple, intel, motorola (now freescale)) alliance did

what should be of more interest is why sony went for a gpu when the cell was originally set to run all fx related tasks. could it have been to convoluted to code for? was the lack of an 8th spe to blame? could they not set up a version of opengl to run on it?

here here.... if i remember right IBM lists that in its white papers.... that being that peak power is misleading..... and this has also always been the mantra of the AIM alliance 

Hmmmm..... thread number 4759374 on this topic....

The Xenos uses a modern unified pipeline architecture.

Intelligent Memory” (eDRAM) makes anti-aliasing an easy work.

That is why the Xenos wins. With the unified shader, it can run at near 100% efficiency. The RSX is only 50%-60% effcient when used in games.

There is a reason for the  general lack of anti-aliasing in PS3 games. The RSX isn't powerful enough. The Xenos can handle it with almost no performace loss due to the eDRAM doing the work.

Then there is the issue of the unified memory on the 360, allowing more memory (with tradeoffs) for graphics. That's why some PS3 games have their resolution downgraded from the 360 version.

which ones are those?

As far as I can remember, only GTA IV.

biggest problem with console gaming today? threads like these.

Gears of war 2 kill this thread

...and posts like lanjiaona's.

I can only think of gta off the top of my head,