Yes, there is more to it than I was letting ... but when you're looking at processors which were designed to solve similar "problems" the metric I proposed becomes remarkably accurate.

Basically, if you take an nVidia and an ATI graphics card where the GPUs are manufactured using the same manufacturing process, have similar energy requirements and have a similar die-size/transistor count the graphics cards will perform in a very similar range.

Certainly, even the most powerful GPU in the world would be unable to run productivity software at an acceptable level and most CPUs could not produce graphics at the level of a several year old mid-line GPU, but you would rarely be comparing these two processors against eachother to decide which is "more powerful"

Well FPGAs and GPGPUs you could say are both designed to solve similar problems and there are architectural quirks that will yield huge performance differences in different subsets of problems in the same field.

Additionally, I'm not sure that it's obvious that the design goals can be said to be the same. The 360 definitely made more architectural consessions to ease development.

The graphics gap has been on the 360 side since the beginning of this generation. But with KZ2 it looks as though a Sony developer has tilt the lever ever so slightly back on their court.

Now does MS want to put in the huge investment to one up Sony with some future games? Or do they feel the gap is not significant enough to justify research cost? And it will be a huge cost! For KZ2 it took a team of over 100 people more than 4 years to do this. While in that span of time MS released both Gears 1 and Gears 2. EPIC Games had about 75 employees during the development of Gears 1. 18 of those folks were cross platforms engine developers. The remaining 57 employees worked simultaneously on Gears 1
and UT3. So we can see that the amount of man years put into finishing Gears 1 was probably less than 1/4 that it took to complete KZ2.

I believe that EPIC Games and UBI Soft are among the few developer who has the technical prowess to better KZ2, given enough time resoures. So if MS wants to reclaim the graphics crown for 360. They should work out a deal with these development houses to develop engines for 360 only.

The first half of a console gen is the most important grafix wise, but after that people will tend to regard the consoles as inferior knowing that all games look so much better on PCs. And basically no one will care if the X360 games look slightly better than the PS3 or vise versa.

But Killzone 2 did a good job just being able to squeeze itself into the first half of this gen, helping the PS3 to earn at least some reputation that it has better grafix than the X360.

But knowing that KZ2 took 4 years to develop, we already know that the most ambitious developers (grafix wise) have already started developing for the next generation, which is only 3 years away.

^^ Wait... sorry.. the Unreal Engine has been in development for less than 4 years? This is news to me.

The man-years excuse is silly, especially since you can spin it to favor whomever you choose. I guess at least the usually blind 360 fanbase can at least appreciate KZ2's excellent visuals.

I'm guessing he was referring to specific iterations of the Unreal Engine.  Yes, if you count all versions of Unreal Engine, then it's been in development for quite a long time.  But I don't believe each version took 4 years to develop.

The fact is, no objective observer is likely to look at Gears of War 2 and Killzone 2 visuals side by side and say, "wow, KZ2 is a generation ahead of GeoW2 in graphics."  I think the Fable II graphics are amazing, particularly some of the lighting effects, even though they're not rendered in 1080p at 120 fps.  I really don't care if the same game on the PS3 might be more detailed... Fable II's visuals are compelling enough.

I know a lot of Cell enthusiasts are just champing at the bit for the PS3 to prove just how advanced that processor is, and I believe the PS3 is definitely more powerful in some ways, in large part due to the Cell.  But the PS3 is not going to sell more just because the Cell will enable the truly devoted developer to build a game with arguably better visuals than a similar type of game on the 360.

In other words, a bazillion people didn't buy Halo 3 because the visuals were better than anything else out there.  They bought it because it has very compelling multi-player features, and the visuals are "good enough" for the current generation of games.  Could a similar game be built on the PS3?  Of course it could.  Will KZ2 be bought by a bazillion people and move systems if it is just as compelling as Halo 3, gameplay wise and visually?  Yep.  Will people flock to KZ2 just because it looks better than Halo 3?  No.  MGS4 is the only PS3 game that has set the world on fire, so to speak, but it wasn't because the visuals knocked anything on the 360 into the ground.  No, it was because the MGS series has a large following and the game was very well executed visually, story-wise, gameplay-wise, etc.

I really doubt anything produced on the PS3 is going to look like a high-quality title that will be available on the next generation of systems, and this seems to be the argument, i.e. - the PS3's graphics are potentially a generational leap ahead of the 360's.  Unless consumers who are still undecided see games on the PS3 that absolutely blow similar titles on the 360 out of the water, visually and in gameplay, it's just not going to change the playing field.  I don't believe the PS3 is so powerful compared to the 360 that people are going to look at it and say, "I have to have one of those... its games are definitely a generation ahead of the 360 games."

 technically we havent seen killzone 2 yet demos and trailers dont make the game.

 for 25 million kz2 better look great,  gow2 cost 10 million and we got 2 freekin games already wheres killzone 3 on the PS5.

So far epics track record for games has guerilla powned. I do hope KZ2 however will be great because my PS3 needs work.

WHEN THE HELL ALAN WAKE IS COMING OUT?............I WAS WAITING FOR THAT DAMN GAME SINCE 2006.

So you own a copy of each games and already benchmarked the whole market ??

When do you post the results of your studies ??