You do know that the average PC Bus is less than 15-18GB/s and runs at 32bit? Only with technologies like HyperTransport and the like are you getting up to 20GB/s.

We know the PS3 has problems, we know it is hard to develop for, we know developer after developer has cited problems in the PS3's hardware. This being said, why do PS3 supporters continue to make defenses for the hardware like there is any benefit of the doubt left to be had?

Even if you could argue that the PS3 is the most perfect gaming system ever made its developers are obviously having problems with it and the games are suffering because of that. Make all the excuses and justifications you want but how many potential consumers do you think are going to buy the PS3 on the fact that it potentially could have fantastic games where as in reality it's getting gimped versions.

This is a problem and blaming developers isn't going to make it a non-issue, it just means (assuming there is any validity to your argument) that Sony can't get good developers and you're going to be screwed either way. If these are problems that need to be hashed out by developers as was the case with the PS2, then don't hold your breath because the number of developers on the PS3 aren't even a fourth of those who were developing for the PS2 and the length and cost of making games for the PS3 compound the issue only further, it will be a very long time before we see the kind of turn around it took the PS2 before we started seeing developers adapting to its shortcommings.

I don't think it will be that long of a time. It is still only 10 months since release, it's not a case of blaming developers just not blaming hardware. Of course they are still adjusting to making games for it. And if they take the line of deveoping first for PC and easier consoles, then porting to ps3, the temptation is to trim whatever doesn't fit instead of making the necessary design changes to optimize for the architecture. I think recent games look a lot better than at release, in particular some of EA's... also the market may care how many good games there are, but I care more which ones. Warhawk is about the most fun game I've ever seen bugs and all. With ps2 and psp also still in the market Sony still commands a big share, more overall than microsoft at least... ps3 will get the time it needs to reach its potential. If it takes another year, 2 years, it's still worth it.

   About PS3 only having 256 MB of system RAM, noone seems to have mentioned that this is fast memory, running at 3.2 Ghz. There is more memory bandwidth in a PS3 than an xb360 whose 512MB runs at 700 mhz. Another thing that developers have to get used to working with, to deal with things like big maps in other ways than than the usual big (and slow) memory. Worth waiting for IMHO 

What kind of excuses are these? Look, I know the PS3 is a very powerful console, but what's with the reaction of shock that PCs can do things PS3s can't? I think this topic needs one big large loud: DUH!

PCs will always do things home consoles can't. The PS3 was hoping to delay the time it took for this to happen, but sadly it's advantage of PC power didn't last any longer than any other console does. That's the problem with striving so hard to make a powerful home console. No matter how hard you try, it will never be as powerful as PCs. Therefor the true tech geeks and graphics whores will always remain primarily PC gamers.

PC gamers though should be taking this as good news. It means this is the first PC game out to really push PCs past home console capabilities (sorry Crysis, you were too slow). That means PC gamers know they are getting a top of the line experience. Personally, I won't be buying the game because A) My PC can't handle it and B) I hate Epic as a company. I think they are shady bastards with horrible business practices.

I know. The problem is that those 128-bit are applied to the VRAM too, and the likely cause for the problem here is too much textures... and anyone just thinking about playing UT3 on PC has a videocard with at least 256-bit wide bus. And I won't mention the GeForce 8800 or the Radeon 2900...

@Kozz: If I remember correctly, the XDR on the Cell is 8-bit, so at 3.2Ghz that gives us around 25GB/s. Xbox 360's is at around 21GB/s if I remember correctly.

Actually, the average PC memory bus (that is what we're talking about, isn't it?) is 64-bit.  And ever since the nForce chipset, which has been around for the last 6 years, PC motherboards have supported dual-channel memory configurations, which effectively gives them... wait for it... a 128-bit memory bus.

The difference, of course, is the clock speed of the memory.  The PS3 uses Rambus XDR RAM running at 3.2 GHz, whereas PCs are only up to 667 MHz (with DDR, effectively 1333 MHz).  BTW, the PS3's memory bus isn't 128-bit, either.  It actually uses four channels that are 8 bits wide each, and transfers twice per clock cycle just like DDR, for an effective 6.4 GHz, 32-bit data path.  That results in 25.6 GB/s of bandwidth.  By comparison, a dual-channel DDR3 1333 setup would result in 21.3 GB/s of bandwidth.  A typical PC from around the time the PS3 launched would have used DDR2 800 for 12.8 GB/s, hence why the PS3 was advertised as having twice the memory bandwidth as a high-end PC.

The Rambus XDR memory is a lot like the old RDRAM that the first Pentium 4s used.  It runs at very high frequency comared to SDRAM, but on a narrow bus.

at most 22" ? wtf

i have a 30" monitor that's freakin sweet.

with that said, i also prefer playing on consoles on tvs. 

I wouldn't suggest it.  The PS3 uses a 5400 RPM IDE HDD.  All PC drives are 7,200 to 10,000 (like my Raptors in RAID 0) and almost all new PC HDD's are SATA.

Oh and the developers already said the same maps won't be on X360.  Given that both have the same memory limitation vs PC's, it seems to be the logical limitation the developers were referring to. 

Viper1, where did you see Epic saying that the same thing will happen on the 360?

And no, PS3 and 360 don't have the same memory limitations. On the 360 you have 512 MB which you can share as you like between graphical and regular memory. On the PS3 you have 256 MB for each. The OS in the PS3 also takes up a rather significant portion of both regular and graphical memory, which reduces it even further...

I've done a little research:

- 360's OS takes up 32 MB of memory (6.25% of the memory). That leaves 480 MB for developers to split as they like between graphical and regular RAM. Meaning that if you split it equally, you have 240 MB for each use.

- PS3's OS (in the latest firmware update) takes up 48 MB of main memory (18.75%) and 24 MB of graphical memory (9.375%). That leaves 208 MB of RAM and 232 MB of graphical memory for developers.

Sources:

http://www.innerbits.com/blog/2007/08/21/ps3-180-sdk/

http://www.innerbits.com/blog/2007/05/09/ps3-memory-footprint/