You mean TEH C3LL?

Okay, the Ps3 cell....  3.2 GHz Cell Broadband Engine with 1 PPE & 8 SPEs..............To simplify things....... 8 cores running at 3.2 GHz (forget about millions of transistors and all that jazz....) "The PPE is the Power Architecture based, two-way multithreaded core acting as the controller for the eight SPEs" So basically the PPE is just there to control it (for simplicity just accept this)

It's only six SPEs available to games. At least get your facts right.

So 8 cores at 3.2 GHz for the PS3.

The xbox 360.... 3.2 GHz PowerPC Tri-Core Xenon...."The PPE was designed specifically for the Cell processor but during development, Microsoft approached IBM wanting a high performance processor core for its Xbox 360. IBM complied and made the tri-core Xenon processor, based on a slightly modified version of the PPE".................

So basically 3 cores at 3.2 Ghz for the Xbox 360

You guys probably knew all this stuff already..... but what do adding more cores actually do? "A multi-core processor is simply a single chip containing more than one microprocessor core, effectively multiplying the potential performance with the number of cores (as long as the operating system and software is designed to take advantage of more than one processor)"

Wikipedia is being annoying vague here when they say "multiplying the potential performace" which could insinuate that it "speeds it up".

Multi-core is a highly efficient use of transistors. At the same die size (and therefore cost), multiple cores increase performance almost linearaly in the best case, while using those transistors for bigger cores like in the Xbox is generally less efficient cost-wise. However, this is assuming maximum optimisation on the software side. It takes a lot of money and time to effectively use 6 SPEs + PPE, as they need a new programming model and more threading.

Think of this: I have a mail service (named 360) and I have 3 airplanes to carry the mail at 320 mph. My competition (PS3) has 8 airplanes to carry the mail at 320 mph. What's going to happen? He gets to carry more mail in the same time I can carry mine. BUT IT IS NOT FASTER THAN MY MAIL!!!!!

This analogy fails. You know nothing about how a CPU works. The Cell has higher peak performance than the 360's CPU. It's just that if developers don't put enough time into optimising then the 360's CPU can be ahead.

Bad analogies aside, My point of this whole thing is that processors PROCESS things, they transfer information like images/AI from between the game disc to everywhere that needs to be, the the graphics card (i'm simplifying, bear with me). So the awesome Cell processor can transfer more data, but it is still locked at 3.2 Ghz.

The clock speed of a chip does NOT limit performance. It's not like carrying more stuff at a slower speed. In fact, because the architectures are different you can't take the clock speed meaninifully AT ALL. You have to compare actual benchmarks, which again show the PS3 is faster if coded right.

Why is that a bad thing? it's not at all. BUT people are saying that the games are looking (and going to look) better because of the CELL....well it will certainly help but it's not displaying the images it transfers....the graphics card does that or whatever. Now the Blu-ray has more space obviously than a dvd-9 but does it really need all that processing power? Xbox 360 games look decent to me and they don't have all that power....

Correct. The Cell being faster does not really help with graphics, and since people mainly experience the technical prowess of the game as graphics they see the PS3 as inferior (its graphics cards is certainly weaker). But this is not the case. Good art direction, and using the CPU for certain graphical operations and environmental effects can hide the discrepancy in graphical power.

So what do make game look better? Well of course the developers need to put that lovely images and backgrounds (whatever) on the disc, and (to the best of my knowledge) what actually puts the images from all the processes on the screen is the graphics card. So which graphics card is better? Hard to determine. Xbox 360 graphics card has 512 mb of memory and Ps3 has 256 mb.....(I'm not going to mention internal memory or edram or all that fun stuff....mainly cause I don't know it) but that doesn't necessarily make it better. From what I have heard (could be wrong) The 360 shares that memory and the ps3 is used solely for graphics.....i'll never know which is better, probably whatever developer can use it better (which is what matters)

The memory situation, for all its differences, is not the limiting factor in 99% of cases on either console. It doesn't matter, and the memory architecture of both consoles is good for different types of workload and can be turned to a developers' advantage if they are inventive enough. The only discriminator is that the 360's memory setup is closer to a PCs so portscan be more easily amde and. again, poor optimisation favours the 360. It is a misconception that graphics card performance is linked to the memory; it isn't at all. GPU performance is based mainly on pixel/vertex shaders. But in this case the 360 GPU is superior to the PS3 GPU.

I'm not even going to start about how it's harder for developers to develop for (if it is, i'm not developer so we the consumers really have no idea, Not to mention I don't want to see flames start flying)

You're wrong not to mention it; it is the most important factor in the differences we see between the PS3 and 360's performance. It's not that the PS3 is any harder to develop for, it's just that it is an unfamiliar architecture with different strengths to the PC platform. If PS3 was the market leader developers would have gotten used to it by now out of necessity. Any developer, with enough effort, could make one console look better than the other or both the same. The PS3 has higher CPU performance and the 360 has higher GPU performance but those don't translate much into what the player thinks.

Conclusion: After all this long winded talk that most of you don't give a **** about....basically...after over simplifying things...and probably being wrong about a couple things also....i'm trying to say that having the CELL does not mean that the games will look better just because of it. I have heard many people say that and it annoys me. How much it helps only the developers know but thats what I was trying to say. Hope it wasn't too confusing/wrong.

Cell can't increase the raw pixel fillrate much (it actually could but it would be a waste of time as the GPU is much better at it). But it can do plenty of things (physics, post-render effects, AI, video rendering)to make the game look better to the player, and that is what really matters.

All the quotes are from wikipedia