Okay, I don't claim to be a computer genius, but some people do not seem to understand what having more cores in a processor actually does to performance, and what it doesn't. I'm not trying to make this a flame thing and I know some of you already know this, but hopefully this will help you understand more of what is actually happening without too much throwing numbers around (I hope).

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)

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".

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!!!!!

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.

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....

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)

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)

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.

All the quotes are from wikipedia

EDIT: ahh right.... T3h C311

No, he's right, it's three cores. The 360 has simultaneous multithreading (Intel calls it HyperThreading, HTT) where one core can use its idle functional units to execute another thread in parallel. But it can't be counted as another real core - you can get +30% performance at best, but at worst -10%. Intel turns off HTT for benchmarks, that's how variable it is.

The PS3's PPE has SMT too, but just like the 360 it's not significant enough to call it another core.

@Soleron:

spot on..good info..! though the xbox360's processor is ,made by IBM not intel...

Yes, I mentioned Intel because he's probably heard of HyperThreading. And I said Intel turns it off for benchmarks because I know they do; I don't know what IBM does.

"the Cell is also a GPU...the Cell is a hybrid CPU/GPU so yes it does indeed make game look better if you as a developer design a game to use the Cell Processor's GPU functions..and as for the PPE being there to control the SPE's , once again that is not 100% true the SPE's are and can be used without the need of the PPE to direct them, does that mean the SPE should..no because you indeed get better result's from the PRE-call file system of the PPE to the SPE's. but the SPE's can do DMA commands without the need of the PPE."

That claim is marketing speak only. The Cell is clearly a CPU, however you are right in that it has much higher FP performance per core than a normal CPU. But it doesn't have any fixed-function hardware that a GPU does and it has very few parallel threads compared to a GPU. I said it can perform some pre- and post-rendering effects to the graphics, but if you were to make it do shaders it would be 10-100x slower than the PS3's GPU.

umm no its not..that is for sure not marketing speak,since when is 30 billion shader ops/sec is marketing speak because that is what the Cell has been already benchmarked at with its terrain rendering..that's without needing the GPU...the Cell is infact a hybrid CPU/GPU yes it does indeed get better results while working in tandum with the GPU but the Cell is infact also a GPU ..that's not marketing speak it is what it is.

Yeah, and you can use a standard desktop quad-core to do software rendering too, and it looks about as good as that Cell rendering demo (i.e. rubbish compared to modern GPUs) You'd still call Intel's quad-cores CPUs, right? To qualify as a GPU it has to be massively parallel, have some fixed-function hardware to accelerate setup, and support a graphics API. Not one commercially available product using the Cell uses it for rendering like a GPU.