Interesting, the PS3 was initially designed NOT to have any graphics chip, everything was to be done on the cells. Now, developers are getting around to doing just that, using the cells for all of the graphics work and getting better results...

"The PS3 is truly an amazing piece of hardware that is surprising everyone as time passes. Digital Foundry recently conducted an interesting analysis on the tech used in the game Saboteur, which revealed that the PS3 is capable of producing something even a high-end PC graphics card has difficulty with."

"The Cell in conjunction with the GPU is capable of squeezing out 2.0 trillion floating point operations per second on the fly, which is super-computer worthy and out performs the Xbox 360’s 355 billion floating operation points/second. This is the type of tech running on the latest IBM Blades residing in our maximum security data centers near DC."

"Digital Foundry recently did an analysis showing that the post-processing tech, once thought to be MSAA, on the PS3 apparently is far more advanced than anything seen. Anti-aliasing or edge smoothing has always been a challenge even on the PC front.'

"The Xbox 360 can do up to 4x MSAA via the built in graphics card. However, the PS3 has an NVIDIA card which really doesn’t do much in the post-processing department as it was initially intended to be left off the console. The Cell processor was originally supposed to handle all graphics processing, but due to concerns that it would be difficult for the developers to program on, a decision was made to incorporate a limited graphics card. "

"Sony’s intent was for the developers to utilize the Cell processors eventually leaning off the graphics card crutch. We have seen developers like Naughty Dog who have mostly moved off the graphics card in the PS3 and are now utilizing the SPUs fully in the Cell processor as seen in Uncharted 2. According to DF, the developers for Saboteur also utilized one of the SPUs to do the post-processing work resulting in edge-smoothing beyond the capabilities of a 16x MSAA found on high-end PC graphics card."

"The PS3 rendition of Pandemic’s The Saboteur is different though. It’s special. It’s trying something new that’s never been seen before on console, or indeed PC, and its results are terrific. In a best-case scenario you get edge-smoothing that is beyond the effect of 16x multi-sampling anti-aliasing, effectively delivering an effect better than the capabilities of high-end GPUs without crippling performance. Compare and contrast with Xbox 360 hardware, which tops out at 4x MSAA."

http://gamer.blorge.com/2010/01/05/ps3-smoothing-beyond-that-of-high-end-pc-graphics-card/

Sorry to the developers, but in the day the PS3 can pull of Crysis maximum settings like graphics, I'll take a read at this dev statements....



And I think that won't happen, I don't know why...

^LOL are you serious? They're saying it can pull off good smoothing, not that is has PC-level graphics! -__- Maybe you should read before giving an uninformed opinion.

only time will tell whether what is said here is really true or not.

Yes, the article is about smoothing. Naughty Dog just uses the graphics chip to draw, all the effects are done with the spus. i don't think it will be farfetched to expect to see crysis quality graphics on the PS3, it hasn't been tried using this tech...until recently.

interesting read but we already know the ps3 is a beast...

Until someone can show otherwise (this article is a start) what has been consistently seen in multiplatform titles, is that the 360 has done superior anti-aliasing.  If the PS3 has some tricks up its sleve, it would be worth discussing those, irregardless if you think the PS3 is a "beast" or not.

hey richardhutnik pulling a multiplat is like grabbing a game on windows 95 and trying to play it on windows xp and complaining its inferior because of bugs due to compatibility issues, if a multiplat where to be re-written for both consoles and "optimized" i have no doubts which one would take the cake, and OP thats a good article not too much new though, recently i did a research paper for my college course over the cell broadband architecture and since 2007 all the articles said that it would be faster and more efficient than any processor out there, (its actually being utilized in the worlds second fastest computer in the world). but the thing is getting the talent to utilize it.

But, but the original article is on site that is on boycott list! No selfrespecting PS3 fan would want to read eurogamer article. ;D

Seriously, yes cell can handle floating point operations very well. And as it can be seen in original article anti-aliaising is nicely made in PS3 saboteur, but it has some downsides too as article says. It is much better than quincunx AA, which have been used in some games(actually quincunx is terrible). However PS3 can never handle crysis, because thats like trying to fit car into trash can, sorry.

So, this means that if a game is on the PC also, then the PC version would look the same as console versions?

Anyhow, we are talking about anti-aliasing here.  If there is some technique that will somehow make the PS3 anti-aliasing look better than the 360, it should be used.  But, developers haven't, because these techniques haven't gotten out.  There is no excuse to say, "Well all games developed across platforms look the same" because the PC versions usually look superior.   The only thing you can use to accurately measure how normal game development works, is to go multi-platform.  It is in the practical environment of this that you see what game libraries are like.

So, what I am saying is that it isn't a simple "slam dunk" to say the PS3 is clearly superior by a wide margin than the 360 (aka a "beast") if the games aren't showing it, and the information isn't getting out.  And yes, the PS3 and Cell do have awesome tricks in them.  But they need to get utilized to matter.  So, it is good to end up writing about such, such as here.