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Sony has been toting the unparreled power of it's new Cell's Processor for years now. Claiming that the PS3 will run circles around the XBOX 360's core setup. Well IBM the chips creator recently put the little fella through the paces and the result may surprise you. Assuming you can read engineer!

At this year's E3 (or thereabouts) Sony proclaimed that their processor could achieve 200GFLOPS! However, according to IBM's white paper, only 155.5 GFLOPS was actually achieved (Table 4). BUT, IBM's tests used all 8 SPEs. The PS3 will only use 7 SPE's, due to manufacturing yield issues.

The efficiency of the Cell is 75.9% (Table 4), with of a theoretical peak of 201GFLOPs (Figure 5)--running 8 SPEs at 25.12GFLOPS apiece (Table 2). Similarly, the theoretical peak for the PS3's processor will be 176GFLOPS, using 7 SPEs at 25.12GFLOPS apiece. Assuming the same 75.9% effieciency, we could easily interpolate the PS3's Cell to be capable of 133.6GFLOPS.

The take home message is that with the PS3 being cabable of 133.6 GFLOPS and the Xbox 360 being capable of 115.2 GFLOPS, the PS3 is not nearly as far ahead of the Xbox 360 as we were lead to believe. we should expect relatively similar power coming from both consoles, processor power, and ease of programming all considered.

Bottomline is that the Cell isn't going to lap the XBOX 360 in terms of power. Ultimately it will be up to the developers to push each machine to it's limits, not the CPU.

Somehow, this does not acually surprise me that the PS3 specs would be overinflated. Seems par for the course for Sony.

PS3 not as powerful as Sony said. wrote: Bottomline is that the Cell isn't going to lap the XBOX 360 in terms of power. Ultimately it will be up to the developers to push each machine to it's limits, not the CPU.

ggs wrote:And CPU is not nearly as important as GPU grunt

Vendetta wrote:

ggs wrote:And CPU is not nearly as important as GPU grunt

And, naturally, ATi says theirs is better. It certainly sounds like the unified shader and funky memory architecture will give the ATi part the advantage (and their experience with it will help when it comes to making WGF 2.0 parts, as that's essentially what their X360 chip is).

Master of Ossus wrote:

Vendetta wrote:

ggs wrote:And CPU is not nearly as important as GPU grunt

And, naturally, ATi says theirs is better. It certainly sounds like the unified shader and funky memory architecture will give the ATi part the advantage (and their experience with it will help when it comes to making WGF 2.0 parts, as that's essentially what their X360 chip is).

ATi will have to forgive me for being skeptical, since their latest computer cards were pieces of shit next to their Nvidia competitors.

Ace Pace wrote:

Master of Ossus wrote:

Vendetta wrote: And, naturally, ATi says theirs is better. It certainly sounds like the unified shader and funky memory architecture will give the ATi part the advantage (and their experience with it will help when it comes to making WGF 2.0 parts, as that's essentially what their X360 chip is).

ATi will have to forgive me for being skeptical, since their latest computer cards were pieces of shit next to their Nvidia competitors.

Anyone else noticed that while nVidia was developing the Xbox GPU their desktop cards sucked(FX line) and now ATi has a sucky GPU while their developing the Xenos. That said, nVidia had an awesome GPU so hopefully ATi will continue with that.

Praxis wrote:

Ace Pace wrote:

Master of Ossus wrote: ATi will have to forgive me for being skeptical, since their latest computer cards were pieces of shit next to their Nvidia competitors.

Anyone else noticed that while nVidia was developing the Xbox GPU their desktop cards sucked(FX line) and now ATi has a sucky GPU while their developing the Xenos. That said, nVidia had an awesome GPU so hopefully ATi will continue with that.

Yeah, but the XBox GPU ended up being based off the Geforce 3, not their FX line.

Last I heard, the PS3 GPU is based off the Geforce 7800.

Admiral Valdemar wrote:It's high-time they got innovating rather than giving us ever more realistic looking fucking driving or shooting games.

Admiral Valdemar wrote:Am I the only one who couldn't give a shit? You can have the shiniest graphics out there, but if you have fuck all gameplay, you've just lost yourself a customer.

The Xbox was more powerful than the PS2 or GameCube, yet, the last two had games that appealed. The Xbox just looked crap in my eyes, and still does.

It's high-time they got innovating rather than giving us ever more realistic looking fucking driving or shooting games.

Admiral Valdemar wrote:Am I the only one who couldn't give a shit? You can have the shiniest graphics out there, but if you have fuck all gameplay, you've just lost yourself a customer. The Xbox was more powerful than the PS2 or GameCube, yet, the last two had games that appealed. The Xbox just looked crap in my eyes, and still does.

It's high-time they got innovating rather than giving us ever more realistic looking fucking driving or shooting games.

Praxis wrote:
Not true- consumers are stupid. These days, oftentimes, visuals are more important than scripts in movies, and visuals are more important than gameplay in games.

If you have crap gameplay, you SHOULD lose yourself customers. Unfortunately, the average gamer is not that intelligent, and buys whatever has "teh grafix!!!111one".

At least, American consumers are stupid. Japanese seem to care more about gameplay.

Agreed. I never bought one because the only games the XBox had that interested me, I could already get on my PC. And very few of the games actually interested me.

Consumers pay for "realistic looking driving and shooting games", so why should they care bothering to innovate? Innovation is risky!

SirNitram wrote:The 'CONSUMERS WILL ALWAYS PAY FOR BETTER GRAPHICS!' kind of hits a roadblock doing 60 when you realize the X-Box, the best graphics-equipped of the current(Last?) generation, scored less of a market share than the Gamecube. And the Cube was declared an outright failure.

Admiral Valdemar wrote:Am I the only one who couldn't give a shit? You can have the shiniest graphics out there, but if you have fuck all gameplay, you've just lost yourself a customer. The Xbox was more powerful than the PS2 or GameCube, yet, the last two had games that appealed. The Xbox just looked crap in my eyes, and still does.

It's high-time they got innovating rather than giving us ever more realistic looking fucking driving or shooting games.

Praxis wrote:

SirNitram wrote:The 'CONSUMERS WILL ALWAYS PAY FOR BETTER GRAPHICS!' kind of hits a roadblock doing 60 when you realize the X-Box, the best graphics-equipped of the current(Last?) generation, scored less of a market share than the Gamecube. And the Cube was declared an outright failure.

Not in the United States though. The XBox failed miserably in Japan. It did well in the States and even outsold the PS2 a few quarters.

And actually, the XBox surpassed the GameCube's market share in 2005. XBox got 16%. GameCube got 14%.

However, your point is still valid. The PS2 sold more overall, everywhere. When it comes to games though, I see a LOT of crappy big-name games with really good graphics being advertised and considered more popular more than good games with lesser graphics. It seems companies make more money slapping a big name on the title, giving it good graphics, and shoving it out the door, rather than giving it depth.

Nephtys wrote:For every Disgaea or Katamari you get, you'll also get six Dynasty Warrior sequels, the 'Battlestar Galactica' game, or Catwoman. And they sell well enough to offset the pathetic development costs. Thus, money is made and chumps are satisfied.