Sony goes batshit insane

Praxis · Post by **Praxis** » 2005-06-15 11:50am

I still don't see ANY indication that the hard drive is built in.

ggs, we weren't saying there isn't a hard drive, we're saying the hard drive is sold seperately and the default $300 box does not include it, just like the PS3.

We know the hard drive is detachable, so saying "The hard drive expands the experience" could easily be a walking advertisement for the sold-seperately hard drive.

HyperionX · Post by **HyperionX** » 2005-06-15 03:54pm

ggs wrote:
HyperionX wrote:
ggs wrote: Yup. And in the PS3's case 1/2 of that is actually exclusively the graphics card. The CPU cant address it IIRC.
Says who? I believe Ken Kutaragi or some other Sony official is on record claiming otherwise.
Could you post a link to that? While I havent been able to find any quotes to backup my claim I wouldnt mind being proved wrong.

Sure

.

CELL and RSX have close relationship and both can access the main memory and the VRAM transparently. CELL can access the VRAM just like the main memory, and RSX can use the main memory as a frame buffer. They are just separated for the main usage, and do not really have distinction.

http://www.psinext.com/index.php?catego ... ticleid=36

Stark · Post by **Stark** » 2005-06-15 06:49pm

Whats the angle? Why are they intentionally creating confusing with regard to HDDs? Can't they just tell us, or is it a wierd political game of oneupsmanship?

SPOOFE · Post by **SPOOFE** » 2005-06-15 07:01pm

Why are they intentionally creating confusing with regard to HDDs?

If they don't include a HDD, they can save a chunk of change on each console sold. However, if they flatly state "We're not going to include a hard drive", then all Microsoft has to do is say, "We will!" and then MS has a PR win. At that point, Sony will either A: be viewed as the inferior product for not having a HDD, or B: will be viewed as "following" MS if they reverse position and include one.

Microsoft is playing similar games.

Wing Commander MAD · Post by **Wing Commander MAD** » 2005-06-19 03:56pm

My newest XBOX Magazine says that the 360 comes standard with a 20GB hard drive that is detachable and upgradeable. Take this as you will considering it is from the official magazine and not an independant third party. This is from the Q & A section following the MaximumPC article.

Also, the overall system floating-point performance of one teraflop seems to be confirmed in one of the recent Game Informer articles on the 360.

Praxis · Post by **Praxis** » 2005-06-21 06:02pm

Yup, but thats counting the graphics card and an extremely optimized in-order processor.

IIRC 90% of that teraflop is the graphics card.

SPOOFE · Post by **SPOOFE** » 2005-06-21 06:17pm

I don't get you, Praxis. Are you saying it's somehow a BAD thing that MS optimized their architecture to achieve a teraflop? Why does it matter HOW they do it?

Ace Pace · Post by **Ace Pace** » 2005-06-21 06:22pm

SPOOFE wrote:I don't get you, Praxis. Are you saying it's somehow a BAD thing that MS optimized their architecture to achieve a teraflop? Why does it matter HOW they do it?

No, hes saying that its a number that has no meaning, with most of it being used by a graphics card and irrelevent to gameplay, while the rest is stunted(as I understand it).

SPOOFE · Post by **SPOOFE** » 2005-06-21 06:29pm

How is it irrelevent to gameplay if it's achieved specifically by optimizing the system for games? It certainly wouldn't match a teraflop-rated general CPU, but nobody's trying to use it as a general CPU.

Praxis · Post by **Praxis** » 2005-06-21 08:11pm

SPOOFE wrote:I don't get you, Praxis. Are you saying it's somehow a BAD thing that MS optimized their architecture to achieve a teraflop? Why does it matter HOW they do it?

I'm saying that it doesn't have meaning in the conventional sense. Otherwise 9 of these systems would rival Virginia Tech's supercomputer.

At the same time Sony claims a 2 teraflop system performance for their system, so if we just take the claims at face value, the PS3 is twice as fast as the XBox 360. I HIGHLY doubt the difference is that much

SPOOFE · Post by **SPOOFE** » 2005-06-21 08:25pm

I'm saying that it doesn't have meaning in the conventional sense. Otherwise 9 of these systems would rival Virginia Tech's supercomputer.

But it's not being used in the conventional sense, as far as I know.

At the same time Sony claims a 2 teraflop system performance for their system, so if we just take the claims at face value, the PS3 is twice as fast as the XBox 360. I HIGHLY doubt the difference is that much

In which case it's a matter of honesty on the part of the company, not whether or not the actual number (whatever the actual number turns out to be) has any relevence.

Praxis · Post by **Praxis** » 2005-06-21 10:12pm

But that's precisely my point; that number is useless for comparing it to ANYTHING.

You can't compare it to PC's as it is not being used in the conventional sense, and you can't use it to compare it to the other consoles because one or both of them are exaggurating, so what use does the number give us other than trivia?

The Dark · Post by **The Dark** » 2005-06-21 11:33pm

Famitsu Magazine was told by Chatani on June 02 that the packaging of the hard drive had "yet to be decided." Also, it was noted that the hard drive is an optional storage solution.

Xon · Post by **Xon** » 2005-06-21 11:42pm

Praxis wrote:At the same time Sony claims a 2 teraflop system performance for their system, so if we just take the claims at face value, the PS3 is twice as fast as the XBox 360. I HIGHLY doubt the difference is that much

Any moron who takes Sony's PR numbers at face value is that; a moron.

Praxis · Post by **Praxis** » 2005-06-22 02:16am

Agreed, but I'd also say the same thing about Microsoft.

They're both really good at hyping. Though Sony is probably better. Remember the "Toy Story-like graphics" the PS2 could output?

SPOOFE · Post by **SPOOFE** » 2005-06-22 03:36pm

But that's precisely my point; that number is useless for comparing it to ANYTHING.

Except other consoles. Which is what the Xbox 360 is competing with. Coincidence? I think not.

Praxis · Post by **Praxis** » 2005-06-22 08:05pm

Except again, if the competitors are exaggurating the numbers (Sony) or not measuring the flop rating at all (Nintendo), then it's a useless comparison.

SPOOFE · Post by **SPOOFE** » 2005-06-22 08:18pm

Jesus, Praxis, I already addressed that. Do you selectively forget posts after you've read them? You're talking about an accuracy issue, not an inherent usability issue. Xbox 360 publishes their numbers for performance, numbers which their competition has already used. What other numbers should they arbitrarily use? Weight? Power consumption? Benchmarks for games that don't exist?

Praxis · Post by **Praxis** » 2005-06-22 10:49pm

I'm waiting for benchmarks before I make any decisions on graphics power.

The thing is, adding the processor and graphics card floating point op performance doesn't really give you a very accurate idea of the power. Why is it that you almost never see systems advertising their flop performance? I have never seen a graphics card manufacturer advertising "so-and-so many gigaflops".

SPOOFE · Post by **SPOOFE** » 2005-06-23 03:42pm

I'm waiting for benchmarks before I make any decisions on graphics power.

I'm certainly with you on that. The hype doesn't rattle me... I wanna see final performance, and what that performance means for game quality.

The thing is, adding the processor and graphics card floating point op performance doesn't really give you a very accurate idea of the power.

Perhaps not when comparing consoles to PC's or servers.

Why is it that you almost never see systems advertising their flop performance?

Apple has, for as long as I can remember. And consoles are more similar to Macs than PC's (closed architecture, all-in-one box, discouraging or preventing self-upgrades, etc.), so maybe that's where the flop rating system comes in.

Xon · Post by **Xon** » 2005-06-23 04:09pm

Praxis wrote:I'm waiting for benchmarks before I make any decisions on graphics power.

The thing is, adding the processor and graphics card floating point op performance doesn't really give you a very accurate idea of the power. Why is it that you almost never see systems advertising their flop performance? I have never seen a graphics card manufacturer advertising "so-and-so many gigaflops".

The "flops" rating is the most useless rating for anything remotely like realworld usage. Great for highly scientific stuff were they spend millions getting every bit of preformance out of it, but realtime stuff interacting with a use? Forget it.

Praxis · Post by **Praxis** » 2005-06-23 05:06pm

Apple has, but does anyone honestly believe Apple's benchmarks?

SPOOFE · Post by **SPOOFE** » 2005-06-23 05:29pm

Apple has, but does anyone honestly believe Apple's benchmarks?

It's not the poor Gigaflop's fault that everyone keeps lying about how many there are...

Oh well, point conceded. I feel like I was just nitpicking, anyway.

Post by **Mr Bean** » 2005-06-23 09:54pm

Apple's benchmarks as always are about as believeable as the Iraq Ministier of Truth and they both get thier numbers from the same source.\

And as noted before, we need REAL benchmarks, after all the system's have been modded to Linux and are running the same programs to get a good idea of true preformance.

Praxis · Post by **Praxis** » 2005-06-23 10:02pm

Agreed. Real benchmarks are needed. PS3 hard drive ships with Linux, the Rev and XBox 360 should hopefully be easy to mod (one firmware flash later...). Both have USB 2.0 plugs, read standard DVD's, and the Rev has a built in flash drive.

I think the PS3 will be very hard to benchmark though. It will perform absurbly good in some areas and absurbly bad in others.

And yeah, SPOOFE, it did feel like a nitpicking competition on both sides, didn't it? lol.