@MikeB

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MikeB wrote: @Lou Quote: So the PS3 had to "dumb down" the # of objects, but the 360 can support better textures and animation/rendering on them. That's the opposite of what developers say regarding number of objects on screen. The PS3 GPU is adequate and is about just as powerful as the 360 GPU with regard to screen refresh in many cases (in some cases the RSX is more powerful and under other circumstances the Xenos). However the GPU was picked and designed to not overlap too much with the strongpoints of the Cell architecture. The Cell is far more suitable / flexible for many graphics related tasks, however this works very differently as compared to on the PC / 360, hence there are some issues related to that when designed a cross platform game amongst others. Really, take try Uncharted 2. That will put things into perspective. The dual Cell idea was from the very early days. The RSX is far more powerful and dedicated than the Cell for some graphics tasks. There could have been potential for fully raytraced games, but that would have complicated games design (and porting of legacy game engines) for such a PS3 a lot more than is currently the case.

Really, you don't know what you are talking about. There was no dual-Cell idea only Sony's hubris into thinking Cell would be able to do it all...and RSX is atleast 1/2 a generation behind Xenos. Managing objects (not visually mind you) is a cpu task. Rendering objects is a gpu task. PS3's weak link is the gpu.

@MikeB

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The PS3 GPU is adequate and is about just as powerful as the 360 GPU with regard to screen refresh in many cases (in some cases the RSX is more powerful and under other circumstances the Xenos).

Name that other circumstances. Unless a game doesn't have any texture operations, any RSX's pixel shader's peak performance numbers are void.

Due to lack the of decoupled texture and pixel shader design, RSX's pixel shader's stalls during a texture operation. Like NVIDIA's CUDA GpGPUs, ATI Xenos has decoupled texture and shader unit design.

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However the GPU was picked and designed to not overlap too much with the strongpoints of the Cell architecture

Fixing RSX's design issues reduces CELL's compute resource. I wonder why CELL was allocated for Early-Z type functions while ATI Xenos and DX10 GPUs includes this feature as standard.

Radeon X1900 + CELL combo would have been a stream computing monster i.e. Fold@Home CELL + Fold@Home GPU1.

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The RSX is far more powerful and dedicated than the Cell for some graphics tasks. There could have been potential for fully raytraced games, but that would have complicated games design (and porting of legacy game engines) for such a PS3, a lot more than is currently the case.

Raytracing?

(Click for full size)


http://www.tgdaily.com/content/view/38145/135/
"Radeon 4800 supports a 100% ray-traced pipeline".
Note the tessellation unit's usage for raytracing. ATI Xenos includes a tessellation unit.

Last edited by _Steve_ on 23-Sep-2009 at 10:21 PM.
Last edited by Hammer on 23-Sep-2009 at 02:00 PM.
Last edited by Hammer on 23-Sep-2009 at 01:58 PM.

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@MikeB

Quote:

However the GPU was picked and designed to not overlap too much with the strongpoints of the Cell architecture

And of course for cost reasons. The PS3 was already a cost bloated console. Moving up a generation to equal or better the Xenos would have meant more costs, read losses, for Sony.