@wegster

Quote:

Bioshock - great game, once again, another game better than R2 in my opinion.

Microsoft paid for this to be timed exclusive. Complain to Microsoft all you want, I doubt they will listen...

Bioshock is a great and well polished game, great alternative horror atmosphere with many well pre-scripted events and story telling! But in terms of shooting fun and of course online, for me Resistance 2 is well above that game.

For example the helicopter crash site part of Resistance 2, so much is going on on screen at once. It feels like a full blown war, Bioshock provides a very different game experience with its much smaller but well polished environments. Or for example the Marauder or Mother Spider make Big Daddy look like a Dwarf Daddy in comparison. It's hard to directly compare these two games.

First IGN recommended Resistance 2 above Gears 2 and now rather unexpectedly for me Gametrailers (usually heavily 360 biased) awards Resistance 2 as best FPS of 2008.

The graphics assets may not be as polished as Metal Gear Solid 4, Uncharted: Drake's Fortune and even Gears of War 2. But the game's graphics makes up for this in terms of scale and on screen activity, from most perspectives it's well a better game than Resistance 1 was. Online is far more extensive and better.

IMO best FPS on the PS3, until the arrival of Killzone 2.

@wegster

Quote:

I've left them on for weeks on end

Regarding reliability, here in the Netherlands over 250,000 PS3s have been sold (Benelux total is 500,000). Of the Dutch units 68 were repaired out of 1 year manufacturer's warranty. These may mostly have been people who lost their receipts or their retailers went out of business or something like that, as for Europe 2 years warranty is standard at the retailer's end. Here in the Netherlands it's even a minimal of 3 years warranty for the PS3.

70% of the failures were Blu-Ray laser issues, the other 30% are mostly overheating related (like Folding 24/7 or dust blocking the vents, etc). The PS3 performs really reliable, but is not unbreakable.

Quote:

few exclusives

Sony has the most exclusives lined up and far more exclusives amongst its top 25 sold games than Microsoft has.

Quote:

games showing up much later than PC or XBox, if at all

So far all best sold 360 third party games (top 25) have seen ports or sequels on the PS3 as well.

Quote:

performance versus both a reasonable PC as well as 360

The best performing games are on the PS3, both lag free online and impressiveness of single player.

Quote:

overpriced accessories and Video On Demand, effectively making them a no-op/not for me.

Yes, but the 360.... My cheap DS even comes with Wi-Fi. 59 Euro for Wi-Fi on the 360? 80 Euros for a 120 GB 360 harddrive? You can easily get a 320 GB harddrive for the PS3 for that price. No free online play on the 360, you need a subscription. On the PS3 you can easily use cheap keyboards and mice.

The 360 HD DVD drive was overpriced, considering bad load times and a format which was almost certain to fail.

Quote:

dropping of PS2 emulation/support

I heard an emulator is in the works.

Last edited by MikeB on 28-Dec-2008 at 09:07 AM.
Last edited by MikeB on 28-Dec-2008 at 08:53 AM.

@MikeB

Quote:

The best performing games are on the PS3, both lag free online and impressiveness of single player.

I know we discussed this two years ago when these threads at AW.net were at their most active. But I still fail to see, as I did then, PS3 having the clear difference in audio visual performance compared to Xbox 360. In fact, a multiplatform after another has been performing better on Xbox 360 or offering improved graphics or factual resolution over PS3. Sure, there are opposite examples as well and details that differ platform to platform, but this was not something PS2 ever did against Xbox 1 - latter was always clearly better.If PS3 is so superior, after two years now, it isn't really shining through - more like glimmering a little in an exclusive title or few - it should be superior on every single title (excluding poor conversion or two) and it just simply isn't.

This isn't the performance tour de force Sony marketing lead us to believe in post-Xbox 360 launch, pre-PS3 launch. "The next generation didn't start when Sony says so", it started when Microsoft launched. It is pretty clear now that both are playing in the same ballpark as far as performance goes. Sure, PS3 has the media advantage and 7.1 audio and probably more MIPS, but the differences in architecture, lesser memory, loading times etc. are actually still contributing to delayed launches and performance that is not always on par with Xbox 360 (from a box that was supposed to be superior in every way) etc...

Quote:

Sony has the most exclusives lined up and far more exclusives amongst its top 25 sold games than Microsoft has.

Maybe a signal that multiplatforms aren't a reason to use/get PS3?

At this point I believe price and exclusives will make or break PS3. Xbox 360 is simply too solid a target to compete on multiplatforms alone and PS3 isn't making up the difference in audio visual performance, a significant positive difference just isn't there on multiplatformers. So, Sony needs to get the price down and exclusives up. Maybe then people will get those multiplatformers for PS3 too, because quality alone is not a reason to do so.

On the other hand, Xbox 360 is not clearly superior to PS3 either - so all the more reason to own both this generation.

@jtsiren

Quote:

This isn't the performance tour de force Sony marketing lead us to believe in post-Xbox 360 launch, pre-PS3 launch. "The next generation didn't start when Sony says so", it started when Microsoft launched. It is pretty clear now that both are playing in the same ballpark as far as performance goes. Sure, PS3 has the media advantage and 7.1 audio and probably more MIPS, but the differences in architecture, lesser memory, loading times etc. are actually still contributing to delayed launches and performance that is not always on par with Xbox 360 (from a box that was supposed to be superior in every way) etc...

"The next generation didn't start when Sony says so" marketing is a joke when you consider the RSX GPU is based yesteryears Geforce 7 series.

_________________
Ryzen 9 7900X, DDR5-6000 64 GB RAM, GeForce RTX 4080 16 GB
Amiga 1200 (Rev 1D1, KS 3.2, PiStorm32lite/RPi 4B 4GB/Emu68)
Amiga 500 (Rev 6A ECS, KS 3.2, PiStorm/RPi 3A+/Emu68)

@MikeB

Quote:

MikeB wrote: @BrianK Quote: When the Cell was talked about it was said to be targeting 4Ghz for speed. Unfortunately by the time of the PS3 launch this was reduced to 3.2Ghz. Sometimes you have to wonder where all this "wisdom" originates from.... The specs posted here from March 2005 clearly state 3.2 Ghz. it was however never a secret higher clocked Cell with more processors, new features and more memory will become available in due time. http://ps3.ign.com/articles/614/614783p1.html That's long before the PS3 released, over 2 years before the platform launched here in Europe. Sometimes you also hear XBots claim the RSX was a last minute add-on, but that's also not the case, for example: From 2004: http://www.gamesindustry.biz/articles/nvidia-partners-with-sony-on-playstation-3-graphics-hardware From 2005: http://www.anandtech.com/tradeshows/showdoc.aspx?i=2423&p=3 IMO take things written by XBots regarding the history and development of the PS3 with a grain of salt and sometimes a bucket load.

Sony staff were quoted in PlayStation Magazine saying that the "RSX shares a lot of inner workings with NVIDIA 7800 which is based on G70 architecture. Since the G70 is capable of carrying out 136 shader operations per clock cycle, the RSX was expected to feature the same number of parallel pixel and vertex shader pipelines as the G70, which contains 24 pixel and 8 vertex pipelines. [2]

NVIDIA CEO Jen-Hsun Huang stated during Sony's pre-show press conference at E3 2005 that the RSX would be more powerful than two GeForce 6800 Ultra video cards combined. [2]

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/RSX_'Reality_Synthesizer'

http://game.watch.impress.co.jp/docs/20060329/3dps309.htm
RSX GPU is "NV47 based." NV47 was a code-name for G70, the GPU better known as the GeForce 7800.

Compared to Geforce 7800 GTX, RSX is a cut down in terms of ROPS and primary VRAM bandwidth. The RSX is not even based on a half baked G80 architecture.

Refer to nVidia's paper on Geforce 7 family vs Geforce 8 family. Refer to page 31 (PDF page 39) about "Decoupled Shader Math and Texture Operations".

With this design flaw, all of peek GFLOPS numbers for RSX are also flawed.

Ever wondered why the majority PS3 games are around 720p?

Xbots indeed…(sigh)...

PS; poking fun at PlayBots is entertaining….

Last edited by Hammer on 28-Dec-2008 at 12:42 PM.
Last edited by Hammer on 28-Dec-2008 at 12:40 PM.
Last edited by Hammer on 28-Dec-2008 at 12:39 PM.
Last edited by Hammer on 28-Dec-2008 at 12:21 PM.

_________________
Ryzen 9 7900X, DDR5-6000 64 GB RAM, GeForce RTX 4080 16 GB
Amiga 1200 (Rev 1D1, KS 3.2, PiStorm32lite/RPi 4B 4GB/Emu68)
Amiga 500 (Rev 6A ECS, KS 3.2, PiStorm/RPi 3A+/Emu68)

@minator

Quote:

I think Intle have got it wrong with Larrabee, by making the system coherent (i.e. using caches instead of LS) they've given themselves a major problem, cache latency will be horrendous.

Geforce 8 series also has L1 and L2 cache.

_________________
Ryzen 9 7900X, DDR5-6000 64 GB RAM, GeForce RTX 4080 16 GB
Amiga 1200 (Rev 1D1, KS 3.2, PiStorm32lite/RPi 4B 4GB/Emu68)
Amiga 500 (Rev 6A ECS, KS 3.2, PiStorm/RPi 3A+/Emu68)

@minator

Quote:

minator wrote: @BrianK Quote: One of the better ideas I've seen to save Sony is a PS3.5 (called PS4). When the Wii2 and Xbox3 launch Sony should be ready to update the PS3 with the latest videochipset and add more memory. Sony could have a low cost PS3 and high cost PS4. What's the point? Upping the GPU without the upping the CPU only leaves you with bottlenecks. The next gen will be a lot easier and cheaper than this gen, they don't have to design a completely new architecture this time, they just need to improve the current one. With the Xbox possibly going with Larrabee there's no way Sony can not improve the CPU.

Depends if Microsoft can obtain the same licence IP core conditions as ATI’s IP core.

_________________
Ryzen 9 7900X, DDR5-6000 64 GB RAM, GeForce RTX 4080 16 GB
Amiga 1200 (Rev 1D1, KS 3.2, PiStorm32lite/RPi 4B 4GB/Emu68)
Amiga 500 (Rev 6A ECS, KS 3.2, PiStorm/RPi 3A+/Emu68)

@jtsiren

Quote:

I know we discussed this two years ago when these threads at AW.net were at their most active. But I still fail to see, as I did then, PS3 having the clear difference in audio visual performance compared to Xbox 360.

I don't know if you have a sound system capable of 7.1 lossless audio, if not you are not going to hear much of a difference.

To re-quote myself from 2005 regarding the PS3:

"It will probably take some time before developers manage to get the most out of this platform, as has for example also been the case with the classic Amiga chipsets. The early Amiga games don't compare well to the complex graphics used by for instance game like Elfmania or Lion Heart."

I promise you Killzone 2 and Uncharted 2 will shatter any remaining doubt regarding 360 vs PS3 technical differences.

Quote:

In fact, a multiplatform after another has been performing better on Xbox 360 or offering improved graphics or factual resolution over PS3.

Let's take the recently released Tomb Raider Underworld for both 360 and PS3 as an example.

Rendering resolution on the 360 576p with AA.
Rendering resolution on the PS3 720p with AA.

A coder stated the game was assets wise (audio and graphics) entirely build around the 360, they started working on the 360 version first because the PS3 came later. He stated beforehand they won't be able to better Uncharted's graphics, because that game is PS3 optimised.

Regarding multi-processing approaches they implemented this the way of the Cell, he stated Sony's approaches for this are much better for performance on the 360 as well, much better than anything Microsoft recommends (which also hampers PS3 porting).

Tomb Raider Underworld is a 360 optimised game, they do not get the most out of the PS3. It's a bit like Ocean's New Zealand Story for the Amiga and Atari ST, where the game was assets wise build for the Atari ST's limited colors.

The PS3 is more powerful than the 360, it's still similar in many regards, yet significantly different in other aspects (such as Blu-Ray vs DVD or Xenon core vs SPU requires different care. A bit like the CD32 got various Amiga 500 ports, where such games sometimes used 1/700th of available disc space and did not fully utilize the CD32's capabilities.

Another comment from a multi-platform developing company, this time Team Ninja's boss, the company that brought us Ninja Gaiden Sigma on the PS3 and Ninja Gaiden II for the 360.

"For any developer that's been working on all of the platforms that are available today,I think they would agree that the PlayStation 3 is the most powerful system out there"

@jtsiren

Quote:

lesser memory, loading times etc. are actually still contributing to delayed launches

The PS3 has a big memory advantage technically. It's uses Blu-Ray discs, better bandwidth and has a default harddrive, in other words a streaming monster.

You should try awesome games like Motorstorm: Pacific Rift, Uncharted: Drake's Fortune and the upcoming Killzone 2 and Heavy Rain. They don't require a harddrive install and rely a lot on advanced streaming.

Remember the PS3 can read Blu-Ray discs faster on average than a 360 can read dual layer 6.8 GB 360 DVDs. In addition every PS3 comes with a default harddrive to help with streaming.

@Hammer

Quote:

Ever wondered why the majority PS3 games are around 720p?

Simple answer, to maintain good enough frame rates.

The more complex answer, the RSX is more powerful than the Xenos with regard to amount of shader ops which can be achieved. The GPU was designed to take advantage of the Cell's SPUs, so it's relatively weak at some graphics uses where the SPUs can really shine and are more flexible than GPUs.

Devs are more and more taking advantage of its design. But high resolution without properly high quality enough assets isn't that useful. This is where Blu-Ray comes into play, it can hold and provide lots of high quality graphics data. Streaming for this must be optimised and developers are getting there. Wardevil is being designed to take good advantage of the SPUs and Blu-Ray disc streaming, they target FullHD 1080p graphics at 60 FPS combined with 7.1 lossles audio.

Rome wasn't build in a day, many modern game engines were in development for well over a decade and they are still working on this as well. The PS3 architecture is very advanced and takes a lot of development to take optimal advantage of.

Last edited by MikeB on 28-Dec-2008 at 02:09 PM.

@MikeB

Quote:

I must have missed this outcry over specs, I couldn't find anything regarding this disappointment online.

I'd be very surprised if there was nothing there, they were showing slides of a 4.6GHz Cell before it was launched and IIRC the patent says 4.0GHz.

Quote:

The Cell was known to become a powerful supercomputer chip as well, Cell specs can differ amongst different uses. Be that scientific supercomputer usage, game console or upscaling HDTVs.

Well it is remarkably similar to a Cray 2...

_________________
Whyzzat?

@wegster

Quote:

And of course, the NetFlix players..last I checked, the HD one wasn't yet released,

Roku Netflix gets HD upgrade "The upgrade brings the Roku box up to speed with the Xbox 360, TiVo HD DVRs, and Samsung BD-P2500 and BD-P2550 Blu-ray players, all of which have been upgraded to support Netflix HD streams over the past few weeks. (The remaining device, the LG BD300 Blu-ray player, should be getting its own HD firmware upgrade soon"

I agree a pay for title option ($7 Sony) compared to others (Netflix).

@BrianK

Quote:

And of course there has been and will be Cell improvements. 6Ghz speeds have been talked about. As have Cells with more SPEs. Significantly increasing the double floats is shipping. I'd suspect they'd look at Power7 or Power8 for the PPE derivative. Certainly when the PS4 comes an improved Cell will be on short list of processors to use.

I suspect it'll be on a shortlist of 1.

Quote:

Did you see earlier this year at ISSCC IBM showed the 45nm Cell? It supposedly uses around 20Watts or ~40% less than the 90nm process. Not quite a linear scaling but good enough for the PS3 purposes.

The 45nm Cell seems to be around 35W, they wont get to the 20W until 32nm.
The original 8 SPE, 90nm Cell was 110W.

It doesn't appear the 45nm Cell has appeared in the PS3 yet, I reckon they may be holding them for a new lower cost "PSThree" sometime in the new year.

_________________
Whyzzat?

@jtsiren

Quote:

Interesting times, as always. I certainly didn't predict either the Xbox 360's crash in numbers a year ago (I didn't predict such early gains for PS3), nor the recent impressive rise (Christmas 2008 was supposed to go for Sony, wasn't it?) - so I don't know what will happen!

I was one who predicted Christmas 2008 would be when the PS3 would pull ahead of the 360 into 2nd place.

I think the answer here is economy. People in the US have cut back spending due to economic worries. If you want a game console then there 2 consoles with lower prices and more games than the PS3. The Wii was clearly the winner the Christmas.

I don't know what'll happen either. If the ecomony stays as it is or gets worse, if the PS3 doesn't get a price cut, and if Nintendo or Microsoft do another price cut the PS3 will again be in 3rd play for 2009. There's enough uncertainity and factors at play here that my guess is that positions will not change in 2009.

@minator

Quote:

'd be very surprised if there was nothing there, they were showing slides of a 4.6GHz Cell before it was launched and IIRC the patent says 4.0GHz.

I found near to nothing, just this insightful posting before the PS3 specs were announced:

"ps3 is NOT 4.6Ghz... nowhere has said this... NOTHING .. nada... just PLAIN NO.

just because cell CAN run at 4.6Ghz... doesn't mean ps3 WILL run at 4.6Ghz "

@ minator

Another quote:

"the clockspeed for Xbox Next CPU is rumored / reportedly 3.5 or 3.5+ GHz.
but the Processors based on Cell are *officially* going to be clocked at 4.6
GHz. I'll wait til it actually happens. not holding my breath. I predict
3+ GHz Cell but not 4 GHz."

The PS3 specs were known well before the PS3 and 360 launched, the 360 specs announcement were far more a last minute thing compared to the PS3. I have found no major outcry amongst people on this whatsoever.

TeamXBox and the Inquirer once did some bad reporting 2 months before the official PS3 specifications announcement. But it was know they aren't always the most solid sources.

@MikeB

I'll try to get more time to respond you in detail later.

Quote:

Let's take the recently released Tomb Raider Underworld for both 360 and PS3 as an example. Rendering resolution on the 360 576p with AA. Rendering resolution on the PS3 720p with AA.

And GTA IV is an opposite example, right? Less resolution on the PS3.

I do get it, PS3 requires different approach from developers due to architecture etc. I do believe it has more "MIPS" or whatever we'd like to call it. But practically speaking, the difference between multiplatform ports during Xbox 1 vs. PS2 was always clearly in favor of the former, PS3 vs. Xbox 360 is obviously not as clear-cut.

Maybe a few more years down the road the differences will be more apparent? But here we are two years since we last discussed this and it has not - clearly - happened yet, there are still instances pointing to both directions....

I clearly had set my hopes for PS3 higher, it did come out year (in Europe over year) later than when I purchased my Xbox 360 and a year is a long time in technology.

Last edited by jtsiren on 28-Dec-2008 at 04:40 PM.

@jtsiren

GTA IV is a strange example. It appears or it is at least claimed the PS3 version is running at a 360 optimised resolution (suitable for tiling).

GTA IV's development was lead on the 360, assets wise the game is entirely 360 centric. I believe the game was intended to run on both systems in 640p, but the 360 version saw some 'last minute' changes to the engine (as assets wise it's targeted for 640p there probably isn't much of a difference with regard to details). Instead of normal GPU AA the game uses some other techniques with the PS3 version.

Here the original claims (note the 630p was corrected to 640p):

"it's 630p (1120x630)
regardless PS3 media look better for me, the light and atmosphere is more real (maybe HDR vs X360 MDR, post-process...), i agree with global reviews feeling but more comparison screenshots would be good it's interesting, it shown that number of pixel isn't enough for determine better visual"

"no, 360 version is clearly 720p AAx2 but good post-process filter on PS3 version do a good job for hide aliasing and imrove visual, and the little more blurry aspect with more hot tint make a more cinematic feeling, probably what some tester like on PS3 version, and with less pop-in"

On the other hand GamesRadar claimed to have compared both versions without any post-processing on (including AA), they stated they saw no difference at all. So it could be both versions render in 640p and some post rendering effect on the 360 hides scaling patterns in one way or the other.

Last edited by MikeB on 28-Dec-2008 at 06:16 PM.
Last edited by MikeB on 28-Dec-2008 at 06:15 PM.

@MikeB
Quote:

Simple answer, to maintain good enough frame rates.

Erm, 30 FPS in UT3.

Quote:

The more complex answer, the RSX is more powerful than the Xenos with regard to amount of shader ops which can be achieved.

Did you read NVIDIA’s paper on Geforce 8 vs Geforce 7? The design flaws cuts the peek shader/math operations on Geforce 7. With NVIDIA's Geforce 8 vs Geforce 7 paper in mind, any theoretical GFLOPs numbers on Geforce 7 family is fundamentally flawed. Ignore NVIDIA at your own peril.

Some pixel shader operations (e.g. HDR) on Xenos are being done 192 FP units on the secondary GPU. Did you forget Xenos's secondary GPU?

Quote:

The GPU was designed to take advantage of the Cell's SPUs, so it's relatively weak at some graphics uses where the SPUs can really shine and are more flexible than GPUs.

A better match for CELL would have been Radeon X1900 based i.e. i.e. better Z-Cull, better branch, threaded pixel shaders and 'etc'. All it needs is vertex resource boost.

Carefull with "more flexible" with GPUs. Such statements are true against Radeon X1900. Atm, Fold@Home GPU2 is processing greater work types than Fold@Home CELL client. Another example, SPEs only supports static branch while G80 supports dynamic branch. Both SPEs and RSX (1)are inherently weak at branch.

With Geforce 7 design, the RSX has to use SPEs e.g. limited vertex shading resource, lack of Early Z cull.

Remember, with 5 SPEs equals 20 pixel shader enabled Geforce 7800 GTX (due to the design flaws, it's peek pixel shader performance is already been reduced). PS3 only has 6 SPEs avail for user land programs.

1. Read NVIDIA’s paper on Geforce 8 vs Geforce 7 on branch.

Fold@Home GPU1(ATI) + Fold@Home CELL(STI) would made the alternative PS3 a programmable floating point beast.

Last edited by Hammer on 28-Dec-2008 at 08:35 PM.
Last edited by Hammer on 28-Dec-2008 at 08:33 PM.
Last edited by Hammer on 28-Dec-2008 at 07:58 PM.

_________________
Ryzen 9 7900X, DDR5-6000 64 GB RAM, GeForce RTX 4080 16 GB
Amiga 1200 (Rev 1D1, KS 3.2, PiStorm32lite/RPi 4B 4GB/Emu68)
Amiga 500 (Rev 6A ECS, KS 3.2, PiStorm/RPi 3A+/Emu68)

@MikeB, @jtsiren

Quote:

Tomb Raider Underworld is a 360 optimised game, they do not get the most out of the PS3. It's a bit like Ocean's New Zealand Story for the Amiga and Atari ST, where the game was assets wise build for the Atari ST's limited colors.

Refer to http://forum.beyond3d.com/showthread.php?t=46241
for "List of Game Rendering Resolutions".

Depending on the game, some game has advantages on Xbox360 and some games has advantages on PS3. It mirrors NVIDIA ("The Way It's Meant To Be Played ")vs ATI ("Get In the Game") in PC land NOT Amiga vs Atari ST.

Since you claimed your not a PS3 fanboy, I wonder who is PS3 fanboy?

_________________
Ryzen 9 7900X, DDR5-6000 64 GB RAM, GeForce RTX 4080 16 GB
Amiga 1200 (Rev 1D1, KS 3.2, PiStorm32lite/RPi 4B 4GB/Emu68)
Amiga 500 (Rev 6A ECS, KS 3.2, PiStorm/RPi 3A+/Emu68)