Quote:

In November, Wii sold 2.04 million units in the U.S., and going by previous hardware trends, the console should have outperformed that figure in December by a "significant margin" if supply were up to the task, Divnich said. "We still believe the Nintendo Wii would have sold north of 4 million units have supply and demand been in equilibrium."

http://www.edge-online.com/news/analyst-wii-sales-suffered-dec-supply

@BrianK

Quote:

I stated you were worried about ruining the middle man. Now you say that.

Ruin suggests something like downfall or destruction, that's not what I was suggesting. I think that's pretty extreme, Netflix still has pretty limited appeal in the total picture of retail and rental services (especially if you only take its streaming services)

IMO it's competition, that's good. It keeps the competitors on their toes.

Quote:

Often they have multiple jobs because BlockBuster doesn't pay them a living wage.

Interesting point, but I guess people prefer this over being unemployed. It's probably paying similar to McDonalds and such for the clerks. I don't know how intensive the job is, it's been a long time since I was at blockbusters in Detroit Michigan about 8 years ago.

Maybe the US government needs to up minimum wages if it's not enough for people to make a living, working full-time.

Last edited by MikeB on 16-Jan-2009 at 11:32 PM.

@MikeB

Quote:

Ruin suggests something like downfall or destruction, that's not what I was suggesting. I think that's pretty extreme,

Money going to Netflix is against the middle-man, as you indicated. For $9 month someone can have 1 movie at a time and watch unlimited streams. Assuming 1 movie per week that's 4 per month that the consumer is not buying. That's anywhere from $40-$120 the middle-man is not making. Does this ruin the middle-man? It sure as heck doesn't help her. The middle-men today in the US are Best Buy, Target, Walmart. Why? Middle-men can't bet on 1 product. Sure the store won't be ruined if no movies sell. But, it won't be the same store it won't carry movies. Kinda like how records do exist but they don't sell so the # of middle-men are barely exist.

Quote:

Netflix still has pretty limited appeal in the total picture of retail and rental services (especially if you only take its streaming services

Only considering streaming would be a bit silly to do as that's a new product for them, and the world. The plus is you can get movies for rental and stream some more for no additional fees. In the US they penalize you a bit for wanting Blu-Ray because that costs you a bit more each month.

Quote:

Interesting point, but I guess people prefer this over being unemployed. It's probably paying similar to McDonalds and such for the clerks. I don't know how intensive the job is, it's been a long time since I was at blockbusters in Detroit Michigan about 8 years ago. Maybe the US government needs to up minimum wages if it's not enough for people to make a living, working full-time

Amazingly the majority of people do want to work. And yes Blockbuster isn't for the highly skilled this means low wages and not the job anyone is using to save for their kids college education. 2007 we raised the minimum wage . The first time since 1997. It was $5.15 for a decade. By 2009 it will be $7.25. The only way it got passed was tied to a bill to spend more money on Iraq. There was no way the President wasn't going to spend more money on his invasion.

@MikeB

"Processing The Truth: An Interview With David Shippy"
David Shippy is one of co-authors of "The Race For A New Game Machine" book.
http://www.gamasutra.com/view/feature/3904/processing_the_truth_an_interview_.php?page=3

Processing power between XBox 360 and PS3 from IBM's POV.

But can Shippy's insight on both console's processors finally answer the age-old debate about which console is actually more powerful?

"I'm going to have to answer with an 'it depends,'" laughs Shippy, after a pause. "Again, they're completely different models. So in the PS3, you've got this Cell chip which has massive parallel processing power, the PowerPC core, multiple SPU cores… it's got a GPU that is, in the model here, processing more in the Cell chip and less in the GPU. So that's one processing paradigm -- a heterogeneous paradigm."

"With the Xbox 360, you've got more of a traditional multi-core system, and you've got three PowerPC cores, each of them having dual threads -- so you've got six threads running there, at least in the CPU. Six threads in Xbox 360, and eight or nine threads in the PS3 -- but then you've got to factor in the GPU," Shippy explains. "The GPU is highly sophisticated in the Xbox 360."

He concludes: "At the end of the day, when you put them all together, depending on the software, I think they're pretty equal, even though they're completely different processing models."

Last edited by Hammer on 17-Jan-2009 at 08:54 PM.

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@Hammer

Quote:

But can Shippy's insight on both console's processors finally answer the age-old debate about which console is actually more powerful? "I'm going to have to answer with an 'it depends,'" laughs Shippy, after a pause. "Again, they're completely different models. So in the PS3, you've got this Cell chip which has massive parallel processing power, the PowerPC core, multiple SPU cores… it's got a GPU that is, in the model here, processing more in the Cell chip and less in the GPU. So that's one processing paradigm -- a heterogeneous paradigm." "With the Xbox 360, you've got more of a traditional multi-core system, and you've got three PowerPC cores, each of them having dual threads -- so you've got six threads running there, at least in the CPU. Six threads in Xbox 360, and eight or nine threads in the PS3 -- but then you've got to factor in the GPU," Shippy explains. "The GPU is highly sophisticated in the Xbox 360." He concludes: "At the end of the day, when you put them all together, depending on the software, I think they're pretty equal, even though they're completely different processing models."

Very good summary and one that I can easily agree with. Reading the whole article, it also gives a rather good, in generic terms, summary of what the pros and cons of Cell in game development are. All in all, Xbox 360 is (still) surprisingly close to the performance of PS3 which on paper was supposed to blow it to kingdom come. Had PS3 had a better GPU, things would be vastly different.

Still, I think it is to be expected that PS3 may pull past Xbox 360 performance when software matures, but the difference may not be all that big... time will tell!

Quote:

jtsiren wrote: @Hammer Quote: But can Shippy's insight on both console's processors finally answer the age-old debate about which console is actually more powerful? "I'm going to have to answer with an 'it depends,'" laughs Shippy, after a pause. "Again, they're completely different models. So in the PS3, you've got this Cell chip which has massive parallel processing power, the PowerPC core, multiple SPU cores… it's got a GPU that is, in the model here, processing more in the Cell chip and less in the GPU. So that's one processing paradigm -- a heterogeneous paradigm." "With the Xbox 360, you've got more of a traditional multi-core system, and you've got three PowerPC cores, each of them having dual threads -- so you've got six threads running there, at least in the CPU. Six threads in Xbox 360, and eight or nine threads in the PS3 -- but then you've got to factor in the GPU," Shippy explains. "The GPU is highly sophisticated in the Xbox 360." He concludes: "At the end of the day, when you put them all together, depending on the software, I think they're pretty equal, even though they're completely different processing models." Very good summary and one that I can easily agree with. Reading the whole article, it also gives a rather good, in generic terms, summary of what the pros and cons of Cell in game development are. All in all, Xbox 360 is (still) surprisingly close to the performance of PS3 which on paper was supposed to blow it to kingdom come. Had PS3 had a better GPU, things would be vastly different. Still, I think it is to be expected that PS3 may pull past Xbox 360 performance when software matures, but the difference may not be all that big... time will tell!

Since RSX is based on G70 GPU's design, read http://www.nvidia.com/object/IO_37100.html PDF pages 31,39, 32
Any theoretical peek numbers for G7X design are automatically negated by nVidia’s G80 vs G70 paper.

NVidia’s statement on G70’s design issues roughly correlates IBM's view on
"The GPU is highly sophisticated in the Xbox 360".

Last edited by Hammer on 18-Jan-2009 at 01:04 AM.

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@Hammer

Quote:

But can Shippy's insight on both console's processors finally answer the age-old debate about which console is actually more powerful?

I don't know if anything will be the final answer. This seems to back up quite a few of the views here.

Something related to performance 16 core for max performance. It appears that after 8 cores the performance levels out and after 16 cores and especially towards 64 cores the performance drops. One has to wonder how this plays out in the Cell2. The PS3 has 9 threads (one can read cores). If the Cell2 is coming will extra SPE's give it any more usable power?

We've seen the theoretical power of the Cell (nearly 2x Xenon) isn't translating into an actual performance gain of the same scale. The differences appear to be on paper and aren't translating into the real world.

@BrianK

One should split the workloads between task and data. Atm, parallel data workloads continues to scale i.e. refer to ALU count on Geforce GT2x0 or Radeon HD 46x0(320 SPs)/47x0(RV740? 640 SPs)/48x0(800 SPs)/49x0 (incoming “super” RV770).

In KZ2, the SPEs are basically being used as a "secondary" GPU". The SPEs provides the “flexible” GPU to less programmable (relative to ATI RV570 and ATI/NV DX10 GPUs) G70/RSX.

ATI Xenos itself is already a dual GPU design i.e. one programmable SPs (1st generation unified shader level) and one limited/fix-function SPs. D3D dot instructions from PPEs fills the rest of the gap.

Depending on the software, both consoles are about even.

Last edited by Hammer on 18-Jan-2009 at 02:53 AM.

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@Hammer
Quote:

Depending on the software, both consoles are about even.

Consumers -- Most consoles go to 10.
Sony -- But the PS3 goes to 11.
Consumer -- Why didn't you make 10 better?
Sony -- The PS3 goes to 11.

@BrianK

Killzone 2 rendering details, refer to

http://74.200.65.90/showpost.php?s=6249e8d20700ab7a760d4c610be1ae3f&p=1039617&postcount=104

Originally Posted by Originally Posted by Fran
I was at the presentation yesterday. Some interesting ideas. Overall, dropping HDR, 4X MSAA for 2X, using only 12 (6) taps on 512x512 shadowmaps for the main directional light, dropping specular color for materials, dropping directional lightmaps, dropping shadows and per-pixel lighting on particles, only one lighting model for the entire world, for the sake of more lights (actually, for the sake of lighting performance non-dependent on the geometry but only on fragments lit which would be desirable) didn't seem worth it to me.

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@Hammer

Quote:

Depending on the software, both consoles are about even.

Like I said many times, I think for most multi-platform games this will be the case. But re-designing game engines from scratch or significantly optimising legacy game engines for the PS3, the PS3 is far more powerful than the 360.

And it's not only Cell + RSX vs the Xenon + Xenos, there are certain bandwitdh advantages, a a default harddrive and Blu-Ray disc related advantages as well.

@Hammer

Quote:

Processing power between XBox 360 and PS3 from IBM's POV.

Just to make it clear, that's not IBM's view but rather David Shippy's view, I believe he was a lead designer for the Cell's PowerPC PPE processor and Xenon-cores.

@MikeB

David Shippy *was* working with IBM. I made my comments while he was working on that project with IBM. David Shippy was the head of that project.

Last edited by Hammer on 18-Jan-2009 at 01:45 PM.
Last edited by Hammer on 18-Jan-2009 at 01:33 PM.

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@MikeB

Quote:

Like I said many times, I think for most multi-platform games this will be the case. But re-designing game engines from scratch or significantly optimising legacy game engines for the PS3, the PS3 is far more powerful than the 360.

Didn't you read KZ2's rendering details i.e. note the "drop" features?

Quote:

And it's not only Cell + RSX vs the Xenon + Xenos, there are certain bandwitdh advantages, a a default harddrive and Blu-Ray disc related advantages as well.

Didn't you read NV's G70 vs G80 paper on shader/math vs texture processing?
Anyway, both have 8 ROPS.

My 8 ROPS CUDA G84 doesn't need blu-ray and Crysis would fit into DL DVD. Typical PS3 fanboys (sigh).

Last edited by Hammer on 18-Jan-2009 at 01:47 PM.
Last edited by Hammer on 18-Jan-2009 at 01:46 PM.
Last edited by Hammer on 18-Jan-2009 at 01:43 PM.

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@MikeB

Quote:

And it's not only Cell + RSX vs the Xenon + Xenos, there are certain bandwitdh advantages, a a default harddrive and Blu-Ray disc related advantages as well.

MikeB. Theses advantages seem to be theoretical in nature.

The Cell+RSX+Bandwidth vs the Xenon+Xenos+lower bandwidth. PS3, on paper, is the clear theoretical winner. In actuality for the games there isn't that big of a difference. In actuality there might be 2 games that the 360 couldn't do. In actuality having to learn the PS3 for developers is more difficult; meaning longer time to market, higher costs, and more slipped launch dates.

Blu-Ray seems to be a theoretical winner for games. In actuality most games don't go over the size of a DVD. In actuality the BR drive is slower and game makers duplicate content on the media to compensate. In actuality the BR drive is slower and game makers force 5GB loads on the end user's harddrive to compensate. In actuality BR costs more to produce for game makers which translates into slightly less profit per game. In actuality BR costs more to put into a console which translates to higher consumer price which has translated to #3.

Blu-Ray was the theoretical winner for movies. And yes Sony's trojan horse approach pulled this into an actuality beating HD DVD. Of course when the PS3 was the best BR player and the lowest priced (2 years ago) this was an actual advantage. Now that the PS3 is one of the most expensive BR players on the market the high price is now an actual disadvantage.

Default harddrive, again theoreticall winner because developers can use it to over come problems with the slow BR and cache content. In actuality another item that raised prices. In actuality the consoles w/o harddrives (Wii, 360 Arcade) are selling because of a lower price. In actuality the vast majority of 360s have a harddrive all non-arcades and up to 80% of Arcades claim MS. The 360 harddrive comes with the same cache ability and the plus of having the end user decide if they want to use it as such not the game developer.

The theoretical advantages are all pluses for the PS3. In actuality they don't translate to the market and its high price is a downfall pushing it to an actual last place, so far, this generation. Of course the price is an easy fix and will come with actual increases in losses for Sony's gaming division.

@BrianK

Quote:

Something related to performance 16 core for max performance. It appears that after 8 cores the performance levels out and after 16 cores and especially towards 64 cores the performance drops. One has to wonder how this plays out in the Cell2. The PS3 has 9 threads (one can read cores). If the Cell2 is coming will extra SPE's give it any more usable power?

This appears to be in reference to desktop GPUs, though it's generally considered going beyond 8 cores is going to be immensely difficult.

The same goes for software, I wrote this back in 2006.

There will be scaling issues with any processor but things like GPUs don't have scaling problems and Cell is designed specifically get around them.

On a traditional desktop processor the cores have to be kept in sync (i.e. coherent). This means communication between caches goes up drastically every time you add a new core. GPUs generally have small non-coherent caches so this isn't a problem, Cell has non-coherent local stores so again there's no problem.

As long as you can parallelize the problem and keep upping the memory bandwidth GPUs and Cell are not going to suffer from this problem. Desktop processors and Xenon will.

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@BrianK

Quote:

BrianK wrote: @Hammer Quote: But can Shippy's insight on both console's processors finally answer the age-old debate about which console is actually more powerful? I don't know if anything will be the final answer. This seems to back up quite a few of the views here. Something related to performance 16 core for max performance. It appears that after 8 cores the performance levels out and after 16 cores and especially towards 64 cores the performance drops. One has to wonder how this plays out in the Cell2. The PS3 has 9 threads (one can read cores). If the Cell2 is coming will extra SPE's give it any more usable power? We've seen the theoretical power of the Cell (nearly 2x Xenon) isn't translating into an actual performance gain of the same scale. The differences appear to be on paper and aren't translating into the real world.

RE: number of cores/threads, really depends on the domain. Number of threads able to be serviced isn't exactly the same issue as max number of cores, but you do still run into similar problems of how much can a given program or task be processed in parallel? Most programs have threads in a wait state doing nothing - even if they were able to be serviced *now*, they're still doing something, like waiting on user input, or a resource to become available (critical section left by another thread, exclusive access to other resources granted, etc).

One type of task may inherently be less able to *effectively* use more threads (or cores, or cluster computing nodes, or..), where another may be able to.

The memory bandwidth article is certainly interesting, and is yet another impact of 'thread overhead' which determines at some point - is it worth doing this way, or should we aggregate functionality inside a single thread (or SPE, or..)?

The other possibility, of course, for Cell 2 is simply faster SPEs and PPE, with more local storage on them, and possibly a limited number of additional SPEs. While doubling the number of SPEs may perform well for some tasks - if it's hitting a data transfer 'wall' like in article, then read this as longer running processing tasks, or ones that don't marshall all data at once/at same time from all SPEs..it's possible this is counterproductive in a gaming (vs general purpose) environment.

PS - thanks for the ars link, decent read.

Last edited by wegster on 18-Jan-2009 at 04:18 PM.

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@Hammer

Quote:

Didn't you read KZ2's rendering details i.e. note the "drop" features?

Actually what they said was the opposite, the added more and more effects, more so than originally planned because of the headroom the technology provides them. And they say they still have a lot of headroom left to do a lot more in future games.

@MikeB

Quote:

MikeB wrote: @Hammer Quote: Depending on the software, both consoles are about even. Like I said many times, I think for most multi-platform games this will be the case. But re-designing game engines from scratch or significantly optimising legacy game engines for the PS3, the PS3 is far more powerful than the 360. And it's not only Cell + RSX vs the Xenon + Xenos, there are certain bandwitdh advantages, a a default harddrive and Blu-Ray disc related advantages as well.

It has more processing power yes, but that does not matter at all if it has a outdated GPU chip. The GPU matters more when it comes graphics than the processing power of the cpu/spus. And most games will be multi platform, so what is the point anyways? The Xbox 360 is just in the lead when it comes to both titles and graphics/performance. I highly doubt that this will change before the next generation.
The PS3 just aint popular enough for exclusive titles.

Try to for example use a old 7900GTX on a fast computer.. Even a low end modern gpu performs better.. So what use do we have for all that processing power of the cell? Even linux on the ps3 is a joke and feels as slow as a old PIII with a non supported gfx card.

Last edited by Tomas on 18-Jan-2009 at 04:59 PM.

@Tomas

Quote:

he GPU matters more when it comes graphics than the processing power of the cpu/spus.

The Cell is special in this regard to other CPUs. The RSX is more powerful than the Xenos, only for tasks the Cell is more powerful and flexible the RSX is relatively limited, the GPU is a good fit for the Cell processor from a technological point of view.

Quote:

Even linux on the ps3 is a joke and feels as slow as a old PIII with a non supported gfx card

Why "even"?

YDL6 is quite usable on the PS3, Linux itself on the PS3 has no 3D accelerated GPU drives and neither does it make use of the SPEs. There is some Linux software which use the Cell's SPEs and they fly.

The way you speak it seems you don't have much knowledge of the PS3 hardware and specifically the PS3 Cell processor (basically 8 processors on a chip, one of which Linux runs on hosted on top of CellOS).

Last edited by MikeB on 18-Jan-2009 at 08:45 PM.