@BrianK

A firmware patch may not be really needed as no other games have shown such problems. IMO Rockstar should have done better testing.

Quote:

Sony divested from the Cell to Toshiba and IBM

Sony was part of the initial R&D, but now the basics are now worked out. The PS4 Cell should be higher clocked sporting 2 PPEs and 32 SPEs (some may be disabled to increase yields and thus reduce costs), Sony needs to concentrate on the software and IBM will focuss on cost reducing and advancing the CPU architecture, good progress is being made.

BTW, an interesting IEEE award winning research paper has been published online. The Cell's SPEs are especially single (and half) precision code monsters, running one thread per SPE. Although their efficiency drops when creating additional software threads and taking a double precision approach this study demonstrates the Cell can still be multiple times more powerful in such far from ideal situations than other top CPU architectures.

This paper researches the performance of several top processors, the Cell in these double precision tests is running 16 threads on 8 SPEs (the PS3 has 7 SPEs in addition to the PPE, one of which one is used for OS functionality running in the background). The study focusses on the Lattice Boltzmann application (LBMHD) "that historically has made poor use of scalar microprocessors due to its complex data structures and memory access patterns." The performance increase per extra SPE unlike for the other CPUs shows a near linear increase in performance:

http://www.cs.berkeley.edu/%7Esamw/research/papers/ipdps08.pdf

Last edited by MikeB on 05-May-2008 at 11:02 PM.

@MikeB

Quote:

A firmware patch may not be really needed as no other games have shown such problems. IMO Rockstar should have done better testing.

Likely yes they could have done more testing on launch consoles. Though one has to question why did Sony stamp their approval on it to? Do they just hope manufactures have done deep enough testing? Seems to be this process is a bit broken.

Quote:

The performance increase per extra SPE unlike for the other CPUs shows a near linear increase in performance:

Cool and interesting. Though also interesting is how adding AMD Opeterons also provided a near linear increase of performance too. However, the Intel chips performance dropped off. Memory access is a big issue for good performance. As such there's little wonder that Opterons with on-chip memory controllers faired better then the Intel CPUs. BTW Intel is moving to on-chip memory controllers too.

Last edited by BrianK on 05-May-2008 at 11:13 PM.

@ BrianK

With regard to disagreements between (past) execs, I think they didn't expect a casual gamer market gap and for the Wii to take off the way it did. But I think some execs are wrong to believe they could have filled this gap.

Nintendo has more expertise with regard to making appealing kid orientated games, the new Wii userbase consists of many females, kids and maybe even some older people. Many of them prefer the Nintendo image of producing mainly family friendly content. The Playstation reputation is far wider, more horror, thrilling, hardcore and mature orientated games. The current situation is IMO good (Microsoft vs Sony for the highend, having Nintendo luring new gamers with a lowend product) Nintendo has more dedicated expertise for the type of games which are easy to consume for new entry gamers.

Even having a PS2 doing nearly everything a Wii does sporting similar games like EyePlay and EyeSports, but using a motion controller would IMO not have been this successful. The Wii has a feeling of being a brand new product, the PS2 has an imagine of becoming outdated soon due to the intoduction of the PS3. And the PS3 is too highly specced to be sold at lowend mainstream 'casual gamer' entry pricing and to cut down the specs it would have hurt their longterm perspectives of the console as well as for the company as a whole with their high definition strategy. Sony can't have it all. IMO it's better to be happy the gaming audience is expanding and just try to lure such gamers into owning a PS3 next to a Wii.

@MikeB

The Xeons seem to be choking on far from ideal memory bandwidth. It would be interesting to see the figures for the 45nm Yorkfield Q9300, sporting DDR3 RAM, instead of 533MHz DDR2 FBDIMMs. Even on DDR2, the memory bandwidth achieved with plain DDR2-1066 RAM vs FBDIMMs makes quite a difference, my Q6600 outperforms an 8-way Xeon with the same core (Kentsfield) in some cases. Quite impressive figures for the Cell, either way, it seems that this test is well suited for SIMD architectures.

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@MikeB

Quote:

Nintendo has more expertise with regard to making appealing kid orientated games, the new Wii userbase consists of many females, kids and maybe even some older people. Many of them prefer the Nintendo image of producing mainly family friendly content. The Playstation reputation is far wider, more horror, thrilling, hardcore and mature orientated games. The current situation is IMO good (Microsoft vs Sony for the highend, having Nintendo luring new gamers with a lowend product) Nintendo has more dedicated expertise for the type of games which are easy to consume for new entry gamers.

It's interesting that sales of the Wii have been solid enough that they have not dropped to their original target price for the hardware yet ($99). They must be making some serious money with this.

I personally find the Wii interesting in some regards and crap in others. My sister has one over here, the controller really suites some games while in others it acts like a silly kludge that makes games next to impossible to play without wanting to bite chunks off the plastic (see: Mortal Kombat: Armageddon)...

Last edited by Zardoz on 06-May-2008 at 12:00 AM.

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@Lou

Quote:

Lou wrote: @wegster Quote: wegster wrote: @jtsiren [quote]IThe Wii - well, it simply doesn't matter. It's not competing in the 'HD or nearly HD' games arena, but on it's unique controller and games. While an HD capable version of the Wii would be welcome, it isn't in the same 'head to head' based on graphics that the PS3 and 360 are, so they can pretty much decide if and when to release their post-Wii console without too much worry, unless the PS4 and XBox '720' completely rip off the Wii controller as well as clone the games, something likely tough to do with at least some of them like Mario, etc. Well, I guess this means Nintendo will have to innovate something else to differentiate themselves. I definitely see the next Nintendo console being HD-capable. They could simply scale up their gpu with more internal memory, a faster clock speed and perhaps had a secondary shader unit alongside the TEV. Switching to the Power6 cpu would certainly give them some computing muscle and maintain some backwards compatibility... The next thing up for the Wii is a storage solution as even President Iwata has mentioned the lack of storage that some users are complaining about...

Sure. I didn't mean Wii is 'irrelevant' but not so much tied to the 'better gfx race' the 360 and PS3 are in. Based on that, it becomes less important for Nintendo to use the same lifecycle for the Wii, as compared to 360/720/PS3/PS4.

Who knows? Sony or MS could rip the Wiimote, and then... ? If not, Nintendo could extend the VR or controller interactivity, and still succeed, even if the graphics aren't necessarily at PS4(?) and next gen 360 level, while I don't see the same success (for Sony) if Sony doesn't release the PS4 close to the 720/whatever.

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Are we not done with the same silly arguments and flames yet??!

@BrianK

Quote:

While this is a safe bet things are quiet right now and supposedly Sony divested from the Cell to Toshiba and IBM. Maybe in a couple years they'll dive in for a Cell 2. But, we have seen 3 consoles with 3 different processors so I wouldn't be too surprised if they shifted gears for the PS4.

Argh. If they 'shift gears' yet again, I think they've lost the console 'race,' as I stated above, if not in this generation, in the next.

Next gen MS console in when, 2010?

_________________
Are we not done with the same silly arguments and flames yet??!

@wegster

Quote:

Argh. If they 'shift gears' yet again, I think they've lost the console 'race,' as I stated above, if not in this generation, in the next. Next gen MS console in when, 2010?

Sony has shifted gears 3 times. It'll be interesting to see if they can earn back their marketshare this generation. I think both Nintendo and Microsoft will have moved onto their next gen console before Sony does. As Nintendo has made, from nearly day 1, and Microsoft has made their goals and is profitable too I'm sure both will be moving on before Sony.

If Blu-Ray comes for the 360 we may see a slightly longer life 2011-2012. If it doesn't I think Microsoft will shift to the next console sooner around 2010. But, even with Blu-Ray it all depends on what impact sales have. Microsoft is no dummy. They've seen the low end (PS2, Wii) sales. How can they get into that market? Xbox360. But, they won't down market their current console until the next gen is near launch. Microsoft may well pursue a 2 market strategy too. Xbox360 vs PS3 for the low end and the Xbox #3 for the high end. It's clear Microsoft has won the USA this generation. Europe and Asia watch out the 3rd time's a charm for Microsoft.

Of course this is all hand wavy thoughts of the a possible future. I'm sure MikeB will post how the PS4 will be playing games, giving backrubs, andwiping our butts so we don't have to and no other company need apply to next gen.

@BrianK

Quote:

'm sure MikeB will post how the PS4 will be playing games, giving backrubs, andwiping our butts

Is that supposed to be funny?

I would applaud it though if Microsoft dropped out of the console market and Rare would return home to the Nintendo market and Halo becomes multi-platform on Mac, Linux, PS3, etc. like the company focussed on in the past. I wouldn't mind a company like Apple or another big consumer electronics company to take its place. IMO Microsoft stalls general market progress.

I hope a PS4 (and PS3 later within its lifecycle) will innovate with advanced virtual reality games technology. I have been waiting for this for decades.

@MikeB

MikeB yes it was was a funny. We know you love the PS4 and would be certain to disagree with anyone who says the PS4 will have a challenge next gen.

Microsoft stalls market progress? Not sure how/why you see that. Clearly they have brought a powerful hardware for a good price and are showing their software prowess with consoles. The Xbox line has added harddrives to consoles, provided a fantastic online ecosystem, and provided developers a fairly good solution to get games to market. The 360's price, power, and games pushed the market forward in such a way Sony had to stop dragging their feet with the PS3 and get it out the door. And we saw that Sony had the hardware ready but the OS wasn't fully baked until 9-12 months after launch. But had Sony waited for the OS to be ready they certainly would be in a worse position then they are now. Also, do to the challenge of Microsoft, Sony has had to change their console in year 1 to lower price to maintain and regain sales. The market is clearly progressing and Microsoft's role has impacted Sony to try and do it and be better. That's what markets should be doing.

Apple? Talk about stalling progress -- Apple gaming solution was improved by -- running bootcamp and Windows to play your games. Gaming is stalled on the Macs, IMO. Right now they have open source gaming. But, so does the PS3. Likely an Apple console would be closer to the PS3 then what the 360 is. In a market you don't want duplicates, that's stalling, you want products that work from different angles, which the 360 and PS3 clearly are.

The PS4 won't innovate advanced virtual reality games tech. DIdn't you see the commercials? That's the PS9.

@BrianK

If I love the PS4 or not will depend upon its specifications and if it turns out to become a noisy and unreliable piece of sh*t or not. If the console sports a more advanced Cell processor and Blu-Ray technology in a well thought out clever design and is built well I probably will love the device for this.

I never owned a PS2, it´s the technical specifications and market advancements like HDTV adoption which got me interested in Playstation consoles.

If Microsoft does the same, I would initially be sceptical due to past experiences. But I hope they will for the good of the market.

@MikeB

Quote:

If I love the PS4 or not will depend upon its specifications and if it turns out to become a noisy and unreliable piece of sh*t or not. If the console sports a more advanced Cell processor and Blu-Ray technology in a well thought out clever design and is built well I probably will love the device for this. If Microsoft does the same, I would initially be sceptical due to past experiences. But I hope they will for the good of the market.

Personally loving a console for the 'cell' is myoptic. Consoles are to serve a purpose. This generation we've moving from gaming into more general entertainment (Media player, Online Services). It doesn't matter to me what the processor is. What does matter is if the games are great, the services are good, and it fits a need.

As for Blu-Ray -- it is interesting PS1 was CD, PS2 was DVD, PS3 was Blu-Ray, I don't think the PS4 will continue in this model. But perhaps it may - holographic storage? Likely online services and bandwidth will be ever more important next generation. I suspect the PS4 will use a Blu-Ray. But so will every other console on the market. As such the media advantage will be lost next-gen. (If the rumored Blu-Ray 360 ships this fall we'll see an impact this Christmas.)

It's interesting you pick noisy and unreliable for your factors. I wonder why you didn't pick what's important for gaming consoles -- the games. 360 has more games and more higher ranked games then either of the current options perhaps why you skipped over the main purpose of a gaming console?
* Current 360s are much quieter then the original launch and for watching movies is near silent. The variable speed fan is a great choice for a console. My PS3 has 2 modes -- silent and jet loud. Makes watching Blu-Rays annoying when 1 hour into the movie the jet kicks in. Games after 1 hour don't seem to kick off the fan.
* Unreliable? Inital 360 builds were way above standard failure rates anywhere from 15-30% depending upon which source we'd like to believe or not. Later generations have a much lower rate of failure. It's hard to say if they're above the norm or not because there simply isn't as much time. IMO a 1 year warranty w/ standard failure rates or a 3 year warranty w/ a bit higher then standard failure? Between these two choices the 3 year plan better protects one's investments and as this is an entertainment console I can live for 3 weeks to return didn't really bother me. I guess because gaming isn't my only hobby.

@BrianK

Quote:

Consoles are to serve a purpose.

Yes, entertainment primarily.

Quote:

myoptic

You mean myopic? I loved the Amiga for its ingenious design for its time, this translated into innovative software as well the years ahead after release and this introduced a learning curve for developers many developers and had a huge effect on the outlook of multi-media and gaming outlook of home computers. IMO a asynchronously operating custom system design well ahead for its time.

Did the Amiga 500 become more impressive when games like Lion Heart, Stardust Elfmania, Ruff 'n Tumble, etc were released many years after release? No, it's the same hardware, but yes it became a more compelling product for gamers. IMO two different things, the Amiga 500 was more impressive at launch in 1987 than in 1994 from a technological perspective.

The early adopters and tech lovers made the Amiga a viable platform, this in effect had a snowballing effect, more users, more developers, better content, more users, more developers, better content and so on until of course Commodore ran into trouble and went belly up.

Quote:

It's interesting you pick noisy and unreliable for your factors.

Yes, IMO this defeats the primary goal of delivering a solid worry free entertainment experience, just like I expect my TV or dish washer to keep functioning and not make too much noise.

Quote:

I wonder why you didn't pick what's important for gaming consoles -- the games. 360 has more games and more higher ranked games

There's more crap on the 360 as well, average review scores are higher for the PS3's games library. Game ratings are subjective, I don't care for Halo 3 or Gears of War and don't agree with the insane scores some US reviewers like Gamespot have awarded them with. I take Uncharted, R&C, Resistance, SSHD, Motorstorm, etc, etc instead any day.

By your reasoning the PS2 is still the best product currently available, it has by far the biggest games library and many more classics amongst them. The Wii would suck the most as the platform received quite a bit of shovelware which dragged down its review score average.

There's no wrong or right here, you have your reasons why you think the 360 is a great gaming platform, but my reasons on why I think the 360 s*cks as an entertainment device or gaming platform are just as valid.

Reliability is just plain bad and well above industry standards, for example the B3D guy who made the picture which as said to be GTA IV running in 640p had has second console as well as his dev station die on him in the meantime. According to one anonymous insider interview failure rates for the latest units were already 10% within just a couple of months. Even at the recent GDC, the BBC reported on RRoD at the show.

Stuff like this is pretty common:

http://homepage.mac.com/lassi.kurkijarvi/RROD/vapaa_su-aamu.JPG

'A guy on NeoGAF''s fourth 360 yesterday...

Another NeoGAF guy's GTA IV disc scratched:

http://i32.tinypic.com/2i1z9sj.jpg

Honestly it's quite remarkable Microsoft is getting away with this and people are still feverishly defending them.

Last edited by MikeB on 06-May-2008 at 04:08 PM.
Last edited by MikeB on 06-May-2008 at 04:03 PM.
Last edited by MikeB on 06-May-2008 at 03:56 PM.
Last edited by MikeB on 06-May-2008 at 03:51 PM.

@MikeB

Quote:

You mean myopic? I loved the Amiga for its ingenious design for its time, this translated in innovative software as well the years ahead after release and this introduced a learning curve for developers many developers and had a huge effect on the outlook of multi-media and gaming outlook of home computers. IMO a asynchronously operating custom system design well ahead for its time.

The fault in your logic here is you said Cell, which is a component of a system, and then you are trying to justify your love of a CPU to your love of an entire ecosystem, Amiga. Between these 2 ideas there is a relationship certainly but aren't the interchangeable. Sure it's cool that the Cell is a killer chip for Lattice Boltzmann and Cancer research but I know of few to no people that consider running Cancer research all day is entertainment. I've yet to see anything entertainment wise that the PS3 can do that other hardware cannot do.

Quote:

There's more crap on the 360 as well, average review scores are higher for the PS3's games library.

Certainly as there are more games. But, unless you're buying every game out there there really isn't a factor.

Your later point about PS2 blah blah. Really is a side point. My point was you missed the BIG reason for a console it's not reliability it's entertainment. My Atari Jaguar has had more uptime and is quieter then my PS3. But certainly you won't exchange your PS3 for my Jaguar to gain reliability.

Last edited by BrianK on 06-May-2008 at 04:08 PM.

@BrianK

Quote:

The fault in your logic here is you said Cell, which is a component of a system, and then you are trying to justify your love of a CPU to your love of an entire ecosystem, Amiga. Between these 2 ideas there is a relationship certainly but aren't the interchangeable. Sure it's cool that the Cell is a killer chip for Lattice Boltzmann and Cancer research but I know of few to no people that consider running Cancer research all day is entertainment. I've yet to see anything entertainment wise that the PS3 can do that other hardware cannot do.

No I mentioned system design and built quality as well. I would love a well designed Amiga based on Cell, Blu-Ray technology, etc and deliver superior entertainment and productivity software, but realistically that's not going to happen anytime soon and if it does we are probably many years into the future.

The Cell is great for many different purposes, it's excellently well suited for games and multi-media. The 68000 wasn't only powerful for use in desktop computers like the Amiga and Macintosh for its time, many arcade game systems and game systems were powered by this chip as well.

Early on the Atari ST had a bigger games library and better versions of games, but that doesn't mean many tech enthusiasts and games developers shouldn't have digged into the Amiga platform to achieve much greater results.

Last edited by MikeB on 06-May-2008 at 04:18 PM.

@MikeB

Quote:

If the console sports a more advanced Cell processor and Blu-Ray technology in a well thought out clever design and is built well I probably will love the device for this

CPU such as Cell doesn't matter as long as the system acheives it's goals. Certainly the Xbox #3 will have a processor better then the Cell in performance. But, that's no reason to buy the console. You as the end user's goals is entertainment and the PS4 is certain to be entertaining. But, so is the Xbox #3 and Nintendo's next gen console.

Would you really not buy a PS4 if it played the next iterations of Motorstorm, Resistence, and SuperStardust if all those games were better then this gen but the PS4 failed to have a Cell? Of course not. Subsequently the Cell isn't important in that list. Clever design and well built are likely more important then the Cell. And more important then those is the entertainment value itself.

Latest news:

Dave Reeves: PS3 has now outsold 360 in Europe LTD. (from live European event currently underway)

So a little over 1 year versus 2 years and 5 months. Pretty good!

@MikeB

Quote:

MikeB wrote: @Lou Detail should be different, pixel count the same. Scaler chips can for instance make a low resolution low detail picture look very smooth and more detailed in a higer resolution. For instance a console game emulator can make a game look better than it originally did. Doing a pixel count you will notice many more pixels being displayed compared to the original source. You're probably a Nintendo and Amiga fan, this can also be done WinUAE or Snes emulators. Game will look a lot better, but no extra details are added, Mario's eye won't suddenly have a highly detailed iris, but the roundness of the iris can be made to look more high res and smooth. Comparison: This is what Super Mario World looks like on an emulator (on a TV this looks smoother due to scanlines, basically pixels aren't directed connected but seperated by black areas, that's also why Amiga games often look better compared to emulated results): http://whiggles.landofwhimsy.com/funbag/top10games-mario.jpg This is what the game looks like with bells and whistles on, in a higher resolution: http://www.gamethink.net/IMG/jpg/snes_super_mario_world_2.jpg Scalers can often do similar things on the fly with images. Scaler chips can be found in game console, video players and are present in HDTVs themselves. Scaling can also be performed in software, but this at a processing cost like you need a decent PC to upscale emulated games properly.

In this example, the filter is increasing the pixel density. The 2 images do not have the same pixel density in the end. One still looks lke it's 524x524 (or whatever the native SNES resolution is). Hence has the apparent original pixel density. Yes, they may both fit a much bigger screen, but the apparent pixel density of the resultant image is not the same.

In your original PS3/360 example, they were the same in the end. That screams different sources and scales.

@MikeB

Your continued comparison of Amiga and PS3 is rather insulting, especially on an Amiga site. The PS3 is another run-of-the-mill console evolution, just like the 360. Compare it to the NES, or SNES, or PS1, or PS2.

It can be the nicest games console ever built, but does it deserve to be mentioned in the same breath as the Amiga? EDIT: No.

Chris

Last edited by clebin on 06-May-2008 at 10:21 PM.
Last edited by clebin on 06-May-2008 at 10:04 PM.

@clebin

I don't agree. Atari ST users at the time would also claim the Amiga wasn't anything special, especially at a time the Atari ST had many better apps as well as better performing games compared to the Amiga ports. A comparison with the PS3 is easily made, the full force Amiga development started with the vision of becoming the top class gaming system of its time. Much later with the CDTV and CD32 it finally turned into such a dedicated multi-media device and games console (sadly past the technology's prime time).

The PS3 already realized this goal (ahead of its time), but like the Amiga IMO the core technology can be improved on and turned into much more for the long run. I see a lot of potential and vision in the Cell architecture. For me it's the most exciting hardware development I have seen in over a decade.

Last edited by MikeB on 06-May-2008 at 11:03 PM.
Last edited by MikeB on 06-May-2008 at 11:02 PM.