@Hammer

Quote:

Fixing RSX's design issues reduces CELL's compute resource.

Dedicating for instance 1 or 2 processors (SPEs) to enhance graphics potential I don't see as a waste. The Cell has 8 processors, although graphics are just one of many aspects with regard to designing complex games. Graphics are relevant and the SPEs are much more flexible than the GPU for many tasks.

Quote:

If Xbox 360 was the lead platform for Ghostbusters, where's the tessellation support? Tessellation was designed to reduce the load on the CPU.

For instance, I don't think Halo 3 uses the tesselation unit.

@MikeB

Quote:

MikeB wrote: I am not twisting words and yes I usually point to specific PS3 exclusives to highlight the PS3's capabilities. Actually I advocated this for a long time. .

Mike,

Trying to paint me as upset is beyond pathetic, its a desperate troll, pure and simple. The point is simply that you said PS3 was the lead platform in the past on this game and you used the developers comments as "proof" that the PS3 is a superior platform.

So now you simply declared the opposite, with nothing to back it up, only because the PS3 version is undisputedly worse. Only a fanboy would say this:

Quote:

But seems clear the game development was lead on the XBox 360, as there were strange glitches which needed patching, which would otherwise been have dealt with before launch

Its funny how you can divine this in the same post that you declare the obvious of "I was in no way involved in the development of that game myself."

Last edited by fairlanefastback on 23-Sep-2009 at 02:56 PM.

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@BrianK

Quote:

It has been your modus operandi here to discount the 360 at every turn and support the PS3.

No, that's not true. Reading back I stated ATi designed a very good GPU for the 360 at the time for the cost. I also said many 360 games are good, even a launch game like Kameo.

However I also stated I thought:
- XBox 360 was failure prone, this before Microsoft admitted to this.
- The PS3 is well more powerful, this before we had games like Uncharted.

These kind of comments seemed to set off many fanboys in the past (and often maliciously so).

Note that years before the PS3 launched I already underlined that I expected problems with regard to porting legacy game engine to the PS3 architecture. So not painting an all rosey picture neither.

Quote:

Here you make it sound like a 'glitch' must only be related to a 360 development?

Do some research with regard to these issues. They wouldn't have been there, errors that the 360 version did not suffer from at launch.

@BrianK

Quote:

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.

Of course, cost is a major consideration.

But still Cell + RSX >>> Xenos + Xenon and that's what matters as well. In addition to this default harddrive, Blu-Ray capacity and other extras enlarges the technical advantage and yes those extras results into extra costs. But the PS3 with all that is truly an amazing deal at $299.

Uncharted 2 will certainly drop jaws, also people with mega expensive PCs.

@MikeB

Quote:

Ian was indeed reporting from the scene, so my reference seems just to me. Secondly, I only saw 1 of the 3 customers speak out on his problems and he didn't say anything that malicious neither. So why you alledge any of them would have lied goes beyond me.

Mike,

We have already covered how I have not alleged that anyone lied. You are obviously just parroting what you said earlier to try to get a rise out of me because you don't have a valid counter argument. If you want to only highlight that further, have fun.

You can pretend all you want that Iain was a journalist reporting for the story and not just a television presenter for that segment all you want, where they specifically announced they had brought in the comedian at the beginning of the segment. Its not going to change the facts. Again, you were ok with this hybrid news/entertainment model when Xbox 360 was their target. It cuts both ways.

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@fairlanefastback

Quote:

Trying to paint me as upset is beyond pathetic, its a desperate troll, pure and simple.

Here and elsewhere you sound upset.

Quote:

The point is simply that you said PS3 was the lead platform in the past on this game and you used the developers comments as "proof" that the PS3 is a superior platform.

Yes, those comments can be used to highlight the PS3 is more powerful and probably the PS3 was the lead platform for some systems in the game, at least earlier on.

Quote:

So now you simply declared the opposite, with nothing to back it up, only because the PS3 version is undisputedly worse. Only a fanboy would say this

No, there are other perfectly reasonable people who came to this conclusion.

Quote:

Its funny how you can divine this

Whatever makes you happy.

@BrianK

Quote:

@MikeB I see this comment as disengenious. It has been your modus operandi here to discount the 360 at every turn and support the PS3. IMO these comments were to highlight how the PS3 was better than the 360 and show that the 360 is harming the PS3 development.

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@fairlanefastback

Quote:

Again, you were ok with this hybrid news/entertainment model when Xbox 360 was their target. It cuts both ways

Have you seen that show? I was rather mild and in parts more like a commercial for the product with their wordings.

They were also late with their coverage, considering the extend of the problem which was already widely known.

@MikeB

Quote:

MikeB wrote: @fairlanefastback Quote: Again, you were ok with this hybrid news/entertainment model when Xbox 360 was their target. It cuts both ways Have you seen that show? I was rather mild and in parts more like a commercial for the product with their wordings. They were also late with their coverage, considering the extend of the problem which was already widely known.

So previously it was a valid source for you to link right here on aw.net to highlight Xbox 360 issues.

But now that their latest story topic was the PS3 and you did not like the coverage now its not a valid source and even was "more like a commercial" for the Xbox 360 on the show that they were highlighting significant issues that the 360 had?

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@MikeB

Quote:

Dedicating for instance 1 or 2 processors (SPEs) to enhance graphics potential I don't see as a waste. The Cell has 8 processors, although graphics are just one of many aspects with regard to designing complex games.

The Cell does physically have 8 processors. The PS3 only allows access to 7 of them. Of that 1 more is absorbed by the OS making it 6, and in some instances 5. This means one is using 2/5 of available power to compenstation for the RSX and that's expensive.

Quote:

No, that's not true. Reading back I stated ATi designed a very good GPU for the 360 at the time for the cost. I also said many 360 games are good, even a launch game like Kameo.

You have a habit of quoting sources as pro-PS3 but should they be anti-PS3 or pro-360 you quickly rush in to discredit the source. If you really think the 360 is a competitive console this opinion is being lost as you always throw down the PS3 gauntlet.

Quote:

Do some research with regard to these issues. They wouldn't have been there, errors that the 360 version did not suffer from at launch

Sorry this is a guess. Certainly PS3 only games, Uncharted and Rachet, had glitches. These particular issues might have been due to some cross platform but this doesn't preclude introduction of new glitches. The rule in software development is one fixes bugs and introduces new one's.

Quote:

But still Cell + RSX >>> Xenos + Xenon and that's what matters as well.

Unfortunately, 98-99% of games it just doesn't matter.

Quote:

PS3 with all that is truly an amazing deal at $299.

I'd agree that finally the PS3 is entering a cost competitive area. Blu-Ray is an oversold advantage virtually no games need to use it. Manufacturing costs are more for a Blu-Ray, still, which means less profits for developers. The included harddrive is also an oversold advantage. The majority of 360s have harddrives, Microsoft is allowing MMOs to require harddrives so the developers can require it if need be, and in addition the harddrive cache the entire game so every game could be sped up if that's desired. The only real advantage to the PS3 in the included wireless. Now that's a market look. I use ethernet for my consoles so care less about included wireless.

Quote:

Uncharted 2 will certainly drop jaws, also people with mega expensive PCs

It's pretty. Resourceful people can find $400 PCs with better graphics and of course higher flexibility.

@MikeB

Quote:

No, there are other perfectly reasonable people who came to this conclusion.

I'm not questioning the validity of such potential speculation. You made a definitive statement that it was lead on the 360 now in post 725, when you previously personally highlighted the company's announcements that the opposite was the case. If you want to speculate, just say you are doing so. Trying to pass it off as fact to defend your beloved PS3 is disingenuous at best, at worst its flat out lieing. And its going to get noticed when you previously made a point of touting this very game as having PS3 as the lead platform.

Just to make it clear, you stated "Ghostbuster, like many or most 360/PS3 multi-platform games was lead on the XBox 360." in post 725.

Last edited by fairlanefastback on 23-Sep-2009 at 04:49 PM.

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@MikeB

Quote:

MikeB wrote: @Lou You always come out with heavy wording, nomatter right or wrong (usually wrong in such cases). Quote: Really, you don't know what you are talking about. There was no dual-Cell idea Here a summary of an old Japanese interview why the dual Cell approach was dropped: "- A 2-Cell PS3 was considered - one acting as a GPU, one as a CPU. But Cell's nature as a CPU eats away at its efficiency for graphics relative to a dedicated GPU. So they've married Cell with a specialised GPU.

bolded text should read: But it was a stupid idea...

Quote:

- Cell, however, can be used for graphics tasks. Cell and RSX have direct access to the results of each other's operations. Kutaragi specifically mentions displacement mapping as a sample workload the SPEs could take on. I think he mentions something about harmonising floating point rounding errors between the CPU and GPU to further ease data exchange between the two. Seems like they focussed quite a lot on harmonising communication between the GPU and CPU, and binding them quite tightly together." http://www.neogaf.com/forum/showthread.php?t=51518

The fact that their is a floating point rounding error difference between the components should scream to you: NOT HARMONIZED!
They are 2 different beasts thrown together in a box.

Quote:

I believe it was 2003 when Ken talked about the dual Cell idea for the PS3, however soon afterwards in early 2004 Sony partnered with nvidia to design a GPU to go hand in hand with the Cell processor. Please be more humble when talking about things you seemingly don't know about.

LOL @ Krazy Ken! Where's my dual HDMI, 3 gigabit ports, 120fps PS3? Why if Ken was designing a PS4, it would surely have no less than 1 MEEEEELLION Cells in it!

On the C64, I used to use the 6502 to bit shift memory to simulate smooth scrolling on the screen, what makes Cell so special for aiding in graphics tasks other than you might have a spare SPE to dedicate to it that can do the same repetitive task to many pieces of data in parallel? Most of what's done is pre-rendering as it's time-consuming to pass data back to Cell from RSX vs. the other way.

As for the consideration for a dual-Cell PS3, it was an idea. An idea is not even a prototype. Reality proves that a Cell cpu fails at being a gpu unless their goal was PS2 graphics. Then their was the cost factor.

I'll tone down my wording when you tone down your exagerations of the PS3's real world capabilities.

Nintendo has an idea for a football-shaped controller. They even patented it. Doesn't mean it exists...or will ever exist. Stop dealing with "the potential" of Cell/PS3 and start dealing with the reality of a system hard to get the most out of when compared to the 360 and then you'll be just fine.

@fairlanefastback

Quote:

So previously it was a valid source for you to link right here on aw.net to highlight Xbox 360 issues. But now that their latest story topic was the PS3 and you did not like the coverage now its not a valid source and even was "more like a commercial" for the Xbox 360 on the show that they were highlighting significant issues that the 360 had?

Just look at the differences between both shows. The 360 show was done professionally, but I think they put too much effort into hyping the 360's launch (which sold less than the PS3) and they put things into perspective by stating the 360 is a complex device and thus issues are to be expected (despite the issues were way beyond industry standards.

The conduct during the PS3 show was very different, for instance, no comedians or cheesy anti-company/product songs, etc.

Really, it's all so simple, just watch both shows. If for example you write a good paper and you receive an A+, would that immediately imply you will get an A+ for another paper you have to write?

@BrianK

Quote:

The Cell does physically have 8 processors. The PS3 only allows access to 7 of them. Of that 1 more is absorbed by the OS making it 6, and in some instances 5. This means one is using 2/5 of available power to compenstation for the RSX and that's expensive.

How many times have I said this? Sigh...

The Cell has 8 processors (9 if you count the disabled SPE). 1 active PPE and 7 active SPEs.

Like with any system the OS takes up CPU time to run, for this one SPE is dedicated to running the operating system. This is really nice as the OS running in the background won't have to fight for CPU time on any of the other SPEs.

On Windows for example a game running on a dual processor, one core was often dedicated to Windows and another core concentrated on running the game. It's still a dual core system in this example, nomatter that 1 core was dedicated to running the OS.

Quote:

Sorry this is a guess. Certainly PS3 only games, Uncharted and Rachet, had glitches.

Both games ran solid for me, Ratchet had a severe install bug for a very small minority of people which required a patch (but could be easily bypassed yourself with instructions). Uncharted didn't get a patch, until the trophy update I believe.

But of course human errors are besides the point. The PS3 glitches would have been easily found by playtesting.

Quote:

It's pretty. Resourceful people can find $400 PCs with better graphics and of course higher flexibility.

Higher pixel count or framerate does not per se generate a game with better graphics. As long as it's play fluid and looks very sharp (which is does), IMO this becomes more a side topic regarding graphics discussions. The HDTV screen or monitor you are using will probably have a bigger impact on graphics perception, which is also a side topic.

Last edited by MikeB on 23-Sep-2009 at 06:19 PM.

@MikeB

Quote:

MikeB wrote: The conduct during the PS3 show was very different, for instance, no comedians or cheesy anti-company/product songs, etc.

See, now a post like this, that is more truthful is a better place to start than the whole overboard thing you did in post #696. Where you tried to pretend the hired comedian was a journalist and where the show should be discredited due to an anonymous, uncorroborated allegation from some website.

Watchdog's reporting in both cases tries to be a bit too much of an entertainment piece in my book. I don't disagree that the PS3 show seemed to have more elements of that and I agree they detract from taking the show seriously.

Instead of discussing that, which I think many rational people could agree on, at least to a reasonable degree, you took the tact of looking to discredit them unfairly, simply because you, as a PS3 fanboy, took great exception that you felt they already did that to your favorite Sony product. This calls to mind the old saying, two wrongs don't make a right.

You've expressed your disdain for US and UK media coverage of the PS3 for quite some time. And you have claimed they hold a bias against it and also one in favor of its rival, the Xbox 360. You still have never explained why Microsoft is supposedly the favorite son when it comes to Xbox, but not other products, or how this supposed conspiracy is organized. So when you go over the top with a "get back" like in post 696 obviously you make it harder to get to a rational conversation.

Last edited by fairlanefastback on 23-Sep-2009 at 08:15 PM.
Last edited by fairlanefastback on 23-Sep-2009 at 08:07 PM.

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@MikeB

Quote:

On Windows for example a game running on a dual processor, one core was often dedicated to Windows and another core concentrated on running the game. It's still a dual core system in this example, nomatter that 1 core was dedicated to running the OS.

A single core is never ever ever dedicated to anything on Windows, sorry. Any Windows process that has no affinity set will run on any available CPU. That includes OS processes and games, whether single or multithreaded, assuming a Uniform Memory Architecture. If NUMA is used, as on older Opteron boards, the scheduler will try to keep a process close to its data. I do not know if anything like this is taken into account when context switching on a quad core processor with cache shared per 2 CPUs. Judging by the fact that processes on my machine typically use 25% of each CPU unless I set the affinity and that my CPU has L2 shared per 2 CPUs, I'd assume that there isn't such handling. Hammer can tell us more I'm sure.

Last edited by Zardoz on 23-Sep-2009 at 08:53 PM.
Last edited by Zardoz on 23-Sep-2009 at 08:26 PM.

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@MikeB

Quote:

MikeB wrote: @BrianK Quote: The Cell does physically have 8 processors. The PS3 only allows access to 7 of them. Of that 1 more is absorbed by the OS making it 6, and in some instances 5. This means one is using 2/5 of available power to compenstation for the RSX and that's expensive. How many times have I said this? Sigh... The Cell has 8 processors (9 if you count the disabled SPE). 1 active PPE and 7 active SPEs. Like with any system the OS takes up CPU time to run, for this one SPE is dedicated to running the operating system. This is really nice as the OS running in the background won't have to fight for CPU time on any of the other SPEs.

Don't forget that the PPE is used to delegate to the SPEs taking away processing power from the PPE. As for the OS, don't confuse yourself with the gui...and with that, that's your opinion. Every new enhancement is followed by news of bricking or freezing and lost data and then days later a patch is released. Microsoft's updates have gone infinitely smoother, as have Nintendo's. I would say, the PS3 OS has the same quality of the RRoD-prone 360 hardware.

Quote:

On Windows for example a game running on a dual processor, one core was often dedicated to Windows and another core concentrated on running the game. It's still a dual core system in this example, nomatter that 1 core was dedicated to running the OS.

No one really complains about the NT kernal of Windows. The main culprits in slowing down Windows are virtual RAM useage and dummy/useless services. The 360 has none of these. Remind me: how many years of experience Sony has in writing operating systems.

Quote:

Quote: Sorry this is a guess. Certainly PS3 only games, Uncharted and Rachet, had glitches. Both games ran solid for me, Ratchet had a severe install bug for a very small minority of people which required a patch (but could be easily bypassed yourself with instructions). Uncharted didn't get a patch, until the trophy update I believe.

Every PS3 game seems to auto-magically run glitch free for you.

@MikeB

Quote:

The Cell has 8 processors (9 if you count the disabled SPE). 1 active PPE and 7 active SPEs

Thanks that's a bit clearer. However, the topic was allocation of the processor for graphics. Isn't that mainly an SPE item? One wouldn't allocate the PPE to do this. Thus, that's why I talked about 8 processors as the SPEs.

Quote:

Both games ran solid for me, Ratchet had a severe install bug for a very small minority of people which required a patch

This is an example of why people see you as a PS3 zealot. You acknowledge the glitches exist due to a patch being made. You then try to excuse this as if it's not really a glitch. Simply acknowledge PS3 games do have glitches, it's not unheard of.

Quote:

The PS3 glitches would have been easily found by playtesting.

Really? Cuz the Ratchet and Unreal bugs were found this way? Certainly they were by the end user.

Quote:

Higher pixel count or framerate does not per se generate a game with better graphics.

Certainly the game construct plays a factor. But, so does the videocard. There's more to graphics cards than higher pixel count and framerate. Such as how it handles textures and shading. The RSX is fairly easy to beat at a reasonable price point. ATI HD 3870 for $73 or X1900 XT for $70 or 8800GT for $100. A bit close how about the X1800GTO for $45? The days of the high priced PC to beat a PS3 are over. PCs move along, the consoles stagnate.

Microsoft is releasing their N adapters. N is faster bandwidth and less latency. Both good things for gaming. Play networked games beyond

@Zardoz

Quote:

A single core is never ever ever dedicated to anything on Windows, sorry.

The advantages in Windows of having multi-core improved over time. Multi-threading is needed for that. For the OS itself to take well advantage of multi-cores vs performance in a single core environment must include multi-processing abilities for core processes.

A related quote from a few years ago:

"Finally, keep in mind that the Windows XP driver model for Direct3D is quite inefficient, to such an extent that in many applications, the OS and driver overhead associated with issuing Direct3D calls approaches 50% of available CPU cycles.Hiding this overhead will be one of the major immediate uses of multi-core."

http://www.anandtech.com/cpuchipsets/showdoc.aspx?i=2377&p=3

This may also help with regard to what I am pointing at:

Why's my single core processor faster than my dual core?
http://answers.yahoo.com/question/index?qid=20070918204048AAy2WtW (edit, wrong link)

Last edited by MikeB on 23-Sep-2009 at 11:12 PM.

@MikeB

Quote:

The advantages in Windows of having multi-core improved over time. Multi-threading is needed for that. For the OS itself to take well advantage of multi-cores vs performance in a single core environment must include multi-processing abilities for core processes.

Windows was multithreaded a very long time before dual core processors got made, WindowsNT was running on multi-CPU systems for ages. The home OSes could run across multiple cores since Windows 2k. Some processes and services of the OS might be single threaded, but since the OS consists of many of them, it doesn't run on one core as such.

The driver model discussed there could very well be single threaded (Hammer?) and certainly having a multicore processor will help with that, provided there is enough memory bandwidth available and expensive forms of synchronisation are not needed. However, this is not the same as having the OS on one core and a game in another. It's possible to do that manually, just set the affinity in Task Manager, but I think that in many cases it's best to let the scheduler decide the load balance.

Edit: I'm not disagreeing with you on this at all, I just pointed out a technical detail, that most of the time both the game and the OS will be scheduled between both CPUs, ie. a single game thread might jump between CPUs.

Last edited by Zardoz on 23-Sep-2009 at 09:47 PM.

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