@Hammer

@Hammer

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Linux already runs on HPC platforms

So?

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You do know the difference between symmetric multi-processors vs asymmetric multi-processors?

Yes.

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PPE sucks as an out-of-order code stream processor.

So?

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UT3 engine includes specialized middleware which are provided by specialized middleware ISV ("one trick pony").

So?

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AGEIA PhysX PS3 is provided by Sony. Are you claiming SPUs are stupidly hard to program compared to yet-another-stream processor like Ageia’s PhysX Accelerator?

No the SPUs are not hard to code for if you write programs from scratch. Porting legacy stuff can pose quite an obstackle.

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They are not unique in that department.

Not unique, but pretty much leading and pioneers compared to others.

@Hammer

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Depends on the situation.

Please clarify and provide proper sources.

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If CELL has "so much power" then there's no need for RSX.

Of course there would be even if 10x times more powerful than is currently the case. The RSX GPU is a much more like the legacy PC approach. Porting legacy engines would still pose a hurdle, you cannot expect a simple recompile on the SPUs to work. And to tap into this enormous potential would still require a lot of time and effort, Rome wasn't built in a day.

Thought this would be interesting. This study was done in Australia...

According to this Nielson report: http://www.next-gen.biz/index.php?option=com_content&task=view&id=10791&Itemid=2

...the 360 is the 'kiddie' system. Ofcourse, if you listen to any XBL headset in-game conversation, you would have known that a long time ago...

http://www.gamesindustry.biz/articles/ea-halts-work-on-ps3-version-of-red-alert-3
http://www.gamesindustry.biz/articles/sony-cancels-eight-days-and-the-getaway

3 PS3 titles stop development in one week. What's up with that? The Sony ones have been shelved permenantly. EA, are they losing hope in the PS3?

ArsTechica story of trying to get their 60GB PS3 replaced.

"In this article, we'll take a look at what has happened to Sony's flagship console SKU, and we'll recount our experience of trying to get one of these precious 60GB models replaced under warranty. If you've got a 60GB PS3, you'll want to read this in case yours ever croaks. And, if you don't have one, read it anyway and wonder what Sony is thinking by discontinuing their best unit"

@BrianK

PC seems to still be ruling the games..

DFC [Intelligence, a video game market research firm] game sales for 2007, the PC is ahead of any other platform, with $8.2 billion in worldwide game sales, with about $5 billion of that online.

@BrianK

Ars Technica has now rerated the PS3, at first they rated the PS3 as a 6/10, now they rate the console as a 9/10. Nice to see reviewers are starting to warm up towards the PS3.

@MikeB

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Ars Technica has now rerated the PS3, at first they rated the PS3 as a 6/10, now they rate the console as a 9/10. Nice to see reviewers are starting to warm up towards the PS3.

Here is that article for those that'd like to read it.

I think the ratings have changed for a couple reasons -- pricing has changed, console has changed, rumble added, and firmware has changed. I think the reason isn't necessarily that they warmed up to. I think the reason is that the PS3 has matured and fixed it's issues since the original review.

They do note in the article that the one big area it's lacking is social networking. Giving the 360 the nod to that. They do recognize that Home may change this.

Last edited by BrianK on 05-Jun-2008 at 08:49 PM.

@Lou

The energy costs for "on idle" sounds unrealistic, it's almost the same as in full use for all three platforms. I guess they mean just "power on" without actually running any games (eventually the fan will continuously kick in which will use up some extra engergy). A 40 GB PS3 uses up about 115 Watts (less than a 360 at 165 Watts when playing a game), that's half or usually less than half of what the average HDTV consumes. Playing games on the PS3 for on average 8 hours a day for a year long costs less than 40 dollars in the US on average (16 hours idle per day), plus on average about 100 dollar a year for HDTV usage.

In any case a full year of nonstop 24/7 gaming spanned over a period of 10 years isn't that costly, even on a more power consuming 60 GB PS3, uses 180-195 watts during gameplay, around less than 2 watts on standby.

The Wii is of course consumes by far the least energy, other than for waggle exercise. But note that you still use a TV set of some sort.

@BrianK

I stated elsewhere I thought they would have focussed more on the hardware specs for their first review, from a hardware perspective (system spec per price ratio) it was IMO more a 10/10. I agree with them though that the firmware wasn't fully up to par and some launch games weren't that great. Still Motorstorm and Resistance: Fall of Man were for me far more interesting than the 360's launch games overall. From a hardware perspective the current PS3s are a little less impressively specced.

Firmware updates were anticipated and comparing the 360's hardware specs vs the PS3's hardware specs 2 128 MB flash memory chips can hold a lot more firmware data than the 360's 32 MB memory. The future outlook of a console like they are doing now should IMO be taken into account.

With regard to social networking, it seems the PS3 will go far beyond what the 360 can provide for the long run.

Last edited by MikeB on 05-Jun-2008 at 09:47 PM.
Last edited by MikeB on 05-Jun-2008 at 09:42 PM.
Last edited by MikeB on 05-Jun-2008 at 09:35 PM.

@MikeB

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With regard to social networking, it seems the PS3 will go far beyond what the 360 can provide for the long run.

Beyond perhaps. 'Far' beyond - doubtful. The limitation for either console is available bandwidth. What do you believe will give the PS3 an online social networking advantage?

@Lou

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Thought this would be interesting. This study was done in Australia...

Interesting table.

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@MikeB

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Of course there would be even if 10x times more powerful than is currently the case. The RSX GPU is a much more like the legacy PC approach

Nvidia releases hardware-accelerated film renderer (G80 class GPUs)http://www.nvidia.com/page/gz_home.html

Recall that Sony’s own 5 SPUs test can only match 20 pixel shader equipped G70 class GPU and this is without concurrent vertex shader processing, texture decompression, Z-cull test, light-and-transformation and 'etc'.

G8x has additional hardware features like early-Z cull, giga-threads dispatcher, concurrent pixel shading and texture processing and 'etc'.

Last edited by Hammer on 06-Jun-2008 at 11:47 AM.
Last edited by Hammer on 06-Jun-2008 at 11:45 AM.

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@MikeB

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MikeB wrote: @BrianK With regard to social networking, it seems the PS3 will go far beyond what the 360 can provide for the long run.

With what? HOME? I heard they are going to open the beta this fall. The 'beta'!!!?
HOME was announced what, 15 months ago now and promised that fall... By the time it's released as complete, this generation will be half over... We'll start hearing murmurs of the next Xbox by then...

Heck, a simple 360 redesign with integrated BR player would extend the lifespan of the 360 well past the PS3 if you ask me... Now for the Wii... there is no hope, but by that time, Nintendo's pockets will be so fat they can write their own ticket...

@Hammer

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Recall that Sony’s own 5 SPUs test can only match 20 pixel shader equipped G70 class GPU and this is without concurrent vertex shader processing, texture decompression, Z-cull test, light-and-transformation and 'etc'.

I think you have an interesting point going on here.

The 'classic' model followed by desktops and the 360 is putting the Cell beating performance needs into the GPU. Certainly a Cell w/ such a GPU would be awesome. Of course we won't see that on the PS3 for gaming as we won't see the 360 use the newer GPUs. In the computer world the evolution is the safer bet then the revolution. We'll likely see the Cell have some specialized application uses -- weather, protein folding etc. But, for the mainstream we'll see the needed power in multiple CPU, GPU and even multiple GPUs.

The question for the Cell will be one of volume. Will Sony's and Toshiba's use expand past themselves? Will this be enough to continue the Cell line? We saw the PowerPC G3/G4/G5 die with the meger needs/uses for desktops. I'd suspect the same will be true of the Cell. The Power lines have morphed, via IBM, to a configurable nearly modular answer to specialized needs. The Cell is along these lines.

My vote for a Cell revolution? Unlikely. Intel and AMD's CPUs will catch up in 2009 most likely and soon surpass the Cell. Others (cough MikeB) will of course disagree.

Last edited by BrianK on 06-Jun-2008 at 12:42 PM.

@MikeB

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So?

So, what happens to your multi-processor claims?

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Yes.

Don't you realise that BeOS is currently a SMP OS?

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So?

What happens to pure PPE claims?

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No the SPUs are not hard to code for if you write programs from scratch.

From Fold@Home GPU2 client; the lessons learnt from programming AMD/ATI R6x0 GPU can be applied to CELL.

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Porting legacy stuff can pose quite an obstackle.

This is why middleware is important.

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@Hammer

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Recall that Sony’s own 5 SPUs test can only match 20 pixel shader equipped G70 class GPU

Which is quite an achievement because the Cell isn't a GPU, but a very powerful multi-CPU, multi-system chip.

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So, what happens to your multi-processor claims?

I think you misread, I didn't state Linux cannot run on a multi-processor system, even single processor OSes can. I also didn't say one cannot take advantage of multiple cores or CPUs with Linux, in fact you can also use the SPEs on PS3 Linux, so you can write your apps on these and thus of course it would also be possible to rewrite Linux desktop OS parts to take advantage of this.

But that still doesn't mean that I think the Linux desktop OS is well suited to adapt to get accelerated from the core up for multi-processing.

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Don't you realise that BeOS is currently a SMP OS?

I only stated easier and more suitable to adapt.

The Cell is a assymetric chip because the PPE and a SPE are different. But you can take assymetric or symmetric programming approaches in both SMP situations (although assymetric approach would not lead to benefits as all processors are the same) as well as in the Cell AMP situationl.

You just have to control which thread runs where.

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What happens to pure PPE claims?

What do you mean?

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the lessons learnt from programming AMD/ATI R6x0 GPU can be applied to CELL

Sure, but the SPEs are more flexible than that. There are far more other lessons to be learnt.

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This is why middleware is important.

Agreed middleware is important. But if you use your own technology you are in full control and better understand the inner working of both the hardware and the game engine. With middleware you are usually very much dependent on the technology provider.

Last edited by MikeB on 06-Jun-2008 at 02:59 PM.

@Lou

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With what? HOME? I heard they are going to open the beta this fall. The 'beta'!!!?

Open beta, they just want to make sure they worked out any potential issue before calling it final.

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y the time it's released as complete, this generation will be half over... We'll start hearing murmurs of the next Xbox by then...

Sony expects at least a 10 year lifecycle for the PS3, the system has only been available here for 1 year and 3 months. Home is shaping up well and for a distant future you should be able to take your home with you on the PS4.

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Heck, a simple 360 redesign with integrated BR player would extend the lifespan of the 360 well past the PS3 if you ask me...

I think that's unlikely, but we'll see. I would applaud a Blu-Ray drive becoming standard for gaming as well as movies on a future 360 (would be great of movie studios and gaming potential). But there are some considerations, for one people may not like to upgrade their existing 360s with an external Blu-Ray drive, inhibiting the gaming potential.

@MikeB

That's just it, how do you released a 'beta' to the world? They are talking heat for the 'promise' of HOME... I also see HOME as more overhead to the system which only has 256MB of main RAM. Launching a disc-based game from HOME then returning to HOME, I just don't see that as seemless as they make it seem...as any high quality game will push the envelope of available resources... Expect a nice "loading" transistion... Again, I see alot of promises that will go unfulfilled.

Release a PS3 with some extra RAM to run HOME as THE native interface...then things become more realistic...

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Open beta, they just want to make sure they worked out any potential issue before calling it final.

For a console people paid $400-$600 for, I wouldn't want a 'beta' quality experience...

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Quote: y the time it's released as complete, this generation will be half over... We'll start hearing murmurs of the next Xbox by then... Sony expects at least a 10 year lifecycle for the PS3, the system has only been available here for 1 year and 3 months. Home is shaping up well and for a distant future you should be able to take your home with you on the PS4.

Expectations and reality are separate beasts... A distant future indeed...that's one of my points...when that future arrives, everyone else will have moved on...

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Quote: Heck, a simple 360 redesign with integrated BR player would extend the lifespan of the 360 well past the PS3 if you ask me... I think that's unlikely, but we'll see. I would applaud a Blu-Ray drive becoming standard for gaming as well as movies on a future 360 (would be great of movie studios and gaming potential). But there are some considerations, for one people may not like to upgrade their existing 360s with an external Blu-Ray drive, inhibiting the gaming potential.

I think MS is waiting for a BR-player that will access a DVD as fast as it's current drive in order to not "break" any existing games... The rumor mill is too-filled with reports of this from hardware manufacturers to not believe it...