An unbiased side by side comparison of 360 and PS3

[zephyrprime]

This has countless applications for databases and will be applied to great use in IBM's upcoming servers. Unfortunately, the SPEs are of little benefit for games as games have little need for crunching numbers or running multiple streams of the same application.

Games have a huge need to crunch numbers. It's databases that don't cruch a lot of numbers. Databases are applications that tend to be I/O limited.

Having some limited experience making games, programming a game to utilize 7 microprocessors is far more trouble than it?s worth. Splitting code 7 ways, even if there is ever a need to do so, isn't easy.

Making a program multi-threaded is definitely a lot more work than making a single threaded program. However, I wouldn't say that it's not worthwhile and what's more, no one really has any choice on the issue. With all semi companies unable to scale clockspeed siginifcantly anymore, parallel processing is the only option we have available to us.

Thus 3 powerful parallel cores imply that one 3.2 Ghz core could be used exclusively to process and render physics, complex lighting, weather and glare effects and such,

Glare is a lighting effect. Lighting is handled by the GPU, not the CPU. And the author seems to not have a clear idea of what weather is in a game. Weather isn't a separate phenomenon from geometry and lighting.

I'm surprised that Microsoft hasn't already come out and stated that their console can render games at 1080p, 1200p, or pretty much any other resolution as well, as is already known by anyone with a technical background.

Microsoft has stated that the xbox 360 won't support 1080p.

The new ATI graphics card, in addition to being two generations ahead of any GPU out on the market today according to Anandtech,

How can it be 2 generations ahead when it is only one generation ahead of the chip ATI currently has in the market?

Don't get the idea that I completely disagree with the author. I do believe as he does that the xbox 360 will be easier to develop for. In the beginning of it's life, a lot of the ps3's raw power may not be exploited due to insufficient multithreading in games.

 

[Goosemaster]

Originally posted by: zephyrprime

This has countless applications for databases and will be applied to great use in IBM's upcoming servers. Unfortunately, the SPEs are of little benefit for games as games have little need for crunching numbers or running multiple streams of the same application.

This guys doesn't know what he's talking about. Games have a huge need to crunch numbers. It's databases that don't cruch a lot of numbers. Databases are applications that tend to be I/O limited.

Having some limited experience making games, programming a game to utilize 7 microprocessors is far more trouble than it?s worth. Splitting code 7 ways, even if there is ever a need to do so, isn't easy.

Making a program multi-threaded is definitely a lot more work than making a single threaded program. However, I wouldn't say that it's not worthwhile and what's more, no one really has any choice on the issue. With all semi companies unable to scale clockspeed siginifcantly anymore, parallel processing is the only option we have available to us.

Thus 3 powerful parallel cores imply that one 3.2 Ghz core could be used exclusively to process and render physics, complex lighting, weather and glare effects and such,

Glare is a lighting effect. Lighting is handled by the GPU, not the CPU. And the author seems to not have a clear idea of what weather is in a game. Weather isn't a separate phenomenon from geometry and lighting.

I'm surprised that Microsoft hasn't already come out and stated that their console can render games at 1080p, 1200p, or pretty much any other resolution as well, as is already known by anyone with a technical background.

Microsoft has stated that the xbox 360 won't support 1080p.

The new ATI graphics card, in addition to being two generations ahead of any GPU out on the market today according to Anandtech,

How can it be 2 generations ahead when it is only one generation ahead of the chip ATI currently has in the market?

Nice ownage there boi...

 

[UNCjigga]

What's funny is that Anand Lal Shimpi himself, in his own article, assured that the XBox 360 can render 1080p with MSAA turned on (1080p frames will fit just fine in the 10mb EDRAM.) But Anand is the only one I've seen claim this--even MS hasn't. Does Mr. Shimpi know what he's talking about?

QFT!

ATI did clarify that although Microsoft isn't targetting 1080p (1920 x 1080) as a resolution for games, their GPU would be able to handle the resolution with 4X AA enabled at no performance penalty.

 

[Acanthus]

This is so good it has to be fattening.