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anands little article on XBOX360 and PS3 CPU's

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If Anand is trying to protect his source, the respectful thing to do would to not link to mirrors of the article, IMO.
 
I would assume the developers are not allowed to comment or speculate on performance of the products.

Too bad they couldnt use a semperon instead. Opteron and P4 would be much better but Semperon is no slouch and after all the original xbox was a celeron/p4 hybrid. Stupid move microsoft.

Also there better be mouse support for the x-box 360 otherwise they really didnt listen to game players and will not get the full support of those who play FPS.
 
It seemed suspicious. First, 3.2GHz sounds too good to be true, especially for a tripple core Xenon. Cell could have been more believable with one 3.2GHz core and several SPEs. However its not really different from the "slow" Xenon cores, then there's the small amount of cache for Cell (512KB L2?) shared ofcourse, making it worse. And only 1mb of cache amongst 3 cores of Xenon. We have X2s with at least 512KB per core, some with 1MB...

Then you notice the designs of the systems. Even a 2.2GHz Athlon X2 4200+ would require a much bulkier system design to house the required cooling system. A whole 1GHz "slower" and less one core compared to Xenon, oh and no SMT so 6 possible threads to the X2's 2...then why is the X2 or a PD so much hotter? Plague of the theoretical.

So these systems cannot be great for general purpose computing, certainly not anywhere near as good as a good desktop PC, I'm not suprised. I knew from the start that they could only be good for what they were designed to do. Hacking them to run something like Linux might work but it wouldn't make an easy or cheap super computer. What suprised me is the claim that they won't be that great even for gaming. I'd figured that developers could simply write the efficient code required to harness the power of these relatively inflexible processors.

Now I'm not as suprised as I would have been if I hadn't already heard about Nintendo's claim back during E3 that the Revolution wouldn't be a power house like the other two systems, it'd only be "a couple times faster than GameCube" - in terms of processing power. Using the same IBM PPC chips and an ATI GPU, Nintendo might actually be in the best shape here if this article comes back to life and M$ and Sony become a laughing stock. Nintendo never lied with their GameCube. They reported numbers that were less than PS2 yet the GameCube's games are easily better looking on average. They didn't want to hype up the power of their Revolution because they probably knew its real world performance was nothing to brag about, they're playing the card of "we'll make a capable machine, its up to the game developers to make good use of it and provide fun games."


If the article is correct, M$ might be the better off of the two. Xenon's low cost might really give Microsoft the big advantage, allowing them to sell consoles for a considerably lower price than PS3. Cell does appear to be another Emotion Engine joke. Way overhyped and while it sounds good, it isn't truly functional as intended. For Sony's sake, the article had better be at least half false, so much money on Cell wasted for what could be nothing but hype factor, which could easily be crushed by fanboyism - it wouldn't take long for XBox and Nintendo fans to rise up and attack the PS3, letting Sony fans know their overpriced system is no better than the underdog's. I believe that Sony survived this past round and remained king of the hill because they came out with their console, the PS2, first. They were able to use the hype they created to amass a large early adopting fanbase - winning them even more "must have" exclusive titles which, in turn, sell even more systems. The same was also true for PSX (PS1), it was out first of the generation and thus was out the longest to generate the larger player base. N64's use of carts killed its chance to kill Sony's rise to utter dominance.

Now Sony won't have that headstart, and their major hardware advantage seems all but gone, and they will most likely have pricing problems to boot. Sony falling out of 1st? Right now it doesn't sound like it will be a sure thing but I think there's a pretty good chance they'll definatley lose ground.
 
Originally posted by: HDTVMan
I would assume the developers are not allowed to comment or speculate on performance of the products.

Too bad they couldnt use a semperon instead. Opteron and P4 would be much better but Semperon is no slouch and after all the original xbox was a celeron/p4 hybrid. Stupid move microsoft.

Also there better be mouse support for the x-box 360 otherwise they really didnt listen to game players and will not get the full support of those who play FPS.
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It's spelled Sempron, and the Xbox's CPU was a PIII\Celeron hybrid, not P4. If they were actually going to use AMD I'd expect a dual core Athlon 64 with reduced cache if anything.
 
Man, the console fanboy sites are tearing through this article like rabid dogs; but of course, not a single thought out reply, just "How could MS and Sony be wrong?" which would have to be the funniest reply ever conceived by man. Geez, Anand even gave them that the GPU are still pretty badass overall, he just pointed out the obvious: how can an in-order, half the die size CPU expect to actually be faster than our equivalent PC hardware? Where's all this magical performance coming from? It has nothing to do with defending our precious investments, it's just we're used to seeing extravagant claims of performance and then wading through the marketing BS to find out what's really going on. No one's claimed these console GPUs aren't going to shine, but most of us saw something overkill the CPU numbers.

And frankly, they needed the GPU power more than the CPU, in my opinion, considering I never see an XBox commercial that doesn't show in-game footage that has anything higher than FPS in the teens (such lag that it burns the eyes). They'll do fine just taking the same games (which they'll do anyway) and upgrading the textures and FPS without really pushing the CPU that hard. Console fanboys need not worry, but they can sure stop telling us PC gaming is dead.
 
Originally posted by: ZobarStyl
Man, the console fanboy sites are tearing through this article like rabid dogs; but of course, not a single thought out reply, just "How could MS and Sony be wrong?" which would have to be the funniest reply ever conceived by man. Geez, Anand even gave them that the GPU are still pretty badass overall, he just pointed out the obvious: how can an in-order, half the die size CPU expect to actually be faster than our equivalent PC hardware? Where's all this magical performance coming from? It has nothing to do with defending our precious investments, it's just we're used to seeing extravagant claims of performance and then wading through the marketing BS to find out what's really going on. No one's claimed these console GPUs aren't going to shine, but most of us saw something overkill the CPU numbers.

And frankly, they needed the GPU power more than the CPU, in my opinion, considering I never see an XBox commercial that doesn't show in-game footage that has anything higher than FPS in the teens (such lag that it burns the eyes). They'll do fine just taking the same games (which they'll do anyway) and upgrading the textures and FPS without really pushing the CPU that hard. Console fanboys need not worry, but they can sure stop telling us PC gaming is dead.
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At the same time, I think it's a better investment to spend $500 on a console than $500 on a GPU with similar processing power.. the console will be useful for much longer..

(Of course, there's much more to it than just this.. like, for example, how I hate playing an FPS with anything but a keyboard and mouse..)
 
Originally posted by: jediknight
At the same time, I think it's a better investment to spend $500 on a console than $500 on a GPU with similar processing power.. the console will be useful for much longer..

(Of course, there's much more to it than just this.. like, for example, how I hate playing an FPS with anything but a keyboard and mouse..)
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Exactly; at no point in time does a console appeal to me for FPS, RTS, or anything MMO. But that doesn't mean I consider my 400 dollar 6800GT any better or worse of an investment than my 99 dollar GameCube. Playing Smash Melee with my fiancee on one, blasting CS:S on the other: neither overlaps in what I want them to do, so there's no comparing price/performance. Just my 2 cents.
 
Anyway you slice it, they MS and Sony) hyped it up with more BS then I have ever seen in a product launch up until this point...

Like mentioned by jedi it is still cheaper so in that case it will be attractive to those who only want to game at HD levels and avoid the higher cost and more complexity of the pC environment.... and buggy Microsoft OS...
 
Originally posted by: ZobarStyl
Man, the console fanboy sites are tearing through this article like rabid dogs; but of course, not a single thought out reply, just "How could MS and Sony be wrong?" which would have to be the funniest reply ever conceived by man. Geez, Anand even gave them that the GPU are still pretty badass overall, he just pointed out the obvious: how can an in-order, half the die size CPU expect to actually be faster than our equivalent PC hardware? Where's all this magical performance coming from? It has nothing to do with defending our precious investments, it's just we're used to seeing extravagant claims of performance and then wading through the marketing BS to find out what's really going on. No one's claimed these console GPUs aren't going to shine, but most of us saw something overkill the CPU numbers.

And frankly, they needed the GPU power more than the CPU, in my opinion, considering I never see an XBox commercial that doesn't show in-game footage that has anything higher than FPS in the teens (such lag that it burns the eyes). They'll do fine just taking the same games (which they'll do anyway) and upgrading the textures and FPS without really pushing the CPU that hard. Console fanboys need not worry, but they can sure stop telling us PC gaming is dead.
Click to expand...

See, this is the problem. You can't take the console CPUs, put them in a vaccum apart from the rest of the system, and then compare them to today desktop CPUs. It just doesn't work that way.

As for Xbox games not showing FPS games above the teens, stop with the crap. I play FPS games pretty heavily on XBox and PC. PC is my preferred platform of choice for FPS games but Xbox is not nearly as bad as you make it.

If anything, the article states nothing completely new. It takes time for developers to take advatage of new console hardware. I know the PS2 likes to get slagged here (Being a PC based site and all), but it pumped out amazing looking games like MGS3, GT4, God of War, etc. You can stack those games against the best of the best on the PC side and they hold up extremely well.
 
The real problem is expectations. By talking about the astounding power of the new systems both sony and M$ have set the bar very high, so when the real hardware shows up and doesn't even come close to what they were saying, everyone is let down, even though the systems may be very good platforms.
 
I already knew those consoles CPUs won't come near in performance of actual PC CPUs. Those consoles use simple in-order cores which have much lower performance than A64 and P4 superscalar out of order CPUs. That's what I said in the begining , but some console fanboys were screaming and believind the marketing BS.
 
Originally posted by: Bearsfan
A 'lowly' 733 celeron and 64 megs of ram (XBox) is pulling off Half Life 2 with HDR at 30FPS!
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...with much much much lower quality graphics and physics than the PC version.

 
Originally posted by: hasanahmad
actually i think anandtech pulled the article because it was a lie.
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Got proof of that asshat???

I am sure the console crews are rounding up their legions to start spinning and trashing the article....Probably MS employees....
 
Originally posted by: blckgrffn
Crippled consoles, that is what we will have, should have balanced the GPU and CPU better...
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Crippled? Are you saying they won't play games well?

Again, I'm not sure why you guys are so concerned.

 
Originally posted by: hasanahmad
actually i think anandtech pulled the article because it was a lie.
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Thank you for your well thought-out, thought-provoking response. I'm sure you have tons of reasons as to why these in-order, deep pipelined, low cache CPU's that are half the size of desktop chips are sure to blow PC's out of the water like they were standing still, but since you responded with all the eloquence of an autistic child screaming "N-n-n-nooo!" with his mittens over his ears, we'll just have to take your word for it.

This is pretty much the extent of the backlash against what Anand said: every board has people bashing him, but no one has offered an alternative to what the numbers mean, or how this magical performance will be extracted. It's just "That's a lie!" and "MS wouldn't lie to us!"
 
LOL!!! MS wouldn't lie to us.......................ROTFLMAO!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

What a bunch of morons...MS lies, cheats, and robs us consumers blind with half-arse programs...............
 
Originally posted by: Wingznut
Originally posted by: blckgrffn
Crippled consoles, that is what we will have, should have balanced the GPU and CPU better...
Click to expand...
Crippled? Are you saying they won't play games well?

Again, I'm not sure why you guys are so concerned.
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I agree with Wingz....

I was never concerned cause I said then that it was waaaayyy overhyped and I knew it was a bunch of BS..manipulated numbers spun..

I like consoles (PS2) cause they are easy to hook up, install game, play, play multple ppl...plus I have access to by bigger screen TV....also when I am done it puts away very nicely out of sight...

Consoles are part of the entertainment center and are best for family rooms...My PC is in my office and not condusive to the gaming experience...
 
do you have proof that anand pulled it because of NDA? until Anandtech says it was because of other reasons it is clear to assume and speculate much like the article assumes and speculates that it was a FUD article and anandtech removed it to save its ass and its reputation. There was NOTHING in the article which seems to be under NDA. It was the comment of one developer qouted and that too is unknown. Pulling article to save the source is also suspicious as it would negate the purpose of the article
 
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