[ArsTechnica] Next-gen consoles and impact on VGA market

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Bobisuruncle54

Senior member
Oct 19, 2011
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Unchartered, Unchartered2, Unchartered3, God of War 3, Killzone 2, Killzone 3. Do you have a counter? It isn't like I've been holding out mentioning these.

If you honestly think that the Uncharted series has great graphics you'd be mistaken and you've just been suckered by cheap rendering tricks. Animated (i.e. not simulated) set pieces and static environments require a lot less processing power than open world games with interactive environments. The texture resolution in the KZ games is also laughably low, and GoW3 is the only remotely impressive title in that list. Gran Turismo 5 doesn't look impressive either, it has excessively bad pop-up with on car reflections and complete lack of reflections of other race cars on the track. Let's not even mention the liberal use of sprites which actually means PGR4 often looks better simply because there doesn't appear to be cardboard cutouts all over the place.

As I've mentioned before, it's as if you believe the marketing and hype of the Cell and PS3 titles to be irrefutable fact when really you're just exhibiting typical fanboy behaviour by making outlandish claims about its capabilities.
 

taltamir

Lifer
Mar 21, 2004
13,576
6
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i can't imagine the next gen consoles NOT having cutting edge graphics. The developers will surely tell them otherwise like they did with the Xbobx 360 and forced MS to up the amount of RAM in game.

that wasn't cutting edge though. It was forcing the xbox to go from 256MB to 512MB of RAM at a time when the average PC had 4GB of RAM.
 

markydV2

Banned
Sep 2, 2012
10
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If you honestly think that the Uncharted series has great graphics you'd be mistaken and you've just been suckered by cheap rendering tricks. Animated (i.e. not simulated) set pieces and static environments require a lot less processing power than open world games with interactive environments. The texture resolution in the KZ games is also laughably low, and GoW3 is the only remotely impressive title in that list. Gran Turismo 5 doesn't look impressive either, it has excessively bad pop-up with on car reflections and complete lack of reflections of other race cars on the track. Let's not even mention the liberal use of sprites which actually means PGR4 often looks better simply because there doesn't appear to be cardboard cutouts all over the place.

As I've mentioned before, it's as if you believe the marketing and hype of the Cell and PS3 titles to be irrefutable fact when really you're just exhibiting typical fanboy behaviour by making outlandish claims about its capabilities.

So what looks better than the uncharted series on 360?
 

BenSkywalker

Diamond Member
Oct 9, 1999
9,140
67
91
Pre-Rage carmack...or Post-Rage carmack...his views are different today...he considers console a dead end...so from what year does Carmack support you...and from what year did the stop supporting your view and return to reality?

I'm not talking about them as lead development platforms. It was my quoting of him stating that Cell could do things beyond what the i7 was capable of. Now we have a quote from the Metro2033 team that the 360's CPU can be faster then x86 processors also thanks to RS for providing the quote. My point in this thread has been quite clear, I clearly remember the huge boost in visuals the Voodoo1 brought to the table, I was already a father by the time it hit the market(I had already been gaming for many years prior to that). I've been around a long time and seen the ebb and flow of development cycles between the platforms. Late life cycle this is the first time I have ever seen *any* PC native devs leading on a console.

The texture resolution in the KZ games is also laughably low

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QdeqqPXep3s&feature=relmfu

Laughably low? Not going to hold them up as an example of bleeding edge, but laughably low? Have you ever seen so much as a trailer of the game? That link is just a fifteen minute chunk randomly selected of someone playing through the game.

Animated (i.e. not simulated) set pieces and static environments require a lot less processing power than open world games with interactive environments.

From the sounds of your post I should have used FFXIII as an example for you. That is one cross platform title that looks better on the PS3 and by the sounds of your post, I'd assume you'd think it had a better graphics engine then any of the games I listed.
 

crisium

Platinum Member
Aug 19, 2001
2,643
615
136
You can disagree with Ben about the Cell, but arguing that UC2+3 and KZ2+3 don't trounce any 360 exclusives graphically makes you look like you're out of touch with reality, and detracts from your argument.
 

Red Hawk

Diamond Member
Jan 1, 2011
3,266
169
106
Sony seems to put more money into console exclusives, so there's less 360 exclusives to compare the PS3 exclusives to. But I would say exclusives like Gears of War 3 and Halo Reach look every bit as good as exclusives on the PS3.
 

RussianSensation

Elite Member
Sep 5, 2003
19,458
765
126
Only have time for a quick post, your continual posting of PC benchmarks using modern GPUs is a pathetic fail on a logical basis, a quick demonstration of why-

http://www.anandtech.com/show/2365/11

Pay attention to the 1280x1024 benchmarks- over 200% performance disparity on one of the benches. That is at 1280x1024.

What are you linking 8800GT vs. 7950GT/X1950XTX for? The R500 GPU has nothing to do with R520 in the X1900XT series. R500 is actually slower than the X1950XTX because it's much closer in performance to the 2600XT. The performance delta between RSX and R500 is not 200% (200% is 4x faster, which benchmarks shows X1950XT outperforming 7950GT by 4x?). You are now claiming that RSX and R500 GPU in the 360 are 1 full generation apart in performance? That's your new defense for the Cell's inability to make up for the GPU performance gap - that XBox360's GPU is way faster, is that it? Again, there is no evidence whatsoever that the RSX is that much slower than the R500 GPU in the 360.

X1900XT 256mb = 25 VP rating (+26% faster)
7950GT 256mb = 19.9 VP rating
http://alienbabeltech.com/abt/viewtopic.php?p=41174

Both the R500 in 360 and RSX are slower than these parts, but it's reasonable to assume the performance delta between RSX and R500 is 25%, maybe 30%, not 100-200%!

The point I am making is that the CPU speed matters a lot more for 1280x800 resolutions where the small 15-25% GPU performance gap between RSX and R500 would easily be made up. This is especially true for NV GPUs that tend to be more CPU limited than AMD parts. If the Cell is that much faster as you keep claiming, PS3 should have no problem at all posting better performance at low resolutions where CPU performance comes into play a lot!

Even if we accept your theory that RSX and R500 GPUs are 1 performance generation apart in favour of the Radeon in the 360 (which I don't at all agree with), that once again shows that Sony wasted $ on the Cell then since the performance advantage the PS3 had over the 360 didn't translate into better graphics. So once again, Sony would be FAR better off focusing on a faster GPU setup in the PS4, perhaps even going for dual-Graphics --> Fusion quad- or 6/8 core custom design + HD7000 discrete GPU cross-fire, as opposed to making the same mistake twice and putting something ridiculous like a 16x SPE Cell 2.0 and pairing it with a slower GPU.

No matter how you slice it, it's impossible to make the case of reusing the Cell in PS4 if Sony's goal is to beat Xbox720 in graphics. MS is already rumored to be using a 4 Core / 4 Threaded PowerPC CPU. That means Sony cannot even consider the Cell if they want to beat MS since the 7 SPE Cell couldn't produce better graphics in the PS3 vs. the 360 overall. If Sony is very serious about achieving their graphical leadership goal, they should put the fastest GPU possible they can afford into the PS4 (even if it means HD7950M) and only then start talking about their CPU choice. GPU > CPU for games, hands down and PS3's Cell's inability to accelerate graphics in games tangibly shows that it was a total waste of $. If Sony is smart about the next generation race, they'll focus on the GPU because history has shown us that faster CPU is not the most important factor for console graphics, the GPU is. Therefore, it would make the most sense to ditch the slow PowerPC and adapt the Fusion x86 CPU + gual Graphics cross-fire approach. Xbox1 was a boon for developers who loved the ease of porting PC games onto its largely PC-driven design. If Sony takes off the shelf Fusion PC parts and stops falling for the Tflops/Gflops hype, puts in a decent HD7000 or Kepler GPU into the PS4, they'll blow 16 threaded PowerPC Xbox720 out of the water.

You can disagree with Ben about the Cell, but arguing that UC2+3 and KZ2+3 don't trounce any 360 exclusives graphically makes you look like you're out of touch with reality, and detracts from your argument.

5-6 games out of 1000, with 50-100 cross-platform games that all look worse and run slower on the PS3? That's not highlightning the superiority of the Cell. Furthermore, the main reason this even came up is because Ben keeps claiming the Cell is sooooooo vastly superior to modern CPU processors, that it would be a far better choice for Sony to use from a performance/watt, performance/$, etc. perspectives. But just looking at the PS3 vs. Xbox360, we can already see that it was a wrong choice during this generation, nevermind for a future PS4. PS3 would have been A LOT more powerful if Sony execs weren't naive enough to buy into the Cell flop hype and instead paired it with a slightly faster version of the Tri-core PowerPC CPU in the 360 and spent the rest on a lot more powerful GPU. Instead, the execs gambled that the Cell would be the key differentiating factor for allowing PS3 games to look much better. 6 years later and it's basically very hard to make a claim that PS3 games look better overall, besides those 4-5 exclusives you mentioned. At the same time, Gears of War 3, Forza 4 games still look very good. Imagine how much better PS3 games could have looked if Sony spent the budget that was allocated towards the Cell CPU and instead put in a much faster graphics card?

Another way to look at it:

Even a 30x SPE Cell PowerPC processor + HD7660 would fall flat on its face against a Quad-Core AMD A8 x86 CPU + HD7970M for graphics. There is a reason modern computers use x86 CPUs with modern operating systems and pair it with a multi-shader/TMU/ROP GPUs to accelerate graphics, leaving the CPU to focus on for sound, AI, physics/character animation.

The Cell is slow for both graphics and as a general purpose CPU, which is why no one in the world was interested in using it for anything else outside of super-computer clusters for specific mathematical calculations, and Sony execs that bought into the hype. The best technology that came out of PS3's feature set was Blu-Ray, that's it.

If I had a choice right now between a Core i3-3220 / Phenom II X6 1045T 2.7GHz Six Core Socket AM3 + HD7970M vs. 30x PPE Cell in PS4 + HD6670/7660 GPU, I'd take the former system 1 million times out of 1 million. The Cell can't do tessellation, HDAO, bokeh depth of field, multiple area lights/lighting via ComputeShaders as fast as a $50 GPU can. It won't do squat for next generation game graphics. And as far as AI, physics and sound, a 6-core AMD CPU is more than capable of handling all of that for $90; so no reason at all wasting $ on a mythical 20-30 SPE Cell 2.0 when the smartest thing to do is spend it on a GPU first.

The Cell is a bastard child: it's terrible as a GPGPU design vs. modern GPUs and it's terrible as a CPU design against modern CPUs. It's good for theoretical floating point #s on paper and not much else.

Even if we dissect the Cell's performance in other applications, it's nothing special. For example, Bitcoin mining comes down the ability of hardware to process more ALU-based 32-bit instructions in succession:

HD7970 = 680 Mhash/sec
Core i7 3930K = 66.6 Mhash/sec
PS3 7 PPEs enabled = 26.6 Mhash
PS3 6 PPE Slim = 21 Mhash

Also, as we have seen with Core i3 vs. FX8150 that floating point performance does NOT at all translate into real world games; and that more cores are often meaningless. IPC per core is what matters and the Cell had just 1 main computational core. It's no wonder that Metro 2033 chief technical officer has stated that 1 Core i7 Nehalem core is still faster than the entire Tri-Core dual-threaded PowerPC 360 CPU. Guess what, Cell has just 1 of those PowerPC cores....

Many developers have already stated that the PS3/360 are completely exhausted of their processing power (i..e, specifically in regard to AI and physics calculations too). If the Cell was much faster for running these aspects of games as modern CPUs, such comments would have never been made.

Even when PS3 launched, developers already started talking about how severely flawed the internal bottlenecks were in regard to local memory speed, etc.:

PS3-memory-bandwidth-table.jpg


Sony themselves admitted the failure of the Cell as early as November 2007:

Sony exits future Cell development
"This week, Nikkei reports that Sony plans to cease participation in the Cell processor's future iterations. Its development has also inflicted a significant dent on the Japanese electronics giant's bottom line, costing Sony approximately $1.7 billion alone, according to recent estimates by financial news service Bloomberg."

I am not aware of many reasons why Sony would choose to stop development of future iterations of a supposedly superior product that's head-and-shoulders ahead of modern x86 processors for games?

The bottom line is, Cell is overhyped: it proved to be basically worthless for GPGPU compute functions outside of Folding @ Home, utterly worthless for accelerating 3D graphics compared to a dedicated modern AMD/NV GPU; and also worthless in terms of performance/$ and performance/watt as a general purpose CPU for supporting AI, sound and physics that a modern CPU can do just as well for a fraction of the cost and power consumption. If Sony has learned anything at all from PS2 and PS3, we should see a much more competitive PS4 using modern CPU and GPU parts that are easier to code for and are much faster in performance.
 
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markydV2

Banned
Sep 2, 2012
10
0
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Sony seems to put more money into console exclusives, so there's less 360 exclusives to compare the PS3 exclusives to. But I would say exclusives like Gears of War 3 and Halo Reach look every bit as good as exclusives on the PS3.

lol you hear everything on this forum
 

RussianSensation

Elite Member
Sep 5, 2003
19,458
765
126
Yes, but you have to wade through a lot of the NV and PS3 brand name bias among many of the posts from time to time; and actually focus on the hardware and its real world performance not marketing features and fluff.
 

BenSkywalker

Diamond Member
Oct 9, 1999
9,140
67
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Both the R500 in 360 and RSX are slower than these parts

That is exactly the point I was making. So now reality is *slowly* catching up to you.

The point I am making is that the CPU speed matters a lot more for 1280x800 resolutions

You have been linking i7 benches with modern GPUs to show that 720p was a CPU limited resolution on the consoles. That was just moronic. I got sick of listening to you spew your ignorance on the topic so I posted benches from faster GPUs that were still limited at 720p. Worked out well that I was even able to find games that were on the consoles for said benches.

If the Cell is that much faster as you keep claiming, PS3 should have no problem at all posting better performance at low resolutions where CPU performance comes into play a lot!

I'm assuming it has to be an act, you can not possibly be this dense. I just showed you 50% scaling on GPUs faster then the parts in the consoles at the resolutions they run at on games that are actually on the consoles. They are *very much* in the range of their GPU limits. Go look at some more 7970GE benches and say again how CPU that resolution is if you'd like. At some point you will open your eyes, I can clearly see you aren't the type to ever admit it, but you will see it at some point.

that once again shows that Sony wasted $ on the Cell then since the performance advantage the PS3 had over the 360 didn't translate into better graphics.

If I was writing satire of an utterly retarded PC Gamer- that exact sentence would likely come out of their mouth. Superior media support, superior physics support, superior audio support, superior standards support and some superior graphics support as icing on the cake. Yeah, must have been a failure cuz it didn't show the 1337 hxzorxz gfx ftw 3v3ry gam3 :p

MS is already rumored to be using a 4 Core / 4 Threaded PowerPC CPU. That means Sony cannot even consider the Cell if they want to beat MS since the 7 SPE Cell couldn't produce better graphics in the PS3 vs. the 360 overall.

eDRAm, UMA and a superior GPU are nothing......... there are just different levels of ignorance, it seems on this subject matter you are pushing hard to reach an entirely new level.

PS3 would have been A LOT more powerful if Sony execs weren't naive enough to buy into the Cell flop hype and instead paired it with a slightly faster version of the Tri-core PowerPC CPU in the 360 and spent the rest on a lot more powerful GPU.

Read the book I linked you so you can stop saying things this dumb. Sony helped design the CPU for the 360. If Sony wasn't building Cell, MS wouldn't have gotten the CPU they had in the 360. There has been a book written on the subject, I linked it for you.

I guess that is what it really comes down to. The lead designer for BOTH CPUs said that Cell was better. He stated in the end the systems would end up comparable because of the 360s superior memory layout and faster GPU. But you, who don't know anything at all about processor design nor coding, you know better then he does.

I link the top developer in the world, you counter with an accountant. Then you claim to link a PC developer claiming that the TriPOWER CPU beat Cell, when what he actually said was a TriPOWER could beat your beloved x86. You can't quote people that know what they are talking about that agree with you, I can. The top coders in the world, the guy who actually built *both* processors, even the people you think back your assertion, they agree with me.

I am not ever of many reasons why Sony would choose to stop development of future iterations of a supposedly superior product that's head-and-shoulders ahead of modern x86 processors for games?

Sony's plan was to use Cell in a variety of different applications, then ARM happened. If you hadn't noticed, it took over as the most popular CPU architecture in the world a while ago.

and also worthless in terms of performance/$ and performance/watt as a general purpose CPU for supporting AI, sound and physics that a modern CPU can do just as well for a fraction of the cost and power consumption.

Cell is both less expensive and uses less power for most computational sets against x86. Dev costs are broken down, $7.00 per chip. Find me this GPU that was going to be the difference for $7, along with a CPU that they are free to produce themselves. That is what is needed for the cost analysis to fall into your favor.
 

Rezist

Senior member
Jun 20, 2009
726
0
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Sony's plan was to use Cell in a variety of different applications, then ARM happened. If you hadn't noticed, it took over as the most popular CPU architecture in the world a while ago.

What's the highest TDP ARM chips like 3W? The cell in the PS3 uses more than that at idle right now I bet. So an ultra high performance chip like the cell was replaced by a chip design that was meant to be ultra low performance/ultra low cost/ultra low heat. some how my PS3 when it runs doesn't seem to do that infact that fan probably uses more W's then my phone. The cell was meant to be used in servers and it failed. Also rendering but it seems cpu rendering isn't happening unless Intel can do it.

Where ARM did work though was the design license and not a pay by the chip like x86 has. If ARM could get out higher performance designs I'm 100% certain MS/Sony/Nintendo would use them next gen but there just not there yet, they maybe by the next gen after this however.

And why compare a cell chip to an intel chip? R&D budget from intel could probably buy sony. Not a fair comparison.
 

Bobisuruncle54

Senior member
Oct 19, 2011
333
0
0
David Shippy does not agree with you either. You are saying that if the Cell is fully leveraged it would and does yield vastly superior looking games compared to the Xbox 360. David on the other hand states that the consoles are on an equal footing in terms of capabilities. Your reasoning is similar to someone arguing that a 6970 should be a faster card for rendering games than a GTX 580 because it has a higher teraFLOPS rating.

Go ahead and continue to make this crap up, but I'm out and you've convinced no one but yourself. You've been going round in circles and tripping up on yourself for pages and pages now and citing games that use one cheap rendering trick after another as if it's evidence.
 

BenSkywalker

Diamond Member
Oct 9, 1999
9,140
67
91
David Shippy does not agree with you either. You are saying that if the Cell is fully leveraged it would and does yield vastly superior looking games compared to the Xbox 360.

No, that isn't what I've been saying. What I have been saying is that Cell is far more powerful then Xenos.

360 has a superior GPU
360 has a superior memory layout
360 has more usable RAM
PS3 has a more powerful CPU

What's the highest TDP ARM chips like 3W? The cell in the PS3 uses more than that at idle right now I bet.

The purpose of the Cell design was to be modular. The goal was that they could have a basic CPU, one with a single core plus one SPU etc. They were planning on making them for their embedded devices up to supercomputers. ARM's performance came up much faster then anyone saw coming, and with it their viability for a lot of different applications. It isn't like Sony is the only one that didn't see that one coming. Intel missed it, AMD sold off a multi billion dollar platform for $65Million, and of course IBM and Sony both missed it.
 

cplusplus

Member
Apr 28, 2005
91
0
0
that wasn't cutting edge though. It was forcing the xbox to go from 256MB to 512MB of RAM at a time when the average PC had 4GB of RAM.

The average PC in 2005-2006 did not have 4GB of RAM. Hell, the average PC probably barely has 4GB of RAM right now.
 

toyota

Lifer
Apr 15, 2001
12,957
1
0
The average PC in 2005-2006 did not have 4GB of RAM. Hell, the average PC probably barely has 4GB of RAM right now.
lol, no kidding as in 2005 even most comps probably had 512mb to 1gb of ram. you can look up arguments from 2005 where people debating benefits of 1gb vs 512mb for their comps.

not to mention comps needed way more ram that consoles anyway.
 

RussianSensation

Elite Member
Sep 5, 2003
19,458
765
126
That is exactly the point I was making. So now reality is *slowly* catching up to you.

No the reality is not catching up to me. The onus is on you to prove that the Cell CPU's superiority justified the extra expenditure in the PS3. I just showed you how with a GTX460 GPU, E6400 was 3x slower in a game at Low resolutions than a Core i7. That means unless all games are suddenly 100% GPU limited at 1280x800 or below, the Cell's CPU superiority should have shown up to support smoother minimum framerates in cross-platform games and yet the opposite happens.

From that we can say:

1) Both consoles are mostly GPU limited, thus wasting $230 on Cell chip manufacturing cost into PS3 was not justified;

2) If the Cell's CPU was faster than 360's it didn't manage to consistently provide higher minimum framerates in games (i.e., it was probably slower most of the time since developers didn't bother optimizing the code well enough to take full advantage of the theoretical performance of the Cell);

3) Having a faster GPU is more important than having a faster CPU for consoles. This further supports the view that the Cell was not justified given that it resulted in a much higher power consuming PS3 (240W power draw) against the 360 (180W power draw) and added unnecessary costs to the console's price. If the Cell was not used, Sony could have dropped PS3's power consumption significantly, or chosen to allocate the funds more effectively towards a faster GPU since they'd have more capital budgeting room from not wasting $230 on the Cell. Alternatively, Sony wouldn't have been as limited by the power consumption constraints imposed as a result of using a 80W+ Cell processor. Without the Cell, PS3 could have included a much faster GPU, sold at a much more competitive price, resulted in less financial losses to Sony, or freed up power consumption headroom that the Cell ate up, which instead could have been used towards a higher clocked version of the RSX or a faster GPU design overall.

Instead, Sony used the Cell as the primary component in the PS3 with the RSX GPU considered as the secondary component (almost an emergency on their part), which is the exact polar opposite of how a gaming console should be designed for graphics.

You have been linking i7 benches with modern GPUs to show that 720p was a CPU limited resolution on the consoles. That was just moronic. I got sick of listening to you spew your ignorance on the topic so I posted benches from faster GPUs that were still limited at 720p.

You posted benchmarks of GPUs running MAX settings with AA in games. I posted LOW visual settings. My test actually shows how PS3/360 run games @ Low visual settings. In that instance the resolution of 1280x800 is both CPU and GPU limited at the same time. Since the R500 wasn't much faster than RSX, at the very least PS3 should have been able to maintain higher minimums in at least some games because not all console games are 100% GPU limited.

If I was writing satire of an utterly retarded PC Gamer- that exact sentence would likely come out of their mouth.

There you go again, failing to stick to the topic at hand, attacking the poster. You have a lot of class for an Elite Member. You must have a lot of friends in real life with your attitude. :thumbsup:

eDRAm, UMA and a superior GPU are nothing......... there are just different levels of ignorance, it seems on this subject matter you are pushing hard to reach an entirely new level.

Yes, obviously. HD7970M won't have any performance advantage over HD7660GPU. We also now know from you that it's a fact that the Cell >>>> modern GPUs at processing graphics. Obviously, the Cell >>>> modern x86 CPUs (such as Core i7 Sandy Bridge) for running games since you stated that ad nauseum for 6 years. Got it.

Read the book I linked you so you can stop saying things this dumb. Sony helped design the CPU for the 360. If Sony wasn't building Cell, MS wouldn't have gotten the CPU they had in the 360. There has been a book written on the subject, I linked it for you.

What's that have any to do with you proving that the Cell is faster at running games than a modern x86 processor or proving to us that the Cell is more important for graphics than having a faster GPU? Nothing.

I guess that is what it really comes down to. The lead designer for BOTH CPUs said that Cell was better. He stated in the end the systems would end up comparable because of the 360s superior memory layout and faster GPU. But you, who don't know anything at all about processor design nor coding, you know better then he does.

Oh really? So I should listen to the guy who designed the Cell on his honest opinion about how the Cell compares to modern x86 CPUs for running games? No bias there for sure. :sneaky: So far, you still provided 0 proof how a Cell would outperform a Core i7 CPU for games, like literally 0.

I link the top developer in the world, you counter with an accountant.

Not once did I linked an accountant's words. What I linked were quotes from technical developers, artists and so on, people that actually work on designing the games and programming them. BTW, I know you missed this part but Carmack said consoles are horribly underpowered compared to PCs. You may want to reread that 100x. His quote is in this thread already.

Then you claim to link a PC developer claiming that the TriPOWER CPU beat Cell, when what he actually said was a TriPOWER could beat your beloved x86.

He only said the PowerPC could beat x86 in some areas but not overall. Also, it's just in theory and until it happens, it's meaningless. If it will take a programmer 3 years to make a TriCore Power PC outperform a Core i7 that took another programmer 1 hour to do, then it's meaningless.

You can't quote people that know what they are talking about that agree with you, I can.

Is this a serious statement? Did you even read what you just typed? o_O

So I can't provide support for my side of the argument with people knowledgeable on the topic, only you can, or my sources don't count?

The top coders in the world, the guy who actually built *both* processors, even the people you think back your assertion, they agree with me.

Incorrect, every single sources I quoted agree that Core i7 processor is faster than a PowerPC architecture for running games overall, efficiency and per core performance. Even your source Carmack agrees that PS3 and 360 are hopelessly underpowered. Keep living in a dream world that the Cell is 4-5 generations ahead of Core 2 Duo.

Sony's plan was to use Cell in a variety of different applications, then ARM happened. If you hadn't noticed, it took over as the most popular CPU architecture in the world a while ago.

I haven't noticed. I don't use ARM on the desktop or for laptops. What I noticed is that ARM has 0 to do with what you were supposed to show us:

1) How Cell is faster in overall performance vs. a modern x86 processor for games;

2) How Cell is better in performance/watt vs. a modern x86 processor for games;

3) How it's justified that Sony spent $230 on the Cell instead of allocating the budget towards a faster GPU instead to arrive at a more balanced PS3?

4) How the Cell's theoretical Flop performance at all related to real world performance? (case in point Core i3 vs. FX8150 theoretical floating point performance does not translate into game code)

5) How the Cell's complicated design didn't add to high programming costs, inefficiencies and general inability of most game developers to extract that theoretical performance, as result mostly negating whatever advantage the Cell had? (i.e., how is it that game developers took 2-3 years to just get PS3 up-to-speed in terms of graphics with most Xbox360 games, despite PS3 launching 1 year later with supposedly superior CPU)

6) Why Sony's PS3 does not have overall better graphics than Xbox360 6 years later, outside of a handful of games out of 1000? And especially why PS3 has worse performance in almost all cross-platform games, despite the Cell being so much superior not only to x86 processors, but by extension to the Tri-core PowerPC CPU in the 360?

7) Why Sony would be ditching the Cell for PS4 if it was really superior to modern x86 processors in performance/watt, absolute performance and performance/$?

Cell is both less expensive and uses less power for most computational sets against x86.

Already proven wrong on both accounts. The Cell in the PS3 used > 100W of power at load in the fat PS3. The only reason the power consumption dropped over time is due to continuous node shrinks.

Secondly, the Cell architecture has not proven to be better at running most computational code vs. a modern x86 processor, in fact failing completely to capture any interest in the consumer space.

Dev costs are broken down, $7.00 per chip.

That's not what it cost to put the chip into the PS3. Are you this obtuse, or just plain stubborn and naive? Development cost for the Cell means R&D and engineering costs to design the Cell. That's like saying the development cost for Kepler GPU architecture was $3 Billion dollars and then dividing $3B by total # of Kepler GPUs sold to arrive at a per chip cost. That's not what it costs to design and manufacture a GTX680 chip and then sell it in the open market.

The cost of the Cell in each PS3 = Development cost + manufacturing costs (wafer costs, yields, chip testing phase costs, transportation costs, assembly line costs, manual labour costs, warranty costs, etc.). Those costs in total amounted to $230 per each Cell chip in a PS3 per professional financial analyst breakdown. What you provided me is a # you pulled out of thin air with 0 credibility, obviously since it comes from you and not a 3rd party who does it for a living.

Even what you are saying doesn't make sense. You are saying it only cost $7 in total to manufacture and assemble the Cell in 2006 on 90nm node? :sneaky:

It's pretty much impossible to argue any aspect of the Cell with you. My conclusion is:

1) You may have worked closely on some aspects of the Cell;
2) You were directly or indirectly involved and were affected by the Cell in one way or another at your job (for example coding something using the Cell hardware);
3) You have personal attachment to the Cell in some way;
4) You have a strong aversion against everything related to PC gamers and to x86 code / compilers that you find are inefficient and worthless.

The way in which you defend the Cell without actually backing up why it's superior with hard factual data is very odd. You tell me to go buy a buck by a person who designed the Cell and yet countless articles and professional opinions have contradicted the designer himself, confirming the industry wide belief that the Cell didn't live up to the hype, that it's horribly inefficient to code for and that it's ultimately slow.

It also sounds to me like you may have had a career in programming (doubtful though since you don't seem to agree with any of the programmers who have stated that the Cell was terrible to work with) or engineering but you lack complete and total understanding of business strategy, manufacturing costs, development costs, design costs and how the semi-conductor industry actually works. The fact that you proposed that the Cell only cost $7 for Sony to put into the PS3 shows that you really don't understand how companies actually function and what it costs to bring products from the development stage to market.

Really, what you are saying is: "The Cell is cheaper, more power efficient and faster for games than ANY x86 CPU. Thus, Sony would be idiotic to abandon the Cell in PS4's design for an inferior x86 CPU." That's pretty much it in a nutshell. Of course that also means if Sony abandons the Cell in PS4, everything you have been saying is wrong because no company would abandon a cheaper, more power efficient and faster processor for what is essentially an inferior design, more power consuming and more expensive design (but of course ONLY according to you, not professionals in the industry).

No matter what though, you'll have no argument left when PS4 abandons the Cell. The minute PS4 launches, your claims of the Cell's (Main Core + multiple unit SPE setup) superiority in performance/watt, performance/$ and absolute performance against a modern PowerPC architecture/x86 CPU will all be proven wrong. Really, the only way anything you are saying can even be remotely justified is if Sony still continues to use the Cell in PS4. I can't wait until PS4/Xbox720 actually launch and neither uses the Cell, so that we never ever have to hear again from you about how awesome the Cell was on paper.

It's pretty amazing to hear from a person who thinks he is more intelligent than anyone else in this thread or our entire CPU forum that Sony had the world's fastest CPU on the planet for computational tasks and games than any x86 processor made since 2006, and yet not a single blue-chip company believed in Sony's Cell. It's amazing that while no company in the world has been able to produce a faster CPU than Intel for games that somehow a company that recently suffered the biggest loss in its 50-year-history had the world's fastest CPU for computational tasks and videogames all this time!!

You may want think logically for a second about how flawed all of your reasoning is from a business sense if what you say is true:

"David Turek, IBM's Vice-President of Deep Computing, who said that the company would not be developing the next generation of Cell processor."
 
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Ancalagon44

Diamond Member
Feb 17, 2010
3,274
202
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@RussianSensation

I dont think Ben will ever get it. No matter how many multi platform games look better on the 360, he wont admit that Sony made a mistake with the Cell.

Even if we assume that PS3 exclusives look better than 360 exclusives (which I dont agree to the case, but anyway), how much did those exclusives cost to develop? How long was GT5 in development for? Had MS invested the same amount of money into their exclusives, they would have looked much better, judging by the way in which 360 multiplatform titles look better than PS3 multiplatform titles.

The irony of the 360's success is that Sony did the same thing with the PS1. When Sony entered the console business, they made things as easy for developers as possible. They provided lots of help and streamlined things. Now, with the PS3, they have done the opposite. They have made the PS3 difficult to program for, and not worth the rewards. Whereas Microsoft has made the 360 easy to program for, and the results show.

Ben, the problem with the PS3 is that unless you invest a lot of time and energy into developing for it, your game will perform and look terribly. Dont take my word for it, look at the multiplatform games, look at statements from people like Carmack. I hope you dont claim to be a better programmer than Carmack. Sure, if you are willing to go the distance, you can produce great results. But to me that is what makes it a failure for its intended purpose - a gaming machine. It is not a good solution to the problem, if it makes things so difficult for developers that a lot of them simply dont bother.

Its a lesson which console makers have learned before - dont make things difficult for developers.

We already know that the Cell or its derivatives will not be used in the PS4. Why? Sony learned its lesson.
 

RussianSensation

Elite Member
Sep 5, 2003
19,458
765
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The core found in the Cell and Xenon was not a direct derivative of any particular Power- or PPC-series core, but shares its most important features with the Power6, which was being worked on around the same time.

Yes, it was. "Cell consists of one PowerPC core ("PPE") and of a number of Synergistic Processing Elements ("SPE") to which the PPE can delegate computation. The IBM QS20 Cell blade offers 8 SPEs per Cell chip. The Sony PlayStation 3 contains 6 useable SPEs."

Here is a secondary source from a H. Peter Hofstee, Ph. D., Architect, Cell Synergistic Processor Element, IBM Systems and Technology Group, Austin, Texas
- the Cell is based on Power Architecture (Slide 16), dual-issue, 21 stages pipeline, but main PowerPC processor is slower than G5 (Slide 23) <--- this is what I said earlier.

The Cell's original specifications:
Observed clock speed: > 4 GHz
Peak performance (single precision): > 256 GFlops
Peak performance (double precision): >26 GFlops
Local storage size per SPU: 256KB
Area: 221 mm²
Technology: 90nm SOI
Total number of transistors: 234M

vs.

Intel Sandy Bridge-E 6-core

Area: 435mm2
Technology: 32nm
Total number of transistors: 2.27B

Are we expected to believe that a 2006 90nm processor with 1/10th the number of transistors can outperform the flagship $1000 2011 Intel Core i7-3960X 32nm in games?

No matter how many multi platform games look better on the 360, he wont admit that Sony made a mistake with the Cell.

There is no question in my mind he won't ever admit that the Cell was a failure, but the question is why he won't admit it? Is there some personal attachment here to the Cell that's not being disclosed publicly? Sony and IBM have both admitted that the Cell was not a success but Ben still hasn't come to terms with their corporate decisions, nearly 3-5 years after they both made those announcements that development for future Cell processors would not continue.

When Intel admitted Netburst was a failure, even the most hardcore Intel fans would not defend Netburst at that point. Sony and IBM both admitted that the Cell was a failure, so why is it still being defended? Hmmm....
 
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Ancalagon44

Diamond Member
Feb 17, 2010
3,274
202
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There is no question in my mind he won't ever admit that the Cell was a failure, but the question is why he won't admit it? Is there some personal attachment here to the Cell that's not being disclosed publicly? Sony and IBM have both admitted that the Cell was not a success but Ben still hasn't come to terms with their corporate decisions, nearly 3-5 years after they both made those announcements that development for future Cell processors would not continue.

When Intel admitted Netburst was a failure, even the most hardcore Intel fans would not defend Netburst at that point. Sony and IBM both admitted that the Cell was a failure, so why is it still being defended? Hmmm....

I find it difficult to be passionate about hardware and gaming. I never thought the Cell was a good CPU, but that wouldnt stop me from buying a PS3 if I thought it was worth it. Likewise, I currently own an Xbox, but I have no loyalty to MS. If the PS4 was better than the 720, I would buy the PS4.

I think it wasnt that the Cell was a failure - it was just not the right choice for the PS3. Its not a good gaming CPU. For super computers (at the time), I'm sure it was great. But as a gaming CPU? Bad choice. It would be the same as putting a 7970 non M into a console - although its very fast, it would push the total manufacturing cost up dramatically, as well as causing greatly increased heat production and power consumption. Not worth it, in other words.
 

RussianSensation

Elite Member
Sep 5, 2003
19,458
765
126
Ya, exactly, it may not have been a failure for specific super-computer usage requirements, but as a gaming processor for consoles and as a general purpose processor, it certainly was a failure. Economist had a good quote around the Cell's launch:

"Similar claims to those now being made for Cell were made in the past about the Sony/Toshiba chip called the Emotion Engine, which lies at the heart of the PlayStation 2. This was also supposed to be suitable for non-gaming uses. Yet the idea went nowhere..." - The Economist

Communicating with SPEs (Slide 21):
- Does not share the same address space
- 256kB &#8220;local storage&#8221; is NOT a cache
- Must explicitly move data in and out of local store

A major bottleneck in the concept of 1 main computational core and the 7 SPEs existed, and it was exposed and discussed by professionals very early on. In post #358, the local memory speed was horrendously slow.
 
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Pottuvoi

Senior member
Apr 16, 2012
416
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A major bottleneck in the concept of 1 main computational core and the 7 SPEs existed, and it was exposed and discussed by professionals very early on. In post #358, the local memory speed was horrendously slow.
I'm pretty sure that the local memory in that slide is a read from RSX or GDDR3 memory. (Which is basically used for debugging, 4GB write into gddr3)
Yes, I'm sure a lot of things would be easier with faster access for CPU from GDDR/RSX, but you can push data with RSX to make things possible.

Bandwidth to Local Store memory on each SPE is ~25GB/s, which is quite nice.

Cell could have been a lot better with 'proper' PPE and some 'tweaks' to SPEs.
 

BenSkywalker

Diamond Member
Oct 9, 1999
9,140
67
91
Both consoles are mostly GPU limited, thus wasting $230 on Cell chip manufacturing cost into PS3 was not justified;

That cost is wrong, covered this repeatedly.

If the Cell's CPU was faster than 360's it didn't manage to consistently provide higher minimum framerates in games (i.e., it was probably slower most of the time since developers didn't bother optimizing the code well enough to take full advantage of the theoretical performance of the Cell)

It had less RAM and a slower GPU.

Having a faster GPU is more important than having a faster CPU for consoles.

Sony is an IP owner for Cell, they make the processor themselves. The R&D cost associated with that is less then $7 per chip. You need to provide another CPU they could have produced themselves with no IP cost and then find the GPU upgrade they could have gotten for the additional $7 per chip over the RSX.

Without the Cell, PS3 could have included a much faster GPU, sold at a much more competitive price,

$400 cheaper then the closes BluRay play that was still inferior due to it not having Cell. $400 cheaper.
$400 cheaper.
$400 cheaper.
$400 cheaper.
$400 cheaper.

I posted LOW visual settings. My test actually shows how PS3/360 run games @ Low visual settings.

That is wrong.

We also now know from you that it's a fact that the Cell >>>> modern GPUs at processing graphics.

Cell was going to be the graphics processor in the original PS3, I have noted that would have been moronic against 2005 GPUs. Yet again, you are wrong.

So far, you still provided 0 proof how a Cell would outperform a Core i7 CPU for games, like literally 0.

Carmack

He only said the PowerPC could beat x86 in some areas but not overall.

In Vector code, which is where Cell kills POWER.

Already proven wrong on both accounts. The Cell in the PS3 used > 100W of power at load in the fat PS3.

Wrong. https://wpweb2.tepper.cmu.edu/ceic/pdfs/CEIC_11_01.pdf

Are you this obtuse, or just plain stubborn and naive?

Any chip must be produced. Sony owns the IP for Cell. The cost to acquire this IP was $7.

The cost of the Cell in each PS3 = Development cost + manufacturing costs (wafer costs, yields, chip testing phase costs, transportation costs, assembly line costs, manual labour costs, warranty costs, etc.). Those costs in total amounted to $230 per each Cell chip in a PS3 per professional financial analyst breakdown.

That was an estimate based on what a comparable CPU would cost them if they bought it from another company. Sony owns Cell.

Of course that also means if Sony abandons the Cell in PS4, everything you have been saying is wrong because no company would abandon a cheaper, more power efficient and faster processor for what is essentially an inferior design, more power consuming and more expensive design (but of course ONLY according to you, not professionals in the industry).

The actual programmers you quoted said that POWER is better under ideal circumstances, not even the entire Cell processor, just the light alternative of it. That is a seven year old CPU against modern x86. If someone is willing to license out x86 and make no money from the x86 field then from a business perspective I could understand them going that route. Do I think it would be a mistake for Sony to abandon Cell? Yes. I also think it was a mistake that they didn't utilize a custom GPU in the PS3, that they didn't have more RAM, that they had such huge penalty for cross device communication.

Really, the only way anything you are saying can even be remotely justified is if Sony still continues to use the Cell in PS4. I can't wait until PS4/Xbox720 actually launch and neither uses the Cell, so that we never ever have to hear again from you about how awesome the Cell was on paper.

There are several business reasons why Sony would go another route this round. Their TV division has been suffering staggering losses along with most of their consumer electronics. The focus of the company is on getting into the black ASAP. Does that mean they would take a long term hit for a short term game? At this point, I can certainly see it happening. Do I think the PS4 is going to use x86? No. The only reason people seem to think it will that I have been able to find is Kotaku.

It's pretty amazing to hear from a person who thinks he is more intelligent than anyone else in this thread or our entire CPU forum that Sony had the world's fastest CPU on the planet for computational tasks and games than any x86 processor made since 2006, and yet not a single blue-chip company believed in Sony's Cell.

Faster then x86 doesn't put it remotely close to being in the league of fastest in the world. GPGPU in general has proven superior for compute uses at this point, MIPS and SPARC along with the updated POWER processors also likely best Cell by a rather sizeable margin at this point(haven't kept up as much with them since GPGPU came out and blew everyone away). Fastest in the world has never ended up becoming a commodity part prior to GPGPUs.

Yes, it was.

No, it wasn't. Cerb stated it wasn't a direct derivative, Cerb was 100% correct. It is based on the POWER architecture, it isn't a direct derivative.

Is there some personal attachment here to the Cell that's not being disclosed publicly? Sony and IBM have both admitted that the Cell was not a success

http://www.itproportal.com/2009/11/24/ibm-denies-pulling-out-cell-development/
 

Cerb

Elite Member
Aug 26, 2000
17,484
33
86
Yes, it was. "Cell consists of one PowerPC core ("PPE") and of a number of Synergistic Processing Elements ("SPE") to which the PPE can delegate computation. The IBM QS20 Cell blade offers 8 SPEs per Cell chip. The Sony PlayStation 3 contains 6 useable SPEs."
:rolleyes: So would you say an Atom can be compared by performance per MHz to Ivy Bridge? No. Why not?

That PowerPC core design is what was used in the Apple G5
Ivy Bridge and Atom are both derived from the same parent. Yet, you can't, with a straight face, compare them in performance terms as being anywhere even close to one another. Both hail from the Pentium Pro. Both are very different from the Pentium Pro. Same thing in the cell. PowerPC is a trademarked name for the ISA that began evolving with Motorola/IBM CPUs, which then became unified as the Power ISA.

Power covers everything from teeny CPUs with no FP or MMUs, for use in networking and drive controllers, all the way up to IBM's bandwidth kings in the Power processor series.
a completely outdated architecture
The actual CPU uarch was a couple years out of date, because IBM didn't consider Apple a big enough customer to worry about, and they were the only ones in great need of faster parts (which ran hot). AMD x86 CPUs were generally better, by that time, but not by enough to call the PPC970 completely outdated.

Depending on what I've read, the Cell PPE guys either started with a Power4, a PPC970, both, or just the tool set that made Power4 CPUs. I suspect they didn't full insight into a Power4, and had so many changes already planned, that which way it's told, and which is correct, depends on what level the person saying it was involved in, and how much pride they had in their work.

The thing is, they made what amounts to a PPC Atom, but in some ways worse, probably for high clocks. Aside from some binary compatibility, and running Altivec well, there wasn't enough else resembling other CPUs to worry about. The PPC970 that Apple used, OTOH, was very much like a Power4, but narrowed and made much more efficient (IBM is quite happy to make fast hot Power-series CPUs, which is no good for desktops, blades, or supercomputers). For a bad analogy, think of dual Nehalem (8C/16T Xeons) as a Power4, a SB Core i3 as a G5, and an Atom as a PPE.

Are we expected to believe that a 2006 90nm processor with 1/10th the number of transistors can outperform the flagship $1000 2011 Intel Core i7-3960X 32nm in games?
No. You should believe that it is not fair to compare it to Apple's G5, which would have had decent performance, but would have eaten as much power as the whole Cell, if run at high those speeds, yet wouldn't have the floating-point vector performance to get by if run at lower speeds (if integrated into the Cell, Sony and friends could have made that work, but MS probably didn't have the time or money for it for the 2nd Xbox).

I haven't once argued that the Cell was a good general-purpose or gaming CPU. I have argued that if it weren't canned, generational improvements could have made it a good embedded CPU where flexible DSPs would be useful, such as in TVs, DVRs, instrumentation (big $$$, there :)), or whatever. CPU/GPU hybrids are still years away from what the Cell was capable of, despite its limitations. But, Sony's pushing it with the PS3, and hyping it so much for the PS3, gave it a horrible reputation, to the point that its technical problems were not allowed to be remedied by a 2nd or 3rd generation.

I would, however, argue that the PPC970 was a good CPU, especially for content creation, where it excelled against x86 for several years. It didn't live up to Apple's hype, and no real testing ever got Apple's numbers, but it was pretty good, and a little Altivec could go a long way in some applications.
 
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