Cell vs. Xenos processor

[Kabob]

Just read this article about the PS3's Cell processor vs. the Xbox 360's Xenos processor. Now, considering that it's posted on the Xbox forum I'm sure it's at least somewhat biased, but can anyone speak of the validity of this arguement?

 

[cmdrdredd]

Sounds about right. I have some friends who do some game development for some of the minor studios. They have dabbled with both systems and have told me that the PS3 is just so hard that most people either won't make games or will take shortcuts.

 

[Kyanzes]

The MythBusters really should look into this one. Never mind the verdict, I want to see the explosions.

 

[SpeedZealot369]

Here's to hoping that halo 3 will use over 90% of the 360's potential!! :beer:

 

[BladeVenom]

The article at Geek Patrol is great.
Highlights 1.6 G5 vs. PS3

bzip2 Compress (multi-threaded scalar)
PlayStation 3 - 124.1
Power Mac G5 - 168.4
Xeon 5160 - 1194.4

bzip2 Decompress (multi-threaded scalar)
PlayStation 3 - 99.5
Power Mac G5 - 133.1
Xeon 5160 - 1353.3

JPEG Compress (multi-threaded scalar)
PlayStation 3 - 94.8
Power Mac G5 - 103.0
Xeon 5160 - 877.6

JPEG Decompress (multi-threaded scalar)
PlayStation 3 - 72.9
Power Mac G5 - 119.2
Xeon 5160 - 788.9

So basically in performance the PS3 processor usually isn't going to be as good as a three and a half year old budget G5 processor.

The only thing that was good was its memory write speed, but it's memory read speed was slow. Why have such good write speed, but have slow read speed? It only has 256mb of memory so it can't store lots of stuff just in case.

Edit - added in some Xeon specs.

 

[bunnyfubbles]

The guy's speculation on next gen systems is ridiculous, there's no way next gen systems are going to have merely the power of a current quadcore @ 3.2GHz.

As an easy brain-free solution, yes, it isn't horrible. But considering that the current Xenos wasn't that hard to throw together with some R&D I'd be that would be what we'd see again.

Sony might have the advantage for the future unless they do something stupid again like putting so many chips into another chip development gamble. A PS4 CPU might have 8 true cores instead of 1 PPE and 7 SPEs, meaning great potential backwards compatibility as well as a substantial boost in power.

Although I don't know how much consoles will be focused on generalized processing power. I think multiple specialized chips (or at least portions of a "single" chip if we start to integrate them together) is better for the future of console gaming. Instead of a do-it-all Cell processor that is powerful (or versatile rather) for doing multiple sorts of tasks, you have portions that handle specialized calculations; graphics, physics, AI, audio, network...whatever...this should make it easier for programmers to utilize as much of the available power as possible.

 

[TraumaRN]

Originally posted by: BladeVenom
The article at Geek Patrol is great.
Highlights 1.6 G5 vs. PS3

bzip2 Compress (multi-threaded scalar)
PlayStation 3 - 124.1
Power Mac G5 - 168.4

bzip2 Decompress (multi-threaded scalar)
PlayStation 3 - 99.5
Power Mac G5 - 133.1

JPEG Compress (multi-threaded scalar)
PlayStation 3 - 94.8
Power Mac G5 - 103.0

JPEG Decompress (multi-threaded scalar)
PlayStation 3 - 72.9
Power Mac G5 - 119.2

So basically in performance the PS3 processor usually isn't going to be as good as a three and a half year old budget G5 processor.

The only thing that was good was its memory write speed, but it's memory read speed was slow. Why have such good write speed, but have slow read speed? It only has 256mb of memory so it can't store lots of stuff just in case.

They did admit they weren't fully utilizing all cores/SPES whatever the fsck on the Cell...but yea point still stands about how it's slow in certain aspects.

FYI Cell Memory Read speed is 16MB/s(not a typo and yes M as in mega)
Write Speed is ~4GB/s

http://www.theinquirer.net/default.aspx?article=32171 (i know its The Inq but they have a pic from a dev conference showing specs)

 

[zephyrprime]

Originally posted by: DeathBUA
FYI Cell Memory Read speed is 16MB/s(not a typo and yes M as in mega)
Write Speed is ~4GB/s

I cannot imagine what designers were thinking when they created the memory unit on the cell and didn't use a crossbar memory switch as is so common in many large parallel processing devices nowadays (gpus, multicore processors). Heck, even if they used a simple bus, it could have had better performance than that. What on earth were they thinking?

 

[MDme]

the PS3's read speed was soooo bad that sony's developer slide mentioned using the RSX to fetch data from memory.

 

[TanisHalfElven]

Originally posted by: DeathBUA

Originally posted by: BladeVenom
The article at Geek Patrol is great.
Highlights 1.6 G5 vs. PS3

bzip2 Compress (multi-threaded scalar)
PlayStation 3 - 124.1
Power Mac G5 - 168.4

bzip2 Decompress (multi-threaded scalar)
PlayStation 3 - 99.5
Power Mac G5 - 133.1

JPEG Compress (multi-threaded scalar)
PlayStation 3 - 94.8
Power Mac G5 - 103.0

JPEG Decompress (multi-threaded scalar)
PlayStation 3 - 72.9
Power Mac G5 - 119.2

So basically in performance the PS3 processor usually isn't going to be as good as a three and a half year old budget G5 processor.

The only thing that was good was its memory write speed, but it's memory read speed was slow. Why have such good write speed, but have slow read speed? It only has 256mb of memory so it can't store lots of stuff just in case.

They did admit they weren't fully utilizing all cores/SPES whatever the fsck on the Cell...but yea point still stands about how it's slow in certain aspects.

FYI Cell Memory Read speed is 16MB/s(not a typo and yes M as in mega)
Write Speed is ~4GB/s

http://www.theinquirer.net/default.aspx?article=32171 (i know its The Inq but they have a pic from a dev conference showing specs)

thats why you don't believe the INQUIRER. cell's read speed of RSX's 256 mb ram is 16 mb/sec

cell is a perfectly good proc. there is nothing wrong with it. its diffeent thats all. what wrong with the PS3 is the stupid 7900gt level graphic card with 128 bit mem bus.

 

[lyssword]

xeon != xenos

 

[TanisHalfElven]

Originally posted by: lyssword
xeon != xenos

really !!!!!