[Debunked] Apple claims that the Ipad 3 has better graphics than the 360 and ps3

[Pia]

Combine that with the fact that both consoles were designed for 720P yet are forced to operate in a 1080P world, and it starts to become readily apparent.

Eh, "operating in a 1080P world" is not a performance hit for the 360 since it never renders in 1080P and scaling is basically free.

Are the 360 and PS3 maxed out? Absolutely! When you consider than any system can only operate as well as the least common denominator, which in this case are their memory and graphics subsystems, both systems are continuously operating in restrictive situations. You could put 5 cell processors in the PS3 and it will still be bottlenecked by the chipset.

I don't disagree about where the bottlenecks are, but the rest is incorrect. A ton of what is conventionally done with the GPU is intended to be offloaded to the Cell on the PS3, and therefore a game "maxing out the PS3" would gain tremendously if the PS3 had more Cells. If I remember correctly, the original design of the console actually omitted a strong GPU altogether. Furthermore, the additional Cells would alleviate the memory bottleneck because the architecture is all about *streaming* data instead of having all required data sit in memory; more cores that can be employed in compressing and decompressing data means that much larger datasets can be used effectively. Of course it is a total PITA to twist your software and pack your data into shapes that are effective to digest with the Cell, which is why developers have been reluctant to do it.

 

[Fingolfin269]

Is there some reason this thread is still alive? Where did Apple actually state this? This thread is the number one result when googling something along the lines of 'does ipad 3 have better graphics than the 360?'. Is that something we really want pointing back here?

 

[zerocool84]

Is there some reason this thread is still alive? Where did Apple actually state this? This thread is the number one result when googling something along the lines of 'does ipad 3 have better graphics than the 360?'. Is that something we really want pointing back here?

It's made by a known troll here that makes threads just to get people in an uproar. I don't know why he wasn't permabanned.

 

[Anteaus]

Eh, "operating in a 1080P world" is not a performance hit for the 360 since it never renders in 1080P and scaling is basically free.

I don't disagree about where the bottlenecks are, but the rest is incorrect. A ton of what is conventionally done with the GPU is intended to be offloaded to the Cell on the PS3, and therefore a game "maxing out the PS3" would gain tremendously if the PS3 had more Cells. If I remember correctly, the original design of the console actually omitted a strong GPU altogether. Furthermore, the additional Cells would alleviate the memory bottleneck because the architecture is all about *streaming* data instead of having all required data sit in memory; more cores that can be employed in compressing and decompressing data means that much larger datasets can be used effectively. Of course it is a total PITA to twist your software and pack your data into shapes that are effective to digest with the Cell, which is why developers have been reluctant to do it.

My point was that even though it might be outputting 1080P, you're really just seeing a scaled up 720P. People who don't know better are convinced it's actually 1080P, thus the charade.

For the rest I do agree that more CPU would equal faster processing, but since the speed in which game files and textures can be moved to ram and vice versus is restricted, gameplay is still inheriently bottlenecked. There is a reason why the fastest GPUs come saddled with a large quantity of dedicated memory.

Of course no one is doubting the power of the cell. It is an amazing chip and works extremely well at doing math calculations, but its current implimentation is a waste. All that power can't overcome memory starvation and a subpar GPU. Fortunately, Sony has done an amazing job with PR and many can't be bothered to understand that Sony could have done the same job with a conventional processor and charged substantially less at launch.

 

[Pia]

My point was that even though it might be outputting 1080P, you're really just seeing a scaled up 720P. People who don't know better are convinced it's actually 1080P, thus the charade.

For the rest I do agree that more CPU would equal faster processing, but since the speed in which game files and textures can be moved to ram and vice versus is restricted, gameplay is still inheriently bottlenecked.

You mean the speed at which the data can be read from the hard drive and/or the Blu-Ray disc?

There is a reason why the fastest GPUs come saddled with a large quantity of dedicated memory.

The bandwidth on the Cell's Element Interconnect Bus and the memory controller is pretty huge so a Cell-based system doesn't necessarily need as much dedicated VRAM. But again, that's only if the code is architected uniquely for the Cell system.

Of course no one is doubting the power of the cell. It is an amazing chip and works extremely well at doing math calculations, but its current implimentation is a waste. All that power can't overcome memory starvation and a subpar GPU. Fortunately, Sony has done an amazing job with PR and many can't be bothered to understand that Sony could have done the same job with a conventional processor and charged substantially less at launch.

Conventional processor would not exactly have done the same job... they would have needed a stronger GPU to go along with that conventional processor just to achieve same results. In hindsight it would have made more business sense to do that, of course, just like Microsoft did.

 

[Rifter]

It's made by a known troll here that makes threads just to get people in an uproar. I don't know why he wasn't permabanned.

Agreed.

 

[swilli89]

Congrats - you've proven yourself worthy of making my ignore list. Instead of trying to understand the content of a discussion, you simply throw out some insults like a child. All it does it make you look weak and undermines any point that you could have made. The PS3 still has a lot of untapped capabilities that simply are not being used, whether you like it or not.

Juddog, you're making some pretty idiot claims. I don't care about your strawman argument, that it is not maxed out PS3 has a Geforce 7800 class GPU. It is absolutely "maxed out" by the very definition. Most games run SUB 720P

http://www.lensoftruth.com/battlefield-3-is-sub-hd-on-ps3-xbox-360/

sub 720p? Yes that's right, games like BF3. There you go, read that. Please

You know how I know you don't really grasp what you're talking about? The SPU's, the 8 "dumb core" co-processors in the PS3 are integer processors, they do things like AI, sound processing, and physics.

Say it with me, AI, sound processing, and physics. Not. Graphics.

Again, SPU's aren't involved in graphics. The "RSX Synthesizer" or Geforce 7800 is the only computational unit involved with graphics.

So are you able to say that the PS3 has untapped potential? Sure, maybe more audio processing, or AI.

But in a threat titled "Ipad 3 has better GRAPHICS than....) then NO you are not able to say in any real way that the playstation 3 and x360 still have untapped graphical potential. They have been "maxed out" for years baring slight tweaks devs are able to squeeze out of them.

 

[swilli89]

It's made by a known troll here that makes threads just to get people in an uproar. I don't know why he wasn't permabanned.

Well yeah I think its bad that he is using this to start a flamebait but, that is something I am very very interested in. I would love to see any kind of standardized benchmark on a jailbroken PS3 Linux and a device with say, the VR543MP4 such as the ipad 3 and vita have. The upcoming powerVR6 series should be really fast.

I want to see just how much slower an ARM A9 or A15 is to a desktop cpu say, Sandy Bridge. I know they get destroyed, but I would just like to see exactly by how much. Same goes for current mobile GPU's vs say the consoles as well as something like a Radeon 7970

 

[tdawg]

Until tablets offer me the same gameplay as MLB The Show, Uncharted, inFamous, and Battlefield 3, I couldn't give a rat's ass how powerful the GPU is in them. So the resolution of the iPad 3 is 2048 x 1536 so the GPU can get some exercise and Apple can offer it's users a much sharper looking 4x4 grid homescreen. In a world of 1080p televisions, what do I care about 2048 x 1536 "gaming" on a 9.7-inch touchscreen with basically useless controls? I'll take console gaming over tablet "gaming" any day of the week; everyone but the OP understands why this would be the case.

 

[Pia]

Until tablets offer me the same gameplay as MLB The Show, Uncharted, inFamous, and Battlefield 3, I couldn't give a rat's ass how powerful the GPU is in them. So the resolution of the iPad 3 is 2048 x 1536 so the GPU can get some exercise and Apple can offer it's users a much sharper looking 4x4 grid homescreen. In a world of 1080p televisions, what do I care about 2048 x 1536 "gaming" on a 9.7-inch touchscreen with basically useless controls? I'll take console gaming over tablet "gaming" any day of the week; everyone but the OP understands why this would be the case.

A tablet could actually beat the consoles in at least boardgame type stuff. You could play a coop game locally, team game with one team local and one matched via internet, or versus game especially if smartphone clients were used simultaneously for players' private information. Hotseat strategy games (deep but relatively short) would be great too.

So far the problem is just that tablets don't have games made for them which take a lot of time and money to develop. Not worth going in the mud pit of the app store and trying to charge real money for a really good game, I guess; everything better be $0.99 and designed to be immediately understood by an idiot. The latter means the games have to be action instead of strategy, and 99% of all action game designs just fail straight up on mobile/tablet because a touchscreen can't even theoretically support a good control scheme for them.

 

[Pia]

You know how I know you don't really grasp what you're talking about? The SPU's, the 8 "dumb core" co-processors in the PS3 are integer processors, they do things like AI, sound processing, and physics.

Say it with me, AI, sound processing, and physics. Not. Graphics.

Again, SPU's aren't involved in graphics. The "RSX Synthesizer" or Geforce 7800 is the only computational unit involved with graphics.

Bullshit. See, for example:
http://www.slideshare.net/guerrillagames/practical-occlusion-culling-in-killzone-3
I also know my friend's game was using an average of ~3 SPU and a lot of that for graphics when it shipped ~4 years ago, with a later revision of the game using a lot more than that.

edit: oh, and SPUs = integer processors? I didn't even notice that assertion when I wrote the above response, but it deserves a lol of all its own. Cell is specifically built to be a number-crunching monster on a per transistor basis, and the SPUs are its floating point muscle. The briefest look at Wikipedia would have told you that much.

edit2: PS3 also doesn't have 8 SPUs, one is disabled for yield purposes to end up with 7 SPUs plus the PPU.

 

[badb0y]

I am pretty sure it was the guy from Epic who commented on the graphic capabilities and I think he specifically said that the new iPad would have twice the memory as the PS3 or Xbox 360.

 

[Juddog]

You mean the speed at which the data can be read from the hard drive and/or the Blu-Ray disc?The bandwidth on the Cell's Element Interconnect Bus and the memory controller is pretty huge so a Cell-based system doesn't necessarily need as much dedicated VRAM. But again, that's only if the code is architected uniquely for the Cell system.
Conventional processor would not exactly have done the same job... they would have needed a stronger GPU to go along with that conventional processor just to achieve same results. In hindsight it would have made more business sense to do that, of course, just like Microsoft did.

^^ It's good to see that someone else understands the meat of my argument.

If the programmers are not taking the time to learn the system and are only loading designing the games as if they were designing for a PC, then they will not take full advantage of the system. The system will not be "maxed out".

The first game I had heard of actually using the full capabilities of the PS3 was Uncharted 2, and when you play Uncharted 2, it shows what good programming is capable of when they code the game around a system's strengths.

The interview can be found here:
http://www.joystiq.com/2009/02/04/joystiq-interview-talking-uncharted-2-with-naughty-dogs-evan-w/

In this case, the developers wrote their engine from the ground up.

Relevant quotes from the interview:

It was a huge learning curve for us. We rewrote our engine from scratch. We started with a line of code with Uncharted basically, so we could build an engine and a tools platform custom-built for what we thought the system was capable of handling.

Another good interview with Naughty Dog can be found here:

http://arstechnica.com/gaming/news/2009/08/uncharted-2-makes-ps3-shine-couldnt-happen-on-360.ars

For the first game, Balestra estimated that they used around 30 percent of the power of the SPUs, now the team was able to use them to 100 percent capacity. Naughty Dog understands the Cell processor, and knows how to get it to sing. "The ability to use the RSX [the PS3's graphics processor] to draw your pixels on the screen, then you use the Cell to do gameplay and animations—we kind of took the step of using the Cell process to help the RSX . All those things are done on the Cell processor," he explained. "It really helps us getting that quality of lighting per pixel; the amount of computation is pretty crazy."

Naughty Dog also used the SPUs to add physics to the sound so things occlude properly. That means that if you're behind a door, the sound will reflect that. Effects will sound different depending on where your character is in relation to the source. "All that math is done on SPUs to immerse players into the environment," he said. If you have a surround-sound setup for your PS3, this could very well be your new showcase title.

This is what I mean by most developers are currently not "maxing out the system". They are simply not taking the time to recode their engine around the PS3's architecture to use it to the max. When you look at games that are coded for the PS3, namely GoW3 and Uncharted 2 as examples, you can see a game that truly shines and yet still has amazing graphics that blow away most other games.

If you have a developer that just takes a game created on one system, and then ports it over to the PS3, and doesn't bother to recode the game to the PS3, then it will run like crap. That to me is not "maxing out" a system. "maxing out" a system to me is what you experience when you play Uncharted 2. It's one of the most fantastic games I've ever seen. The developers have to play to the strengths of the PS3 to use it to the max.

I can understand why a lot of what I write goes over the heads of some of the people in this thread. They simply look at the GPU and go "oh it's the equivalent of a geforce 7800" without taking into account the SPU's, and figure that if someone fills up the GPU with crappy textures that the game is maxed out. My point was that here we are, years after the PS3 came out, and developers are still learning new tricks in how to use it properly and take advantage of the PS3's strengths. Also the time and expense with the newer consoles is rising exponentially, so more time should be spent with it on the market while it matures. The PS3 is an amazing machine, but it takes a lot of work to get what you want out of it, and if the developers don't spend the time doing so, they get a crap game like Marvel Ultimate Alliance 2.

 

[tdawg]

A tablet could actually beat the consoles in at least boardgame type stuff. You could play a coop game locally, team game with one team local and one matched via internet, or versus game especially if smartphone clients were used simultaneously for players' private information. Hotseat strategy games (deep but relatively short) would be great too.

So far the problem is just that tablets don't have games made for them which take a lot of time and money to develop. Not worth going in the mud pit of the app store and trying to charge real money for a really good game, I guess; everything better be $0.99 and designed to be immediately understood by an idiot. The latter means the games have to be action instead of strategy, and 99% of all action game designs just fail straight up on mobile/tablet because a touchscreen can't even theoretically support a good control scheme for them.

A good digital version of Settlers of Catan and all of its expansions on a tablet would be great. But the CEO of EPIC, or whatever he is, showed off an action game and tried to compare it to console gaming at this point purely because it was being played on a "retina display". Nevermind the fact that consoles are connected to 720p or 1080p televisions with no real consumer option for anything higher.

The other problem is that no true game developer has any interest in developing a full-size game for a tablet, charging regular price for said game that a small minority would probably actually buy in an app store, and giving 30% of the sales to Apple purely for the pleasure to get their game on a tablet. Plus, consoles and PCs offer far superior in-depth games than tablets.

 

[zsdersw]

She'd also be a gold-digging, hipster whore.

She'd be a member of the League of Women Voters.

 

[Pia]

The other problem is that no true game developer has any interest in developing a full-size game for a tablet, charging regular price for said game that a small minority would probably actually buy in an app store, and giving 30% of the sales to Apple purely for the pleasure to get their game on a tablet. Plus, consoles and PCs offer far superior in-depth games than tablets.

Maybe "therefore" instead of "plus"?

Tablets are perfectly capable of running in-depth games, and the chicken-egg conundrum you acknowledge in the previous sentence is literally the only reason why those games don't exist.

 

[Mopetar]

A good digital version of Settlers of Catan and all of its expansions on a tablet would be great. But the CEO of EPIC, or whatever he is, showed off an action game and tried to compare it to console gaming at this point purely because it was being played on a "retina display". Nevermind the fact that consoles are connected to 720p or 1080p televisions with no real consumer option for anything higher.

Just because the consoles are hooked up to a 720/1080 monitor doesn't mean that all of the games are actually using that resolution. I remember the shit storm from back in the day when it turned out Halo 3 wasn't even 720p.

It seems as though people are really trying to blow his comments out of proportion. He merely stated that the iPad offered more memory and had a higher resolution than the current generation of consoles. Why that needs to be taken as an attack on consoles is beyond me.

The other problem is that no true game developer has any interest in developing a full-size game for a tablet, charging regular price for said game that a small minority would probably actually buy in an app store, and giving 30% of the sales to Apple purely for the pleasure to get their game on a tablet. Plus, consoles and PCs offer far superior in-depth games than tablets.

Just because we have yet to see one, doesn't mean that none will ever exist. This is a new space and companies have been seeing what works and adjusting their development practices to find things that work. Considering that these mobile platforms easily have the potential to dwarf the potential market for both console and portable gaming devices, there's potential for money to be made. Eventually some companies will start making larger, more full featured games. I just finished playing Ghost Trick on my iPad a few weeks ago (As a side note, the game is quite enjoyable and the first few levels can be played for free so I recommend checking it out). The game was originally developed for the DS, but they ported the full game over to iOS. If it does well enough, it's possible that the company might start developing full games like that for mobile devices.

The business side of things really isn't different. Do you really think that any company developing console games gets the full $60 for every game that they sell? The store the sells the disc gets a cut, Microsoft/Sony/Nintendo get a cut, etc. Once everyone has had their cut, the cost comes out to be similar to what Apple would make with their 30%.

Also, what's a true game developer? Sounds kind of like a Scottish bloke I know.

 

[ultimatebob]

You're an Idiot..

the graphics have to be toned down for the consoles.
always have been they shipped with obsolete cards 7 years ago..

PC gaming still pushes software... the problem is no one but a small elite few want to update their PCs.

If you think that consoles don't even max out.. why dont you for instance compare BF3 Console version to the PC version..
Night and day difference.

They always use a fraction of the quality of textures on the consoles compared to the PCs..


anyway.. its still a hunk of shit Apple that can only do what it wants you to..
I'll wait for Samsung to blow their doors off again with a 10.1 v2

Heh... A "small elite few"? You make it sound like putting a $500 Nvidia or AMD graphics card in your PC is like joining a Navy SEAL team

 

[HFS+]

wont quad core graphics cause a battery hit?

 

[Juddog]

Heh... A "small elite few"? You make it sound like putting a $500 Nvidia or AMD graphics card in your PC is like joining a Navy SEAL team

Let alone place something that expensive inside of a console. People had enough of a problem justifying the price tag on the original PS3, imagine jacking up the price by $400 - nobody would buy one.

 

[MrX8503]

When desktop GPUs advancement is held back like it is right now, the consoles are maxed out. Every console port runs faster and looks better on a PC counterpart. On top of that consoles run mostly at 720p. If a console isn't maxed out then we wouldn't see this difference.

The reason why the PS3/X360 is still sticking around is because Sony/MS wants to recoup the losses. It doesn't make much financial sense to release such costly consoles frequently.

 

[Mopetar]

wont quad core graphics cause a battery hit?

To some degree, but nowhere near as much as the retina display and LTE baseband. However, Apple significantly upped the battery capacity so the relative battery life is the same overall.

 

[TurtleCrusher]

bump

Why??

Edit: Oh, a RBM. Nice to have you gone soon.

 

[tommo123]

dont know if it's been asked above but what's the point of all this grunt in a tablets/phones GPU? i mean you don't need it for angry birds and the like. i know there are the odd game that look more impressive than that but again, with touch screen controls what's the point? i'd love GTA3 on my sgs2 but i won't touch it since the controls suck

ICS supports game controllers (i think) but not all games make use if them right?

 

[Steelbom]

This isn't true. Whilst the SGX543MP4 is very powerful, it is only about one third to a half as powerful as the 360.

However there are two major, more important factors:

The first, is that the iPad 3 is powering a 2048x1536 resolution, which is 3.1 million pixels, whereas the majority of games on the 360 are rendered at 720p, which is only 0.9 million pixels, and then upscaled to 1080p.

The second, is that the 360 is sporting a much more powerful CPU, which the iPad 3 currently can't match.

I believe we will see console quality games on these types of devices in the near future, due to the Cortex A15 and more importantly, the PowerVR SGX 600 "rogue" series of GPUs, of which the entry models are supposedly up to ten times more powerful than the SGX543, or five times more powerful than the SGX543MP2, or two and a half times more powerful than the SGX543MP4, but in one chip.

When we see a quad-core Cortex A15 at 1.5GHz, and dual-core 600 series graphics, at 720p, then we'll see console quality graphics, if not better. Even a single 600 series GPU should be capable of console graphics, so two should be... fantastic.

It has a tons of pixels to push and weaker hardware than the Vita. So in other words Apple is full of @#$%.

The iPad 3 has a substantially weaker processor, but the GPU is the same -- though I think in the iPad 3 it is higher clocked.