Playstation 2's processor vs. the top of the line PC processors - which has more raw power?

[erub]

I heard on the news that Iraq was sending people to buy Playstation 2 and ship them to Baghdad to use in weapons systems, since they are so advanced of anything they have today, and much more powerful than the best PC processors. I heard similar info about selling them not being able to sell them in communist China for this reason back in July or so. Is this true? I personally was laughing at the story when I heard it, cause I thought that there was no way a GPU would be powerful enough to drive a modern weapons system, and more importantly that it wouldn't be as powerful as an Athlon 1.2 GHz/Pentium III 1 GHz/Pentium IV 1.5 GHz - but now I think that there may be some truth to this.

Of course I don't believe everything I hear, but this actually sounds like some sort of truth to this.

LMK what you think.

 

[Shockwave]

Ya, I heard that too! Dunno, but if the reason I didnt get my P2 is because that damned Saddam needed a P2 chip for a missle, I'm gonna be pretty pi$$ed off.......

 

[noxipoo]

umm yes and no. depends on what its doing. kinda like asking which is more powerful! a dump truck's engine or a formula 1 engine. one can tow 30 tons, one can go 200mph.

 

[erub]

yeah that's what I was thinking - but wouldn't calculating the placement of missles require FPU calculations? I have no idea what he needs them for to drive his missle systems...

 

[jaggrey]

I remember hearing that about the original PlayStation a while back too.

PlayStation = 25 MHz
PlayStation2 = 300 MHz
AMD Athlon = 1.2 GHz
Intel P4 = 1.5 GHz

I know it's alot more to it than the megahertz, but it's nice to see the numbers

 

[ktchong]

Yup, it was on the front cover of Times magazine more than a year ago. The PS2 processor was way too powerful and considered as a threat to US security. The U.S. government tried and successfully stopped Sony, a Japanese company, from selling PS2 to many "black-listed" countries (China, Iraq, etc.) The news was disturbing because a government was able to go in and tell some company in another country how to run its business. Of course, as Americans who have more-or-less superiority complex, most people here probably don't see anything wrong with that...

 

[erub]

I don't see anything wrong with it, espically if Sony wants to sell us Playstation 2. If I'm not mistaken, Sony Coporation of America (their US branch) is doing quite well at the moment. Espically they should not be allowed if it is a threat to our security. There was another thread on the boards about how it is wrong for the US to go after criminals who blew up US embassay from across the street. We're the most powerful nation in the world - most nations choose to get along with us, as we do nice things for our allies - a few do not. What do you think that the Romans would have done if someone tried to sell a weapon to their enemy - they woulda said hell no. Does that make it right? No. Does it make me happy that my gov. does this to protect me and my fellow citizens? Hell yes it does.

 

[ElFenix]

the emotion engine had an insane amount of transistors and takes up a lot of space on the silicon, probably more than a p4. some pc magazines or maybe it was news week commented at the time that the size of one was enough to make intel and amd both balk at making one, the yields would be so bad. of course, its only clocked at 300, so that probably improves the yields, as does other things like high voltage. the emotion engine was designed to do one thing, whereas pc processors are designed to do lots of different things, none particularly well. even a lowly tnt2 or v3 can push more polygons than a 1.2 GHz athlon, for illustration. the emotion engine was also designed for bandwidth the way the p4 is. probably doesn't have much cache because of that.

 

[xtreme2k]

The Playstation2 vs. the PC: a System-level Comparison of Two 3D Platforms

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