Originally posted by: nismotigerwvu
I was regarding the hardware more than anything. I don't think you'd find much resistance to calling the N64 a flawed piece of hardware (4KB for textures....yeah 4K...they broke the bank springing for the RDRAM). On the Pentium 4 front I can swear to you the Willamette P4's were pushing RDRAM, but I believe the it was introduced first on the P3 as you mentioned (someone look it up for me but I want to say the i840). The PS3, IMHO, is in the same boat as the N64 as being a flawed piece of hardware (Cell, in it's current design, is ill-fitted for use as a general purpose processor and the RSX is severely outdated, I mean you don't see people in a rush to pick up 7800GT's do you?). This doesn't mean that they technical issues can't be dealt with (see OoT/Goldeneye/Resistance FoM).
Yes the Willamette's had RDRAM. I know...I still have one of those systems with the i850 chipset.
I disagree with the PS3 being flawed. It has some good looking games (Uncharted <--this surprised me more than any other game, MGS4, GTA4) and although it can't match today's graphics cards, it does a decent job. However, one thing I'd change is the amount of ram...what is it a total of 512 for both CPU+GPU?
The one thing I admire about PS3 games is the use of shadows. Very few PC games I've played have the level of detail in shadows I've found in PS3 games. I'm not sure if this is a consequence of Cell or not but I always notice it in PS3 games and am always glad for it. I just wish some of the games had some AA added.
In terms of Cell, while you probably won't see it running Vista, it works fine for Blu-Ray playback, the games, and I even have linux running on it so I can use it as a web surfing computer if I wish as well.