Xbox 360 CPU vs PS3 CPU...3 cores vs 8 cores

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gg616

Junior Member
May 18, 2005
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i think it's best to wait and see. no one still yet knows the full capabilities of the x360. i was reading around some of those links mentioned thruout this forum and even the developers of x360 games havent been given actual finalized 360's to work with, have had to use multiple pc's hooked up to work with. what's obvious is that the 360 isn't even really finalized and in the above link the MS dude said MS were still trying to not finalize just yet.
basically all the game demos shown for the 360 were very raw works in progress footage, not what the final product will look like. You can see it in some of the clips where there are literally cinematic (nextgen) looking backdrops and xbox1 looking action, then xbox1 looking backdrops with x360 characters.
and ps3's game demos were all "fake" but they never actually said they are actual in game demos. they said "THIS is what we aim to achieve in in-game graphics, THIS is what it WOULD look like" and the only actual in-game demo was this brief piece where some robots are fighting on some bridge. and you can even see in that how still sketchy it was, only a rough draft as of now of whats to come, you could see that theyre cooking up something big.
also....as someone at ign said.....the best way to actually tell which system is better/faster is by running the same game on both systems, like madden next-gen. thats when you'll tell.
ps3's demos kinda scared alot of ppl about x360's demos shown as some crap thing, a joke. Some are thinking that even the ps3 wont be able to pull off cinematic effects and that in the end both the ps3 and x360 will only be slightly better than last gen. but by what both corps are planning, this wont be the case.
and by rumors of the revolution, when that comes out in later 2006, it will be even more powerful than the other systems, tho at a cheaper cost price.
but what i personally guess, based on last gen wars, this will happen......nintendo's revolution wont be enough to compete, theyll continue shooting themselves in the foot with games like nintendogs and electroplankton and rehashing mario in many forms, maintaining its very fun kind of child-like philosophy. and will be far behind in console sales than the other two.
from listening to all 3 corps in their presentations.....nintendo's was very funny, fun, showing theyd be a very cool company to work for, yet still a bit too tentative to encompass a more mature gaming audience.
meanwhile sony's was highly professional and technical, no fun, and shows they really take making technology seriously.
meanwhile MS's was kind of inbetween, both fun yet professional without all the tech mumbo-jumbo.
bill gates is so obsessed with monopolizing industries that he'd stop at nothing to ensure his xbox franchize prevails.
one journalist says how it usually takes MS 3 goes at something before dominating the market (re netscape vs IE war). and reckons the same will happen here. the fans of sony and its past success and tech-achievements will keep sony no1 in this next gen, but the market ratio would be alot closer. and that if theres a x4 vs ps4 war later, that being MS's third go at it, finally by then MS will have toppled Sony, esp with sony's dropping profits.
i think history will repeat in many ways....nintendo wont really change from its less-mature gaming stance even tho their revolution will be highly impressive it will still suffer, sony and ms will be the ones truly pushing the boundaries of next-gen graphics.
gamecube was a far better system than ps2, tho less powerful, unable to play dvd's, and didnt have online play. ps2 wasnt at first as good as its later ps2 models, forever striving for perfection. and ms's was much more powerful but came in too late to threaten sony.
sony promised things in the ps2 that never eventuated. and with all of xbox's power, hardly any developers actually made full use of it. bcos the money was always with sony's system it made more sense for them to develop games easily port-able to both ps2 and xbox.
the same thing will happen this time. x360 and ps3 will ultimately end up being compatible with blu-ray and hd-dvd, and while x360 will be more powerful/faster in some areas, the ps3 will be more powerful/faster in other areas (as that MS dude admitted)....which will mean that in the end, all the game developers will end up having similar systems to develop for. this time however, what we'll find is that the early games for x360 and ps3 wont be as developed for next-gen as games released further in 2006 and beyond. and as both systems will now be as powerful as each other, developers can create a game that will look as good on x360 as it will on ps3. previously, only the xbox had more power than the ps2 and with ps2's better selling of consoles, they obviously made less use of xbox's power. but this time that wont happen at least.
the problem is gonna be the costs for both the consoles and the games.
cos these next gen consoles are total entertainment packages many times faster than todays pc's, either the prices of these consoles is gonna be in the $1,000-2,000 price range....or, they are worth only 500-700 dollars each which will end up forcing the standard price of current and future pc's down by a lot. Even apple will have to worry and lower its prices for its household computers.
 

Munky

Diamond Member
Feb 5, 2005
9,372
0
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I remember for the original xbox MS claimed it could do somewhere around 70 gflops. I also know that the PS2 EE was rated at 6.2 gflops. Since the GS of the PS2 could not do floating point math, we know the EE could only put out 6.2 gflops by itself, without the GS or anything else. Now, considering the EE had 1 cpu and 2 vector units, all 128-bit, do you think a lousy 32-bit Celeron could put out 70 gflops? Even the latest and greatest P4 would only top out at about 5 gflops. So, obvioulsy MS counted the xbox gpu when they made that claim. Whether the claim was true or not is a whole other issue, but I have my doubts about that one.

So what's to stop MS from counting the gpu this time? I highly doubt it would reach 1 teraflop even with the gpu, but no way would the xbox360 cpu alone would come anywhere close to even 100 gflops, nevermind 1 teraflop.

As for the PS3, those specs could be (and probably are) overinflated just as bad as the xbox360. But, from a theoretical perspective, under ideal conditions, the 8 cores in the cell would most likely run a lot faster than the 3 cores of the xbox360. I do agree, however, that the cell will be more difficult to program efficiently, and thus we see a repeat of the PS2 - it had powerful hardware, but only performed well if you knew how to use it. The PS2's only weakness is it's GS was outclassed by the gpu of the xbox and gamecube. If the PS2 and xbox had a similar gpu, the PS2 would literally run circles aroud the xbox or gamecube. Given that the PS3 will have a gpu as good as or better than the xbox360, it will have the potential to be a lot faster than the xbox360. The only question is if the developer is willing to code it right, or if the compiler is good at optimizing code for the cell.
 

xbl xxghostsxx

Junior Member
May 18, 2005
2
0
0
Hey you guys should realy stop doubting MS, and stop and remember that MS actually wasn't worried about the fact that their games looked like crap compared to PS3 (fake) gamefootages. Ms is has comfirmed that they are still in the processes of sending out the beta for the development kit ( http://xboxmovies.teamxbox.com/xbox/1957/J-Allard-Video-Interview/ ) . So most of the games that were playable and shown at E3 are using about 40 to 50 % of the xbox 360 s power. The best thing to do now is to chill and wait for more information to appear on the net.





MY xbox PIC..... http://www.freewebs.com/haloevent/Photo012.jpg
 

scsi drv1

Member
Mar 17, 2005
190
0
0
Originally posted by: Starglider
The Cell cores will be synchronous simply because they're all driven by a single external clock generator; it would cost more and perform worse if they were run asynchronously.

I dont believe that they will be synchronous. Can you imagine all of those cells working @ around 2GHz. That thing would heat up and burn through ur desk, flooring, and rock in ur house. Not only that but the sheer thought of that makes me cringe from the power.
 

HDTVMan

Banned
Apr 28, 2005
1,534
0
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If neither the Xbox 360 or PS3 support a mouse then I dont care which has more power they will suck because they overlooked every serious hardcore gamer.

For those who do not live by the mouse. The one with the best games will win regardless of power.

I dont believe we will see one game system over the other with significant visuals over the other. They are both capable of Doom 3 at HDTV levels and beyond and since game development now takes several years the xbox 720 and PS4 will be out before we can exceed the technology of these 2 titans.

Heck the X-box 2 can play doom 3 pretty nicely and its a 733.

Power doesnt matter if the games suck more power wont make it better.
 

imported_Starglider

Junior Member
May 18, 2005
15
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0
Scsi: whether the cores are synchronous or not makes absolutely no difference to their power dissipation. The pentium and athlon dual core processors are synchronous for this reason. Perhaps you have confused this with asynchronous logic, which is a technology that really does have the potential to reduce power consumption but works by avoiding the need for a clock at all rather than running seperate clock domains out of sync.

Secondly the stated clock speed for the PS3 is 3.6 GHz (the same as the XBox). Power dissipation is kept down by making the cores simpler and thus smaller, but even still yes it will be a hot chip.
 

Intelia

Banned
May 12, 2005
832
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There are three glaring facts here.
1) Xbox 2 is arriving on time . PS3 is not.(its back to the drawing board for PS3)
a) 3 G5 cpu's fact not fiction

2) nvidia did Xbox 1 and PS3 ( lets hope they do a better job with PS3 than Xbox1

3) This is the first time out of the box for cell its great tech. But its still an infant in the long run it well be great. (there is however a wildcard that being PPU) Were all going to have to wait to see how this shakes out.
 

Schmeh

Member
Jun 25, 2004
29
0
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Originally posted by: Intelia
There are three glaring facts here.
1) Xbox 2 is arriving on time . PS3 is not.(its back to the drawing board for PS3)
a) 3 G5 cpu's fact not fiction

"its back to the drawing board for PS3", what are you talking about? The PS3 has always been slated for release in 2006.

Also the Xbox 360 doen't have 3 cpu's, it has 1 cpu with 3 cores.

 

akugami

Diamond Member
Feb 14, 2005
6,210
2,551
136
Originally posted by: IGN ARTICLEXbox 360 has 278.4 GB/s of memory system bandwidth. The PS3 has less than one-fifth of Xbox 360's (48 GB/s) of total memory system bandwidth.

I really wonder if that one statement is correct. That is INSANE bandwith.

 

gg616

Junior Member
May 18, 2005
11
0
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so like, everything said in that article, weighing it all up, can you elaborate a little if what MS is suggesting is true?
 

rav3n2k

Junior Member
May 22, 2005
8
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Although the CPU appears to have far superior processing power on paper:
The Xbox 360 CPU architecture has three times the general purpose processing power of the Cell.
Also
Xbox 360 has 278.4 GB/s of memory system bandwidth. The PS3 has less than one-fifth of Xbox 360's (48 GB/s) of total memory system bandwidth.

When you break down the numbers, Xbox 360 has provably more performance than PS3. Keep in mind that Sony has a track record of over promising and under delivering on technical performance. The truth is that both systems pack a lot of power for high definition games and entertainment.

This is all from IGN - comparisons made by Douglass C. Perry.

The full article, which appears to be a fairly indepth comparison, can be found here:
http://xbox360.ign.com/articles/617/617951p1.html
 

HDTVMan

Banned
Apr 28, 2005
1,534
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The PS3 should be more powerfull however microsoft learned that being first with a next gen console is a better plan. By being at least 6 months before PS3 microsoft hopes to have about 200games by the time the PS3 arrives. Microsoft has also planned to release Halo 3 on the same day as the PS3 with a massive ad campaign that should overshadow the launch of the PS3.

Both will have nearly the same capabilities. Visually you wont be able to see a difference in gameplay. Will a game eventually come out that cant play on the other system? Doubtfull since the goal of both machines is to be able to play every game at 1080i with AA enabled. So if such a game did arrive you could just run it at a lower res on the other machine. Which certainly wont kill you. Graphics are not what make the games but gameplay makes all the difference.

Microsoft learned this lesson when they released the Xbox 1. Although it was vastly superior in performance to PS2. The PS2 already had so many games that it was obvious which system your were going to buy. Unless you modded your x-box like a lot of us to do various things that Windows MCE does. Forget game copies the ability to play any video format and display pictures streamed from my pc was the sell. In that price catagory nothing came close. Even if the games were released on both systems neither 99% of the time neither looked any better on the other console. So power gave nothing more. I believe 1-2 games added visual improvements but others were just ports.

Microsoft learned from the dark side of this area and the X-box 360 will be able to do the same what the modders have been doing since early X-box1. Its a multimedia entertainment unit that plays games. Microsoft will allow Windows XP and all future generations the ability to do similar items. It will also allow you to do this with High Definition movies. Lets see sony compete with that since they are too busy trying to push a totally different format that the majority of movie studios are not adopting. The Blue Gay dead technology will die out to WMV9 and TS and even HD-Divx because they are here and blue ray is not.

Microsoft is going to also close the gap on kids games also. There will be many kids games for the x-box 360. An area overlooked by the X-box 1.

Microsoft also leveraged several titles from being sony releases. Final Fantasy is going to Microsoft for this round and thats a huge fan base. Enough that they might win Japan this time around. In fact that was a part of Microsofts goal was to appeal to the Japanese fans with titles that would get them to microsoft.

Microsoft is basically delivering a checkmate solution. The best thing sony can do is move their release date ahead. But I dont believe they can do so enough because Microsoft was smart for releasing just before the X-mas season. Every kid and adult is going to ask for X-box 360. There will be millions before Sony even can have 20 titles launched. The same way PS2 beat the X-box 1 is the same was Microsoft is going to beat Sony at PS3.

BTW the mystery connector on the top of the X-box controller? A long time ago I was friends with a guy in development and he told me it is for a web cam. Well at the time he didnt say that connector but he did say the next xbox will have a webcam feature on the controller. So I assume its this connector. Its so you can see each other during games he stated it is especially fun to see your opponents reaction when you get a kill. Yes I did tell him the X-box needs a mouse. Lets hope the developers listened this time. He did specify a keyboard will be available this time around and a possible surprise by voice recognition. Dont get your hopes up because a lot happens in beta that never makes it to market.

 

HDTVMan

Banned
Apr 28, 2005
1,534
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Before I get hit with questions on the webcam and keyboard. They were originally scheduled for the Xbox 1 but microsoft scrapped them for their first gen console and pushed them for release into the Xbox 2. At the time they were considering allowing you to do stuff like manage your online banking and doing MSN messaging. Then MSN got hit with a few exploits and they werent sure how to integrate it with the community yet provide updates to secure the box. Same went for online banking. They also felt HDTV was not the mainstream market place also so anything that would best be suited for that also got scrapped. The web browser also was scrapped and thus a keyboard etc. It just became a big mess and they scrapped everything outside of gaming. Like I said a lot goes into beta but very few things come out.
 

gg616

Junior Member
May 18, 2005
11
0
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I believe you HDTV, and am an xbox man thru and thru, but i lack the technical knowledge to understand that ign article. Id like someone to run it thru their heads and like let me and others know on here, not so much IF ms are telling the truth, but how much of what they say is spot on.
 

IntelUser2000

Elite Member
Oct 14, 2003
8,686
3,787
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PS3 Cell=200GFlops
Xbox 360 CPU=100GFlops

PS3 total system=2TFlops
Xbox 360 total system=1TFlops
 

gobucks

Golden Member
Oct 22, 2004
1,166
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personally, i don't really buy into arguments about processing power on consoles. Look at current gen ones - do you honestly see a big difference between PS2, Gamecube, and Xbox in terms of graphics and realism, even though the Xbox is WAAAAAY faster in terms of specs? Game developers usually program for the least common denominator, at least for multi-platform launches. For example, in most PC games, textures fit into a 128MB buffer, even though 256MB and even 512MB cards are available. In the same way, game developers for cross-platform launches won't want to come up with 8-threaded games when most other consoles can only handle 3 (or six if you count the 360's virtual cores). Besides, I'm not sure how easy it will even be to split up game software - after all, app writers have been designing for multi-cpu setups for years, and games are the one area that haven't followed suit, even though most PCs have hyperthreading now. I think it's just hard to do and not as effective as other software for multithreading. Additionally, I think the large bandwidth and embedded DRAM are going to be huge advantages for the XBox 360. I think the PS3 is going to be kinda like the XBox 1 in the sense that its power rarely gets to really shine. Plus it's gonna be like $500, which is way too pricey for me. But i think PS3 will still do very well, due to customer loyalty and great titles; it just won't be a blowout like it was this time around.
 

rav3n2k

Junior Member
May 22, 2005
8
0
0
Originally posted by: IntelUser2000
PS3 Cell=200GFlops
Xbox 360 CPU=100GFlops

PS3 total system=2TFlops
Xbox 360 total system=1TFlops

Get over the paper, and start learning something new...

I also agree that current-gen consoles are similar in terms of performance and graphics - having said that, I think the thing that tipped PS2 over the line was being released before xBox. Then again, it might also be because of the fanatics who decided to follow-suit and grab the new-gen of their PSX.

With each new generation of console, a new level is reached. I'm using a game in its metaphorical sense, by saying that level 1 was PS1, level 2 was the xBox and PS2, and level 3 is the PS3 and xBox 360. As many have argued, there aren't many notable differences, that I've seen at least, in the xBox vs PS2 performance. I don't own both, and I lean towards xBox for the reasons of being able to turn it into a multimedia center, but, for their primary purpose (has it lost its meaning?) there really aren't too many differences besides the titles. (Games.)
 

xbl xxghostsxx

Junior Member
May 18, 2005
2
0
0
Now that the Xbox 360 and PlayStation 3 specifications have been announced, it is possible to do a real world performance comparison of the two systems.

There are three critical performance aspects of a console:

Central Processing Unit (CPU) performance.
- The Xbox 360 CPU architecture has three times the general purpose processing power of the Cell.

Graphics Processing Unit (GPU) performance
- The Xbox 360 GPU design is more flexible and it has more processing power than the PS3 GPU.

Memory System Bandwidth
- The memory system bandwidth in Xbox 360 exceeds the PS3?s by five times.


CLICK HERE FOR COMPARISON PIChttp://media.teamxbox.com/dailyposts/consolecompare.jpg



The Bottom Line

When you break down the numbers, Xbox 360 has provably more performance than PS3. Keep in mind that Sony has a track record of over promising and under delivering on technical performance. The truth is that both systems pack a lot of power for high definition games and entertainment.

However, hardware performance, while important, is only a third of the puzzle. Xbox 360 is a fusion of hardware, software and services. Without the software and services to power it, even the most powerful hardware becomes inconsequential. Xbox 360 games?by leveraging cutting-edge hardware, software, and services?will outperform the PlayStation 3.
 

sbuckler

Senior member
Aug 11, 2004
224
0
0
Originally posted by: akugami
Originally posted by: IGN ARTICLEXbox 360 has 278.4 GB/s of memory system bandwidth. The PS3 has less than one-fifth of Xbox 360's (48 GB/s) of total memory system bandwidth.

I really wonder if that one statement is correct. That is INSANE bandwith.


That's just for the 10mb of embedded dram everyone keeps mentioning talking to the floating point units attached to it. Basically thats the bit that going to anti alias everything on the xbox, which it should be able to do with a zero performance hit.
 

Acanthus

Lifer
Aug 28, 2001
19,915
2
76
ostif.org
The PS3 is also running ultra high frequency XDR which will be lower latency.

The bottom line is, speculating now is retarded.
 

overst33r

Diamond Member
Oct 3, 2004
5,761
12
81
Originally posted by: xbl xxghostsxx
Now that the Xbox 360 and PlayStation 3 specifications have been announced, it is possible to do a real world performance comparison of the two systems.

There are three critical performance aspects of a console:

Central Processing Unit (CPU) performance.
- The Xbox 360 CPU architecture has three times the general purpose processing power of the Cell.

Graphics Processing Unit (GPU) performance
- The Xbox 360 GPU design is more flexible and it has more processing power than the PS3 GPU.

Memory System Bandwidth
- The memory system bandwidth in Xbox 360 exceeds the PS3?s by five times.


CLICK HERE FOR COMPARISON PIChttp://media.teamxbox.com/dailyposts/consolecompare.jpg



The Bottom Line

When you break down the numbers, Xbox 360 has provably more performance than PS3. Keep in mind that Sony has a track record of over promising and under delivering on technical performance. The truth is that both systems pack a lot of power for high definition games and entertainment.

However, hardware performance, while important, is only a third of the puzzle. Xbox 360 is a fusion of hardware, software and services. Without the software and services to power it, even the most powerful hardware becomes inconsequential. Xbox 360 games?by leveraging cutting-edge hardware, software, and services?will outperform the PlayStation 3.


do you call gaming "general purpose?"... dont think so, although they will have trouble programming on the cell, it has much more portential.

memory bandwith twice than ps3? you must be swayed by the 10mb embedded EDRAM.

you are very right about the bottom line.