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Now everyone is aware that there isn't a perfect console , each console has it's + points and it's downfalls , some worse than others.
I'll be constructing a guide on each consoles individual flaws , please PM me with any flaw your believe ive missed out or any flaw you believe needs to be included. I'm not going to go into good points of each console as this would consist of mostly opinion rather than fact , consoles + points are relative to the user whereas negative points generally affect every console user.

DISCLAIMER : THESE ARE NOT MY VIEWS ALONE ,ALL THIS INFORMATION HAS BEEN TAKEN FROM MULTIPLE SOURCES THERFORE ALL FLAMES DIRECTED TOWARDS ME FOR THIS POST ARE POINTLESS.

Let's Start of with the current Gen champion , the Wii


KIDDY GAMES (OPINION)

The Wii is seen to be the most babyish out of the 3 current gen consoles "little Bro". with a large libary of games that would be considered suitable for only those below 10 , this may be seen as a serious downside for more mature gamers interested in purchasing a console.

Potentially damaging to equipment and people in the immediate area (OPINION)

There have been reports of people,equipment being damaged because of intensive playing on the Wii , you'd have to be pretty excited and no focused
enough to maintain a propper grip on the Wii controler. This - is really relative to the person using it , if your a sensible gamer it shoudln't really affect you.

The Wii doesn't come with a HD, can't currently Utilise HD w/o modifications ( FACT )

this seriously limits the multimedia capabilities of the Wii , this shoudln't limit the Wii's gaming capabilities unless an MMORPG is introduced onto the console.
although Nitnendo may introduce a wii HD in the future when there is a real need for it , right now not really...

LACK OF DVD PLAYBACK , Next Gen optical format.(FACT)

The XBOX 360 and the PS3 are boasting the ability to play either next gen format the Blu-Ray and the HD-DVD , the Wii currently isn't even able to
play a DVD at the moment , but to my understanding this is possible with a firmware update or an external pherical.

Poor Graphics and power in comparison to PS3 , 360.(FACT)

The 360 and PS3 are over 5X more powerfull then their predecessors while the Wii could be seen as up to 2X as powefull as the GC as most , whilst
it is still a big hit regardless this - point could really prove to be fatal within the next 2 years. There has already been reports of ports being
impossible to bring to the Wii because of it's lack of power (assassins creed to name one).

Poor Quality:Garbage ration in relation to games.(OPINION)

There are quite a killer exclusives that nintendo can boast about such as Zelda , SMG , red steel etc but the amount of garbage nintendo DS is somewhat of a disappointment for Wii owners , not really too much of a downside because there is still a good range of quality titles to compensate.


Growing Piracy scene for the Wii(FACT/OPINION)

For some this may be seen as a huge plus but in actual fact it massively damages Nintendo and the consumer in the long run , piracy for the Wii scares away developers , makes games more expensive , reduces nintendo's profitability and generally isn't a good thing for anyone at the end of the day.A quick search ona torrent site shows 4,000 downloaders of SMG (i'm sure the actual number of people downloading SMG is much greater) this translates into millions of $$$$ lost. There isn't much nitendo can do about this I believe.

Gimmicky/Flawed FPS's on the Wii


Quote:
The problem I have with it [Red Steel] and other Wii shooters is that I can't lay my right hand down, not for one second, without the camera flying up or down," writes Louis Bedigian. "The consequence is disorienting, frustrating, and after getting used to it, just plain annoying.

Maybe this problem has been resolved on later FPS games , I unno. This could easily change in the future though with more developer innovation, this could easily be turned into a + point.

Next Up , PS3

Many games are delayed up to months after rival consoles have it(FACT)

This is going to pose a huge problem for Sony especially with multi platform games , exclusives won't be as much of a problem because they're only available on the PS3 but then the delays alone could be sufficient reason for the PS3 failing in this gen.

A Poorer library of PS3 games (OPINION)

there is a number of factors the contribute to this , the PS3's difficulty to develop for , the PS3's later release date ( in comparison the 360) and other things. The 360 it's closest competitor probably boasts a better line-up of games currently and there are reports of multi-platform games appearing better on the 360. ofcourse future exclusives and increasing developer understanding of the console could change this.

PS3 17% Market Share(FACT)

It would take alot of effort from Sony's side if they are going to dominate the market at any point of this Generation , despite the PS3 currently beating it's closest rival XBOX in sales in Europe ,japan and nearing the sales gap between itself and the Wii. Both the 360 and the Wii have a much larger user base than the PS3 so even in the scenario where the PS3 was to outsell both consoles it would have to maintain this for quite a while for a decent market share.

Possibility of Blu-Ray loosing the HD-DVD (OPINION)

with the current release of the sub $200 HD-DVD players this could be the end for the Blu-Ray's dominance as we know it.Considering one of the main selling points of the PS3 is it's blu-ray player.

Wii beating PS3 2:1 in japan.(FACT)

Sony was traditionally the main console seller in Japan however it apears the the Jap's have decided to embrace the Wii much more than they have the PS3 , despite reports of the PS3 closing the sales gap on the Wii , the Wii is still far off in the distance in terms of it's sales.

PS3's Price (FACT/OPINION)

Maybe this - is becoming less and less of an issue but even the wide belief that the PS3 is an expensive console is a downside , although considering everything that is included maybe it's worth it.

The PS3's Size/Weight(OPINION)


Quote:
This may or may not matter to you, but it's a bit large, and it's a bit heavy. Weighing in at around 11 pounds, the PS3 is the size of a really thick textbook. If you have to move it around, it'll start getting annoying.

.I'm not sure of how much of a problem this is for other people, for me personally it doesn't present much of a problem .

Powerful with 8 cells but lack of RAM(FACT/OPNION)


Quote:
256MB of system memory seems like too little. Based on my PC gaming experiences, some games use more than twice that. It may be different on the PS3, but I can't see why. In fact, with 8 cores running simultaneously, I'd imagine you'd want more memory, not less.

When I saw this 256 MB figure I was kinda worried , even my 5 year old computer has 1GB of ram . with XMB running and all those other background processes I don't exactly know how damaging this will be to PS3 game play. I haven't heard any reports of it having any damaging effects so far though.

CELLS (OPINION/UNPROVEN)

Quote:
The Cell processor looks great on paper, but IBM claims 10 to 20 percent yields when they actually try to manufacture it. Your PS3 may actually come with only 7 of the 8 cores working; Sony will accept any processor with at least 7 cores working. And if one of the cores dies...well, I hope your warranty's still active.

I won't comment on this because I don't know how valid this is , I haven't seen any proof of this being true though.

Now for the 360

Fully utilising the XBOX 360 can be expensive.(OPINION)

-XBOX live 12 months subscription £35
-Wifi £60 ( optional but much more convenient for gaming )
-HD-DVD Drive £115 ( For next gen HD-DVD)
(prices based on amazon.co.uk , one of the lowest possible prices for new hardware)

Fully utilised 360 costing between £450-£510 ($900-$1020) which is more than it's competitors.Although you could run your 360 perfectly fine without these things(Maybe you might need a fan at most)

XBOX 360 has quite a few Hardware related problems.(FACT)

RROD , Disc Read error to name a couple , this seems to have plagued many XBOX 360 users and the problem still hasn't been rectified with newer XBOX ELITE. The exact % of 360 failure is unsure (it's rumoured to be 33%) but with the sheer volume of reported 360 hardware failures it is a problem that needs to be addressed.The extended warranty should keep XBOX owners at ease for a while longer , with 1billion set aside maybe they'll replace the current 360's with newer 65nm ones.

Many 360 exclusives going to appear on a PC near you(OPINION/FACT)

Big titles such as Halo 1 , Halo 2 have appeared on the PC after their XBOX releases , it's possible Halo 3 will be on the PC next year. there are a range of XBOX 360 destined for PC screens however i'm advised that there are some exclusives they will remain just that "exclusive". The 360 performs better than most PC's anyway so it's not that much of a downer.

360 PIRACY WILL COST MICROSOFT HUNDREDS OF MILLIONS(FACT)

Looking @ a popular torrent site I see that a XBOX 360 game named The Darkness is being downloaded by 60,000 people X $60.00 that they should have paid will = 3.6 Million in losses ( although considering not all of the people downloading the game may have bought or may still buy it , the losses may not be as great) But assuming each piracy will cost microsoft 1mil per game they are looking @ losses of at least 100Mill for every hundred games they release.

XBOX 360 performing poorly in Japan

The XBOX series has traditionally performed badly in Japan , without killer titles that apeal to the Jap's (mainly RPG's sicne they aren't as interested in FPS's) then the 360 might as well not be sold in that region. I can see Micrsoft turning this around but not without investing serious $$$ into development of games that the JAPS love, they have traditionaly embraced Sony and Nintendo so this would be in the realms of miraculous if MS could pull this off.

Not enough USB Ports (OPINION/FACT)


Quote:
As I said, there's only one USB port on the back, and in a lot of cases, that's going to be tied up with the USB Wi-Fi accessory. That leaves only the two USB ports on the front left available to plug in such accessories as the video camera (coming soon). Toss in another wired controller, and your 360 is full up--and looking untidy, with wires sprouting from the front.

I read on Max Console that you need a USB hub to play the special edition guitar hero , although it's provided with it.This won't really limit the 360 that much though.

SPECIAL THANKS TO...
MAX CONSOLE
CNET
N4G
BBC
AND OTHER SOURCES I CAN'T BE BOTHERED TO REMEMBER

MORE UPDATES IN THE NEAR FUTURE , PLEASE HELP ME UPADTE BY PM'ING ME.
__________________
Why can't we just all get along WiiS360 ?

Thats the point for Wii for me (and even NDSL), playing mostly cute cute games to relax instead playing those high tense games such as Need for Speed, Resident Evil etc. I myself like the idea (call me coward or childish)

I had to admit that I am a little bit disappointed with PS3 sales and marketing. However, as a lifelong PS fans, I am confident it will bounce back because, hey I am not alone on this PS fan things. The games however is a problem as not many games are just dedicated to PS3. However, I am sure that a lot of people will just buy the console just for the Final Fantasy , Gran Turismo and those super duper famous PS dedicated game. Finally, let's just hope that there is a size scale down version in the future for PS3.

Be remember though, PS3 is the state of the art.

no perfect console

All hail Captain Copypasta!

i believe this guy think that it can increase post count by copypasta

Common man this is a good thread isnt it ? sharing knowledge its fun lol

tis one i agree, its much better than wat u posted

copy pasting news doesn't make it yours or make up for your own lack of originality

why no sauce? this is plagiarism.

He just want try to share the source with us, but i believe that he's copycat skill is not that bad too.

Give him a break larrr...he doesn't bring any harm. We have other important issues to dwell on...like a fraudster that keeps popping up in Console Couch after numerous permban

*cough cough* so helpful.... thanks for the input.. *cough cough*..

For the post to be right, the poster should hv experience all of the console...not just judging from other ppl's view only. I for one can't say much about other console since I only own the nintendo wii n ndsl since they hv more games of my choice and I'm already 30yrs old

nowdays no need hands on aredi, got internet, CTRl key and C,V button will do

thats the way... aha2 i like it..

No it's not, because the "info" in the first post has many mistakes and just reeks of ignorance. But i guess that's what copypasta people read anyway lol.

Booooringg......

hahaha...i like it when u all start saying bad thing at each other...stop it or others will join me..
kamon la guys...at least appreciate first , then give some comment...show your hidden good ethic... u guys good at giving a comments...all your comment is usefull and good....but sometime try to throw it using a good way...other people also have emotion that we must keep it good...so please don't just throw it without thinking other feeling..really sad when i read how u wrote your comment..but it's good comment, just not in the right road..tq

every console has it good and bad point that how is it there is no perfect console i believe, but still copypasta like u will never learn

i think the one who never learn is u.....

we got a beastwar fanboy here

To bEaSt WaRs and jeerie (as I think both of u are the same person),

I've been following your posts, and I'd like to give a kind opinion on what you have posted. Honestly, I think all of your topics are boring. I believe most people have read most of the news that you have posted. So boring.

TS, why don't you compile everything into one thread? Making a new thread just for 1 news is just plain dumb and messy. Hope the mods take notice of this.

nizam high on drugs ar?

Why not u just make one lol
let we all see ur post is it good or not

common show it to everybody here can you?

dont be shy..

hahahahaha...

---

Added on November 6, 2007, 6:17 pmSorry, I'm not in the mood to do so, and I've got nothing to prove to copypasta people like you. As, I've mentioned in my previous, I've already given my opinion on the way you post. It just depends whether you want to accept it or not. It's just an opinion.

This post has been edited by nizam80: Nov 6 2007, 06:17 PM

to TS this i award u



This post has been edited by squall_12: Nov 6 2007, 08:21 PM


Attached thumbnail(s)

u insulted wii

*aim for your heart with wii remote *shoots u*

u are wrong for 2 thing
first, i'm not beast wars, second, i never post anything before...
ape2 jelah yang korang suka...bagi nasihat pun taknak dengar...malas nak layan...nanti yang kena bambo aku jugak...

u know i also thought the samething nizam80. the way those two converse like the same person.. another sabrina. i guess..

but wat the heck he wanna do is his pasal. igrorance is a blitz..

to TS.. i shall term u copypasta frm now onwards

You are absolutely rite, bro.

macam ni rupanya sifat2 terpuji org malaysia...tak bagus la cakap org lain macam tu walaupun korang tak kenal...betul2 tak bagus..
kalau tak suka abaikan aje lah...takde masalah pun ..tapi tak perlulah nak bagi apa2 komen yang memberi kesan negatif....jangan gaduh2...
kalau ade ape2 kata2 aku yang salah, minta maaf banyak2....hope u all enjoy in this forum...bye

bye..

Nizam80 and ruztynail r u malaysian??????????????

To me i don't think so btw enjoy this forum lol

dad singaporean. mum malaysian. i was born along the highway in the car crossing singapore to JB.. so i dunno wat i am..


does it matter???

This post has been edited by ruztynail: Nov 7 2007, 02:18 PM

So u are a street boy or an alien? thats why u never learn about someone feeling..
btw dont hurt any other person here ok
common man be a profesional not a street boy..

sry oh.. street boy like tat one lo.. u hv to live wit it..

cheers

anyways why we going off topic.. stick to the topic copypasta.

wats the ultimate flaw of the next gen??

This post has been edited by ruztynail: Nov 7 2007, 02:34 PM

Thats more polite just bring it on man...
Now u become professional now hihihihiihiih
Wiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiii lo

kids these days. sigh.....

This post has been edited by ruztynail: Nov 7 2007, 02:48 PM

beast waru got a problem with nationality and race is it?

the TS was newb for regainining cumulative post, ya plagiarism wasnt good but I think we should stick on topic........

anyway, alot of current generation have pos & cons, but best of all is my old console,

nowadays its call Polystation or NewSlim

Nop i am malaysian man..

Malaysia got multi racional

thats why we need to respect each other lol

doesnt matter that u r black or white we are malaysian isnt it.

---

Added on November 7, 2007, 3:04 pmcommon man just stick in this topic yall

if u got an opinion and discussion just bring it on...lol

This post has been edited by bEaSt WaRs: Nov 7 2007, 03:04 PM

Guys, can we stay on topic here?

Appreciate it much.

Just get all 3 consoles and be done with it, as there are games exclusive to each console like HALO3 for XBOX360, Grand Turismo 5 for PS3, and Super Mario Galaxy for Wii.

No console is perfect, just depends on what games you enjoy playing the most on each system.

Xbox is prone to overheat and get 3-rod.
PS3 need to do the waiting game cause all the major titles still not lanch yet like MGS 4 , GT5, Killzone 2and the online feature still not as good as xbox's live system
Wii is for playing relaxing nice games like wii sports, zelda, etc

This post has been edited by quiksilve: Nov 7 2007, 03:11 PM

i dont care bout the console. What i care is good games.

support beast war same as rx = msian

I think the ultimate flawed console is PS3.
Why? Coz no "funny"-fied version of an original game.
Almost RM200 per-game disc T_T

lol

Today's gaming flaw is, the rise of development cost! Hence, your PS3 games being RM200.

well, @ least he is frank

Well, I see several faults with your thread regarding PS3, OP.

1. PS3's total system memory is 512MB which is a combination of 256MB GDDR3 operating at 550Mhz and 256MB of hi-speed XDR RAM operating at 3.2Ghz. Your post make it sound like the PS3 only has 256MB of RAM and it can be misleading to prospective buyers.

2. There is no real possibility that Blu-ray might lose out to HD-DVD. Most Hollywood studios are still backing Blu-ray.

3. The CELL cpu has 8 SPEs with one disabled for redundancy meaning it only has 7 working SPEs and one spare SPE if any of the 7 working SPEs fail. It has nothing to do with the PS3's warranty.

Just to clear some things.



Doesn't matter much. We're so used to paying RM200-250 for an original PS2 games anyway.

This post has been edited by lamusiqa: Nov 15 2007, 02:23 PM

Ah well, didn't know the actual price of PS2 games as there was lack of it But seriously, PS32 games @ RM200?

This post has been edited by sihumchai: Nov 15 2007, 02:32 PM

even now ps2 games still @ tat price

Maybe is PS2 game on Blu-Ray, play on PS3 ???

Yes its absolutely right. In the Specifications (Page 17) section of the PS3 manual that i have in my hand here says; Memory: 256 MB XDR Main RAM, 256 MB GDDR3 VRAM.

It's sad that even a well-known detail such as the total RAM is being mistakenly passed around.

Xbox propaganda for sure. lol

nakata, wat the fark u toking abt????????

DETAILED ANALYSIS OF PERFORMANCE SPECIFICATIONS by Douglas C Perry


CPU
The Xbox 360 processor was designed to give game developers the power that they actually need, in an easy to use form. The Cell processor has impressive streaming floating-point power that is of limited use for games.

The majority of game code is a mixture of integer, floating-point, and vector math, with lots of branches and random memory accesses. This code is best handled by a general purpose CPU with a cache, branch predictor, and vector unit.

The Cell's seven DSPs (what Sony calls SPEs) have no cache, no direct access to memory, no branch predictor, and a different instruction set from the PS3's main CPU. They are not designed for or efficient at general purpose computing. DSPs are not appropriate for game programming.

Xbox 360 has three general purpose CPU cores. The Cell processor has only one.

Xbox 360's CPUs has vector processing power on each CPU core. Each Xbox 360 core has 128 vector registers per hardware thread, with a dot product instruction, and a shared 1-MB L2 cache. The Cell processor's vector processing power is mostly on the seven DSPs.

Dot products are critical to games because they are used in 3D math to calculate vector lengths, projections, transformations, and more. The Xbox 360 CPU has a dot product instruction, where other CPUs such as Cell must emulate dot product using multiple instructions.

Cell's streaming floating-point work is done on its seven DSP processors. Since geometry processing is moved to the GPU, the need for streaming floating-point work and other DSP style programming in games has dropped dramatically.

Just like with the PS2's Emotion Engine, with its missing L2 cache, the Cell is designed for a type of game programming that accounts for a minor percentage of processing time.

Sony's CPU is ideal for an environment where 12.5% of the work is general-purpose computing and 87.5% of the work is DSP calculations. That sort of mix makes sense for video playback or networked waveform analysis, but not for games. In fact, when analyzing real games one finds almost the opposite distribution of general purpose computing and DSP calculation requirements. A relatively small percentage of instructions are actually floating point. Of those instructions which are floating-point, very few involve processing continuous streams of numbers. Instead they are used in tasks like AI and path-finding, which require random access to memory and frequent branches, which the DSPs are ill-suited to.

Based on measurements of running next generation games, only ~10-30% of the instructions executed are floating point. The remainders of the instructions are load, store, integer, branch, etc. Even fewer of the instructions executed are streaming floating point-probably ~5-10%. Cell is optimized for streaming floating-point, with 87.5% of its cores good for streaming floating-point and nothing else.

Game programmers do not want to spread their code over eight processors, especially when seven of the processors are poorly suited for general purpose programming. Evenly distributing game code across eight processors is extremely difficult.

Game programmers do not want to spread their code over eight processors, especially when seven of the processors are poorly suited for general purpose programming. Evenly distributing game code across eight processors is extremely difficult.

GPU
Even ignoring the bandwidth limitations the PS3's GPU is not as powerful as the Xbox 360's GPU.

Below are the specs from Sony's press release regarding the PS3's GPU.

RSX GPU
550 MHz
Independent vertex/pixel shaders
51 billion dot products per second (total system performance)
300M transistors
136 "shader operations" per clock
The interesting ALU performance numbers are 51 billion dot products per second (total system performance), 300M transistors, and more than twice as powerful as the 6800 Ultra.

The 51 billions dot products per cycle were listed on a summary slide of total graphics system performance and are assumed to include the Cell processor. Sony's calculations seem to assume that the Cell can do a dot product per cycle per DSP, despite not having a dot product instruction.

However, using Sony's claim, 7 dot products per cycle * 3.2 GHz = 22.4 billion dot products per second for the CPU. That leaves 51 - 22.4 = 28.6 billion dot products per second that are left over for the GPU. That leaves 28.6 billion dot products per second / 550 MHz = 52 GPU ALU ops per clock.

It is important to note that if the RSX ALUs are similar to the GeForce 6800 ALUs then they work on vector4s, while the Xbox 360 GPU ALUs work on vector5s. The total programmable GPU floating point performance for the PS3 would be 52 ALU ops * 4 floats per op *2 (madd) * 550 MHz = 228.8 GFLOPS which is less than the Xbox 360's 48 ALU ops * 5 floats per op * 2 (madd) * 500 MHz= 240 GFLOPS.

With the number of transistors being slightly larger on the Xbox 360 GPU (330M) it's not surprising that the total programmable GFLOPs number is very close.

The PS3 does have the additional 7 DSPs on the Cell to add more floating point ops for graphics rendering, but the Xbox 360's three general purpose cores with custom D3D and dot product instructions are more customized for true graphics related calculations.

The 6800 Ultra has 16 pixel pipes, 6 vertex pipes, and runs at 400 MHz. Given the RSX's 2x better than a 6800 Ultra number and the higher frequency of the RSX, one can roughly estimate that it will have 24 pixel shading pipes and 4 vertex shading pipes (fewer vertex shading pipes since the Cell DSPs will do some vertex shading). If the PS3 GPU keeps the 6800 pixel shader pipe co-issue architecture which is hinted at in Sony's press release, this again gives it 24 pixel pipes* 2 issued per pipe + 4 vertex pipes = 52 dot products per clock in the GPU.

If the RSX follows the 6800 Ultra route, it will have 24 texture samplers, but when in use they take up an ALU slot, making the PS3 GPU in practice even less impressive. Even if it does manage to decouple texture fetching from ALU co-issue, it won't have enough bandwidth to fetch the textures anyways.

For shader operations per clock, Sony is most likely counting each pixel pipe as four ALU operations (co-issued vector+scalar) and a texture operation per pixel pipe and 4 scalar operations for each vector pipe, for a total of 24 * (4 + 1) + (4*4) = 136 operations per cycle or 136 * 550 = 74.8 GOps per second.

Given the Xbox 360 GPU's multithreading and balanced design, you really can't compare the two systems in terms of shading operations per clock. However, the Xbox 360's GPU can do 48 ALU operations (each can do a vector4 and scalar op per clock), 16 texture fetches, 32 control flow operations, and 16 programmable vertex fetch operations with tessellation per clock for a total of 48*2 + 16 + 32 + 16 = 160 operations per cycle or 160 * 500 = 80 GOps per second.

Overall, the automatic shader load balancing, memory export features, programmable vertex fetching, programmable triangle tesselator, full rate texture fetching in the vertex shader, and other "well beyond shader model 3.0" features of the Xbox 360 GPU should also contribute to overall rendering performance.

Bandwidth
The PS3 has 22.4 GB/s of GDDR3 bandwidth and 25.6 GB/s of RDRAM bandwidth for a total system bandwidth of 48 GB/s.

The Xbox 360 has 22.4 GB/s of GDDR3 bandwidth and a 256 GB/s of EDRAM bandwidth for a total of 278.4 GB/s total system bandwidth.

Why does the Xbox 360 have such an extreme amount of bandwidth? Even the simplest calculations show that a large amount of bandwidth is consumed by the frame buffer. For example, with simple color rendering and Z testing at 550 MHz the frame buffer alone requires 52.8 GB/s at 8 pixels per clock. The PS3's memory bandwidth is insufficient to maintain its GPU's peak rendering speed, even without texture and vertex fetches.

The PS3 uses Z and color compression to try to compensate for the lack of memory bandwidth. The problem with Z and color compression is that the compression breaks down quickly when rendering complex next-generation 3D scenes.

HDR, alpha-blending, and anti-aliasing require even more memory bandwidth. This is why Xbox 360 has 256 GB/s bandwidth reserved just for the frame buffer. This allows the Xbox 360 GPU to do Z testing, HDR, and alpha blended color rendering with 4X MSAA at full rate and still have the entire main bus bandwidth of 22.4 GB/s left over for textures and vertices.

CONCLUSION
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.
-- BY Douglas C Perry

Like rx330 said, price for PS2 games is around RM1xx-2xx.

Few example from play-asia:

Gran Turismo 4 NTSC/J = RM203.65 (Playstation 2 The Best edition = RM118.66)
God of War II NTSC/UC = RM203.65

...and few others....

Based on my previous post, i'm just stating that the PS3 has 512MB RAM based on the Specs sheet. So Beast Wars, wat actually r u trying to point out here by quoting my post? Btw, this article seems familiar.....

DETAILED ANALYSIS OF PERFORMANCE SPECIFICATIONS by DOUGLAS C PERRY

This post has been edited by bEaSt WaRs: Nov 16 2007, 12:13 PM

Wow. I haven't seen this FUD in months(referring to bEaSt WaRs article post)! It was totally disproved when Killzone 2's E3 '07 trailer and GT5 Prologue trailers was released but I guess you can still use it on normal folks who wont understand more than half of the technical jargon.

Something that is worthy to point out is that you can tell its a bad comparison when there's a lot of IF's. Like this one:



The general consensus on RSX right now is that as a GPU, it is comparable to Xbox 360's Xenos with Xenos winning over a small performance margin. However, this article failed to mention that RSX is able to work in tandem with the CELL chip to offload graphical tasks such as rendering polygons to the CELL. What this means is that both RSX AND CELL can work together to render graphics far more complicated than Xenos ever could simply because Xenon and Xenos are unable to do so. Developers are picking up speed on the CELL architecture and it won't be long till you play a graphical marvel unachievable on an Xbox 360 (Killzone 2 anyone?).

Well this whole article is flawed, really. Seeing how it emphasized on "3 General Purpose Cores are better than 1" theory and it's ridiculous total system bandwidth, I might as well clear up some things.



They DO have cache. Just that they're not called Cache and functions a lil bit different. Each of the cores have their own 256kb local SRAM. Compared to Xbox 360's bottlenecked CPU which has 3 cores sharing one 1MB L2 cache, CELL has 2MB of total on-chip local SRAM memory[(1 PPE + 7 SPE) x 256KB].

Besides, the "DSPs" as you'd like to call it are highly specialized in calculating physics, vertex, AI codes, sound processing and various other computational work.



Right and wrong. The CELL chip is indeed not designed for an efficient general purpose computing. This is due to the fact that it was designed and built to be a specialized chip all along. Specific game codes such as AI computing, physics, sound channels, and graphics requires heavy optimization and this is where the SPEs excels at. For the game engine, in most cases, the PPE will be running it because the PPE has a 64-bit general purpose register set (GPR), a 64-bit floating point register set (FPR), and a 128-bit Altivec register set which are adequate for running today's game engines and instruct the SPEs to do their work.

What is true, however is that it takes quite a level of optimization to get the SPEs working at high efficiency. This will change in the near future as developers and programmers get familiar with the architecture.



Ah. The infamous total system bandwidth thing. In a hindsight, Xbox 360's total system bandwidth beats the hell out of PS3's in a big magnitude. Although in reality.. Xbox 360's the less capable one in this matter.

To put it simply, the 256GB/s out of the total 278.4GB/s is the eDram internal logic to its internal memory bandwidth. Not internal CPU bandwidths. The high bandwidth is used primarily for z-buffering, alpha blending, and antialiasing. The eDram is mainly touted to allow all Xbox 360 games to have 4xAnti-Aliasing with no performance hit on the GPU performance however there are games that has aliasing issues, at 720p.

The physical bandwidth between the eDram to the GPU is 32GB/s and the link between the CPU and GPU is 10.8GB x2. Both the CPU and GPU has to share the unified RAM and in effect, they both have to share the 22.4GB/s link.

Unlike the Xbox 360, PS3 has 2 RAM pools. The 256MB XDR RAM @ 3.2Ghz is linked to the CELL CPU at the speed of 25.6GB/s and the 256MB GDDR3 @ 700MHz is linked to the RSX at the speed of 22.4GB/s. Both CELL and RSX has access to the 2 RAM pools and they do not have to share the bandwidth to their assigned RAM. In practicality, CELL has no need to access the GDDR3 although RSX may require more RAM space for graphics data and has to go through CELL to use the XDR RAM.

Basically PS3 has a faster means of using the RAM pools but it requires more optimization to use it efficiently.

The problem with games looking better and more detailed on Xbox 360 these days are basically due to the fact that developers creates a game with Xbox 360 being the lead platform and then port over the game code to the PS3. This is highly inefficient as the two has different architectures and throwing a code that's started on a unified RAM to a split RAM without proper optimization always results in poor performance. Multiplatform games on PS3 such as Call Of Duty 4 that started from scratch and were not ported over from Xbox 360 shows how a good optimization can go a long way in achieving high quality.

There's still a lot of untapped potential in the PS3 and once the developers gets the kinks out of the way, we'll be seeing and playing a lot of amazing games like the it's predecessor; PS2.

Last but not least, the article was written by Douglas C. Perry, while he was in the employment of IGN, working for the XBOX team as the Editor. Obviously the article was biased from the get-go.

This post has been edited by lamusiqa: Nov 18 2007, 06:48 AM

GOOD article wei.. all the jargons early in the morning.

haha but thanks for clarifying. i really hv been reading about all the techie details whn cell was launch its blueprint its detailed architecture. and honestly.. its one freaking amazing piece of handy work by all tats in it.

SONY toshiba and IBM. no doubt it took years and R&D and capital and most importanly man power.. Microsoft even wit help frm IBM did theirs in a nick of time.. jus to put up wit the competitors. reason being. cell research commenced in march 2001 (2 years after ps2), xenon started in nov 2003 (360 was release in 2005) and about two years of research was enuff moreover lacking an additional super power techie company...

anyways only time will tell. the producers and developers are out there making mostly better games for the 360 due to the fact they are driven by the market forces of the 360 (sony's very first bad mistake on the ps legacy) since the market numbers are against the ps3 in terms of number of house hold players. its logical if they make better games for the 360.

and once the numbers are stabilized.. we can thn see the major changes.. in 2008..

another driven factor is the MEDIA.. all the small little rumours going about changes consumers opinion in a sec.. tats next gen for you. if u noticed allot of media is going out to stomp sony's ps3 in any way possible. call me crazy or naive.. but there forces at work here beyond the normal conduct. (i cant mention u know who sort).

all i wonder is how the market will eventually play out and we will see how long it will all end next year..

microsoft is churning out the new xbox in 2011. roughly giving it a 6 year period. ps3 is supposedly to last 10 years. lookin at how the ps2 is still in fashion despite the ori xbox going out of commission. we can thn deduce thay sony's time line is pretty accurate.. not bad huh for a company in the beginning whom everyone thought wouldnt go into console business to lead with 2 gens. and thn being aggressively beaten up in the next one..

still me respects for the japs.

I think the next Xbox will come out around 2010. Most probably, yeah. PS3 really needs all the help it can get to win this generation. One thing's for sure though.. If the pirates can finally hack the PS3 to play bootlegs, Malaysia's and China's adoption rate of PS3 is gonna soar. hahahah