Right now, from what we’ve heard, the real-world performance of the Xenon CPU is about twice that of the 733MHz processor in the first Xbox. Considering that this CPU is supposed to power the Xbox 360 for the next 4 - 5 years, it’s nothing short of disappointing. To put it in perspective, floating point multiplies are apparently 1/3 as fast on Xenon as on a Pentium 4.
...
The Cell processor doesn’t get off the hook just because it only uses a single one of these horribly slow cores; the SPE array ends up being fairly useless in the majority of situations, making it little more than a waste of die space.

You got this info from a pc fanboy didn' t you? First of all Xenon is about 5 times more powerful then the Intel 733Mhz proccessor not 2 times and the SPEs in PS3 are not a waste of die space. Think of the PS3 cpu as a 3.2Ghz proccessor (same as 360 except only one core) with a built in PPU (physics proccessor) just like the ones AGIA is going to bring to the market, infact the SPEs in the ps3 cpu are the reason Sony will be using sofware from AGIA in the development platform. If you look I bet you will find examples of what AGIA technology can do. People thought it was crazy when people first put video and sound cards in their pcs well now people are going to put physics cards in them as well, the The SPEs in ps3 are essentially a physics card built in the cpu. As for the Xenon it has three cores running at 3.2Ghz with two threads each, which basically means more of the same the physics won' y be as good as the ps3 can be but it will beat it everywhere else like A.I.

Sorry, I know I posted this in the PS3 vs 360 thread, but realized it' s more relevant here. You know me, anything to get my post count up.





I originally found this story on IGN or something, but apparently the bigwigs at Nvidia made a comment about the 360' s GPU being faster than the PS3 chip, but now they have retracted or corrected their statement and say that while it still kicks ass, it is not as fast as the PS3 GPU. This article is from an Xbox webpage, so I don' t think it' s all fanboy arguments.
PS3 GPU actually faster than Xbox 360

They weren' t talking about the 360 GPU. NVidia was just comparing their new PC graphics card to the RSX. Ati' s Xenos is still better than it.

ORIGINAL: Game Junkie

Think of the PS3 cpu as a 3.2Ghz proccessor (same as 360 except only one core) with a built in PPU (physics proccessor) just like the ones AGIA is going to bring to the market, infact the SPEs in the ps3 cpu are the reason Sony will be using sofware from AGIA in the development platform. If you look I bet you will find examples of what AGIA technology can do. People thought it was crazy when people first put video and sound cards in their pcs well now people are going to put physics cards in them as well, the The SPEs in ps3 are essentially a physics card built in the cpu. As for the Xenon it has three cores running at 3.2Ghz with two threads each, which basically means more of the same the physics won' y be as good as the ps3 can be but it will beat it everywhere else like A.I.

Technically the Cell processor doesn' t have a PPU built in. Infact there is no PPU present at all in the PS3. The comparison is that the PhysX in engine' s architecture closely ressembles that of the Cell. Sure, the Cell processor can have some amazing physics but in an actual game world they will have to be turned down.

See, the reason a PPU is such a big thing is because it' s a unit that processes the physics on the side. It frees up the CPU because it doesn' t deal with the the load of calculating physics. The cell has basically defeated that purpuse because the architecture is built in to the CPU so it isn' t really freeing up the CPU' s work load at all. If you ask a developer they will tell you Physics are all software based anyway. the only thing the PhysX PPU does is allow that program to run in a location other than the CPU. Basically, yes the Cell can handle some insane physics but because the CPU is still the hardware pice governing the process it won' t every be able to have physics run as well as a a computer that has equal stats that has an actual PPU.

As far as the 360 not being able to handle such impressive physics... well that depends on how much of the CPU is used for Physics processing. They have three cores to work with plus 3 simulated cores all running at 3.2 GHz. If they used one of those cores strictly for Physics processing and the other cores for whatever else, they can easily pull of physics that are equal to what the PS3 can handle in a real world situation if not better. All the demenstrations for physics with the Cell processor has been a super small game enviroment with minimal detail that only shows physics. It' s not going to be the same in a large game world with numerous other things going on. This is why the 360' s three core processor is so impressive and why the Cell is just overrated like to old Emotion Engine form the PS2. Having three cores to work with is exactly why MS decided not to put a PPU in. the 360 already has the potential to have advanced physics because of the multicore processor so why waste the money on a PPU?

I know the ps3 doen' t actually have a ppu but the SPEs will still act like a PPU. By the way I think you are underesatimating Cell a little. Developers have already stated that the 360 cannot quite achieve the same physics as ps3 (I' m guessing that is even with two cores) still I think Xenon has the advantage overall as it is far more flexible we can expect better A.I. with 360 if the devs deside to go that route.

I have no doubt the Cell will pull off some amazing physics. I' ve already seen it in the tech demos. I just don' t think the physics will be as good in game. Everything shown at E3 to show their physics were in thiny restricted areas. The PS3 has yet to show such incredible physics in an actiual game.

Don' t take it as understimating the Cell. you have to remember how much the emotion engine was hyped up too. Sony and it' s developers love to blow the Sony hardware stuff out of proportion.

there have been numerous articles explaining how the Cell has already been boasted top much for its own good and will never live up to the claims. I' ve personally read all that I can on the subject. The reason the 360 has the potential to be just as good with physics is because while the PS3 has only one core to use for both physics and everything else(bogging down what the physics are capable of in game drasticly), the 360 has the three cores and can dedicate an enire core just to physics which is basically the same as dedicating an entire CPU for physics.

As I mentioned before though, physics are all software based. the physics engine is the thing that makes the physics work. A PPU is really not necassary at all if you have enough processing power (as I said before was the reason MS didn' t put a PPU in the 360). the only reason you need a PPU is to seperate the physics processing from the rest ofthe processing. The 360 can do that with the multiple cores. The Cell processor has to deal with the burden of doing physics and everything else in the same spot. Again, the Cell processor is a beast of a chip and does boast some physics friendly architecture but it still has to deal with all the general purpose calculations that actually govern the games (and it' s general purpose number crunching is only a third as powerful as the 360).

I see what you mean Rampage, but when I originally found the article on whichever damn site it was, damn if I can remember, they wrote it up as " PS3 GPU faster than XBOX 360 GPU' . I' ll try and find the original link, but I' m having less hope than I did yesterday.

It was a quote from PSM. Like I mentioned in the other thread. They weren' t comparing the 360 to the PS3. they were just comparing the new computer graphics card from nVidia to the RSX card also by nVidia. They didn' t compare it to the 360' s ATi card.