What WILL PS3 be capable of?

I' ll appologise for the longwinded post in advance......Sorry!

When PS3 was unveiled at E3 last year there was an awful lot of ooooh-ing and aaaah-ing and yet it wasn' t made entirely clear what of the footage shown was ' real' or pre-rendered.

Some people still aren' t actually sure about the video' s shown. SOME people think that if the Killzone video was pre-rendered CGI, yet it wasn' t. Now none of the footage shown was created with and/or running on PS3 dev-kits, they hadn' t been finished yet. The platforms they were developed and running on were custom IBM PCs containing an early Cell processor and two NVIDIA 6800GT graphics cards working together in SLI configuration. Although Cell was unfinished, Sony (and NVIDIA) claim that the two 6800GT' s represent the capabilities of the now finished RSX and referred to as the ' alpha' kit.

Now...

KILLZONE:- Probably the most stunning (along with MGS4) video shown was, technically, running in realtime on the hardware noted above. It was however running at less than 5 frames per second and sped up to 60 in post-production.

WARHAWK:- Again running in realtime but without any ' cheating' or post-production added effects.

VISION GRAN-TURISMO:- A very high-res version of GT4 with added pit-crews and bystanders. Tons of post-production effects added to the technically ingame generated ' vision' . (Gran Turismo sucks!)

I-8:- Insomniacs 8th game (hence the codename), running on the ' alpha' kit. Doesn' t look anywhere near as good as Killzone and that' s because it' s realtime and probably a very good representation what the final product will be like.

The Getaway:- A massively updated tech-demo based on Team Spho' s previous Getaway games. Higher resolution textures, advanced lighting effects and additional animation added in post-production. Again running in realtime on an ' alpha' kit.

FIGHT NIGHT ROUND 3:- Real time and playable demo showed up at E3. Looked nice but not actually as nice as the soon to be released Xbox 360 version.

Most of the others were pre-rendered CGI, those include Motorstorm, Tekken, Gundam, Ni-oH amost others.

The other big game showed at both E3 and TGS was MGS4 and although running in realtime on an ' alpha' kit (as demonstrated by Kijoma-san), still wasn' t running on final PS3 hardware. An impressive (to say the least) cutscene that we all hope is a close representation on what the game will be like.

Anyway, on to the hardware...

Cell itself with a core clock rate of 3.2GHz and with 512MB of onboard RAM and 7 Synergistic Processing units (SPE' s) each with 256KB of work RAM sound very impressive. It' s certainly fast on paper but is bottlenecked bu only having 256MB of main system memory available to it. Still, it' s certainly fast enough for games since it' s the GPU that doesn the bulk of the work.

The GPU (basically the graphics card) in PS3 is based on existing NVIDIA technology. Dubbed the Reality Synthesizer and running at 550MHz and with 256MB of video memory attatched to it (although it can poach the 256MB that' s available to Cell but would have to take none or all of it). The GPU in PS3, because it hasn' t been custom built and is just there to serve it' s purpose is outdone by far by the GPU in 360.

PS3 can support higher resolutions than 360, but only if you have a HDTV that will take them.

The amount and diversity of available ports (USB' s, HDMI' s etc) don' t actually interest me and most will not be used by casual gamers. They add to the cost.

Now, the main topic here is what PS3 will be capable of, and will it be capable of what was shown at E3 and TGS, The short answer is no, not initially. PS3 will likely suffer from aliasing issues in it' s first generation of titles until the game developers and middleware tool developers come up with ways around it. 360 doesn' t have to worry about that because Microsoft had 10MB eDRAM (VERY fast) embedded RAM added for just this kind of thing. That' s not to say the games won' t look great, but the jaggies will be even more apparant when playing games in a higher resolution (on a HDTV).

Other than potential and likely jaggies in titles launched within the consoles first 6 months on release, developers tryng to figure out how best to utilize the RAM available which will likely produce sub-standard (when compared to late 1st gen and early 2nd gen 360 titles) graphics, i see only 1 other problem. Blu-Ray!

Beacuse Blu-Ray is still in it' s infancy, Sony only have working 1x and 2x drives. This, coupled with PS3' s lower (than 360) memory bandwidth will mean longer loading times than you may be expecting. The drive will only be able to ferry so much data from the disc to be rendered by RSX per revolution, much less so than 360. It' s not REALLY a problem and Sony are looking into an 8x drive for PS3 but that' s unlikely to make the launch models, simply due to the additional cost. The 2x drive adds more than $101 to the final cost to produce the unit so faser drives will initially cost them more.

I have no doubt about PS3' s potential capabilities and when developers have been given time to learn more about the system then we' ll see a similar evolution in it' s visuals as have been seen with PS2. But don' t exect anything like you saw at E3 to be available at launch, it doesn' t work like that and neither do Sony.

PS3 has other issues but none that relate to this subject.

What do you guys expect to be playing when PS3 hits, what to you envisage for the future?

What do you guys expect to be playing when PS3 hits

Gradius 6

what to you envisage for the future?

Gradius 7

Terry Bogard - currently the most Unhelpful member of the Kikizo forums.

Well, Kikizo is shortly going to post hands-on with PS3. So there will be plenty of detail in there.

This is not sarcasm by the way.

FIGHT NIGHT ROUND 3:- Real time and playable demo showed up at E3. Looked nice but not actually as nice as the soon to be released Xbox 360 version.

No way is it.. the E3 demo looked much more fluid than the demo ive D/l from Xbox live. Its so obvious that the E3 dmo was running of some Dev Power PC it had extremey fluid motions almost like how that Killzone CGI ran..

BTW Dont expect graphics near that Killzone Demo in this coming generation or PS3/ 360. I think it' ll be more like another one or two generations away myself..

We did not know about many ps2 games before ps2 now did we,now let the console get a launch date and you will hear about many many titles,im 100% sure the ps3 sortiment will outdue the 360 big big big time.

Even if you break 2 legs from a crab it still runs!
What you gotta do is find its weak spot and do massive damage at it.

Fluid yes, obviously, but the visuals weren' t quite as good. The models and effects in particular aren' t to the standard that FNR3 is on 360. Remember that the ' alpha' kit wasn' t PS3 hardware and like you said just a dev pc with an unfinished Cell and 2 NVIDIA cards as a stand in for RSX.

And again, Killzone wasn' t CGI. It was an ingame video using the alpha kits to render it but it was developed and ran at 5fps then they sped it up to 60 and showed it at E3. It' s doesn' t even look like CGI, you can see murky textures in places, some clipping (slight) and you can see where the aliasing has been smoothed out. It' s not what PS3 will be capable of but it was still rendered using a game engine and not a CGI.

What WILL PS3 be capable of?

Sorry, but it seems obvious to me that the most obvious capability of the PS3 is going unmentioned. It' s going to be able to cook a frozen steak to meadium rare in under 7 minutes!!!! It' s gonna KNOCK out the fat!!

Even though I don' t trust Sonys comments on their own hardware I believe that they know a lot more about consoles than any on this forum does. They' ll manage to make a great console, I' m sure of it. The question is if it will be good enough to motivate the speculated price.
I don' t care if the graphics are better or worse than the 360 because the new standards are so high that I can' t see any difference unless I really focus on it. And I don' t play games to evaluate graphics, I play them to have fun.
What interests me more is what Sony will do with other things. What will the controller be like, how many games will be released and will they be any good? How will their online services work, if there will be any at all? There is so much more than just graphics that can make the PS3 great or pure crap.

If WADA doesnt make FF13+Dragon quest 9 multiformat Sony has already won...big.

Even if you break 2 legs from a crab it still runs!
What you gotta do is find its weak spot and do massive damage at it.

I' m not sure if they will be capable of making a fantastic system , but if they fail , 3rd party like capcom , square and konami (and others) will do it for them.
Just like with PS2.

The worse scenario for Sony fans is that they will have a great system no sooner than 2009 (that' s when the games will rock).Is it bad? I think many PS2 games were worth the wait.

MS is the company I will remember for dissapointing me with overhyped products like Jade Empire (who didn' t want that game after KOTOR?) FORZA (GT killer ? whatever) , Halo 2 (not even close to HALO 1 when it comes to single player and with glitches) - some hyped 3rd party hits were very dissapointing to me - like FAR CRY.
I played a lot of amazing games on X - Ninja Gaiden , DoA 3 / Ultimate , Soul Calibur 2 ,Rallisport challenge 2 , Outrun 2 , Otogi 1 ,2 ; HAlo , Half-life 2 and many more , but I had way to many dissapointments (especially with games I dreamed about - hype works I guess).

Homebrew and modding scene really helped X gain my respect

Did I mention that we have a world exclusive hands-on with PS3?

I don' t believe anything I' ve seen supposidly running on PS3 apart from the Metal Gear Solid 4 trailer. It was the only one that looked real enough to be playable, unlike the over produced and fake looking tech demos also seen.

Adam, I can' t wait. It' ll be interesting to see if the games running in real time match their E3 trailers. If not people have a lot of explaning to do.

Did I mention that we have a world exclusive hands-on with PS3?

Damn ...I thought I' m the only one :)

Seriously - will you get to hold and pet it for w while or will you play some demos on it or at least something like that?

That' s because you haven' t seen anything realtime on PS3 except for MGS4 (apart from Sonic which was realtime as well)... ;-)

All the E3 stuff was prerendered to reflect what the developers " thought might be possible" on the final spec, this is complete fact and openly admitted these days, so the creative liberty they were able to take resulted in demos that can, ultimately, be described as misleading.

Sony still says that Killzone was realtime so it doesn' t matter if it' s possible - everyone knows it' s a lie.

This kind of " Action" really sucks on their side.

--- Kikizo at E3 -----

I played the ps3 today, it rocks. Too bad the games could never be on the 360 becuase the 360 is so inferior! i want to have blue-ray' s babies and sell them to toshiba becuase the ps3 is the best console ever. even the boot video uses one of those faked nintendo RS screens! how cool is that? and i can play halo anytime i want since the console is allready hacked before its launch.

anyway, what other console can provide cooked food [which was handed out by middle aged men in tight leather since booth babes are illegal], sexual pleaure and 1080p? stupid 360 cant.

- MR.X

---

can I indeed see into the future?



I am getting one anyway.

Change is inevitable. Except from a vending machine.

Viva La Revolution! erm, I mean Viva La Wii!

People,MGS4 was real time,and hell no would kojima misslead you people,awesome to know that ps3 can handle that graphic,this early :)
It can only be better.

Even if you break 2 legs from a crab it still runs!
What you gotta do is find its weak spot and do massive damage at it.

ORIGINAL: Adam Doree

That' s because you haven' t seen anything realtime on PS3 except for MGS4 (apart from Sonic which was realtime as well)... ;-)

All the E3 stuff was prerendered to reflect what the developers " thought might be possible" on the final spec, this is complete fact and openly admitted these days, so the creative liberty they were able to take resulted in demos that can, ultimately, be described as misleading.

No, Killzone as i said was running on the alpha kit (witht the two 6800GT' s in SLI to stand in for RSX) but had been done ingame, recoreded at 5fps then spend up to 60 in post production. Yes misleading but not pre-rendered.

MGS4 was done on an incomplete devkit too since the final kits only went out during CES.

I am curious though as to what you mean by ' hand-on' , like with a specific developer or with a final shelled unit (i had heard information to the effect that Sony were still struggling to fit everything in)??!!

And QuezcatoL, we know it was real time, we saw Kojima pause it and play around with it. But even though it was real time, it still wasn' t playable. It was a cutscene, all of it, even the fps bit (which was taking the piss out off the Killzone trailer because it was suppsoedly pre-rendered). MGS cutscenes ALWAY looks better than actual gameplay footage!

If WADA doesnt make FF13+Dragon quest 9 multiformat Sony has already won...big.

In Japan.. Gamers there will sell their families into slavery just to get their hands on those games. Other territories (U.S., Europe) aren' t as nutso about those games.

I REALLY REALLY want to be proven wrong but I' m calling it, Final Fantasy 13 and Dragon Quest 9 will be PS3 Exclusive.

Terry Bogard - currently the most Unhelpful member of the Kikizo forums.

If it was sped up that means it was prerendered. Yes they used the ingame engine to create it, but they used the ingame engine to create CGI. It wasn' t rendering in real time when they played it. If it was in real time then it would be shown at 5 frames per second.

And about hardware. They can easily do antialiasing on PS3. They just have to use power from the GPU instead of using that power to add more detail in textures and stuff like that. XBox 360 has the embedded ram so they basically do antialising for free which is much better. Most PS3 games will probably use antialiasing.

Also most PS3 games will probably be in 720p. Games could be made to play at 1080p but the higher resolution means they are using a lot of power for the higher resolution instead of putting in more detail. They probably will do most games at 720p. Xbox 1 could do games at 720p but most games were only 480p because they could put more detail in, and not as many people had 720p TVs at the time. The PS3 is in a similiar situation. There will be some games in 1080p but most will be 720p.

I' m sure most people at sony in the higher positions know more about hardware than most people on these forums. But I know that isn' t true for everyone. And you also have to realize that the people who end up controlling what goes into PS3 don' t base their decision on what the fastest hardware is. They have time constraints, budgets, and many other reasons.

"If you knew how good I am you would think I'm modest."

I think it will be an advanced toaster, with the option of medium og very toasted bred. It will also be able to make fried eggs, when crack on the top of the hood. And hey, you get the option of playing games for free with this toaster!

loco you don' t get it. Running in realtime when they were playing it, recorded at 5fps then sped up in post production. They showed a video, speeding it up makes perfect sense to me. Go google ' Killzone, 5fps' and check it out for youreslf.

' 360 Aliendron' - Guano Apes!

I agree with Locopuyo. Killzone wasn' t realtime, nor was it CGI. It was some bullsh*t middleground that they invented so they could say, " it' s NOT cgi! It' s running on our alpha kits!"

And, yes, Sony games will be anti-aliased at launch. Saying they won' t is like saying there won' t be any AI! They may not have hardware in the unit specifically for it, but it' s easily done through shared processing power and programming.

ORIGINAL:QuezcatoL

If WADA doesnt make FF13+Dragon quest 9 multiformat Sony has already won...big.

...
riiiiiight.

Let me just expand upon what Terry is saying. Yes, Japan is a very important market. Yes, these games will move many, MANY units there. Yes, these games also sell well in the west. No they will not make or break any system! America and the European market are LARGER than the Japanese market.

I do like where the industry is headed, though. I like the ratio of western games versus Japanese games right now. Seems like there' s something for everyone.

ORIGINAL: Adam Doree

Did I mention that we have a world exclusive hands-on with PS3?

I don' t get it. Have you played the PS3? Is that... is that possible? How did Kikizo get a world exclusive? You' re joking right? Being sarcastic? Yeah, that has to be it.

...
riiiiiight.

Let me just expand upon what Terry is saying. Yes, Japan is a very important market. Yes, these games will move many, MANY units there. Yes, these games also sell well in the west. No they will not make or break any system! America and the European market are LARGER than the Japanese market.

I do like where the industry is headed, though. I like the ratio of western games versus Japanese games right now. Seems like there' s something for everyone.

Not when it coming to games selling,they sell more in japan then in EU,hwoever console market is bigger in europe.

But remember,xbox sold 4 millions in europe,ps2 20.
you see the diffrence,europe is goin ps3.
Japan is goind ps3,USA? well we will see...it will be ps3 or equal.

Even if you break 2 legs from a crab it still runs!
What you gotta do is find its weak spot and do massive damage at it.

This is a little off topic but I' ve heard that the European Union has some kind of extra toll that makes it much more expensive to import certain products from the U.S. Such as everything from Viz Comics (I believe) which has made them to cut all export to all countries within the E.U. (f*****ck!!!). Does this affect the prices of american products such as the 360 in Europe? And does these tolls, if the thing is true, affect the price on japanese products?

Chee, you' re as dumb as loco is! Post processing or not, the PS2 was capable of exectly the same thing and yet early titles suffered.

Anti-aliasing, specifically as far as games development are concerned are more often than not down to middleware tool creators. PS3 lacks dedicated hardware (like that in 360) for exactly this kind of stuff, and since Sony have decided against providing developed with a toolkit like Microsoft did then it' s pretty much down to the developers themselves to smooth things out using the systems available memory which is bottlenecked as it is. The only other think they can do is utilize Cells multi-cored architecture as best as it can be (which they definately won' t for the launch titles) and put the load on the processor instead.

You two goons have no understanding of the technology in these machines, saying shit like " ..it' s easily done through shared processing and programming.." makes you sound stupid since it has relatively fuck all to do with the bloody code! It' s either a middleware solution or they develop their own tools and they' ll need a good understanding of how to use the unit to do that anyway.

I talked with a programmer or whatever you call people who works with videogames. He has worked with videogames for some time and he says that how good the visuals in a game gets is really up to the dev-kits no matter how complex the architecture of the hardware is. And of course it' s also about the raw-power. So he said that since the PS3 has more raw-power, even though it is more " stupid" than the 360, the PS3 games will eventually become better looking.
How fast the dev-kits gets better depends on how much money a company is ready to spend on developing those. So if a company really thinks it' s worth the money, they can come up with really good dev-kits pretty fast.
I don' t know if this is correct but seeing as how the PS2 turned out it makes lots of sence.
Maybe with some luck it won' t take long before developers have learned to take full advantage of the PS3s power.
Anyway, just read the article about Sonys online plans. Sounds great, especially since the PSP seems to be used alot. Doubt they will make abetter service than MS but it will probably make the 360 less attractive.

WTF?

Dev-kits are supplied by Sony. They ARE hardware, the developers can' t do anything with them at all. And does it fuck come down to raw power, Xbox had loads more than PS2 but PS2 still got more publisher and developers support. Creating good games comes down to experience with the hardware, finding the best way to utilize all of it' s components and the tools/game shaping environments they have at hand, either through in-house development or 3rd party middleware.

Games companies do NOT come up with dev-kits at all they are GIVEN dev-kits by Sony so that they can optimize the game for that hardware.

If you got that off your so called programmer friend then one of you is full of shit. I' m studying ' BA Hons Computer Games Design' at Teesside University in Middlesbrough and i' ve been dealing with previous gen (Xbox, Gamecube, PS2, Dreamcast) hardware for 18 months and i know what i' m talking about.

Developers code their software usually on high-end PC' s/Macs, then optimize the code for the hardware it' s intended for. Middleware tools have a HUGE role to play with regard to the modelling/effects tools developers use. All the developer has to do is figure out how best to use what Sony send them, which will be difficult as far as PS3 is concerned because of it' s difficult architecture! That' s my fucking point!

As far as Sony' s supposed ' live-esque' service goes, if they do do it then it won' t be as comprehensive or as robust as Xbox Live. Sony has NO experience in that area and it' s something that Microsoft have MAJOR support and experience with.

You DO know that 360 will eventually be able to act as a TiVo and stream TV channels from the net don' t you?!

Chill! I never said the GAME companies made the dev-kits. Is my english that bad? And besides I might have misunderstood something he said since I don' t get much of this. Maybe you can say that it' s up to Sony how good the dev-kits will get? Depending on how much money they spend?
My friend, he' s good I know it. Programming since he was 5, spent 2 years in the university. Already has experience in the business. I probably misunderstood something he said.
I don' t care if the 360 can stream TV channels from the net. What' s that supposed to be good for?
Sony has no experience with delivering online content but they didn' t have any experience with making consoles when they released PS1 so... you never know what might happen. Ah, the mysteries of life.
Anyway, do you always have to swear so much? Watch your language kid! Or I' ll be looking down on you as the childish person you seem to be deep in side.

Pah!

The dev-kits are already out, the ones that developers have at the moment won' t change and Sony probably won' t revise the kits until after the launch.

The kits that developer do have have been troublsome and lots of problems have been reported. I have no doubt that PS3 will be an amazing machine and will allow developers to harness it' s power over time, but you better not expect the launch titles to look as good as 360 games that will be out by that time (Gear of War, Too Human etc). I mean it' s unlikely the US or Europe will see PS3 until early 2007 anyway which if correct will give developers a good amount of time to prepare their games, meaning that we might see some indication of just how good this next generation will get.

As far as PS3 having more " raw power" , it doesn' t quite work like that. While PS3 seems (on paper) to have a processor advantage, it' s the GPU (graphics renderer) that does most of the work and 360 has a fairly big advantage in that department, which is why developers are saying that there' s not much between the two at all. It' s just going to come down to how they use it all.

At the end of the day we' re all going to benefit. I' m dreading having to work on complex hardware with multiple threads, but that won' t be for about another 3 years at least (well, 1 actually if i' m doing a placement year, ...oh golly!). I' ll probably just cry because i' m terrible at maths! Programming is not my strong point to say the least...

Wow you didn' t show any sign of anger in your post. That' s great you' re already making improvements.
Now, we keep talking about graphical power (or are we? I don' t know myself what I' m talking about anymore...). But since the PS3 looks faster on paper, shouldn' t it be better on something like some special kind of calculations? Maybe it can have better A.I. or things like that.
Any ideas Mr. Hardware-know-it-all ?

Every developer has said cell is stronger,but more complex.
What that means i dont know,it might take to 2007-2008 untill we see the power behind cell,but each cell core can handle diffrent task,one can handle A.i,one physic for ex,cell has 7 cores.

Even if you break 2 legs from a crab it still runs!
What you gotta do is find its weak spot and do massive damage at it.

Technically yes. While 360 will have an early graphical advantage (starting when PS3 hits) which will probably last around a year, PS3 should technically be able to perform more calculations. The only issue is the memory distribution in the unit. PS3 has 512MB that is shared equally between the CPU and the GPU, just like 360, but, ...wheras in the 360 it can be divided up however the developer likes, Sony haven' t let them do this and instead they cal have 256MB for each or the GPU can use the whole 512MB, leaving the CPU with only it' s core memory.

It' s a minor problem that developers will have to figure out. I expect multi-platform titles to looks pretty much identical after the first year PS3 has been on release, htne PS3 will possible take a slight lead, but 360 might too so it' s too early to tell yet.

Not that it matters much!

I' ll tell you what the ps3 is capable of. The ps3' s RSX video card is a 7800GTX 512 pc videocard.

http://www.theinquirer.net/?article=27463 <- they got confirmation from nvidia that they can call the rsx a g71 graphics processor aka 7800GTX 512. The ps3 videocard though will only have 256MB of video memory.

The ps3' s rsx has the same core clock as the 7800GTX 512 550MHZ. It performs the same exact shader ops per clock as a regular 7800GTX 136 shader ops per clock. It also has the same number of pixel pipes 24 and the same number of vertex pipes 8.

The xbox360' s gpu has 48 pixel pipelines and 48 vertex pipelines thanks to its unified shader architecture (24 more pixel pipes than ps3 videocard and 40 more vertex pipes than ps3).

http://anandtech.com/video/showdoc.aspx?i=2679&p=3

Its also capable of operating at 100% efficiency at all times 95-99% with 4xAA on. No videocard available for the pc has a unified shader architecture which is why all pc videocards now operate at an efficiency of about 55-64%

The only videocard available to computers currently that matches the 360s pixel pushing power is ati' s new r580 product line, but still has 40 less vertex pipes.

http://www.tomshardware.com/2006/01/24/ati_radeon_x1900_heats_up_with_48_pixel_pipelines/

Take note that this videocard the x1900xtx beats the ps3 videocard the 7800GTX 512 flush.

This r580 which beats the ps3' s 7800GTX 512 has a fillrate of 10400(Mt/s) aka 10.4 gigapixels per sec.

http://www.beyond3d.com/reviews/ati/r580/index.php?p=09

The 360 GPU being capable of 16000(Mt/s) aka 16 gigapixels per sec

http://www.xbox360power.com/features_gpu.htm

The r580 has a memory bandwidth of 49.6GB/s
The 360 has a memory bandwidth of 278.4GB/s thx to the 22.4GB/s of GDDR3 bandwidth and the 256GB/s of from the 10MB of embedded ram.


PS3 videocard can perfrom 74.8 billion shader operations per second
The 360 can perform 96 billion shader operations per second.


A unified shader architecture is the future of graphics cards. Nvidia will put one on their g80 product line ati will introduce one to the pc market with their r600 product line, but there is no guarantee it will have the 10MB of edram like the 360 has which allows it to perform 4XAA at no performance hit and many other features such as advanced shadow techniques etc.

The xbox360 gpu is in a nutshell an ati r600 a videocard that is significantly superior to ati' s r580 and on a whole other level completely than a 7800GTX 512 which already loses to the 580. Fight night round 3 for the xbox360 pay attention to the HDR lighting + Antialiasing present in the screens. A 7800GTX 512 can' t perform those 2 tasks simultaneously so expect the ps3 version of fight night round 3 not to be capable of it either.


Sorry for not being as informative as I could' ve been, but if you want to know what a ps3 is capable of look no further than what a 7800GTX 512 is currently capable of. The 7800GTX 512 loses to an ati r580 while having 512MB of video memory the ps3 has half of that 256MB. Whereas the 360 has 512MB dedicated to both system memory and video memory thx to the gpu which also servers as the system' s memory controller and does a damn good job of it.

Pixel shaders can be used to alter the lighting, color and surface of each pixel. This in turn affects the overall color, texture and shape of 3-D objects built from these pixels. Pixel shaders help to " smooth out" 3-D objects, giving them a more organic texture.

Pixel shaders are VERY important Pixel shaders these days provide most of the fancy lighting and shading. Majority of talk regarding " shader programs" or total GPU computational capacity have to do with these pixel shaders.


The 360 having 24 more of these than the ps3 means the 360 will have superior graphics pay attention to any and all multi-platform releases. Fight Night round 3, GTA 4 (yes it will release simultaneously on both the 360 and ps3)

Majikdragon the ps3 doesn' t have 512 that is shared between the video memory and the system memory like the 360 does.

The ps3 has 256MB to video memory and 256MB to system memory.


The 360 will have the graphical advantage early and that lead will continue to increase once developers learn how to fully exploit the 360 in a year or 2. The ps3 once developers get a handle of it will improve graphically as well, but it wont surpass the 360.

In fight night round 3 alone the ps3 already can' t match what the 360 has done. HDR + AA simultaneously is not possible on ANY nvidia videocard the same will remain true for fight night round 3.


The cell cpu has certain advantages over the 360' s triple core setup, but it isn' t as big an advantage as sony would like to make it seem. The processor on the ps3 is based on a powerpc core just like the 360 except the 360 powerpc core is a much more beefed up version of the power pc core that is used in the ps3.


Ps3' s cpu has A VMX vector unit with 32x128bit vector registers
360 cpu has A VMX vector unit with 128x128bit vector registers for all 3 cores.

There is 256KB of memory for each of the 7 spe on the cell processor.
The 3 cores on the 360 cpu all share 1MB of memory divide that up if all 3 need memory simultaneously and you got 333KB for each core.

The only advantage the cell provides is it performs 25.2 billion shader operations per second, but that isn' t close by any stroke of the imagination to make up for the graphics card advantage the 360 has.

Don' t forget the ps3 has 48GB/s memory bandwidth whereas the 360 has 278.4GB/s that is major.

The ps3' s big advantage is in floating point operations. But no way will the ps3 cpu achieve its full floating point performance (Neither will the gpu because it uses a non-unified shader architecture) The ps3' s cell can perform 218GFLOPS of floating point, but only 75% of that will be achieved probably the same goes for the ps3 cpu, but the 360 gpu can achieve all of its gpu' s floating point performance thanks to the unified shader architecture.

With multisample 4xaa the 360 gpu is at 95-99% of its full capability no videocard out there can do such a thing.

http://www.firingsquad.com/features/xbox_360_interview/page4.asp

NOBODY here but me will understand that. FINALLY!

You failed to mention that although Sony bunged up the main memory allocation that RSX can still poach the 256MB attatched to CELL.

Nobody here seems to believe me when i say 360 it technically superior (in terms of visual output) to PS3. I have been, and you may get called a ' fanboy' here (i seriously despise that term and those who use it!)

I understand it completely, and I' ve mentioned it before. It' s made gangsta cry many times, because I' m too lazy to cite 800 sources with it. Even though he never cites anything to disprove.

But you didn' t clearly say since the xbox 360 has unified pipelines its only 48 divided between the vertex and pixel. So it will be divided up. Although it still blows away the PS3 gpu.

"If you knew how good I am you would think I'm modest."

nobody knows for sure - it is nothing but a speculation.

We all know about all those powerful innovations to X360 and we know how powerful it is (no other console could be on par with PC' s year after release yet 360 seems to have technology that will come to PC market no sooner than 2007)

X360 is incredibly powerful - and it really is hard to imagine what some games using 90% of it' s power could look like.

PS3? hmm I can tell you one thing for sure - if they are equally powerful - PS3 games will look MUCH better(sure not in the first year after launch but soon enough).It is all up to Developers like you guys said and Sony' s system has the best guys in the industry.

I' ve just finished killzone a minute ago and I have to tell you that if it weren' t for framerate , some glitches in the first half of the game and underpowered weapons (also first half of the game) - that game would rock like nothing out there.
Graphics design is so amazing - I have to say I would never believe I' d say something like that about killzone - I love it even with it' s flaws (at the begining) :)

Right now I' m sure that next killzone game will be a must have and if anyone can make it close to that CG from E3 it' s those guys.

Storytelling in this game is off tha hook and it' s a god damn FPS ...

He' s probably gone to check that. It is true though, RSX can either just use the 256MB it has or it can take the 256MB from CELL, but it' s all or just 256MB. It' s nowhere near as efficient as 360' s makeup.

If Microsoft can get tons of developers support and exclusive titles (Too Human trilogy!!!!) then Sony' s going to be in trouble. No company has dominated 3 generations yet and the specs say PS3 falls short as far as rendering ability goes. But, like Gangsta said and like i said it will come down to the developers figuring how best to use the components and funky middeware tools!

I am slightly suspicious about our new friend though, it would seem he knows a little too much about Microsoft and their future plans. They have a whole multitude of things that are just waiting to go and mystery peripherals offering comprehensive connectability to 360 that most people either don' t know about yet or haven' t heard the ' rumours' .

Opta, will it really have a mini directv receiver built in?

Oh and Gangsta, it looks like the Killzone for PS3 will be the 3rd in the series and that doesn' t count the stupid looking PSP version. Killzone 2 is rumoured for PS2 and the ' artwork' for the PS3 version seems to lead towards the same conclusion.