Before making absurd assumptions:
Controllers:
- Design is not finalized, however, it is extremely possible that the DS2 design will not be used. While no official comment has been made, it is clear that sony is headed in a new direction, and change is coming.
- The are rechargeable with ANY USB cable on ANY USB connection. What has not been said, however, is weather or not rechargeable batteries will be available off the bat, or if the will have to be purchased. This does, however, confirm that if they trickle charge off of a USB connection, that they will be able to be played wired to the PS3 via USB connection. This information was gathered from the Sony Press conference at E3.
Power:
Many people have believed that the PS3 is powerful, yet they do not believe that it will be capable of what was shown at E3. To keep away from confusing numbers, I will provide references and examples to compare and come to your own conclusions.
Processor/GPU Relation:
PS2:
The Emotion engine ran at roughly 300mhz, and communicated with the GPU via a 64bit 1.2GB/s bus.
PS3:
The Cell Processor runs at 3.2Ghz, and communicates with the RSX via 35GB/s bus.
That is a huge difference.
Video Memory:
PS2: 4MB
PS3: 256MB of VRAM (running at 700Mhz) with the other 256MB of Main memory (running at 3.2Ghz) accessible.
Again, the difference is apparent.
Now, this is not a console war, however, with the release of the apparently biased Xbox 360 comparison chart on IGN, there are numbers that need to be addressed, as they were never mentioned in the "report".
Xbox 360 has 1MB of L2 cache, and they mention this as a strong point because PS3 has only 512KB of L2 cache. However, they forget to mention that each SPE (8 of them) is loaded with 256KB of it's own cache, and if you count them all together, including the L2, that's 3.5MB of total processor cache. Go figure.
They also comment on the memory bandwidth etc, however, the bus speeds on the memory are not mentioned...funny.
X360 rocks a solid 512MB of shared system memory between the processor and the GPU, running at a 700Mhz bus.
The PS3, on the other hand, has a different approach. It has a set of memory, two different 256MB memory sets. Their main system memory is 256MB XDR, however it's running at an incredibly fast 3.2GB/s bus. The other, is a 256MB GDDR3 (Running at 700Mhz). This is PURELY Dedicated to Video applicatoin, THAT is one of the main differences in the two consoles, and a reason I believe PS3 is capable of such like the Killzone trailer.
Also, keep in mind that that the 256MB of XDR is not dedicated, and it can also be used by the GPU instead of being used purley by the core processor.
Dot Product Operations:
So, Microsoft says "hey, we can do 9 billion dot product operations". Sony says they can do 51 billion.
Here's the whole truth.
Sony combined their GPU and CPU dot product operation performance to come up with 51 billion. However, Microsoft ONLY told you how many the CPU was capable of. With the GPU included, the X360 is capable of 33.6 billion dpo's.
Gotta love the way you can stretch truths.
Cell processor quickies:
Okay, a lot of people don't exactly understand what the Cell processor "does".
So, to make it easy, here is a quick anology.
You have The boss (the core) who basically handles a few operations here and there, but mainly delegates to the 7 other workers (the SPE's). These 7 workers all have individual tasks that can be assigned to them, and they will carry them out, working together as a team. Then you have the 8th worker, who does "redundancy" operations. Basically, he cycles through things that happen over and over again, so that the other 7 need not worry about it.
Practical application to video games: That 8th SPE handles those little redundant calculations that will always happen, i.e. let's say you're playing a tennis game, well the physics for the tennis ball need to be calulated, and the behavior of it is quite redundant, i.e. the speed it travels, and the force it is hit, these are redundant calulations, done over and over, and instead of forcing the other SPE's to take on this job, it is dedicated strictly to one SPE, so each time the action happens, it is quickly processed by the 8th spe, this prevents the other SPE's from straying away from their task at hand.
That's just a quick "run down" and not at all as in depth as the processor is, but it should give those with doubt a little more of an idea of exactly how the Cell works.
I will edit this post later, but I dont have time right now to talk about each and every little specification and all of the analogy's I can come up with to make it easier to grasp, lol.
Controllers:
- Design is not finalized, however, it is extremely possible that the DS2 design will not be used. While no official comment has been made, it is clear that sony is headed in a new direction, and change is coming.
- The are rechargeable with ANY USB cable on ANY USB connection. What has not been said, however, is weather or not rechargeable batteries will be available off the bat, or if the will have to be purchased. This does, however, confirm that if they trickle charge off of a USB connection, that they will be able to be played wired to the PS3 via USB connection. This information was gathered from the Sony Press conference at E3.
Power:
Many people have believed that the PS3 is powerful, yet they do not believe that it will be capable of what was shown at E3. To keep away from confusing numbers, I will provide references and examples to compare and come to your own conclusions.
Processor/GPU Relation:
PS2:
The Emotion engine ran at roughly 300mhz, and communicated with the GPU via a 64bit 1.2GB/s bus.
PS3:
The Cell Processor runs at 3.2Ghz, and communicates with the RSX via 35GB/s bus.
That is a huge difference.
Video Memory:
PS2: 4MB
PS3: 256MB of VRAM (running at 700Mhz) with the other 256MB of Main memory (running at 3.2Ghz) accessible.
Again, the difference is apparent.
Now, this is not a console war, however, with the release of the apparently biased Xbox 360 comparison chart on IGN, there are numbers that need to be addressed, as they were never mentioned in the "report".
Xbox 360 has 1MB of L2 cache, and they mention this as a strong point because PS3 has only 512KB of L2 cache. However, they forget to mention that each SPE (8 of them) is loaded with 256KB of it's own cache, and if you count them all together, including the L2, that's 3.5MB of total processor cache. Go figure.
They also comment on the memory bandwidth etc, however, the bus speeds on the memory are not mentioned...funny.
X360 rocks a solid 512MB of shared system memory between the processor and the GPU, running at a 700Mhz bus.
The PS3, on the other hand, has a different approach. It has a set of memory, two different 256MB memory sets. Their main system memory is 256MB XDR, however it's running at an incredibly fast 3.2GB/s bus. The other, is a 256MB GDDR3 (Running at 700Mhz). This is PURELY Dedicated to Video applicatoin, THAT is one of the main differences in the two consoles, and a reason I believe PS3 is capable of such like the Killzone trailer.
Also, keep in mind that that the 256MB of XDR is not dedicated, and it can also be used by the GPU instead of being used purley by the core processor.
Dot Product Operations:
So, Microsoft says "hey, we can do 9 billion dot product operations". Sony says they can do 51 billion.
Here's the whole truth.
Sony combined their GPU and CPU dot product operation performance to come up with 51 billion. However, Microsoft ONLY told you how many the CPU was capable of. With the GPU included, the X360 is capable of 33.6 billion dpo's.
Gotta love the way you can stretch truths.Cell processor quickies:
Okay, a lot of people don't exactly understand what the Cell processor "does".
So, to make it easy, here is a quick anology.
You have The boss (the core) who basically handles a few operations here and there, but mainly delegates to the 7 other workers (the SPE's). These 7 workers all have individual tasks that can be assigned to them, and they will carry them out, working together as a team. Then you have the 8th worker, who does "redundancy" operations. Basically, he cycles through things that happen over and over again, so that the other 7 need not worry about it.
Practical application to video games: That 8th SPE handles those little redundant calculations that will always happen, i.e. let's say you're playing a tennis game, well the physics for the tennis ball need to be calulated, and the behavior of it is quite redundant, i.e. the speed it travels, and the force it is hit, these are redundant calulations, done over and over, and instead of forcing the other SPE's to take on this job, it is dedicated strictly to one SPE, so each time the action happens, it is quickly processed by the 8th spe, this prevents the other SPE's from straying away from their task at hand.
That's just a quick "run down" and not at all as in depth as the processor is, but it should give those with doubt a little more of an idea of exactly how the Cell works.
I will edit this post later, but I dont have time right now to talk about each and every little specification and all of the analogy's I can come up with to make it easier to grasp, lol.
