PS3's RAM and RSX explained

Talkplaystation.com: "There has been a lot of talk about the Playstation 3's Random Access Memory (RAM) vs Xbox 360's RAM, saying that the 360 has more RAM to work with etc. Here's an article to explain the situation of its RAM.

Just so you know that the PS3 has 512MB of RAM (256 for video and 256 for system). The Cell chip has 256MB of completely sharable RAM, the GPU has 256MB of dedicated RAM. Now the key here is what type of RAM it is."

[QueefyB]

as you can see the playstation 3 is confirmed superior

[QueefyB]

wow i didnt know that the xbox 360 only has 256mb of gpu memory so this is why all the xbox 360 games look last gen

[QueefyB]

everybody go easy on silogon http://img181.imageshack.us...

[Silogon]

It's a good story. Story being the fable they're spinning of course.

[chaosatom]

don't click the show button and put him on ignore or report him as spam.

[Pain]

truth hurts your crack baby brain huh?...that PS3 is NOT some Crappy Ram dependent PC or a lesser PC called a XBOX.

[gambare]

someone took a picture of you and your girlfriend

[xhairs9]

And I think her name was Lianne McNeil.

[niall77]

games like uncharted and MGS4 look better then ANYTHING on 360

so clearly there is more important things then RAM to make a game look pretty and run good

[chaosatom]

HAHA. Cell is so powerful, it doesn't need a RAM to go with.

[pwnsause]

the thing is we need articles like this to make people to stop having small brains. people dont research. thus they dont know why Sony implemented this architecture. an example of smallbrains on this site is bruceongames(or should i say bruceonflames) who stated that multiplatform games on the PS3 are weak because the RSX is weak. and stuff like this pisses the hell out me, because you have these idiots making articles that are full of S**t without doing research.

Thats why if you do a multiplatform game first on the PS3, both versions(360 and PS3 versions) wont suffer, in fact both versions of a game would be %99 percent identical. (example Burnout Paradise, sega GT rally, etc.)

[Bladestar]

lol! sure... let's hope the PS4 comes with 0 ram next time...

[Yellow11]

I never really played Uncharted and MGS4 so I don't know how they look but I bet they would look just as good if they were made for the 360.

[pwnsause]

you wouldnt say that when you play act 3 of metal gear solid 4, or when you look at Nathan's face when playing uncharted when he changes his facial expression depending on the situation he's in, or when he comes out wet out of the water.

[cmrbe]

there are other stuff like talented devs.

[mikeslemonade]

The truth is spoken in this article.

[Genesis5]

I hope Brucie from Bruceongames reads that article. For a so called authority on the video games industry. He sure doesn't stay up to date on current information and trends.

If anyone else read his little rant about the PS3 shortage of RAM this just shows you he doesn't have a clue.

[INehalemEXI]

Good article. Not much new to me there but it backs up what I been trying to tell those like bruce for 1 that look at PS3's RAM as an issue. Thats all myth and urban legends. Don't forget that the PS3 does Procedural Texture Streaming fastest as well 6 mb per second.

[bababrooks]

talk playstation.............LOL. 2 socks in 1 drawer is better than 1 sock ea in 2 drawers! let me think, what is better?

i would rather open one drawer and pull my socks out with the other hand........................go ing to 2 places for something i need waistes time! that is the way i look at ram, it is a file unit!

[jamesrocks3147]

i have said this all along about XDR its miles better then crap xbox ram we have better ram for the PS3 no dowt.

[INehalemEXI]

That analogy fails because memory is not a drawer that has to be opened and closed the way a dresser's drawers do.

My PC has 2 chunks of memory and 2 open slots for more I don't think its going to be bad if I put 2 more chunks of RAM in it.

------------

Here is how it saves time. There is more then 1 component looking for "socks" at the same time. So with one "drawer" You always have 1 component waiting to get "socks."

[Xbox is the BEST]

"Thats why if you do a multiplatform game first on the PS3, both versions(360 and PS3 versions) wont suffer, in fact both versions of a game would be %99 percent identical. (example Burnout Paradise, sega GT rally, etc.)"

What happens when it's the other way around? Are you saying that the 360 can handle coding for the Cell?

[INehalemEXI]

That would depend on how many threads of code are being run simultaneously. 360 would have a max of 3 vs PS3's 7. So yes and no games presently rarely use most of the cells spe's. I think 4 spe's is the most that have been used simultaneously to this point and that game is not multi-platform.

[shazam]

The only reason why the Xbox 360 is able to have a unified memory architecture is because of the 10MB of high bandwidth EDRAM for the frame buffer. If it did not have this, the frame buffer would have to be stored on the GDDR3. Xenon (the CPU) has to ask Xenos (the GPU) if it can use some of the RAM. But if the frame buffer was in the GDDR3, there would be no bandwidth left for the CPU. So basically the CPU wouldn't be able to function, which means that the system would be unable to function. The 360 simply wouldn't work without the EDRAM.

So Microsoft chose to add more heat and cost for a 100M transistor daughter die in order to have a slightly more flexible memory architecture. In fact I bet that if the Xbox 360 had a split memory architecture and no EDRAM, there would be no RROD problem right now. Every other modern computing system riht now has a split memory architecture between the CPU and GPU. This includes PS3, PC's, Macs, etc.. I also guarantee that the next Xbox will have split memory.

[drewdrakes]

IDemonstalkerXI - If were actually basing our comments on facts, the 360 has 6 hardware threads.

[inthekillzone]

nice article, cleared up alot of things fanboys thought they knew

[INehalemEXI]

http://media.arstechnica.co... here is a diagram of the Xenon 360's cpu. As you can see there are only 3 cores ...where do you get the #6 ?

[shazam]

2 threads per core.

2*3=6

Its like hyperthreading. if you have a pentium 4 with hyperthreading technology and you go into the task manager you will see two line graphs because the os thinks there are two CPUs but there are really just 2 hardware threads.

Generally adding dual threads increases performance by at most 1.5 times. But in most cases it doesn't make much of a difference.

[drewdrakes]

Each core has 2 threads.

Edit: I wasnt arguing which one was faster, nor did i say that its 6 threads are equivilent to the 7 spe's in the cell. I merely pointed out that you saying the 360 has 3 hardware threads is wrong, it has 3 cores, each of which would be more powerful than a spe on its own, but not 3 against 7 of them.

Check this: http://www.ibm.com/develope...

Straight from the people that made the CPU, id trust their documentation slightly more than whats on ars technica.

Edit more: btw you can throw out FLOPS all you want, its meaningless. Look up MIPS and what the knowledgable people think MIPS means.

[INehalemEXI]

It says here -> http://www.blachford.info/c... that you can't run multiple lines of code for any length of time so its not really a true measurement to say that 3 cores running 2 threads is an equivalent to 7 spe's and the PPE of the cell. I think the PS3's higher # of FLOPS reflects this clearly.

Thats not what I said. I said that the 360 is capable of running 3 lines of code simultaneosly. Which is true. This multiple threads per core does not constantly run code concurently. This is not even an article on cpu's .... Article as in what this news the topic... its on RAM lol. This is a tangent I never meant to be on.

I just responded to this question: 1.13 What happens when it's the other way around? Are you saying that the 360 can handle coding for the Cell?

My response in short yes and no. The cell is a better parallel processor then the Xenon as far as the specs tell me anyway. So the 360 could handle cell coding to a certain extent.

The PPE's of the Xenon are not as fast as Cells SPE's though and there are less of them not to mention Cells PPE. Eventually the Xenon would not have the means to keep up.

[drewdrakes]

I dont think youre a programmer are you. To me this is a potential line of code:
x = y*x*Math.sin(z);

The Xbox 360 cannot do 3 of these instructions at once in a cycle, it can do 3 of these:

add ah, al

Also, what implies an article on CPU's? Perhaps an article written by the same people who created the CPU, about the CPU, outlining the details of the CPU and how it works?

[The Lazy One]

the cell in the PS3 is not better than EVERY processor on the market.

edit: also, this article is amateur at best. The comments in that other PS3 RAM story were more technically informative.

[The Lazy One]

Wow... the cell when custom coded and optimized for a benchmark compared to other processors, which were only adapted for the same benchmark, actually came out on top. Who would have thought it.

Let's ignore the fact that the purpose of the study was to test for bottlenecks in the benchmarking system and experiment with how multiple cores could handle SCIENTIFIC ANALYSIS (read: not general purpose or gaming), not to compare the performance of the actual CPUs.

And PS3's ram isn't better, it's different.

The way each system's ram is set up has benefits to each. Most developers prefer the way the 360's is set up right now because a lot of the bigger advances in graphics for time spent come in the form of high quality textures, which is proving to be difficult to handle with 256 mb of VRAM.

You'd be able to argue a lot better if you read things from both sides of the arguments.

[BattleAxe]

Superiority, you gotta love it!........................... ....BA DA BA DA DA i'M LOVIN IT.

[Varsarus]

I know for sure the Cell in the PS3 is capable of blasting every other CPU in the market today running Allegorythmic's New Substance Procedural Rendering Engine!

http://www.allegorithmic.co...

Now that's just 1 SPU, now do the others and do the math :D

[madmike]

now its a good thing not to have lots of ram ok sheep what ever you say are you all just brain dead sheep ill take all my ram from my pc to make it run better haha

[Grown Folks Talk]

Like Sam Fisher did in Chaos Theory on the Xbox?

[JsonHenry]

LOL! This article cracks me up!

Having 512megs of system ram is completely different than having 256 megs that the GPU can also share. The problem with both consoles is lack of RAM. If Sony and MS had pulled their heads out of their asses and put in at least another 256megs the games we are all playing on the consoles would look night and day different than what we play now. The draw distances would be farther out, the pop-up issues would be non-existent, and when we play online the graphics would not have to be toned down to make up for extra processes used when playing online.

[GameDev]

of ignorant people talking about things they know nothing about.

I forgot that scientific calculation uses a different type of bitwise operation than game code does..........LMAO

I have said this soooooooo many times it should be set in stone on the internet. CODE IS CODE, the hardware doesn't care if its crunching folding @ home or mary poppins 3Dfragfest. IT IS ALLL 1's and 0's at the end of the day.

to hear people speak about processing power in subjective terms makes those of us who actually work with this stuff cringe with embarrassment for even being part of the discussion.

[drewdrakes]

GameDev - Its not all 1's and 0's. The Cell and Xenon are actually nothing alike. They have completely different instruction sets, from what i understand. The Cell processor has more math based instruction sets, so that it can crunch the numbers quickly, whereas the Xenon has IBM's PowerPC Instruction set, which makes it more of a general purpose thing, but not as good at math.

You clearly arent a game dev, otherwise you would understand that depending on the scientific calculations and game, they WOULDNT use the same instructions (bitwise operations is the wrong term here). But more importantly, the hardware does care what its doing, if its doing it efficiently. You think you can just slap a PC program onto the PS3? The hardware doesnt care what its doing? Please.

JsonHenry - The games would not look THAT much different with more ram. Draw distances are not based on textures in RAM, it is based on the GPU and what it can handle. You wouldnt even need textures for the draw distances youd be talking about. At that distance a texture would be indistinguishable from just a flat colour.

I dont understand how the pop-in textures are happening, but it wouldnt be from lack of RAM. Otherwise once one of the textures pops in, another would pop out... which leads me to believe its the slow read speeds of the media to the RAM. Also, the RAM wouldnt be to blame for the online toned-down graphics. How much RAM do your online applications take? I dont think it would take as much as 1MB of ram. I can even think of what to put in 1MB for that. It would be that the CPU cant handle the extra processes. But i have yet to see proof of online looking worse than offline. Please specify a game?

Edit: GameDev - You make it seem as i am attacking the PS3 and its hardware, where did this come from? You may be able to get those 3.2 billion cycles, but that could still make a crappy 480p game if the code is inefficient. All im saying is that you should reconsider your stance that CODE is CODE. Because it isnt. Why do you think these devs worry about efficiency. And if you think you can get all that out of the PS3, why arent you leading every dev team in the world?

I dont even understand what youre trying to say anymore? Its almost as if youre the kid who cant decide what their opinion is.

Btw, the hardware doesnt generate 3.2 billion cycles per second all the time. It, like most processors, will only do as much as it needs to, which conserves power.

[GameDev]

so you're telling me that the PPE and SPE's do not generate 3.2 billion processing cycles per second based on what type of code is running??

Or that the RSX can't generate a 1080p 60fps AA raster depending on wether its a game or a simulation?? Which is what all scientific programs like folding @ home are??

or that the l1 and 2 caches will run at different speeds based on the type of application it is??

is the hardware suddenly smart? or does it always generate 3.2 billion processing cycles per second across 7 chips that leave it up to the developer what to do with it???

sit down and be quiet kid, you are obviously that.

Why are people like you even allowed to post in the gamer zone??
Your ignorance is astounding.

[sether82]

This comment is ludicrous. It's inevitable that Konami will eventually port MGS4 to the Xbox (if they're not already) and if past iterations are any indication (and they are) Snake will look just fine on the 360. Might even play better, too. At least it'll have standardized features like achievements and rumble (unless you were like me and imported a DualShock3 from Asia) and custom soundtracks and all those things update 2.40 kinda slacked on.

And as for Uncharted...SHUT UP. Why do people insist on blowing this game? Oh wow, the colors were super-saturated. If that's what makes a landmark game, just go back to your Atari and turn up the color on your TV. There's nothing this game did that was revolutionary. The "puzzles" were the definition of uninspired and the "combat" was more frustrating than trying to poke a Jesus-freak. Tomb Raider is the queen of this genre and in terms of control, Lara still reigns supreme. And the next version of Lara is set to match, if not surpass, whatever "awesomeness" Uncharted put forth in its graphics. The only thing Uncharted set the bar for was disappointment and over-hype. The only reason it got such high scores was because PS3 was starved for an exclusive.

I hate to sound like a fanboy (the Sony hags out there make it hard not to), but Gears of War is still one of the high watermarks for graphics, and guess what. PS3 can't run it for sh*t.

[gameraxis]

say exactly this in the "ps3 broken" article... Its all about the xdr. Faster and more efficient. and for disagreers, FAIL..., NEXT

[Dacapn]

What you're spewing is some serious bullshit. You say PS3 can't run Gears? Gears is basically UTIII Adventures and there's nothing in the game that is so spectacular technically that outdoes anything we've seen in other games. It's just the poster child of the Unreal Engine. No one's saying Gears is terrible looking; it's just dated. If PS3 can run UTIII, it could run Gears. Simple.

As for MGS4 on 360, it could be ported, but it would definitely not be equivalent to the PS3 version. For starters, it would HAVE to be on multiple discs. I dunno if you're a fan of the game or if you've even played it, but cutscenes, vocal content, and uncompressed audio eat up a ton of space in games. If you've got a surround sound system setup, you notice that sound in this game is unparalleled. I'd say COD4 comes in a distant second when it comes audio. The game is just too saturated with content to fit on a DVD, especially if you wanna keep the sound uncompressed.

I believe graphically it could be done on 360, but damn it would be a stretch. The character models on MGS4 are easily the best looking on any console. The detail is just sick. You may think the cutscenes differ from gameplay, but the gameplay is just as detailed. There are points in the game where it goes directly from cutscene straight into gameplay, seamlessly, as in, "insert icons" and now you're playing. But again, combining the highly detailed environments and characters with the above warrants many discs. The game would be at least 5 discs.

As for Uncharted, I dunno why you're trying to downplay the graphical prowess of that game. The gameplay is questionable (I thought it was decent fun), but the graphics are not. The game is beautiful. Personally, I feel the games that have best captured a jungle would be Crysis, Uncharted, and MGS3. In all 3 of those games, the environment seems like it's alive. When you walk through plants, the grass actually moves as you step through it as opposed to games like COD4 or Oblivion, where you literally walk through plants like they were holograms or something. You see the wind affect every piece of greenery as it blows. The water in the game seems like it has volume instead of just a flat texture that bends. The game gets real high marks in the graphics department.

So ya I dunno what exactly you were trying to cook up, but I guess you could sum up my wall of text in a sentence:

You're full of $hit.

[cLiCK_sLiCK9]

Can someone please write a summary about this whole RAM and the Cell Thing...Im confused.
Im new to this.

@sether82
You obiously are a 360fangurl.
"(unless you were like me and imported a DualShock3 from Asia)"
Nice try. =)
Your not fooling anybody.

"but Gears of War is still one of the high watermarks for graphics, and guess what. PS3 can't run it for sh*t."
UNREAL TOURNAMENT 3 ran on the Unreal engine and looks better than Gears of War......Explain. Or our Eyes Lying to us??

Please keep Your idiototic comments on the Open Zone.

[Harry190]

But for sure,in 3-4 years,we will be seeing things no one thought was possible on this type of hardware. It has always been like that.

Progressive little increments=big results.

New technology takes time to get to grip with. You can't ride a Ferrari like a Mini Cooper,you'll only get stuck then.

[Nitrowolf2]

@QueefyB

i need stronger spray i doesnt seem to be working on Silogon

[QueefyB]

hey Nitro i think its because hes going through a rough time http://img181.imageshack.us...

[juuken]

Lmao Queefy...oh man that picture is priceless.

[Tmac]

lmfao!!

[chaosatom]

i had to log in to give u credit man.

[FAQS]

Q:...
A: QueefyB that was GREAT, I Laughed a lot! Just keep that humour, man!

[theKiller]

ROFL!!!

that was great, u deserve many bubbles!

on topic, the article explain it very well!! for those who is not into these tech things should be easy to understand, for the bots well....hhhmmmm just stay on denial and miss out the best games in the industry and play ur halo and gears!

[power of Green]

If you are wondering why this excuse response post is here, here's why http://n4g.com/NewsCom-1681...

[Rice]

Get to your battlestations and await for your go...

[bleachrulez]

this should help some people

[kewlkat007]

...

[kewlkat007]

come on bro....these flamebaits are meaningless to me, notice I had not that much to say, I been though this already pre-PS3 release.

All my consoles have Pros and cons, take a look...

[Armyless]

His comments are honest and pretty fair now.

(Used to make my eyes bleed, but he's proven he's at least "got a dog" in every fight in the last couple months)

[HighDefinition]

Is on my PSN friends list.

BTW, love the pic Kewl.

LOL.

[Guitarded]

What are his sources? Did he aid in design of the ps3? The ps3 has only 511MB of RAM, because I said so.

[The Lazy One]

he was questioning the sources of the article (none) with a sarcastic remark.

The fact that you thought he was serious is laughable.

[beavis4play]

and the RAM conversation is labled "meaningless".

[ThatCanadianGuy]

Ohhh right right,where's Microsoft deffence force?
Looks like they couldnt handle the truth.Poor,poor...poor siligon

They left you all on your lonesome.

[cmrbe]

worked on him :)

[Isaac]

Both RSX and Cell processor have much higher theoretical power than their 360 counterparts, and since they are optimized for power and not for programmers unlike 360, you will see games looking a lot better on PS3s long life, but that is the reason why it is taking time since the 360 is just modern PC architecture made to please lazy "DEVELOPERS DEVELOPERS DEVELOPERS DEVELOPERS DEVELOPERS DEVELOPERS DEVELOPERS DEVELOPERS DEVELOPERS DEVELOPERS DEVELOPERS"

[GameDev]

EXACTLY

all the nob jockey pseudo xboy "devs" on here and in studios who cry about the PS3 sound like this:

"what do you mean i can't make a call to my direct-x routine?? how will i handle transforms or lighting?? you mean i have to redesign the engine to work the cell?? WAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAWAAA AAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAA

crybabies all of them who have no business making games. they want to turn gaming into a second rate rehash industry like they did with american auto manufacturing. We all see where that got them against the japanese. NOw they want to ram a third rate pc in a box with a logo on it that says "xbox 360" down gamers throats. its sickening.

THE PS3 is a CULTURE SHOCK to lazy american developers, it represents Japans mindset. One of hardwork and dedication to get results. Not lazy fatasses who like to dedicated half the day to gaming on their 360's while the produce generic piece of crap games for a gimped console.

[IchibanKoroshiya]

Look you plainly don't know ANYTHING about the RSX at all to say that it has more power than the 360's GPU. It plain doesn't. On paper the two GPU's are barely different but the implementation of certain graphic routines and FX just eat away at the RSX severely limiting it's fill rate capacity; an issue EA publicly announced BEFORE the console was even released. Luckily it has access to the CELL but even then that's not really helping given the immense technical challenges of making it run across multiple threads..( queue GameDevs idiotic ramblings)

GameDev there, (pfff as if), doesn't know what he's talking about either. He mocks XNA when he hasn't got the first clue what he's on about. Hey idiot. PS3 has tools which are kinda similar to the XNA platform, it's called PHYRE asshole and they don't work anywhere as near as well as Microsofts.

Games are NOT made from the ground up from scratch. Everything you play uses tools and middleware made either by Sony, Microsoft or someone else but in PS3's case they won't give their best stuff away to smaller developers. i.e The people who come up with the innovations in games..because it will adversely affect how their "flasgship titles" look.

[Bnet343]

and so, N4G continues to spiral downwards ...

[cmrbe]

Why?

[ChefDejon]

why

[Captain Tuttle]

Probably because people are taking a positive story about the PS3 from a site called "TalkPlaystation.com" ; as the gospel truth. Don't you think there might be a HINT of bias?

[cmrbe]

This is fairly common knowledge and i don't see anything wrong with this article. Do you think its biased?. This article is nothing compared to what was allowed on NG4 from blogs and sites like xboxkings. You have the good the bad and the ugly on N4G and thats the way i like it.

[Genesis5]

How can specs be biased?

[sloth4urluv]

No one is disputing the speed of the RAM, but the fact that its faster does not make up for its lack of capacity.
Dosnt matter how fast the cell talks to the RAM, the RAM still has to be large enough to store all the highresolution textures, highpolygon textures, and high quality audio. Where else is the cell going to get the data, pull it out of its ass? the optical or HDD surel isnt fast enough to stream the data on the fly ro the cell, that would be like watching paint dry for the cell.

Anyways this articale was posted pretty much as a response to the other article stating that the PS3 has a lack of RAM. This seems to be turning into one of these stupid 360vsps3 things. Really the other article was just stating that the PS3 is being gimped. Dosnt mean that its a bad piece of hardware, just that it could have been better with some more room to play.

[cmrbe]

if you didn't notice. I really don't care what is there. Be it 512, 1 or 2 gig. The only thing that matters is what i play and what i am playing right now hasen't been done on any other console sofar. MGS4 and GTP.

[Zeevious]

Tuttle, Genesys, SlotLuvvin
There's often a degree of bias in articles unless it's a technical guide to navel lint.

The same facts on both side are either glossed over or magnified as if the gaming universe will end because of it, depending on what end of the bias spectrum the writer wrote the facts from.

The other article used versions of this repeatedly, including there being no way to add extra Ram to the 14 million (+/-) existing consoles short of a USB/ReadyBoost like, 4 gig high-speed cache. Current prices, OEM, like $5; Cheap enough to practically give to everyone, but practically unlikely.

I don't know if this is biased but facts tend to be boring, so you get a ridiculous headline ending in a '?' that somehow makes it all ok.

More is More.
Of course more of anything, for any hardware is usually a good thing. With consoles, your looking at a product who's concept got on the drawing board in 2004, developed through 2005, and available in 2006. It was 2 years old in 2006 when it launched and is 4 years old now. Ahead of it's time, yeah, but at the limit of 4 year old tech.

Today 4 gig of ram is common, so's a fast 32 gig flashdrive 1/2 the size of my thumbnail that fits in my phone.

If launched today it would have more Ram . . . Sure, it could use it and short of your Forks or a Toaster, what couldn't?

Next-NextGen.
This is more a valid argument for what to include in the PS4 than existing consoles. Besides improvement to storage & peripherals, all hardware is LOCKED on it's release date for practical compatibility.

Might, Might not.
Who would want a console that MIGHT run a $60 game you can't return once opened to find out if your console MIGHT run it?

In the end.
The end result is all that matters and there are some damn good examples that this isn't gimping any game from a developer that knows how to use the hardware.

Cmrbe
Good? Bad? Ugly? Yeah, I wouldn't have it any other way either!
The "Sony Throwing in the Towel on Winning the Console War?" has to be my favorite so far...(from a site that just opened 5 days ago...sensational headline for site-hits?)

It's all interesting, but once in a while I can't help but wait for the pictures of Elvis & Bigfoot to show up playing Guitar Wars Solid IV: Strums of the Patriots

(See also: Metal Smurf Solid)

[Wolf873]

we all want to justify that our console of choice is better than the other, therefore feeling less threatened that exclusive games on either consoles don't go Multiplat. But what I understood from that article is that PS3 is just as powerful as 360, and Cell, if it really is that power-ful, maybe PS3's only advantage. Feel free to correct me though.

[INehalemEXI]

It seems the article was made just to clarify that the PS3 has 512 MB of RAM available to its GPU. The Cell has access to 256 MB RAM plus 512k of L1 cache + 1.7m of L2 cache for the 7 spes(Cell).

Its in two separate chunks. One of the XDR 256 mb is 3.2 ghz the fastest memory ever found in a console. this is dedicated to the GPU yet the GPU not only has access to this RAM it can also access the 256mb of GDDR3 at 700mhz RAM which is also available to the Cell.

-------------

The Bus on the PS3 allows for faster data travel between the ps3s components as well btw. Thats the reason for PS3's higher overall bandwidth vs the 360 and one factor as to why the PS3 does more floating point calculations per second. Ive said all this long ago its not really new.

Ultimately its up to what the devs can do with what they have. There is much power in the PS3 and argueably its the most powerfull console the market has seen. I say argueably only because there is a worthy competitor that has a gpu with on board memory which is its greatest asset, some call it the 360. 2 different beasts that carry there own unique burdens.

[PittzBlitz2003]

Its actually the other way around. The XDR memory is paired with the Cell and the GDDR3 memory is dedicated to the GPU, unfortunately! The ability of the Cell to share its XDR ram with the GPU is great but I believe the reason we dont see a major difference between the 360 and the PS3 is the fact that the GDDR3 ram is only 700 mhz. I could be wrong but I believe this is a major bottleneck with the GPU using the XDR ram. Since developers can only depend on the ram available to the system at any given time having a speed of 700 mhz, they cant utilize all of the extra speed that the XDR ram has. It just like with PCs. If you buy new ram to add to your existing ram in the old ram is slower, the new ram automatically defaults to the speed of the old ram. Now if developers can optimize their games well enough to know exactly what information is going to what type of ram, then maybe there would be a better increase in performance.

[MNicholas]

PS3
1) Cell (according to developers is vastly faster than 360 CPU)
2) XDR (much faster than the RAM in the 360)
3) Double the RAM bandwidth of 360
4) Far more cache
5) Standard Hard-Drive (according to a couple of developers)
6) Blu-Ray (according to Rockstar, developers of GTA series)
7) RSX (devs say that PS3 can handle far better textures than 360)
8) Hardware HDR support (360 lacks true hardware HDR)

Xbox360
1) Easy to max out because of simpler design
2) EDRAM reduces the bandwidth disadvantage (but not the latency issues)
3) EDRAM reduces AA hit as long as resolution is not too high
4) Scaling chip does a great job hiding low resolution of some games
5) Common and easy platform for online features

So to sum it up,

360 is easy to max out and has a lower game development cost while the PS3 is a much more advanced and powerful machine that's very difficult and expensive to make games for. This is why multi-platform games are first made on the 360 and then ported to the PS3 with teams of just 5-10 developers without proper reengineering to take advantage of the unique PS3 architecture.

[GameDev]

The ps3 has many advantages

the immense and ever growing capacity of bluray disks (just look at what panasonic just did wit the medium, 400GB games anyone??)

the CELL\
> unified rendering engine
the RSX/

the PS3's REAL secret weapon > the FLEX I/O controller. Contrary to what many here think this gives the cell access to all 512mb of memory. The trick here is coders who know what the hell they are doing and why they are doing it. DO any of you know what qualifies one object for one pool of memory over the other?? the answer is easier than you might think.

I think its time I explain something to the people of this site and by extension the internet. Back in 98-99 when MS started preparations for announcing the first xbox, sony took notice. Up until this point the console market had been a pretty linear race to the top. Make a good product, support it with a vast library of great software and voila, it will sell. WHO KNEW?? lol
NOW Sony had a new problem and a new enemy, one with pockets big enough to disrupt the natural order of things and Sony wasn't about to be dethroned by the newjack rich kid on the block. They started strategically planning what would eventually become the PS3. At that point the PS2 was already designed, manufactured and ready to ship. (were talking 2000 now)They knew they had the momentum of the PS1's userbase and the developer support to win last generation easy. But make not mistak about it, MS actually had a very good console with the first xbox. Alot of late generation games ran noticeably better on Microsoft's box. Sony took notice of this aswell. They knew that this generation they were gonna take a hit on developer support and thus had to find a different advantage for their new console. POWER, ABSOLUTE UNMITIGATED POWER (insert darth sidious soundtrack here lol).
At that point the overall design of the PS3 was in place.Its mission is to:

Take away Microsofts advantage (money and the PC industry to make its hardware).

The ability to counter Microsofts pockets in buying developers and deals with large publishers with Sony plethora of internal studios.

Use the asian manufacturing base (their backyard) to compete on the price scale. Lets be honest here folks, who is better at manufacturing, repoducing and innovating hardware over time than the asian labor force??

so there you go.

[mistertwoturbo]

It's funny because this is all actually pretty old information since the release of the PS3. It's just certain someones who keep denying it, and absolutely have no idea what XDR memory is.

Creating the whole "PS3 only has 256mb, and 360 has 512mb. Thus 360 is better!!!"

However people need to forget, that just because the PS3 has this or that. It doesn't make the 360 any less powerful. I mean look at games like Gears of War... And Gears of War 2. And... Umm...

OK n/m, cant think of extremely graphical games on the 360 except Gears of War.

But none the less, that just shows developers aren't trying to harness the 360's power as much as they should. If Gears of War can look that good, why cant all the other games look as equally good.

Since the PS3 is so complex, it seems to be natural progression that they're trying to squeeze out every ounce of juice. Thus resulting in games like Uncharted, Ratchet & Clank, GT5P, Resistance 2, and of course the benchmark of graphics Killzone 2.

After seeing what they can do with Killzone 2, I'm dumbfounded on imagining what SE is going to do with FFXIII. I was playing FFXII the other day, and it has amazing graphics for the PS2. And looks better than some PS3/360 games of today.

[kewlkat007]

It's like the past few days we have gone backwords wit these flamebaits...

I remember this before...like 2 years ago.

[INehalemEXI]

Yah, these arguments where made back when the PS3's specs where released before it even launched lol.

[mistertwoturbo]

Yup, it seems like everything keeps repeating itself over and over again. I still don't get why these arguments still pop up.

I mean it's understandable like you said if it was in 2006. But it's already been almost two years and the PS3 has already proven itself if the developer sit down and optimize it, they can get great results.

I'd crap my pants if I see an article "why the PS3 cant do the 360's graphics"

[GarandShooter]

These arguments continue to pop up because it's easier for a lot of people to just defend their position than to have an open mind and use logic and reasoning, so we continue the meaningless console war.

If all these losers complaining about the system they don't have stopped wasting their time on N4G and put it into employment, they could afford the best of both worlds, but it's easier to be lazy and flame.

It's the old sour grapes story...

[Gandhi Man]

My Dad can beat up your Dad!!

[kevin1122]

well i can beat them both.

[Kirstenlottesovs]

RAM doesn't really matter.
The PS3 does not have any RAM shortage, it all comes down to the devs and their skills in using the XDR RAM and cell processor..

[jcgamer]

It's ALL about what the eyes can see...and my eyes clearly see that the PS3 surpasses the 360 in the graphics department...PERIOD...it's not about what's under the hood...it's about the clever ways you can squeeze the potential out of a gaming console from under the hood and onto the screen...

[miked808]

I should hope the PS3 is more powerful just look at how much it costs.

[QueefyB]

http://img172.imageshack.us...

[Chubear]

Yeah - A WHOLE 50 BUCKS MORE!! OUTRAGEOUS! lol Cry some more

[FAQS]

Q:...
A: I WANT THAT SPRAY!!! AH AH HA HA HA HA !!

[mindedone]

I would like to preface the following comment by saying that I only have a PS3. My PSN id can be seen on my page, and you're more than welcome to see how many trophies I have (only about 30%.)

As truthful as this post may be, it is written pretty poorly as an argumentative paper. He fails to mention why the PS3 vs Xbox360 RAM was ever an issue, because it HAS been made an issue by some developers in the past (good developers or not.)

I would have liked to see WHY these developers saw PS3's RAM situation as inferior to Xbox360's. Clearly if he is writing to an audience that didn't know that they had the same amount of RAM, then they did not know why some developers found Xbox360's RAM easier to work with at the time.

Of course, most of us knew these answers to begin with. But I still would like to have seen him go into specifics as to why developers had a problem, just as he went into specifics as to why PS3's RAM is better. If he had done so, it would have made for a better article, and a much better argument. As it stands he missed half the point.

(On a side note, how long did it take people to finish the RatP01/Frog section on their BB emblem run? I don't wanna waste my time if it's gonna be a problem by act 5)

[cmrbe]

but i think that is not the objective of this article. This article is just claiming in laymans terms that the PS3 RAM is not inferior as some are claiming. As for Devs i don't know. Perhaps the problems thay faced had more to do with tools than actual physical specs which is what this article is based on.

[mistertwoturbo]

I'm thinking the most developers are having a hard time with the Split Ram. Sure it's 256mb of XDR RAM that is faster, but it's still split. While the 360 has the 512mb of RAM all packed into one. But there are other advantages in the PS3's hardware.

"In short, the very nontraditional setup of the PS3's Cell chip is capable of vastly out powering the traditional multiprocessor setup of the X360, mostly due to successfully eliminating memory latency."

That was a quote from an old forum poster back when people were studying the PS3's architecture. Other interesting things I found were that it's not as easy as

SPE 1 = AI
SPE 2 = Physics
SPE 3 = ...

"Instead picture the main CPU going through a normal game loop (simplified here)
Step 1: Update positions
Step 2: Check for collisions
Step 3: Perform motion caluclations
Step 4: AI

At the beginning of each step the main CPU farms out the work to the SPE's. So, you have a burst of activity in the SPE's for each step, then a lull as the main core figures out what to do next."

So again in basic terms, the CELL's main CPU is the one that delegates the tasks to the individual SPE's in the core. Then after the calculations, it goes through the memory controller then to the RAM to transfer the data to what we see. A the same time, the GPU is streaming data to and from the CELL essentially talking to one another.

Here's an illustration
http://www.blachford.info/c...

This website put's it best

"Cell is a revolution, a completely new microprocessor architecture which, while it may take some time to get used to, promises a vast performance boost over today’s systems. GPUs can already run 10 times faster than desktop CPUs, Cell will not only bring similar performance but will do so for more applications and it’ll be easier to program."

"Many people do not like change, to them Cell represents a threat. For others it represents an opportunity.

Lets see how many take the opportunity, and what other opportunities the other CPU vendors come up with in response."

Gabe Newell see's it as a threat, which is why he regards the PS3 as useless. While others like Insomniac who is clearly pushing the boundaries of the processor is always finding new ways to use it. And the results show.

Source: http://www.blachford.info/c...

(For the record I am not claiming to be some expert or anything. This is all just my comprehension of what I've been reading. Feel free to "smash" or correct me. )

[The Lazy One]

Pretty good all around, but a few corrections.

the reason many developers don't like the PS3's ram is because it's split. Plain and simple. It makes it harder to put things where you want them. In the case of ID with RAGE/Idtech 5, they dislike it because they designed it to use textures in very creative ways.

In the case of the cell, most of the case against the cell in the PS3 comes down to the fact that it's not the ideal place to launch the hardware. It's not nearly optimized yet, it still has a couple of inherent bottlenecks, and people didn't know how to program for it. By the time people are taking advantage of the cell, there's nothing stopping M$ or even Nintendo from releasing a console with a new CPU that takes advantage of the cell's concepts and builds on them to make an easier to develop for, more general purpose, and more powerful processor.

[mindedone]

You are correct in what you say is the point of the article, but what I am saying is that in an argument, in ANY argument, one must explain the other side of the argument, just to show why there was a question in the first place.

In this article, he makes it seem that PS3 RAM clearly has all the advantages when it comes to gaming. If this were the case, then why would the article be needed? There has to be a reason for some saying that XBox Ram is better. This issue must be addressed before even addressing the PS3's Ram.

At least this is how any scholarly paper works. But I suppose I shouldn't expect the same from internet articles.

[fadeawayjae]

hey lets bookmark this page and anytime someone questions about the ram give em this link

[pwnsause]

or take them to this page http://www.rambus.com/us/pr...

[sloth4urluv]

Really maybe you would be interested in researching some articles on DDR vs DDR2, or DDR2 vs DDR3 benchmarks.

You might be surprised to see what type of realworld performance you can expect by doubling you memory bandwidth....

[n00bzRtehgey]

lol. more lies from Fony. they don't have a unified architecture or 10 megs of embeded d ram. owned. (that's why no PS3 game can run in HD with AA.)

[pwnsause]

really, how do you know, show me proof, when there is evidence that you are talking out of your ass. why dont you go get a top to cover it, it stinks of xbot Sh*t.

[OmarJA]

(that's why no PS3 game can run in HD with AA.)

look who's talking how's Gaylo 3 640p? Flop Gaiden 2 585p?

GT5P & MGS4 both can run at 1080p that something you're poor 3fixme can't handle ... i know the truth hurts

QueefyB we need a spray over here

[juuken]

SHUT THE F*CK UP.

Seriously, do yourself that favor for once in your miserable self-centered life. For a 360 muppet, you have got to be THE dumbest one on this site.

The PS3 has always been graphically superior to the 360. Numbers don't lie and my eyes sure as HELL don't lie.

Come back when you have factual evidence and you're not acting like a f*cking n00b on acid.

[n00bzRtehgey]

lmao. I'm still getting over your other comment about how Halo 1 was the most overhyped piece of crap you've ever played LMAO. you're so dumb it hurts!!! LOLOL.

[juuken]

Um...so says the person with an avatar that says n00b. Halo is drastically overrated. Hell, is that all Microsoft can use? Halo and Greys of Bore 1.5? That's the ONLY two games in which they can use against Sony?

Microsoft better start using a different strategy if they want to stay in the market.

I'm a lot smarter than your dumb ass.

Now begone foul being.

Hmm...you need a good drenching with this stuff because I don't want your n00biness to rub off on me.

[mepsipax]

well I know I'll be torn apart for saying some level headed things here but anyway, I love reading the open zone, it provides a very good chuckle how someone can devote themselves to a heartless corporation (Sony, Nintendo, Microsoft) and a piece of plastic and copper I'll never figure out, why devote yourselves to a console or company, I enjoys playing games and whether thats on the PS3/360/Wii/PSP/DS I don't care as long as the game isn't sh!t. seriously guys, you're religiously devoted, you tear the other side apart just like a Catholic and Muslim do, it must be psychological but anyway it's only your loss, instead of enjoying every game you can you limit yourselves to only the console/company of your choice because in your eyes they are better even though you won't even try out the other sides games, whatever,
<and so mepsipax waited for the flood of disagrees to come upon him... and there was much rejoicing>

[TheXgamerLive]

Some of the ram is superior as in faster but not more efficient and def. not more accessible, so explain, lie, make up, stretch whatever truths that you like, but the proof is in the pudding and so far it's 90+ %%%%% all Xbox 360.

So in the end your story is just that, ......a story. But definitely no FABLE :))) Ha ha ha !!!

[pwnsause]

talk out of your ass much? here dumbass, do reserch next time http://www.rambus.com/us/pr... stop talking out of your asshole before you end up like this:

[xhairs9]

NEED A WARNINGO N THAT PHOTO LINK OMG NOOOOOOOOO!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! !!!!!!

[juuken]

Another f*cktard muppet talking out of his ass.
Unless you have factual evidence to back up your claims, then shut the hell up.

And HOLY MOSES pwnsauce! I nearly threw up dinner seeing that! Naaaaaasty!

[ThatCanadianGuy]

Oh that's just revolting..

[cmrbe]

not that is sick.

[FAQS]

Q: WOW pwnsauce, how could you get this image of xgamer? Did he let you take that?
A:....

[Aclay]

That article about, "Is the PS3 Broken" is the biggest EPIC FAIL of an article I've seen so far this week.

PS3's Cell Broadband Engine and RSX Chip > Xbox 360.

[Bladestar]

Ram does not matter? wow.. you people are really that clueless? The only reason why PS3 fans say Ram is not important is because the CPU is where the PS3 shines... How hard is this to understand... CPU process commands, functions, methods, algorithms, etc... Memory holds textures, sounds, data, game assets, etc... why are people acting as if the PS3 Cell replaces ram.... If a texture needs to be loaded into memory and the texture is 50MB... regardless of the CPU.. that system needs to have 50MB of available ram... how hard is that to understand?
This is the reason why a game like Crisis can't run on any console this gen...

by the way this article if from "Playstation.com" uhh.. duh! they will say the PS3 is better no matter what... I'm I suppose to blindly believe that this is the case when lots of other articles say otherwise.. not to mention that multiplatform games (only way to prove anything unless Metal Gear comes to the xbox 360)... didn't gear beat lots of PS3 games for almost 1 year? Wont Gears 2 beat many PS3 games once is released?

I said it before and I say is again... both, the PS3 and the xbox 360 mayor flaw is not the CPUs or the GPUs... is the lack of ram... both Sony and Microsoft should of add at least 1-2GB of Ram... and games look 10 times better... Most of the issue with existing games... skip frames, performance degradation are do to the lack of memory... developers have to Stream data from disc or hard drive; sometimes even during the same level... because a full level assets is not enough... if developer want to make the game more detailed in terms of graphics they have to remove features, like destructive environment, make the levels smaller, remove car damage, vehicles (COD4).... you can see this when you compare COD3 and COD4... COD4 lacks vehicles and maps are smaller than COD3... and now COD5 looks against like COD3 and have vehicles and larger maps...

The xbox 360 may have a few extra megabytes than the PS3... but to me it's also somewhat cripple too... Both the PS3 and the xbox 360 CPU and GPU are way... wayyyyy too much horse power for the little Ram they both have.... my PC CPU and GPU are both less strong than the xbox 360 and PS3... but thanks to my 8GB Ram... COD4 look 10 times better on my PC than the xbox 360 and PS3.. not to mention It can run crisis...

I really hope the next xbox comes with at least 2-4 GB of ram... CPU can come with a few cores more if they want to... but those 2-4GB of ram would make a big different...

and the PS3? well as PS3 fans say, "Ram is not important" I guess magically the cell will act as ram too...

[INehalemEXI]

Don't get it twisted that was not PS3 fan's that was someones comment they do not speak for me :D I think they were just trying to say that RAM is not the only factor. If you look at what God of War 2 did with the tiny amount of RAM the PS2 had you can maybe see from there perspective. That was before Texture streaming was used in console games as well. The cell does have its own cache memory too its not magic its just cache.

http://www.bit-tech.net/gam... Procedural Texturing is also a way to eliminate a need for so much RAM. Both the 360 and PS3 are capable of this. The 360 @ 4mb per second and the PS3 @ 6mb per second.

Sure it would be nice to have more RAM in any system that can support more. Yet we already made a leap this generation in terms of RAM and its not cheap. 8 bit, 16,32, 64, 128, we skipped 256...now were at 512.

[GUNS N SWORDS]

bits is an old measurement that was used to pinpoint the precision of the cpu's registers.....if ps3 or 360 was to be measured in..."BITS" i think it would be in the thousands.

[INehalemEXI]

Yah your right its different for that era. But for PS1 through PS3 era it shows we keep expanding in RAM from 32 mega-bytes-128mb-512mb right? Im just saying its not feasible to make such an enormous leap in RAM size from 1 generation to the next due to a cost factor.

bit, kb, mb,gb it all started at bits.

[cmrbe]

do you?. Anyone with half a brain knew what Nia177 ment. I'll make it simple for you. Nial77 ment that all this talk and bickering about ram is kind pointless considering the games on PS3 which the x360 can't match in his opinion. In the end that is what matters.

Even if a machine is technically more advanced. Its useless if you don't have talented devs working on it.

I can't believe i had to explain this to you. Perhaps next time people should include illustrations with their comments for you to understand. Sheesh Blade grow up.

[GUNS N SWORDS]

i believe it was more about it's bandwith, the ps1, ps2, and ps3 intentionally had a certain amount of memory but had an exreamly great amout of bandwith.

each playstation had particular reasons for its setup, but mostly sony has a good track record of not being the system with the most memory.

[m9105826]

lol, didn't read the rest of it yet, but as someone who does texture work for games, if you have a 50MB texture, you're doing something WAAAAYYYY wrong.

[RocketRaiders]

256mb GDDR3

256mb XDR ram

However XDR is much better than GDDR3

in a sense 256mb XDR>>>>>> 1 gig GDDR3

but x360 has only 512mb so ps3's memory is also better

[59fifty8]

their are still actual bots left i though they all ran to differnt websites since they kept getting owned here.

[GUNS N SWORDS]

360 doesn't exactly have more memory, it "CAN" have access to more memory because it's unified, all 512 not just 256 for graphics.

and yeah, both have 512......,well, 360 has 522, 10 of embedded memory but that's about it.

edit-- and yes memory means a sh!t load in the world of electronics, your not going to get anywhere if you don't have memory in your PC, fvck even sound cards comes with memory, plus were do you think all the textures and a lot of the graphics go when it's done with the CPU and the GPU.

[RocketRaiders]

eDRAM makes up for 360's lack of bandwidth. It has just 25.6g/s vs 48.6 g/s on ps3

ever wonder why x360 never outputs at 1080p native?
it is because of slower ram

256mb XR alone>>>>> 1 gig GDDR3

oh wait x360 has just 512mb of slower GDDR3 ram

[gnothe1]

come on sony guys think for a second!! if the PS3 could access as much or the same amount of memory as the 360 we WOULDNT even be having these discussions. look how many times developers stated that when developing a multiplat game they have to make sure they dont go over the memory pool of the PS3.Carmack, ubisoft,EA an a few more have ststed the SAME thing about the PS3. there has not been 1 article posted were a developer has said they had to worry about going over the 360's memory pool.memory is one of the MAIN reasons for a LACK of TEXTURE DETAIL an FRAMERATES, an both of those are things that the PS3 suffer from.

[Tunerboy8732]

When is it gonna be unleashed.Yea the Koenigsegg CCX is the world's fastest production car but without the right driver its nothing.The same goes for the PS3.Who cares how powerful when there hasnt anybody that can fully crack.The 360 is visually more powerful and the games speak for themselves.

[Tapioca Cold]

You're all fools. All of you! I come here everyday to read articles and you guys are always bickering like old married couples. You actually beleive everything you read. Because some person wrote an article online does not make it true. Most of you act like this is written in stone. Fools!

I'm a sony fan and always have been. But none of you are being honest. My PS3 is supposed to be the most powerful computer in the world, but it can't even do two things at once. I love my PS3, but i got to see power to believe power.

[SkyGamer]

First ps3 uses DX9. That is LAST GEN. Next the cell isn't all that great. Not the ones in the ps3 anyway. They have newer versions but STILL ARE NOT TRUE MULTI-PROCESSOR. The cell has 1 PowerPC chip with 7 or 8 SPE's attached to it. So in essence there are 8-9 different things to work with. Now disable one of them for system redundancy and another for the dashboard and whatever if the dashboard and/or systems needs it, so in essence there can only be the power pc chip with 5-6 spe's to work with. The X360 has THREE IDENTICAL power pc chips running DUAL THREAD so in essence there are 6 to work with. True the cell is a LITTLE stronger and they do have faster ram, yes the xdr is fast (don't expect any price drops with the xdr and the rsx as nvidia will not lower the price). There is 10 mb embedded eDRAM which smokes anything the ps3 has. That is one of the X360's secret weapons that allow memory bandwith to transfer at an astonishing 256 gb/s. Just the eDRAM alone.

[iiraymoii]

So does the 360, whats your point?

[robep3]

Your first statement shows you know **CK ALL! PS3 does not use DX9
LOL direct x is microsoft YOU CLOWN.THEN THE SPE'S one disabled to increase yield at fabrication but the rest still available have a look at KZ2 videos 4-5 spe's used NOT ALL running 100% of the time OK!
Then you talk about the edram bandwidth have a look at this for bandwidth

Element Interconnect Bus (EIB)

For the sake of quoting performance numbers, we will assume a Cell processor running at 3.2 GHz, the clock speed most often cited.

At this clock frequency each channel flows at a rate of 25.6 GB/s. Viewing the EIB in isolation from the system elements it connects, achieving twelve concurrent transactions at this flow rate works out to an abstract EIB bandwidth of 307.2 GB/s.

LINK TO EIB
http://www.ibm.com/develope...

Also keep in mind all bandwidths quoted are the theoretical max they don't usually get to the limit ALTHOUGH a lot off sites state that the Cell gets closer to its max output than others do!

Re price drop of xdr & rsx LOL AGAIN when they sell more and reduce fabrication size for RSX which they have it gets CHEAPER more yield lower price SIMPLE economy of scale MATE so cut the bull and do a little more research OK!

[IaMs12]

Yes we know the PS3 is a superior system and Devs need time to learn how to code with it and port for it better and with new RAM and GPUs coming out like water from a spicket every few months of course there would be more to choose from when SONY made the PS3 which came out a Year and Half ago....I think Xbox is doing pretty good against a system that everyone claims to be the Ultimate gaming system ever made... when the Xbox has Hardware in it that is over a year old thats pretty old for hardware now a days

[HelghastGeneral]

All i have to say 360 fanboys go take a look at the new killzone 2 trailer. Its pointless to even think it can be done on 360 the footage from that trailer just blows every game away.

[EnforcerOfTheTruth]

Same like on PC, it doesn't make a difference if you have 1x512mb or 2x256mb, only brainless idiots think otherwise

[Bladestar]

mmm well in terms of (doing the math) yes... 256 x 2 = 512...

but here the thing...
The xbox 360 has 1 x 512 MB GDDR3 (700 MHz) + plus 10 MB embedded DRAM (eDRAM) frame buffer... technically that's not 512MB .. that's 522MB...

PS3 has 1 x 256MB GDDR3 (700MHz) + 256 MB XDR RAM (3.2GHz)...

now the PS3 XDR Ram is a lot faster... but the xbox 360 allows developers to not worry about where to put the game assets they are going to use... with the PS3... developers have to decide where it make sense to put their game... now... Faster does not mean more... if what developers are trying to do requires speed but not a lot of it... the PS3 will perform better than the xbox 360... but no matter how you put it the xbox 360 has more memory.. and this is not including the fact that the PS3 OS footprint uses more of that ram...

http://www.onthexbox.com/fo...

Almost 2 times more than the xbox 360...

also include other features like The standard on-screen keyboard still requires 7MB of memory.

Now I don't want to get into what's better More Ram or faster Ram.. because it depends on the developers... some developers (Depending on their game) would like more ram and the DDR3 (700 MHz) that the PS3 has 256MB and the xbox 360 has 512MB... other would like the speed.... get where I am going with this? Don't think for a second that DDR3 (700Mhz) is a bad thing because is not...

Also take under consideration that not having a unified consistent memory to work with adds complexity to the development... developers need to know when loading assets what goes to the DDR3 and what goes to XDR failure to do so will result on games like EA makes on the PS3... Think of the PS3 memory as a PC ram and the memory in your GPU... somethings are better on the video card others in the PC Ram...

Keep in mind that though PS3 256 + 256 is not just 512... have you try mixing DDR2 + DDR3 or Ram of different speed? PC perform on the lower common denominator.. in order to prevent errors and what not... now that does not happen on the PS3 since developers have control to where they want to put data.. but don't think that they can do it randomly without caring where it goes... memory in the PS3 is different...

[Sanhlami]

I am Sanhlami and I approve of this message.

[InMyOpinion]

More damage control.

[Big Jim]

Enough of the techno-babble, when will the PS3 show me a game with good textures?

[GarandShooter]

If the game holds up to the videos, Little Big Planet is going to blow everything out of the water texture-wise.

[Avto]

Well I had just about enough of this silly tech stuff, I mean look at Uncharted, Tools of Destruction, MGS4 and GT5P X360 got nothing like this so right now I don't give a rats ass how much RAM X360 has the graphics need work.

[power of Green]

I was wondering how long it would take for some pro Sony media outlet/PS3 fanboys to make up and post Bullshit in PS3's defence, I wonder if this type of shaddy fud is one of the most effective tactics Sony depends on when fighting console wars.

[pwnsause]

bullshit? like the bullshit your spitting out right now till your intestines drop out?

[ThatCanadianGuy]

For the love of F*ck POG!

Why dont you do some research? like seriously tho,instead of just browsing through the comment section talking about how it's all bullsh!t,If anything thing is BS it's these anti-sony Articles all poping up right before E3.You sicken me.

Ironic picture actually,that's kinda like you after you take it up the ass from M$ and still keep a smile on your face.

[xhairs9]

I might have to agree with POG, I think I saw Sony slip some funds to these guys...didn't you see it on YouTube?

[AngryHippo]

.....instead of talking all techy, let the games prove the power of the ps3. It shouldnt need ps3 fans to try and justify and try to explain ps3's architechture and how it all works, btw god knows how they seem to know exactly how the ps3 works but there we go.

Just let the games do the talking, and im sure with e3 upon us, they will do just that. PS3 fans need to just calm down and stop getting irritated by every article, if they are happy then why care, if they are getting great games.

[The Lazy One]

if the ones that didn't know what they were talking about stopped talking. Dead serious, I would like sony a lot more if so many people didn't defend them so ignorantly.

Anyone with a decent knowledge of both systems knows the theoretical performance of both is more similar than you'd expect. Yet I still have to deal with fanboys that don't understand the concept of the whole not being the same as the sum of its pieces.

I'm sure next week there will be articles about the quality of the plastic in the PS3's case being better thus negating the 360's GPU.

[BISHOP-BRASIL]

The only reason to people (including developers) still complaining about PS3's RAM is misinformation and laziness.

The thing is, if you ever have thought on how a memory work on your computer, you should actually have learned that we only need bigger memories today is because we can't have that faster without change all ours mobos. You don't have many data that exceed 512MB, actually rarely you'll see a piece of data as big as half this and anyway, your PC can actually deal with big files, cut and administrate it. If you could have 512MB 8 times faster than a 4GB set, they would just virtually deal with the same amount of data on the same time.

But your PS3 is not a PC and we are far away from the old DRAM and SRAM. Give "Cell DMA" a little research and you'll see for yourself, the way the PS3 uses memory is way different from the usual PC, not only a CISC vs RISC difference, PS3 (CBEA) is even too much different from most PowerPCs, even both being based on old IBM POWER architecture.

If people could be a bit more smarter and a much less lazy, they could understand you can't just compare the fact that your PC needs much memory to game for assume your console should just too. They are two different pieces of hardware, that the relation between them date as back as 1970. PS3 and PC share historical and origin matters, even one can use advances achieved by the other, but they just happen to work way too different, for different applications.

Even if you want to go idiotic way and make simple comparisons, PS3 just happens to have split memory. OK, what the big deal? One of its memories is more than four times faster as 360's memory. Let's say, PS3 can deal with 5GB of data in one hour, 360 will just deal with 2GB in the same time. The only way of not getting this results would be with data bigger than 256MB, which PS3 would just have to use part of the memory to administrate, breaking it and remounting it. But as you can see, there is room to doing so.

And I'm not pointing it as a bad thing, 360 is also different from PS3, maybe it someway just need less data and that is enough, or PS3 needs more memory for other applications, or whatever. You can't just compare it for memory alone.

I really hope Sony put a bit more confidence in the next Playstation hardware and just happen to not have any GPU or independent memory, just put everything you need on that CPU, power it up (more parallel units, more cache memory), so devs will actually have to learn how to work with it, instead of trying to push PC and oldgen like developments and complaining it's difficult (for god's sake, if you are trying to use/focus on complement hardware, instead of using the meant to be used hardware/architecture, just because that way is more familiar to you, for sure it will be difficult). Sony would just not give the option to devs, they did this time and look how this turned out... For sure there is some benefit, like being able to receive ports, getting into multiplat games, but I think they can stand on their own (if they actually deliver the dev kits not too late this next time) until devs get it.

[Saigon]

finally an article that explains what i already know...

[Equinoxe_7]

I think it´s kind of childish to say, see we have MGS4, and Ucharted, what does the Xbox360 have?

I still think Gears of War is one of the best looking games today.

We should have gameplay in mind, and the fact that the enigine is the tool, that makes a game look very good.

For me a game is fantasy, it doesn´t have to look like the real world.

I can´t wait to se Final Fantasy, Team Ico game, Killzone 2 on the playstation 3.

The Xbox360 just have the lead in multiplatform, but I think it will change.

Another thing is, a game can only look as good an artist(drawer) can make it, and what the console is cable of, it´s seems you talk so much about spec, but not what the artist(drawer) have done, it´s about creativity.

[D-ROB]

Just deal with it - PS3 rules!!! It took some time, but we are starting to see the superiority of the PS3 come about now...RIP X360, never liked you and never will!

[Siqness]

So then explain why the 360 gets higher framerates...

http://www.eurogamer.net/ar...

[Captain Tuttle]

In before the first "lazy developer" comment.

[MNicholas]

Most multiplatform games have teams of 50-60 develop on the 360 for a couple of years then have a second team of 5-10 port it to the PS3 in a few months. Just ask any industry insider. You can find them (from a variety of companies) on Beyond3d.com

It's not because of "laziness" it's because of cost. It's a lot cheaper to hire 5-10 people to do a quick and dirty "port" than to have two seperate development teams of 50-60 develop for two different platforms. The reason why they start on 360 is because it came out a year earlier and developers know how to max out the hardware.

[Siqness]

but they`ll never be able to max out the harware of the ps3..Thats for sure

[xfader]

SONY has failed to deliver promises...a.k.a. HYPES..
1080p games, 120fps, 8 times high-end PC power, etc...

why proud of GT5p if the cars are "invincible"??? how about you guys ask SONY to add "damage system" like forza 2?? then we'll see about the graphics again...

[Mr Fancy Pants]

because Prologue it's just a demo? a demo that beats Forza 2 ass... wow.

There are some 1080p games; real 1080p not upscaled like the x360 ones.

"8 times high-end PC power"? Well for its time even the x360 was more powerful then any high-end PC two years ago but man, almost every month comes a new GPU or something to upgrade computers. that's why consoles > PC

120fps; sony just said that it could be possible. "That it could be..."

"Sony Computer Entertainment president Ken Kutaragi said he expects the PS3 to be capable of running games at a stunning 120fps"- http://www.gamespot.com/new...

i don't see sony promising anything.

[pwnsause]

"why proud of GT5p if the cars are "invincible"??? how about you guys ask SONY to add "damage system" like forza 2?? then we'll see about the graphics again..."

because polyphony was not allowed to do realistic damage to real cars, car companies before saw this as a bad thing, they would not be able to market their cars. Now they are allowing it. Polyphony has a very tight relationship with car companies, its so tight, they have access to everything that Forza doesnt have. you dont read up on history or research do you?

[IchibanKoroshiya]

It's a myth that they weren't allowed to do damage to the cars in Gran Turismo. An absolute flat out lie. They couldn't do it at the time on PS1 because there wasn't enough power under the hood to make it do deformations; all of it was used to drive the simulation and it was a f**ing excellent simulation at that. By the time they got to hardware that COULD do deformations it just never got put in there.

There were/are plenty of other games that came out with Ferrari's and Porches and every other marque you can think of that allowed them to get scratched, battered and smashed. Polyphony never bothered until now because no one had mentioned the car deformation until the lack of such FX were criticised in GT5P. As if having a damaged Ferarri would somehow lessen the exclusivity of the marque and damage sales; puh-lease....

For what it's worth. Destruction Derby on PS1 did do deformations in game but obviously it didn't have the physics of GT. What it did have though was Ken Kutaragi moaining that the lazy British developers didn't leave debris on the track; an impossibility given the technical specs of the hardware at the time.

[DarkCowMoo]

Both article are pure fan boy crap.

With all the respect, I'm not a fan boy of neither consoles, but taking a super CPU computer, adding an average+ video card, but not enough ram (although it's a super fast ram or something) would probably make a crappy computer because of the bottleneck. The Xbox also has it's own problems like crapy CPU, but crazy RAM and Graphic card which also makes a bottleneck.
Both consoles are kind of equal.

[FPS nut]

Good god (rolls eyes) ram is a PS3 handicap, the PS3 isn't superman.

get over it, go play a game or somthing.

[SL1M DADDY]

And Kojima was laughing all the way to the bank having developed a game that would otherwise prove them all wrong.

Let the games do the talking, at this point, they have shown us that the RAM in the PS3 is plenty sufficient for some great looking games and more to come.

[FPS nut]

How?

[Voiceofreason]

LOL@ the kids who still think an almost 4 year old processor is the most powerful thing on the market..Anyway as far as sharing goes, it sucks on the PC. You can buy a PC's now with integrated graphics cards. If you have 2 gigs of RAM they'll use around 256-512 for graphics. Sounds very similar to this. Except for one thing. It becomes very clear when you replace these integrated cards with true graphics cards that it is the inferior method.

[Time_Is_On_My_Side]

Just a while ago people were saying the PlayStation 3 is like a Viper with a scooter engine, well something like that. Now everyone is saying oh, so the next PlayStation will have zero RAM (Random Access Memory)? Luckily I'm one of the gamers who thinks for their own instead of letting others think for me.

My previous post on PlayStation 3's RAM HTML: http://www.n4g.com/NewsCom-...

[midgard229]

yeah sure mgs4 possible on 360......with like 15 discs and longer load times than halo 3 and ninja gaiden 2 combined......my goodness why does halo take so long to load a multiplayer map lol

honestly no 360 game comes close to the quality of ps3 exclusives like mgs4, heavenly sword, ratchet, and uncharted, what gears is closest thing and unreal looks better lol

[FPS nut]

14 of those disc would be just cutsceens

[Bladestar]

lol.. do not talk about load times when trying to make the PS3 seem better than the xbox 360.. because it has nothing to do with Ram... there is a reason why 90% of the games now require installs for the PS3... and in most cases the games load same or better on the xbox 360..

[Time_Is_On_My_Side]

90% are you sure and there is roughly 168 released PlayStation 3 titles. 90% of 168 is 151.2 / 151 of 168 games for the PlayStation 3 requires an install, wrong. The only reason why developers are installing the game because they aren't streaming the game properly from the Blu-ray disc to the PlayStation 3. With exclusive I think it's due to the fact that they still need to learn more about the architecture.

While the XBOX 360 is using old technology the PlayStation 3 is using new technology. If Blu-ray was on the XBOX 360 loading time would be so horrible because it isn't designed to read fast enough. It's like 480i, 720i, and 1080i vs. 480p, 720p, and 1080p. Progressive is the better technology but people still don't have enough tech to make it mainstream. Interlace is the XBOX 360 and Progressive is the PlayStation 3.

[miked808]

So powerful but yet no Damage.

[Silvia007]

who are not lucky enough to own both systems and still continue to defend their system. Well being one who does infact have both systems, I must say that both are very, very capable systems but the PS3 has a slight edge from the current games I see right now. However, that could change or it may not. Just in case some wonder what tv I'm using to make the comparisons, both systems are hooked up to a 60" 1080p TV via HDMI. As of right now, I wouldn't give up either system. So there people, so what if one has a bigger gun than the other, both provide a great gamming experience that can't be had anywhere else... well maybe on my PC but that's a different story. So what's the conclusion? You don't need to defend your system, it can do that by itself much better than you ever can. Those who don't have a console and bashes it is just blowing smoke out of their butts so it don't matter anyway what that persons says, best thing you can do for that person is get him a butt plug.

[militant07]

wow this my last comment stupid assholes
im gona read news and ingnore poopstations 3 fanboys

"its will be best" " its gona be best", i wounder when that time coming it was 2007 but delayed to 2008 and now to 2009

ps3 is going to best console this generation when we move to next generation or mabye 3 next generation "10th"

[gnothe1]

thats been my claim, having BOTH systems hooked up to a 60in 1080p sony SXRD HDTV. but i think the 360 outputs better looking games. now since thats your setup, I wanna see a PIC SHOWING both systems an a 60in 1080p set an I'll do the same. because when you said the PS3 games look better thats kinda hard to believe considering you have both systems. what games!!

95% multiplat games look better

MGS4 characters look awesome but the environment textures an sometimes in the cut scenes the textures look horrid.

so I'm gonna call you on your claim of having both systems on a 60 in 1080p tv.

[MNicholas]

By a large margin.

Why?

PS3 has 24 texture units.
360 has 16 texture units.

Developers have stated that the only thing keeping them from using far better textures on the PS3 is because they have not started using CELL to compress textures. The ones that do use CELL for texture compression get ridiculously good textures. Both these games have much better textures than any game on the 360.

Uncharted: Some of the best shading, shadows and textures ever seen
http://youtube.com/watch?v=...

MGS4: Most sophisticated lighting and shadows on console
http://youtube.com/watch?v=...

That's not to say the Xbox360 doesnt have it's strengths. While it's hardware isn't as powerful, there's a potentially more potent advantage in that the world's most successful software company, Microsoft, does a fabulous job helping developers make games. This reduces development cost and hence reduces risk and enables even smaller developers (who might have an innovative new idea) to make games on the 360. As a result I'm sure we will continue to see more 3rd party games on the 360 and perhaps even more innovation as long as Microsoft is able to get 360 sales back on track.

The problem for Microsoft is that they are trailing the PS3 in 2008 sales by over 33%.

Of course, if I decided to start a gaming software company for consoles, I might just skip both PS3 and 360 and go after the Wii. It has an install base that's not only larger but growing twice as fast as the PS3's and three times as fast as the 360's. The hardware is simple and well known. It has an awesome and easy to use controller that anyone can use.

[IchibanKoroshiya]

Seriously. If I hear one more stupid remark about sales figures I'll go mental. Want to hear something about Sales?

Overall, PS3 is STILL 6 Million units behind the install base of the XBOX 360 and if they continue to ONLY outsell 360 by their current margins they'll never actually catch up. I think its 10k units a month between them now.

Furthermore, in terms of Software sales, the 360 trounces the PS3. Firstly let's look at the multi-platform games:

COD4 on 360 = 6.1 Million Units Sold.
COD4 on PS3 = 3.3 Million Units Sold.

GTA4 on 360 = 5.6 Million Units Sold.
GTA4 on PS3 = 4 Million Units Sold.

Rainbow Six Vegas 2 on 360 = 1.57 Million Units Sold
Rainbow Six Vegas 2 on PS3 = 670K Units Sold

After a week

Battlefield Bad Company on 360 = 332K Units Sold
Battlefield Bad Company on PS3 = 145K Units Sold.

It's a continuing trend where all multiplatform games are just tearing the ass of PS3's sales figures. For all these supposed hardware sales increases, the software sales still lag WAY behind.

Still don't believe me? Let's look at the "exclusive titles"...the supposed system sellers and the games that people love to say "blow everything away". Take for example, two of the arguably biggest franchises on each platform:

Metal Gear Solid 4 - After 3 weeks of sales figures = 2 Million Units Sold.
Halo 3 - After 3 weeks of sales figures = 4.9 Million Units Sold.

Ooh how about these two big exclusives.

Gran Turismo 5 Prologue - After 29 Weeks = 1.8 Million Units Sold
Gears of War - After 29 Weeks = 4 Million Units Sold.

----------------------------

So it begs the question. If Sony are selling machines at a rate greater than Microsoft. Why isn't their software sales reflecting this?

2 Reasons.

1) Alot of people own both systems; multi-platform games invariably are bought on 360. They're always better.

2) People are buying PS3 but not for games. Rather they're buying it as an inexpensive BluRay player.

----------------------------

As for the PS3's technical capabilities. It's not a problem with RAM but the over-complexity of making games on it. That's why it's taken so long for companies like Naughty Dog and Guerilla are taking so long to get their games out. Luckily for them, they have the "backing" of Sony who've paid top dollar for their exclusives. However most studios are reluctant to commit to PS3 development because the sales just plain suck...

[DJ]

PS3 is less than 5 million units behind 360 for worldwide install base (according to Microsoft), and Metal Gear Solid 4 passed the 3 million sold mark a long time ago. Most of the figures are for North America only, which is why we see the 2:1 ratio in multiplatform sales. It's because the install base for 360 to PS3 is (you guessed it) 2:1 in North America. Why you chose those titles though is beyond me. You could have just as easily said that Devil May Cry sold about 800K more units on the PS3 than the 360. But whatever.

Install base is one factor, but Achievements on XBL are another. This is why Sony rolled out their Trophy system. It's a way of drawing in people to purchase the PS3 version over the 360 version of a title. And there's no reason to keep lying. Multiplats are completely identical gaming experiences now that devs have had enough time with PS3 and 360 hardware.

Oh, and the "PS3 is only a blu-ray player" comments are a few years old. Learn something new. PS3 isn't that much more difficult to learn than the 360. It just launched (and was finalized) about a year later. Naughty Dog got their flagship title out within one year, and Guerilla pushed back Killzone so that Killzone and Resistance wouldn't eat into each others' sales. Both games have huge online components, which is where the fear stems from. I know I stopped playing other titles for about 4 months after Call of Duty 4 came out.

[JBaby343]

You got owned. Yes Uncharted and MGS4 do have the best textures on consoles. No other games compare.

[joeynox]

Does it matter who has faster ram or a better cpu because neither will beused to its full power . Also the only game that can say looks better than a 360 game by a small margin is mgs4. so all those spe's and rambus isnt speaking for much because devs aint using them.Also I do remember rambus being used for intel mobo's a while back because it was light years faster than ddr but where is it today.Its in the back seat because its crap in real world but great on paper. Also this whole thing with the ps3's ram has been discussed by tech sites and devs and crap day 1 ps3 launch,I dont need a PS# fan site telling me how better it is because if i wanna hear the same about the 360 i guess i can go to team xbox or xbox .com and find out how much better the 360 is there. Get a real site like pc world, max pc, or some thing liek that , that actually knows something about this stuff

[joeynox]

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.

in the end it all comes down to how devs can use these two systems.

saying the 360 isn't as powerful is retarded! the cell is 1 core that has 7 small spe's, Xbox 360 has three general purpose CPU cores which gives it more general computing. the ati gfx in the 360 has more memory to use than the rsx and has more pipes to go through.Also the system memoyr in both are 512, but the ps3 is limited to 256 for the rsx and 256 for the cell. The 360 has 512 shared which means if the the cpu's only need 100 then theirs 400 more fore the gfx ,so yes the 360 has the upper hand there but once again its how devs use the hardware.The ps3 till this point only has 2 games that take advantage of the hardware and thats uncharted ( i love this game, its the ps3's best game ) and mgs4.

I have both consoles and like them both alot,They both have their faults and guirks but are great systems.

[Bladestar]

tell them joeynox.. you seem to know what you are talking about.. bubbles!

[MNicholas]

This is incorrect. The 256 GB/s is not a part of "system bandwidth". In fact, it doesnt even add to GPU bandwidth.

"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."

EDRAM bandwidth (256 GB/s) is essentially internal to the GPU and neither the GPU nor the CPU can read data from it. Hence it cannot store textures, vertices, or other game data. To be able to contribute to "system bandwidth" it has to be able to store graphics and game data.

In fact, all that the tiny 10MB EDRAM is good for is raw uncompressed frame-buffer tiles. It's not an effective design, which is why it hasn't caught on for high performance graphics cards.

It does somewhat compensate for the lack of system bandwidth in the 360 architecture by reducing the GPU's write-to-RAM requirements. However, there's little it can do to compensate for the limited CPU bandwidth available.

[MNicholas]

I'll address the comment about the CPU comparison.

Your post mirrors the "article" by Major Nelson.

According to IBM, who designed both the CELL and the 360 CPU and don't give a crap about PS3 vs 360 flame wars, the CELL is vastly more powerful in both graphics and general processing.

Just go to IBM.com and read what their tests have revealed.

[IchibanKoroshiya]

And since Cell isn't a graphics processor but a number cruncher, you've just made yourself look like an idiot.

The idea is Cell can take the load off the RSX by performing calculations the GPU would normally do thereby leaving it free to do other things. The reality of the situation though is drastically different from the concept on paper since taking the load of the GPU then reduces performance elsewhere; catch 22.

Bear in mind that Frames Per Second is NOT just a calculation of how quickly you draw to the screen but also how many times in a second your game samples inputs, performs AI Calculus, plays sounds. Everything.

[robep3]

You cant add bandwidth of individual components to get an overall fig you thick **ck.
The EIB in the cell has a higher bandwidth than the edram for all the info from spu's to whiz about inside the cell so if you added all the bandwidths on PS3 it would be higher but that would be stupid like YOU!

[JBaby343]

The flex I/O has more bandwidth than anything on the 360. Also if the PS3 is as starved for bandwidth as it is for RAM then why is Heavenly Sword rendered at native 720p with 4X AA? According to you guys that shouldn't be possible especially with so many characters, interactions, advanced lighting, etc.

Look at KZ2 footage to see the PS3 deficits in action. I have no problem with its "weaknesses".

[Hercules]

i thought we already knew this...ok shared ram...forget about that, tell me how to use the RSX in linux..then i will be happy

[MNicholas]

It's great that Sony made PS3 an open platform so we can run Linux and use any brand accessories but I wish they would enable atleast limited access to the GPU in Linux. I can understand they don't want people hacking the PS3 but even if they gave us limited access, where all requests run through the hyper-visor we could do amazing things.

I have reached my limit for responses to this article so I apologize for not being able to continue to clear things up for you guys on this topic.

[tk]

I have a PS3, love the architecture, but this article over simplifies the tech. The 256MB XDR is not "freely" access as he puts it. There is some latency.

But split memory is better. Just when textures comes up that is too big for 256MB, then some other techniques must be used, and not all devs know how. Which is why some ports will be bad until it is common best practice.

[B-Rein]

PS3 is jus the BEST!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! !!!!!!!!
Im lucky to own 1
unluky to own a 360 with rrod :( (M$ wont help then i ditched it)

[kopicha]

cell is indeed most if not one of the most powerful processor on the market. xenos is surely no where near it. i am not saying xenos is weak, it can be good at its own stand point but if you are trying to say its better or even on par with cell then i would completely disagree with that. lets just take a look at things thats been going around some time ago. when people are trying to build a super computer that require a lot of processing power for heavy computational task. why wouldn't they cluster up 300 xbox360 but they rather use ps3 in the same situation given that xbox is "always" being claim by fanboy that its cheaper? why on earth people would want to pay more when they could pay less for something better? it clearly shows that they are not some ppl with small brains and only think and act like a fanboy trying to protect themselves over something that even thou its a fact which they cant accept it. this is not meant to start some console war s**t but just that ppl really just need to wake up sometimes. its no point to fight against something that is fact just because you want to win.

[FrozenFrag]

Its funny how all these so called "gamers" know a crazy amount of tech about their games consoles. If their games consoles were so amazing then why arent they playing them now?

[Wraith001]

yeah, i kinda agree with you on that but not in a direct sense. I have both systems and to be honest barring great visuals on both systems ive been pretty disappointed with this gen.

Maybe i just been a gamer to long, but i get real bored with most of the games nowadays i always feel like ive been there done that and worn the T-Shirt.

Same copied ideas over and over again barr a few innovations, enough with who's got the most power give me game play for a change.

[tk]

The profile of many gamers like myself -
I am a programmer of around 20 years experience - not in the console indutry though - but I always loved tinkering with the insides of the machine that I buy. I bought the PS3 to run Linux on it...

Many console owners are technology enthuisiasts... and the PS3 really is interesting for that portion of the crowd...

[DJ]

But it did break down how the two memory pools are actually unified. Why the author didn't mention the XDR Memory lookup system on RSX though is beyond me. Even more entertaining than the article though are the people jumping in and saying "NO! 360 is more powerful. I swear!!" LOL. It's like a Wii owner saying that their system's more powerful than a 360. It's that embarrassing to look at.

[TABSF]

well all the experts are saying that XDR (extreme data rate) RAM is quicker than gddr4 and its only competitor is gddr5 which has a bandwidth is 3.6 GB/s 900MHz X 2 = 1.8GHz and XDR is 3.2 GB/s 400Mhz x 2 = 800Mhz.

the reason it is doubled is because the memory is Double Data Rate (DDR) and Dual Inlined Memory Moduel (DIMM)

[Si-Pie]

Interesting article! There of course is alot more to it than that but I dont usually comment on here as there is too many arm chair experts about so I like to keep what I know to myself! But what I will say is no matter what any side say there are some fantastic games out and that are coming out to both systems! Enjoy the games and stop arguing thats what I say!

[the_RED_SCARE]

What's the point of trying to explain hardware specs to console fanboys? It's like watching retards hump a door knob when they try to break down hardware features in PS3's and 360's.

"We have a bigger hard drive, that means PS3 games look better"

Games that have seen dual release on both PS3 and 360 have almost always looked and performed better on the 360.

[DJ]

Since then though, just about every multiplatform title is equal on both platforms. A few are superior on PS3 (GTA IV, DMC, Burnout), but devs try pretty hard to keep the platforms even.

[moja]

I'm sorry, but this article seems like a platform-elevated comment. Nothing new here than inciting banter.

Anyway, to succumb to the peer pressure, I'll add that both systems bring intriguing potential to this console generation, and it's the 'other side' you detest (that means both of you) that snaps up units and makes these discussions possible. Developers will continue to refine their exploitation of our sacred boxes, and compete for our lunch money.

[carjrix]

ps3fanboys will always believe what SONY has promised to them and SONY will never tell them the truth about PS3.. so sad!!

[PS3thedestroyer]

PS3 IS THE BEST CONSOLE EVER, XBOX 360 IS INFERIOR, OH AND YOU ALL NEED TO STOP ACTING LIKE A BUNCH OF SISSY'S AND GET LAID OR SOMETHING.

[the_RED_SCARE]

God, your comment just wreaks of stupidity. The more people like you talk, the worse you make all PS3 owners look. Hopefully your PS3 burns down your house with your 13 year old butt inside of it.

[gk07]

know sony made a better console this time around hooray for all of us ps3 owners, i never gave the 360 a chance .

[pornflakes]

Yes the PS3 is the best hardware ok.. but the 360 has the best dev support, best software, best online service with working archivments.. We still hold the highest attach rate since a console launch and we will still get the best multi games.

So go on ps3boys... yes you have the best peace of hardware that cant show ANYTHING not even in your GOTY game. Movie Gear Solid 4.

[CouchKing0]

Pornflakes I need some links that proves everything that you just said is true =/

[IchibanKoroshiya]

DJ, Give me an ounce of whatever you are smoking.

XBOX 360 - Total Sales to Date: 19.54 Million Units
PS3 - Total Sales to Date: 13.84 Million Units.

More or less 6 Million; at the rate they are selling now and provided sales of the 360 decrease, which they aren't doing, it'll take Sony 3 YEARS TO CATCH UP. This is all based on global sales.

Cold Hard Facts. Furthermore,

1) The Sales for Metal Gear Solid 4 until the 28th June is 2.1 Million Units as confirmed by vgcharts, develop magazine, and MCV. All trade and industry publications. It's not touched 3 Million units by a long shot but lemme guess you're quoting Sony here. The same company that said 1080p for all games, 120FPS and 4D? LMFAO.

2) Devil May Cry 4 sold nowhere NEAR 800K more units on the PS3 than the 360 since they only sold 1.2 million units on it in the first place. Oh and for the record, the 360 version sold 1 Million. Not that striking when you compare the rediculous ratios of other games i mentioned; especially the games which were supposed to be system sellers and the games that every PS3 owner wanted.

3)No reason to keep lying about what? It's a fact that multiplatform games are BETTER on 360. John Carmack, the man who made the Doom engine is just one of the highly respected developers who've gone on record to state that. You telling me that you know more than the man who made the Doom 3 engine? Or how about the guys at Epic who've stated time and again that Unreal 3 works better on 360s hardware? Hmm? Or maybe Infinity Ward, a company of highly talented programmers and designers who've publicly stated that the PS3 version of COD4 was pushing the machine to it's limits? Or how about EA who've pretty much admitted that their games run better on Microsofts hardware? The only person "lying" here is you; to yourself.

4)Naughty Dog haven't got their flagship title out. Ratchet and Clank isn't it. Jesus, if it is they better worry. it's only sold 1.2 million units.

5)Guerilla haven't held back for sales reasons, of course you won't believe it but they've had to have nearly FOUR YEARS to make one game. They coulda released it a year ago. But hey, if it's one of the PS3's must have system sellers i'm sure it'll sell somewhere in the region of...oooh...2 Million units lol.

6)Trophy System? You think that's going to sell systems? Grasping...at...straws....are. ..we???

Look, if people were buying PS3 to be anything other than a Blu Ray player, you'd be seeing a whole load more PS3 games selling. They aren't and ultimately that's what developers use to guage whether or not they'll invest in the licence. Most games only just about break even, it's only the big hitters that sell 5 Million units plus that turn a real profit, (see GTA4), and PS3 isn't a lucrative platform. Simple.

[Equinoxe_7]

Hmm I think you make it too simple, and your statement is too old, the Playstation 3 is more than a Blu ray player.

The Xbox360 came out when the world economy where good, now it´s pretty bad, the Playstation 3 came out at the end of the good cycle.

Another thing is, when, and before the Playstation 3 came out, Sony still have focus on Playstation 2 and still have, and 1 year before the Playstation 3 came out Sony introduced PSP.

The Playstation 2 have sold over 100 mill

PSP over 20 mill

You are also forgetting that the competition is much harder today, than years back, Microsoft is paying much more to get gamers attention, and the Wii where introduced nearly the same date as Playstation 3

Xbox360 also have a year head start.

But you can hang me up on this, Playstation 3 will pass the Xbox360 in sales next year, you can be sure about that.

Why Sony doesn´t release Killzone 2 this fall is because of Resistance 2 and Gears of War 2 is coming this fall, that´s why.

[IchibanKoroshiya]

Yeh it's simple. And it's the truth.

Arguing that the world economy is different now so, therefore, PS3 games don't sell as much is retarded when you're quite happy to quote that PS3 outsells 360 every month. Similarly, if the global recession were a factor you'd see a similar slump in 360 games sales and you don't. By your logic I could argue that 360 will sell more than PS3 again once the recession has passed. Not happening. Those sales figures aren't going to change and at that rate you're talking THREE YEARS before getting anywhere near the 360's numbers. Bear in mind, people haven't just stopped buying Microsofts box.

And yeh the PS3 IS more than a Blu Ray Player; it's also a poorly supported console. A good portion of the people buying it are doing so FOR blu ray. How else can you explain a console user base of 13.8 million and such low software sales?

[Equinoxe_7]

IchibanKoroshiya:

If I could answer your silly questions I would be billionaire right now, why does the Wii sell so well, but low software sales, hmm?

The price is also a factor you can´t ignore, but I can ask you, why haven´t Xbox360 sold more, maybe RROD is the answer?

Playstation 3 will pass the Xbox360 before the 3 years timeframe that´s for sure.

Little Big Planet will sell over 2 mill, and will be a console seller.

[IchibanKoroshiya]

When did that happen? The last I checked, (which was about 10 minutes ago), Super Smash Bros Brawl had sold more than any game on PS3 has and it's not even been released in all of Nintendos markets yet.

Super Smash Bros has hit 5.5 million copies sold.
Super Mario Galaxy is pushing 7 million in sales.
Zelda: Twighlight Princess is just under 5 million units in sales.

Please, get your facts straight. And seriously, stop living in a dream world.

As for Little Big Planet..wow..2 million units eh? You would consider 2 million copies sold a big success eh?

[Equinoxe_7]

And maybe I should say to you stop being a smartass, maybe the lower price on Wii console, making the sale higher on software, I don´t know.

And just because I say Little Big Planet can sell over 2 mill, what I think is fine for a game, it doesn´t mean it could sell more, but I know many Playstation 3 owners talking about the game so maybe it will sell over 5 mill, and that´s pretty good.

[the_RED_SCARE]

Where are you getting your facts from? Which fictional statistical database are you looking at to guarantee the PS3 will outsell the 360? The last time I checked, NOBODY can accurately predict that. Little Big Planet will not single handedly win the console war. Who wants to spend 400 bucks on a system just for a little kid game? I have a PS3 and I could care less about this game.

As a PS3 owner, I have come to notice that PS3 fanboys are the worst. They will blindly defend their console to the ends of the Earth based on spin articles they read in their pro-Sony fantasy worlds. They pull out ridiculous statements like this. The only real good argument that I have EVER heard for PS3 was BluRay...that's it! PSN is a joke compared to XBL (and as long as it's free) will never even come close to XBL.

[gnothe1]

you speak the truth. many sony guys are forgetting the fact that MS is fighting the PLAYSTATION BRAND with the xbox, an their also fighting sony's HYPE GHOST. so with this being a PLAYSTATION its should be selling at Wii type rates if not better. the PlayStation is a good system but way to many people fell for the lies an hype that sony promised, even when the games are right there in their face looking an running better on the 360 they still wanna say the PS3 is superior. they wanna blame the systems short comings on the developers rather than the system itself. an this guy DJ continues to CLAIM the DMC4,COD4, an GTA4 looks better on the PS3 when its been shown countless times the the 360 version produces sharper graphics an better frame rates, my question is how do developers continue to make games perform better even if its only by 3% on the supposedly weaker 360.

[harrisonxxi]

It becomes quite obvious that quite a few people in the thread know nothing about what they are talking about. First. The rsx' memory runs at 1400 mhz (700x2) since its gddr3. Second, xdr (ie ddr5 with more bandwidth) is vastly superior to the 512 memory inside of the xbox 360 for the sheer fact that it process VASTLY more information over time than the xbox360s memory. (As for anyone who wants to say differently, i challenge you to build 2 computers with identical processor speeds, same FSB and then stick ddr400 (4g in 2 sticks) and ddr800 (2g in 2 sticks) and see which gets better benchmarks, or even track the memory bandwidth.) As to people who compare science data to graphics, i hate to break it to you, the big thing that bogs down most gpu's is physics calculations (this is why high end gpus have seperate gpu/shader/texture calculators), and guess what is the biggest things that scientific calculations are used for (give you a hint it starts with p). In the end its all assembler, and it doesnt matter whether its my nephews scribbles on a scanner or high end graphics. Shared memory has been being used sucessfully for 20 years or so, and there is NO difference in speed as long as the FSB is equal or higher to what is being used by the processor (in this case figure that the rsx runs far less than 3.2ghz).

Also, tri-core models are notoriously unstable, if you want an example look at AMDs tricore phenoms, ESPECIALLY with microsoft's OS'. Also you cant compare a cel processor to a conventional processor because its like comparing apples to oranges, they are completely different in how they work and process data.