Aw come on, you're not dead yet.
Cell's dead baby, Cell's dead. Even in its final form. *spawn*
- Thread starter Shifty Geezer
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- cell is dead
Sorry, reading back I was a bit ambiguous.
We just wanted to buy the cell chip and solder it onto a video processing board of our own design (non PC based). Have a play with it, see what it could do.
But unfortunately it was impossible to buy the chips on their own, I think at the time we were looking they were supplied fitted to blades only, but that was a long time ago and memory may not be 100%.
Their policy may well have changed over the years, but by then we would have already moved to other technologies.
Riddlewire
Regular
My favorite B3D quote.
Even the new DBZ opted to bring back Frieza instead of Cell as the big old school baddie. Cell is dead.
Good ole Vince. Gods, I miss that guy, I really do.
That's the wrong way to look at it. PS2 was incredibly primitive when it came to rendering. However, it was programmable and versatile, somewhat akin to the software rasteriser. In some ways it was better; in others, worse. Of course, the evolution of the VU's could be considered the SPUs of the Cell. This is another factor to say Cell2 should make an appearance. Have a completely customised GPU with shader units for rendering, and SPUs for all the geometry processing, coupled with a memory-structure-traversal processor to accelerate structured lookups (raytracing, cone tracing, trees, etc). It'd be the world's greatest, fastest architecture ever, and only require devs to balance three or four different processor ISAs.
I love you.
They lack the cahoonas. Needs me to take charge!
Megadrive1988
Veteran
I wonder what kind of beast the PS3 would have been if Sony wasnt involving other businesses into the hardware. The thing was costing more than 800 each to manufacture with compromises on performance to allow the inclusion of BR and what not. If they had a better GPU in there it would have kicked ass
We will never know. The huge bulk of the price was supposedly the NV GPU and the blu-ray drive. Expensive XDR memory aswell as a large footprint of the whole system. I do not think it was just the GPU's fault, it was weak by the time the PS3 launched, but the Cell was overly complicated and quite weak too. It was very fast at certain tasks, just not so much for gaming (as a CPU). Sony had a different vision for the Cell CPU, adoption beyond the PS3 etc. It never happened.
The memory pools where quite limiting too supposedly. It was just a terrible console hardware-wise all around (as Dictator noted). On top of that it was expensive and hard to code for. It was quite successfull anyways, the power of the brand/PS2 successes before it, and the might and skills of the studios under Sony's belt.
I dont think CELL was weak at all. Just overly complicated.
Its crazy how Cell leveraged the GPU's weaknesses. I m sure games like Uncharted 3 and GoW3 were the result of Cell being used proberly and wouldnt have been surprised if these were impossible on an XBOX. I still cant believe how good GoW3 looks on a PS3 to this day
Just like they did with the OG XBOX, NVIDIA overcharged for the GPU, and with the PS3 they charged too much for little which probably made Sony make additional compromises on the GPU to reduce costs. The console design didnt appear like it had a design focus to bring a balanced and best gaming experience at an affordable price, but rather a frankenstein mess of hardware parts aiming to rush too many functionalities too soon that Kutaragi was envisioning for the platform in order to take over entertainment, computing and gaming. They transformed the Playstation into a trojan horse for CELL adoption, BR and a computing machine to replace Windows, and felt safe that the gaming brand was strong enough to maintain PS2's momentum.
If Sony focused on a developer friendly environment, gaming performance and good cost management, the PS3 might have been a focused gaming powerhouse, released on time, sold at a good price, cheaper to produce, and thus prevent MS from establishing theirselves better in the market. They wouod have been selling like PS2
That would have allowed Sony to fulfill steadilly and gradually their future vision with the next generation of consoles
But they overestimated themselves stupidly and underestimated competition
The GPU that Nvidia sold Sony was the best possible GPU that Sony could have put into their console at that time. That time, that die, that power budget was pretty tight. And Sony left it late.
MS got the banger GPU, because they helped shape it. MS and ATI were talking. Sony were coming down from a high dose of copium.
Switch got a fine APU, as fine as Nintendo deserved. The denial machine against the hardware pre launch was incredible, even though B3D regulars could see what was happening.
And who's laughing now? Nintendo. And good on them. Banger of a handheld.
Do you mean Opium?
