AnandTech article up (X360 vs PS3)

[j^aws]

...
Drakengard was developed by a 17 person team from Cavia. And one of the first visually stunning titles for the PS2, The Bouncer, was made by only 26 guys from Dream Factory.
...

I believe one of those very guys is in this thread!

 

[Atsim]

Ok, I've read the article many times, and to me it seems like the two consoles are pretty even with either one becoming stronger depending on how developers use their strengths.

However, there seem to be people who took the article and says it means the PS3 "owns" the xbox360. People like www.majorynos.com but also some people I chat with.

Am I missing something in this article? As far as I know they don't say one is stronger than the other... Could someone clear this up so I can get these people off my back?

 

[ERP]

The problem with dynamic hinting in tree traversal is as far as I can see you have to do the same amount of work to do the hint as you do to do the branch, so I'm not sure I see how it saves you in this case.

Depends on the type (and amount) of work we're doing at each node I guess.

and the L2 cache bails you out.

Even when the L2 latency is more then 2x that of a branch mispredict?
I think we already know from experience what effect latencies of roughly this size have on an in-order CPU if you don't take special care with the code. And that was with much shorter pipelines to boot...

No I think you're right overall, if you want to get good performance out of either CPU it's going to be more like programming a PS2 than a GameCube.

There is even a pretty good argument that can be made for setting an X360 CPU's up to look more like Cell (lock cache banks to each of the processors and treat them like the local memory). Although I personally think this is throwing away X360's biggest strength.

IMO with a single task in isolation the SPU is not going to run general code faster than an X360 core. Of course that doesn't take into account loadsa threads contending for the bus, or uploading lots of code or data to the SPU's.

But I also wouldn't expect any one thread in the X360 core or PS3's to compete favorably with a modern P3, Athlon or PPC on general purpose code either.

It's going to be a while before we have any idea how these processors perform in realworld applications. Or what's involved in making them run effectively.

 

[Karma Police]

Majorynos was a site made by Sony in reaction to Majornelson. So don't take any information from Majorynos seriously at all (unless, you take Theonion.com seriously).

 

[Tap In]

Majorynos was a site made by Sony in reaction to Majornelson. So don't take any information from Majorynos seriously at all (unless, you take Theonion.com seriously).

seriously... it's so over the top it is actually a satire on Majornelson and the entire console "war" in general.


Some of the suff they write there is just LOL funny.

 

[lip2lip]

I never really understood vertex shaders. would removing them really improve graphics quality that much?

 

[Sis]

Majorynos was a site made by Sony in reaction to Majornelson. So don't take any information from Majorynos seriously at all (unless, you take Theonion.com seriously).

It was made by Sony? I always took it to be a guy goofin' on all the Xbox fans.

Check out the comment where he brings out the "Major Ynos Chinese translator." Pure comedy genius...

But on topic:
I think the PS3 is generally seen as more powerful, even in balanced articles, because the areas in which it is more powerful are easily grasped (i.e., comparing two cars--the dreaded automobile analogy--but comparing two cars it's easy to see a power difference in HP output of the engines, but if there are design differences, such as AWD versus rear wheel, it's not as easy to see the performance benefit.). IMO, of course...

(Another possibility may be that the PS3 is more powerful and respected journalists are unwilling to pull the trigger on that call until they see more real world application of the consoles.)

.Sis

 

[Bobbler]

Majorynos was a site made by Sony in reaction to Majornelson. So don't take any information from Majorynos seriously at all (unless, you take Theonion.com seriously).

I wouldn't quite call it made by Sony -- check the whois on the site -- registered through 2 arizona based places.

Mark Creig (the guy who runs the site) has stated hes not affiliated with Sony.

I also don't see how anyone could take the site seriously -- it always seemed to me it was a play on the majornelson article.