Anandtech dashes cpus from ps3 and xbox360

[russo121]

http://www.anandtech.com/video/showdoc.aspx?i=2461

"...Right now, from what we’ve heard, the real-world performance of the Xenon CPU is about twice that of the 733MHz processor in the first Xbox. Considering that this CPU is supposed to power the Xbox 360 for the next 4 - 5 years, it’s nothing short of disappointing. To put it in perspective, floating point multiplies are apparently 1/3 as fast on Xenon as on a Pentium 4.

The reason for the poor performance? The very narrow 2-issue in-order core also happens to be very deeply pipelined, apparently with a branch predictor that’s not the best in the business. In the end, you get what you pay for, and with such a small core, it’s no surprise that performance isn’t anywhere near the Athlon 64 or Pentium 4 class.

The Cell processor doesn’t get off the hook just because it only uses a single one of these horribly slow cores; the SPE array ends up being fairly useless in the majority of situations, making it little more than a waste of die space..."

What the specialists here have to say about it?

 

[ERP]

It's on the negative side. I wouldn't agree with the numbers he's posting.

But anyone expecting any single core in either XB360 or Cell to compete favorably with a P4, Athlon or G5 on general code is going to be sorely dissapointed.

 

[Shifty Geezer]

Ha ha ha ha ha!

Not even reading the article, just the very thought of Sony execs, having ploughed billions into RnD and fabbing, sat around the boardroom, and a junior exec walks in, presents this Anand article, and says "Told you we should have bought a job lot of 2.5 GHz P4s!!"

I'll give the article a look later on, but it really does play down the smarts of IBM, Sony and Toshiba if they think these companies have only managed to create a really expensive and useless turkey of a technology.

That said, I have heard XeCPU cores aren't hot on general purpose code, as I've mentioned here in response to MS suddenly talking it up as though it was important (which of course PPE will also be no good at). Not sure what they mean about naff float performance though without reading it.

 

[Dave Baumann]

"One option we didn't discuss in the last article, was that the G70 GPU may feature a number of disabled shader pipes already to improve yield. "

Not about the CPU, but I say its nice of them to acknowledge my reasoning without linking us!

 

[Carl B]

The article's no good, and I think these PC-centric sites (and I'm a big Anandtech fan normally) should just stay out of the console coverage if they don't want to go the full distance to learn the architectural aspects, but that said, this caught my eye:

Each individual core is extremely small, making the 3-core Xenon CPU in the Xbox 360 smaller than a single core 90nm Pentium 4. While we don’t have exact die sizes, we’ve heard that the number is around 1/2 the size of the 90nm Prescott die.

I mean, can that be true?

 

[Carl B]

"One option we didn't discuss in the last article, was that the G70 GPU may feature a number of disabled shader pipes already to improve yield. "

Not about the CPU, but I say its nice of them to acknowledge my reasoning without linking us!

Wow you really feel you're the only one who could have noticed that discrepency, aren't you Dave?

I hope you went and read my long-ass post in that 'G70 more powerful' thread!

 

[Teasy]

Is this guy saying that a single core is twice the performance of XBox's CPU? Or is he saying the entire CPU is twice the performance? If its the second option then he surely has to be talking crap.

Though I am starting to get the impression that this CPU isn't going to be quite the power house people are expecting.

 

[SanGreal]

Cell's PPE is identical to a single core in Xenon.

 

[Titanio]

Sounds like a lot of waa-waa-ing because they aren't PC chips. Or at least that's the spin put on it by Anandtech (a PC tech site ).

It didn't help that he kept talking about 1Tflop vs 2Tflops with regard to the CPUs. Or that he spent a paragraph discussing why they can't reach their peaks as if it were some sort of revelation

That aside, looking at the meat, I also thinks he writes off "physics acceleration" too handily if that is actually the case on Cell. Even if it's only one of a "handful" of applications for SPEs, its size should make it a boon. If the things SPEs can "accelerate" hog a disproportionate amount of CPU time, it doesn't matter that there is only a few of them.

 

[SanGreal]

A single hot title can ship hundreds of millions of consoles

I'm sorry, but Anand needs to leave the console coverage to someone else

 

[dukmahsik]

im shocked to hear anand say these words, i find them very hard to believe

 

[Farid]

Anand is not a reliable source of informations when it comes to... Anything. Let alone consoles.

And folks, don't fool yourselves, what Anand is doing here is simply posting a doom and gloom article to get more hits for his filthy site.

 

[Npl]

The same Anandtech that told us to to not go out and buy a Radeon9700 because the NV30 will walk over it?

Theres to much wrong in that article to even start discussing it.

 

[Shifty Geezer]

A single hot title can ship hundreds of millions of consoles

I'm sorry, but Anand needs to leave the console coverage to someone else

Man, I bet those console companies just wish someone could create a single hot title!!

 

[Titanio]

I think his commentary should be taken with care, but the specific comments re. performance I presume come from developers. ERP says it's not *that* bad, but with the suggestion that it's not a million miles from the truth either.

 

[gurgi]

A single hot title can ship hundreds of millions of consoles

I'm going to assume he meant thousands here. =P

 

[Carl B]

I have to go back to the die size thing - I'm just in disbelief.

At 135mm^2 for the new Pentium 4 series 2MB chips, 1/2 the size would be about ~70mm^2. That's going to be cheap cheap cheap to produce!

 

[Teasy]

At 135mm^2 for the new Pentium 4 series 2MB chips, 1/2 the size would be about ~70mm^2. That's going to be cheap cheap cheap to produce!

Surely this chip isn't going to be particularly hot either..

 

[V3]

Is this guy saying that a single core is twice the performance of XBox's CPU? Or is he saying the entire CPU is twice the performance? If its the second option then he surely has to be talking crap.

Though I am starting to get the impression that this CPU isn't going to be quite the power house people are expecting.

The entire CPU. And is roughly about right for real world performance.

 

[scooby_dooby]

Why's everyone rag on Anand?

I don't see anyone here with a direct line to Tim Sweeney and the EPic team.

Most of his statements come from developers, it sounds like both processors are much weaker than their parent companies would like you to believe.

It does seeem very doom and gloom though. I mean, it's not like the celeron was as powerful as top end PC chips in 2001 when it was released, but it still made for a very powerful console.

Oh well, I'm sure Dev's will make it work, the CPU's aren't the most powerful, but 512MB of Ram, and cutting edge GPU's are still going to make for amazing games.