Anandtech dashes cpus from ps3 and xbox360
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But surely if that is true then it makes the CPU some what of a joke yes? I mean if its true real world performance is only twice that of the XBox CPU for stuff like physics and AI.
I suppose I might have been wrong about the cost of XBox 360 if this is really true. I was basing my opinion on the hype of this CPU being much faster than any PC CPU on launch.
Confidence-Man
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V3 said:
But he's talking about these developers only using one or two threads out of a CPU capable of six. Surely that isn't using the entire CPU?
therealskywolf
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WTh, what is this guy trying to say? That MS and Sony are investing millions on their consoles for nothing?
And what was the dev that said the Xenon was only twice as fast as the Xbox cpu? Must be a very crappy studio i'm sure, i mean lol.....wtf.
And wasnt Cell PPE core different from Xenon cores? VMx 128 bit?
Does this guy even knows what he is talking about?
And what was the dev that said the Xenon was only twice as fast as the Xbox cpu? Must be a very crappy studio i'm sure, i mean lol.....wtf.
And wasnt Cell PPE core different from Xenon cores? VMx 128 bit?
Does this guy even knows what he is talking about?
scooby_dooby
Legend
I think he was saying single-threaded performance is only twice the celeron.
Which I think is pretty brutal, however, the whole design is built for multi-threaded programming, not single.
Does anyone else think anand unerestimates the speed at which Dev's will embrace multi-threading? If I was a developer, and wanted to get an edge on my competition, wouldn't it make sense to try and use that untapped potential as quickly as possible?
Rather then just plod along for 2-3 years making basically single-threaded games like he imply's?
Which I think is pretty brutal, however, the whole design is built for multi-threaded programming, not single.
Does anyone else think anand unerestimates the speed at which Dev's will embrace multi-threading? If I was a developer, and wanted to get an edge on my competition, wouldn't it make sense to try and use that untapped potential as quickly as possible?
Rather then just plod along for 2-3 years making basically single-threaded games like he imply's?
Yes. The "the SPE array ends up being fairly useless in the majority of situations, making it little more than a waste of die space". MS and Sony have played a trick on us all, offering multicore processors but without any potential. I hear PS4's processor is already in development, with one working EE core and 400 'dummy' cores that don't do anything, just so they can boast about figures.
Honestly, this is a laughable article. It reads as 'PC's are great, and consoles suck and always will'. And I'm only on page 3!!
Regards XeCPU I don't know what it's real world general purpose computing is, though I hear it's less than the Alpha kits'. However, games will be written to take advantage of their strengths (FP).
I think attitudes may be a bit swayed by MS's big hoohah about '80% of games is general purpose'. If they had stuck to the original idea of fast, FP stream processors work differently and faster in new game structures, this talk might not exist.
Honestly, this is a laughable article. It reads as 'PC's are great, and consoles suck and always will'. And I'm only on page 3!!
Regards XeCPU I don't know what it's real world general purpose computing is, though I hear it's less than the Alpha kits'. However, games will be written to take advantage of their strengths (FP).
I think attitudes may be a bit swayed by MS's big hoohah about '80% of games is general purpose'. If they had stuck to the original idea of fast, FP stream processors work differently and faster in new game structures, this talk might not exist.
Also, for those that think Anand are on the case this time around, look at HS runnin ATM with only a single thread and n hundred enemies on screen with their own AIs. Forgive me for being naive, but that looks a little bit better than 2x the performance of XB...
"To put it in perspective, floating point multiplies are apparently 1/3 as fast on Xenon as on a Pentium 4"
I'm wondering what this means.
One core can do 1/3 the number of floating point multiplies per sec as a P4 at the same clock?
3 cores = 1 P4 for floating point multiplies?
On a general note I'm not sure if Anand realises the importance of some of the things points he himself brings up, specifically re. Cell. If all the SPEs could do is "accelerate" physics, depending on by what margin it could be a big gain. Harking back to his own previous article, Tim Sweeney apparently suggested that even if the SPEs are only useful for a handful of tasks, most of the others don't take significant CPU time anyway.
In fairness, looking better than Xbox games is possibly more a function of GPU power than CPU power, at least in early games. And he says himself that in that area both consoles are up to scratch.
I'm wondering what this means.
One core can do 1/3 the number of floating point multiplies per sec as a P4 at the same clock?
3 cores = 1 P4 for floating point multiplies?
On a general note I'm not sure if Anand realises the importance of some of the things points he himself brings up, specifically re. Cell. If all the SPEs could do is "accelerate" physics, depending on by what margin it could be a big gain. Harking back to his own previous article, Tim Sweeney apparently suggested that even if the SPEs are only useful for a handful of tasks, most of the others don't take significant CPU time anyway.
Shifty Geezer said:
In fairness, looking better than Xbox games is possibly more a function of GPU power than CPU power, at least in early games. And he says himself that in that area both consoles are up to scratch.
V3 said:
Let me get this right. For real world performance, you are guestimating that a single PPC core (like the ones in the XeCPU) with 333K cache and running at 3.2GHz is ~2/3 as powerful as a Celeron 733MHz with 128K cache *in the real world* ?
Is that correct?
Confidence-Man said:
If they can't have six threads, that's all they are going to get out of it.
Haven't people forgotten this is the caveat of moving to multicore CPU, we had discuss this like multiple times on this board, when Cell was being discussed, though at that time most here still think Xbox 360 was going to have a single beefy Intel CPU.
Ok they have officially outdone their previous atrocity of the console article (the one on PS2/GCN). I guess they're overcompensating for too much common sense in the previous article.
Look at the Cell diegraph - 1MB of L2 alone takes up nearly 70mm2. Unless the XeCores are sitting in vacuum, you're not gonna be producing the cpu at that size.xbdestroya said:
Shifty Geezer said:
Hmmm You must have read:
Anand said:
The 80% general purpose to FP code in games was a remark that their general purpose performance--as poor as it may be to a P4/Athlon--is superior to the CELL.
As a developer told me, multithread IS a big issue on BOTH platforms. It will be a while before development teams transition to this new environment and there are serious hurdles on both sides (yes, that includes CELL and XeCPU).
Anyhow, MS was not going to go with a P4/Athlon because of IP issues. This means limited movement on cost down the road. They also have limted performance in FP. And when you begin looking at their memory architecture, heat/power issues, and the HUGE size for what you get, well, I don't blame anyone for NOT using one.
x86 processors have a lot of legacy the consoles do not need. Granted, they also are great GPs. But the PS2 did not have an especially powerful GP (relatively) and it did fine. So did every other console before it. Not that GP code is not important, but there needs to be some balance.
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