Anandtech dashes cpus from ps3 and xbox360

What a disaster. Anyone want to take bets on if the article ever comes back? :?

 

God forbid!

 

On the Gamespot forums a user by the name "Xdrive" posted a rebuttal supposedly coming from an IBM engineer about the Anandtech article:

It may be nothing or it could be something, but its interesting since the article got pulled.

 

Thanks for that.

 

Anand is full of shit. That article wasn't taken down because he was afraid of MS, it was taken down because it was chock full of inaccuracies. Anand is a PC apologist.

 

Where can I read what this David Milford guy wrote firsthand? I'll appreciate the pointer.

I've always assumed like this just by the contract nd common sense, but the Ars Technica writer and likes have been insisted they are identical, not just virtually identical for the sake of comparison, so I want to make sure they are not.

 

He posts sometimes on the IGn Boards. He is pretty credible. Original post here http://boards.ign.com/PS3_General_Board_/b8267/91468602/p1 if you have insider.

 

How much difference can there be between XeCPU and PPE? They use the same core as a derivative, the same API, and the same principles as other processors. Short of a few more registers here, a few less there, and a few unique commands, I'm not expecting a lot of diversity. Save in memory access perhaps. I'd be interested to what the real differences are.

 

Do you have any sources on it? i.e. Waternoose is derived from this PPC core?

 

The emulator CXBX emulates the Xbox on the PC at full speed using a Pentium 3 at 800 Mhz and a Geforce 3 or higher graphics card.

The PS2 isn't emulated yet at full speed. Mind you that Sony and Microsoft have all the documentation that is known about their console systems. Where the free emulators must reverse engineer in a way that is legal. Witch takes time. Currently no PS2 game is fully playable on PC. Let alone any real optimizations which is always done last.

So therefore saying that because Xbox 360 and PS3 will emulate doesn't hold any ground.

The RSX chip in the PS3 will be using a type of Turbo Cache. The 22.4 GB/sec of bandwidth will probably be shared with the CPU's in the 360.

Even the fastest graphics card will fall to it's knees if it isn't supplied with enough bandwidth. I'm thinking that even a Geforce 6800 would be faster compared to the GPU in PS3.

The Geforce 6800 Ultra has 35.2 GB/sec that isn't sharing it with anything else. Which makes PC graphic cards already faster then some of the new console systems that are coming out.

 

SPE's not having a lot of local memory is a legitimate concern...

Like Deano has said before on this board (which seems to have a limited memory), PS3 will be good for some things and bollocks for others.

It will not be very good for porting something like Half Life 2 without a major re-write. Trust me it will be like pulling out nose hairs. Too much AI, too much gameplay code (imagine large objects being flushed in and out like mad). Any advanced FPS type game will be easier to write for any western house on Xbox 360. PS3's advantages are easily outweighed by the difficulty in achieving those results.

 

The reason a P3 and GeForce3 can emulate XB is because it's basically the same hardware! Same instructions for the CPU, and GPU, using the same interface (DirectX). The reason it's hard for XB360 to emulate XB is because the processor uses a totaly different API (language if you like) and the GPU works differently coming from a different manufacturer - totally different architectures.

You're getting caught up in the numbers. ie. Xenos doesn't NEED as much bandwidth as it can use the eDRAM (32 GB/s to eDRAM, internal processing, frees up a lot of external requirement).

If bandwidth were horsepower, we know bigger engine doesn't alway mean a faster car. A smaller engine with less horsepower can outperform a big, heavy motor with a huge engine. The important consideration is TOTAL SYSTEM DESIGN, not individual component performance.

 

Embedded - you're adding 2 + 2 and getting a billion. A rather humourous billion at that. At the very least, how difficult it is to harness is a matter of subjectivity. And no one in their right mind would take PC HL2 code and expect good results out of PS3. X360 may be easier to harness, but if top performance is not THAT good, I'd take my chances with Cell (assuming once the SPEs are tapped, they prove useful and fast for a few key areas as has been mooted).

edit - going back to "difficulty", look at UE3 - running on PS3 kits in less than 2 months. Sure, it's nowhere near using all the power of Cell, but that should excite rather than initimidate.

As for the Anand article - so what of it was actually correct? I don't know if we should just write it all off since it was pulled and because of Anand's own spin. Some points from it would seem to be reasonably true given the reaction of some devs here, and seemingly some of the ones that caused most controversy.

 

I think CXBX just hooks and redirects APIs... In XBOX 360 you have to do binary translation.
EDIT: Shifty Geezer beat me!

 

It's a shame the article got pulled. MS is the one who's been citing general purpose code performance in their CPU benchmark.

If you want to talk general purpose code performance then I think Anand's article was perfectly valid.

 

There's no way that the article is valid. If it was so valid why'd he pull it? Everyone here can see through that article, so we should just write it off.

Check this out. This is why we should be dissappointed in Anand's article.

This is why I'm pissed to see a poor excuse for an article to be written. Stupid websites like CVG and others will repeat it like its actually true. Very sad, this is very very sad.

 

More than likely it was pulled due to outside pressure.

See through what? I dont think anyone would argue that the next gen console CPUs are superior to a top of the line P4 at running general purpose code.

He also bring up a lot of good points about theoretical performance vs. real world. Most of the complaints are based on discussions with developers (specifically PC developers) who are rightly disappointed to see poor performance cut in half when porting their game engine to so called susperior next gen consoles. So the ony solution is to rewrite their engine from scratch to fit the new architecture. It's going to be PC ports to the PS2 all over again. With games never reaching the theoretical performance claims.

With Sony it's pretty much a given that they'd have a proprietary solution but you can't blame them for wishing MS had stuck with a more traditional approach. Especially PC developers who were some of Xbox's strongest supporters thanks to the ease of porting.

My guess is that the Anand's "anonymous source" might be one of the UE3 people...

 

you pull an article if it gives out information which is under NDA not information of numbers and facts which everyone knows. Pulling the article only demonstrates they got thier information from "ONE developer" who basically...well how should i put it...glorified himself to anand by lying

 

you pull an article if it gives out information which is under NDA not information of numbers and facts which everyone knows. Pulling the article only demonstrates they got thier information from "ONE developer" who basically...well how should i put it...glorified himself to anand by lying

 

Hey...PPE transistors are about 55M.(includeing 512kb L2 cache)
G5's are about about 58M(including 512kb L2 cache).
I don't think that PPE will be slower than G5.
Maybe worse GP,but better FP
And I rememder EPIC vice president ever said that bunchs of SPEs are much similar to PPU architecture.
So you could regard Cell as PPE + a super PPU.
Then..... assuming one of XeCPU's tri-core is like PPE....
Well,three cores.......good enough.