Consoles & Propoganda

[TheChefO]

Because those people are idiots.



Chef, the document is wrong.



...."game code?"

1) Indeed those pople are idiots ... so are the ones that take a document such as the one you describe and when presented with correct information they still disregard it. Difference?

2) I know this. But the bottom line of the document is the machines are a wash. You believe this to be false, but I have seen and heard evidence from credible sources that disagree with your assesment. Time will tell I suppose.

3) Wasn't that their terminology? "game code" anyway - devils advocate

 

[Carl B]

3) Wasn't that their terminology? "game code" anyway - devils advocate

You'll want to be reading the edit I made above. But basically, what is "game code" Chef, in your own words. You read the document, right? You "learned" from it, did you not? So certainly you'll be able to explain to me how the XeCPU is better at running this mysterious class of code everyone is enamoured with.

 

[TheChefO]

You'll want to be reading the edit I made above.

I did and my point was, that is what they were calling it wasn't it? Anyway whatever they were calling it is what I meant. To play devils advocate in the scenario of comparing these two FUD/PR fiasco's I'd say one has clearly proven to be the lesser of two evils and spelled out the examples to prove the point.

If your point in that response is to prove I'm not a programmer, well all you had to do was ask. I'm not. Graphics is my realm. (see job title)

 

[Carl B]

I did and my point was, that is what they were calling it wasn't it? Anyway whatever they were calling it is what I meant.

Right, and so what you're telling me is that "whatever that is that the document refers to..." is what you believe the XeCPU to be better at, yeah? Which is the same as to say that you believe the document, right? That the 360 is better at... "game" code? Because oh yes, indeed Major Nelson does make this claim.

 

[TheChefO]

Right, and so what you're telling me is that "whatever that is that the document refers to..." is what you believe the XeCPU to be better at, yeah? Which is the same as to say that you believe the document, right?

no! As I said I know the document was false ... I know the vids and stats at e3 were false. But one could make a case for the mn doc where one could not for the vid/spec list. That was my point.

edit - I should have used quotes around my original use of the term "gamecode" to make it more clear.

 

[Carl B]

But one could make a case for the mn doc where one could not for the vid/spec list.

I'd like to hear the case one could make for the Major Nelson docs - I for one can certainly not conceive of it.

If you can defend this passage to me, well... I don't know, I'll dedicate all of my folding efforts for the rest of my life to you.

DETAILED ANALYSIS OF PERFORMANCE SPECIFICATIONS

CPU
The Xbox 360 processor was designed to give game developers the power that they actually need, in an easy to use form. The Cell processor has impressive streaming floating-point power that is of limited use for games.

The majority of game code is a mixture of integer, floating-point, and vector math, with lots of branches and random memory accesses. This code is best handled by a general purpose CPU with a cache, branch predictor, and vector unit.

The Cell's seven DSPs (what Sony calls SPEs) have no cache, no direct access to memory, no branch predictor, and a different instruction set from the PS3's main CPU. They are not designed for or efficient at general purpose computing. DSPs are not appropriate for game programming.

Xbox 360 has three general purpose CPU cores. The Cell processor has only one.

Xbox 360's CPUs has vector processing power on each CPU core. Each Xbox 360 core has 128 vector registers per hardware thread, with a dot product instruction, and a shared 1-MB L2 cache. The Cell processor's vector processing power is mostly on the seven DSPs.

Dot products are critical to games because they are used in 3D math to calculate vector lengths, projections, transformations, and more. The Xbox 360 CPU has a dot product instruction, where other CPUs such as Cell must emulate dot product using multiple instructions.

Cell's streaming floating-point work is done on its seven DSP processors. Since geometry processing is moved to the GPU, the need for streaming floating-point work and other DSP style programming in games has dropped dramatically.

Just like with the PS2's Emotion Engine, with its missing L2 cache, the Cell is designed for a type of game programming that accounts for a minor percentage of processing time.

Sony's CPU is ideal for an environment where 12.5% of the work is general-purpose computing and 87.5% of the work is DSP calculations. That sort of mix makes sense for video playback or networked waveform analysis, but not for games. In fact, when analyzing real games one finds almost the opposite distribution of general purpose computing and DSP calculation requirements. A relatively small percentage of instructions are actually floating point. Of those instructions which are floating-point, very few involve processing continuous streams of numbers. Instead they are used in tasks like AI and path-finding, which require random access to memory and frequent branches, which the DSPs are ill-suited to.

Based on measurements of running next generation games, only ~10-30% of the instructions executed are floating point. The remainders of the instructions are load, store, integer, branch, etc. Even fewer of the instructions executed are streaming floating point?"probably ~5-10%. Cell is optimized for streaming floating-point, with 87.5% of its cores good for streaming floating-point and nothing else.

http://www.majornelson.com/archive/2005/05/20/xbox-360-vs-ps3-part-2-of-4.aspx

I have presented you with an impossible challenge.

 

[TheChefO]

I'll get back to you on this. :smile:

 

[Tap In]

speaking of questionable PR

 

[LogisticX]

That's excellent PR. Sony's PS3 is so far into the future that their console, adjusted for inflation 6 years from now, actually costs $399!

What a deal

 

[Acert93]

Who is the 'best man' though, and what determines that but our own individual criteria?

Well said. What is the best console for me isn't always the best console for my nephew, my dad, wife, or friend.

speaking of questionable PR

Someone better tell consumers!

 

[betan]

I disagree. Soft-body physics in 2D isn't that complicated. There's evidence for this real applications : 1) I've seen a complex (30-40 bodies) 2D soft-body simulator running on my AthlonXP 2500. I haven't found a link unfortunately as it was a long time ago. 2) A 200 MHz MIPS in PSP manages some good results in LocoRoco.

I see no reason why these 3 GHz processors with vector units aren't going to laugh at 2D physics. The reason it's not widespread isn't because it's difficult, but because few people have been incorporating 2D physics into games, mostly because games tend to be almost exclusively 3D these days.

Obviously I haven't seen the 2d soft-body simulator you are talking about (nor Locco Rocco).
But I still believe your expectations are set by crappy Havoc collusions. When I say 2d physics I mean non-uniform density distributions, nonlinear string constants lot's of lot's of frictions, elasticity etc.

And for reference, the number of objects limit I had in mind was in order of thousands (for current level of LBP physics). It needs to do all the computations at at least 90Hz (Forza 2 is apparently doing at 360 Hz though we will see how good it is).

Truth to be told, while LBP's current physics is by far best we have seen, it's nowhere near good nor sufficient. Even in the trailer it misses some collusions. Probably some of those are animation related but still it's CPU's job to handle.

I honestly cannot believe some people (not specifically you) think cpu difference is not important or anything CBE can do can be done by Xenon (from gameplay's point of view).

I guess I am the only one who thinks we have yet to see acceptable, interactive and adaptive (not purely mocap) animations in games.

 

[JohnyBeGood]

I'd rank:
Sony
MS
Nintendo

in that order of who tosses out the most shit, takes cheap shots at the competition and over promises.

Are we talking console gaming only this gen? Because, if we take account of previous BS PR performances, all 3 of them should win a prize: sony>ps3 ( 2tfplops and killzone vid ) , MS>xbox ( 100 million pol/sec real time or ps2 times 5 ) , nintendo>wii ( promotion of wii as a revolution in gaming ) .

 

[TheChefO]

speaking of questionable PR

WT ...

You can't compare the two. If you're comparing the two we would have had the same technology and we'd be at the same price – we're not,

[Insert multiplat reviews of all concurrently released titles for xb360 and ps3 to this point]

Well, when looked at in this light, he is correct, you can't compare the two.



These guys just can't shake the foot in mouth disease.

xbd - I'll get to that article in a minute but I had to respond to that... ugh.

 

[TheChefO]

Well said. What is the best console for me isn't always the best console for my nephew, my dad, wife, or friend.

Agreed - and I didn't mean to imply otherwise by that statement. I meant the console should fair on it's own merits. Your grandmother may love the Wii because it is easy to pickup and play. Your brother may love the xbox because it has many good shooters. Your friend may like ps3 because bluray has the movies he likes and it's the cheapest option. Who knows. But if your brother bought ps3 because he was "under the impression" that ps3 would play realtime cgi level graphics, that would be wrong. If your brother was told this by an idiot friend of his, that's one thing, but if Sony put that out there, and EVERYONE is agreeing, that's deception.

Anyone of these companies can decieve but as it is currently, Sony has the biggest voice by virtue of their userbase following.

 

[Dr. Nick]

WT ...



[Insert multiplat reviews of all concurrently released titles for xb360 and ps3 to this point]

Well, when looked at in this light, he is correct, you can't compare the two.



These guys just can't shake the foot in mouth disease.

xbd - I'll get to that article in a minute but I had to respond to that... ugh.

Sony's PR has worked for the most part. They got people (not everyone) to wait a year and in Europe's case a year and 4 months before purchasing a next gen console. Even if it doesn't live up to your expectations, you waited so long for it that you might as well get it. People can b*tch about Sony's PR as much as they want but in the end it still works.

On a side note you can't really blame Major Nelson for doing what he did when the competition, through videos and tech demos, made it seem that they had tech that was so far head of what MS had that it would be able to absolutely crush the 360. Though they kind of had themselves to blame because they didn't make a single tech demo to show off what is so special about their own hardware.

 

[TheChefO]

I'd like to hear the case one could make for the Major Nelson docs - I for one can certainly not conceive of it.

If you can defend this passage to me, well... I don't know, I'll dedicate all of my folding efforts for the rest of my life to you.



http://www.majornelson.com/archive/2005/05/20/xbox-360-vs-ps3-part-2-of-4.aspx

I have presented you with an impossible challenge.

First of all, I agreed this document was false. Multiple times! What I said was the general concept of this document was "prove how the systems are generally a wash and considered equal". Most devs on this board and abroad have stated just that. Why you refuse to give credence to this fact is unknown but I'll go ahead and run through this thing even though it doesn't look complete.

DETAILED ANALYSIS OF PERFORMANCE SPECIFICATIONS

CPU
The Xbox 360 processor was designed to give game developers the power that they actually need, in an easy to use form. The Cell processor has impressive streaming floating-point power that is of limited use for games.

True

The majority of game code is a mixture of integer, floating-point, and vector math, with lots of branches and random memory accesses. This code is best handled by a general purpose CPU with a cache, branch predictor, and vector unit.

True

The Cell's seven DSPs (what Sony calls SPEs) have no cache, no direct access to memory, no branch predictor, and a different instruction set from the PS3's main CPU. They are not designed for or efficient at general purpose computing. DSPs are not appropriate for game programming.

True (aside from the verbage) misleading, but true

Xbox 360 has three general purpose CPU cores. The Cell processor has only one.

True

Xbox 360's CPUs has vector processing power on each CPU core. Each Xbox 360 core has 128 vector registers per hardware thread, with a dot product instruction, and a shared 1-MB L2 cache. The Cell processor's vector processing power is mostly on the seven DSPs.

True (aside from the verbage)
But if you were explaing a foreign technology without hyping this technology what would you describe your competitors tech as? Would you go in depth or explain the quickest, closest match?

Dot products are critical to games because they are used in 3D math to calculate vector lengths, projections, transformations, and more. The Xbox 360 CPU has a dot product instruction, where other CPUs such as Cell must emulate dot product using multiple instructions.

I can't honestly answer that but it sounds incorect based on what I've read here at b3d so:
False

Cell's streaming floating-point work is done on its seven DSP processors. Since geometry processing is moved to the GPU, the need for streaming floating-point work and other DSP style programming in games has dropped dramatically.

half True half False - GPU's have picked up the slack but other factors are at play currently in games (even though I have read of instances where cell is faster than RSX at culling and thus must be used to keep parity with xb360)

Just like with the PS2's Emotion Engine, with its missing L2 cache, the Cell is designed for a type of game programming that accounts for a minor percentage of processing time.

Misleading but True. all consoles are designed this way because they have to get work/frames done in 1/30th 1/60th a second.

Sony's CPU is ideal for an environment where 12.5% of the work is general-purpose computing and 87.5% of the work is DSP calculations. That sort of mix makes sense for video playback or networked waveform analysis, but not for games. In fact, when analyzing real games one finds almost the opposite distribution of general purpose computing and DSP calculation requirements. A relatively small percentage of instructions are actually floating point. Of those instructions which are floating-point, very few involve processing continuous streams of numbers. Instead they are used in tasks like AI and path-finding, which require random access to memory and frequent branches, which the DSPs are ill-suited to.

I can't vouch for existing games demand requirement, but I can say that I recognize Cells ability to help in physics heavy interaction which was not prevelant in yesterdays games. So while it may be true it is evaluating against the trend.

Based on measurements of running next generation games, only ~10-30% of the instructions executed are floating point. The remainders of the instructions are load, store, integer, branch, etc. Even fewer of the instructions executed are streaming floating point?"probably ~5-10%. Cell is optimized for streaming floating-point, with 87.5% of its cores good for streaming floating-point and nothing else.

This sounds false based on what I've read here so: False.

Again like I said, I know what the purpose of this document was and from what I recall, it summerized in "They are a wash" which is what I took from it and what I remember. Now there are also cases where cell is outperformed by xcpu are there not?

Now getting back to my original point. What I said was, as false as this document is, I can validate the general concept through what is on the shelf right now between multiplat xbox360 games and ps3 games. Does it mean this article in whole is correct? no. It means the general idea of "the machines are a wash" seems to ring true from every corner (that isn't ps3 diehard) is saying. The edge currently in these titles I speak of is mostly due to better tools and an easier to code for system. That's by design. That's "let the best man win".

Now on the other hand, Sony spewed many "facts" that have not been proven by any measure. Some might in time ... others I know for a fact will not! (realtime cgi)

Yet people believed and I still see people believe this garbage.

I think if you polled anyone interested enough in the who whats an why's they would all agree Cell is a good chip and should have an edge in physics calcs. It should also help make up for the deficient rsx. (this goes against the mn doc btw)

On the other hand, the info presented at the event provided a very clear message that is clearly false: "We are twice as powerful as our closest competitor and see the difference for yourselves on screen."

The funny thing is even though MS may have overshot the numbers on xb1 v ps2, they were still clearly superior from day one. The same cannot be said of ps3.

 

[almighty]

DETAILED ANALYSIS OF PERFORMANCE SPECIFICATIONS

CPU
The Xbox 360 processor was designed to give game developers the power that they actually need, in an easy to use form. The Cell processor has impressive streaming floating-point power that is of limited use for games.

True

 

[TheChefO]

"limited use" ... misleading, but true. It isn't all encompassing and other operations are needed. hence "limited".

 

[archangelmorph]

Where has this thread gone..?



DMC4 anyone?

 

[TheChefO]

Where has this thread gone..?



DMC4 anyone?

Agreed - a thread split would be appropriate.