Shark Sandwich
Regular
According to http://www.theinquirer.net/?article=23807 Epic received PS3 hardware 2 1/2 months ago. Is this possible? I thought RSX hasn't even been finalized yet.
Epic has first Playstation 3 hardware
- Thread starter Shark Sandwich
- Start date
As with any console, dev kits starting out don't have final hardware. X360's feature-complete dev kits are only shipping to devs now. PS3's equivalent likely won't hit till late in the year.
edit - oh, and Epic certainly wasn't the first to get dev kits: first hardware went out to some around Dec/Jan, iirc.
edit - oh, and Epic certainly wasn't the first to get dev kits: first hardware went out to some around Dec/Jan, iirc.
Shark Sandwich
Regular
Well that's exactly what had me confused. I thought it was pretty much common knowledge that developers have had development kits for quite some time now. Why would this be a headline on The Inquirer today? Is the "Playstation 3 hardware" they're referring to the same thing as the development kits? If so, this is hardly newsworthy.
koldfuzion1
Newcomer
No kidding, is that even English? 
The GameMaster
Newcomer
PS3 devkits from what I understand are Cell workstations with dual Geforce 6800 Ultra SLIs and the systems are suppost to be indicative of what the final system's performance so be similar to. The RSX in the Playstation 3 is roughly as powerful or slightly more powerful than than the dual Geforce 6800 Ultras in SLI mode... so that basically means that the RSX will be roughly 50-70% faster than a single Geforce 6800 Ultra (pretty darn fast if you ask me) provided if the RSX has 24 pixel pipelines and 8 vertex pipelines like the Geforce 7800 that is is suppost to be based on. Not sure if the RSX will be able to achieve the 550MHz clock rate that Sony claimed, but it is too early to say for now. Remember though Sony has promised certain things before and later on reduced the specifications for their products. This happened with the PS2 in 2000, this happened with the PSX (PS2 + Tivo) in 2003, and this also happened with the PSP (though they traded off with more RAM). I would not be surprised if one of two things happens in regards to the RSX... either a) it's clock rate will be reduced to 400-430Mhz (the Geforce 7800 has a clock rate of 430MHz) or b) it will have some pixel quads and maybe vertex pipelines disabled for yield (much like how pipelines are disabled in 6800NUs and 6600GTs) so they can achieve a higher clock rate. If they do this though that would be the RSX would only be somewhat more powerful than a Geforce 6800 Ultra.
The XBox360 devkits (Alpha2 level) consist of Apple PowerMac G5 systems comprised of dual PPC G5 CPUs at 2.0GHz and a single ATI Radeon x850XT video card. The devkit was not meant to be representative of the final system's performance and has been stated that this system represents 20-30% of the final systems performance.
There are very significant differences between the XBox360 final hardware devkits and the current Alpha devkits. There are only a few differences between the PS3 devkits and the final PS3 hardware... but overall the PS3 devkits are quite a bit more powerful than the current Alpha Xbox360 devkits. Now the question here would be how the final devkit hardware compares to each other... and I think a lot of people will be surprised when both final devkits are delivered.
More on this in a future post...
The GameMaster...
The XBox360 devkits (Alpha2 level) consist of Apple PowerMac G5 systems comprised of dual PPC G5 CPUs at 2.0GHz and a single ATI Radeon x850XT video card. The devkit was not meant to be representative of the final system's performance and has been stated that this system represents 20-30% of the final systems performance.
There are very significant differences between the XBox360 final hardware devkits and the current Alpha devkits. There are only a few differences between the PS3 devkits and the final PS3 hardware... but overall the PS3 devkits are quite a bit more powerful than the current Alpha Xbox360 devkits. Now the question here would be how the final devkit hardware compares to each other... and I think a lot of people will be surprised when both final devkits are delivered.
More on this in a future post...
The GameMaster...
Where did you get that information? I don't believe you. There isn't a chipset that could support both Cell and PCI-E/AGP, let alone dual PCI-E slots. The Cell is going to directly interface to the RSX via a Flex I/O interface. How do you get a 6800U (actually 7800) with a Flex interface? Design a new chip, ergo RSX, which as we all know isn't done. Sony's own Cell demos, the landscape one for example, used two Cell chips, and did software rendering, sending the images across the network to a computer that could display them like a high speed slideshow. If the dev kits were as you describe, that would be completely unnecessary. My guess would be that there are "headless" Cell workstations that you could test code on, and PC's with Nvidia cards to develop graphics, but not combined. Please explain how you came to that conclusion.
Perhaps someone who actually KNOWS could respond.
The GameMaster
Newcomer
http://www.eurogamer.net/article.php?article_id=58341Rockster said:
And a quote from the PSM Magazine...
PSM Magazine said:
It has been fairly widely known that the Cell was used in the current PS3 devkits for a while now (since early this year from what I read)... what do you think they made those technicial demostrations at the E3 Sony conference on anyway? How did they get the Geforce 6800 Ultras to work with the Cell CPU? They used a custom motherboard and modified the interface from the Geforce 6800s so that it could be used with the FlexIO on the Cell CPU, that and used Linux for a custom operating system for this purpose along with special drivers made for this particular system.
Part of the reason why Sony decided to USE nVidia in the first place is because the Cell CPU frankly did not turn out to be as sufficient in rendering real time graphics as Sony hoped... nVidia was basically Plan B and nVidia did not start work on this project until fairly recently (over a year ago). Also it has been stated by other individuals, which was backed up by other information, that the RSX is based on the Geforce 7800 (NV50) series GPUs... but due to the fact that Sony and nVidia did not start work on the RSX until fairly recently... don't expect much differences from the Geforce 7800 GPU. I personally would be surprised if they did more than just change the interface of the video card so it could more seamlessly integrate with the Cell FlexIO, such as adding more pipelines or adding certain Cell like elements to the GPU.
Like I said though... all indications say that the RSX is basically the Geforce 7800... and like I said also... the current PS3 devkits use the Cell CPU.
The GameMaster...
The GameMaster said:
The NVidia comparison at the press conference was more powerful than 2 NVidia 6800 Ultras. SLI wasn't mentioned
The GameMaster said:
Err...Sony was actually the only company not to modify their specs after announcement last gen.
Sorry, The GamesMaster, but your posts have been consistently and suspiciously sceptical of, and down on PS3 both here and elsewhere. And constantly over-reaching with respect to X360 (looking for extra "hidden" power where there is none). Biased much? I think you're the one who has been surprised up to now and will be surprised going forward
-tkf- said:
IIRC, PS2's announced spec in March 99 was what you got on the shelves at launch. People may count the increase in clockspeed between the chip shown at the ISSCC in '99 and the chip announced in March 99, but the ISSCC announcement officially wasn't the PS2's chip, so technically it doesn't count.
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