How much work must the SPU's do to compensate for the RSX's lack of power?

[Laa-Yosh]

no one says GTA4 looks good any more

GTA4 looks very good.

Halo 3 also scored a 10 for graphics despite the inefficient way it did HDR and gave up scene complexity, AA and resolution, that's hype. Even the diehard fans admit that it doesn't look good but they come back for the gameplay.

Halo3 looks very good, the quality of its lighting in particular is still almost completely unmatched.

Happy now?

 

[corduroygt]

Judging by the software sales, such awards and reviews and opinions matter not.

So I guess Mario Kart Wii and Wii Fit are the best looking games out there.

Sales have nothing to do with quality, and they also don't matter to someone interested in playing actual games. I don't care how much GOW3 cost for Sony to make, and neither should someone who's interested in playing quality games. This is not a business or investment forum.

 

[SG79]

It sure as hell outsold KZ2, UC1-2, GOW3 and maybe even KZ3 - combined. 17 million units so far, according to Rockstar.

Where have I read such a comparison before..... Is that you Mr. Greenberg? Mario Kart Wii, one SKU, sold 25 million. It's totally irrelevant in the tech topic.

I guess this topic has run its course.

 

[Ruskie]

The real question is who ISN'T actually pushing 360 hardware? There is MS documentation showing TOTAL usage of 2 to 3 cores in launch titles. Can you say the same in the other direction? It's hard to believe a machine that use to cost $200 more than the competition at launch while being subsidized about $300 is similarly capable. Blu-ray and HDMI 1.3 didn't cost $400 to $500. That's been proven.

What determines if hardware is being pushed or not, to you? Is it your belief in what you think that hardware should be able to do? What makes you think that hardware easier to push wouldn't be pushed further than hardware harder to push? Why was the easier to push hardware overtaken so easily by the harder to push hardware? It doesn't make sense. If it doesn't add up, then it's usually not true. That's the number 1 rule in investigating anything.

You say that it might be extra effort pushing the PS3 out front, but the time between Uncharted 1 and Uncharted 2 was 18 months. However, the leap was a lot larger than any leap on from a sequel on any other console. Again, what you say doesn't add up. That puts us back to investigation rule #1. I'm sure MS wouldn't waste money on none capable developers to purchase as 1st party developers. Sony wouldn't do that either, yet their is a huge difference in the results. The big 1st party exclusives on both sides have big budgets (Alan Wake, Halo, Too Human, Killzone, God of War, GT, etc), so that's not really the difference.

In spite of all these things being essentially even (or in the 360's favor), the gap between the 1st party platform games continues to widen. Yes, I believe the Kool-Aid is too strong. The real question is this. Using basic investigative techniques, which point of view is the real Kool-Aid? More and more evidence is being laid out as time passes. I guess another question would be how long can it continue to be dismissed/ignored?

Both consoles tech was wrapped up by the end of 2005.You could argue that 360 tech is even newer.Lets see,gpu that architecture is generation ahead of RSX,cpu that is made by modified ppu from cell,that does not add up with year older .The reason why ps3 cost 200$ more than competition is EXACTLY blu ray and hdmi.

While you are saying that evidence(ps3 being more capable and proving it) cant be dismissed/ignored same can be said about 360 constantly,4 yrs straight is getting better multiplats.While that can be duo to likes of IW,R* and others being incapable(even though i highly doubt that) it still does not make sense in the end,why is that ps3 constantly,4 yrs straight getting mp that,in best case are on par with 360 version of game?I mean,those hi profile devs should learn about coding on ps3 after more than 4 years,dont you think,or maybe consoles are really very close?

I think good insight was given by Joker.Not only do you have to dedicate 1-2 spus for geometry to help RSX,but you also have to spend some of them for general code,that equals 360s 3 ppus/vmx.When you do all that,then you are left out with some spus for helping RSX that(in his and opinion of majority of devs) needs alot of help to keep up with Xenos.Than you include xenos eDRAM and memory advantage of 360 and then you see that things are not like they seem to be.

 

[Shifty Geezer]

Not to derail the thread...

too late - it's a runaway. Some good ideas here but it's a chaotic mess that'll only become more chaotic and messy. People will have to start new threads if they want to pick up the conversation ehre.

 

[Carl B]

I like how you basically came in to say 'we've done this a long time ago, and I'm too lazy to find the appropriate threads and I'm not really interested in this topic so I'm starting a new topic, but I'm also too lazy to start a new thread'!

Well looks like I'm pullin' another stunt with a post-thread closure post!

Wanted to add some more thoughts prior to the lockdown. Anyway fair point on the laziness, so I went ahead and did the digging. The original Inquirer article that started the original 'back in the day' conversation on RSX/Cell memory read/writes was this one here:

http://www.theinquirer.net/inquirer/news/1007286/ps3-hardware-slow-broken

I'm having trouble pulling up the various threads it spawned back then, but this is one I was able to locate that for four pages adds some nice color:

http://forum.beyond3d.com/showthread.php?t=31313&highlight=Cell+slow+broken

Mint's posts #9 and #19 seem like they would draw in some additional related points and posts, but those links are dead; remember there were some forum changes/outages now and then in years past, and to dig up these posts you would have to locate them independently of the in-thread legacy links. I think it would be worth doing, and there was a lot of good discussion back then, but for now I'm just providing the above two. MrWibble in that thread above does a good job of going into it though, for those interested.

The more the better I guess but why 12MB? You need 15MB for 2xAA @ 720P, is 12MB more of a fit for a average render target in a deferred set-up? (I remember Sebbbi explain that they had to play with resolution and overlay a bit to make their RT fit in eDram.

I believe all you need is 12MB though to avoid tiling and implement AA. For all of the MS 640p non-tiled titles (including the ever contentious H3), obviously then you would be shifting up to real 720p rather than scaling. Now - I'm not one of these folk that cries and points fingers at 640 vs 720, so I have nothing personal on the choice of 10MB. It's just that given MS' goals in the space and their original 'HD Era' targets, I would think that even if tiling were an original and intrinsic part of the scheme - which it probably was and had to be given the architecture and lead times - it still seems cutting it just a *bit* close to have gone with 10MB vs the 20% bump for some material gains.

It may not have been yields at all, but if not, it seems a strange decision given the would-be nominal cost differential for some real ease of use thrown the developers way.

I don't think yield numbers have ever been released, but I doubt Microsoft knew specific yield characteristics like that at the time the decision was made to go with 10MB. Usually these decisions are made prior to the process being production ready.

Not disagreeing with you, but I'm coming from the above context.

.......

Ok, I think the original thread question was answered a while ago anyway, even before the lock. But a couple of new thread candidates may be lurking in here should anyone want to expand/expound.

PS -

Comparing what two different GPUs of the same transistor budget has to be way up there in the Beyond3D raison d'etre!

Completely agree with you Shifty, transistor budgeting and the resultant yields - both performance and otherwise - are a fave discussion point. It's just when it comes to RSX vs Xenos specifically, I don't know... RSX is... it's sort of hamstrung anyway by its relative obsolescence given the state of the art at the time. They're not even really contemporaneous architectures to one another in a sense, though on a system level I would certainly say that PS3 vs 360 on a transistor basis is always an interesting topic (and of course iterated a number of times through the years).