More comments from John Carmack about xbox360, ps3

[Sethamin]

The cell chip can do 218 gflops. The xcpu can do 115 gflops. The RSX can do 136 shader ops. The Xgpu can do 96 shader ops. In a previous interview, Carmack calls the PS3 "marginally" more powerful. Now he says pretty much the same thing: "a bit" more powerful. (raw gpu and cpu power)
Wouldn't you agree that the PS3 is not "marginally" and "a bit" more powerful, but alot more powerful (raw performance) than Xbox 360?

First, stop trying to use theoretical peak performance numbers; they are meaningless for all intents and purposes. It's like to trying to evaluate F1 cars based on how they perform on a perfectly straight stretch of road, when no track in the world is even remotely straight and it's all dependent on how good a driver they put behind the wheel anyway (hmmm...I rather like that analogy).

And no, I don't think anyone with any decent technical knowledge who is credible would say that the PS3 is a lot more powerful. Search the forums and the Internets and you'll see that the consensus is that in real world performance these two systems are going to be very close to each other. But anyway, we have to wait until the PS3 is actually released before we can have even slightly reasonable metrics to compare the two system (even then, there's no perfectly fair comparisons). As bad as comparing theoretical specs are, comparing a released product to a yet-to-be-released one is even worse. You just can't do it; all you can do is speculate.

Even then, though, comparing multi-platform games isn't going to be the end-all-be-all. Going back to the F1 analogy, even if you have both cars both drive the same track (e.g. multiplatform games), the times are going to be heavily dependent on the driver behind the wheel. What that means is that the quality of developer behind the game is going to have far more impact on it than the platform it's released on. (I'm actually loving this analogy, I'm going to always use this from now on...)

 

[inefficient]

I think this explains his view "it will be easier to exploit the available power on the 360"

if doom 3 took them 4 years, how long will it take to make a game and try to exploit the power of the cell, and given that xenos is supposed to be more efficient the gpu's should be about even

The engine did not take 4 years to create. It was the content creation. There was a fully functional tech demo of all the engine's features at least 2 years before release. Content creation took so long because ID is such a small team.

 

[AlNom]

if doom 3 took them 4 years, how long will it take to make a game and try to exploit the power of the cell, and given that xenos is supposed to be more efficient the gpu's should be about even

Engine work was done in a couple years. Long development time was due to their small development team and the fact that they were using normal mapping for everything for the first time (having just come off of Quake III) and the tech/software was new.

 

[mckmas8808]

Why does anybody think that the PS3 could be WAY more powerful than the 360? I little bit yeah, but a lot? Good to hear that his PS3 game will come out at the sametime as the PC's though.

 

[ninzel]

I really hope Sony is succesful in pushing Linux and openGL to the mainstream via PS3, there has to remain some sort of competition.

Edit: What would you guy's say are the most important peices of hardware that contribute to making a game look great. My guess would be the amount of RAM, and the feature set of the GPU. Less important are the RAW clockspeeds of the chips.

 

[ImaginaryIndustryInsider]

Why do you think MS launched Xbox? Windows and DX was being marginalised as a gaming platform.

I kind of figured it had more to do with MS not wanting the general public getting comfortable with a web-surfing/PC-ish PS2 using the Linux OS (as was Sony's plan at the time), but I guess there were a lot of reasons.

 

[ninzel]

MS simply wants to control all possible conduits for digital content .

 

[Sethamin]

I kind of figured it had more to do with MS not wanting the general public getting comfortable with a web-surfing/PC-ish PS2 using the Linux OS (as was Sony's plan at the time), but I guess there were a lot of reasons.

I agree that there were a lot of reasons, but I don't think this is one of them. People don't want to surf the web on their TV. I have no idea why this myth still persists. You'd think the failure of every single set top box that has tried to do this would convince someone that consumers don't want this, but apparently not. The web is simply not a good viewing experience with a 10' UI.

 

[zidane1strife]

First, stop trying to use theoretical peak performance numbers; they are meaningless for all intents and purposes. It's like to trying to evaluate F1 cars based on how they perform on a perfectly straight stretch of road, when no track in the world is even remotely straight and it's all dependent on how good a driver they put behind the wheel anyway (hmmm...I rather like that analogy).

And no, I don't think anyone with any decent technical knowledge who is credible would say that the PS3 is a lot more powerful. Search the forums and the Internets and you'll see that the consensus is that in real world performance these two systems are going to be very close to each other. But anyway, we have to wait until the PS3 is actually released before we can have even slightly reasonable metrics to compare the two system (even then, there's no perfectly fair comparisons). As bad as comparing theoretical specs are, comparing a released product to a yet-to-be-released one is even worse. You just can't do it; all you can do is speculate.

Even then, though, comparing multi-platform games isn't going to be the end-all-be-all. Going back to the F1 analogy, even if you have both cars both drive the same track (e.g. multiplatform games), the times are going to be heavily dependent on the driver behind the wheel. What that means is that the quality of developer behind the game is going to have far more impact on it than the platform it's released on. (I'm actually loving this analogy, I'm going to always use this from now on...)

I think most multiplatform dev.s will try to appease both parties, and will try to make any possible differences seem smaller in their pr, while those of each will also agree with this or choose their side as superior. At e3 we'll see x360 games that've had substantial time with final h/w and many ps3 games done with final h/w too, if an overall qualitativel difference becomes apparent, a general preliminary consensus will emerge as to who the victor is, if none becomes apparent the view of equality in perf will prevail.

 

[rabidrabbit]

I agree that there were a lot of reasons, but I don't think this is one of them. People don't want to surf the web on their TV. I have no idea why this myth still persists. You'd think the failure of every single set top box that has tried to do this would convince someone that consumers don't want this, but apparently not. The web is simply not a good viewing experience with a 10' UI.

But it's the HD Era now, web viewing on a high definition 1280 x 720 display is a much better experience than it was on 720 x 576.
I don't see no reason why people wouldn't want to surf the web in their livingroom every now and then, especially if the PS3 web browser supports kb and mouse.

 

[Junkstyle]

"JC: Our next game has the working title "ReturnToCastleDoomAndQuake"

Interesting article. I'm glad idsoft is really branching out into new gaming areas.

 

[weaksauce]

A recent interview with John Carmack:

The cell chip can do 218 gflops...I]almost[/I] 2 times more powerful on gflops.

 

[DuckThor Evil]

When it comes to shader ops per clock it only has to perform 70% to equal Xenos theoretical max, and per second it's 65%, while xenos has to perform 100% for that. I wouldn't think RSX would be that unefficent and xenos would be at 100%.

I really think the edram bandwidth is the only thing that is better. But if ps3 devs go without AA they'll do much nicer games. I mean, I don't see anyone complaining that MGS4 or Motorstorm not having AA at all.

You must be joking... Right?

 

[weaksauce]

You must be joking... Right?

No.

Where am I joking?

 

[DuckThor Evil]

No.

Where am I joking?

Well you can't accurately measure system performance using shader ops and gigaflops, remember PS2 had much more gigaflops than Xbox...

your second paragraph doesn't make much sense, you said that if PS3 devs doesn't use AA they'll make much nicer games, probably meaning that they have more resources to other stuff I quess... and you are using MGS4 footage which has lot's of AA and Motorstorm CGI-footage (with plenty of AA) as a proof that PS3 doesn't need AA!!, if I understood you correctly, I'm sorry I thought you were joking, because that doesn't make much sense to me.

 

[Shifty Geezer]

Well you can't accurately measure system performance using shader ops and gigaflops, remember PS2 had much more gigaflops than Xbox...

Not as a system. PS2's CPU had more Flops than XBs CPU, but PS2's CPU had to do graphics work. As a system, combining CPU and GPU flops, XB>>PS2, which is a shocking revelation when you consider XB came out 18 months later, and which is why it is a more 'powerful' console (in Flop measurements, though as ever, there's some strengths where PS2 trumps XB).

 

[DuckThor Evil]

Yep I forgot to mention that I was talking about cpu's...
And I must point out that I'm not saying that PS3 won't be more powerful, all I'm saying is that looking at a few semi-marketing numbers is not the right way to analyze the situation.

 

[weaksauce]

Well you can't accurately measure system performance using shader ops and gigaflops, remember PS2 had much more gigaflops than Xbox...

your second paragraph doesn't make much sense, you said that if PS3 devs doesn't use AA they'll make much nicer games, probably meaning that they have more resources to other stuff I quess... and you are using MGS4 footage which has lot's of AA and Motorstorm CGI-footage (with plenty of AA) as a proof that PS3 doesn't need AA!!, if I understood you correctly, I'm sorry I thought you were joking, because that doesn't make much sense to me.

I compared shader performance, which should be xenos strong point since it has teh unified shaders...

I don't see any AA in these pictures:
http://media.ps3.ign.com/media/714/714044/img_3074903.html

And this motorstorm pic shows it clearly:
http://www.filerushnews.com/images/album209/aaa.jpg

They haven't said if it's pre-rendered. Maybe it is target renders, and they knew AA would take too much.

And I said Cell was "more powerful on gflops".

 

[superguy]

Compression is such that 2XAA is virtually bandwidth-hit free.

And is anybody really going to notice if PS3 games only sport 2xAA? Heck, X360 seems to have a lot of trouble getting the supposed free 4XAA out anyway. So they may have no advantage in that area at all, realistically.

 

[DuckThor Evil]

I compared shader performance, which should be xenos strong point since it has teh unified shaders...

I don't see any AA in these pictures:
http://media.ps3.ign.com/media/714/714044/img_3074903.html

And this motorstorm pic shows it clearly:
http://www.filerushnews.com/images/album209/aaa.jpg

They haven't said if it's pre-rendered. Maybe it is target renders, and they knew AA would take too much.

And I said Cell was "more powerful on gflops".

Maybe you should watch that MGS trailer again, and then play for example Devil May Cry 1 and see what it means to have no AA at all.