xbox 360 specs (unofficial, but believable)
- Thread starter McFly
- Start date
Well I got the same degree of speedup out of reworking a Matrix solver - in an algorithm that wasn't even vector friendly originally (but I modified it to fit).ERP said:
What I found amusing was that even regular C++ code with no SIMD usage ran ~20% faster on x86 cpus after I modified the algorithm. So much for OOOE taking care of code all by itself 8)
Btw, are you saying there were even more puzzling results after those first ones?
ERP said:
Can I ask if any attempt was made at coding specifically to each architecture?
Are you comparing the code running on one Intel/AMD cpu versus 1 xenon core versus 1 PPE versus 1 SPU? Or Intel/AMD cpu versus the xenon cpu in its entirity versus the cell cpu in its entirity?
I'm not sure how much you can say, but I'm curious
passby said:
Heh..I don't know. That seems to be suggestion by ERP, but I wouldn't want to put words in his mouth.
But I'm not sure how indicative the same code running on each platform would be of technical potential. In the case of both the X360 and PS3, you're really going to have to code with their CPUs in mind in order to be "fair" to them, I think..
aaronspink
Veteran
Titanio said:
Hmm, by that arguement they are all going to fail because they can't keep up with clearspeed.
Having a higher flops number does not equate with having higher performance. Most workloads do more than:
While(1)
a:= a x a + a
Aaron Spink
speaking for myself inc.
And that extra cpu power is going to increase the quality of your 3d models, textures, animation, and art style "how" exactly? Or that's right I forgot about the CPU call for JustAddExpertArtists Ibm added to cell.
What get's me is that people think the extra "CPU power" is goign to vastly make the games look better then what xbox 360 will display. You're basically going to get the same thing. The only thing that will make the games look better on PS3 over xbox 360, is if the developers take more time to make a game look better. However that doesn't mean you couldn't make an xbox 360 game look better.
V3 said:
That's what I recall. MS was sensitive about accusations that the Xbox would mostly have PC ports because of Direct X. So they kept saying how it was first and only a console. That is probably why they never pushed a browser or other clients for it (that and they wanted all online activity to be through XBL).
Now this generation, looks like the 360 will have media center features as well as maybe a WebTV browser?
The 360 will have USB 2.0 ports. It's up to developers to support mouse and keyboard assuming there is some kind of API. Logitech had to evangelize their USB headset API for the PS2 games and none of the Japanese games seem to support it. Maybe MS will push keyboard and mouse support.
They could also help by porting AOE3 to the 360. But then again, do they really want to quash PC gaming? Windows is still their bread and butter, where they actually make money, instead of burn money as they've done with the Xbox.
Better power doesn't mean better visuals, but more potential. I will say though that I expect better visuals from PS3 primarily because I think PS2's got a real advantage this gen. I've been looking around at screenshots and PS2 invariable has a higher level of art-direction in what I've found. I accept my observations will be limited, but in games that have interested my, I tend to go "that looks nice" more on PS2 games than XB and PC games. Dunno why, just is. With more visual oomphability, and a track record of more artistic creations, I think Sony will show more (number of) impressive looking titles.
Qroach said:
Q roach - you hit the nail on the head with this post. I was going to ask this in a separate post... I was wondering if really the CPU makes any difference in this generation... not in a naive way but a CPU doesnt make the difference graphically... as long as its not a bottleneck for the GPU to do its work.... who cares?
ok, potential for what? Potential doesn't pay the bills.
That's art direction. not hardware capability.
Again, that's art direction. if it's a cross platform game, what would make one look better over the other? If anything the only advantage sony has is the amount of developers working on PS2, but as we all know that can drastically change.
blakjedi said:
Hypothetically if PS3 CELL is 2-4x more powerful (I still think the designs represent very different philosophies... hard to compare FLOPs when the Xbox 360 has 3 PPC cores to do stuff other than fp tasks). Anyhow, if the PS3 or Rev CPU is 2-4x more powerful it wont help the static graphics look much better necessarily, but it will make games in motion look better, namely
1. Physics (interactive worlds that have more physics based objects)
2. Animation (e.g. calculate animation at 600fps, and then feed the correct frame to the GPU)
A more powerful CPU would also allow for better AI and such.
But I TOTALLY agree with Q about graphics. Developers tools are going to be VERY important this generation. I think this is the single biggest reason people are jumping on UE3. Yes it has nice features--but other developers can make engines with HDR, nice shadowing, physics, streaming worlds, etc... I think the scripting tools and the art tools--both of which that let artists/mappers do tasks traditionally done by programmers--are the big sellers.
The goal of game developement is to make a game, not an engine. If there are tools out there that will mean more time spent making game assets and allowing the artists to make the right shaders and mappers make the right gimmiks and tricks in their maps then so be it! That is the stuff that makes better games.
We all know game development costs are up, and so are gamer expectations. Tools that allow developers to spend more time developing content and less time fighting the HW will mean better games. This is not an issue to big companies with 300 person development teams, but to the smaller developers with 20-50 team members (argueably the more creative developers), getting the most out of your time, money, and effort is important.
If you look at this gen, where the HW is arguably more lopsided, all the systems were able to compete graphically. With the Xbox360 and PS3 both getting top of the line PC GPU variants there just wont be that much difference in performance. The GPU race on the PC has been very close and competitive. So the bigger factor this gen will be who has the most 3rd party support and who is making life easiest on game makers. In the past complexity was able to be overlooked, but when we are looking at exploding budgets and higher consumer demand for quality I think it does become a resource factor. My opinion of course.
Um... :? ...potential to make better looking games. If consoel x can render twice as many polys as console y, you have better looking models (all other things being equal). You telling me that a more powerful console CAN'T produce better looking visuals? :?Qroach said:
I agree with your points but want to add something.
Yes, more CPU power can mean more physics calculation. But how much is enough for what a game needs? Even still, more and more developers are using licensed physics engines. They do this because it's extremly hard and time consuming to be able to do somehting as simple sounding as stacking objects and have them interact in a realistic way. Some developers will make use of this extra physics power, but others won't find a use for it. Licensed engines "can" make use out of this power, but in the end you're still going to have limits for the use of dynamic objects in a scene or somehting along those lines.
This is a tougher one as it depends on what type of animation you are talking about. If it's key framed, this depends on the artists again and whatever memory contraints you have. If it's some type of dynamic animation, calculated like physics or by using physics, then you may see a difference (only if the game is moving) but even then it may be hard to tell the difference, but as usual things in games tends to be faked and not real world, so the one game that is doing everything all phsysics like in hardware, may go up against a game that does a better job faking the appearence of physics.
No necessarily. A more powerful CPU will allow for more AI calculations, but "better" or "smarter" AI takes takes more time to write. I don't think you're going to see much of an AI difference between both consoles, as time is always a factor in game development.
Yes, more CPU power can mean more physics calculation. But how much is enough for what a game needs? Even still, more and more developers are using licensed physics engines. They do this because it's extremly hard and time consuming to be able to do somehting as simple sounding as stacking objects and have them interact in a realistic way. Some developers will make use of this extra physics power, but others won't find a use for it. Licensed engines "can" make use out of this power, but in the end you're still going to have limits for the use of dynamic objects in a scene or somehting along those lines.
This is a tougher one as it depends on what type of animation you are talking about. If it's key framed, this depends on the artists again and whatever memory contraints you have. If it's some type of dynamic animation, calculated like physics or by using physics, then you may see a difference (only if the game is moving) but even then it may be hard to tell the difference, but as usual things in games tends to be faked and not real world, so the one game that is doing everything all phsysics like in hardware, may go up against a game that does a better job faking the appearence of physics.
No necessarily. A more powerful CPU will allow for more AI calculations, but "better" or "smarter" AI takes takes more time to write. I don't think you're going to see much of an AI difference between both consoles, as time is always a factor in game development.
Acert93 said:
I have to wonder about the GPU's though - in the console world of trying to maintain minimum framerates, as competetive as the two GPU's might eventually be, that still might translate in to noticeably, not large, but noticeably better visuals on one system vs the other. Now, I don't pretend to know which GPU will be better - ATI's going a completely different route than is traditional and NVidia has dropped the ball before, so anything could happen. And in fact, the differences between the two could be so substantial as to be the difference between NVidias NV30 gen and ATI's R300 gen.
The graphics world moves rapidly enough that six months extra development is no joke, so that might imply an advantage for NVidia, but maybe the whole unified shader concept will pay off for ATI in a big way.
Anyway I'm just rambling here, but the common consensus seems to be both systems will have essentially the same graphical abilities, and I just think perhaps that's not something we should take to be a given.
Shifty Geezer said:
Art direction can be entirely subjective. Some people LOVE how Nintendo 1st party games look, other hate it. Some people loved WW, others hate it. I, for example, thought the art direction in HL2 was awesome--out of this world great. Others hated it. How can one person think it is the best thing since sliced bread and another hate it? Because it is subjective.
That is not to say that we can not objectively say some games have better art direction, or the art direction of a game matches/mismatches with the technology/gameplay in the title. And there are companies who are just better at game art and have better artists.
BUT, to say Sony has better art direction on the PS2 ignores that a lot of PS2 games are cross platform and/or not first/second party. It also ignores that the GCN and Xbox have some pretty wicked looking games with excellent art direction.
You may disagree--and and you would be right. In your preference, Sony has the best art direction for your tastes. Part of that comes with you being an admitted Sony fan (and pessimistic toward MS), and part of that is taste. Nothing wrong with either of those. With the PS3 being a monster of a system and with a lot of 3rd party support I am sure you will continue to see an excellent stream of high quality games that have an artisitic style that make you happy. Good time to be a Playstation fan!
xbdestroya said:
As the former proud owner of a kickin' Radeon 9700 I must say the NV30 would not have been bad in a console. Yes, the R300 kicked the NV30 in the crotch in DX9 games. BUT... but, on a console that would not be an issue. Developers would have exploited the NV30 strengths and tried to minimize its weaknesses. Instead of being forced to use FP24 as in DX9, they would have used the same/similar shaders in FP16.
That is where featureset comes in. True, the R300 had geometry instancing (and the 256bit bus), but the NV30 had Ultrashadow and some other features. So the R300 would have been a better chip in general, the NV30's shortcomings would have been less noticable on a console. It did very well on DX8 and had excellent FP16 performance. I am sure console developers would have exploited the NV30 featureset and could have offset many of its weaknesses.
That is the interesting part. R500 is a chip long in development, it really is not the first chip with a lot of its basic features (R400 was, which was not released). If we can take the CELL analogy, which has been in brainstorm since 1999, and look at how the long development process has helped it it may also be true of the R500. Even if the NV PS3 GPU is 6 months newer, it could be held back by the fact it is derived from their next gen GPU, whereas ATi has basically gone with a concept to be used in the R600. ATi also has shown with the R300 that they can make a first gen chip that performs well under the API expectations. In the past GPUs would stink supporting new features, it would often take the next gen release to actually support those features fast enough to use them in game.
But then again ATi could totally drop the ball and make another chip like R400--feature rich, performance poor. You are right, this is really a big wild card. The 10MB eDRAM for the Xbox 360 GPU is another factor... having that framebugger with ~250GB/s bandwidth is helping out a lot... like AA on everything.
True, but at this point the geneal assumption is that the PS3 GPU will be the fastest, but we really have no reason, other than it being 6months later, to believe this.
My hunch is thus: The Xenon leaks look all to be true. This is a HUGE HUGE HUGE advantage for nVidia/Sony. Based on that alone I think Sony can be very proactive. Second, I believe each system will have strengths and weaknesses and games will need to take these into consideration. A game that does feature X,Y,Z on the Xbox may not do them as well on PS3, but the PS3 may have features A,B,C that the Xbox does not even have.
The one thing that gots me interested in the unified shaders is the suggestion that it could mean more even framerates. I like solid framerates, be it 30fps or 60fps, but games that hop up and down annoy me. Unified Shaders may be able to help with that by diverting resources immediately to where they are needed. Instead of having 6 Vertex shaders just sitting there in a pixel shader intense scene they can be used, and vice versa in a scene with a lot of geometry the system can compensate better. Likewise, I think this should give some flexibility in game design. Maybe a designer wants a VERY LOW poly count game with a lot of shaders, or he wants a game with all flat shadded polygons--but like 10M per frame? This is where Unified Shaders help I think (not to mention they should give CAD and 3D artists in the professional segment some killer cards).
Okay, but I'll mention that my preference for a console or manufacturer isn't going to affect my idea of what does or does not look good. Games on PS2 don't look good becuase they're on PS2 and if on XB, they'd be rubbish. No more so than an offline render looks good because it was rendered an a Mac instead of a PC!
Games like SOTCollosus, that what-not japanese painted jobby, and others, show variety on PS2 that I haven't seen elsewhere. Looking at the game types I like, RPGs mostly, I haven't seen anything on other platforms that matches something like CON. eg. I'm interested in Dungeon Siege II for PC, but graphical it's way behind Champions of Norrath on PS2. Just got Guild Wars and although quite nice, it's not a beautifully smooth experience.
Now OF COURSE those are PC games, ones MMO, etc. etc. But going by the glut of visuals Sony's machine has attracted the most diversity and creative artwork. Maybe coz it's the most popular? Maybe coz it's Japanese? Maybe 'coz Sony are paying devs with a strong art style?
My main point being, this trend is more than likely to continue IF PS3 offers the most graphical prowess, and even if graphical prowess isn't much different from XB360 and Rev, such varied artstyles haven't appeared on MS's and Ninty's machines to date (from what I've seen) so I'd still expect PS3 to be showing more arty creations.
Just off the top of my head, Zelda WW was a one-up for Nintendo. There was a definite style. More of this variety is what I'm looking for (even though I might well never buy the games!)
Games like SOTCollosus, that what-not japanese painted jobby, and others, show variety on PS2 that I haven't seen elsewhere. Looking at the game types I like, RPGs mostly, I haven't seen anything on other platforms that matches something like CON. eg. I'm interested in Dungeon Siege II for PC, but graphical it's way behind Champions of Norrath on PS2. Just got Guild Wars and although quite nice, it's not a beautifully smooth experience.
Now OF COURSE those are PC games, ones MMO, etc. etc. But going by the glut of visuals Sony's machine has attracted the most diversity and creative artwork. Maybe coz it's the most popular? Maybe coz it's Japanese? Maybe 'coz Sony are paying devs with a strong art style?
My main point being, this trend is more than likely to continue IF PS3 offers the most graphical prowess, and even if graphical prowess isn't much different from XB360 and Rev, such varied artstyles haven't appeared on MS's and Ninty's machines to date (from what I've seen) so I'd still expect PS3 to be showing more arty creations.
Just off the top of my head, Zelda WW was a one-up for Nintendo. There was a definite style. More of this variety is what I'm looking for (even though I might well never buy the games!)