7 November 2006
Ferry

PS3’s Cell three times more powerful as the Xbox 360 processor?

This summer Sony created a training website for Canadian Wal Mart employees. The access codes got leaked when a store visitor saw a manager put up internal documents around the store.

After logging in, Sony marketing spin quotes can be found while employees read, learn & test their PS3 knowledge. Here’s the real gem:

“Welcome to your PS3 Retail Online Training. We trust that you will find the following information valuable and assist you in understanding and explaining PS3 Technology to your customers and staff. … The Cell Processor is essentially as powerful as 3 Xbox 360 CPU’s or 35 PlayStation® 2 CPU’s”

And you wonder why store clerks so seldom know what they are talking about? How in the world is “The Cell is actually 7 SPU’s (Synthetic Processing Units) each running at 3.2 GHZ” supposed to inform customers? Here’s a screenshot (click to enlarge) of one of the tests where employees can win prizes if they get all the answers right.


Oh and by the way, most developers say that the horsepower inside both the Xbox 360 and PS3 will be comparable a few years from now as it’s all about what they can get out of their processors to use in-game. That’s a good thing and also why Gears of War look prettier in graphical detail than any PS3 launch games shown so far.

A direct quote from Silicon Knights president Denis Dyack says: “The 360 and the PS3 are equal in power in my eyes,” Dyack says. “Maybe the PS3 has more processing power. The 360 has more available memory. It’s pretty much a net, net. The public perception of the PS3 was that it was much more powerful. To developers, they look even.“

7 November 2006 15:29
winkertoups

What’s so funny is that Canada is a stupid country and Sony has to educate them.

Way to suck Canada!

7 November 2006 15:42
What the *@UK name is winkertoups

winkertoups a pu55y. 5uck my Rocket! Pony Boy

7 November 2006 15:57
dave

i love playstation people. they just look at how many something has and base it off that. with that type mentality i guess i can make this statement: “the nintendo ds is more power then a 360 and a playstation 3 combined because it comes with 2 screens.”

7 November 2006 16:01
Carlos

Wow, I can believe your dissing Canada. Canada has 1/10 of the population the US and yet has more people on high speed internet. Canada is also the lowest spam producing country. That translates too many people understanding and valuing technology. The reason Sony tries to educate the employees, is in order to brianwash people into thinking the ps3 is more powerful. Don’t get me wrong the PS3 is a powerful machine, but the 360 is comparable. Each one has it positives, Sony developed a state of the art CPU that can do an amazing job number crunching, their GPU though is a 1.5 year old GPU. Meanwhile the 360 has a state of the art GPU and incorparates technologies that are not even available for PC. The 360 CPU is still powerful, but only half the theorectical computing power of the Cell. Well when all is said and done though the PS3 and XBOX 360 are pretty much equal.

Even though the consoles are equal, games for at least the following year will be better on the 360. OMG why? Well game developers are still getting use to the PS3 so all real development is done on a 360 and then ported to the PS3, and Wii. Hence this is why at Sony’s E3 booth Assassin’s Creed was being run on an XBOX 360 although it was suppose to be exclusive to PS3. Hmm??

Also the 360 is building an amazing game library of exclusive like Huxley, Gears of War, Halo 3,Bioshok and many others.

Also Epic which fully supports both consoles and developer of Gears of War said they would have a hell of time getting the game to run with 256MB of video ram.

7 November 2006 16:40
Chris

It amazes me how little people know about the hardware in their consoles.

Props to the few people here who do not succumb to PS3 hype and realise that the 360 and the PS3 have different architecture and cannot be directly compared.

However, as stated by someone, the 360 is a lot more flexible allowing game programmers to get more out of the 360 easier than they would out of the PS3.

Let the games do the talking

Ridge Racer vs GOW anyone?

7 November 2006 16:59
digit

kudos to Chris, he knows what hes talking about

7 November 2006 17:10
the true

IBM with made booth, the 3 core CPU of the 360 and the Cell. They are saying that the Cell is the most powerfull CPU they ever build, all you CPU computers know it alls here I believe a Company as IBM more as some Xbots who think they know better, lets face it the Cell is more powerfull as the 3 cores of the 360 …the PS3 will show us that, time WILL tell

To take this:
That’s a good thing and also why Gears of War look prettier in graphical detail than any PS3 launch games shown so far.

Is Utterly b*llsh*t, GOW is a multimiljoen dollar project and by the way, Epic told Microsoft that 256 MB is not enough so they scalled the 360 up to 512MB, Microsoft had only only one thing in mind to build a next-gen console for a cheap price, now its comming back to them. The 3 cores are less powerfull as the Cell who says it isn’t so is blind….

7 November 2006 17:12
George

The PS3 is has power and the 360 has memory that is all. But what it comes down too is development of games and these consoles arent next gen.The console that is closet to next gen is the Wii and it doesnt matter about the graphics or sound its the inovation of the console

7 November 2006 17:14
George

Hey and while you did faces are buying the PS3 i will have a Wii and a 360 so have fun paying for it and its super expensive games and sh*t online experience

7 November 2006 17:47
Downunder

Looks like microsoft fud spreading. The picture has incorrectly labeled SPU as “synthetic processing units”. Looks like microsoft are hiring peeps to spread bad press.