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

7 November 2006

Posted by:Ferry

Cell 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 CPUâ€™s or 35 PlayStationÂ® 2 CPUâ€™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 SPUâ€™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.“

Categories: News

Kazimieras

Uh you guys if you’re going to be a fanboy, atleast be informed.

The PS3 has 7 ‘cpus’, one of which is dedicated to managing the other 6.
The 360 has 3 ‘cpus’ that are dual cored… in essense giving it 6 ‘cpus’

I hate to say they are equal
Austin

3.2*8*8/(3.2*3*8) ~ 2.666666

It’s about right, though not quite. Only 2 2/3 the power of a Xbox 360 CPU.

As for as Gears of War, wait until PS3 has a year like the 360 has had. Have you seen FFXIII, Killzone, or MGS4 trailors?
Austin

“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.”
What ass are you pulling this information out of?

Try looking into who developed the CELL processor for a relevant example of what an ignorant post that was.
slider2nl

Xbox 360 or ps3 doesn’t matter. Both are great to play with. the only thing what matters for me is that the systems work flawless.

In the mean time sony and microsft are already planning the next-gen for the year 2010/2011 so what is new now is old tomorrow.
Joey

Xbox 360 was proven that it can’t do 1080p. Just because you say it does the gaming world says it don’t.
Xbox 360 will have Gears of war and halo whoopie do. Stupid first person shooters. While PS3 will have metal gear solid 4, Final Fantasy XIII, Lair (can’t be done on Xbox 360), Resistance Fall of man by the way 40 people can play at same time for you first person shooter people.
http://www.futuremark.com TheMan42

To all:

Its been stated over and over again that both the X360 CPU and PS3 CPU are both powerful, powerful processors.

However they both fall short in certain areas.

The X360′s IBM PPC based CPU is 3 Physical cores, each multithreaded making it a total of 6 threads – 2 threads per core.

The X360 CPU exceeds very well at graphical content but not as good as the Cell processor does with physics. That is where the Cell shines. Also the 360 CPU isnt the greatest with branch prediction.

The PS3s Cell CPU, however, is 1 PPE with 8 SPEs. 1 SPE is disabled on the PS3′s Cell for reasons unstated thus far. What I said above about physics is where the PS3 shines. However I also mentioned the 360′s CPU will fare better with graphical content. The Cell’s SPEs have absolutely zero branch prediction and therefore cannot handle graphical content.

Other factors such as the X360s 512 Unified System RAM and the PS3s 256 of XDR and 256 of graphics memory will balance both systems out. For the most part both systems will look alike in terms of graphics. They will be different in terms of exclusive titles where developers will have all their resources dedicated to one system rather than worrying about coding for 2 or 3 different systems. Working with one system allows a developer to better exploit the consoles capabilities.

Also it has been said that the 360s GPU is better suited than the PS3s RSX due to Unified Shader Architecture, something the RSX lacks and makes running code and graphical content much easier and faster on the X360.

In the time to come we’ll all see fantastic releases on both consoles, but for the majority what will set them apart are exclusives, accessories, and online support – graphically I believe the systems will be on par pretty evenly. Its not always about raw power, its ease of developability.

And FYI to the above poster about Gears of War – the game looks phenominal and to say it doesnt and rip it apart shows your blatant fanboyism.
Testo

“Xbox 360 or ps3 doesnâ€™t matter. Both are great to play with. the only thing what matters for me is that the systems work flawless.”

Yeah and 2 people I know have had to return there 360′s in twice so far!
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PS3 suxs Xbox360 rulez noobs

PS3 will sux sux sux sux sux sux sux sux stink stink stink stink stink stink overpriced overpriced overpriced overpriced slow load time slow load times s*cky online subpar games subar games subpar games…those who buy that piece of cr*p will have it collect dust just like last gen when your Xbox ruled over your waste of money and space!
PS3 suxs Xbox360 rulez noobs

BTW you can tell who is a blatant retard sony fanfart on here…if you think a wannabe console like PS3 can support 40 players online without lagging and awhole bunch of other issues your as stupid and dumb as sonys marketing team…lmfao go make sony rich stupid fanboys Ken thank you wery mooch…lmfao