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

Sheepy

Wow, people are actually buying into this crap?

Some people…
who

PS3 will always be more powerful than Xbox 360. Think about it. They disable 1 SPE to make the 360 think they have a chance and when they get close, they will activate that last one via upgrade. Boo yaah.

I broke the matrix code first.
me

ps3… watch out xbox… XBOX SUCKS
Robert

360 has 3 core CPU. Each core has 2 hardware threads.
Threading is way of sharing time on on single core. It does not multiply magically processing power.
1 thread will run on 1 core with speed of 3.2 GHz. Assuming the you have 2 threads active and doing similar computation, the time between 2 thread will be split => 3.2 (full speed of core) divided by 2 thread = 1.6 GHz.
Max processing power of 3 core CPU|–> 3* 3.2

PS3 has 1 PPE processor running at 3.2 GHz , 7 SPE coprocessors runnig at 3.2 GHz. To simplify (1 PPE +7 SPE) *3.2GHz=?
Too use all processing power will required extremely sophisticated scheduling algorithms. This is not gonna happened any time soon. Will have to wait about 1 to 2 years. RISC CPU always been difficult to program
Bigj

TESTO, your a f*cking idiot!!!! I can’t wait to see how many people have to return there ps3 when it comes out, because it will happen. Look how many ps2 systems had to be repaired, because the drive quit working. Sony does not have a clue. You can have the fastest processor in the world but if you have no memory it is useless, and thats what makes this article meaningless. The ps3 has 256mb of memory and the xbox 360 has 512 mb of memory. They must have forgotten about putting that info in this article. They must be putting out this article to try to get more people to buy the ps3. This holiday season will be all about the xbox 360. F*ck Sony and F*ck you.
http://n/a HBNDonut

I see a lot of flaws and errors here. Lots of lying, and lots of sugar coating in Sonys little PS3 “facts” presentation. lol

The facts that matter are this;

The Sony PS3 IS more powerful than the Xbox 360. (although both machines are going to be very similar.) But the game developers for Xbox 360 know how to pull the weight of what tech they do have, and as a result, the Xbox 360 will always have better games. Just look at Halo 3.

Plus, Sony will never be able to compete with the online gaming services of Xbox Live.

Besides, look at Sonys track record, and all of the times Sony has lied and/or not delivered in the past. (Playstation, PSOne, PS2 etc.)
LuiteFan

It’s truly hilarious to read some of the above comments when few actually know what they’re talking about. The use of profanity to compensate this knowledge seems to prove my point. I mean guys, since when did you all become gamedevelopers (or computer scientists for that matter, like myself) and know what a system is capable of without even ever touching a software development kit for either console. You are only reading into numbers, and thereby making the same mistake by thinking the number of hz’s is soley responsible for delevering AWESOME GAMES. DEVELOPERS are responsible for the latter, and to reinstate the most important quote of this article:
A direct quote from Silicon Knights president Denis Dyack says: â€œThe 360 and the PS3 are equal in power in my eyes,â€ Dyack says. â€œMaybe the PS3 has more processing power. The 360 has more available memory. Itâ€™s pretty much a net, net. The public perception of the PS3 was that it was much more powerful. To developers, they look even.â€œ
Some of you guys don’t seem to be capable of accepting this from a __respectable__ developer. Apparently, that’s what fanboyism does to one.
LuiteFan

Oh my. Did I just say reinstate? Hehe, it seems my mind is more concerned about politics, than proper grammar/spelling or fanboyism for that matter.
ps3

lol nerds. ps3 kiks xbox’s ass i cant belieive people are fitin over this shit.
LuiteFan

Well, third time is a charm. About->with.

To conclude, don’t simplify the power of a console merely by its number of hz’s, cores or GPU’s. There’s much more to it than just that, so please refrain yourself from posting ridiculously oversimplified equations like you actually know what you’re talking about. I recommend you first go read some books on computer organization and computer architecture before you consider making statements like that. That is, if you still dare to, because you’d probably realize by then that you’re making a fool out of yourself. Terribly entertaining though!