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

http://news4gamers.com ps3

u all have no life get a job n do something with ur life oh i have a job so I will have both and a 50 inch plasmHD so i dont have 2 bitch 2 people online all day
newton

It’s interesting to see some people get really … “emotional” when it comes to this console battle; dissing canadians, and… not that I’m counting, but I’m reading more dumb agressive comments against sony than I am about microsoft.

Anyways, for my 2 cents, I thought it was worth pointing out that to compare the abilities of these 2 systems, wouldn’t be right to look at current 360 games against current ps3 games.

-yes it is easier for developers to make games on xbox360; 2 reasons, the architecture of the system is very similar to a pc. It would be easier to port a 360 game to pc than it would with a ps3 game. 2nd reason, developers had a full year head start on 360 than ps3.
-it is true that you will have to sacrifice textures, etc, for 1080p output, but again, we are only at the first generation of games. It will take time before we can discuss if the ps3 can really do it.

I hear too many (yeah man… 360 has killer apps, gears of war, halo 3, bioshock, …).

GOW – this JUST CAME OUT! and you want to compare it with ridge racer? why dont we keep this game on the sidelines and compare it with killzone when that eventually comes out? or metal gear?
HALO 3 – … this isn’t a killer app because it didn’t come out yet
BIOSHOCK – … same as above.

so… xbox360 has been out for about a year now and we have 1 out of 3 potential killer apps (which are all fps by the way).

Let’s compare a release 360 title to… resistance, motorstorm… how about nba 2k7 or fight night (360 vs ps3).

Let’s compare the above exclusive 360 titles to ps3s future list: metal gear, killzone, gran turismo, final fantasy, tekken, getaway, rachet and clank, jak.

We can go on and on throwing points on both sides arguing which system is better. But what I think is fair, is to give different consoles praise for what they’re good for. We can always listen to developers give their ‘politically correct/corrected’ opinion – it could be that, or that they just are stuck on one way of developing that it not costly enough to learn the ‘non-pc’ way – or it could be that they are 100% honest (but we will never know).

I say, the 360 had their head start on LIVE, and on the release. They are definately ahead of the game in terms of their online setup (which is really good), and their install base (playing nba 2k7 online will be harder to find players to play with on the ps3 for now than the 360).

The ps3 is including a hard drive with every system (a bonus for developers to cach some info during a game). games will be on blu ray (another bonus as developers can add more info – and i’m not talking about 1st gen “oh we dont have to” – lets face it… more space is better period… i.e. make an amazing game on a DVD and fill it up with goodies and extras… then add one extra level/car/song, and you got the blu ray advantage. Also, the ps3 coming out a year later should only mean that their hardware will be the same, or better. And sorry guys, but the specs do speak for themselves… the ps3 is better.

Everything on the above 2 paragraphs should be accepted by both sides.

How much better will LIVE be with PS3′s network? and how much better will the ps3 performance be to the 360s? I dont think we’ll be able to fairly tell right away. The online setting is not a hard task, and 360 games will continue to get better (more gears of war games).

So if you want to do a comparison now, compare motorstorm with… a release 360 title… resistance with… i dunno… ghost recon graphics… but i would prefer to compare GT5 when that comes out… with forza… and I’m pretty sure that all of ps3s exclusive titles will look better than 360s… but whether they will be more enjoyable? we will have to see.

oh… and also, as much as people might hate on the six-axis… but having this controller as a standard is another bonus. just look at nba 2k7, or any air game announced so far (lair, warhawk).

there’s a lot more to say, but i dont think anybody can prove anything until a year or 2 from now. At least what I said can make some people take off their “XBOX!!” and “PLAYSTATION!!” hats for a second. You know, it still possible to like your xbox AND talk good of the playstation. Your reason for keeping the xbox doesn’t have to be justified by (ps3 isn’t better you #$%&(#!). You can simply justify it by “i like it better” or “i like the games better”.

p.s. canadians have a better history in electing it’s nations leaders – a.k.a. bush.
joey

hats off and big round of aplause to microsoft for not having to stoop as low as sony to push there system.

try boosting your own system and games next time (if there is a next time)

fools
http://recompile.weblogs.us Don

“hats off and big round of aplause to microsoft for not having to stoop as low as sony to push there system.”

Have any lucid dreams lately?
Dagger

Sony paid for the rights for the FFXIII so that SE can not make the game for any other console, thats the only thing whay FFXIII only will be for PS3 and not PS3 and Xbox360.
Evrybody have there favoriet system and thats all, i love my 360 for serten games and I love my PS2 for other games, same will be for the PS3, but the price for PS3 is bit to mutch, i will w8 till price cutdown, even if I need to w8 long time, only game I am gething it for is FFXIII, rest of games dont intrest me on PS3 and BTW the grafics of PS3 are bit to policht up, bit to strait from all the movies and pics I seen, its all a litle bit to clean.

Think what ever you think is best, just play the games you like the most, we are all gamers, so PEACE
Jon

Ok i have enough look guys i dont care any way you look at it the ps3 has more power the x box is more flexible blah blah blah look at it this way remeber when x box came out it had better grphics than ps2 yet ps2 still dominated microsoft thought it was all about the graphics but as it was proven its not its about price and games and thats what its going to come down to who cares about 1080p last time i checked not everyone has an hdtv and if they do i am sure that its not high end i have so lets just f***ing play some games to tell you the truth i just got my x box 360 for gears of war and if ps3 has a bad ass game exclusive for them i will buy it as well…………when the price goes down lets all get along and game
360 fanboys dumbasses

you stupid f*ck, it has 256MB of XDR system RAM AND 256MB GDDR3 video RAM. The the PPE core in the the Cell does 2 threads too. but its funny tome how nobody mentions the fact that both of these CPUs are in-order processors and not OoOE (out-of-order execution processors like modern day processors. This is a major weakness when compared to modern day processors from Intel or AMD. Also with the Xenon’s L2 cache being split among 6 threads, 1MB is ridiculously low. At least the Cell has 256KB of cache for each SPE. And a Unified pipeline has not been proven to be better than a dedicated pipeline. This is only what they (ATI & MS think). And the xenos is not more powerful than the RSX the Xenos is like a hybrid chip that is like a R420 mixed in with the Unified Pipe of the R600 with this embedded DRAM (which btw is only 10MB which is really insufficient for anything more than 2xAA. The RSX is based on the 7800GTX. Which is far more powerful than a R420. So people stop buying into the market hype from bith companies and all these following websites and learn the facts. And stop all this bullsh*t *ss fanboyism, its pathetic! And btw, I own a 360 and have owned one since day one and had to have mine replaced. And am not that impressed by it. Nor do I plan to buy a PS3
Ryan

There are so so so many stupid *ss comments here that I just should just walk away. The two systems are basically the f*ckin same quit your yipinbg PS3 f*gs and quit your defense to it all XBOX gurus, you know they are just worried and acting defensive. LOOK AT THE GAMES THEN TELL ME THE ANSWER OF WHICH IS BETTER/MORE POWERFUL….ps3 dipsh*ts
Ryan

sorry for my grammatical errors
the man

yes the XBOX 360 CPU is easier to program for, and yes the systems are almost the same in power now. but i think because of the way you have to program for the CELL,
in the next few years you are going to see somethings done on the PS3 that will blow peoples mind. The developers that like a challenge and fancy new technology are drooling for the chance to get at all that potential. Also being that SONY lets programmers get closer to the metal when programming, I would like to see what happens in the next year.