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.“

29 November 2006 20:22
Kevin

Dispelling Some of the Hype

Now there are people that look at the 360 having a triple core processor and the PS3 with the much publicized Cell Processor and start to wonder…
# #1 How in God’s name can the 360 ship with a 3 core processor in November 2005 while there isn’t an available purchase for 3 or 4 core CPUs for desktop computers?
# #2 Why didn’t Intel or AMD manufacture and start selling such a processor at the same time or before the Xbox 360 shipped?
# #3 How can the cell have 1 Power PC core and, in addition to that, have 7 SPE, which are basically seven extra processors?
# #4 Everyone knows processors aren’t cheap and when you factor in everything else you need, it’s even more expensive. How can Microsoft get away with charging as low as $299 for the Xbox 360? How can Sony get away with charging as low as $500 for the PS3, when the processors themselves cost 90% of the PS3’s price or cost more than $500?

Marketing talk from Microsoft and Sony: The processors inside these machines are extremely powerful and cutting edge you literally have a supercomputer in your home as the Xbox 360 has 1 Teraflop worth of computing power and the PS3 has 2 Teraflops worth of computing power.

TRUTH: Both the 360 and PS3’s CPUs are heavily stripped down compared to what most of us are probably using on our desktop computers to view this article. Both consoles are labeled as 3.2GHZ, but they don’t offer performance comparable to that of a typical Athlon 64 3200+ or better than even an Athlon XP 2800+ CPU. The CPUs inside the Xbox 360 and PS3 are “In-Order Execution” CPUs with narrow execution cores, whereas what we use on our computers are classified as “Out-of-Order Execution” CPUs with wider execution cores.

The reason they can sell for so cheap is because they are not as robust or complex as what we have inside our computers. The execution theme in both the 360 and PS3’s CPUs is similar to that of what you would see in the original Intel Pentium Processor. (Not referring to the Pentium 2 3 or 4, but the original) This is because they’ve stripped out hardware designed to optimize the scheduling of instructions at runtime. As a result, neither the 360 nor PS3’s CPU contain an instruction window. Instead, instructions pass through the processor in the order in which they were fetched; hence both are “In-Order Execution” CPUs.

Marketing talk from Microsoft and Sony: Thanks to these multi-core processors developers will be able to multi-thread their games and get significant performance improvements and achieve Artificial Intelligence in games that people previously thought impossible for a videogame. It’ll be as if you’re playing with another living breathing human being.

TRUTH: “What is the big deal? How exactly does the fact that both processors being “In-Order Execution” CPUs hurt them? Well, see the 3.2GHZ clock speed for both CPUs? The type of nasty game code, full of branches, loops etc… that would’ve been greatly improved speedwise, thanks to out-of-order execution and a wider execution core is not there to help, so that 3.2GHZ actually performs slower than out-of-order execution CPUs available to desktop computer users.

This brings us to the very reason why both the PS3 and Xbox 360 are using multiple processors in an effort to combat the lack of an instruction window and the fact that they have a narrow execution core. It gets even better, because this very same code that they hope to speed up using parallelism on multiple cores isn’t by any means parallel programming friendly.

On the other hand, Graphics-related code is great on both these processors, as graphics code is nice and parallelism friendly. There is a reason people consider graphics accelerators to be the poster child for parallelism. As a matter of fact, it’s the most successful form of parallelism the field of computer science has ever witnessed. GPUs are able to get all transistors firing that actually produce a significant real world benefit to the people using the product.

For the CPU to become more like the GPU is the ultimate goal for many and AMD together with ATI seem to be going for it. The cell processor is actually one such attempt to do so, but it’s not yet at the level everyone had hoped. (Perhaps a bit early as a cell like CPU isn’t on Intel’s to do list until about 2015) Long story short, both Microsoft and Sony have given developers more than enough on the graphics side of things, but at the same time, are asking developers to do more with less on the aspects of the game unrelated to graphics.

15 December 2006 20:53
Kenshin

Any of you xbox 360 fanboys seend metal gear solid 4? that should silence you about the Playstation 3

16 December 2006 00:20
jermaine

i just think the ps3 is getting even for when the ps2 power was crap compare to the xbox but if u remenber even tho the xbox had better grahpic the ps2 had more of better games but not to say that xbox dont have any good ones but instead of putting all this power in the system they should be like the wii something fun and new and cheaper the xbox did get there with the price tho (only 50$ more then the wii) infact i dont even think i get a ps3 till it around 300 to 250 cause i cant aford no 400-650$ for a system i see if it was coming with some games like the wii bundle pack but it not and i no why it cost so much because of the blueray but nether of them is going to last long if the prices keep going up in a bad government *cough* bush *cough* *cough*

16 December 2006 00:35
jermaine

also i for got to state that each system shouldn’t be compare cause each system have there own sytle of uniquiness like the ps3 have more power this time and the 360 have better online (xbox live ) support even tho i think it should still be free like ps online and the wii have all new controlles (witch rocks ) each system have up and downs and if u want to pick a system to go with then u have to ask ur self what system is close to you r u a rpg fan or action fan then that ps3 if ur a fps to action fan then that xbox 360 if u just want to have fun or have kids that u dont want them to see blood splat all over the screen (witch aint a big deal but that me) then u should go wii
and the ds is a system no one talk about but it have fun games and psp have afew but there just getting started but so far it still not a good reason to buy a psp right now only 5 games i can think about ( well 3-4 really ) that is good on the hole system so instead of saying who is better and trying to force ppl on ur side u should just let them deside for them self’s

20 December 2006 22:08
Fadesofblack

Anyone hasn’t said this yet but has anyone else noticed the RSX is on a 128 bit memory bus. If that isn’t one hell of a bottleneck for that fast GPU then I dunno what is.

21 December 2006 12:26
G-MAN

I think both systems are great. If you look at the previous gen systems they both did well even with all there inferior technology compared to todays systems. The sony is more powerfull but to new for programmers to make the most if it. Where XBOX 360 is riding the wave with current technology rather than futuristic which is easier for programers to build software so they can make the games. XBOX 360 definitely has the upper hand now the games prove it. PS3 will eventually have better games once the software becomes more compatible to the hardware. That’s where things stand now as for the memory advantage their more to it than MB’s you must consider memory latency, bandwidth, bus speed. Cause 256mb of XDR is very quick compared to say a 1GB of SD ram from a intel Pentium 3. So the size is not always the answer unless you’ve got a huge texture area all loaded at once. In any case I’m glad their both out cause otherwise niether system would be as good. After all competition a game for them as it is for us.

21 December 2006 13:08
kert

The problem for the PS3 is a bit like the problem the Xbox1 had,the time devolopers make use of any PS3 advantage the next round of consoles will be here,,the 360 has all the BIG games “NOW”(look at the 360 March AAA titles) and also whereeas before Nintendo were not a feature they certainly are now.

10 January 2007 04:38
M 83

How long you guys think it will take. Before all these web sites and the freak fan base that Maicrosoft has. Will read the numbers and just say Ok it is. lol. How lear does it have to be written. Justlike the Xbox was more powerful than the PS2. The PS3 is more powerful than the 260. Granted when the Xbox first came out. It did not look that great compared to the PS2. But than again the PS3 has wont start killing the 360 in graphics bad. Intill they really dig that unknown hardwear. Which will be a while. I love it thow. Becuase now. Everyone is fooled into thinking. Ok the PS3 will only look slightly better. Thats a cool thing. Becuase if the PS3 has that game in 2008 that does finally show some of the PS3 power. People wont expect it. And its gonna draw a tun of attention.

10 January 2007 04:39
M 83

And God did I screw up the grammer on that last post. lol Its late

10 January 2007 07:22
Davw

Don’t you get it yet ? the XBOX 360 has sold over 10 MILLION units and the game GEARS OF WAR has sold around 3 MILLION units in a few months(3 million TIMES £40)on just one game that is exclusive to this one machine!! IT does not matter how many PS3 are now sold the whole point is no developer will ignore the 360 now it is here to stay and getting stronger..Look at the AAA titles being released between now and March for the 360, point proven..