Laying the Graphics Question to Rest

IF YOU POST A REPLY, BE SURE TO READ THE POST FIRST (I can't wait for sheep to post "but gameplay > graphics!!!!1111")

OK, there has been a lot of "debate" here about which console has the best graphics and best graphical hardware.  I am about to lay this issue to rest, once and for all by doing what nobody ever seems to do here: look up the facts.  I will then delve a bit into the history of how these facts came to be.

First, it is important to understand where graphics come from.  Many cows seem to think that graphics are generated by the CPU, and therefore the Cell is advantageous.  Unfortunatelyl for them, this is basically wrong.  Video game graphics are made of triangles, which are drawn by the graphics processing unit (GPU).  This is a completely separate, and distinct, piece of hardware from the CPU and for bandwidth reasons cannot offload triangle drawing to the CPU.

The fill rate is the theoretical maximum number of triangles the GPU can handle per second.  The higher this number, the more complex a 3D scene the console (or PC) can render at real time rates (24 FPS and up).

Now here are the numbers:

Xbox 360: 500 million triangles/sec (source)
PlayStation 3: 275 million triangles/sec (source)
Nintendo Wii*: 30 million triangles/sec (source)

Now first a quick note, for ownage reasons, Nintendo dos not publish their fill rate.  In fact, Sony tried to keep their fill rate a secret for a long time for the same reason.  But back to Nintendo - here I used the Xbox 1 fill rate because a lot of people on this board (probably more than 60%) think the Xbox 1 has better graphics than the Wii.

The conclusion is pretty obvious: the reason the Xbox 360 has better graphics than the other two consoles is that it has a much, much more powerful video card.  It is nearly twice as powerful as the PS3's "reality synthesizer" and over 10 times more powerful than the Wii's Hollywood.

But let's take a step back, and understand why this is.  Why would Sony, obviously trying to build the most powerful console known to man, put a slow graphics chip inside their console?  Well the reason is, this wasn't the plan.  In fact, when Sony began the Cell project there were, in fact, two cell projects.  One cell was designed to function as a CPU (what has become the "cell broadband engine" in the PS3 today), and another cell was designed to be a GPU.  The GPU was designed in-house and was meant to be the successor to the emotion engine.

But unfortunately, developing modern graphics processors from scratch is very difficult and to make matters worse, ATI and NVIDIA hold a plethora of patents in this area, meaning a new chip has to skirt (or license) all of these patents.  Ultimately, this Cell GPU project fell far behind schedule and 2 years before the PS3's launch Sony made a hard decision: kill the Cell GPU project.  Sony then licensed a new chip from NVIDIA to be used in the PS3.

The chip they licensed is neither a 6800 nor a 7800 because it was developed by a separate team working simultaneously as the team at NVIDIA which ultimately developed the 6800 and now the 7800 and 8800.  It seems this team may have been smaller, or underfunded, or perhaps neglected by NVIDIA because what they came up with - the RSX - is actually not very fast.  What is more likely, though, is that Sony was had made a decision to include a hard drive in every unit and was trying to find ways to cut costs.  And so they whacked one of the most important components of a game console: the GPU.

So, cows, now you know why your console has significantly worse graphics than the Xbox 360, and will continue to have worse graphics for the duration of the life of the console.  Also, sheep now know how much slower their console is than the other two and hopefully will stop posting pointless threads like "the Wii has pixel shaders after all!!!!".

I think you mean the debate over if the 360 or the PS3 has better graphics or not.

Finnally when putting things to rest you need to use fire, wooden stakes, or silver bullets.  Since those only works on trolls, vampires, and werewolves; and there's no known method of putting debates to "rest" I wish you good luck with that.

1. Its Wiki, not the most reliable source.

2. The RSX was changed from 550MHz to 500MHz.

You know nothing about graphics processors.  If you'd like a free lesson, please let me know.Teufelhuhn

Saying "I can't wait for the sheep to say "But Gameplay > Graphics!!11!"" Is a kinda stupid attempt at non-fanboyism, since you are in fact denying someones opinion without saying why.

Look, i'm going to say it. Gameplay > Graphics. No, graphics are not what makes a game, and no, graphics are NOT completley un-important either. I like my games to have nice shiny graphics. I just think I can live with playing a game that isn't realistic right down to TEH O SO IMPORTANT DETAIL ON T3H GRASS!!!1!! I own a Xbox 360 and a Wii by the way, and I play Zelda and Wii Play more than I do Gears and Dead Rising.

[QUOTE="Teufelhuhn"]You know nothing about graphics processors. If you'd like a free lesson, please let me know.bragac200

I dont know much about this, but I'm sure thers more to it than just that.  Also, I think its pretty evident that the 360 isn't twice as powerful.  Is gears twice as good looking as mgs4? does it even look better?  the 360 may be more powerful, but the games dont neccesarrily look any better.agentfred

I dont know much about this, but I'm sure thers more to it than just that.  Also, I think its pretty evident that the 360 isn't twice as powerful.  Is gears twice as good looking as mgs4? does it even look better?  the 360 may be more powerful, but the games dont neccesarrily look any better.agentfred

You know nothing about graphics processors.  If you'd like a free lesson, please let me know.Teufelhuhn

thanks topic creater for creating a thread based on misinformation that has already been discussed from awhile ago.  Thanks for "laying that to rest." 

The cell does have advantages and power that CAN create images and "graphics."  It is just harder to do.  THat is why they almost didnt put a GPU in the ps3 to begin with.  That would have been too difficult to do ports and other things like that because developers wouldn't want to learn all about the cell and how to utilize its power properly. 

Plus it doesnt matter the graphics of both systems are good. Everyone thinks VF5 looks great and it uses a 6800 AGP (bandwith limited) GPU along with a p4 3.0ghz.  case closed.

[QUOTE="Teufelhuhn"]You know nothing about graphics processors. If you'd like a free lesson, please let me know.Danthegamingman

[QUOTE="bragac200"][QUOTE="Teufelhuhn"]You know nothing about graphics processors. If you'd like a free lesson, please let me know.Teufelhuhn

[QUOTE="Teufelhuhn"][QUOTE="bragac200"][QUOTE="Teufelhuhn"]You know nothing about graphics processors. If you'd like a free lesson, please let me know.bragac200

I'm gonna go take a shower, hopefully someone else can keep the idiots in check :)

thanks topic creater for creating a thread based on misinformation that has already been discussed from awhile ago.  Thanks for "laying that to rest." 

The cell does have advantages and power that CAN create images and "graphics."  It is just harder to do.  THat is why they almost didnt put a GPU in the ps3 to begin with.  That would have been too difficult to do ports and other things like that because developers wouldn't want to learn all about the cell and how to utilize its power properly. 

Plus it doesnt matter the graphics of both systems are good. Everyone thinks VF5 looks great and it uses a 6800 AGP (bandwith limited) GPU along with a p4 3.0ghz.  case closed.

Dave_NBF

[QUOTE="bragac200"][QUOTE="Teufelhuhn"][QUOTE="bragac200"][QUOTE="Teufelhuhn"]You know nothing about graphics processors. If you'd like a free lesson, please let me know.Teufelhuhn

[QUOTE="bragac200"][QUOTE="Teufelhuhn"]You know nothing about graphics processors. If you'd like a free lesson, please let me know.Teufelhuhn

no thanks we will pass, plenty of well respected tech and gaming sites have put the consoles thru the motions and X360 has been the clear winner on the GPU, RAM architecture, and some feel the X360 CPU is better than the Cell for gaming. So we will pass on the lesson as there are plenty of resources to learn like the one below my sig.Danthegamingman

I've already made my point. If I were actually convinced you knew what you were talking about, I'd be willing to argue. But what's the point of arguing with someone who doesn't know what you're talking about?
Teufelhuhn

[QUOTE="Teufelhuhn"][QUOTE="bragac200"][QUOTE="Teufelhuhn"][QUOTE="bragac200"][QUOTE="Teufelhuhn"]You know nothing about graphics processors. If you'd like a free lesson, please let me know.bragac200

Wow Im sure you are a credit to all xbox fans, its this sort of blind fanboyism (lol is this a word) that embarresses supporters of a system.  This actually reminds me of the DC and the PS2, everybody said the PS2 could not output as nice visuals as the DC when it came out due to it having half the video ram and for the best part of a year they were right.  Every gen Sony make a console which is hard to program and if you look back you can clearly see why, once developers get to grips with the hardware the games really improve but it takes time which inturn means the lifespan is extended greatly.  I feel this is the same way the PS3 will be heading.

I just want to add Im not biased towards Playstation, I am a Wii owner infact that plans on picking up a 360 when I either have the cash or it drops in price whatever comes first.

There was a debate about Wii graphics? No one is arguing that the Wii's graphics are better than anything. Even Nintendo admits to this.

I think you mean the debate over if the 360 or the PS3 has better graphics or not.

Finnally when putting things to rest you need to use fire, wooden stakes, or silver bullets. Since those only works on trolls, vampires, and werewolves; and there's no known method of putting debates to "rest" I wish you good luck with that.

RahnAetas

[QUOTE="bragac200"][QUOTE="Teufelhuhn"][QUOTE="bragac200"][QUOTE="Teufelhuhn"][QUOTE="bragac200"][QUOTE="Teufelhuhn"]You know nothing about graphics processors. If you'd like a free lesson, please let me know._AsasN_

I don't see any mention of texture sizes, anti-aliasing, anisotropic filtering, HDR technology, or any of that other stuff that makes games look good. Nvidia makes the best GPUs as far as graphics quality is concerned. I don't know if you could use any of that techonolgy on a conole because you really wouldn't notice a difference on a TV.

OK, there has been a lot of "debate" here about which console has the best graphics and best graphical hardware. I am about to lay this issue to rest, once and for all by doing what nobody ever seems to do here: look up the facts. I will then delve a bit into the history of how these facts came to be. First, it is important to understand where graphics come from. bragac200

IF YOU POST A REPLY, BE SURE TO READ THE POST FIRST (I can't wait for sheep to post "but gameplay > graphics!!!!1111")

OK, there has been a lot of "debate" here about which console has the best graphics and best graphical hardware. I am about to lay this issue to rest, once and for all by doing what nobody ever seems to do here: look up the facts. I will then delve a bit into the history of how these facts came to be.

First, it is important to understand where graphics come from. Many cows seem to think that graphics are generated by the CPU, and therefore the Cell is advantageous. Unfortunatelyl for them, this is basically wrong. Video game graphics are made of triangles, which are drawn by the graphics processing unit (GPU). This is a completely separate, and distinct, piece of hardware from the CPU and for bandwidth reasons cannot offload triangle drawing to the CPU.

The fill rate is the theoretical maximum number of triangles the GPU can handle per second. The higher this number, the more complex a 3D scene the console (or PC) can render at real time rates (24 FPS and up).

Now here are the numbers:

Xbox 360: 500 million triangles/sec (source)
PlayStation 3: 275 million triangles/sec (source)
Nintendo Wii*: 30 million triangles/sec (source)

Now first a quick note, for ownage reasons, Nintendo dos not publish their fill rate. In fact, Sony tried to keep their fill rate a secret for a long time for the same reason. But back to Nintendo - here I used the Xbox 1 fill rate because a lot of people on this board (probably more than 60%) think the Xbox 1 has better graphics than the Wii.

The conclusion is pretty obvious: the reason the Xbox 360 has better graphics than the other two consoles is that it has a much, much more powerful video card. It is nearly twice as powerful as the PS3's "reality synthesizer" and over 10 times more powerful than the Wii's Hollywood.

But let's take a step back, and understand why this is. Why would Sony, obviously trying to build the most powerful console known to man, put a slow graphics chip inside their console? Well the reason is, this wasn't the plan. In fact, when Sony began the Cell project there were, in fact, two cell projects. One cell was designed to function as a CPU (what has become the "cell broadband engine" in the PS3 today), and another cell was designed to be a GPU. The GPU was designed in-house and was meant to be the successor to the emotion engine.

But unfortunately, developing modern graphics processors from scratch is very difficult and to make matters worse, ATI and NVIDIA hold a plethora of patents in this area, meaning a new chip has to skirt (or license) all of these patents. Ultimately, this Cell GPU project fell far behind schedule and 2 years before the PS3's launch Sony made a hard decision: kill the Cell GPU project. Sony then licensed a new chip from NVIDIA to be used in the PS3.

The chip they licensed is neither a 6800 nor a 7800 because it was developed by a separate team working simultaneously as the team at NVIDIA which ultimately developed the 6800 and now the 7800 and 8800. It seems this team may have been smaller, or underfunded, or perhaps neglected by NVIDIA because what they came up with - the RSX - is actually not very fast. What is more likely, though, is that Sony was had made a decision to include a hard drive in every unit and was trying to find ways to cut costs. And so they whacked one of the most important components of a game console: the GPU.

So, cows, now you know why your console has significantly worse graphics than the Xbox 360, and will continue to have worse graphics for the duration of the life of the console. Also, sheep now know how much slower their console is than the other two and hopefully will stop posting pointless threads like "the Wii has pixel shaders after all!!!!".

bragac200

IF YOU POST A REPLY, BE SURE TO READ THE POST FIRST (I can't wait for sheep to post "but gameplay > graphics!!!!1111")

OK, there has been a lot of "debate" here about which console has the best graphics and best graphical hardware. I am about to lay this issue to rest, once and for all by doing what nobody ever seems to do here: look up the facts. I will then delve a bit into the history of how these facts came to be.

First, it is important to understand where graphics come from. Many cows seem to think that graphics are generated by the CPU, and therefore the Cell is advantageous. Unfortunatelyl for them, this is basically wrong. Video game graphics are made of triangles, which are drawn by the graphics processing unit (GPU). This is a completely separate, and distinct, piece of hardware from the CPU and for bandwidth reasons cannot offload triangle drawing to the CPU.

The fill rate is the theoretical maximum number of triangles the GPU can handle per second. The higher this number, the more complex a 3D scene the console (or PC) can render at real time rates (24 FPS and up).

Now here are the numbers:

Xbox 360: 500 million triangles/sec (source)
PlayStation 3: 275 million triangles/sec (source)
Nintendo Wii*: 30 million triangles/sec (source)

Now first a quick note, for ownage reasons, Nintendo dos not publish their fill rate. In fact, Sony tried to keep their fill rate a secret for a long time for the same reason. But back to Nintendo - here I used the Xbox 1 fill rate because a lot of people on this board (probably more than 60%) think the Xbox 1 has better graphics than the Wii.

The conclusion is pretty obvious: the reason the Xbox 360 has better graphics than the other two consoles is that it has a much, much more powerful video card. It is nearly twice as powerful as the PS3's "reality synthesizer" and over 10 times more powerful than the Wii's Hollywood.

But let's take a step back, and understand why this is. Why would Sony, obviously trying to build the most powerful console known to man, put a slow graphics chip inside their console? Well the reason is, this wasn't the plan. In fact, when Sony began the Cell project there were, in fact, two cell projects. One cell was designed to function as a CPU (what has become the "cell broadband engine" in the PS3 today), and another cell was designed to be a GPU. The GPU was designed in-house and was meant to be the successor to the emotion engine.

But unfortunately, developing modern graphics processors from scratch is very difficult and to make matters worse, ATI and NVIDIA hold a plethora of patents in this area, meaning a new chip has to skirt (or license) all of these patents. Ultimately, this Cell GPU project fell far behind schedule and 2 years before the PS3's launch Sony made a hard decision: kill the Cell GPU project. Sony then licensed a new chip from NVIDIA to be used in the PS3.

The chip they licensed is neither a 6800 nor a 7800 because it was developed by a separate team working simultaneously as the team at NVIDIA which ultimately developed the 6800 and now the 7800 and 8800. It seems this team may have been smaller, or underfunded, or perhaps neglected by NVIDIA because what they came up with - the RSX - is actually not very fast. What is more likely, though, is that Sony was had made a decision to include a hard drive in every unit and was trying to find ways to cut costs. And so they whacked one of the most important components of a game console: the GPU.

So, cows, now you know why your console has significantly worse graphics than the Xbox 360, and will continue to have worse graphics for the duration of the life of the console. Also, sheep now know how much slower their console is than the other two and hopefully will stop posting pointless threads like "the Wii has pixel shaders after all!!!!".

bragac200

Lol thats why MGS4 looks better then most 360 games? and 1st year PS3 games look as good as 2nd Year 360 games. buddy you dont know much:lol: oh and getting your info from Wikipedia is the dumbest thing you can do, i can go in ther and edit it right now.GsSanAndreas

Lol thats why MGS4 looks better then  most 360 games?  and  1st year PS3 games look as good as 2nd Year 360 games. buddy you dont know much:lol:  oh and getting your info from Wikipedia is the dumbest thing you can do, i can go in ther and edit it right now.GsSanAndreas

Ummm Shouldn't first year PS3 games look better than anything on 360.  It came out a year later and is more expensive.  The Xbox came out after PS2 and had better graphics....N64 after PSX....Snes after Genesis.....etc. 

The 360 and the PS3 both have good looking games. Your numbers mean nothing to me. All I care about is: $399 > $599.
fartgorilla

Good point

[QUOTE="GsSanAndreas"]Lol thats why MGS4 looks better then  most 360 games?  and  1st year PS3 games look as good as 2nd Year 360 games. buddy you dont know much:lol:  oh and getting your info from Wikipedia is the dumbest thing you can do, i can go in ther and edit it right now.RickLemieux

Ummm Shouldn't first year PS3 games look better than anything on 360.  It came out a year later and is more expensive.  The Xbox came out after PS2 and had better graphics....N64 after PSX....Snes after Genesis.....etc. 

[QUOTE="RickLemieux"]

[QUOTE="GsSanAndreas"]Lol thats why MGS4 looks better then  most 360 games?  and  1st year PS3 games look as good as 2nd Year 360 games. buddy you dont know much:lol:  oh and getting your info from Wikipedia is the dumbest thing you can do, i can go in ther and edit it right now.Vyse_The_Daring

Ummm Shouldn't first year PS3 games look better than anything on 360.  It came out a year later and is more expensive.  The Xbox came out after PS2 and had better graphics....N64 after PSX....Snes after Genesis.....etc. 

I know, but someone had to say it. 

Did you hear that if you play the PS3 launch games, you turn into a 360 fanboy?

I also heard that if you play the Wii for an hour, your arms fall off....but if you play with yourself for an hour does you Wii fall off.

[QUOTE="Danthegamingman"][QUOTE="Teufelhuhn"]You know nothing about graphics processors. If you'd like a free lesson, please let me know.Teufelhuhn