PS3 firmware heads to 1.80

I must have been the only one to read Utgardaloki's who comment. Good on ya mate. That was great. The high and mighty, "zombie" slaying Makaveli-GR needed to be shut up. Which by the time he reads this post will begin again. He doesn't know when he is in the wrong place to talk. How about we all just put ourselves in a time capsule to be opened in 2010? Then we will truly see the full potential of Cell and the PS3. I just got my PS3 and my jaw dropped when I found out all that it can do. Sony constantly releases updates, which, as stated before, is like getting a new console every time you update your machine. PS3 is a beast ready to be uncaged!

Highly requested features make it to the PS3 firmware update! This one is well worth the download. The DVD upscaling looks great, but the jury is still out on the PS2 upconversion.

My next requested feature is title screen information for DVDs and Blu-Ray movies.

@Dorothy

Thanks honey cup. I'm happy u managed to put me straight

Dear Utgardaloki im sorry man please for the love of god make youre posts shorter i dont know why your in such denial no 1 even bothers reading them cuz there probably filled with biasism and other bull sh*t dude get a life and do something else with your free time stop posting on forums so much and go outside and chill with friends or play some sports um thats assuming that you have any

Yesterday I tried playing SHADOW OF THE COLOSSUS in my PS3, using the optimized display settings for PS2 games...

One word: amazing. It's not the same game. Graphics are now (more) wonderful, with a lot of detail, a lot more organic (less edgy).

Meanwhile, back at the Batcave, Gamespot editors keep ignoring the impact of this firmware (particularly streaming and upscaling)... and prefer to spend their time writing about nudity in Halo 2, spontaneous combustible consoles, etc., etc..

Guys, come on... you're not even trying to look impartial anymore.

Makaveli-GR

It is only difficult to develop for If you are an Idiot Programmer or you are pretending that your a Programmer to support your argument.
Which one are you.

It's sad that the comments about this story went to a whole different path. Some people just sound crazy when they try to bash the PS3.

But getting back on this story... it's time, once again, to criticize Gamespot!

Tell me, Gamespot Editors: - did you even read the release notes about this firmware?
- are you thinking about making a "feature" story about this new Firmware?
- are you planning on changing (as you did before) your "master articles" about each console?


I already installed this new firmware, and the changes are enormous...
- improved HD image, with the new display options
- streaming from a PC
- amazing photo album slideshows
- upscaling for PS, PS2!!
- upscaling for DVD

@Utgardaloki:

I understood the most of that...I think...and all I have to say is...

Lol...Very nice essay. (No sarcasm.)

And I wish I knew something about all this CPU and stuff...But that's just because this stuff is not my major.

All I'm doing is learning...

@Makaveli
"I dont know Why i even bother trying to educate people."

Believe me it's as much a mystery to me as it seems to be for you. Did you even read the posts?

Alright Makaveli-GR I can see I managed to press a few of your buttons. Pissing contests aside... you want to create the impression you're educated. That's fine. Now since you say you are, please let us in on the information on how a Pentium Core processor with its OoO architecture and powerful branch predictor makes it more suited for advanced next gen games providing a better and more powerful result than achievable on the Cell? I'll get you off to a good start:

1. A driving game preferably with very many cars not only in the race itself but simultaneously on the screen as well. Take into consideration heavy physics, behaviour and animation.

2. A war game. 20 000 plus characters in the register running in the background at all times and up to several thousands visible at any one time. At any given time the player should be able to swap between ground based and air based combat in a seamless fashion. Knock yourself out.

3. Graphical strategy game. Lots of characters and environmental possibilities with real time predictions of next CPU move based off of previous happenings stored in register as well as your own actions. This game is going to be next gen so physics should take as much into consideration as possible instead of sporting prev gen generic behavior. This includes tracing of lots of interactive particles, real time geometry remodelling as well as surface tracing for most or the entire scene.

4. A first person shooter.

5. Feel free to chose your own example.

None of these games may be a constant "stutter" and has to support at least 30 FPS at all times.
Now why don't you swap the Pentium Core for the Xbox 360 CPU the Xenon and tell us the whole thing all over again?
If you don't care to answer then let me tell you this. Out of all the games specifically developed for PC the Cell shows no sign of having a problem to keep up. It's just more of a fuss to do some of the same things on Cell since it's not very well adapted to most PC game codes programming wise. And the lack of a branch predictor of course makes "work arounds" quite important.

@Makaveli
"The Cell[...] its achitecture is optimized for streaming like i said"

No you said streaming media. I'll give you a couple of examples of pure streaming media technologies. Your CD-player and your DVD player. Get your DVD player to swap the stream from a pure media stream to a physics calculation as well as animation calculations using single and/or double precision variations respectively. If this doesn't go well it's probably because you chose a /streaming media processor/ meaning it's incapable of manipulating or change the stream at hand let alone swap between different types. The Cell is a CPU+(wide) streaming processor hybrid. The streams it can handle range from simple types like Mpeg (a DVD and Intel processor can do this as well) to large combinations of different streams that can be manipulated and coordinated in real time (now DVD and Intel are in trouble). You can't say it's a streaming media processor. You don't plan on having your games being "calculated" through "Mpeg" do you? Media streamers are normally quite unpowerful and very limited processors normally useful under single type streams. Cell is not. Regardless of the type of stream Cell is (contrary to media stream processors) very fast and can manipulate it/them in real time. Like the 360's CPU the Cell is an in-order-processor and contains no branch predictor. But it can compensate and achieve the same with its compiler assisting with prepare-to-branch instructions. That's at a loss of efficiency, granted. But since PS3 and 360 are consoles there are no standard issues to worry about meaning code can be kept at a very high level of optimisation and efficiency meaning branch predictors are less needed than on a PC.

@Makaveli
"The only thing that the cell is considerably better than the x360 cpu is in the floating point , which meant very litlle to Gaming"

For God's sake give me a break! Yeah we all know how little use the floating points have for gaming don't we. Just ask Microsoft or Intel (it's strange though... I recall Microsoft being quite vocal about the CPU's streaming FLOPS on XBOX 360... once upon a time). Ask the industry why anyone at their right mind would ever opt to use a GPU for the heaviest of all tasks in next gen gaming as is. I mean that stupid thing barely contains a single transistor of CPU architecture logic. What bloody morons. I tell you what. Why don't you send your technical outcome that you're about to write here above and explain to these lost souls how they're not upping the ante with this solution but are in fact on a course to utter failure - "excuse me sir... all this GPU thingy has is a large bunch of FLOPS. This thing wouldn't hold a candle against Garry Kasparov in a chess simulation so how can it be any good in a game?"
The Cell is exactly like a GPU very FLOPS intensive only not as intensive but considerably wider concerning possible calculations. The Cell isn't a general purpose monster. It's a physics, behaviour, animation and multi content monster. It gets crushed by its sibling the POWER5 in applications not mainly intended like general purpose processing. But POWER5 has been proven the same fate compared to Cell when ever the narrower and very typical next gen environment is on the table. That table is one with lots of content that needs lots of attention all at the same time. Fire up Linux and try it.

@Makaveli
"Ask to any respected dev , the Cell is a pain in the ass to develop for."

So in your mind the developers that have succeeded in running several registers at the same time on the Cell each capable of more or less maxing out a general purpose processor, aren't respectable? You man of a high horse wanting so badly to be right should get your priorities straight. Next gen games are all about approximated physics and behaviour on a massive scale as long as Tetris or Chess master isn't your thing. With current technology the only way to achieve that on a high level is to have dedicated NARROW hardware like Xenon, Cell or a GPU. The general purpose processors that you're talking about are crap concerning this. They are too wide in execution where too many "tools" are each given too few transistors bound to miss their target. When ever they do hit they tend to be too weak for the task or at least much weaker than Cell lending themselves to nothing more than a lesser result. This isn't a super scalar out-of-order scientific test meant to assess the outcome of millions of dynamic possibilities. That would be for your PC or general purpose super computer to dig their teeth into. This is about videogames. And they need to be real time. When ever I throw a grenade into a very large bunch of people you already know the basic outcome. But how do you calculate it? I want each of them to fly in the right direction each obeying the right or near right laws of physics as they fly. That takes lots of raw number crunching power. The Cell, Xenon and a GPU all have that very narrow but powerful type of ability. General purpose processors generally do not. You sound like a tape recording of the PR side meant to lessen the competition. If you have actually gone into depth concerning this and scraped more than the surface then it sure doesn't show in your posts.
The Cell a pain in the ass to program for? ...the price you pay for not having an OoO architecture and 8 possible threads running at the same time. This is the future. Optimisation is key. Results may vary from mind blowing to bland. Developer houses don't like it. Multi core PC CPUs are about to take the same rout. Developers are crying. If you you're a developer and want more CPU power you simply can't have it from one core running at 25 Ghz... because it would burn. There's only one thing to do and that's splitting the thread into many onto several different cores. Developers are whining as much over this concerning PCs as they are concerning Cell only Cell has 8 threads (PPE 2 + SPE 6) compared to maximum 4 on the PC. You are picturing the situation concerning Cell the way you and some developers see fit... through negative eyes. Other developers picture it for what is possible to achieve on such an architecture once you know how to handle it.

@Makaveli
"it just got 2 main treads , and those 6 spes without branch predictor with a ineficient 256kb of cache , which realy limits the devs options."

It's funny you would say "just 2 main threads" seeing how the PC game developers are complaining about CPUs having more than one now a days... since it's a pain in the ass to develop for. 256KB cache for each SPE yes (that's (256)KB=kilobytes not (256)kb=kilobits). Each such cache and SPE can stream directly from RAM at very high speed when ever the PPE says it should. 256KB cache is not ideal and a developer always needs more. So what can you achieve on these "inefficient" 256KB x 6 caches? The hardware itself can't be weaker than the results at hand (naturally!) and some developers are claiming to get results far beyond what they ever achieved before or even can achieve on other present hardware. So what's your point? You like to listen to those who fail? They don't provide the benchmarks. The highest achieved results do.

@Makaveli
"The Cell is not fit for gaming , get over it , sony never made the ps3 as with gaming as a top priority , if so , they wouldnt even tough about the Cell as the ps3 CPU.
Please learn something"/ "Gs need more educated gamers."

So according to you what type of game calculations render it so unfit to handle them? I'm all ears and ready to learn...
From reading your other posts in this thread it seems you're more on a mission to piss people off rather than making valid and good contributions to further understand the technology that drives the games that we like. "I based my posts with information of friends of mine who actually know real developers". I tend to base my talk off real developers as well as my own findings. You on the other hand look like a copy cat of bad attitude... generally speaking. "Yes it is multimedia processing which is based heavily on matrix operations and pushing large amounts of data around , SO WHAT?" So what???? Well WHAT WOULD YOU CHOSE FOR YOUR PHYSICS, BEHAVIOUR ETC. ETC.?? A BRANCH PREDICTOR??!! Look at the results. Developers are not getting the same heavy duty results from a PC CPU as from the Cell unless you use a GPU (which is even narrower in design than Cell.) How can you expect anyone to claim you have a case going for you? Just tell us in which occasions the Cell would be beaten and people would probably back off proclaiming you as "the winner" of this discussion.

And in case anyone wonders where I got Makaveli's quotes from... I copied it before he deleted/changed it.

Makaveli-GR, catagorizing all members on here at once...

You sound like you've have/had a 360...you're justification for your spelling speaks volumes for that statement.

Now...I know its a bit late, but could you give us a link to any of your claims that arn't Wiki? Thanks.


http://www.gamespot.com/xbox360/index.html?navclk=x360

There we go: Leading one lost lamb at a time.

@@@LuminosityBlaze and the rest of the sony loyal zombies.

you another big joke of this website.
Everything i said is true , just do some rechearch.
You dont know nothing , i repear you dont know nothing ,and also you got a terrible reading understanding,

The Cell cant do the miracles tha sony PR love to boost about , and im speaking from a dev prespective.
If you dont want to belive fine , I COULDNT care less about loyal zombies like you.

Im still laughting at you...llolololololo

P,s - picking at my spelling was just a way of trying to change the subject which i had already won.

Gamespot members are a Big Joke.lololol

Makavelli: "you know very little about videogames and console hardware architecture.
I m not going going even bother trying to educate you because it donsent worth it." Easy thing for you to say. But no cajones to back up your frivoulous statements. You obviously DON'T know squat about hardware architecture if you think the cell doesn't improve gaming computing. While it is not completely optimized, it is the best thing in any console at this time. Maybe some basic grasp of the English language would also serve you well before you decide to berade other members with nonsense. They don't teach that in IT school anymore?, obviously they don't teach social skills either... : \ Yo, Ivalice...Do you have a HDTV with HDMI(or component works, I think)? If not you will not see a difference from upscaling because your set cannot support it, that is probably why you haven't noticed a difference in picture quality. Smoothing is a nice feature too, especially with those that still have SD sources.

sweet at least sony offers some great patches

This is new....

A ballte between PS3 owners?

Makaveli-GR...You're a PS3 owner, right?

@juancorazon:

This is what happens if 360 fanboys butt out for a major portion of the thread.

*Maybe they read my sign (post) and actually listened...

good sony keep up the good work

@@@RaiKageRyu Care proving how and why i am a moron???
or You are just speaking trough your ass?

The truth hurts, specially to ps3 loyal zombies like you.

Somehow this comments always end up in useless discussions by fanboys or people showing off, it's really sad that the gamespot community turned into this. People should be commenting positive and negative stuff about the article, in this case the firmware update for the PS3. Well enough talk, I downloaded the update, and I must say I'm really pleased of the new functionalities they added (although most of them were promised from day 1) but they are really good and work well I can now give more uses to my PS3 which is really nice. On the other hand I wish they added more countries to the list of the PS Store so I can register my credit card and buy with it. It's really sad that I can buy stuff for my Wii and my Xbox and I can't buy stuff from the PS store. It really isn't fair.

Nice

Makaveli-GR is another complete moron who is trying to pretend to be a smartass, who learns all his info from Wikipedia.

@Makaveli-GR:

Lol.

Got nothing to say about your last comment.

Someone else will pick up to where I went to sleep.

@@@Symphonycometh Trying to be a smart ass eh???

Sorry if i hurt your feelings with my quick typing , i dont have too much time to post , like i had back on high school , so i end up making some spelling mistakes.

One day when you get a job and learn a little bit about consoles hardware architecture , you will understand.

Until there try to read a learn with me , ok??? Yes , I still waiting for those ps2 toy story graphics and 1080p 120fps games like Harrison promised.
Sarcasm said.

Makaveli-GR:

I'm sorry...you seemed to have overlooked a very pretty sign I posted up:

It said:

"Haters please stay on your side of the fence, we don't want our green grass tainted."

Your long essay is opinion at most. And lastly, I don't want to pry too much into that essay's spelling structure, just in case you're actually from another country...but if you're not: Look at your ironies!

"I m not going going even bother trying to educate you because it donsent worth it."

It "donsent worth it?" Come now, don't speak education if you worded something wrong within a wrong structured sentence.

First off, it should be "desn't worth it." to make that...somewhat fit...

Or...

"It isn't worth it." That works too. And then you ironically say

"Dead brain" members down there...Wow.

Lastly, to blow some theories of yours away: I'm still in High school, but I do somewhat recall the Phil guy saying they're making EASIER dev kits for the developers...so...why did you post that thing?

*Hope I didn't spell anything wrong.

@@@@ cduran I dont care where did you toke your course , you know very little about videogames and console hardware architecture.
I m not going going even bother trying to educate you because it donsent worth it.

Now sorry im going back to gamersreporters.com , where i can find people who actually know what they are talking about.

P.S- The simple ignorant and arrogant assumptions of yours , that only the sprectum jornal is a big thing is quite laughtable , I based my posts with information of friends of mine who actually know real developers , i based my posts with years and years of research and debates with other similar minded gamers like me.

Please dont make yourself look worst , the spes are not the same thing as multicores , they are just there to help the main core with threads,
In comparison with real cores , the spes got not branching predictor , and are too much dependent of the main core inside the cell aka , power pc.

The Only thing that the cell got better than the x360 is floating point , which means very litlle to videogames , ask any decent dev.
Yes it is multimedia processing which is based heavily on matrix operations and pushing large amounts of data around , SO WHAT??

What is the point of having power when its a pain in the ass to develop for? do you want me explain why it is hard to develop for???
The Cell is only a marketing move of sony , they saved a lot of money doing it in thosiba and ibm , instead of making a dedicated and more pratical cpu like the xbox360.
They felt that the cell was viable for gaming , yes it is , but is not specificaly desingned for it.

Im happy that the floating point of the cell is doing good stuff like the home fold project , i really do , other than that it will never gave an impact on gaming.

For some reason , Gs known for their "dead brain" members.

Dude just take 10 minutes of your time and read a little bit at wikipedia. (basic stuff).

best update ever. Now I can play the best games from last generation on my ps3 and my ps2 can finally retire... pwnzer!!! woot woot

I haven't tried it with PS2 games, but it seems upscaling PS1 games causes the sound to skip. Anyone noticed that as well?

@Makaveli-GR, where did you get your degree in computer or electrical engineering (computer science maybe?)?

I got my BS and MS in Computer Engineering at FIU, and Im a firmware developer, and I can tell you from reading an article in Spectrum journal (in case you dont know thats a journal members of IEEE (like me) get as part of their membership) that the cell is 100% designed for multimedia processing which is based heavily on matrix operations and pushing large amounts of data around. From a software point of view that IS what a video game does.

Do some reading and you can learn a lot more. The Cell architecture is where all processors are moving towards, because the limits on the performance that the current processors is being reached very quickly. Check out the specs on all the latest GPUs, the new Intel and AMD processors...what do they all have in common...Multiple cores (aka Cells).

Thanks, kstegall2. Jaggies suck, so I assume I'll wind up turning the smoothing on myself.

Scratch that. You have to go into the settings and change the game setting for the upscaling. Reading the release notes helps.

http://www.us.playstation.com/ps3/network/updates/

The update wacks widescreen on GT4 in all settings. Progressive Scan 16:9 is widescreen during the test, but when you select OK, it goes back to 4:3. God Of War II seems to work fine. This is crap. I just got force feedback and now this?

Makaveli GR..NOBODY CARES...

Xbox Lovers...find your own news!

To "Muziksoul": I've turned on the PS1/PS2 smoothing & I noticed a cleaner screen on my PS2 game, less jaggies. I'm playing "Total Overdose" currently..

To "m-m-f" re: your update is still v 1.70.. wow, that's strange. You may wanna call Sony support @ 800-345-7669. Hope that helps, let us know if you're finally able to get the 1.80 update.

warrner11:

"Cept the three rings of death MS snuck in most 360s."



LOL. Nice one.

Gs need more educated gamers.

@@@Utgardaloki I dont know Why i even bother trying to educate people who dont want to learn.

The Cell , was never meant or optimized for games , its achitecture is optimized for streaming like i said , which benefit a lot from the paralel processing of the Cell.
Ask to any respected dev , the Cell is a pain in the ass to develop for , it just got 2 main treads , and those 6 spes without branch predictor with a ineficient 256kb of cache , which realy limits the devs options.

The only thing that the cell is considerably better than the x360 cpu is in the floating point , which meant very litlle to Gaming , but means a lot to things like homefold programs , scientific aplications ,etc,,,

I dont even going to bother going futher on the Cell , i let this to you , go learn something.

The Cell is not fit for gaming , get over it , sony never made the ps3 as with gaming as a top priority , if so , they wouldnt even tough about the Cell as the ps3 CPU.

Please learn something , before making yourself lock bad.

ps3 knows's how plays blu ray at 720p confirmed i tested it

what the use to upscale an old game to higher resolution?

it will make it look even worse..

Upscale dosn't make any diffrents for me.. The movies looks the same and PSone/PS2 games looks the same aswell. The only feature that makes any diffrent is "Smooth".

Amazing News! although I'm still saving money to buy My PS3 lol

they used a lot filters but it's not true upscaling, people like to toss that term around a lot

This might have already been answered, but does anyone know what the double scale feature under the DVD upscaling section is for and how it's different than the other options? Also, I'm looking for some insight on what everyone's been doing with the option to turn the smoothing on or off for ps2/ps1 games. Thanks!

AWESOME. i've been waiting FOREVER to be able to upscale my already pixilated ps1 games!!!!!111

This is absolutely amazing news. Ive been considering getting an A/V receiver with upscaling to 1080p but those are eeeexxxxpppeeeeennnnnssiiiiivvvve, for my DVD and PS1/PS2 game collection. (although I know ps1 games will still look bad on my 60" sony 1080p tv) Now i can save like $1000 on a receiver.

Glad to see Sony is putting out solid updates. More reason to get a PSP now too (especially with god of war going to the psp)

I need to check out that free copy of Casino Royale on Blu-Ray that Sony provided !

thanks kstegall2 btu of course i know that but it show's to me that is the 1.70 is the latest update

Downloaded and love playing ps2 games

Indeed , what about upscaling to 720p as that's the res most people have or even getting more specific as may DVD upscalers do 13xx by 768 and give the machine Dvix and xVid support streaming from PC's sucks ..what's the point of the HDD if all your gonna do is stream content ?

Can anyone who has a European PS3 confirm that Sony has got rid of the 'black borders' when playing a PS2 game? Cause i've downloaded the update already and I've configured the Game Settings to output Full Screen and there's no change when I play FFXII. It's still as ugly as before.

good stuff but waht other resolutions will be availible??
if its only 1080p then that is useless to practicly everybody!

OMG! OLD PS/PS2 GAMES AND DVD'S LOOK SO MUCH BETTER WITH THE NEW UPDATE! LUVIN THE IDEA OF USING MY PSP OVER THE WI-FI WAVES!
STILL DON'T KNOW HOW TO WORK THE PUBLIC NETWORK FOLDERS YET. WILL NEED HELP IN THAT DEPARTMENT.