Wow, it is really unbelievable, what some people write here obviously without knowing anything about the matter.

One important thing is, that having two threads is in no way a substitution for having two cores. If you have two threads, you can execute the second thread in the time your first thread has to wait for example for a memory transaction to end. So you can mask many "work breaks".

It doesn't miraculously execute two bits of program code simultaneously as if running on two cores. You often have two caches etc., but the used pipeline is the same and can only be used by one thread at a time. It never completely doubles the performance and on heavily optimized code it gives almost zero performance boost.

So don't act as if a 3-core processor with multithreading substitutes a 6-core.

Another thing, of course you can call the SPU a core. And no, it's definitely not the same thing as in a graphics card. Sure, they both use SIMD, but every CPU today has some kind of SIMD implementation (for example Altivec on PPC or SSE on Intel processors).

The SPU can run almost any code, but it is much more efficient when running SIMD optimized code. You have to avoid branches and if you really want to code fast, you have to do at least double buffering etc... yes, its sometimes hard to code for it, but it is more than possible.

And there are reasons for it being in-order etc. They didn't thought: "Oh, let's dumb down our processor!" If you want so know about some of their design decisions and why they did it the way they did, take a look at following links.

http://www.power.org/resources/devcorner/cellcorner/CellTraining_Track1

The first talk gives a really great overview.

http://www.research.ibm.com/journal/rd/494/kahle.html

That's for the people prefering to read about it.

[QUOTE="srPsychonaut"][QUOTE="ogvampire"]

[QUOTE="DireToad"]What do sheep know about fighting games anyways.
HuusAsking

i could be mistaken, but hasnt Brawl been the best rated fighting game for the last 2 gens?

and if you say that Brawl isnt a 'real' fighting game, then explain this:

http://www.evo2k.com/

notice how brawl is right there along with SF and Tekken

Actually there is a better rated fighting game in the last two generations. Soul Calibur is rated higher on Gamerankings and Metacritic. Dreamcast was sixth generation, too. Don't know why it is ignored so often.

I'm not saying anything about Brawls qualities here though, haven't even tried it yet.

Anyhow, that doesn't invalidate your point, so...

Silly me, forgot that that reduces the quality of games on that system. :oops:

And it was only the home of one of the most esteemed fighting game, that still gets sequels. And there aren't at least every week threads begging for a Shen Mue Sequel. And Resident Evil: Code Veronica was first on Dreamcast.

I really don't know why it should be remembered. :o

[QUOTE="DireToad"]What do sheep know about fighting games anyways.
ogvampire

i could be mistaken, but hasnt Brawl been the best rated fighting game for the last 2 gens?

and if you say that Brawl isnt a 'real' fighting game, then explain this:

http://www.evo2k.com/

notice how brawl is right there along with SF and Tekken

Actually there is a better rated fighting game in the last two generations. Soul Calibur is rated higher on Gamerankings and Metacritic. Dreamcast was sixth generation, too. Don't know why it is ignored so often.

I'm not saying anything about Brawls qualities here though, haven't even tried it yet.

Anyhow, that doesn't invalidate your point, so...

[QUOTE="srPsychonaut"][QUOTE="-oG-ShAdY"][QUOTE="m2twkisfun"][QUOTE="-oG-ShAdY"]

Short Answer = No (peaked), Yes (will pass Xbox)

Insert witty comment involving a plastic bag, twinky and a hammer.

m2twkisfun

Source?

Have you guys all forgotten that the PS2 had twice the POTENTIAL of the original Xbox?

I will admit when the PS3 launched I thought it was gonna go down in flames, but now the consoles are very closely matched. And if any thing the 360's more flexible video card will allow it to be optimised further than the PS3's 7800.

I return the question to you my friend. I was stating an abbreviated version of what others were saying, not my own opinion. However, I see nothing but opinion so far out of your own comments. So... "source?"

Yeah, I would like a source, too. According to wikipedia, the Xbox has a 733 MHz Celeron and a 233 MHz NVidia GPU, while the PS2 EE is 294 MHz and the GPU is 147 MHz. Of course, the PS2 hat the two vector units, that gave it a lot of power, but that didn't push it to that extremes you're talking about.

By potential, I was refering to the thoeretical peak processing power of the entire console which people oftem use to describe the power of a a video game console(usually described as "flops".) And there is much more to a GPU than its clock rate, for instance the PS2's GPU has a lower clock rate than the Xbox's, but has 16 pixel piplines, where as the Xbox's has only 4. We all know the Xbox had better graphics despite the PS2's greater potential.

And if you want a source for why the 360's video card is more flexible than the PS3's than do a little research on DrectX10, and shader modal 4.0.(cause I don't feel like it right now) One of the main changes over previos hardware and API's is the unified shader architecture, where as older GPU's(such as the PS3's) had vertex, and pixel processsors, the xenos and ALL new video cards use general purpace stream processors which can dynamicly change roles(vertex/pixel). Which gives develupers greater flexeblity, or so I've been told.

So there you have it.

P.S. I'm not an Xbox fanboy, but I will defend it if someone makes a false claim. Well really I guess I'm a PC fanboy, which runs circles around both systems by the way;-)

Yeah, the GPU of the PS3 seems to be a bit underwhelming, but I really don't think that it's extremely slower than the Xenos. Furthermore the Xenos only has DirectX9.0c and Shader Model 3.0, according to Wikipedia at least. I think there were reports, that it is a kind of DX 9.5 or something. But I guess it would be still closer to 9.0c, and definitley no SM4.0.

I think the flexibility thing is balanced, at least a bit, by the cell. An SPE is generally speaking a streaming processor, and it actually can help with graphics. Although I would prefer it to be used to have more things going on on screen at the same time.

The cell really is a beast. I'm (trying to ;)) programm it right now for my diploma thesis and you can use it virtually for anything. Although its much, much faster with problems you can translate to SIMD computations.

P.S. I'm no fanboy either, but I don't like that in these times we have to state something like that. :(

Actually I like a lot of cutscenes in my games (you could guess that I love Final Fantasy. :P). And I would prefer to have them in HD. When I played Enchanted Arms I was very disappointed in the cgi videos. They were of good HD quality, but there were about, what, two? And it came out on DVD on another console, too.

Another example is Ultimate Alliance. The videos are okay, but low-res. Of course I would have prefered HD videos. If it had only been on PS3, then they probably would have been.

Of course this doesn't have an impact on gameplay, but in my opinion it's nice to have the vids in HD if you're gaming in HD.

Didn't have The Darkness more streaming videos for the in-game-TVs because of Blu-Ray? I like that kind of thing because of the atmosphere it delivers. Don't tell me you haven't watched the documentary about the foundation of Liberty City yet! :)

[QUOTE="m2twkisfun"][QUOTE="-oG-ShAdY"]

Short Answer = No (peaked), Yes (will pass Xbox)

Insert witty comment involving a plastic bag, twinky and a hammer.

-oG-ShAdY

Source?

Have you guys all forgotten that the PS2 had twice the POTENTIAL of the original Xbox?

I will admit when the PS3 launched I thought it was gonna go down in flames, but now the consoles are very closely matched. And if any thing the 360's more flexible video card will allow it to be optimised further than the PS3's 7800.

I return the question to you my friend. I was stating an abbreviated version of what others were saying, not my own opinion. However, I see nothing but opinion so far out of your own comments. So... "source?"

Yeah, I would like a source, too. According to wikipedia, the Xbox has a 733 MHz Celeron and a 233 MHz NVidia GPU, while the PS2 EE is 294 MHz and the GPU is 147 MHz. Of course, the PS2 hat the two vector units, that gave it a lot of power, but that didn't push it to that extremes you're talking about.

*sigh* Why not just look at the exclusive games and the decide? If there are enough, buy it, if not then don't. I would never buy a console just for one game.

Perhaps you have a friend who owns one and can lend you his for the game? I gave my Xbox to a Friend once for a weekend so he could play Halo.