Got me a new toy!

[Captain Ben]

Also cant wait until i get other important things out of the way to get a 360 and mod the crap out of it. 

My current X-Box: 
Ver 1.1
black/blue paint job
80mm fan replacing 60mm fan in the back
120gig Hdd
50mm HDD fan mounted on the bottom of the drive
80mm cold cathode under the cleared jewel, quite bright, blue
12" cold cathode under the front grill, blue. (this took about 4 hours to put in, major motifing involved)
All of the cathodes are sound activeted

Right not i have the money to buy 5 xbox 360 Premium editions, but i kinda need a car first. 
When i eventualy do get one, im going to do some pretty nice changes if my quess, possibly water-cooling.  HALO 3 FTW

...Ever thou8ght of buying an Xbox to play "games" on it?

[Plonkoon]

i think every consol is just going to be crap:

1. the wii:
the wii has the stupidest controller they ever made, they will drive away much of the market with it, after 20 minutes with your arm stretched out you will ether have to switch hands or stop playing, nintendo always makes systems that are behind in terms of specs all it has going for it is its cheap as hell price and the gamemakers who have to overcome the ****hole controller issues.

2. the new xbox:
the xbox 360 is the safest bet if you HAVE to get a system, you can play it at a best buy or other store before you buy it because it IS ALREADY OUT. on the negative side, the xbox only ever had 2 games that made any impact, halo one and halo two, and both of them were not even that good, they were nothing compared to games like half life 2 and quake and doom, pc is just so much better, the only thing people want from xbox is halo 3, that game alone will sell a huge amount of systems, which is sad, because they are wasting their money, online is nothing but what we should all expect from these consoles, gamecube is the last system that doesnt have multiplayer online stuffs.

3. playstation 3
it makes no difference that it has better stats and like the playstation 2 is pushing for a large amount of games for every type of player whether it is final fantasy or metal gear solid or sports games and devil may cry gran tourismo and other games, the price is so outragios! for that amount of money you could get a computer and do way more then play games, and for a little more, you might as well go for a computer, playstation is just too high priced and they are still going to lose money on the thing, it will not have enough ready in time for release and it will cost way to much so playstation 3 is going to sink.


bottom line: if you dont have a pc yet and you are reading these forums on a library computer when you are supposed to be researching about the mylasian prime minister, by one before even thinking about these, and if you have a computer, just upgrade it instead, and finally if your computer is upgraded, keep your money so you can buy games for the computer instead of wasting any time on these.

Well spoken.   

[jbigz]

i think every consol is just going to be crap:

1. the wii:
the wii has the stupidest controller they ever made, they will drive away much of the market with it, after 20 minutes with your arm stretched out you will ether have to switch hands or stop playing, nintendo always makes systems that are behind in terms of specs all it has going for it is its cheap as hell price and the gamemakers who have to overcome the ****hole controller issues.

2. the new xbox:
the xbox 360 is the safest bet if you HAVE to get a system, you can play it at a best buy or other store before you buy it because it IS ALREADY OUT. on the negative side, the xbox only ever had 2 games that made any impact, halo one and halo two, and both of them were not even that good, they were nothing compared to games like half life 2 and quake and doom, pc is just so much better, the only thing people want from xbox is halo 3, that game alone will sell a huge amount of systems, which is sad, because they are wasting their money, online is nothing but what we should all expect from these consoles, gamecube is the last system that doesnt have multiplayer online stuffs.

3. playstation 3
it makes no difference that it has better stats and like the playstation 2 is pushing for a large amount of games for every type of player whether it is final fantasy or metal gear solid or sports games and devil may cry gran tourismo and other games, the price is so outragios! for that amount of money you could get a computer and do way more then play games, and for a little more, you might as well go for a computer, playstation is just too high priced and they are still going to lose money on the thing, it will not have enough ready in time for release and it will cost way to much so playstation 3 is going to sink.


bottom line: if you dont have a pc yet and you are reading these forums on a library computer when you are supposed to be researching about the mylasian prime minister, by one before even thinking about these, and if you have a computer, just upgrade it instead, and finally if your computer is upgraded, keep your money so you can buy games for the computer instead of wasting any time on these.

Well spoken.   

Ahaha, you two really want me to go out on you, dont you? have you read my previous posts? Okay, here we go...

First, I definately must object on your comments on the Wii.
It absouletely does NOT have the stupidest controller they have ever made. Do you see motion-sensing controllers for your all-holy PC? im pretty sure there isnt such a thing. You may think "oh well my arms gunna get tired. im a fatass.". you may in fact not be a fatass or even more well-fit than me. but if you tire out from playing a video game, heh well your sad stuff. And, in fact, it is not driving away the market. It has the most publicity of the systems. Also, it has many more developing companies begging it for the software to develop games for its motion-sensing controller. And lo-and-behold. Another graphic freak. OMG graphics are nothing important. Lets talk about some other good games, lacking in your top-of-the-line graphics. Metal Slug series, those games just SUCKED because they didn't have 3D full-scale explorable environments? um, NO. Metal Slug was one of the best 2D side scrollers of all time, aside from Mario. And for its price? Lets do some math... PS3, 500+ dollars. XBOX360? bout 400 for good one. PC? hahaha for a good one, at least 800+. and i know the Wii's performance is more than 1/3 the Playstation's performance (specs), but still the Playstaion is almost 3x more. Less than 3x performance, but 3x the price? i think the Wii is the best deal there. and it COMES WITH motion sensing hardware. Oh yeah, wireless too. the bargain 360 comes corded, im not sure about PS3.

HEY, WAIT A SECOND. Did I just think up extremely convincing reasons why your response was un-researched and unlogical? Dang, I'm good.

[GAMEOVER]

No console games are catching up with computer games, like I said the only games id take on computer over consoles are FPSs or games like Soldat.

The consoles coming and the 360 now IS a computer with the purpose of playing games only on it.

the 360 has..

1) Hard Drive....
2) Processor....
3) Video Card....

The GPU is probably better then 90% of your guys on here, hell, the Processor might even be!

Consoles are going in the right direction. Online play, etc

To the 4 year old..

Your wrong RPGs (Morrowind, Fable, Jade Empire, etc) have flourished on xbox and way more are coming out for 360. Id take Oblivion on 360 ANYDAY over a PC. Halo? I dont even like that game at all wont even rent it so that goes to show you how much Halo influenced my decision to buy a 360.

Nothing like coming home grabing my 360 remote when I feel like it and laying on the couch only to turn it on with my controler load my game and be ready for action and then turn it off with my controller without even having to get my lazy ass off the couch. I dont know about you but sitting infront of a PC all day just isnt fun.

BTW my couch is pretty far from my TV and the xbox is turned backwards and facing the back of an entertainment center yet this stock wireless 360 controller picks up signal perfectly without error. They really pulled  this system off, on all levels..

Lets see some reasons that I can think of why your bashing it assuming NONE of the ones bashing it own one. Could it be..

1) Mommy wouldnt buy you one?

2) Your a fanboy of another system?

3) You like to argue and just wanted to join in even if you dont make any sense cus your emo.

[MWTBDLTR]

Also cant wait until i get other important things out of the way to get a 360 and mod the crap out of it. 

My current X-Box: 
Ver 1.1
black/blue paint job
80mm fan replacing 60mm fan in the back
120gig Hdd
50mm HDD fan mounted on the bottom of the drive
80mm cold cathode under the cleared jewel, quite bright, blue
12" cold cathode under the front grill, blue. (this took about 4 hours to put in, major motifing involved)
All of the cathodes are sound activeted

Right not i have the money to buy 5 xbox 360 Premium editions, but i kinda need a car first. 
When i eventualy do get one, im going to do some pretty nice changes if my quess, possibly water-cooling.  HALO 3 FTW

...Ever thou8ght of buying an Xbox to play "games" on it?

yes as a mater of fact,  i have a game *backup* tool that i use where i can put in any game, and *back it up* onto the HDD, I keep this completly legal of course *wink wink*

also, i have 2 network cards in my computer, and i use xboxconnect so i can play online for free.  I also have a media player, if i wanted i could get forecasts, all the info i need. 

[Kazuki]

Gameover, stop with the fanboy bullsh**. All of your points are completely off the top of yours or someone else's head. Although you try to elaborate them, you still give no numbers (other than the made up percentages). You definately fit into your second category, and it's annoying. I'm going to agree with people like Amblin and Lapis, and although I'm not much of an XBox fan myself, I will agree that Microsoft has the advantage by releasing their console early and at a moderate price.

Go play your Oblivion and leave us the hell alone until November.

[Plonkoon]

I'm really not for or against any of the consoles, they all have perks and disadvantages.  But I think the PC makes them obsolete becuase . . .

1.) More games:  In the electronics Isle the pc games will take up enough space to meet all the consoles combined, and there are more exclusive games for the PC than consoles, (nintendo gives it a good run though)  And I've yet to play a good strategy game for a console

2.) Higher Performace:  Look at any review on gamespot or the likes for high end games like oblivion, They run great on an Xbox 360 but a high end computer will outperform it.  Of course, a high end computer is fairly expenisve.

3.) Game customization:  The ability to make mods and levels for games gives PCs a massice advantage over consoles, After I get bored of a game I'm still going on it for a few months cause of modablity.

4.) More than just games: Justification for the higher price of PCs is the fact that you can do a shitload more than just play games.

5.) Multiplayer:  This will soon be a void reason with the new consoles online capabilities but I've always had so much fun being part of online communities and clans and such.

6.) Upgrading:  There isn't much you can do to upgrade a console, in a few year you just have  to get the new gen system.  A well managed PC can be kept up to date until it breaks, and then you have the warrenty 

7.) Controllers:  PCs can use gamepads just like consoles, and they also can get joysticks, steering wheels, and other accessories to control games with.  This allows for a huge variety of games easily possible on a PC

Ok, I'm done for now.  I guess I'll just sit back and wait for someone to flame me and start shouting pros for thier side of the argument.   

[GAMEOVER]

Gameover, stop with the fanboy bullsh**. All of your points are completely off the top of yours or someone else's head. Although you try to elaborate them, you still give no numbers (other than the made up percentages). You definately fit into your second category, and it's annoying. I'm going to agree with people like Amblin and Lapis, and although I'm not much of an XBox fan myself, I will agree that Microsoft has the advantage by releasing their console early and at a moderate price.

Go play your Oblivion and leave us the hell alone until November.

LMAO you stop with your jibberish kazu, you cant even make a valid arguement like I have. You obviously havent read everything could swore I told you I wasnt a fanboy and will buy what shows results put the guts, game developers, etc etc of the 360 under the Sony name and id have a Sony. Thats just the bottem line. So if you cant make a valid arguement if your gonna argue then go see yourself out this thread bud.

All of my statements were made by me through research I did at neutral review sites and in neutral review mags.

If youd like I can get into numbers but people like you who cant argue dont even make me feel like I have to take it there and to tell you the truth i dont even want to i just wanted to show how much i love my new 360. Ive only seen one or two good counter arguements in this whole thread and I never mentioned any percentages ffs do you read kazu?

[frogboy]

1. the wii:
the wii has the stupidest controller they ever made, they will drive away much of the market with it, after 20 minutes with your arm stretched out you will ether have to switch hands or stop playing, nintendo always makes systems that are behind in terms of specs all it has going for it is its cheap as hell price and the gamemakers who have to overcome the ****hole controller issues.

A lot of people like the Wiimote, and you don't even have to use it in some games. There are attachments for it, and the motion sensor is only used in certain games. The GC controller also works with it. Nintendo makes systems that are behind in specs because hardware doesn't mean anything if the games are absolute **** (Xbox). Neither if the games are poorly ported and suffer from framerate issues or poor loading times, unlike their PC counterparts (again, Xbox), or the hardware is so complex that it's a complete pain in the arse to programme for (PS3). The cheap price is an upside too, especially considering that PS3 will be up to US$600, more than twice the price of the Wii, and twice the price of the basic Xbox 360. The name does sound pretty stupid though.

...I'm not much of a Nintendo fanboy, either - last Nintendo product I bought was the GBA.

LMAO you stop with your jibberish kazu, you cant even make a valid arguement like I have. You obviously havent read everything could swore I told you I wasnt a fanboy and will buy what shows results put the guts, game developers, etc etc of the 360 under the Sony name and id have a Sony. Thats just the bottem line. So if you cant make a valid arguement if your gonna argue then go see yourself out this thread bud.

You can say all you want, doesn't make it so. The only argument you've made is "Xbox is better than all your other consoles I'm not a fanboy lalala not listening not a fanboy Xbox is great you're all fanboys".

[Captain Ben]

I'm really not for or against any of the consoles, they all have perks and disadvantages. But I think the PC makes them obsolete becuase . . .

1.) More games: In the electronics Isle the pc games will take up enough space to meet all the consoles combined, and there are more exclusive games for the PC than consoles, (nintendo gives it a good run though) And I've yet to play a good strategy game for a console

2.) Higher Performace: Look at any review on gamespot or the likes for high end games like oblivion, They run great on an Xbox 360 but a high end computer will outperform it. Of course, a high end computer is fairly expenisve.

3.) Game customization: The ability to make mods and levels for games gives PCs a massice advantage over consoles, After I get bored of a game I'm still going on it for a few months cause of modablity.

4.) More than just games: Justification for the higher price of PCs is the fact that you can do a ****load more than just play games.

5.) Multiplayer: This will soon be a void reason with the new consoles online capabilities but I've always had so much fun being part of online communities and clans and such.

6.) Upgrading: There isn't much you can do to upgrade a console, in a few year you just have to get the new gen system. A well managed PC can be kept up to date until it breaks, and then you have the warrenty

7.) Controllers: PCs can use gamepads just like consoles, and they also can get joysticks, steering wheels, and other accessories to control games with. This allows for a huge variety of games easily possible on a PC

Ok, I'm done for now. I guess I'll just sit back and wait for someone to flame me and start shouting pros for thier side of the argument.

All those points were what I wanted to say but I played Maplestory instead.
PCs are more versatile... want a new controller for a game? Buy one and install it. Want to play bigger, better games? Buy a new graphics card etc.
COnsoles are good because you don't need to upgrade constantly or only buy specific games which suit to your graphics card (ie. Starwars lego, which only worked on graphics cards which enabled pixelshading or soemthing).

But ture, modability is the key: I'd rather choose... GTA:SA on computer rather than on PS2 because once you've beaten the game, gone down every street and crashed every car, you have mods to fall back on. New buildings, vehicles and hell, even multiplayer.

And GAMEOVER, have you happened to notice that the PS3 will be roughly twice as powerful as an Xbox 360? Whining about which is more powerful and better is pretty redundant if the games are going to be shit.

Right now, I prefer handhelds, such as my PSP and DS... both are good fun, but the PSP is good because you can download hacks and cheats for games on it.

[Meep.]

Have fun with the 360  .  I won't get involved in this crazy console war, but I've been waiting for the Wii and I do not think it'll be a let down; it's something new at least.  All the consoles have their awsome points, so it probably won't matter much on the one you choose.  (Just wish I had money for a nice 'puter)

[a-4-year-old]

Ahaha, you two really want me to go out on you, dont you? have you read my previous posts? Okay, here we go...

First, I definately must object on your comments on the Wii.
It absouletely does NOT have the stupidest controller they have ever made. Do you see motion-sensing controllers for your all-holy PC? im pretty sure there isnt such a thing. You may think "oh well my arms gunna get tired. im a fatass.". you may in fact not be a fatass or even more well-fit than me. but if you tire out from playing a video game, heh well your sad stuff. And, in fact, it is not driving away the market. It has the most publicity of the systems. Also, it has many more developing companies begging it for the software to develop games for its motion-sensing controller. And lo-and-behold. Another graphic freak. OMG graphics are nothing important. Lets talk about some other good games, lacking in your top-of-the-line graphics. Metal Slug series, those games just SUCKED because they didn't have 3D full-scale explorable environments? um, NO. Metal Slug was one of the best 2D side scrollers of all time, aside from Mario. And for its price? Lets do some math... PS3, 500+ dollars. XBOX360? bout 400 for good one. PC? hahaha for a good one, at least 800+. and i know the Wii's performance is more than 1/3 the Playstation's performance (specs), but still the Playstaion is almost 3x more. Less than 3x performance, but 3x the price? i think the Wii is the best deal there. and it COMES WITH motion sensing hardware. Oh yeah, wireless too. the bargain 360 comes corded, im not sure about PS3.

HEY, WAIT A SECOND. Did I just think up extremely convincing reasons why your response was un-researched and unlogical? Dang, I'm good.

The wii isnt going to make any money, remember what everyone said about the ds? "this is so great, two screens! wow, AND one is a touch screen." remember what happened? it was hard to manuver and use the touch screen, no third party developers used it effectively, and it just turned out to be a mostly useless item, this is probably going to happen for the wii, oh and to prove my point,

sit down
place something in your arm of relative weight to the wii controller
extend your arm,
you may move your wrist up and down left and right to simulate playing a game, but keep your arm up as long as you can.

the Wii controller only makes it more difficult for third party developers, and drives some away, how fun is beating an imaginary person with a bat while playing GTA (not like rockstar is going to develope for nintendo) and making silly movements is just a fast dying novelty.

xbox 360 is probably the best of these, although the standard is low, it is going to have games that are more adult, no faries here. Xbox specific games are usually RPG FPS(halo) and fighting, those are the three, so you can get three games for your xbox, and games are where these companies get all their money, since they have to sell the consols as cheaply as they can. xbox isnt going to generate as much fanfare among other non fanboys, but Gameover, if you are happy with your choice you can keep your personal opinion.

I honestly think that nobody other than the rich and wannabe rich will buy the playstation3 IT JUST COSTS SO DAMN MUCH. at 600 dollars just to get it without any games, you really are going to burn a hole in your pocket. this is a hill few people will bother trying to climb, with all the acesessories, sony is just looking to take some more money. And what about blue-ray? Blue ray is the most stupid idea sony has ever had, what they should have done is release blueray first, to have movies made on it so that when the ps3 came out, they would have some type of advantage in the market.


final thoughts i do not consider any game that can be played on the other platforms as any sort of judgement on the system.

the wii will need attachments like a real game controller that you can hook in. When has this happened before? both the wii and the playstation 3 will drive you into your wallet before you can do much whether it is buying a 30 dollar attachment for your controller, or a second one and internet acsess for the ps3, it is just too much money

A pc is the highest amount of money you could spend on a system for playing games, but you get more then that, all the things you can do on a pc makes it much more worthwile than a consol, plus all the free games like soldat that you can get. And chances are high, that if you dont have a computer, you arent reading my opinion.

[Sotija]

Do you still play soldat?

[jbigz]

The wii isnt going to make any money, remember what everyone said about the ds? "this is so great, two screens! wow, AND one is a touch screen." remember what happened? it was hard to manuver and use the touch screen, no third party developers used it effectively, and it just turned out to be a mostly useless item, this is probably going to happen for the wii, oh and to prove my point,

sit down
place something in your arm of relative weight to the wii controller
extend your arm,
you may move your wrist up and down left and right to simulate playing a game, but keep your arm up as long as you can.

the Wii controller only makes it more difficult for third party developers, and drives some away, how fun is beating an imaginary person with a bat while playing GTA (not like rockstar is going to develope for nintendo) and making silly movements is just a fast dying novelty.


the wii will need attachments like a real game controller that you can hook in. When has this happened before? both the wii and the playstation 3 will drive you into your wallet before you can do much whether it is buying a 30 dollar attachment for your controller, or a second one and internet acsess for the ps3, it is just too much money

LMAO! The DS is wildly popular and is far from worthless! It is an extremely well selling product, possibly the best for Nintendo. Do you EVER read gaming mags or gaming news on the internet?

If i just held something out in the air, of course my arm would get tired. but when you are doing something fun, you dont get as tired, if at all unless you play like 4 hours straight. And even if you did get tired often, it would prevent carpeltunnel lol. But i dont think that will be a problem.

AND i forget to mention 2 extremely other big factors why the Wii is, in my opinion, the best overall system.

1. It's backward compatibility. You know how awesome it would be to play good ol' Super Mario Bros. on your Wii? And no, not with the remote controller, with the other controller they made, maybe you didnt know about that. Think of all the classics they have, and for approximately 2 dollars each. Thats good for classic awesomeness. You can even get N64 and Gamecube games on it. For a good price too.

2. FREE ONLINE PLAY + WIRELESS. Alot of people say wireless internet (Wi-Fi) sucks. They must of not used it before. You get to have your Wii hooked up to the internet at all times, 24 hours a day. Lets say you have to go to the bathroom. You put your game on pause, and go take a "seat". while you were relieving yourself, Nintendo released an update and it downloaded to your system. You come back, unpause and notice the scenery is more detailed, and a new creature that wasnt supposed to be there magically appeared. I think the constant online time is great. And Xbox and PS3 would NEVER give away something free....

And to gameover. You are not a fanboy. And i dont mean that negatively, either. people are calling you a fanboy just cuz their mad at you... and they didnt put up a side of the arguement. and haha no one is really argueing with me except a-4-year-old.

[jrgp]

Ha, I am gonna get me the WII and the 360 and then I am not gunna get any more consols and stick with my top of the line pc.

[a-4-year-old]

LMAO! The DS is wildly popular and is far from worthless! It is an extremely well selling product, possibly the best for Nintendo. Do you EVER read gaming mags or gaming news on the internet?

If i just held something out in the air, of course my arm would get tired. but when you are doing something fun, you dont get as tired, if at all unless you play like 4 hours straight. And even if you did get tired often, it would prevent carpeltunnel lol. But i dont think that will be a problem.

AND i forget to mention 2 extremely other big factors why the Wii is, in my opinion, the best overall system.

1. It's backward compatibility. You know how awesome it would be to play good ol' Super Mario Bros. on your Wii? And no, not with the remote controller, with the other controller they made, maybe you didnt know about that. Think of all the classics they have, and for approximately 2 dollars each. Thats good for classic awesomeness. You can even get N64 and Gamecube games on it. For a good price too.

2. FREE ONLINE PLAY + WIRELESS. Alot of people say wireless internet (Wi-Fi) sucks. They must of not used it before. You get to have your Wii hooked up to the internet at all times, 24 hours a day. Lets say you have to go to the bathroom. You put your game on pause, and go take a "seat". while you were relieving yourself, Nintendo released an update and it downloaded to your system. You come back, unpause and notice the scenery is more detailed, and a new creature that wasnt supposed to be there magically appeared. I think the constant online time is great. And Xbox and PS3 would NEVER give away something free....

And to gameover. You are not a fanboy. And i dont mean that negatively, either. people are calling you a fanboy just cuz their mad at you... and they didnt put up a side of the arguement. and haha no one is really argueing with me except a-4-year-old.

first, the DS is only popular because of a bunch of nintendo fanboys, i have one, i know what i am talking about when i say that the psp (also have) is better, but still not great. the only thing keeping nintendo afloat is a bunch of jackasses who think that the next generation of gamming is buying a cheap system with crappy specs so they can buy controller add-ons that are the standard for any other console.

second, to perfect my experiment, watch your favorite tv show while holding the "controller", and to make it interactive, instead of some random object being the controller, make it your tv's remote control. the wii isnt as fun as you would think.

[GAMEOVER]

Now that the Xbox 360 and PlayStation 3 specifications have been announced, it is possible to do a real world performance comparison of the two systems.

There are three critical performance aspects of a console:
Central Processing Unit (CPU) performance.
The Xbox 360 CPU architecture has three times the general purpose processing power of the Cell.
Graphics Processing Unit (GPU) performance
The Xbox 360 GPU design is more flexible and it has more processing power than the PS3 GPU.
Memory System Bandwidth
The memory system bandwidth in Xbox 360 exceeds the PS3's by five times.

The Xbox 360's CPU has more general purpose processing power because it has three general purpose cores, and Cell has just one.

Cell's claimed advantage is on streaming floating point work which is done on its seven DSP processors.

The Xbox 360 GPU has more processing power than the PS3's. In addition, its innovated features contribute to overall rendering performance.

Xbox 360 has 278.4 GB/s of memory system bandwidth. The PS3 has less than one-fifth of Xbox 360's (48 GB/s) of total memory system bandwidth.

CPU
The Xbox 360 processor was designed to give game developers the power that they actually need, in an easy to use form. The Cell processor has impressive streaming floating-point power that is of limited use for games.

The majority of game code is a mixture of integer, floating-point, and vector math, with lots of branches and random memory accesses. This code is best handled by a general purpose CPU with a cache, branch predictor, and vector unit.

The Cell's seven DSPs (what Sony calls SPEs) have no cache, no direct access to memory, no branch predictor, and a different instruction set from the PS3's main CPU. They are not designed for or efficient at general purpose computing. DSPs are not appropriate for game programming.

Xbox 360 has three general purpose CPU cores. The Cell processor has only one.

Xbox 360's CPUs has vector processing power on each CPU core. Each Xbox 360 core has 128 vector registers per hardware thread, with a dot product instruction, and a shared 1-MB L2 cache. The Cell processor's vector processing power is mostly on the seven DSPs.

Dot products are critical to games because they are used in 3D math to calculate vector lengths, projections, transformations, and more. The Xbox 360 CPU has a dot product instruction, where other CPUs such as Cell must emulate dot product using multiple instructions.

Cell's streaming floating-point work is done on its seven DSP processors. Since geometry processing is moved to the GPU, the need for streaming floating-point work and other DSP style programming in games has dropped dramatically.

Just like with the PS2's Emotion Engine, with its missing L2 cache, the Cell is designed for a type of game programming that accounts for a minor percentage of processing time.

Sony's CPU is ideal for an environment where 12.5% of the work is general-purpose computing and 87.5% of the work is DSP calculations. That sort of mix makes sense for video playback or networked waveform analysis, but not for games. In fact, when analyzing real games one finds almost the opposite distribution of general purpose computing and DSP calculation requirements. A relatively small percentage of instructions are actually floating point. Of those instructions which are floating-point, very few involve processing continuous streams of numbers. Instead they are used in tasks like AI and path-finding, which require random access to memory and frequent branches, which the DSPs are ill-suited to.

Based on measurements of running next generation games, only ~10-30% of the instructions executed are floating point. The remainders of the instructions are load, store, integer, branch, etc. Even fewer of the instructions executed are streaming floating point—probably ~5-10%. Cell is optimized for streaming floating-point, with 87.5% of its cores good for streaming floating-point and nothing else.

Game programmers do not want to spread their code over eight processors, especially when seven of the processors are poorly suited for general purpose programming. Evenly distributing game code across eight processors is extremely difficult.

Game programmers do not want to spread their code over eight processors, especially when seven of the processors are poorly suited for general purpose programming. Evenly distributing game code across eight processors is extremely difficult.

GPU
Even ignoring the bandwidth limitations the PS3's GPU is not as powerful as the Xbox 360's GPU.

Below are the specs from Sony's press release regarding the PS3's GPU.

RSX GPU
550 MHz
Independent vertex/pixel shaders
51 billion dot products per second (total system performance)
300M transistors
136 "shader operations" per clock
The interesting ALU performance numbers are 51 billion dot products per second (total system performance), 300M transistors, and more than twice as powerful as the 6800 Ultra.

The 51 billions dot products per cycle were listed on a summary slide of total graphics system performance and are assumed to include the Cell processor. Sony's calculations seem to assume that the Cell can do a dot product per cycle per DSP, despite not having a dot product instruction.

However, using Sony's claim, 7 dot products per cycle * 3.2 GHz = 22.4 billion dot products per second for the CPU. That leaves 51 - 22.4 = 28.6 billion dot products per second that are left over for the GPU. That leaves 28.6 billion dot products per second / 550 MHz = 52 GPU ALU ops per clock.

It is important to note that if the RSX ALUs are similar to the GeForce 6800 ALUs then they work on vector4s, while the Xbox 360 GPU ALUs work on vector5s. The total programmable GPU floating point performance for the PS3 would be 52 ALU ops * 4 floats per op *2 (madd) * 550 MHz = 228.8 GFLOPS which is less than the Xbox 360's 48 ALU ops * 5 floats per op * 2 (madd) * 500 MHz= 240 GFLOPS.

With the number of transistors being slightly larger on the Xbox 360 GPU (330M) it's not surprising that the total programmable GFLOPs number is very close.
      

The PS3 does have the additional 7 DSPs on the Cell to add more floating point ops for graphics rendering, but the Xbox 360's three general purpose cores with custom D3D and dot product instructions are more customized for true graphics related calculations.

The 6800 Ultra has 16 pixel pipes, 6 vertex pipes, and runs at 400 MHz. Given the RSX's 2x better than a 6800 Ultra number and the higher frequency of the RSX, one can roughly estimate that it will have 24 pixel shading pipes and 4 vertex shading pipes (fewer vertex shading pipes since the Cell DSPs will do some vertex shading). If the PS3 GPU keeps the 6800 pixel shader pipe co-issue architecture which is hinted at in Sony's press release, this again gives it 24 pixel pipes* 2 issued per pipe + 4 vertex pipes = 52 dot products per clock in the GPU.

If the RSX follows the 6800 Ultra route, it will have 24 texture samplers, but when in use they take up an ALU slot, making the PS3 GPU in practice even less impressive. Even if it does manage to decouple texture fetching from ALU co-issue, it won't have enough bandwidth to fetch the textures anyways.

For shader operations per clock, Sony is most likely counting each pixel pipe as four ALU operations (co-issued vector+scalar) and a texture operation per pixel pipe and 4 scalar operations for each vector pipe, for a total of 24 * (4 + 1) + (4*4) = 136 operations per cycle or 136 * 550 = 74.8 GOps per second.

Given the Xbox 360 GPU's multithreading and balanced design, you really can't compare the two systems in terms of shading operations per clock. However, the Xbox 360's GPU can do 48 ALU operations (each can do a vector4 and scalar op per clock), 16 texture fetches, 32 control flow operations, and 16 programmable vertex fetch operations with tessellation per clock for a total of 48*2 + 16 + 32 + 16 = 160 operations per cycle or 160 * 500 = 80 GOps per second.
      

Overall, the automatic shader load balancing, memory export features, programmable vertex fetching, programmable triangle tesselator, full rate texture fetching in the vertex shader, and other "well beyond shader model 3.0" features of the Xbox 360 GPU should also contribute to overall rendering performance.

Bandwidth
The PS3 has 22.4 GB/s of GDDR3 bandwidth and 25.6 GB/s of RDRAM bandwidth for a total system bandwidth of 48 GB/s.

The Xbox 360 has 22.4 GB/s of GDDR3 bandwidth and a 256 GB/s of EDRAM bandwidth for a total of 278.4 GB/s total system bandwidth.
      

Why does the Xbox 360 have such an extreme amount of bandwidth? Even the simplest calculations show that a large amount of bandwidth is consumed by the frame buffer. For example, with simple color rendering and Z testing at 550 MHz the frame buffer alone requires 52.8 GB/s at 8 pixels per clock. The PS3's memory bandwidth is insufficient to maintain its GPU's peak rendering speed, even without texture and vertex fetches.

The PS3 uses Z and color compression to try to compensate for the lack of memory bandwidth. The problem with Z and color compression is that the compression breaks down quickly when rendering complex next-generation 3D scenes.

HDR, alpha-blending, and anti-aliasing require even more memory bandwidth. This is why Xbox 360 has 256 GB/s bandwidth reserved just for the frame buffer. This allows the Xbox 360 GPU to do Z testing, HDR, and alpha blended color rendering with 4X MSAA at full rate and still have the entire main bus bandwidth of 22.4 GB/s left over for textures and vertices.


When you break down the numbers, Xbox 360 has provably more performance than PS3. Keep in mind that Sony has a track record of over promising and under delivering on technical performance. The truth is that both systems pack a lot of power for high definition games and entertainment.

However, hardware performance, while important, is only a third of the puzzle. Xbox 360 is a fusion of hardware, software and services. Without the software and services to power it, even the most powerful hardware becomes inconsequential. Xbox 360 games—by leveraging cutting-edge hardware, software, and services—will outperform the PlayStation 3.

[Plonkoon]

     Someone did their research.

[Lapis Lazuli]

The wii has an alternate controller has well.

Also, no console, and I repeat, NONE, have ever used the complete limits of the hardware, so what do specs matter, anyway?

They're playing Twilight Princess and SSBB on Gamecube, which proves its capable of graphical feats beyond what we've seen so far.

Hardware will always be several steps ahead of software. What we need is a console that uses all of its features, not some high tech shit that doesn't use what you plunk down 300 for.

[ds dude]

Gameover yu are smart.