[Pagnell]

Originally Posted by kevinorriss

Oh god, how do i know that pagnell is going to have some kind of response to this. :lol:

I aim to please! :lol:

However, before I start here I want you to read the last paragraph of my reply. Done? Ok.

Brandishing speeds around means little as the two CPU's use completely different architecture. I don't expect Ryder to know this but I'm surprised the article he cut and pasted from didn't pick up on it.

I will give you a few examples. Would you say a 1.2Ghz Pentium 3 is as fast as a 1.2Ghz Sparc III? Of course it isn't. But wait there! It must be as they are the same speed! Let's take it further - would you say a 133mhz 486 is as fast as a 100mhz Pentium? Surely it must be faster as it has a higher number! No, it is slower because it is based upon different technology. My point is speed means jack sh*t as both the 360's CPU and PS3's CPU will have advantages and disadvantages depending on what you want it to do.

You seem fond on quotes Ryder, so I will do the same from an IGN article. You talk about processing power where I could talk about memory and memory bandwidth.

The 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.

Then let's talk about graphics power.

The Xbox 360 GPU has more processing power than the PS3's. In addition, its innovated features contribute to overall rendering performance. But even ignoring the bandwidth limitations, the PS3's GPU is not as powerful as the Xbox 360's GPU

Then we have an advantage in the CPU of the 360.

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

But the PS3 has an advantage over the 360 on the CPU.

The PS3 Cell's claimed advantage is on streaming floating point work which is done on its seven DSP processors.

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 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.

We could go on all day but I can see this turning into another PS3 v 360 flame thread and I don't really want that. I have never tried to tell anyone to get the 360 on the basis it is a more powerful console, it has purely been based on cost, the fact it currently has more games and the fact it is readily available. I also thought Sony couldn't be trusted because they have a track record of overpromising and underdelivering when it comes to features - and this has partly turned out to be true.

However, when it comes to hard power, there is very little difference between the two so which one you buy should be based on other factors.