I just bought a playstation 3

So am I right in thinking that the PS3 has 2 cores, one like the one in the XBox and this other "special" core with the 8 sub cores within?

Sort of, but not quite, the PS3 has one normal core. It has 7 (8 is the Cell spec, 7 the PS3 spec. Sony currently make one redundant because of production issues - ie. if one fails, they do not need to throw the chip away) special co-processors that all work independently but can also be chained, and they are specialized at doing vector based maths. All 8 (or 9 in a true Cell setup) are running at full speed, which IBM thinks they can take to 10Ghz within 6 years.

They currently run at 3.2Ghz.
 
Sort of, but not quite, the PS3 has one normal core. It has 7 (8 is the Cell spec, 7 the PS3 spec. Sony currently make one redundant because of production issues - ie. if one fails, they do not need to throw the chip away) special co-processors that all work independently but can also be chained, and they are specialized at doing vector based maths. All 8 (or 9 in a true Cell setup) are running at full speed, which IBM thinks they can take to 10Ghz within 6 years.

They currently run at 3.2Ghz.



I see, so one normal core with 7 running alongside and one redundant for cockup issues making your "normal" 9 core set up?
 
I see, so one normal core with 7 running alongside and one redundant for cockup issues making your "normal" 9 core set up?

Yes, 1 normal general purpose core, and 7 super-duper independent vector processor cores in the PS3. This is why it's so difficult to program, because nobody has ever seen its like before. Thus why a lot of the key games that have been in development for two to three years still have not been released.

Hectic goes on about exclusive titles and the lack of them on the PS3, well, there a shit loads of them, Sony is the second largest producer of video games on the planet, and they have a mountain of exclusives. They have been developing these games alongside the development of their development environment. They know how the Cell works, and they try to get the best out of it, thus the delays - it's a totally different beast to a normal processor.

The new development environment should provide 3rd party developers with the tools they need to make software to use the Cell to it's current know maximum.

I just wish that I could have a play with it.
 
Yes, 1 normal general purpose core, and 7 super-duper independent vector processor cores in the PS3. This is why it's so difficult to program, because nobody has ever seen its like before. Thus why a lot of the key games that have been in development for two to three years still have not been released.

Hectic goes on about exclusive titles and the lack of them on the PS3, well, there a shit loads of them, Sony is the second largest producer of video games on the planet, and they have a mountain of exclusives. They have been developing these games alongside the development of their development environment. They know how the Cell works, and they try to get the best out of it, thus the delays - it's a totally different beast to a normal processor.

The new development environment should provide 3rd party developers with the tools they need to make software to use the Cell to it's current know maximum.

I just wish that I could have a play with it.



Well you have sold me. When I have the funds PS3 it is.

Goodnight.
 
So Weaste, are you a sonybot?

Oh and teh cell is just so difficult to code and good games will take a lot of time to be made. Also one SPE is reserved for the OS as some 100 or so MB of the ram. Furthermore the 360 has a better GPU and developers say it's easier to code. Plus it's cheaper and has better games. The funny thing will be if they release MGS4 on the 360 too!!!:lol:
 
Just ordered that Ninja Gaiden:Sigma as i've heard great things about and also it's meant to be hard as fook, so it should last me a while.

Anyone else got it?
Its a remake of Ninja Gaiden Black which was on the xbox, that game was hard to a ridiculous degree, never finished it, never got beyond the second level
 
So Weaste, are you a sonybot?

Oh and teh cell is just so difficult to code and good games will take a lot of time to be made. Also one SPE is reserved for the OS as some 100 or so MB of the ram. Furthermore the 360 has a better GPU and developers say it's easier to code. Plus it's cheaper and has better games. The funny thing will be if they release MGS4 on the 360 too!!!:lol:

You are talking gibberish now!

Tell me why the XBox has a better GPU? Do you have detailed specs for the RSX?

As for MGS4, as I said, I don't play games and I do not own a games console that is less than 10 years old. How was Shadow of the Beast on the Atari ST?
 
You are talking gibberish now!

Tell me why the XBox has a better GPU? Do you have detailed specs for the RSX?

As for MGS4, as I said, I don't play games and I do not own a games console that is less than 10 years old. How was Shadow of the Beast on the Atari ST?

What? It's not like it has unified shaders, 10MB of eDRAM and 512MB of total ram from which it can work. Xenos is based on the new R600 GPUs form ATI while RSX is based on G70 which has only 256MB video ram. Also Xenos is based on tweaked directX 9 (has some features of 10) while RSX uses OpenGL 2.0 and most modern game engines including UE3 use DirectX. And use the facts ffs. Every multiplatform game is better on the 360 except Oblivion which was released months later. Last the EE CPU (emotion engine) of PS2 had more processing power than xbox's cpu but you know who had the better graphics. 360 is more accessible by both the consumer because of its price and the developer because it is easy to code. The result? Games like Gears of War, which are yet to be seen on the PS3, and multiplatform games which are better on the 360. Anw I want to end this because it will lead us no where. Btw I will buy a PS3 when good games become available and when the price drops in Europe.
 
What? It's not like it has unified shaders, 10MB of eDRAM and 512MB of total ram from which it can work. Xenos is based on the new R600 GPUs form ATI while RSX is based on G70 which has only 256MB video ram. Also Xenos is based on tweaked directX 9 (has some features of 10) while RSX uses OpenGL 2.0 and most modern game engines including UE3 use DirectX. And use the facts ffs. Every multiplatform game is better on the 360 except Oblivion which was released months later. Last the EE CPU (emotion engine) of PS2 had more processing power than xbox's cpu but you know who had the better graphics. 360 is more accessible by both the consumer because of its price and the developer because it is easy to code. The result? Games like Gears of War, which are yet to be seen on the PS3, and multiplatform games which are better on the 360. Anw I want to end this because it will lead us no where. Btw I will buy a PS3 when good games become available and when the price drops in Europe.

Is that correct?

Sorry, you know nothing about what you are talking about. The specifications of the RSX are not in the public domain.

Yes, the XBox is easier to code, I think that point has already been covered.

The emotion engine was a feck-up, if you know anything about hardware you would not have even brought that up. It's irrelevant in any case, it was not a CPU.

Gears of was will never been seen on the PS3 because Microsoft paid for its development. Again, another moot point.

As for the RSX only having 256mb of video RAM. The PS3 doesn't have video RAM as such, the Cell can pump it full of data from the other memory bank. The Cell and the RSX can also work independently because they are not sharing the same bus, so no memory access problems unlike the Xbox. The Cell and the RSX also have a silly bus connection, they can pass data back and forth at silly rates. Memory here is not an issue, there is no 10Mb of special video block.

Seeing as you know so much about the RSX, provide me with its technical specification documents.
 
Is that correct?

Sorry, you know nothing about what you are talking about. The specifications of the RSX are not in the public domain.

Yes, the XBox is easier to code, I think that point has already been covered.

The emotion engine was a feck-up, if you know anything about hardware you would not have even brought that up. It's irrelevant in any case, it was not a CPU.

Gears of was will never been seen on the PS3 because Microsoft paid for its development. Again, another moot point.

As for the RSX only having 256mb of video RAM. The PS3 doesn't have video RAM as such, the Cell can pump it full of data from the other memory bank. The Cell and the RSX can also work independently because they are not sharing the same bus, so no memory access problems unlike the Xbox. The Cell and the RSX also have a silly bus connection, they can pass data back and forth at silly rates. Memory here is not an issue, there is no 10Mb of special video block.

Seeing as you know so much about the RSX, provide me with its technical specification documents.
The someone starts twisting my words I just run away. If you want a normal conversation don't twist my words.

What is not a public domain? The fact about OpenGL? Why? Isn't it true?

Also I'm talking about games of Gears level you...(I don't want to swear just yet because of our age difference)

Next how are so sure about this freaking Cell? The EE has won awards and it was supposed to be the next great thing why shouldn't this apply to the Cell? And what about the 10MB of special video block? What's the eDRAM? Oh, you want to say that it's bad to have some super duper fast memory?

Just admit that you have bought up all this hype from Sony. Why don't you give me examples of great games on PS3?

Anw you win. Playstation 3 is the best you can get this gen. You are even drafted into the format war without your choice...:muppet:
 
I loved my Atari ST :)

And to what you said earlier, yeah Killzone is being unveiled at E3. When I worked for Sony we were showed a clip of the ragdoll technique in the game. It looks much more lifelike when you shoot someone. You can pick individual limbs and the enemies act as though they have been shot in that limb. Brilliant.
 
Just ordered that Ninja Gaiden:Sigma as i've heard great things about and also it's meant to be hard as fook, so it should last me a while.

Anyone else got it?

I completed it :) On the first two difficulties though. I didn't even contemplate doing it on Master Ninja.
 
That's beside the point. What is happening here is a huge sideshow to games, even more important. It's about control of the living room, even the house, and every electronic device in it, and how you interact with all software in the future.

A bloke at Sun (VP of software - can't remember) made a huge speech not long ago about how we have to change the current software paradigm. Windows is not going to do this, it's not geared towards the home, even though Microsoft will say different and try and shove it down your throat.

The PC will not exist in 10 years.

Yeah, but my original point is that the average consumer won't know too much, or indeed care too much about what you can with linux on the PS3, simply because he or she isn't equipped with the know how to do so. If the PS3 is to lead the way in this revolution of the home living room that you speak of, it probably won't be with linux, which right now is in the 'other OS' category and is therefore not mainstream.

As for the demise of the PC within the next 10 years, I don't know, it's a bold prediction isn't it? Plenty of people have predicted the demise of the old guard whenever a new wave of technology comes along, and usually when the dust settles, the old guard is still there, albeit with a different form and serving a different purpose, like radio with the advent of TV.

I don't really know what's going to happen to the PC and how it's going to cope with the 'home entertainment center' or whatever it's going to be called ten years from now. All I know is that you'd need entertainment (be it movies, full-featured games or demos, music) at the touch of your fingertips, where everything is offered in such a way that you'd never want to leave your couch. It'll take some doing, and from what I've seen now of the PS3 and other platforms, it's not happened yet.

Meanwhile, I'm still going to be using my PC to make a presentation I have to do tomorrow aren't I? Windows does a decent job of that, I reckon. Though right now I'm discovering the joys of linux, because it gives you that extra bit of control. :D Rant over.
 
hey Weaste, people are saying that this killzone trailer is just CG and can never be actual PS3 gameplay, but with what you said about the power of the cell, is this actually possible?

http://youtube.com/watch?v=g5ROVhHtN_Y

The trailers are well known to be CG, but CG that actually reflects what the final game will look and play like (remember it was done almost a year and a half before a production PS3 could even be bought) - thus why they are not of higher quality which you would get if it was done solely as a film. We'll see soon enough, but if Sony were stupid enough to show it as something it isn't they will be in serious trouble.

Yes, it is possible, of course it is. People are dissing it because they think that it's not possible. The things being done now on the PS2 and PSP would have thought to have been impossible several years ago, but people research into how to get the most out of a machine, and in the case of the PS3 they have to learn how to use 8 processors at the same time to get optimum performance.

And example:

Deferred rendering in Killzone 2
Michal Valient, Guerrilla-Games

Next generation gaming brought high resolutions, very complex environments and large textures to our living rooms. With virtually every asset being inflated, it’s hard to use traditional forward rendering and hope for rich, dynamic environments with extensive dynamic lighting. Deferred rendering, on the other hand, has been traditionally described as a nice technique for rendering of scenes with many dynamic lights, that unfortunately suffers from fill-rate problems and lack of anti-aliasing and very few games that use it were published.

In this talk, we will discuss our approach to face this challenge and how we designed a deferred rendering engine that uses multi-sampled anti-aliasing (MSAA). We will give in-depth description of each individual stage of our real-time rendering pipeline and the main ingredients of our lighting, post-processing and data management. We’ll show how we utilize PS3’s SPUs for fast rendering of a large set of primitives, parallel processing of geometry and computation of indirect lighting. We will also describe our optimizations of the lighting and our parallel split (cascaded) shadow map algorithm for faster and stable MSAA output.

Take Away
The session will provide detailed overview and optimizations of modern rendering engine and parallel processing. Many of the topics are applicable for various gaming platforms.

sonymobby seems to know a lot about the RSX doesn't he? The specifications for it are not in the public domain, but even still, it's quite clear that it's not just the RSX doing the job, the Cell is feeding it with pre-rendered stuff, thus proving that you cannot judge the graphical prowess of the PS3 on the "speculations" of what the RSX actually is or is not.

The PS3 is a very flexible machine that has a double figure number of serious processors all going off at the same time.
 
The trailers are well known to be CG, but CG that actually reflects what the final game will look and play like (remember it was done almost a year and a half before a production PS3 could even be bought) - thus why they are not of higher quality which you would get if it was done solely as a film. We'll see soon enough, but if Sony were stupid enough to show it as something it isn't they will be in serious trouble.

Yes, it is possible, of course it is. People are dissing it because they think that it's not possible. The things being done now on the PS2 and PSP would have thought to have been impossible several years ago, but people research into how to get the most out of a machine, and in the case of the PS3 they have to learn how to use 8 processors at the same time to get optimum performance.

And example:



sonymobby seems to know a lot about the RSX doesn't he? The specifications for it are not in the public domain, but even still, it's quite clear that it's not just the RSX doing the job, the Cell is feeding it with pre-rendered stuff, thus proving that you cannot judge the graphical prowess of the PS3 on the "speculations" of what the RSX actually is or is not.

The PS3 is a very flexible machine that has a double figure number of serious processors all going off at the same time.
Indeed ffs but the point is that somethings are holding it back hence the lack of super duper games like Gears on 360. It is a fact that the RSX is based on the G70 GPUs made by Nvidia. Therefore things like AA and HDR can be done simultaneously unless they make some modified version of HDR which is a great hussle.

Also the Flex I/O used by the GPU to take ram from Cell's ram is not efficient and thus you see games like Call of Duty 3 utilizing only the 256MB memory of the GPU. Also developers like Capcom and ID say that Xenos is better than the RSX.

I'm not the one say these things. I'm not qualified to make such statements and come into such conclusions. I just see the facts and decide for myself. Do you want to know what I see now? I see the 360 a more value for money console with better games and many great to come. This however can change in 2008 and if it changes and if the price is right I will by a PS3. Not yet though, not yet.;)
 
does anybody know any good wholesalers of the PS3?I have found a few from China off various sourcing websites but for every good seller you have 99 fake sellers, so its hard to trust anybody.
 
Next how are so sure about this freaking Cell? The EE has won awards and it was supposed to be the next great thing why shouldn't this apply to the Cell? And what about the 10MB of special video block? What's the eDRAM? Oh, you want to say that it's bad to have some super duper fast memory?

How am I so sure about the Cell? The Emotion Engine was purely a Sony thing, but never lived up to expectations. Sony shouldn't be in the business of buggering about with processors. This time they went to IBM, that's why I'm sure about the Cell.

As for eDRAM. Look at the schematics of the XBox design and tell me whether you notice a flaw or not. Both the the Xenon and the Xenos share the same bus to the main memory bank. They cannot both access this memory at the same time. But it's a classic XBox supporter's argument that the XBox's chips have access to the entire 512Mb of RAM and the PS3 does not. It's actually an age old problem. Let us go back to the granddaddy of the multi-chip systems shall we; the Amiga. It faced a similar problem. The custom graphics hardware and the CPU could not access the same memory bank at the same time. It's impossible without VRAM, so the solution they came across is one that the PS3 actually uses today, in that the CPU and the Graphics hardware have their own memory banks. Unfortunately, due to the price of RAM at the time, this was never a standard feature in the low end machines such as the A500. When you have two memory banks like this, it allows the CPU and the Graphics hardware to both go full whack on their respective buses without interfering with each other. Where the PS3 takes this to another level is that the CPU and the RSX have a huge high bandwidth connecting bus between each other. This means that both have access to both memory pools, and only requires a little loss of bandwidth on the other side. The XBox on the other hand does not do this. Both Xenon and Xenos share the same bus to the main memory bank. It's wonderful to know the memory access bandwidth supported by both of these chips, but in reality you have to cut it in half because one has a go then the other has a go. This does not happen in the PS3. So, what did they do with the XBox? They stuck an additional 10Mb super fast memory block (yes, it's a frame buffer, a little bit like you have in PC graphics cards) with an extra bus from the graphics hardware. Xenos therefore has very fast access to the memory used to render a frame. But that frame (10Mb) is not large enough to render a 1080p double buffered frame - you would need about 12Mb to do that. Not only that, the Xenon has no access to it, and in the end you only need enough bandwidth to such memory as you can pump out pixels. Ok, brilliant for doing extra shadows and textures etc., but where does the Xenos get its textures from? Yes, that's right, the main memory bank which it has shared access to. If the Xenon is doing something, it has to wait and twiddle its thumbs. In the case of the PS3, both processors go full whack at the same time, meaning that the Cell can use its 7 SPEs to doe some serious pre-rendering, and then pass it on at high speed to the RSX to finalize the job. I wouldn't want to argue with you though.

Just admit that you have bought up all this hype from Sony. Why don't you give me examples of great games on PS3?

I've bought the hype? I'm a computer scientist, I can see hardware specifications, read through them, understand them, and make my own mind up. Great games? I've said multiple times that it currently lacks software.

Anw you win. Playstation 3 is the best you can get this gen. You are even drafted into the format war without your choice...:muppet:

That makes absolutely zero sense.
 
Indeed ffs but the point is that somethings are holding it back hence the lack of super duper games like Gears on 360. It is a fact that the RSX is based on the G70 GPUs made by Nvidia. Therefore things like AA and HDR can be done simultaneously unless they make some modified version of HDR which is a great hussle.

Also the Flex I/O used by the GPU to take ram from Cell's ram is not efficient and thus you see games like Call of Duty 3 utilizing only the 256MB memory of the GPU. Also developers like Capcom and ID say that Xenos is better than the RSX.

The Flex I/O is not efficient? We'll see. Many developers are contracted to Microsoft. The developers of Gears of War stated it could not be done on the PS3 due to lack of shared memory. It's quite clearly rubbish. Call of Duty was a launch title, and they did not have any access to the finalized PS3 devkit.

I'm not the one say these things. I'm not qualified to make such statements and come into such conclusions. I just see the facts and decide for myself. Do you want to know what I see now? I see the 360 a more value for money console with better games and many great to come. This however can change in 2008 and if it changes and if the price is right I will by a PS3. Not yet though, not yet.;)

You're not the one to say these things? So you are simply regurgitating what you have read on some other forum and take it as gospel?
 
Yeah, but my original point is that the average consumer won't know too much, or indeed care too much about what you can with linux on the PS3, simply because he or she isn't equipped with the know how to do so. If the PS3 is to lead the way in this revolution of the home living room that you speak of, it probably won't be with linux, which right now is in the 'other OS' category and is therefore not mainstream.

As for the demise of the PC within the next 10 years, I don't know, it's a bold prediction isn't it? Plenty of people have predicted the demise of the old guard whenever a new wave of technology comes along, and usually when the dust settles, the old guard is still there, albeit with a different form and serving a different purpose, like radio with the advent of TV.

I don't really know what's going to happen to the PC and how it's going to cope with the 'home entertainment center' or whatever it's going to be called ten years from now. All I know is that you'd need entertainment (be it movies, full-featured games or demos, music) at the touch of your fingertips, where everything is offered in such a way that you'd never want to leave your couch. It'll take some doing, and from what I've seen now of the PS3 and other platforms, it's not happened yet.

Meanwhile, I'm still going to be using my PC to make a presentation I have to do tomorrow aren't I? Windows does a decent job of that, I reckon. Though right now I'm discovering the joys of linux, because it gives you that extra bit of control. :D Rant over.

I agree with most of what you say. I just think that with the introduction of the PS3 and things such as MS Media Connect and iTV from Apple, we are just now entering the stage where people are aware of the home media hub.

As for Windows, it's very annoying at times, but yes, for most people it does the job. I'm a purist however, and will argue that it has absolutely no valid reason to be the size that it is or consume as many resources as it does. It's bloatware, and it can be put down to nothing else than shoddy software engineering.
 
Well who gave you the impression that Flex I/O is good enough to be used then? And why are trying to twist my words once more? Just stop it and don't try to intimidate me. You make it sound I don't have judgement and I'm an xbot who believes anything its fellow xbots say to him. You know, reading different opinios on foroums is not necessarily a bad thing.

PS3_memory_bandwidths.jpg


Anw this is MY LAST COMMENT HERE. You can write whatever you want and I won't answer back.
 
Well who gave you the impression that Flex I/O is good enough to be used then? And why are trying to twist my words once more? Just stop it and don't try to intimidate me. You make it sound I don't have judgement and I'm an xbot who believes anything its fellow xbots say to him. You know, reading different opinios on foroums is not necessarily a bad thing.

PS3_memory_bandwidths.jpg


Anw this is MY LAST COMMENT HERE. You can write whatever you want and I won't answer back.

I fail to see what that image of yours is trying to say.
 
It seems like they have pulled it off Hectic.

http://ps3.ign.com/articles/803/803129p1.html

The opening was once again fantastic, but we couldn't help but sit there and think, "When are we finally going to see some in-game footage?" The only thing was that we had been looking at in-game footage.

:lol:

If you would like a number to go with that, try 2GB. That's how big the single level was on disc, to which the Guerilla rep noted that the game's level of detail would not have been possible without Blu-ray.

http://microsoft.justgotowned.com/

And this is basically nothing more than a launch title that still has about 6 months more development time to be put into it.
 
I want to wait and see first, I remember IGN originally reported the last trailer as 'In-Game' when none of it was.

However, if it is then that's fantastic news. I wonder when they will release the video for it.
 
To be honest the first three quarters of that trailer was just CGI.

The actual in-game play looks decent and smooth, for the short piece they showed. It doesn't look as graphically good as Gears of War, but that's expected.

The Hi-Res images didn't look very good, but as you said, they have over six months to make it better and tweak it.