Xbox 360 Specs updated at IGN, Faster Than PS3

[aristotle-dude]

Agreed, these numbers are as bogus as the numbers from Sony, dont you agree ?

585952762[/snapback]

I agree.

The only number that I may trust are GB/Sec of "discreet" subsystems but I will reserve judgement until there are "real" working models of the consoles. We all now know that MSFT did not use real Xbox 360 units for the demos at E3.

We do not know whether there is a working prototype of the PS3 either.

[Riz360]

Wow, IGN is really critical of the PS3. Basically says XBox360 is a much superior machine for gaming

[firen]

all throughout e3 all i have been hearing is people pounding the ps3 and prasing xbox 360 :no: :( :unsure:

[jedrzej]

We do not know whether there is a working prototype of the PS3 either.

well, some of the scenes at the Sony press conference, like Unreal3 Engine demo was rendered on a real PS3 hardware... At least that's what Kutaragi said...

[Tomi]

*stops laughing*

These PS3 vs Xbox 360 wars are so hilarious. Everyone flaming each other, getting into huge arguments.

I can't wait till next year when both consoles have been released, then we can talk about real finalized specs and be able to properly say XX is better than YY.

*goes back to laughing*

[Bhav]

Wow, IGN is really critical of the PS3. Basically says XBox360 is a much superior machine for gaming

585952797[/snapback]

it wasn't written by IGN. it was written by microsoft, so obviously it'll be really biased.

[DjmUK]

enclosed is a Microsoft-made comparitive analysis

^^ um...I know I haven't read the first 3 pages but what does this tell ya ;)

Oh, and in regard to overall system performance, the PS3 was almost twice as fast in the FLOPS - now conveniently MS alters their said specs...hmm!!!

[Argote]

it's made by microsoft but unlike sony's comparisons... most of the stuff here makes sense and seems correct and relatively honest

[jerry]

Oh, and in regard to overall system performance, the PS3 was almost twice as fast in the FLOPS - now conveniently MS alters their said specs...hmm!!!

585953074[/snapback]

If you look carefully, the graphs still show the PS3 twice as fast in Floating points but takes a hit in General Performance; the latter is more relevant in relation to games.

[digitallaughter]

Proof is in the pudding, AKA put up or shut up.

[ANova]

I'm losing respect for all the PS3/Nintendo fanboys.  :whistle:

585951638[/snapback]

roflcopter

Only PS3 and Nintendo fanboys? I wonder why. :rolleyes:

[slik da relic]

wow... i get screamed on by a couple of punx in this thread.... i scream on them back with the same language they used... and instead of all the posts bein deleted. they delete mine....lol. so much for free speech. you want courtesy, u gotta give it 1st. :crazy:

da relic

[jerry]

roflcopter

Only PS3 and Nintendo fanboys?  I wonder why. :rolleyes:

585953744[/snapback]

Well atleast the Xbox fanboys arent resorting to personal attacks.

[Favorable7404]

I don't care about the feud. I just want a more excellent console. :D

[Scibbers]

I don't care about the feud. I just want a more excellent console. :D

585953849[/snapback]

heh, same here

[megamanXplosion]

A lot of that comparison is just marketing fluff (you don't honestly believe that the Microsoft employee posted that without having it go through their PR department, do you?). A lot of the information is misrepresented, and some of it is completely hidden just to make themselves look better.

The first bit of mental manipulation is the main system bandwidth figures. The very impressive speed of the memory that the Microsoft employee spouted IS true; however, that memory is only used for anti-aliasing (which is why there's only 10mb of it), IS not the main system bandwidth, and it means practically nothing in terms of overall performance. The memory which is actually used to power the games is 512mb of GDDR3 @ 700mhz which is shared between the processors and the GPU. The playstation 3, on the other hand, has 256mb of XDR @ 2.6ghz dedicated to processing and 256mb of GDDR3 @ 700mhz for the GPU. This means that the PS3 has MORE system bandwidth than the xbox 360, AND it doesn't bog down the GPU by constantly requesting information. While the article may say "The memory system bandwidth in Xbox 360 exceeds the PS3's by five times", that is complete and utter hogwash. The PS3's memory system bandwidth actually exceeds the Xbox 360's by 1.5x, if not 2x.

The next bit of manipulation is about the floating point units. I'm sorry but 10%-15% is waaaay too low to actually be accurate. If they're talking about first-person shooters where the screen consists of a tiny room then perhaps 10%-15% would be accurate, but throw a concept like Black & White 2 (whole island, thousands of villagers, hundreds of buildings, thousands of trees, thousands of grass models across the whole island, etc.) out and the figure will be a LOT higher. As the Microsoft employee himself stated, this is where PS3's main advantage is (3x more floating point operations), and coupling this fact with the BD-ROM drives that can hold 50+ gigabytes of data, we're talking MASSIVE landscapes and the percentage the Microsoft employee spouted is no longer true. The 7 SPDs will make a big difference in performance, nowhere near as minor as the article tried to claim. Even though most games will not take advantage of this fact (most will be racing games, football games, etc), I do hope to be playing something more than first-person shooters where I'm always in a small room shooting at things jumping at me.

And while we're still on the subject of floating point operations, streaming calculations DO require fast access to the RAM (these are usually used for artificial intelligence, path finding, etc. which is VERY common, especially in games like B&W2). While DSPs may be ill-suited for this task, you have to remember that they have 256mb of XDR @ 2.6ghz at their disposal while the xbox 360 has ~256mb of GDDR3 @ 700mhz, which means that the general purpose processors, that the xbox 360 has, will eat their dust. Code branching is another important factor in path finding algorithms and such, and the Xbox appears to have the advantage here but you have to remember that heavy usage of path finding algorithms usually means that there's a large amount of objects using those paths and moving down them, which is where the streaming floating point operations kick in. Once again, the Xbox 360 bites the dust.

Another misrepresentation of the facts is about the GPU. The Xbox 360 GPU is impressive all by itself. Just thinking 500mhz operation, 512mb of GDDR3 @ 700mhz, 10mb of EDRAM (frequency? I don't know), the unified 48-shader architecture, etc. It's a monster of a card all by itself. However, there are many drawbacks to it's implementation in the Xbox 360. First and foremost, about half of the memory will not be utilized by the GPU but rather the processors. Because the amount of memory at it's disposal is only ~256mb, the unified 48 shaders will be doing absolutely nothing most of the time (which is probably the main reason why they unified the vertex and pixel shaders, to try to increase the utilization of the pipelines). The EDRAM will make a very positive, and very noticable, difference because it will allow 4x anti-aliasing at High-definition resolutions with no performance penalty. There is another important detail to mention, the 1080i rendering technique, but more on that later.

Now, to put the GPU comparison into perspective. The PS3 GPU will have 256mb of GDDR3 @ 700mhz, about the same as the xbox 360 GPU (but remember, the PS3 GPU doesn't share it's bandwidth with the processors!), but will be better utilized by the graphics card. The PS3 GPU doesn't have as many rendering pipelines as the xbox 360 GPU, but that's okay because they will be fully utilized whereas the xbox 360 GPU's won't be. The PS3 GPU also runs at a clock speed of 550mhz, which is 50mhz more which means that it will be communicating with the memory and doing calculations at a faster rate. I'd say that the 50mhz more will be used for anti-aliasing purposes, considering that the PS3 doesn't have the 10mb of EDRAM that the xbox 360 has. Remember how I said the xbox 360 uses the 1080i rendering technique? The PS3 uses the 1080p rendering technique. The difference is that the xbox 360 uses an interlaced rendering method which works similarly to nvidia SLI, at TV resolutions this is entirely unnecessary and requires the GPU to constantly figure out where geometry will be before it can even begin rendering it. Take a look at the benchmarks for SLI setups at 1024x768, no performance gain at all, all this will do is create a bottleneck to the rendering process. The PS3 uses a progressive rendering technique which is more common to single-GPU configurations and will result in better rendering performance which means that more of the GPU clocks will be used for anti-aliasing and such. Altogether, when put into perspective, the xbox 360 GPU and the PS3 GPU are practically equal in real-life performance.

Now backing away from the GPU-specifics, I think it's important to further examine how the CPU(s) and GPU will work together. Because the PS3 appears to be significantly faster at calculations, it is only logical to assume that the GPU will get usable data faster than the xbox 360's GPU. This should result in even more clock cycles being used to render a scene than that of the xbox 360, which should result in much better looking graphics.

And like the article said, hardware performance itself is only a fraction of what makes a great gaming console. That is absolutely true, and since he brought that up I feel it's only natural that I talk about it. The Xbox 360 has a 12x dual-layer DVD-ROM drive while the PS3 has a dual-layer BD-ROM drive (I can't find any information about the speed of it). This is an important factor to consider because the BD-ROM drive can hold 50+ gigabytes of data, that's more than 5x the capacity of the disks that are used by the xbox 360. This should result in games not being cut short because of capacity limitations (or forcing the user to constantly switch disks.) This means that you can expect PS3 games to be more vocal in their story-lines, more videos to finish off action sequences, etc. I've always been a fan of RPGs and the fact that the PS3 will allow me to hear the story, instead of reading it, makes me a very happy camper. I remember when I first played Final Fantasy X on the PS2, that was an excellent game as far as the implementation of the story goes because I got to actual see and hear the story and not just read about it. I'm sorry but I don't want to read the story, I want to engage myself in the story, and the PS3 will bring me leaps and bounds closer to being fully immersed in the role-playing experience. The BD-ROM drive is also impressive in another way, there will be less loading time. Even if the drive is at 4x reading speed, it will still pull data quicker than the Xbox 360 which means I'll spend less time waiting and more time playing.

Anyways, I'm done talking about this. I'll just put my conclusion in plain English/ The Microsoft employee is a liar, the Microsoft PR department are liars, and the PS3 will totally destroy the xbox 360 in real-world performance comparisons and possibly in real games as well. And to finish this post up, "the proof is in the pudding".

[Edit]

Wow this is a long post! Sorry for punishing everyone with it, but I just get tired of hearing marketing b.s. :whistle:

[demondave]

Everything comes at a cost though, PS3 is going to be a lot more than Xbox360.

[SkaterAustin]

A lot of that comparison is just marketing fluff (you don't honestly believe that the Microsoft employee posted that without having it go through their PR department, do you?). A lot of the information is misrepresented, and some of it is completely hidden just to make themselves look better.

The first bit of mental manipulation is the main system bandwidth figures. The very impressive speed of the memory that the Microsoft employee spouted IS true; however, that memory is only used for anti-aliasing (which is why there's only 10mb of it), IS not the main system bandwidth, and it means practically nothing in terms of overall performance. The memory which is actually used to power the games is 512mb of GDDR3 @ 700mhz which is shared between the processors and the GPU. The playstation 3, on the other hand, has 256mb of XDR @ 2.6ghz dedicated to processing and 256mb of GDDR3 @ 700mhz for the GPU. This means that the PS3 has MORE system bandwidth than the xbox 360, AND it doesn't bog down the GPU by constantly requesting information. While the article may say "The memory system bandwidth in Xbox 360 exceeds the PS3's by five times", that is complete and utter hogwash. The PS3's memory system bandwidth actually exceeds the Xbox 360's by 1.5x, if not 2x.

The next bit of manipulation is about the floating point units. I'm sorry but 10%-15% is waaaay too low to actually be accurate. If they're talking about first-person shooters where the screen consists of a tiny room then perhaps 10%-15% would be accurate, but throw a concept like Black & White 2 (whole island, thousands of villagers, hundreds of buildings, thousands of trees, thousands of grass models across the whole island, etc.) out and the figure will be a LOT higher. As the Microsoft employee himself stated, this is where PS3's main advantage is (3x more floating point operations), and coupling this fact with the BD-ROM drives that can hold 50+ gigabytes of data, we're talking MASSIVE landscapes and the percentage the Microsoft employee spouted is no longer true. The 7 SPDs will make a big difference in performance, nowhere near as minor as the article tried to claim. Even though most games will not take advantage of this fact (most will be racing games, football games, etc), I do hope to be playing something more than first-person shooters where I'm always in a small room shooting at things jumping at me.

And while we're still on the subject of floating point operations, streaming calculations DO require fast access to the RAM (these are usually used for artificial intelligence, path finding, etc. which is VERY common, especially in games like B&W2). While DSPs may be ill-suited for this task, you have to remember that they have 256mb of XDR @ 2.6ghz at their disposal while the xbox 360 has ~256mb of GDDR3 @ 700mhz, which means that the general purpose processors, that the xbox 360 has, will eat their dust. Code branching is another important factor in path finding algorithms and such, and the Xbox appears to have the advantage here but you have to remember that heavy usage of path finding algorithms usually means that there's a large amount of objects using those paths and moving down them, which is where the streaming floating point operations kick in. Once again, the Xbox 360 bites the dust.

Another misrepresentation of the facts is about the GPU. The Xbox 360 GPU is impressive all by itself. Just thinking 500mhz operation, 512mb of GDDR3 @ 700mhz, 10mb of EDRAM (frequency? I don't know), the unified 48-shader architecture, etc. It's a monster of a card all by itself. However, there are many drawbacks to it's implementation in the Xbox 360. First and foremost, about half of the memory will not be utilized by the GPU but rather the processors. Because the amount of memory at it's disposal is only ~256mb, the unified 48 shaders will be doing absolutely nothing most of the time (which is probably the main reason why they unified the vertex and pixel shaders, to try to increase the utilization of the pipelines). The EDRAM will make a very positive, and very noticable, difference because it will allow 4x anti-aliasing at High-definition resolutions with no performance penalty. There is another important detail to mention, the 1080i rendering technique, but more on that later.

Now, to put the GPU comparison into perspective. The PS3 GPU will have 256mb of GDDR3 @ 700mhz, about the same as the xbox 360 GPU (but remember, the PS3 GPU doesn't share it's bandwidth with the processors!), but will be better utilized by the graphics card. The PS3 GPU doesn't have as many rendering pipelines as the xbox 360 GPU, but that's okay because they will be fully utilized whereas the xbox 360 GPU's won't be. The PS3 GPU also runs at a clock speed of 550mhz, which is 50mhz more which means that it will be communicating with the memory and doing calculations at a faster rate. I'd say that the 50mhz more will be used for anti-aliasing purposes, considering that the PS3 doesn't have the 10mb of EDRAM that the xbox 360 has. Remember how I said the xbox 360 uses the 1080i rendering technique? The PS3 uses the 1080p rendering technique. The difference is that the xbox 360 uses an interlaced rendering method which works similarly to nvidia SLI, at TV resolutions this is entirely unnecessary and requires the GPU to constantly figure out where geometry will be before it can even begin rendering it. Take a look at the benchmarks for SLI setups at 1024x768, no performance gain at all, all this will do is create a bottleneck to the rendering process. The PS3 uses a progressive rendering technique which is more common to single-GPU configurations and will result in better rendering performance which means that more of the GPU clocks will be used for anti-aliasing and such. Altogether, when put into perspective, the xbox 360 GPU and the PS3 GPU are practically equal in real-life performance.

Now backing away from the GPU-specifics, I think it's important to further examine how the CPU(s) and GPU will work together. Because the PS3 appears to be significantly faster at calculations, it is only logical to assume that the GPU will get usable data faster than the xbox 360's GPU. This should result in even more clock cycles being used to render a scene than that of the xbox 360, which should result in much better looking graphics.

And like the article said, hardware performance itself is only a fraction of what makes a great gaming console. That is absolutely true, and since he brought that up I feel it's only natural that I talk about it. The Xbox 360 has a 12x dual-layer DVD-ROM drive while the PS3 has a dual-layer BD-ROM drive (I can't find any information about the speed of it). This is an important factor to consider because the BD-ROM drive can hold 50+ gigabytes of data, that's more than 5x the capacity of the disks that are used by the xbox 360. This should result in games not being cut short because of capacity limitations (or forcing the user to constantly switch disks.) This means that you can expect PS3 games to be more vocal in their story-lines, more videos to finish off action sequences, etc. I've always been a fan of RPGs and the fact that the PS3 will allow me to hear the story, instead of reading it, makes me a very happy camper. I remember when I first played Final Fantasy X on the PS2, that was an excellent game as far as the implementation of the story goes because I got to actual see and hear the story and not just read about it. I'm sorry but I don't want to read the story, I want to engage myself in the story, and the PS3 will bring me leaps and bounds closer to being fully immersed in the role-playing experience. The BD-ROM drive is also impressive in another way, there will be less loading time. Even if the drive is at 4x reading speed, it will still pull data quicker than the Xbox 360 which means I'll spend less time waiting and more time playing.

Anyways, I'm done talking about this. I'll just put my conclusion in plain English/ The Microsoft employee is a liar, the Microsoft PR department are liars, and the PS3 will totally destroy the xbox 360 in real-world performance comparisons and possibly in real games as well. And to finish this post up, "the proof is in the pudding".

[Edit]

Wow this is a long post! Sorry for punishing everyone with it, but I just get tired of hearing marketing b.s. :whistle:

585954017[/snapback]

very nice post man... See least one person is relizing what ive been thinking and posted it. :)

But demondave has the point though it cost more than the 360, but the thing is most of the hardware on the ps3 is next gen. bd-rom that hold 50gs of data TDK just announced 100g discs seriously theres a good future for bd or hd-dvd in that matter.

[P!P]

I knew some PS3 guys would come in here and try to say IGN is wrong. They would'nt post it if was a bunch of crap. What are you trying to say? Microsoft can't count. :no:

Edited May 22, 2005 by pipdipchip

[P!P]

Oh yeah, Blu-ray is really going to be great. We all know how many 100GB games there are. :rolleyes:

[NeoXY]

is it just me or is this getting really stupid?...I mean come on...how old are they?..6?... I mean come on, so we are now expected to believe that the the 360 be even more powerful than the PS3?...I am as much of a hardware ###### as the next hardware ###### but this is really getting stupid...there they are flaping their mouth off but there isn't even a single complet in game video for us to watch and decide.....man...this is stupid..

Edited May 22, 2005 by dark kyuubi

[Hipster]

I think people want 360 to be superior just because it comes out first and people, including me, have very little patience. So honestly, I hope the Xbox 360 does prove to be superior to the PS3.

Good find Orange.

[Hyori]

Just buy both consoles and be done with it.

[megamanXplosion]

very nice post man... See least one person is relizing what ive been thinking and posted it. 

But demondave has the point though it cost more than the 360, but the thing is most of the hardware on the ps3 is next gen. bd-rom that hold 50gs of data TDK just announced 100g discs seriously theres a good future for bd or hd-dvd in that matter.

I'm glad you liked me post.

I'm also looking forward to when the BD-ROM drives will be available to mainstream consumers. Right now I have to use an external USB hard-drive for backups because even dual-layer DVDs are nowhere near the capacity needed. The BD-ROM drives will allow people to do backups that are truly portable and archivable, which will be excellent :)

I knew some PS3 guys would come in here and try to say IGN is wrong. They would'nt post it if was a bunch of crap. What are you trying to say? Microsoft can't count.

If you read the article then you would know that IGN didn't write any of it and they even specifically state that the comparison is slanted (thus, "a bunch of crap"). IGN isn't wrong here, it's the Microsoft employee. I never said that the Microsoft employee couldn't count, I said he lied and misrepresented the facts. Also, I am not a "PS3 guy", I look forward to all 3 of the major consoles coming out. Please do not try characterizing me when you do not know me.

Oh yeah, Blu-ray is really going to be great. We all know how many 100GB games there are.

The PS3 will use 50gb discs, and those can really be put to use. Even if a single game could not utilize all of the space, who's to say that they don't create 3-in-1 packages? Also, a lot of games have their textures and videos compressed to save space, the enormous amount of extra space means uncompressed textures (around a 20% average increase in quality) and unencoded movies (around a 60% average increase in quality.) You may think that there's no use for that data, and that's because the game developers are sneaky in trying to work their way around capacity limits.

is it just me or is this getting really stupid?...I mean come on...how old are they?..6?... I mean come on, so we are now expected to believe that the the 360 be even more powerful than the PS3?...I am as much of a hardware ###### as the next hardware ###### but this is really getting stupid...there they are flaping their mouth off but there isn't even a single complet in game video for us to watch and decide.....man...this is stupid..

I don't think it's stupid to ponder about how expansive and detailed the games could be...

[Nand]

I just have a question, why would Sony put out an inferior system 6months plus or minus after the Xbox is out? They wouldn't. They can always change something after the XBox comes out, so no one can make any assumptions.

Who says the PS3 is going to cost alot more than the XBox? They both have the same amount of extras except PS3 has Blu ray and 3 more ports, and the XBox has a Windows Media Center 2005 extension in it. I can see a few dollars more, but I think Sony would keep the price the same as the XBox for marketing purposes. However Microsoft might lower the price when PS3 comes out. I can see it now "mommy mommy I wanna PS3" "How much is it?" "$blah" "How much is that system" "$blah" "Honey your getting an Xbox"