PlayStation 3 GPU Less Powerful than GeForce 7800

By thecableguy
in Gamers' Hangout

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SkaterAustin

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Off of what convincing information do you base your conclusion? I really do want to find out why everyone says they're horrible.

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let me tell you something about theinquirer, if they dont have a link or reference to there source other than text.. dont believe what they show, great system trust me... AND trust me I kno since i been reading there stuff for many many years now and seen the lies.

Grand Master

jerry

Posted
Posted
Off of what convincing information do you base your conclusion? I really do want to find out why everyone says they're horrible.

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Inquirer is always 50-50. They have their contacts in some places and they dont have in other areas. The genuinity of their news reflects that.

One thing is certain though, the quality of the news (writing) is very bad.

Mentor

Jeremy1

Posted
Posted
HD-TVs have a picture that isn't as good as a moniter thus hide any defects in quality or resolution loss.

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You are sorely misinformed. HD resolution is either 1280x720, or 1920x1080. Those are both perfectly acceptable resolutions for computer monitors. I'm actually using an LCD HDTV as one of the monitors on my computer, and it does it's job perfectly.

Grand Master

Brandon Live Veteran

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Posted

Err, isn't the RSX a G70 chip with a higher clock frequency?

I think the idea is that it's a little faster than the 7800 GTX, not a little slower.

Of course, the Xenos chip in the X360 is a completely different beast. It's not even comparable to PC graphics cards, largely because of the embedded DRAM, but also because it has direct access to the CPU cache, and acts as the memory controller for the system (ie. it doesn't have to wait for the CPU to block in order to access the shared memory). Furthermore it uses unified shaders, unlike anything available today.

It's hard to say when PC parts will catch up with that... they'll probably have unified shaders at some point. Initially you'll see WGF cards that support pseudo-unified shaders (a common model, but different hardware paths for each). Then maybe at the end of 2006 we'll see real unified shaders on some GPUs.

Embedded RAM might take longer... since it's hard for a company like ATI or Nvidia to restrict their framebuffer like that. Whereas when you commit to a 720p anti-aliased rendering output, you can figure out just how much space you need (about 10MB).

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megamanXplosion

Posted
Posted

A few facts that people should keep in mind...

1. The cell processor itself can be used for rendering. Combine the sheer power of the Cell processor with a card comparable to the nVidia 7800, and you have a lot more power in your hands than what a $3000+ gaming PC can provide under its most optimized settings. Developers have the freedom of not having the best graphics in the world but may shift their focus to physics and artificial intelligence (smart bombs that are effected by the wind speed and direction, for example) or make the more simplistic games extremely beautiful since it can dedicate a lot of processing power (from the Cell) to the rendering of graphics.

2. PCs have a lot of hardware abstraction and other processing/memory overheads (services running in the background, for example) that reduces its gaming potential. Windows Vista will behave more like a console when launching fullscreen DirectX 10 (Windows Graphic Foundation 2.0) games because it starts and stops unnecessary processing/memory overheads (hardware abstraction overhead will still remain.) Current versions of Windows do not do this. This means that even if you had a PC with slightly higher specs than an Xbox 360 or PS3, they will still be behind in pure gaming power (the margin will lower with Windows Vista, like I mentioned earlier.)

3. PC games are typically limited by their common denominator (CPU speed, for example.) For the most powerful of PCs, they typically just increase the amount of eye candy and rarely add anything new to the actual gameplay because they are limited by the processor. It will take a long time after PCs beat the PS3 and Xbox 360 performance before you actually see the advantage used. This means that the Xbox 360 and PS3 will be churning out better games than what the PC will, for at least a year after their performance had been beaten.

4. This article was complete nonsense. The Inquirer, Team Xbox, and the original forum poster were all spreading FUD for their personal gains (Inquirer gains readers and makes more money for sensational journalism, Team Xbox gains users and increases their 360 fanclub, and the original forum poster doesn't want the PS3 to succeed and the spreading of his information contributes to his cause.) Don't trust any of them.

Grand Master

Brandon Live Veteran

Posted
  • Veteran
Posted
A few facts that people should keep in mind...

1. The cell processor itself can be used for rendering. Combine the sheer power of the Cell processor with a card comparable to the nVidia 7800, and you have a lot more power in your hands than what a $3000+ gaming PC can provide under its most optimized settings. Developers have the freedom of not having the best graphics in the world but may shift their focus to physics and artificial intelligence (smart bombs that are effected by the wind speed and direction, for example) or make the more simplistic games extremely beautiful since it can dedicate a lot of processing power (from the Cell) to the rendering of graphics.

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Actually the Cell processor is virtually useless for rendering. It's mostly useful for video encoding/decoding as it works kind of like a DSP on steroids. Expect PS3 games to use video streams all over the place because of that - at least the japanese games. They sure do love them their FMVs.

Some believe it could be used for vector processing not unlike the PS2's VU0 and VU1. We'll see. The problem there is the large amount of work required, when you already have a GPU with vector units to do that work. The gain from adding the Cell help the workload of the RSX will add overhead and development time... and I think probably won't be worth the effort, at least for the vast majority of games.

The Cell can also not do physics or AI really at all. Branching destroys the Cell processor. Anything like physics or AI will have to be done entirely in the main CPU (the single-core 3.2Ghz Power-based chip).

Veteran

megamanXplosion

Posted
Posted
Actually the Cell processor is virtually useless for rendering. It's mostly useful for video encoding/decoding as it works kind of like a DSP on steroids. Expect PS3 games to use video streams all over the place because of that - at least the japanese games. They sure do love them their FMVs.

Some believe it could be used for vector processing not unlike the PS2's VU0 and VU1. We'll see. The problem there is the large amount of work required, when you already have a GPU with vector units to do that work. The gain from adding the Cell help the workload of the RSX will add overhead and development time... and I think probably won't be worth the effort, at least for the vast majority of games.

The Cell can also not do physics or AI really at all. Branching destroys the Cell processor. Anything like physics or AI will have to be done entirely in the main CPU (the single-core 3.2Ghz Power-based chip).

The cell isn't useless for rendering. Before Sony contacted nVidia about creating a graphics card for the PS3, they were considering the use of another Cell processor to render scenes. That shows that a cell processor itself could benefit graphics greatly if utilized (it won't be like another RSX card but it has enough power to be useful.) I do agree that they are more likely to be used for streaming high-definition videos than to do actual rendering, but the option is there.

Will the Cell be used extensively to improve graphics? Probably not, it will more than likely be used to fix up problematic areas in games where FPS might lag. For example, if you are switching environments and there's a ton of things going on in the game it may lag for a second or so, developers could eliminate FPS hiccups using the Cell processor instead of reducing the quality of the graphics or limiting that area in another fashion.

I don't know where you are getting your information about the cell's physics support though. I have to completely disagree here. Gravity, friction, collision detection, etc. all require the precision of floating-point calculations. The PS3 excels in floating-point calculations because the SPEs were developed for specific tasks like these.

I don't think we have anything to worry about when it comes to artificial intelligence and path-finding, the Cell processor's main core will be more than capable of even the most demanding of tasks. Look at Black & White 2 on the PC, for example, it has artificial intelligence and path-finding for thousands of villagers and even that can be handled by mainstream processors just fine. Comparing a mainstream PC processor to the Cell's main processing core with XDR memory speed should be enough to convince anyone that artificial intelligence and path-finding will not be lacking (if it is, it is because of the developers and not the hardware.)

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