Xbox forum - extremetech: x360, ps3, who will win?

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extremetech: x360, ps3, who will win?

2005-05-26, 8:34 pm

Right now, the raging message board wars about next-gen consoles seem
centered on which is more powerful. Is having the most powerful console a
recipe for certain success? I don't think so. Is coming out first enough to
do it? Not if the Dreamcast has taught us anything.

There's an update on the blog of Xbox Live's own Major Nelson, with a
Microsoft-prepared counter-argument that "proves" the Xbox 360 is in fact
more powerful than the PS3. It's an interesting read, even if many of the
arguments are flawed. It brings up a good point: Either system can be made
to look more powerful than the other, depending on how you want to bend the
specs.

In truth, the systems aren't entirely comparable. The 360 has a single,
unified 512MB bank of GDDR3 memory. The PS3 has 256MB of GDDR3 connected to
the graphics chip and a bank of 256MB XDR connected to the CPU. That's more
total bandwidth in the PS3's favor, but what if there's some penalty for the
graphics chip accessing the XDR? Then there's the issue of the Xbox 360's
"smart EDRAM,"--10MB of embedded RAM that stores the back buffer, z-buffer,
and stencil buffer. It performs a bunch of useful blending and z-compare
functions right within the RAM so that the graphics chip doesn't have to.
It's also got an insane 256 GB/sec of bandwidth to the GPU. The PS3's
graphics chip is a traditional PC architecture, with separate and discrete
vertex and pixel pipelines. The 360 uses a new unified shader architecture
with 48 ALUs, each capable of performing multiple shader operations per
cycle and fed by a scheduler intended to keep them fully utilized all the
time. So when it comes to graphics, it's simply not possible to tell, simply
by looking at the numbers, which one is more "powerful."

The CPUs are a similar story. The 360 uses a three-core PowerPC derivative
with a shared L2 cache, where each core can process two simultaneous
threads. It's got SIMD floating-point units similar to SSE3, and is
certainly no number-crunching slouch. The PS3 uses the Cell, which has a
single PowerPC core and eight "synergistic processing units" optimized for
particular tasks. What these SPUs are good at and what they're not is a
point of contention, even among programmers working on it, because it's no
small task to get the Cell CPU firing on all cylinders, if you will. Is it
more powerful than the 360's CPU? Well, it certainly has a higher peak
"gigaflops" rating, but that doesn't really mean it's going to be better for
games. Games use operations like load/store, and perform logic functions
that need to access memory in a random, rather than streaming, fashion.
That's not necessarily the Cell chip's forte. As with the GPUs, the raw
numbers don't tell the whole story here. It's simply not possible to look at
the specs and say "this one is more powerful for what game developers need
to do."

Right now, there are no developers working on kits that include hardware
resembling the true final production Xbox 360 or Playstation 3 systems. It's
not until they start banging on that final silicon that we'll really know
which is more powerful, and I suspect there will still be disagreement. At
the end of the day, in a general sense, I think both systems are going to be
able to get about the same quality stuff on the screen.

So if hardware horsepower won't determine the winner, what will? It will
come down to the following criteria:

Manufacturability
Demand will outstrip supply at first. Which system can be more easily
manufactured in large quantities, have production scale up more quickly, and
ramp down the price more easily? I think Microsoft has an advantage here.
It's using somewhat smaller chips, and less exotic components (like XDR RAM
and Blu-ray optical storage). Still, Microsoft is building in a hard drive,
so that's one more thing to worry about.

Development ease
Which platform makes it easier, faster, and less costly for publishers to
bring out impressive next-generation titles? With neither system shipping
final dev kits, this one is still up in the air. Nvidia's involvement with
the PS3 is a big boost in this area and will make the graphics side of game
programming much easier on PS3 developers than it was on the PS2.

Business deals
Who's greasing the right palms and working the deals necessary to secure
gotta-have-it games exclusively for its system? Who's going to grab the next
Grand Theft Auto, or the next GTA-like phenom? It's hard to pick a winner
here. Both companies have very deep pockets and good relationships with lots
of third-party publishers.

First-party titles
One way to get exclusives is to make them yourself. Will Microsoft Game
Studios' stable of franchises beat out Sony Computer Entertainment's? You
used to be able to hand this one to Sony, but Microsoft has built some well
respected and popular franchises in the last few years, it's finally
delivering games from premiere developer Rare, and has a little something
called Halo.

Services and non-gaming features
Both systems are flaunting online play, online community features, and media
features. Sony has a lot of catching up to do to compete with the
universally praised Xbox Live, and Microsoft is able to show off some really
impressive services and media features for the 360 already. That they can't
demo any of this stuff for the Playstation 3 speaks volumes about how much
further ahead Microsoft is on the development of this side of the system.
Will the media capabilities of a particular console work with your devices
and with the file types and formats of all your data?

Right now, it's too early to call a "winner." Each system has its strengths
and weaknesses. Fortunately, you don't have to decide which one to buy just
yet. Prices and exact release dates haven't even been announced yet. You can
wait a few more months, and read more about the games as they move from
development to final hardware, before you make a buying decision.
http://www.extremetech.com/article2...,1820466,00.asp