A true PS3 and 360 hardware breakdown

Apium · Post by **Apium** » Wed Nov 22, 2006 11:26 am

http://dpad.gotfrag.com/portal/story/35372/?spage=1

I've only read the CPU part and its quite interesting. My only conclusion so far is that the 360 is a lot easier to program for and will have awesome games in the short term as we see here. PS3's programming is extremely difficult and unlike anything developers have done before. It will take several years before we see anywhere near full useage of a PS3's hardware.

Heres a quick breakdown of the CPUs if your too lazy to read.

360
larger L2 cache
Easier to program
Multiple power cores
in-order execution
3.2 GHZ

Major upside: Its easy to harness its power/easy to program
Major downside: Amazingly powerful, but doesn't have the raw power of the PS3

PS3
smaller L2 cache
harder to program
single power core
Multiple SPEs, one PPE
in-order execution
3.2 GHZ(faster raw speed overall, much harder to harness though)
Capable of better physics
Capable of running more things on the screen at one time ie cloth animation/water animation etc

Major upside: Raw power is amazing, clocking in at 218 GFLOPS
Major downside: Forced to run too many things through one power core/PPE. Extremely difficult parallel programming.

EDIT: I have no intentions of being bias by the way. I'm reporting only facts, and my personal comments are all valid conclusions. I love both these powerhouses.

Dragonus · Post by **Dragonus** » Wed Nov 22, 2006 7:34 pm

yep but u gotta love that raw powr

Apium · Post by **Apium** » Thu Nov 23, 2006 3:58 pm

I've come to the conclusion that the 360 is indeed a better console overall than the PS3.

Dragonus · Post by **Dragonus** » Thu Nov 23, 2006 3:59 pm

o rly?.... btw i got my hands on the helios framework 2 being sold for 50 euros.. if u want it leave email =d

Kurke_Aumea · Post by **Kurke_Aumea** » Fri Nov 24, 2006 11:50 am

Apium wrote:I've come to the conclusion that the 360 is indeed a better console overall than the PS3.

I agree and disagree. I agree because it has the best games with some of the best graphics seen to date on a console. However, the PS3 does have some superior hardware that the 360 does not have. While all of the hardware is good and all, but the PS3 has some limiting factors which will keep the 360 and PS# on the same plane of existence till the end of their life. For instance, not only does the 360 have more memory, it also has higher memory bandwidth. The DVD drive in the 360 is also faster than the Blu-Ray drive in the PS3. The DVD drive reads at 16x and the Blu-Ray drive reads at 2x. So, while Blu-Ray may hold more data, the 360 can still transfer data faster and more efficiently.

Indeed, the PS3 is a highly powerful machine. The bad thing is, parts of it are extremely limiting. Its Cell processor is a curse and a blessing. It will be a year or more before devs learn how to code properly for the Cell processor. It can also offer superior performance in certain tasks, but only uses 6 out of its 7 SPEs.

But, let's be honest. Both will be almost identical when the dust settles. Despite all the advanced hardware packed into the PS3, the 360 can keep pace in most areas. In the end the PS3 will win in some areas and the 360 in others. For once, I think the winner of this generation will come down to games.

I also think many people were caught off guard by how well the 360 is holding up to the PS3, because everyone thought the PS3 was going to blow everything out of the water.