PS3's GPU got plenty on the GeForce 7800

by James Ransom-Wiley { Aug 31st 2005 at 5:00PM }

Xbox 360 GPU UPDATE: You know people, we did question the validity of this information right off the bat (see sentence #3 in the original post). And as it turns out, the RSX will be more powerful than the GeForce 7800—see Team Xbox's apology.

This is not speculation. It comes straight from the company that manufactures both the PS3's RSX and the GeForce 7800 GPUs. True, you've got to be wary of the article's sources, namely Team Xbox (a rival) and the Inquirer. But still, if nVIDIA is admitting (allegedly in the Official PlayStation Magazine) that its latest PC graphics chip, the GeForce 7800, is more powerful then the RSX GPU to be featured in the PS3, then Sony might have slipped a notch in the "mine is bigger than yours" bickering match with MS.

If the PlayStation 3's launch is still a year away, and already we are seeing stronger PC GPUs, then you can hardly call the PS3 a "next-gen" console. As for the Xbox 360's GPU (developed by ATI), Team Xbox claims that its technology won't be matched on PCs until late 2006. Dag!

[Thanks, Dalvin]

Reader Comments (Page 1 of 2)

chris @ Dec 18th 2005 10:00PM

yeah, well... it doesnt matter! cause once i buy my $8000 1080p tv, xbox360 will have nothing! and neither will my wallet!

chris @ Dec 18th 2005 10:00PM

yeah, well... it doesnt matter! cause once i buy my $8000 1080p tv, xbox360 will have nothing! and neither will my wallet!

Not Impressed (Dmitri) @ Dec 18th 2005 10:00PM

Meh. I have a nice TV, nice speaker system, nice setup. But nothing will make the PS3 look good to me.

calvinhobbes @ Dec 18th 2005 10:00PM

i can't find this statement in the OPM... are you sure this is accurate?

DICE @ Dec 18th 2005 10:00PM

"Any time we created any content it looked exactly the same on PC as it did on PS3. The only thing was, even though we had these ass-kicking Nvidia 6800 Ultra SLI systems, when we got the actual RSX card, even though it's not running anywhere near full speed, it was more than twice as fast as our SLI setup." Mark Rein"

honestly do u guys think that the RSX is weaker than the 7800....

NVidia CEO Jen-Hsun Huang stated during Sony's pre-show press conference at E3 2005 that the RSX is more powerful than two GeForce 6800 Ultra video cards. Current industry speculation is that the RSX may be based on the G70 architecture used in NVidia's GeForce 7 Series GPUs which were introduced in June of 2005, but implementing more parallel pixel and shader pipelines (48+) than any consumer PC GPU (NVidia's top-of-the-line GeForce 7800 GTX currently contains 24 pixel and 8 vertex pipelines), and clocked higher than PC GPUs based on G70 (again, the 7800 GTX is clocked at 430 MHz, compared to 550 MHz for the RSX).

the only advantage that the 7800 has over the rsx is that the RSX has 128bits and 7800 has 256bits...

http://www.gamespot.com/unions/read_article.html?union_id=Playstation3&article_id=22949265

take that article for a grain of salt...
sorry to rain on ur parade but that article is very false.....

and the current ps3 devkits have a 7800GTX card in them....

and i just hate how all this fanboy sites blow everything out of portion..

DICE @ Dec 18th 2005 10:00PM

and its not even accurate, the PSM magazine never said anything like that and its only funny that its onkly the fanboy sites that carry this kinf of BS Information

Not Impressed (Dmitri) @ Dec 18th 2005 10:00PM

DICE very nice arguement. You have completely convinced me. Finally someone with something more to say then, "Dum-itri"

cool dude @ Dec 18th 2005 10:00PM

i think this is all fake. i think that the console war is gonna end up being the opposite of the old one. ps3 will be the more advanced console with more power like xbox was but the xbox 360 will be the console with the most sales and highest popularity like the ps2 was. this is going to be an interresting. right now the ps3 has everything the xbox 360 has and more. so i think it should be the best but xbox 360 is releasing sooner than the ps3. or what else could hapen is the ps2 fans will stick with sony and give them an easy win but i dont know. it is going to be close.

n8 @ Dec 18th 2005 10:00PM

I may be way off base here, but I thought it was a given that top-end PC graphics were always going to be better than console graphics. Considering the price on a 7800 card is somewhere in the neighborhood of $500, it doesn't really surprise me that Sony won't be able to deliver double the GPU power in a console costing ~$300. I seriously doubt MS will either.

Not Impressed (Dmitri) @ Dec 18th 2005 10:00PM

Or the whole dreamcast situation could come back and bite sony in the ass. Sony was only 1/2 of the reason why dreamcast did so poorly. The other 1/2 was the previous sega fans were disappointed with support and glitches in the systems.

Now here is what I believe could be the future.

Microsoft will be 1/2 of the reason why PS3 does poorly. The other 1/2 will be because of the disappointment in support and glitches in the PS2.

I am not saying this will happen, it is just a possibility. I have had my PS2 since the week after it released, and I am converting because of the lack of support.

elmer @ Dec 18th 2005 10:00PM

Sony/Nvidia did say at the E3 show that all the realtime RSX emulation was done on 2 unreleased Nvidia cards in SLI - at that time the 7800 was unreleased, so i always assumed it was run on 2 of those.

Either way, they say they'll do 100 billion shader ops per second while MS says they'll do 48 billion. Shader ops aren't the be-all and end-all in graphics, but for the coming generation, they're pretty damn important and look to be a fairly good measure of the stuff you can do.

Hachi_Roku @ Dec 18th 2005 10:00PM

To #7 There is no way Sony can sell there PS3 at $300 they would be loosing $200 or so dollors per console sold, and raising the price of software wouldnt help them make enought profit. Face it PS3 may just be the most expensive Next-Gen system.

J. @ Dec 18th 2005 10:00PM

"Not Impressed", you're complaining about the PS2 five years after it's been out?! Have you considered that even with its "lack of support" and "glitches", it still outlasted the Microsoft's Xbox, which came to market later and is about to be replaced sooner? I hope you fanboys find true happiness with your system of choice.

Not Impressed (Dmitri) @ Dec 18th 2005 10:00PM

J very good point. I haven't put that into consideration. I have quite a few things I need to rethink. 1 being next-gen. And, uh, fanboys? How does the equation Xbox360 + Rev = Fanboy?

swamp dweller @ Dec 18th 2005 10:00PM

http://www.filerush.com/forums/viewtopic.php?t=3480

this seems a bit sketchy, sounds like it may have been started by a case of illiteracy.

Beau @ Dec 18th 2005 10:00PM

Dmitri thats true, but it works the other way around aswell, I was supporting xbox when the last gen started, but after 2 replacement xboxs, long and excrutiating phone calls, I was not so hot on the xbox...

Could go either way.. which is why I'm just gonna wait a til rev to make my first next-gen console sys (not saying its gonna be rev, but by that time we should have a scope of all 3, seeing as nintendo usually never has any bad glitches and/or support issues from their consols from day1, but like I said, by that time all 3 will have been able to be tested and played..)

matteos @ Dec 18th 2005 10:00PM

Touch?wamp Dweller

Figgaz @ Dec 18th 2005 10:00PM

I dunno wat the big deal is with these specs

Xbox - 733 PIII
GC - 485 PowerPC
PS2 - 300 or 350mhz processor dont remember

All the games looked almost the same
I dont think that the fact that a game has a sharper edge on the PS3 would make me buy it over the xbox

Brake @ Dec 18th 2005 10:00PM

GPU, SCHMEE PEE YOU. I'm more interested in the FP operations churning out crazy particle systems and physics. That's what seperates the next gen games in my opinion.

djSyndrome @ Dec 18th 2005 10:00PM

Hachi_Roku, I'm glad you know exactly how much it's going to cost to manufacture a PS3. You should pass this information along to Microsoft, I'm sure they'd love to have it [/sarcasm]

Obvious @ Dec 18th 2005 10:00PM

It will come down to the game lineup... graphics mean absolutely nothing if they're allocated to rendering salt particles on crackers in "Cracker Farmer XTREME 2006".

So far, without Halo 3 backing up the 360's launch, I don't see much of a reason to spend 400/500 bucks.

Not Impressed (Dmitri) @ Dec 18th 2005 10:00PM

Obvious,
So you'de much rather play a game such as Killzone 2? The sequal to the worst highly anticipated game in history? [/snicker]

CB4D @ Dec 18th 2005 10:00PM

#1: "the RSX may be based on the G70 architecture used in NVidia's GeForce 7 Series GPUs...but implementing more parallel pixel and shader pipelines (48+) than any consumer PC GPU (NVidia's top-of-the-line GeForce 7800 GTX currently contains 24 pixel and 8 vertex pipelines)" (Auth: DICE)

Please note that I am assuming you meant 'vertex and pixel pipes' instead of 'pixel and shader pipes' for obvious reasons. I think it is unfair to compare shader pipes to shader ALUs. NV architecture specifies a set of n pipelines, each containing 1-2 ALUs. The PC 7800 contains 24 pixel pipes, and 8 vertex pipes. This could be interpreted as 48 pixel ALUs and 16 vertex ALUs. In short, the RSX will not contain 48 pipelines. NV currently doesn't have the technology to pack 96 shader ALUs on a gpu. If we graph the shader pipes of previous video cards, we can see that a leap from 24/8 to 48/? is extremely unrealistic.

#2 "the only advantage that the 7800 has over the rsx is that the RSX has 128bits and 7800 has 256bits..." (Auth: DICE)

I am assuming you are intending to compare the 128bit memory interface of the 7800 to the 256bit memory interface of the RSX (you did not mention *what* these numbers referred to). This is a critical statistic which gives us some indication as to the amount of data this chip will be able to move per second. Needless to say, the next generation of graphics will be extremely data hungry, and bandwidth is going to be vital. If you can't keep your gpu happily fed, it doesn't matter how many shader ops it is capable of. Remember, HD resolutions, multisampling, HDR lighting render targets, etc will all mean large amounts of data traversing the bus.

#3 "Either way, they say they'll do 100 billion shader ops per second while MS says they'll do 48 billion. Shader ops aren't the be-all and end-all in graphics, but for the coming generation, they're pretty damn important and look to be a fairly good measure of the stuff you can do." (Auth: Elmer)

The number of shader ops you can pull is only a piece of the story. It is important to consider things like the size of the post TnL cache, memory bandwidth, the number of raster ops per sec, the number of texture fetches per cycle, the number of floating point operations per shader op, etc. The problem with making any comparison between the next generation gpus is that you would need to consider so many different variables.

Obvious @ Dec 18th 2005 10:00PM

No, but I'd be down with checking out both MGS4 and DMC4... that's at least 2 titles to look forward to.

DICE @ Dec 18th 2005 10:00PM

http://img348.imageshack.us/img348/5135/psm23vg.jpg
plz read

Not Impressed (Dmitri) @ Dec 18th 2005 10:00PM

Same. I will probably still pickup Killzone 2. Kus I loved the Killzone 1 story, online was messed up badly though. I guess thats what everyone based their opinions on, since Halo 2 has such a great online mode.

The only reason you hear of so many games being made for the Xbox360 is because it is coming out so soon, keep that in mind.

ROG27 @ Dec 18th 2005 10:00PM

Joystiq admin...please take this blog down or update it...it's libelous and misquoted. Proof right here:

http://img348.imageshack.us/my.php?image=psm4kn.jpg

this is what the article really says:

"There's no doubting that NVIDIA's new 7800GTX is the ultimate in PC graphics technology. The card's G70 GPU, which is more than twice as powerful as two of NVIDIA's previous top-of-the-line 6800 borads, shares a lot of similar workings with the PS3's RSX chip - only it isn't as fast. Oh, and it retails for $599."

Thus, the 7800 GTX is actually the slower of the two. Therefore, RSX is faster than 7800 GTX, two sli-linked 6800 Ultras, and the XBOX 360 GPU - like it always has been.

Also, check this out about the possibility of ray tracing utilizing the CELL and RSX. Cool stuff:

http://www.gamespot.com/unions/read_article.html?union_id=Playstation3&article_id=22949265

DigitalStupor @ Dec 18th 2005 10:00PM

A similar article is mirrored at:

http://www.theinquirer.net/?article=25838

People, we all know Sony is a hype machine...the reality is that the 7800GTX is an amazing card, and even the 6800 ULTRA is still an amazing card (if a bit big and power hungry). SO if the RSX is indeed very similar to the GTX flavor of the 7800, then it will still be an amazing GPU. I guess the problem revolves around the fact that in another year, the GTX will be surpassed by yet another nVidia release that pushes PC graphics beyond what the 7800 has been able to accomplish (and probably also surpassed by ATI). This is a little dissapointing for the PS3, but will hopefully allow them to decrease the cost a little (even though I doubt it!) by using a slightly older chip.

On the reverse, the ATI GPU going in the 360 is pretty unique, and very hard to make direct comparisons to the PC Graphics world. So while some may say "As for the Xbox 360�s GPU (developed by ATI), Team Xbox claims that its technology won�t be matched on PCs until late 2006." - the correct statement should say:

"The XBox 360's GPU has some features that don't exist in a PC now, nor may see light on a PC GPU in the near future. Whether these unique features mean the chip will perform 'better' than PC card's benchmarks for over a year is up for debate."

So bottom line is that both chips will be on fairly equal ground, while some unique features of the ATI chip may or may not actually give it the edge!

ROG27 @ Dec 18th 2005 10:00PM

leo @ Dec 18th 2005 10:00PM

I wonder how much this guy get paid by microsoft for this negative campaign.....

metal_gear_jello @ Dec 18th 2005 10:00PM

I think joystiq needs to get their own set of fact checkers. :)

I'm not surprised a bunch of xbox fanboys decided to run with a misquoted article regarding the PS3. are they so desperate...?

Alucard @ Dec 18th 2005 10:00PM

I am in total agreement with (Dmitri). "Meh. I have a nice TV, nice speaker system, nice setup. But nothing will make the PS3 look good to me." I have yet to a game on the PS3 that captivates me. If Sony contiues long running streak of derivative game play with a shiny coat of paint; that hides how crapy their games really are. Sony just lost a customer. If I do not enjoy games on my PS2. What make you think I'm going to enjoy games on the PS3!?

Slashbunny @ Dec 18th 2005 10:00PM

Wow, what an absurd anti-Sony post. GF3 cards were out on the market half a year before Xbox was released. Was that not next gen?

Ok, let's just forget that. Let's consider it another way- can you take off the shelf hardware that is the same speed as the console counterparts and get the same performance in PC games? Not even close. You'd have to be a fool to think otherwise. This is nothing new. PS3 games will look many, many, many times better than anything a 7800GTX on a PC can produce, especially when we are talking 5 years from now when the console matures.

And this is ignoring the fact that we aren't comparing 2 PC's to each other (comparing PC hardware to consoles is really only slightly logical when speaking about Xbox), they are drastically different hardware and work differently. PS2 was a 300mhz CPU, Xbox 733mhz, and GC 485mhz CPU. Does that mean the PS2 was twice as powerful as the Xbox. No. Jesus, you are like a dumb little kid trying to convince someone that the Jaguar is going to be super awesome because IT HAS 64 BITS OMFG!!! GENESIS HAS BLAST PROCESSING!@

Really, a post like this doesn't even deserve a rational response. I'm just going to call you a moron instead. Moron.

Xbox360 and PS3 will be no different realtively from Xbox and PS2. That's all there is to it. Sorry. You hardware fools are the silliest of all. Let's wait until we can see exactly what these consoles are capable of in actual games.

DigitalStupor @ Dec 18th 2005 10:00PM

Thanks for the link ROG...

"Thus, the 7800 GTX is actually the slower of the two. Therefore, RSX is faster than 7800 GTX, two sli-linked 6800 Ultras, and the XBOX 360 GPU - like it always has been."

You could have just stopped before you said

"...and the XBOX 360 GPU..."

No one knows how the next-gen ATI GPU in the 360 stacks up to the GTX.

It's clear that this article from "Playstation Magazine" really gives us NO new information in either direction. Sounds like production RSX's are nonexistent, and the author of this article was really making conjecture as to which was "slightly more powerful" between the RSX and the GTX. He based all this on the "Luna" demo provided at E3 by nVidia which ran on pre-production 7800 GTX cards. He probably just assumes that the RSX will be "more powerful" because it is going to be released down the pipe by about a year. This same article also states, as if fact, that the console will cost $299-$399, which may be true, but good ol Kutaragi has made us all think otherwise (crazy kook or sneaky marketing manuever?).

Again, I believe hardware wise, 360 and PS3 will be on the same ground give or take non-consequential benchmark numbers. This is fine, both will be great machines.

Unfortunately, Sony may price themselves out of this market, considering the news today they plan to charge 70-79 bucks per game and the Blu-Ray drive alone is enough to guess that base console prices will be higher than most hope.

Cpt Spaulding @ Dec 18th 2005 10:00PM

#7 Someone with some sense, The PC will always be king, thats the reason it comes in a box 5 times the size and price, not to mention that the electronic ideal is to have one device to many functions and not vica versa. My first PC cost �2K and now has as much power as my toaster (which also runs linux :P) In time PC's will become so cheap that a console will be pointless. And just to from a great height on next gen consoles once more, your only getting better graphics, the architecture especially on the cell processor allows fantastic graphics but very little in the way of development for physics, AI and the like so dont expect anything too ground breaking.

Ryu @ Dec 18th 2005 10:00PM

Wow, the internet is scary:

Here is the chrolonogy of this farce:

1.) Some retard named "Red Cloak" misreads PSM magazine and posts his misinformation on the message board of "Evil Avatar".

2.) British Tabloid site TheInquirer picks it up without even bothering to fact check.

3.) TeamXbox jumps on it, also without bothering to go down to book store to look at the magazine in question.

4.) Xbox fanboys squeel in glee.

5.) JoyStiq, amongst other sites, picks it up as well.

5.) Everybody looks stupid.

Dralt @ Dec 18th 2005 10:00PM

Don't waste your time comparing a graphics chip delivered on a daughter board and a graphics chip that is co-located near a CPU on a mainboard.
It's ridiculous.

The chip that comes on a daughter board would need to be twice as powerful to match the chip that stands on the mainboard.

I heard Microsoft has 3 agencies tasked with the propagation of such "rumors". I don't know if it's true, but this kind of "news" makes you wonder.

sennan @ Dec 18th 2005 10:00PM

http://news.teamxbox.com/xbox/9132/PlayStation-3-GPU-More-Powerful-than-GeForce-7800/

nVidia contacted team xbox in response to the article... the PS3 GPU IS more powerful than the 7800.

lol @ Dec 18th 2005 10:00PM

lol at joystiq for covering this

Juan Carlos @ Dec 18th 2005 10:00PM

Wow... All I have to say is you're all retarded. Sony, Microsoft, who the hell cares? What ever happened to the good old days of buying something based upon how good it ends up being, instead of the hype surrounding it, and the company that makes the product.

DETOX @ Dec 18th 2005 10:00PM

http://news.teamxbox.com/xbox/9132/PlayStation-3-GPU-More-Powerful-than-GeForce-7800/
who the hell believes the inquirer?

DETOX @ Dec 18th 2005 10:00PM

would it be possible for nvidia to have 2 rsx's working on sli on ps3?

xbair @ Dec 18th 2005 10:00PM

you're thinking of the national inquirer. the inquirer is usually a reliable source. (usually)

The1 @ Dec 18th 2005 10:00PM

Now what will the PS3 lovers say??? .... Fan boys scream and scream until you are blue in the face. Sony got played.

Alucard @ Dec 18th 2005 10:00PM

Let me make this clear. I am not a X-box fan boy. I am merely stating my opinion/argument. If my statement was misconstrude. I apologize on my part for posting a one sided arguement/opinion.

kuyu @ Dec 18th 2005 10:00PM

Does it really matter? Seriously, any rational adult can clearly see that BOTH the PS3 and the Xbox 360 are light years ahead of anything out today. BOTH systems have the strengths and weaknesses. BOTH systems have a fanatical fanbase, and millions of loyal supporters.

Therefore, this battle will be waged on the "reviews" page of gaming websites. Whomever comes ready with good games will win. Period. Of course fanboy's will buy whatever they're told to buy, but average people will buy the one with better games.

This is Sony's glaring mistake thus far. I can think of at least 10 Xbox 360 games that look very fun. In fact, there are so many "launch window" titles that I know I'll never get time to play them all.

All I know about the PS3 is CELL, RSX, Blu-Ray, etc. What about the games? Please give us something besides gameplay that's sped up 12x to look fluid, or watch us buy Xbox 360's. It's your choice Sony...

Spartacus @ Dec 18th 2005 10:00PM

I am an informed consumer. I am buying a 360 at launch. I do not believe this article... Here's why:
nVidia claimed from the beginning that the RSX chip was faster than the 7800, BUT that by the time the PS3 was released, faster PC GPU's would be on the market.

SO, here we have a case of misinformation... However one thing is still unclear- Which next gen console GPU is better. My bet has been on 360/ATI's from the beginning due to the radical new architecture (which nVidia is adopting). While Sony is using a modified 7800 (which is really all the RSX claims to be) which will be outdated the minute it launches, MS has built a custom GPU from the ground up to suit their console's needs. In doing so they have built a monster of a GPU which *may* not see a PC counterpart until late 2006. Add to the equation that ATI, though sub-par in software and drivers, has been able to produce better hardware than nVidia for quite some time. nVidia comes out blazing with new technology, new bells and new whistles, then ATI releases a card with seemingly less doohickies and thingamabobbers but grunts out more power. I think the same will be in the 360/PS3 battle. Just my 2 cents though...

ROG27 @ Dec 18th 2005 10:00PM

Um, no, not exactly. MS's Xenos GPU will have a more flexible (albeit unproven, and likely very inefficient) architecture, not a more powerful architecture. Sony is putting their money with raw power and efficiency over a "could-be" slight improvement in flexibility. Remember Sony's GPU has 300 million transistors of LOGIC, whereas MS's GPU has only 252 million transistors of logic (inclusive of daughter-die post-rendering processes logic). 80 million transistors of the 100 million transistor daughter die are actually the 10 MB of EDRAM. Because the logic setup on the Xenos GPU is drastically different and theoretically improvements might be seen (yet to materialize), ATI/MS are going crazy touting it. Yet, in practical reality, it seems RSX will be the more powerful GPU. Also, the having anti-alaising and motion-blur for free is not that big of a deal. The need for super-duper anti-alaising diminishes as the resolution becomes greater. Also, the RSX has access to the superfast XDR main system memory, which offsets this problem to a great extent as this can act as a high speed buffer.

James @ Dec 18th 2005 10:00PM

i like chicken, especially in nugget form. the only type of chicken i don't like is steamed chicken, which can get pretty dry to eat if not cooked correctly. popcorn chicken and kfc original recipe chicken is very tasty, but the downside is they are considerably less healthy than other alternatives.

ill trooper @ Dec 18th 2005 10:00PM

LOL JameZ u r teh Looser, itZ not evn a dizcousin abt CHIKKEN! LMAOROTFLOCOPTER

Teh 360 is going to b pwning a PS3 cuz the PS3 only uzes a blue Acura RSX & is like $$$$$, while teh 360 comes wit HD tv and ring of light. Holla!

......STOP STOP STOP this speculation madness! James' post is almost, maybe a little short of, as accurate as anyone can be about the PS3 and 360. Of course there are facts and figures, but do you really know how to visualize how it will work together? Likely not - I see so many people here quote the MajorNelson report and Anandtech posts...
Not one person on this planet has both production models to test and compare. I admit, it's fun to guess, but god man, people here get so heated...

Kuyu - I agree, both systems will kick ass, but remember the 360 is a year ahead of the PS3 - when we get to about 6 months before the PS3 release, I'm sure we'll see some fun-looking games - maybe even on a MTV special!