Could Lost Planet come to PS3?

by Ross Miller { Aug 24th 2006 at 5:25PM }

Speaking to 1UP, Lost Planet co-producer Jun Takeuchi (alongside Keiji Inafune) admitted that the sci-fi shooter might eventually come to the PlayStation 3. "We will try to keep it as a 360 exclusive," he said, "but, from the company's point of view, when you think about the business, in the future it's something [port the game to PS3] we might have to do."

The Xbox 360's performance is rather abysmal in Japan, but we can safely say that the Microsoft's box has always been one of the top 10 best-selling game consoles in the Land of the Rising Sun. Needless to say, for Capcom to reach the largest possible audience with its IP, they might have to port it to the PS3. It all depends on Sony's success, and it wouldn't come out for some time after Lost Planet hits the Xbox 360.

Capcom has ported successful IPs before. At one time, Resident Evil 4 was a GameCube exclusive, but was later ported onto the PlayStation 2 following critical acclaim.

See Also:
Behold! Lost Planet multiplayer footage!

Tags: lost planet, lost planet extreme condition, LostPlanet, LostPlanetExtremeCondition

Reader Comments (Page 1 of 1)

Erik Novak @ Aug 24th 2006 5:30PM

Well gee, you guys should also mention that due to the enormous success of Dead Rising, they have said that many once exclusive ps3 titles are also up for grabs for the 360. Selective journalism?

charles @ Aug 24th 2006 5:37PM

just to let all you guys know out there x box live is dfown for some reason and i called xbl techincal support they said it would be ok to log on xbl again about 8:30 est time just a heads up for anyone that plays xbox live

rjg @ Aug 24th 2006 5:38PM

Why bother, clearly the PS3 cannot handle this game, that's why it is on Xbox360 to begin with!!!

Of course, I'm kidding since I plan to pop down a ps3 next to my xbox360...

Neil @ Aug 24th 2006 5:46PM

I can't wait for the day when we're in the store going hmmmm should I buy this game for the 360 or PS3? What a wonderful problem that will be.

Pc @ Aug 24th 2006 5:54PM

Every port to the PS3 is supposed to include 20% more content than was previously on the 360. If it's true, which it seems to be soo far with the other ports, then it should be a better buy for the PS3. I just thought i would mention also that the PS3 ports are also going to have better graphics ( blazing angels, while prolly not the best game on 360 is an example) and of course will also have better gameplay elements because of the controller....It's gonna be freakin awesome !!!! November 17...please hurry !!

herman @ Aug 24th 2006 5:56PM

@#4:
I totally agree. THis wil be the 1st time that almost all 3rd party games are on all the platforms, so 1st party games will be what sways your decision, unless you have a bad case of fanboy/fangirl ism.

rjg @ Aug 24th 2006 6:00PM

Somewhat true Pc (comment #5).

But the thing is, with PS2 and Xbox1, supposedly the Xbox1 is the 'better' machine and while I admit the graphics are slightly better on xbox1 over ps2 (in some cases at least), for whatever reason I enjoy SSX Series (for example) on PS2 even though Xbox1 is suppose to be the more improved version.

I think most developers will just port and enhance slightly where it's easy. Maybe Resident Evil4 is a better example - I don't think they added any more content for PS2, but it's still a fantastic game.

Point being, these companies don't seem to do anything special when they are releasing for multiple systems.

Can anyone think of a game that really got better when it was ported versus being essentially the same, but with better slightly better graphics or maybe an extra level or two? This is considering console to console ports, not PC to console.

insane_cobra @ Aug 24th 2006 6:01PM

Of course they'll consider porting it if PS3 manages to capture enough market share, that's the way things work (unless Microsoft coughs up enough money to keep it exclusive). However, that's unlikely to happen anytime soon.

Like others already noted, it goes both ways. If Xbox 360 captures enough market, some previous Sony exclusives will come its way. No big deal, let us all play.

Buster Brown @ Aug 24th 2006 6:02PM

20% more content? What the hell are you talking about, at most ports get a few extra guns or costumes. 20% more content is like adding 4 levels to a game. Thats quite rare for any port.

Neil @ Aug 24th 2006 6:10PM

When games are ported to multiple systems and if the Xbox 1 version has Xbox live functionality, then Sony insists that the devs add enough content to their PS2 version to balance it out. That way both versions offer exclusive content.

insane_cobra @ Aug 24th 2006 6:19PM

@Buster Brown

There's a rumor going 'round that Sony requires developers to throw in at least 20% extra content into every PS3 port. I believe it's a load of bull because PS3 ports should be difficult enough to make even without adding anything, and that would actually discourage companies from porting to PS3.

Anyway, about PS3 ports being graphically superior... Maybe in a couple of years, but for now I don't think so. Check out the latest preview of The Darkness on IGN (from Leipzig GC). Among other things, it sheds some light on similarities and differences between the PS3 and the Xbox 360 version.

First of all, performance:

"...2K also anticipates that the final version will run at 30fps in-game and 60 frames during cutscenes, with no noticeable performance differences between the Xbox 360 and PlayStation 3."

Speaking of content and functionality, the PS3 version does get some bonus features, but:

"Because of the Blu-ray format, for example, Starbreeze plans to include additional videos that exploit the "television watching" feature which currently consists of the classic "Nosferatu" vampire silent film (in its entirety) and five 30-minute Popeye cartoons. The publisher isn't sure what the PS3-exclusive videos will be just yet... Additionally, Starbreeze is also looking into taking advantage of the PS3's tilt controller and is considering some possible changes with another feature we can't talk about yet."

Neat additions, then, but nothing earth-shattering, unless that mysterious feature is a big deal. But apparently it's not:

"Xbox 360 fans shouldn't worry about feeling left out with all this talk about PS3 exclusives, though, as other than what's mentioned above, the game should be damn-near identical in every way."

So not with better graphics, indentical. And tilt functionality is leveraged with rumble support on the Xbox 360.

Merx @ Aug 24th 2006 6:22PM

Works both ways. If this goes to PS3. DMC could go to 360.

saidnamyzO @ Aug 24th 2006 6:31PM

Pc:
to my knowledge, the only 360 to ps3 ports with more content are the games that have already been released for 360 for quite some time. ridge racer, blazing angels, and full auto have been on sale for nearly 6 months each. extra content is needed to make consumers notice them. This is common practice for any port. When GTA made the leap to xbox, the games were greatly improved over the ps2 versions. rockstar added the option to play your own music, increased the lighting effects, improved on the graphics, and smoothed the "pop in" and frame rate. going back even further to the ps1, sony would require developers to add content to the game, no matter how minute, to make the playstation version "better" than the game it was ported from.

Pc @ Aug 24th 2006 6:35PM

Just for # 8....In the Playstation world..atleast here very soon, its called Blu-ray. The developers have the means now to finally add everything they want into a game and can easily add an extra 20%. The thing is...these devolopers really are adding extra content to these ports on PS3...no joke...im talking about all new missions, better graphics, even more people allowed in online play, the works. Whatever they can think of , they are putting it in the games. There are several titles that are already being done like this for the PS3 and a few are going to be launch titles.

Pc @ Aug 24th 2006 6:47PM

I just read this on IGN and had to put it up here for those people that are always hating on Sony. This game may not appeal to everybody, im sure of it, but it gives you a very good idea of what's to come with the PS3.......>Player's clothes now flowed realistically with their movements and the clipping errors we witnessed a few months ago are nowhere to be found. Sega also placed the PS3 version directly next to the Xbox 360 build allowing us to see the slight differences between the two. This was made more interesting by the fact that the two games are being developed by separate companies with AM2 working on the PS3 title and Sumo Digital developing the 360 version. Plainly put, the PS3 looked a little better with sharper textures and incredibly detailed player models. It was almost eerie when we noticed the veins sticking out in our character's forehead.

dauthi @ Aug 24th 2006 6:50PM

I'm so confused why it everyone keeps saying the graphics are going to be better on the ps3... Like that Pc fellow (your name isnt working, you need to aim for a more ps3 fanboy oriented name there). I mean, based on the specs there wont be that obvious a difference in graphics. Oh well, considering how many PS3's wont sell, porting Lost Planet pretty much equals out to throwing money away.

insane_cobra @ Aug 24th 2006 7:04PM

Pc, dear, just because extra storage space is there to take advantage of, doesn't mean that it will magically fill itself up with extra content. Likewise, it doesn't mean filling it up manually is a trivial task.

Also, just because someone doesn't think PLAYSTATION 3 is the best thing since, well, PlayStation 2, doesn't mean they hate Sony.

And what game are you talking about in that second post?

dizzle @ Aug 24th 2006 7:07PM

o ya dauthi and ur not a fanboy.......just stfu and take the fact that the ps3 is more powerful than 360
the 360 might have a chance to challenge ps3 games if they used hd-dvd for games and not dvd9

boots @ Aug 24th 2006 7:13PM

These last two days have been full of amusing news, especially since Xbox 360 fanboys have come to rationalize it all.

OK, so first you mock everything, assume everything was in your favor, DX10, next-gen format not needed, performance on 360 is equal or better than PS3, gaming on PS3 isn't free either, HDMI is required on PS3 (but not on 360), and all games will get the same amount of content on PS3 and 360.... and when you discover everything you thought was false, or that 360 isn't as good as it should be, or that the PS3 WILL get extra content and gameplay (which is what matters, not necessarily graphics only), you act all apologetic? LOL.

Well, I forgot that everything that mattered to an Xbox fanboy were graphics. After all, that's why you bought the original Xbox.

supradupra @ Aug 24th 2006 7:19PM

Wow dizzle, you got an attitude there little guy, I see where that -1 star comes from.

Les Doodis @ Aug 24th 2006 7:32PM

I'm not sure what all the arguing is about. I own a 360 and won't be getting a PS3, but it's no secret that the PS3 will have obvious advantages over the 360, namely Blu-Ray enabling extra content. I really wish the 360 had come with an HD-DVD drive.

Still, PS3's disadvantage is it's price. And there's already some question about the game prices. You may get more content on the PS3, but PS3 games may end up costing $10 more than the 360 version.

SnapperDragon @ Aug 24th 2006 7:34PM

Hmm...extra content. Let's see how the economics work out:

1. PS3 requires br discs, which we all know cost much more than a dvd9. OK, so you have the extra space...fill it in free of charge.

2. 2 DVD9's probably still cost way less than a br dvd, so if content is an issue, any developer can simply add a second DVD9 to the 360 version and probably still come out ahead on total cost when just comparing these two.

Of course, this little (non-fact backed) formula will gradually go the other way to where a br-dvd will cost less per mb than 2 dvd9's..eventually...

insane_cobra @ Aug 24th 2006 7:39PM

@Pc

Ah, now I see, you were talking about Virtua Tennis 3. Well, let's ignore the fact that each version is made by a different company for a moment (which could explain the difference in quality, no?). What IS the difference between the two versions?

"Plainly put, the PS3 looked a little better with sharper textures and incredibly detailed player models."

It looks "a little better". Wasn't PS3 supposed to graphically completely outclass every other console out there? Good luck explaing the price difference to people who don't care about HD movie playback by saying that games on PS3 look "a little better".

As to why ports of older games end up being more polished and maybe get extra content, it's not necessarily because they're PS3 ports, it's because they're ports of older games. saidnamyzO already explained that quite nicely.

Christ, why do I get involved in such fanboyish pissing matches at all?

Neil @ Aug 24th 2006 7:44PM

@ insane_cobra

is the answer because you're also a fanboy?

trooper11 @ Aug 24th 2006 7:45PM

Pc,

The game your talking about that Sega showed was Virtua Tennis and I think you should read your own comment and realize that obviously thats not a fair comparison. No where has it been said that the reason for the graphical differences was becuase of the hardware. You do realize that the PS3 and 360 version are being worked on by two seperate teams, which means that there are bound to be little differences here and there.

Also, about the idea that blu-ray allows developers to make these amazingly huge games isnt so true. Adding multiplayer support for say 40 people has little to do with how much disc space you have, it has everything to do with the network your playing over. Blu-ray doesnt make it easier to do, it just so happens that Insomniac Games will be targeting that number with the servers they use for online play. Right now, there is no proof that ports will automatically have 20% more content nor that the 360 games wont also get that content via XBL updates. There is also no proof that games ,for at least the short term, will automatically be large and better becuase of blu-ray. All we have are pr comments from Sony and developers who obviously would want to promote it. Resistance looks like a cool game, but I see nothing that cant be done on the 360. Of course Ill wait to see the game, maybe it will be different, Im just not giving anyone a pass.

insane_cobra @ Aug 24th 2006 8:01PM

@Neil

No, I'm not a fanboy. I have my preferences, but they're not based on blind love for particular brand. They're based on careful evaluation of all available choices before my final commitment to the one I believe will best satisfy most of my needs while still being relatively affordable. That's why my next console of choice is PS2 (which I still don't own) and after that Wii and/or Xbox 360. I'd love to get a PS3 as well (and I probably will in 4-5 years), but for now other options seem better tailored to my tastes and my wallet.

Oh, and I don't make hollow arguments, I always try to put some weight and reason behind them.

Pc @ Aug 24th 2006 8:22PM

I don't understand how most of you guys still don't understand that everything about the PS3 is leaps and bounds ahead of the competetion in every way !! Just read the specs on the video card on nvidia, or look into the power of the Cell processor, and then there is blu-ray. If you did a little reading you would understand that the PS3 is the most powerful gaming computer/machine ever built. The games for it will eventually if not right away look as good and better than the 360. I'm not bias, im playin dead rising on my 360 right now....I just love playstation because they always outdo everybody else in every way possible..plus they have some badass exclusives. One more thing...look at the difference between the PS2 and PS3...then look at the difference between the original xbox and then the 360. Obviously Sony is making a giant leap past their previous system....microsoft isnt.!

dsub @ Aug 24th 2006 8:31PM

if this game does go to PS3, then DMC4 better be coming to 360. Come on Capcom, you know cross-platform is where the money is at!

polly @ Aug 24th 2006 8:46PM

rjg,

The PS2 version of RE4 did have some added content, but graphically the Gamecube version had the edge, and quicker load time, and also a near year of exclusivity.

ninja @ Aug 24th 2006 8:49PM

PORTING Games:

Porting games from one console to another is done for one main reason; revenue. Several factors must be thought out prior exploiting valuable resources into a project. Some to point out that I have yet to see anyone mention clearly;

How much profit was made on the first release?
Can the developer allocate the required resources to port the title?
Does this leave room for adding additional content?
What time line are they working with?
What do the consumers think of the replay value?
Is extra content required to get the title to sell?
How much will this cost?
How much more revenue can they receive of the title?

If a large amount of profit was pulled in, this provides extra funds to recycle back into the project for newer updated versions. This would likely increase the amount of 'extra' content if any at all.

If the title does not sell well on the current platform, then the developers must weigh in a whole new set of reasons along with the ones listed and more.

Making these decisions sometimes can be like going all-in with a pair of deuces.

ninja @ Aug 24th 2006 8:53PM

PS2 was less powerful system of the last 3 consoles. Last generation:

Xbox
GameCube
Playstation 2

This generation:

Playstation 3
Xbox 360
Wii

As history has ALWAYS shown, the most powerful system is not guaranteed 'winner' (i.e.: Neo Geo).

Master X 24 @ Aug 24th 2006 8:59PM

400 to play lost planet or 600 to play lost planet. I stick with my 360 and also if it does who cares cuz the 360 will get DMC4 in return and since dead rising sold great capcom has more trust in the xbox name

trooper11 @ Aug 24th 2006 9:14PM

Pc,

I have to stop you again. You know this hardware spec crap is really getting tiresome. For one thing, I think if you really want to be fair, you should read up on all the 360 hardware like the tri-core cpu and the ati graphics core. If you give it a fair review, then you will realize something that most people (developers included) are saying, that the architectures are different and in the end, neither will have a substantial lead in terms of what can be done visually or for gameplay.

The PS3 cell setup edges out the 360 tri-core by a small margin, and the 360's ati graphics core edges out the Ps3 nvidia core by a small margin. This all adds up to a whole lot of nothing. Blu-ray might be able to add more content down the road but that content wont neccesarily be leaps and bounds ahead of the 360. I also think Microsoft will heavily leverage its Live service to offer the same extra content for games if it is beyond what a standard DVD disc could hold.

I know its easy to fall into the numbers game and thinking a 1% advantage means a universe of difference, but this is gaming we are talking about and the proof will be in the games, not the hardware this generation. I know Ill be anxiously awaiting the games that will push me to buy a PS3 at some point, just not at launch

ninja @ Aug 24th 2006 9:14PM

trooper11 wrote: "Resistance looks like a cool game, but I see nothing that cant be done on the 360."

aside from the storage content that would have to be spanned across several DVDs

trooper11 @ Aug 24th 2006 9:25PM

ninja wrote: "aside from the storage content that would have to be spanned across several DVDs"

how do you know that? all we have heard is that the game currently takes up 22GB of space on blu-ray, nothing about why it does. It could just be a product of using uncompressed files or having alot of 1080p video content. Of course it could mean it also has so much content that it is actually a worthwhile thing, but either argument is valid at this point. all Im saying is that no one knows the truth and nothing said officially makes me believe that the length or depth of gameplay will make a huge jump beyond what is being done on the 360.

this is the discussion that is taking place all over the net and wont be answered until the game is out most likely.

ninja @ Aug 24th 2006 9:26PM

trooper11 wrote: "The PS3 cell setup edges out the 360 tri-core by a small margin"

This depends on what you are comparing; the CELL vs the 'tri-core' alone is a poor comparison. When it comes to media applications, this is what the CELL was designed for; GAMING. This same technology is being used in today's most advanced scientific computers, not the Intel 'tri-core'. When handling basic applications for complex data processing, the CELL wins on a smaller margin. Where ATI edges up on nVidia, the CELL makes up for. The 360 cheapest gaming machine you can buy that can compete with today's best PCs. Though the PS3 is capable of more. Buyers will let us know in the end which system will prevail as the "next-gen winner".

I just route for Sony.

nick @ Aug 24th 2006 9:31PM

Translation: We're releasing on the 360 and will consider releasing on the PS3 if it sells well.

ninja @ Aug 24th 2006 9:34PM

aside from the storage content that would have to be spanned across several DVDs
how do you know that?
*******************************************************
Uncompressed is not better? So how would you intend to compress all 22GB into 9GB? We are talking about compressing media, lets not forget.

Although a mute point, it is still a point. Note they mentioned a feature that utilized the motion sensors built into the PS3 controller, one you would not experience on the 360.

As I said mute, as the 360 version should support vibration.

trooper11 @ Aug 24th 2006 9:42PM

ninja wrote: "This same technology is being used in today's most advanced scientific computers, not the Intel 'tri-core'."

Actually, there are several technical reviews of the cell system as a whole versus the tri-core on the 360, and most of them point to the same conclusion that I mentioned. I know your talking about that article several months back that tested a cell enabled system for streaming multiple video feeds, which it did with flying colors, but there is no direct evidence that this relates to how it will perform while playing a game. What the cell may provide for is more multimedia flexibility for video and such, but not neccessarily in a game.

Also, the tri-core is a custom made cpu developed by IBM based on the same core being used in the Cell processor setup. That main core is the one that basically filters the data being sent to the smaller spe units for processing. The tri-core version of that chip is an enhanced version and is no slouch. But remember, your talking about two completely different architectures. The tri-core being a general purpose cpu and therefore able to perform a wide variety of tasks and being much easier to code for while the Cell system is a closed system and more difficult to code for. The thing is, the pluses for the cell configuration make up for that and thats why it will probably edge out the 360 tri-core, but it wont be the earth shattering difference you suspect. Now this is just from the technical reviews Ive read on both. As far as the graphics is concerned, its the same argument, but this time the ati core has the edge.

If you have some other technical reviews that say difentively otherwise, thats fair, but I havent seen anything like that.

Figboy @ Aug 24th 2006 10:57PM

what i find funny is that the excuse, "Well, the X Box version looks better!" is something i heard repeatedly from friends and co-workers when discussing why they bought a multi-platform title on X Box instead of PS2.

now that the situation is reversed, and the PS3 is supposedly more powerful than the 360, it suddenly doesn't matter which game looks better? sounds like hypocracy to me.

people really, really need to admit that graphics are just as important to them than the actual gameplay. there's nothing wrong with it.

here's another example to think about: whenever an even marginally good-looking PS3 game is revealed (say, Resistance: Fall of Man, who's recent screenshots have been really impressive), fanboys of the 360 always, and i mean always has to comment, "Gears of War looks better!"

if gameplay is so paramount over graphics in a lot of these peoples eyes, then why does it matter that "MGS4/Resistance/Heavenly Sword/Warhawk doesn't look as good as Gears of War?" easy answer: it shouldn't.

yes, last time around, X Box fans had bragging rights for their powerful console. everytime i got into conversation with my X Box loving friends, i had to constantly hear about how "inferior" my PS2 was in comparrison to the X Box. now, the tables have turned, and, if i chose, i have bragging rights, as a Playstation fan, to decree how "superior" the PS3 is over the 360. but i won't. why? because i'm not 12, and it's not important.

what matters to me is the games. whether i'm playing Ninja Gaiden or Shadow of the Colossus. each system is defined by the titles it possesses. not specs.

Nintendo has Zelda, Mario, and Smash Bros.
Microsoft has Halo, Gears of War, and Mass Effect.
Sony has Final Fantasy, Metal Gear Solid, and God of War.

each console has it's killer titles. each console will be on my shelf at some point in the near future. bickering over system specs, and which game "looks a little better," isn't important in the least. grow up and behave like adults, people.

ninja @ Aug 24th 2006 11:46PM

trooper11 wrote: "but it wont be the earth shattering difference you suspect"

First; Games are a form of multimedia. How does this make PS3's CELL processor not superior to a PC processor pushing gaming?

You miss understood what I am referring to; I am not saying which system can display better graphics or more polygons. I am simply stating which system is more powerful. At the heart; PS3 is made up of 1 multi-core processor made up of 1 PPE and 8 SPEs(1 reserved for redundancy) which all run at full speed. 360 uses a common multi CPU configuration, with some nice enhancements, but still a basic configuration. You have a main processor that runs at full speed while the other 2 waste 50% of their power to stay in sync with the main processor. What makes the difference with the 360's configuration is the HT technology which allows up to 6 threads at once.

I admit that the guts of the 360 are impressive, but only in the way of using the best old technology (aside from graphics card). Point is, you won't see any 360 CPUs in super computers.

NOTE: The data that is processed in super computers is exactly the same sort of data to process with 3D gaming. Meaning - PS3's processor built for gaming from the ground up. Microsoft took 4 cylinder and converted it into a 8 cylinder.

*******************************************************
Look up: John Carmack

http://forums.ea.com/mboards/thread.jspa?sls=2&tstart=0&threadID=100219&start=0

*******************************************************

Playstation 3 and Xbox360 – Comparing and Contrasting:
Before I compare and contrast with the Xbox360 hardware, here are some quick facts about the Xbox360 hardware:
Xbox360 Quick Hardware Summary:
The Xbox360 has a tri- symmetrical core CPU. Each one of the cores is based on the POWER architecture like the PPE inside the Cell, and is clocked at 3.2GHz. Each core has 32kb L1 instruction and 32kb LI data cache, and has a 1MB shared L2 cache. Each chip also sports an enhanced version of the VMX-128 instruction set and execution units. This enhanced version expands the register file from 32 128-bit registers, to a pair of 128 128-bit registers – with one execution unit per core. Each of these cores can also dual-issue instruction and handles two hardware threads, bringing the Xbox360 thread total to 6 hardware threads. The CPU and GPU share 512MB of GDDR3 RAM. Xbox360’s GPU, codenamed “Xenos” is designed by ATI and sports 48 shader pipelines using a unified shader architecture. The Xbox360 GPU also has 10MB of eDRAM for the frame buffer and over 200GB/s of bandwidth between this eDRAM and a simple logic uni, for a limited set of 3D processing effects such as anti-aliasing and z-buffering.

The system sports a DVD9 optical media drive from which games are loaded, a controller with rumble features, and 100mbps Ethernet.

Head To Head:
General Architecture Differences:
One thing I think is important when looking at CPU architecture is visuals. In the world of computing, physical distance between parts of a computer system generally corresponds with the speed (latency-wise) of their communication. Also a diagram shows the flow of memory, outlining where bottlenecks might exist for certain components to access large amounts of data from specific areas of memory.

Here are two diagrams of the major components on the Xbox360 motherboard:

Here are two diagrams of the Xenon CPU:

Comparably it is harder to find verbose diagrams of PS3 hardware but here is one I found on AnandTech:

This diagram has a likely discrepancy relating southbridge (I/O) being connected through the RSX. It is likely the southbridge will connect to the Cell directly via Flex I/O given the large bandwidth available through the interface and the GPU not being a recipient of I/O.

There are plenty of other Cell diagrams on the internet and here are two of them:

Bandwidth Assessment:
I recall an article IGN released short after or during E3 2005 comparing Playstation 3 and Xbox360. Microsoft analyzed their total system bandwidth in the Xbox360 and came up with some outrageous numbers compared to the Playstation 3. One of the big reasons for this total number being higher is the 256GB/s bandwidth between the daughter die and parent die in the Xenos (graphics chip). I will explain the use of the eDRAM memory later, but it is important to know that the logic performed between those two components with 256GB/s bandwidth hardly constitutes a system component where considering game processing takes place. Additionally, Microsoft added up bandwidths that weren’ t relevant to major component destinations such as “to CPU” or “ to GPU.” Context like that matters a lot, because bandwidth between any two elements is only as fast as the slowest memory bus in- between. The only bandwidth figures that make sense to add together are those on separate buses to the end destination.

The biggest ugly (and this really is a big one) in the Xbox360 diagram should be the location of the CPU relative to the main system memory. It has to be accessed through the GPU’s memory controller. The Xbox360 GPU’s memory has 22.4GB/s bandwidth to the system’s unified memory, and this bandwidth is split between the GPU’s needs and the CPU’s. A simple investigation would show that if the Xenon(Xbox360 CPU) was using its full 21.6 GB/s bandwidth to system memory, there would be 800MB/s left for the GPU. If the GPU was using it’s full bandwidth to this memory, none would be left for anything else. Additionally, the southbridge(I/O devices) is connected through the GPU also, and all of these devices are actually destined to go to the CPU unless sound for the Xbox360 is done on the Xenos. The impact of this is considerably less since I/O devices probably won’t exceed more than a few hundred MB/s during a game, and isn’t shared by GPUs 22.4GB/s access to main memory. This bandwidth is still going through the same bus that the CPU uses to access RAM though.

Looking at the diagram of the Playstation 3, you can see that the RSX has a dedicated 22.4 GB/s to its video memory, and the Cell has a dedicated 25.6GB/s to its main memory. Additionally, if you wanted to find the bandwidth the RSX could use from the Cell’s main memory, it go through the 35GB/s link between the Cell and itself, and then go through the Cell processor’s FlexIO controller, on the EIB, to the Cells memory controller which is the gatekeeper to RAM. The slowest link in the line is the bandwidth the XDR memory controller provides which is 25.6 GB/s. If the RSX uses this extra bandwidth it is being shared with the Cell. In general though, the major components in the Playstation 3 have their own memory to work with which provides maximum bandwidth.

In terms of peak performance, if both the GPU and CPU for both consoles were pushing the maximum bandwidths from their respective memory banks, the total for Xbox360 would be 22.4 GB/s, and the total for the Playstation 3 would be 48GB/s. I believe this to be the most important bandwidth measure as both of these elements are the major programmable elements of a gaming machine. They will be processing game data or graphics data independently, and need fast access and high bandwidth to what they are working on.

While the Xbox360 shared bandwidth is a big downside on the grand scheme of things considering potential, Microsoft probably allowed this due to the nature of a game loops often not involving both the CPU and GPU needing high bandwidth simultaneously. Overall, during a game loop, Xbox360 will probably use its 22.4GB/s bandwidth almost constantly due to the CPU using it heavily for a part of the game loop, and the GPU using extreme bandwidth during another part of the game loop. While a Playstation 3 game, if it uses a typical game loop design, would show half of the frame time, the CPU is using high bandwidth to its memory, the other half being mostly unused; and the same thing for the GPU’s use of video RAM. That isn’t a disadvantage of the Playstation 3’s part, but it is a lack of using its full potential. A modified game loop that kept both rendering and CPU processing high would fare far better on the Playstation 3’s bandwidth and design than the Xbox360.

In the worst case scenario for the Playstation 3, if the GPU literally only used bandwidth for half of the game loop, overtime, you could consider it’s bandwidth to be half of its peak. Same thing applied to the Cell and XDR RAM would yield 12.8GB/s bandwidth if it only used XDR half of the time. Although Playstaiton 3 not to be outdone - if the situation of a game loop is like this, the RSX might as well take the XDR RAM bandwidth while the CPU is idling and increase its total bandwidth to 48GB/s.

Xbox360 “ Xenon” compared to Playstation 3’s “ Cell” – the CPUs:
Inter-core communication speed:
Another mystery with the Xbox360 (at least in my view) exists with the inter- core communication on the Xenos CPU between its cores. IBM clearly documents the Cell’s inter-core communication mechanism physically and how it is implemented in hardware and software. This bandwidth needs to be extremely high if separate cores need to communicate and share data effectively. The EIB on the Cell is documented at a peak performance of 204GB/s with an observed rate at 197GB/s. The major factor that affects this rate is the direction, source, and destination of data flow between the SPE and PPEs on the Cell. I tried to find out the equivalent piece of hardware inside the Xenon CPU and haven’t found a direct answer.

Looking at the second architectural diagram of the Xenon, it seems that the fastest method the cores can use to talk to each other is through the L2 cache. Granted, the Xenon only has 3 cores, game modules are usually highly dependent and will need to talk to each other frequently. I might be a jumping the gun a bit, but given the L2 cache and FSB are running at half of the core speed, as opposed to the Playstation 3’s EIB which runs at the same clock speed as the cores, I’m pretty positive using L2 cache to communicate is not going to be very fast. It seems that independent threads are really what Microsoft was aiming for with the Xbox360 CPU design, and games are not optimally implemented if they have massive streaming transfers to hand off to other cores. What would suggest that the Xbox360 cores can communicate quickly and with high bandwidth, would be evidence that the reading and writing to the L2 cache are in larger segments than the writes to the EIB, compensating for the lower clock speed. Additionally, just writing to memory isn’ t enough as the receiver needs some sort of notification that it has new data unless it is a permanent buffer. If anyone wants to do research on the topic, please add it to the discussion and include links to your sources.

Enhanced VMX- 128 instruction set:
This is one of the features Microsoft boasts to claim they have a better gaming machine than Sony. They focus on the fact that their enhancements support a single cycle dot product instruction, and the larger register file. The problem with this boast over the Playstation 3 is that it compares it to the PPE’s VMX-128 unit which comparably only has 1 set of 32 128-bit registers and presumably less instructions. If the code requires 128 128-bit registers, or more complex instructions, then the code is most definitely vector processing heavy and should be run on an SPE which sports the exact same register file size, and includes a superset of the VMX instructions in terms of functionality(it is not a superset in terms of being binary compatible).

While each core in the Xbox360 also has two VMX-128 register sets, this is done to support the dual threaded nature of the cores better. It doesn’t actually have two vector execution units. Each core only has one VMX-128 execution unit meaning that even though there are two sets of registers per core, two threads that are using vector code have to share this single execution unit.

Comparably, the Cell’s PPE has the limited 32 128-bit register file with a single VMX vector unit on the PPE. This is what Microsoft usually singles out when they compare Playstation 3 to the Xbox360’s CPU. They forget(purposefully) that the Cell has 7 SPEs running at 3.2 GHZ, which is far greater SIMD performance than their 3 enhanced VMX-128 execution units. For vector based computations, the Playstation 3 undeniably outdoes the Xbox360 by an order of magnitude.

The dot product instruction claim is matched at least on the SPEs on the Playstation 3 though a simple multiply-add instruction. For those of you that aren’t mathematically inclined, a dot product is basically a measure of how parallel or perpendicular two lines are. The calculation of a dot product is basically multiplying each corresponding dimension value together, and then taking those products and adding them all together. Take two vectors < 2, 3, 4> and . The dot product would be: 2*6 + 3*7 + 4*8 = 65. If you read the earlier section in this post covering the SPES and SIMD architectures, you should remember that at the very least, an SPE can do all of the multiplying in one cycle, and all that needs to be done is a follow up add between the elements in the result vector. I do know that the SPEs have a few multiply-add instructions, but the bit of haziness is if the multiply can be an intra-vector(between two separate vectors) operation, while the add instruction is an inter-vector(between elements in the same vector) instruction from the result of the multiply. Sony claims that the dot product can be done in one cycle on an SPE, and it is very reasonable that this is the case as there are vector permute/shuffles/shift instructions in the SPE instruction set. There just isn’t a labeled dot product instruction in the SPE instruction set – but an intelligent programmer should find what he needs.

I found the multiply-add instruction in the Cell BE Handbook. It takes 4 vectors, one is definitely the result vector and two are operands, but the third parameter named ‘ rc’, which I think represents a control register that dictates how to perform inter and intra vector operations. That means the multiply-add instruction has to operate on only two vectors, and the control vector is able to dictate an add between the result components of the multiply.

Symmetrical Cores?:
Symmetrical cores means identical cores. The appeal to this setup is entirely for developers. It represents no actual horsepower advantage over asymmetric cores since code running on any of the cores, will run exactly the same as it would run if it were on another core. Relocating code to different cores has absolutely no performance gain or loss unless it means something with respect to how the 3 cores talk to each other. It should be noted though, that thread relocation does matter between the cores, as a thread might not co- exist well with another thread that is trying to use the same hardware that isn’t duplicated on the core. In that case, the thread would be better located on a core that has that execution resource free or less used. The only case of this I can think of is the VMX-128 execution unit. I think most other hardware is duplicated on the cores in the 360 to allow for two threads to co-exist with almost no problem.

The Cell chip has asymmetrical cores, which means they are not all identical. That being said, the SPEs are all symmetrical with each other and the code that runs on an SPE could be relocated to any other SPE in the Cell. While the execution speed local to the SPEs are the same, there are performance issues related to the bandwidth the SPE is using and who it’s talking to on the EIB. Developers should look at where their SPE code is executing to ensure optimal bandwidth is being observed on the EIB, but once they find an optimal location to execute the code on, they can just put it there without rewriting anything. If a task was running on the PPE or PPE’s VMX unit, then it would have to be recompiled with C, and probably rewritten if hardware specific instructions are in the code(C or ASM) before it moves to an SPE, and the same applies in reverse. Good design and architecture should immediately let developers know what should run on the PPE and what should run on the SPEs, eliminating the chance of rewriting code if they see something better fit to run on an SPE later in development.

Is general purpose needed?:
Another one of Microsoft’s claims for the Xbox360’s superiority in gaming is the general purpose processing advantage since they have 3 general purpose cores instead of 1.

To say “most of the code is general purpose” probably refers to code size, not execution time. First, it should be clarified that “ general purpose code” is only a label for the garden variety of instructions that may be given to hardware. On the hardware end, this code fits into various classifications such as arithmetic, load/store, SIMD, floating point, and possibly more. General purpose applications are programs made up of general purpose code on the scale that one function might be arithmetically heavy, and another might be memory bound. Good examples of this are MS Word, a web browser, or an entire operating system. With MS Word there is a lot of string processing which involves some arithmetic, comparison, a lot of branching, and memory operations. When you click import or export and save to various file formats, it is an I/O heavy operation. Applications like these tend to not execute the same code over an over, and have many different functions that can occur on relatively a small set of data depending on what the user does. These functions can vary from being very I/O device bound (saving to disk), to string processing intensive (spelling/grammar check), to floating point intensive(embedded Flash media game or resizing an image). Ultimately, there is a large amount of code written to handle the small set of data and most of it never gets executed.

Games are not general purpose programs. Any basic game programming book will introduce you to the concept of a game loop. This loop contains all of the functionality a game performs each frame. This loop handles all of the events that can occur in the game. An important principle in a game loop is to avoid branches when unnecessary as it slows down execution and makes the code on screen extremely and unnecessarily long. A good example of this is the Cohen- Sutherland line clipping algorithm. Instead of writing lengthy and complicated branches to check the 9 regions a point lies in, the code performs 4 simpler checks, and computes a region code which can be easily be used.

This automatic and repetitive processing has to occur for many game objects which represents a massive amount of data, with a relatively small code size. This is opposite of the general purpose paradigm, which typically has a small set of data (word document or html) and performs many various functions on it representing a large code size. Games processing has a large data size, but much smaller code size. Game objects also tend to be very parallel in nature as game objects are typically independent until they interact (collision) – which means they can be processed well on SIMD architectures if they are well thought out..

The whole integer advantage claim for the Xbox360 CPU is pretty stupid considering the SIMD architectures can operate on 4 32- bit integers at the same time, and integer processing abilities of games are not the bottleneck of 3D games processing.

What this general purpose power does grant Xbox360 owners over Playstation 3 is the ability to run general purpose applications faster. If the Xbox360 had a web browser (official or not), the design for such an application would work better on a general purpose CPU(s). That being said, it’s too bad Xbox360 doesn’t come with one, and web browsers don’t put the highest demand on general purpose processors to begin with. Most general purpose applications remain idle until the user gives actually input. The application will then process the task and complete before sitting idle again.

AI routines that navigate through large game trees are probably another area where general purpose processing power might be better utilized since this code tends to be more branch laden and varying depending on the task the AI is actually trying to accomplish. The plus side for the Playstation 3 is generating of these game trees, which is also time consuming. Generating a game tree is a more computational oriented task, and is likely to be executed faster by SIMD architectures. I am largely speaking speculatively under my Computer Science knowledge in this area. Anyone who knows more or has done more research on AI algorithms is welcome to add to discussion in this area.

The only case I can really see the general purpose computing power of the Xbox360 cores manifesting itself as a true advantage over the Playstation 3, is if Windows or similar OS was put on an Xbox360, having multiple applications running simultaneously along with some background services. Again, it is funny that Playstation 3 is more likely to have a general purpose operating system running on it than Xbox360 even though it would perform worse doing such a task.

XDR vs GDDR3 – System Memory Latency:
XDR stands for eXtreme Data Rate while GDDR3 stands for Graphics Double Data Rate version 3. XDR RAM is a new next generation RAM technology from those old folks at Rambus, who brought out that extremely high bandwidth RDRAM back during the onset of Pentium 4 processors. DDR was released soon after and offered comparable bandwidth at a much lower cost. RDRAM also had increased latency, higher cost, and a few other drawbacks which ultimately led to it being dropped very quickly by Intel back when it was released. Take note that DDR RAM is not the same as GDDR RAM.

Anyways, it was hard to make a good assessment on what the exact nature of the performance difference between these two RAM architectures are, but from what I gathered, GDDR3 is primarily meant to serve GPUS which means bandwidth is the goal of the architecture, at the cost of increased latency. For GPUs this is accepatable since, large streaming chunks of data are being worked on instead of small random accesses. In the case of CPU main memory, when more general purpose tasks are being performed, latency has increased importance on memory access times because data will be accessed at random more frequently than a GPU would.

That being said, the Xbox360’s CPUs bandwidth to RAM tops out at 21.6GB/s while the Cell processor still has more bandwidth to its RAM at 25.6GB/s. XDR RAM also does this without incurring high latency, and I’m almost positive its latency is lower than GDDR3 which is considered to actually have high latency. Games are not going to be performing a lot of general purpose tasks so the latency advantage for the Playstation 3 might not be that large, but the CPU will be performing more random accesses to memory regardless. The Xbox360’s CPU latency may be made worse than the already inherent GDDR3 latency issues due to being separated by the GPU.

Xbox360 “ Xenos” compared to Playstation 3’s “ RSX” – the GPUs:
Since the specs on the RSX are not fully known, I’ll only make comparisons on the solid aspects of the RSX that are unlikely to change from what Sony has reported at E3 2005 (unless they change for the better).

Unified Shaders vs Fixed Function Pipelined Shaders – the GPUs:
The general move to unified shaders was done after examining the hardware differences between the vertex and pixel shader pipelines. There was enough duplicate and similar hardware that unified shaders were favored and the pipeline differences were consolidated into one and the number of total pipelines increased.

The general trend/nature of computing hardware is that the more variety of code types the hardware had to handle, the more complex it gets in hardware, and it will run slower. This remains true with the pipelines of the RSX compared to the pipelines in the Xenos. A pixel shader pipeline in the RSX, at a one to one ratio with the abstract pipeline in the Xenos would perform faster, and the same thing in respect to the vertex shader pipeline. How much faster are the RSX fixed function pipelines individually when compared to a single pipline in the Xenos performing a specific task? I really don’t know and it depends on what that is to say which card has more shader horsepower.

It should also be noted that ATI’s current highest end video card, still sports a fixed function pipeline. This strongly suggests that unified shaders are not the way to go.
The above statement is under strict review and is likely invalid. Further discussion will ensue related to this topic in this thread. A revision change may be made later.

Xenos’ eDRAM:
On the Xbox360’s GPU, there are 10MB of eDRAM which provides an assortment “free” frame buffer effects such as anti-aliasing, alpha blending, and z- buffering. This daughter die is connected to the parent die with 32gb/s bandwidth, and has 256GB/s bandwidth between the eDRAM and the logic to perform the aforementioned operations. These operations are considered “free” with respect to bandwidth since they are performed by hardware and memory that isn’t shared by the rest of the GPU or CPU.

The exact nature of the AA advantage is 4xMSAA or 2xFSAA at 720p. Any larger or higher of a resolution and the 10 megabytes become insufficient to accomplish these tasks. The basic premise is that any operations that require a frame buffer of over 10MBs will make this eDRAM unavailable unless a tiling method is used for rendering. Examples of typical methods that increase are HDR(certain types)

The RSX doesn’ t have anything to compare to this free bandwidth for anti- aliasing and other effects, but I don’t think Playstation 3 fans have to worry too much for a few reasons. First, even PC cards don’t sport eDRAM and AA still accomplished even with other effects enabled. Additionally, games can step up to 1080p on the Playstation 3 to lower the need for anti-aliasing. Lastly, this eDRAM is probably in the Xenos as a necessity rather than luxury, since the main memory bandwidth between the GPU and CPU on the Xbox360 is shared. The RSX and standard PC cards have dedicated bandwidth to video memory, which is definitely where the frame buffer resides.

The Cell Advantage:
The Cell will not, and should not be performing all rendering operations like the E3 2005 demos displayed. It should prove as very interesting that the Cell does perform well at those types of operations since rendering on a CPU offers more flexibility than vertex and pixel shader programs. It is unlikely the Cell would be processing the latter type of shader operation since it would involve the RSX processing an almost finished frame, before giving it up to the Cell, only for the Cell to send it back to continue down the graphics pipeline again with almost no work to be done.

Granted, 3D pipelines are configurable and you can speed up processing through it by disabling unnecessary features that you might have already accomplished on the CPU already. It is likely that developers will do some basic/macro level 3D operations on geometry before passing it off to the RSX to do more time consuming fine detailed processing.

The Xbox360 CPU could do the same thing too and aid in rendering task, but general purpose computing power doesn’t exactly lend itself well to the types of operations it would have to perform, and the vector processing capabilities of the Cell greatly out perform the Xenon in this respect.

Other Peripherals:
Hard Disc Drive:
In the case of the Xbox360, a 20GB hard drive is included in the premium version, and it is an upgradeable feature in the core version. Playstation 3 offers a 20GB hard drive on its “core” version, and a 60GB hard drive on its premium version. Advantages of a hard drive are generally well known to anyone who has a PC and has ever played a game for it. Both systems having a hard drive considered, there is nothing much to speak of except for the fact that you can get a bigger hard drive for the Playstation 3 if you are a person looking to store and playback larger amounts of media. It is likely both Microsoft and Sony will provide upgrades in the future.

The issue here is the fact that the hard drive is non- standard on the Xbox360. Some people get really defensive when this comes up. It is an issue that will and should be brought up since with the Xbox360 developers may not develop a hard drive feature they don’t feel enough consumers will see and enjoy. With the Playstation 3, developers know every consumer will have a hard drive and see the benefits of the feature they implemented.

It isn’t quite clear at this point though whether or not Sony is using a standard 2.5” SATA drive. If they are, then you could upgrade a PS3 hard drive as soon as any consumer SATA drive is released.

Optical Media Drive:
You know it was going to come up – Blue Ray vs DVD9. This isn’t really a fair versus. Blue-ray is superior to DVD9 in every respect. The only disadvantage Playstation 3 has in this respect is data reading speed. The 2x BD read speed is considerably slower than the 12x DVD read speed. The difference is between 72mbps vs ~130mbps, which in terms of common data rates known in the computer world are 8.6 MB/s and 15.4MB/s. Should PS3 fans worry about their load times? I don’t think so as this is still higher than Playstation 2’s read speed, and since the hard drive is standard on Playstation 3, this will be large motivation for developers to use hard drive caching methods as a standard – not merely as feature.

The clear advantage of blu-ray is capacity and the possibility of playing the next generation standard for HD movie content. Blu-ray is looking good for becoming the next generation standard for movies as Hollywood has far more support for Blu-Ray than HD-DVD. If movie fans go where the movies are (which they will), then it will be blu-ray decisively. Playstation 3 is playing a part in getting consumers to match up with the studios by sporting a blu-ray player. Playstation 3 will probably be the majority of blu-ray player sales this year, and may even continue in 2007. That being said, it isn’t set in stone just yet so don’t hold your breath…

Capacity for games is where the bigger debate still exists with blu-ray and DVD9 with respect to the console wars. Will blu-ray be needed for this next generation? I can’t say it will be needed by any genre except any games that will decide to include HD FMV sequences on the media. But that is under the current way things are looking now. In a few years, or 5 years, that could all change and the space for blu-ray media is needed or wanted. Right now, you can’t make too strong of an argument for blu-ray being needed for the capacity of games, but it is an advantage.

Controllers:
Both consoles now sport pretty much the exact same button layout. All “who copied who”s aside, Playstation 3’s controller has motion sensitivity for better primary control in some game types, and a very large possibility to improve secondary control in all genres (i.e. tilting head around corners in an FPS, cameras, etc). Xbox360 has rumble feedback which was much enjoyed last generation, and PS3 fans will miss if it doesn’t come back (which it likely wont). Another significant difference is the pressure sensitivity of the face buttons. Playstation 2 had this, and Playstation 3 is most definitely going to include the same (it’s impossible to find out if it really is there or not). Xbox360, surprisingly, doesn’t do this even though the original Xbox controller did. Functionally, the major difference is merely that PS3’s controller has motion sensing.

Xbox360’s supports 4 RF(radio frequency) wireless controllers. Playstation 3 supports up to 7 wireless Bluetooth devices – not the keyword “ device” as it means Sony isn’t limiting it to only controllers. Bluetooth notably has a shorter battery life due to its increased bandwidth capability although this shouldn’ t be an issue as Sony’ s controller appears to be using a built in rechargeable battery that charges through USB. Looking at the player number support, Playstation 3 has jumped to the lead over all other consoles this generation out of the box. Will you do 7 player multiplayer? Probably not split screen, 4 players is a comfortable maximum there, but for multiplayer games where the screen is shared and all players are on the same screen, 7 players is definitely feasible.

Bluetooth:
In reference to the last section – Playstation 3’s Bluetooth support is labeled with the word device as to be clear that it is not limited to controllers. This means that the Playstation 3 could utilize other Bluetooth devices on the market such as mice and keyboards. Bluetooth is basically aiming to be the wireless USB for computer equipment since RF devices are typically propriety end to end.

The Final Verdict?:
The Playstation 3 really does have a considerable hardware lead when it comes to games processing power. Despite Microsoft’s claims of the Xbox360 having more bandwidth, the evaluation brings in play numbers that make no sense to add up in the context of the “ system” and throws in numbers which also shouldn’t be added together due to the buses being connected in series. Vector/SIMD/stream processing is very relevant and needed in games programming to achieve a lot of high end calculations that occur in games today.

Consider why a number of PC games in the past year or two have been tapping into the GPU hardware to get it to accomplish a few things. Consider why research has supported that GPUs are much faster than CPUs at performing many tasks that people though desktop CPUs dominated in. Consider why Ageia is proposing a new major piece of hardware on PCs to aid in processing physics in games. The answer is clear that a certain type of processing is needed, and it is not found in traditional desktop CPUs with general purpose processing power. Desktop CPUs are also not heading in a direction to ever compensate for these deficiencies either. If this post isn’t enough to convince you, you can go out and do research on the various topics yourself.

Microsoft has nice tools to help developers get the most out of Xbox360, which is a noble and needed effort for developing better games. But in the end, Xbox360 has a lower roof than the Playstatation 3, and over time the lead will show and be undeniable. Taste in games is purely subjective so I won’t say Playstation 3 will have better games as a whole, but they will be technically superior over time.

Playstation 3 and PC – Comparing and Contrasting:
Unlike consoles PCs are not static and evolve over time – or rather, the components of a PC evolve over time. In the case of a PC, CPUs, GPUs are the fastest evolving parts of it that are the most relevant to games processing. The downside to a PC is that is not purely a gaming platform and the CPUs are more general purpose in nature to handle code coming from an operating system running many applications at once. It has to perform integer math, floating point math, memory loading and storing, and branching all at an acceptable level of performance such that no area noticeably slows down processing. The other downside to PCs is that motherboards do not advance as rapidly and they represent some significant bottlenecks for PC games today. Here is a quick rundown of what is inside of a PC as it relates to game processing.

PC Architecture Summary:
PC Motherboard – AGP/PCI-E:
Motherboards dictate a baseline functionality limits you can get out of a PC. A motherboard is where you connect your CPU to the GPU, RAM, and other peripherals that connect to your PC. Because this is where you connect these components, it effectively sets the rate at which these parts can talk to the CPU*. If a motherboard uses AGP 4x, an AGP 8x card will be capped to communicating with the CPU at 4x speeds and the same goes to PCI- express.

To put some numbers on the speeds of these buses, AGP 8x runs at roughly 2GB/s peak bandwidth, and PCI-E runs around the same speed at 8x. PCI-E is however being upped to 16x which puts this speed at 4GB/s. If the graphics card and motherboard PCI-E or AGP speeds differ, the max bandwidth that can be obtained is the lower of the two speeds.

*On a PC, devices talk to each other through the CPU by sending signals (I think interrupts). The CPU in turn forwards or retransmits information to whatever the destination device is. On a PC, heavy bandwidth coming from the network to the hard drive, will have an impact on the CPU. On a console setup, this can be avoided as every byte transferred doesn’t actually have to take up cycles on the CPU.

PC Motherboard – RAM:
PCs today typically use DDR ram at varying clock speeds. The fastest variant of DDR RAM is DDR400 which runs at around 4GB/s in single channel mode, and 8.5GB/s in dual channel mode. DDR offers very low latency access to RAM which is important for desktop CPUs.

PC Graphics Cards:
Graphics cards are probably the single most important factor in determining the visual performance of games on the PC platform. PC games are typically the first to show the latest and greatest rendering methods and pushing certain features to the max due to hardware improvements that consumers can buy at a rate at which they please, and developers are free to use these expanded hardware features as they are released.

PC graphics cards also typically come with on- board memory so the GPU doesn’t have to gather resources through the slow AGP or PCI bus. PC graphics cards typically offer very high bandwidth to video ram since the video card manufacturer is completely in charge of building the link between the video ram and the actual GPU.

Head to Head:
Bandwidth Assessment:
If there was a diagram showing PC motherboards compared to the bandwidth diagram of the Playstation 3, you might be shocked to see some of the narrow bandwidths provided in PCs, but you’d also notice that the bandwidth provided in top end graphics cards today are already around double the currently known bandwidth for the RSX and Xenos to video memory. A top end GeForce or Radeon card has around 50GB/s bandwidth between the GPU and its video ram, while the RSX only has 22.4 GB/s. This factors in greatly with the texture detail displayed on PC games as compared to those in console games. On a PC, you can push higher quality textures onto your polygons, and use bandwidth expensive filters liberally with this added bandwidth. Many games enable these features and it isn’t even significantly necessary for the game’ s visuals, or it could easily be compensated for using cheaper methods.

Comparably, PCs use an AGP or PCI- E bus for CPU to graphics card (memory or GPU) communication. It is extremely low at 8GB/s on the top end (PCI-E 16x). On a PC, it is safe to say that the graphics card will not put video memory that’ s needed frame by frame, on the CPU’s main memory with such a slow link. The Playstaiton 3 sports a link of 35GB/s bandwidth between its CPU and GPU alone to allow them to work together to accomplish tasks without going through a huge bandwidth bottleneck. It effectively allows the RSX to not be excluded from the 256MB XDR RAM if it needs extra video memory.

PC CPUs also have much lower bandwidth to RAM compared to the Playstation 3. Today the fastest(common) RAM on desktop PCs runs at 4GB/s, and a gaming rig might try to setup dual channel upping this bandwidth to 8GB/s. On the PC end this bandwidth is so low due to the fact that general purpose computing generally doesn’t have a demand to transfer or process massive chunks of data at such a fast rate. For PC games, this does put a limitation on games that might want to process massive amounts of data on the CPU. PC games just don’ t do this type of thing.

CPU performance:
On that note, CPUs on PCs are general purpose CPUs. The mainstream ones are all x86 based and are scalar processors – meaning they execute one operation at a time (on a single pipeline per core) on one piece of data. General purpose CPUs have gotten extremely fast at executing ALU related instructions, but this improvement has not been kept up with by memory(RAM). Due to this, a large part of die space is taken up by hardware aimed to hide general purpose CPU access times. This added hardware dissipates a lot of heat and lowers the overall efficiency of the CPU to keep it running fast. This hardware is needed in the general purpose computing scene since random accesses to memory are frequent due to application switching, and even a single application has many random variables to keep track of in memory. This need however, is not needed as much for games and the extra hardware would be a much greater waste of space and power. I already mentioned the lack of need for general purpose computing power in the Xbox360 contrasting so I won’t mention it again from a software standpoint.

Intel/AMD are the primary manufacturers of desktop CPUs today and all have huge amounts of die space allocated to general purpose computing. However, to not be completely outdone by the world of SIMD processing, MMX, 3DNow!, and SSE technologies were added to these general purpose CPUs to improve their 3D gaming and multimedia functions. These SIMD instruction sets and hardware associated with them are still behind the single VMX-128 instruction set and hardware included in the Cell’s PPE as they only have 16 registers as opposed to 32. SSE only recently supported operations that apply between elements in the same vector register with the latest version SSE3, although 3DNow! had this functionality from the start. MMX and 3DNow! also shared registers with the x86 floating architecture at the start which meant they couldn’t be executed simultaneously with x86 floating point code (x87). Since then, this may have changed though.

SSE, MMX, 3DNow! don’t even begin to scratch the power offered on a single SPE on the Cell. Not to mention the Cell has 7 of them in addition to the VMX-128 instruction set. For games processing, Intel/AMD CPUs are vastly outdone, and they will not be catching up this generation or the next. Buying newer and newer CPUs will not increase PC gaming performance drastically, and they won’t be catching up to the Cell for a long time.

Graphics performance:
In purely assessing the graphics cards compared the RSX, the RSX likely doesn’t weigh in along side of the heaviest hitter today. As I said before in the bandwidth assessment, graphics cards have extremely high bandwidth between video RAM and the graphics rendering pipelines that make up the GPU. The bandwidth and processing capability in graphics chips increases quickly as new cards are released on the market, which is about 3-4 per year, and a new generation adding more filters, methods, or effects every year. Consoles are quickly outdone in the eyes of PC game developers in the graphics department. When you see the latest top-end PC game, remember that it’s running on the latest top-end graphics card, and in some cases, these games are targeting cards that aren’t going to run well until the next generation of graphics cards is released.

The “ Cell factor” added into graphics processing should also be considered in boosting the visuals of Playstation 3’s graphics when compared to PC games. Unlike a desktop CPU, the Cell is actually equipped to process many of the tasks that are performed on a graphics card, and there is enough bandwidth between the Cell and RSX so they both can render graphics. The most obvious approach to getting more out of the Cell is using it to do hardware transform and lighting (T&L), and other basic or complex vertex operations that a vertex shader might do. Upon entering the geometry to the GPU, a developer would disable these rendering steps since they have been performed already and it goes through these stages on GPU’s rendering pipeline quicker, giving it more time to accomplish something in another stage like pixel shading, AA, or HDR. There is actually feasible bandwidth for pixel shader operations to be done on the Cell before it is handed back to the RSX to do nothing but move it to the frame buffer and send the output signal to the display.

How much processing can be done on the Cell to make up for the PC graphics card advantage? I can’t answer that well since GPU specs and statistics are usually documented in results with little introspection as to what hardware does what, and how quickly it is doing it. If anyone knows a bit more about this, it would be a good area to get into deeper discussion with. I am pretty confident that the Playstation 3 with the Cell + RSX working together can look on par with many PC games that will be released in 2007.

One thing that the Playstation 3 developers couldn’t easily make up for is the bandwidth limitations of the RSX. No matter what, the RSX is limited to its 22.4GB/s link to GDDR3 RAM which limits the rate large textures can be rendered, which couldn’t be made up by Cell’s processing power. The wildcard in this scenario is obvious if you look at the RSX/Cell diagram and remember that RSX has full access to the Cell’s 256 MB/s of XDR RAM. The channel would first have to go through the Cell’s 25.6 GB/s link to RAM, then the Cell/RSX link at 35GB/s – limiting bandwidth being the 25.6GB/s. If this RAM could be used simultaneously with the GDDR3 RAM, then the total peak bandwidth with memory that the RSX can use is 48GB/s through two buses, which is still on par with high end graphics cards today.* Do note that this scenario drains the Cell of all bandwidth to XDR RAM while the bandwidth is being used. This could be a non-issue by the nature of a game loop since the CPU is less likely to need such high bandwidth to RAM during rendering stage of a game loop.

Even if the 48GB/s bandwidth on the RSX is on par with top end PC cards today such as the GeForce 7900GTX or the ATI X1900 XTX, that number is static. Next year graphics cards could (and likely will) be sporting bandwidth figures in excess of 70-80GB/s.** They will push larger and more detailed textures faster than what 48GB/s can do, and will eventually have execution speeds that the Cell’s processing will not be able make up for.

*In a press interview with the Heavenly Sword developer(Ninja Theory) a few weeks ago, this idea was hinted on. I believe a developer said something about the RSX having two buses to memory and not just one. This very well could be what he was referring to without getting into the details.

**After I wrote that, I looked up the bandwidth on the GeForce 7950GX2 and see that it has 76.5GB/s bandwidth to video RAM. Next year’s bandwidth for top end PC graphics cards are looking to get up to 150GB/s or more bandwidth at this rate.

Frame-rate:
Frame rates vary for a number of reasons. It actually factors in considerably in the visual department because smoother and stable frame rates look better. While 30 FPS is well-playable, 60 FPS at the same visual quality will just make the game feel much better.

The reason why I mention this here is that PC games typically showcase very unstable frame rates. Unless your PC is far beyond the recommended requirements of a game, you will probably notice that most games have frame rates dropping to around 10-15 in certain parts, and going up to 30 or more during others. I’m not completely blaming this on developers since they have a lot of different hardware to worry about, but it is something that degrades the overall pleasure of playing a game. Playstation and Nintendo (sorry, Xbox360 and original have shown some awfully ugly frame rate drops similar to those seen on PCs), have historically shown games with less frame rate variation.

Controllers:
Mouse and Keyboard vs Playstation 3 controller. When it comes to RTS and FPS games, then Playstation 3 is owned along with every other console. Playing these types of games on the highest multiplayer tiers will always yield better players on the mouse + keyboard combo. That being said, the controls can still work on the Playstation 3, and players can get relatively good.

For many other game types, a PC keyboard and mouse suffer almost like a console controller does with RTS and FPS. You’d probably want a PC gamepad or joystick to play flight sims, fighting games, racing games, sports games, and probably more. The problem with a PC is that these things aren’t standard and not every developer will care to put in rumble features or motion sensing features even if they are out for certain PC gamepads on the market. The number of buttons supported on a decently programmed PC game does scale accordingly though to whatever the user has. PCs are lagging behind in the pressure sensitivity department and I don’ t even think DirectX supports detecting pressure on button presses unless they’ve actually updated it since DirectX8(fyi, DirectX9 still used the DirectInput8 API).

OMG Look at Crysis!!!:
Yeah, this game got its own section due to how much it has annoys me on these forums. It is always being compared to the abilities of the next generation consoles processing abilities as it if is some unattainable goal for consoles.

Guess what is responsible for those graphics? I’ve already said it and you probably already know it if you’ve read and understood everything I wrote so far – top end graphics cards. Can the RSX beat it alone? I might lie to you and say “yeah it can do that” and fail to mention the RSX would likely be running at 5 frames per second if it did - as would any comparable PC graphics card would too. But I’ d rather try to be a bit more honest than what nVidia would tell you. In order for the Playstation 3 to match or surpass those visuals, the Cell would have to be used to handle some of the parts of the 3D rendering pipeline to speed up rendering through the RSX to levels which could probably even exceed what Crysis looks like. Of course, at some point in the future when GeForce 8950GTX-SLIs come out, you could probably run Crysis at ridiculously high 16xAA, 16xAF, FP32 HDR and what have you settings, but those are just polish related visuals, not the baseline visuals that are a large determinant of what makes games look good.

Short story is that you won’t be disappointed with the Playstation 3’s visuals. It will be quickly outdone by PC graphics cards in terms of the nitty gritty technical settings like AA, HDR, AF, and shader model version whatever. Don’t let that discourage you because artists and improved techniques on the Cell + RSX will make the improvement of Playstation 3 visuals keep up even if it isn’t displaying more polygons with higher settings.

The Final Verdict?
While PCs GPUs are evolving and pushing the visuals beyond consoles due to new graphics card hardware being released yearly, the rest of the PC world is relatively static and offers little to no improvement when it comes to gaming. When multi- core CPUs hit the shelves for desktop PCs, there could be an increase in performance for games and more tasks being done on the CPU, but no more than what Xbox360 has or will show us with its 3 cores.

All of the next generation consoles already possess more games processing power than PCs with their increased and improved SIMD units. Unfortunately, developers aren’t taking the best advantage of this extra power in most cases as writing computational code for games is more difficult than the direct logical approach. Multiplatform development will be the biggest inhibiter of the Playstation 3’s potential.

PCs gaming or PS3 gaming doesn’t really have a clear technical winner. PC’s constantly evolve so in some aspect they will always be better for graphics when you always have the top end graphics card. The Playstation 3 will offer more flexible computational power that can be applied to more accurate physics, sound, or other computational related tasks than a PC. PS3 cannot catch up graphically which seems to be the most important or obvious difference between games. But PCs will not catch up in physics processing and other computational simulations unless the physics card catches on and is integrated well.

Computer Games @ Aug 24th 2006 11:58PM

Bluray vs DVD. Even if a developer could fill the Bluray disc with meaningful gameplay content, there is nothing to stop them using 2 or even 3 DVDs in a multi disc game for the 360. Multi discs games have happened on PS1, GC and others and 3 x DVD is still cheaper than 1 x Bluray ('cept maybe for negligable weight/shipping costs)

The GPUS in the machines are pretty even with most devs citing the 360 has having the more powerful one, they also say it will balance out when you consider that very few 3rd party games will make specific content/use of each consoles GPU features. They will stick to the common denominator so that in some games PS3 performs better, in others 360 performs better.

So it's ironic that completely non biased folk such as myself will end up with a 360,Wii and PS3 and the choice of EVERY game. The over-zealous fanboys will be "limited" to the PS3 titles purely because they believed the Sony hype machine again.

Stop arguing about consoles it's a waste of precious life. Just buy good games on all systems and enjoy them!

Scott @ Aug 25th 2006 3:05AM

I like how everyone involved with the PS3 vs XBOX360 war is all pointing to the Blu-ray drive. What about the lowly old Cell processor. I was reading an article the other day where they were experimenting with multiple Cell processor mothboard setups for high-end servers. They got 16 cell processors working together in a workstation/server and it instantly became the 79th most powerful PC/Server/Workstation ever created. Not bad since the 80th most powerful has more than 1000 cpus on multiple motherboards. What sont have done is really amazing, and while i am not a sony fanboy (WII FTW!!!), i see the advantage they have over the 360. One game ported from the 360 to the ps3, all you will notice is an improved framerate, or maybe just less slowdown in big action scenes. The extra space might make way for 'behind the scenes' and 'the making of' extra material.

The biggest differance will be noticed if they were to make the same game from the ground up for each system to take full advantage of everything that console had to offer. Only then will you see the ps3 come out on top with higher details, longer draw distances, better textures and longer games. But of course, that wont happen, it is way most cost effective to simply port games, of which you wont see graphical differances until you have them side-by-side.

Meanwhile i'll be at my place, sitting happily after spending sweet stuff all on my Wii in comparison, enjoying cheaper games, free online multiplayer, and downloading all my NES, SNES and N64 favourties...good luck to ya'll...lol

Uber Soldat @ Aug 25th 2006 4:20AM

So Ninja, let me get this straight, what you're saying is that your poxy tin foil PS3 can beat my Core 2 Duo (6700), nVidia 7950GTX (1024MB) and 4GB Corsair XMS2 DDR2 Ram based Gaming PC? Dream on pal, the PS3 is going to be hard pressed to beat the 360 (which I also own) let alone a 'ninja' PC. The next gen consoles will do fantastic games / visuals / physics etc for what they cost but please don't say that the PS3 is the best thing ever because when you do , you just sound like a Sony Hypebot.

Froghourt @ Aug 25th 2006 10:15AM

Yay then I don't have to get a 360.

ninja @ Aug 25th 2006 10:19AM

Uber Soldat wrote: "please don't say that the PS3 is the best thing ever because when you do , you just sound like a Sony Hypebot"
********************************************************

Read my comments thoroughly, you will notice that I am simply stating facts about system performance. Graphic wise, 360 and PS3 close, but reports seem to favor PS3 slightly. When it comes to pure 'horse-power' the PS3 wins by a much larger margin. What makes the PS3 so special? The new CELL processor.

If you read what John Carmack wrote, best detailed post I have read ever, maybe you would understand. If you can't understand what he is saying I will dumb it down:

The PS3 is more powerful. The PS3 can compete with today's fastest computers on the market when dealing with floating-point calculations. BUT the PC would eventually catch up as it always has.

LOOK UP: JOHN CARMACK

I never said PS3 is a super computer; it has the guts to be one, with the CELL processor - a multimedia CPU.

God forbid Sony have the more powerful system than M$ this generation, right? Just as the PS2 vs Xbox, the system that came later is more powerful and has slightly better graphics.

I'm done with this thread. If you notice what I have been saying, I am not bashing the 360 here. I am simply stating facts. Just a shame that people take it personally.

What’s the matter, not so sure about your 360 investment anymore?

Tomas @ Aug 25th 2006 6:47PM

BIG meh. it doesnt matter what console u buy anymore.
they wanna blame production costs. but it's more about principles.
we haven't seen a truly authentic console war since the 32-bit one, however short that one was.
....
once again, we're gonna have to go to Nintendo for truly original and exclusive content/games.