Devs Problems: Lack of memory on Sony PS3 and storage on Xbox 360
Filed under: News | By: Daniel
Posted on: November 3, 2007 | 134 Comments
We have heard many gamers comparing the different games on the Sony PS3 and Xbox 360 but today we had a long comment from someone calling themselves “IsThis4Real” and they make an interesting case for both the PS3 and 360.
Also they outline some of the problems both games consoles face and explain a little about the CELL CPU. Have a read a let us know if you agree.
Here is IsThis4Real’s comment:
I honestly wish people would get over the whole “CELL” thing. Its totally, as it stands now, overated - and the concept is still in its infancy. Its not the be all end all of CPUs. Its simply a single IBM Power PC core with 7 SPEs. I think people still make the mistake in claiming and thinking that they are essentially seperate CPUs. They are not.
Its “simply” designed for very fast on the fly encoding/decoding (gross missunderstatement, I know - but I think for some it has to be put VERY simply if you know what I mean) - its specialty will lie in the integration of the home based setup.
This is something Sony mooted nearly 10 or more so years ago, the ability to have every single (Sony based) product in one house hold to be able to communicate with eachother. This is when they forst started announcing that they were working on a single SUPER cpu.Watch that space over the next few years. They might actually get there, but I tell you, it aint going to be this incarnation of CELL, thats for sure.
It is not even an ideal functioning model for multi-threaded coding, an area, which despite a few game companies have said they are able to pull off, is again, still very much in its infancy - especially on the mainstream level - ie to you.
If you really want to be “technical” the PS3 setup is absolutely lousy - plain and simple - for modern game setups. The majority of the work needed for the PS3 is not the so called difficulty of the CELL processor, but its lack of main memory, lack of video memory, and very slow load data-read speeds, and much slower bus speed, all in comparisson to the Xbox 360.
The CELL, despite what is said, is NOT an overly complicated piece of architecture. It has the potential to be quite elegant in fact.
Think to yourselves for a minute, peoples?
You have games on the PS3. Dev kits have only been out X amount of time. Both 360 and PS3 release are identical - dont be anal guys.
Yet, you will notice that the PS3 sufferes time and time again in comparison - just mildly - mind you. The issues being what? Framerate? Resolution? This are problems not associated with CELL, but less memory, fill rate, bus transfer etc. The only way to really optimize is for Sony to “cut the fat” from their supplied libraries. Thats it. Its very little, or nothing at all to do with CELL difficulty. The processors are a non event.
That will possibly be the only major problem for devs for both consoles in the near future.
1). Lack of memory on the PS3.
2). Lack of storage space on the Xbox 360.
Watch out for that one. It will be here sooner than you think, if not already.
Hence the heavy need for almost triple assest content on Blue Ray discs, and very heavy cache useage. But cheers to Sony anyways for bringing something new to the table. But to say that games that are comming out would not be possible without it are just plain rubbish. But not so if on the PS3… Its just a little bit different. Tis all.
You want to talk about technical limitations??
All it will take is one REALLY good game, yet to come, on the PS3, with exceptional graphics and very heavy scripting, and it will absolutely bring that machine to its knees. Just because of the Single PPC core, and small ammount of memory. If you have actually looked at the way the PS3 “works”, it is a very laborious process !! There is so much to and fro before it even gets into the pipeline for post processing, any benefit that the CELL even began to pose is vanquished.
But everyone, just bear this in mind. The Xbox 360, for all the bagging it gets, is really quite a powerfull piece of kit. It has 3 seperate PPC cpus, which basically equates to 6 hardware threads. It has more memory to play with, a superior GPU, and superfast bus rate.
All the BS talked about GOW pushing the 360 is almost toss. Sorry. It was only running on two thread system. And even that engine was very buggy and “heavy” at the time. If not totally overated in its own right as well.
Honestly, if MS decided to put some form of a HD disc in it, Blu Ray or HD-DVD, the damn thing would be almost future proof, with the exception of the over heating, ofcourse.
Because, as it stands, the PS3 only has the storage space over the 360. Its not anymore “advanced” at all, and in many ways, slightly less.
Anyways, ive gone on a bit. Sorry.
Sometime soon, some dev will get around to managing the PS3 with a par excellence attitude. It looks like Infinity Ward might just be there.
Take it easy, guys. Sorry for going on a bit.
CLICK HERE to keep updated with the latest news, share a comment or problems with products and services. Follow us on twitter or read more news.
Com’on everyone knows that the harder it is to program the more ways you can find and use .
When it’s harder the DEVz find many ways to make games on PS3 unlike 360 which uses only few ways.
IF THE PS3 IS LOW ON MEMORY THEN HOW DO YOU EXPLAIN IN GAME SCENES THAT THE 360 CAN’T DO .
I don’t think PS3 cellchip uses Cache in traditional scene. CellChip use “Local Store” and Programmable DMA.
I realised that when I read the Insomniac cheat sheet on Cell instruction set. The fastest SPU instruction set has a latency of “2″ and double floating-point latency is “13″. I could be wrong. Google search “spu intruction latencies and pairing info” “Insomniac” See it yourself.
What happen when the two different type of memories pass data to each other. One is 3.2Ghz and the other is 700mhz. Do that drag the whole system speed down to 700mhz?
I think PS3 don’t really need RSX. Just 512mb of Xdr and one cellchip would be faster and cheaper to produce. Sony want Nvidia inboard is to attract third party developers. I don’t think many 360 to PS3 port games would be possible without RSX.
smoothnoodle, having the RSX is a definite plus. Sure you can do all rasterization in the SPUs, but then you won’t be able to add physics at almost no cost.
The Local Store in each SPE is something like 256kB L1,.. or more precisely L0 “cache”… because it’s actually a 128×128 16-byte register file. For comparison, the x86 cpu has only 8 4-byte registers, and this is a huge limitation, that’s why out-of-order computation had to be implemented, with a hidden register file.
A “latency of 2 cycles for SPE” means “you have to wait 1 extra cycle if the current instruction reads the result of the previous instruction”. But if you order the instructions in a good order (it’s quite easy), each instruction takes 1 cycle. Double-floats are rarely used in games, except for some Euler-based physics (that are prone to huge problems with precision, as they do integration all the time). But even Euler-based systems revert their position/velocity data to single-floats before doing collision detection.
When you transfer data between the 3200MHz and 2×700MHz memories, it doesn’t drag the system at all. It’s a “hello world” in basic hardware design. It’s a pity they use GDDR3 instead of XDR, but there must be a reason for it. I can only speculate that the on-die cache+queue is large and good enough, that using XDR won’t be a big plus. There was a rumor that RSX has a lot of on-die cache, but in reality I think even 100kB will be enough in most cases.
Anyway, the whole PS3 system would behave slower if they excluded the RSX. Specialized asynchronous hardware is always better than software, it’s as simple as that. (just imagine implementing SPE code to do texel-fetches and filtering, that can surpass the RSX’s tex-fetch units… *shudder*).
Honestly, why do people get so worked up about this? I myself own an Xbox 360 and a Wii. Once I get an HDTV I’ll probably pick up a PS3 at some point. You guys should spend more time playing the games than complaining about fanboys online. The PS3 shot itself in the foot temporarily with the Blu-ray drive, because it made some of their exclusives jump ship, but in the long run they’ll probably do fine. And yeah, the PS3 might be more powerful than the Xbox 360, but do you seriously think there aren’t developers working on the next Xbox already? Do us all a favor: shut up, play every console that’s out there and realize that they’ve all got their upsides and downsides.
If you want to talk about power/ graphics than look at this! Did anybody know that the ps3’s gpu does goes up to 2 teraflops? the 360 only gos to 1.3 teraflops. Now, teraflops are calculations, everything in a videogame MUST be calculated in some format/way. So in the end, the ps3 can process more information. AND FOR ALL YOU WHO SAY THAT THE PS3 DOESNT HAVE GAMES, CAREFULLY PULL YOUR HEAD FROM YOUR BUTT AND LOOK!!! Let me give you excamples!! Resistance fall of man (9.5 rating) Ratchet and Clank(9.0 rating) Heavnly Sword (8.5 rating) Warhawk (8.5 rating) Need i go on? and please im not trying to be a fanboy…but i must protecct the ps3! MS has done a good job making a system except that its just not working out. Why should the next generation counsole crown go to somone who has 5x less memory avliable to make games?! Not to mention i have a friend whos had to replace his 360 4 times in the past 1 1/2 years! Id rather be playing games than have to worry about how long MS will be fixing my 360!
If you want detail in a game..think of this! In killzone 2, they used the same amount of polygons in one character…as they did in an entire level of the first killzone! see it to believe it! http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=-1250784901612083485&q=killzone+2+gameplay&total=168&start=20&num=10&so=0&type=search&plindex=8
@Ultrano
RSX only run at 550mhz. GPU is slower in clock speed. I think RSX has latency issue with XDR ram. That why Sony split XDR/GDDR3.
There is still a lot thing we don’t know about PS3. For example cache size/technology on RSX.
Good news is more developers use words like easy and fun on PS3 development. Bad news is Guitar Hero3, Xbox360 outsold PS2 by far. It is area of concern.
By the way, what cell programming tool do u use?
Some of you, particularly Smoothnoodle, seriously need to leave your McDonald’s jobs and find a decent one that pays more than minimum wage. This way you can buy all three consoles and stop wasting time arguing with random anonymous people about shit that in the end do not matter.
“Graphics power”, “Folding@Home”, etc. Who the fuck cares? Am I dreaming or did Super Mario Galaxy, a game that came out in a vastly underpowered console, just achieve top ratings on Metacritic? You people need a serious lesson in perspective, serious gamers talk about GAMES not fucking CONSOLES. Losers.
nicely said reality.
Reality: good damn point.
Super Mario Galaxy: less fancy graphics, awesome gameplay, very fun.
Lair: Amazing graphics, complete shite gameplay. Then Sony had the audacity to tell reviewers they were playing it wrong.
Games are like everything else, if it’s pretty but doesn’t work it just isn’t worth the trouble. If it’s amazingly well constructed we’ll all forgive a little graphic deficiency. Besides, it’s all opinion. I can’t stand Grand Theft Auto games. I just can’t get into them. Does that mean I go around calling Grand Theft Auto games crap? No. It doesn’t. If you think Sony is a better company than Microsoft, that doesn’t mean you’re right. You know what’ll probably happen with these ‘console wars’? Nobody’ll win, nobody’ll lose. The reason Sega lost is because they had all their eggs in one basket. Both Sony and Microsoft are successful enough to continue making consoles and games for years to come. Nintendo will stick around because they come out with incredible handhelds and other consoles.
@billytech,
if you would have gotten one of the 3shittys at launch too, you would know that it fuckin sucked before gears came out.
Once again, you should listen to Ultrano, and the other guys that actually know WTF they are talking about.
Youll see, in just a couple months, the PS3 will be dominant, its already outselling the wii in japan, its homeland, it wont take long for it to be overcome the wii everywhere else. pretty much because the wii is turning into another Gamecube, only with a different control scheme.
@Ultrano
Thanks for voicing an actual intellegent argument about the power of the cell, and how the Xenos in the 3shitty is nothing more than a PT4 that has an extra “hyperthreading core” im still not really sure how and why intel did that. i would really like to know more about how the cell works as far as programming and its similarities to GPUs go. Please let me know. My email is howell_100@hotmail.com