Call of Duty 4: Larger burden on Sony PS3 than Xbox 360
Filed under: Gaming, Sony Playstation 3, Xbox 360 | By: Daniel
Posted on: July 5, 2008 | 127 Comments
Games like Call of Duty 4 run at a framerate of 60 frames per second on both systems. But Call of Duty 4 is a game that experienced technical problems with various bottlenecks due to the varying levels of action that occur on the screen. The game was originally designed to run at 60 frames per second at 720p, but it caused drops in the framerate.
The proof of this is the fact that Call of Duty 4 runs at a resolution of only 640p on both the Xbox 360 and Playstation 3. This may be “equal” in terms of what is displayed on the screen, but the FACT is that Call of Duty 4 is putting a much larger burden on the PS3 than it is the Xbox 360.
Confirmation of this can be seen in the large number of games that “run smoothly at 60 frames per second on the Xbox 360, but struggle to run at 30 frames per second on the Playstation 3.” That was a quote from Gamespot.
It’s simple math: The Xbox 360 can display approximately 500,000,000 polygons per second, compared to 275,000,000 polygons per second for the Playstation 3.
Multi-platform games use what is called a “Lowest Common Denominator” form of programming.
Basically, what this means is the developers start out by saying to themselves, “We need to develop a game for the Xbox 360 and the Playstation 3.”
Then, the developers put limits on how many polygons they are going to put on the screen, and they determine what framerate the game will run at as a result of that number.
When the developers multiply the number of polygons displayed on the screen by the number of frames being displayed each second, they examine what that number is. Multi-platform games can NEVER display more than 275,000,000 polygons per second, or else they can’t be released for the Playstation 3, since the PS3 cannot display more than 275,000,000 polygons per second.
As a result, developers are often conservative with the number of polygons being displayed with multi-platform games, especially with the poor reputation of inconsistent framerates that the Playstation 3 has acquired over time.
It basically comes down to these THREE factors:
If a multi-platform game running at 30 frames per second on the Playstation 3 uses 250,000,000 polygons or less, it gives the developers the ability to allow the Xbox 360 version to run at 60 frames per second, since 500,000,000 is double the number of 250,000,000.
If a multi-platform game running at 30 frames per second on the Playstation 3 uses over 250,000,000 polygons per second, it means the Xbox 360 version is also forced to run at only 30 frames per second. This is an unfortunate situation, because it means the Playstation 3 will be using 90-100% of its power by displaying somewhere between 250,000,000 to 275,000,000 polygons per second, while the Xbox 360 will only be using 60% of its power, since the Xbox 360 has so much more polygon power.
If a multi-platform game is intended to run at 60 frames per second on the Playstation 3, the Xbox 360 version will also run at 60 frames per second. The Playstation 3 version will be limited to 275,000,000 polygons per second. The Xbox 360 will also be limited to 275,000,000 polygons per second, due to the fact that 275,000,000 is the Lowest Common Denominator. This is unfortunate, because it means the Playstation 3 version will be using between 90% to 100% of the systems power, while the Xbox 360 will be using only 60% of the systems power. Call of Duty 4 is an excellent example of this situation.
The Playstation 3 only transfers data at a rate of 54MB per second as a Blu-ray player being used for movies. When it comes to gaming, there are hardware “bottlenecks” that the Playstation 3 faces, which allows the PS3 to transfer data at a rate of only 9MB per second. The Xbox 360 transfers data at a rate of 16MB per second.
The Official Playstation Magazine wrote an article about the longer load times of PS3 games shortly after the Playstation 3 was launched. The only time the PS3 does not have to deal with either noticeably or significantly longer load times is when the game is placed on the PS3 hard drive. Sadly, it often takes over TWENTY long minutes to write the game onto the PS3 hard drive. Even when a PS3 game is written onto a hard drive, the load times between Xbox 360 games and PS3 games is virtually identical, as we saw in Devil May Cry 4 and Grand Theft Auto 4.
Gamespot has conducted a Graphics Comparison between the Xbox 360 and Playstation 3 each year since the Playstation 3 has been available. Xbox 360 has been declared the winner of the Graphics Comparison each of the three years: 2006, 2007, 2008.
2008 shows that the gap in performance continues to get bigger, in favor of the Xbox 360. Here is the hyperlink that shows the newest comparison–one the Xbox 360 easily defeats the Playstation.
Also, the Xbox 360 uses 10MB of eDRAM. This new form of RAM technology is something that even Windows Vista-based PCs do not yet take advantage of. The next release of Direct-X on the PC will start to take advantage of eDRAM technology for gaming, but it still hasn’t happened yet.
This just goes to show you how incredibly far ahead of its time the Xbox 360 Unified-Shader GPU/Multi-Core CPU design is.
Thanks to Mike Zoran
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Who gives a flying fuck which console can generate the most polygons or whatever. The fact of the matter is, both consoles can render sublime looking games and there hasn’t been a multi-platform game yet where I have been able to tell the difference between the two. Why does it matter and why do so many people seem to care about this stuff??!!
Really? Last time i check Uncharted is better than anything on the Xbox 360 graphic wise.
Halo 3? LOL
Uncharted is even superior to games like Gears of War and Bioshock, and MGS4?
GTA4 looks and loads a lot better on the PS3, the 360 version just cames with better standart brightness, witch can easly be change on the PS3 version for optimal performance and that leaves the X360 version beind for good.
This is just none sence, you are patetic and i don’t know if you are being paid to write that stuff. I’ve work in a company that makes 3d special effects for tv ads and some movies, i am familiar with the PS3 hardware and i can tell the your numbers are wrong…
Sorry, PS3 has already outsold the X360 in Japan, Europe and USA is not far away.
The original Xbox sold around 25 millions world wide, the PS1 sold 106 millions, the PS2 is over 120 millions and still selling, do you need a picture?
I wasn’t going to write this down, because you really can’t understand, but here it goes.
1st how do you calculate the number of poligons a GPU is able to pull for second?
You said that the PS3 is able to pull 270 million triangles per secondand the X360 500 million per second, right?
So for you to know that’s just a pointless measurement,where’s the context? How were these numbers measured? There are loads of different ways you can measure tri performance, and just putting up headline figures like that tells you nothing.
In fact, the PS2 had better tri performance than the Xbox, on paper, everyone knows that the Xbox was more powerful at running real games, but if you just wanted to fill a screen with 2D, flat colour, unlit triangles, then the PS2 was much better at that, so it looked great in benchmarks. That just shows how meaningless this measurement is, it’s really pointless and “so 2005″ a a user said here.
for f sake. they are both good. both have + and -. Bottom line is what makes you want to play a game, cuz youre a fanboy or do you really want the best experience. The 360 is just a more mature system. I have both and love the 360 for games, PS3 for movies. Not to mention, the PS3 controller BLOWS!
its a silly arguement, be happy we have both to play.
PS3 Rules, MS drools!
if the ps3 is more powerful then y doesnt gtaIV run at native 720p on it like it does on the 360 version
Ha these comments are great, not just the cliche fanboy wars about what console is better then what, but because some of the users claim youtube as a ‘reliable’ source, so if it is then all the other videos on the site must be reliable sources for a documentation. Next, the the teraflop BS rants against each other are choice backing up power on who’s better because neither developer will ever get close to exploiting that much power from a system but it’s there in ‘theory’ so it makes the console better because it has more ‘power’, and then the polygons are just a cute rant, and the only advantage the 360 has in giving it more polygons is because it has twice the amount of ram. However my favorite is discrediting a source of information (gamespot) because it gave your favorite game (ratchet and clank) a 7 *tear* *tear* because it’s like one guy runs ALL of gamespot. Now i have no problem against either system, both are cool in their own ways (all ps3s having Hard drives, 360s larger library of games so far), but at the end of the day does it matter what resolution the game is in if it doesn’t affect gameplay? Have a nice day, and please please please… try to get out of highschool..