Originally posted by: Fox5
Originally posted by: thequinox
I am having a hard time understanding how a console (mainly the PS3) is capable of playing games at full 1080 HD resolution while some high end PCs have trouble with it.
I am currently planning on buying a new gaming PC. I patiently waited (and am still waiting) for the AM2 to be released ever since I heard of it. Then I heard of Conrow and... well that's a different story. Anyway, I have read a couple posts on this forum about the PS3's cell processor and most people conclude that it would be very powerful if taken advantage of (which is apparently very hard to do).
Will the PS3 match/beat a high end PC, in which the processor, video card, etc cost $600 each? Is so, then how? and why is it so cheap?
Wait until the PS3 is out before claiming it's doing 1080 HD while PCs can't. BTW, 1080 is only about equivalent to 1600x1200, so it's not that impressive of a res. (1920x1080 is slightly hgiher, but most likely most ps3 games will run at 1280x720 anyway)
So far, the PS3 looks to have a graphics chip about equal to a 7900GT.
The cpu, around the equivalent of a 1Ghz Celeron maybe with a physics accelerator strapped on. (except for more general purpose than the physics accelerator, but you can't compare 1 to 1, cell is designed for a completely different purpose than a pc cpu and their strengths are entirely different)
An old article on this site showed that both PS3 and xbox360 would have been better off using an AMD or Intel CPU. Cell and xbox360 CPU is an in of order processor and is inherently slower. They are also much is harder to program and do not have current instruction sets such as SSE.
I think that article may have been on anandtech, or perhaps arstechnica. The one on anandtech was pulled.
Anyhow, for the things that you'd use SSE for, I bet the xbox 360 and Cell cpus would beast a PC. However, 99.5% of game code in current games isn't SSE.
If the 3 core power pc chip the xbox 360 has is anything like a G5 then you are talking about a pretty powerful chip there.
The G5 is generally weaker than a Pentium 4 or Athlon 64 (except in very specific tasks, generally ones not related to gaming), each core of the x360 cpu is notably weaker than a g5, except in those tasks a g5 did comparatively well in which weren't gaming related.
So anyhow, when PS3 comes out, it will have a gpu that is mid range to upper mid range, a cpu that probably costs as much to produce as the top end pc cpus (though those $1000 fx and extreme edition chips cost nowhere near that much, considering a $300 cpu overclocked can usually match them), a paltry amount of memory (512MB), a very small harddrive, and very limited input/output ports. The $600 PS3 is probably the equivalent of a $700 or $800 PC. Oh wait, forgot the blue-ray drive, so yeah, that would bring it up to about a $1000 PC. Of course, then Sony will charge you an arm and a leg for any upgrades in functionality, like extra controllers, larger harddrives, memory ports, wifi internet. (though the premium version has the last two)