PC Rigs That Will Obliterate The "Next Gen" Consol

[RajaF]

All of the hardware is purely fictional on my side for now since I only base the thread on chip roadmaps:

So what type of hardware do I see already overtaking the "next gen"?

Motherboards: socket M2 is on the way. the new wave of chipsets that will support the M2 will most likely be the NForce5 and ATI's TBA follower of the Radeon Xfire. This is still a haze but I expect any mobo's that will support the M2 to be fully capable of extreme performance.

CPU: with all the Hype the Cell and Xenon have been getting on this forum you would think the PC is dead. Well it is not. At least from AMD we have the top of the line Athlon 64 FX-62 with the Windsor core that will come out in '06. this will still be a dual core CPU but it will be more than enough for next year. The Windsor core will support Dual channel DDR2 (aka fast as a speeding bullet RAM). Expect to see the quad-core CPU's hitting market in late '06, early '07. The Cell will have some stiff competition in those while I expect the quad-cores to whipe the floor with the Xenon.

GFX: this needs no introduction. We can argue that an SLI or Crossfire set up right now can rival either RSX or Xenos. Imagine when the 512 ram cards with DDR2 hit the market next year and in either SLI or Crossfire they will destroy any competition.

So now let's take a look on a theoretical '06, next gen PC and see if we are impressed:

Mobo: DFI Lanparty 5 SLI
CPU: Athlon 64 FX-62 Windsor core
GFX: 2*XFX NVidia 7800 GTX 512 (i'm not putting in 8800 yet)
RAM: 3GB Corsair DDR2
HDD: 2*78 GB Raptor at 10.000 RPM SATA II
Monitor: any quality 21" will do
Add the rest of the hardware as you please with extra care on the PSU (recommended 500W).
For an ATI rig just swith manufacturers where applicable :D

So are we impressed? I say we should be. I say that the PC will overtake consoles a lot faster this gen than they did the last time around. How about you?

[The House]

2*XFX NVidia 7800 GTX 512? that is insane :shock: .

i wonder how much $ is going to cost you.

[Perfect Sin]

Here's what i know. The PS3 will cost around $400 along with the 360. That PC will cost around $2500-$3500 dollars for the graphics and efficiency that are just better than what the PS3 can accomplish.

[bamboopro]

Theres no way in hell I'm going to be able to rack up 2500 bucks for that baby anytime soon:(

[sukhrajpal]

im waiting for atleast 2 years before i upgrade my pc. waiting for 4core amd,1600gb holographic disc, 1 gb ram video card with 1ghz engine clock with 32 pixel pipelines and 16 vertex pipelines with 2.5 memory clock.

[RajaF]

im waiting for atleast 2 years before i upgrade my pc. waiting for 4core amd,1600gb holographic disc, 1 gb ram video card with 1ghz engine clock with 32 pixel pipelines and 16 vertex pipelines with 2.5 memory clock.

I believe the Athlon 64 FX-62 will be a 4 core. and the SLI = 1Gb of RAM on your vid card :D

[hoverbike]

That rig would cost $8000 not $2500. I don't think that will beat the PS3 just yet. It may come closer to it but not blowing it away.

As for the PC world, the AMD 64 FX-62 won't happen because it's called the AMD 64 FX-61 not 62. The reason for that is because it went/will like this: FX-55, FX-57, FX-59, FX-61.

[RajaF]

I'm positive it's 62. I'll double check but I got that CPU from the AMD roadmap so i'm almost positive it's going to be the 62. And I did not say anything about the price. This is a pure theoretical thing.

[Organic_Shadow]

Dont forget that by then nVidia may have the new SLi out, which means you wont be limited to the same exact cards, and you'll be able to use 4 cards!!

Also, you need to correct that XFX 512 card, because all their cards are overclocked! :wink:

[RajaF]

Well 4 cards would just be overkill. There is no CPU out on the market that could handle that workload. Maybe the CELL.

[Ryunosuke]

I don't think 4 sli cards will go anywhere, you won't have room for any other pci cards and not to mention heat issues with having 4 gpus basically stacked on top of each other. Can you imagine how much a pc would cost with 4 512MB 7800gtx (likely well over $10k), not to mention you would have to know what you're doing to set up a water cooling rig, etc.

As for the FX62 (Although I thought it was the called the FX63), it will either be single or dual core since its coming out in 2006 and both AMD and Intel have stated that the quad core cpus will not be out til 2007 at the earliest.

[sukhrajpal]

if you have enough memory, the fx62 does not have 4 cores. in the amd roadmap, they plan to ship 4 cores processors in 2007. they will also include ddr-3 whereas right now it is stuck with ddr 400. maybe holographic storage will be out by then, and i will be playing grand theft CALIFORNIA on an 300 gb disc. 8)

[Organic_Shadow]

Nevermind I was thinking of BFG. All of their cards are overclocked.

With quad SLi, you WOULD have room for other things. There are empty 1x PCI-E slots between each 16x slot, so you could fit things no problem. You would just need to make sure you have a good cooling setup or things would get pretty dangerous.

http://www.hkepc.com/bbs/viewthread.php?tid=475438

Im not even THINKING about trying to translate all that. If the pictures arent self-explanatory enough then go translate it yourself.

[CompGeek]

PCs are already more powerful.

For $1500 you can have a better video card than PS3, 8x as much system RAM, 2x as much video RAM and a much more powerful CPU.

All developers agree that, had either console used a P4 or Athlon 64, they would be SIGNIFICANTLY ahead in terms of CPU performance.

The GTX512 is basically exactly what the RSX is, only it has nearly 3x the memory bandwidth and 2x the memory.

No console is even close to beating a high end PC in terms of capability.

[PeanutButterMunky]

PCs are inferior with CPU <-> GPU bandwidth (at least I've read, and only for the time being). And two cards in SLI mode does not = a 100% increase in performance. http://www.theinquirer.net/?article=27920

And you need to be in at least 1600x1200 to see any noticeable differences.

However, that is one hefty PC. But price is the one BIG thing that separates consoles and PCs. And PCs need to be upgraded every so often to keep up with high end gaming, but consoles don't need this. It's up to the developers to keep trying to get the most out of the system.

[CompGeek]

PCs are inferior with CPU <-> GPU bandwidth (at least I've read, and only for the time being). And two cards in SLI mode does not = a 100% increase in performance. http://www.theinquirer.net/?article=27920

And you need to be in at least 1600x1200 to see any noticeable differences.

However, that is one hefty PC. But price is the one BIG thing that separates consoles and PCs. And PCs need to be upgraded every so often to keep up with high end gaming, but consoles don't need this. It's up to the developers to keep trying to get the most out of the system.
PCs are SOMEWHAT inferior in CPU <-> GPU bandwidth, but this is NOT a critical thing when each part is doing different things. Consoles need this to balance their workload and share tasks between CPU and GPU. The PC cpu is capable of more on its own than a console's.

[PeanutButterMunky]

I suppose. There are quite a few differences between PCs and consoles.

[VeganFreak]

yeah, it still pizzles me to hell how ps2 is able to pull off what it can pull off with a 290 Mgz processor (128 bit, i know, but still) 32 megs of ram, and 4 megs of video ram. i mean in terms of a pc having those specs, it would be a total piece of ****. could someone explain how the ps2 does it to this confused person(me).

[sukhrajpal]

look at f.e.a.r it can put fear in to the current gen and next gen consoles. the nvidia 7800gtx 512mb gets only 21 fps at 1600x1200. thats why its only an pc game. no current gen console or next gen console has enough horsepower to run f.e.a.r. its not the only game the ps2 can run. look at doom3, half-life 2. the original xbox is more powerful than the ps2.thats why these games were put on the xbox. there is one or two good loking games for the ps2 like god of war of gran turismo 4. the ps2 was successful for its game library. the ps2 has the most games.thats why its the most popular console,not for its graphics but for is games.

[PeanutButterMunky]

ook at f.e.a.r it can put fear in to the current gen and next gen consoles. the nvidia 7800gtx 512mb gets only 21 fps at 1600x1200. thats why its only an pc game. no current gen console or next gen console has enough horsepower to run f.e.a.r. its not the only game the ps2 can run. look at doom3, half-life 2. the original xbox is more powerful than the ps2.thats why these games were put on the xbox. there is one or two good loking games for the ps2 like god of war of gran turismo 4. the ps2 was successful for its game library. the ps2 has the most games.thats why its the most popular console,not for its graphics but for is games.
You contradicted yourself several times in this post. You also lied, or got wrong information from somewhere. Here's the benchmark scores for the 512MB 7800 GTX and F.E.A.R. @ 1600x1200 ~> http://anandtech.com/video/showdoc.aspx?i=2607&p=7

Regularly, it can run F.E.A.R. @ 60+ frames per seconds, but with 4xAA, it's at 30+, which is more than what you stated.

[CompGeek]

Besides, what you need to look at is 1280x960 benchies, because consoles only go to 1280x720 on the graphically intensive games. The Xenos isnt even capable of running FEAR @ 1280x720, yet the GTX512 can run it at 1600x1200.

[su37su]

PCs are already more powerful.

For $1500 you can have a better video card than PS3, 8x as much system RAM, 2x as much video RAM and a much more powerful CPU.

All developers agree that, had either console used a P4 or Athlon 64, they would be SIGNIFICANTLY ahead in terms of CPU performance.

The GTX512 is basically exactly what the RSX is, only it has nearly 3x the memory bandwidth and 2x the memory.

No console is even close to beating a high end PC in terms of capability.

So your saying that AMD and P4 are more powerfull CPUs then CELL.
and from reading the rest of your post I don't think you know what nextgen systems have under their hood.

[hoverbike]

The Cell can beat the Intel cpu's and AMD cpu's in most areas. The PS3 should be more powerful the the best PC out there at the time. I don't think PC's right now can beat the PS3 let alone match it.

[PeanutButterMunky]

The Cell can beat the Intel cpu's and AMD cpu's in most areas.
No it can't. It wasn't designed for the type of work that the Intel and AMD CPUs do.

[RajaF]

For games sake the Cell would most likely blow any general purpose x86 CPU out of the water. That is true. CompGeek the only CPU that will rival the Cell will be the 8 core ones set to come out in later 2009.

[Pink]

For games sake the Cell would most likely blow any general purpose x86 CPU out of the water. That is true. CompGeek the only CPU that will rival the Cell will be the 8 core ones set to come out in later 2009.

I'd be willing to bet that a top of the line duel core AMD processor could challenge the Cell in terms of performance if the game was coded directly for the processor. Remember PC games usually aren't using everything they can because they are programed for crappy computers as well.

[hoverbike]

The Cell can beat the Intel cpu's and AMD cpu's in most areas.
No it can't. It wasn't designed for the type of work that the Intel and AMD CPUs do.
I said in most areas not all. The thing is, 3.2 GHz may not "wow" many people but remember the Cell has something bigger then the others. It's just plain crazy what they can do with it.

[RajaF]

Well I'd love to see how a dedicated game code for the Athlon 64 FX-57 (the big boss) would stack up against Cell. I reallly would but it will never happen sadly.

EDIT: don't forget i'm probably the biggest AMD / ATI fanboy on this forum, it pains me to see either of them lag behind and my expectations bar of both companies is sky high (I was dissapointed with the ATI X1800XT although I did deffend it to the best of my abilities on every forum I am registered)

[CompGeek]

The cell has 7 SPEs, which are god for video/audio encoding and streaming. But the cell is very weak for general purpose, which is where desktop CPUs excel and what games need for physics and AI.

I know most of you would love to beleive all the power sony and MS raves about at E3 will overtake PCs, but it wont.

[hoverbike]

The cell has 7 SPEs, which are god for video/audio encoding and streaming. But the cell is very weak for general purpose, which is where desktop CPUs excel and what games need for physics and AI.
That's just a load of crap right there. Why would Sony make the Cell for the PS3 then??? (maybe even PC's one day). For gaming not for video/audio encoding and streaming. Sony would be killing themselves if the Cell couldn't game very well. Plus I have heard that from M$ and a lot of other places and I feel it's getting old now.

Physics is also a place where the PS3 and Cell will "excel" in. How can the Cell be weak for that?

[CompGeek]

The cell has 7 SPEs, which are god for video/audio encoding and streaming. But the cell is very weak for general purpose, which is where desktop CPUs excel and what games need for physics and AI.
That's just a load of crap right there. Why would Sony make the Cell for the PS3 then??? (maybe even PC's one day). For gaming not for video/audio encoding and streaming. Sony would be killing themselves if the Cell couldn't game very well. Plus I have heard that from M$ and a lot of other places and I feel it's getting old now.

Physics is also a place where the PS3 and Cell will "excel" in. How can the Cell be weak for that?

The CELL and Xenon are weak out of order CPUs, Desktop CPUs have 10+ times as much out of order power.

CELL was not designed FOR ps3, it was designed to be used in many things.

[hoverbike]

That's true but it's not that weak for general perpose. General perpose may be a tad bit slower but how does this affect gaming in a big way?

[CompGeek]

Physics and AI are out of order processes.



Microsoft's Xbox 360 & Sony's PlayStation 3 - Examples of Poor CPU
Performance

Date: June 29th, 2005
Author: Anand Lal Shimpi

"In our last article we had a fairly open-ended discussion about many of the
challenges facing both of the recently announced next-generation game
consoles. We discussed misconceptions about the Cell processor and its
ability to accelerate physics calculations, as well as touched on the GPUs
of both platforms. In the end, both the Xbox 360 and the PlayStation 3 are
much closer competitors than you would think based on first impressions.

The Xbox 360's Xenon CPU features more general purpose cores than the
PlayStation 3 (3 vs. 1), however game developers will most likely only be
using one of those cores for the majority of their calculations, leveling
the playing field considerably.

The Cell processor derives much of its power from its array of 7 SPEs
(Synergistic Processing Elements), however as we discovered in our last
article, their purpose is far more specialized than we had thought.
Speaking with Epic Games' head developer, Tim Sweeney, he provided a much
more balanced view of what sorts of tasks could take advantage of the Cell's
SPE array.

The GPUs of the next-generation platforms also proved to be quite
interesting. In Part I we speculated as to the true nature of NVIDIA's RSX
in the PS3, concluding that it's quite likely little more than a higher
clocked G70 GPU. We will expand on that discussion a bit more in this
article. We also looked at Xenos, the Xbox 360's GPU and characterized it
as equivalent to a very flexible 24-pipe R420. Despite the inclusion of the
10MB of embedded DRAM, Xenos and RSX ended up being quite similar in our
expectations for performance; and that pretty much summarized all of our
findings - the two consoles, although implementing very different
architectures, ended up being so very similar.

So we've concluded that the two platforms will probably end up performing
very similarly, but there was one very important element excluded from the
first article: a comparison to present-day PC architectures. The reason a
comparison to PC architectures is important is because it provides an
evaluation point to gauge the expected performance of these next-generation
consoles. We've heard countless times that these new consoles would offer
better gaming performance than anything we've had on the PC, or anything we
would have for a matter of years. Now it's time to actually put those
claims to the test, and that's exactly what we did.

Speaking under conditions of anonymity with real world game developers who
have had first hand experience writing code for both the Xbox 360 and
PlayStation 3 hardware (and dev kits where applicable), we asked them for
nothing more than their brutal honesty. What did they think of these new
consoles? Are they really outfitted with the PC-eclipsing performance we've
been lead to believe they have? The answer is actually quite frequently
found in history; as with anything, you get what you pay for.

Learning from Generation X
The original Xbox console marked a very important step in the evolution of
gaming consoles - it was the first console that was little more than a
Windows PC.

It featured a 733MHz Pentium III processor with a 128KB L2 cache, paired up
with a modified version of NVIDIA's nForce chipset (modified to support
Intel's Pentium III bus instead of the Athlon XP it was designed for). The
nForce chipset featured an integrated GPU, codenamed the NV2A, offering
performance very similar to that of a GeForce3. The system had a 5X PC DVD
drive and an 8GB IDE hard drive, and all of the controllers interfaced to
the console using USB cables with a proprietary connector.

For the most part, game developers were quite pleased with the original
Xbox. It offered them a much more powerful CPU, GPU and overall platform
than anything had before. But as time went on, there were definitely
limitations that developers ran into with the first Xbox.

One of the biggest limitations ended up being the meager 64MB of memory that
the system shipped with. Developers had asked for 128MB and the motherboard
even had positions silk screened for an additional 64MB, but in an attempt
to control costs the final console only shipped with 64MB of memory.

The next problem is that the NV2A GPU ended up not having the fill rate and
memory bandwidth necessary to drive high resolutions, which kept the Xbox
from being used as a HD console.

Although Intel outfitted the original Xbox with a Pentium III/Celeron hybrid
in order to improve performance yet maintain its low cost, at 733MHz that
quickly became a performance bottleneck for more complex games after the
console's introduction.

The combination of GPU and CPU limitations made 30 fps a frame rate target
for many games, while simpler titles were able to run at 60 fps. Split
screen play on Halo would even stutter below 30 fps depending on what was
happening on screen, and that was just a first-generation title. More
experience with the Xbox brought creative solutions to the limitations of
the console, but clearly most game developers had a wish list of things they
would have liked to have seen in the Xbox successor. Similar complaints
were levied against the PlayStation 2, but in some cases they were more
extreme (e.g. its 4MB frame buffer).

Given that consoles are generally evolutionary, taking lessons learned in
previous generations and delivering what the game developers want in order
to create the next-generation of titles, it isn't a surprise to see that a
number of these problems are fixed in the Xbox 360 and PlayStation 3.

One of the most important changes with the new consoles is that system
memory has been bumped from 64MB on the original Xbox to a whopping 512MB on
both the Xbox 360 and the PlayStation 3. For the Xbox, that's a factor of 8
increase, and over 12x the total memory present on the PlayStation 2.

The other important improvement with the next-generation of consoles is that
the GPUs have been improved tremendously. With 6 - 12 month product cycles,
it's no surprise that in the past 4 years GPUs have become much more
powerful. By far the biggest upgrade these new consoles will offer, from a
graphics standpoint, is the ability to support HD resolutions.

There are obviously other, less-performance oriented improvements such as
wireless controllers and more ubiquitous multi-channel sound support. And
with Sony's PlayStation 3, disc capacity goes up thanks to their embracing
the Blu-ray standard.

But then we come to the issue of the CPUs in these next-generation
consoles, and the level of improvement they offer. Both the Xbox 360 and
the PlayStation 3 offer multi-core CPUs to supposedly usher in a new era of
improved game physics and reality. Unfortunately, as we have found out, the
desire to bring multi-core CPUs to these consoles was made a reality at the
expense of performance in a very big way.

Problems with the Architecture
At the heart of both the Xenon and Cell processors is IBM's custom PowerPC
based core. We've discussed this core in our previous articles, but it is
best characterized as being quite simple. The core itself is a very narrow
2-issue in-order execution core, featuring a 64KB L1 cache (32K
instruction/32K data) and either a 1MB or 512KB L2 cache (for Xenon or Cell,
respectively). Supporting SMT, the core can execute two threads
simultaneously similar to a Hyper Threading enabled Pentium 4. The Xenon
CPU is made up of three of these cores, while Cell features just one.

Each individual core is extremely small, making the 3-core Xenon CPU in the
Xbox 360 smaller than a single core 90nm Pentium 4. While we don't have
exact die sizes, we've heard that the number is around 1/2 the size of the
90nm Prescott die.

IBM's pitch to Microsoft was based on the peak theoretical floating point
performance-per-dollar that the Xenon CPU would offer, and given Microsoft's
focus on cost savings with the Xbox 360, they took the bait.

While Microsoft and Sony have been childishly playing this flops-war,
comparing the 1 TFLOPs processing power of the Xenon CPU to the 2 TFLOPs
processing power of the Cell, the real-world performance war has already
been lost.

Right now, from what we've heard, the real-world performance of the Xenon
CPU is about twice that of the 733MHz processor in the first Xbox.
Considering that this CPU is supposed to power the Xbox 360 for the next 4 -
5 years, it's nothing short of disappointing. To put it in perspective,
floating point multiplies are apparently 1/3 as fast on Xenon as on a
Pentium 4.

The reason for the poor performance? The very narrow 2-issue in-order core
also happens to be very deeply pipelined, apparently with a branch predictor
that's not the best in the business. In the end, you get what you pay for,
and with such a small core, it's no surprise that performance isn't anywhere
near the Athlon 64 or Pentium 4 class.

The Cell processor doesn't get off the hook just because it only uses a
single one of these horribly slow cores; the SPE array ends up being fairly
useless in the majority of situations, making it little more than a waste of
die space.

We mentioned before that collision detection is able to be accelerated on
the SPEs of Cell, despite being fairly branch heavy. The lack of a branch
predictor in the SPEs apparently isn't that big of a deal, since most
collision detection branches are basically random and can't be predicted
even with the best branch predictor. So not having a branch predictor doesn't
hurt, what does hurt however is the very small amount of local memory
available to each SPE. In order to access main memory, the SPE places a DMA
request on the bus (or the PPE can initiate the DMA request) and waits for
it to be fulfilled. From those that have had experience with the PS3
development kits, this access takes far too long to be used in many real
world scenarios. It is the small amount of local memory that each SPE has
access to that limits the SPEs from being able to work on more than a
handful of tasks. While physics acceleration is an important one, there are
many more tasks that can't be accelerated by the SPEs because of the memory
limitation.

The other point that has been made is that even if you can offload some of
the physics calculations to the SPE array, the Cell's PPE ends up being a
pretty big bottleneck thanks to its overall lackluster performance. It's
akin to having an extremely fast GPU but without a fast CPU to pair it up
with.

What About Multithreading?
We of course asked the obvious question: would game developers rather have 3
slow general purpose cores, or one of those cores paired with an array of
specialized SPEs? The response was unanimous, everyone we have spoken to
would rather take the general purpose core approach.

Citing everything from ease of programming to the limitations of the SPEs we
mentioned previously, the Xbox 360 appears to be the more developer-friendly
of the two platforms according to the cross-platform developers we've spoken
to. Despite being more developer-friendly, the Xenon CPU is still not what
developers wanted.

The most ironic bit of it all is that according to developers, if either
manufacturer had decided to use an Athlon 64 or a Pentium D in their
next-gen console, they would be significantly ahead of the competition in
terms of CPU performance.

While the developers we've spoken to agree that heavily multithreaded game
engines are the future, that future won't really take form for another 3 - 5
years. Even Microsoft admitted to us that all developers are focusing on
having, at most, one or two threads of execution for the game engine
itself - not the four or six threads that the Xbox 360 was designed for.

Even when games become more aggressive with their multithreading, targeting
2 - 4 threads, most of the work will still be done in a single thread. It
won't be until the next step in multithreaded architectures where that
single thread gets broken down even further, and by that time we'll be
talking about Xbox 720 and PlayStation 4. In the end, the more
multithreaded nature of these new console CPUs doesn't help paint much of a
brighter performance picture - multithreaded or not, game developers are not
pleased with the performance of these CPUs.

What about all those Flops?
The one statement that we heard over and over again was that Microsoft was
sold on the peak theoretical performance of the Xenon CPU. Ever since the
announcement of the Xbox 360 and PS3 hardware, people have been set on
comparing Microsoft's figure of 1 trillion floating point operations per
second to Sony's figure of 2 trillion floating point operations per second
(TFLOPs). Any AnandTech reader should know for a fact that these numbers
are meaningless, but just in case you need some reasoning for why, let's
look at the facts.

First and foremost, a floating point operation can be anything; it can be
adding two floating point numbers together, or it can be performing a dot
product on two floating point numbers, it can even be just calculating the
complement of a fp number. Anything that is executed on a FPU is fair game
to be called a floating point operation.

Secondly, both floating point power numbers refer to the whole system, CPU
and GPU. Obviously a GPU's floating point processing power doesn't mean
anything if you're trying to run general purpose code on it and vice versa.
As we've seen from the graphics market, characterizing GPU performance in
terms of generic floating point operations per second is far from the full
performance story.

Third, when a manufacturer is talking about peak floating point performance
there are a few things that they aren't taking into account. Being able to
process billions of operations per second depends on actually being able to
have that many floating point operations to work on. That means that you
have to have enough bandwidth to keep the FPUs fed, no mispredicted
branches, no cache misses and the right structure of code to make sure that
all of the FPUs can be fed at all times so they can execute at their peak
rates. We already know that's not the case as game developers have already
told us that the Xenon CPU isn't even in the same realm of performance as
the Pentium 4 or Athlon 64. Not to mention that the requirements for
hitting peak theoretical performance are always ridiculous; caches are only
so big and thus there will come a time where a request to main memory is
needed, and you can expect that request to be fulfilled in a few hundred
clock cycles, where no floating point operations will be happening at all.

So while there may be some extreme cases where the Xenon CPU can hit its
peak performance, it sure isn't happening in any real world code.

The Cell processor is no different; given that its PPE is identical to one
of the PowerPC cores in Xenon, it must derive its floating point performance
superiority from its array of SPEs. So what's the issue with 218 GFLOPs
number (2 TFLOPs for the whole system)? Well, from what we've heard, game
developers are finding that they can't use the SPEs for a lot of tasks. So
in the end, it doesn't matter what peak theoretical performance of Cell's
SPE array is, if those SPEs aren't being used all the time.

Another way to look at this comparison of flops is to look at integer add
latencies on the Pentium 4 vs. the Athlon 64. The Pentium 4 has two double
pumped ALUs, each capable of performing two add operations per clock, that's
a total of 4 add operations per clock; so we could say that a 3.8GHz Pentium
4 can perform 15.2 billion operations per second. The Athlon 64 has three
ALUs each capable of executing an add every clock; so a 2.8GHz Athlon 64
can perform 8.4 billion operations per second. By this silly console
marketing logic, the Pentium 4 would be almost twice as fast as the Athlon
64, and a multi-core Pentium 4 would be faster than a multi-core Athlon 64.
Any AnandTech reader should know that's hardly the case. No code is
composed entirely of add instructions, and even if it were, eventually the
Pentium 4 and Athlon 64 will have to go out to main memory for data, and
when they do, the Athlon 64 has a much lower latency access to memory than
the P4. In the end, despite what these horribly concocted numbers may lead
you to believe, they say absolutely nothing about performance. The exact
same situation exists with the CPUs of the next-generation consoles; don't
fall for it.

Why did Sony/MS do it?
For Sony, it doesn't take much to see that the Cell processor is eerily
similar to the Emotion Engine in the PlayStation 2, at least conceptually.
Sony clearly has an idea of what direction they would like to go in, and it
doesn't happen to be one that's aligned with much of the rest of the
industry. Sony's past successes have really come, not because of the
hardware, but because of the developers and their PSX/PS2 exclusive titles.
A single hot title can ship hundreds of millions of consoles, and by our
count, Sony has had many more of those than Microsoft had with the first
Xbox.

Sony shipped around 4 times as many PlayStation 2 consoles as Microsoft did
Xboxes, regardless of the hardware platform, a game developer won't turn
down working with the PS2 - the install base is just that attractive. So
for Sony, the Cell processor may be strange and even undesirable for game
developers, but the developers will come regardless.

The real surprise was Microsoft; with the first Xbox, Microsoft listened
very closely to the wants and desires of game developers. This time around,
despite what has been said publicly, the Xbox 360's CPU architecture wasn't
what game developers had asked for.

They wanted a multi-core CPU, but not such a significant step back in single
threaded performance. When AMD and Intel moved to multi-core designs, they
did so at the expense of a few hundred MHz in clock speed, not by taking a
step back in architecture.

We suspect that a big part of Microsoft's decision to go with the Xenon core
was because of its extremely small size. A smaller die means lower system
costs, and if Microsoft indeed launches the Xbox 360 at $299 the Xenon CPU
will be a big reason why that was made possible.

Another contributing factor may be the fact that Microsoft wanted to own the
IP of the silicon that went into the Xbox 360. We seriously doubt that
either AMD or Intel would be willing to grant them the right to make Pentium
4 or Athlon 64 CPUs, so it may have been that IBM was the only partner
willing to work with Microsoft's terms and only with this one specific core.

Regardless of the reasoning, not a single developer we've spoken to thinks
that it was the right decision.

The Saving Grace: The GPUs
Although both manufacturers royally screwed up their CPUs, all developers
have agreed that they are quite pleased with the GPU power of the
next-generation consoles.

First, let's talk about NVIDIA's RSX in the PlayStation 3. We discussed the
possibility of RSX offloading vertex processing onto the Cell processor, but
more and more it seems that isn't the case. It looks like the RSX will
basically be a 90nm G70 with Turbo Cache running at 550MHz, and the
performance will be quite good.

One option we didn't discuss in the last article, was that the G70 GPU may
feature a number of disabled shader pipes already to improve yield. The
move to 90nm may allow for those pipes to be enabled and thus allowing for
another scenario where the RSX offers higher performance at the same
transistor count as the present-day G70. Sony may be hesitant to reveal the
actual number of pixel and vertex pipes in the RSX because honestly they
won't know until a few months before mass production what their final yields
will be.

Despite strong performance and support for 1080p, a large number of
developers are targeting 720p for their PS3 titles and won't support 1080p.
Those that are simply porting current-generation games over will have no
problems running at 1080p, but anyone working on a truly next-generation
title won't have the fill rate necessary to render at 1080p.

Another interesting point is that despite its lack of "free 4X AA" like the
Xbox 360, in some cases it won't matter. Titles that use longer pixel
shader programs end up being bound by pixel shader performance rather than
memory bandwidth, so the performance difference between no AA and 2X/4X AA
may end up being quite small. Not all titles will push the RSX to the
limits however, and those titles will definitely see a performance drop with
AA enabled. In the end, whether the RSX's lack of embedded DRAM matters
will be entirely dependent on the game engine being developed for the
platform. Games that make more extensive use of long pixel shaders will see
less of an impact with AA enabled than those that are more texture bound.
Game developers are all over the map on this one, so it wouldn't be fair to
characterize all of the games as falling into one category or another.

ATI's Xenos GPU is also looking pretty good and most are expecting
performance to be very similar to the RSX, but real world support for this
won't be ready for another couple of months. Developers have just recently
received more final Xbox 360 hardware, and gauging performance of the actual
Xenos GPU compared to the R420 based solutions in the G5 development kits
will take some time. Since the original dev kits offered significantly
lower performance, developers will need a bit of time to figure out what
realistic limits the Xenos GPU will have.

Final Words
Just because these CPUs and GPUs are in a console doesn't mean that we
should throw away years of knowledge from the PC industry - performance
doesn't come out of thin air, and peak performance is almost never achieved.
Clever marketing however, will always try to fool the consumer.

And that's what we have here today, with the Xbox 360 and PlayStation 3.
Both consoles are marketed to be much more powerful than they actually are,
and from talking to numerous game developers it seems that the real world
performance of these platforms isn't anywhere near what it was supposed to
be.

It looks like significant advancements in game physics won't happen on
consoles for another 4 or 5 years, although it may happen with PC games much
before that.

It's not all bad news however; the good news is that both GPUs are quite
possibly the most promising part of the new consoles. With the performance
that we have seen from NVIDIA's G70, we have very high expectations for the
360 and PS3. The ability to finally run at HD resolutions in all games will
bring a much needed element to console gaming.

And let's not forget all of the other improvements to these next-generation
game consoles. The CPUs, despite being relatively lackluster, will still be
faster than their predecessors and increased system memory will give
developers more breathing room. Then there are other improvements such as
wireless controllers, better online play and updated game engines that will
contribute to an overall better gaming experience.

In the end, performance could be better, the consoles aren't what they could
have been had the powers at be made some different decisions. While they
will bring better quality games to market and will be better than their
predecessors, it doesn't look like they will be the end of PC gaming any
more than the Xbox and PS2 were when they were launched. The two markets
will continue to coexist, with consoles being much easier to deal with, and
PCs offering some performance-derived advantages.

With much more powerful CPUs and, in the near future, more powerful GPUs,
the PC paired with the right developers should be able to bring about that
revolution in game physics and graphics we've been hoping for. Consoles
will help accelerate the transition to multithreaded gaming, but it looks
like it will take PC developers to bring about real change in things like
game physics, AI and other non-visual elements of gaming. "


http://groups.google.com/group/alt.games.video.sony-playstation2/msg/62ff83d96ea78ea9?hl=en

Originally posted by Anandtech, but removed due to the controversy it caused.

[Ryunosuke]

It's been posted before and if you look for the other articles on consoles at Anandtech you can tell they and the majority of their forum posters greatly despise consoles and console gamers.

[CompGeek]

Their hardware review soon after e3 is one of the most highly respected on the net.

Anandtech is one of the most adept hardware sites that exists.

Of course, most console lovers would like to beleive that they're liars, and of course devs lied to them about what they thought of the console hardware.

And yes, of course its been posted before, but hoverbike asked... so..

[Ryunosuke]

I got the PC vs Console article from tomshardware mixed up with one of the articles from anandtech. I didn't even say they were liars, just that they (not to as much as I thought they was) and the majority of PC sites try to paint consoles in as much negative light as they can. Its even clear in the article you posted they don't really like consoles and some of the claims have already been proven false.

[hoverbike]

And yes, of course its been posted before, but hoverbike asked... so..
They took it down for good reason. The reason I think is because it doesn't matter and most of it is slander.

[CompGeek]

I got the PC vs Console article from tomshardware mixed up with one of the articles from anandtech. I didn't even say they were liars, just that they (not to as much as I thought they was) and the majority of PC sites try to paint consoles in as much negative light as they can. Its even clear in the article you posted they don't really like consoles and some of the claims have already been proven false.
Like what claims?

If their claims are false why dont console games look better?

Why dont any 360 games have decent physics?

[Ryunosuke]

The claims are not just about the 360, they also claimed the same stuff about the PS3. Just look at what has been shown on the PS3 with such early dev kits, do you still believe the article when it says that physics will not appear on the consoles? And to be fair to the 360, it is still too early to tell what it will be capable of in a year or 2. Just look at the PS2, there have been games out the pass year or 2 that no one thought would be possible on it.

I also severely doubt the AI is going to be as bad as they make it out to be in the article.

[PeanutButterMunky]

Why dont any 360 games have decent physics?
It just came out. What kind of a comment is this?



That's true but it's not that weak for general perpose. General perpose may be a tad bit slower but how does this affect gaming in a big way?
It's not a tad bit slower for general purpose computing. I'm not sure what articles you've been reading.

[CompGeek]

Um well lets see. The "much less powerful" pc has no trouble doing this on its "much less optimized" self. Why should we have to wait?

[Ryunosuke]

Um well lets see. The "much less powerful" pc has no trouble doing this on its "much less optimized" self. Why should we have to wait?

Who is that to and what about? I hope your not suggesting that about the physics.

[CompGeek]

Um well lets see. The "much less powerful" pc has no trouble doing this on its "much less optimized" self. Why should we have to wait?

Who is that to and what about? I hope your not suggesting that about the physics.
O but I am, and AI.

[Ryunosuke]

If PCs are so good with physics or even as good as the PS3 is, then why the need for physic chips? There was stuff being done with the Cell at E3, that at the time most top PCs would struggle with.

Why in the world do you think a company would spend billions on something if they could just spend a very small fraction of the cost for an AMD or Intel that is better (according to you)?

[CompGeek]

If PCs are so good with physics or even as good as the PS3 is, then why the need for physic chips? There was stuff being done with the Cell at E3, that at the time most top PCs would struggle with.

Why in the world do you think a company would spend billions on something if they could just spend a very small fraction of the cost for an AMD or Intel that is better (according to you)?
I didnt see any real time physics on either system at e3, or nothing more than extremely basic such as the GTA clone.

[PeanutButterMunky]

I didnt see any real time physics on either system at e3, or nothing more than extremely basic such as the GTA clone.
That isn't even a point to be made. The 360 just came out and there are only a few available games. A lot of the E3 videos weren't even finished games. I don't see what you're trying to get at here. Just because you haven't seen anything yet doesn't mean consoles are incapable of physics in games.

[Ryunosuke]

Then you need to catch up on your PS3 info, while there wasn't much on the physics side at E3 (there has been since E3 though) there was much more than just GTA clone stuff, there was some truly impressive stuff done and you should really check some of it out.

Just take a look at the statements from Ageia, the PS3 is capable of stuff with the Cell alone that a PC will need a physics chip to do.

The fact that consoles are much more optimized than PCs is what allows them to do more with less, take that into consideration with the fact that at the moment consoles also have the advantage spec wise.

[CompGeek]

Console do NOT have the advantage spec wise.

If consoles are so optimized then WHY do we have to wait for physics??Q!??!

[Ryunosuke]

Ok, after your last post I now know don't matter what I or anyone else posts your response will be similar.

The reason why we haven't seen more physics is that it takes time to make the games and most of the games for the 360 at the moment are either ports, rushed out to meet the launch date, or was developed for other consoles but switched over to a next gen console so they wasn't designed for physics.

There has already been physics shown on the PS3, but I don't know how much the games will have at launch. We are talking about new technology and something that hasn't really been done much in games (physics).

I haven't really seen anything on the PC that is capable of this physics you are talking about they are capable of. After what we have seen with the Xbox, PS2, and even the Gamecube I don't know how you can question the consoles abilities due to it being optimized.

[su37su]

I have to Agree with Ryunosuke, it looks like no matter how much proofe you guys give him, he will not except it. from reading all of his posts he looks like a PC fan.

From what I've heard and read about the Cell, it preety much says it that PC CPUs can not compete with Cell for a while.

[CompGeek]

You guys need to read this again, because you ARE the consumer that beleives this:



Final Words
Just because these CPUs and GPUs are in a console doesn't mean that we
should throw away years of knowledge from the PC industry - performance
doesn't come out of thin air, and peak performance is almost never achieved.
Clever marketing however, will always try to fool the consumer.

And that's what we have here today, with the Xbox 360 and PlayStation 3.
Both consoles are marketed to be much more powerful than they actually are,
and from talking to numerous game developers it seems that the real world
performance of these platforms isn't anywhere near what it was supposed to
be.

It looks like significant advancements in game physics won't happen on
consoles for another 4 or 5 years, although it may happen with PC games much
before that.

[Steroyd]

they're the PC fanboys from IGN i presume.

someone really needs to read up on their home work on Cell, Cell and Xennon are highly efficent where PC's only use 70% of it's overall power Consoles use 90%+

PS3 was designed to be a PC for games, and general purpose stuff as a second, where as PC's it's the other way round.PC's won't be able to do MGS4 for a while, just give up that argument.

Xbox 360 was pitiful from the start, i even criticised it's best looking game being a PC game, that's how lackluster it is, and they're other eagerly anticipated game iis Gears of war which will undoubtably end up on the PC platform also.

But yeah it is the Xbox 360's launch, and i havn't seen PC's do physics calculations on par with Cell at the moment, maybe that's why they need the Aegia PPU. :P

[su37su]

That article is full of crap,
so were suppost to believe what that article is saying and not to the companies that developled the hardware for the NextGen Consoles?
If Pcs are so powerfull right now then Why do I need to update my hardware every 1 or 2 years to play top of the line games, when on consoles games just get better and better every year with out upgrading your system.

[CompGeek]

All I can say is, you've been eating MS and Sony BS like the bread of life, and now that you are full of it its impossible to reason with you.

I for one want a next gen console, but it wont compare to my PC.

[JordanL]

All I can say is, you've been eating MS and Sony BS like the bread of life, and now that you are full of it its impossible to reason with you.

I for one want a next gen console, but it wont compare to my PC.

Do you know anything about x86 architecture? It's concievably possible that you could have better physics once you put your physics card in, but you'll be watching them in worse graphics until the computer industry finally lets go of its dated x86 architecture. From another post I made:


Computers are built to process network communications, text documents, and most of the games available. Computers are not built for graphics, and the industries inability to provide things like integrated video and memory busses, as well as the fact that all video of PCs still use IRQs, shows how they are not built to be optimized.

Computers are powerful, but you are paying the extra $500-1000 for flexibility, not performance. The Cell/RSX will just plain push more polygons, more bump maps, more physics, more AI, more shaders, more frames and more effects than PCs will be able to do, probably even physically, let alone within a reasonable price, for at least a year after it launches. Gaming is too much based on Windows, and Windows squanders too many resources for computers to really shine like their "power" makes you think they should. The same goes for the 360. It's architecture alone allows it more scalability than computers currently, and I blame the fact that its current games look like PC games on the devs, not the hardware ATM.

The 90s were about integrating everything into a single device, but this isn't the 90s, so stop thinking in that mindset. You lose power by opting for flexibility, and its clearly evident that certain tasks are better performed by dedicated products, gaming being one of them.

Until the entire way hardware talks to each other on an x86 architecture chages, your stipulation that computers will always brow-beat consoles is a pipe-dream.

Your name is "Comp Geek", but you should really look into doing some A+ training or something. Traditional computers have too much overhead they sacrifice for flexibility.

[CompGeek]

All I can say is, you've been eating MS and Sony BS like the bread of life, and now that you are full of it its impossible to reason with you.

I for one want a next gen console, but it wont compare to my PC.

Do you know anything about x86 architecture? It's concievably possible that you could have better physics once you put your physics card in, but you'll be watching them in worse graphics until the computer industry finally lets go of its dated x86 architecture. From another post I made:


Computers are built to process network communications, text documents, and most of the games available. Computers are not built for graphics, and the industries inability to provide things like integrated video and memory busses, as well as the fact that all video of PCs still use IRQs, shows how they are not built to be optimized.

Computers are powerful, but you are paying the extra $500-1000 for flexibility, not performance. The Cell/RSX will just plain push more polygons, more bump maps, more physics, more AI, more shaders, more frames and more effects than PCs will be able to do, probably even physically, let alone within a reasonable price, for at least a year after it launches. Gaming is too much based on Windows, and Windows squanders too many resources for computers to really shine like their "power" makes you think they should. The same goes for the 360. It's architecture alone allows it more scalability than computers currently, and I blame the fact that its current games look like PC games on the devs, not the hardware ATM.

The 90s were about integrating everything into a single device, but this isn't the 90s, so stop thinking in that mindset. You lose power by opting for flexibility, and its clearly evident that certain tasks are better performed by dedicated products, gaming being one of them.

Until the entire way hardware talks to each other on an x86 architecture chages, your stipulation that computers will always brow-beat consoles is a pipe-dream.

Your name is "Comp Geek", but you should really look into doing some A+ training or something. Traditional computers have too much overhead they sacrifice for flexibility.

I realize PCs have this problem, which is one of their great downfalls. But PC has enough extra RAW power to make up for it. There is nothing wrong with x86 architecture, in fact, PowerPC cores are MUCH weaker at any type of general purpose use.

[JordanL]

I realize PCs have this problem, which is one of their great downfalls. But PC has enough extra RAW power to make up for it. There is nothing wrong with x86 architecture, in fact, PowerPC cores are MUCH weaker at any type of general purpose use.

Yes, but general purpose use. They don't have more raw power, they have more flexible power, and that is a very big difference, especially in computing.

[CompGeek]

Dude, you dont know what you are talking about. You should quit now.

[gtecartman]

Why are we arguing that a PC will be better or worse than the PS3? Point is that the PS3 will cost sub $500, and there is no PC for that price that can compete at all. With that said, there will come a time when the PC world can throw over 2 grand into a system and get equal if not better graphics. It's a never ending thing. I just don't see why people are debating this.

Even if you have a Game System and a PC with exactly the same parts and such... the game system will win due to it not running an OS and other apps.

[CompGeek]

Why are we arguing that a PC will be better or worse than the PS3? Point is that the PS3 will cost sub $500, and there is no PC for that price that can compete at all. With that said, there will come a time when the PC world can throw over 2 grand into a system and get equal if not better graphics. It's a never ending thing. I just don't see why people are debating this.

Even if you have a Game System and a PC with exactly the same parts and such... the game system will win due to it not running an OS and other apps.
I wasn't debating that, the PC has BETTER specs though if u sink $1500 in.

[gtecartman]

Alright fine.... either way that is three times the cost of the PS3. You get what you pay for, and the gaming system is more power per dollar spent.

[JordanL]

Dude, you dont know what you are talking about. You should quit now.

:lol:

Dude, I do this for a living. You can think what you want, but the truth is independent of your opinion, and the truth is that the Cell architecture outperforms x86 PCs in almost every aspect, especially gaming.

I don't know what I'm talking about? Sorry, I've only been doing this for over half my life. It's not like its my profession or anything. :roll:

[PS Gamer]

To say the least, nobody's CPU will "Obliterate" the next gen. console cpus. The 360 is using a tri core, in which there are no tri core processors in PC CPUs (yet).

Same goes with the cell.

Another thing, you don't see the CPUs of personal computers, doing TFLOPS.

[CompGeek]

To say the least, nobody's CPU will "Obliterate" the next gen. console cpus. The 360 is using a tri core, in which there are no tri core processors in PC CPUs (yet).

Same goes with the cell.

Another thing, you don't see the CPUs of personal computers, doing TFLOPS.
TFLOPS mean nothing in real world performance, thats why.


And I respect Anandtech, a highly respected and proven website, much more than some guy who "claims" to do IT work, yet doesn't even know about CPU architecture half as much as he thinks he does.

I also happen to work at a tech company, I am not the IT guy, but I was their before our IT guy and did a lot of the stuff he did besides programming before he was here. I do know some C++, but I'm not advanced in it.

[JordanL]

To say the least, nobody's CPU will "Obliterate" the next gen. console cpus. The 360 is using a tri core, in which there are no tri core processors in PC CPUs (yet).

Same goes with the cell.

Another thing, you don't see the CPUs of personal computers, doing TFLOPS.
TFLOPS mean nothing in real world performance, thats why.


And I respect Anandtech, a highly respected and proven website, much more than some guy who "claims" to do IT work, yet doesn't even know about CPU architecture half as much as he thinks he does.

I also happen to work at a tech company, I am not the IT guy, but I was their before our IT guy and did a lot of the stuff he did besides programming before he was here. I do know some C++, but I'm not advanced in it.

Yes, that's it. I don't know, you're just too smart for me. :lol:

...

And if this is your profession too, why in God's name did you pay $1500 for your computer.

[hoverbike]

TFLOPS mean nothing in real world performance, thats why.
If it means nothing then why are supercomputers ranked by the TFLOPS alone? Why when people say Ghz means nothing as well?

[RajaF]

OK don't mess my thread up. This is a pure theoretical thread to show some rigs that will pass the PS3 in performance based on sheer graphic power. No CPU comparisons here please. None of you guys have any idea how a quad core CPU will handle itself in benches or how much the FSB will evolve. Hell FlexIO might become a PC standard before 2008. So please the thread wa supposed to be imaginary rigs. Stick to that please, I don't want this locked.

[JordanL]

TFLOPS mean nothing in real world performance, thats why.
If it means nothing then why are supercomputers ranked by the TFLOPS alone? Why when people say Ghz means nothing as well?

What he means by real world performance is most computer apps. Things like games, Maya, Photoshop, etc. do indeed have improvements when you get increased FLOPS performance.

Me and a friend of mine are working on writing our own gaming engine at the moment, (for use with apps our company is going to create). Trust me, FLOPS do matter in games. So unless you plan to run Windows and Word on your PS3, his "real world performance" quip means little. FLOPS isn't the end all beat all way to measure performance, but its not inaccurate, especially for certain types of apps.


Hell FlexIO might become a PC standard before 2008.

That's unlikely considering its part of the patent that Sony owns.

[RajaF]

That's unlikely considering its part of the patent that Sony owns.

And if Cell goes to PC? What would your imaginary rig look like?

[JordanL]

That's unlikely considering its part of the patent that Sony owns.

And if Cell goes to PC? What would your imaginary rig look like?

You mean if Sony licenses IBM to make desktops? Hmmmm... you'd have to use completely different interfaces for things like graphics cards and such... I'm not sure what would be available.

[RajaF]

Ugh, use the old third eye damn it. What would make you droll buckets right now?

[Firewarrior]

There is no point in saying PC is gonna thrash Consoles EVERYONE KNOWS THAT PC can be modded while Consoles cannot so they get powerfull everytime while Console stay the same for time :shock: :wink:

[The_Only]

Live on site.

Source: http://www.videogaming247.com/2008/04/1 ... al-kombat/ (http://www.videogaming247.com/2008/04/18/fatalities-out-of-new-mortal-kombat/)

[luxurys]

Can you post an update in the article about our rumor.

Basically I was told that Mortal Kombat was going back to the 2D era, but will be sporting highly detailed graphics.

[The_Only]

Ah damn, did I not cover that? sorry, will do it now.

[The_Only]

done.

[JDawg5000]

2D, I heard that they are taking out fatalities and blood, that wouldn't be like the old school mortal combat :)

[BustenRhymes7790]

Edited a sentence

They way you worded it implied that there wouldn't be "little to no blood." As nice as that would be it wasn't what you were trying to say lol.

[The_Only]

Crap, thanks Eric - sorry about that!