|
|
|
PS3 will outsell Wii, Xbox 360 handily, says firm
|
|
The following comments relate to this news article:
article published on 9 March, 2010
An analytics firm, the Strategy Analytics Connected Home Devices (SACHD) has released a forecasting report that says the Sony PlayStation 3 will eventually outsell the Xbox 360 and the Wii, on route to 127 million units sold.
The "Taming the Waves: Games Console Life Cycles and Platform Competition," report says that Sony's PS3 will surpass the Wii eventually despite a giant gap now, ... [ read the full article ]
Please read the original article before posting your comments.
|
|
autolycus
Newbie
|
13. March 2010 @ 03:42 |
Link to this message
|
I do admit, its been awhile since i've delved wayyyy too deep into the PS3 architecture, so I may have some spiderwebs there. I read you link and while its good that is has RAMBUS XDR ram, you need more than 256 MB of RAM, especially in today's games w/ the amount of textures that are loaded in at out (which are in 480p on both systems, for reference). The problem is, the compiler, writes textures in and out of the ram and if you try to share that 256MB SYSTEM RAM w/ the the 256MB of video ram, you run into latency issues along with now having to keep track of the used ram from the "system" cache. Yes the speed of loading the textures in and out and presenting them on screen will be faster, but it's still hindered by the loading and unloading of the textures into the pipelines from the video RAM.
I agree with you that it's nice that it has faster ram on the 16 (if i remember correctly) pipelines (there might be 8 pipelines sorry for being foggy this morning) but again, slower ram and more ram would've been the better option.
And regarding my statement about developers not being able to take advantage of, I think you are missing my point. If the developer could write to each core individually and have its own access, you'd see developers being able to squeeze the world out of it. But you can't on the PS3. You send audio to processor(which is the PPE), processor (PPE) sends to available SPE. Okay now you have to load textures to model(gpu) and fill textured model to screen(gpu), and all the computation to figure out which model should move to where and what the lighting should be, to send the instructions back to the GPU, etc etc etc all gets sent to the SAME PPE. (the PPE is the main controlling processor, i had them backwards in my previous posts, sorry i get em backwards sometimes). Okay collision detection, sent to the same PPE. User input, PPE. Algorithms now... PPE. Objects, PPE, etc etc etc.
Point being is, the developer never gets a chance to say, "take this code and have processor (spe) 2,4, 6 do this. Have processor 1,3,5 do this" (7th processor is the FULL core aka PPE that controls what the SPE's are doing)
That too me, SUCKS. If Sony really wanted to come up with something truly awesome, they'd give the developers the control instead of the PPE being the manager of it all.
Dude, someone told me today that Insomniac games is going multiplatform (maker of Resistance 2). Heard anything about this?
I also tried searching to see if the PS3 SDK allows developers to write to the individual SPE's yet so they can do better stream processing (which writing a game in this manner is hella difficult, but that is the only benefit of the multi cores these days) and i wasn't able to find anything that said they can. I remember reading about a year ago that Sony was going to release something that would allow developers but now I cant find anything on it... so who knows maybe its allowed now, but I doubt it as I have read some relatively recent articles that say otherwise.
Your empty, uninformed, comment makes you a fanboy. Yes even you, who thinks they arent a fanboy.
This message has been edited since posting. Last time this message was edited on 13. March 2010 @ 04:01
|
|
Advertisement
|
 |
|
|
|
autolycus
Newbie
|
13. March 2010 @ 04:07 |
Link to this message
|
Oh I just found some info from IBM's site ( http://www.ibm.com/developerworks/library/pa-specode1/ )
---quote---
The biggest speed obstacle for the SPEs is code with a lot of branches. On the SPE, only one branch hint can be active at a time. The SPE has no hardware for branch prediction (it simply predicts, in the absence of a hint, that the branch will not be taken), and a mispredicted branch can cost 18 cycles. This means that code with lots of vtable lookups (like object-oriented code), lots of function calls, or lots of conditionals could in fact run slower on the SPE than on the PPE.
---end quote---
And here is where this is BAD for gaming (this article is about trying to access each individual SPE on a later version of the CELL processor that isn't available in the PS3 (that I know of)
A Branch would be considered (if this do that) a second branch would be (if that do this). So if you branch out and have any other if else statement, the SPE can't handle it ( as all tasks have to be in-order processing). Since video game are all object oriented, this is where the CELL was DIRECTLY not meant to be used for video games (performance wise). Because all games are heaving in branch writing/predictions and object oriented code., leaving us back to what i said originally, SHORT BURST algorithms is where the CELL owns...not in gaming. either way, its been a good conversation we've had and it'll be interesting to see where things end up on the system dual side of things. World wide, Sony is coming on hard strong (i agree with you on that), but in the U.S. Sony is still in trouble.
Your empty, uninformed, comment makes you a fanboy. Yes even you, who thinks they arent a fanboy.
|
Senior Member
|
13. March 2010 @ 13:39 |
Link to this message
|
I've become more interested in actually purchasing a PS3 lately... but only for certain exclusives and the fact that it will round out my collection (can't be bothered with the Wii tho, even people I know who own one can't be).
However, an Australian (region locked) PS3 Slim costs >$365 USD here, coz we'll pay that apparently, so Sony will just have to wait longer for my filthy lucre.
But M$ may miss out too (in a way). I discovered the superlative Xpadder and made a kick-ass controller profile for Bioshock2 on my PC (with selective rumble, I might add)... I really can't go back to 720p gaming {in general} no matter how many times it's sinc filter anti-aliased.
It was sad but the difference was astounding... not just the resolution either. So the winner, for me, is a new dual GPU graphics card.
I won't be adding to those PS3 sale figures for a while yet still it seems.
@autolycus I really appreciated your efforts man, they've been very enjoyable and informative to read. But like "W" said you're just gonna be missunderestimated here, heh. Btw, gaming in 1080p on a 50" screen is really lovely, so I can't agree that HDTV is a total fail.
Its a lot easier being righteous than right.
DSE VZ300-
Zilog Z80 CPU, 32KB RAM (16K+16K cartridge), video processor 6847, 2KB video RAM, 16 colours (text mode), 5.25" FDD
This message has been edited since posting. Last time this message was edited on 13. March 2010 @ 19:13
|
Moderator
16 product reviews
|
13. March 2010 @ 17:39 |
Link to this message
|
After going over and re-reading everything I wrote as well as what you did I noticed you really don't answer any of my questions or respond to the facts I have given so there is no point in wasting my time and effort of giving valid information with proof to back it up. Though I will just re-iterate one thing and quote myself as I have said more than enough already for anyone who wants to learn something ~
Quote:
Specifications and stats (which are correct I do agree) are not the same as real world application or usage; and the real world shows us that the PS3's capabilities in ALL aspects (speed, power, throughput and more) is unrivaled for a console. Bar none. This cannot be denied nor just brushed off with a slighted opinion about the difficulties in programming/using the Cell's architecture. It is not 2007 anymore and the proof is clearly visible with each AAA exclusive title that seems to come out quite regularly as of late, just as previous gens have.
@ below ~ I was just re-quoting myself as I didn't want to get into just another big discussion just to waste "breath". I gave out my info and so did he, anyone can take it which ever way they interpret it. But when you read between the lines in what is actually said in reference to my questions, explanations, links and proof it is a bit of a "round and round we go" with more opinion from auto than what is "real". So I just don't want to bother with it anymore and avoid an argument but can deal with the disagreement just fine. After all this time if people still want to "believe" what they want over what is proven or what they see ~ then fine. Time will tell. And all information shows what I link to as to the standings when looked at with more than just opinion to make claims.
This message has been edited since posting. Last time this message was edited on 14. March 2010 @ 20:02
|
|
Advertisement
|
|
|
Senior Member
|
13. March 2010 @ 19:49 |
Link to this message
|
|
autolycus had not "...denied nor just brushed off with a slighted opinion about the difficulties in programming/using the Cell's architecture". That is patently quite unfair.
Its a lot easier being righteous than right.
DSE VZ300-
Zilog Z80 CPU, 32KB RAM (16K+16K cartridge), video processor 6847, 2KB video RAM, 16 colours (text mode), 5.25" FDD
|
|
