Xbox 360 Gpu Vs. Ps3 Gpu, Interesting article in this month's EDGE Options

[alex]

Thought those of you who haven't read this month's EDGE might appreciate this. As a 360 owner possibly thinking of getting a PS3 I found it pretty interesting... Realistically, I never believed the PS3 GPU would be able to produce visuals on par with the Killzone and Motorstorm videos, but apparently there's more to it than that... I'll apologize for any typos in advance...

"Q&A: Richard Huddy European developer relations manager, ATI

How do you think your work on the 360 measures up to PS3?

I take a fairly robust view on this. The Xbox 360 GPU is designed to be a console GPU - that's what we set out to produce when we started the collaboration with Microsoft; let's build a really powerful, really flexible kind of general purpose GPU which doesn't have performance cliffs where if you do certain things suddenly the performance crashes down by a factor of two or something like that; let's have things pretty predictable and easy to work with, and let's generate about the best performance that we can- so we went for things like the unified shaders and so on. The PS3 has been designed in a quite different way because of the way the process worked. We sat down with Microsoft and said: 'This is what we think we can build', and they said: 'Yes, but what about...?' And they started picking holes in our design, so we came up with a collaborative design. They didn't put a spec in front of us and say: 'How much for this?' That definitely wasn't the dialogue - in fact that would make it more of a monologue; it would be kind of bidding on prices and so on. Instead what we have is a very collaborative design.

With the PS3 my understanding of what happened is that they had three different internal hardware solutions - at one point, for example, as I understand it there was a proposal to use multiple Cell processors just to handle the graphics. And towards the end of the process, as the story goes, they took a look at the three internal tenders and decided than none of them would actually do; none of them would deliver the kind of performance and quality that games programmers could use and would make for a good cost-effective console, so they had to go out and shop around. And one of the places they shopped was Nvidia, and what Nvidia did was say: 'Well, you've got this relatively short timeframe, you've got roughly this kind of budget, I'll tell you what we'll do: we'll do you a good price on what is essentially the 7800GTX'. So that's a PC chip, and if you look at the architecture of the two consoles you can see we've done bizarre things that they haven't. We've built ten megabytes of dedicated ED RAM which knows how to antialias and so on, because that's a specific way of addressing a console's problem. It's bizarre in a PC sense but a special skill for a console builder. Whereas the PS3 has 256 meg of system memory and 256 meg of graphics memory it communicates through what is effectively a PCI express bus. It uses GDDR3 fast memory, it's essentially a PC graphics design bolted on to a Cell processor and 256 meg of fast system memory...

You make it sound so unrefined!

[Laughs.] Well, yeah, but the tragedy is that it is unrefined. There's a lot brute force in there - I'd be the last person to admit it, but the truth is that the 7800GTX is a pretty powerful piece of hardware, but it's not very elegant, it hasn't got the kind of: 'Well, how do we design this to be the best possible console we can build for this money?' Instead it's been put together at the end of quite a complicated process. We have two very different design processes. If Microsoft had come to us and said: 'All right, what are we going to do about this graphics chip, then? Let's sign the contract and let's go', but then we'd got two thirds through and they'd said: 'Look, you guys aren't going to deliver - now what are you going to do?' and then walked away from us, they would have ended up with a design very much like the PS3 in some essential characteristics - it would have had to use bought-in components. And our GPUs instead are custom-designed components, and that's one of the fundamental reasons why I think Xbox 360 technology is likely to outperform PlayStation 3 technology by a pretty healthy margin in the long run.

So how about this one: can those E3 PS3 demos be achieved on Xbox 360?

Well, why not take another combative line here? I think it's more likely that they can be realised on an Xbox 360 than they can be on a PS3. Those things are movies generated using whatever DCC software the houses had in mind. The Epic demo was running on a PC, and it was done using an early 7800 in SLI mode, so that was a high-end PC demo, but the movies were generated as movies and dressed up as: 'This is what you can expect from a PS3', but that's probably overstating what the PS3 can do a little bit. Indeed, it's well beyond what we expect the PS3 to be able to do. So I guess we'll just have to see what happens..."

Merry Xmas,

Alex.

[Vezna]

our GPUs instead are custom-designed components, and that's one of the fundamental reasons why I think Xbox 360 technology is likely to outperform PlayStation 3 technology by a pretty healthy margin in the long run.

:o

That's a statement and a half.

[Hitcher]

But look at the Killzone demo!

[Big Loud Mouth]

Yeah but what do you expect an ATI guy to say?
"Our GPU is shite, buy a PS3, Killzone" FAP FAP FAP FAP.

[Vezna]

Yeah but what do you expect an ATI guy to say?

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True but he did basically say the PS3 / multiple cell processors is an ambitious project and no one knows if the pay off will be worth it.

[Big Loud Mouth]

True but he did basically say the PS3 / multiple cell processors is an ambitious project and no one knows if the pay off will be worth it.
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I know, but but what's the point in having this discussion based on an interview with one of the guys who designed the 360 gpu? An interview with a Nvidia guy as well would make slightly less pointless, even then I don't think you'd be able to have an intelligent debate on this subject.

What we need are the opinions of developers who have worked with both systems, only then could people start making reasonable judgements about the comparitive power of the two systems.

At the moment, surely it's all going to be speculation and maddening fanboi comments? IE: a load of bollocks.

[Beertiger]

At the moment, surely it's all going to be speculation and maddening fanboi comments? IE: a load of bollocks.
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Well in the real unbiased world all we've had is Carmack saying "360 for the win. 11111!!!1111!!! Development tools wooo" and Kojima saying that there is very little difference in power between the two.

[Dandy_Sephy]

But look at the Killzone demo!
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which has been blown completely out of proportion...

I mean FFS just look at PDZ then use a bit of intelligence and people will see its not that implausible. Heck Gears of war doesnt look far off the killzone trailer

Oh and the Ati guy did admit the Nvidia chip is a well designed peice of gear, so there is some aspect of competition there rather then a complete bias.

[Bluetooth]

European developer relations manager, ATI
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Opinion deemed null and void

[Big Loud Mouth]

Well in the real unbiased world all we've had is Carmack saying "360 for the win. 11111!!!1111!!! Development tools wooo" and Kojima saying that there is very little difference in power between the two.
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We'll find out the truth of the matter a bit closer to PS3 release (and beyond, obviuosly). Although I seriously doubt there are many people out there who know how much power the PS3 will have. And haven't Sony been making a bit more of an effort this time with the development tool side of things? They seem to be making quite a few deals with the 3rd parties who are in the business of creating development tools.

Kojima is probably right, but I'll reserve judgement until I've seen the PS3 in action. (saying that, I haven't been blown away by the 360's graphics.... yet)

[Adverse_Camber]

http://www.jolt.co.uk/index.php?articleid=5195

[Quexex]

Funny this as the GPU for the PS3 has yet to be finallised as far as I know anyway. I would have thought that Sony would have their paws on a 360 and have worked out how to best it!

Cheers

Quexex

[Tommo]

Funny this as the GPU for the PS3 has yet to be finallised as far as I know anyway. I would have thought that Sony would have their paws on a 360 and have worked out how to best it!
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It pretty much better be if they really are going to launch in 'Spring 2006', that's only 3-4 months away...!

[Gwynster]

To be honest, I was expecting the 360 to be the more GPU-capable just because it was a custom chip. That's always going to be the way it works.

I very much doubt any differences between the machines will be visible at all, though. CPU power is a far bigger factor of this generation, and I suspect that's too high to matter in both cases as well.

[Gwynster]

It pretty much better be if they really are going to launch in 'Spring 2006', that's only 3-4 months away...!
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That's just a cynical Sony marketing ploy that will probably work. They'll keep pushing the date back by just long enough that anyone waiting will decide to keep waiting.

I wouldn't be surprised if MS didn't just cut the price the moment PS3 was actually released, just to piss in Sony's chips.

[barkbat]

It's more likely MS will release Halo 3 the moment PS3 is actually released.

As a third gen 360 title, it's probable it will graphically equal if not better the PS3 launch titles. That would be closer to shitting in Sony's chips.

[Jack]

I wouldn't be surprised if MS didn't just cut the price the moment PS3 was actually released, just to piss in Sony's chips.

Halo 3 pack in with a price dropped premium pack, just to shit on their tits.

[Gwynster]

I hope they're reading this. It would be awesome if someone finally shat on Sony's tits.

[Adverse_Camber]

It's more likely MS will release Halo 3 the moment PS3 is actually released.

As a third gen 360 title, it's probable it will graphically equal if not better the PS3 launch titles. That would be closer to shitting in Sony's chips.
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I suspect anything on 360 at that stage will look far better than a PS3 launch title.

[MK-1601]

I suspect anything on 360 at that stage will look far better than a PS3 launch title.
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Technical considerations aside, this depends on where the development effort goes over the next six months.