[Question] Processor on 360 and PS3?

Originally Posted by Slayer X

However where the difference comes in is when you want to do more. While powerful graphics processors are great, all the assets have to be assigned by the processor. Which at the same time is dealing with AI, physics, lighting, collission, etc... meaning that the 360 can only do 2 of these things at a time (hence dual-core). So the more you dedicate to graphics the weaker your other areas get, and visa-versa.

On the PS3 however due to it's 7 cores it can do 7 things at once before things have to be prioritized, allowing a more equal quality of all your ellements. And as such if done right graphics "can" be better because you can have a dedicated core that ONLY does graphics. Or if it's that important you can assign multiple cores to the same task.

That's not quite how it goes: while the PS3 has 6 "sub-cores" that run at the same raw speed, they have a much more specialized design and can't simply do everything that the main core, or any of the cores on the Xbox 360, can do. In particular, AI would be extremely difficult to run on them. On the other hand, they're absolutely phenominal for something like physics or other math-heavy calculations.

Also, the Xbox 360's CPU is triple core, not dual core as you stated, and also supports 2 threads per core (essentially meaning that two processes can be running on each core at the same time and that the only parts of eachother that will be slowed down is when they're accessing the exact same resources from the CPU). So essentially, the Xbox 360 can do at least 3 things at once, and at most 6 things at once, without slowing down.

So basically, it comes down to 3 general purpose cores which can do pretty muich anything confidently and can have two threads run on each, vs. 1 main core and 6 sub-cores which are extremely fast for some tasks and totally useless for others. I guess you could call them equal overall but each excel at certain things, however there's definitely a gap between what each is capable of.

Jam it back in, in the dark.

Originally Posted by Slayer X

Well it's not like there was much difference between the Xbox 1 and the PS2 at first either. However KillZone 2 looks to be the starting point of when you will see a DRASTIC difference between the two. Even though LAIR if you play it on a HDTV still looks better then anything to date.

Err, even when the Xbox was first released, it's technical superiority was more than evident. Halo and DOA3 obviously looked far better than what the PS2 was capable of. Games released or shown shortly after launch like Wreckless and Splinter Cell were obviously a HUGE leap forward from what the PS2 had, whereas we're almost a year into the PS3's release and it still has yet to show any clear advantage over the Xbox 360 (and in fact, seems to be at a disadvantage a majority of the time).

I'm not sure what you mean by Killzone 2 being a starting point where you'll see a drastic difference between the two though...the game looks nice, but it doesn't look superior to what's on the Xbox 360.

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You're also right about the 360's cores, However once again, one is for OS operations only hence why I only said that it had 2 cores.

That's not true at all, a core is NOT locked out in any way for OS functions. It only requires around 3% of the second and third cores processing power: GotFrag DPAD - DPAD Home News Story - End all arguments: PS3 vs 360. The OS doesn't cause any noticable impact on game performance, since 99% of the time the main core would be the one that's running at its maximum load, with the other two cores mainly used for suplimental calculations. Although it should be noted that the PS3 OS requirements on that page are going to be lowered in an upcoming firmware update (at least in RAM usage).

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@Solis
I'm going to try and find the article online that was in this months PLAY that had an interview with Ninja Theory where they discussed a lot of these PS3 downfalls like AI. It seems that current AI isn't the best for the Cell, however more modern forms of AI seems to be not only better for the SPE but also for the end product. They also went on to discuss how Heavenly Sword will have 4X AA and combines HDR lighting with full normal mapping. (AA + HDR isn't supposed to be possible on the PS3 according to rumour lore)

Actually, HDR with AA isn't anything special. It's certainly not impossible: even Half-life 2 was able to accomplish that over a year ago on standard DX9 hardware (even the FX5200 could do it). It is impossible to use AA with HDR when using the FP16/32 method of HDR on Geforce 6/7 architectures (including the PS3's), but that doesn't mean there aren't other methods that can be used to achieve HDR which are compatible with AA.

And I'm not sure what you mean by "modern AI". If you're talking about something like Euphoria which is essentially AI with physics calculations on top of them, then the SPUs could be used to calculate the physics of it, but the "main" AI algorithms will still largely be dependant on the main core of the Cell processor.

There's nowhere I can't reach.