PS3 vs PC

Read: PCs will always have better graphics.
The PC is not the Premier gaming platform, the Console are. The only thing that pcs have in gameplay over consoles is the keyboard and mouse setup in FPS' and Rts'. All other genres suck while playing with a keyboard, the gamepad is far better.

 

Dagger.

Getting a 360 Elite for the awesomeness that it is.

But damn, son.

 

i love fps on pc way more than playing it on a console, so much more control

 

HOW IS RACING BETTER ON A GAMEPAD OVER A PC WITH A WHEEL AND PEDALS?!!?!?!?


seriously


RACING IS JUST AS GOOD ON PC if not > CONSOLE

 

Did you read my post? I mentioned a Keyboard and mouse setup many times, not to mention that all of the consoles have racing wheels that you can buy. If that is all you can come up with, don't try to refute my post. Gamepad w/ console>Keyboard and mouse with few exceptions.

 

You can use gamepad on PCs or keyboard and mouse on consoles. So the only thing we have to look onto is the performance and PS3 or Xbox360 can't even be compared to the fastest desktops out there on this subject. Desktops blows consoles upside down in any given day.

 

pcs for rts and fps. everything else is alright for console. but ps3 rocks

 

GPU-wise. The CPU in the PS3 would eat a QX9650 like a T-Rex would eat a mouse.
Even though they're only only about a 7800GTX-X1800XTX, they'll be able to produce way better graphics than those in about 2 years.


Also, the reason why the X360 has better graphics than the PS3 right now is because the 360 can use you everyday DX9.0C on a standard architecture while the PS3 is a completly new type for devs. And also because of that, all the PS3 port of360 games have poor performance and less good graphics

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/White_Engine

Apparently, SE graphics engine uses he CPU for randering

 

I just got my PS3 today...

Its amazing... seriously... if you own a psp with it... its even better... once you got pictures and films on the hdd your ready to go anywhere...

cant wait for the video feed from the ps3 over internet to my psp so I can play ps3 games anywhere!!! (seriously its really simple, I got it up and running in less than 20 minutes)

I forgot to try out my S510 logitech KB + Mouse on myps3... hmmm I'll see...

The Cell processor is a wonder of nature... if that thing goes PC ... the PC would take a lift off to pluto.

Seriously... Gaming on consoles in the 8th genereation (ps4, xbox3, wii2, etc...) will be the real test to see if PC can stay up close...

And most consumers dont want the hasle of a pc... I just noticed how flawless installation of F@H, 2 updates and transferring of files was...

 

The cell processor is a mediocre cpu for most gaming apps (gabe newell, founder of Valve Software hates the thing). But it's good at just about everything else.

 

I don't know that it is. However, isn't foling@home multithreaded? All those CPU's/cores in the PS3 would offer faster folding. I'd like to sit it pitted against a current gen quad core. I'm sure the Intel chip would blow away anything the PS3 could do.

Also CPU is a lot different than GPU for gaming. While all the CPU power is great, it doesn't compete with PC's GPU power. I don't see any PS3 games that do anything spectacular that shows me they are taking advantage of all that CPU power anyhow.

 

You couldn't ever get away with gaming on a PS3 at work.

 

All consoles will always be compared to the PC. Did I mention RPGs are better on a PC? Can we say MMORGs? Can we say Everquest and WoW.

Microsoft and Sony only wish their gaming divisions make as much money as PC games. Plus I'd like you to convince your parents to buy you a console for "educational" purposes.

 

You can optimize frame rate by coding for a distinct GPU, but this won't enhance its capabilities. But they can also use programming "tricks" to make things look better - as they did with the PS2. And even if "ALL system resources are directed at the gpu" the GPU can still only process things so quickly and is limited in what it can do by its architecture, not to mention its limited amount of memory.

While I think the PS3 is an amazing machine Sony way overhyped it. Not to mention the boneheaded decision to include a Blu-ray player as standard just for pricing reasons vs. the Xbox 360.

Consoles have their place, as I own an Xbox 360 and a PS2. But no console will ever be able to compete with a current gen PC in terms of graphic fidelity and overall performance. It's the nature of a fixed set of hardware.

 

I'm running Crysis on a 7900GTO that I paid $239 at Newegg over a year ago. The rest of my rig is basically the same, I run Crysis with mid-high settings and it looks and plays great.

 

It's true that if you view each console as a single platform, overall PC game sales are probably still ahead (though I have my doubts that's the case for eg. individual recent multi-platform releases - I imagine the XBox 360 versions of games like Bioshock and Oblivion are outselling the PC versions by quite a margin), but if it's simply "consoles" vs. PC, it's barely even a competition.
While I've always thought all those annual proclamations of doom for PC gaming were rather silly (and I still do), console gaming as a whole is a much larger market and generates a much larger total income.

Consoles might "be compared to PCs" if we're talking technical accomplishments (and then probably mostly by PC gamers , or people who enjoy both console and PC gaming - like myself), but I'm quite certain that many game developers and publishers are making far more money on their console sales than the PC sales - total and often on individual (multi-platform) titles.

Oh, and with regards to RPGs - unless you enjoy replaying all the old classics (plus a few more recent titles, like The Witcher or NWN2), I'm not entirely sure I see why the PC would inherently be a better platform for RPGs than consoles?
Sure, you've got a much larger pool of RPG games to choose from on the PC (but again, that's mostly older titles) but Mass Effect on the 360 is by far one of the best games I've played in several years - on any platform.
And obviously Oblivion is available on three platforms (though I don't want to get into a debate over the merits of that game here - I know there are many "traditional" RPG fans who hated it).

MMORPGs is - like first person shooters and real time strategy games - a genre that does seem to lend itself better to the PC, but that's really mostly because of the chat interface.
Not sure how that works in FFXI on the 360 (and I believe Age of Conan is coming for the 360 at some point as well?), but I do admit that I would hate walking into an even remotely crowded area if voice chat is the replacement for text .
Oh, and since I brought up the FPS and RTS genres, with all the FPS title on particularly the 360, you would think that the former is considered to be working at least reasonably well with a gamepad. Sure, you would get utterly spanked if you went up against a PC player using mouse and keyboard (I think - I rarely play shooters on any platform), but that's not much of an issue since that won't happen.
Supposedly the couple of RTS games released for the 360 (including one of the LoTR titles if I recall correctly) actually managed to implent a control system that worked fairly well - again assuming of course you wouldn't have to go up against a PC player, because obviously, no matter how well the gamepad controls might have worked out, they would be no match for the precision and speed of mouse and keyboard.

 

I used to be a pc gamer for several years(CS, HL, WC3, Diablo, WoW, etc) and loved it. I used to build all of my pc's and upgraded them constantly. Overclocking was my hobby. I now own a PS3 and don't play pc games or PS3 games anymore. Mostly watch blurays.

Seems like most people on this site are pc users and rightly so considering it's a notebook hardware site. Just a few things that people don't seem to understand about the PS3. All versions of the PS3(not sure about the newest 40GB one) come with USB ports. Mine has 4 ports. Keyboards and mice are compatible with them. Not too sure about their use in games though. You can browse the web on a PS3, although I wouldn't say it is as flexible as internet explorer. The hard drive is upgradeable to any size you wish as long as it is a notebook size hard drive. In a way, I view the PS3 as a pc except for the fact that it is not completely upgradeable. As mentioned before, I believe the cell processor is the most advanced processor in existence so upgrading needed there. The videocard is good enough for now, and many(if not most) games are made to run at 1080p(1920x1080). Now to run any current game at a resolution that high, I am assuming you would need a top of the line graphics card. Also, you can hook up a PS3 to any monitor you wish that has an HDMI or DVI port.

 

This might be a flawed opinion but aren't most RPGs for the consoles based on the RPG system made famous by FF Tactics and others originating from Japan? I thought Oblivion and Mass Effect were highly rated as most console players had never seen RPGs which were standard stock for veteran PC players over the last few years.

Miths: Actually console games have been outselling PC games in all genres over the last 5-7 years. With the ease in which gamers can sit down in front of the television and play games compared to the increased hassle of turning on your PC, running installations and tweaking settings for each game.

Never grew up playing consoles but they definitely have their merits compared to the PC. Specifically for the PS3 I believe since it's a dedicated gaming platform programmers have less compatibility headaches to work with and can concentrate more on producing good looking games and gameplay.

 

I just think Mass Effect is a fantastic game. Period. And I've played (and loved) PC RPGs like Fallout 1+2, Planescape Torment, the Baldur's Gate series, NWN 1+2, Morrowind and numerous others over the years.

Mass Effect is very different from all those in terms of gameplay mechanics (the closest comparison in terms of style, gameplay, interface etc., are probably the KOTOR games - which probably isn't much of a surprise ), but I definately think it made for a nice change.
I loved the realtime 3rd person shooter style combat with cover system and pause option for selecting skills, as well as the story line and the almost universally fantastic voice acting (the male protagonist is probably the worst of the bunch, though still not horrible, so I played through with a woman - Jennifer Hale's voice work is amazing as always).

The things that counted as negative points to varying degrees - framerate issues, texture pop-in on the technical side, the unfortunately (in my opinion) not too well implemented and repetitive "on wheels" random planet exploration on the gameplay side - weren't even close to being serious enough to detract from my enjoyment of the game.

Oh, and for the JRPGs - I've tried a handful of those on my old PS2. Each and every time I ended up quitting after 6-8 hours at the most - the random turn-based combat in nearly all of them started to get on my nerves. But that was nothing compared to the androgynous, spiky-haired emo boys that apparantly passes for powerful heroes in Japanese roleplaying.
They are more annoying than Peter Parker in Spider-Man 3. Well, almost .

 

Not as boneheaded as the decision not to inclue a HDD with all 360's which will hurt games like GTA 4. At least with Blu-Ray you have the bonus of the extra storage on the disc - I believe Oblivion took advantage of this over the DVD format.

I don't see why these consoles vs. PC things come up? Who cares? For a start I have a PS2 which is great for the odd blast of GT4 and a nice shiny laptop for playing PC titles. I don't care if one looks better than the other, just that I enjoy the games on both.

Graphics aren't everything guys. Seriously, get a life. You want to spend a couple of hundred quid every year upgrading graphics cards then I don't have a problem with that but it doesn't make you superior to people who just want to buy a console and enjoy it.

Favourite games of all time: Final Fantasy 7 and Deus Ex. Who cares that if you play either its not going to look like Crysis, I'd stil enjoy it. Hell, who enjoys games purely because it looks better than a game on another platform?

As for the cost argument - It's difficult to argue for either case that spending that amount of money on something just to play games on is easily justified. It isn't, but it is an expensive form of entertainment whatever way you choose to approach it. Plus why does everyone say "oh you have to factor in the 40" HDTV in the PS3 cost" - Why? You wouldn't just use it for the PS3. Besides, its not like it needs one, just run it on what you've got.

I would put in an argument for/against but I really don't see the point. I was watching Drake's Fortune being played yesterday - it looked great, ran well and it had bucketloads of atmosphere. What more do you need? On the other side of the coin I picked up UT3 for my laptop and thoroughly enjoy playing it when I get the chance. Why should it matter what platform its on?

In raw power, mid to high end PC's will be on top. But then that doesn't mean anything at all, they aren't comparable.

 

PS3 is wayyy more consumer friendly so they dont have to go through all the technical crap, it stores music, pictures etc... and thats great for family. And then the Blu Ray player is fantastic imo.

Sure PC gaming looks nicer etc... but if your just the average "I wanna game on GTA" or just wanna kick back and have some fun with friends and co then console wins hands down...

I just got F@H up and running on my PS3 and read the pie charts about PC, PS3, etc... usage... PS3 is around 10-20% and then on another one it says work completed and PS3 was like 40-50%... so I am sure the PS3 rips up PC F@H...

And I noticed how quick it does the Folding... since it only took 10 hours... on my crappy laptop is said 2-5 days....

 

PS3 is wayyy more consumer friendly so they dont have to go through all the technical crap, it stores music, pictures etc... and thats great for family. And then the Blu Ray player is fantastic imo.

Sure PC gaming looks nicer etc... but if your just the average "I wanna game on GTA" or just wanna kick back and have some fun with friends and co then console wins hands down...

I just got F@H up and running on my PS3 and read the pie charts about PC, PS3, etc... usage... PS3 is around 10-20% and then on another one it says work completed and PS3 was like 40-50%... so I am sure the PS3 rips up PC F@H...

And I noticed how quick it does the Folding... since it only took 10 hours... on my crappy laptop is said 2-5 days....

 

Because without the specialized equipment you mention in the next block of text, the default control scheme for consoles is infinitely superior (analog > digital for precise control).

Doesn't have to beat it, but you can get the same items for a console now that USB has become commonplace. And with bluetooth (on the PS3 at least) you can go wireless.

You clearly don't have much experience with the latest consoles if you believe this to be true. Show me a PC that will accept a PS3 controller. Then show me a PS3 that won't take a USB (or bluetooth) keyboard and mouse. What's that? Can't do either of those things? hmmm...

That much is obvious. I don't see why, it's not like a big bad PS3 monster came by your house and killed your dog one day...

That almost made sense...

Sure I've heard of Oblivion. I played it on my high-end gaming rig in 2006 and it ran very poorly, so nothing new there. 2x X1900 XTXs in Crossfire, Opteron 175 @ 2.7GHz, 2GB PC4000 RAM, yada yada yada. I spent at least 10x as much on that rig as I did on my PS3.

Gabe Newell, founder of Valve has ZERO programming experience on Cell, so anything he has to say about it is simply an uninformed opinion. Valve couldn't figure out multi-threaded programming so they farmed out the Orange Box PS3 port to EA.

Look at Stanford's current FAH statistics. ~80% of the project's calculations are currently being done by about 1/6 of the systems (PS3). By my calculations that makes the PS3 up to 25x faster than the average PC at folding. If you want to break it down further and limit it to Core 2 Duo/Quad only, then take a look at the OSX - Intel numbers and see that even the mighty Core 2 is out-performed by Cell by a ratio of 8:1.

I agree that GPU horsepower is more important for graphics rendering, however in a closed environment with the floating-point beast that is Cell, many developers have chosen to use Cell for some graphics processing because it has so much power to spare.

MMO's aren't everyone's cup of tea, you know. In fact, the majority of gamers still do not play them. I couldn't care less about them. Subscription-based gaming? No thank you.

Good for you. The point of this particular line of discussion was that there is no current PC that runs Crysis max'd out (and thus looking significantly better than anything else out there). You turn Crysis down to mid-high and it looks like a slightly-newer version of Farcry. Drake's Fortune and Heavenly Sword beat that hands-down.

 

Extra storage yes, but at what cost? Make HD-DVD or Blu-Ray optional so it is a requirement to have it for certain games. That would boon sales for the optical drive as well as keep the initial cost of the console down.

I agree with the no HDD though. Both for Sony and MS to have a version without it.

 

Sony's decision to include a DVD player with every PS2 is one of the biggest reasons DVD became mainstream and replaced VHS. In the early days of DVD's march to mainstream acceptance, it was often cheaper to buy a PS2 than a stand-alone DVD player, and you got a free game player with it.

I imagine a similar situation for PS3 (and I'm sure Sony does too). Heck, you can go as far back as the original Playstation and look at the inclusion of a CD player as impetus for the rest of the market to move to compact discs instead of continuing to use cartridges. Sony's got a lot of clout in the industry, and it shows.

Sony doesn't sell a version of the PS3 without a hard drive, MS's base-model Xbox 360 however does not include an HD, which means its not part of the minimum specifications for the console, which means that game developers cannot use it for storage unless they want to cut out a large part of their target market.

 

All that proves is that multi-threading works great (is it 7 cores on the PS3?) and the Cell is an efficient CPU for floating point ops.

But that doesn't do anything for gaming or its power. It's like saying "Big Blue" is great at chess, but it sucks as a video gaming platform.

Either way, its all a mute point. Consoles, regardless of the make, are different than PC's. They are hardware based on technology at a fixed point in time, and typically last five years before the next generation. Look at a PC that was top end five years ago and you'll have the same thing.

The GPU is based on a PC technology, and regardless of how much "extra" GPU work is done by the Cell processor, it still has to run through the GPU to be displayed - and is still limited by its graphic power.

 

there is no "Extra cost" really....blu ray movies and hd dvd movies cost like $6 more in stores....so what like 50cents extra per disc...im sure they can handle that just fine.

ok so for $50 less you get the xbox 360....ok...no HDD, no high deff player, so lets add the $200 for the HD DVD drive, and it doesnt even play at full 1080P anyways because it goes through component cables.

a stand alone blu ray player is over $500, and the PS3 is 100 less...so there u have it cheapest blu ray player on the market.

i think you getting a hell of a deal witht he PS3.....using Blu Ray was one of the smartest things sony could have done.

 

Clearly Cell has its advantages over a traditional OoO multi-core x86 CPU. FAH proves that. That doesn't mean Cell is better in every situation, code with lots of branches will of course perform better on said traditional CPU.

Incorrect, especially in this particular case. Cell is being used by some game developers for graphics processing. The majority of the rendering work is still performed by RSX, but due to Cell's strengths it can aid RSX in certain tasks (mostly work with vertexes & particles). Cell is clearly of great benefit if you use it properly.

moot, actually

Sure, this is especially true in the case of the original XBox. Today's consoles are a little different though, what with their custom multi-core PPC CPUs. Cell in particular.

You can't just look at the hardware specs on paper and say that consoles are inferior due to their smaller memory pools and "weaker" GPUs, and you surely can't discount Cell's ability to aid in graphics rendering. Due to the closed architecture environment of consoles, you can optimize your game code for that hardware set, instead of coding to a baseline and scaling with different hardware, which only allows you to truly optimize for one or the other on the PC side (unless you have practically limitless development resources and an extremely-long development cycle).

 

Actually there are already $400 blu-ray players out there, probally lower by now. There the ones made by Sony. But obviously the PS3 is still the better deal.

 

Indeed. Particularly when one considers the amount of work that goes into PS3's firmware and the enhancements they bring, especially compared to the lack thereof with stand-alone players.

 

I don't know if you guys have heard about it, but it's supposedly coming out very soon.

Sega Genesis. It's a oct-core GPU with mind control sensors for the controls with a 20 core CPU that processes enough to bypass the mainframe, not to mention debugging it at the same time.

But in all seriousness, isn't this debate the republican v democrat; my religion v your religion; my toy v your toy?

when was the last time you've seen ANYONE in this type of debate say "wow, you've made a great point, I believe that this enlightening conversation has changed my mind. I agree with you and my perspective was wrong."

I say just enjoy what you enjoy, and if it's a toss up between which one you want, try them out. Friends, family, EB/Gamestop all have consoles or a PC you can try out to see what best suits what you want.

Although I admit, I did go through the past 8 pages of entertaining posts

 

Last I checked, it wasn't.

The GPU client for PC's is faster still.
However, the Cell version is faster than the PC CPU version, yes. Which just means that F@H is pretty much exactly what Cell excels at.

That's not the problem. The problem is that while yes, it can assist the GPU (It was originally intended to replace the GPU entirely in the PS3), it can't really do the CPU's own job very well.

The PS3 is a decent enough console, on par with the 360, and powerful enough to last a couple of years still, but in gaming it's no match for a high-end PC today, a year after launch (even when you factor in all the console-only optimizations that make console games run better than PC games on similar hardware), and it's certainly not the uber-powerful "truly next-gen" monster that Sony wanted people to believe.

So what if it has a fancy marketing-speak name for the CPU? That doesn't magically make it a better console.

 

Isn't this what the internet is for though?

Indeed. To each their own.

Glad you enjoyed. I'm having fun too

 

While the GPU client may be faster in terms of FLOPs per client, it can only work on a limited sub-set of problems. Cell can work on a wider array of simulations, and is thus more valuable overall, especially when you factor in what the PS3 folding community as a whole is contributing to the project.

I'm a folding whore, so I'll be glad to continue this line of discussion

The only way it "can't do the CPU's own job very well" is through lazy programming. If devs devote enough time to learning how to code for Cell properly then it does just fine. If you just throw all your game code at the PPU and expect to come out with a game that runs well, you're in la-la land.

I challenge any PC gamer to show me the games that look vastly superior to the best the PS3 has to offer. I've already conceded that Crysis max'd out is the best-looking game available for any platform, but can you show me a wide array of games for which the same can be said?

Having a name does not make a CPU any less impressive either. Do you refuse to buy a Core 2 because it is marketed? Don't be silly.

 

i live in canada...the lowest we got here is about $450 or 500, everything is a bit cheaper in the states usually tho

 

I think the debate oversaturated. The first three pages are worthy, while the rest is just defending the thesis of either 'PC is better than PS3' or 'PS3 is better than PC', without actually showing any figures more than the thoughts of the respective defenders.

Anyways, I am not sure if this was mentioned in this thread already (if it is, discard this then) but my two cents are: how much RAM (or VRAM) has the PS3?. No matter how many processors you have, if you don't have enough RAM for such amount of processors then their full potential cannot be totally achieved.

 

There's plenty of specific support for each argument. Just because you either don't agree with it or don't understand it doesn't make it invalid.

My retort to that is: how much overhead do you have in a Windows gaming environment sapping those (ostensibly) larger resources? Also, there is no universal baseline for PC hardware which game devs code to, like there is with consoles. Thus consoles have much higher resource utilization rates, and are more efficient with the resources available.

That being said I'm not going to sit here and act like the PS3 is the perfect console and couldn't possibly improve in any area, that would just be asinine. It could certainly benefit from more system RAM, as well as more VRAM.

PS3 specs
512MB combined RAM pool is very small compared to a modern gaming PC, but just look at what they've been able to pull off with those limited resources so far.

 

Scientific support? Sure, I do not deny there are plenty of numbers for both systems (# of processors, their respective speeds, their own GPU's, etc.), but since both of them are DIFFERENT SYSTEMS, these numbers become (most of them) meaningless. Therefore if that is your scientific support, then we have a problem. Always the best comparison is how good are the graphics and how smooth (average fps, not max. fps).

And while I don't deny the PS3 has excellent graphics, that is an invalid argument for saying that 512MB VRAM is enough for all the capacity the GPU and processors in the PS3 can achieve.

Last but not least, still no figure to show the PS3 games are better than PC: maybe Oblivion or Orange Box, or are they to skewed towards one side?

And please, don't take it personal, this is not the purpose of these forums.

 

Like it had been mentioned already, it's not true.

They have difficulties because it's a NEW thing. The X360 uses DX9.0C/OpenGL 2.0 and the Wii OpenGL so of course it's WAY easier to develop right now. PS3 games right now almost all use opengl too so yeah that's why it's not as good. SE has his PS3 engine almost ready and it will be able to produce to best graphics up to date.

Remember in 2000, the PS2 games looked like Dreamcast games with no textures and no special effects.


@Techguy2k7: It's XDR RAM. it's like 10 times faster than your everyday DDR2 533. The same apply to the X360.

 

The Cell can also only work on a subset of problems. (Although it is a larger subset than the GPU client)
Overall, Cell is dominating F@H, I'm not denying that. I'm just pointing out that strictly speaking, a good PC can outperform a PS3 in F@H as well (but as you say, only in some problems)

Uh, no?
There's no way to "code properly" for code that's just ill suited for the Cell. The Cell sucks at branch prediction and at singlethreaded performance. Both of these are *very* important in a most of the CPU-heavy parts of game code. There's just no real way around that. It's not a matter of laziness, it's simply the Cell being specialized for something else. Of course you can "work around" it by simplifying those parts of your game code. Simpler AI, perhaps, while spending extra CPU time on the graphics. That would be one way around it, but you would end up with a different game.
Of course, I'm not denying that in certain areas, lack of experience with the Cell (or as you call it, "laziness", which I'd say is slightly offensive) also hinders performance in some areas. But no matter how much work you put into it, no matter how brilliant a programmer you are, there's no way to make it do branches faster, and there's no way to split singlethreaded tasks across multiple cores, which means you'll still run into these same problems.

Or perhaps you've done a lot of actual Cell programming to prove me wrong?

Why does it have to be a wide array? I simply said that a high-end gaming PC is more powerful when it comes to games than a PS3, regardless of how many games exploit it.

True, but people tend to treat the Cell as "special". Why are we having this discussion? Why is it this has turned into "how awesome is Cell" instead of the PS3 as a whole? Because Sony has marketed it as "special". It's not a CPU, it's a Cell, and that makes it different and able to solve all the world's problems.
It's just a CPU, despite what Sony says. It's not all that special. It sucks at general-purpose computations, and it kicks ass at streaming floating point stuff, but it's still not some kind of futuristic miracle gaming technology.
I didn't say I'd refuse to buy a Cell (if it was separately available) or a Core 2 or anything else. I'm just tired of seeing discussions of how awesome the Cell is. It's just a CPU. Sony tells you that *everything* inside a Playstation is alien technology from the year 2060, and was banned by the US military for two decades because it's so powerful. It's called marketing, but somehow, when it's Sony doing it, half the world believes it. That was my point, nothing about the Cell's merits as an actual processor. Just the fact that its name (and marketing) has taken precedence over its actual capabilities in most of these discussions.

 

The perfect example of scientific support. Read the sub-topic on Folding @ Home.

I've said as much.

Indeed. Which is why I've issued the challenge to PC gamers to find a better-looking title than the best of the PS3, excluding Cyris (which I've already acknowledged is the best-looking game out there).

I don't think you're actually reading what I've been saying. Go read my first response to you again and pay close attention to the section on RAM. Don't just pick out a single line and respond, read the whole thing, think about it, then respond.

I'm saying that games which are made specifically for the PS3 rival and surpass anything the PC has to offer right now (excluding Cyris), not that PC games ported to PS3 are equal to or better than the PC version of those games.

What, discussion? I know this isn't a console site, but the question was posed by a member and has obviously generated a lot of interest.

 

I'm not sure why you insist on excluding Crysis. If the best-looking game out there is a PC game, doesn't that kind of prove the point that the PC is capable of better graphics? What relevance does the second- or third-best looking game have then?

Well, it's more accurate to say that it sucks at most things, including gaming to some extent, but it absolutely kicks ass at a few tasks. It's a very specialized architecture, which in some areas has backfired on Sony, because they had to cut a lot of corners to design a CPU like this.

360 doesn't use OpenGL, and as far as I know, the Wii doesn't either.
PS3 does use OpenGL though, so I don't see why that would be a problem.

Anyway, they also have difficulties because it's just not very well suited for most games. Sony misjudged how games and the hardware market would evolve. There's no shame in that, they had to make a decision to go for Cell many years ago, and they're not the first (nor will they be the last) console manufacturer to misjudge what consoles would look like 8 years later.
They thought they could make a killer chip that would work well as both CPU and GPU, and if GPU's (and to some extent CPU's as well) hadn't evolved so quickly, they'd have been right. Instead, they had to stick a Geforce 7900 in there at the last moment to do the GPU job that the Cell couldn't.

But now they've ended up with 1 dedicated GPU which is slightly less powerful than the 360 one, but still capable enough to serve the PS3, and then a CPU which is really 30% CPU and 70% GPU. Which means they're in trouble with games that require more general-purpose CPU processing.

 

Hey techguy2k7... you kinda just ended the argument on which can produce the best visuals... since you just said Crysis is the best looking game out there, yet want to exclude it for some reason that is beyond my understanding. A lot of PC games don't look on par with ps3 simply because devs want a wide variety of users to be able to run them. If you look at all the multiplatform stuff extending to PC they will either look on par or better than their console versions, unless the port was badly coded. When it comes to just pure, raw power and capability consoles just can't keep up. Consoles evolve only once every 4-5 years, while PCs are being continually refined and improved every month. If you don't believe me then go to alienware.com or apple.com and see the options available to the Mac Pro. I don't think even the cell can achieve the power of 4 quad-core processors. Are there games in existence that actually USE the full power of a top of the line rig? No, simply because they wouldn't be able to sell the game since no average joe can blow $10,000 on a computer. Does the PC have the raw power it needs to run games far superior than even Crysis? Indeed it does.

 

hmmm, ps3 dosent hv good games? for me i mean

 

I think there is a big misunderstanding on some topics:
1) Scientific support: If you were really reading what I wrote, you will notice my first post initial argument is that there is no proof besides our toughts to try to compare both systems. To that you answered 'There's plenty of specific support for each argument.' Next I answered (following my argument) that there is no scientific support (numbers mean different things to different system de facto). Then you mentioned F@H. I am sorry, that is another scientific support meaning, I am refering to sceintific supoport as 'scientific facts', or what I called 'figures' to compare. Now, that the PS3 support such project is not bad, but if you remember the project SETI started since more than 10 years back and it asked the same as F@H is asking: lend me your resources if you don't use them now and contibute to scientific research. Therefore: you did not read well my first post.

2) Then another point I mentioned in my second post was: 'Always the best comparison is how good are the graphics and how smooth (average fps, not max. fps).' To which you answered: 'Indeed. Which is why I've issued the challenge to PC gamers to find a better-looking title than the best of the PS3, excluding Cyris (which I've already acknowledged is the best-looking game out there).' On this I have nothing to add since both Jalf and Arquis made the point (why exclude the best of the best PC games has in graphics?)

3) Next I made a mistake (yes, I am not perfect, too). Yes, you mentioned that more VRAM would be good, so there was no reason for reasurring that point in my response.

4) Last but not least (sorry, don't answer to this if you don't have an answer): still no figure to show that PS3 games are better than PC.

 

Honestly, the PS3 is capable of very good games, but the marketing and design of the games for it are aimed at people with short attention spans.

This doesn't mean the PS3 cannot have good games... only that the vast majority will be shallow and short. This isn't a hardware limitation... its how they make their money.

PCs will have superior hardware at all times due to being able to swap out to the latest when it comes out while the PS3 is limited to where it was when it was designed.

There is something to be said for a dedicated GPU and processor that is always the same and can be designed around. However, that only goes so far.

There is nothing wrong with a PS3... it is fun and great for a drunken party game.

I however, disagree with the idea that its easier to get women to play with consoles. My wife likes the details, design and thoughtful play of today's PC games and has no desire at all to play console games... (too easy, too boring) I think you are underestimating the women in your life.

 

IMO, no. I own a PS3 and Uncharted: Drakes Fortune and Crysis even at med-high settings poos on Uncharted. The graphics physics engine in Crysis is amazing and makes the jungle setting come alive. Trees and foliage move and react to your movement.

Uncharted looks nice no question and btw is one hell of a fun game. But it's not in the same league as Crysis. If you think it is good for you but I see it differently.

 

FAH's points system is in need of a re-work. They skew too much towards the beta PC SMP clients. PS3 and GPU aren't getting nearly enough credit, given the sheer number of FLOPs they're churning out. Points are arbitrarily assigned by commitee, they're not purely quantitative like FLOPs. Therefore, I believe FLOPs are a better metric for FAH performance.

Uh, yes. It's called "re-think your algorithms". Stop trying to force a square peg into a round hole and come up with a solution that works for the given set of hardware. Of course this requires more work, but if you want your game to shine sometimes you have to work a little harder than everyone else.

Sucks is a rather harsh term. It has strengths and weaknesses, just like any microprocessor. There is no perfect MPU. I happen to think its strengths outweigh its weaknesses, as do the engineers at Sony, Toshiba, and IBM (in addition to numerous game development houses).

The idea is to use Cell's strengths as much as possible while at the same time minimizing use of weak areas. Since Cell is a multi-threaded floating point beast, there is a wide range of game/scientific/media-specific code which can be executed by it with more speed than even the fastest x86 MPUs can offer. Again, sheer FLOP output in FAH shows this.

AI is a rather parallelizable workload too, just for the record, so it is quite well-suited to Cell (or Cell to it, depending on your viewpoint). The problem is that the traditional single-threaded/mildly-threaded coding model that exists in the PC gaming space doesn't port to Cell.

Nope, just do far more reading and thinking about MPUs than anyone that's not an engineer should do

If you can only come up with a single example that demonstrates the PC's gaming superiority, I don't see how the statement "a high-end gaming PC is more powerful when it comes to games" can be justified.

Cell is the most important aspect of the PS3. It is also far more difficult to extract performance from (on average) than RSX is, so I see it as the most technically-interesting aspect of PS3, and therefore the most worthy of discussion. Afterall RSX is just a slightly revised G7x core.

Please, don't trivialize the matter and try to downplay Cell's capabilities just because you happen to dislike Sony's marketing tactics. 218GFLOPs don't lie. The fastest current single x86 CPU can only output 96GFLOPs, by comparison. Granted, these are single precision numbers only. When you go up to double precision (DP) Cell takes a huge drop-off on an order of magnitude, where the PC stays basically the same (barring memory limitations). Of course, said PC CPU will cost you in excess of $1000. You can buy 2x top-SKU PS3s for that amount.

 

Don't downplay the fact that all it takes is one title like Crysis to prove the PC is much more capable than the PS3, and maybe people won't downplay the Cell.

 

Then I question your objectivity (or lack thereof). I realize beauty is in the eye of the beholder, but Uncharted looks simply amazing on a quality HDTV, especially when calibrated. The same cannot be said of Crysis on mid-high settings. As I said before, Crysis on mid-high looks like a slightly updated version of Farcry, nothing mind-blowing like the highest settings.

Indeed. And remind me again what the performance is like when you turn up the in-game details to actually see these differences? Runs pretty poorly, even on today's fastest rigs. Fact is you have to make sacrifices and trade-offs to get Crysis to run well.

I think you're mis-reading my statements. I've not said Uncharted looks as good as Crysis. Crysis is the best looking game out there, which I've said several times already in this thread.

I don't. Read what I said again.