PS3 vs 360… 360 vs PS3… is a very touchy subject as everyone is aware I’m sure. Before this article gets underway its important that everyone keep in mind that neither of these 2 consoles is weak by any stroke of the imagination. Both are very powerful and significant upgrades over their current generation counterparts such as the PS2 or Xbox and as always it’s about the games. What it TRULY boils down to for the vast majority of people out there is that they don’t care about the specs of a console. All most people care about is “How good are the games available for it?” So I want it to be understood immediately that by no means is this article meant to be some sort of indication of which of the two consoles will end up coming out on top. Nor is this article meant to, in any shape or form, change anyone’s mind about which console they decide to purchase. This is simply an article intended to inform people about both machines and in doing so there will of course be comparisons between the 2 machines, but they will be facts. With all of that said lets get down to business shall we?
PS3 CPU & 360 CPU
Let us start off by just showing what Microsoft and Sony released to the public in regards to the cpus in both their machines. Many press releases in many different formats and or styles, but this is the gist of it.
360 Central processing unit (aka Xenon)
90 nm process, 165 million transistors (65 nm process SOI revision in 2007)
Three symmetrical cores, each one SMT-capable and clocked at 3.2 GHz
One VMX-128 SIMD unit per core, dual threaded.
128×128 register file for each hardware thread, 2 sets per VMX unit
1 MB L2 cache (lockable by the GPU)
Dot product performance: 9.6 billion per second (33.6 billion combined with GPU)
115 GFLOPS theoretical peak performance
ROM storing Microsoft private encrypted keys
360 CPU information provided by Microsoft
PlayStation 3 Central-processing unit (aka Cell Broadband Engine)
PowerPC-base Core @3.2GHz
1 VMX vector unit per core
512KB L2 cache
7 x SPE @3.2GHz
7 x 128b 128 SIMD GPRs
7 x 256KB SRAM for SPE
Dot product performance 22.4 billion (51 billion combined with GPU)
1 of 8 SPEs reserved for redundancy
Total floating point performance: 218 GFLOPS
PS3 CPU information provided by Sony
Now before I get into it I’d like to point out that while both consoles have powerful CPUs both Sony and Microsoft have played a dirty little numbers game with everyone… numbers that can easily be misinterpreted by most people to mean “The one with the highest numbers must be the better of the 2” and that isn’t how it works at all (atleast not all the time and here is the kicker both Sony and Microsoft want you to misinterpret the numbers).
Why isn’t a “higher is better” mentality always a safe bet? Simple really, one has to take into consideration important things like the architecture. To only concentrate on the raw numbers without understanding the specifics of how it operates can lead to mistakes like this example here “Midway has a car that can reach a top speed of 180MPH and Australia has a car that can reach a top speed of 90MPH.” Someone only looking at the raw numbers may assume “This is far too easy clearly Midway is going to win because his car goes up to 180MPH” Now did anyone stop to consider the fact that maybe Australia is not only the better driver of the 2, but his car has quicker acceleration plus better braking and the road they’ll be racing on is dripping wet and packed full of sharp turns which may prevent the more inexperienced driver from banking on all that raw speed?
Not the best of analogies, but this will teach everyone to be cautious when they see either side throwing around their Megahertz, dot products and GFLOPS. I’m not saying the numbers are 100% meaningless as there are numbers that are actually trustworthy, but its getting you all ready for what I’m about to tell you.
More here http://dpad.gotfrag.com/portal/story/35372/?spage=2
PS3 CPU & 360 CPU
Let us start off by just showing what Microsoft and Sony released to the public in regards to the cpus in both their machines. Many press releases in many different formats and or styles, but this is the gist of it.
360 Central processing unit (aka Xenon)
90 nm process, 165 million transistors (65 nm process SOI revision in 2007)
Three symmetrical cores, each one SMT-capable and clocked at 3.2 GHz
One VMX-128 SIMD unit per core, dual threaded.
128×128 register file for each hardware thread, 2 sets per VMX unit
1 MB L2 cache (lockable by the GPU)
Dot product performance: 9.6 billion per second (33.6 billion combined with GPU)
115 GFLOPS theoretical peak performance
ROM storing Microsoft private encrypted keys
360 CPU information provided by Microsoft
PlayStation 3 Central-processing unit (aka Cell Broadband Engine)
PowerPC-base Core @3.2GHz
1 VMX vector unit per core
512KB L2 cache
7 x SPE @3.2GHz
7 x 128b 128 SIMD GPRs
7 x 256KB SRAM for SPE
Dot product performance 22.4 billion (51 billion combined with GPU)
1 of 8 SPEs reserved for redundancy
Total floating point performance: 218 GFLOPS
PS3 CPU information provided by Sony
Now before I get into it I’d like to point out that while both consoles have powerful CPUs both Sony and Microsoft have played a dirty little numbers game with everyone… numbers that can easily be misinterpreted by most people to mean “The one with the highest numbers must be the better of the 2” and that isn’t how it works at all (atleast not all the time and here is the kicker both Sony and Microsoft want you to misinterpret the numbers).
Why isn’t a “higher is better” mentality always a safe bet? Simple really, one has to take into consideration important things like the architecture. To only concentrate on the raw numbers without understanding the specifics of how it operates can lead to mistakes like this example here “Midway has a car that can reach a top speed of 180MPH and Australia has a car that can reach a top speed of 90MPH.” Someone only looking at the raw numbers may assume “This is far too easy clearly Midway is going to win because his car goes up to 180MPH” Now did anyone stop to consider the fact that maybe Australia is not only the better driver of the 2, but his car has quicker acceleration plus better braking and the road they’ll be racing on is dripping wet and packed full of sharp turns which may prevent the more inexperienced driver from banking on all that raw speed?
Not the best of analogies, but this will teach everyone to be cautious when they see either side throwing around their Megahertz, dot products and GFLOPS. I’m not saying the numbers are 100% meaningless as there are numbers that are actually trustworthy, but its getting you all ready for what I’m about to tell you.
More here http://dpad.gotfrag.com/portal/story/35372/?spage=2
: Good article the both are fun to play with.
