6 ms·

Given how common multi-platform releases have become I think it makes sense to just get behind x86. Sony had quite a bit more powerful hardware in the last gen

by Expez 14y ago

Given how common multi-platform releases have become I think it makes sense to just get behind x86. Sony had quite a bit more powerful hardware in the last generation, but when I had the opportunity to compare games side by side I didn't notice a difference large enough to prefer one console over the other. Most likely the extra headache for developers and the higher cost of developing their own hardware (in partnership with IBM last time) is leading Sony in a different direction this time around.

przemoc 14y ago
My friend in gamedev explained it me once. The problem with PS3 is that it is a bit esoteric platform. GPU is worse there than in xbox360, but there are 6 SPUs. OTOH writing for them is far from a pleasant task. You have to perform manual fiddling with DMA stuff. Slow bus, async requests to 64k cache (IIRC), where you must send everything and get results via DMA some time later, 64k load max, so you must do partial screen updates, syncs, etc. That makes the whole execution path in PS3 quite different from other platforms. To see good-looking PS3 games, you have to look for games developed exclusively for PS3. PS3 ports always look worse, because no one devotes at least 2x more time for them to write "proper" renderers etc. Middle-level psgl is not recommended by Sony itself, as you should use gcm, where you manually put bytecode to GPU's memory being command buffer. And for SPU asm is the way to go... tl;dr PS3 is not the most developer-friendly platform, you can say... But it has its own potential. Check Naughty Dog's Uncharted. Difference between U1 and U3 is huge. Same technology and 10 years of development - good engine leveraging potential of underlying complex hardware takes a lot of time.
deleted 14y ago
[deleted]
electrograv 14y ago
The Xbox360 is actually dramatically faster than the PS3 [1] where it really matters - the GPU. Triangle Setup Xbox 360 - 500 Million Triangles/sec PS3 - 250 Million Triangles/sec Pixel Shader Processing with 16 Filtered Texels Per Cycle (Pixel ALU x Clock) Xbox 360 - 24.0 Billion Pixels/sec PS3 - 16.0 Billion Pixels/sec The only reason people think (to some extent correctly) that the PS3 is more powerful than Xbox360 is due to the PS3's cell processors. If you sum up the PS3's total FLOPS, the cell processors do give it a total advantage in FLOPS. But this is very misleading - obviously FLOPS are only useful if the architecture enables you to use them towards what you need. Almost nobody used "cell processors" to potential initially, and for very good reason [2]. The bottom line is they were incredibly difficult to program for in any useful way to graphics. But more than that, they are limited in very specific ways [3]. They won't increase triangle throughput, and they don't directly increase pixel throughput. In some extremely rare cases, some game engines found a way to use them for graphics (like Battlefield 3's Frostbite 2 engine towards the deferred lighting passes). But by the time engineers found a way to leverage this extremely complex architecture, it was already too late. If you actually look at most Xbox360 vs PS3 games side by side, the Xbox360 often looks much better. In this case though (the next gen Xbox and Playstation) the situation is reversed: Sony's GPU is actually legitimately faster, and by a large margin. Not only that, but having a full 4GB of fast ram is a HUGE advantage to Sony. High performance 3D rendering is inherently a bandwidth hog, because everything on the screen must be pushed through the pipes every single frame. Having a fast 32MB cache doesn't really help you if you want to consistently and smoothly render more than 32MB of content on the screen. And moreover, just as the last generation PS3 had an overly complex architecture making it difficult to reach its full potential, it seems Xbox and Playstation are swapping roles here as well with this generation. [1] http://forums.gametrailers.com/viewtopic.php?f=23&t=794700 http://forums.gametrailers.com/viewtopic.php?f=23&t=7947... [2] http://www.videogamer.com/ps3/saints_row_2/news/two_or_three_years_till_ps3_graphics_better_than_360.html http://www.videogamer.com/ps3/saints_row_2/news/two_or_three... [3] http://stackoverflow.com/questions/1355827/what-does-programming-for-ps3s-cell-processor-entail http://stackoverflow.com/questions/1355827/what-does-program...
- pandaman 14y ago
  >Almost nobody used "cell processors", and for very good reason. Seeing that you edited with a citation from a Volition AP. I guess if you trust sources like this - there is no argument possible. >In some extremely rare cases, some game engines found a way to use them for graphics (like Battlefield 3's Frostbite 2 engine towards the deferred lighting passes). But by the time engineers found a way to leverage this extremely complex architecture, it was already too late. You mean like 2007 Uncharted?
  - jerf 14y ago
    It's too late in this cycle to be a fanboy. It is very well established that the cell processors are bandwidth starved and it's hard to feed them. Not impossible, but legitimately hard. This is an architectural fact, not something to be debated anymore. The PS3's internal architecture was poorly balanced. This really hasn't been a secret for a long time, for anyone who can take off the hype goggles. It sounds like the PS4 will not have this problem. It will be interesting to see if Microsoft makes the same mistake; it really won't be a console-gaming win to stick 8GB of slower RAM in the box, then suck away 2 or 3 GB for other purposes. (Probably still won't be as poorly balanced as the PS3 though.)
    - pandaman 14y ago
      It's hard to code for SPU. Game programming in general is hard. Yet all 1st party studios and most high profile 3d party used SPU code either of their own or from the libraries that Sony gives. And I agree, PS3 was not a nice architecture compared to 360. PS2 was not nice compared to xbox 1 too. However this just not justify idiotic claims like "nobody used SPU" etc.
    - teamonkey 14y ago
      Each console has its strengths and weaknesses. Working on multiplatform games, the 360 version is, more often than not, CPU-bound while the PS3 is very often GPU-bound. But in reality there's very little in it. They're both horribly memory-bound and the 360's Achilles' heel is actually the lack of disc space. But look at something like Halo4. It's had all of Microsoft's drive behind it. Pretty, yes. Significantly better than anything the PS3 could do? Not really, no.
hythloday 14y ago
Given that all x86 processors spend non-trivial energy translating the x86 ISA to an internal RISC format, it would be a competitive advantage to expose the "raw" internal ISA, which game developers would target if it could buy them 2% more performance. Standardization does not really work for games in the same way that it works in most industries.
- CrLf 14y ago
  But it's that translation that makes x86 so successfull. If you remove that layer, you also lock yourself in to whatever internal instruction set is used. Even this being a console, it's still useful to be able to change the internal ISA in a future revision, without breaking compatibility.

by Expez 14y ago

przemoc 14y ago

My friend in gamedev explained it me once. The problem with PS3 is that it is a bit esoteric platform. GPU is worse there than in xbox360, but there are 6 SPUs. OTOH writing for them is far from a pleasant task. You have to perform manual fiddling with DMA stuff. Slow bus, async requests to 64k cache (IIRC), where you must send everything and get results via DMA some time later, 64k load max, so you must do partial screen updates, syncs, etc. That makes the whole execution path in PS3 quite different from other platforms. To see good-looking PS3 games, you have to look for games developed exclusively for PS3. PS3 ports always look worse, because no one devotes at least 2x more time for them to write "proper" renderers etc. Middle-level psgl is not recommended by Sony itself, as you should use gcm, where you manually put bytecode to GPU's memory being command buffer. And for SPU asm is the way to go... tl;dr PS3 is not the most developer-friendly platform, you can say... But it has its own potential. Check Naughty Dog's Uncharted. Difference between U1 and U3 is huge. Same technology and 10 years of development - good engine leveraging potential of underlying complex hardware takes a lot of time.

deleted 14y ago

[deleted]

electrograv 14y ago

The Xbox360 is actually dramatically faster than the PS3 [1] where it really matters - the GPU. Triangle Setup Xbox 360 - 500 Million Triangles/sec PS3 - 250 Million Triangles/sec Pixel Shader Processing with 16 Filtered Texels Per Cycle (Pixel ALU x Clock) Xbox 360 - 24.0 Billion Pixels/sec PS3 - 16.0 Billion Pixels/sec The only reason people think (to some extent correctly) that the PS3 is more powerful than Xbox360 is due to the PS3's cell processors. If you sum up the PS3's total FLOPS, the cell processors do give it a total advantage in FLOPS. But this is very misleading - obviously FLOPS are only useful if the architecture enables you to use them towards what you need. Almost nobody used "cell processors" to potential initially, and for very good reason [2]. The bottom line is they were incredibly difficult to program for in any useful way to graphics. But more than that, they are limited in very specific ways [3]. They won't increase triangle throughput, and they don't directly increase pixel throughput. In some extremely rare cases, some game engines found a way to use them for graphics (like Battlefield 3's Frostbite 2 engine towards the deferred lighting passes). But by the time engineers found a way to leverage this extremely complex architecture, it was already too late. If you actually look at most Xbox360 vs PS3 games side by side, the Xbox360 often looks much better. In this case though (the next gen Xbox and Playstation) the situation is reversed: Sony's GPU is actually legitimately faster, and by a large margin. Not only that, but having a full 4GB of fast ram is a HUGE advantage to Sony. High performance 3D rendering is inherently a bandwidth hog, because everything on the screen must be pushed through the pipes every single frame. Having a fast 32MB cache doesn't really help you if you want to consistently and smoothly render more than 32MB of content on the screen. And moreover, just as the last generation PS3 had an overly complex architecture making it difficult to reach its full potential, it seems Xbox and Playstation are swapping roles here as well with this generation. [1] http://forums.gametrailers.com/viewtopic.php?f=23&t=794700 http://forums.gametrailers.com/viewtopic.php?f=23&t=7947... [2] http://www.videogamer.com/ps3/saints_row_2/news/two_or_three_years_till_ps3_graphics_better_than_360.html http://www.videogamer.com/ps3/saints_row_2/news/two_or_three... [3] http://stackoverflow.com/questions/1355827/what-does-programming-for-ps3s-cell-processor-entail http://stackoverflow.com/questions/1355827/what-does-program...

pandaman 14y ago
>Almost nobody used "cell processors", and for very good reason. Seeing that you edited with a citation from a Volition AP. I guess if you trust sources like this - there is no argument possible. >In some extremely rare cases, some game engines found a way to use them for graphics (like Battlefield 3's Frostbite 2 engine towards the deferred lighting passes). But by the time engineers found a way to leverage this extremely complex architecture, it was already too late. You mean like 2007 Uncharted?
- jerf 14y ago
  It's too late in this cycle to be a fanboy. It is very well established that the cell processors are bandwidth starved and it's hard to feed them. Not impossible, but legitimately hard. This is an architectural fact, not something to be debated anymore. The PS3's internal architecture was poorly balanced. This really hasn't been a secret for a long time, for anyone who can take off the hype goggles. It sounds like the PS4 will not have this problem. It will be interesting to see if Microsoft makes the same mistake; it really won't be a console-gaming win to stick 8GB of slower RAM in the box, then suck away 2 or 3 GB for other purposes. (Probably still won't be as poorly balanced as the PS3 though.)
  - pandaman 14y ago
    It's hard to code for SPU. Game programming in general is hard. Yet all 1st party studios and most high profile 3d party used SPU code either of their own or from the libraries that Sony gives. And I agree, PS3 was not a nice architecture compared to 360. PS2 was not nice compared to xbox 1 too. However this just not justify idiotic claims like "nobody used SPU" etc.
  - teamonkey 14y ago
    Each console has its strengths and weaknesses. Working on multiplatform games, the 360 version is, more often than not, CPU-bound while the PS3 is very often GPU-bound. But in reality there's very little in it. They're both horribly memory-bound and the 360's Achilles' heel is actually the lack of disc space. But look at something like Halo4. It's had all of Microsoft's drive behind it. Pretty, yes. Significantly better than anything the PS3 could do? Not really, no.

hythloday 14y ago

Given that all x86 processors spend non-trivial energy translating the x86 ISA to an internal RISC format, it would be a competitive advantage to expose the "raw" internal ISA, which game developers would target if it could buy them 2% more performance. Standardization does not really work for games in the same way that it works in most industries.

CrLf 14y ago
But it's that translation that makes x86 so successfull. If you remove that layer, you also lock yourself in to whatever internal instruction set is used. Even this being a console, it's still useful to be able to change the internal ISA in a future revision, without breaking compatibility.