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Another Xbox 360 Vs Ps3 Comparison

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Please take our . Another Xbox 360 vs PS3 comparison Posted May 20, 2005, 3:25 PM ET by Steve Parsons Related entries:

This time, the UKs Guardian newspaper gets in on the comparison. It gives a pretty good technical breakdown of the respective systems. Of course, we all know that consoles do not live on tech specs alone. While one console being able to throw around a thousand more megatriplethunderhappyfunflops than the other is cool and all, its the games that make or break it. Still, sure is fun to drool.

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» (5/22/2005) » (5/22/2005) » (5/21/2005) » (5/21/2005) » (5/21/2005) () Reader Comments Posted May 20, 2005, 3:33 PM ET by Doug

I’m wondering why Joystiq is not reporting the excellent breakdown of performance specs for the Xbox 360 on Major nelson’s site. Here’s some of it:CONCLUSIONWhen you break down the numbers, Xbox 360 has provably more performance than PS3. Keep in mind that Sony has a track record of over promising and under delivering on technical performance. The truth is that both systems pack a lot of power for high definition games and entertainment. However, hardware performance, while important, is only a third of the puzzle. Xbox 360 is a fusion of hardware, software and services. Without the software and services to power it, even the most powerful hardware becomes inconsequential. Xbox 360 games—by leveraging cutting-edge hardware, software, and services—will outperform the PlayStation 3. He goes on to say:Even ignoring the bandwidth limitations the PS3’s GPU is not as powerful as the Xbox 360’s GPU.And…The PS3 does have the additional 7 DSPs on the Cell to add more floating point ops for graphics rendering, but the Xbox 360’s three general purpose cores with custom D3D and dot product instructions are more customized for true graphics related calculations.DETAILED ANALYSIS OF PERFORMANCE SPECIFICATIONSCPUThe Xbox 360 processor was designed to give game developers the power that they actually need, in an easy to use form. The Cell processor has impressive streaming floating-point power that is of limited use for games.The majority of game code is a mixture of integer, floating-point, and vector math, with lots of branches and random memory accesses. This code is best handled by a general purpose CPU with a cache, branch predictor, and vector unit.The Cell’s seven DSPs (what Sony calls SPEs) have no cache, no direct access to memory, no branch predictor, and a different instruction set from the PS3’s main CPU. They are not designed for or efficient at general purpose computing. DSPs are not appropriate for game programming.Xbox 360 has three general purpose CPU cores. The Cell processor has only one. Xbox 360’s CPUs has vector processing power on each CPU core. Each Xbox 360 core has 128 vector registers per hardware thread, with a dot product instruction, and a shared 1-MB L2 cache. The Cell processor’s vector processing power is mostly on the seven DSPs.Dot products are critical to games because they are used in 3D math to calculate vector lengths, projections, transformations, and more. The Xbox 360 CPU has a dot product instruction, where other CPUs such as Cell must emulate dot product using multiple instructions.Cell’s streaming floating-point work is done on its seven DSP processors. Since geometry processing is moved to the GPU, the need for streaming floating-point work and other DSP style programming in games has dropped dramatically.Just like with the PS2’s Emotion Engine, with its missing L2 cache, the Cell is designed for a type of game programming that accounts for a minor percentage of processing time.Sony’s CPU is ideal for an environment where 12.5% of the work is general-purpose computing and 87.5% of the work is DSP calculations. That sort of mix makes sense for video playback or networked waveform analysis, but not for games. In fact, when analyzing real games one finds almost the opposite distribution of general purpose computing and DSP calculation requirements. A relatively small percentage of instructions are actually floating point. Of those instructions which are floating-point, very few involve processing continuous streams of numbers. Instead they are used in tasks like AI and path-finding, which require random access to memory and frequent branches, which the DSPs are ill-suited to.Based on measurements of running next generation games, only ~10-30% of the instructions executed are floating point. The remainders of the instructions are load, store, integer, branch, etc. Even fewer of the instructions executed are streaming floating point—probably ~5-10%. Cell is optimized for streaming floating-point, with 87.5% of its cores good for streaming floating-point and nothing else. It goes on and on and, in fairness, which is what you guys say you believe in, should be reported. Posted May 20, 2005, 3:35 PM ET by

There's a horribly biased 4-part look over at Major Nelson's site: Posted May 20, 2005, 3:39 PM ET by Doug

Well, that depends on your point of view, Brian. Last time I checked, it was a free country. Posted May 20, 2005, 3:47 PM ET by Tom

I love how when Microsoft defends itself it's suddenly "horribly biased" and when Sony tells lies it's "innovative." That makes me sick. Microsoft has an actual product at E3. Sony has vaporware. Posted May 20, 2005, 3:50 PM ET by awdboxer

Well Doug if you didn't know major nelson is actually a top dawg at MS, so I'd say he's just a tad biased. Not to say the 360 won't be great and all, cause I'm sure it will be and I'll more than likely be picking one up. Posted May 20, 2005, 3:51 PM ET by

What the heck does that have to do with being a free country? Nelson works for MS and there's a horribly one-sided slant on his write up, there can't really be much argument about that. For every stat the PS3 leads in he claims it doesn't matter, and then for every one where the 360 leads he writes 5 paragraphs about how important it is. It's coming directly from an MS employee, it has to be taken with a grain of salt. Just like if Ken Kutaragi wrote an article detailing how much superior the PS3 was, it doesn't necessarily make it true.I'm so freaking tired of the "XBOX RULZZZZ!!! PS3 SUXXORS!!" and vice versa crowds. Posted May 20, 2005, 3:54 PM ET by

By the way Tom, they're both vaporware. Here's Microsoft's actual product: & Posted May 20, 2005, 3:59 PM ET by Doug

Awdboxer: Nelson said: "The truth is that both systems pack a lot of power for high definition games and entertainment. " That's pretty magnanimous for someone you claim is so biased. Sony would never say that. Posted May 20, 2005, 4:04 PM ET by zander106

Agree with Brian there. Hmm, an analysis on an Xbox 360 fansite that says the Xbox 360 has better specs? Not really a news story. And what's this "it's a free country" thing? Brian didn't say "you are censored from posting that here." He just noted that the source has to be considered and provided a more concise example of how to refer to other people's content online (linking vs. wholesale cut-and-paste).Anyway, I don't really understand how people end up "rooting" for one game console or another. Both Sony and Microsoft are megacorporations, and I don't get the sense that one megacorporation really "gets" gamers any better than the other. I especially don't understand why people root for Microsoft -- what, 96% domination of desktop operating systems isn't enough? Still, all specs and whatnot aside, I do have to concede that Microsoft's online offerings with Xbox 360 Live sound promising. Posted May 20, 2005, 4:04 PM ET by Doug

Brian, #7: You know exactly what I mean. Stop being disingenuous. Microsoft has an actual product that is far closer to marekt than Sony does. Sony has an empty box and claims of superiority. I'm pretty damn sick of "Sony rules!" and "Gates sux!" myself, so don't throw that at me. Posted May 20, 2005, 4:11 PM ET by

Doug, just because of a one sentence disclaimer doesn't mean he's not biased. Under that thought process I could say, "Ted is a great guy, but..." and then write 10 paragraphs about how big a loser he is and how much I hate him. Does that one sentence counter the other 99% of what I said? No, I didn't think so. Posted May 20, 2005, 4:14 PM ET by Gil

I thought all the xbox games were running off Apple G5's? Shouldn't MS have a unit ready by now? Seeing that it's only a few months until its debut? Oh yea... the PS3 is vapor until I see it run, just like the Xbox360 is vapor. Posted May 20, 2005, 4:14 PM ET by awdboxer

So he said one sentence that compliments both systems compared to like 15 pages of pro MS. Guess you're right, the site is definitely not biased.... Posted May 20, 2005, 4:26 PM ET by Doug

Blah, blah, blah... Sony is notorious for lying before release of a product to inflate claims of superiority. Microsoft is notorious for trying to kill competition. Both systems are very strong and I plan to buy both consoles. I thought Nelson's assessment of the 360 was accurate. Posted May 20, 2005, 4:57 PM ET by CB4D

The use of devkits is not disingenuous. What do you think is in those devkits? Hardware that is approaching the final version. It isnt like these devkits are using a completely different architecture.I agree with #4. Sony even included slides with the Xbox 360, so I would say it's only fair to allow for rebuttal. Posted May 20, 2005, 5:32 PM ET by Monmin

Throw in my 2 cents to a heated argument is probably not wise, but here I go anyway>I agree that Major Nelson is biased. Of course he is. Although I am glad to see MS finally try to balance the hype.At the E3 press conference Sony clearly put up a slide of a bar chart with PS3,x360, and a PC comaparing floating point operations. To the hardware ignorant (like myself) this slide was absolutly condeming of the x360's power as a system. Signed, sealed, and delivered. EVERYONE now believes that the PS3 is the more powerful system - EVERYONE! ONE SIMPLE MARKETING BS SLIDE PRESENTED BY SONY AND EVERYONE AGREES THAT THE PS3 IS MORE POWERFUL.I was really looking forward to the MS press conference because I assumed they would fire back with their own slides. Well, they didn't directly answer Sonys claims at all. My guess is that MS doesn't want to position the x360 as just a technology wonder - they want this system to appeal to not just me, but to my wife. Hyping up Teraflops is not the way to convince my wife the x360 is worth getting.Now, MS is finally stepping up to the plate - which they should do. They need to explain why floating point isn't the be-all, end-all to console performance. Yes, it is biased crap to be sure - but somewhere in between all the BS is the truth. Lets just not conclude today which system is more powerful. Posted May 20, 2005, 5:34 PM ET by The Jeremy

I am disappointed that Sony has opted for the Cell to also handle the audio functions on the PS3. It would be better if it was a separate processor, IMHO... What I want to see is a coherent online strategy by Sony. They should not be # 2 behind Xbox Live since they are responsible for Everquest and Star Wars Galaxies. Posted May 20, 2005, 5:49 PM ET by P3

I believe the xbox 360 is much better than the ps3. Firstly the ps3 is the most plainess piece of silver ive ever seen! Secondly, sony has tried to wipe the ms sales by adding lots of components. For example 7 USB drives. Why the hell would you want all them? All sony has done is throw a few CPUs together and thought they had a console. Emphasis on thought! Thirdly, Ive been told they are using Blue V discs or something. This technolgy has only just been created and sony has jumped onto the band waggon. These discs are going to be very expensive! Sony needs to do us all a favour and decler bankrupcy!!! Posted May 20, 2005, 6:13 PM ET by Doug

"Lets just not conclude today which system is more powerful." I'm always open to a persuasive comment. That's the first one I've heard. Let these babies hit the street and then we'll see what happens. Both companies are in good shape and should do well. Nintendo? Who knows, but they'll surely come up with something intruiging. They always do. Posted May 20, 2005, 6:26 PM ET by Boomhauer

Of course this guy is biased. But then again, so are all of the figures people took from the PS3 press conference. It's all too early to tell who has the stronger hardware and by how much. The most likely scenario is that the PS3 is more powerful/advanced because it is coming out later. That said, how much of a difference does 6 months make?I really think that MS made a mistake by not having a demo like the Fight Night one that Sony had. They needed someone up there showing in detail what the system is capable of. This seems to be what most people and the media are drawn to when the come to their conclusions about which console is more powerful.As an aside, it seems that Sony's system as cofigured will cost better than $500. If they price it at $500 their sales will be hurt enormously. It would not surprise me if Sony also put out a PS3 "normal edition" with stripped down device and display (ie HD) capabilities at the $300 price point. If this is the case, you aren't really comparing apples to apples (atleast in terms of connectivity and display capabilities) because this edition of the PS3 is priced much higher. I think SOny is doing this on purpose to make their system look better (as any company would). Thats my prediction/hypothesis, but I could for sure be incorrect. Posted May 20, 2005, 7:20 PM ET by James

We've only looked at them, not played them.How anyone thinks we now have enough info to declare judgement on any side is beyond me. There are too many things we don't know till we play them - they're commonly known as 'computer games'. Posted May 20, 2005, 7:21 PM ET by terry

Hey, but you gotta admit, the PS3 plays pre-rendered movies very well! ;) Posted May 20, 2005, 7:23 PM ET by Corey Barcus

One interesting note is that Major Nelson is trying to de-emphasize SIMD (360CPU > Cell), but here I have to totally disagree. While he may be totally correct in that traditionally SIMD hasn't been really important, I think that is the future. Once simulating massive collsions, explosions, crowds, objects, etc becomes a central part of making a convincing environment, the advantage of the Cell will become readily apparent. Posted May 20, 2005, 9:04 PM ET by matt vander

i'm buying both because i can. Posted May 20, 2005, 9:04 PM ET by Joey Geraci

I personally think that the xbox 360 has shown to be a more interesting system, especially the online capabilities, and I think they will be pretty equal on hardware capabilities. But Doug, you got to admit that that Major Nelson guy was unbelievably biased; no big surprise, since he works for Microsoft. But he really shouldn't cite the more arcane technical specs of the 360 and the ps3, when he gets some of those fundamental facts wrong. I know for a fact that each "dsp", as nelson puts it, on the ps3 has its own seperate 128k of cache to access, yet he says that they "have no cache, no direct access to memory". He then uses this to justify why the dsp's are not good at general purpose computing. If he gets that fundamental fact wrong, I wonder what else he gets wrong. Posted May 20, 2005, 9:57 PM ET by Shannon

Boomhauer at E3 they had a guy playing Kameo for a crowd - theres a video of it floating around. And it looks amazing. Posted May 20, 2005, 10:26 PM ET by terry

#25: But Sony is saying that the 360 is not built for the future which I think is fundamentally wrong. Actually, with the 360's focus on software and services, I believe it is the system that better grasps the future of gaming. Posted May 20, 2005, 10:37 PM ET by Doug

I think the news of E3 is how surprisingly well Microsoft did. Everybody expected Sony to hit a home run, but few expected Microsoft to hit one, too. Even if it was inside the park. I think this "war" will be decided on features and services, not specs. Advantage 360. But I'm sure there are many like me who will be reigning in their spending in order to buy both systems. There will be awesome games on both systems. And that's great news for gamers. Posted May 20, 2005, 11:39 PM ET by rog27

I love Major Nelson's analysis...it is completely wrong...in fact, it is an ancient backwards way of thinking (typical of a PC/Microsoft programer).Gaming is not a proportionate mix of integer, floating point, and vector calculations.In fact it is an intensive floating point based and vector-based type of application.Major Nelson is wrong again when he claims that the individual cells have no vector/SIMD units, as each of them clearly does. In fact, the chip is so ahead of the curve for gaming, that each SPE has its own hybrid embedded local memory (not cache)/cache. Yes, Sony's CPU is much more powerful.Sony's GPU is also much more powerful - that was an all out lie when he said microsoft's was more powerful...Sony's GPU is more than twice as powerful as two 6800 ultra boards (MORE POWERFUL THAN TWO). MS's is just a slightly modified version of the next gen ati chip about to be launched for the pc.There is no contest on which console will dominate graphics, audio, ai, and physics-wise.Sony is the clear winner.But that is to be expected as its coming out after MS's console. Posted May 21, 2005, 12:26 AM ET by Cel Shady

Actually, the majornelson.com posts are a pretty good breakdown of what's true in today's world. Looking at it hardcore like he's posting, there's a lot of truth to it (assuming the numbers are correct in Sony's spec) - the XBox 360 will likely be more powerful in terms of raw graphics performance. Also, in terms of current AI programming, it is likely that the 360 will be more powerful. What I'm not sure of are the percentages presented in terms of floating point versus int, branching etc (I'm not a game programmer). If the numbers on majornelson.com are fairly accurate, the 360 certainly would be more powerful in a real-world scenario. That said, I tend to agree somewhat with Corey Barcus's post earlier: advanced collision detection and physics could have a serious advantage on the PS3.All in all, based on the current specs, the 2 systems are going to be fairly comparable. As a gamer and/or a geek, you probably won't go wrong with either. Certainly, either system will not be light-years away from the other. I for one am signing up for both - and perhaps even the Revolution! I love all this next gen stuff. Posted May 21, 2005, 5:52 AM ET by Heywood Mogroot

That Major Nelson thing was total BS. I couldn't find one honest thing in it, even the line about how the platforms are equal is BS since the xbox-360 is totally outclassed by the PS3 in so many areas (720p vs. 1080p x 2 (dual HDMI no less), 10MB framebuffer vs 256MB, 3 vs. 6 USB ports, four vs. 7 wireless controllers, 1 (10MB/s?) vs. 3 gigabit ethernet ports, dvd-rom vs. blu-ray.It was very, very dishonest for Microsoft's Major Nelson to claim that the xbox has 256GB/s of "system bandwidth". That's just the theoretical bandwidth into the 10MB EDRAM on the ATI chip; that's nice and all but the ps3's multiple data buses simply blow away the xbox's architecture. It's really hard to compare the two, the PS3 looks like it comes from another planet or something (the internal processor databus on the CPU, the XDR RAMBUS FSB, the FlexIO CPU GPU connection, these are just amazing)... Posted May 21, 2005, 12:24 PM ET by MosquitoControl

rog always spits out stats, but buys into them quickly. rog, you were the one making definitive statements about the Revolution technology a while back, but never said where you got it. I seem to remember you swearing it would have 512MB of RAM and an ultrapowerful GPU, mentioning what it would be specifically.Heywood, don't buy the 1080p hype. Can't the Xbox do 1080i, but nothing uses it? I imagine it will be the same with the PS3. You have the raw ability to go to 1080p, but nothing can do it in practice, giving you 720p or 1080i instead.Also, 3 vs 6 USB ports? So what? The PS2 has 2, has anyone used them? 7 vs 4 controllers? Bluetooth isn't the best input protocol (notice how few high-speed PC components use it?), 7 is a strange number, and I doubt more than 1 or 2 games will have more than 4 player access. Lastly, blu-ray is nice, but I'm not convinced games need the size benefit, and Hollywood may pass on blu-ray. If so, you're left with huge, costly discs that give you absolutely no benefit, just a lighter wallet.All those things COULD be great, but are unlikely to be useful, just costly. Posted May 21, 2005, 10:26 PM ET by Hal

Mr. Mogroot, there were so many lies told before the introduction of the PS2 that it very difficult for me to believe anything Sony says. They make some wonderful products, but they are also accomplished liars. The PS2 didn't deliver on much of what was promised before release. The Xbox did deliver on what was promised. You tell me who's the more honest company? Posted May 21, 2005, 10:46 PM ET by JiN.X

You guys are all wrong! I'm going to come out with my own system that's going to be 100 times better than the PS3 and Xbox 360. Muhahahahaha! Posted May 22, 2005, 2:08 AM ET by Pete

Why is this still an issue? The article that we are commenting on says it all: "While one console being able to throw around a thousand more megatriplethunderhappyfunflops than the other is cool and all, it’s the games that make or break it."It all comes down to what the people like. I think it will be closer than anyone could imagine. You have to recognize that ultimately, we are all gamers. I am trying to pursue a career in game development, but I realize that there is life beyond a system's greatness. A great system can produce horrible games, eventually causing the death of the system (I'm sure you could find some examples). Also, a great system can produce great games, yet and still does not seal the market for the company (i.e. Sega Dreamcast, N64 to a degree, among others).This major nelson guy, nothing against him, but anyone who understands politics would clearly understand that a review written by an employee of the company that he is reviewing (in so many words) is going to be biased in order to keep his job. It's a matter of affiliation. If, for example, someone was to write an article about president Bush, if the author was democratic, there might be a difference in wording than if the author were a republican. Just imagine if major nelson got fired, think those statements would have been the same after the fact? Maybe, but more than likely not.In knowing that gaming is beyond the specs shown, also know that gaming involves the mass public to survive. People will go for what they know and what they see. We that are true gamers already claim that we will buy both systems. The non-gamer MORE THAN LIKELY will go for what they see, what their friends have, and which system has better games (in terms of personal interest in PS3 or 360 exclusive games). Some people would get the Halo 3, PDZ, and online heaven in 360, some people would get the MGS4, GTA: New, and Blu-Ray-toting PS3. In the end, neither company will be defeated, they will both win and lose for the sake of competition.To address those who bash the new technology that is becoming available, get off the site that is about new technology. Blu-ray bashers, bash it's price or whatever all you want, but in the end, you are only advocating that DVD's attain the monopoly on media storage/playback/etc. Please learn to welcome new technology, because bashing it makes it seem that you don't welcome the change offered by it. Yes blu-ray may be expensive come spring 06, but that won't last long nor is it confirmed that it will even STILL be expensive by spring 06. People also mention that the PS3 will have expensive blu-ray games. Surely, not all PS3 games will be on a blu-ray disc given its uber-compatibility. Just learn that change is coming, we need to welcome it from all angles. Add your comments

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Another Xbox 360 Vs Ps3 Comparison