[stuntman101]

Originally Posted by Jeff

Here's an unbiased comparison from someone who loves his 720P capable Xbox and cant believe some of the ridiculous hype coming out of both camps such as Sony's simply absurd 2 Trilliion flops or Microsofts hilarious bandwidth claims.

Hardware threads
Xbox360: 4.5 (each pair of threads compete for execution resources)
PS3: 8.5 (one double threaded core + 7 single threaded cores)

CPU Floating point (32 bit) based on IBM test data
Xbox360: 76.8 Billion/sec
PS3: 204.8 Billion/sec

CPU Integer (32 bit) based on IBM test data
Xbox360: 76.8 Billion/sec
PS3: 115.2 Billion/sec

CPU cache
Xbox360: 1024kb
PS3: 2,304kb

System bandwidth:
Xbox360: 22.4 GB/s
PS3: 48 GB/s

Main memory efficiency ([cycles-latency]/cycles)
Xbox360: 79% (700mhz GDDR3)
PS3: 94% (3,200Mhz XDR)

GPU Programmable Floating Point Operations
Xbox360: 240 Billion/sec
PS3: 308 Billion/sec

So its clear where the power advantage lies.

Now there have been repeated claims on this forum that the Xbox360 has some magical 256GB/s bandwidth that can be added to system memory bandwidth. This is just plain ridiculous.

1) The real bandwidth from the GPU to the eDRAM daughter card is 32GB/s.

2) The data traveling via the 32GB/s is only partially compressed (Z-data) but without color compression SSAA is out of the question. This means Xbox360 games are stuck with the inferior MSAA method of anti-aliasing which is really a sort of glorified hack as far as FSAA goes.

3) The 256GB/s number frequently quoted is internal to the eDRAM unit does not in any way help out with system bandwidth. If you add that to the system RAM you might as well add the 307GB/s of the CELL (that connects all the different processors) to the PS3 system bandwidth number. Internal bandwidth is internal and only marketing morons would add it to system bandwidth. System bandwidth is the speed at which the system can access memory and that is 22.4GB/s for the Xbox360 and 48GB/s for the PS3.

4) The 10MB eDRAM frame-buffer of the Xbox360 is too small to contain a single 720P frame with even 2x MSAA, let alone 4x MSAA. This is why the release titles of the Xbox360 render at less than 720P and simple stretch it to fit 720P TVs. PGR3, for example, renders at what would approximately be 600P).

5) Rendering at true HD is a nightmare for developers. Because of the small frame-buffer, in order to render at 720P with 2x or 4x AA the developers must use a process called "tiling", which requires each frame to be rendered in little pieces (tiles), then each tile is saved to main memory, then all the tiles are stitched together to form the full frame. On the Xbox360, this leads to a huge performance hit which under ideal circumstances is about 5% hit on the GPU and 20% on the system as a whole. This is probably why most developers have decided to simply render at non-HD resolutions (like PGR3) and stretch the frame to fit HD screens (like the PS2 does with GT4 1080i) instead of using tiling and actually rendering at true HD.

6) As for anyone having doubts about the bandwidth of the PS3, they should consider that the original Xbox has only 6.4GB/s of total memory and had no problem rendering at 720P. Do they seriously think the PS3 with 48GB/s of total bandwidth will have the slightest problem rendering at 720P? Did they forget the GPU in the PS3 is designed by the same people who designed the one in the original Xbox? Give me a break!

Don't get me wrong. The Xbox360 is a fine machine as was my Xbox but in terms of hardware capability its not really in the same class as the PS3. However I strongly believe that software and gameplay that will determine the winner, not hardware, so this means that unless PS3 can come up with something to compete with Halo3, DOA4, etc, its going to have some problems.

WOW DUDE.. thats harsh.. why come to an XBOX FORUM.. and pratically diss the 360.. what you have posted is fake... you must be a sony fanboy