You are in a maze of twisty passages, all alike.
RSS icon Email icon Home icon
  • All the cards on the table: Xbox360 vs. PS3 vs. Revolution

    Posted on October 7th, 2005 Finster 5 comments

    UPDATE: I’ve tried to get this as up to date as I could since the months following E3. Surprisingly little has changed in the past few months from what was announced at E3.

    I’m still absorbing all the E3 coverage of the next-gen consoles. The mind-numbing technologies being implemented in some of these machines is truly amazing. 2.18 Teraflops? Holy crap, Sony. Calm yourselves down. So, let me break down my impressions right now.

    If I could buy only one console in the next generation, which would it be?

    Here’s all the info I have gleaned so far. I’ll fill in more details as I get them. (factual and rumored)

    Next
    Generation Consoles

     

    Xbox360

    PS3

    Revolution
    (mostly rumor)

    Vendor-claimed "Power Factor"

    10-13 times more powerful than Xbox

    35 times more powerful than PS2

    2-3 times more powerful than Gamecube

    Backwards Compatibility

    Requires software emulation for each title. MS will
    support popular titles.

    With PS2

    Gamecube and N64, SNES, NES games available through online
    service

    CPU: Core

    3 IBM PowerPC-based 3.2 GHz cores

    1 IBM PowerPC-based 3.2 GHz Cell Processor.
    This includes 1 PPE and 7 functional SPE’s

    2 1.8 GHz CPU’s (Not 1 CPU with 2 cores)

    CPU: L2 cache

    1 MB

    512 kB
    Each SPE has 256 kB

    512 kB

    CPU: flops

    1 Teraflop

    2.18 Teraflops

     

    CPU: FSB

    1000 MHz

    800 MHz

    1200 MHz

    System RAM

    512 MB of 700 MHz GDDR3 RAM (Accessible to GPU as well)

    256MB XDR system RAM at 3.2 GHz

    128 MB 1T SRAM

    GPU

    ATI Custom

    nVidia RSX

    ATI "Hollywood":
    600 MHz GPU

    GPU: Graphics RAM

    10 MB Embedded DRAM

    Full access to 512MB system RAM

    256MB GDDR VRAM at 700MHz

    256MB VRAM & 12 MB Embedded DRAM

    GPU: Polygon Performance

    500 million triangles per second

     

     

    GPU: Shader Performance

    48 billion shader operations per second

    100 billion shader operations per second

     

    GPU: Pixel Fill Rate

    16 gigasamples per second fill rate using 4x MSAA

     

     

    Video

    720p standard, up to 1080i

    up to 1080p

    No HD support

    Memory Bandwidth: CPU<=>Bus

    21.6 GB/s

     

     

    Memory Bandwidth: RAM<=>Bus

    22.4 GB/s

    25.6 GB/s

     

    Memory Bandwidth: RAM<=>VRAM

    22.4GB/s (Read Anandtech
    for the truth about MS’s 256 GB/s)

    22.4GB/s

     

    Memory Bandwidth: CPU<=>GPU

     

    35 GB/s (20GB/s read, 10GB/s write)

     

    Storage: HDD

    20 GB optional
    Detachable/Upgradable 2.5"

    Detachable/Upgradable 2.5" HDD

    None?

    Storage: Optical

    DVD-ROM

    Blu-Ray BD-ROM

    6 GB Dual Layer Panasonic Discs (Proprietary?)

    Storage: Solid State

    Starting at 64 MB

    Memory Stick,
    SD, and CompactFlash

    512 MB of internal Flash ROM
    SD slots

    IO: Controllers

    up to 4 wireless

    up to 7 bluetooth

    up to 4 wireless

    IO: Ports

    3 USB 2.0

    6 USB 2.0

    2 USB 2.0

    IO: Networking

    100 Mb Ethernet

    Gigabit(?) Ethernet
    802.11g wi-fi
    Bluetooth 2.0

    Ethernet
    802.11 wi-fi

     

    5 responses to “All the cards on the table: Xbox360 vs. PS3 vs. Revolution” RSS icon

    • Great stuff, I hope you keep it updated, this is a handy guide!

    • The front side bus of the PS3 will be 800MHz if the RAM is running at 3.2GHz, since XDR is always quad pumped. (Sony could have a custom setup, but I doubt it)

    • Thanks! I’ll get that updated.

    • Yikes. All this tech stuff just flies straight over my head.

    • I hear that, and ultimately I don’t think it will matter as much as the quality of the games. But… When the first Xbox came out, I wanted to buy for the sole purpose of cracking it open and seeing all of those familiar PC parts laid out inside a game console. I like hardware.