On what basis can you make this claim? The architectural difference between the two consoles make a like-for like comparison very difficult, so how do you know the 360 has better graphical capabilities (in theory at least - implementation issues can always cause issues, and the PS3 seems to have an architecture game programmers don't like.)Zer_ said:
Your facts are also completely off with regard to Ati cards. Unified shader architeture was first introduced to PC's with the Ati Radeon HD 2000 series. The 360's Gpu is a simpler version of this, having essentially been the prototype for the unified shader concept.
On a like-for like basis it is highly unlikely that the 360's gpu is more powerful than a high-end Ati 2000 series card, and based on it's specifications it's actually a relatively low end part by PC standards from that generation. (Though it compares favourably to older generation stuff such as an Ati X1900 or the like.)
Having just 48 shader units, on paper the xbox Gpu is only marginally faster than an Ati HD 2400, the low end-PC card from that generation, which has 40 shader units.
the 2600 already has 120, and the high-end 2900 had 320, as well as a 512 bit memory controller, and dedicated high-speed RAM. -
All 2000 series GPU's supported directX 10 - the first cards that did, had unified shaders supporting shader model 4, and supported hardware tessellation, although since this was not part of the directX spec until directX 11, and no Nvidia card at the time supported this feature, this ability wasn't ever really used on PC. - However, it probably was on the 360, since it could also do hardware tessellation, and there was no reason not to implement it, because the hardware specifications are fixed.
The Cell processor is an unknown quantity, being a general purpose vector processing unit. Vector processors are very useful for graphics code (MMX and SSE are great if you're writing a software renderer, though nobody bothers with that because of dedicated 3d hardware).
Whether or not this can be used to help the PS3 or not is difficult to say. But again, what are you using to compare such vastly different consoles?
A direct port from one to the other will disadvantage at least one of those consoles, because they work so differently.
And since most game programmers have much more experience with DirectX than whatever the PS3 is built around, chances are game performance will be biased towards the 360, not because of better hardware, but because the programmers have a harder time figuring out what's going on.
You are completely missing the point. The 3dmark scores give a point of reference; They are a consistent and simple way of measuring PC hardware performance, if not especially reliable as a real-world figure
However more efficiently a console uses it's hardware compared to a PC is beside the point, because it wasn't about comparing PC's to consoles.
It was about having a frame of reference for comparing one console to another.
And that goes something like this:
Look at the actual hardware a console contains; Find a PC with similar specifications. Do the same with the second console.
Now look up PC benchmark figures for the relevant hardware...
By looking at which is faster in a PC, you can't tell how fast the consoles actually are, but you can estimate how fast two consoles with various types of hardware would be in relation to eachother.
If one console is built around say, an Nvidia 7800, and another around an Ati X1600 (that's never happened, but this is just an example...)
Then yes, PC benchmarks won't tell you if the first console is faster than a PC that also has an Nvidia 7800. (It probably will be, by a significant margin.)
But, the hardware is the same, or pretty similar. So even with different overheads and optimisation, you can still tell that the console built around the 7800 is going to be faster than the one built around the X1600.
Do you follow the logic being used here, or are you still going to claim PC benchmarks can't possibly tell us anything about console performance?
AMD and ATI are the same thing, just so you know. You do have a point about the lack of clear information though. (6000 series AMD/ATI cards are mostly relabelled 5000 series cards though. It would however matter. I have a ATI 5770, which is upper-midrange. It's specifications and performance however are faster than the fastest 4000 series card ever made.)
My point however was in trying to work out the worst case scenario. At a rough estimate the worst case scenario could lead to a console with about half the performance of a 360 or PS3.
The best case scenario could easily lead to something probably 10 times as powerful (though that's highly unlikely.)
Speculation is very true. I don't know about VRAM though. This is closely related to the chip that ends up being used. Most ATI graphics cards made in the last decade can use main system memory regardless of if they have any dedicated graphics memory or not.
The 360 has a unified memory architecture, which is a concept it ironically shares with low-end notebook graphics. The PS3 has a more traditional split memory system.
Unified memory is usually thought of as a bad thing in a PC, but this is only because main system memory tends to be a lot slower than the graphics memory most cards have.
Graphics memory isn't as important as you might think though. The main system memory will probably have much more effect. On PC, memory requirements are directly proportional to screen resolution and texture sizes.
1 GB of graphics memory sounds like it's better than 512, but on PC that's really only true if you like to use huge resolutions like 2560 by 1600.
The Wii doesn't have a lot of graphics memory, but given it's SD resolutions it wouldn't gain much from having a huge amount more. (What really kills the Wii is the gpu performance itself).
But yeah, in the end all we can really do is wait and see.