How many bits are modern consoles?

[Queen Michael]

The Nintendo 8-bit, remember that one? And the Super Nintendo. That one was 16 bits.
The Playstation was 32 bits, and the Nintendo 64... Well, I don't think I need to spell it out. But what about modern consoles? How many bits are, say, a Playstation 3 and the other newer consoles? And why are these things never discussed nowadays?

 

[Radeonx]

I think it's 128 still, not sure, because I'm pretty much talking out of my ass.
I'm guessing its more than 128, though, but that's what I heard a while ago.

 

[Ilikemilkshake]

I believe the ps3 is 128 bit
But bits arent really a good measure of power anymore, if i remember my high school computing you need to look at the Flops

 

[Queen Michael]

I believe the ps3 is 128 bit
But bits arent really a good measure of power anymore, if i remember my high school computing you need to look at the Flops

I know what you mean. If a console's a flop, it can't have ben very powerful.

 

[Radeonx]

I believe the ps3 is 128 bit
But bits arent really a good measure of power anymore, if i remember my high school computing you need to look at the Flops

I know what you mean. If a console's a flop, it can't have ben very powerful.

Umm, are you joking? Because a FLOP is an actual thing [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/FLOPS].

 

[Queen Michael]

I believe the ps3 is 128 bit
But bits arent really a good measure of power anymore, if i remember my high school computing you need to look at the Flops

I know what you mean. If a console's a flop, it can't have ben very powerful.

Umm, are you joking? Because a FLOP is an actual thing [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/FLOPS].

Yeah, I'm joking.

 

[Techno Squidgy]

64 bit processors. Just a hell of a lot more advanced than what the N64 was running. Curiously enough, you're computer is pretty much guaranteed to be running a 64 bit processor, but only a 32 bit OS. Weird, huh?

 

[Tupolev]

The reason they aren't brought up is that bit count doesn't have much to do with processing power; small bit counts limit things like number of available memory addresses, or the number of possible values that can be stored natively in a variable (depending on what you're referring to when you state the bit count). When you have only 8 bits, this means 256 possible values, which can obviously be problematic. However, it increases exponentially as bit count increases; when you have 64 bits, this means roughly 1.8*10^19 possible values, and right now it's pretty hard to eat that up for most practical gaming purposes.

Note that this explanation is rather simplistic.