id Says Rage on 360 Runs Faster Than PS3, Brings the Ruckus

[Rigs83]

It's not really Carmack's fault that the PS3 version is lagging. Sony intentionally made the PS3 difficult to code for in the belief that it would negatively affect the ability to port games to it's competitors and thus ensuring some exclusivity. Of course the plan backfired when the 360 came out a year ahead and reached a sustainable level of penetration before Sony could get SKU's on the shelves thus inadvertently giving the 360 the edge.

Moral of the story: Don't be a dick to your third party developers.

 

[Nutcase]

With that I can say with confidence, CPU is not such a limit on frame-rate, in fact Carmack explicitly stated that it was the rasteriser (i.e. GPU, he uses the older term because he has been in the business for so long) that was the problem,

A guy whose day job is engine technology doesn't call GPUs "rasterizers".

which is completely separate from Teh Cell. In fact everyone has been incredibly sidetracked by the hype around Teh Cell since graphics are mainly rendered in a GPU, not CPU. The entire reason GPUs invented was because CPUs are so inefficient at rendering multi-polygon and large textures i.e. what makes games today look good. Some effects can be effectively offloaded to a CPU but they are still inefficient and need very careful resource management = hard to program.

The bolded part is incredibly silly. By definition, nothing is ever offloaded to a CPU. Everything belongs there by default and gets offloaded from it as necessary.

And why do GPUs have to do all crunching of large masses of numbers on the PC? Because the PC CPUs were never designed for it properly and therefore suck at it. The Cell was designed from the ground up to crunch large masses of numbers, so when it's used properly it needs to offload much less to the GPU. Look at the performance and you realize that with appropriate code, the Cell could beat some very low-end GPUs at being a GPU.

Bottom line, when some calculations need to be done, it doesn't matter where they are done. It matters even less in a high-bandwidth architecture like the CBE.

Also, I know enough about the PS3 to know the PS3 only has FOUR Synergistic Processing Units' (SPU) available rather than 6 as was originally touted. This is because Teh Cells used in PS3s are basically all units that fail Sony's quality control for other commercial use (mainly supercomputers, servers, etc), where one of the 6 cores is faulty so is disabled so only 5 physical cores are active. On top of that the 5th core is ALWAYS reserved for PS3's background operating system, that 5th core is not available to developers now and no sign of it ever being made available in the future.

The SPUs are so complex the main Power Processing Element (PPE, actually almost identical to one of the three cores in Xbox 360's Xenon processor, only at a lower clock rate) is almost totally devoted just to managing the 4 + 1 SPUs.

It's PPU + 8 SPUs on the chip, PPU + 6 SPUs usable by the game.
And the bolded thing is wrong at least in two ways. First, the SPUs are so simple that it's a good idea to spend a lot of PPU time crafting a suitable workload for them. It's like a large group of hardworking but stupid craftsmen, and one smart engineer. The maximum amount of things gets done when the engineer keeps the craftsmen fed with clear orders so that they never have to stop to do what they are bad at (thinking). Second, why do you think the PPU needs to manage the "+1" SPU running the hypervisor?

So it is a lot more like 3 vs 4 in terms of sheer CPU power of 360 vs PS3 but bottlenecks like the rasteriser that Carmack has mentioned is a bit like having a 1000 horse power engine in a car yet spindly bicycle tires; if you can't transfer the power to the road then you aren't going to get the speed you expect.

Where that comparison fails is that laws of physics dictate how much power you can put into the road through the bicycle tires, and those laws are unalterable. There's no law like that in game design and architecture. Carmack's complaint is essentially that he has decided to make a certain kind of engine and when the platform isn't balanced for just that purpose it's the platform's fault. Meanwhile, other developers design their engines with the platform in mind and have no bottleneck.

 

[ZippyDSMlee]

Its well noted the PS3 is a pain in the butt to develop for, its partly due to $onys inane choice of hardware(if the doubled the ramm I couldn't pick on them so much) and partly due to an industry of slackers. We can't have standardization of control options(full button mapping),volume options,saving options(quick saves),ect even credits are accredited right. Why in the hell do you think they would bother to port anything right? Have you looked at the PC ports of late? Its like they don't even bother to do anything more than just get it to work and even then they slack on that half the time.

 

[Nutcase]

It's not really Carmack's fault that the PS3 version is lagging. Sony intentionally made the PS3 difficult to code for in the belief that it would negatively affect the ability to port games to it's competitors and thus ensuring some exclusivity. Of course the plan backfired when the 360 came out a year ahead and reached a sustainable level of penetration before Sony could get SKU's on the shelves thus inadvertently giving the 360 the edge.

Really, that's about as credible as "Bush/Obama did 9/11". The PS3 forces devs to do a lot of work to parcel the jobs into small units, but there isn't anything in particular about the software engineering which would make the game hard to port. If you really think otherwise, specifics please.

Who does Sony get compared to in developer support these days? Microsoft. Which company has the most experience on earth dealing with and supporting developers? Microsoft.

Where were these conspiracy theories when the PS2 came out? Developers had more trouble with it than they did with the PS3. I'd say the architecture is weirder than the PS3 one.
http://www.bringyou.to/games/PS2.htm

You know what else had weird architecture? Dreamcast. Again, not a peep from the X-Files crowd.

All Sony is doing, then and now, is to do their best to extract as much performance as they can from hardware of certain cost. It sucks for the developers who don't want to learn anything new, and it rocks for the developers who master it and are then able to produce miracles like God of War, Virtua Fighter 4 Evolution, Shadow of the Colossus or Okami on a 300MHz machine with 32MB of RAM.

 

[LesIsMore]

People - let alone developers - are still committed to the PS3?

(This post brought to you by bored Friday night fanboy baiting.)

 

[LesIsMore]

Get ready for John Carmack to make the PS3 his *****!

Oh, that takes me back to PC Gamer ads of many moons ago. Well played.

 

[Guitarmasterx7]

Wow. This is a first. They don't seem to be able to grasp the PS3's tech. Sorry to all the Rage fans out there.

Is that sarcasm? From what I've heard the PS3 is a pain in the ass to program for. Valve said they had trouble programming games for it, and they where able to make the greatest physics engine ever. Hell even sony says that it's hard to program for followed by a bullshit reason why. The real story being: They wanted to put a blu ray player in their console to one up everyone and that screwed them. Sure the Console hardware itself is much more impressive than the other two consoles, but blu ray which was their selling point ironically became a negative, because the discs read a lot slower and the programming format requires a lot more space to be filled to make everything run smoothly.

 

[Booze Zombie]

Oh, that takes me back to PC Gamer ads of many moons ago. Well played.

This trip down memory lane was brought to you courtesy of Drunken Ghoul airlines.

 

[Viruzzo]

Bottom line, when some calculations need to be done, it doesn't matter where they are done.T

Actually, it matters a lot. It seems there is a bit of misunderstanding on the differences between GPUs and CPUs: the first one are programmable, specialized and pipelined, and cannot be replaced by simple CPU rendering. It's not a matter of power, it simply is different. So it doesn't matter how many and how powerful the SPUs are, they won't manage graphics.

Oh and to those that say that PC = 360, it's true, just, not. To begin with, the 360 has a PPC CPU, not an x86 like all Windows PCs; even more, programming for a console is in general completely different than from programming for a PC, simply because on one side you have fixed hardware and other side it's variable. Of course MS has assuredly produced a very good SDK that allows a decently easy porting of games over the PC, but that's different from just "tweaking the graphics settings".

What is the difference between cores and threads? Is one software and the other hardware?
Does this have something do with why Intel Core series of processors is better than having a quad core processor?

Threads: software. They are lightweight processes, meaning that each one is one concurrent stream of code from the same program.
Cores: hardware. Basically each core is like a separate CPU (meaning that it can concurrently execute code along the other cores), but on the same chip. Is similar to having a multiprocessor system, but with simpler bus access to RAM and partially shared cache.
Intel Core: just a commercial name.

 

[DoctorWhat]

id Says Rage on 360 Runs Faster Than PS3, Brings the Ruckus

id Software and John Carmack caused, in their own words, a "ruckus" by revealing that the 360 version of the developer's upcoming FPS Rage runs twice as fast on the 360 as it does on the PS3.

Wow, the 360 version of the game runs half as fast on the PS3 as it does on the 360? I'm amazed it runs at all =P

I was just about to say that. Mr Ng, could you maybe do something about the wording of the post?

 

[HardRockSamurai]

I just hope that both versions run at an equal frame rate before the game is released, so that the balance may be restored again.

[small]And by balance, I mean that we can go back to ripping at each others throats just like we normally do.[/small]

 

[Nutcase]

Bottom line, when some calculations need to be done, it doesn't matter where they are done.T

Actually, it matters a lot.

Not as long as they get done.

It seems there is a bit of misunderstanding on the differences between GPUs and CPUs: the first one are programmable, specialized and pipelined, and cannot be replaced by simple CPU rendering. It's not a matter of power, it simply is different. So it doesn't matter how many and how powerful the SPUs are, they won't manage graphics.

LOL. You engage in exactly the same kind of magical thinking as the guy I originally rebuked. If a chip doesn't say "GPU" on the top, it doesn't have magical pixel fairies, and those are required in order to bring bits into the framebuffer, so no video output is possible.

 

[Treblaine]

With that I can say with confidence, CPU is not such a limit on frame-rate, in fact Carmack explicitly stated that it was the rasteriser (i.e. GPU, he uses the older term because he has been in the business for so long) that was the problem, which is completely separate from The Cell. In fact everyone has been incredibly sidetracked by the hype around The Cell since graphics are mainly rendered in a GPU, not CPU. The entire reason GPUs invented was because CPUs are so inefficient at rendering multi-polygon and large textures i.e. what makes games today look good. Some effects can be effectively offloaded to a CPU but they are still inefficient and need very careful resource management = hard to program.

But you forget, the cell is designed to actually offload some of the processing from the GPU on to the Cell. Thats the way they designed it.
Go play Uncharted, or MGS4, All those cutscenes, Are rendered in REAL TIME. They are able to DO that by putting the processes between the CPU and the GPU. The SPE's are incredibly powerful, They are fast, really really fast. And there are six of them.


The CPU isn't inefficient at rendering multi-polygons, its inefficient because its running the OS, running everything involved with the game, all the physics, particles, AI, ect. Its doing a LOT of stuff at the same time. All the GPU is, is a 2nd Proccessor dedicated to graphics. If you put a 2nd CPU in your pc and dedicated it to graphics it would virtually do the same thing. Nvidia Is, I believe, making there own GPU/CPU that will supposedly replace Intel/AMD.

Also, I know enough about the PS3 to know the PS3 only has FOUR Synergistic Processing Units' (SPU) available rather than 6 as was originally touted. This is because Teh Cells used in PS3s are basically all units that fail Sony's quality control for other commercial use (mainly supercomputers, servers, etc), where one of the 6 cores is faulty so is disabled so only 5 physical cores are active. On top of that the 5th core is ALWAYS reserved for PS3's background operating system, that 5th core is not available to developers now and no sign of it ever being made available in the future.

Actually you got that wrong, the SPU's also called SPE's, and about a dozen other things, there are EIGHT in the Cell, 2 of the SPUs are locked. 1 is locked for the Core System (Aka it runs the OS), the other is locked because it is faulty. Its a cost saving measure. They have 8, 7 are good, 1 is defaulty, what are they going to do with the shitty one? They have to have ONE for the OS, and they can't apparently give devs an 'odd number' of SPU's.

The SPUs are so complex the main Power Processing Element (PPE, actually almost identical to one of the three cores in Xbox 360's Xenon processor, only at a lower clock rate) is almost totally devoted just to managing the 4 + 1 SPUs.

Its main processor I believe is a 2.4ghz Single Core Processor. It might be 3.0, (was 360 3.2?) It isn't devoted to the SPU's, but thats part of its job. THIS IS WHY people who made ports 2 years ago, sucked. THEY PUT EVERYTHING ON THE SINGLE PROCESSOR!

So it is a lot more like 3 vs 4 in terms of sheer CPU power of 360 vs PS3 but bottlenecks like the rasteriser that Carmack has mentioned is a bit like having a 1000 horse power engine in a car yet spindly bicycle tires; if you can't transfer the power to the road then you aren't going to get the speed you expect.

Again, you fail at reading its still 3 vs 8. 7 SPU's, and one main central processor.

Also, Your last analogy fails.
Never heard of the Tweel?
http://www.gizmag.com/go/3603/

/fail!

I stand corrected, you are right there are 6 Synergistic Processing Elements, I remembered that there were 2 less than expected but it was late when I posted, I made a boo boo. But that doesn't equal 3 vs 8... at most 3 (tri-core Xenon) vs 6 (SPEs) as I think we can agree you can't include the one that is locked out for the OS.

Also, the Tweel is WAY more than just some bicycle tire I was obviously referring to the narrow width of a bicycle tire that has very little grip. I think my analogy still stands though you have done a lot to obfuscate it with some prototype tire which barely has anything to do with an actual bicycle tire.

I have no idea why some 360-PS3 ports look so bad, maybe they put it all on one processor, maybe not, it is in those companies best interest to stay hush hush about it and unless you can get into the game code it is incredibly speculative. I suspect even low quality ports something is offloaded to the SPEs because it is easy to get the first SPE, but complexity confounds it when you try to go after the next 5.


"If you put a 2nd CPU in your pc and dedicated it to graphics it would virtually do the same thing."

It is a HELL of a lot more complicated than that. If I tried to run Crysis graphics on just my CPU, you'd end up with this:

http://www.tomshardware.com/news/windows-cpu-gpu,6645.html

That is a quad-core 3.0GHz CPU, one of the most powerful CPU you can buy for PCs and easily more powerful than Teh Cell, it renders Crysis FIFTEEN times slower than some cheap GPU you can buy for as little as $70 retail. All this is a the LOWEST possible quality settings and Standard Definition resolution (800x600) yet the most powerful CPU can only manage 7 frames per second and I'll say Crysis on lowest graphics look almost the same as Far Cry 1. CPU graphics rendering is a red herring.

That CPU/GPU experiment you mentioned is by Intel (not Nvidia) code named Larrabe has hit several huge road blocks that means it will likely never reach fruition. Mainly due to how a conventional GPU will always have the advantage unless developers can be convinced to make a quantum leap to a new rendering method (ray-tracing) with a simultaneous performance dip (resolution, frame rate).

I think you are mixing it up with Nvidia's Tesla and GPU processing idea, that is where the GPU is still physically exactly the same and still optimised for graphics but a special overlay is used to emulate CPU functions on the GPU, in terms of space, power consumption and everything it is wasteful but GPUs have become so bloated in processing power in the PC graphics arms race, it is easy to exploit that.

But these SPEs in The Cell could be seen as like the shaders stream processors in a GPU and it would not be hard to make them function like that, except even a low end graphics card has at least 16 of these processors rather than 6 for the Cell and an entry level card like the 8800GT has 112 stream processors!

 

[Treblaine]

With that I can say with confidence, CPU is not such a limit on frame-rate, in fact Carmack explicitly stated that it was the rasteriser (i.e. GPU, he uses the older term because he has been in the business for so long) that was the problem,

A guy whose day job is engine technology doesn't call GPUs "rasterizers".

You say that but how about you actually read the article this thread is based on, there is a quote attributed to him he actually uses the word:

John Carmack admitted. "The rasteriser is just a little bit slower - no two ways about that..."


You also said: "Bottom line, when some calculations need to be done, it doesn't matter where they are done. It matters even less in a high-bandwidth architecture like the CBE."

Well I think my previous post where the link showed Crysis being rendered on the most advanced CPUs yet being outperformed on the cheapest GPUs by a factor of 15 show it DOES matter where. In fact it is borne out in this precise scenario, RAGE is under-performing on PS3 by 30-40 fps, running at as low as 33% the speed of 360 or PC.

And it is not id Software's fault that PS3 can't handle an advanced engine. Your proposal of using a different TYPE of engine is unrealistic as for the most PS3 exclusive games they use fundamentally the same type of engine with graphical COMPROMISES like the low res textures in KZ2, while pushing PS3's strengths like certain lighting effects.

 

[Olikunmissile]

Everyone is entitled to their own opinion I guess, sure sony shot themselves in the foot with making it harder to program for but seeing as I own both consoles I have to disagree, the PS3 runs better, for me, than the 360. But oh well, I'm not fussed, games come out and I play them, not exactly bothered what platform they're on.

 

[Doug]

Well the issue is that the PS3 is difficult to program for. Just ask any developer out there, hence why the PS3 lost a bunch of exclusive titles that turned into multi-platform titles. Spec wise the PS3 is absolutely more powerful than a 360, the catch is re-designing your code to take advantage of all that horsepower, with budget issues and deadlines, it makes coding for the thing very difficult.

But heck, Sony wants it that way...

the real shitter here is that id has coded Tech5 to work on all platforms right from the start, that includes the PS3. It's not just a port so to speak. Anyways, this has my wondering just how bad it really is to work on the PS3.

Having seen LucasArt's troubles with the PS3 version of The Force Unleashed first hand, I instantly knew then that the PS3 was not a port-friendly platform, but LucasArts made TFU primarily on the 360 and then ported it to the PS3. PS3 testing for us started quite a while after the 360's testing began. Anyways, having Carmack come out and say that they are having some issues with the PS3 version of Rage really gets me to wonder why the hell Sony intentionally failed so badly.

I suspect that, as Shamus said, its all for the Blu Ray player - assuming it isn't wiped out by direct downloads, it'll be the future first platform for people buying movies.

 

[Dogstile]

Valve and id software have problems developing for the PS3. Well Sony, what do you have to say?

Get over it and just work? I dunno, you'd think people would get used to the PS3's hardware by now, but seeing as how id is primarily a PC developer like VALVe, I can't imagine them becoming masters overnight on their first game (to my knowledge, I'll retract that partially if wrong) on the PS3. 360, maybe, that's similar to PC, but even then it's all pretty different.

Besides, RAGE is supposed to be so big that it fills a Blu-ray disk and needs 2 or 3 360 discs, so take that Xbots!

I find it insanely awesome that a game needs to use more than one disc, and would love to have it in my collection for that soul reason

 

[Pendragon9]

Wow. This is a first. They don't seem to be able to grasp the PS3's tech. Sorry to all the Rage fans out there.

Is that sarcasm? From what I've heard the PS3 is a pain in the ass to program for. Valve said they had trouble programming games for it, and they where able to make the greatest physics engine ever. Hell even sony says that it's hard to program for followed by a bullshit reason why. The real story being: They wanted to put a blu ray player in their console to one up everyone and that screwed them. Sure the Console hardware itself is much more impressive than the other two consoles, but blu ray which was their selling point ironically became a negative, because the discs read a lot slower and the programming format requires a lot more space to be filled to make everything run smoothly.

Whoa, easy. Put the flamethrower away, I was only expressing my opinion. I don't even know what is, I was just pondering on another developer that says the Ps3 is too hard to develop for, once again.

Surely, being so popular, the people who made this should surely be able to make it run.

Now please, don't pounce on me next time. Your post kinda attacked me. Then again, this has turned into another "lol Sony shot themselves in the foot and they are dckheads" thread, so I'm not surprised someone took offense to my post.