The PlayStation 3 will feature the much-vaunted Cell processor, which will run at 3.2GHz, giving the whole system 2.18 teraflops of overall performance. It will sport 256MB XDR main RAM at 3.2GHz, and it will have 256MB of GDDR VRAM at 700MHz. It has 6 USB ports, 3 ethernet ports and Bluetooth (no WiFi support for gaming it seems and Bluetooth was chosen for controllers only as it has better latency over WiFi). There are also CF/SD and MemoryStick readers integrated.
Sony PS3 Specifications Are Out
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I want this. I like that they put support for other memory cards and not just the sony stick.
how much will these things cost? More then 700$???
More power than 2 GF 6800XT?????
CNet says that it will cost below $450 for the normal model and $550 for the write-capable Blu-Ray version that also has a bigger hard disk in it.
I wouldn’t worry about the cost. Their first concern is getting the system in your house. Even if they don’t profit from the sales at first.
You might want to double check the RAM listing. Everything I’ve read says 512mb overall. 256mb for Video and 256mb for the system.
All the reports I’ve read say that it will have 512MB total – 256 for the CPU and 256 for the GPU. Nowhere so I see another 512…?
http://ps3.ign.com/articles/614/614682p1.html
256MB XDR Main RAM @3.2GHz
256MB GDDR3 VRAM @700MHz
The way the article is written on gamespot is like saying it has 256+256+512.
Well, only problem with the XBOX 2 and PS3 is going to be the price. Traditionally consoles have been the biggest gaming machines, by far, because of the low price. But, these two are looking so expensive, that one could buy a computer cheaper.
But, I don’t care about the hardware as much as the games. Show me the games, and I will make my decision that way.
What OS is it going to run? Can I run Apache on it?
To the Xbox 360? I can’t be bothered to read through both myself, and I’m sure there’s a bunch of stuff in each I wouldn’t truly understand.
SO, in raw power, which has it? I’d imagine the PS3 seeing as it’s comming out quite a while after..
that thing is freaking powerful! That ram is unbelievably fast! It’s going to be interesting to see what kind of games come out for it and the xbox 360.
I’m going to buy both
Console specs have been overhyped since the days of the 2600. Hardware is only meaningful in the games it makes possible, and the demos for both the PS3 and Xbox 360 have been quite unimpressive thus far.
XBox 360 @ 3.2ghz and the ps3 @ 3.2ghz?!?!?!
Coincidence?!!? I think not: either one of two things:
(1) Same chips, or a least derived from same chips
(2) Marketing Scheme
Lets see what nintedo has coming now…
its *not* the same chip. the xbox has a tricore custom ppc cpu and the ps3 has a cell cpu… besides, who cares ;P
I don’t understand people these days. All they care about is hardware, not the games. Back when the SNES ruled the world, the NEO-GEO and Atari Jaguar came out. While both were superior to the SNES, they didn’t have good games, and didn’t sell as well.
Now, people will waste money on a system (ie xbox), that doesn’t have as many good games as a PS2, so they have to buy both. Out of the current systems, if you could only have one, which one would you choose?
My choice is the PS2, it has more exclusive titles, that are actually worth playing/buying than the xbox.
Hell, the GC is pretty good with exclusives only as well, but, I still think the best games are on the PS2, and backwards compatablity makes it my system of choice.
2.18 TFLOPS for the PS3 and 1TFLOPS for the XBox360.
http://hardware.gamespot.com/Sony-PlayStation-3-C-15015-x-4-4
Some pictures from engadget.com:
http://www.engadget.com/entry/1234000620043567
Hardware specs are jawdropping, unfortunately it appears as if we will again be getting rehashs of xyz flagship franchise. As a long time gamer the lack of innovation in the current crop of console market is a real big turn-off, suppose I’ll just stick with indie-pc stuff or just roll my own.
These specs are pretty outrageous.
However, I’m reminded of how the PS2 was supposed to push 70 million polygons per second with AI and everything else. The PS2 has never come close to that mark.
These specs sound more concrete though, so hopefully it’s not just more empty hype.
I only want one to run Linux on. Games are a bonus
By the way what’s up with these new console designs? The PS3 looks like a friggin jet printer!
Hopefully the big N won’t drop the bomb on their console design.
Actually, it looks almost identical to one of the more famous rejected SNES designs.
I like how the X360 looks. A little Dellish but thats ok. The new PS3 controller looks like a d!ld@.
Could someone explain how a 3.2 Ghz processor is going to do 2.18 teraflops. I think it’s a lie.
Anyone else think its odd that Sony is using bluetooth for their controlers (a MS owned technology) but MS is going Wifi???
Hmm, people see the past with rose-colored glasses. Hardware specs were hyped plenty “back in the day”. Remember all the talk about the Jaguar hardware being “64-bit” (32+16+16), and how the Neo Geo hardware was “arcade perfect”? There was lots of talk about how the Gensis, at 7Mhz was so much more powerful than the SNES, at 3.5MHz. So hardware hyping has always been with the video game industry. And it hasn’t been something that is irrelevent. I personally couldn’t stand the Gensis because the tiny 64-color palette made games look drab. The SNES’s larger 256-color palette made things look much nicer. Same thing with the PSX — the N64’s anti-aliasing made games a lot more playable than the PSX’s aliased graphics.
That said, the hardware hype makes sense in this context. We’re talking about the launch of a console, which is just a piece of hardware. The silicon and plastic is the only thing they are making, so what else will they hype? Its up to the studios to hype the games.
“A 64-way supergrid made by stacking eight eight-way assemblies would have a total of 512 attached processors and could, therefore, break 2 teraflops if data transportation kept up with the processors.” — talking about the PS3 cpu.
source: http://www.macnewsworld.com/story/34548.html
The 2 teraflops would only be possible with 512 of these things running in a cluster. I knew it was BS!
The teraflops rating is the Cell processor + the GPU. It looks like the GPU accounts for the vast majority of the flops.
Not saying these things aren’t hyped… but the Neo Geo was “arcade perfect.” It was the same hardware as used in their arcade machines. You could even adapt the cart’s from the home console to the arcade type. Even the Neo Geo CD was effectively the same. Had some more ram i believe and games were ported to accomidate for the CD drive.
Both “teraflops” figures are a bit sketchy. The reason is that they are factoring in the performance of the GPUs, whose FLOPS aren’t entirely general purpose. For reference, the geforce6 chips have a rating of about 200 gigaflops. A lot of that performance is tied up in special-purpose circuits for triangle setup, T&L, etc. General-purpose vector performance is more in the range of 20-50 gigaflops. The percentage of general-purpose FLOPS in the XBox 360 and PS3 GPUs should be higher, however, than in the Geforce6, since their shader pipelines are far more general than those in existing GPUs.
The Cell’s rating of 218 gigaflops, is general-purpose vector ops, with each of the 4 components in a 128-bit order being counted as a seperate operation. That’s a massive amount of floating-point power, and really does dwarf the vector performance of the XBox 360 *if* your software can run the 7 SPEs at a good capacity.
Each Cell CPU actually has 8 attached processors. So to achieve 2 gigaflops, you’d need 8 Cells, not 64. The 2 tflops rating isn’t BS, at least if you’re as jaded by marketing dweebs as most people are
2 tflops can actually happen in the machine, its just that you can’t directly use a large portion of them. Its really no different, though, than the 1 tflop figure Microsoft is throwing around, or the 200 gflops figures ATI and NVIDIA throw around.
The design is geared for mid-life crisis porsche-buying males, not gamers. (Maybe there’s an overlap now). But what do I know. I’m not into black turtlenecks and Bose-lifestlye stereos either.
The specs look great. But game design has not evolved in 10 years so the extra power will likely add effects, not gameplay.
I’m not arguing that it wasn’t arcade perfect. I’m just saying that the arcade hardware was a major part of its appeal, that the focus on hardware in the consoles isn’t a recent thing. Basically console manufacturers create the tools game developers use. That’s why they focus on the hardware — that’s the part they create, and the part they have control over.
Quote: “@#$@#$@#$. @#$@#$@#$. This is SSOOO stupid. I just cannot believe this. I need to find counselling immediately, this totally shot my hopes for the future to hell. God, what IDIOTS.”
You just let the world know that you are the idiot. Come on, it’s just a game console.
Scaling is just one capability of Cell, the individual systems are going to be potent enough on their own. The single unit of computation in a Cell system is called a Processing Element (PE) and even an individual PE is one hell of a powerful processor, they have a theoretical computing capability of 250 GFLOPS (Billion Floating Point Operations per Second) [GFLOPS]. In the computing world quoted figures (bandwidth, processing, throughput) are often theoretical maximums and rarely if ever met in real life. Cell may be unusual in that given the right type of problem they may actually be able to get close to their maximum computational figure.
Each Cell contains 8 APUs. An APU is a self contained vector processor which acts independently from the others. They contain 128 X 128 bit registers, there are also 4 floating point units capable of 32 GigaFlops and 4 Integer units capable of 32 GOPS (Billions of Operations per Second). The APUs also include a small 128 Kilobyte local memory instead of a cache, there is also no virtual memory system used at runtime.
learn more:
http://www.blachford.info/computer/Cells/Cell1.html
holla back
It’s better to have bluetooth for controllers, because Bluetooth has better LATENCY over WiFi, while WiFi has more BANDWIDTH. However, for controllers, latency is what matters, NOT bandwidth. Sony’s solution is better to MS’, but it will cost Sony a few bucks more on the console.
Please note that Sony does have WiFi on the PS3 too, but only for LAN/NET gaming, not for the controllers.
Isn’t it just a bit weird they have 1 SPE set aside for redundency? What’s that all about?
Both CPU’s are custom developed and based off the PPC. the main powerful core of the Cell(9 cores total, the remaining are HIGHLY simple cores, not seen since the Pentium 1(Pentium 1 Pro is more advanced) is basically a PPC Core.
“The Cell’s rating of 218 gigaflops, is general-purpose vector ops, with each of the 4 components in a 128-bit order being counted as a seperate operation.”
The article claims 2.18 teraflops which doesn’t equal 218 gigaflops. That would be 2180 gigaflops. Either way, both figures sound too high.
—-
“Each Cell CPU actually has 8 attached processors. So to achieve 2 gigaflops, you’d need 8 Cells, not 64.”
Ok, in that case how does a single 3.2 Ghz cell processor achieve 218 gigaflops. Running at 3.2 Ghz and doing one floating point instruction / clock cycle would only yield 3.2 Gigaflops. Now if it does multiple floating point operations per clock cycle, that number can get higher. But how does it get THAT much higher.
Is it just me, or does both the xbox 360 and ps3 specs seem far fetched and rediculous.
Why the heck there are 3 Ethernet ports?
HELP!
Bill
The article claims 2.18 teraflops because its taking into acount the 1.8 teraflops provided by the GPU.
As for how it achieves 218 gigaflops with one processor. Each Cell has 9 elements. One PPE with a VMX unit, that does 4 operations per clock cycle. Then it has 8 PPEs, each with a vector unit that does 2 operations on 4 elements each clock cycle. Thus, you get a total of 3.2 * 4 + 3.2 * 2 * 4 * 8 = 217.6 billion 32-bit operations per clock cycle.
I don’t see what’s so far-fetched about it. What do you expect when you cram 9 vector units on a single processor running at 3.2 GHz? The humongous clock-rate isn’t magic, either. It comes at the expense of out-of-order execution, wide superscaler execution, branch prediction, and a lot of hand-tuned circuits.
Ahem. I mean “8 SPEs, each with one vector unit”.
Here: http://ps3.ign.com/articles/614/614619p1.html
The local paper today claims it is a power pc design.
Gotcha. Well, that’s all i was looking for. Some explanation on how it’s possible.
It seems to me like Sony is a little bit ahead of MS. Sony did their demos on _real_ hardware. MS used G5s, which means that they are probably still in bringup. If they are indeed still in bring up, they shouldn’t have been quoting CPU speeds to the public. I bet there are a bunch of pissed off IBM executives. The last thing that they want is another “3GHz by next year” situation. That little disclaimer will protect MS in court. It won’t strengthen their relationship with IBM. Just because this product is for MS, doesn’t mean that MS controls all of the confidential information.
Cross development on G5s is not perfect, especially when you do not have real hardware to complement it. It can only expediate development to a certain point because not all of bringup can be done in parallel. If the game developers only have a few months with real hardware, MS’s operating system and user space libraries better be flawless.
I think Sony’s launch in the spring is going to give them an advantage because everyone in the development of the games will have more time. Also, 65 nm will be more mature and soften the manufacturing costs. MS is pushing it and they could easily end up with a small number of titles at launch that are low quality. If some of the games are delayed, it won’t make MS look good. But who knows, I guess free press is good press.
http://ps3.ign.com/articles/614/614619p1.html
has some INCREDIBLE screenshots, with reports of real-time demos and announcing a bunch of PS3 games. I’d say Sony is ahead by more than a nose!
I’m pretty sure bluetooth is NOT “(a MS owned technology)”
http://www.palowireless.com/infotooth/knowbase/general/97.asp
The XBOX 360 appears to only use Wifi as a networking option (just as the original XBOX). The controllers appear to use a different technology.
From IGN’s XBOX 360 FAQ:
http://xbox360.ign.com/articles/608/608394p2.html
The Xbox 360 controller will be by far the most sophisticated wireless controller the market has ever seen. It uses “frequency-hopping spread spectrum” a thousand times a second or so, changing frequencies, cutting down drastically on the amount of interference you might encounter from other devices in your house. Not only that, but it’s already a tried-and-true system.
How long is the range between the wireless controllers and the Xbox 360?
Players have approximately 30 feet of uninhibited freedom.
I just hope the PS3 is going to run Linux or NetBSD, that would be great and give you quite a little compilation power. According to IBM it’s also going to be used in Highend Servers, homeservers and so on. Let’s see when the first Cell Computer hits the market. Maybe something along the lines of the Genesi Open Desktop Workstation.
Hardware specs are jawdropping, unfortunately it appears as if we will again be getting rehashs of xyz flagship franchise. As a long time gamer the lack of innovation in the current crop of console market is a real big turn-off, suppose I’ll just stick with indie-pc stuff or just roll my own.
This is because Nintendo, Sony, and Microsoft are not smart enough to allow anybody to develop games for their console. Thus the obsurd prices and trashy games. Once one of them decide to actually make money from their console (aka, majorly lower the sdk price and outragous restrictions), then we will see decent games on the market and the console creator will actaully turn a profit.
Until then, the PC is the only real “console”.
I don’t understand people these days. All they care about is hardware, not the games. Back when the SNES ruled the world, the NEO-GEO and Atari Jaguar came out. While both were superior to the SNES, they didn’t have good games, and didn’t sell as well.
“…and how the Neo Geo hardware was “arcade perfect”?
The Neo Geo didn’t sell because its cartridges were priced over $150 each. The system was awesome and everyone I knew wanted one but it was too much money for a teenager. IT WAS “arcade perfect”. It used similar hardware to arcade machines at the time and Neo Geo coin-op machines were in arcades. The games for it were amazing especially if you were a fan of Street Fighter clones. I still occasionally fire up an emulator to play one of the Metal Slug series games.
I really don’t care about next gen console specs. What I want to know is if gameplay has been improved in their games this time around. Nintendo can come out with a console with half the performance, as long as they keep making great games its their consoles I’ll keep buying.
Now that we have heard from Sony and Microsoft, now its Nintendo’s turn. So far, I am a little more excited about the new XBox over the PS3. I currently own a PS2 right now, but I think Microsoft really did their homework for the XBox 360. The only thing I am worried about with the XBox 360 is how it seems internet gaming seems to really be pushed. I could care less about going online and playing, especially when you have to pay…
As far as the console design goes, I dont think the PS3 looks that great… It already looks similar to my Sony DVD player. Who cares about how a console looks, because its the games that count.
Looks at this demo of Killzone 2 on playstation3
http://www.gametrailers.com/player.php?id=5833&type=mov
That’s real time, guys!!!
This is because Nintendo, Sony, and Microsoft are not smart enough to allow anybody to develop games for their console. Thus the obsurd prices and trashy games. Once one of them decide to actually make money from their console (aka, majorly lower the sdk price and outragous restrictions), then we will see decent games on the market and the console creator will actaully turn a profit.
The prices aren’t bad at all. They’re very similar to PC game prices, and have actually gone down over time despite inflaction and drasticaly higher production budgets.
Nintendo and Sony both make larger profits. It’s been a while since I’ve seen figures, but IIRC, Sony makes a higher overall profit due to higher volume, but a larger percentage of Nintendo’s revenue is profit due to all their inhouse games. Microsoft loses hundreds of millions of dollars per quarter from their games division (with the exception of the quarter Halo 2 launched) as their business startegy is to simply gain a foothold in the game industry regardless of cost.
Lowering the barrier of entry to making console games would essentially kill the market. Look at what happened in the early 80’s with Atari. The low barrier of entry to making games flooded the market with crap, resulting in the market crashing. Nintendo revived the market by significantly raising the barrier of entry for making games.
Well this seems impressive atleast if its for $400 and we can upgrade the system RAM and run linux officially. Well the artcle at IGN says the GPU has a FPU of 1.8 TFlops contributing to that 2.18 TFlops overall.
Bluetooth is sure as hell not an MS technology. I’m pretty sure the guys in Lund, Sweden, will tell you that (atleast they told me when I was there before BT was announced to the rest of the world).
Besides, who cares what standard the handcontrollers use, or do SONY plan on !handcontroller hardware to work with BT on the PS3? It would be nice with a keyboard for online games after all (a bugger to write crap with a handcontrol).
Never bought a console. I simply don’t like console games. BUT, this time I might be tempted. 3 Ethernet ports? If I can run a decent OS on top of that I guess my old server is going for a little vacation as soon as the PS3 is out. Sure, IF the price is right.
ha, i don’t care about ps3 or xbox360 specs as long a new 60fps, AAed, dazzling “burnout”-title will hit these consoles. One of the rare unique games currently on the market.
I have never played with a console. I mean, how can one play a first person shooter without a good mouse, a decent keyboard, and a high resolution monitor? I do not think I could bear playing something like CounterStrike on a console.
At least we all know who are the winners here: us the comsumers…
… and IBM.
http://arstechnica.com/news.ars/post/20050516-4912.html:
Sony also unveiled the PS3’s graphics chip.The RSX is more powerful than two GeForce 6800 Ultra video cards, which would cost roughly $1,000 total if purchased today.
I would like to know what the prize estimation of the PS3 is.
I read somewhere that there will be 2 versions, one around USD 450 and the other USD 550.
From my previous experience with PS2 I’d say it’s better to wait about a year before buying, so you can get a much lower price, and usually the first batch of games are not that good anyway.
I think these 2 of the 3 next generation consoles give some insight into where the game business is headed.
One thing I’m happy about is the rumors that the ps3 sdk will use opengl. This could allow for a real opportunity for homebrew development, something that hasn’t happened _significantly_ since the dreamcast.
On the other hand these consoles are not going to be simple to program for. To squeeze out the real power of these consoles developers are going to need to work a lot harder and introduce multithreading into their game engines — not a simple task, ue3 devs have talked about just how many tricky pitfalls are in the way of making a good multithreaded game engine. Then again this gives me hope that programming languages more suited for concurrent execution than C++ will rise in popularity, and that the efforts to optimize compilers and interpreters for them will increase.
All of this is happening as the art side of game development takes longer than ever — the cost of creating high polygon models and high resolution textures has brought on the dominance of the massive game development studios and pushed out the smaller devs — it’s no longer possible for a half dozen people to put together a professional game with content that can compare to the big devs.
it was a pre-rendered movie, right?
right?
I just hope the PS3 is going to run Linux or NetBSD, that would be great and give you quite a little compilation power. According to IBM it’s also going to be used in Highend Servers, homeservers and so on. Let’s see when the first Cell Computer hits the market. Maybe something along the lines of the Genesi Open Desktop Workstation.
I heard from someone at IBM who was working on Linux-on-cell. So yes, it will run Linux definitely (and already does).
I also heard on the grapevine from someone doing some Linux kernel work for Sony, apparently for PS3. That was a couple of years ago, but we may still see a Linux based kernel for PS3, it isn’t out of the question.
it was a pre-rendered movie, right?
I don’t know mate, should be … right? Or is it…?
Is there anyone else like me, who can’t run UT2k4 at absoute full detail level because the screen simply gets crammed with TOO MUCH stuff? I mean, I can’t even see other people sometimes, because there’s so much cables, boxes, pipes and stuff running all over the place.
I believe we need 3D glasses so we can let our brain sort all this information (depth wise).
this is imho normal for 3d shooters. even on q3 decent players turn down detail to the absolute minimun in order to see enemies better.
the high detail view should only be used if you want to have a tastefull gaming experience, but not if you want high scores
Do you know where are my favority games? In a 7Mhz console with 64 colors, that’s right, Mega Drive!
Streets of Rage 2, Monster World 4, Sonic 1/2/3/Knuckles, Comix Zone (The most kickass game ever after Shenmue), Gunstar Heroes, Soleil, Shining Force 1, Popful Mail (Mega CD), Phantasy Star 4, Snatcher (Mega CD was the best version IMO)
I can go on mentioning SNES that only had 3Mhz but games like Kirby Superstar, Final Fight 3, Seiken Densetsu 3, Kirby Dream Course, Chrono Trigger (best RPG ever)
I can even go as far as Master System with games like Monter World 3 or Alex Kidd (yes it’s Kidd not Kid)
To me 3D games just don’t have the same appeal that 2D games had with the obvious exceptions of Shenmue 1/2 (best games ever in any possible way), Jet Set Radio (not Future), and maybe some other I’ve forgot (Final Fantasy 7?), infact the only modern games I’ve played recently were Sonic Advance 1/2/3 and Zelda: Minish Cap. That said, to me these specs are absolutely ridiculous and so will their prices be not to mention that the time gap between console is getting smaller, back on the days Mega Drive was out in 1989 and lasted ’till 1996, that’s 7 years worth investiment, nowdays a console last what? 3 year?… Oh well.
So are you thinking I’m Old School? You bet!
OldScholl? DAMN RIGHT! 😛
– 16 bits or DIE!
P.S.: Just in case you are wondering why did I write such a long post about old games is because OldSchool (being one myself) dudes like these posts about the lost games 😛 You can reply to this post if you are one cause I’m sticking around for a hour or so.
In a sense the consoles would even out the game players of whom some play at full detail and thus can’t see shit in a dense env and those that play for the high scores and try to minimize the env effects on their vision. So, for consoles, both get the full detail and are on even ground. Now, of course everyone would like to have a better controller than the crappy pad, but it might be possible to convince the console industry to accept a wasd mouse controlle combination (or something equally capable). 1st person shooters are such mainstream games now that the console developers must be aching to get betters controls for them as well.
So, here’s to hoping for that day…
Well, if you like all those old games, you shoudl buy a PS3, a 1080p TV, a bunch of BT gampads!
You’ll be able to play them, all at once, at full speed, and at full resolution, on just one single screen
To me 3D games just don’t have the same appeal that 2D games had with the obvious exceptions of Shenmue 1/2 (best games ever in any pos….
I know what you mean. Quite easy to explain too – most of the graphics in today’s games are very photorealistic, but artistically they are actually quite poor and boring. As a matter of fact, boring and photorealism kind of go together.
It is a bit like higly realistic art paintings – very interesting, kind of cool even, but artistically just cheap and utterly uninspiring. No wonder then, most people find them inferior to abstract and impressionist art – and that’s what some oldschool games were in terms of CG – aparts from tons of kitsch, of course
And I won’t even start bitching about the gameplay problem …
No, supposedly much of that’s in-game play. All generated with the game engine. Yeah. I about freaked. I’m sorry, but I have to say that the X-Box 360 vids I’ve seen look like X-Box I games with maybe a touch of extra shine. In some cases. In others they look exactly like X-Box 1 games. On the early side. Demonika? WTF? The Dreamscape did better than that.
The PS3 game vids, however, are outrageous… despite being scheduled to come out 6 months to a year later, most of them look a clear generation ahead. Sure, Killzone 2 blew you away. Think that might be a fluke? Check out MotorStorm as well:
http://ps3movies.ign.com/ps3/video/article/614/614855/sonycon_games…
Most of that is real-time, in-game action. If this system was out this week, I wouldn’t even be giving SW III the time of day. Or any other special-effects dependant movie you could name. Screw them. Their time is done. Not when I can play something that looks 95% as good. I mean ‘play’ interactively. I can’t even imagine what the developers will be squeezing out two, three years down the road. And the head of whatever company makes the Unreal engines says that the PS3 platform is a breeze to program for, despite worries to the contrary. Maybe he’s blowing some smoke, but it’s doubtful he’s lying outright.
The hardware in the Sony looks to be superior, performance wise. All across the board. The games, judging only from the videos both teams presented, also looks to put the advantage square in Sony’s camp. And then there’s the added functionality… like two HDTV outputs. So you can either set up cinemascope gaming with wide-field view or you can have one HDTV covering the game while the other takes care of vid chats, etc. Ka-RAY-zee.
Now if only the rumors of Sony/Apple collaborating on video integration (iChat, or at the least h.264 handling?) and system UI are true, I’ll be in heaven.
I’m gaming platform agnostic… I gravitate to where the love is. But I have a very, very strong feeling I’ll be waiting for the PS3 to come out to pick up my next gen system. I’m just past the need to have all three systems taking up space in my living room. But you never know. Maybe I’ll break down and pick up the 360 as well. Of course I can’t wait to see what Nintendo has in-store. Not likely to one up on hardware performance, but new features and games could be king.
And the controllers look great. What are people smoking? As if the older rumble-style controllers are aesthetically attractive? Come on. I just hope the new ones are comfortable.
I don’t what problem some of uou see. PS1 had mouse. For PS2 standard USB mouse is fine. Practically all good fps games (and strategies and such) supported it.
And as for WASD – I’ve found that controlling FPS game with right hand on the mouse and left holding Dual Shock (movemment by analogue stick, direct aces to 3 keys without moving thumb + 4 more if moving; and also force feedback) was kinda nice…
The link requires you to register/log-in to IGN!
I would bet my eye teeth that this thing runs some sort or Linux. That’s why the Unreal engine ported so quickly. Linux and Opengl.
it may run sum sort of linux. i want it to run a full distro. i cant wait till they figur eout how to get debian on it.
Gah, my bad. I apologize. I wasn’t thinking. As of yet, I can’t seem to locate the vid from somewhere that doesn’t require registration. Sad. You may not be into it, but I just registered with IGN to watch the latest vids, and I used crap info and a throw-away email address. They don’t charge for basic registration.
Just a guess but maybe to allow it to connect to other Cell enabled equipment without need for a hub? Since this is one of the major ambitions of the project.
“Just as the cells in a body unite to form complete physical systems, a “Cell” architecture will allow all kinds of electronic devices (from consumer products to supercomputers) to work together, signaling a new era in Internet entertainment, communications and collaboration.”
http://www-1.ibm.com/businesscenter/venturedevelopment/us/en/featur…
look here
http://ps3.ign.com/articles/614/614774p1.html
“Today, Nvidia announced that they have partnered with SCE to develop a new graphics processor for the next-generation platform. Codenamed “RSX”, the new processor will connect directly to Cell, the advanced microprocessor developed by IBM, Toshiba, and the Sony Group.” so If I’m understanding it right, although PS3’s CELL chip only achieves 1 TFLOPS and the other 1.8 TFLOPS comes from “RSX”, the 2.18 TFLOPS statment would be right because they can work directly with each other.
Hope I further helped explain things for you.
PS: Like simmoV said weither you like sony, microsoft, or nintendo IBM is the real winner
Wasn’t it so that you’d be able to multiple PS3 units together to using fibre links to increase processing power ?
At least that’s a rumour I heard a few weeks ago. Maybe that’s why there’re 3 network ports on it ? (dunno what type I admit)
Myren.. go troll somewhere else. No one cares to read your drivel.
anyways, the PS3 does look extremely nice. I hope some really good games come out for it. Right now I sitll play my NES more than anyhting
and I have several systems inclding a ps2 slim. Nothing can beat the old classics ;P
http://www.gametrailers.com
Sounds like more cheap pc’s on the market
. Ok, 256MB of RAM makes it not worth it :/.
For a game console 256mb is plenty. You don’t need insane ammounts of ram if all you are doing is gaming
look at the NES. it had 2kb of ram and 2k vram and it came out with games like kirby and super mario land 3! 
http://jogos.uol.com.br/e32005/ultnot/sony/ult2907u140.jhtm
The site is in portuguese but I suppose it’s easy to figure it out..just click in the game titles.
Well we can use the three ethernet ports to make clusters at least. With 500 PS3 we may be able to defeat the world largest supercomputer except on the RAM count.
No offense but why would you want to run an third party OS on an expensive piece of hardware? Sure playing the 30th iterating of Final Fantasy, or the 90th iteration of Meatla Gear may be somewhat tedious but, if you want a computer just go out and put together some cheapo homebrew PC.
I hope Sony releases a Linux kit for this one!
They have PS2 Linux, even with a website about it (http://playstation2-linux.com/).
Seems interesting, I’m sure the system will be powerful for the price and fun to play with.
Gabor wrote:
“Could someone explain how a 3.2 Ghz processor is going to do 2.18 teraflops. I think it’s a lie.”
The Cell is not a conventional processor. Have a look:
http://arstechnica.com/articles/paedia/cpu/cell-1.ars
Altivec only has 32 registes so, are the rest for register renaming or are they using a different vector technology?
Hopeful this will help put an end to the sorry joke that PC gaming is with its ridiculous hardware requirements, the inevitable patches that either half work or don’t work at all and the antiquated mouse/keyboard combination for a controller . Maybe kids will finally learn to use a computer what it’s meant for instead of a more expensive toy.
simple. can u build a PC with the cell cpu yet? i didnt think so.
The SPEs don’t use either Altivec or the full PowerPC instruction set. They use their own vector instructions along with a cut-down form of the 64-bit POWER instructions. The PPE uses Altivec (called VMX because Altivec is an Apple trademark), and only has 32 vector GPRs.
There is a lot of very good detailed info about the PPE and the SPEs here: http://www-306.ibm.com/chips/techlib/techlib.nsf/techdocs/D9439D04E…
“that thing is freaking powerful! That ram is unbelievably fast! It’s going to be interesting to see what kind of games come out for it and the xbox 360.
I’m going to buy both
”
Just because you dont care to discuss Cell’s ramifications as a distributed system doesnt give you the right to bork on others. This is a technical discussion forum.
You weren’t discussing the ramifications of Cell as a distributed system. You were ranting inanely.
That said, the PS3 does demonstrate Cell’s distributed capabilities. The ability to gang multiple PS3s together should be in place (via the multiple network jacks), and within the PS3 itself, the Cell processor contains 9 processing elements, and is connected via FlexIO to the GPU (just as another Cell would be in a multi-Cell system).
i know how cell works, thanks. I’ve been following it actively. great source <a href=”http://www.blachford.info/computer/Cells/Cell0.html“>here</a&….
i’ve been ranting madly because this is the maddest shit I’ve ever seen.
the ps3 was supposed ot have 4 cell processors! 4, not 1. all the various rumors and hearsays have all said 4, for the past x years we’ve been digging.
this is nothing less than a calamity. ps3 is cool and all, i’m sure it’ll be fast and pretty, but it was supposed to be the staging grounds for a new distributed platform. sony wants to put cell in everything, but developers are going to have to learn good practices for distributed systems coding somewhere. the ps3, when it had 4 cell processors, would have been the perfect platform for this learning. this deficiency is proof to me that the cell processor will never get actively used outside the ps3, and perhaps an actual computer. clearly though sony no longer has the distributed dreams that were built into the cell. read the article i linked; the very first thing it talks about is the Cell architecture, or how Cell is designed for distributed systems.
my posts keep getting deleted, people keep telling me to shut up. what the hell is going on here? the entire internet is abuzz with how awsome ps3 looks now and i’m sitting here wondering where the other 3/4 the system is. i guess i cant expect sympathy, but getting told off like this is completely unreal. i’m happy ya’ll are going to get faster video games and all but i was honestly hoping for a shift towards distributed systems.