Xbox360 and PS3 CPUs Suck Incredibly Bad
Posted by: Newsfactory on: 07/04/2005 10:27 PM [ Print | 12 comment(s) ] · 4872 views
This article was posted over at Anandtech at the weekend and then was mysteriously pulled but luckily for us Google have an archive.
Right now, from what we've heard, the real-world performance of the Xenon CPU is about twice that of the 733MHz processor in the first Xbox. Considering that this CPU is supposed to power the Xbox 360 for the next 4 - 5 years, it's nothing short of disappointing. To put it in perspective, floating point multiplies are apparently 1/3 as fast on Xenon as on a Pentium 4.
The reason for the poor performance? The very narrow 2-issue in-order core also happens to be very deeply pipelined, apparently with a branch predictor that's not the best in the business. In the end, you get what you pay for, and with such a small core, it's no surprise that performance isn't anywhere near the Athlon 64 or Pentium 4 class.
The Cell processor doesn't get off the hook just because it only uses a single one of these horribly slow cores; the SPE array ends up being fairly useless in the majority of situations, making it little more than a waste of die space.
Xbox360 and PS3 CPUs Suck Incredibly Bad
Right now, from what we've heard, the real-world performance of the Xenon CPU is about twice that of the 733MHz processor in the first Xbox. Considering that this CPU is supposed to power the Xbox 360 for the next 4 - 5 years, it's nothing short of disappointing. To put it in perspective, floating point multiplies are apparently 1/3 as fast on Xenon as on a Pentium 4.
The reason for the poor performance? The very narrow 2-issue in-order core also happens to be very deeply pipelined, apparently with a branch predictor that's not the best in the business. In the end, you get what you pay for, and with such a small core, it's no surprise that performance isn't anywhere near the Athlon 64 or Pentium 4 class.
The Cell processor doesn't get off the hook just because it only uses a single one of these horribly slow cores; the SPE array ends up being fairly useless in the majority of situations, making it little more than a waste of die space.
Xbox360 and PS3 CPUs Suck Incredibly Bad
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B3astage Unregistered |
#61511 Posted on: 07/04/2005 11:30 PM
Woha?! |
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Juomaru Unregistered Posts: 112 Joined: 2002-03-29 |
#61513 Posted on: 07/05/2005 12:04 AM
I think that writer fundamentally suck even more ... and I should have known when I read: "The reason a comparison to PC architectures is important is because it provides an evaluation point to gauge the expected erformance of these next-generation consoles. We've heard countless times that these new onsoles would offer better gaming performance than anything we've had on the PC, or anything we would have for a matter of years. Now it's time to actually put those claims to the test, and that's exactly what we did. " Look at the PC "gaming" architecture today ... 1 GB, 1.5 GB of ram? What other "non-gaming" PCs require such amount of ram onboard. You can always get the high-end models, but so what? Not everyone drives a Benz, BMW or Volvo. It does not indicative of anything. He then uses the original xbox story to say this and that, like there should have been 128MB system ram on it and stuff. Apparently he has no memory of what's going at that time; such as many Windows PC computers ran with 32MB system ram. People had 1MB, 2MB, 4MB, 8MB and 16MB video ram card. PentiumII/III 233 to 450 MHz were common-place. The rest of the article talks about how console's CPU and GPU are not as good as those on a PC "gaming" computer. So, what is the price tag of the console system? Well, right now, for the price of a current Pentium 4 processor (LGA775 or S478), I can get a low-end computer system (no monitor, keyboard and mouse). (like some Sis/Via inegrated chipset board, AMD Sempron and etc.) Then he goes on about how the general purpose CPU on the console is not very powerful. By this time, I have completely lost confidence in any of his credibility on the topic. He is not talking about "consoles"; he just want another PC computers review. Ultimately, I don't think he understands playing video games. If anything is not designed to render a 3D environment as real as possible, in a first-person-shooter style, it is no good. |
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Mertsch Senior Member Posts: 2708 Joined: 2002-08-22 |
#61514 Posted on: 07/05/2005 12:20 AM
huh ? what a surprise ... I am totally shocked ... I was just about to sell my PC for a PS3/XBOX360 |
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BetrayerX Unregistered |
#61515 Posted on: 07/05/2005 01:18 AM
If the 2 instructions per cycle issue is true, and if the low caches are true, he is right.....again, someone plz point me to such data because I want to know more. If the coders words are indeed what they feel, case closed, it's true. Multi core programming is not very easy, you have to balance and sinchronize the workload that each core will do. Ask SEGA what happened with the Saturn. While they had 2 CPUs compared to 1 CPU here with multiple cores, the concept of load balancing and sinchronization are similar. I agree with him here that 1 'all-mighty' core is indeed better here. Now, I think he's overreacting....it really takes a while to know a console, from a programmers point of view. Software tricks will be enabled later to circumvent any hardware limitation....it always happens, that's why second generation games are usually a lot beter than the first batch. |
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dlolos Unregistered |
#61516 Posted on: 07/05/2005 01:22 AM
You obviously have not idea about hardware. PC's need more ram because of the OS and because the monitor can reach much higher resolutions. Also the cost of the console is a common misunderstanding. In order to use the full potention of the new consoles you'd need some serious cash. While the machine is cheap it doesn't come with a TV. You'd need to spend a few grand just to get a decent HDTV. Spend the cash on a kick ass 5.1 sound system. Plus controllers, games, and etc. When you're done all you have is a gaming machine. Where a PC can do much more. |
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Nicotoxic Unregistered |
#61518 Posted on: 07/05/2005 04:28 AM
I'm sorry, but you misread the article. Anand's point was that these next-gen consoles boast that the gaming performance they will have will be so good that it's going to kill PC Gaming, yet the CPU specs are not better than what we have on a PC gaming rig. Not because they couldn't have used a better CPU, but because they chose to use a dual-core architecture that will not yield performance increases compared to the CPUs used on standard P4/A64 PCs. Plus, the developers are misleading the public by boasting about the floating-point calculation specs that won't mean much in terms of gaming performance. "The original Xbox console marked a very important step in the evolution of gaming consoles - it was the first console that was little more than a Windows PC.", The XBox 1 example was used to point out that when it was released, it WAS BETTER THAN A STANDARD PC. "One of the biggest limitations ended up being the meager 64MB of memory that the system shipped with. Developers had asked for 128MB and the motherboard even had positions silk screened for an additional 64MB, but in an attempt to control costs the final console only shipped with 64MB of memory." The 64MB memory issue was a problem for developers later on. Anand did not say that the XBox should have had 128MB, only that it was something they were considering in part due to requests from game developers, and the developers had to deal with it. Even you have to agree that a couple of years later, 64MB was a measely amount of RAM to work with.... I play games, but I would say my rig is more of a Honda Accord, rather than a Benz or BMW. Aside from all of that, you need to understand that the console developers (Sony and Microsoft) are trying to market these machines as better than anything that a PC Gaming machine will be capable of, no matter how much money the computer costs. Anand's article clearly illustrates that by the hardware specs alone, rendering a 3d environment better than a PC will be capable even now at a high cost is simply not going to be possible. Personally, I really doubt that PC Gaming is going to disappear any time soon. It's waay too much of a selling point for consumers (like me) to buy a new computer/computer parts because it is going to enhance my gaming experience. And besides, I like FPS games on a PC far more than I do on a console, and I own both 
it's the same old ball and game every time something new comes out... |
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Monolyth Unregistered Posts: 3 Joined: 2002-04-05 |
#61519 Posted on: 07/05/2005 06:00 AM
Many of you have the idea behind a console wrong, as does the "writer" of this article (if it truly is Anand). A console is not designed AT ALL do any kind of processing other than game related processing. Granted the designers may allow you to use the machine to watch DVD's (which is more based on GPU processing than CPU in consoles), as well as browsing the web, which in most cases does not require much power at all. People are not going to be rendering movies on their PS3/Xbox360, they will not even be re-encoding/transcoding movies. The machine is not designed for this. Consoles main purpose is to run the "specified" code as efficiently as possible. This could mean "dumbing" down of hardware, this "dumbing" process also allows them to lower costs of the systems because yields of more "basic" components are much higher than that of higher end parts. There is a price point for consoles which is around the 300-500 dollar range (for just the console). If they introduced higher-end parts to consoles they would in-effect be creating a PC and just labeling it a console, there is notreason for them to do this as the cost for such a unit would be around the range you would need to play the games on a nice PC. This will not make them money on the people that just want to "play". There is nothing "sinister" about consoles using parts specifically designed to perform as they want it. They aren't forcing anyone to buy their console or a PC if they want more "power" and useability. Now I'm not a big fan of consoles, but if console makers got one thing right, it was the ability to "hook" the non-PC gamers. These are people that don't necessarily want the detailed world of PC gaming. Nor do they want to have to keep up on the latest hardware trends. Simple fact is, consoles are "custom" PC's, designed to do a few things right, a PC-gamer has no right to "criticize" the parts used in the machine, because YOU are not the one coding for that hardware. Any "hardware" specific coding gets vast performance benefits from that dedication no matter how powerful the actual hardware is, just look at "Graphic Driver Optimization" done by both nVidia and ATI. Hope that helps some of you realize what consoles are built to do. But hey make up your own mind, don't like the product? Don't buy it 
Peace! |
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Juomaru Unregistered Posts: 112 Joined: 2002-03-29 |
#61520 Posted on: 07/05/2005 06:22 AM
The only person(s) saying "consoles gonna kill PC gaming" is who? That's an "self-interpreted" / "self-imagined" statement at best ... All empirical data point to these 2 things are not related to each other, in terms of target audience, game genres, price and etc. (ask how many people use keyboard to Playstation2 games) For the xbox point, it is really a moot point. There is no such thing as enough. Especially when you talk about the bottom-less pit of PC gaming ... there is not a "finished" product , ver. The point which I tried to make concerning the 64MB decision is that it is not as bad as he thinks, given the cirumstances. What cirumstances, think back now. You won't say you have a honda or porsche; but I bet you say you'd have a killer rig in your signature, not some gimpy Celeron 1.1Ghz with integrated graphics. For the marketing part, I think I already covered it, and the "so-called" flop, mhz, and etc. numbers game is nothing new. The fatal flaw in the article lies upon its bias of favouritism towards PC gaming. How can you compare an actual product that is gonna have a standardized with a final spec; gonna be mass-produced; gonna have a set price; gonna have an specific, intended use, with that jerry-rigged, general-purpose, no-budget-limit, no-time-limit, montrosity of a PC "gaming rig"? P.S. I want to apologize for my bad writing, because I don't wanna waste time writing, and I don't have a need for expressing my opinion for other people's approval. Actually, I spent too much on this rubbish already ... ouch. |
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deez Unregistered Posts: 3 Joined: 2002-06-30 |
#61521 Posted on: 07/05/2005 06:52 AM
What is totally ghey for me about these consoles is a lack of mouse/keyboard support....if all thier games had that i would throw pc away....for gaming that is !!cus id much rather game on my 57" high def with a wireless mouse keyboard while on recliner then in my 100$ fake leather chair at a desk......they say they dont want consoles like pc's but that is lame excuse just have the games/consoles support this feature and let consumers decide what is best for them...who agrees with me? |
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dlolos Unregistered |
#61522 Posted on: 07/05/2005 08:24 AM
AnandTech said the truth and nothing more. Basically PC CPU's are since after the Pentium Pro has "Out of Order Completion". Making it easier for people to code for the CPU. The Xbox 360 and PS3 both don't have this and the code must be in order which can be a *****. Why you think they were able to pack so much stuff into those chips? The "Out of Order Completion" can take up to 1/3 of the CPU. Without "Out of Order Completion" the games today would run slower since 80% of the games isn't in order. Game developers can fix it by putting it in order but that's a lot more work for them to do. Not to forget the multiple CPU's they have to code for now. In other words yes they will be slower compared to PC CPUs. |
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Monolyth Unregistered Posts: 3 Joined: 2002-04-05 |
#61525 Posted on: 07/05/2005 01:40 PM
They are not going for MAX FPS on consoles. They want games to look good and perform within reasonable limits, and quite frankly a console between 300-500 still blows away any PC at the same price point in terms of performance. And multi-cpu makes no difference to coders when processor affinity is properly used. You scream that the code must be in order for the "game", fine. But they have two choices for multi-cpu's, they can "multi-thread" the application, or they can use processor affinity to reserve power for specific processes. Now forcing console developers into coding for multi-cpu's only helps force PC developers into the same mix. There are many ports between PC and console, and they would want them all to run as good as possible. So in fact forcing dual-cores was a "smart" move on console designers part. But thank you for proving my point that yes in fact consoles aren't meant to be PC's, they aren't meant to do multi-tasking as well. And I still highly doubt that was Anand that wrote the article. |
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dlolos Unregistered |
#61526 Posted on: 07/05/2005 04:58 PM
It was AnandTech who wrote the article. I read it at their website before they removed it. This information is about 1 week old. Warp2Search was just a little slow at getting the info. |
