Well that's a possibility, the cell is very efficient for those types of calculations but as shown it's hard to actually divide the tasks between them to get any benefit from it.

Quote:



That is just the nature of parallel computation. However, it is just faster, and all high performance game system are going in that direction. When doing these computations in a parallel manner, a lot of age old math and physics computations need to be rethought. Not to mention, writing parallel code is just a lot to wrap the head around. If you want to read more about the future of this kind of thing, look at CUDA, OpenCL, and DirectX11 Compute. This is the undeniable and unavoidable soon-to-be-future of game processing.

That aside my original point is that while cells are promising they're arguably not the right choice for a console right now. The easier to take advantage of CPU in the 360 with its slightly stronger GPU make it a wiser choice in that regard. How many cores will the next xbox have? Other future gaming consoles? That remains to be seen but they'll have to balance the theoretical and realistic capabilities of the processors with the practical usability.

However my understanding of the architecture behind most games is that they need more than just offloading those kinds of calculations to a cell processor or GPU, that other aspects either work better or are easier to implement on a less single-minded type of processor.

You are correct, writing code for a CPU is a breeze on the Xbox360, it is actually easier than writing on the computer. This is because they already had an established system to work with. They already had the early technology of the parallel processing, but did not have any easy interfacing with it. That is what DX11 Compute will take care of. If Sony had waited for OpenCL (which is like DX11 Compute) to be published, they could have had a significantly easier game development process. As I mentioned in an earlier post, it was just too early for them to release the hardware. There was just not enough support for this kind of processor at the time.

The architecture behind all 3D games is HEAVILY matrix and quaternion oriented. This makes parallel processing a must. The speed of these calculations are what makes a game run well, or run terribly. Just think of this, for every frame, just for your one character on screen to animate with no special graphical effects (ie. no light, no texture, etc), thousands of computations are done.

From a professional stand point, dedicated parallel processing units is not a speculation, or an obvious next step. It is the next step. Oh, video game development is my job

I've got a couple of friends who are game coders, and a couple others who are exploiting the PS3 for scientific analysis. I'm always trying to find more details out about what they expect to be coming next. That we'll have more cell-like processors in the future I don't doubt, but I do wonder if the next console generation will take advantage of them or what shape that will come in, or if as you said a floating point co processor of some point is added in.

No idea what the Xbox 3 or PS4 would have. The potential of those future systems will probably put the 360 or PS3 to shame if they keep scaling up what they've been doing and have the memory bandwidth and coding to take advantage of more parallel processing systems.

Quote:



It's still expensive because it is still expensive to produce. The hardware blows the 360 out of the water, completely. Whereas the 360's age will start showing pretty soon, the PS3 has a long life ahead of it due to it's incredible power. Better hardware= higher price.

Oh, and they do offer a budget version. The 20 gig model, lacking the chrome strip and also lacking Wifi. You can buy them on craigslist for about $200 without any controllers. I scored a 60 gig PS3 (most desireable model, full backwards compatability) for $300 on craigslist without controllers, then sold my 20 gig version.

Quote:



Which games?

Many game developers havn't even bothered to tap into the full power of dual core cpu's yet, never mind cell processors. Some games that do make use of a second core only offload small functions too and don't take full advantage of them. I bought Black Shark helicopter simulator just before Xmas and it is one of the most demanding games you can expect to buy and yet it is only coded to use a single core. Makes my mind mind boggle at that decision when such a game could have been really helped by taking advantage of multiple cores.

I have a PS3 since launch but no games. The games are an afterthought, but media side is terrific. I use it as a HTPC to play movies (downloads) off a hard drive. Since I haven't touched it in a while, have they worked on mkv playback?

Does this help?

YouTube - Bluray MKV Playback on PS3 using tsMuxeR

The blue ray player is very nice to.

Xbox 360 at 200$ doesn't even have a hard drive. At 300$, you get a 60gb... now for 100$ more you have a blu-ray player.

If only my ps3 had more than 4-5 games i actually wanted to play

Because it costs $400 to produce a PS3. They are barely profiting off sales.

In fact, Sony was initially losing about $250 for every PS3 made and sold when it used to cost $800+ to produce.

some things to keep in mind

launch price was higher $500 and $600
launch HD capacity was smaller 20GB and 60GB
cheapest model didn't have built in wi-fi
they almost had all the hardware inside for a complete PS2 (for backwards compatibility)

now they are $400 and $500
HD capacity is larger 80GB and 160GB
both have built in wi-fi
no PS2 backwards compatibility

when i bought mine a year ago the prices were the same as they are now and i had a choice between the 40GB with no PS2 backwards compatibility and the spiderman 3 bluray (though it was a special one disc version without the bonus features disc) or the 80GB model with some PS2 backwards compatibility and motorstorm (i went with the 40GB)

of course i am not going to buy Xbox 360..

i have had a cousins PS3 for a week...loved it..most awesome gadget in the living room..hell..in the entire home.


but thing is..the selling price hasnt dropped which means it has a longer product life cycle.

which is a good thing for people who bought it...


hmmm..i think i ll save up and get it somehow.

came to know i can also connect mouse for First-person games....

It's same as audio gear. Just bleed once, and enjoy it for months and years. They're actually talking about a price drop which I thought would never happen. If you could wait a little longer, it may very well pay off.