A computer components & hardware forum. HardwareBanter

If this is your first visit, be sure to check out the FAQ by clicking the link above. You may have to register before you can post: click the register link above to proceed. To start viewing messages, select the forum that you want to visit from the selection below.

Go Back   Home » HardwareBanter forum » Video Cards » Nvidia Videocards
Site Map Home Register Authors List Search Today's Posts Mark Forums Read Web Partners

PS3 misconceptions and spin



 
 
Thread Tools Display Modes
  #1  
Old October 28th 07, 06:30 PM posted to alt.games.video.sony-playstation3,alt.comp.periphs.videocards.nvidia,alt.games.video.sony-playstation2,alt.games.video.xbox,uk.games.video.playstation
R600
external usenet poster
 
Posts: 12
Default PS3 misconceptions and spin

PS3 misconceptions and spin

I read various game forums from time to time, and often see gamers
complaining about 'lazy ports' to the ps3. They often mention how the
ps3 is the most powerful game console and blame developers working on
the console for doing a bad job. Sony has all of these people duped by
impressive marketing spin, and I'm often amazed at how potent this
type of rhetoric proves to be. For those unaware, I'm going to break
it down simply and explain exactly why ports to the ps3 will never be
as good as their 360 counter parts, and why most ps3 exclusives will
likely continue to suck. First, lets debunk a few common
misconceptions:

"The PS3 is more graphically advanced than the 360"

Fill rate is one of the primary ways to measure graphics performance -
in essence, it's a number describing how many pixel operations you can
perform. The fill rate on the PS3 is significantly slower than on the
360, meaning that games either have to run at lower resolution or use
simpler shader effects to achieve the same performance. Additionally,
the shader processing on the ps3 is significantly slower than on the
360, which means that a normal map takes more fill rate to draw on the
ps3 than it does on the 360. And I'm not talking about small
differences here, we're talking roughly half the pixel pushing power.

"Ok, fine, but the cell is like, super powerful"

In theory, sure, but in reality it doesn't work out that way. Game
code simply doesn't split well across multiple processors. You can
probably find a way to split a few things off fairly easily - put the
audio on one processor, animation on another; but generally the
breakup is always going to leave several of the SPUs idle or
underutilized. On top of that, it's usually not CPU speed that
restricts the visuals in games - it's fill rate.

"Uh, Blue Ray!"

Great for watching movies, but not so great for games. Getting data
off the blue ray drive takes about twice as long as it does to get the
same data off the 360's DVD drive. That translates into longer load
times, or god forbid if your streaming from disk, tighter constraints
on the amount of data you can stream.

"But it's got a lot more space than DVD"

Ok, you got me there - it does have a lot more space, and there is the
potential to use that to do something cool, but thats unlikely to be
realized in any useful way. There are tons of compression techniques
available for data and I'd personally rather be able to get my data
faster than have more of it. Most developers who use the entire Blue
Ray drive are doing it to work around other problems with the ps3 such
as it's slow loading - for instance, in Resistance: Fall of Man, every
art asset is stored on disk once for every level that uses it. So
rather than storing one copy of a texture, you're storing it 12 times.
If you took that entire game and removed all the duplicate data, it
would likely fit on a DVD without any problem. They do this to speed
up load times, which, as I pointed out before, are painfully slow on
the ps3. So in this case, the extra space is completely wasted.

"Once developers figure out the PS3 they'll maximize the hardware and
it will be amazing"

I suspect a small number of PS3 only developers will optimize the
hardware to do something cool. However, this will be an exception to
the rule, and will likely involved game designs that are specifically
designed for the hardware and funded by Sony. If those will prove to
be fun or not is another question.

Most of the performance centric research into the PS3 has been around
making it easier for developers to get the same level of performance
you get out of the 360 naturally. For instance, some developers are
using those extra SPU's on the cell to prepare data for the rendering
pipeline. Basically, they take the data they would normally send to
the graphics chip, send it to an SPU which optimizes it in some
manner, then send it to the graphics chip. So, once again we see an
'advantage' in hardware being used to make up for a disadvantage in
another area - a common theme with the ps3. And this introduces an
extra frame of latency into the equation, making controller response
slower.

So, the common theme is this; developers must spend significantly more
time and resources getting the PS3 to do what the 360 can already do
easily and with a lot less code. Lets look at how this translates into
practical realities for a moment:

Why the PS3 version often pails in comparison to the 360 version, and
why exclusives often suck:

As outlined above, getting equivalent performance out of the PS3
requires a lot of work unique to the platform, and in many cases, even
with all these tricks, you still won't see equivalent performance.
Thus, many ps3 games have simplified shaders and run at lower native
resolutions than the 360 versions. On top of this, there is shrinking
incentive to do this work; the PS3 isn't selling.

The code needed to make the PS3 work is most likely only useful to you
on the PS3, as the types of tricks you need to do to make the thing
perform are very unique to the platform and unlikely to be useful on
any other architecture now or in the future. These issues all stem
from unbalanced hardware design, and any future hardware that is this
unbalanced will likely be unbalanced in a completely unique way.

Finally, there's the problem of resources. Game Development is, at
it's heart, a resource management challenge. Given finite resources,
do I have these five engineers work on optimizing the PS3 version to
look better, or do I use them to make the game play better and fix
bugs? Do I change my design to fit with what the PS3 hardware does
well, or simply run the game at a slightly lower resolution on the PS3
to make up for it? Developers striving to push the PS3 hardware have
often sacrificed their game in the process.

This post might come across as a lot of Sony bashing, but it's just
the reality from the trenches. Sony let their hardware be designed by
a comity of business interests rather than a well thought out design
that would serve the game development community. They are going to
loose hard this round because of it, and I hope that in the next round
they take lessons from this round and produce a more balanced and
usable machine.

http://jbooth.blogspot.com/2007/10/p...-and-spin.html

  #2  
Old October 28th 07, 07:05 PM posted to alt.games.video.sony-playstation3,alt.comp.periphs.videocards.nvidia,alt.games.video.sony-playstation2,alt.games.video.xbox,uk.games.video.playstation
Blig Merk
external usenet poster
 
Posts: 23
Default PS3 misconceptions and spin

You're an idiot, Air-Head Raid. And to think you used to go by Cyg-
anus the Bringer of Balance. Seems like it should have been the
Buttplug of Imbalance now. And what is it with this switching between
R600 on day and NV55 the next? That long, rambling BLOG was just some
random ****head that obviously doesn't have the slightest inkling
about what he was posting about. This is what the PS3 is doing now and
it only improves more this spring and beyond. Yes, news about the
Getaway, Afrika, and Eight Days is on the way...

E-fun Game Expo 2007

GT5 Prologue
http://ruliwebimg.empas.com/data/new...web_ps3_02.jpg

Uncharted
http://ruliwebimg.empas.com/data/new...liweb_un01.jpg

Ratchet and Clank on 56-inch 1080p

http://img218.imageshack.us/img218/9099/80206615lg2.jpg
http://img508.imageshack.us/img508/8907/87748699cr4.jpg

  #3  
Old October 28th 07, 07:15 PM posted to alt.games.video.sony-playstation3,alt.comp.periphs.videocards.nvidia,alt.games.video.sony-playstation2,alt.games.video.xbox,uk.games.video.playstation
Jonah Falcon
external usenet poster
 
Posts: 23
Default PS3 misconceptions and spin

What's it like to have a tiny penis, Blig?

  #4  
Old October 28th 07, 07:30 PM posted to alt.games.video.sony-playstation3,alt.comp.periphs.videocards.nvidia,alt.games.video.sony-playstation2,alt.games.video.xbox,uk.games.video.playstation
Paul Heslop
external usenet poster
 
Posts: 355
Default PS3 misconceptions and spin

R600 wrote:

This post might come across as a lot of Sony bashing


Yes, you're right.

--
Paul (We won't die of devotion)
-------------------------------------------------------
Stop and Look
http://www.geocities.com/dreamst8me/
  #5  
Old October 28th 07, 07:33 PM posted to alt.games.video.sony-playstation3,alt.comp.periphs.videocards.nvidia,alt.games.video.sony-playstation2,alt.games.video.xbox,uk.games.video.playstation
mark johnson
external usenet poster
 
Posts: 10
Default PS3 misconceptions and spin

R600 wrote:
PS3 misconceptions and spin

I read various game forums from time to time, and often see gamers
complaining about 'lazy ports' to the ps3. They often mention how the
ps3 is the most powerful game console and blame developers working on
the console for doing a bad job. Sony has all of these people duped by
impressive marketing spin, and I'm often amazed at how potent this
type of rhetoric proves to be. For those unaware, I'm going to break
it down simply and explain exactly why ports to the ps3 will never be
as good as their 360 counter parts, and why most ps3 exclusives will
likely continue to suck. First, lets debunk a few common
misconceptions:

"The PS3 is more graphically advanced than the 360"

Fill rate is one of the primary ways to measure graphics performance -
in essence, it's a number describing how many pixel operations you can
perform. The fill rate on the PS3 is significantly slower than on the
360, meaning that games either have to run at lower resolution or use
simpler shader effects to achieve the same performance. Additionally,
the shader processing on the ps3 is significantly slower than on the
360, which means that a normal map takes more fill rate to draw on the
ps3 than it does on the 360. And I'm not talking about small
differences here, we're talking roughly half the pixel pushing power.


Yup your spot on with the GPU being way more powerful in the 360, but it
looks like some of the Dev's have found away to use the Cell for
graphics too, as Sony intended it for. Take a look at the latest crop of
games coming out for the PS3 and what the Dev's are saying what the
cells usage in them.

"Ok, fine, but the cell is like, super powerful"

In theory, sure, but in reality it doesn't work out that way. Game
code simply doesn't split well across multiple processors. You can
probably find a way to split a few things off fairly easily - put the
audio on one processor, animation on another; but generally the
breakup is always going to leave several of the SPUs idle or
underutilized. On top of that, it's usually not CPU speed that
restricts the visuals in games - it's fill rate.

"Uh, Blue Ray!"

Great for watching movies, but not so great for games. Getting data
off the blue ray drive takes about twice as long as it does to get the
same data off the 360's DVD drive. That translates into longer load
times, or god forbid if your streaming from disk, tighter constraints
on the amount of data you can stream.

"But it's got a lot more space than DVD"

Ok, you got me there - it does have a lot more space, and there is the
potential to use that to do something cool, but thats unlikely to be
realized in any useful way. There are tons of compression techniques
available for data and I'd personally rather be able to get my data
faster than have more of it. Most developers who use the entire Blue
Ray drive are doing it to work around other problems with the ps3 such
as it's slow loading - for instance, in Resistance: Fall of Man, every
art asset is stored on disk once for every level that uses it. So
rather than storing one copy of a texture, you're storing it 12 times.
If you took that entire game and removed all the duplicate data, it
would likely fit on a DVD without any problem. They do this to speed
up load times, which, as I pointed out before, are painfully slow on
the ps3. So in this case, the extra space is completely wasted.

"Once developers figure out the PS3 they'll maximize the hardware and
it will be amazing"

I suspect a small number of PS3 only developers will optimize the
hardware to do something cool. However, this will be an exception to
the rule, and will likely involved game designs that are specifically
designed for the hardware and funded by Sony. If those will prove to
be fun or not is another question.

Most of the performance centric research into the PS3 has been around
making it easier for developers to get the same level of performance
you get out of the 360 naturally. For instance, some developers are
using those extra SPU's on the cell to prepare data for the rendering
pipeline. Basically, they take the data they would normally send to
the graphics chip, send it to an SPU which optimizes it in some
manner, then send it to the graphics chip. So, once again we see an
'advantage' in hardware being used to make up for a disadvantage in
another area - a common theme with the ps3. And this introduces an
extra frame of latency into the equation, making controller response
slower.

So, the common theme is this; developers must spend significantly more
time and resources getting the PS3 to do what the 360 can already do
easily and with a lot less code. Lets look at how this translates into
practical realities for a moment:

Why the PS3 version often pails in comparison to the 360 version, and
why exclusives often suck:

As outlined above, getting equivalent performance out of the PS3
requires a lot of work unique to the platform, and in many cases, even
with all these tricks, you still won't see equivalent performance.
Thus, many ps3 games have simplified shaders and run at lower native
resolutions than the 360 versions. On top of this, there is shrinking
incentive to do this work; the PS3 isn't selling.

The code needed to make the PS3 work is most likely only useful to you
on the PS3, as the types of tricks you need to do to make the thing
perform are very unique to the platform and unlikely to be useful on
any other architecture now or in the future. These issues all stem
from unbalanced hardware design, and any future hardware that is this
unbalanced will likely be unbalanced in a completely unique way.

Finally, there's the problem of resources. Game Development is, at
it's heart, a resource management challenge. Given finite resources,
do I have these five engineers work on optimizing the PS3 version to
look better, or do I use them to make the game play better and fix
bugs? Do I change my design to fit with what the PS3 hardware does
well, or simply run the game at a slightly lower resolution on the PS3
to make up for it? Developers striving to push the PS3 hardware have
often sacrificed their game in the process.

This post might come across as a lot of Sony bashing, but it's just
the reality from the trenches. Sony let their hardware be designed by
a comity of business interests rather than a well thought out design
that would serve the game development community. They are going to
loose hard this round because of it, and I hope that in the next round
they take lessons from this round and produce a more balanced and
usable machine.

http://jbooth.blogspot.com/2007/10/p...-and-spin.html


Once the coding has been cracked and yes some of the game Dev's have
said they have, it will take less time and people to make new games.
  #6  
Old October 28th 07, 07:36 PM posted to alt.games.video.sony-playstation3,alt.comp.periphs.videocards.nvidia,alt.games.video.sony-playstation2,alt.games.video.xbox,uk.games.video.playstation
Rich Hutnik
external usenet poster
 
Posts: 1
Default PS3 misconceptions and spin

On Oct 28, 2:05 pm, Blig Merk wrote:
You're an idiot, Air-Head Raid. And to think you used to go by Cyg-
anus the Bringer of Balance. Seems like it should have been the
Buttplug of Imbalance now. And what is it with this switching between
R600 on day and NV55 the next? That long, rambling BLOG was just some
random ****head that obviously doesn't have the slightest inkling
about what he was posting about. This is what the PS3 is doing now and
it only improves more this spring and beyond. Yes, news about the
Getaway, Afrika, and Eight Days is on the way...

E-fun Game Expo 2007

GT5 Prologuehttp://ruliwebimg.empas.com/data/news8/10m/27/ps3/ruliweb_ps3_02.jpg

Unchartedhttp://ruliwebimg.empas.com/data/news8/10m/27/ps3/ruliweb_un01.jpg

Ratchet and Clank on 56-inch 1080p

http://img218.imageshack.us/img218/9...7748699cr4.jpg


Right, as in upscaled images Blig:
http://sg.answers.yahoo.com/question...6072516AATqxDU

R&C is around 700p or so, hardly 1080p, except it does upscale. Still
looks gorgeous, but my regular def TV has better looking images for TV
broadcasts.

- Rich

  #7  
Old October 28th 07, 08:05 PM posted to alt.games.video.sony-playstation3,alt.comp.periphs.videocards.nvidia,alt.games.video.sony-playstation2,alt.games.video.xbox,uk.games.video.playstation
Khee Mao[_2_]
external usenet poster
 
Posts: 1
Default PS3 misconceptions and spin


"R600" wrote in message
ps.com...
PS3 misconceptions and spin

I read various game forums from time to time, and often see gamers
complaining about 'lazy ports' to the ps3. They often mention how the
ps3 is the most powerful game console and blame developers working on
the console for doing a bad job. Sony has all of these people duped by
impressive marketing spin, and I'm often amazed at how potent this
type of rhetoric proves to be. For those unaware, I'm going to break
it down simply and explain exactly why ports to the ps3 will never be
as good as their 360 counter parts,



like Oblivion, right?

  #8  
Old October 28th 07, 11:06 PM posted to alt.games.video.sony-playstation3,alt.comp.periphs.videocards.nvidia,alt.games.video.sony-playstation2,alt.games.video.xbox,uk.games.video.playstation
mark johnson
external usenet poster
 
Posts: 10
Default PS3 misconceptions and spin

"Ok, fine, but the cell is like, super powerful"

In theory, sure, but in reality it doesn't work out that way. Game
code simply doesn't split well across multiple processors"

ummm hasn't the 360 got multiple processors too?

Good God, the guy who wrote this is a genius
  #9  
Old October 29th 07, 01:37 AM posted to alt.games.video.sony-playstation3,alt.comp.periphs.videocards.nvidia,alt.games.video.sony-playstation2,alt.games.video.xbox,uk.games.video.playstation
Noozer
external usenet poster
 
Posts: 450
Default PS3 misconceptions and spin


"R600" wrote in message
ps.com...
PS3 misconceptions and spin


You missed one glaring advantage that the PS3 has the the 360 doesn't.

It's not locked down tight. You aren't forced to use a MS server to host
your audio/video files. You can simply swap out the hard drive in a PS3,
etc...

I'll do whatever it takes to make sure that Microsoft doesn't get any more
of my money, until they STOP trying to tell the users what they should be
doing.


  #10  
Old October 29th 07, 01:44 AM posted to alt.games.video.sony-playstation3,alt.comp.periphs.videocards.nvidia,alt.games.video.sony-playstation2,alt.games.video.xbox,uk.games.video.playstation
Paul Heslop
external usenet poster
 
Posts: 355
Default PS3 misconceptions and spin

Noozer wrote:

"R600" wrote in message
ps.com...
PS3 misconceptions and spin


You missed one glaring advantage that the PS3 has the the 360 doesn't.

It's not locked down tight. You aren't forced to use a MS server to host
your audio/video files. You can simply swap out the hard drive in a PS3,
etc...

I'll do whatever it takes to make sure that Microsoft doesn't get any more
of my money, until they STOP trying to tell the users what they should be
doing.


I really don't think he cares about your arguments in favour of the
ps3

--
Paul (We won't die of devotion)
-------------------------------------------------------
Stop and Look
http://www.geocities.com/dreamst8me/
 




Thread Tools
Display Modes

Posting Rules
You may not post new threads
You may not post replies
You may not post attachments
You may not edit your posts

vB code is On
Smilies are On
[IMG] code is On
HTML code is Off
Forum Jump

Similar Threads
Thread Thread Starter Forum Replies Last Post
Idle time spin-down-spin-up for disks? How often is too often? Al Dykes Storage (alternative) 3 March 10th 06 11:05 AM
Controlling spin-down & spin-up? John Doe Homebuilt PC's 0 February 20th 05 04:16 AM
Controlling spin-down & spin-up? DN General 6 November 13th 04 06:45 AM
Controlling spin-down & spin-up? DN Homebuilt PC's 6 November 13th 04 06:45 AM
HD doesn't spin Matt Peter Storage (alternative) 3 February 5th 04 09:27 AM


All times are GMT +1. The time now is 10:14 AM.


Powered by vBulletin® Version 3.6.4
Copyright ©2000 - 2024, Jelsoft Enterprises Ltd.
Copyright ©2004-2024 HardwareBanter.
The comments are property of their posters.