The PS3 Graphics Card Options

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I thought I'd continue the discussion from here, http://www.gamersreports.com/news/708/

"the RSX can process 24 pixels with its 24 pipelines while an Xbox 360 powered with ATI's Xenos, R500 chip can do double that, 48 pixels per clock."

source: http://www.theinquirer.net/?article=27463

So as you can see, from the pixel stand point the ATI trumps the RSX. The ATI does double what the Nivdia can do per clock. The only thing that may redeem Nvidia's chip is if they manage to double the clock speed that the 360's chip employs, and that has about a 1 in 1,000,000 chance of happening by spring 2006.

[optaviusx]

The ps3 gpu wont even be able to match what the 360 can do in fight night round 3 in certain aspects.

Shader Model 3.0/HDR (High dynamic Range) + antialiasing can't be done simulataneously on any of nvidia's gpus even their newest 7800GTX 512 which is what the ps3 is running minus the 512MB of video mem (ps3 has 256MB)

http://xboxyde.com/news_2499_8392_3_en.html

See the fight night round 3 screens for the 360 on this site? Notice the antialiasing and that really bright light that you normally see reflecting off of their shoulder's or muscles at times? The parts of the body that are far brighter than the rest of their body. The ps3 gpu can't perform antialiasing + shader model 3.0/HDR that bright light effect simultaneously.

http://www.firingsquad.com/hardware/3dmark_06/page10.asp

Look at the result when the ps3 gpu attempts to do so. Look at the 7800GTX 512 (ps3 gpu) When they attempt to perform shader model 3.0/HDR and ANY form of antialiasing simultaneously. Even the ati video cards that are also far inferior to the 360 ati card can perform those tasks simultaneously. So what might EA do since the ps3 gpu can't do such a thing? They have 2 options.

#1 Use Shader model 3.0 and sacrifice 1 of the 2 effects (antialiasing or HDR) I doubt the cell will be able to assist in allowing the PS3's gpu to perform all 3. Doubt they'll want to sacrifice antialiasing so they might choose that over the HDR if they choose this option. Still HDR is a big boost to image quality so they'll be missing that effect. Or maybe they'll use HDR and sacrifice AA. Either way they have to sacrifice 1 of the 2.

#2 Get some help from valve. They have this weird method that allows HDR and AA to be available at the same time on nvidia's video cards. Not sure how they've done it or maybe its that AA is secretly taken off while HDR is on like many have reported have happen to them. Thats going to be a problem for them.



If these 2 effects aren't somehow available to the ps3 at the same time it'll indeed be proven that sony overly hyped the thing. Still, HDR is a really nice next gen effect that helps image quality bigtime but I'm sure that alone wont prevent ps3 games from looking beautiful, but for hyping the thing as the true next gen console it certainly is lacking in some important areas.



http://www.bit-tech.net/gaming/2005/06/14/...overview/1.html

Here is a link explaining how HDR works its an effect that through proper use can drastically improve the image quality of 3D games.


I'm sure people are wondering why can't the ps3 gpu support both at once??? Simple not enough memory bandwidth. Unless they add more mem bandwidth to the ps3 they wont be able to pull off these 2 effects at once. Only 48GB/s of memory bandwidth whereas the 360 has 278GB/s thanks to that 10MB edram which has a monster amount of bandwidth inside it totalling 256 GB/s added to the 22.4GB/s GDDR3 of memory bandwidth from GPU which gives the 360 a total of 278.4GB/s.

The edram can handle all of those tasks such as antialiasing/ shadows and other tasks while not having to touch any of the 22.4GB/s GDDR memory bandwidth on 360 gpu. Which is why the 360 performs 4xaa and other tasks at no performance loss.