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PlayStation (Games) Graphics Software

PS3 GPU Less Powerful Than GeForce 7800? 104

Posted by Zonk from the confusing dept.
dividedsky319 writes "The Inquirer (as well as a more biased Team Xbox) is reporting that the PlayStation 3's GPU will be a little less powerful than a GeForce 7800, which would also mean it's less powerful than the Xbox360. If true, what could this mean for the release of the PS3, a year later than the Xbox360 is released?" From the article: "It's all awfully confusing we know, though it is an interesting tech mystery to try and get to the bottom of. Of course Microsoft and Sony engineers all know exactly what's in the difference between the two consoles, but the marketing people want to tell us that their console is twenty times better than everyone elses, so we must wait until someone rips the two boxes open and benchmarks them..."
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PS3 GPU Less Powerful Than GeForce 7800? More

PS3 GPU Less Powerful Than GeForce 7800?

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  • Disproven in minutes (Score:5, Informative)

    by TechniMyoko ( 670009 ) on Thursday September 01, 2005 @09:35AM (#13454137) Homepage
    http://news.teamxbox.com/xbox/9132/PlayStation-3-G PU-More-Powerful-than-GeForce-7800/ [teamxbox.com]

    Kick the fanboys off the editors panel!

    • NVIDIA contacted us today after we published the "PlayStation 3 GPU Less Powerful than GeForce 7800" story based on a report found at The Inquirer. Derek Perez, NVIDIA's Director of Public Relations, was kind enough to provide us the actual paragraph from the September issue of PSM. Here is the information from the blurb in question:

      There's no doubting that NVIDIA's new 7800GTX is the ultimate in PC graphics technology. The card's G70 GPU, which is more than twice as powerful as two of NVIDIA's previous

    • I am glad you got 1st post on this. Expect alot more xbox false propaganda to come on slashdot and beyond. This is hurting M$ xbox reputation more than helping.

    • Re:Disproven in minutes (Score:1, Insightful)

      by Anonymous Coward
      They said "faster", not "more powerful". If you look at the clock speeds, the RSX is 550MHz and the 7800GTX is 430MHz. They do share some similarities, but since they seem to be two seperate architectures, faster doesn't necessarily mean more powerful. Gotta watch that market speak.
      • Good point, given that it takes fairly exotic cooling to get 550Mhz+ speeds out of the 7800GTX it's likely the higher clock speed of the RSX means a different kind of chip. Probably it has fewer pipelines, so a 24 pipe 7800GTX at 450Mhz would likely be quicker than an RSX with 16 pipelines at 550Mhz.

        Presumably Sony will play the yield game and go for something like a 20 pipeline part and disable the non-working pipes on each chip to maximise the number of working chips they can churn out. They're apparently
    • It's either Sony fanboys or MS fanboys. If we got rid of them,, there'd be no Slashdot.

  • Relativity? (Score:5, Insightful)

    by DamienMcKenna ( 181101 ) <damien@mc - k e nna.com> on Thursday September 01, 2005 @09:36AM (#13454147)
    The PS3 will be released for the same price as one expansion card and have (guessing) ten times the technology in it and people are bitching? Get a life. Does the 7800 have a cell processor behind it? Or any of the other advanced features?

    Damien
    • No, but at least there aren't any developers complaining about how hard it is to program for the GeForce card.

      Gabe Newell, anyone? [joystiq.com]

    • What gets me is how these companies are releasing systems for the price of the graphics cards in them. Wonder if the individual component makers are getting a cut from the licensing as well in order to sell cheaper? Or possibly its simply the promise that they will be able to sell graphics chip X for years are virtually no price cut. Something unheard of in the graphics card industry.
      • The manufacturers eat the cost. Consoles are traditionally sold at a loss. Profits come from game sales and licensing.
        • Yes microsoft is eating SOME cost, but they can't be eating more than $100 or so. This means that they must be getting the components very cheaply. If they are using a higher than top of the line video card, NVidia has to be eating some of this cost.

          • Re:Relativity? (Score:3, Interesting)

            by yasth ( 203461 )
            One should keep in mind the bill of materials cost for producing a graphics chip is actually pretty low. Nvidia places a massive markup to cover research, and product development (and marketing and other things). So there is no cost to eat. They lose some margin, but make it up in volume, and since you can't rip the chips out and use them in a pc, they don't hurt any other market (except for those few that would have bought a high end card that will now buy a console)
      • What gets me is how these companies are releasing systems for the price of the graphics cards in them. Wonder if the individual component makers are getting a cut from the licensing as well in order to sell cheaper?

        Probably has something to do with the fact that they're ordering millions of them at a time, major bulk discounts with no markup... I doubt these chips are costing Sony 600 bucks a piece.

  • Who cares! (Score:5, Insightful)

    by defkkon ( 712076 ) on Thursday September 01, 2005 @09:38AM (#13454164)
    I really don't think that many of us care whether the PS3 graphics chip will be a generation behind, and the Xbox 360 will be the cutting edge for the next 12 months.

    How many times do we need to say it - its not the hardware that makes great games - its the gameplay! The graphics chips will help make a more immersive environment - but other than that, who cares?

    The only thing these statistics help is the pissing contest between Sony and Microsoft.

    I'm buying an Xbox 360. Its not because of the fact that its graphics chip is "bigger" than the PS3's.

    BTW, don't even bother reading the Team Xbox article. It extremely biased, and sounds like it was written by the PR department.

    • "How many times do we need to say it - its not the hardware that makes great games - its the gameplay!"

      We have to keep saying it until people stop buying crap. Which they will not for awhile. Games are still new to the overwhelming majority. They still see shiny and cannot avoid the instinct to buy. Just like every other technology at it's beginnings, most people are uneducated about what to look for. So the market droids dumb things down and drawn in people who do not realize an informed decision is

      • You've hit the nail on the head here. There is one thing I would edit, however.

        Product loyalty. Remember the problems with the original two or three models of PS2? Disc drive failures after watching 30 hrs of DVDs or even less drove many of my friends mad. My brother went through three PS2s untill finally the fourth is still running. The first two died in the 90 day warrenty, the thrid being what Sony's Customer Service called the 2nd generation of PS2 and was exchanged at Wal-Mart after the 90 days by

        • On the other hand, X-boxes' original DVD player (toshiba?) started dieing a year or two after release for many people.

          It was actually Thompson who made those DVD drives, and yes - they were horrible. A lot of people first started finding out how bad they were when Halo 2 launched - for some reason, the multiplayer maps were prone to problems because of this drive.

          The only reason I'm correcting you is because I absolutely love Toshiba. Mad props to their awesome TVs. :D

    • They don't make games...so what else are they going to push? Duh...good games make a console more desirable. We know already...why do people feel so insightful saything the same thing over and over again...maybe beause they get modded up. But seriously, a more capable console can be appealing to people who make games (though the complexity can be a deterrant as well). But of course they are going to push specs...you can't push games on a system that doesn't exist yet. Be realistic people.

  • Already corrected (Score:5, Informative)

    by Murrow ( 144634 ) on Thursday September 01, 2005 @09:40AM (#13454189)
    Inq has already corrected [theinquirer.net] the story. NVidia says the PS3 GPU will be slightly more powerful than the 7800.
    • Okay, so then in a year and a half, when a 7800GT is $75, I can just run them in SLI mode and beat the pants off a PS3 GPU?
      • Yeah, but you still won't be able to play Gran Turismo 5 on your PC.
      • Well, that or you could buy a 150$ graphics card instead and get much better performance than the 7800 with SLi.
      • "Any time we created any content it looked exactly the same on PC as it did on PS3. The only thing was, even though we had these ass-kicking Nvidia 6800 Ultra SLI systems, when we got the actual RSX card, even though it's not running anywhere near full speed, it was more than twice as fast as our SLI setup." - Mark Rein

        it sounds like your statement may turn out to be false. theres a jump from the 6800 to the 7800 esp in SLI, but the developers' statement makes me wonder exactly whats under the hood.

        overall,

    • Re:Already corrected (Score:3, Interesting)

      by Satorian ( 902590 )
      From the link on TheInq: For all those who have blamed this debacle on us, we'd point casually towards the people we sourced. What the fuck? This quote shows everything one needs to know about TheInq's 'journalism'.

  • System specs are second... (Score:5, Insightful)

    by Irish_Samurai ( 224931 ) on Thursday September 01, 2005 @09:41AM (#13454190)
    Man, the only people who buy systems on systems specs alone are idiots. Who cares how beefy a console is if it has 1/3 the library of another console? Game Cube anyone? That purple box could render graphics far superior to the PS2, yet the PS2 library is waht made it king.

    I know fanboys love to brag about the specs for their boxes, but it really doesn't mean that much.

    Take for example the way developers make their games. Japanese developers prefer to prerender their cinematics as opposed to rendering them in real time. The XBOX 360 is designed to render these cinematics in real time. Japanese developers have to change the way they build their games, and that is a speedbump when it comes to garnering the powerful Japanese 3rd party support.
    • Take for example the way developers make their games. Japanese developers prefer to prerender their cinematics as opposed to rendering them in real time. The XBOX 360 is designed to render these cinematics in real time. Japanese developers have to change the way they build their games, and that is a speedbump when it comes to garnering the powerful Japanese 3rd party support.

      So is the PS3, and nobody is forcing these developers to do it real-time, they can still prerender if they want to.

    • Who cares how beefy a console is if it has 1/3 the library of another console? Game Cube anyone?

      If size of library were everything, people would be using PCs, which have a bigger library than any console platform. The point is how many worthwhile games in your favorite genre are on a given platform. For first-person shooters and team sport simulations it's Xbox. For multiplayer "party" style games and for well-designed games that don't use M-rated gimmicks it's GameCube.

      • If size of library were everything, people would be using PCs, which have a bigger library than any console platform.

        To reinforce my point, PC's do have the largest library, they also have a plethora of compatability and minimum system spec issues. So if you actually broke down total PC's and grouped them by their system specs. You would actually have a ton of different "systems" and the library for each one of those "systems" is not the same. A more robust PC has a bigger library than an older PC, so to

        • A more robust PC has a bigger library than an older PC, so to lump them together under "PC" is misleading.

          But a recent PC running Windows XP SP2 and DOSBox [sourceforge.net] still has a significantly bigger library than the PS3 will have, even though the PS3 (the closest console equivalent to a "more robust PC") can play PS2 and PS1 games.

          But I want adult themes in my games.

          What specific kinds of "adult" themes do you want in your games? Discussions about broad generalities don't result in title recommendations.

          • The majority of Nintendo's first party games are not "kiddie" games but games for EVERYONE

            I may have to define what I call a kiddie game. I use the ERSB rating to detirmine what games are "kiddie" and what aren't. Now, that does not mean that kiddie games are no good, I love Magic Pengel, most Mario games, and Zelda games. This may have been misleading as when most people use the term kiddie they mean "targeted at kids".

            But a recent PC running Windows XP SP2 and DOSBox still has a significantly bigger lib

            • Demo's are also a huge plus for the PC. Nothing like tasting the latest and greatest game before you buy it.

              With Consoles, you have to pay 7 bucks a rental or 15 bucks a month to "preview" a game, and there's the chance it won't be available.
    • Japanese developers may prefer pre-rendered FMV, but with what new consoles can do in real time can you be so sure they won't be willing to use the (probably) in-game engine for FMV's? I always figured the pre-rendered scenes were for conveying emotions and adding a more human side to character models that weren't detailed enough to become attached to during the course of the game. I guess we'll just have to see.
      • Japanese game developers have been looking forward to the day when they could prerender highly detailed backgrounds. Imagine an active level where the environment behaves like a prerendered plot movie. Realtime couldn't touch it. It couldn't handle the amount of objects. The ability to create atmosphere would be enhanced tenfold. But these files will be huge and numerous. The Japanese developers do not enjoy when this design method is hindered. That's why Square jumped to Sony during the PS1 days. Cartridge
    • I would have to disagree with you on the PS2 vs GameCube remark. ive owned a PS2 since its first week, and have bought about 2 or 3 games for it, and played them each for a few hours... worst game library ever for a console, imo. but i jsut playe da freinds GC, and a bunch of games he has, so i just ran out and bought a GC and a bunch of games, and there are a bunch more old ones, and plenty of unreleased one i want to get soon. and its costing me a whole lot less than it would to buy a PS2 right now. not
  • Tell me if the games are good in comparison to the XBox 360. That's what really is going to sway my purchase, especially given the insane pricing for both the XBox and the PS3.
  • Was it just me, or after reading this story (especially the last paragraph), did you get the feeling that you just wasted your time reading a story that basically said in itself that it wasn't much of a story?
  • ...That this story is hosted on the same site that advertises The Escapist, which usually espouses the value of a good game with real story and gameplay as opposed to higher polygon count and one teraflop being worse than two ;)

    Even if people don't care about the 'quality' of the game, like everyone else has said, the selection is what matters and the selection is what turned me off to the Xbox in the first round.

  • Bah (Score:1)

    by rk87 ( 622509 )

    Anybody who has owned and/or played more than a few minutes with either the PS2 or the Xbox will know that there is not much difference in graphical quality between the two. I think the same thing will apply here.

    It's not only the power of the GPU, but also how fast and how much data you can get to and from the GPU. Nobody knows, of course, how fast each does this task but from History I just have this hunch that the PS3 will still have comparable graphics to the Xbox. And of course, it's not all about g

    • I own both, and I can say that there's a massive difference in graphics quality between the PS2 and the Xbox.

      The PS2 has zero hardware anti-aliasing. The graphics look very jagged compared to both the Xbox, and the GameCube, because of this. The PS2 was released very early in comparison, so it's understandable.

      I don't expect the PS3 and the Xbox 360 will look very different, though.
      • I don't know really how understandable that is.

        The dreamcast had AA, and was even earlier.

        Ever played any of the bleemcast emulated PSX games? They look better on a dreamcast emulated than on a PS 2, because of the superior graphics capabilities of the dreamcast.
  • That the PS3 will continue to get the good, interesting games, while the X-Box 360 will get the usual collection of crap they have been getting (Football, Basketball, Halo, Yet Another FPS 2006, etc.) that just race to see who can paste the most poly's to the screen every second.
    • the ps3 won't be getting elder scrolls oblivion.

      if the 3 consoles manufacturers weren't such aholes, i'd consider getting a 360 just for oblivion. it's not the money but the principle.
  • What is a game console? it's a entertainment system.

    Now what if I offered you in 1995, a choice of a PS3, or a NES, which would you take?

    Many people probably have answered the PS3. And that would seem to be the right answer because it's a HELL of a machine.

    Problem is that in 1995, PS3 had no games, hell 10 years later we don't have a Ps3 game, if you had the NES you'd have less power but you'd have a library of about 300 games for the last 10 years.

    Now this question seems pointless, but there's a point. S
    • Yeah, but 10 years later I'd have reverse engineered the PS3 from the future and introduced all the technology years ahead of everybody else and been incredibly wealthy.

      Clearly the PS3 is the right choice for all time travelers from 1995. :)
    • I dont think you can so easily say that games are what gave the PS2 its big win. I had a PS2 and a Gamecube on their release date, why would I buy an XBOX? I feel many people probably felt this way. Microsoft had yet to prove they were really going into the game business so who knew if in 2 years the XBOX would be discontinued and would be shelved next to the 3D0. I will also admit that I didnt want to support Microsoft, they get enough of my business. Microsoft had not only to impress Sony/Nintendo fanboys
      • name one other point where the PS2 would win? there's no reason, the only two reasons is brand. But Microsoft has had windows as a platform for many years.

        The fact is it really is up to Games. Granted there's an influx of consumers on launch, but after the first flood, which while is a bit major doesn't amount to that much.

        Here's the core problem, that you DONT see. Your popularity numbers really mean nothing to the company in the end. There's one factor that all companies care about (Yes even Non Profit
    • it's a digital computer that's locked up to prevent the purchaser from using his/her property lawfully.

      the use of the word console seems to make people think it's not a computer. nothing could be further from the truth. in the old days, people couldn't afford to burn roms onto cards to program them, so it was somewhat glossed over. but not that modern systems have ethernet and moreso optical based interfaces, there's no excuse.

      consoles: preventing lawful use of property since 1978.

  • Comparing Console Specs to PC?? (Score:3, Informative)

    by PoderOmega ( 677170 ) on Thursday September 01, 2005 @10:30AM (#13454719)
    Since when do PC specs have anything to do with console? Compare the specs of any console to a high end PC of the time and the PC is going to be more powerful, because it is a general computing machine with tons of hardware options. With a console you can optimize code much better because it is always the same hardware. I thought this was like Gaming 101???
  • so we must wait until someone rips the two boxes open and benchmarks them..."

    Based upon the "debunking" comments I've read already, maybe they should have done that before even writing this article.
  • Even if the RSX had turned out to be slower than the 7800, why would that give the XBox360 an edge in graphics. I don't know what ATI chip is in the XBox but unless they get their fab problems straightened out, they won't have anything comparable to the 7800.
  • http://www.theinquirer.net/?article=25862 [theinquirer.net]

    I don't know why people post such bullshit stories on the internet. It's especially frustrating when the story not only make no logic sense, but it's source is some idiots thread on a message board nameless message board. Then on top of all of this, the story makes its way onto the hallowed pages of Slashdot????? Devastating.

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