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Pull up a chair, some beverages, even a pillow as we look at DPAD's most comphrehensive article EVER. Michael "Optimus" Perry goes beyond the range of an average review and breaks the PS3 and 360 down piece by piece, giving us a never before seen analysis of arguably the most heated debates in our recent console memory. PS3 or 360?
PS3 vs 360… 360 vs PS3… is a very touchy subject as everyone is aware I’m sure. Before this article gets underway its important that everyone keep in mind that neither of these 2 consoles is weak by any stroke of the imagination. Both are very powerful and significant upgrades over their current generation counterparts such as the PS2 or Xbox and as always it’s about the games. What it TRULY boils down to for the vast majority of people out there is that they don’t care about the specs of a console. All most people care about is “How good are the games available for it?” So I want it to be understood immediately that by no means is this article meant to be some sort of indication of which of the two consoles will end up coming out on top. Nor is this article meant to, in any shape or form, change anyone’s mind about which console they decide to purchase. This is simply an article intended to inform people about both machines and in doing so there will of course be comparisons between the 2 machines, but they will be facts. With all of that said lets get down to business shall we? |
Monday November 23 2009 | |||||
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User Comments
(though I must admit for me #4s summary would have worked just as well... I'd rather just play my friends 360s and ps3s, I'll be buying a wii)
#10 Yes it is, I was wondering why all these game sites are publishing art with that old controller too, but it's not a big deal anyways it still got the point across.
Optimus, very nice article, good to know we actually have someone in the community who can read past higher numbers / gimmick features. I myself would also resort to higher numbers and the other things that could throw others off considering I don't know all of these technical things. Was written very well and presented it good considering I learned a lot about the terms in just one article haha. Very nice comprehensive article, it's up to the people to decide what's best for them :)
There are a lot more 360 titles that I'm looking forward to right now. For the 360 there is Gears of War, blue dragon, lost odyssey, infinite undiscovery, halo 3, Lost Planet, Ninja Gaiden 2, forza motorsport 2, mass effect, fable 2, Banjo 3, bioshock, splinter cell 5, naruto 360 from ubisoft montreal (supposedly an adventure game)
I'm getting both consoles, but if I didn't already own a 360 my first purchase would be the 360 simply because I'm impressed with what its offering right now and what it promises to offer in the future. Xbox Live is amazing, proven and continues to get better. Gears of War looks incredible and lives up to the hype from all I hear. Microsoft seems to be doing the right things at the right time there is always some good news to look forward to. Every chance they get Microsoft is announcing all these cool new things they plan to offer and eventually it piles up to the point where you think "wow.. buying this might not be such a bad idea." My biggest reason for a 360 purchase is the final fantasy creators 360 titles blue dragon and lost odyssey. Price also plays a role for me (even though I intend to buy the ps3 when heavenly sword is out) I would likely purchase a ps3 sooner if the price was lower. Its just with the prices for both consoles so different right now the 360 seems like the default first choice until the game I want for the ps3 arrives.
Its also a big plus that the 360 is getting assassin's creed, gta4 and resident evil 5 just like the ps3. The hardware features are also a big selling point for me with the 360 after all the reading I've done on it and some of the information I've seen from developers. Those hardware features would mean absolutely nothing to me though if there weren't also games that caught my fancy.
Well #4 its meant to help inform people beyond the fact that they are both good consoles not tell which of the 2 is better as only the games can do that :)
Glad you guys like the article.
it's no secret that when constructors announce the specs they always lie (oups, i meant use their marketing skills) , but the comparison between the respective specs is very useful.
#15 glad you're glad we guys liked the article
wii+PS3 = the übber combo
I still remember the PS3 conference at E3 2005 where you were lying about how many birds they could simulate at the same time and how many GFLOPS they could achieve lol
Up till now, I still don't know whether all the PS3 demos are done in real time or if they are just using pre-prossessed animations.
b4 i go back to playing wow
a few opinions on my own, mostly everyone on gotfrag would announce something so stupid to thinking the xbox360 is better because of its approach in Gaming HALO / GraW but i rather leave my pc up for the Online perspective of things and that the picture SUX thats not the ps3 controller.
I'd prefer it if I was informed in the writers opinion which games where more fun, which was easier to get hold of, which runs better on HDTV, which has a larger range of games and also which is better value for money.
as for Blu-Ray, i'll quote Sony's Phil Harrison:
'[i]It's not just about graphics, it's about 7.1 audio, it's about speech, it's about having up to 1080p movies built into the game; it's high-res textures, it's animation, it's everything that goes into making a very rich and varied next-gen experience. Partly it's visual, partly it's sound, and partially it'll be down to gameplay benefits as well - more levels, more detail, richer experiences.[/i]"
it should also be noted that [b]NO games will be developed for the HD-DVD medium[/b]. that alone makes the inclusion of a Blu-Ray drive on the PS3 an important and "future-proof" advantage. plenty of PS3 developers have already come out in support having this extra storage and how it allows them unlimited potential without the consequence of 3++ discs. there are also various other benefits that Blu-Ray gives to developers including:
-slower spin for full speed read access (i.e. a quieter drive... no more screamers)
-data doubling; which means developers can duplicate data across the data, in order to reduce seek times... for example, say a racing game loaded a track; the car data could be placed after each track, instead of the requiring the drive to move its read head up and down the length of the disc it would just stream it right after the track information.
-less time spent on optimizing code and and compression techniques
-support for ALL regions on one disc
now, is Blu-Ray a NECESSITY for developing a great game? of course not. but if the history of consoles teaches us anything, it's that games WILL benefit from this new and improved technology. or would you guys prefer to be playing FF13 across 319 ultra super nintendo 5 cartridges? it should be obvious to any sane person that extra storage capacity has the potential to be a great benefit for games (and in some cases, it is already realizing that potential). however, in more ways than one, it is all up to the developers at this point.
[i]"There are many attempts on both sides to distort the numbers or misconstrue their importance, but looking at the features as a whole allows the opportunity to determine how these consoles will operate overall. While both consoles shine in some areas, they do have their softer spots. Ultimately, the good features of each of these consoles outweigh the bad and the amount of high quality games being released this winter will give Sony and Microsoft fans alike a lot to be happy about."[/i]
you could have saved me 11 pages of reading and just posted that as forum thread. :P overall it was a fairly good read, you did a decent job of trying to present a fair and balanced outlook (although your x360 bias started to reek farther along in the article, but it was to be expected considering the author). i enjoyed the article, thanks for writing it. :D
Thats becaues you delete all the negative, truth is, this article has a lot of good information. But you don't conclude anything, you list everything about both systems then just leave a general conclusion. Fact is, this article was supposed to "End all arguements." When infact it hasn't ended anything because you're still unsure which is better..
i said it once and ill say it again, waste-o-time.
peace
I could tell you why you were nuked, but I think we both know it was the attitude that came across. Not a big deal :)
It didnt end the arguing because people dont read/understand it.
*IF* people *COMPREHENDED* what he said, it would end the arguing. Some are too dim to get it though...
For example, using Mike's logic, I can present it differently and more fairly here (still based on facts !).
The PS3 GFLOP and architectue comparisons are downplayed
=======================================
The Cell GFLOP numbers mentioned in this article are obtained from here:
http://www-128.ibm.com/developerworks/pow..
Mike's article states that IBM tests 8 SPE cell using 1Kx 1K matrix , producing 73.4GFLOP. But it fails to mention that Cell was not running at full workload in this case. In fact, the quoted 155.5 GFLOP number is achieved by *running the same program* using a larger matrix (4K x 4K). So 155.5 GFLOP can be attained when the programmer throws more data at Cell.
Not sure why it's necessary for the article to highlight the 73.4GFLOP number out of the blue (instead of the 155.5GFLOP) in the article -- other than to pull a fast one on lay-person and subtly downplay the 155.5 GFLOP number for Cell. In fact, the technical report above also mentioned that Cell achieved 201GFLOP for some simple tests, and run many of these code at higher efficiency than other CPUs. So now at 6 SPEs, we should have about 6/8 * 155.5 GFLOP = 116.6 GFLOP real world performance _for this benchmark_ (Still higher than Xbox 360's _theoretical_ peak number of 115 GFLOP).
The Xbox 360 GFLOP and architecture comments are misleading (in this article)
=========================================...
Each Xbox 360 core can only run 2 threads max (as indicated in this article, but it is _inferior_ to Hyperthreading). Xbox 360's threading mechanism gains about 10-15% efficiency on the average. This means that The 360 CPU runs at about 50-65% efficiency (average to best case). So Xbox 360's real GFLOP is around 115 * 0.65 = 74.8 GFLOP.
A las ! we forgot that Xbox 360 also need to run an OS, especially with all those Xbox Live UI and events. PS3 OS takes about 14% (1 out of 7 SPEs) of computing resources. Let's assume that Xbox 360 OS programmers are twice as good and they take only 7% of computing resources, this means that 360 should run _only_ at 74.8 * 0.93 = 69.6GFLOP.
GFLOP does not tell the full picture
======================
So what do we do ? Gaming requires many things to be done at the same time within 1 frame. So architecturally, having as many cores as possible (PS3 has 6, Xbox has 3) to complete all the work is important. As highlighted in Mike's article, Xbox 360's pseudo-threading cannot replace full cores. So they will lose out here. Their cap/ceiling has been determined, sealed in silicon.
On the other hand, PS3 programmers suffer from s*cky development kits. And because memories are split into small chunks in PS3, it is much harder to program. Once the PS3 developers get over the initial hurdles, they can go further than Xbox 360 programmers. However at this stage, since both of them are hard to program (with PS3 even more difficult than 360), both camps have some way to go to tap the full potential of both CPUs.
360's symmetric core is important to maximize efficiency. But it is not critical because PS3's assymetric cores allow more specialized design and can achieve higher than average efficiency (once the PS3 programmers build sufficient expertise and tools to help them).
Others
=====
All these are not taking into consideration Xbox 360's _slower_ DVD drive (because it's variably speed !). The 12xDVD number is misleading because it only applies to the outer layer of the disc. The 2xBlu-ray number is constant rate. On the average 360's DVD drive is slower than PS3's Blu-ray in transfer rate.
Also because of smaller disk space, Xbox 360 cores and programmers need to spend more time on compression/uncompression and disc layout. This detracts from both the performance and productivity somewhat.
At the hardware level, PS3 is superior to Xbox 360. The saving grace of MS is their flexible and more mature development tools and the similar architecture between Xbox 360 and PC.
this article has a little xbox360 bias to it
#40 thank you for taking the time to do what i never felt like taking the time to do.. appropriately and effectively responding to an optimus filler-essay. as for the dev-kits.. the vast majority of developers have already stated that the PS3 is much easier to develop for than the PS2. so if you take into consideration the quality and quantity of titles for the PS2.. the outlook for games on the PS3 is extremely optimistic.
[b] "but Xbox 360 marketing claims are left intact." [/b] Oh really..
To believe the ps3 will actually achieve 150gflops or even 200gflops would be just as ridiculous as believing the 360's GPU would actually achieve 500 million triangles in games. Yea sure the 360 gpu could achieve 500 million triangles, but here is the catch... there would be no color or pixels (we like color and pixels to be in our games right?)
[b] Before going any further I’ll clarify this 500 Million Triangles a second claim. Can the 360’s GPU actually achieve this? Yes it can, BUT there would be no pixels or color at all. [/b] That sounds like I put a microsoft claim to rest in the article...
To my knowledge the core 2 duo has a peak gflop performance of around 40GFLOPS
http://www.theinquirer.net/default.aspx?a..
Notice how amazed these guys are at the fact that these CPUs achieve 22.4 GFLOPs, 19.8 GFLOPs. I don't remember the exact numbers for the conroe, but I believe it has a peak of 40GFLOPS. #40 Do you honestly believe that the processors in either of these 2 consoles can outperform intel's core 2 duo? Face the facts both processors have been overhyped and people were actually fooled into believing these cpus will achieve these triple digit performance numbers in games. Its not going to happen and even John Carmack has said its not going to happen.
There was no bias in this article it was all facts and naturally people are going to take offense when things aren't in favor of their favorite console (which I should've expected) In regards to the 360's DVD Drive versus the PS3's Blu Ray Drive. Do you even know why sony lets people install 4GB+ caches onto their hard drives? Because the blu ray's read speed is much slower than the 360's DVD drive. Even when the information is put onto the hard drive the loading times still aren't better than the 360. The elder scrolls devs have said the 360's dvd drive pulls information off the disc 2 times as fast as the ps3's blu ray drive. Are they lying?
http://digg.com/gaming_news/Bethesda_360_..
http://www.gamespot.com/pages/profile/sho..
http://www.maxconsole.net/?mode=news&news..
[i] The maximum read speed of a disc that is only half full on a
12x drive is only 12MBps compared to the drives maximum of 16.5MBps.
At 2x Blu-ray can read as fast as 12x DVD's minimum read speed. At just
3x Blu-ray is comparable to DVD at 12x; through the first half of the
disc 3x Blu-ray is faster, through the second half of the disc 12x DVD
is faster.
And at only 4x Blu-ray manages to best a 12x DVD's maximum read speed
by 9%. [/i]
Also with game discs #40 the information is actually pushed to the outer layer of the disc so the 360's dvd drive would achieve its full speed. The ps3 uses a 2x blu ray drive also. If it used a 4X blu ray drive it would be faster than the 360's 12X dvd drive, but it doesn't.
Xbox 360 has better games and support than PS3.MS actually pays attention to what customers wants for 360 and delivers. My dad's PS2 broke and he had to buy a new one.My original Xbox has never failed.Assassin's Creed PS3 exclusive?Ha!MGS4 only possible on the almighty PS3?It's creator says it could easily be done on 360.THP8?Roughly the same but SLIGHTLY favoring 360.Blu Ray is the only reason to pay $200-$300 more for a console of equal power that's about the same.Yeah,I said up to to $300 more.There's a temporary deal for $100 off 360's( I won't say where)...the same time PS3 is launching at $599.99 .BEST BUY HAS Xbox 360 READY TO GIVE TO YOU PS3 FANS THAT WON'T GET A PS3. http://www.flickr.com/photos/tuannguyen/2..
Sony's networth is $4 billion.Nintendo's is $5 billion. MS' is about $30 billion. You REALLY think MS can't crush SOny?They were just getting a foot into the door with the first Xbox.360 will trash Wii and PS3.The next Xbox will dominate even more.It's MS' 3 point plan. You see?MS wants to dominate this market.Considering that it's worth 7 times as much as SOny and 6 toimes as much as Nintendo, they won't be stopped.
PS Xbox 360 is great.Wii is great.PS3 is great.Xbox 360 is better for me and some others. PS3 is better, for some others.Wii is better for some others. Some have no preference or call a tie.It's all about what you want.
I know that some have said that this article is a little biased but all in all it achieves what it sets out to do, and that is to make someone think about the differences and realize that numbers don't mean jack. Alot of details are obscured, overinflated, or unexplained by both companies and the fact remains that either console is a great choice. When it comes down to it as with anything else in life each has advantages and disadvantages. The deciding factor will be price and the level of value compared to that price that each system presents to the end user. It will be interesting to see what 2007 and 2008 have in stored for gamers.
I am not developer but after reading the article I thought about these consoles as if they were each a car. I'm not going to give them car names as that would invite more debate...here is my analogy from an end user's point of view. its silly I know but this is what my brain came up with....
The xbox 360 looks and feels like a tuner car that has been agressively moded. It is slower on paper and smaller in comparison yet more nimble with a very efficient fuel and traction control system. Its inside is an engineering marvel blending eastern astethics and western efficency, giving the driver everything he needs at his fingertips leaving enough room to put 2 small kids in the back seat. Yo uare suprised how roomy it is when you get in. The doors open easily letting people in and out of the car efficiently, and even the dog can squeeze through. The car is easier to repair and maintain and of course overall is less costly on the team. Its small 3 cylinder v-tech (I used 3 cylinders becasue of 3 cpus) engine redlines at 9,000 rpm making it extremely efficient. However its extremely noisy at high RPMs and tends to overheat and crash requiring maitenance. Its turbo is not that powerful but well tuned. It has 3 on board robots that you can tell what you want them to do at any one time but sometimes they need to share work so some things wont get done as quickly. Overall having more people in the car makes everything that much more complicated. Everyone is a sideseat driver. The kids also require attention and if you are not careful they tend to fight over things and slow you down.
The the PS3 on the other hand is a hulking beast with power and roar oozing out of every tail pipe. Its very presense intimidates onlookers. its so big that they managed to fit the last 2 versions inside it just in case anyone wants to drive the older models. When cruising it is quiet and menacing and always hungry. It looks great, has the most durable and strongest components under the hood, and there is a team of experts saying its the best thing since sliced bread. Its bullet proof. It can get GPS coordinates and intel from 6 different satelites including the Pentegan's top secret bad boy. I has 6 seperate computer assist robots to help you handle everything from air conditioning to radio station selection and a inflatable passanger who tells you where to go.
It can go really fast but is guzzles gas and fights you at every turn. Its V8 is hungry and strong but its american built so there is alot of waste and inneficiency as the design seems almost counterintuitive to what the driver needs. (the irony here since the consoles are opposite of this).The turbo is big but costs a ton to repair and maintain. Its inside looks big at first glance with LCD TVs, and Navigation systems galore but to use it all you need a PHD in vcr/dvd remote control managment. Its full of gadgets, and this makes it cramped in the front making you shift in your seat to get anything done. It takes a degree just to learn how to drive it. You can potentially fit your wife's entire family in the back seat and they come standard with the car, but its one door makes it difficult for them to efficently get in and out at rest stops. All the noise is the back seat also makes it a pain in the butt to drive and you need to tell them one at a time who needs to go to the bathroom. The good thing is that once you tell them what to do they are pretty good at getting things done letting you focus on the driving and won't slow you down like the 2 kids in the back seat of the other car.
Behind the wheel of the 360 sits a well trained driver with a very good team of trainers behind him telling him how to improve his already impressive skillset. He's been driving for years and is very comfortable behind the seat of any car but this one is tricky to handle. The team has proven tools and videos on how to be a better driver and the nimbleness of the car makes it even easier to learn.
In the PS3 sits a kid right out of college with a degree in DVD remote control managment. The problem is that you need at least a Masters degree to actaully get the most out of this thing. He's new to the game and does not yet know the full power of the beast he rides. To make thigs worse he needs to study for his MS and PHD while he drives. The good news is that he is the son of the legendary PS2 who won the last race by a landslide. His team so far has given him a short boot camp on how to drive the car and they aren't very good teachers. They aren't using sears craftsman tools to tune the car so its going ot take them a while to get some performance out of the beast but at the moment they don't think its even necessary as they convinced the onlookers that the kid will win. However the kid is ambitious, determined and hungry to win the race, and his teachers are working hard to improve the game and pass on their knowledge to him. Their trainingvideos suck, but with time they will improve. Over the years they think he will mature and they will help him tap the power of the beast. The only thing that stands in their way is the fact that if he gives up his training he might go to the other team. They are hoping that the huge loan he took out to pay for driving college will pay off in the end. he came from a long family of drivers and his daddy did the same thing and now is rich beyond his dreams with a harem of women to enjoy in his old age, and will go down in history as one of the best drivers ever. The trainers believe that if they follow the proven formula they will win and they think that in the end bigger is always better.
The race is on and initially the 360 is in the lead...after all the team had a year's head start because they got their stuff together early. They relied on experience, current techology and listened to their people and surveyed other drivers. The team is planning on utilizing every trick at their disposal and years of experience to tap his already impressive experience and skill set. They know the car inside and out and are confident of fine tuning it to even greater heights. They have a great plan and a great communications network and see amzing things down the road. Constantly they are listening to their peers and other drivers to give the guy behind the wheel every advantage they can.
The PS3 finally takes off after having numerous delays as the turbo proved to be difficult to incorporate and put together. The car is a year behind. The beast lunbers forward with a roar and a huge puff of smoke but the driver is scared and unexperienced. He might be late getting to Rome, but thats ok. The team of trainers isn't worried because they know that anyone crazy enough to sign up for the ride is here for the long haul. The kid, seeing $$ signs hangs on for dear life hoping that at the end of the road is fame and fortune....
who will win? time will tell... right now the tuner is ahead but there is still 890 miles in this 1000 mile race.
hah...anyway...my analogy and lame comparison of the 2. I wasn't trying to be baiased...jsut wanted to share how i see it.
Anyway good read...
Even if both PS3 and Xbox 360 can't meet their peak (of course !), PS3 can still be more powerful than Xbox 360. As for whether PS3 can reach 155GFLOP (PS3 Peak is higher than 155 GFLOP !) as mentioned in your #43 reply, time will tell. I don't think you have enough credibility to argue for or otherwise.
Also, please don't quote The Inquirer, they are often wrong on technical facts.
If you want to quote facts regarding Blu-ray, quote the right technical guys:
http://www.beyond3d.com/forum/showthread...
Read the entire thread above to find that 2xBlu-ray is superior to 12xDVD. The links you quoted are regular gaming sites... and they often make mistakes too (or they just regurgitate what people told them).
Also you might want to check out:
http://www.neogaf.com/forum/showthread.ph..
for some refute. nostromo is a game developer.
First, Optiums has obviously done his research and knows more about this topic than you do...You provide no technical support for your argument, he does.
Take it from a comp. engineering student - the two systems are very evenly matched.
Secondly, quotes from random people on boards (i.e. your second "source") don't mean anything.
Finally, would you mind finding where that topic states that the PS3's Blu-Ray drive is better than HD DVD?
Overall his article is good. It really helps correct a lot of the misconceptions that are out there, many of which work in favor of the PS3. The section on the CPU's in particular should be very helpful to the type of idiots that think Cell is the bees knees. And is for the most part very correct.
Overall I think his article is a bit slanted toward Xbox 360 though. For one, he speaks of free 4XAA, for the most part that has been debunked, as 360 titles have had a few problems with AA. The whole free AA thing turned out to be a bit oversold.
It all comes back to predicated tiling. Which is a must for any sort of AA on 360. Of course the 360's EDRAM is too small to fit the full 720P framebuffer with AA (2X or 4X), so, the framebuffer must be split into tiles, typically three, and rendered like that. The problem is the game engine must be built from the ground up to support predicated tiling. The other problem is it's a bit of a pain in the ass and a performance hit as well. I'm not technically knowledgable enough to say why, but it has something to do with the geometry where the tiles intersect each other. It must be drawn multiple times and kept a list of in memory as well. It's not ideal, and some type of performance hit results, maybe, 5-15% or something like that, there's no hard and fast rule, but the more tiles the more hit is possible.
The ideal solution would have been to stick 30MB of EDRAM in there, which would hold the full framebuffer and all this annoying tiling could have been avoided, the reason MS didn't is cost, the EDRAM is extremely expensive. Around one third of the GPU size is EDRAM as it is!
I've even heard tiling breaks memexport. AKA the memexport feature does not work with predicated tiling, or automatic predicated tiling. Not sure the details though. But it gives you a hint the predicated tiling sucks, and is just a necessary evil. Nobody likes it but it has to be dealt with, and the EDRAM does have it's advantages as detailed in the article.
Having said that, if you look at the review of multi-platform games such as COD3 gamespot review, Tony Hawk 8, etc, it's seems in every case the PS3 version looks the same but runs slower with frame rate slowdown than the Xbox360 version. So while tiling isn't good, so far so good if the 360 can hold it's own even after accounting for the tiling performance hit.
Oh, another factually incorrect statement is that the Xenos has the same shading power as R600. R600 isn't out yet, so we dont know, but there's almost no way R600 wont totally crush Xenos in raw power, (as well as RSX for that matter). The current guess puts R600 at 96 shading units (double Xbox360), anything less and it will find itself woefully outpowered versus Nvidia's G80. You cant expect Xenos to compete with R600 any more than youd expect RSX to compete with G80. They're simply not in the same class. Put it this way, Xenos is around ~337 million transistors, but 80 million of those are EDRAM (remember how we talked about how expensive EDRAM is?) which means they dont calculate anything or contribute to the raw power of the GPU. Meaning the actual GPU stuff is around 337-80=257 million transistors (RSX's PC counterpart the 7900 GTX is 278 million transitors). G80 is 681 million transistors. Last rumor I heard about R600 was ~720 million transistors. Meaning yeah, it's well over twice as big as Xenos, and will contain at least twice the raw power/shading units if not more. Now, it's true R600 HAS been said by ATI to be BASED on the Xenos design. That much is very true.
Couple more notes, it's pretty well accepted by now that RSX DID get downgraded to 500 mhz. Not only that but the GDDR got lopped as well, to 650 mhz (from 700). That is why Sony stopped printing the specs. They dont want to aknowledge the downgrades.
I'd quibble a bit with your statement that PS3 uses 96 MB for the OS though. It was hinted at by one B3D dev that it may in fact be 48. He said that Sony usually doubles the OS RAM in DEV kits (Dev kits have double system RAM anyway), that was the case with PSP. So the true figure might be half 96, or it might be 48. However, I am not SURE of that. It could be 48 or it could be 96, I wouldn't stake my life either way, I just dont know, nor have I seen any comfirmation or denial, or credible rumors even, for sure.
Lastly I'm not sure the 256MB VRAM limit on PS3 is as big a deal as you make out. As you noted doing some texturing from XDR will be standard operating procedure in many cases anyway, which means you can use all the VRAM+some XDR, and go over 256 MB. Regardless though, you are correct in general, Sony's split RAM architecture is not particularly elegant and will not be as easy to deal with as 360's unified pool, if not being an outright texture RAM limiter.
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