PS3 Cell Chip and nVidia's next GPU co-developed

Yep, GeForce 7's will apparently use varients on Sony's PS3 Cell Chip. PC's will blow consoles out of the water within a year once again.

It could make emulation a little easier as well although I'll leave that to the experts, I'm going to stick with a PS3 once a decent FF or GT come out on it.

If you are wondering where I got the info from nVidia handed a statement out to a bunch of PlayStation magazines about the Cell chip and let slip that they "co-developed the new range of GeForce Cell chips wit Sony for the PS3". I don't know if nVidia have posted the statement on their website yet but considering Sony announced the existence of the Cell chip a while ago, ATi are sticking with Nintendo and nVidia are already working on the XBox 2 chip as well, it's possible that nVidia are trying to get one up on ATi.

#248865

i highly doubt that the chips on that ps3 are going to be faster than the computers released around that time too. just hope the product won't be a failure and hope that ATI will have some competiton again. thanks for the info.

#248940

i highly doubt that the chips on that ps3 are going to be faster than the computers released around that time too. just hope the product won't be a failure and hope that ATI will have some competiton again. thanks for the info.

Console CPUs are never faster than PC CPUs because they don't need to be, the internal OS doesn't need things like DirectX to interact with the other parts of the computer, it's all done directly and the OS is designed purely for gaming, no over the top User Interface like WinXP.

Although the XBox has the fastest CPU among the consoles the fact it runs everything via DirectX (and so will the XBox 2) it takes a little more effort from the CPU so it's about the equivalent speed to the GC and PS2 CPUs.

The main part of a Console is it's GPU which is usuallt as fast as it's CPU and as it handles all instructions itself requires more built in high speed RAM than the CPU does.

Anyway, we can't judge how good the next GeForce or Radeon series cards will be based on the consoles as DirectX itself will have to update to v10 before that (and we'll probably be looking at the launch of Longhorn for that).

#248949

nVidia are already working on the XBox 2 chip as well, it's possible that nVidia are trying to get one up on ATi.

M$ already announced that they dropped nVidia and are going with ATI for X-Box 2.

They had been trying to get nVidia to drop the price of their chips for a long time and nVidia refused to budge. Sooo.... M$ has already sent out hardware kits to developers for X-Box 2.

The new X-Box is powered by G5 cpu's and ATI graphics.

I also here they don't use internal HD anymore either. But that's still speculation at this time.

Last I read, there were 3 prototypes under consideration. One of them didn't use a HD, it ran the game from DVD and loaded what it needed into a RAM drive.

#248970

I don't read XBox news much...

I'm not a great fan of Microsoft and as the only games on XBox that have interested me are Sudeki and Fable (Which turned out to be rather poor) I have no reason to change my mind.

So basically, the N5 and XBox are going to be the same (bar programming differences) and the PS3 is going to be noisy.

N5 (Nintendo)

I haven't read anything about it but if they stick with what they had with the Gamecube, it's going to be a custom chip Mini-Mac running ATi graphics chip.

XBox 2 (Microsoft)

Is going to be a G5 Mac running some bizarre Media Center version and DirectX (announced with the XNA announcement), and will also use ATi.

PS3 (Sony)

Custom CPU and nVidia based Cell chip for GPU (may use the PS2 CPU for less important features for backwards compatibility (won't run PSOne games though)).

Infinium Labs

Will never see the light of day.

#248980

hmm, then your opinion is biased.

I own all three systems. Truthfully I love them all equally, but I love Microsoft's mediacenter for the xbox since I am able to double it as an extension to my HTPC to the living room.

Microsoft sees the potential in this.

That would be horrible to see if Microsoft ditched the harddrive... (i have a modded xbox) so it might be good to keep the old xbox around to play ROM based games

#249090

All opinions are biased but mines based on the fact I'm a major RPG fan. Almost the only reason I buy a console is if there is a worthwhile range of RPGs on it.

PS2 had Dark Chronicle, Kingdom Hearts, Final Fantasy, Star Ocean when it finally hits and even stuff like Shadow Hearts.

Gamecube had Zelda (almost the entire series) and my brother already bought it anyway.

XBox had Sudeki (which looked beautiful) and Fable but as Lionhead said themselves, they weren't happy with what they ended up with in Fable, and neither am I.

As for the Media Center thing, good idea but I'd never use it. I use my iPod as a portable music storage and as I live round a friends I usually watch films on my PC so I don't disturb his family during Emmerdale or something.

#249214

if any of you had read and understood the vast capability and scope of this new CELL processor being deveolped by IBM, Toshiba and Sony you would understand that the PS3 is not gonna be just another console. This CELL chip has a theoretical speed of three to four times that of our fastest personal computers (yes apple included) and it is said that the PS3 will include four of these chips, no doubt specialised to render graphics or perform other processing tasks. if indeed the CELL chip is half of what its said to be, not even a multi-core 64bit x86 architechture would come close to the CELL's power.

now the next thing i hear you saying is $$'s - well because it is a joint venture between IBM, Toshiba and Sony, all your next gen products will include these chips to manage everything HiDef related. it is because of that ive read two 65nm factory's are being buit to produce a great enough supply and bring the final costs down dramatically.

if anyone wishes to read a little more about the CELL chip and one guys interpritation of the PATENT that has been lodged regarding it, visit here - i must note however this is only one source of many from which i have heard information about the CELL chips potential, and given even half this information is accurite, the Technology industry is in for a major surprise and not just gaming consol's.

-The Unknown

#249225

The Cell processor is huge, people. It's enormously powerful, especially when linked together.

The Cell processor is basically grid computing on steroids. The architecture, if you've seen it, is completely amazing.

It supposedly uses a core loosely based on the G5 chip, if that doesn't tell you enough, and there are regularly 4 to 8 of these in low-power systems like the PS3, which is enough to generate a couple hundred gigaflops of power (nearly a teraflop).

And if you put 400 of these chips together, you'll have the most powerful supercomputer in existence.

edit: by the way, the guy who "interpreted" the patent is a technologically inept moron. Take everything he says with a truckload of salt. Though, he does seem to get a few things right about Cell. Just don't pay any attention to the rest of his articles.

#250139

The architecture, if you've seen it, is completely amazing.

Got any links?

#250145

No, I haven't seen any believable reports online. This information comes off a friend's dad (I asked the dad, not the friend), who is associated with the project.

#250146

I wouldn't be surprised if the PS3 costed $300-$1,000.

#250198

I wouldn't be surprised if the PS3 costed $300-$1,000.

personal opinion: if the PS3 costs anywhere near $1000 they're going to lose ALOT of sales.

#250248

my guess? $500 in the middle of the road.

I would buy it for $500, it seems the middle of the road. Considering a lot of game players are now getting older you would expect a price hike. Also, with the evolution of technology that thing better support HD =) maybe native output res of 1280x768 atleast

#254123

It was rumored that PS3 would also function as a pc... keyboard and mouse that is, but also with the normal gamepads...

Cell is a multicore processor... Intel is planning or releasing a dual.core processor, but cell got an expandable processor! imagine 8 of this things put together in a single PC! it would be like a supercomputer, I would loooooooove to see 1 teraflops in my computer...

well... technology advances all the time, expect in 15 years quantum computing... jejeje i love technology

#254178

This Cell Chip technology is amazing - the possibilities are astounding.

I've found this link for more information on the architecture etc...

#254297

I didn't realise that it was PowerPC based...

That means it may be possible to run OSX with a bit of fiddling on all three consoles

#254312

wow, wonder what microsoft'll do about it...

#254334

they'll try to encrypt it, or use some hardware blocks... but as always, hackers have some thing to say...

#254489

Didn't Microsoft say that the xbox couldn't be hacked before its release? I'd give it at most around 3 months and we'll all probably be running OS X on the xbox 2.

#254696

I hope the XBOX2 looks good on the outside, becouse if it's as ugly as XBOX (1) it would be a sacrilege to Apple to run OSX on it

But ok, it would be fun to make MS a bit mad hehehe

#255900