Thanks to reader Michael C. for pointing out this rather depressing article. It talks about the PS3′s memory footprint. Memory is a big deal for developers, and the more you give them, the better the game. Even a little bit helps. Which is why I got slightly upset at this article.
I’d always heard that the PS3 OS’s memory footprint was about 64MB, down from an originally estimated 96MB. As it turns out, it’s not 64MB at all – it’s 84MB. That 84MB is 52MB of main memory and 32MB of video memory. Compare this to the Xbox 360′s 32MB total OS memory, and you see one of the reasons why people have more trouble developing PS3 games. 52MB makes a big difference.
But that’s not all!
Not only does the PS3′s OS take 84MB of memory, it can take more than that if you want to use special features. The worst offender is the buddy list, which takes an additional staggering 24MB of memory! Sony is doing something seriously wrong here. A buddy list system shouldn’t require near that amount of memory, by an order of magnitude.
Read the article for more – it’s all depressing.
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Written by: Blackstaffer
- Founder of PS3Blog.net 
#1 by Annie on May 10th, 2007 [ 0 Points ]
BTW, I will not tolerate people who use this as an excuse just to bash the PS3. If you have something constructive to say, go ahead. Even if it’s not constructive – go ahead. No bashing however – I just deleted such a post.
#2 by HachiRoku on May 10th, 2007
I see this as a non-issue, and a reflection of a slow news day in the Next-Gen arena. Please don’t equate a system’s memory footprint with how games will look. Yes, less will give it more flexibility, but more just means there is more data being passed around. If you can accommodate that data, then where is the worry?
The PS3 has a guaranteed HD in every machine. That is its ace in the hole. With it, comes the ability to utilize Virtual Memory for ‘heavy’ items. Either way, don’t worry yourself over these small details. In the end, it’s the games that count. Just look at MGS4 or FFXIII… I don’t see anything in their pics/videos that suggest any sort of limitation here.
#3 by Rich on May 10th, 2007
As the article says, these numbers aren’t set in stone and Sony has already started to improve the efficiency of the coding in its OS. Expect more optimizations in the next major firmware release. The article also says games can now access the main friends list! Think this is the first I’ve read about this and is great news
#4 by MoLe on May 10th, 2007
Thanks for posting this ;>
One thing that is good about this as Rich says is that since these pieces, like the friends list and online play, are modularized into the Firmware we can only expect these footprints to get smaller and faster and it will affect all the games across the board!
#5 by chrysostom on May 10th, 2007 [ 830 Points ]
I am still puzzled by how PS2/PS3 games use so little memory compare to normal applications (say, Word, or other Windows applications). I guess the PS3 memory management unit is streamlined to do certain thing (say, graphical operations) very efficiently so that it doesn’t require as much memory. Could more memory help? Maybe. But I don’t think this is the limiting factor. From what I have read so far, developers have more troubles dividing works across the Cell processors than dealing with the memory limitation.
#6 by Annie on May 10th, 2007 [ 0 Points ]
While I won’t deny that multithreading is a difficult problem to solve, that doesn’t change the fact that PS3 games are constrained an additional 52MB over 360 games. That’s 10% of the console’s memory right there! The amount of memory you have makes a BIG difference to the kind of game you can make, though I have to admit that HachiRoku’s point about the PS3′s internal HDD is a good one and helps make up for the 52MB downside somewhat.
But developers will always use what you give them, and memory is one of the most precious resources you have when writing a program.
#7 by Sporty on May 10th, 2007 [ 95 Points ]
@chrysostom
Console programmers are typically developing with efficiency in mind from the ground up. The system is locked every version will play the same.
Application and to a lesser extend Computer programmers develop with features in mind, often building on top of old code base with un-optimized code. If it run you can always add more RAM or CPU at it to improve it.
Kinda sad, but this is part of the reason Linux is popular. You can always compile your own and strip out bloat.
#8 by Doodlepants on May 10th, 2007 [ 490 Points ]
As a Dev. I would rather have Blazing fast memory over ~10% more memory ANY day. Memory wise the two systems are so much different. 360 Cpu has to ask permission to fully use its memory which can result in HUGE performance hits.
#9 by Annie on May 10th, 2007 [ 0 Points ]
That might be true. But memory speed isn’t the question. The PS3′s memory speed is what it is, and can’t be changed. The amount of it available to the developer, however, can be changed. My point is that developers would be much better off if Sony did some fat trimming and gave developers another 52MB to play with.
#10 by mcloki on May 10th, 2007 [ 2355 Points ]
I don’t think they’ll ever get to giving them back the entire 52 MB. People like services. If in game chat becomes popular they can continue to refine that portion of the OS. Since many many gamers will be using it. I am concerned with the first iteration of Home and how huge that may be. But overall Sony has done a good job of keeping the updates coming. It’s very Japanese. It’s Kaizen “continuous improvement”, seems to be the order of the day with Sony’s OS. And with plenty of other Games. ie: Motorstorm always getting new features with a new download. I like that. By Christmas we’ll see how bloated the Footprint becomes. No worries on my part.
#11 by Trieloth on May 10th, 2007 [ 3286 Points ]
This is a bummer, here is a goofy compairson. I watch drag racing at our local drag strip. I have seen little four cylinders beat V-8′s with very little mods done to the 4 cyl. I would like to explain more but you would need to know about cars. The extra memory problems arent to big a deal because someone or something will figure out a way to get around it… slow times always brings these old topics up. See what I mean by slapping of others, its going to be a long few months.
#12 by Sporty on May 10th, 2007 [ 95 Points ]
What Doodlepants said is very valid. Faster speed, and faster and 3 times the registers burns through the stack faster. The quicker the stack the faster the RAM is manipulated.
When developers get better at working with the PS3 they will start to push it better.
#13 by L on May 10th, 2007
If Sony went with some form of open source UNIX kernel and if the GUI is based on X11, I would not be surprised.
Developing a micro-kernel, with a proper graphics library, is not a trivial project. In fact, if Sony had done that from scratch, they could compete with Microsoft in the OS market.
I don’t know if anyone knows what the PS3 OS is based on. A lot of it may be beyond the direct control of Sony.
#14 by Gary on May 10th, 2007 [ 1770 Points ]
Woah, chill Liar!! No need to get so worked up.
Here’s a positive PS3 article for you.
#15 by Annie on May 10th, 2007 [ 0 Points ]
liar: do you even read this blog regularly? We post lots of positive stuff. And no matter what you said, my point is still valid. Microsoft is doing a lot more right now in 32MB than Sony is with 84MB. Just because I like and prefer the PS3 doesn’t mean that I can’t see what’s good about the competition.
L: I think the PS3′s OS is a proprietary, non-UNIX based one. Though I’m not 100% sure.
#16 by L on May 10th, 2007
Oh boy, look what I found:
http://crypto.riken.go.jp/pub/linux/kernel.org/kernel/people/arnd/patches/2.6.19-rc6-arnd1/broken-out/ps3-support/ps3-os-area.patch
#17 by HachiRoku on May 10th, 2007
I totally agree with Liar. Kudos!
Seems like when the news day is slow, people are just scouring the Net to find the most obscure tidbit to spin into a negative for the PS3 – to further the momentum it built for itself after last year.
The good news is, this is becoming more and more rare, as gamers and devs are learning of the power and potential of this machine. So because negative PS3 news is getting more rare, haters are anxiously looking around for bread-crumbs, so they can put a negative spin on it, and call it news. Sadly, these folks are sometimes bigname gaming sites (1up, kotaku, gamespot, etc).
#18 by liar on May 10th, 2007
I really don’t understand the point of this article. Another hypothetical could have/should have maybe written for the sole purpose of trying to paint a depressing picture of the PS3. Ignoring the evidence to the contrary. Does the 360 support remote play on a hand held console? Why don’t you talk about how depressing that is for the 360 and how great it is for the PS3 instead.
The only depressing thing is PS3 sites that spend too much of their time painting a doom and gloom picture trying to find the most obscure reason to do so. Have you ever had a positive topic posted here?
SHOW ME A GAME RIGHT NOW ON THE 360 were this supposed advantage is holding back the PS3 in comparison. For christ’s sake the 360 had over a YEAR lead on development tools and the current PS3 games are ALREADY BIGGER AND FASTER WITH MORE OBJECTS AND MORE COMPLEX ENVIRONMENTS AT HIGHER FRAMERATES AND RESOLUTIONS with BETTER PHYSICS ENGINES. But the only topic you can come up with is how this is memory in the XMB so depressing and will effect games DESPITE THE EVIDENCE TO THE CONTRARY. Jesus.
How many objects does that “pinnacle” of 360 development called Gears have on-screen before the frame rate dies or the screen tears or it’s cartoon physics engine falls over. Or maybe we should limit our on-line games to a measly 8 players because it’s too ****ing slow to handle all those objects. Guess that extra few megabytes isn’t helping so much is it?
SPEED KILLS. Get that fact thru your head. The SPE’S are formula one race cars and the general puprose CPU’s are camaros when it comes to HD media.
If your entire system from the CPU to the bus to the dram is fast enough you couldn’t care LESS about a few megabytes when everything else was built to deal with REAL-TIME STREAMING AND MANIPULATION OF HD MEDIA. And now you can afford to have the flexibility of adding more features into the XMB and still build bigger worlds with more objects and better physics engines in comparison to a bunch of general purpose CPU’s slapped together because the competition wanted to get to market sooner – not because they wanted to build a system to last more than a year before needing major feature upgrades.
Memory and caches are more critical to speed up an otherwise slower system. THAT’S WHY IS WAS SO CRITICAL FOR THEM TO HAVE A LIMITED DASHBOARD CRAMMED INTO 32MB. They were constrained by the capabilities of the REST of the system. That’s it – don’t expect much more from it in the future. They have cornered themselves and are trying to spin it as a positive. Meanwhile we will be getting Home, etc.
How about a topic with “XMB most flexible, Dashboard constrained” instead a negative spin article that only gets the opinion of a MS executive and never pauses to at least analyze the information – but simply regurgitates someone else’s agenda.
Maybe next time?
#19 by Sporty on May 10th, 2007 [ 95 Points ]
I have to agree with Liar also.
A few MB is hardly something to think is an edge.
PS3 can work through more data at higher speeds so the advantage is still PS3s. 360 may be able to store 60 more MB but PS3 can refresh the ram with new data faster making it a moot point.
#20 by Segitz on May 10th, 2007 [ 1450 Points ]
Jumping over all comments w/o reading, I post my smack here…
You need to consider, it is 84MB NOW, and may get lower over time (as for instance with the PSP). Sony now reserves much RAM till everything is dialed in and then lowers the RAM consumption, so that nothing breaks in the end. If it was the other way round, the games that used an older SDK wouldnt work with a new firmware etc.
The point is, and also the people at B3D mostly say the same, that Sony is just playing it safe, rather than being sorry in the end. Maybe they’ll add a killer feature, which we still dont know about yet, or they just cant code right… We dont know, what they want to do, with that much RAM
#21 by Trieloth on May 10th, 2007 [ 3286 Points ]
Gee liar, I thought I got worked up during my posts. I was at n4g.com and they are doing a the same thing. Bark, Bark Errrr Bark, Bark rrrrr Woof.
#22 by Segitz on May 10th, 2007 [ 1450 Points ]
Ok, now that I flew over most comments, I most say I somehow agree with Liar, if he/she calms down a wee bit.
As I said earlier, Sony set the footprint big on purpose to develop stuff yet to come, that in the end, they dont have problems.
I cant see MS adding much stuff to the guide button in the future (only via a new fw/sdk, that chooses between old and new dashboard), as 32MB is mighty small.
You need also to now, what the RAM does… It is “sort of” just a cache for the BD ROM to the CPU (you should know Henning^^, I know very simplified but not untrue) and GPU, nothing more nothing less… If you streamline your engine enough, you can put out graphics even better than the 360 with half the RAM (streaming from both, BD and HDD parallelly). Look at what the Demo Coders on the C64 and Amiga did with 64 or 512 kilobytes of RAM!
54MB is not much, it is a mere 10%. And seeing the PS3 having much more bandwidth than the 360 (real bandwidth, not the “fake” eDRAM stuff, where no DVD data flows so to say), 10% is negligible (sp?). Also the standard HDD is more than just a help! This is future proving your console, even at higher costs.
And to those who think it is Linux based… Get that idea out of your head. Sony would NEVER EVER do that. The GNU/GPL Kernel is open source and the GPL v2 states, that every derived product must be also open source… So if Sony used the Linux Kernel, they would need to make the Sourcecode available at nearly no costs (bandwidth can be deducted, but… even I as a student can pay that). This is what happened to Linksys with its WRT54 routers (have one btw, because of that). They had to give out the source for the system. If Sony would have to do that, they would be in for a hell lot of trouble, in terms of piracy!
And sorry for any misunderstanding I might have written into my comments, I had some beers tonight with some coeds after studying^^
#23 by mcwilliams on May 10th, 2007
The issue is as such…since the PS3 has a split memory architecture; 256 for video 256 for system, Sony is segmenting off up 84mb of system memory just for the 0S…so the dev has only 172mb of ram for system stuff.
Whereas a developer on the 360 has 512mb – 32mb = 480mb to use any way they want to split between video and system. See the benefit?
Less system memory means more load times, less complexity, etc…
I guess we’ll have to see which console out does the other when some developer does a cross platform game and optimizes for either system. But I doubt we’ll see much if any difference.
#24 by Sporty on May 10th, 2007 [ 95 Points ]
“Less system memory means more load times, less complexity,”
That’s not entirely true. Only for the simple minded.
Since you seem to take things as black and white you can’t grasp the concept so no point in explaining to you.
But I’ll try to make it simple for you. 360 has a slightly larger waiting room (ram), PS3 has 6 more doctors (SPE’s), and larger hallways (bandwidth).
While logic tell us more people would rather get in and out faster, some people are still arguing they think it’s better to wait in a larger room longer.
PS3′s RAM is segmented but not restricted. However you probably only listen to pro MS news so think what you want.
Some of us are gamers. I guess others are not.
#25 by mcwilliams on May 10th, 2007
Yep Sporty…some of us ARE gamers…I have a 360 and I’m actually playing games while you guy PS3 guys paid $600 to play the same games I’ve been playing for a year. To what benefit? None… You’re only waiting to play the games that’ll make your “investment” count…
Anyways…Let’s talk numbers…
Processors:
PS3: 3.2 GHz Cell processor with 7 single-threaded synergistic processing units cores (not directly comparable to Xbox 360 processor cores)
360: 3.2 GHz PowerPC with 3 dual-threaded processor cores
Video Memory Bandwidth
PS3 : 256MB GDDR3 (700MHz) / bandwidth: 22.4 GBps
360 : Up to 512 MB GDDR3 system RAM (700 MHz) plus 10 MB embedded DRAM (eDRAM) frame buffer / bandwidth: 21.6 GBps to system RAM; 256 GBps to eDRAM
Main System Ram:
PS3: 256 MB XDR RAM (3.2GHz) / Bandwidth: 25.6 GBps
360: 512 MB GDDR3 RAM (700 MHz), shared with GPU / Bandwidth: 22.4 GBps
As you can see the numbers aren’t that far off and actually fairly similar. Both systems have their pros and cons which basically make it a wash..so it comes down to “I see your Schwartz is as big as mine. Let’s see how well you handle it.”
#26 by liar on May 10th, 2007
@Henning.
Sorry I meant to put [RANT ON] [RANT OFF] around that and instead had a brain freeze and used
#27 by liar on May 10th, 2007
@Henning.
Sorry I meant to put [RANT ON] [RANT OFF] around that and instead had a brain freeze and used angle brackets which were stripped.
My point is your article was another doom and gloom conclusion based on mostly information from some MS exec and provided no balance. As far as I know the 360 doesn’t have a web browser that let’s you grab content from anywhere in the world like the PS3 allows..SACD playback? Blu-ray playback? So when you say they are doing more with less that is just false. I can be browsing the web on a large screen T.V and listening to music in hi fidelity thru my audio system at the same time. Try that thru that constrained 32MB Dashboard. And yes quite frankly I’m tired of half truths and half information and the FUD effect these kinds of article have and how they are used by others. Saying it’s “depressing” without backing it up by providing concrete examples of how it is actually effecting anything is the “depressing” part. I just want people to use their brains instead of just regurgitating something out of context.
@mcwilliams – the cell and the RSX can work together and use each others assets. They also have separate paths so that there is no contention as they move it back and forth. Your painting a false picture about memory usage.
Another example, less system memory DOES NOT mean more load times…especially if your system is FAST enough to keep up with the data being thrown at it. Now you may need more memory for a cache because your system can’t keep up with data required for 1080 at 60 fps. Your making a generalization that does not take into account a multitude of factors. If it was comparing two PS3 systems and one had more memory then more memory would favour one over the other – but the systems are not the same.
Your ignoring the speed, bandwidth and in particular the nature of the SPE’s. And comparing cross platform games isn’t going to tell you much given the politics and different approaches required for each console. That is why you won’t see much difference. Comparing what exclusives are capable of will and on that front..
Just LOOK at the games already – open your eyes – find me a single 360 game that has as much going on as RFOM – and can run at the consistent frame rates we are already seeing with the PS3 – this early in the game – despite having half as much time with the development tools the devs had with the 360. There is a REASON Gears can’t have as many enemies/friends on screen each with their own independent AI and realistic physics for *every* shot fired – and even with a lot less going on Gears still chokes with screen tearing – the multi-player isn’t even a fair contest it’s so lopsided in RFOM’s favour.
Why? The CELL and SPE’s were PURPOSE BUILT. It’s that simple. Strapping 3 general purpose CPU’s together to handle multi-media still can’t keep up with a *single* CPU purpose built for that goal. It’s been that way since the history of computing. That’s why we have GPU’s. Right? Purpose built. Again there is a reason the CELL can handle decoding multiple HD streams and the 360 is maxed out by one. Purpose built for a HD 1080p multimedia world. The 3 PPC’s in the 360 were built for a general purpose world.
So how is that MB difference depressing when it comes to creating great games? It isn’t.
Especially now looking at Forza 2 which doesn’t appear to keep up with GT:HD despite the extra development time and all that “extra” memory advantage. What happened if it’s that important and that big of an advantage? Simple. It’s not when you actually look at the results being achieved – even at this early stage.
P.S. F1 and Motorstorm were barely tapping the SPE’s.
#28 by Sporty on May 10th, 2007 [ 95 Points ]
@mcwilliams
My point was directly comparing systems isn’t accurate. Thanks for taking that further.
Saying ignorant things like thread and cores works great on fanboys. But the truth is PS3 does 9 threads per cycle. Core is dual threaded and the 7 SPEs. Cycle comparison’s don’t work unless your convincing an idiot. RAM has already been addressed and was over your head.
But my point was since you didn’t understand that the RAM, it’s a given you will just cut and paste FUD.
Having a 360 and hating a PS3 doesn’t make you a gamer. I have a 360 a Wii, but a PS3 also. Main difference is I can play any game I want and you think of reasons to discard PS3 games one by one by saying $600 each time.
#29 by liar on May 10th, 2007
Yep mcwilliams…some of us ARE gamers…I had a PS2 as well and have been playing a better and wider variety of games for $130 while you paid over $600 to play the same games using the same technology in our original Xbox. To what benefit? None.Talking about numbers. Hope you enjoyed the 5 hours of Gears you got because of that old DVD technology couldn’t hold any more data. Get used to it it’s only going to get worse. I know I enjoyed the 20 hours of RFOM and the 40 person multi-player because I actually got something new instead of the same thing warmed over. But hey if you like paying for 4 games on DVD to get the same amount of content found on a single blu-ray game like RFOM then I guess that’s your business. Whatever floats your boat. Not such a deal for me or most people I reckon. But I guess you have to feel like your investment counted and you weren’t swindled somehow.
RFOM, Motorstorm, Virtua Tennis, Oblivion, NHL 2K7, Ridge Racer, F1, Casino Royale , Planet Earth plus the other 20 blu-ray movies our whole family has been able to enjoy while you’ve had to endure those old DVDS. They were great in their day but just don’t hold a candle to 1080p images that have 8 times the resolution of DVD. Planet Earth is something else .. stunning really. Could have been even better if they would have encoded it in AVC instead of VC-1 though.
Unfortunately HD-DVD looks to be dying so you would be better off buying either a standalone blu-ray player or a PS3 to experience it. At least you can be confident the PS3 has everything needed and you won’t have to buy another console like 360 users to get HDMI. And even then they still lose out since it still can’t support audio properly due to the bandwidth problems of the 360 system and only 1.2 support.
#30 by Real Gambler on May 11th, 2007
Hmmm….. PS2 is still ouselling any PS3 or 360 as we speak, with 32Mb memory…. PS2 games still on top charts, ahead of those next-gen consoles with games fitting in less memory than those consoles OS!!!… If memory was so important, you would have paid $25 or $50 more for your console and they would have 768Mb to 1Gb memory. Worst case, they would have added a small door, and a connector under every console for an extra $5, and allow you to upgrade it in the future (like the N64). You need memory to store textures because it’s faster to get them from memory, and you need memory to store maps, soldiers positions calculate trajectory, etc, but 256Mb is huge for this. Everything else is just CPU crushing physics, positions, AI, and GPU showing the stuff as is…
Original PS2 games probably didn’t even use half of that 32Mb memory (lots of games probably not even touching more than 8Mb…). Same with today’s next-gen game. Have you ever heard one developper complaining about the lack of memory, for any consoles?
Sure enough you need more memory with each generations because you’re displaying 1920X1080 instead of those big blocky games of the past. Still the ratio is still there. Sleep thight everybody.
#31 by Edwin on May 11th, 2007
Real Gambler, your wrong about the PS2 outselling the PS3, last month the PS3 sold more consoles then the PS2, look at the stats. But your right about the Xbox 360 selling lower then the PS2.
#32 by L on May 11th, 2007
Sporty, how do I contact you?
#33 by Pc on May 11th, 2007
I don’t care about how much memory the PS3 has, or how much memory is being used by certain features. I just know that the PS3 is freakin awesome and it’s just getting started !!
#34 by Pc on May 11th, 2007
BTW, Mcwilliams, the 360′s 3 symetrical core setup is nowhere nere as powerful as the cell processor. This was made clear well over a year ago at E3 and it very true today also !
#35 by Ole on May 22nd, 2007
To Liar:
Have you even read the article? The 84mb reserved doesn’t include very much. Add network, another 8MB, friendslist a whooping 24MB, voice chat 8mb. This is the very reason we don’t get multiplayer on titles that 360 does, like Sega Rally and Virtual Tennis. They just can’t sacrifise an other 40mb for multiplayer gaming, and that really is a shame. It is expected that MS is better at optimizing the OS (thats what they do), but Sony needs to catch up here, or we will lose things like multiplayer on more titles in the future. This is also the very reason they say Gears can’t play on PS3, the memoryfootprint is just to big to get all the features in.
#36 by MoNaRky on August 31st, 2007
@Ole
Sony has already optimized memory it is no longer at 84MB, as if that was a problem with a Streaming processor with memory same speed as Cell. Besides that the Cell processor can dynamically clock itself just as it does right now in FOLDING@HOME. Cell BE is a fully Asynchronous Multi-core Parallel processor and is considered to be like a “Mini Render Farm”.
In another words, many computers on one chip. It is fully capable of on the fly real time rendering of Procedurally Generated Textures as demonstrated at E3 2005 by Phil Harrison. PS3 has 3 1200 pin chips onboard with the ability to interact with all other PS3′s on the web through it high end gigabit ethernet connection that conforms to IPv6 Internet 2 commercial transfer speeds up to 4GiB Jumbogram Packets with auto hypertunneling. Absolutely no other consumer device is capable of this on the market to date!
He can intelligently clock itself from between 3.2 to 5+ ghz, depending on whether the program it is running is Double precision or single precision, 10 thermal sensor on Cell for heat adjustments to speed, Load demands, joblet assignments via networking in the Distributed Networking PS3 clusters. Right now in FOLDING@HOME, the PS3 has been observered running at over 384 GFLOPS, which would put it at well over 5ghz. It is well known that the Cell BE can clock to 6ghz (especially since it is now 65nm).
Gears can’t play on PS3? ….mwaa….ha..ha….. Gears runs on a PC and right now UT3 with the more advanced UE3.5 engine and we epic saying it is already running better than Gears was on release for Xbox 360! So you can take shove it where the sun don’t shine. PS3 loads ProFX “Bayou Demo” in 1.2 seconds, while PC with a Nvidia 8800 GTS takes 5 seconds and Xbox 360 takes 10 seconds to render the same scene. On top of that, I run ProFX and on PS3 before the year is out will prove that it can continuously render Procedurally Rendered Graphics on the fly in Real Time 4D for infinity!
Match that Xbox 360 fools!
#37 by Shadowsan on January 25th, 2008
Let’s take things into perspective with some numbers here.
Both systems (ps3 by default, 360 in an ideal world) have hard drives, which means swap space. Both use serial ATA (so transfer of about 133MB/sec average).
So. If the 360 and the PS3 both have swap (say, 1gig for arguments sake) then they both have 1024MB. However, they can only use 133MB tops for this in any 1 second. So: PS3=360 (there’s a high chance that the performance of each systems drives differ, but it’s close enough on a per-second basis).
Ok. Now the PS3′s memory system. It has 256MB running at 3.2gig (XDR) of which 32 is taken by the xmb. So that leaves 224MB@3200mhz. That is a lot of throughput.
Each Cell processor spu has 256KB Cache available to it, also running at 3.2Ghz. Now this is important because there are 7 of these. That, coupled with the ppu’s cache (not to mention that the ppu is also technically a dual-core g4, otherwise known as g5) means that the processor itself goes through equally a shitload of data.
There is Gddr3 ram, which is clocked at 700Mhz… Though with DDR it’s actually equivalent to 1400Mhz. That’s another 256MB ram minus 32MB for the XMB – so another 224MB. Still shifting a shitload of data – possibly not as much as the XDR but still.
Basically what i’m trying to point out to you all is, even though the ps3 has possibly less physical ram available to it, it wins out by the fact it can process much more in any one point than the 360 can, and can re-allocate memory much faster than the 360 can. It just needs developers to get out of the store-retrieve mentality that is currently in games programming, and rely on the fact the ps3 can swap data around and process it faster than most systems can even store it currently.
This is JUST like the original conversations that people had about how different and difficult the ps2 was to develop for and how games dev’s said that it was a crippled system… Yet after working out how to utilise it properly they were pretty much all in agreement that it had tonnes of power, even compared to standardised hardware like the xbox.
Where the 360 falls down is that it’s using standardised hardware. Now where obviously the 360 saves money and increases profitability for itself initially by getting to market first and using established manufacturing techniques… It shoots itself in the foot in the mid to long term. Yes it makes games easier to develop and max out on the 360, granted – But the PS3′s first-gen games are equal to the 360′s 3rd gen games, which devs have already stated are currently in the high 90′s for efficiency on the 360. Does that not leave an enormous amount of headroom for improvement on the PS3′s part? Course it does!
Now people have said that currently the situation is that developers will prioritise their development based on who has the largest installed userbase/prospective market, then port onto other systems. I can see how that will be a fair point in the favour of the 360 right now, however it’ll come to the point where developers will want to do something totally outrageous and they’ll hit a wall on the 360. And that’s where the PS3 will come in. Not to mention the PS3 is beginning to pick up momentum regarding installed user base due to the dominance of blu-ray and the fact the PS3 is the ONLY updatable blu-ray player on the market… Like I said. It’s a matter of time before the 360 gets overtaken. Hell in europe that’s nearly the case already!
Let’s not get drawn into the Wii either. It’s not directly competing with Sony or Microsoft. Microsoft and Sony are both trying to muscle in on the casual gamer market, but neither will really find any success unless they both release different controllers (at which point Sony is already ahead with their sixaxis idea – it just needs to be more accessible).
The only way Microsoft (and to an even greater extent, Nintendo!) can combat the PS3 mid to long term is to cut the console lifecycle, and release updated hardware more regularly. Hell, Microsoft have already done this to a small extent by releasing multiple SKU’s, to add features in that they deemed too expensive/take too long to implement and spoil their rush to market, and this wasn’t to satisfy the ‘hardcore gamer’, it was to keep interest in the console high and double charge us, the end users, who bought the 360 on release to then find out later on that it wasn’t the finished product. RRoD anyone?
The only reason Sony did similar (and even then it wasn’t similar!) was that people balked at the initial prices of the PS3, so to stay competitive they chopped a few ‘non-essential’ features to make the PS3 competitive price wise… The release day console had the best feature set of the bunch. And I can bet that once the cost of making Emotion Engine’s comes down they’ll re-release the ‘full fat’ PS3 model at a more competitive price range.
So. Back to the facts. Using standard programming methods, the PS3 will not be too far removed from the 360 in terms of performance, and in some cases will actually suffer, especially if it’s getting ports. However any developers worth their salt will learn how to squeeze the masses of power left untapped currently, and then we shall definitely see the PS3 emerge as the most complete console of this generation.
Where Microsoft and Nintendo choose to go with their plans to combat this is another matter completely.
Laters
Shadowsan