I won\'t even say anything :)

Agree.

A quik check on Wikipedia indicates that the PS3's RSX has a fillrate of 4.4 gigapixels per second. While the 360's Xenos has a fillrate of 4 gigapixels per second.



http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/RSX_%27Reality_Synthesizer%27



http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Xenos

He doesn't really seem to be the best source for such unvalidated statements. He's got no numbers to back it up, and as stated on his comments to the blog post, has conflict of interest. Pfft... This is like a HUGE scaled troll post really... -_-

He try's to sound inpartial but sadly fails, everything he says comes from someone who only believes he's qualifed to comment on the PS3 hardware, if such information was to come from someone who has worked on a Major (graphic intensive ) PS3 title ( instead of the laughable title's he believes he's worked on ) then and only then, I would consider it as credible, however as it sounds, he's just one huge troll.



And anyone who believes his blog are most likely all xbox360 fanbots who have just been given another reason to bash the PS3, unjustly.

"But, does it really matter since all devs can use the HDD on the PS3 to improve load times? And they should be even faster if you have a 7200 or 10000 RPM HDD in your PS3 right?"



Yes the HDD can be used, at the cost of 4-5GB or more data being copied onto the HDD for each game which uses it. This is a crude but very effective way of improving performance. Another way is for the HDD to be used as a cache, which saves time for frequently used data, where is can be loaded from HDD instead of the slower optical disk.



"And from my understanding, devs can't use this trick on the 360 because of the core models which doesn't have any HDD?"



Oblivion uses the HDD in the 360 for caching if it's present. The HDD doesn't have to be in every console for devs to use it in this way, it just needs to be used if it's present.



Think of those PS3 games which give you the option of dumping 5GB of data onto the HDD. You don't HAVE to do it, which means the game will work whether you've used the feature or not. For those PS3 gamers who are happy to give up 4-5GB of HDD space, they will receive the benefit of better load times, those that don't will not benefit. The same is true for core 360 gamers compared to premium/Elite 360 owners.



"Then again, they might not need it on the 360 since the drive is faster?"



That's a question of balance. Faster load times are always welcome, even with the speed of the DVD drive in the 360, faster is still better. But from a gamers perspective, it's whether the load times are acceptable or not, and that's an issue for the devs have to deal with on each console.



"Oh, wait. This isn't even about HDD? Your talking about duplicate data on the Blu ray disc right? If so, why should the load times be faster just because you have duplicates on the disc?"



There's a number of ways you can speed up your optical disk performance. You can increase the data transfer rate (which requires a new drive, therefore impossible on consoles), or you could improve the seek time, i.e. the time it take to find the data on the disk. There's nothing the devs can do about the transfer speed on Blu-ray, since it's fixed (unlike DVD), but they can improve the seek time by putting data together in blocks.



For example, if you had 3 blocks of data to be read from seperate places on the Blu-ray disk, the read head will be moved to the first block and then read the data, then it will find the second block, and then move to the third. Each time the head moves to a new block of data, it takes a certain amount of time to do so before it starts reading.



So, to improve the performance, you could put all 3 small blocks of data into one big block on the disk, and read all 3 in one go instead of wasting time moving the head to read 3 seperate blocks.



The space of Blu-ray compared to DVD meant the devs were able to do this for Oblivion. It doesn't matter that some of the same data exists elsewhere on the disk, they had enough capacity to organise data for optimal speed rather than for optimal space.



Clever use of the Blu-ray disk imo. :)

nice try on trying to push an opinion no one cares about.

Then why so many problems with getting games running as well as 360 ? Don't give me the year headstart BS....if it's twice as powerful it should be SIMPLE to get it to at least the level of 360.....



Also for those that looked up the fill rate specs, it's along the same lines as the 2 TFLOP spec....looks good on paper, but in reality it's never acheived.



Arstechnica did a VERY indepth look at both systems, and even though PS3 has the higher theoretical fill-rate, the architecture within the PS3 (mainly the bandwidth of the system bus) did not allow for it to acheive even 75% of that.



However the more efficient bus of the 360, and the fact that it was designed only to play games, allow it to acheive 99% of it's fillrate, 100% of the time....





But again, lously framerates and delays must mean it's better !



and here is another dev, saying pretty much the same thing....



http://www.hardcoreware.net/reviews/review-348-1.htm



and another...



http://www.itvidya.com/playstation_3_vs_xbox_360

Thanks again Yaz. I'm learning like crazy here :)

as long as we are on the load times, the 360 isnt able to use its hdd because of ms. yes its able to but devs cant do it because not all 360's have a hdd. so in theory the ps3 can easily have faster load times.

The HDD is being used by Oblivion on the 360, as I stated in my post above. For example;



http://support.microsoft.com/kb/921271



"Note Oblivion frequently uses the hard drive to cache, or copy and reuse game data. Caching helps optimize the loading of game data."



There is nothing stopping devs using the 360's HDD if they choose to (as Oblivion proves). The only restriction is that the game has to be able to work without it. But as I've said already, many of those PS3 games which dump data onto the HDD do so as an option, and therefore can work with or without a HDD.

I am waiting for the PS3 to show me something that I can't already get on my 360...so far eye of judgement is the only thing...and that has nothing to do with performance, but how they use the camera....and really, it still doesn't justify a $500 purchase....



I'm not a blind consumer, I'm not going to buy something just because it's Sony, or some other brand....I want it to give me something I don't already have.



Not to mention I have moral issues with Sony in that they shoot their mouth off so much and bash the competition and brainwash consumers into thinking their machine is the most powerful, yet there is absolutely no evidence of such, and to the contrary more evidence to prove that it's the lesser machine...



Also, just because I don't own one, doesn't mean I havn't spent hours playing with PS3 and checking out the games/features for myself, and they are just lacking....



Don't get me wrong...I don't "bash" I just point out truthful observations/facts



I'll be the first to admit bad things about the 360 as well....crappy d-pad, crappy dvd-drives that get read disc errors....and really that's all that's gone bad for the 360 (for me).....but when it's working perfectley, it out performs the PS3.....sorry to say it.....some people may not like the colour blue, but the sky is blue, it's a fact....



I just hate how Sony spins their words and creates propaganda.....seriously, any machine that is "twice as powerful" as another would have no problem reaching the same performance level of the lesser machine.....even with less experience on the machine, it should be no problem to at least match the lesser machine.....but it can't....





Also, you said they say nothing good about the PS3....I also looked for articles like the ones I quoted, but for the PS3....saying it has all these advatages over 360....but guess what, I couldn't find one.....I wonder why....

the theoritical infomation on paper is based on the ps3 having 8spes and Rsx clocked at 550 mghz and in truth yes in most ways it is and worse the than the 360....now the real truth is that the ps3 is has 7 spes one reserved for the operating system and we are now left with 6 spes ..... rsx is truly clocked at 500mghz you do the math the ps3 at current can dream of doing 2flops and so forth maybe the ps4? haha we will all have to wait and see... ;)