Please, excuse me if I have the facts wrong. I read this soooo long ago. Let me tell you why the 360 is a slam dunk, as much as I hate to admit it.
It's all comes down to what an Amigan would call Chip RAM.
In fact to put it entirely in retro Amigan terms, to compare XBox360 to PS3 feels like comparing an Amiga to an Atari ST in terms of specs, as there are a lot of simularities. Or maybe a A1200 to an Atari Falcon. Was that DSP ever used effectively?
1. The PS3 GPU only has access to 256Mb while the XBox360 has access to its entire 512Mb. This assists in the loading and processing of textures. More ChipRAM means less moving from conventional RAM to Chip RAM and more complex textures. In fact the raising from 256mb to 512mb of GPU accessible RAM was called for by the developers of Gears of War who convinced MS through their demo systems that the difference it makes is staggerring. It apparently will cost MS around a Billion dollars extra in terms of production costs for doing this.
2. The transfer rate between the PS3's CELL Chip co-processors and RAM is acknowledged to be too slow to be entirely useful for anything but media processing. It's not a great help for games it is said.
3. There is only one PPC CPU core in the PS3, and a basic one at that. The XBox 360 has a triple pipeline PPC(or something of the sort) that allows for all sorts of optimising, effectively making it a hell of a lot faster. It's like having 3 PPCs running simultaneously. Has it got two of these?
4. Blue Ray loading times (I am told) are slower than 360 DVD loading times.
5. The GPU on the 360 is a generation later than the PS3s and it shows. It really does. I still haven't gone WOW over any PS3 game, yet I am constantly doing it with the 360.
6. The money for the developers is in XBox, and most of them have thrown their wholehearted support behind it. So with a larger install base that is unlikely to be surpassed, development will focus on 360, with the PS3 as an afterthought. Therefore the PS3 will obtain ports of XBox360 games, which, with the way they would have been coded for the 360 hardware, will not take advantage of any custom chips resulting in games of lesser quality for the PS3. It's like an ST or PC port to an Amiga which doesn't make use of the custom chips because it costs too much to do it. So in such a circumstances the Amiga port would be worse than others, for the lack of CPU power as is the case with the PS3 CPU and its GPU combination.
7. Blue Ray will not win, and if it somehow does, this battle will be prolonged by MS on purpose. It is in MS interests to prolong the battle to gain more bargaining power with industry players, and to hasten their online content streams. They have the money to keep the HD battle at a stalemate to their own ends. If it tilts too far one way, they may even put HD-DVD in their Xbox units.
My XBox360 doesn't make that much sound. Sheesh? Forza motorsport kicks major ass.
Ok. Going back to my happy place now.
