# Ps3 Or Xbox 360?



## backseatgunner

Which will you buy? My loyalty lies with the Xbox.


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## Smurf-you

Considering the ps3 will be faster then the xbox 360 by twice the speed, And better games better graphics, And over clock speed of 4ghz which is faster then nearly any home pc, I think the ps3 will be a VERY GOOD MACHINE

But then the price, who knows...

And the looks of both of ps3 and xbox 360 there both near enough same colour, And personally i recon ps3 should stick with black, And xbox black and a lovely green.


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## atomic

hmmm....where have you heard the ps3 will be faster?


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## apj101

> Considering the ps3 will be faster then the xbox 360 by twice the speed, And better games better graphics,



thats a bold statement, i do agree that from what has been shown thus far the ps3 is a cut above the 360 but thats only on the demo models shown so far.  I dont think that any scale has it been shown to be twice as fast.  



> And better games


thats a matter of judgement - Halo3 will no doubt be a top seller. Especially since it is getting releases on the exact same day as the ps3 is, devious marketing going on there. 



> I think the ps3 will be a VERY GOOD MACHINE


I'm sure both will be good, personally i agree with you and will consider holding on for the ps3.



> But then the price


Good point does anyone have any idea on the expected price, they will prob be quite similar.


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## elmarcorulz

accorfing to the sun yesterday, the xbox 360 will be £165+ when it comes out, and the PS3 something like £180+. either way, from what ive seen the xbox is more of a entertainment unit whilst the PS3 seems more of a console, and well having a entertainment unit would save so much money, plus HALO3, and bringing it out on the release day of PS3 is a genius idea


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## Travo925

XBOX! That is all i can say. Microsoft out did Sony with the first xbox, and no doubt will they out do them this time. How? Well Xbox's online is a lot better the ps2's, and of course...xbox has Halo


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## uniqueusername

i will get BOTH


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## flame1117

There is no point of this thread. The fanboys will come, and change none of the other panboys descion.


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## P11

Smurf-you said:
			
		

> Considering the ps3 will be faster then the xbox 360 by twice the speed, And better games better graphics, And over clock speed of 4ghz which is faster then nearly any home pc, I think the ps3 will be a VERY GOOD MACHINE
> 
> But then the price, who knows...
> 
> And the looks of both of ps3 and xbox 360 there both near enough same colour, And personally i recon ps3 should stick with black, And xbox black and a lovely green.


Actually no, the xbox 360 will have 3 (3.2ghz processors) and the ps3 will only have one 3.2 ghx processor.


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## Charlie7940

> XBOX! That is all i can say. Microsoft out did Sony with the first xbox, and no doubt will they out do them this time. How? Well Xbox's online is a lot better the ps2's, and of course...xbox has Halo



I definitely smell a fanboy...

I don't see how you can openly state that Xbox was better than PS2.  Whoever owns a PS2 will say it's better and whoever owns a Xbox will say it's better.  I think it comes down to a matter of opinion.


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## elmarcorulz

it is a matter a of fact........but if you put the specs of both consoles together, then you can see that xbox was the more powerful of the 2 machines


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## 4W4K3

Charlie7940 said:
			
		

> I definitely smell a fanboy...
> 
> I don't see how you can openly state that Xbox was better than PS2.  Whoever owns a PS2 will say it's better and whoever owns a Xbox will say it's better.  I think it comes down to a matter of opinion.



exactly. i don't own either so that might make my opinion a bit more fair.

the XBOX had bettter graphics, while the PS2 looked/played alot better. out of all my friend's XBOX's, all of them have at least frozen up or overheated once when i was playing them. they have serious problems. i've never played a PS2 and had it have a problem like freezing or overheating.

that in all fairness is my only beef, if i had to choose one i'd say PS2 because it plays DVD's without a little $40 attachment thing and its smaller and loks alot better. I prefer the PS2 selection of gmaes as well, never really liked Halo series after playing them for a few months...got old fast. but they werent exactly BAD either.


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## elmarcorulz

yeah micorsoft lost loads of money when they found out the power cables were fualty. and the whole dvd remote was the most annoying thing ever, although i had a dvd player already so it wasnt a majordeal, but it did let it down a bit


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## jonskijet

I have done alotta research on both and have owned both a ps2 and an xbox in the past. this is my analysis:

1. a game console is bought top play games, right? so why isn't anyone paying attention to the developer lineups! Xbox 360 kicks in this area with their huge developer lineup and xbox live.... something ps3 doesn't have anything like.

2. even if a console has killer games... why play them if you have to hold a brick to play them? xbox's controller is obviously going to be great to hold... and i hope the ps3's will as well. i really don't understand why sony had to redesign the controller because it was probably the b est controller ever created... but who knows? maybe this new boomerang ps3 controller will feel great!

3. The system specs on both consoles are close. Sure the ps3 is going to be faster... but not by much. I encourage you all to go to IGN.com and check out the specs. The consoles are just built differently. 360 has many cores with more ram, but ps3 has one with less ram but gives more power. i doubt you will see as much of a graphic difference between the two as we see between xbox and ps2.

4. xbox live. xbox live. why doesn't sony see that the future of gaming is online? If the ps3 can utilize a online service for every game, they will hae much competition against xbox.


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## elmarcorulz

jonskijet said:
			
		

> 2. even if a console has killer games... why play them if you have to hold a brick to play them? xbox's controller is obviously going to be great to hold... and i hope the ps3's will as well. i really don't understand why sony had to redesign the controller because it was probably the b est controller ever created... but who knows? maybe this new boomerang ps3 controller will feel great!


it sure as hell doesnt look very nice (PS3 controller)


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## Classic_house

I will get both and tell you later!
http://www.winsupersite.com/showcase/xbox360_vs_ps3.asp


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## apj101

the graphic are going to be in line, it just a matter of the line up that they put. 
Xbox has a few good games, halo has probably been its flagship. Dont pick the consol based on the graphics pick it based on the games. 

If online gaming is your fancy then xbox is the path, personally online gaming is not the way for me. And i will stay faithful to sony for know, at least until i see what games are goning to be developed. Microsoft have got several month to impress me


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## Cromewell

There was (are still?) some patent infringment lawsuits against sony for the use of the dualshock2 controller, plus the design really has to change I like the ps1/2 design as well, IMO it's as close to perfect as you can get, but its been the same since the PSX.
For me the draw for the PS3 is the full backwards compatability with PS2 and PSX games (and I don't really like Halo ).


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## flame1117

Charlie7940 said:
			
		

> I definitely smell a fanboy...
> 
> I don't see how you can openly state that Xbox was better than PS2.  Whoever owns a PS2 will say it's better and whoever owns a Xbox will say it's better.  I think it comes down to a matter of opinion.


This whole thread is based on opinion.It dosn;t matter whitch one is more powerfull and better graphics...its how good the games are, and you don't know that yet.the graphics will be close enough. 

One this i noticed, the PS3 has less ram but faster ram, one RAM is only 50Mhz faster then the other....

System memory
Xbox 360 	                                PlayStation 3
512 MB GDDR3 RAM (700 MHz) 	256 MB XDR RAM (3.2GHz)

I also think havning 7 controllers in cool on the PS3. And for what the website says Xbox 360 wont be compatible with all Reg Xbox games...whats up with that?

And for the CPU thiing, this is what the site says, they will both be 3.2GHZ but Xbox has 3 cores that are dual threaded, and PS3 has 8 cells silngle threaded.

3.2 GHz PowerPC with 3 dual-threaded processor cores  	3.2 GHz Cell processor with 8 single-threaded synergistic processing units cores (not directly comparable to Xbox 360 processor cores)


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## Praetor

> Which will you buy?


Neither. While they may have immense computational firepower ... having to play games on a low resolution, low refresh, high-dotpitch screen from far away just isnt appealing


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## Smurf-you

Well it is 4ghz overclock, Anyways, PS3 Will win due to games... Always have and always will... Not that i like Sony i like xbox's but playstations have better games always have done, The gamecube was a let down, And i heard the gamecube 2 (Not known name yet) Is going to look like a mini fridge


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## elmarcorulz

have nintendo revolution is nothinglike a mini fridge, its more like a external dvd drive! and playstation only have a few launch games so far, whilst the xbox, accordingto some sources, have 40+


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## Cromewell

Yes but the xbox needs immediate game support, the PS3 doesn't.  The xbox360 is marketed more as a home entertainment station, the ps3 is as well but it has a better design as a full fledged console.


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## elmarcorulz

Smurf-you said:
			
		

> Well it is 4ghz overclock


how would you overclock it?



			
				Cromewell said:
			
		

> The xbox360 is marketed more as a home entertainment station


thats whats edging me towards the 360


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## Travo925

Charlie7940 said:
			
		

> I definitely smell a fanboy...
> 
> I don't see how you can openly state that Xbox was better than PS2.  Whoever owns a PS2 will say it's better and whoever owns a Xbox will say it's better.  I think it comes down to a matter of opinion.



I have both. And online on both. I can see a considerable difference in graphics between the 2, with xbox's being better. Also, xbox's online is a lot better...although you need to pay for xbox live, it is well worth it(more support for games and the voip is a lot beter IMO)


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## Underground_Evo

I have always liked Playstation, but I have come to like the Xbox too. I think im gonna go with the PS3 though, just because I have so many ps2 games


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## flame1117

I think nto suporting Xbox games on the 360 is retarted, I would not get it just for that. With a PS3 i can get PS1,2,and 3 games.


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## 4W4K3

jonskijet said:
			
		

> 4. xbox live. xbox live. why doesn't sony see that the future of gaming is online? If the ps3 can utilize a online service for every game, they will hae much competition against xbox.



i will never pay to play, ever. it doesn't really matter how good the online gameplay is for either system, if it's not free, then there is no chance i will ever use it. that's just my decision though, i'm most definelty part of a minority on this one.


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## Underground_Evo

4W4K3 said:
			
		

> i will never pay to play, ever. it doesn't really matter how good the online gameplay is for either system, if it's not free, then there is no chance i will ever use it. that's just my decision though, i'm most definelty part of a minority on this one.



Same here... I especially like the free online play of the ps2


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## flame1117

someone said that ps3 didn;t have many games in devopment yet, they say a mass amount... http://ps3.ign.com/articles/614/614708p1.html


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## b3n

personally if I had a better computer i'd choose the bottom one, but the xbox 360 sounds and looks sweet


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## ZER0X

Yeah your not wrong


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## Praetor

> I think nto suporting Xbox games on the 360 is retarted, I would not get it just for that. With a PS3 I can get PS1,2,and 3 games.


Hehe its ironic that we want backwards compatability but for something like windows we complain about flaws and bugginess (50% of which are because of their backwards compatabiily, 40% because of market demands for fashion before function and the last 10% for actual errors) hehe


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## elmarcorulz

flame1117 said:
			
		

> I think nto suporting Xbox games on the 360 is retarted, I would not get it just for that. With a PS3 i can get PS1,2,and 3 games.


the 360 can play xbox games
EDIT: just read another article and apparently only selected games will be backwards compatible, so im guessing halo and halo 2 will be, which is all that matters


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## Talent

The thing is the question 'What will you buy?' is often cut short by people just buying whatever comes out first or just buying something offhand with no knowledge. I would buy neither and simply upgrade my PC with an emulator for the games; But thats a bit Warezy. 

Heres a quick little story:
Walked into my local Game Store.
Overheard staff conversation.
Yeh some guy rang up complaining that by accident he had bought a DVD player from us and it wouldn't play his Xbox games, i said we didn't sell them. He said he'd bought one that looked like a slim line silver DVD player. I said Yes its called the slim PS2.

My point being?
People buy whatever has got the games they want or they just buy ignorantly.

Nintendo = for children
Xbox = Multiplayer
PS2 = Creativity


Not saying that the formats don;t blend but thats how it stands.


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## Yo-Yo

i read somthing about the "CELL" chip and its being used in the PS3


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## computerhakk

no... is xbox 360 that much better than ps3.. hehe


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## GhostEye

damn some people are ignorant. ps3 2x faster than the xbox 360? my ass. plz do some research on the specs of the systems, then talk. First off, the PS3's cell proccessor CAN be faster than the xbox 360's 3 processors. But its extremely hard to code for. considering its wat... 11 sub cell proccessors? its a more inovative design, while the xbox 360 just went for 3 beefy CPUs. but thats just the processors. the main concern i have with the ps3 is its gpu board bandwith restriction. anyways, whoever can code the most efficiently for which system, will make that system the "fastest". these systems are so god damn powerfull, that i doubt game devs will even make anything that will have a speed difference between the 2 systems. anyways, the ps3 comes out like half a year after the xbox 360, so sony has alot of time to use new technologys and if they just stick to the current technology they have made for it so far, in half a year the price of those chips will go down significantly, allowing sony to sell their PS3's at a lower cost than the xbox 360 when it is released. now for the game selections thats another story. I think that showing of the xbox 360 microsoft did was completely horrid. they  are trying to turn the god damn thing into a entertainment system. i am not spending 500 dollars for a god damn movie player, or a mp3 player, or a web surfing comp, i want that 500 dollars to be spent JUST ON A GAMING MACHINE. anyways, the systems are 1 year apart, so why not get both.


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## Elite

If i had to buy one of the consoles, i would choose the Xbox 360, but i won't get either of them, because my world revolves around computers!


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## 4W4K3

wow...bringing up an almost 4 month old thread?


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## bigsaucybob

i am a major fan of the xbox, i used to live online playing halo 2 but then i got my computer. The newest problem with the xbox 360 is that it only uses a basic dvd-rom drive. This means that developers will have to put there games on more than one cd, this also means that there will be much slower load times. I was watching a show and they mentioned this and i was quite dissapointed. I am starting to lean towards the PS3 just a little bit now.


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## Archangel

ow,.. you mean those blu-ray disks they want to use in the ps3?
we'll  dont thinkt they use it for improved performance or better games.
they only use for those discs is because no-one can copy/rip them at the moment.
(and i think it will stay that way for a while)


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## mikekelly

4W4K3 said:
			
		

> wow...bringing up an almost 4 month old thread?




looks like there is life in the old dog yet


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## 4W4K3

lol guess so. i tried to win an xbox360 but have yet to succeed. one of those bottle cap games is giving away an xbox 360 every 10 minutes. i must win!

i'd probably sell it when i won it...and use the cash for my PC.


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## Zeus2005

**** that and get a better pc lol


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## GhostEye

the xbox 360 has 3 CPUs, will have the most advanced graphics card to date...and will cost around 400. while getting a top of the line cpu, ( which still wouldnt be able to match the xbox's processing power) , would cost me over 2k.. hmm... -_- and the best thing about consoles, u know the games made for it WILL RUN. theres no wondering if u are going to need more ram, or a better gfx card, etc.


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## thereckerdbraikr

Talent said:
			
		

> Nintendo = for children
> Xbox = Multiplayer
> PS2 = Creativity



When will people understand that nintendo is not a children system

I am getting a revolution personnaly, free online, you can download classic fist party games from NES SNES and N64

Now that nintendo is slowly recovering thier 3rd party support (capcom re4 for example) they will have your "mature sex games" that some of you guys seem to be obssesed with....

and it will also be the cheapest system to develop for, sony's blue rays cost a lot more....its might drive away 3rd party support, and then sony will not have any mario and samus and link and all those games that nintendo relyed on when they had barely any 3rd parties developing for the n64 (because cartridges were more expensive than cds and this made the ps1 more developer freindly) if sonly loses third party they have bairly any first party games and will die (not the company, just the console)

because oif blue ray, ps2 games will probably be more than the usually 50$

If i had to choose one though, i would go with xbox 360


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## Shambree

I wouldnt get either.They will probablly become outdated by new and improved pc hardware in a matter of months,thats why i LOVE pc,s!


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## skidude

Shambree said:
			
		

> I wouldnt get either.They will probablly become outdated by new and improved pc hardware in a matter of months,thats why i LOVE pc,s!



PC's grow better with age, consoles don't.... nothing shall replace my trusty PC.


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## Archangel

but still.. the xbox is running halo2 better as the average Pc will run it when it's released for pc    so, consoles dont need to grow with age


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## DCIScouts

I personally have a list of 3 companies that I try to avoid helping financially in any way...:
1. WALMART!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!    @$*%)#(%^#)(*&$
2. Disney
3. Microsoft <- reason why I won't buy an XBOX (and they bought the DOA series and made that horrific beach volleyball game... )

and HP is making a bidding for a fourth company...


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## Vampiric Rouge

Praetor said:
			
		

> Neither. While they may have immense computational firepower ... having to play games on a low resolution, low refresh, high-dotpitch screen from far away just isnt appealing



I have to say I agree with this..... If I had to pick one I would go with the PS3.


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## skidude

dciscouts said:
			
		

> I personally have a list of 3 companies that I try to avoid helping financially in any way...:
> 1. WALMART!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!  : @$*%)#(%^#)(*&$
> 2. Disney
> 3. Microsoft <- reason why I won't buy an XBOX (and they bought the DOA series and made that horrific beach volleyball game...
> 
> and HP is making a bidding for a fourth company...



I like the way you think!


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## Geoff

i know the XBOX360 will have 2 versions, 1 will be a lower version which will require memory cards, and that will cost $199, and the one that includes a hard drive, special edition case, and a few other things will cost $299.

And i'd rather get the XBOX over PS3, since im a real big Halo fan


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## Archangel

cool   never heard that b4 ^_^      but the idea is good


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## Ku-sama

Xbox 360 
Suggested retail price: $399.99* 

If you're a serious gamer looking for the ultimate console, the search ends here. Fully loaded, it's the unsurpassed gaming and entertainment experience right out of the box. 

We're talking a 20GB detachable hard drive for downloading content and saving games, plus a headset and a wireless controller for instant Xbox Live action. That's on top of the console itself, which not only plays games in high definition (HD) with 720p/1080i output and full surround sound, but can stream digital photos and music from your Windows® XP or Windows® Media Center Edition 2005 PC. Xbox 360 delivers the ultimate digital entertainment and gaming experience. 

With its built-in Ethernet port and a free level of the online service, Xbox 360 instantly connects you to Xbox Live. Every Xbox 360 owner is a Silver subscriber—just plug the Ethernet cable into your existing broadband connection and join a global community of more than two million members. Set up a Gamer Profile, visit the Xbox Live Marketplace, even send voice messages—and that's just the beginning. Upgrade to Xbox Live Gold service and experience multiplayer games and tournaments, intelligent matchmaking, voice communication via the Xbox 360 Headset, and much more. 

Comes with: 

- Xbox 360 Wireless Controller 
- Xbox 360 Hard Drive (20GB) 
- Xbox 360 Media Remote 
- Xbox 360 Headset 
- Xbox 360 Component HD-AV Cable 


------------------------------------------------------------------------------------ 

Xbox 360 Core 
Suggested retail price: $299.99* 

The Xbox 360 Core system is everything you need to hit the ground running. Plug in the console and the controller and you're playing. Then decide what extras you add and when—it's expandable to the full Xbox 360 experience. 

Comes with: 

- Xbox 360 Wired controller 
- Xbox 360 Standard AV Cable 
more info here 

FOR FUTURE REFRENCE!!!!!!!!! THE XBOX 360 HAS !!!!ONE 1!!!! 3.2GHz TRIPLE CORE processor, GET IT RIGHT!!!! 

Xbox 360 System Performance Specifications

Custom IBM PowerPC-based CPU Three symmetrical cores running at 3.2 GHz each 
Two hardware threads per core; six hardware threads total 
VMX-128 vector unit per core; three total 
128 VMX-128 registers per hardware thread 
1 MB L2 cache

CPU Game Math Performance 9.6 billion dot product operations per second

Custom ATI Graphics Processor 10 MB of embedded DRAM 
48-way parallel floating-point dynamically scheduled shader pipelines 
Unified shader architecture

Polygon Performance 500 million triangles per second

Pixel Fill Rate 16 gigasamples per second fill rate using 4x MSAA

Shader Performance 48 billion shader operations per second

Memory 512 MB of 700 MHz GDDR3 RAM 
Unified memory architecture

Memory Bandwidth 22.4 GB/s memory interface bus bandwidth 
256 GB/s memory bandwidth to EDRAM 
21.6 GB/s front-side bus

Overall System Floating-Point Performance 1 teraflop

Storage Detachable and upgradeable 20GB hard drive 
12x dual-layer DVD-ROM 
Memory Unit support starting at 64 MB

I/O Support for up to four wireless game controllers 
Three USB 2.0 ports 
Two memory unit slots

Optimized for Online Instant, out-of-the-box access to Xbox Live features with broadband service, including Xbox Live Marketplace for downloadable content, gamer profile for digital identity, and voice chat to talk to friends while playing games, watching movies, or listening to music 
Built-in Ethernet port 
Wi-Fi ready: 802.11a, 802.11b, and 802.11g 
Video camera ready

Digital Media Support Support for DVD-Video, DVD-ROM, DVD-R/RW, DVD+R/RW, CD-DA, CD-ROM, CD-R, CD-RW, WMA CD, MP3 CD, JPEG Photo CD 
Ability to stream media from portable music devices, digital cameras and Windows XP-based PCs 
Ability to rip music to the Xbox 360 hard drive 
Custom playlists in every game 
Built-in Media Center Extender for Windows XP Media Center Edition 2005 
Interactive, full-screen 3-D visualizers

High-Definition Game Support All games supported at 16:9, 720p, or 1080i, with anti-aliasing 
Standard-definition and high-definition video output supported

Audio  Multi-channel surround sound output 
Supports 48KHz 16-bit audio 
320 independent decompression channels 
32-bit audio processing 
Over 256 audio channels

Physical Specs Height: 83 mm 
Width: 309 mm 
Depth: 258 mm 
Weight: 7.7 lbs.

System Orientation Stands vertically or horizontally

Customizable Face Plates Interchangeable to personalize the console


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## skidude

Wow, what a post.


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## Ku-sama

main thing i wanted to state was this part:
"FOR FUTURE REFRENCE!!!!!!!!! THE XBOX 360 HAS !!!!ONE 1!!!! 3.2GHz TRIPLE CORE processor, GET IT RIGHT!!!!" cause everyone kept saying it had 3 processors.... but the thing i got get is why that kind of processor... you dont multi task with a gam consol


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## Archangel

no.. but the game will be split up in different tasks.. so it will perform faster on them


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## Doom_Machine

i thought this was interesting article. dont have a link cuz this anandtech article was pulled cuz author was afraid of them tracking him..whoever they are

Microsoft's Xbox 360 &amp; Sony's PlayStation 3 - Examples of Poor CPU Performance

Date: June 29th, 2005 Author: Anand Lal Shimpi

"In our last article we had a fairly open-ended discussion about many of the challenges facing both of the
recently announced next-generation game consoles. We discussed misconceptions about the Cell processor
and its ability to accelerate physics calculations, as well as touched on the GPUs of both platforms. In
the end, both the Xbox 360 and the PlayStation 3 are much closer competitors than you would think based on
first impressions.

The Xbox 360's Xenon CPU features more general purpose cores than the PlayStation 3 (3 vs. 1), however
game developers will most likely only be using one of those cores for the majority of their calculations,
leveling the playing field considerably.

The Cell processor derives much of its power from its array of 7 SPEs (Synergistic Processing Elements),
however as we discovered in our last article, their purpose is far more specialized than we had thought.
Speaking with Epic Games' head developer, Tim Sweeney, he provided a much more balanced view of what sorts
of tasks could take advantage of the Cell's SPE array.

The GPUs of the next-generation platforms also proved to be quite interesting. In Part I we speculated as
to the true nature of NVIDIA's RSX in the PS3, concluding that it's quite likely little more than a higher
clocked G70 GPU. We will expand on that discussion a bit more in this article. We also looked at Xenos,
the Xbox 360's GPU and characterized it as equivalent to a very flexible 24-pipe R420. Despite the
inclusion of the 10MB of embedded DRAM, Xenos and RSX ended up being quite similar in our expectations for
performance; and that pretty much summarized all of our findings - the two consoles, although implementing
very different architectures, ended up being so very similar.

So we've concluded that the two platforms will probably end up performing very similarly, but there was
one very important element excluded from the first article: a comparison to present-day PC architectures.
The reason a comparison to PC architectures is important is because it provides an evaluation point to
gauge the expected performance of these next-generation consoles. We've heard countless times that these
new consoles would offer better gaming performance than anything we've had on the PC, or anything we would
have for a matter of years. Now it's time to actually put those claims to the test, and that's exactly
what we did.

Speaking under conditions of anonymity with real world game developers who have had first hand experience
writing code for both the Xbox 360 and PlayStation 3 hardware (and dev kits where applicable), we asked
them for nothing more than their brutal honesty. What did they think of these new consoles? Are they
really outfitted with the PC-eclipsing performance we've been lead to believe they have? The answer is
actually quite frequently found in history; as with anything, you get what you pay for.

Learning from Generation X The original Xbox console marked a very important step in the evolution of
gaming consoles - it was the first console that was little more than a Windows PC.

It featured a 733MHz Pentium III processor with a 128KB L2 cache, paired up with a modified version of
NVIDIA's nForce chipset (modified to support Intel's Pentium III bus instead of the Athlon XP it was
designed for). The nForce chipset featured an integrated GPU, codenamed the NV2A, offering performance
very similar to that of a GeForce3. The system had a 5X PC DVD drive and an 8GB IDE hard drive, and all
of the controllers interfaced to the console using USB cables with a proprietary connector.

For the most part, game developers were quite pleased with the original Xbox. It offered them a much more
powerful CPU, GPU and overall platform than anything had before. But as time went on, there were
definitely limitations that developers ran into with the first Xbox.

One of the biggest limitations ended up being the meager 64MB of memory that the system shipped with.
Developers had asked for 128MB and the motherboard even had positions silk screened for an additional
64MB, but in an attempt to control costs the final console only shipped with 64MB of memory.

The next problem is that the NV2A GPU ended up not having the fill rate and memory bandwidth necessary to
drive high resolutions, which kept the Xbox from being used as a HD console.

Although Intel outfitted the original Xbox with a Pentium III/Celeron hybrid in order to improve
performance yet maintain its low cost, at 733MHz that quickly became a performance bottleneck for more
complex games after the console's introduction.

The combination of GPU and CPU limitations made 30 fps a frame rate target for many games, while simpler
titles were able to run at 60 fps. Split screen play on Halo would even stutter below 30 fps depending on
what was happening on screen, and that was just a first-generation title. More experience with the Xbox
brought creative solutions to the limitations of the console, but clearly most game developers had a wish
list of things they would have liked to have seen in the Xbox successor. Similar complaints were levied
against the PlayStation 2, but in some cases they were more extreme (e.g. its 4MB frame buffer).

Given that consoles are generally evolutionary, taking lessons learned in previous generations and
delivering what the game developers want in order to create the next-generation of titles, it isn't a
surprise to see that a number of these problems are fixed in the Xbox 360 and PlayStation 3.

One of the most important changes with the new consoles is that system memory has been bumped from 64MB on
the original Xbox to a whopping 512MB on both the Xbox 360 and the PlayStation 3. For the Xbox, that's a
factor of 8 increase, and over 12x the total memory present on the PlayStation 2.

The other important improvement with the next-generation of consoles is that the GPUs have been improved
tremendously. With 6 - 12 month product cycles, it's no surprise that in the past 4 years GPUs have
become much more powerful. By far the biggest upgrade these new consoles will offer, from a graphics
standpoint, is the ability to support HD resolutions.

There are obviously other, less-performance oriented improvements such as wireless controllers and more
ubiquitous multi-channel sound support. And with Sony's PlayStation 3, disc capacity goes up thanks to
their embracing the Blu-ray standard.

But then we come to the issue of the CPUs in these next-generation consoles, and the level of improvement
they offer. Both the Xbox 360 and the PlayStation 3 offer multi-core CPUs to supposedly usher in a new
era of improved game physics and reality. Unfortunately, as we have found out, the desire to bring multi-
core CPUs to these consoles was made a reality at the expense of performance in a very big way.

Problems with the Architecture At the heart of both the Xenon and Cell processors is IBM's custom PowerPC
based core. We've discussed this core in our previous articles, but it is best characterized as being
quite simple. The core itself is a very narrow 2-issue in-order execution core, featuring a 64KB L1 cache
(32K instruction/32K data) and either a 1MB or 512KB L2 cache (for Xenon or Cell, respectively).
Supporting SMT, the core can execute two threads simultaneously similar to a Hyper Threading enabled
Pentium 4. The Xenon CPU is made up of three of these cores, while Cell features just one.

Each individual core is extremely small, making the 3-core Xenon CPU in the Xbox 360 smaller than a single
core 90nm Pentium 4. While we don't have exact die sizes, we've heard that the number is around 1/2 the
size of the 90nm Prescott die.

IBM's pitch to Microsoft was based on the peak theoretical floating point performance-per-dollar that the
Xenon CPU would offer, and given Microsoft's focus on cost savings with the Xbox 360, they took the bait.

While Microsoft and Sony have been childishly playing this flops-war, comparing the 1 TFLOPs processing
power of the Xenon CPU to the 2 TFLOPs processing power of the Cell, the real-world performance war has
already been lost.

Right now, from what we've heard, the real-world performance of the Xenon CPU is about twice that of the
733MHz processor in the first Xbox. Considering that this CPU is supposed to power the Xbox 360 for the
next 4 - 5 years, it's nothing short of disappointing. To put it in perspective, floating point
multiplies are apparently 1/3 as fast on Xenon as on a Pentium 4.

The reason for the poor performance? The very narrow 2-issue in-order core also happens to be very deeply
pipelined, apparently with a branch predictor that's not the best in the business. In the end, you get
what you pay for, and with such a small core, it's no surprise that performance isn't anywhere near the
Athlon 64 or Pentium 4 class.

The Cell processor doesn't get off the hook just because it only uses a single one of these horribly slow
cores; the SPE array ends up being fairly useless in the majority of situations, making it little more
than a waste of die space.

We mentioned before that collision detection is able to be accelerated on the SPEs of Cell, despite being
fairly branch heavy. The lack of a branch predictor in the SPEs apparently isn't that big of a deal,


----------



## Doom_Machine

conitnued:

since most collision detection branches are basically random and can't be predicted even with the best
branch predictor. So not having a branch predictor doesn't hurt, what does hurt however is the very small
amount of local memory available to each SPE. In order to access main memory, the SPE places a DMA
request on the bus (or the PPE can initiate the DMA request) and waits for it to be fulfilled. From those
that have had experience with the PS3 development kits, this access takes far too long to be used in many
real world scenarios. It is the small amount of local memory that each SPE has access to that limits the
SPEs from being able to work on more than a handful of tasks. While physics acceleration is an important

one, there are many more tasks that can't be accelerated by the SPEs because of the memory limitation.

The other point that has been made is that even if you can offload some of the physics calculations to the
SPE array, the Cell's PPE ends up being a pretty big bottleneck thanks to its overall lackluster
performance. It's akin to having an extremely fast GPU but without a fast CPU to pair it up with.

What About Multithreading? We of course asked the obvious question: would game developers rather have 3
slow general purpose cores, or one of those cores paired with an array of specialized SPEs? The response
was unanimous, everyone we have spoken to would rather take the general purpose core approach.

Citing everything from ease of programming to the limitations of the SPEs we mentioned previously, the
Xbox 360 appears to be the more developer-friendly of the two platforms according to the cross-platform
developers we've spoken to. Despite being more developer-friendly, the Xenon CPU is still not what
developers wanted.

The most ironic bit of it all is that according to developers, if either manufacturer had decided to use
an Athlon 64 or a Pentium D in their next-gen console, they would be significantly ahead of the
competition in terms of CPU performance.

While the developers we've spoken to agree that heavily multithreaded game engines are the future, that
future won't really take form for another 3 - 5 years. Even Microsoft admitted to us that all developers
are focusing on having, at most, one or two threads of execution for the game engine itself - not the four
or six threads that the Xbox 360 was designed for.

Even when games become more aggressive with their multithreading, targeting 2 - 4 threads, most of the
work will still be done in a single thread. It won't be until the next step in multithreaded
architectures where that single thread gets broken down even further, and by that time we'll be talking
about Xbox 720 and PlayStation 4. In the end, the more multithreaded nature of these new console CPUs
doesn't help paint much of a brighter performance picture - multithreaded or not, game developers are not
pleased with the performance of these CPUs.

What about all those Flops? The one statement that we heard over and over again was that Microsoft was
sold on the peak theoretical performance of the Xenon CPU. Ever since the announcement of the Xbox 360
and PS3 hardware, people have been set on comparing Microsoft's figure of 1 trillion floating point
operations per second to Sony's figure of 2 trillion floating point operations per second (TFLOPs). Any
AnandTech reader should know for a fact that these numbers are meaningless, but just in case you need some
reasoning for why, let's look at the facts.

First and foremost, a floating point operation can be anything; it can be adding two floating point
numbers together, or it can be performing a dot product on two floating point numbers, it can even be just
calculating the complement of a fp number. Anything that is executed on a FPU is fair game to be called a
floating point operation.

Secondly, both floating point power numbers refer to the whole system, CPU and GPU. Obviously a GPU's
floating point processing power doesn't mean anything if you're trying to run general purpose code on it
and vice versa. As we've seen from the graphics market, characterizing GPU performance in terms of generic
floating point operations per second is far from the full performance story.

Third, when a manufacturer is talking about peak floating point performance there are a few things that
they aren't taking into account. Being able to process billions of operations per second depends on
actually being able to have that many floating point operations to work on. That means that you have to
have enough bandwidth to keep the FPUs fed, no mispredicted branches, no cache misses and the right
structure of code to make sure that all of the FPUs can be fed at all times so they can execute at their
peak rates. We already know that's not the case as game developers have already told us that the Xenon
CPU isn't even in the same realm of performance as the Pentium 4 or Athlon 64. Not to mention that the
requirements for hitting peak theoretical performance are always ridiculous; caches are only so big and
thus there will come a time where a request to main memory is needed, and you can expect that request to
be fulfilled in a few hundred clock cycles, where no floating point operations will be happening at all.

So while there may be some extreme cases where the Xenon CPU can hit its peak performance, it sure isn't
happening in any real world code.

The Cell processor is no different; given that its PPE is identical to one of the PowerPC cores in Xenon,
it must derive its floating point performance superiority from its array of SPEs. So what's the issue
with 218 GFLOPs number (2 TFLOPs for the whole system)? Well, from what we've heard, game developers are
finding that they can't use the SPEs for a lot of tasks. So in the end, it doesn't matter what peak
theoretical performance of Cell's SPE array is, if those SPEs aren't being used all the time.

Another way to look at this comparison of flops is to look at integer add latencies on the Pentium 4 vs.
the Athlon 64. The Pentium 4 has two double pumped ALUs, each capable of performing two add operations
per clock, that's a total of 4 add operations per clock; so we could say that a 3.8GHz Pentium 4 can
perform 15.2 billion operations per second. The Athlon 64 has three ALUs each capable of executing an add
every clock; so a 2.8GHz Athlon 64 can perform 8.4 billion operations per second. By this silly console
marketing logic, the Pentium 4 would be almost twice as fast as the Athlon 64, and a multi-core Pentium 4
would be faster than a multi-core Athlon 64. Any AnandTech reader should know that's hardly the case. No
code is composed entirely of add instructions, and even if it were, eventually the Pentium 4 and Athlon 64
will have to go out to main memory for data, and when they do, the Athlon 64 has a much lower latency
access to memory than the P4. In the end, despite what these horribly concocted numbers may lead you to
believe, they say absolutely nothing about performance. The exact same situation exists with the CPUs of
the next-generation consoles; don't fall for it.

Why did Sony/MS do it? For Sony, it doesn't take much to see that the Cell processor is eerily similar to
the Emotion Engine in the PlayStation 2, at least conceptually. Sony clearly has an idea of what direction
they would like to go in, and it doesn't happen to be one that's aligned with much of the rest of the
industry.


----------



## Doom_Machine

continued:

Sony's past successes have really come, not because of the hardware, but because of the
developers and their PSX/PS2 exclusive titles. A single hot title can ship hundreds of millions of
consoles, and by our count, Sony has had many more of those than Microsoft had with the first Xbox.

Sony shipped around 4 times as many PlayStation 2 consoles as Microsoft did Xboxes, regardless of the
hardware platform, a game developer won't turn down working with the PS2 - the install base is just that
attractive. So for Sony, the Cell processor may be strange and even undesirable for game developers, but
the developers will come regardless.

The real surprise was Microsoft; with the first Xbox, Microsoft listened very closely to the wants and
desires of game developers. This time around, despite what has been said publicly, the Xbox 360's CPU
architecture wasn't what game developers had asked for.

They wanted a multi-core CPU, but not such a significant step back in single threaded performance. When
AMD and Intel moved to multi-core designs, they did so at the expense of a few hundred MHz in clock speed,
not by taking a step back in architecture.

We suspect that a big part of Microsoft's decision to go with the Xenon core was because of its extremely
small size. A smaller die means lower system costs, and if Microsoft indeed launches the Xbox 360 at $299
the Xenon CPU will be a big reason why that was made possible.

Another contributing factor may be the fact that Microsoft wanted to own the IP of the silicon that went
into the Xbox 360. We seriously doubt that either AMD or Intel would be willing to grant them the right
to make Pentium 4 or Athlon 64 CPUs, so it may have been that IBM was the only partner willing to work
with Microsoft's terms and only with this one specific core.

Regardless of the reasoning, not a single developer we've spoken to thinks that it was the right decision.

The Saving Grace: The GPUs Although both manufacturers royally screwed up their CPUs, all developers have
agreed that they are quite pleased with the GPU power of the next-generation consoles.

First, let's talk about NVIDIA's RSX in the PlayStation 3. We discussed the possibility of RSX offloading
vertex processing onto the Cell processor, but more and more it seems that isn't the case. It looks like
the RSX will basically be a 90nm G70 with Turbo Cache running at 550MHz, and the performance will be quite
good.

One option we didn't discuss in the last article, was that the G70 GPU may feature a number of disabled
shader pipes already to improve yield. The move to 90nm may allow for those pipes to be enabled and thus
allowing for another scenario where the RSX offers higher performance at the same transistor count as the
present-day G70. Sony may be hesitant to reveal the actual number of pixel and vertex pipes in the RSX
because honestly they won't know until a few months before mass production what their final yields will
be.

Despite strong performance and support for 1080p, a large number of developers are targeting 720p for
their PS3 titles and won't support 1080p. Those that are simply porting current-generation games over will
have no problems running at 1080p, but anyone working on a truly next-generation title won't have the fill
rate necessary to render at 1080p.

Another interesting point is that despite its lack of "free 4X AA" like the Xbox 360, in some cases it
won't matter. Titles that use longer pixel shader programs end up being bound by pixel shader performance
rather than memory bandwidth, so the performance difference between no AA and 2X/4X AA may end up being
quite small. Not all titles will push the RSX to the limits however, and those titles will definitely see
a performance drop with AA enabled. In the end, whether the RSX's lack of embedded DRAM matters will be
entirely dependent on the game engine being developed for the platform. Games that make more extensive
use of long pixel shaders will see less of an impact with AA enabled than those that are more texture
bound. Game developers are all over the map on this one, so it wouldn't be fair to characterize all of the
games as falling into one category or another.

ATI's Xenos GPU is also looking pretty good and most are expecting performance to be very similar to the
RSX, but real world support for this won't be ready for another couple of months. Developers have just
recently received more final Xbox 360 hardware, and gauging performance of the actual Xenos GPU compared
to the R420 based solutions in the G5 development kits will take some time. Since the original dev kits
offered significantly lower performance, developers will need a bit of time to figure out what realistic
limits the Xenos GPU will have.

Final Words Just because these CPUs and GPUs are in a console doesn't mean that we should throw away years
of knowledge from the PC industry - performance doesn't come out of thin air, and peak performance is
almost never achieved. Clever marketing however, will always try to fool the consumer.

And that's what we have here today, with the Xbox 360 and PlayStation 3. Both consoles are marketed to be
much more powerful than they actually are, and from talking to numerous game developers it seems that the
real world performance of these platforms isn't anywhere near what it was supposed to be.

It looks like significant advancements in game physics won't happen on consoles for another 4 or 5 years,
although it may happen with PC games much before that.

It's not all bad news however; the good news is that both GPUs are quite possibly the most promising part
of the new consoles. With the performance that we have seen from NVIDIA's G70, we have very high
expectations for the 360 and PS3. The ability to finally run at HD resolutions in all games will bring a
much needed element to console gaming.

And let's not forget all of the other improvements to these next-generation game consoles. The CPUs,
despite being relatively lackluster, will still be faster than their predecessors and increased system
memory will give developers more breathing room. Then there are other improvements such as wireless
controllers, better online play and updated game engines that will contribute to an overall better gaming
experience.

In the end, performance could be better, the consoles aren't what they could have been had the powers at
be made some different decisions. While they will bring better quality games to market and will be better
than their predecessors, it doesn't look like they will be the end of PC gaming any more than the Xbox and
PS2 were when they were launched. The two markets will continue to coexist, with consoles being much
easier to deal with, and PCs offering some performance-derived advantages.

With much more powerful CPUs and, in the near future, more powerful GPUs, the PC paired with the right
developers should be able to bring about that revolution in game physics and graphics we've been hoping
for. Consoles will help accelerate the transition to multithreaded gaming, but it looks like it will take
PC developers to bring about real change in things like game physics, AI and other non-visual elements of
gaming. "


----------



## skidude

Can you stop with the long posts, my brain hurts!!!


----------



## Doom_Machine

yes i can, wouldve rather just shown a link but i think this summary is the most important part to consider before getting too excited about them...think i'll just stick with my pc gaming

"Both consoles are marketed to be
much more powerful than they actually are, and from talking to numerous game developers it seems that the
real world performance of these platforms isn't anywhere near what it was supposed to be"


----------



## Mr.Blonde

eh? where is the revolution is this Poll, outrage!


----------



## Doom_Machine

Mr.Blonde said:
			
		

> eh? where is the revolution is this Poll, outrage!



i dont think nintendo is planning on competing for top hardware, they dont have to cuz they have mario, although i think they should target more adult audience since kids dont even want to play kiddie games and stay away from propriatary media


----------



## elmarcorulz

doom machine, couldnt you of just given a link ot the article?


----------



## GhostEye

nice read, ty for that.


----------



## 4W4K3

for everyone mad Nintendo wasn't in the poll...

http://cube.ign.com/articles/522/522559p1.html


----------



## Archangel

now THAT's some slick designing


----------



## MatrixEVO

*XBox 360*

I want to stay with XBox, but I would have to compare both consoles side to side to be sure which is better, not by just reading info and reviews about them on the internet. Don't you agree?


----------



## Xufar

I love my ps2 and probably am going to buy the ps3. I don't think you really can compare the specs though..


----------



## 4W4K3

i JUST purchased a Gamecube for my girlfriend...that'll keep me going for a few years

i poop on consoles.


----------



## alienmidget

Travo925 said:
			
		

> XBOX! That is all i can say. Microsoft out did Sony with the first xbox, and no doubt will they out do them this time. How? Well Xbox's online is a lot better the ps2's, and of course...xbox has Halo



Says who? The Ps2 sold more consoles than the Xbox did.


----------



## MatrixEVO

alienmidget said:
			
		

> The Ps2 sold more consoles than the Xbox did.



The Playstation 2 also had a 1 1/2 year head start on the XBox, so that's why they sold more. But right now as we speak, the XBox is selling more then the Playstation 2.


----------



## tomprice43

PS3 will be so much faster so ill definatly go with that, and by the time its out, hopefully pcs will be just as fast.


----------



## Cromewell

Regardless of which one is better on paper (technically wise) I will always prefer the PS3 because of its backwards compatability.  That way I don't have to keep 3 consoles to play all my old games (and you have to admt games were way better when the graphics weren't the be all end all selling point) and Halo sucks so why would I want a XBox with Halo 3


----------



## skidude

tomprice43 said:
			
		

> PS3 will be so much faster so ill definatly go with that, and by the time its out, hopefully pcs will be just as fast.



I highly doubt that. You will not be able to tell the difference in speed between the two, and the xbox will most likely have better components.


----------



## Archangel

yea.. its like the xbox and the ps2 now   at hardware, the xbox is faster. but you can barely notice it 
but i havnt seen a xbox burn down yet by itself.. but ive seen several ps2's do that


----------



## Ku-sama

ive had several do that


----------



## GhostEye

tomprice43 said:
			
		

> PS3 will be so much faster so ill definatly go with that, and by the time its out, hopefully pcs will be just as fast.




did u bother to even read up on the specs of the 2 systems? their CPU's are extremely shitty. They cant even compete with old P4's let alone a amd 64. at the moment the only differences with speed between these two, will be who can code the most efficient code for which system. Also note, once multi threaded games come out (which wont be forawhile i know), the ps3 will be left in the dust. Till then, their performances will be almost identical.


----------



## Doom_Machine

you get what you pay for, i mean seriously for $300 does anyone really think thier getting the most powerful cpu in the world on either system?

pc's will always have the latest and best technology available for upgrading unlike consoles but just depends on how much you want to spend to play games. spend $300 and be stuck with this years generation of gaming engines for the next 5 years till ps4 comes out or spend more money in 3 years and play games twice as good on a pc. comes down to preferences.


----------



## 4W4K3

Whoever develops/mass-produces an "upgradable console" will be in for the big bucks.


----------



## Doom_Machine

4W4K3 said:
			
		

> Whoever develops/mass-produces an "upgradable console" will be in for the big bucks.



there have been many upgrades for consoles in the past and ALL did poorly...sega 32x for instance, simple addon that turned the genesis 16bit into 32bit with much more power...all the consoles that tried such things lost money big time. even the hard drive addon for ps2 flopped horribly, and it wasnt much of an upgade.


----------



## super_xero

ps3 in my opinon looks better oes it have blue ray discs or did they take that of


----------



## Archangel

no.. but they only use blue ray diskt because people can copy them atm.
they wont make actually 53Gb games.


----------



## super_xero

yer i no but you never no in teh future they might and on teh blue ray disk they are gona put high definision dvd ect


----------



## Jon Boy

> Regardless of which one is better on paper (technically wise) I will always prefer the PS3 because of its backwards compatability. That way I don't have to keep 3 consoles to play all my old games (and you have to admt games were way better when the graphics weren't the be all end all selling point) and Halo sucks so why would I want a XBox with Halo 3



I agree with you here 100%, and I need a new ps2 anyway cos mine is laying in about 20 bits with cracked circuit boards and all.



> yer i no but you never no in teh future they might and on teh blue ray disk they are gona put high definision dvd ect


I will also get it on the fact that you can use blue-ray disks.  Have you seen how much a blue ray player costs on its own anyway?  well its ALOT.


----------



## super_xero

blue ray discs i recon gona be a huge thing soon


----------



## Jon Boy

Just think they can do more than one full game on a disk like back on the sega mega drive.  Think about it you can get a discount cos u can purchase 5 games or more on 1 disk !!!!!!!!!


----------



## dar2lit

I have to agree with some of the replies on here about the xbox or ps2 being better.  It is all about what you like and can play.  I have both the xbox and ps2, some games I like on the xbox and some games I like on the ps2.  I think they are both great consoles.  As far as the xbox360 or ps3, I will get them both.  I am expecting my xbox360 on Nov. 22.  When Sony releases the ps3, i will get that one two.  I will also get on the sameday Halo3.  My vote is to get both systems and have a kickass computer.


----------



## Lordmord

I got to go with PS3, I have being saving all of my extra cash for that.


----------



## Zhuge Liang

Eventually both, if they came out at same time, Id get the 360 first.

I got it preordered from months ago. Cant wait for it


----------



## Geoff

most likely i wont get either, but if i decide to get one, it would be the xbox, but not until the price comes down.


----------



## epidemik

I would probably get an xbox but not until an awesome game (like Halo), which isnt compatible with my PS2, is released for it giving me a good reason to upgrade. Also most of my friends will probably get it and it always is fun to bring games and memory cards to someone elses house. I will definately wait until prices come down and the fix a few of the errors that have been reported.


----------



## Modoman

GhostEye said:
			
		

> did u bother to even read up on the specs of the 2 systems? their CPU's are extremely shitty. They cant even compete with old P4's let alone a amd 64. at the moment the only differences with speed between these two, will be who can code the most efficient code for which system. Also note, once multi threaded games come out (which wont be forawhile i know), the ps3 will be left in the dust. Till then, their performances will be almost identical.



the xbox will be left in the dust. the ps3 will be able to handle multiple threads without question, as it will have essentially 7 cores. that is the purpose of using the chip in the ps3.


----------



## maroon1

i will not buy any of them, i will stick on my pc

but between ps3 and xbox360, i would go with ps3 without even thinking,   because it is more powerful than xbox360 interms of both cpu and gpu,  and the more important thing that it has much better games than xbox360.

here some links that shows that ps3 is much more powerful than xbox360

PlayStation 3 is compared with Xbox 360 and a PC clocked at 3.2 Ghz in Floating Point Performance http://www.answers.com/main/ntquery...pedia+Images&dekey=8784671701491003.jpg&gwp=8

A side-by-side comparison between Xbox 360 and PS3 can be seen here http://www.bigkid.com.au/2005/05/17/xbox-360-vs-ps3

some infomation about ps3 http://www.answers.com/ps3
                               xbox360 http://www.answers.com/xbox 360
                               Revolution http://www.answers.com/main/ntquery?method=4&dsid=2222&dekey=Nintendo+Revolution&gwp=8&curtab=2222_1


----------



## Raditz

ps3 for me. Not an xbox fan. My computer kick ass.


----------



## Thug541

Modoman said:
			
		

> the xbox will be left in the dust. the ps3 will be able to handle multiple threads without question, as it will have essentially 7 cores. that is the purpose of using the chip in the ps3.




Ahhh sony has plagued the mind of many people as they usually do.  Yes i guess you could say the Cell processor has essentially 7 cores (specifically called SPE's), however what Sony doesnt' say is that the SPE's are very specific, meaning they will go completly unused unless specific instructions are given to each one.  Also, the SPE's work more like hyperthreading.....not really a full core, nor are they running at 3.2ghz.  Furthermore, as amazing as the Cell looks on paper, 1. its going to be EXTREMLY difficult to program for (in fact at one point, The Cell was supposed to handle everything in the PS3, but after seeing its limitations in some departments they realized they needed a dedicated graphics chip.)  So the best parts of the Cell are going to be limited by the GPU.  In the end, i think xbox and sony's powerhouses are really a lot more similar then what most poeple think.  To top it off, xbox360 uses a PowerPC chip, something developers are very used to developing on meaning better quality games are def. coming onto the xbox360 long before the ps3.  Now the real winner of this war is IBM seeing they have a hand in all three processor, not bad at all IBM.

Just wanted to add a statement that IBM made:
"According to recent testing by IBM [7], SPEs can be expected to reach 75.9% of their theoretical performance."


----------



## Modoman

well... speculation aside im still not jumping out of my seat for either. pc is vastly superior imo, just not as much variety when it comes to games.


----------



## Thug541

Well of course, the PC is ever upgradable.  Right now though, the xbxo360 is currently more powerful than all but the most expensive computers.  Of course that will change within a year most likely...but it is a testiment to the power capable with it.


----------



## P11

> Thug541: Well of course, the PC is ever upgradable. Right now though, the xbxo360 is currently more powerful than all but the most expensive computers. Of course that will change within a year most likely...but it is a testiment to the power capable with it.



Don't know where you heard that, but 2x 7800gtx 512 dual core - 4 gpu's SLI, owns xbox 360.


----------



## Thug541

P11 said:
			
		

> Don't know where you heard that, but 2x 7800gtx 512 dual core - 4 gpu's SLI, owns xbox 360.




I said the all but super expensive computers......aka 2 7800gtx.....lets see, $400 for a plenty powerful xbox360 configuration, or $1200 for two video cards.


----------



## Blue

> I said the all but super expensive computers......aka 2 7800gtx.....lets see, $400 for a plenty powerful xbox360 configuration, or $1200 for two video cards.



Can I take the two videocards? .


----------



## P11

Blue said:
			
		

> Can I take the two videocards? .


Agreed


----------



## H-Bomb

I personally don't like the fact that MS claim that the Xbox 360 is next-gen when it really isn't. It supports 720p as a HD resolution but that display format has been around for a while now. I think it supports 1080i on 1 or 2 games but whats the point if the 360 doesn't play ANY next-gen media. Neither HD-DVD or Blue Ray are supported. It seems to me that MS are trying to pass off the 360 as something it isn't. I wish they would just tell the truth and say "It's like the Xbox...only a bit better"


----------



## spacedude89

what use is next gen in this gen?


----------



## Modoman

being ready for when next gen is this gen


----------



## dragon2309

yeh but when next gen is this gen, this gen will be an old gen, and next gen will be a newer gen than the older newer gen. so really, next gen never actually arrives.


----------



## diduknowthat

would ps3's cell processor be considered next gen? And i dont like counsoles cause once a newer console comes out, its basically dead. Also, you can't mod it that much seeing there's no room for anything and to me, half the fun in buildilng a computer is modding it.


----------



## elmarcorulz

> what use is next gen in this gen?





> being ready for when next gen is this gen





> yeh but when next gen is this gen, this gen will be an old gen, and next gen will be a newer gen than the older newer gen. so really, next gen never actually arrives


ARRRGGHHH, shut up, your doing my head in


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## H-Bomb

What i meant was that MS are using the term "next-gen" as some sort of stupid catchphrase to try and excite people who somehow believe they will be "entering the next generation of gaming". It's a term that means nothing. If you truly wanted "next-gen" today, surely you woud have to travel forward in time or something?!!


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## TooMuchButtHair

H-Bomb said:
			
		

> What i meant was that MS are using the term "next-gen" as some sort of stupid catchphrase to try and excite people who somehow believe they will be "entering the next generation of gaming". It's a term that means nothing. If you truly wanted "next-gen" today, surely you woud have to travel forward in time or something?!!



I think by next gen, they're trying to say that they're officially beginning the next generation on computers (the Xbox 360 and PS3 are, afterall, computers.).  The Xbox 360 IS next gen because it has 3 processors, and 2 hardware threads per.  The reason it's next gen is because Intel (and we all know they're a massive company) is going to release multi-processor computers beginning in 2007.  So, in essence, the Xbox 360 is the beginning of the next-gen.


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## Charles_Lee

common this is computer forum, lolz


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## H_L

lol pc will always kick anyway the reason the xbox is better than the ps2 is that the ps2 is older!!!


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## Blue

> What i meant was that MS are using the term "next-gen" as some sort of stupid catchphrase to try and excite people who somehow believe they will be "entering the next generation of gaming". It's a term that means nothing. If you truly wanted "next-gen" today, surely you woud have to travel forward in time or something?!!



I hear you but... I'm sure they simply mean or could argue that they mean that it is the next generation X-box. Does not need to mean anything but.


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## Doom_Machine

well they mention next gen games, which i took to mean games that are offering all of dx9's features including real mapping/soft shadows/hdr/ sm3.0..etc, theres been a few on the pc that offer some but not many that offer all thos features, but i'm sure they reference thier hardware as well but seeing quake 4 stutter on the 360 tells me its THIS generation,not next


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