Macworld: News: E3 : Set for 2006 launch, Sony’s PS3 packs power — Sony rolled out a prototype of the PS/3 after apparently freaking out over the Xbox 360. It decided that if it cannot get the PS/3 out by Christmas that it can get the Playstation/FUD out by Christmas.
At the heart of the PlayStation 3 lie two very powerful processors. One, the main processor, is a new chip called Cell that was developed for use in the console by SCEI, its parent company Sony Corp., Toshiba Corp. and IBM Corp. The chip is based on IBM’s PowerPC architecture and will have seven cores, each running at 3.2GHz, to give the chip a total performance of 218GFlops (floating point operations per second).
That’s 35 times the performance of the processor inside the current PlayStation 2, according to Koichiro Katsurayama, a spokesman for SCEI in Tokyo.
Running alongside the Cell will be a graphics processor developed by Nvidia Corp. that is capable of handling full high-definition images and boasts performance of 1.8TFlops. Together, the two chips will give the PlayStation 3 a total system performance of 2TFlops, or about double that claimed by Microsoft for the Xbox 360.
The processors will be backed up by 256MB of Rambus Inc.’s XDR (Extreme Data Rate) memory running at 3.2GHz and 256MB of GDDR3 (Graphics Double Data Rate 3) graphics memory running at 700MHz. System bandwidth between the processors and memory is as high as 25.6Gbps (bits per second) for main memory and 22.4Gbps for graphics memory.
I think the most interesting aspect of this — for all of us — is that the competition for console power is blowing open the market for new cpu designs.
Wintel is wimping along with a dual-core and AMD tailing after. Or vice-versa. The various flavors of PowerPC chips are cooking. This is the 2nd or 3rd formulation of the Cell hitting print in the past few weeks.
Sure, they’re going to be formulated for gamers; but, that just proves the silicon foundries are as flexible as ever.
I want a six-core Cell for wireless HDTV.
What the hell do you do with 3 Ethernet ports on a games console?
Just read another version of the release from Sony that says “their” Cell cpu will have Nine cores: eight operating to run the system and one acting as controller!
Miguel, one to connect to the internet and two to connect to friends in the same room. In other words, a routerless lan party.
And all this computing power to drive a crappy TV screen. What a waste.
All that power, geez, who can count that high?
But it also has WiFi built in… What are the ports in there for? 🙂 Oh well, maybe one day someone will hack it and use it as a very fast firewall running IPCop?
Miguel , too much is never enough.
The elephant in the room is the price of these new powerful consoles. We’re seeing expensive gaming technology on the horizon. True, the current business model is to sell consoles at a loss and make up for it on the games, but speculation this morning is that the PS3 will be priced at around $500.
I think there’s a reason M$ is holding off on releasing price information until after E3 – they’re trying to build as much hype as possible before hitting consumers with a high price tag. $400, maybe? Add in rumors of $70 games and online fees (will most people be satisfied with the free version of Xbox Live?) and I have to wonder how Microsoft is going to reach that 1 Billion Consumers they kept talking about at their E3 press conference.
“The elephant in the room is the price of these new powerful consoles.”
And what about the price of the HDTV sets these new consoles are designed to display on?
There was some discussion of cheap HDTVs when the original Xbox came out, and it should become a lively topic soon.
In that regard, I read that Sony will have network-centric TVs ready when the PS3 hits the stores. Another use for Ethernet or WiFi ports – when your console -AND- your TV have independent connections to the Internet. 🙂
Dave, you’re just proving what John has been saying for the last few years. The game market is in for a huge collapse.
I’d guess that the $400 price would be correct. And I’ve also heard that the games will cost more, allegedly because they’re in HD. As if THAT increases the price! Very funny.
People are going to tire of paying these outrageous prices and find something else to do with their time.
My prediction is that these latest consoles will be the last ones to be hyped for a long time. After this, no one will care.
Does J. Allerd go…ANYWHERE without his headset? Im sorry but he looks rediculous….
I have to agree with the first poster, Sonys hype will kill Microsoft. Though I despise the new PS3 case and controller, I still think Sony has the upperhand. MS is kidding itself if it believes that the only reason the PS2 outsold the Xbox by like 50 million units is because it was released a year earlier.
MS is acting like its THEIR market, and they can decide when to progress to the “next-gen” (new buzzword alert) consoles. From what ive seen Sony wasnt planning on releasing the PS3 until 2007 but bumped it up to 2006 in response to MS. They didnt have much of a need considering how well the system was doing and the extra year would of allowed them to really ripen the cell.
As of right now, the Xbox 360 hasnt really showed gamers that much of a leap forward. You look at Full Auto, then you look at Kill Zone 2 or EA’s boxing title. There is just no comparison. I love how the sony PR people are dubbing it the Xbox 1.5…granted MS has PLAYABLE games this year at E3 and Sony has only tech demos, but the hype Sony is generating is just eclipsing the 360.
So John are you at E3 right now? Be interested to hear your opinion on MS attempts to reach the 1 billion gamers and take the market for themselves.
“I love how the sony PR people are dubbing it the Xbox 1.5…granted MS has PLAYABLE games this year at E3 and Sony has only tech demos, but the hype Sony is generating is just eclipsing the 360.”
Playable, but not on an Xbox 360.
Check out the photos at:
http://www.anandtech.com/tradeshows/showdoc.aspx?i=2420&p=5
It is sad that marketing is so important, that they try to give the impression that tthe demos are running on the Xbox.
Won’t that make people think the new hardware isn’t that big of an improvement?? Isn’t this playing into Sony’s hand, regarding Xbox 1.5??
You guys are missing the point, what is power compared to crappy games? Remember the nintendo 64 was the most powerful console of that time and yet it flunked due to a huge roster of lousy games and excessive censorship.
In the end the quality of the games is what will stand in the end since nowadays any game can look pretty but to make it a really good game is another thing.
Take for example nintendo’s game Ninendogs wich was the sole reason the Nintendo DS outsole the Sony PSP 3 to 1 despite the PSP hardware being obviously superior than the DS.
In the end the games played on the consoles are going to be the ones defining wich one will win.