PS3 Performance Issues?

Some PS3 users find the hardware capability of the console to be somewhat limiting. At least one user, writing for The Inquirer wrote a scathing review of the mechanism, calling it “slow and broken.” Those of you who are familiar with the source of this information knows to take the following with a grain of salt.

When it comes to displaying 3d data, the RSX system appears to be limited to setting up 275 Million triangles per second, compared with  500+ million for the Xbox 360. On the surface, there would seem to be no reason for the disparity – a glance at the image above indicates plenty of main memory. The problem seems to be memory access – although there is a respectable amount of onboard RAM, it appears that the actual amount available for current “read” memory is only a fraction of that. The problem would seen to be one of bandwidth and transfer rates rather than available memory.

If the game program can write at 250x the read speed, the Cell local memory is superfluous. All work comes out of main memory, meaning the “local memory” – important to game speed and animation flow – may as well not exist. Regardless of platform or OS, it is a fact that the processor reads from the cache – in this case, the “local,’ or “read’ memory – far faster than having to fetch it from the RAM chips sitting on the logic board. This can lead to contentious issues for the main memory bus, and cause numerous performance problems. If the figures in the image above are correct, the PS3 will have some serious performance issues when it comes to object-heavy gaming environments with complex models.

Or it could all be hogwash.

Via The Inquirer

Some PS3 users find the hardware capability of the console to be somewhat limiting. At least one user, writing for The Inquirer wrote a scathing review of the mechanism, calling it “slow and broken.” Those of you who are familiar with the source of this information knows to take the following with a grain of salt.

When it comes to displaying 3d data, the RSX system appears to be limited to setting up 275 Million triangles per second, compared with  500+ million for the Xbox 360. On the surface, there would seem to be no reason for the disparity – a glance at the image above indicates plenty of main memory. The problem seems to be memory access – although there is a respectable amount of onboard RAM, it appears that the actual amount available for current “read” memory is only a fraction of that. The problem would seen to be one of bandwidth and transfer rates rather than available memory.

If the game program can write at 250x the read speed, the Cell local memory is superfluous. All work comes out of main memory, meaning the “local memory” – important to game speed and animation flow – may as well not exist. Regardless of platform or OS, it is a fact that the processor reads from the cache – in this case, the “local,’ or “read’ memory – far faster than having to fetch it from the RAM chips sitting on the logic board. This can lead to contentious issues for the main memory bus, and cause numerous performance problems. If the figures in the image above are correct, the PS3 will have some serious performance issues when it comes to object-heavy gaming environments with complex models.

Or it could all be hogwash.

Via The Inquirer