Microsoft's Xbox 360, Sony's PS3 - A Hardware Discussion
by Anand Lal Shimpi & Derek Wilson on June 24, 2005 4:05 AM EST- Posted in
- GPUs
Will Sony Deliver on 1080p?
Sony appears to have the most forward-looking set of outputs on the PlayStation 3, featuring two HDMI video outputs. There is no explicit support for DVI, but creating a HDMI-to-DVI adapter isn’t too hard to do. Microsoft has unfortunately only committed to offering component or VGA outputs for HD resolutions.
Support for 1080p will most likely be over HDMI, which will be an issue down the road. If you’re wondering whether or not there is a tangible image quality difference between 1080p and 720p, think about it this way - 1920 x 1080 looks better on a monitor than 1280 x 720, now imagine that blown up to a 36 - 60” HDTV - the difference will be noticeable.
At 720p, the G70 is entirely CPU bound in just about every game we’ve tested, so the RSX should have no problems running at 720p with 4X AA enabled, just like the 360’s Xenos GPU. At 1080p, the G70 is still CPU bound in a number of situations, so it is quite possible for RSX to actually run just fine at 1080p which should provide for some excellent image quality.
You must keep one thing in mind however; in order for the RSX to be CPU limited and not texture bandwidth limited at 1080p, the games it is running must be pixel shader bound.
For example, Doom 3 is able to run at 2048 x 1536 at almost 70fps on the 7800 GTX, however Battlefield 2 runs at less than 50 fps. Other games run at higher and lower frame rates; the fact of the matter is that the RSX won’t be able to guarantee 1080p at 60 fps in all games, but there should be some where it is possible. The question then becomes, as a developer, do you make things look great at 720p or do you make some sacrifices in order to offer 1080p support.
One thing is for sure, support for two 1080p outputs in spanning mode (3840 x 1080) on the PS3 is highly unrealistic. At that resolution, the RSX would be required to render over 4 megapixels per frame, without a seriously computation bound game it’s just not going to happen at 60 fps.
Microsoft’s targets for the Xbox 360 are far more down to earth, with 720p and 4X AA being the requirements for all 360 titles. With a 720p target for all games, you can expect all Xbox 360 titles to render (internally) at 1280 x 720. We’ve already discussed that the 360’s GPU architecture will effectively give free 4X AA at this resolution, so there’s no reason not to have 4X AA enabled as well.
Most HDTVs will support either 1080i or 720p; those that natively support 720p will simply get a 720p output from the 360 with no additional signal processing. We’d be willing to bet that the game will still render internally at 720p and rely on either the Xbox 360’s TV encoder to scale the output to 1080i, or you can rely on your TV to handle the scaling for you. But for all discussion here, you can expect the Xbox 360 GPU to render games at 1280 x 720 with 4X AA enabled.
The support for 4X AA across the board is important, because on a large TV, even 720p is going to exhibit quite a bit of aliasing. But the lack of 1080p support is disturbing, especially considering it is a feature that Sony has been touting quite a bit. The first 1080p displays just hit the market this year, and the vast majority of the installed HDTV user base will only support 720p or 1080i, not 1080p. In the latter half of the Xbox 360 and PS3 life cycle, 1080p displays will be far more common place but it may be one more console generation before we get hardware that is capable of running all games at 1080p at a constant 60 fps.
In the end, Sony’s support for 1080p is realistic, but not for all games. For the first half of the console’s life, whether or not game developers enable AA will matter more than whether 1080p is supported. By the second half, it’s going to be tough to say.
Microsoft’s free 4X AA is wonderful and desperately needed, especially on larger TVs, but the lack of 1080p support is disappointing. It is a nice feature to have, even if only a handful of games can take advantage of it, simply because 1080p HDTV owners will always appreciate anything that can take full advantage of their displays. It’s not a make or break issue, simply because the majority of games for both platforms will still probably be rendered internally at 720p.
Facebook
Twitter
RSS
93 Comments
View All Comments
MDme - Friday, June 24, 2005 - link
now i know what to buy :)SuperStrokey - Friday, June 24, 2005 - link
lol, thats funnybldckstark - Friday, June 24, 2005 - link
Having a PS2 and an XBOX I was not even thinking about buying a PS3 since the XBOX kicks the PS2's ace. (IMHO). After reading this article I have much more respect for the PS3 and now I don't have any idea which onw I will buy. My wife may force me to buy the PS3 if the 360 isn't as backward compatible as most want it to be.Maybe I will just use my unusually large brain to create a PS360 that will play everything. Oooh, wait, I gotta get a big brain first. Then a big p3nis. Or maybe just a normal one.
Furen - Friday, June 24, 2005 - link
#37: supposedly yes. Since it will have to be through hardcore emulation there will be issues (but of course). It wont be fully transparent like the ps2 but rather you'll have profiles saved on your harddrive which will tell the system how to run the games.SuperStrokey - Friday, June 24, 2005 - link
I havnt been following the 360 too much (im a self admitted nintendo fanboy), but will it be backward compatible too? I heard it was still up in the air but as PS3 is going to be and revolution is going to be (bigtime) i would assume that 360 will be too right?ZobarStyl - Friday, June 24, 2005 - link
#32 is right: how many games get released for all 3 console with only minor, subtle differences between them? Most of the time, first party stuff is the only major difference between consoles. Very few 3rd party games are held back from the 'slower' consoles; most are just licensing deals (GTA:SA on PS2, for example). And if you look back, of the first party games lineup, XBox didn't have the most compelling of libraries, in my opinion.yacoub - Friday, June 24, 2005 - link
imo, the revolution will be a loser in more than just hardware. i can't remember the last time i actually wanted to play any of the exclusive nintendo games. actually, i think for about one day i considered a gamecube for metroid but then i saw it in action at a friend's place and was underwhelmed by the gameplay. forget mario and link, give me splinter cell or gran tourismo or forza or... yeah you get the idea.nserra - Friday, June 24, 2005 - link
#27If you read the article carefully, you will see that since they are "weaker" pipelines, the 48 will perform like 24 "complete" ones.
I think with this Ati new design, there will be games where the performance will be much better, equal or worst.
But that’s the price to pay for complete new designs.
On paper Ati design is much more advance, in fact reminds the VOODOO2 design where there are more than one chip doing things. I think I prefer some very fancy graphics design over a double all easy solution.
Taracta - Friday, June 24, 2005 - link
With 25.5 Gbs of bandwith to memory, is OoO (Out Of Order processing) necessary? Isn't OoO and its ilk bandwith hiding solutions? I have an issue with regards to Anandtech outlook on the SPPs of the CELL processor (I could be wrong). I consider the SPPs to be full fledge Vector Processors and not just fancy implementation of MMX, SSE, Altivec etc, which seems to be Anandtech's outlook. As full fledge Vector Processors they are orders of magnitude more flexible than that and as Vector Processors comparing them to Scalar Processors is erroneous.Another thing, RISC won the war! Don't believe, what do you call a processor with a RISC core with a CISC hardware translator around it? CISC? I think not, it's a RISC processor. x86 did win the procesor war but not by beating them but joining them and by extension CISC loss. Just needed to clear that up. The x86 instruction set won but the old x86 CISC architecture loss. The x86 insrtuction set will always win, fortunately for AMD because the Itanium was to have been their death. No way could they have copied the Itanium in this day and age which come to think of it is very unfortunate.
From you have the processor the runs x86 the best you will always win. Unless you can get a toehold in the market with something else such as LINUX and CELL!
CuriousMike - Friday, June 24, 2005 - link
If it's a 3rd party game, it won't matter (greatly) which platform you pick, because developers will develop to the least-common-denominator.In the current generation, about the best one could hope for is slightly higher-res textures and better framerate on XBOX over ps2/gc.
IMO, pick your platform based on first-party games/series you're looking forward to. Simple as that.