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
Storage Devices
Both the PlayStation 3 and the Xbox 360 feature removable 2.5” HDDs as an option for storage; the difference being that the PS3 won’t ship with a hard drive, while the Xbox 360 will.
In the original Xbox, developers used the hard drive to cache game data in order to decrease load times and improve responsiveness of games. Compared to the built in 5X CAV DVD drive in the Xbox, the hard drive offered much faster performance. With the Xbox 360, the performance demands on the hard drive are lessened, the console now ships with a 12X CAV DVD-DL drive. You can expect read performance to more than double over the first DVD drive that shipped with the original Xbox, which obviously decreases the need for a hard drive in the system (but definitely doesn’t eliminate it).
This time around, Microsoft has outfitted the 360 with a 20GB removable 2.5” HDD, but its role is slightly different. While developers will still be able to use the drive to cache data if necessary, its role in the system will be more of a storage device for downloaded content. Microsoft is very serious about their Xbox Live push with this next console generation, and they fully expect users to download demos, game content updates and much more to their removable hard drive. The fact that it’s removable means that users can carry it around with them to friends’ houses to play their content on other 360s.
It is important to note that disc capacity remains unchanged from the original Xbox, the 360 will still only have a maximum capacity of 9GB per disc. Given that the current Xbox titles generally use less than half of this capacity, there’s still some room for growth.
Microsoft has also reduced the size of the data that is required to be on each disc by a few hundred megabytes, combine that with the fact that larger game data can be compressed further thanks to more powerful hardware and game developers shouldn’t run into capacity limitations on Xbox 360 discs anytime soon.
The PS3 is a bit more forward looking in its storage devices, unfortunately as of now it will not ship with a hard drive. The optical drive of choice in the PS3 will be a Blu-ray player, which originally looked quite promising but now is not as big of a feature as it once was.
The two main competitors for the DVD video successor are the HD-DVD and Blu-ray standards. Around the announcement of the PS3 at E3, there was a lot of discussion going on surrounding an attempt to unify the HD-DVD and Blu-ray standards, which would obviously make the PS3 Blu-ray support a huge selling feature. It would mean that next year you would be able to buy a console, generally estimated to be priced around the $400 mark, that could double as a HD-DVD/Blu-ray player. Given that standalone HD-DVD/Blu-ray players are expected to be priced no less than $500, it would definitely increase the adoption rate of the PS3. However, talks between unifying the two standards appear to have broken down without any hope for resolution meaning that there will be two competing standards for the next-generation DVD format. As such, until unified HD-DVD/Blu-ray players are produced, the PS3 won’t have as big of an advantage in this regard as once thought. It may, however, tilt the balance in favor of Blu-ray as the appropriate next-generation disc standard if enough units are sold.
When we first disassembled the original Xbox, we noticed that it basically featured a PC DVD drive. From what we can tell, the Xbox 360 will also use a fairly standard dual layer DVD drive. As such, it would not be totally unfeasible for Microsoft to, later on, outfit the Xbox 360 with a HD-DVD or Blu-ray drive, once a true standard is agreed upon.
The one advantage that Sony does have is that developers can use BD-ROM (Blu-ray) discs for their games, while if MS introduces Blu-ray or HD-DVD support later on it will be strictly as a video player (game developers won’t offer content for only owners of Blu-ray/HD-DVD Xbox 360 versions). The advantage is quite tangible in that PS3 developers will be able to store a minimum of 23.3GB of data on a single disc, which could mean that they could use uncompressed video and game content, freeing up the CPU to handle other tasks instead of dealing with decompression on the fly. Of course, Blu-ray media will cost more than standard DVD discs, but over the life of the PS3 that cost will go down as production increases.
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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.