Saturday, August 09, 2008

Shedding Some Light

I've noticed that a lot of fanboys are not as informed as I am. Most people wonder why some things happen and why some things are. This will be mainly PS3 vs. Xbox 360 but I'm going to try not to take any shots at either console and make this as even as possible.

First up why do PS3 sytem and game updates take longer than on 360? The answer is PS3 system updates are about 150MB give or take, the 360's updates are 8MB giver or take but thats around the average. The game updates are the same thing. If you noticed the Burnout: Paradise Cagney update is upwards of 100MB, on the PS3 this is downloaded when you turn the game on. The 360 has you download it from the Marketplace.

Another thing I hear a lot is why is it most games that are ported from 360 to PS3 are bad on the PS3? Some say its because the PS3 isn't as strong as what Sony said it would be and because the PS3 has less RAM. Wrong! The reason why there bad is really because of lazy developers and this is why.. The 360 has 3 cores all at 3.2GHZ the PS3's Cell processor has 1 main core at 3.2GHZ and has 8 Synergistic cores but 7 are active since Sony turned one off. Another one is used exclusively for the OS so 6 Synergistic cores can be used for games. The reason why ports are bad is because on the PS3 you have to split up Physics and lighting etc... amongst the 6 cores and this is hard to do. Its easier to go from 6 to 3 thats why you hear some people say you should go from PS3 to 360. Also the RAM issue isn't a issue at all the PS3 does have 512MB of RAM same as the 360 but there split 256MB for the Cell and 256 for the GPU similar to PCs, the PS3 can share RAM between the two when its needed and its not slower the PS3 has 256MB of XDR RAM which is extremely fast hence the X and is around twice as fast as the 360s GDDR3 RAM and the PS3 has 256MB of GDDR3 RAM as well. So really bad ports are due to lazy developers and thats why! Also to note the PS3 version of the Orange Box which is usually frowned upon really does show how powerful the PS3 is! The Orange Box really wast much worse than the 360 version if I say its worse than the 360 version why did I say it shows the PS3's power? It's because the OB didn't use any Synergistic cores it just used the main core and thats it!

Really the thing people put down on the PS3 is the Mandatory installs and this is why they happen. The PS3 uses a Blu-ray drive that is at 2x speed the 360 uses a DVD drive at the speed of 12x i believe. You might think holy hell the PS3 has to get all of that data off of there at only 2x speed why'll the 360 toasts it with 12x. Really the drives are almost equal the read speed on a Blu-ray disc is faster than a DVD but the 2x speed isn't faster than 12x. Now if there almost equal why the big installs? The answer is compression and the read speed! With Metal Gear Solid 4 the game is stated to take up the whole 50GB of a Blu-ray disc which is almost 10x what a Dual layer DVD can hold. Now the game is the least compressed it can be to fit on the disc on the 360 they would compress the hell out of it thus helping loading speeds and not using 10 DVDs. So really the BDs greatest advantage is its greatest weakness. One thing the PS3 usually has over the 360 is texture quality. Lets take Assassins Creed as an example, this game looks worse on the PS3 but has better textures. This is because there less compressed using more of the Blu-ray disc but the BD drive cant read these big textures fast enough the developers offload them to the HDD.

These are really most of the complaints I hear that are wrong or people don't understand. If you know anymore sound off in the comments and Ill try to provide an answer to it.

No comments: