We heard a lot about the hassle developing for PS3, and now John Carmack, the technical director of id Software has reaffirmed it.
“PS3 has more raw CPU power, but 360 has more GPU, avail memory, and is easier to develop for.” he said in his Twitter account.
Although with the statement above, he did say that the differences between Xbox 360 and PS3 are “modest” enough.
“The differences between the PS3 and 360 are modest enough that differences between developers is a much larger factor.” he added.
Xbox 360 features 3.2 GHz PowerPC with 3 dual-threaded processor cores and PS3 3.2 GHz Cell processor with 7 single-threaded synergistic processing units cores although is not directly comparable to Xbox 360 processor cores.
For RAM, Xbox 360 have 512 MB GDDR3 RAM (700 MHz), shared with GPU while PS3 is powered with 256 MB XDR RAM (3.2GHz).
Mike
Aug 23. 2011
wow. talk about misleading. the SPEs in the cell are DUAL THREADED. And, the PS3 has 256MB of System RAM and 256MB of Video RAM. and since the cell and the RSX can use each other’s memory as needed – technically, PS3 has 512MB of RAM. the PS3′s fashion of RAM seems to be much more efficient than the 360′s.
superdynamite
Aug 24. 2011
First off, id already blamed XBox360 for Rage development limitations. This is part of their “damage control”. (*all links below).
I like both 360 & PS3. Although I like both, I am a realist and I do know that the PS3 is far more technologically advanced than the 360, as it should be, being released 2 years after.
The limitations of the 360 and today’s “average” gaming PC are far greater than the Playstation3. But, the PC has almost endless expansion capabilities, so I don’t even know why it is part of the comparison.
Grand Theft Auto IV is the greatest example of this. The GTAIV was scaled down in almost every facet of the game so it could be developed for XBox360 without having to use multiple DVD discs. The frame rate, size & native resolution of GTAIV were all minimized so the game could fit on one DVD disc for 360. I highly doubt that Rage is close to the size of GTAIV.
Rage has been “in developement” since Motorstorm 1 was released (5 years). Infact, the developers got the idea for Rage from Motorstorm 1 on the PS3. I would be surprised if Rage was graphically superior to either Motorstorm or God of War III, both of which could not run on the 360 without being scaled down or released on mulitple discs.
The Xbox360 version of Final Fantasy XIII is on 3 discs and is still unable to run at a native resolution of 1080p. There is currently one XBox360 game with a native relolution of 1080i NOT 1080p (Boogie Bunnies = 1920×1080 (4xAA) on XBLive.
The author should be more responsible as a journalist when chosing a title for his article. The limitations of the 360 far outweigh the limitations of the split memory of the PS3 which is not even a limitation. PS3 runs at 3.4Ghz which is 4X faster than 360.
http://www.1up.com/news/rage-held-xbox-360-limits
In my opinion, the developer was trying to be politically correct
http://n4g.com/news/60602/id-admits-motorstorm-inspirations-for-rage
http://kotaku.com/257184/rockstar-gtaiv-limited-by-360
http://www.gamesradar.com/ps3/god-of-war-iii/preview/why-god-of-war-iii-is-only-possible-on-ps3/a-201003051611977042/g-20060713144458560042
Jonathan
Aug 24. 2011
@superdynamite
Carmack himself has said the split RAM wasn’t such a problem (said at QuakeCon 2011 I think), but the issue is that the Sony OS uses up more RAM than the X360′s and so even though on paper both consoles have 512Mb, the X360 has more available.
And frame rate being lowered to make a game fit on a DVD? I don’t see the connection.
The RSX on the PS3 is weaker than the X360. There is just no way around that. Many developers (including Carmack) have stated this Which is why developers have been exploiting the Cell to accomplish things like motion blur (Uncharted 2), z-caching (Killzone 3) and other functions normally performed on a GPU to free it up some.
So yes at the end of the day the PS3 probably has more RAW power overall, but the X360 is not far behind and 10x easier to develop for. Brilliant looking games like God of War 3 and Killzone 2/3 are benefiting from the blu-ray in being able to store massive amounts of high quality content (Killzone levels could be over a couple Gbs each if i recall correctly), but on a pure raster level, the X360 could definately accomplish those visuals.