Meh, who knows.  These days, GPUs are actually far ahead of CPUs in terms of speed, which is why some tests (using top-notch CPUs and GPUs) indicate that SLI actually slows down the computer.  So the extra CPU power present in the PS3 may not have a detrimental effect.

PS3, IMO, is still far stronger than the PC in terms of number crunching.  And price to performance wise, the PS3 is a lot better.  8 PS3s are enough to build a supercomputer...

ZiNgA BuRgA Wrote:Meh, who knows.  These days, GPUs are actually far ahead of CPUs in terms of speed,

GPUs are fast cause of parallel processing (correct me if I'm wrong), which is not very viable in CPUs. So that comparison is pointless, since they do different stuff. If u force a GPU to use a single pipeline (to mimic a CPU), it'll be way slower than a CPU.

Anyways, i read this interesting article that someone actually programmed a GPU to encode a bunch of audio by feeding the audio in as video data and stuff, and utilizing all the pixel pipelines, and it supposedly worked really well, faster than a CPU.

ZiNgA BuRgA Wrote:which is why some tests (using top-notch CPUs and GPUs) indicate that SLI actually slows down the computer.  So the extra CPU power present in the PS3 may not have a detrimental effect.

In terms of gaming, isn't the gpu usually the bottleneck, not the cpu, i mean isn't gaming more gpu intensive? ...And the PS3 has a weaker gpu, and stronger cpu...

ZiNgA BuRgA Wrote:And price to performance wise, the PS3 is a lot better.

For solely playing games, likely. It's designed for that purpose.

Yet neither of us will probably ever get a PS3... ... which relates back to that massive console vs PC argument i had with Ge64 a long time ago, which i don't really want to re-visit.

ZiNgA BuRgA Wrote:8 PS3s are enough to build a supercomputer...

My uni has this interesting super computer built of i think 64 or 128 Pentium 3's they got really cheap from some company which needed to do an upgrade.

I can get some pentium 2 computers for almost free... lets make a super computer!!! ... ofcourse, there's always the problems of space, and cooling, and skill.

(This post was last modified: 23/07/2007 05:37 PM by Assassinator.)

Assassinator Wrote:

ZiNgA BuRgA Wrote:Meh, who knows.  These days, GPUs are actually far ahead of CPUs in terms of speed,

GPUs are fast cause of parallel processing (correct me if I'm wrong), which is not very viable in CPUs. So that comparison is pointless, since they do different stuff. If u force a GPU to use a single pipeline (to mimic a CPU), it'll be way slower than a CPU.

Multi-core CPUs work in parallel...
If I recall correctly, if you compare a single pixel shader pipeline with a single core CPU, I really doubt that the GPU would be "way slower".
Dunno the specs of the newer Graphics cards.  taking an older example, the 7800GTX had ~169GFLOPS, the Intel Pentium 4 Extreme Edition 3.6GHz about 15?GFLOPS.
7800GTX had 24 pipelines, so if you spread them evenly (probably incorrect), there really isn't that much difference.

Assassinator Wrote:

ZiNgA BuRgA Wrote:which is why some tests (using top-notch CPUs and GPUs) indicate that SLI actually slows down the computer.  So the extra CPU power present in the PS3 may not have a detrimental effect.

In terms of gaming, isn't the gpu usually the bottleneck, not the cpu, i mean isn't gaming more gpu intensive? ...And the PS3 has a weaker gpu, and stronger cpu...

Depends what game.  Graphics is handled by the GPU, but physics calculations are done by the CPU.  I've seen various benchmarks show that some games will run slower under SLI, due to CPU bottlenecks.  On (almost) purely graphical tests, like 3DMark, SLI improves performance a lot.

Assassinator Wrote:

ZiNgA BuRgA Wrote:And price to performance wise, the PS3 is a lot better.

For solely playing games, likely. It's designed for that purpose.

Actually, PS3 was meant to be more like a computer, as Sony is trying to push for an open development environment or something.
Dodgey.

Assassinator Wrote:Yet neither of us will probably ever get a PS3... ... which relates back to that massive console vs PC argument i had with Ge64 a long time ago, which i don't really want to re-visit.

The main turn off for the PS3 is the price.  Typically, consoles have been a lot cheaper, but the PS3 really pushes it.

Assassinator Wrote:

ZiNgA BuRgA Wrote:8 PS3s are enough to build a supercomputer...

My uni has this interesting super computer built of i think 64 or 128 Pentium 3's they got really cheap from some company which needed to do an upgrade.

I can get some pentium 2 computers for almost free... lets make a super computer!!! ... ofcourse, there's always the problems of space, and cooling, and skill.

O_o, you'd need a few thousand Pentium 2 CPUs...
128 Pentium 3s doesn't sound very strong either.  Typically you need something like around 500 Pentium 3s to build a supercomputer.

ZiNgA BuRgA Wrote:

Assassinator Wrote:GPUs are fast cause of parallel processing (correct me if I'm wrong), which is not very viable in CPUs.

Multi-core CPUs work in parallel...

Not viable at the level of parallel GPUs do. New GPUs do like 48x parallel? Current CPUs do 4x at most.

ZiNgA BuRgA Wrote:

Assassinator Wrote:Yet neither of us will probably ever get a PS3... ...

The main turn off for the PS3 is the price.  Typically, consoles have been a lot cheaper, but the PS3 really pushes it.

Mainly cause of the BluRay drive probably. They're really expensive at the time of the PS3's launch.

Not that either of us will get an X360 either, which is a lot cheaper.

Meh, couldn't even be screwed getting myself a graphics card. I don't really even play games much at all these days.

ZiNgA BuRgA Wrote:

Assassinator Wrote:My uni has this interesting super computer built of i think 64 or 128 Pentium 3's they got really cheap from some company which needed to do an upgrade.

128 Pentium 3s doesn't sound very strong either.  Typically you need something like around 500 Pentium 3s to build a supercomputer.

Forgot how many there really are, but i remember it's something like 128.

Anyways, it's not made to be the strongest supercomputer. More like something they did for fun. And it's made some years back (like 5 years back or something), So u have to compare with standards back then.

(This post was last modified: 24/07/2007 05:01 PM by Assassinator.)

Assassinator Wrote:

ZiNgA BuRgA Wrote:

Assassinator Wrote:GPUs are fast cause of parallel processing (correct me if I'm wrong), which is not very viable in CPUs.

Multi-core CPUs work in parallel...

Not viable at the level of parallel GPUs do. New GPUs do like 48x parallel? Current CPUs do 4x at most.

Not really.  An application is either multi-threaded or single-threaded.
The number of threads is really irrelevant (unless applications allocate threads to do specific tasks rather than just parallel processing).
For example, multi-threaded video encoders will work with any number of threads.


Though Blu-ray / HD-DVD is an interesting aspect of these consoles...

I find Necrobot one of the hardest bosses on EP.