How powerful is the PS3?

**shattacrew** · 10-19-2010,09:17 PM

Just as the title says. How powerful is the PS3? Using PC for comparison.

I just got a PS3 since my belief is that PS3's with firmware 3.41 is hot commodity and will be selling expensive when they become rare like the Jtag 360. My main reason for getting the PS3 was for the possible emulators and mostly XBMC. When i saw progress with a dreamcast emulator i said to myself, cool so any console before that should have no problem being emulated. I understand the PS3 is difficult to program, and i know eventually these will come.

Now when it comes to XBMC, the devs are really putting down the PS3 hardware. As far as i know the PS3 has a 7 core CPU operating at a little over 3.0 GHZ. The famed Acer revo has a dual core 1.6 GHZ processor. The devs don't even want to look at the PS3 with its mediocre specs.

This have me worrying if all those emulators would even be possible.

How do the ps3 PPC processor compare to the dual core processors on today's computers.

**Fresc** · 10-19-2010,09:28 PM

One thing I do know is that it's the most powerful console currently available... what more do you need to know?

**JonahUK** · 10-19-2010,09:34 PM

The main issue with the XBMC devs is the fact that the ps3 is not a fully open system. They also made a lot of their statements when Linux had no RSX access.

Now things have changed and the system is becoming more open, who knows.
They have stated that they will not code it but have no problem if someone esle does, they will give all the help they can.

As for the power of the PS3, I don't think developers have coded to its full potential yet.

**Xeauron** · 10-19-2010,09:37 PM

Originally Posted by shattacrew

How do the ps3 PPC processor compare to the dual core processors on today's computers.

As a measure of power, the cell processor shits all over most of your garden variety PC processors. The main problem with it is that it's different to program for than most as well - if done properly - your program must be divvied up into several smaller tasks being thrown at the processor at once (parallel processing).

The PS3's weaknesses come from it's lack of system RAM - a relatively weak GPU, there are a few other bottle necks in there as well but it's getting late here and I can't be arsed to go into more detail at the moment (too tired!).

But rest assured, where there are weak links in the system, the cell processor does pick up most of the slack and redeem it.

**JonahUK** · 10-19-2010,10:11 PM

Originally Posted by Fresc

One thing I do know is that it's the most powerful console currently available... what more do you need to know?

What makes you say that?

**Fresc** · 10-19-2010,10:25 PM

Originally Posted by JonahUK

What makes you say that?

"Also, relevant to processing speed is the floating point performance measurement of teraflops. The PS3 has 2.18 tfps and Xbox 360 has 1."

**shattacrew** · 10-19-2010,10:35 PM

Originally Posted by Xeauron

As a measure of power, the cell processor shits all over most of your garden variety PC processors. The main problem with it is that it's different to program for than most as well - if done properly - your program must be divvied up into several smaller tasks being thrown at the processor at once (parallel processing).

The PS3's weaknesses come from it's lack of system RAM - a relatively weak GPU, there are a few other bottle necks in there as well but it's getting late here and I can't be arsed to go into more detail at the moment (too tired!).

But rest assured, where there are weak links in the system, the cell processor does pick up most of the slack and redeem it.

Point taken, i was also looking at the small amount of RAM the PS3 has. Just hoping that my investment gives a great return. Bluray & PS3 games capability is awesome but, i'm thinking "One Device to Rule them all"

**itsMoeyy** · 10-20-2010,01:21 AM

It's so powerful that it can kill you o_O

jk. its pretty powerful in terms of Ghz. Better than the 360 if I can recall.

**Misfit** · 10-20-2010,02:25 AM

The power of the PS3 has been discussed since day 1, It's 4 years old now and we aren't seeing anything remarkable. Comments like "power hasn't been tapped yet" are getting really old. Looking forward to decent homebrew is the realistic future imho.

How many of you Own the ps3, 360 and a decent pc?

**KuroiKami** · 10-20-2010,05:54 AM

the ps3 is very complex and still have power to be pushed on. think gears of war 3 is very fully pushed the console limit.

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